The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-08 00:00:00

CAMP BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, SEPT. 25.
With the exception of the excavated rock remains of
Inkerman—of which their situation as yet limits our
examination to a telescopic survey—the ruins of Hera-
clea Chersonesus, on the little headland that bounds
Quarantine Bay on the west, are the only architectural
relics of any historic interest in the nighbourhood of Se-
bastopol. Till within so recent a period, I believe, as 20
years ago, several others were scattered over the plateau
from the mouth of the Tchernaya to Balaklava, along
the eastern declivity of which a wall connecting these
two points served to protect the promontory against the
Scythians and Bosphoranic kings ; but what the dens
edax temporis had been slowly effecting for centuries the
" march of improvement" had speedily consummated
since then, and, excepting the few blocks of Chersonese
masonry which I have mentioned, not a trace is to be
seen over this broad expanse of hill and valley of either
Greek or Genoese remains. The last and most sweep-
ing clearance of the architectural relics of this- cele-
brated city of commercial antiquity took place on the
building of Nicolaieff, on the Boug, when all the
finest of its green marble pillars and slabs, were car-
ried off to form part of the houses in the new t9-wn.
Later, the rise of Sebastopol itself occasioned a stiff
further diminution of the ruins, by the extraction of
almost every remaining block that could be turned to
account in the erection of the great Russian stronghold ;
till hardly enough now remains to guide the wanderer in
his search after the site of the capital of one of the most
powerful free states of the ancient world. On Sunday I
rode over to Kamiesch, and after making the tour of the
large wooden town into which this French landing-place
has grown, proceeded over the heights on its north-east,
and rambled for a time amid the crumbling relics of the
old Greek city, and the tombs in the very picturesque
graveyard of the Church of St. Wladimir, a short way
beyond. Before attempting any description of either of
these last, however, I may just prefix a remark or two
on the present state of Kamiesch itself, and the line of
works by which it is now fortified.
But a few weeks ago, this head-quarters of the
French administrations and principal locale of the
traders who followed the army consisted of little more
than a couple, or at most three, straggling and broken
rows of wooden sheds, portions of which bore, to be sure,
sufficiently imposing names, such as Hotel des Allies,
Cafe de l'Univers, Grand Magazin de Monsieur Qnel-
qu'un et Cie., and the like ; but sounding as might be
the nomenclature given by the various proprietaires to
their shops, they were little better than so many detached
hovels, and their stocks in trade were anything but first-
class. Wondrous, however, is the change which has
taken place : regularly laid-out streets of substantial and
neatly-built wooden houses have been erected along the
whole face of the slope running up from the northern
shore of the bay, and in these are to be seen shops filled
with every variety of eatable, drinkable and wearable
merchandise ; behind the counters of which, too, buxom
Marseillaises or Parisiennes may be seen dealing
out creature comforts to groups of red-coated
ensigns and lieutenants, wliom they daily be-
witch all the way from the English camp, to
listen to their merry laugh, and drink in unsettling
poison from their wicked but lustrous black eyes.
What if Madlle. charges her delighted customers 60s. a
dozen for yin ordinaire, or, in the prettiest broken Eng-
lish in the world—to which her juvenile admirers will
persist in replying in still more disjointed French—re-
commends her Medoc (?), at four guineas the case ; is it
in British human nature, especially on the green side of
25, to haggle for prices with so charming a pickpocket?
Mademoiselle and her employer both know that it is
not, and wax rich accordingly. Indeed, with some few
exceptions, it is only at Kamiesh that the face of wo-
mankind is to be seen at all ; and to the fact that many
a pretty specimen of " that same" may be there gazed
at tilt the gazer i 3 content, for the trifling premium of
some 40 per cent. of extortion on what he buys, the
place, I am disposed to think, owes a large proportion
of its English and most profitable trade. Substantial
wooden landing-wharves line the shore of the bay,
and behind these rows of army stores, numerous
and capacious enough, one would fancy, to hold vic-
tualling and other supplies for the whole allied force
before Sebastopol.
Then comes the first of the ten or a dozen of broad
streets into which the town is laid out, running
parallel with the shore, and kept perfectly free from
obstructions and nuisances of every kind. Neatly-
painted tablets fixed on the corners of the streets
tell the stranger that he is walking through the Rue
Napoleon, or Rue de la, Gloire, or Place de la Qua-
rantine, or some other equally well baptised thorough-
fare which the enterprise of our allies has called into
existence within a very recent period. A busy popula-
tion, and crowds of arriving and departing customers
throng and jostle each other in the roadways, and, with
the aid of strings of waggons and light carts, inter-
spersed with here and there a mounted vivandiere, rid-
ing "not sideways but otherways," complete a very
striking and peculiar picture of life in one of its not
least suggestive phases.
The high plateau behind the town is mainly occupied
by Government stores and scattered bits of encampment,
some couple or three hundred yards distant from which
runs the line of field-works which fortifies the position,
in a sweeping curve from north to south. In point of
solidity and apparent permanency these defences far sur-
pass those by which Balaklava and its neighbourhood
have been strengthened, their construction having no-
thing whatever about it which is improvised or tempo-
rary in appearance. The whole consists of the usual work
of a continuous line of ditch and substantial stone-faced
earth bank, crowned with batteries at intervals of every
five hundred yards, which are so constructed as to pour
a cross-fire upon any attacking force that might attempt
to force the line. Those of the redoubts which I saw on
Sunday had not received their guns ; but this, I pre-
sume, will be done before winter sets in. The impression
given to a glance at the:vvhole, was certainly such as in no
way favoured the notion that our allies meditate an early
retreat from the situation ; but rather encouraged the
belief that, peace or no peace, they'll hold Kamiesch for
some time to come.

From the point at which I emerged from this admir-
able line of defence works, the route towards the ruins
lay down a steep and very stony declivity, at the bot-
tom of which was a French encampment. Then an
open space, then a patch of encampment again, and
So or for nearly a mile, when the path entered a
broad grassy open, on the other side of which lay
all the crumbling ruins that have as yet escaped
removal. Spread over this were several Frenchmen
impressed with the delusive notion that they were
" doing it" in the line of quail shooting ; but I counted
five shots out of six running in which the sportsman
missed his " feathers." They carried cheap double bar-
rels, however, and were girt on with game-bags—a com-
pleteness of outfit which doubtless brought with it a
keen sense of sporting enjoyment, and so, minus the sup-
plementary game, realised its wearer's object well
enough. The first portion of the ruins I came to was a
thick and lofty wall, much frayed and honeycombed,
but still likely to resist the action of time for centuries
to come, if spared so long by the more destructive hand
of man. Outside of this massive line of masonry, and
nearly washed by the sea, was a collection of ruinous
buildings, also of evidently considerable antiquity, 'out
forming no part of the ruins which give interest to the
spot. Within, nothing remains to point out where
temple, or forum, or market-place once stood ; odd and
scattered fragments of foundation walls having alone
outlived the annihilating breath of some twenty centu-
ries, and escaped the yet more fatal agency of a vandalism
which can neither value nor respect what has been con-
secrated by time. The French had taken advantage
of one of these low masses of antique masonry in
the construction of the extreme outside battery of their
left attack, and here in incongruous fellowship with ga-
bions, fascines, and sand-bags, were to be seen the relics
of buildings Which had become ruins before ever Gaul
had emerged from its anti-medimval barbarism, or the
savage peopled forests of Scandinavia echoed to the
sound of the first civilising axe. Further on, in advance
of this battery, the ruins presented very much the ap-
pearance of an exhausted quarry, heaps of broken slabs
and massive chisselled blocks lying thickly all over the
ground, and almost hiding the few traces of foundations
the eye could still discover amid the surrounding rubbish.
After picking my way cautiously, and not without danger
to both horse and rider, through these historic wrecks and
pitfalls for a few hundred yards, I came upon the re-
mains of a few modern houses, in an open space, before
which were piled fragments of the old Greek pillars, capi-
tals, and other productions of the architectural chisel,
cut out of. a rough white marble, and but little disco-
loured by time. The heap would have filled some six or
eight ordinary waggons. They may probably have been
in course of removal to Sebastopol at the time of the
arrival of the Allies, and the sadly fractured condition in
which I found them was no doubt largely owing to the
round shot and shell which had fallen and exploded on
and around the spot during the siege. A few perches
beyond this was another French battery, like nearly all
the rest, dismantled and empty, and serving as a sort of
abutment to this was the last fragment of the Chersonese
masonry, a portion of the wall of what appeared, from
the foundations, to have been a small circular tower.
Winding through the labyrinth of old trenches and am-
busCades which lay behind this, I reached the crown of
the little slope which divides this extreme end of Quaran-
tine Bay from the grassy and secluded valley from the
centre of which rose the green and gilt spire and-cupola
of the " holy and ancient" church of St. Wladinair. It
was the sight of thr sacrilegious plundering of this build-
ing by the French, your readers way Perhaps xemem,i