The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-21 00:00:00

banians.

BERLIN, JAN. 18, EVENING.

Count Lobanoff has arrived with despatches
from St. Petersburg. The participation of Prus-
sia in the Conferences for peace is under discus-
sion. Dresden is talked of as the place where
they are to be held. Russia has only accepted

the propositions of Austria with the reserve of
their being discussed at the Conferences. The
King has to-day held a chapter of the order of the
Black Eagle.

BERLIN, .TAN. 18.

According to the most recent accounts, the do-
cument signed by Count Nesselrode constitutes a
real attestation that Russia accepts without re-
serve the Austrian propositions, and will suffice to
authorise Prince Gortschakoff to sign a prelimi-
nary treaty of peace. The signature of that
treaty is here considered to be imminent.

MADRID, JAN. 18.

The Cortes yesterday rejected the vote of cen-
sure on the Ministry by a majority of 152 to 57.
The Parliamentary Committee is favourable to
the credit establishment proposed by some Spa-
nish capitalists.

THE ARMY IN THE CRIMEA.
(From the, Correspondent of the Times.)
CAMP BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, J. 4.
We have had a heavy snowstorm last night and
his morning. The fallhas ceased, but the snow lies
several inches deep on the plateau. On the white
surface the irregular collections of huts have some-
thing the appearance of groups of farm buildings,
while the more distant tents, dingy in comparison
with the dazzling whiteness of the ground, might
be taken for heaps of hay or manure. On all sides,
at the distance of about three-quarters of a mile,
our horizon is limited by a haze a few shades gayer
than the snow and semi-transparent, so that figures
are dimly seen walking within it. The wind howls
drearily round the huts, but the snow lends light
to the foreground, and the temperature is milder
than it has been for the last few days far
milder than it was on the 2d, a piercing day of
frost, wind, and sleet. Fatigue parties, in their
short fur-lined coats, their heads protected by those
black sealskin caps, the shape of which reminds
one of the pictures of Russian travelling, bring
up fire wood on their shoulders to the different
commissariat stores, and a considerable amount
of snow-balling goes on among them in the
intervals of their toil. Here and there carts
move slowly through the deep snow, in which,
hard by my window, some Tartar dogs are now dis-
porting themselves, apparently quite in their ele-
ment. The winter piece is complete, and not un-
picturesque. But it suggests a wish that the whole,
instead of part only, of our army had more sub-
stantial shelter than tents against the sharp wind,
the driftinc, snow, the bitter cold that will attend a
return of frost, and the chilly floods which a thaw
must inevitably bring. Well provided in most
essential respects the soldiers certainly are well
clothed and well fed ; but it seems strange that by
this time they should not all have been hutted.
Huts aro getting up, however, with great rapidity;
along the road to Balaklava one daily meets thou-
sands of men bringing up the planks on their
shoulders, and it is to be hoped that before the
heavy rains set in there will be few under canvass.
The amount of labour that has been expended on
this British camp for the Crimea is enormous. It
would have built a city of no mean aspect in some
more favoured situation, where materials were
less difficult to obtain and easier of transport. It
has built a town—a scattered and irregular one,
spread over a large surface in many groups.
Besides the numerous wooden buildings, there
are not a few of stone—small, but snug and
well-built edifices, quite able to resist even
Crimean rains and winds, and fitted, many of
them, with fire-grates from Sebastopol. If the
army were to quit the Crimea, leaving its stone
and earthen huts standing, many a Tartar would
find a better dwelling than he, perhaps, had ever
before enjoyed, and would marvel at the ingenious
and comfortable contrivances of the invader. Some
of the stables, too, are wonderfully perfect and
well contrived, and must have cost an immensity
of labour. I rode down, a day or two ago, into the
valley towards Karanyi, where the heavy batteries
are, and saw some truly admirable stables. The
stalls were paved ;
there was a clean path down
the centre ; there were racks for the hay and well-
made wooden mangers, bound and striped with the
iron bands that confine the compressed trusses—
excellent mangers—economical of corn, and which
the horses cannot bite. It had been found that the
horses sometimes pushed out the planks of the
stable huts; so stone walls were built up outside to
a sufficient height outside to prevent this. In short,
although some of the men were still under canvass,
the horses of the artillery in question could hardly
be better cared for, and the condition of those
saw corresponded with the pains that had been
taken to protect and preserve them.
The health of the camp continues good. As far
as I have been able to ascertain, the average
amount of sickness does not exceed, if it quite
reaches, 10 per cent. But a large proportion of the
cases are of a trifling nature, and the mortality is
small.

NothingJAN.
JAN. 5.
new since yesterday. It is a severe
frost and a fine bright morning.

DESTRUCTION OF THE CENTRE DOCK.
, On Wednesday evening the English engineers
blew up the bottom of the centre dock, which is
at top 236 feet long and 95 feet 4 inches wide, and
at. bottom 191 feet long and 40 feet wide. There
were 13 charges in all-11 of 160 lbs. each, and
two of 300 lbs. each—total 2,630 lbs. of powder.
The hour named was half-past 4 ; but all was not
ready for Mr. Deane to operate upon with his 10
voltaic batteries and electric wires till an hour and
a half after, when the demolition was pronounced

complete as far as it went. Twn eal-qes were ag-_, in
used, to which the small wires leading to each charge
were attached. In addition to a large number of
engineer officers, there were present, although it
was dark, the commander-in-chief, with two aides-
de-camp, Brigadier-General Straubensee, with his
aide-de-camp, and two officers of the 11th Hussars
—viz., Capt. Dallas Yorke and Cornet Wilkie, be-
sides the garrison of Sebastopol and the officers on
guard, the whole being under the superintendence
of Brevet-Major Nicholson, R.E. The enemy took
no notice of the explosion, nor have they been
firing much lately from tha north side, although it
is reported that on New Year's Day the French
and Russian pickets were uselessly firing at each
other.

THE WAR IN ASIA.
ERZEROUM, Dec. 24.-1 told you in my last of
the dispute between our ambassador in Persia and
the Shah. Mr. Murray gave the latter up to the
sth inst. to make up his mind as to the liberation
of the teterrima causa belli—our native agent's
wife, and, as he still continued obstinate, has left
Teheran. The mesh is rather a tangled one, but,
as the case stands at present, Mr. Murray is un-
doubtedly in the right. The quarrel, by the latest
accounts, was by no means irreconcileable ; but
Kars has fallen in the meantime, and the Russians
will certainly avail themselves of the influence it
gives them to widen the breach as much as pos-
sible.

We are very quid here in Erzeroum. The snow
has come down honestly at last, a good hearty fall,
covering everything but the minarets and chimney-
tops, so that our flat-roofed houses all look like
wedding-cakes.
Stragglers are still coming in from Kars. I met
some yesterday, toiling over the snow-clad plain
that lies between this and the Euphrates. They
showed weary and footsore, poor fellows, but had
not the wild, hungry look of those who had pre-
ceded them. They had, probably, been recruiting
at the villages on the road. But report states that
no less than 1,500 out of the 6,000 Redifs who
were turned out of Kars have perished in the snows
of the Siwanlidagh.
Our troops have at last been marched in from
the Devr-buyunic (Anglice, Camel-back) heights,
where they had been encamped since the beginning
of last summer. It was high time that they should
take up their winter quarters. When last I visited
the camp, some weeks since, the road was as trying
as rain and thaw can make it. The camels, with
their slow deliberate gait, got over it Easily enough,
like wooden machines wound up for the purpose,
but horsemanship was hazardous, and the arabas,
axlcdeep in mud, groaned along as if their very
hearts would break. The ground of encampment
itself was ono mass of mud. The men, however,
were not badly tented, better, indeed, than I had
ever seen elsewhere.

The whole system of administration here is cor-
rupt beyond measure. It has a tontine, too,
which rides it like a nightmare, and forcing one's
way through its red-tapeism is like swimming
through seaweed. Take one example out of a
thousand. A young Magyar officer here in the
Turkish service had 20 months' pay due. He ap-
plied for it to the Muchir, the Muchir referred him
to the president of the Medjlis, or council ; the
president of the council passed him on to the com-
mandant of artillery ; the commandant of artillery
to the sub-commandant ; the sub-commandant to
the chief of the staff; the chief of the staff again to
the president, who at last recommended him to lay
a memorial before the Medjlis, which being done,
he, the chief Imaum, or high priest, and I know
not how many other wiseacres, put their heads to-
gether over the intricate claim, and at last came
to the conclusion that, without committing them-
selves, they might allow the memorialist six out
of his 20, or rather 22, months' pay, for two
months more had elapsed in inquiring how to
get his money. The balance remains an out-
' standing debt, which he may amuse himself in
memorialising for at his leisure during the next
two years, but, let him manage as ho may, there
will be an arrear, and, if both parties live long
enough, it will drag its slow length along till the
millennium, when the Turks will most probably
take advantage of the joyful occasion to cancel it
altogether. Add to this the want of common
honesty. When a soldier, for instance, is killed—
and he i 3 often killed, with three years' pay due—
there is no regular way of transmitting his earnings
to his relations. It becomes the booty of the officers
of his regiment, a legitimate godsend. The same
of course when he dies.

As far as this opinion bears upon the fate of
Erzeroum, I will explain myself pointedly and
plainly. An English general with an efficient
staff i 3 wanted here before next spring.. Unless he
be sent Erzeroum must fall. This is a catas-
trophe which the people of England ought not to
contemplate with indifference. The fall of Erze-
roum will not only do more to strengthen Russia's
influence in the East than that of Sebastopol has
done to weaken it, but also throw a territory as
rich in natural resources as any in the world into
Russian hands, as no mean counterpoise to what
may be wrung from her in the West.

Letters have been received from General Williams,
and those who accompanied him. They are quite
well, arrived at Gumri on the Ist inst., and ex-
pected to leave on the 4th for St. Petersburg. They
were treated on the road with the greatest courtesy.
Every one here is in hopes that the General will
be released, and take his old position in Anatolia
before next spring. It would be difficult to find
another man so calculated for this peculiar work.
General Kmety has gone, to Constantinople. It is
to be hoped that he will get a good command
there.

FRANCE.
PARIS, SUNDAY.
The fact of Russia having accepted the Austrian
ultimatum will not suspend the Council of War.
The Emperor will preside to-morrow at an early
hour.

The Emperor and the Duke of Cambridge rode
out yesterday in the Bois de Boulogne, the Em-
press taking an airing in an open carriage at the
same time.

BOURSE, Jan. 19—Two o'clock.—Threes slightly
declined at the beginning of the day, but there was
afterwards a sudden rally on the report that de-
spatches had been sent to Marshal Pelissier, order-
ing him to suspend hostilities. Threes, after
having been done at 67f. 50c. and 67f. 35c., rallied
to 68f. 40c., and they are now at 68f. 20c. The
Mobiiier improved from 1,435 to 1,470. The Rail-
way Shares were in good demand.
Half-past Three—The market was steadier at the
close. The following are the last quotations :

Cash. rr. e. End of Month
ti per Cents 94 —f. -C.
per Cents 67 60
67 90

New Loan

63 -

Bank Shares...

3250 -

Roman

Credit Mobilier 1460

Austri an

Belgian Fiveg ......
Piedniolitesc (5)

Spanish Threes
Home Debt

RAILWAYS-FOR CASH.

fr. c. C.
Oran
Northern
Lyons llB5 New Ditto 775
Nlediterranean 1320 Grand Central 5BO
LTons Geneva 7OO Teste
Cato 7OO Austrian Corn. 792 50