The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-28 00:00:00

THE NA VE

The Duke of Somerset, as First Lord of the
Admiralty, will hold levees at the Admiralty,
Whitehall, at 2.30 on the following days :—the
7th, 14th, and 21st of March, and the 11th, 18th,
and 25th of April.
A telegram was received at Portsmouth yesterday
announcing that Rear-Admiral Sir Baldwin
Walker, Bart., would, with his family, arrive at
that port this day (Thursday), and embark in the
Sprightly, Master Commander George Allen, who
will convey the admiral to pithead to hoist his
flag on board the Narcissus, 51, screw, Capt. Risk.

The Flying Fish, screw, arrived at Spithead
yesterday fl„nt Dcvonport.
The Isis, 44, sailing frigate, which has been
fitted at Chatham for the pendant, and is in daily
expectation of being commissioned, is ordered to
have a complement of 100 men. She will take out,
in the first instance, a supply of stores for the
island of Ascension, after landing which she will
proceed to Sierra Leone, where she will be employed
as a coal depot for the supply of the steamers at-
tached to the West African squadron. The Isis
has been fitted up in the most complete manner for
the service on which she will be employed, the
whole of the interior space devoted to the stowage
of her coals being lined with thick sheet iron. The
vessel has been thoroughly strengthened in order
that she maybe in every way fitted for the particu-
lar service. She has also been newly coppered.
Yesterday the shipwrights at Chatham dockyard
commenced laying the bilgeway beneath the screw
corvette Rattlesnake, 21, which is being rapidly
brought forward for launching.
The following line-of-battle and other screw

steamers are now under the sheds at Chatham
Dockyard, building, and in various stages of pro-
gress, viz., the Bulwark, 91, 600-horse power ; the
Royal Oak, 91, 600-horse power ; the Belvidera,
51, 600-horse power ; the Rattlesnake, 21, 400-
horse power; the Menai, 21, 400-horse power; the
Reindeer, 17, 400-horse power; and the Myrmidon,
4, 250-horse power.
Orders were received on Monday from the India-
office for pensioning off and discharging with gra-
tuities proportioned to length of service, a large
portion of the non-commissioned staff of the East
India depot at Warley Barracks.
The following appointments were made yester-
day at the Admiralty :—Francis C. Alton, chief
engineer to the Doris ; John F. Channon, first-class
assist-engineer to the Indus, for charge of the ma-
chinery of the Pantaloon ; Wm. H. Grose, second-
class assist.-engineer to the Indus, for charge of the
machinery of the Steady; Edward E. Williams,
third-class assist.-engineer, to the Fisgard, as super-

numerary ; Lawrence Morton, acting third-class

assist.-engineer, to the Indus, as supernumerary;
John Wm. Owen, acting third-class assist.-engi-
neer, to the Indus, for service in the Zephyr ; George
Grandidier, paymaster, to the Icarus ; John Hill,
paymaster, additional, to the Royal Adelaide ; and
Valentine D. J. Rickcord, assist.-paymaster, to the
Victory, as secretary's clerk.

GAETA.

From the Tunes' Correspondent.

MOLA DI GAETA, FEB. 21.

Curiosity to see the condition of the town and
fortress of Gaeta, and the works of the besiegers
and the besieged, induced me to leave Turin for this
place immediately upon the intelligence of its capi-
tulation reaching the Sardinian capital. A consider-
able amount of valuable time was lost owing to the
wretchedness of the post steamboat, the Solferino,
a worthless, small craft, which took 48 hours to
convey us from Genoa to Naples, and the slowness
of the posting between Naples and Gaeta, which
caused the loss of another day. I was no sooner on
the spot, however, than I perceived I was not one
minute too late ; for the want of communication
between the fortress and its besieging army, the
natural jealousy of any officer in command of com-
plicated military operations, and the danger of
moving about grounds exposed to the artillery on
either side, rendered the part of a mere spectator
and reporter extremely difficult, not to say impos-
sible, during the continuance of actual hostilities,
or even during the short armistices ; so that a full
and circumstantial account of the siege could only
be attempted after its close. Waiting for the offi-
cial statement of General Cialdini's Staff, it may,
perhaps, be interesting to the readers of the Times
if I venture upon such a sketch of it as a man by
no means conversant with military matters can give
of what falls immediately under a first cursory ob-
servation.

I shall endeavour, in the first place, to give my
impression of the importance of Gaeta as a place of
war. Nature, which intended Italy as one of the
strongest no less than of the loveliest and happiest
lands under the sun, stretched along the length of
its peninsular region that glorious backbone of the
Apennines, from the main chain of which huge ribs
or ridges stretch on either side to greater or smaller
lengths, but in some instances as far as the
Adriatic on one side and the Tyrrenian or Me-.
diteranean Sea on the other, efficiently barring the
way at no very distant intervals, and constituting
so many strong lines of defence, sufficient
to arrest the march of hostile armies from
one province into another. Such a line, for
instance, closes the entrance into the Roman terri-
tories between the Legations and the Marches at
La Cattolica, where the frontier of the Rubicon was
laid in ancient Roman times ; such another is made
by the gigantic mass of the Apuan hills, or Carrara
mountains, separating Liguria from Tuscany ; and
such a third, finally, and to come more immediately
to our subject, is the line of the Garigliano, the
natural barrier of the kingdom of Naples on the
Mediterranean side. Though no region in the world
in point of fact, perhaps, has ever offered so feeble
a resistance to foreign invasion at all times as this
southern country, nowhere, perhaps, could a brave
race under valiant leaders make a nobler or more
successful stand against any odds than might be
attempted on these excellent Neapolitan frontiers.
From the central mass of the Apennines, the vast,
bleak, precipitous ridges come down towering loftily
on the valleys of the Volturno and the Garigliano,
and press so close upon the sea here at Mola di
Gaeta that, as all travellers know, between the
mountain and the sea scarcely room enough is left
for the highroad and the straggling line of buildings
which stretch to the length of more than one mile.
Mola di Gaeta is the real fortress on this side, and a
handful of men, with no other stronghold bat those
of natures own contrivance, ought to be able to
repel the attacks of any army attempting to invade
the kingdom on the side of Terracina.

The frontier of the Tronto, on the Adriatic side,
supplies several no less admirable lines of defence;
but supposing an enemy even to force his way into
Apulia, he would always have to cross the Apen-
nines, and could be met, on his descent, in the
gorges between Isernia and Teen°, on a variety of
battle-fields by the side of which the famed straits
of Thermopylw would be mere child's play. In this
instance, however, it was not on the Tronto or on
the Garigliano that Naples was called upon to de-
fend herself. Garibaldi took the bull by the horns ;
he accomplished a mere triumphal march from
Reggio to the capital, along those Calabrian lines, at
every step of which the mere show of resistance
would have stopped, not merely Volunteer bands,
but the best disciplined and determined troops ;
he travelled through the Basilicata and the Princi-
pality of Salerno; posted across La Cava, another
gorge of almost fabulou 3 strength, and drove the
taint-hearted King, with at least 50,000 of his best,
or, I should say, least worthless troops, to these
lines of the Volturno and Garigliano.
Garibaldi was checked at the Volturno, and met
with an obstacle at Capua which put the metal of
his Volunteers to a decisive test, Had the contest
been suffered to continue between . him. and the
Xing he had driven from his. capital, it would be
difficult to hazard even a.conjecture as to the pro-
bable result;
field . ut; but the Piedmontese came into the
frontier they-- entered unresisted through the Tronto
ApeaniT;estheoy met only the puniest obstacles on the
rona, and hrilrather through the defiles of Mace•
relieved the ea
a'
detachment. under Della Rocca
and
brtiourcipbhaldians. from duty on the Vol-
turno,
main %oat the siege of Capna to a ready
close, the
J. eif. the army marched from the
Volturno to the
Garigliano, when a corps of 6,000
or 7,000 men, uncideti•etr,:aennez, stormed the narrow
pass of Mola di hEirdly defended by the
35,000 Bourbon troops,' who fell back in disorder,
and huddled together
stronghold of Gaeta. round and into their last
Although Gaeta is only
four miles
of from Mola,
faor chainma
and the latter is the last link
to
moun-
tain fastnesses which stretch up
the Apennines, the town itself and fortressny miles to
of Gaeta
is no part of the natural stronghold, nor can itbe
said to be in any manner the key to this magnifi-
cent position. It is, and was meant for, merely a
place of refuge, From Mola the bay sweeps grace-
fully round, with the hills gradually declining to
the sea, and at the head of the bay, separated from
the last skirts of the hills by a narrow sandy
isthmus, rises the peninsula formed by the Monte
d'Orlando, surmounted by the tower of the same
name, at the foot of which, on a smaller and lower