Traveller.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 428, 28 July 1904, Page 3

Traveller.

CRIMEAN SIMPSON. His Baptism op Fibe. -V§IK»E arrived in the Crimea in Novemqßgfp ber, '54,, shortly after the b&ttle aSfiiK of Inkerman had been fought, and received his ' Baptißm of Fire' in the trenches outside Sebastopol occupied by the Naval Brigade, under the command of Captain Peel, whose name booh became historical as one of tha.bravestand coolest of officers during the bombardment of the city. «Jußt as I was finishing my sketch, Mr, Simpson says, f said something to Captain Peei : of naving seen nothing that day of aotive work. He replied 'lf i order that gua to be fired two guns will be fired back at us in return, and you will have some experience.' I said all right, and tha gun was fired. Very soon after, as Peel had predicted, a gun from the Malakorf returned the compliment, but the missile went wide of us. This was followed by another, a shell, which Btiuok the outside of the parapet, then burst, throwing up in the air a great quantity of earth and stones, which came' down in a shower upon us. I had sat all the time" where I had been sketching, with my portfolio on my knees, and it was covered with earth. I, at the moment, remembered to have read of Junot, who was at one time, during a siege, writing to Napoleon's diotation, when a shell covered his paper in the same way as mine, and he remarked that it would save' him the use of Band to dry his writing with. This was my first experience, and I cannot say I was quite as calm as the Frenchman.'

A Geih Statue Mr Simpson met with many adventures in the Crimea, which we have ao space to describe; he also visited the battlefield of Tchernaya, having arrived—as he lived on board ship-just too late for the fighting. He painted a picture of this afterwards Oa the morning of the 9:h of September; 55, he heard that the French had taken the Malakoff, and that the * siege of Sebastopol was over, the Russians having left during the night. With General Barnard, he entered the city. Uhey visited the Esdan, and then pressed on the Malakoff 'We found,a small crowd of soldiers,' he writes,' standing in the Malakoff round a Z crave, who was sitting at the side of a traverse. To our astonishment, we found that the man was dead. He was sitting in an easy position, leaning his head on hand, as if resting ; but the pose was as gerfect as if he had been sitting for a painter. No wound was visible; no sign of blood. The figure, if it could have been east, would have made a perfect statue. It was this artistic appearance which evidently attracted the soldiers around him. He must have received a mortal wound, and afterwards had enough time to sit down; then life must have fled, leaving him in the position he had assumed. There was no sign of piin on his features.' • r FuBTHEK Wanderings,

In a volume so foil of incidents, so fall of descriptions of travel in many parts of the world, it is evident that in a short article one can bnt extract a few anecdotes hure and there. When Mr Simpson returned from the Crimea the Q jeen sent for him, as she wanted to Bee the pictnre she had commissioned him to paint, and with which she was greatly pleased. Daring hiß life he made four journeys to India, the first juat after the Mutiny, then yifch the Frinoe of Wal-as, subsequently to the Afghan war of 1878 and, lastly, with the Afghan Boundary Commission in 1881 " The Fbanco Prussian Wak. The Franco-German war was declared on July 15bh, 1870, and Simcsin started f o,jqin the French aide on the 25th, going by Nancy to Metz. . The town was full of military/ and he had some difficulty' in procuring a bed.. .'Sydney'"Hall,' he writes, ' turned up here, at the beginning 'is! his" career, as a special artist to the "Graphic/* Gk A. Sate was tbe life of the parly; ' There were about a dozen of us. but generally two or three were in custody as spies, and a considerable portion of oar time was occupied in running about among the military authorities to get them released. Spy-fever among the French became the most serious obstacle in carrying out the work. A .sketch-book was a most dangerous article to be found in your possession.' At , Forbaoh, the most advanced French position, the happy idea occurred to Mr •Simpson of sketching in a book of cigarette i papers. In the event of being apprehended be could make a cigarette of che sketch .and smoke it under his accuser's nose. Nancy became too hot for them, and they returned to Paris, where the writer remained until after Sedan. He saw the Republic declared, and then went to the battlefield of Sedan, and, after visiting other battlefields, eventually returned to England by way of Belgium, feeling very j ill from hard work and exposure.

Commune Incidents. After peace came the Commune, and Mr Simpson and Sir W. Ingram,- a proprietor of the ' Illustrated London News,' went "to Paris. A fierce civil .war was raging between the Communists in Paris and the Versailles troops outside. One morning they walked but to Port Valeries, whence Paris was being bombarded. The Pariß guns were answering, but the shells fell short, and dropped into the village of Sureshes, The two went there for breakfast, and also in search of 'incidents/ They soon found one. 'For,' says the writer, • we had just entered the village when a shell arrived. It went through a garret window and burst inside. I, with ; others, ran up the stairs. The door was burst open, and at first we could see nothing for the smoke and dust. When it cleared a little we found a man, with his wife and child, in a frightened condition, but, fortunately, unhurt.' The Vebsaillais Revenue. . After a week's, flghtinsr the Commune. was at an end. On May 28 ;h the author, writes:—' I passed the Mazas Prison, and it bo chanced that a kind of omnibus came' out, into which I got a glimpse It was 1 filled with dead bodies—poor devils who had, I suppose, been shot as Communards.' Later he went to the Battea de Chaumont. Fere la Chaise, and the Prison of La Bjqnette. 'These places,* he con-

Itianaa, '.inolude the ragion where the defeaca of the. Beds ended, and where cruel shooting of prisoners had been done bj the Versailles troops. In La Boquette, , to which oar party were admitted, we saw a piled-up • heap of dead bidies. The ballet marks wers visible on the wall where they had stood to be shot. It was told as of one man that the ballets had missed, or be had not been fatally struck. He pretended to be dead, and, after iying in the heap all night, had crawled out, saying: ' God has saved me; you will save me P Bat the words fell on deaf ears ; be was one of that ghastly heap at the time of our visit,. .... As we drive back we passed the Place Voltaire, where there is a statue of Voltaire. A bullet had gone right through the bronze, making a very absurd hole. There mast have been some shooting of prisoners here, for the ground was littered with muskets, caps, cartouche-boxes, etc., and one part of the pavement was a sheet of blood. This was not like a battlefield, where the blood waß absorbed in the earth, and does not appear to the eye.' Mr Simpson, although not approving o( the Commune,' is very, severe on the Versailles party—the party of law and order—for these wholesale massacres,