THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES IN THE CRIMEA.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 550, 27 July 1869, Page 4

THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES IN THE CRIMEA.

Under date Sebastopol, April 14, the Times publishes a lung account of the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to the Crimea. We extract the following passages :— VJSIT TO THE HEIGHTS OK ALMA. "The day was rather cold, and there was a very strong wind, which caused some inconvenience as the cortege flew over the steppe-like ground which extends from the Katcha to the Alma. I looked in vain for the White Telegraph Tower, which formed so remarkable a point on the ridge over-sea, and on which the French had left a record of their victory. It has been thrown down. At last, after a drive of about an hotir and a-half from the north side, we dipped into the track which leads from the plateau down towards the river, passing through the position of the Minsk and Wolinski Regiments (where they were as Pennefather's Brigade of De Lacy Evans's Division was struggling in very broken order up the slope), and having the 18-giin epaulement on our right and Lord Raglan's knoll on our left. Almost on the spot where Lord Raglan's tent was pitched on the evening of the battle the carriages halted among a great gathering of horses, of Tartars from the villages, of Germans and Russians, and the gentlemen of the party proceeded tc move in order to view the battle field. There was a warm and eager reception given to the strangers, who speedily galloped over the ground to the epaulement, in front of which is a shabby monument to the officers who fell before those deadly guns. The Prince, dismounting, examined the position with interest, and inspected the names on the memorial stone, and Captain Skariatine pointed out to His Royal Highness the position of ■ the Russian corps, and related how he and his army on the heights saw the Allies advancing in magnificent array, but very slowly as it seemed, from their bivouac on the Alma, and how his Marines, who did not fire a shot, and were in rear of the epaulement, nevertheless lost nearly fifty men from the long-ranging rifle bullets of the British regiments. The field is unchanged; every embrasure cut in the epaulement can be traced, and the traverses can be counted. The bridge over the river is very much as it was, and in September next it is probable there will be vineyards full of grapes, as before ; but of those who clambered up that gently murderous slope, and who joined in the wild cry of victory and in the cheers which rose from the bridge beyond as the Guards threw up their bearskins around Lord Raglan, how many have gone to join their comrades who were then stretched lifeless below them ! Well might the Prince of Wales ask, ' Why did we advance straight against the Russian guns?' Nearly a thousand men of the Light Division, which drew the teeth of the Russian batteries, and forced them to withdraw their pieces, leaving to the Guards a comparatively easy task, might have liked to hear the answer. We saw where Gortschakoff's tent stood — where Menschikoff's headquarters were — and then, mounting once more, left the Princess and Mrs Grey, who had come up in a pony carriage, and, crossing over by the bridge and by the ford, rode rapidly through Bourborik, saw where the Second Division was divided by the flames, where Lord Raglan crossed with his staff, where Prince Napoleon's Division forded the stream and was held in check by the gathering masses above them, and looked • away to the right, towards the ford at the mouth of Ihe river, beneath the crag-like and precipitous banks where Bosquet, covered by the fire of the fleet, passed his corps across, and, climbing like ants, and spoking up his guns, turned the Russian left. The party returned to Tashavilav, near Bonrborik, and in a large and comfortable farm-house in a court, which looked to me very like that near which our great field hospital was established, found a lunch prepared by the Russians. The party returned to the north side as they came, passing through the old lines where the Russians prepared to resist the advance of the Allies after they abandoned the south side, or Sebastopol proper, the only drawback or contretemps being au accident to one of the Russian officers, who dislocated his ancle at the landingplace. In the evening, General de Kotzebue, Admiral Kirlinisky, Baron Osten Sacken, M. Hiterovow, General Jukofsky, Mr Stevens, &c., dined on board, and the conversation often turned on the war, which the Russians treated as a matter of history, quite removed from passion or feeling of any kind. THE REDAN. " Horses were provided for the Prince and the gentlemen of the party, and an escort of Tartars of the Guard, under the Kufti Kadi, attended on the Princess and Mrs Grey and others, who were in pony carriages. About 10 "30 we started along the street which runs above Dockyard Creek, as we called the harbor of Sebastopol. We passed heaps of guns and shot and shell by the water's edge, wound round under the Garden Batteries, the Crow's Nest Battery, and Flagstaff Bastion, now only earth and clay, and crossing by the site of the Creek Battery, got | on the Woronzow Road, crossed it, and ascended the steep side of the Karabelnaia suburb behind the Barrack Batlery, and so got in rear of the Redan, passing out to the front by a track on its proper left face. The side of the ravine was once a mass of houses ; there remain now only continuous lines of stones and walls, like those of a Scottish or Irish clearing. The Princess found it hard to believe that the shapeless heaps on which she was looking once constituted the streets of the Queen of the Euxine — a city of 30,000 souls, or with the garrison and sailors, 50,000—reduced to some 5000 we were told, and most of them apparently in penury. The line of the Redan can still be traced very cleariy, but no idea can be formed of the depth of the ditch, the thickness of the traverses, or the fortress of gabionnade which was erected on the spot. The Prince rode outside to the salient, and there dismounted and surveyed the scene. I The head of our last, sap was shown to him, and the trench from which our poor fellows had to run the gauntlet for 300 yards, the place where they got in, the ground which they held unsupported, though our trenches were full of men— in fact, the site and nature of a calamity which would have been cheaply converted ! into a triumph even at the cost of twice the lives which were sacrificed to no avail. Little children came up to offer bullets and shell splinters for sale, and diligent research rewarded private explorers by old musket-locks and similar rejigs j but

the marvel is how all the iron and lead mines which wei'e so abundantly furnished here could have been so soon exausted, THE SOLDIERS' CEMETERY. " From the Redan we went to the Fifth Parallel and so into the Quarries, and then passing by ' Egerton's Pit,' rode by our mortar batteries, descended into the ravine, crossed the Woronzow Road, mounted to the other side, and cantered over to the Cemetery on Cathcart's Hill. It makes one's cheeks red to hear that L 13,000 was paid by our Government to a late otlicial for putting up walls to the cemeteries and repairing those already existing, True, there is a good wall round that on Cathcart's Hill, but it was put up in the time ef the occupation, and those round the others are of rude masonry. The gate of the Cemetery was closed, and the Princess ascended the steps, and in company with her husband, walked slowly through the noiseless streets, reading the names inscribed on the stones, and stopping now and then to pick a flower or a weed from the side of a grave of one whose friends she knew. The Prince engaged himself in a similar way, and often called the Princess's attention to some name which recalled those at home. There was not one, perhaps, of the party who had not a friend or relative lying there, and nearly an hour was spent inside the inclosure before the anxiety of the Russian officers led them away to their horses again. It is plain enough that if steps be not taken to preserve the Cemetery from decay and from wanton dilapidation, it, in common with every monument and memorial in the Crimea, will become a national disgrace — a sort of moral Redan. The fine slab and tablet over poor Newman, who fell at Inkerman, has just been chipped and broken at the base. The star on the Coldstream monument has been smashed into fragments, other stones are chipped and split, weeds and rank grass are growing up all over the stones. What a scandal this is wje could appreciate to some degree after our visit to the Russian Cemetery ; but it was not until we had seen the French that we quite understood its enormity. Leaving the burial-place of so many gallant soldiers, we crossed close to my old quarters in the rear of the hill by the low ground, towards the headquarters of the Second Division, leaving 'Donnybrook' (the sutlers' camp on the main road) to our right, crossed the Woronzow Road, and passed the headquarters of the Light Division on towards the Right Siege Train Depot. In a farm-house close to the windmill there was spread a lunch — the windmill which was once almost a centre of battle as it certainly was in the midst of a tremendous conflagration. INKERMAN. " When the repast was over the Prince and the gentlemen galloped over to the Inkerman ridge, where we could look down on the Tchernaya, the Traktir bridge, and the scene of the Light Cavalry charge, and of that of the Chasseurs d'Afrique ; and General Kotzebue explained to the Prince the general scope of the very unfortunate Russian attack on the French and Sardinians on the 16th of August, 1855, which is called the battle of the Tchernaya or of Traktir. Skirting the ridge of Inkerman, as we improperly style it — the real name being the Sapoune Heights; and the former name being that of the ridges and ruins on the opposite side of the valley of the Tchernaya— the party came to the battle field. It was a striking illustration of the difficulty of getting at facts to find that the Russians supposed the first redoubt we came to was the Sandbag Battery, and the scene of the combat of the Guards with Pavloff's men. So stiff was Captain Skariatine on the point that he almost made us think their memory had failed them in the lapse of so many years ; but, in fact, when the Allies evacuated the plateau and the Russians came to survey it, they found several small works cast up by the French after the sth November, 1854, to strengthen their right flank when thej' took over the position, and assumed that these works existed before the battle. Ths field is fast returning to its original aspect, for brushwood is growing on the side of the hills with astonishing .rapidity. It was not possible for the pony carriage to get o\er the rough ground before us, but the Princess and Mrs Grey could see the scene of the action very well. We rode slowly over the ridge, saw the fatal little glen into which General Cathcart led his men with desperate strategy, and fell with Seymour by his side, the hillocks where for a time our guns were taken by a surging rush, the head of the Careening Creek Ravine, in which Sorinanoff, coming from the city, made his saving blunder, and, turning to his left instead of his right, debouched in rear and flank of Pavloff's Division, instead of deploying on the ridge between the middle ravine and Careening Creek and seizing it. For the object of the Russians at Inkerman was simply to occupy the Sapoune Heights, and so besiege the Allies as it were on the plateau, aided by an attack from Balaklava Valley, which Liprandi never made. Then there was the scene of the ' little Inkerman' of October 26, 1854, on our left, where Sir De Lacy Evans so • handsomely' repulsed a fierce attack of the enemy on his position with his own division alone — an attack which" was the precursor of the coming heavy blow foreseen by the veteran, and of which he so vehemently represented the danger. The success of Liprandi the previous day in capturing our guns from the Turks roused the garrison to great enthusiasm, and the sortie was made with much confidence. As to those same guns, by-the-by, I forgot to say that they are all lying in a row beside the wall of the Memorial Chapel on the north side as trophies, and they are certainly much more fittingly placed there than are the guns which have been, stuck up in so many places at home, as if they had been taken in the field. After visiting the points of interest, the royal party returned at a gallop, for it was now getting late, by the Creek Battery and road to the landingplace, where there was a crowd to welcome them as before, and returned to the Ariadne at dusk. General, Madame, and Mdlle. de Kotzebue, Baron Osten Ssicken, Captain Skariatine, and Mr Stevens were invited to dinner on board, and toasts were proposed to the health of the Emperor and of the Prince and Princess. THE HOUSE IN WHICH XORD RAGLAN DIED. " It was arranged that the Ariadne and Psyche should proceed to Yalta, and anchor there as soon as the Prince and Prinoess had left the Roads of Sebastopol, so as to arrive there before the royal party, and land the luggage there at the Palace of Levadia, which is situated above the little town. After breakfast all landed

at the Count's stairs, where they were received with the usual honors. An aged and very venerable old man, in a picturesque dress, presented the Prince with an address, the patriarch of the Karaite Jews. / Our proceedings to-day involved long detonrs, and the covering a great deal of ground, as we were bound to the south coast. We passed Upton's house — the ' Maison Brulee' — and, skirting the French headquarters, now occupied as a farm — the porch where General Pelissier might be seen of a morning in his kepi, shirt" sleeves, and bountiful red pantaloons, giving orders to his staff-*-and old { Clochetour,' drove to the French Cemetery, near at hand, We next went to the British headquarters, over the plateau, crossing the head of the ravine which separates the two. The House in which Lord Raglan died, and in which General Simpson and General Codrington in succession executed their functions as Com-manders-in-Chief of the Army in the Crimea, has been done up and renovated, but even in the details it is very much as it was when they lived there. The outhouses, stables, and dependencies are intact, and we could make out wii^re Estcourt and de Morel, where Chetwocle and Macnaughten, of the Bth Hussars escort, where Fowle Smith and Cookesley, where Romaine and Pakenham had their quarters, where Steele, Burghersh, Somerset, and Calthorp 'hung out,' and the post office site, and Campbell's hut, and Dacre's quarters, and so on. At the door stood the Russian officer in uniform, the owner of the plaoe now as then, whose name, I think, is Buchof, and he led the Prince and Princess to the rooms, and presented his wife to them. Nothing could be more perfect and admirable than the cleanliness, neatness, and taste of the place. Flowers and shrubs perfumed the apartments, and by the slabs winch marks where 'Lord Raglan died two cypress trees were placed, growing in tubs. We heard that it is likely the present proprietor may have to sell his little estate ; and if so, there is a good opportunity for the British Government to purchase it, and make the garden and vineyard at the back the principal cemetery. After a deeply interesting inspection, the Prince and Princess took leave of the proprietor and his wife, and the party drove over to the Monastery of St. George— a bleak and cold journey enough. BALACLAVA. " On arriving at the point of the road whence a sight can be got of the fiord- 1 like harbor of Balaclava, there was an involuntary exclamation from those who remembered it once so full of great ships that a man could pass from deck to deck along and across it. The Psyche lay there in simple possession, not even a iishingboat else. Here, again, there is so little changed that we could make out our old quarters ; but the population is reduced to few indeed, compared to what it was when Lord Raglan entered it, and many of the Greeks whom he sent away never returned. The population, Buch as it was — men, women, and children — was gathered in the street at the landing-pier, which is all that is left of the splendid jetties, for the planking has been torn up, and along the beach the piles on which it rested stuck up like snags, having bid defiance to the means of the destroyers. The party went on board the Psyche in boats, and stood out past Castle Bay and Cossack Bay and Point Powell, through the narrow gut to the open sea ; were shown where the ' Prince' was cast away, and where the Duke of Cambridge passed that terrible forenoon on board the Retribution, and the fatal rocks on which so many vessels were wrecked in the disastrous gale of the 14th November 1854 ; they then returned to the harbor, and landing, visited the house of one of the principal people, where they partook of Crimean wine and cake. Here, to my great satisfaction, I found Major Stomati, of the Greek Battalion, who had hastened over from Karanyi to see us, and who was introduced to the Prince. But time presses now as it did then. It was getting late in the day, and there was still a drive of more than twenty-five miles before us. So we left Balaclava, and passing out on the plain, not far from the knoll where Sir Colin Campbell drew up the 93rd to resist the Russian horse, were driven rapidly towards Canrobert's Hill, below which horses were waiting for the gentlemen to visit the scene of the Light Cavalry charge. A Greek, with two crosses of St. George on his breast, and other orders, who had served as orderly to Liprandi the very day of the action, led us to the spot, and there, as the Prince reined up his horse on the very ground occupied by the Russian guns, he heard from General Kotzebue, from the Greek officer, whose name I regret I did not catch, and from another who saw it, accoxxnts of that brilliant feat of arms, in which all agreed — the Greek declaring that some of our horsemen went right away as far as the aqueduct over the Tchernaya. We returned to our carriages at a gallop, and had a delightful, but cold drive, through the valley of Baidar, where we changed horses at the Tartar villag

below the Phoros Pass. . The drive to Levadia is one of the most exquisite in the world, and to-night, as the peaks and walls of rock which tower above the winding road were warmed by the sun into marvellous colors, it was confessed even by the most travelled that the scenery could scarcely be paralleled, At 9.30 the cortege reached the Imperial Palace of Levadia, where the Master of the Imperial Court, Count Jules Steinback, was waiting to receive the Prince and Princess, and it wap late when dinner was served,