Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/212

 168 THE WINTER TKOUBLES. CHAP. ' must be more or less relied upon for achieving power to command this resource, the power to do what work might be needed for the accept- ance of approaching supplies — this was far from being uniformly present in the divisions, the brigades, the regiments which constituted our army. The capacity, the force of will, the per- sonal ascendancy of officers commanding these several bodies of men, the zeal, the judgment, the ability of the assistant commissary allowed to each division, the comparative number of men left in camp who might not be so prostrated by fatigue or sickness as to be incapable of hard bodily exertion, — all these and perhaps many more were the varying conditions under which it resulted that deficiencies occurring in some parts of our camp were from other parts of it wholly averted. (^^) The sailors Where results depended upon a man's power the"chei°" of helping himself, upon energy, upon determin- ation, upon resource of mind, and upon bodily activity, it may well be believed that our sailors lying out on the Chersonese would not be easily conquered. More or less communistic perhaps in their notion of the use that might be made of stray horses belonging to unknown landsmen, they at all events compassed in some way the task of 1 fringing up their supplies, kept off Want from their camp, and by a high, joyous courage, by skill, by what men call ' handiness,' made the best of the ugly conditions under which in this 'lubberly' struggle — for so of course sonese.
 * the last stage of the process ; ' (^^) and the