Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/353

 ACROSS THE BLACK SEA. 323 was believed that the inhabitants were for the most part Tartars, men holding to the Moslem faith. Of the enemy's forces in this country, the Allies, in a sense, were ignorant ; for although the information which had come round to them by the aid of the Foreign Office was in reality well founded, they did not believe at the time that they could at all rely upon it, and therefore they were nearly as nmch at fault as if they had had no clue. They knew, however, that the peninsula was a province of Eussia — that Eussia was a great military power — that, so long as three months ago, the invasion had been counselled in print — and that afterwards the determination to undertake it had been given out aloud to the world. From these rudiments, and from what could be seen from the decks of the ships, they in- ferred that, either upon their landing, or on some part of the road between the landing-ground and Sebastopol, they would find the enemy in strength. But beyond this, little was known ; and the im- Tins gives agination of men was left to range so free that, j.ediUo^n the although they were in the midst of their ' nine- an^^vcu- ' teenth century,' with all its prim facts and statis- tics, the enterprise took something of the character of adventure belonging to earlier ages. Common, sensible, fanciless men — men wise with the cynic wisdom of London clubs — were now by force (then Colonel) Mackintosh, and the Colonel had also addressed important reports on the same subject to the military authori- ties. What I intend to indicate in the text is, not that the means of knowledge were wanting, but that they had not been extensively taken advantage of.