ground is quite flat, the ridges there having been long ago leveled by the Russians in order to give no cover to an attacking force. We have said that there is a circuit of five or six hundred yards of level ground immediately around the town, and it was beyond this radius that the Russians threw up their new works, erecting strong redoubts on several elevated positions; the Allies had to open their trenches at the distance of a mile from the body of the place, although within one hundred and twenty yards of the Russian batteries. The French were the first to break ground. At nine at night, on the 9th, the trenches were opened by one thousand six hundred workmen, divided into relief parties, and supported to defend the works. A land wind, and an almost entire absence of moonlight, favored the operations, and by breaking of day 1,014 yards in length were completed, without interruption from the enemy, of sufficient depth to cover the men.
Next night the British broke ground; but this time the garrison were on the alert, and kept up a very heavy but ineffectual fire. The British, who occupied much higher ground than the French, placed their batteries with great skill. The raised mounds or beds of earth, upon which the guns were placed, were erected precisely along the crest of the various ridges on which the batteries were planted, and, when finished, showed only the muzzle of the guns over the brow of the ridge, so as to present little to the direct fire of the enemy.
The besiegers' batteries were now drawing near completion; and the governor of Sebastopol had sent a request to Lord Raglan, that he would spare the inhabitants by not firing upon the civilian part of the city, to which he replied, that he would grant a safe-conduct to such of the inhabitants as were desirous of leaving, but would promise nothing as to his mode of attack, save that the buildings marked by the yellow flag should be respected as hospitals.
Every means was adopted to keep up the spirits of the garrison, and balls even were given every other night.
On the 17th of October the dreadful work began, and no one then present will ever forget that memorable scene. The morning dawned slowly; a thick fog hung over the town, and spread far up the heights. Towards six o'clock the mist began to disperse, and the rich clear October sun every instant made objects more and more visible.
In the Allied lines, all the artillerymen were at their pieces, and as the iron muzzles of the guns became visible through the fog in the now unmasked embrasures, a scattering and fast-increasing fire was opened upon them from the Russian lines. Soon the Russian works, crowded with grey figures, could be seen below, with, in rear, the large handsome white houses and dockyards of Sebastopol itself. Slowly, like the drawing back of a huge curtain, the mist moved off seaward, a cool morning breeze sprang up, and the atmosphere became clear and bright. Around were the wide extending lines of the besiegers, sloping down from the elevated ridges held by the British to the low grounds on the coast occupied by the French. Facing them below was the continuous line of Russian intrenchments of earthwork, interspersed with redoubts and stone towers, and loop-holed walls, with the line-of-battle ships showing their broadsides in the harbor; and beyond all, the open sea, bearing on its bosom, like a dark belt, the immense armada of the Allied fleet.
