ADVANCE TO THE BELBEC. 357 at the mouth of the Belbec, they began to bend chap. away from the shore. '- The "-round at this time traversed by the in- tiio track m , . 1 • 1 1 -11 *'"^ Russian vadiug armies was so thickly strewn with the .army. marks of the enemy's hasty flight and confusion, as to show that defeat had been lapsing into ruin, and that that which had entered Sebastopol was a hurried and fugitive crowd. Amongst the things abandoned there was even that cargo of kitchen implements which had suj)plied the table of the Eussian Headquarters. The Allies failed to read these signs, or rather they failed to read them with that kind of understanding which leads to clear inference and to accordant action. Indeed, it would seem that they had hardly at all treasured up and applied the narrative of that Eussian panic on the Katcha which the villagers had been giving them on the foregoing night. Strange to say, that stand, or that mere sem- The proofs ° "^ . ' of its blance of a stand, which Kiriakoff had made at shattered state not the close of the battle on the Alma, had raised well mas- tered by up a veil so effectual, that it still served to screen the Allies the Eussians from the eyes of their invaders. No fragments of the wreck, no accounts of eye- witnesses, were enough to countervail the effect which Kiriakoff had wrought upon the counsels of the Allies, by showing them a front for some minutes, and causing them to believe that the retreat which he was covering must be a retreat in good order.*
- The reason why the few minutes' stand made by Kiriakoff
imposed so effectually upon the Allies was this : it happened
