254 COMMENCED EXPEDITION TO KERTCH. CHAPTER X. THE INTERPOSITION OF THE FRENCH EMPEROR CON- TINUING AND BRINGING ABOUT THE RECALL OF A JOINT EXPEDITION. CHAP. X. Project for opening a passage inti the Sea of Azof. The Straits of Kirtch. I. To open the fortified straits leading into the ' closed ' Sea of Azof, Lord Raglan adopting with warmth the eager counsel of Lyons had been pressing the French to concur with some of our land and sea forces in a joint expedition to Kertch, or, more explicitly speaking, to that long, bare, steppe-land peninsula which borrows its name from the town. This peninsula of Kertch on the one side, on the other, a forked tongue of land jutting out from the coast of Circassia, approach each other so nearly that the waters there rolling between them are narrow enough to be reached by artillery planted on shore. Whilst sundering thus the two headlands, these waters unite the two seas and so form the straits giving entrance from the Euxine to what was the Palus Mteotis, that is, the Sea of Azof. Known of old as the difficult waters of
