It is more than a mile in length, and its greatest width is about three-quarters of a mile—the streets entering the open steppe on the south.
The streets are built in parallel lines from north to south, are intersected by others from east and west, and the houses, being of limestone, have a substantial appearance. The public buildings are fine. The library erected by the Emperor, for the use of naval and military officers, is of Grecian architecture, and is elegantly fitted up internally. The books are principally confined to naval and military subjects and the sciences connected with them, history, and some light reading.
The club-house is handsome externally, and comfortable within; it contains a large ball-room, which is its most striking feature, and billiard-rooms, which appear to be the great centre of attraction; but one looks in vain for reading-rooms, filled with newspapers and journals.
There are many good churches, and a fine landing-place of stone from the military harbor, approached on the side of the town, beneath an architrave supported by high columns. It also boasts an Italian opera-house.
The eastern side of the town is so steep that the mast-heads of the ships cannot be seen until one gets close to them. Very beautiful views are obtained from some parts of the place, and it is altogether agreeably situated. A military band plays every Thursday evening in the public gardens, at which time the fashionables assemble in great numbers.
As Sebastopol is held exclusively as a military and naval position, commerce does not exist; the only articles imported by sea being those required for material of war, or as provisions for the inhabitants and garrison.
On the eastern side of the military harbor, opposite to the town, is a line of buildings consisting of barracks, some store-houses, and a large naval hospital.
The country around Sebastopol sinks gradually down, in a succession of ridges from the position occupied by the Allied army to the town; but for nearly a third of a mile, immediately in front of the town, the ground is quite flat, the ridges there having been long ago levelled 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 break 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.