CHAPTER XVI
IN THE CRIMEA
1856
The voyage from Joppa to Constantinople was a succession of surprises, from Latokea to Lanarca, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Smyrna. At Beyrout we were the guests of a pasha, the leading man of the place. Henry Kennard, banker, of Heywood, Kennard & Co., of London, who had joined us in Jerusalem, went with us through Syria and was going as far as the Crimea. MacFarlane was still with our party. We had a day off in Beyrout, and went up to Lebanon, inland, where the cedars seem to antedate the olive-trees in the Garden of Gethsemane.
When we got to Smyrna we entered a beautiful bay, somewhat like that of Rio Janeiro, and I went out on the fortified hill that overlooks the city. I saw from the hill that troops were marching on parade, and went off alone to see them. I was told to let my donkey go his own way. He brought me to a place where were about one hundred stone steps, almost perpendicular. I had a little hesitation about going down these steps, but he seemed to know what he was about, and I could do nothing with him but hang on his back. I expected him to tumble, and that would have been the last of me. He didn't miss a step, however, but took me safely to the bottom. I thought of General Putnam's stone-step ride. If he had only had a Turkish donkey he would have missed being a hero.
My donkey seemed to know more than I about the streets of Smyrna, and I gave him the rein. He took me past the sentinels to the parade ground, as he appeared to know the password, and across the parade, which was against regulations. When we arrived at the center of the ground, he began very peculiar operations, as if he had been with Barnum. Here was a donkey that would have made a fortune for a circus. The soldiers were coming up in platoons, when the donkey began to stand on his hind feet, and then on his fore feet. The roar of the advancing regiment convinced me that I was in a tight place. I got off his back and walked alone on the opposite side, and then escaped through a gate. I have never heard of the obstinate animal since.
From Smyrna to Constantinople we passed among famous Greek islands—Rhodes, and Chios, where twenty-two thousand Greeks were killed by the Turks—but we had not time to stop at any of them. At Constantinople I preferred to take passage in a transient steamer, instead of waiting for the Government boat. I stopped here only to see our minister, Carroll Spence, of Baltimore, and then hurried on through the Marmoro Strait and the Bosporus, and into the Black Sea, and there found an immense fleet of transports, from the port of Sebastopol. I was delighted to see alongside of one another three of our Boston clippers, built by Donald Mackay in East Boston, that had brought French troops from France: the Great Republic, Captain Limeburner, the Monarch of the Seas, Captain Gardner, and the Ocean Queen of clippers, Captain Zerega. Ships filled the little bay, bows and sterns touching the shore on one side and the other. Not one could have got out in case of fire.
We immediately got horses to go out to Balaklava, and there I was glad to meet my old friend, Captain Furber, of the Black Ball Line and the Ocean Clipper, who gave me a state-room and all the courtesies of his ship. He had come for the French. Kennard went with the British. Horses and attendants were furnished me by the French generals free of cost.
My object in going to the Crimea was to speculate in munitions of war, which I supposed would be sold for a mere bagatelle. But the armies took their material away with them—English, Russian, Turkish, French, Sardinian—so there was no chance for business there. The British troops were in rags and tatters. Their new uniforms had not arrived, and their shoes were worn out. I went on board one of the clippers and spoke about the shoes not having arrived. "What!" exclaimed the captain; "I am loaded with shoes! I have been here six months." "Have you notified the commissary?" "Yes." What could I do? All this was afterward described by "Bull Run" Russell. He was then the correspondent of the London Times, and so exposed the mismanagement of the war that ships were sent with provisions, uniforms, and everything, after the war was over.
Through the courtesy of French officers, I visited the city of Sebastopol, a ten-mile journey from Balaklava, and saw the twenty-one-gun battery, the Redan, and the Malakoff, and, of course, the ruin of the famous city. I could see the masts of the ships at the entrance of the bay, the fleet that had been sunk by the Russians to block the channel. Here they had crossed in the night to the Star Fort on the opposite side, which was strongly fortified. It would have been almost impossible for the allied armies to interfere with the Russians. They had made up their minds to fight it out to the end.
The French zouave commander got up a banquet for me with twenty of the officers of all the armies—Turkish, French, English, Sardinian, and Russian. I did something to stir up the battle spirit again, and several times almost got them fighting over the table, especially when I asked some question that brought a reply from the zouave general of the Ninety-sixth regiment of Algiers. He rose and said to the Englishmen who had disputed his word: "You were asleep at the Alma, you were late at Inkerman, late at Balaklava, ran from the Redan and at Chernaya." This of course roused the English officers, and we had to pour oil on troubled waters.