The apathy of the Turks was astonishing. Though Scutari, with its population of 100,000 souls, was within a mile and a half, it did not appear that half a dozen people had been added to the usual crowd of camp followers who attend on such occasions. The Greeks were more numerous; Pera sent over a fair share of foreigners, all dressed in the newest Paris fashions.
Vessels were sent up to Varna daily with stores; but we were not prepared to take the field. There was great want of saddlery, pack-saddles, saddle-bags, and matters of that kind, and the officers found that their portmanteaus were utterly useless. If John Bull could only have seen the evil effects of strangling the services in times of peace by ill-judged parsimony, he would not for the future listen so readily to the counsellors who tell him that it is economy to tighten his purse-strings round the neck of army and navy. Who was the wise man who warned us in time of peace that we should pay dearly for shutting our eyes to the possibility of war, and who preached in vain to us about our want of baggage, and pontoon trains, and our locomotive deficiencies? No outlay, however prodigal, can atone for the effects of a griping penuriousness, and all the gold in the Treasury cannot produce at command those great qualities in administrative and executive departments which are the fruits of experience alone. A soldier, an artilleryman, a commissariat officer, cannot be created suddenly, not even with profuse expenditure in the attempt. It would be a great national blessing if all our political economists could, at this time, have been caught and enlisted in the army at Scutari for a month or so, or even if they could have been provided with temporary commissions, till they had obtained some practical knowledge of the results of their system.
CHAPTER V.
Departure of the Light Division—Scenery of the Bosphorus—The Black Sea—Varna—Encampment at Aladyn—Bulgarian Cart-drivers—The Commissariat.
DEPARTURE OF THE LIGHT DIVISION.
On Sunday, the 28th of May, Sir George Brown left the barracks at Scutari, and proceeded to Varna in the Banshee. Before his departure orders were issued that the men belonging to the Light Division under his command should embark early the following morning—the baggage to be on board at six o'clock, the men at nine o'clock. At daylight on the 29th of May the réveillé woke up the camp of the Light Division, and the regiments were ready for inspection at five o'clock. The Light Division, which was destined to play an important part in this campaign, and whose highest glory was to emulate the successes of the famous legion of the Peninsula whose name they bore, consisted of the following regiments:—The 7th Fusileers, the 23rd Fusileers, the 19th Foot, the 33rd or Wellington's Regiment, the 77th Foot, the 88th Connaught Rangers, and the Rifle Brigade, 2nd Battalion. They formed in front of their tents, and after a rapid inspection were ordered to strike tents. In a moment or two file after file of canvas cones collapsed and fell to the earth, the poles were unspliced and packed up, the canvas rolled up and placed in layers on bullock carts, the various articles of regimental baggage collected into the same vehicles,—ants in a swarm could not have been more active and bustling than the men; they formed into masses, broke up again, moved in single files in little companies, in broken groups all over the ground, while the araba drivers looked stupidly on, exhibiting the most perfect indifference to the appropriation of their carts, and evidently regarding the Giaours as unpleasant demons, by whose preternatural energies they were to be agitated and perturbed as punishment for their sins. It would seem, indeed, very difficult to re-form this shifting, diffusive crowd of red-coats into the steady columns which were drawn up so rigidly a short time previously along the canvas walls, now fluttering in the dust or packed helplessly in bales. Their labours were, however, decisive, and in some half-hour or so they had transformed the scene completely, and had left nothing behind them but the bare circles of baked earth, marking where tents had stood, the blackened spot where once the camp-fires blazed, tethering sticks, and a curious débris of jam-pots, preserved meat cases, bottles, sweetmeat boxes, sardine tins, broken delf, bones of fowl and ham, pomatum pots, and tobacco pipes.
A few words of command running through the toiling crowd—some blasts on the bugle—and the regiments got together, steady and solid, with long lines of bullock carts and buffalo arabas drawn up between them, and commenced their march over the sandy slopes which led to the sea. There lay the fleet of transports, anchored with their attendant steamers in long lines, as close inshore as they could approach with safety. The Vesuvius, steam sloop, Commander Powell, the Simoom and the Megæra troop ships (screw-steamers), sent in their boats to aid those of the merchantmen and steamers in embarking the men and baggage, and Admiral Boxer, aided by Captain Christie, Commander Powell, and Lieutenant Rundle, R.N., superintended the arrangements for stowing away and getting on board the little army, which consisted of about 6,500 men. The morning was fine, but hot. The men were in excellent spirits, and as they marched over the dusty plain to the landing-places, they were greeted with repeated peals of cheering from the regiments of the other division. The order and regularity with which they were got on board the boats, and the safety and celerity with which they were embarked—baggage, horses, women, and stores—were creditable to the authorities, and to the discipline and good order of the men themselves, both officers and privates.
No voyager or artist can do justice to the scenery of the Bosphorus. It has much the character of a Norwegian fiord. Perhaps the rounded outline of the hills, the light rich green of the vegetation, the luxuriance of tree and flower and herbage, make it resemble more closely the banks of Killarney or Windermere. The waters escaping from the Black Sea, in one part compressed by swelling hillocks to a breadth of little more than a mile, at another expanding into a sheet of four times that breadth, run for thirteen miles in a blue flood, like the Rhone as it issues from the Lake of Geneva, till they mingle with the Sea of Marmora, passing in their course beautiful groupings of wood and dale, ravine and hill-side, covered with the profusest carpeting of leaf and blade. Kiosk and pleasure-ground, embrasured bastion and loopholed curtain, gay garden, villa, mosque, and mansion, decorate the banks in unbroken lines from the foot of the forts which command the entrance up to the crowning glory of the scene, where the imperial city of Constantine, rising in many-coloured terraces from the verge of the Golden Horn, confuses the eye with masses of foliage, red roofs, divers-hued walls, and gables, surmounted by a frieze of snow-white minarets with golden summits, and by the symmetrical sweep of St. Sophia. The hills strike abruptly upwards to heights varying from 200 feet to 600 feet, and are bounded at the foot by quays, which run along the European side, almost without interruption, from Pera to Bujukderé, about five miles from the Black Sea. These quays are also very numerous on the Asiatic side.
The villages by the water-side are so close together, that Pera may be said to extend from Tophané to the forts beyond Bujukderé. The residences of the pashas, the imperial palaces of the Sultan, and the retreats of opulence, lined these favoured shores; and as the stranger passes on, in steamer or caique, he may catch a view of some hoary pasha or ex-governor sitting cross-legged in his garden or verandah, smoking away, and each looking so like the other that they might all pass for brothers. The windows of one portion of these houses are mostly closely latticed and fastened, but here and there a bright flash of a yellow or red robe shows the harem is not untenanted. These dwellings succeed each other the whole length of the Bosphorus, quite as numerously as the houses on the road from Hyde Park Corner to Hammersmith; and at places such as Therapia and Bujukderé they are dense enough to form large villages, provided with hotels, shops, cafés, and lodging-houses. The Turks delight in going up in their caiques to some of these places, and sitting out on the platforms over the water, while the chibouque or narghile confers on them a zoophytic happiness; and the greatest object of Turkish ambition is to enjoy the pleasures of a kiosk on the Bosphorus. The waters abound in fish, and droves of porpoises and dolphins disport in myriads on its surface, plashing and playing about, as with easy roll they cleave their way against its rapid flood, or gambolling about in the plenitude of their strength and security, till a sword-fish takes a dig at them, and sets them off curvetting and snorting like sea-horses. Hawks, kites, buzzards, and sea eagles are numerous, and large flocks of a kind of gregarious petrel of a dusky hue, with whitish breasts, called by the French âmes damneés, which are believed never to rest, keep flying up and down close to the water.
Amidst such scenery the expeditionary flotilla began its voyage at eleven o'clock. It consisted of two steamers for staff officers and horses, seven steamers for troops and chargers, one for 300 pack horses, four sailing transports for horse artillery, and two transports for commissariat animals. Off Tophané, frigates, some of them double-banked, displayed the red flag with the silver crescent moon and star of the Ottoman Porte. They were lying idly at rest there, and might have been much better employed, if not at Kavarna Bay, certainly in cruising about the Greek Archipelago.