Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

and galloped towards the dilapidated city, which, although from the hill it seems close at hand, afterwards appears to recede further and further. We arrived at the Ravin des Boulets--so called from the extraordinary crop of that article which lay there after the ploughing of that piece of land by the hand of Mars, the god of iron vegetables made of solid materials. Our gallant cockney Zouave, who had never smelt any other powder than gunpowder tea, was quite intrepid, and he mounted to the Redan as though he intended to take it by assault. He was always ahead; and no sooner had a view from that far-famed historical spot, of which he had so successfully taken possession, than the rage of valour seized upon him; no one could arrest his progress--he bounded off upon his steed several hundred yards in advance, shouting in frantic enthusiasm, “To Sebastopol! to Sebastopol!” My friend and myself were rather cooler upon the subject, and trotted slowly along the ravine direct to the Mast Battery. I called my invincible engineer back, telling him that he was going the wrong way, as we wanted to visit that battery before going into the city. He therefore returned. “I tell you what,” said I, “young boiling-hot warrior from Snow-hill, if you had been here this time last year, you would not have charged like that; the Russians would have smashed your crown for you.” No doubt they would, had I given them a chance; but I should have said with the coward, Peter Morrison, ‘The time to show courage has arrived, my brave fellow; let us hide ourselves.’ He had scarcely perpetrated this old joke, when a tremendous explosion was heard, shaking the earth under our horses’ feet and almost upsetting them. I made sure it was a mine that had been sprung; and a few seconds after, a thick short piece of wood, partially ignited, fell at about ten paces from my horse’s head. The animal began to kick, and we were enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke smelling of powder, and so thick that