For two days after the battle of the Alma the army remained halted, [Sidenote: 23rd Sept.] and then on the 23rd slowly resumed the march on Sebastopol. Lord Raglan’s wish had been to push on immediately after the victory, but to this the French commander would not consent. On the 24th the cavalry, under Lord Lucan, was sent on to the river Belbec, a day’s march ahead of the main army, but encountered no opposition. Next day, Lord Raglan having been obliged, in deference to the French, to abandon his plan of attacking Sebastopol from the north, the army executed the flank march which brought it round from the north to the south side of the city. The march lay through difficult wooded ground; and the cavalry, which had been pushed forward to cover the advance, was misguided by a staff-officer. The result was that Lord Raglan and his escort were the first to come upon the rear-guard of the Russian army, which was likewise, though unknown to the English, executing a flank march across the British front. The cavalry soon came up, and captured some waggons as well as a few prisoners. After this trifling and rather ludicrous affair with the Russian rear-guard at Mackenzie’s Farm, the march was continued, and the army bivouacked that night on the Tchernaya River. [Sidenote: 29th Sept.] On the following day Balaclava was taken; and after three nights more bivouac on the Balaclava plains, the Seventeenth received some tents. They, like the rest of the army, had landed without tents or kits. The main business of the cavalry now consisted in patrolling east and northward towards the Tchemaya, where, as early as the 5th October, it began to encounter Russian patrols. In a sense the cavalry was isolated from the rest of the army. [Sidenote: 1854.] The plain of Balaclava lies about a mile from Sebastopol, and extends on an average to a length of about three miles from east to west, and a breadth of two miles from north to south. It is enclosed on all sides by heights: on the north by the Fedioukine Hills, on the south by the Kamara Hills, on the east by Mount Hasport, and on the west by the Chersonese, where the bulk of the army was encamped. The plain is cut in two from east to west by a line of hills called the Causeway heights, which run almost to the Chersonese; and it was at the foot of these hills, on the south side of them, that the camp of the Light Brigade was situated. Just about due south of the camp, at a distance of about a mile, stands the village of Kadikoi, at the entrance to the gorge that leads down to Balaclava harbour.