“Everybody who has seen beaters pushing their way through a thick cover, may form a faint idea of the difficulties which beset, and the obstacles which retarded our progress. The heat was overpowering, not a breath of air percolated the dense vegetation. You scrambled on with arms uplifted to protect the face against the swinging back-handers dealt by the boughs; now your shakoe was dashed off, now the briars laid tenacious hold on your haversack, or on the tails of your coatee. It was as much as you could do to see the soldiers immediately on your right and left. For the time, military order was an impossibility, brigades and regiments got intermixed. Guardsmen, Rifles, and Highlanders straggled forward blindly, all in a ruck. There was much suffering, and some stout soldiers dropped involuntarily to the rear, to be heard of no more.”[239] ----- Footnote 239: _Our Veterans, etc._ , p. 163. ----- N^o. 5. [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF COUNTRY NEAR SEVASTOPOL _Compiled from_ Hamley’s Crimea _by kind permission_. A.D. Innes & C^o. London. ] After four hours or more, the troops emerged on a lane blocked by the cavalry and baggage, and squeezed through. A little later they heard an explosion, and, pushing forward, they came upon the scene of the singular meeting that took place between the head-quarter Staff and the rear of the enemy’s army. Continuing along a tolerably good road, they approached the valley of the Tchernaya after dark, and, crossing it at Traktir Bridge, they finally bivouacked near the village of Tchorgun, at ten o’clock at night, “completely exhausted, parched with thirst, and their clothes much torn by struggling through the wood.” Indeed, they were fortunate, for it was one in the morning before the last British division reached its halting ground. The French, who followed their English allies, remained for the night midway on the wooded heights near Mackenzie Farm, where they suffered much from want of water. Next day the movement continued; and the cholera, that accompanied our troops without intermission, burst out with renewed malignity, and struck its victims down on the roadside along our line of march. After three hours, the division reached Kadikeui, about half a mile from Balaklava; while our ships, approaching, threw a few shells into an old Genoese fort, which commanded the harbour, and which was held by a handful of Greek troops in the Russian service; after a mere show of resistance, they surrendered without difficulty. The French also moved forward on the 26th, and established themselves on the Fediukhine heights near the Tchernaya. The Fourth Division, under Sir G. Cathcart, had been left behind on the Belbek, to embark the sick that remained there; on the same day (26th) he, too, started from his bivouac on the north of Sevastopol, and, following the track of the Allied armies, arrived on