The scarcity of forage and the want of a road acted and reacted on each other, and formed the principal causes of the winter troubles. The horses and mules died of starvation, and it was useless to replace them, as there was not wherewithal to feed them. The transport, miserably insufficient as it always had been, dwindled into nothing, and all but disappeared; troop horses of the cavalry were impressed into this service, but they too perished. Carriage traffic soon ceased, and an attempt was then made to convey supplies on the backs of the wretched beasts that survived. This expedient also failed; the quagmire of tenacious clay intervening between the port and the front, the famine, and the exposure to cold and wet, all operated together, and the animals could work no more. Thenceforward there was nothing for it but to make the men themselves wade through the deep mud, and fetch up such things from the base as they required, to keep body and soul together. The duty was no inconsiderable addition to their ordinary toil, for while they were decreasing fast in numbers, the labour in the trenches did not abate. The journey also sometimes took twelve hours to accomplish, and during the time it lasted they were without food, shelter, or rest.[301] This miserable makeshift was, of course, entirely inadequate to supply the troops, and the more bulky or heavy articles, however necessary to the well-being of the army, could not be brought to camp at all. The serious error by which magazines had not been established in time at the seat of war, was repaired quickly by the great energy displayed at head-quarters, and in December considerable quantities of every kind of stores were available at Balaklava, but there most of them remained unused, because, as Government would not supply forage (and it seems it was not easily procured out of England), there was no transport, and as there was no road to span the morass, means did not exist of crossing it and of reaching the front. ----- Footnote 301: Hamley, _War in the Crimea_ , p. 170. -----