Sebastopol, by a long _détour_ over the Bakschiserai road, and that to Traktir. [Sidenote: SUSPICIONS OF PORK IN DISGUISE.] On five of these tumular ridges overlooking the road to Balaklava, a party of 2000 Turks were busily engaged casting up earthworks for redoubts, under the direction of Captain Wagman, a Prussian engineer officer, who was under the orders of Sir John Burgoyne. In each of these forts were placed two heavy guns and 250 Turks. These poor fellows worked most willingly and indefatigably, though they had been exposed to the greatest privations. For some mysterious reason or other the Turkish government sent instead of the veterans who fought under Omar Pasha, a body of soldiers of only two years' service, the latest levies of the Porte, many belonging to the non-belligerent class of barbers, tailors, and small shopkeepers. Still they were patient, hardy, and strong--how patient I am ashamed to say. I was told, on the best authority, that these men were landed without the smallest care for their sustenance, except that some Marseilles biscuits were sent on shore for their use. These were soon exhausted--the men had nothing else. From the Alma up to the 10th of October, the whole force had only two biscuits each! The rest of their food they had to get by the roadside as best they might, and in an inhospitable and desolated country they could not get their only solace, tobacco; still they marched and worked day after day, picking up their subsistence by the way as best they might, and these proud Osmanli were actually seen walking about our camps, looking for fragments of rejected biscuit. But their sorrows were turned to joy, for the British people fed them, and such diet they never had before since Mahomet enrolled his first army of the faithful. They delighted in their coffee, sugar, rice, and biscuits, but many of the True Believers were much perturbed in spirit by the aspect of our salt beef, which they believed might be pork in disguise, and they subjected it to strange tests ere it was incorporated with Ottoman flesh and blood.