When I wrote two days ago I hardly expected to have dated another letter
from Koomaylo. I had prepared to start for Senafe, leaving my baggage
behind me, and returning in ten days or so. The great objection to this
plan was that neither at Zulla nor here are there any huts or stores where
things can be left. The only thing to be done, therefore, was to leave
them in the tent of some friend; but as he, too, might get the route at
any moment, it would have been, to say the least of it, a very hazardous
proceeding. The night before last, however, I received the joyful and
long-expected news that the ship which had left Bombay with my horses six
days before I started myself was at last in harbour. My course was now
clear; I should go down, get my horses, and then go up to Senafe, carrying
my whole baggage with me. Vessels and troops are arriving every day, and
the accumulations of arrears of work are increasing in even more rapid
proportion. Major Baigrie, the quartermaster-general, is indefatigable,
but he cannot unload thirty large vessels at one little jetty, at whose
extremity there is only a depth of five feet of water. Unless something is
done, and that rapidly, and upon an extensive scale, we shall break down
altogether. It is evident that a jetty, at which at most three of these
country boats can lie alongside to unload, is only sufficient to afford
accommodation for one large ship, and that it would take several days to
discharge her cargo of say one thousand tons, using the greatest despatch
possible. How, then, can it be hoped that the vessels in the harbour,
whose number is increasing at the rate of two or three a-day, are to be
unloaded? In the Crimea great distress was caused because the ships in
Balaclava harbour could not manage to discharge their stores. But
Balaclava harbour offered facilities for unloading which were enormous
compared to this place. There was a wharf a quarter of a mile long, with
deep water alongside, so that goods could be rolled down planks or
gangways to the shore from the vessels. The harbour was land-locked, and
the work of unloading never interrupted. Compare that with the present
state of things. A boat-jetty running out into five-foot water, and only
approachable for half the day owing to the surf, and, as I hear, for
months not approachable at all. It can be mathematically proved that the
quantity of provision and forage which can be landed from these boats,
always alongside for so many hours a-day, would not supply the fifth of
the wants of twenty-five thousand men and as many animals. Everything
depends upon what the state of the interior of the country is. If we find
sufficient forage for the animals and food for the men—which the most
sanguine man does not anticipate—well and good. If not, we must break
down. It is simply out of the question to land the stores with the present
arrangements in Annesley Bay, or with anything like them. The
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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