The Crimea--The Fleet--Appearance in the Bay of Baltjik--Sail from Varna--Land at Eupatoria--March Inland--Battle of the Alma--Lord Raglan--Appearance of the Troops--Distance from Sebastopol--The Morning of Battle--Advance to the River Alma--Russian Position --The Zouaves--Storming the Heights--March to Sebastopol--Death of Marshal St. Arnaud--General Canrobert. Until the last twelvemonth opened a new page in history, it could not have been anticipated that the battle-field of Europe would be a little arid peninsula in the remotest corner of the Black Sea, and that the armies of Britain, France, Turkey and Russia would be concentrated in direct strife around a fortress, whose very name was hardly known in this country before the present war broke out. Connected with the barren steppes of the mainland of Southern Russia only by the narrow strip of flat and sandy land, not five miles across, which constitutes the Isthmus of Perekop, the Crimea stretches out in a nearly northerly direction, in the form of a diamond-shaped peninsula, about one-third the size of Ireland. At its western point is Cape Tarkham; at its eastern, Kirtch and Kaffa, and in the south, the bay, town, and fortress of Sebastopol. At least one-third of the Crimea consists of vast waterless plains of sandy soil, rising only a few feet above the level of the sea, and in many places impregnated with salt; but all along the south-eastern side of the peninsula, from Sebastopol to Kertch and Kaffa, there extends a chain of limestone mountains. Beginning at Balaklava, nine miles east of Sebastopol, precipices fringe all this north-eastern coast; but at foot of these limestone precipices extends a narrow strip of ground, seldom half a league in width, intervening between the hills and the shore. It is in this picturesque and delightful region that the Allied army established its base of operations. A luxuriant vegetation descends to the water’s edge. Chesnut trees, mulberries, almonds, laurels, olives, and cypresses grow along its whole extent. Numbers of rivulets of the clearest water pour down from the cliffs, which effectually keep off cold and stormy winds. Thickly studded with villages, and adorned with the villas and palaces of the richest Russian nobles, this tract offers a most striking contrast to the remainder of the peninsula, or indeed to any part of Russia. The possession of the Crimea, and the construction of a maritime fortress of the first order in the magnificent harbour of Akhtiar (for such was the former name of Sebastopol) were prominent parts of that vast scheme of policy, by which the genius of the Czar Peter, and his successors, transformed Muscovy into the Russian Empire. The ever-memorable expedition of the Allies, designed to wrench this fortress and fleet from the possession of the Czar, set sail from Varna in the first week of September, 1854. No naval expedition ever before equalled it.