My curiosity was not strong enough to enable me to endure the horrors of a walk over the dead and dying animals, so I fled to the boat, and, under the protection of a thick cloak and huge umbrella, waited there until the others had seen enough. For hours the yacht was passing through the swarm, or detachments of it. Such numbers of the disgusting insects fell on the deck that two men were constantly employed in sweeping them into the sea. Every window, every crevice, was kept carefully closed, for fear that one of them should get below. There is something inexpressibly revolting about these horrid animals. They fly, they crawl, and they cling, and, after having come in contact with them, we could well understand what a frightful infliction the plague of them in Egypt must have been. Wherever they pass they leave barrenness and pestilence. We hoped the flight we had met might be driven out to sea. It was a very large one, for long after we had passed through it, we could see the dark cloud extending along the horizon like hills. Beyond Old Fort the country began to improve. The sandy plain gradually changed into gentle undulations, then rose to picturesque hills, and at last, in the distance, a range of fine mountains came in sight. Here and there a few small farmsteads, surrounded by patches of cultivated ground, showed that the soil was more genial than that around Eupatoria and Old Fort. In the glow of a lovely sunset, the sea gently breaking in little waves upon the beach, the lark singing above the corn-fields, in all the quiet and repose of a summer evening, we came upon the scene of the most awful strife and carnage the world has seen in modern times. As we lay in towards the shore, on our right was the steep bank up which the brave Zouaves forced their way; the pretty grass-field beyond, where a flock of sheep were so peacefully feeding, was the deadly slope where so many of the noble and gallant 23rd Welsh Fusiliers died a soldier's death. That fearful day is now a story of long ago--but what English heart can look upon the field of Alma and remain unmoved? The chalk cliffs near the sea are about thirty feet high, and are curiously intersected by strata of red gravel. As the sun slowly sank, these cliffs caught his last rays, and were dyed so deep a crimson that we could almost fancy the battle had but been to-day, and that the long dark stains were indeed the blood so nobly shed by our gallant soldiers.