Even black clouds and depressing rain could not make us insensible to the beauty of the valley of Tchernaia. It lies deep amongst rocks, with a fine range of chalk hills in the distance. The long white lines on their rugged sides looked like snow whenever a straggling ray of light fell upon them through the dark and heavy mass of clouds. Quite at the upper end of the valley, where it turns to the right towards Balaclava, are two low hills, covered with the ruins of Sir Colin Campbell's camp. The long flat piece of ground beneath these will be ever memorable as the scene of the famous charge of cavalry. The little plain forms a sort of amphitheatre, as it is partly surrounded at one end by a series of hillocks or rising ground. On these commanding positions were posted the Russian guns. Even an inexperienced eye could see at a glance that the devoted regiments must have been rushing to certain death. It seems marvellous that men can be so trained to passive obedience, that, without a murmur, they hurry to their doom. Every officer, at any rate, was probably aware that the heroic effort could but be a useless sacrifice of human life. What must have been the agony of those who were forced to look on at such frightful and unnecessary carnage, powerless to prevent, and powerless to aid? Balaclava is a quaint little place, completely shut in by hills and rocks. The entrance to the harbour from the sea is very difficult to find even when quite close to it, so curiously does the channel twist and turn about. It must have been once a better-class village than any we had yet seen, for the church, though in a dilapidated state, is large, and the houses, though partly in ruins, are of good size. Some have been repaired, and most are inhabited, but everything speaks of ruin and discouragement. The landing-place is rotting in the water, the warehouses made by the English are rotting on the shore, and the dirty, dreary-looking people seem as if they were decaying away in their poverty and hopelessness. Drinking is unhappily the prevailing vice in the Crimea. We rarely went on shore without seeing several tipsy men. Towards evening one generally meets wives and daughters dutifully wheeling their husbands and fathers home in barrows. Yesterday we met a procession of five being thus brought back in triumph from some prolonged carouse. To the credit of the fair sex, it is but just to say we have not seen one woman so degradingly overcome.