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The retreat, covered by the fire of the ships in the harbor, and by some skirmishers opportunely brought up and posted by Todleben, was deliberately and safely effected; but out of the 34,835 Russians who had taken part in the battle on the plateau, six generals, 256 officers, and 10,467 rank and file were put hors de combat-more than double the loss of the Allies.

tion to oppose to the fire of the Allies; on the 14th November they had two hundred and forty, although during the same interval of time eighty of their guns were dismounted and one hundred and fifty gun-carriages destroyed. The most important works for strengthening the defences, especially those round the Malakhow tower, were not commenced until the middle of November, when the Allies had been seven weeks before the

place. They consisted principally of works closed at the mouth or entrance (fermés à la gorge), on each of the elevated points of the enceinte commanding the place; so that, if the enemy broke through a weak place in the connecting portion of the line, they would be prevented from entering either of these insulated strongholds or fortresses from the rear:

"The closing of the Bastion No. 2 was begun on the 15th November,* and on the 19th of the same month we set to work to transform the fortifications of the Malakhow mound into a great closed polygon, which, by its vast dimensions, as well as by its commanding situation, should serve as a point of support to all the Karabelnaia. Its plan was defined in The The loss of the battle is attributed by semi-circular glacis before the tower, and two accordance with the existing works. Todleben to the want of simultaneity in batteries at its extremities, formed the direct the advance of the Russians, the superi- front; the two batteries (28 and 44) formed ority of the French and English small- part of the right front, which had received a arms, and the omission of the Russian broken formation, having been made to conartillery to follow and support their in- form in this respect to the configurations of the borders of the mound. The left front, fantry-a service, he says, which was excellently executed by the correspond-ed by two jutting posts, arranged so as to indisposed on the opposite slope, was augmenting arm in the English army. He thinks close two large powder-magazines. A breastthat, although the Russians were re work which had been raised behind on the pulsed, the battle of Inkermann was favorable to them in its results.

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duced a deep impression on the Allies. In the first moment they had even the idea of raising the siege. But although this idea was abandoned by them, this important result followed, that the assault meditated against the Bastion No. 4, which for many reasons seemed about to be crowned with success, was adjourned, and that henceforth the operations of the Allies assumed gradually a defensive character."

The besieged were constantly adding to the strength of their works and their batteries, as well as to the numbers of their army. On the 17th October, when the bombardment began, they had only one hundred and eighteen guns in posi

*Bastion No. 2 is the Little Redan. It would describing the manner in which the Russians, seem that this work was not completed. After taken by surprise, were driven out of the Malakhow and the Little Redan, Bazancourt states that, rallying and supported by their reserves, they tried in vain to retake the Malakhow, but succeeded in retaking the Little Redan. vain the captain of engineers, Renoux, exerted himself with his sappers to close the opening of the Little Redan, in which he is already beginning to intrench himself. Unhappily the obsta

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cle he has created is still insufficient, and cannot cover our troops, who, forced to abandon the ground which they had so vigorously seized, threw themselves into the ditches," etc. The closing of the Malakhow, therefore, was apparently the cause of an irreparable disaster to the besieged. General Niel states that the closing of the gorge was very useful to the French, in enabling them to withstand all the efforts of the Russians.-Journal, etc., p. 37, note.

borders of the mound, and which was intended to protect the reserves placed on the slope, or those posted between the houses of the Malakhow suburb, served as bases for the entrance or gorge front. In arranging the two lateral fronts, care had been taken to flank their ditches as much as possible.

"The execution of these immense works was accompanied by very great difficulty, by reason of the excessive hardness of the rocky soil, which reached almost to the very surface of the ground, especially on the side of the right front, where the work could only be done during the night, without being exposed

to the fire of the English riflemen."

From Todleben's summary of the second period of the siege, including December, 1854, and January, 1855, we learn that although the Allies also had added to their batteries, their fire had slackened considerably, and that they had even suspended their approaches whilst they were employed in strengthening the positions on the side of the Tschernaia as well as on the side of Sebastopol. Their trenches had been advanced sufficiently close greatly to dis quiet the besieged, who in most other respects had reason to entertain better hopes of the result than when the Allies first appeared before the place.

The second volume of the first part concludes with a chapter in which the respective conditions of the besiegers and besieged, as regards the supply of provisions, hospital accommodation, and the health of the troops, are stated and compared. We learn from it, that although the Russians were never actually in want of provisions, they were frequently straitened in their supplies, and that at one time, with twenty-five thousand sick and wounded in the town, they were unable to find room, attendance, and medicines for more than half. Through the blunders of their commissariat, much of their winter clothing did not arrive till it was no longer wanted; but the wonder is how they managed, with only a single line of road open, to transport men, food, ammunition, clothes, and necessaries sufficient to keep pace with the constantly increasing armies and resources of the Allies. The sacrifice of men and animals was doubt less enormous, but it was endured with out a murmur; and at the point of time where the history breaks off, towards the end of February, 1855, the czar had

just decreed a new levy throughout the whole of his vast empire for the prosecution of the war.

It will be collected from our remarks and extracts, literal and abridged, that the work before us is of unequal merit and authority, and that we are seldom permitted to forget that it is edited, not written, by the distinguished and eminently scientific soldier whose name adorns the title page. The plans of defence, the construction of the new works, and the siege operations, strictly so called, which were directed by him, or fell under his own personal observation, are always clearly described; but the accounts of engagements and manoeuvres beyond the walls are too frequently open to the same criticism as his narrative of the battle of the Alma: they want the unity, succinctness, and perspicuity which betoken the hand of a single wellinformed and impartial historian. We refrain from further comment till the completion of the work; and by that time most probably Mr. Kinglake's anxiously expected continuation will be before the world.

Saturday Review.

A MISSION TO DAHOMEY.*

CAPTAIN BURTON'S peculiarities as a narrator are now tolerably well known, and everybody who takes up his book is sufficiently aware beforehand how many literary eccentricities will be found to offend or amuse him. These peculiarities are certainly not less conspicuous than usual in the present work. A haughty and undisguised contempt for other travellers,an equally undisguised confidence in himself, and a detestation of most things which the rest of the world generally approves all this gives a tone to Captain Burton's writing which is at least time in paying compliments, he leaves striking and uncommon. He wastes no nothing out because it may rather hurt common notions of decorum, and he laudably refuses to conciliate the British public by any eulogy on the operations of "missioners." The plainness of speech

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with which he talks of various matters | book, and as bright and gay as its chrowhich are for the most part passed over by travellers either in discreet silence or else treated with mincing periphrases, is sometimes a little startling; but in this and in some of his other oddities, Captian Burton is, in a way, manly and straightforward. The only virtue of a writer of travels is to tell the truth accurately and fully, and the author's very offences against good taste are such as to inspire the fullest confidence in the trustworthiness of his statements. He evidently tells what he thinks to be the truth, if he does not exactly shame the devil; and it is so much the fashion among travellers to doctor their books, as the wine-merchant doctors sherry, with an eye to the English market, that we may readily overlook occasional coarseness and very frequent unamiability and intolerance.

mo-lithographs. It was reserved for Captain Burton's blunt style, and careful minute observation, to put clearly before us the pitiful meanness, the puerility, and the squalid misery of the Dahoman savages. In the poet's raptures about the freedom of the eagle's eyrie we forget that it is, as a matter of fact, a foul depository of bleached bones or mangled carcases; and in the same way, Commander Forbes' good language, and frequent use of such general terms as ferocity, atrocities, deplorable barbarism, conveyed a very faint notion of the stench, filth, shabbiness, din, and loathsome discomfort which are revealed by the more recent traveller. The force with which all this is brought out in Captain Burton's book is cheaply purchased at the cost of some slight iteration, which, though now and then rather wearisome, is perhaps the only way of enabling us to realize the naked truth. Though in one respect Captain Burton, by showing that the popular estimate of the number of human beings annually put to death is an enormous exaggeration of the truth, has effect

The interest which has always been taken in everything connected with Dahomey has, according to Captain Burton, been much greater than Dahomey really deserves. Principally, no doubt, this interest was excited by the rumors which reached Europe from time to time of ap-ed a sort of rehabilitation of Dahomey, palling massacres and ghastly sacrifices. People could not but feel the keenest curiosity about a country whose monarch was reported to divert himself by paddling a canoe in the blood of two thousand of his subjects, or stamping frantically about among their putrescent carcases. The horrible mysteries of slave-hunting, the strange stories of female warriors, the abominations of their warfare, and the alleged vastness of the Dahoman empire, combined to make Dahomey more famil iarly talked about than any other part at least of Western Africa. The two volumes published in 1851 by Commander Forbes, containing an account of his mission to the Dahoman court two years previously, were rather calculated to heighten this interest than to diminish it, though correcting some of the delusive notions formerly entertained about the terrific amount of annual bloodshed. Some neatly-colored though poor illustrations, an easily flowing style, a few proper ejaculations, and a general literary trimness, made his book sufficiently pleasant reading, but also served to give one the idea that things in Dahomey were as compact and well-ordered as the

in another he has diminished its European repute by pointing out its present unimportance and approaching decay. The older travellers represented the Kingdom of Dahomey as of enormous extent; and Commander Forbes, though admitting the difficulty or impossibility of arriving at any accurate measure, asserts that the actual extent may "with safety be taken at about one hundred and eighty miles from east to west, and nearly two hundred from the sea-coast at Whydah to its most northward boundary," thus giving a total area of thirty-six thousand square miles. This may perhaps have been a reasonable approximation to the truth thirteen years ago, but at the present time, as Captain Burton very positively asserts, we must reduce the area to four thousand square miles, or to just one-ninth of Commander Forbes' estimate. In population, in the same way, the author is convinced that similar exaggeration has been perpetrated. A French traveller fixed the number of the subjects of the Dahoman king at nine hundred thousand, Commander Forbes at two hundred thousand. Commodore Wilmot, whose visit to the father of the

present king in 1862-3 was the occasion | of them than has been permitted by more of Captain Burton's mission, puts it at sentimental writers expels with rude the slightly lower figure of one hundred promptitude any idea which the reader and eighty thousand; while Captain may have had of Amazons as a troop Burton would even say one hundred and of brave, resolute, and comely virgins. fifty thousand, confessing, however, that Their chastity is far from unimpeachable, all the numbers are mere guess-work. and in appearance they are a pack of It is perhaps pretty safe to assume that "old, ugly, and square-built frows," who the truth lies somewhere between one "trudge grumpily along with the face hundred and eighty thousand and one of a cook after much nagging." If the hundred thousand. Considering that hideous creature in Captain Burton's the country could support three times as frontispiece is an impartial representation large a population, and that there is little of the average of Amazon comeliness, his or no commerce in produce, the cultiva- written account is no calumny; but it tion is obviously of the scantiest descrip- may be added, that in Commander tion. The disproportion between the Forbes' book there is a picture of an extent of territory and the number of the Amazon who would be distinctly atinhabitants is easily explained. The fe- tractive but for a dripping head which male troops are variously calculated at she carries in her left hand. They affect ten thousand, five thousand, and by Cap- a Zouave swagger, but in spite of this tain Burton at twenty-five hundred, and they cannot disguise the mildness of they contribute no increase to the king's countenance with which nature stamps subjects. In a country where the doc- their sex. Although bulky in appeartrine of the superiority of the female had ance, their size is due more to fat than made less progress, these women would muscle, and, in the author's opinion, they represent seventy-five hundred children. are too light to stand a charge of the In the second place, Dahomey is sur- poorest troops in Europe." The whole rounded by hostile tribes, and constant force is divided into five arms-blunderwarfare both employs and annihilates buss-women or grenadiers, razor-women, large numbers of men who would other- infantry, elephant-huntresses, and archwise be forced to do at least a certain ers, the infantry composing the corps amount of work. So long as these two d'élite of the army. The elephant-huntchecks-one preventive, and the other resses have a great reputation for skill positive-are actively at work, the dis- and daring, and, notwithstanding rude proportion between the surface of the and worn-out muskets and bad ammunicountry and the number of dwellers on it tion, twenty of them can bring down seven will go on widening, until at length the animals out of a herd at a single volley. whole Dahoman power will dwindle The razor-women, we presume, cut off away. Since Captain Burton's visit, it the heads of those who have fallen before has received a severe blow by the rout the bullets and poisoned arrows. The of Gelele and his followers in their long- archers, formerly the most distinguished threatened.attack upon Abeokuta -a portion of the force, have become more blow from which it will take them many lightly esteemed as the inferiority of years to recover," and before that time," their weapon, even with the most deadly says the author, "I hope to see Dahome poison on the arrow-tips, to the clumsilevel with the ground." est blunderbuss, has grown more apparent. The bravery of the Amazons seems to be on a level with that of their brethren in arms, but in both cases, as might be expected among barbarians of this peculiarly degraded type, their courage only sustains them for one furious onset, and if this is not successful they soon beat a retreat. The Dahoman warrior possesses none of the stubborn perseverance in combat which is often found in tribes indiscriminately classed as savage, and to this, among other causes, the final

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But though we may no longer regard the King of Dahomey as a terrible potentate, ruling over boundless regions and a comparatively enormous people with undisputed sway, there remain, even in a petty and decaying territory, abundant points of extreme interest to the civilized European. The practice of employing female troops, or "fighteresses,' as Captain Burton absurdly calls them, is one of the most remarkable of Dahoman peculiarities. A closer inspection

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overthrow of the nation will doubtless be largely due. Commodore Wilmot saw a troop of Amazons fire at a mark, and declares they fired exceedingly well, considering the flint musket and the iron ball, which fits loosely to the barrel. He adds, very absurdly, that "they would prove formidable enemies with good weapons, and if they possessed discipline and real courage"-which is as true and as valuable as if he had told us they would be men if they were not women. The people of Abeokuta are exasperated beyond all bounds by the use of female troops, which they very naturally regard as the grossest military insult. Captain Burton's contemptuous estimate of the Dahoman forces, both male and female, has received remarkable confirmation in the utter repulse which they met at the hands of their inveterate enemies only six weeks after his visit to Agbome, the capital of Dahomey. The respect paid to the female slaves of the Amazons is not less exasperating to their countrymen than the Amazons are to the people of Abeokuta. Whenever they sally forth they ring a little bell, like a sheep-bell, at the sound of which every male must get out of the way as fast as possible, and hold his face averted until the women have passed on. As slaves are passing to and fro all day long, and their pace is of the slowest, the tinkle of their bell, and the consequent flight of every native male, however occupied, become a profound nuisance to the traveller. The women rather enjoy the scampering which their presence creates, and the older and uglier they are the more noise they make, "which," as Captain Burton says, "is natural." Dancing is quite as much a part of Amazon business as fighting, and it must be fully as hard work. One of the most common of these dances consists in an imitation of the process of cutting off an enemy's head, but this is mere repose when compared with some of their performances. In what Captain Burton calls the regular Dahoman dance, every part of the body is in the most violent motion. The arms, bent at the elbow, are moved swiftly backwards and forwards, and almost meet behind the back; the hands paddle like a fish's fins, the feet shuffle after the approved negro fashion, and the whole trunk is incessantly jerked in

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every possible direction. Everybody acquainted with Hindoo dances will agree with the author, that as all these several actions, varied by wonderful shakings, joltings, grimaces, and contortions, must be executed rapidly, simultaneously, and in perfect measure to the music," it must be a more difficult performance than the feats of the Nautch girl of India or the Alimeh of Egypt. King Gelele himself is a dancer of great fame, and one c. the most popular parts of the "So Sin Custom," or annual festival at Agbome, is his energetic dancing and singing.

These Customs, the rumors of which have so long filled all Europe with horror, are of two kinds. The "Grand Customs" take place only after the death of a king, and are marked by superior grandeur and more profuse bloodshed. Gelele performed the rites in honor of his father in 1860, and it was of these that what appears to have been a highly exaggerated account reached this country. The "Yearly Customs" are also of two kinds, being performed in alternate years, but, according to Captain Burton, the ceremonies of the So-Sin year and those of the Atto year are substantially the same. The author was present at the So-Sin Customs, and he has recorded all he saw with a minuteness which would be tedious were it not that hitherto there has been no plain and detailed account of what really occurs on these occasions. Customs of one sort or another are spread over the whole year, except when the king is on his annual slave-hunting expedition, which employs him for from six weeks to two months. They are a mixture of " carnival, general muster, and lits de justice." The troops are paraded, there is a vast amount of drinking, firing, gambling, and dancing, cowries are distributed among the populace, and the victims are put to death. The name So-sin literally means Horsetie," and is given to the "Customs" because all the horses are taken from their owners, tied up, and not released until they have been redeemed with a bag of cowries, this being the Dahoman mode of collecting taxes. The ceremonies extend over five days, and their combined childishness and monotony must be absolutely unendurable to a European onlooker. One element, however, gives a

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