382 COUNSELS ENDING IN THE CHAP, 'to defeat any military force that might be op- J ' posed to them in the open field), sack the town, ' and burn the fleet.' * This report not only did much to evoke the desire for an enterprise against Sebastopol, but also caused men to see that, at all events up to the period when the question of the Holy Shrines began to assume a grave aspect, little had been done to the land defences ; and that, whatever obstacles might have to be encountered by an army attacking the place from the south, those obstacles, at the time of Mr Oliphant's visit, were not of a kind to make a formal siege needful. Moreover, as there was no proof that works on a great scale had been going on during the last eighteen months, there seemed to be fair ground for hoping that, so far as concerned the existence of regular fortifications in masonry, the land approaches to Sebastopol might be nearly in the state they were in when Mr Oliphant saw them. Before he left England, Lord Eaglan did not fail to give himself the advantage of a personal interview with Mr Oliphant, and afterwards with Oliphant's fellow-traveller, Mr Oswald Smith. The result was, that the impression created by
- Oliphant's ' Russian Shores of the Black Sea,' p. 260. Mr
Oliphant's report was accurate. With the exception of throw- ing up a work near the water's edge, which was more properly an adjunct to one of the sea-forts than a part of the land de- fences, nothing had been done at the time of his visit towards fortifying the main town of Sebastopol on its south side. Jlr Oliphant's book was published on the 15th of November 1853
