32 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. CHAP, with the very existence of the inner line of de- ' fence, and to hear of it for the first time some ten years after the peace. To him in the Crimea this inner line of defence was what oxygen is to a peasant — a blessing unperceived and unheard of, on which his existence depended. The plain of The gorge of Kadikoi opens out into a lame Balaclava. £ ° . r & tract or ground which, though marked in some places by strong undulations, by numberless hillocks, and even by features deserving the name of ' heights,' is yet, upon the whole, so much lower, and so much more even than the surrounding country, as to be called 'the plain ' of Balaclava/ This tract of comparatively low ground is the field of the engagement, which we are accustomed to call the battle of Balaclava, but it lies a mile north of the town.* It has an average length of about three miles, with a breadth of about two, and is hemmed in on almost all sides by ground of from some 300 to 1000 feet high; for, on the north of the plain, there are the Fedioukine Hills ; on the east, Mount Hasfort ; on the south, the Ka- mara Hills and Mount Hiblak ; on the west, the steep buttresses of the Chersonese upland. The distinctive feature of the basin thus formed is a low ridge of ground, which, crossing the so- called ' plain ' in the direction of its length — or, in other terms, from east to west — divides it into
- See the map ; but a glance at the diagram on the following
jiagc may ai'l towards an apprehension of the general features of the field.
