66 THE BATTLE OF INKEllMAN. CHAP. SO large a proportion of the whole ground is thus VI. taken up by deep hollows, that the downs at its top have but a moderate extent, forming only, as it were, the skeleton of what the mount would be if not cleft by ravines.* The spine of the rock thus left standing up over the valleys begins at the Trbitsky Peak, and, stretching thence away to the isthmus in an arched line, subtended by the Careenage Ravine, throws out at right angles to itself several ribs of high ground. From Troit- sky Peakf onwards along the course of the arc, the wold mounts up by gently ascending steps — St George's Brow,j Cossack Eise, § Cossack Knoll, II Shell Hill IF — till it reaches the centre
- The whole area of what a strategist includes under the
name of the Inkerman ' plateau ' may be subjected, it seems, to a method of reckoning which allows it, at the broadest part, a measure of less than half a mile, antl at the narrowest only 1 Id yards. — Todleben, ' Defense de Sebastopol, ' vol. i. t 314 feet above the sea-level. X 368 feet. § 370 feet. || 505 feet. IT 583 feet. Amongst the officers and men of the 2d Division there was a difference of habit in regard to nomenclature, for some called Shell Hill ' Cossack ' Hill ; but the ground which rightly took a name from the Cossack vedette lay further to- wards the west. ' Shell Hill ' was so called on account of the missiles which used to come lighting upon it whenever the enemy saw there a group of English officers, or even a single horseman. Of that fire no man, it is believed, drew so much as the indefatigable Percy Herbert ; and if it follows that from that circumstance he earned a right to christen the ground, there can be no doubt that ' Shell Hill ' is the right name. He has always so called it. It was he who ' explained away ' the shells, making out. that they were less dangerous than they seemed l)eeause they must have been thrown by gunners wlio were guided only by telegraphed signals, and could not see the objects fired at
