Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/149

WAY OF MINISTERING TO THE AKMIES. 105 number of hands for the construction of the CHAP. road.(22) Yet the task was one of vital import, L_ and one, too, of some magnitude, for the road altogether was eight or nine miles long, and the lower stage of it passed over soft alluvial ground where no supply of stones could be obtained without fetching them by hand from spots at least half a mile off, and sometimes even yet more distant.(^^) Of course under such con- vital im- ^ ' portance of ditions, the work made small progress ; and yet having a the time had now come when the need of a road, completed road was imperatively urgent, for torrents of rain were converting the old carriage- track into a quagmire of tenacious clay. In Question as •^ " to how the this grievous coniuncture what ought to have peniocca- ^ _, . sioned by been the course taken by an English com- thebreak- iDg up of mander ? the road should have Already, the strength of our soldiery and been met. their Turkish auxiliaries was being tasked to the utmost of what the human frame could endure ; and, tliis truth being once acknowledged, it becomes, of course, necessary to discard all idea of suggesting that the labour of completing the road should have been superadded to all the other labours then exhausting the power of our men ; (^^) but it does not, I own, at all follow that the critic must rest content with the non- completion of the road as an evil that was really inevitable. Far from making any such conces- sion, he may fix upon some chosen part of the duty at that time entrusted to our soldiery, as, for instance, upon work in the trenches, and maintain that the toil there expended might