Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/382

338 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, lenged to collect great resources upon a small, barren promontory far away from her own happy shores, she yet — upon pain of discomfiture be- yond measure signal and humbling — was doomed to be exerting a power not proportioned to the size or the worth of such a mere apple of discord as the port of Sebastopol, but rather to the vast- ness of her means and the pitiless exigency of her renown. He sfiw that England must put forth her strength, that to put forth her strength, she must enable her army to move, and that, cost what it might in energy, and cost what it might in treasure, the condition must be fulfilled.() His transactions soon became so extensive that the Treasury — half shrinking — declared tbey must have a ' limit,' but the Colonel, with what was real prudence as well as high spirit and frankness, rejected this State admonition ; for ' limit,' lie plainly said, there could not, there must not be, till our rulers should either make peace, or else provide our array with the needed carrying power. It was in the March of 1855 that the Land- transport Corps began its operations in the Crimea, but the force at that time was far from having gained the proportions which it afterwards reached. However, M'Murdo's operations for the purchase of beasts had long been going on upon a field so extensive that it included many countries — from Spain in the west to Armenia in the east, from Wallachia on the nortli to the Persian Gulf on the south ; and these dispositions at last brout{ht about the intended results. Be-