Forts Constantine and Nicholas are passed; no gun speaks from their walls, and not a soldier is visible to note our entrance. The shattered and ruined walls of these forts have disappeared; the present fortresses are new, or at any rate they have undergone a vast amount of repairing since the day the allies left Sevastopol after their work of destruction was finished.
We steamed up to the stone pier, where a dense crowd was gathered to meet us--in the foreground the officials of the port, { 097}behind them the well-dressed part of the community, and further away the wide-mouthed and sheepskin-coated peasantry of Russia. Our guide-book had told us of a good hotel a couple of hundred yards from the landing, and as soon as we could get ashore we went to it at a respectable pace. A crowd of hack-men sought to entrap us into riding, but we disdained their offers. We found the hotel, and after selecting rooms and fixing the price, we proceeded to “do” Sevastopol.
“Get us a guide at once and a carriage for three,” I said to the German-Russian landlord, who spoke English, French, or any other language that you might choose to try him in.
He sent a messenger to bring what we wanted and then asked where we wished to go.
I told him we wished to see all that we could that afternoon, and leave in the morning for Yalta. He mentioned the Malakoff, Redan, Inkermann, and other points, including the cemetery, and I interrupted him with:
“Never mind the cemetery; send us somewhere else.”
“Oh, then you are Americans,” he exclaimed; “every Englishman goes at once to the cemetery, and it is the first thing he asks for; but an American always says: ‘D----n the cemetery; take me somewhere else.’”
A moment later he apologized for his intimation that my countrymen were universally profane; but reiterated his assertion that every Englishman visiting Sevastopol goes at once to the cemetery, while every American prefers to do something else. I can well understand this. So many English were buried there, that every British visitor is sure to have occasion to look { 098}after the grave of a relative or friend; or, at all events, he has been requested to look out the burial-place of somebody and report its condition. Few Americans are likely to have anything more than ordinary curiosity to attract them to the cemetery at Sevastopol.