o, and after lying at anchor for five
days, the greater portion of which was passed in a thick fog, the
great fleet steamed away towards Kinburn. The entrance to the gulf
into which the Dneiper and Bug discharge themselves, is guarded by
Fort Kinburn on the one side and by Fort Nikolaev on the other, the
passage between them being about a mile across.

On the 17th fire was opened on Fort Kinburn, and although the Russians
fought bravely, they were unable to withstand the tremendous fire
poured upon them. Twenty-nine out of their seventy-one guns and
mortars were disabled, and the two supporting batteries also suffered
heavily. The barracks were set on fire, and the whole place was soon
in flames. Gradually the Russian fire ceased, and for some time only
one gun was able to answer the tremendous fire poured in upon them.

At last, finding the impossibility of further resistance, the officer
in command hoisted the white flag. The fort on the opposite shore was
blown up by the Russians, and the fleet entered the channel. The
troops were landed, and Kinburn occupied, and held until the end of
the war, and the fleet, after a reconnaissance made by a few gun-boats
up the Dneiper, returned to Sebastopol.

The winter was very dull. Exchanges of shots continued daily between
the north and south side, but with this exception hostilities were
virtually suspended; the chief incident being a tremendous explosion
of a magazine in the centre of the camp, shaking the country for miles
away, and causing a loss to the French of six officers killed and
thirteen wounded, and sixty-five men killed and 170 wounded, while
seventeen English were killed, and sixty-nine wounded. No less than
250,000 pounds of gunpowder exploded, together with mounds of shells,
carcasses and small ammunition. Hundreds of rockets rushed through the
air, shells burst in all directions over the camp, and boxes of small
ammunition exploded in every direction. The ships in the harbors of
Balaklava and Kamiesch rocked under the explosion. Mules and horses
seven or eight miles away broke loose and galloped across the country
wild with fright, while a shower of fragments fell over a circle six
miles in diameter.

On the last day of February the news came that an armistice had been
concluded. The negotiations continued for some time before peace was
finally signed. But the war was at an end, and a few days after the
armistice was signed the "Falcon" was ordered to Eng