Sevastopol must have been beautiful twenty years ago; she is the reverse of beautiful now, and I do not wonder that the Russian who walks through her half silent and almost deserted streets vows with compressed lips and lowering brow that Sevastopol must be avenged. She is majestic in her ruins. One feels her greatness, or what it must have been, at every step he takes; and no one can call Russia a barbarous nation when he looks at the remains of her dockyards, which were her pride and glory. To destroy these docks required months of labor on the part of French and English engineers. What must have been the labor to create them!
There had been much talk about a new kind of gunboat then at Sevastopol, and by the kindness of Admiral Popoff, the inventor of the system, I was permitted to visit and examine the _Novgorod_, as the pioneer vessel is called. She was built at Nicolayeff, on the River Bug, and was brought to Sevastopol to be finished. Another boat of the same class, but larger, to be called the _Popofka_ was under construction, and intended to be followed by several others. The _Novgorod_ is something like our monitors, though with a difference. When the original _Monitor_ came out we were told to imagine a cheese-box on a raft; in the present instance you may imagine a cheese-box without any raft. The _Novgorod_ is circular, and about a hundred feet in diameter; her sides where they rise above the water are perpendicular, but they do not rise very high--not more than a couple of feet. From the edge toward the centre there is a gentle incline, and this incline is covered with small cleats of wood to enable one to preserve his foothold. About twenty-five feet from the edge there is a circular wall of iron, fifteen inches thick, forming a turret like that of one of our monitors. This turret is fixed and made as firm as possible; inside of it is a movable turret, containing the guns, and pierced with two holes, through which the { 100}guns are to be discharged. The turret is firmly fastened to the platform which sustains the guns, and it can be raised or lowered at will by means of machinery. The guns are eleven-inch breech-loaders, and are very well finished; the carriages are of an improved pattern, and altogether the turret and its contents are highly creditable to their designers and makers.