A short distance below the ruins of Trajan’s bridge we pass, at the embouchure of the Timok River, the frontier of Serbia and Bulgaria. Thenceforward, until we reach the Black Sea, we have Bulgaria on our right and Roumania on our left. But there is little on either side to arrest our attention, for the history of this part of the world is little more than a chronicle of the horrors of warfare and marauding armies from the time of Alexander the Great. No part of Europe, not even Belgium or northern Italy, can point to so many battlefields in the same limited area, and none of the many peoples inhabiting the vast Danube basin have suffered more than Roumania from the calamities of war--of the long and bloody struggle between the Cross and the Crescent for the mastery of this part of Europe. As I surveyed the broad plains of Bulgaria, I vividly recalled the thrill of horror that stirred the civilized world when my old friend and schoolmate, Januarius A. McGahan, of Perry County, Ohio, there penned his famous letters to the London _Daily News_ on the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria.[20] He told the Ottoman authorities that their depredations and carnage would have to cease forthwith or he would have the Russian army across the Danube in six months. They laughed him to scorn. But he was as good as his word. In a brief space of time the Russians, accompanied by their brave Roumanian allies, were in Bulgaria, and at Plevna and Shipka Pass the fate of Turkey in this part of Europe was sealed and the greater portion of the Balkan peoples was at length liberated from the Turkish yoke. The Russians, under their gallant commander, Skobeleff, pushed on to San Stefano, within sight of the domes and minarets of Constantinople. Then, by orders from St. Petersburg, the conquering general was halted in his course just when Russia’s long-coveted goal, the capital on the Golden Horn, was within his grasp. The chivalrous McGahan, whom his distinguished associate, Archibald Forbes, declared to be the most brilliant war correspondent[21] that ever lived, was stricken with typhus and after a very brief illness died in Constantinople, June 10, 1878, in the early bloom of a glorious manhood. His chief mourner was his bosom friend, the noble Skobeleff, who, with unfeigned emotion, declared at the grave of his illustrious friend, whom he loved as a brother, that his heart was interred with his beloved Januarius and that he had nothing more to live for.