The state of the Sulina mouth of the Danube therefore, remains a most notable scandal. Vessels can only get over the bar when lightened of their cargoes, and are subject to all manner of official hindrance and fiscal extortion. They are sometimes detained a whole winter, to the serious loss of owners, to the stoppage of trade, to the increase of the price of food; also to the grave injury of the Moldo-Wallachian ports of Galatz and Ibraila, and the comparative ruin of the navigation of the whole Danube. Wrecks are awfully numerous; the loss of life, appalling, as I had after opportunities of observing. Sulina is, at this time, a miserable collection of huts hastily run up to meet the pressing exigencies of the moment, being mere temporary erections of dried reeds. Their interiors--of which I visited several--presented no incorrect idea of the very extreme of discomfort in this raw damp climate. In some huts were haggard grisly men asleep, after an ague fit; and withered women, like the dried figs of a bad season with respect to personal appearance, cowering over their smoky fires, and grumbling as they cooked their unsavoury meals, or tore damp sticks for fuel. They had seldom any furniture besides an earthenware pan, or a black pot to stew their food. They had also generally a mat of rushes, dried or undried as the case might be, to sleep on; and they made fires on the bare earth outside their hovels. The central streets--mere muddy lanes--were choked up with sailors; among them, plenty of bad truculent Greeks from the Pirate Islands, seated before the doors of dram booths, gambling with filthy cards, and swearing canting oaths in the pauses of their sneaking debauch. On the face of each skulking rake the stamp of scoundrel was branded, so plainly that a child might read it. It is a pity that we know these rascals too well, to connect one pleasant thought with their fine features and pretty dresses. These, perhaps, were some of the selfsame revellers who lurked about the seas as buccaneers at the beginning of the war, armed to the teeth, and who bore down one night upon a British merchant ship becalmed; who stabbed the watch; then cut the throats of the sleeping crew; then played ghastly tricks to their mangled remains; then plundered the vessel, and then departed. The ship drifted with her dreadful burden over the beautiful waters of the Ægean, where she was found, some hours afterwards by a man-of-war’s boat, which put off, irate at having hoisted signals to the death-laden bark in vain!