For many miles the left bank of the Vistula is a deep morass, with extensive woods, and a few scattered houses and hamlets. The inhabitants of these were all gone, fled or murdered; and the Germans had pierced the walls of their homes with loop-holes, and piled the furniture, carts and farm implements together to form barricades. They failed, however, to stop our advance. Position after position was carried, sometimes by a withering rifle-fire, sometimes at the point of the bayonet. Brave as he is, the German soldier is not ashamed to plead abjectly for his life when he is driven into a corner. I saw men clinging to the bayonets that were about to terminate their existences; and many actually screamed for mercy. It was not much use making such petitions; the women and old men who had been driven in, leaving a toll of murdered behind, had stories to tell which inflamed the fiercest passions of the soldiers. I contrived to save the lives of one or two of these wretched Germans; but my own safety required that I should not interfere too strenuously; and though, I hope, I should not fear to give my life in a just cause, or to save a just person, I was not prepared to throw it away on behalf of ravishers and child-stabbers. In this fight I crossed swords with a German officer of the 2/94th regiment (probably Landwehr), a portly gentleman who thought fit to finish the encounter by an unconditional surrender. He took advantage of my remissness in watching him, and tried to escape back to his own men. Some of our fellows noticed this, and--well, he had not time to suffer much. Dishonourable acts, and breaches of word, were very common amongst the Germans; but it often got severely punished. The enemy suffered most, I heard, at places called Sandomir and Kozyniece. The latter place is close to Ivangorod, which was, for some days, our headquarters, and the centre of our line. Further north, near Bloni, and Vishgo, and at Novogeorgevsk, they suffered more severely, and gave way sooner. By the evening of the 21st they were retiring at many places along the entire line; but at some spots they stood firm with remarkable tenacity, and suffered themselves to be almost surrounded. We passed the night in a hamlet of a dozen houses which had been defended by a company of jagers (riflemen). Only forty-eight of them survived our attack with the bayonet; and these we captured. They slept in the same rooms with their captors, played cards with them, and sang jovial-sounding songs, apparently quite unmoved by the fact that 120 dead bodies of their comrades lay in the gardens and courtyards outside. Both the Germans and Russians are great card-players and inveterate gamblers. In the morning, before it was daylight, we made our prisoners dig graves and bury the dead--129 of theirs, sixty-two of ours: we then sent them to the rear under an escort, while we advanced towards Chinlin, and began skirmishing with the enemy, who were only 600 or 700 yards in front of us.