It was shocking to see the number of empty and destroyed houses, some isolated and standing alone, others in clusters forming small hamlets and villages. In the rooms of some, or in the courtyards, and sometimes in the open fields, we came across the bodies of peasants and soldiers who had not been buried. The remains of one man were hanging from a tree. He was little more than a skeleton, and the eyeless sockets of his skull had an inexpressibly horrid appearance. There were also the carcasses of domestic animals lying about, wantonly killed. It is really difficult to understand the state of mind of men who could be guilty of such cowardly and monstrous cruelty. Isolated acts of wickedness occur in all wars; but here we seemed to have a whole people, multitudinous in numbers, afflicted with the madness of blood-lust. Very little information was gleaned from these reconnaissances. The few miserables who still lurked about the ruins of their former homes said that no soldiers had been in their neighbourhood since the fighting which led to the destruction of the country. One old fellow, with mattock and spade, and accompanied by a faithful dog, was making it his business to bury the abandoned bodies of his dead countrymen. He said he had made graves for forty-five of them, and he was still very busy and complained that he had to lose much time while he was looking for food. We gave him all we had with us. He had been living chiefly on hares which he tracked down in the snow. We had discovered, ourselves, that this was an easy way of capturing them; and they often made an agreeable addition to our poor fare. We also caught an odd sheep or two, pretty lean for want of a shepherd's care; and pork was plentiful enough for those who cared to partake of it, who became fewer every day, as it became more and more evident that these omnivorous creatures were living on carrion and the bodies of the unburied slain. We gained some important bits of information, amongst them the fact that we were not supported by other troops; and that reinforcements were passing through Warsaw, day and night, in an unbroken stream. They were proceeding mostly towards the Austrian frontier, and to the scene of the fighting on the Vistula, or rather on its tributaries, the Pilica, Bzura, Bug, and the Narew; a region extensively entrenched.