Thus, "hundreds of brave men, who had left the British shores, full of high hope and manly strength, died in the valley of Aladyn, or on the hills overlooking Varna! The army grew discontented. Though no act unbecoming British soldiers was committed—though no breach of discipline could be charged—it was impossible to refrain from discontent. Murmurs, not loud but deep, made themselves heard. No man there but burned to meet the enemy. The entire army was prepared cheerfully to face death in the service of the country to which it had sworn allegiance; but to remain in inactivity, exposed to pestilence, which struck down its victims as surely, and nearly as speedily, as the rifle-bullet, beneath a burning sun, with no power of resistance, and no possibility of evasion, was a fate which might quell the stoutest courage, and raise discontent in the most loyal bosom." Seven thousand Russians, who had perished of cholera some time before, were buried in the vicinity of our camp; and thus the green, smiling spot which the Bulgarians named the vale of Aladyn, the bearded Muscovites anathematized as the Valley of the Plague! While such was the state of our inactive army at Varna, our fleet in the Black Sea was vainly seeking to lure the Russian vessels from their secure anchorage under the formidable batteries of Sebastopol; and the Turkish army was exhibiting a courage which astonished all Europe. At Giurgevo, a city on the left bank of the Danube, on the 7th of July, a mere handful of Turks, chiefly led by a gallant Scot, styled Behram Pasha,[*] defeated a large force of Russians, after a desperate conflict. At Kalafat the latter sought in vain to force the passage of the river, and drive the Osmanlees from their stronghold; and at Citate and Oltenitza they were routed with disgrace. For neither their own native prowess, the prayers of the Bishop of Moscow, nor the miraculous image of St. Sergius, availed them—the blue cross of St. Andrew and the Eagle of Muscovy fled alike before the crescent and star of Mahommed. And now Silistria, on the Danube—"the thundering river"—became the base of operations; and there Moussa Pasha, Butler, an Irish officer, and my countryman, Naysmith, covered themselves with glory, while the Hungarian exile, Omar Pasha, opposed the foe with all his available troops. [*] Lieutenant-Colonel Cannon. During this time the French continued pouring into Varna, by marching across the Balkan, the great mountain barrier of Turkey, the rocky passes and deep defiles of which are almost impassable in winter.