Early in July Lord Cardigan returned to camp with the detachments of Light Cavalry, with which he effected an extended _reconnaissance_ along the banks of the Danube, towards Rustchuk and Silistria. The men were without tents, and bivouacked for seventeen nights; in a military point of view, the _reconnaissance_ effected very little service. On the 16th, the _Vesuvius_, Captain Powell, and the _Spitfire_, Captain Spratt, were cruising off the Sulina mouth of the Danube, and it occurred to the two captains that they would feel their way up to the scene of poor Captain Parker's death. On the morning of the 17th, Lieut. A. L. Mansell, of the _Spitfire_, went up towards the bar in one of the boats, and ascertained from the captain of an Austrian vessel coming down that there was one small buoy left to mark the channel over the bar. He ran up accordingly, found the buoy, and discovered that there was eleven feet of water on the bar, instead of six or seven as is generally reported. The channel was found to be about a cable's length across, and when Lieut. A. L. Mansell had buoyed it down he returned to the ships, which were ready with their paddle-box boats, their launches, gigs, and cutters. This little flotilla proceeded up the river, destroying the stockades as it passed, without a show of resistance, and at last came to the small town of Sulina, on which the boats opened fire. Only three musket-shots were fired in return, and at three o'clock P.M. the place was a heap of ruins, nothing being spared but the church and lighthouse. On the 17th of July, Omar Pasha having slowly advanced from his camp opposite Rutschuk, on the track of the retreating Russians, entered the town of Bucharest, and took military possession of Wallachia. [Sidenote: THE BLACK VIRGIN.]