The atrocities which shocked the world were, without exception, the work of the auxiliaries--the Tchircasse, the Bashi-Bazouk, the Zeibeck, the Smyrniote and Tripolite. I claim to know something of the doings of these gentry, for Mr. Francis Francis (then representing the _Times_) and myself were for six weeks the only Englishmen in what was known as the 'Roumelian atrocity district.' Day after day we lived among the Christian dead, night after night we saw the incendiary fires. From the heights of the lower Balkans--as at Sopot--we could see the horizon red. The deserted villages stank with the unburied bodies of men and animals. About them in the night-time hordes of vagabond dogs howled lugubriously in the dark. It was wonderful and terrible to see how the old savage Eastern spirit could revive itself in these modern days--'Kill, slay! leave not one stone standing upon another.' In Kalofer, where there had been a busy and thriving population a fortnight before our arrival, there was not a creature left, and scarcely a wall on the summit of which one might not have laid one's hand. The town still sent up a melancholy smoke to heaven as we entered it late in the evening, and the last torch of war shone from a thatched roof at the uttermost limit of the place against the lowering darkness of the sky. The arabajee who drove the lumbering little vehicle in which our few belongings were stored fell upon his knees in the middle of the stony desert street, and delivered to mean impassioned address of which I could not make out one syllable. My dragoman translated for my benefit 'Man with the two sweet eyes,' said the kneeling orator, in possible tribute to my spectacles, 'why did we enter upon this disastrous journey? Allah has forgotten us. Let us return.' We were in two minds about it already, for the place was weird to look at and the air was a slow poison; but the horses were tired, and we ourselves had had almost enough of the day s march. Suddenly I sighted a domestic rooster, walking with a certain air of pensive reflection down the street. I rested my revolver on my left arm, took careful aim and fired. The bird towered madly, executed a wild waltz, and went round the corner. The noise of the shot disturbed some members of his harem, and a hen fluttered into the branches of a tree close by. Francis potted her, and she fell at our feet. Here, at least, was supper; but at the first corner we turned, in search of a place in which to camp for the night, we found the rest of the feathered brood feeding on the carcase of a pig which literally heaved in waves of vermin life. We were very hungry; but there was a good two to one chance that our bird had enjoyed that uninviting diet, and we threw her over the nearest wall into the cinders of a smoking cottage.