pass many days without food; they there lie upon their backs, and will remain in this position sometimes for an entire week. I have been informed that a man can very well bear the whole of the eight days without nourishment, if he have only surmounted the difficulty of the first three days. But even in this covert they are not safe, as the monsters either hunt them up or destroy them in their places of refuge; for the soldiers light fires with pitch, sulphur, and other combustibles before the entrance, and endeavour to drive the irritating fumes into the caves, when the poor wretches are forced to creep out and deliver themselves to their enemies, or perish by suffocation in the smoke. After every means have been resorted to for gaining possession of the living, the unfortunate beings are escorted to the camp, the houses are plundered, and the cattle is driven away, and a detachment of several hundred soldiers then examines the hill in every direction to pillage the hidden grain, in order that the survivors who may have been fortunate enough to save their lives by flight, or by secreting themselves in inaccessible caverns, may not find anything on their return wherewith to maintain their dearly purchased existence. The experience of many years has made the troops employed in these expeditions gradually wiser; in former times one-third of the number at least, and on some occasions even one half of them lost their lives in these attacks, at present they confine themselves to a simple blockade, and storm merely in extreme cases. Very few hills are, as I before said, provided with springs, when, therefore, all communication is impeded, the poor negroes are forced to surrender, but not before they have suffered the most horrible tortures; for they never provide themselves with a supply of water for longer than two days, partly from want of vessels or reservoirs, partly because they do not expect to be besieged for a longer period, thus the scarcity of water is generally felt on the third day of the blockade. Nothing can be more frightful than the position of these unhappy men at this time. The fear of falling into the hands of the Turks on the one hand, and the certainty of death from thirst on the other, drives the poor wretches to the very verge of despair. This scarcity is immediately known in camp, for the screams of the children and the groans of the cattle betray the melancholy position of the village. The cattle runs about as if wild, and on the third day becomes so dangerous that the negroes are obliged to slay it. The human being struggles in despair with death, to find a mode of escape, but, alas! in vain: the blood-thirsty huntsmen have surrounded their game too securely, thus not one soul can escape with his life. Many of the unhappy victims prefer death for themselves and their families to captivity, whilst others endeavour to conceal themselves in caverns, and thus to spare themselves the awful miseries of slavery. The remainder