This accounted for the haggard and cadaverous appearance of so large a proportion of the soldiery. We hear also that the ratio of mortality is very large. Fever prevails all the summer, and is more or less dangerous according to the quantity of rain that falls, but during the months of July and August it usually rages with frightful severity. During a rainy season the mortality is quite terrible. Last year out of five thousand soldiers three thousand were suffering from fever, while there was not one case amongst the seamen on board the Russian men-of-war lying at anchor opposite the town. Vessels, during the summer months, remain as far away in the roadstead as possible, the air from the town being so fraught with disease. During the course of our walk we ascended a little detached hill called the Upper Fort, and felt immediately the relief of being able to breathe the fresh invigorating mountain breeze, after the relaxing warmth and dampness of the air in the town below. Happily the hospitals are here, for it is the only really healthy spot in Soukoum. Were the sick obliged to remain in the valley, the deaths would probably be doubled. Close to the fort is a small house where Omar Pasha lived with some of his wives when the Turkish army occupied Abasia. It is quite a tiny place, only containing four rooms, but notwithstanding the confined space, the poor women, it is said, were never allowed to go out. Tradition, however, does not say whether their beauty was so dazzling that it was not safe to risk their being seen by the profane eyes of unbelieving Giaours. The views on all sides were most lovely, but the very beauty had an air of desolate grandeur that produced a feeling of depression. A perfect network of steep narrow valleys extended beyond the region of wooded hills immediately before us. Great banks of forest clothed their steep sides, stretching far away, dark and silent, until their gloomy outlines were lost in the shadowy recesses of the mountains. Here and there the silver line of a distant water-fall caught the rays of the setting sun, and glittered for a few minutes amidst the sombre masses of the woods; but, though so near the town, no sound broke the stillness--no song of birds, no voice of man, no cheerful token of the neighbourhood of cattle or home life disturbed the silence of evening.