Nearly every day I used to ride into Widdin to hear the news, and return to camp in the evening, generally reaching it before sunset. Only life in a Turkish camp can enable one to realize how deeply the Turks feel their religion, and how diligent they are in the practice of their devotions. No dour old Covenanter with a verse of a psalm on his lips ever flung himself with more dogged courage on the pikes of Graham of Claverhouse, than did those Turks charge down upon the Russian steel a few months later, with the cry of "Allah" upon their lips and the assurance of paradise in their heroic hearts. Perhaps the best qualification for a good soldier is to be a fanatic--as the next best is to be an infidel. After "Praise-God-Barebones," the most striking figure in a _mêlée_ is Sergeant Bothwell, who died "believing nothing, hoping nothing, fearing nothing." Every evening at the camp near Widdin the men were formed up in long, double lines just before sundown; and as the sun sank below the horizon the cry of "La ilaha illallah Mohammed Rasul Allah" started at one end of the lines, and was taken up by man after man, dying away in the distance _diminuendo_, and travelling back again _crescendo_, until it reached the starting-point in a mighty shout of religious fervour. The effect resembled nothing so much as a _feu de joie_ of musketry, delivered with the precision and clearness attainable only by the daily practice of a lifetime. When the men were dismissed from this mighty church parade, they would scamper off like so many schoolboys, and indulge in all kinds of games with the keen joy of living, and the unblunted faculties of sensation which are seldom found in the alcohol-drinkers of other nations. Wrestling was a favourite pastime with the men; and it was no uncommon sight to see five thousand spectators gathered in a huge ring, in the centre of which picked competitors, stripped to the waist, engaged each other in a catch-as-catch-can struggle. Hassan Labri Pasha, one of the principal officers in the camp, was an enthusiast in the sport of wrestling, and used to get up great tournaments in which the men wrestled each other for prizes of tobacco and other inexpensive little luxuries. After three weeks of this life in camp, I was ordered back to Widdin again, and took up my quarters at the little Bulgarian hotel on the bank of the Danube where I had been before. Things were looking very serious at this time; and though war was not actually declared by Russia until April 24, 1877, still it was quite certain long before this date that Roumania would espouse the Russian cause; and when the Russian army which had been quartered on the Pruth entered Roumanian territory, the Government of the Porte communicated with the Roumanian Government, intimating that they construed the act of Roumania in allowing Russian troops to cross her frontier as an act of hostility towards Turkey.