bring a mob of cattle across a river nearly a mile wide and with a current of great velocity would need some skill in daylight; but to bring them across in pitch darkness, and under the guns of the enemy, was a feat which few but Circassians could accomplish. Those black cattle, however, that are found along the banks of the Danube are almost amphibious, and they take to the water like dogs. As soon as the front files had taken to the water the others followed them readily, and the Circassians followed in the boats, rounding up the stragglers with their whips, and towing their horses, re-equipped with the pigskin lifebelts, behind them. So in darkness and rain, across the hurrying flood of the Danube they brought four hundred head of Roumanian cattle, and left behind them two dead sentries lying with their faces turned towards the sky. All that May the bombardment of Widdin was continued at irregular intervals; but there were occasionally several successive days on which there was no firing, and at these times life in Widdin was inconceivably dull. While these voluntary armistices were in progress, we could see the Roumanians hard at work constructing new batteries, which made the Turkish troops in Widdin chafe at their enforced inactivity. Owing to the conditions under which the bombardment took place and the strong fortifications of Widdin, the Turkish loss in killed and wounded was remarkably small; for on June 27, after several weeks of intermittent firing, we only had about twelve killed and twenty wounded. The Roumanian gunners seemed to have great difficulty in finding the range; for on June 26, when I was sitting on the verandah of the Austro-Hungarian Consulate, all the Roumanian batteries, six in number, opened fire apparently on the consulate, though it was said afterwards that their target was a Turkish monitor lying a little farther down the river. The first two shells flew over the consulate, the next exploded in the adjoining house, and the next fell into the river about twenty yards from where we were sitting. Despairing, it seemed, of hitting the consulate, my quondam entertainers, with whom I had dined not so long before, directed their efforts upon the fortress, but without doing any serious damage. On the following morning they commenced operations at seven o'clock, and from that hour until three o'clock in the afternoon the screaming of the shells was incessant. This was decidedly the biggest day that we had had, and the Turkish batteries responded very vigorously. Osman Pasha took the keenest interest in the artillery practice, and remained in one of our largest batteries for the greater part of the day. While there he told one of the gunners to direct his fire upon a certain battery. The gunner fired three times, and on each occasion he dropped the shell right into the Roumanian battery. Osman Pasha was so delighted that he embraced the man, and made him a sergeant on the spot.