The Town of Plevna--A Natural Stronghold--_Le Petit Village_--The Gypsies' Warning--Dr. Robert--An Expatriated Bacchanalian--We attend a Banquet--The First Battle of Plevna--An Artillery Duel--Surgical Aid to the Wounded--A Gunner's Death--The Zacuska--Arranging the Hospitals--Disposition of the Turkish Line of Defence--Commencement of the Battle--Fighting on the Janik Bair--Arrival of the Wounded--Sufferings in the Arabas--Variety in Gunshot Wounds--Some Extraordinary Recoveries--Turkish Fortitude--Objections to Alcohol--And to Amputation--Berdan _v._ Krenke Bullets--A Man shot through the Brain--Rapid Cure--An Erratic Rifle-ball--Remarkable Example of Vitality--A Missile in the Heart of a Living Man--My Second Hospital--A Turkish Colonel's Wound--Insufficient Beds--Mangled Wretches lying on the Floor--Two Russians wounded--They both die--The Shambles in the Mosque--Our Open-air Operating Theatre--Calling the Faithful to Prayer. The town of Plevna is built in the valley of the Tutchenitza, a small affluent of the Vid, about three miles from the meeting of the two, and just south of the confluence of the former with the Grivitza, which gave its name to the celebrated Grivitza redoubt. Before the war Plevna contained about seventeen thousand inhabitants, eight mosques, and two Christian churches. All round the angle formed by the confluence of the Grivitza and Tutchenitza are rolling hills, rising to their highest on the north near the villages of Opanetz, Bukova, and Grivitza. To the east one could see a number of small isolated hills, forming natural mamelons; and on the south a huge natural rampart defends the town. On the left bank of the Tutchenitza rise a succession of knolls, which were called by the Russians the "Green Hills"; and here some of the heaviest of the fighting afterwards took place.