When I reached the building where I was instructed to report myself, I found that it consisted of two large rooms, the outer of which contained fifty beds, while the inner was furnished with three or four benches intended to serve as operating tables. The rooms were high and well ventilated with many windows, and fortunately there was an abundant water supply, while the building stood in about two or three acres of ground. This had originally been the playground of the Bulgarian children who attended the school. Now it was filled with wounded men, and the laughter of the children was replaced by groans of agony. Already the courtyard was full; and as I looked up the Nicopolis road I could see a long string of Bulgarian arabas, each drawn by two little white oxen, bringing the wounded down from the battle-field. Only the men who were gravely wounded were brought in these arabas, and hundreds had to drag themselves down on foot. As the rough, springless arabas jolted over the cobble-stones of the Plevna street, the sufferings of the wounded men must have been excruciating. There was no field hospital to render first aid, and it is not easy to imagine the misery of an unfortunate wretch, say, with a compound fracture of the thigh, transported in a cart and without any surgical attendance from the field to the base hospital. The two ends of the bone jarring together with every movement of the cart could not but cause the most exquisite agony. As far as the eye could reach stretched the long line of arabas, each with its load of suffering men. Every cart was driven by its Bulgarian owner, and escorted by a Turkish soldier to see that the Bulgarian did not despatch the unhappy victims before their time. The foremost carts had already arrived, and the entrance was blocked by the jostling drivers all anxious to get rid of their loads, while every minute fresh wounded kept staggering in on foot. Even the stoical Turks could not help moaning when they were lifted out of the carts by unskilful hands and dragged into the hospital, which was quickly assuming the appearance of a slaughter-house. Dead and dying were lying one on top of another in many of the arabas, matted together with clotted blood.