In one little hollow I saw some locks of curly fair hair sticking up from the ground, and, scraping the earth away with my sword-blade, found a dead Russian there. In many places a foot, a finger, or a hand protruding from the ground revealed the presence of the dead; and as I advanced farther down into the valley from the Turkish line of defence, I came across a great number of bodies which had escaped the notice of the burial parties altogether. There they lay, with the hot July sun beating down upon them, and the cool moisture of the earth teeming with horrible living things beneath them. The faces of many of the Russians, as is often the case when death is due to gunshot wounds, were placid and composed; while the skin, tanned to the consistency of parchment by the rays of the sun, showed as yet no sign of putrefaction. With others death had come with such instantaneous force that the expression of the face still reflected the tumultuous passions that chased each other through the brain of the living man in the supreme hour of battle. One could see, to quote the vivid words of the soldier's poet, Anger and pain and terror Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin. But while the part of the body exposed to the action of the sunlight was preserved in a mummified condition, the lower part, which rested on the earth, had already undergone the first stage of decomposition. Any one who has ever turned over a great stone embedded in a bank of mossy earth, and seen the swarms of noxious living creatures battening on the underneath side, will recognize without further description the sight that met my eyes as I prised over a dead body here and there with my scabbard to ascertain its condition. After the battle fresh troops kept pouring into Plevna from Sofia, and it soon became evident that Osman Pasha did not intend to content himself by remaining in the town purely on the defensive. Lovtcha, as we knew, had fallen into the hands of the Russians before we reached Plevna, having been occupied by General Sobatoff on July 16; and Osman Pasha, having had time to look about him, determined to recapture that town. Its importance from the strategical point of view was obvious, inasmuch as it commanded the main road to Sofia, from which our reinforcements were to come. The possession of the town was also indispensable to Osman Pasha in order to cover the operations of the Plevna army, and to complete his front line of defence, which should serve him as a base of operations whenever the moment might prove propitious for assuming the offensive.