camel’s hair jackets, and loose cotton drawers,--even the absence of these in many instances, and the substitute of copper-coloured flesh as a common garb of the country--are after all only superficial differences. It is the quiet immobility of the men which makes one feel at once that they are a different race, and the complete absence of women in the crowds. The cottages, in general, look like great mole-hills. They look miserable enough, but I believe are well suited to the climate, being sunk three or four feet in the ground, which keeps them cool in summer and warm in winter. Our Crimean experience bears this out. The mud huts sunk in the ground and thatched roughly were far more comfortable all weathers than those sent out from England. The campaign between the Russians and Turks at the beginning of the late war became much clearer to me as we passed down the river. It must be a very difficult operation to invade Bulgaria from the Principalities, for the southern bank commands the dead flat of the Wallachian banks almost all the way down. The serious check which the Russians got at Oltenitza was a great puzzle in England. We could not make out how it happened. Omar Pasha seemed to have made a monstrous blunder in throwing a single division across the river, and we wondered at his luck in getting so well out of it. The fact is that it was a real stroke of generalship. The Russian corps were about to cross at points above and below. Omar’s cannon posted on the Bulgarian heights completely commanded the opposite plain, where a considerable stream runs into the Danube. This stream protected the left flank of the division which crossed, and they threw up earth-works along their front and right. The Russians recalled the corps which were about to cross, thinking to annihilate them, and attacked under a plunging fire from the Turkish artillery on the opposite bank, which, combined with that from the earth-works, was unendurable, and they were repulsed with enormous loss. It is by no means so easy, however, to understand why they did not take Silistria. Here they had crossed, were in great force, and had no strong position to attack. The famous work of Arab Tabia, the key of the position which was so gallantly held by Butler and Nasmyth with a few hundred Turkish soldiers under them, is nothing but a low mound, which you can scarcely make out from the steamer. Why they should not have marched right over it and into the town is a mystery.