On the second day after leaving Bieliki, our course lay due N. through a perfect wilderness of rocks, varied only by an occasional basin, formed by surrounding hills, and covered with a species of dwarf vegetation.  The appearance of the force, as it straggled over this wavy expanse of stone, was curious enough, and it certainly baffles all attempts at description; so I must ask my readers to allow their imagination to people the mer de glace with some thousands of Oriental soldiers, regular and irregular, pipe-bearers, and household servants formidably armed, and they will not be far from a just conception of the case.  After marching for five hours over this inhospitable tract, we halted at the mouth of a valley where the hills open out into a small plain.  This forms the entrance to the Pass of Koryta, whence we had just emerged.  It is a spot of ill repute even amongst the barbarous inhabitants of these regions; and more Turks have received their death-wounds from behind the boulders, which have served to screen the assassins, or from the knives of the ever-ready Greeks in that fatal gorge, than in any other spot of these disordered lands.  The Pass is formed by the extremities of Banyani and Pianina, and is of much strategical importance.  It was one of the first points subsequently occupied by Omer Pacha.  Many a disaster has been brought about by the incautious recklessness of those in command of Turkish troops, and it was with some satisfaction that I saw the heights both in front and rear crowned by Turkish battalions, before the remainder were allowed to pile their arms, and betake themselves to sleep or any other recreation.  It was impossible not to revert in imagination to the scenes of blood and strife of which Koryta has been the site, as contrasted with its appearance at that moment.  Groups of Turkish soldiers were amusing themselves by dancing a national dance, with as much gaiety as though they had not marched a yard, and with far more activity than one would be disposed to give them credit for possessing.  The dance, a kind of jumping reel, was accompanied by droning music not unlike the pipes.  A little farther a regimental band was murdering the two or three European airs with which it was acquainted.  One of these, to which they showed a good-natured antipathy by frequently murdering, was ‘La Donna e Mobile,’ or ’La Donna Amabile,’ as Omer took pleasure in calling it.  And thus the day wore on, until, late in the evening, we arrived at Tchernitza, a little town of about 600 inhabitants.  Our camp was formed on a level plot, which looked green and pleasant after the barren country through which we had passed.  Just above the spot where the men bivouacked was a lofty mound surmounted by a turret, from which an armed sentry of a regiment of redif (or militia) kept watch over the surrounding country.  While taking a bird’s-eye view from this point, I heard myself accosted, to my no small astonishment, in very fair English by a Turkish