After supper was finished, and duly cleared away, we all disposed ourselves for sleep, taking care to have the guns ready at hand, for we might be disturbed by a wolf or a bear on his nightly rounds.  Our attendants had previously collected some large logs of wood, large almost as railway-sleepers, to keep up a good fire through the night.  Wrapping my plaid round me, I laid myself down, confident that I should sleep better than in the softest feather bed.  I gave one more look at the romantic scene, and then turned on my side to yield to the drowsiness of honest fatigue.

But, alas! there was no sleep for me.  I had hardly closed my eyes when I was attacked by a regiment of mosquitoes.  I was so tormented by these brutes that I never slept a wink.  I sat up the greater part of the night battling with them; and what provoked me more was the tranquillity of F——­’s slumbers.  I could bear it no longer, so at three A.M.  I woke him up, saying it was time for us to be stirring if we wanted to get to the top of the mountain to see the sun rise.  I believe he thought I need not have called him so early, and grumbled a little, which was very unreasonable, for the fellow had been sleeping for hours to my knowledge.  Rousing our Serbs, we set them about making preparations for breakfast; but when the water was boiled and the tea made, it turned out to be utterly undrinkable.  The water-cask had had sour wine in it, and the water was spoiled.  We consoled ourselves with the hope that we might get some sheep’s milk on the mountain.

We reached the summit of the Stierberg before five o’clock; it has no great elevation, but the position commands magnificent views of all the surrounding country.  Advancing to the verge of the precipice overlooking the Danube, a sheer wall of rock 2000 feet in depth, we signalled our arrival by discharging our rifles simultaneously.  This “set the wild echoes flying.”  Each cliff and scaur of the narrow gorge flung back the ringing sound till the sharp reverberations stirred the whole defile.  Before the fusillade had ceased we beheld a sight I shall never forget.  The sound had disturbed a colony of eagles, who make their nests in these rocky fissures.  They flew out in every direction from the face of the cliff, and went soaring round and round, evidently in much alarm at the unwonted noise.  We counted fourteen of these magnificent birds.  I wanted to get a shot at one, but they never came near enough.  After circling round for several minutes they flew with one accord to the opposite woods, and were no more seen.

The view from the Stierberg is splendid.  On every side were stretches of primeval forest.  Bounding the horizon on the north-east we made out the Transylvanian Alps; to the south lay Servia, and more distant still the Balkan Mountains.  As the sun rose higher, lighting up in a marvellous way all the details of this fair landscape, we could see far eastward a strip of the Danube flashing in the sunbeams.