THE HORRORS OF WAP.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 46, 22 February 1878, Page 4

THE HORRORS OF WAP.

[Frcm the Daily Times Correspondent.]

When the Turka made the sortie from Plevna they left the sick and wounded of whom there were thousands, entirely without attendants. There never whs a regular hospital in Plevn , the Bick being transported to Sofia, aud the small ambuiaace corps waa at all times insufficient to carß for the wounded, even before Ahe town was surrounded. Of course the attendants at tie hospitals thought only of their own safety when the sortie was made, and they joined their lot with those who tried to break through the Russian lines. The day and night of the battle passed, and the sufferers received no food or water, and their festering wounds were undressed. The folowing morning u he Russians entered and took possessor, and made the day one of rejoicing, with the visit of the Czar ond the Imperial Staff; but this celebration of the event, however short it may have seemed to thß victors, was a long season of horrible suffering for the wretched, helpless, captives, who stretched their skeleton hands in vain towards heaven, praying for a bit of bread or a drop of water. Neither iriend nor foe was there to alleviate their Bufferings, or to give the trifle ne&ded to save them from a painful death, and they died by hundreds; and before the morning of the third day the dead crowded the living in every one of those dirty, dimly-lighted rooms which served to shelter the wounded from the colJ and wet, !sut confined them in a foul and fetid atmoßphere of disease and death.

It was only on the morning of the third day Bfter these wretched, tortured, creatures bad been left to their fate that the Russians found opportunity and means to begin, first, the separation of ibo living from the dead, and then the care of the former. The mosques, the largest houses, and many of the small dwellings had been filled with sick and wounded. Overcrowded in every case, and as I have before said, from the first without propsr attention, these temporary hospital, were at the best most filthy and pestilential,, and the air was tainted with the stench of undressed wounds and the corpses which lay unburied in the courtyards. The first room entered in one of these charnel-houses contained ninety odd Turks. Of these, 37 were dead, and many others on the point of death. Piteous groans came from between rigid lipr, and painful cries for water, and some made feeble signs for food, One or two of the strongest raised themselves, and fixed their hideoua, sunken eyes with such a beseeching stare on those who had come to free them from the company of the dead, that it would have softened the hardest heart. The small room, dimly lighted by a high window with one pane of glass, was crowded with the forms of thirty or forty ragged, filthy, human beings. Many of these forms were motionless, Bnd scarcely audible groans were heard from one r two, who raised ■with difficulty their bony hands to their lips to signify their need of food. There were faint whispers of " Some water I" "Some water ! " piteous to hear. The dim light was concentrated on the half naked body of an old man stretched across the entrance, whither he had dragged himself in the last hours of his agony, in hope of succour, or at least of a breath of fresh air; for in the unventilated room the air was thick With putrid odours which burst out when the door was open, overpowering strong men, and causing them to turn sick and faint. The old man's hands ■were clutched in the rigor of painful death on bis nude end meagre breast, and his head lay against the very crack of the door, so that it was opened only by rude force. Living and dead were lying together undistinguishable along the w;:!ls, behind the door, and under tbe window.

The room ia one of fifty where a similar spectaole is presented. The pavement of the mosque is covered with crouching forma — some moving at intervale, others motionless and silent. Here and there the faces of the dead come out in ghastly relief with a fixed expression of great agony. Nothing can be done but to drug the dead from among the iivingr, let in tho li^ht and air, and give witer and nourishment in hope of Baviui; some of those who iemain alive. Sainil enough was t! c force of in«n who set about this painful task, and meagre encm-h their meuiiF. Threo open pefr-aots' ox -curls were all (hut were av-il'iM:' for f he remov.-il of the de;id, and 50 soldiers lo cany the bodies from the rooms to the carts', and bury them in the ditches, As fust as possible bread and water were dietribute J, and the feeb'e wretches fou«ht each other with their last breath io their greed for the nourishment, kome propped up against the walls slowly ate until the untnistakeable pallor enme over their faces, aud their eyes were fixed in death. Even the efF,rt of eating the l'oug-needed fooj was too great for their waning strength. The Jiving clutch at the remaining morsel in the dead man's hand, struggle for it with all their feeble power, and eurso each other and wrangle over the spoil, perhaps to fall dead themselves before they can eat the bread.

The threa open oxen-carts began the removal of tbe dead at once, and as I write the work still goes on. The hospitals daily supply more freight ol this kind than the slow-:noving teams can c&rry away lo the ditches outside. The disinfection of the hospitals was promptly effected. Aa fa3t as possible, with the small force of men at baud,

the rooms wera emptied one after another. After a day or two some of the Bulgarians were compelled to serve in place of the soldiers, and they set themselves about the hate I task with a brulality terrible to witness. They dra» (he bodies down the stairs by the legs, the heads bumping from step to step with sickening (huds, then out into the court through the filthy mud, where they sling them into the csrfc with the heads or legs hanging over the side, and so continue to pile up the load with a score of half-naked corpses. It is horrible (0 hear the conversation of the men who do this work. They perhaps bring out a body still warm, the heart still bearing, and the flush of life on the cheek. One eaye, "He is still alive," proposes to leave him without stopping to decide the question. The others cry, " Devil take him ! He will die before to-mor-row, any way. In with him." And so the living goes in with the dead, and is tumbled into the grave. I have seen ihis myself, and the man who has charge of the disinfection of the hospitals aud burial of the dead told me tliHt he doubled not that such cases occurred several tioieß daily. When the thre carts are lull they start awt»y through the streets towards the ditches outside the town. The horrible load jolts and ehakea, and now and then a body falls out into the mud, and ie dragged into the cart again, and jammed in solidly, to prevent a recurence of the accident. This heartless proceeding goes on in the public street crowded with the men, women, and cbilJren of the place, the soldiers, the wouned and tbe sick ; and after so many days of the same spectable, no oneaDyionger pays any attention (0 t!ie transport of the dead. Oeer a thousand have already been carted away and from the hospitals come about a hundrdd daily. The care of the sick and wounded is now rapidly being tyslemßtised. The few Russian doctors that are detailed for the servica are working very hard ; and also tbe Turkish surgeons who remain hero ; but the corps is not one quarter large enough to properly attend to the patients. ISome of the hospitals are light and, airy and well purified j but the mosques are still dark, foul smelling, and crowded. The dead lie for many hours unattended, and the horrible sights and sounds defy description. In the midst of this the few Russian Sisters of Charity move about quietly, busy from daybreak till daik, bringing comfort to hundreds whose wounds they dress, and whose pains they alleviate.

I hove given but a slight outline of the scenes that have pissed beforo my eyes since I came here. A long defailed account alone could give anything like an idea of the climax and final act of the drama of Plevna.

But the horrors are not all in the town. Some are in the valley of the Vid. In the redoubts which the Russians stormed, hundreds upon hundreds of still uubun'ed bodies lie ; the whole ridge of the wooded mountain, the valley beyond, and the hill further on, where stand the two redoubts overlooking the town, taken with terrible loss by General Skobeloff on Septem--ler 30, are strewn thickly with the corpses of the Eussiana who fell on those days. Some of those bodies have been partly covered with a few spadefuls of dirt, but most of them lie as they fell. Not all as they fell, for the dogs have torn away the limbs of many, and the birds of prey have pecked at the skull?. In the pools of water He corpses half decayed ; pale, withered hands and feet stick oat of the soil on all sides, and horrible, dead, mummified fac33 stare at one from every little hollow in the ground, and from among every clump of bushes. Some of these bodies have beeu put in graves within a day or two, but still the whole region is strewn thickly with these dreadful mementoes of the fight there nearly three months ago.

Around (he redoubts the ground is furrowed and dug with thousands of slells, and tons of pieceß cover the earth. It is interesting to observe how few shells went into the redoubts, or struck the edge of the redoubfs The majority plunged info (he ground just in front. The Turks built great traverses across therelouhts, anil under these dtj£ deep bomb-proof shelters, where they were es Sfftf from harm from shelU us in Constantinople ; but the whole surface of the hills :s literally riddled with holes lor^e onoujjh (o bury horses in, and nil about Ho »reut uukxplo.led shells. Even awuy hack in the raviae, w\wiq the sol.lieiV huts are, bullet?, frugraanis of dothio,' and equipment cover the ground ; and one fnquenlly finds in the rnosb uoexp«ct.ed spots long-unburied ho.iiea, rr sodden in the path one ee;;s the lirnts of hunvm beings who fell and were left there until many feet passing trod hard the thin layer of earth over them. Plevna is one va3t charnel-house, surpassing in honor anything fcbafc can bo imagine].

It is proposed to establish gas works in Reefton, and a favorable opportunity for purchasing a cheap plant has occurred. Noting the fact of the large increase in the crane record of Kentucky, the Courier Jnimal remarks pensively that "revolvers, idleness and whiskey are three of Kentucky's most malignant enemies." The appearance of abovit 200 Chinamen on board the Wakatipu (says the Wellington Artjus) was anything but a welcome sight to numbers of beholders at the end of the wharf; for it is a fact that the majority of Europeans have what is vulgarly called " a down upon " the pigtail nation. "They came from Hong Kong via Sydney, so that they l:uve had no actual experience of colonial life as yet. They left by the Wakatipu this atternoou en route for OU^o. wh'cu is their destination.,

Says a Wellington contempory :— A gentleman was, this week, riding along one of the beautLal new roads made by the City Council. The horse sank in. The gentleman got off to pull his horse out. He sank in too, and couldn't get out again. He floundered about for three hours, and the sun went down on his labours. He was at last extricated by two men and a rope. J It will be ploasing for our readers to know that after so many ages of blundering and torturing in the name of science and akill, the time as at last srrived when all who are suffering from maladies which were supposed to be incurable, such as Goto, severe chronic Rheumatism, diseases of the Liver, Stomach, Chest, &c, can now be completely cured and eradicated by the timely use of the marvellous Indian Medicines known as "Ghollku's Gbeat Indian Cures." sold by all Chemists. Testimonial— Motueka, Nelson Dec. 13, 1876. To Mr R. Hadfield, Agent for Ghollah's Great Indian Cures. Sir.— l have been a great sufferer for the last fourteen years from Gout, and have been under medical treatment without receiving any good result. I had a very severe attack about a month ago, and was induced to try Ghollah's Gout Mixture, and assure you the effect was almost like magic. The medicine seemed to go to the part affected at once, and after taking half the bottle I was entirely free from pain, but still continued with the medicine until I had taken two bottles—fearing a return of the malady. lam now completely cured, and able to work as well as ever I could. I wish to bear my testimony to the efficacy of this valuable medicine, and strongly recommend it, to any fellow creature who may have the misfortune to suffer from the dreadful enemy— Gout. I am, Sir, yours, &c, EmvAßo Parkinson, Carpenter. Valtjab'jE Discovert for the Bair —^If your hair is tuuing grey or white, or falling off- use '« TJ-e Median Hair Uenewer," .or it will vo > ioe't/ restore in every case Grey or White hair to i;s original color, without leaving tie dia^reeabJe smell of most 'Restorers.' It mak i ii?e hair charmingly braufcii'ul, as well as promoling the growth of the hair on bald spots wljpre fie glares are not decayed. Ask jour ne.ire3t cbemist for •' The Mexican EairHenewer." prepared by Henry C. Gallup, 493, Oxford-street. London, and sold everywhere at Cs. 6d. per bctt.r. 91© Floftune .'—For the Teeth and Breath— A few drops of the l'quid "Floroline" sprinkled on a wet tooth-brush produce a pleasant lather, which thoroughly cleanses tbe teeth from all parasites and imparities, hardens the guma, prevents t»tar, Btops dc3ay, &Ive3 to the teeth a pecaliar pearly whiteness, and a ddightful fragrance to the breath. It removes all uap~ta9act odor ai.V.ng from decayed teevh or tobacco smoke. "The Fragrant Florilioe," being composed in part of honey and sweet herbs, ia delicious to taa taste, and the greatest toilet discovery of tbe age. Sold C7erywr.e:e r.; 2s. 6d. Prepared by Henry C. Gallup, 4 r 3 Oxford-street Londoa, 1091 Adviob to Mothers !— Are you broken in your rest by a sick child Buffering with the p?in of cv ilng tee«u ? Go at once to a lA'emist, a^d get a bYJIe of Mrs. Winslow's f: caching uyrup. Jt will relieve tbe poor c. fi;erer immediate 7. It ia perfectly harm\~3 and phasa't t) t te. It produces natural quiet slet,). I v relieving the child frcu pain, and the l'Ue cliera* awakes -'as t ight as a baito .' It soothes the ".hild, it softens the gums, allays ail pain, relieves wind, regu'at^s the bowels, and is the best known remedy for dysentery and diarrhoea, whether arising from teething or olher causes. Sold everywhere at Is. l}d. per bottle. Manufactory, 493 Oxford-street, London.