The most singular use of it was made when Omar Pasha first visited the camp. After the infantry had been dismissed to their tents, they crowded to the front of their lines in fatigue jackets and frocks to see the Pasha go by, and as he approached them a shout of "Bono! bono! Johnny!" rent the air, to the great astonishment of Omar, while a flight of "foragers" gave him some notion of a British welcome. He smiled and bowed several times in acknowledgment, but it was said that as the whoops, hurrahs, and yells of the Connaught Rangers rang in his ears, he turned to one of the officers near him, and said, "These are noble-looking fellows, but it must be very hard to keep them in order!" He could not comprehend how such freedom could be made consistent with strict discipline in the ranks.
Early in July Lord Cardigan returned to camp with the detachments of Light Cavalry, with which he effected an extended reconnaissance along the banks of the Danube, towards Rustchuk and Silistria. The men were without tents, and bivouacked for seventeen nights; in a military point of view, the reconnaissance effected very little service.
On the 16th, the Vesuvius, Captain Powell, and the Spitfire, Captain Spratt, were cruising off the Sulina mouth of the Danube, and it occurred to the two captains that they would feel their way up to the scene of poor Captain Parker's death. On the morning of the 17th, Lieut. A. L. Mansell, of the Spitfire, went up towards the bar in one of the boats, and ascertained from the captain of an Austrian vessel coming down that there was one small buoy left to mark the channel over the bar. He ran up accordingly, found the buoy, and discovered that there was eleven feet of water on the bar, instead of six or seven as is generally reported. The channel was found to be about a cable's length across, and when Lieut. A. L. Mansell had buoyed it down he returned to the ships, which were ready with their paddle-box boats, their launches, gigs, and cutters. This little flotilla proceeded up the river, destroying the stockades as it passed, without a show of resistance, and at last came to the small town of Sulina, on which the boats opened fire. Only three musket-shots were fired in return, and at three o'clock P.M. the place was a heap of ruins, nothing being spared but the church and lighthouse.
On the 17th of July, Omar Pasha having slowly advanced from his camp opposite Rutschuk, on the track of the retreating Russians, entered the town of Bucharest, and took military possession of Wallachia.
On the 18th, an old woman, said to be Fatima Honoum, the Karakizla (Black Virgin), Kurdish chieftainess, passed through Devno on her way from Varna, attended by a rabble rout of thirty or forty Bashi-Bazouks. She stopped at a rude khan or café, and enjoyed her pipe for a time, so that one had an opportunity of seeing this Turkish Semiramis. She appeared to be a lean, withered, angular old woman, of some seventy years of age, with a face seamed{55} and marked in every part of its dark mahogany-coloured surface with rigid wrinkles. Her nose was hooked and skinny — her mouth toothless and puckered — her eyes piercing black, restless, and sinister, with bleary lids, and overhung by tufty grey brows. Her neck, far too liberally exhibited, resembled nothing so much as the stem of an ill-conditioned, gnarly young olive tree. With most wanton and unjustifiable disregard of the teachings of Mahomet and of the prejudices of Mussulmans, she showed all her face, and wore no yashmak. Her attire consisted of a green turban, dirty and wrinkled as her face; an antiquated red jacket, with remnants of embroidery, open in front, and showing, as far as mortal sight could gaze upon it, the lady's bosom; a handsome shawl waist scarf, filled with weapons, such as knives, pistols, and yataghans, and wide blue breeches. Hanoum was a spinster, and her followers believed her to be a prophetess. The followers were Bashi-Bazouks pur sang, very wild and very ragged, and stuck all over with weapons, like porcupines with spines. Their horses were lean and scraggy, and altogether it was a comfort to see this interesting Virgin Queen of the Kurds on her way to Shumla. The lady refused to visit our camp, and seemed to hold the Giaour in profound contempt. We never heard of her afterwards, but she was remarkable as being the only lady who took up arms for the cause in this celebrated war.