Bucharest, August 22.

I have just arrived here after a few weeks' trip through Bulgaria, in company a part of the time with Mr. Schuyler, whom I left pursuing his investigations in the Balkans. Before continuing the recital of what we saw and heard, I wish to exchange a few remarks with Mr. Disraeli on the subject of "exaggerations ;" to offer a few observations on the conduct of Sir Henry Elliot, and to give a short account of the present condition of the country.

I see that in Mr. Disraeli's last speech he still reiterates his assertion, that the accounts of these atrocities here have been grossly exaggerated, because Mr. Baring had not found any evidence that human heads had been carted through the streets of Philippopolis, nor any to show that forty young girls had been burnt alive at Novi-Selo. With regard to the first point, it strikes me as somewhat immaterial whether the heads were carted through the streets or not, once you admit, as Mr. Baring does, that the people who owned them had been killed. But at the time that Mr. Baring sent that telegram which Mr. Disraeli read with such a triumphant air, he had not yet been to Tamboli. Had he been, and had he talked to the Italian Consul at Burgas, who has a commercial establishment at Tamboli, he would probably not have sent that telegram. For the Italian Consul would have told him, and probably has told him ere this, that sackfulls of heads were emptied in the street before his door. There was a steep descent there, leading down to the little river that runs through the town, and the heads rolled down this little hill, tumbling over each other in horrid confusion, as though trying to escape from the dogs that immediately pounced upon them. Exaggeration, indeed, Mr. Disraeli! It is very true that forty young girls were not burnt alive at Novi-Selo. This occurred at Batak, and there were not 40, but 200 girls, women, and children burnt alive.

The people who appear to be principally to blame in this business, are the newspaper correspondents. The great crime in the eyes of Mr. Disraeli and Sir Henry Elliot was not to have killed many thousands of innocent people, but to have said there were 30,000 killed when there were only 25,000. The grievous fault was not the slaughter of a thousand little children, but to have written there were a thousand killed, when in reality there were only nine hundred and ninety-nine. It was not much matter to have cut off the heads of a great many people ; but to have said that these heads were carried through the streets of Philippopolis, when, in reality, they were carried in bags and rolled down a street before the house of the Italian Consul in a very different place, is a kind of crime that Mr. Disraeli and Sir Henry Elliot cannot easily forgive.

It was on Friday that these shells were thrown, after the greater part of the men had run away. Many of these men who escaped on Thursday night were caught next day in the country and killed. The people still left in the church and churchyard were in despair. There were less than a hundred men, and there were four or five hundred women and children. They had already sent three or four old men and women to Aziz Pacha to ask for peace, and these had never returned. They had probably been killed by the Bashi-Bazouks before reaching the Pacha, for I am willing to give him the credit, if any credit there be in the supposition, that these messengers never reached him. It is enough that he should, after these people had appealed to him three times for protection, without asking them to submit, without waiting to hear what they had to say in their defence, have bombarded the place and shelled this churchful of women and children. It is enough that he should have done this, that he should have gone on shelling these miserable beings after they had fled to this slaughter-pen and ceased the slightest effort at resistance, and it is scarcely worth our while to try to prove, as we might do, that he did refuse to listen, or would have refused to listen, to any prayers for mercy that might have reached him through the lines of Bashi-Bazouks. Mr. Guarracino made a great point of this fact, and he and his Turkish proteges are welcome to all the credit that may be derived from it. They take to themselves as much praise for the fact that these messengers never arrived as though they had never been sent, and as though the Turkish commander were not directly responsible for their non-arrival. We shall see presently how he protected the messengers who did reach him.

But the poor people determined to make one more effort to obtain a cessation of the firing before completely abandoning themselves to despair, and two of the richest women of the village volunteered to go and try to reach the Turkish general. The Armenian girl tells how they tried to arrange their dresses to look their best, and how they put on whatever poor articles of jewellery they had about them in order to look as rich and imposing as possible. The poor women actually hoped to overawe the Bashi-Bazouks by their magnificence. Perhaps their calculations were not altogether wrong, for they really succeeded in reaching the Turkish general. He instantly promised them that if the people would come out of the church and surrender they should not be harmed, and he sent back an old man who had been made prisoner to accompany them. But he does not seem to have given them a guard or escort of any kind. On the way back the two women were seized by the Bashi-Bazouks, stripped of their jewels and clothing, violated, and then killed. The old man continued his way, and delivered his message ; but as he at the same time told them what had happened to the two women, the people in the church did not feel encouraged to come out, and they remained there all Friday night. Aziz Pacha threw several more shells at the church; the Bashi-Bazouks from the surrounding slopes kept up a fire of small arms, to which no answer was made. The condition of the people in the church was now fearful in the extreme. They had been besieged for four days. The dead bodies of those who had been killed were still lying around them unburied; the wounded were groaning in the agony of undressed or improperly dressed wounds, for there was of course no doctor among them, and they were all besmeared with blood of their own or their slaughtered companions that had clotted and grown hard, and they were filthy, loathsome, and haggard as spectres. And still the small arms of the Bashi-Bazouks played upon the church from the low hills around, and the shells continued ploughing up the churchyard, or crashing against the walls.

The story of the Armenian girl regarding the events of Friday and Saturday is strangely incoherent and wild, and what she relates is simply incredible. I can only account for this part of her story on the supposition that she had by this time gone partially or quite mad. She relates that on Friday after the murder of the two women above related, the men remaining in the churchyard determined, upon the failure of this last attempt at negotiation, to kill themselves. She says that some of them were on the point of putting this resolution into effect when their wives interposed and begged to be killed likewise, whereupon ensued a scene of horror that we might well believe the coinage of this girl's own mad brain were a part of the story not corroborated by all the villagers. It seems that two of these men actually carried their resolution into effect. Two of them, after weeping, moaning, tearing their hair, beating their heads against the wall, actually killed their wives and children, and then killed themselves. This girl relates that these women asked to be killed, that they knelt down, gathered their little ones to their arms, weeping, sobbing, praying, while the husband and father shot or stabbed them one after the other. The girl's story with regard to these two is corroborated by the rest of the villagers, but she goes much further. She asserted, and persisted in the assertion, throughout a series of sharp cross-questions, that there were many more who killed themselves, or who were killed in this way ; that fifty or sixty men killed their wives and children ; that many young girls and married women, whose husbands had been killed or who had escaped on Thursday night, came forward and asked to be killed likewise, to avoid falling into the hands of the Bashi-Bazouks; and that their request was complied with. She thinks there were fully two hundred people killed in this way. She says that they even asked her if she wished to be killed likewise, and that she declined.

The story is so thoroughly in keeping with the sad despondent character of the Sclaves that I should be inclined to believe it, were it not that it lacks confirmation. The truth seems to be that there were only these two, one of whom had two children, and the other, three. I can only account for this girl's story on the supposition that after four nights passed in this manner, nearly without sleep, surrounded by horrors, she had gone quite mad, and was subject to hallucinations. Awaking probably from a fainting fit, or a long state of insensibility, she beheld these two men, her near neighbours, killing their wives and little ones. She looked about her and saw the ground strewed with dead bodies lying in their blood. She says the floor of the church was ankle deep with blood, and she instantly jumped to the conclusion that all these people had been killed in the same way. But two are enough. That even two men should have decided to kill their wives and little ones, to plunge a knife, to fire a bullet, into the weak tender little beings that looked to them for love and protection, shows to what a state of despair the people were reduced by the senseless conduct of the Turkish commander. And Mr. Guarracino insisted that this all happened to them because they refused to surrender ! The perversity of these people was such that he could not account for it. The Armenian girl says that at one time she wanted to be killed, and tried to go where the bullets could reach her, but the other women held her back. There was no romance about this girl. She was a mere peasant girl, with a dull, heavy, phlegmatic face, that was as far removed from the poetic and romantic as it is possible to imagine. I should have thought that nothing short of physical torture would have driven her to think of death as a relief.

Sir Henry Elliot is greatly to blame for his conduct throughout this whole business. His system of dealing with the Turks has been from the beginning radically foolish and wrong, considered even from his own point of view. If the English Ambassador at Constantinople is to be the friend and champion of the Turk, he should, one would think, give friendly advice, reprove, restrain, reprimand, and prevent the Sublime Porte from committing sublime acts of folly. It is only in this way that the Turkish power can be maintained for even a short time longer in Europe. Sir Henry's policy-has been diametrically opposed to this. He has always acted upon the absurd principle that, as Turkey is a free and independent Power, the Turkish Government must never be interfered with or restrained, no matter what mad project it may have in view. It must be encouraged, on the contrary, to carry out any act of folly, simply to show that it is free and independent. Owing to this absurd desire always to support the Turks, to aid and abet them in everything, to shut his eyes to their faults, and to consider everything said against them as mere Russian slanders, he is in a measure responsible for the Bulgarian massacres. He is to blame for not preventing the calling out of the Bashi-Bazouks, as a friend to Turkey should have done if necessary.

He is to blame for pretending not to believe the reports of the massacres, when they were pouring in upon him from all sides, and for not reporting to his Government. He had the most trustworthy evidence that these massacres were occurring daily. The Rev. Dr. Long, of Robert College, showed him a mass of letters he had received from the burnt districts, and he returned them, saying he could not act upon such information, because it was not official. By official information he meant, I presume, information received from the Turkish authorities. It is generally supposed that ambassadors and diplomatists prefer unofficial and private information when it is trustworthy to that received from official or officious sources. It is popularly believed that it is part of the business of an ambassador to keep his Government supplied with important information and facts, no matter from what source obtained ; but Sir Henry Elliot understands his duties in a different way.

His duty was to defend the Turks through thick and thin, and to shut his eyes to their atrocities ; and that is what he did. But there were still other sources of information. The French, German, Austrian, Greek, and Russian Consuls made accurate weekly reports of everything that happened, which Sir Henry might have seen—which, for anything I know to the contrary, he did see. There were the reports of the German railway officials living in the country in sight of the burning villages, near enough to smell the rotting bodies, whose reports he might likewise have seen. But Sir Henry believes the Greek, Austrian, German, and Russian Consuls, and the German railway officials, and the American missionaries are all in the pay of Russia. Their reports were, therefore, utterly worthless. He even had a report or two from Mr. Dupuis, Consul at Adrianople, which, for unexplained reasons, he looks upon as exaggerated ; and still he did not inform his Government. He did not even offer to investigate to see whether there might not be after all some grains of truth in all these reports. He sent his dragoman to the Porte, to inquire into the matter, and the dragoman came back with the assurance that the Turks were as gentle as sucking doves in their dealings with the Bulgarians, and that the latter were everywhere slaughtering the unresisting Mohammedans. And Sir Henry Elliot smiled benignantly, and said, " I knew it," and made no report. Sir Henry is to blame for asserting in the face of the mass of evidence that he had before him, that the reports of the newspapers were exaggerated. He is much to blame for making, without the slightest evidence, without a shadow of proof, the reckless, the shameless assertion that the Bulgarians had committed atrocities equal in number and heinousness to those of the Turks. And now, if Sir Henry Elliot, instead of expressing his indignation at these acts of atrocity in the severest terms he can command, can still go on talking about exaggerations with the bones of thousands of helpless women, of poor hapless little children, whitening the fields of Bulgaria, and crying aloud to Heaven for pity, he is much, very much, to blame. He is unworthy to be the Ambassador of a Christian Queen, the representative at the Porte, or anywhere else, of a great-hearted and generous people.

I see that Mr. Disraeli read in Parliament a telegram from Mr. Baring stating that he thought the number of villages burnt in the whole of Bulgaria was about sixty, and the number of people killed 12,000. I do not know, of course, how Mr. Baring made this statement, nor whether he gave it as a whole or a partial statement. But as he, at the time of making this report, had only visited the district of Philippopolis, and could have had very little information regarding what had happened north of the Balkans, I am inclined to think that what he gave as a partial statement for the district of Philippopolis alone, Mr. Disraeli gave the world as a complete statement for the whole of Bulgaria. This may not have been done intentionally, but I am of the opinion that it will be found to have been so.

Mr. Schuyler, when pursuing his investigations in the district of Philippopolis, estimated the number of people killed in that district alone at from twelve to fifteen thousand, and the number of villages burnt at from sixty to seventy. Since then, during his investigations north of the Balkans, he has obtained information that at least forty more villages have been burnt there, accompanied by the same acts of atrocity as south of the Balkans. I do not know what will be his estimate of the number of people killed there, and for my own part shall not hazard the statement of my own opinion, but I think I am safe in saying that Mr. Disraeli, unintentionally of course, gave to the world a partial statement as a complete one, and then, as usual, made assertions founded on this incomplete statement about the exaggerations of correspondents.

The night we were in Tamboli a boy was killed by some Turks under circumstances which we had no time to investigate. People came to us from Streletia, a burnt village, where the people had nothing left, and said not a day passed but some women were violated by the Turks. Two men came to us from Mishka with the same story, that there was not a day that some act of violence was not committed, especially towards the women. Near Tatar Bazardjik we met a dozen men tied together in twos, under the guard of three or four zaptiehs, who were conducting them to Tatar Bazardjik, and at the latter place Mr. Schuyler obtained convincing proof that one Ali Bey, who had some sort of unrecognised occult authority in the place, arrests men of the well-to-do class upon a charge of having belonged to the Insurrectionary Committee, puts them in prison, and maltreats them in various ways until they are glad to ransom themselves at the rate of from fifteen to fifty pounds apiece. There were three beys in and about Tatar Bazardjik who were engaged in this profitable occupation, one of whom was Tassun Bey, the person who destroyed Klissura and who accompanied Mr. Baring when he went to that place. The same thing occurs at Sofia on a much larger scale. There the business is taken in hand by the Kaimakam, who often exacts as much as £500 ransom. At Tamboli the people are completely in the power of three or four beys, or Turkish notables, who virtually govern the place, and in whose presence the Kaimakam does not pretend to any authority. In our presence they gave orders which it was the business of the Kaimakam to give without even consulting him, and he stood by, silent and obsequious, without offering an observation. The people there were held in such a state of terrorism by these beys that very few dared to come to us, and those only after night, in the most secret manner.

If you speak to the authorities about the acts of lawlessness that are committed every day within their own jurisdiction, they will either deny that they have occurred at all, and tell you that the victims are liars, or they will avow flatly and openly that they are as powerless to redress these grievances as to prevent their recurrence. Or they, will ask why these people come to us and complain instead of going to the proper authorities. The answer is simple. They do go and complain where they dare, but in most cases they are afraid. They know it would be not only useless but dangerous. What would be the good, for instance, of making a complaint against Galib Bey, of Tamboli, before the above-mentioned Kaimakam ? The Kaimakam seems to be nearly as much afraid of Galib Bey as the people are. In addition to all this, the people are kept in a state of terror by threats of more massacres, which are freely made by the Turks. Everywhere all over the country the people are in constant dread of the recurrence of the scenes that took place at Batak, Otluk-kui, and Bazardjik—a dread which is only too well justified by the conduct of the Turks. Then, besides this state of terrorism, which is kept up by continual acts of violence, there are thousands of people who have escaped from the massacres with their lives only, who have been pillaged and robbed, whose houses have been burnt, and who have not a roof to shelter them, nor bread for the morrow. The Turkish authorities, in spite of reiterated assurances that help was to be distributed, that the cattle were to be restored to their owners, and the burnt villages to be rebuilt, have done absolutely nothing, are doing nothing, and will do nothing. Take the village of Klissura, for instance, which was destroyed by Tassun Bey, and which was a very flourishing little place. There were 700 houses here, not one of which was left standing. The Mudir told us that there were not more than fifty families in a condition to rebuild their houses, or any substitutes for houses even, as they had absolutely no means to work with. They did not know what the people would do when winter came. The people here were principally engaged in the cultivation of the rose and the manufacture of attar of roses. There were from 130 to 150 small manufactories, with about 500 retorts, or copper boilers, for distilling the rose leaves. These retorts, worth each about £10, represented an aggregate capital of £5,000, all of which, together with everything of the least value, were carried off by their Turkish neighbours, under the command of the ubiquitous Tassun Bey. Not only did they carry off the furniture, and drive away their cattle, but they even carted off the tiles from the roofs ; and after the village was reduced to ashes, they raked among the cinders for iron and nails, so thoroughly and systematically was the work of pillaging conducted.

In spite of repeated promises, neither the retorts nor the cattle have been restored. The Mutle-Serif, of Philippopolis, told Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring that a great many of the lost cattle from all over the country had been assembled at Philippopolis, and that the orders had been sent for the people to come in to identify their own and take them. A very just and equitable arrangement. You had only to come—perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred miles, and identify your cattle, prove they were yours to the satisfaction of the Turks, and then you could have them. Mr. Schuyler and Mr. Baring were delighted with the arrangement, it seemed so simple and so easy. I do not know but what Mr. Baring is still convinced of its beauty and efficacy. Mr. Schuyler, who has a faculty for finding out hidden things, found, however, that strict orders had been issued that nobody be allowed to leave his village without a special passport. The people were quite free to come to Philippopolis and claim their cattle—nobody could be freer—only they must do it without leaving their own villages! Nothing could better illustrate Turkish methods of meeting European demands for justice and reform. At Klissura the people were not allowed to leave the crumbling ruins of their houses. They were not allowed to go and work for the people of other villages, to beg, to ask for help. They were not even allowed to pay a visit to a friend or neighbour in the next village. The Mudir found this a most oppressive and absurd regulation. Many of the people here, besides being occupied with the manufacture of attar of roses, engaged in trade in a small way, and travelled during the winter as far as Constantinople, and even into Asia Minor. Had they been allowed to leave the village they might have begun with their credit, and their aptitude for trading, to rebuild their ruined fortunes and homes. Instead of which they were obliged to remain doing nothing—rapidly consuming what they had gathered of the harvest before it was spoiled, with the prospect of starvation and cold staring them in the face with the incoming winter. The Mudir told us he had written three times for permission to allow those of the people who found it advantageous to leave the village to do so. He had received no answer. He had written thrice for authority to seize a number of cattle belonging to the village, that he knew to be in a neighbouring Turkish village, and he had received no answer. When Mr. Schuyler asked the Mutle-Serif, of Philippopolis, about this, he impudently asserted that there was no order forbidding the people to leave the village, and that the Mudir had full powers to seize cattle wherever he found them. Here in Klissura, as at Batak, several children and young girls had been carried off to the neighbouring Turkish villages and " converted," as the term is, to Mohammedanism. The parents of these children and girls had up to this time, that is after three months, been unable to get them back, and were in despair. There were many cases of the same kind at Tatar Bazardjik and Philippopolis. I can now, I think, form a very good idea of the kind of " conversion " that was worked on the young girl at Salonica, which resulted in the death of the German and French Consuls.

When we left Klissura two or three hundred miserable, haggard women, mostly with children in their arms, ran after us for a mile, crying and wailing in very despair at our having come and gone without bringing them any relief, or wrought any change in their miserable condition. It was the same at Otluk-kui. When we left, three or four hundred people set up a perfect wail of despair, saying that after we were gone they would be worse maltreated than ever. The state of things which I have described as existing in Otluk-kui, Batak, and Klissura is the same in more than a hundred Bulgarian villages. The misery is too fearful to think of with calmness. I am still under the impression of what I saw there. The cries and heartbroken sobs and lamentations of these miserable women and children are still ringing in my ears ; their wretched, haggard, despairing faces are still before my eyes ; they follow me day and night wherever I go, sleeping or waking, haunting me like so many spectres. Alas! they will soon be spectres indeed, unless something is done for them. Disease, hunger, famine, and cold will soon do for them what the sabre left undone.

To sum up. The country is in a state of complete anarchy. The Turkish authorities fail in the two great functions of government—the administration of justice and the maintenance of order. They flatly refuse to protect the Christian population against the Mohammedans, or frankly avow their inability to do so. The Kaimakams and Mudirs say their zaptiehs cannot execute their behests because the Turks everywhere resist them. The Mutle-Serif of Philippopolis says he can do nothing without cavalry to quell the Mussulman population. This may be only a pretext or it may be the truth ; but I do not believe he would use cavalry, if he had it, to protect the Christians. The Turkish authorities will do nothing. They will, if possible, prevent anything from being done. At Philippopolis the people wished to get up a subscription for the sufferers. The Mutle-Serif refused permission, saying the Government was giving them all the help that was required. That is none at all. There is no counting, no calculating with Turkish perversity; no foreseeing what it will or will not do. Why he should refuse to allow a subscription for these starving women and children nobody but a Turk could tell. Unless Europe takes the matter in hand, nothing will be done for these poor people. Unless the Christian Powers that hypocritically took these people under their protection, in order to turn them over bound hand and foot to the tender mercies of these barbarian Turks, now come forward and do something, these wretched women and children must die of disease, cold, and famine. Mr. Schuyler, who when he left Paris some three months ago was strongly Turkophile in his leanings, has been so deeply impressed by what he has witnessed here, the wide-spread ruin and desolation, the misery which is augmenting day by day, that he has determined, as I have already telegraphed you, to make an effort to bring about a foreign intervention, and the appointment of a Commission for the protection of the people. He will propose that this Commission see that the following measures are carried out:—First, the hanging of Achmet-Aga, the destroyer of Batak; of another Achmet-Aga, equally infamous, who distinguished himself at Perustitza; of Chefket Pacha, who has been promoted to a position in the palace of the Sultan; and of Tassun Bey, to whom I have had occasion to refer several times; second, the disarming of the Mussulman population; third, the rebuilding of the burned villages, and the indemnification of the people for their losses, at the expense of the Government.

There is no doubt that if these measures be not executed without delay there is imminent danger of another Mussulman rising any day that will far surpass anything that has yet happened. In case the Turkish arms should meet with a reverse in Servia, nobody doubts but there would be a general rising of the Mussulman population against the Christians, who are now without arms. I heard Mr. Guaraccino and Mr. Baring both remark that the Bulgarians ought to pray with heart and soul for the success of the Turkish arms, for that in case of defeat the whole Bulgarian population would be swept out of existence. Such an avowal from Mr. Guaraccino speaks volumes as to the present condition of the Bulgarians. Will Mr. Schuyler succeed in having these measures carried out ? I do not think it. The comfortable old gentlemen who are directing the destinies of Europe are too well fed to care for these wretched women and children, who are starving to death ; they are too well housed themselves to think of weak, sickly little babes sleeping on the ground, with no roof to shelter them from the dews and the rains of Heaven. There is no danger of their houses being burnt over their heads; there is no danger of their wives and daughters being violated by bands of ruffians; there is no danger of their little ones dying of starvation. They can take an elevated and statesmanlike view of these miserable starving women and children, and they will not oppose the appointment of a Commission to protect them.