FURTHER OUTRAGES IN BULGARIA.

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 398, 7 August 1877, Page 4

FURTHER OUTRAGES IN BULGARIA.

The Turks, says tlie JVeio York Herald telegrams, have recommenced their barbarities in Bulgaria. All Christian Europe should proclaim a crusade. With seeming frenzy the wild Bashi-Bazouks have been let loose upon the frontier towns along the Danube, and the results are scenes of rapine and spoliation which rival the darkest days of the Middle Ages. The little Bulgarian town of Turtukai, situated across the Danube from Oltenitza and twenty-eight miles west-south-west of Silistria, possessed many Christian inhabitants. Although in numbers far fewer than the Turks, they were in every way an industrious and valuable part of the population. On the night of the 16th (Wednesday last) the Turkish citizens of the town joined with the troops in the fortress, from which the village takes its name, and began an onslaught upon the Christians. The carnage began in all parts of the town at once. The doors of those who attempted to defend their homes were broken in, and the massacres and outrages were perpetrated within the dwellings. In many instances, however, the attacking parties encountered the families se:ited together in the front of their houses. The method in such cases generally was to either sabre or shoot the father and elder sons, to break the skulls of the old women, and then to seize and outrage the younger women. In very many cases the outrages were perpetrated by neighbours and citizens of the town well known to the poor miserable victims. Nobody was spared who was captured. Scenes of frightful atrocity occurred. The cries of the fleeing women and children were heard at the outposts of the Roumanian troops encamped below Oltenitza, and a small party of brave fellows, under cover of the darkness, ventured across the river, in the hope of being able to rescue some of the fugitives. They were partially successful and brought two Bulgarian men back with them. One of the fugitives was quite an old man, and was for a long time unable to speak from grief and wild terror. When, on the morning of Thursday, he was composed sufficiently to talk with the Roumanian officers, he described the killing of his wife and eldest son in his sight and the carrying oft* of his daughter. He seemed to rebuke himself for his escape. He declared that he was returning in haste to his home, having heard of the outbreak in another part of the village, when he saw his wife's head struck from her shoulders, and heard his daughter's wild shrieks as she was dragged away by a fierce mob of scrambling, frenzied brutes.

The accounts which these two men give of the general outrage and murder of old and young are horrible beyond description. The only pretext seems to have been the ineffectual bombardment of Oltenitza from the old fortress of Turtukai, and from the new water batteries irhich have been erected along the river bank. No damage was done by the Turkish batteries, the weapons being of a very inferior kind. In a single instance a shell passed over a park of artillery and exploded near a powder magazine. Not a person was killed, however, during the ten days of bombardment, and this seems to have exasperated the Turkish commander to a degree bordering upon madness. With his direct sanction the irregulars joined with the Moslem inhabitants to perpetrate the terrible deeds told above. The effect of this massacre is to ever settle the policy of Roumania. From Thursday her future in this war must be part of Russia's. Even neutrality would not protect her fr< >m such outrages from the Turks if the Russians were driven back ; therefoi'e an armed defence of her own territory is imperative. The Roumanians daily thank the good fortune which placed them on the northern side of the wide Danube.