MORATSHA Niksich was full of smallpox and fever, and, as there was a great abundance of tents captured with the city, I took one, with an extra baggage-horse and his leader, and started for Moratsha.

The wide plain into which we entered after leaving the hills above Niksich was a great pasture land, mottled as I never saw land before with mushrooms.
The abundance was extraordinary, but nothing would induce a Montenegrin to eat one.

We halted for our first night on the edge of a magnificent natural meadow, where a shepherd had built his hut and was feeding his flocks, and we took advantage of his presence to enjoy some security against the wolves, pitching our tent in a little grove close to him and picketing our horses between the tent and his hut.

He and his sons were on guard by turns all night, and the howling of the tantalized wolves came clearly to us at times with, at long intervals, the reports of the guns which were fired to keep them at a distance.
They were so near at one time that I got up and fired my fowling-piece out of the tent, and we kept lights burning all night to prevent them from attacking our horses.

In the course of the night a thunderstorm came up, and, as we had pitched the tent in a hollow to secure freedom from stones in our beds, the rain, washed out our tent-pegs, and the tent came down on us in our sleep.