The liberators there received an overwhelming ovation, and gained many recruits for the "Bulgarian Legion." Pushing ahead, the Cossacks and Dragoons seized large supplies of provisions stored by the Turks, and gained valuable news respecting the defences of the passes.
The Shipka Pass, due south of Tirnova, was now strongly held, and Turkish troops were hurrying towards the two passes north of Slievno, some fifty miles farther east.

Even so they had not enough men at hand to defend all the passes of the mountain chain that formed their chief line of defence.

They left one of them practically undefended; this was the Khainkoi Pass, having an elevation of 3700 feet above the sea.
A Russian diplomatist, Prince Tserteleff, who was charged to collect information about the passes, found that the Khainkoi enjoyed an evil reputation.

"Ill luck awaits him who crosses the Khainkoi Pass," so ran the local proverb.

He therefore determined to try it; by dint of questioning the friendly Bulgarian peasantry he found one man who had been through it once, and that was two years before with an ox-cart.
Where an ox-cart could go, a light mountain gun could go.