CHAPTER XVII

BULGARIAN FISHERMAN BASKET-MAKING

consisted of a small kettle, a dish, and two wooden spoons, and, stowed away in the shade of a convenient stump, a small stock of green corn, a few watermelons, and a fish or two wrapped up in leaves comprised their whole stock of provisions. In this simple bivouac they cooked and ate and slept all summer long, fishing by day and by night, and selling their catch at Kalafat or Widdin. A cloak of thick rough woollen cloth, like the mantle of the ancient Dacian, was their covering by night, and their chief protection against the weather. As simple in their tastes as the Indians of the plains, and with no better appliances for use and comfort than may be found in the wigwam of the savage, they live a happy and contented life, their only enemy the mosquito, their only society the solemn herons that wade along the shore in the very smoke of the camp-fire.

They had watched our struggle with the storm, and welcomed us ashore with hearty good-will. Out of their rustic larder they chose the best melons, and insisted on our eating them, and for our supper they selected the freshest and best fish. They firmly refused the money we hesitatingly tendered them as we launched the canoes after the violence of the gale had abated; and when we left them at twilight, they shook hands, and wished us “godspeed” as heartily as if we had camped with them for a season. Some distance below their bivouac, and in full sight of the glimmering lights of both Kalafat and Widdin, we passed the night among the wild-flowers and tangled grasses of a dry bank in a sheltered spot quite enclosed by a dense growth of trees and underbrush, with no more unpleasant intruders than startled water-fowl and drowsy, unambitious mosquitoes.

The great brick fortress of Widdin has a strangely aggressive look in the pastoral landscape along the river. The high walls, enclosing with their protecting bulwarks the populous Turkish quarter of the town, with its numerous mosques, rise directly out of the water at the river-front, and tower far above the trees scattered over the broad green meadows, and, although neglected and fastcrumbling to pieces, are grandly imposing in height and extent. No bunting now flutters from the tottering flag-staff, and the yawning embrasures are half filled with rubbish, but the great citadel still dominates with arrogant pride the rambling commercial town in the shadow of its walls, and maintains its dignity as the extreme important outpost of Mahometan faith in Europe—a noble monument to the former military and political supremacy of the Turkish Empire. On the narrow landing-places by the water-gates, as we drifted past in the early forenoon, crowds of Turkish women and children were busy with their washing, and men in variegated jackets, baggy trousers, turban, and sash waddled idly about, or lazily rowed the clumsy boats laden with merchandise. The indescribable squalor and filth of the Orient characterized every feature of the scene, and we now realized, what Belgrade and Ada Kaleh had only hinted to us, the nature of the gulf that separates Mahometan from Christian, not only in religion, but in type, dress, and costume. Widdin is not only one of the most important towns of northern Bulgaria, but is the real head of navigation for sailing-vessels, and in many ways distinctly marks a new phase of river life, and an abrupt political, ethnographical, and philological frontier as well.

When we drew up our canoes on the shore just above the steamer-landing, we were interviewed at once by a smart-looking young officer in white Russian cap and tunic, and red-trimmed brown trousers of Bulgarian homespun, and armed with sabre and revolver, who politely requested the temporary loan of our passports, and, after we had given them up, told us we were free to go where we chose. We were not long in finding our way to the busiest thoroughfare of the town—a long street with low houses, and a continuous line of small shops and cafés, mostly like deep alcoves slightly raised above the level of the pavement.

CANN, OPPOSITE KALAFAT

BULGARIAN PEASANT TYPES

Hundreds of country people, having disposed of their produce in the great market-place near the citadel, were now busy shopping. The women in this section of Bulgaria wear a short, scant chemise of homespun linen, with full,long sleeves, often richly embroidered, a bright-colored woollen apron reaching to the hem of the chemise in front, and another of similar stuff, but very full and stiffly plaited, hanging no lower than the bend of the knee behind. They braid their hair in one long piece down their back, and fasten an embroidered white kerchief around their heads, with fresh flowers and ornaments of various kinds. Uncouth rawhide sandals and thick shapeless socks, often brilliant orange in color, protect their feet and ankles. The men here, as in most other districts, wear what may best be described as a clumsy imitation of the Turkish dress, usually made of brown woollen homespun, trimmed with black braid, and, in place of fez, a black sheepskin cap, often varying in shape, but seldom in color.

Among this gay and bustling crowd, sad, pallid-faced Turkish women, and mournful, dejected-looking men, stalked like spectres, or haggled wearily with apathetic shopkeepers. Mounted policemen, very like Cossacks in appearance, galloped recklessly through the multitude, and a numerous force of men on foot, in neat brown uniforms, watched with active vigilance every unusual stir among the people, and quelled with rough-and-ready authority every incipient disturbance caused by too much slivovitz (plum brandy). We strolled across the market-place and over the moat into the great citadel, and passing the inner gate, were in a quarter as characteristically Turkish as the remotest corner of Stamboul. The huddle of people in the narrow, crooked streets; the curious shops, and the open manufactories of all sorts of articles; the latticed windows, tumble-down fountains, and half-ruined mosques; the close, musty smell, and general squalor and worn-out appearance—all were unmistakably Turkish, and everything indicated extreme poverty and a condition of life which excited our heartiest sympathies. Intense love of locality binds this people to the place, and,isolated by religion, language, and customs, with no rights of citizenship and no common interests with their neighbors, they endure with the patience characteristic of their race the aggravating tyranny of the Bulgarians.

TURKISH TYPES

Three fresh languages assailed our ears in Widdin, and we plunged without preparation from the tangled maze of Roumanian and Servian into the quagmires of Bulgarian, Turkish, and modern Greek. We expected to hear two new languages here, but were surprised when we took our luncheon in a restaurant to find the bill of fare written in Greek, and to hear the waiters shouting orders in this lisping speech. We were now well across the line that separates the Orient from the Occident, and within touch of Constantinople and Athens. The markets gave us abundant evidences that we had reached a milder climate. Grapes were delicious, plentiful, and cheap, the best varieties costing less than two cents a pound. Tomatoes, egg-plant, and sweet-peppers were larger and better than we had seen before, and melons and green corn were almost out of season. Fresh meat was about five cents a pound, and caviar, for which delicacy Widdin is celebrated, was readily obtained, but at a price very little lower than in any other market. Knowing that we had a rather desolate part of the river before us, we laid in a good supply of stores of all kinds, except wine, which, we learned, was easily to be obtained at any village, and when the town had gone to sleep at noon, sought our passports at the police headquarters; but the official in charge of this department had gone home for his dinner and siesta, and we were obliged to kick our heels in idleness and impatience until he returned, an hour and a half later.

Just below Widdin, at the Bulgarian town of Arčer Palanka, the general course of the Danube changes from the south to the east; and to the town of Cernavoda, in the Dobrudscha, about 300 miles below, the river keeps the latter direction with few and slight deviations. The long, straight reaches were here enlivened by many sailing-vessels of the fifteenth-century type, with high ornate sterns, and single mast set midway between the bow and stern. Sometimes

TURKISH QUARTER, WIDDIN

TURKISH VESSELS

we met them gayly ploughing their way up-stream, with every bellying sail drawing full, and again we saw them dragged slowly against the current by a long line of patient Turkish sailors harnessed to a tow-rope; or else we came across them tied to the trees in some quiet spot awaiting a favorable wind, the decks covered with sleeping sailors, no man on watch. The Roumanian shore from Kalafat down for scores of miles at a stretch is as straight and level as if drawn with a ruler, and the landscape on that bank of the river is reduced to its simplest terms. The Bulgarian side is seldom monotonous, and never for any long distance flat and marshy. High grassy hills approach the river, and recede again at intervals, enclosing between their spurs great fertile meadows covered with farms. Here and there on the bare slopes of the rounded hills quite extensive villages are seen, usually at some distance from the river. Many of these are only great irregular collections of hovels dug inthe ground and roofed with earth, and even the best of them can boast no more than one or two buildings of a better type than the ordinary hut of sun-dried bricks or of wattle and mud. Most of the habitations, together with the great straw and hay ricks—always the prominent feature of every village—are enclosed by walls of mud or by wattled fences, and the streets, which ramble along casually between these boundaries, are seldom better than gullies or watercourses. The interiors are often surprisingly neat and tidy, even in the rudest hovel, and whitewash is used with freedom.

About three hours’ paddle below Widdin we came to the flourishing town of Lom Palanka, famous for the purity of its water, and somewhat renowned for the quality of its wine. We ran ashore, intending to fill our wine-bottles and then to move on to an early camp. We fancied that the Lom Palankians would be eager to welcome us when they saw us land prepared to trade, but the delegation who met us as we floundered out of the mud looked uncommonly hostile, every man wearing a uniform, and all more or less heavily armed. Escape was impossible, so we began to parley, and asked the way to a wine-shop with as much politeness as our meagre vocabulary allowed. The only response to this question was a stern demand for our passports. We promptly produced them, and, to our chagrin and astonishment, saw them disappear in the capacious pocket of the chief officer of the little army. The Custom-house people at Widdin had told us that we could land anywhere to buy stores without giving up our papers, and we explained this as well as we were able, and demanded our passports again, preparing to leave without making our desired purchases. Remonstrances were worse than idle, for they soon led to our arrest, and we were marched off to the police-station, a long way up the main street. The chief was not in his office, and he

BULGARIAN VILLAGE

was unearthed from his hiding-place only after a half-hour’s search by a large scouting party of policemen. The usual series of questions was put to us, and we sandwiched our replies between bursts of indignant language, which perhaps it would be unwise to chronicle here. The pachydermatous young man, bristling with authority, and assuming the indifference of immeasurable superiority, paid little attention to our explanations or our expletives, and after slowly spelling out the words from our passport, “We, Robert, Arthur, Talbot, Gascoyne Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, Earl of Salisbury, Viscount Cranborne, Baron Cecil,” and from the other, “Robert Lincoln,” copied the numbers in a book, ordered us to sign our names, and then let us go. Hot with wrath at the delay, we paddled off, determined to leave Lom Palanka out of sight if we had to sleep in a swamp. We had the good-fortune, however, to discover just after darka reasonably good camp-ground on a low bank of sun-baked mud covered with coarse grasses, and the next morning found we had chosen the spot where the natives had their summer clam-bakes, for great heaps of fresh-water clamshells, the well-picked bones of a sheep or two, and traces of recent fires were scattered all around us.

BECALMED

Between Lom Palanka and Sistova, a stretch of about 150 miles—which, by-the-way, we paddled in less than two days and a half—there are only three towns on the river, Cibar Palanka, Rahova, and Nicopolis, and these are all Bulgarian. There are two or three busy grain-shipping stations on the Roumanian side, however, and we could see on the edge of a low plateau, miles back from the river,frequent prosperous-looking places, and, opposite Nicopolis, the church-towers of Turnu Magurelli, one of the most important towns in southern Roumania, rising above the trees. This shore of the river is, for almost the entire distance referred to, a broad, low marsh, intersected by numerous lagoons and shallow, irregular lakes, often ten miles or more in length. The lonely picket-stations are the only human habitations along the bank. In agreeable contrast to this dull and desolate waste of marsh and willow swamp, is the rich pastoral country of Bulgaria opposite. Although villages and farm-houses are not numerous, we saw everywhere abundant signs of life. The meadows were dotted with hay-stacks, and great net-works of deeply-worn cattle-paths scored the smooth slopes of the hills, all burned yellow by the summer sun. Before the greatest heat of the day came on, immense herds of cattle and buffaloes, driven by Turkish cowboys, rushed panting down the hill-side in a cloud of dust to cool themselves in the stream. The buffaloes wallowed in the muddy places, and then lay down with the tops of their heads alone visible above water, like uncouth amphibious animals. Great flocks of sheep stood on the shore by the water’s edge, crowding together in a solid mass, and holding their heads close to the ground to escape the heat from the direct rays of the sun, and multitudes of goats were scattered all over the steep and arid slopes. The shepherds dig little shallow caves in the mud bluffs, with steps leading to them, where they lie and sleep for hours in the daytime; others curl up in the gullies, so that every yard of shade on the rough bank has its human or its animal occupant, and sometimes men and goats, both seeking to avoid the sun, lie down peacefully together in the same narrow cleft or in the shadow of the same projecting corner.

In the broad straight reaches of the river the frequent

ON THE BULGARIAN SHORE, NEAR RAHOVA

sand-banks were covered with water-fowl. Thousands upon thousands of noisy wild-geese, hosts of ducks, plover, and other game birds, rose into the air as we approached, almost deafening us with their cries. Wheeling round in broad circles, they settled down again before we had fairly passed them. Ranks of solemn pelicans awkwardly flopped into the water, and swam ahead of us in stately dignity scarcely out of pistol-shot, turning their huge, ill-balanced beaks from side to side, and if we came too near, flew up with a tremendous splashing and fluttering. Tall herons soared away out of the shallows on every side, and swans and storks sailed overhead in graceful flight. Sometimes we paddled in the full light of noonday up to within a few yards of slender, white cranes wading among the water-grasses, and once approached within a paddle’s length of a large gray heron standing on one leg and blinking in the brilliant glare of the sun. The flora of the river-bank in this region is best described in a quotation from Alfred Parsons’ note-book: “By the camp opposite Kalafat was a very handsome sedge with brown flowers, a mass of blossoms of the flowering rush, and plenty of excellent dewberries. A flat below Lom Palanka was covered with a thorny, leguminous shrub, tufts of small purple flowers and prickly red seed-pods, small yellow asters, tall scabious with pale blossoms, and chiccory, which has been a constant flower for a long distance down the river. The slopes above the limestone cliffs below Rahova were covered with feather sumac and lilac bushes. Wild-grape vines grow all over the willows on an island above Sistova, and the marshy lake near there had great yellow patches of villarsia. On the edge of this lake grow arrow-head and flowering rush, and where the land is drier are seen purple and yellow dwarf thistles, a small scentless heliotrope, and a white scutellaria. Tamarisk grows on the sandy flats.”

TURKISH FLAT-BOAT

The river life was mostly confined to the larger craft; very few small boats were seen, and almost no fishermen. The great clouds of canvas on the Turkish vessels gleamed above the trees behind the islands far in the perspective, and the black smoke of tow-boats with their trains of loaded lighters was a constant feature in the ever-changing landscape. Occasionally a huge flat-boat of the roughest build, piled high with a cargo of red and yellow earthen-ware, melons, sacks of charcoal, and other miscellaneous merchandise, floated down in the gentle current, steered by Turks in costumes of varied hue, the whole reflecting a mass of glowing color in the stream. Each of the river towns we passed was the centre of great activity. Crowds of peasants’ carts laden with grain covered the broad strand in the vicinity of the steamboat-landing, waiting their turn to discharge their loads into the lighters. When the grain is harvested and threshed, the farmers load their rude carts, and lead the slow and stupid buffaloes, often several days’ journey, to the nearest river town, where they find a certain market for their produce. The whole country is covered with trains of creaking carts, and peasants’ bivouacs are

TURKISH WOMEN AT SISTOVA

scattered all over the scorched hill-sides and everywhere along the dusty highways. They carry no tents nor shelters of any sort, and only the simplest food for themselves and their beasts. When night overtakes them they lie down on the ground beside their carts, and, wrapped in their rough coats, sleep as peacefully as their tired oxen. Their whole outfit is as rude and uncouth as it was centuries ago, and the native carts have not improved in build since they transported the supplies of Trajan’s armies. The only iron used in their construction are the linchpins and the rings which bind together the great hubs; the roughly-hewn felloes, the different parts of the body of the cart, and of the yoke as well, are all held together by wooden pegs.

We noticed at Nicopolis the first of the series of Russian monuments along the river which commemorates the bravery of those who fell in the late war—a plain stone shaft on a hill-top just above the town; and when we landed there found every evidence of increasing prosperity and enterprise in new buildings, public squares and promenades, and general improvements. A friendly young soldier-policeman piloted us about, acted as our cavass or special guard, saw that we were not cheated at the shops, and at the same time busied himself with keeping order in the drinking-places, and cleared the streets when they became congested with traffic. He did not so much as ask to see our papers, and we began to be more hopeful about our trip along the Bulgarian frontier, and looked forward to landing at Sistova, twenty-five miles below, with no disagreeable anticipations.

The large biweekly passenger steamer on its downward trip reached Sistova a few moments after we did, and we were just in time to witness the exodus of twenty-five Turkish families who were leaving the country for Asia Minor by way of Chernavoda, Kustendji, and Constantinople.The whole remaining Turkish population of the town had turned out to see them off, and veiled women in solemn rows along the shore looked from a distance like so many queer river birds. We were assured by the agent of the steamboat company that similar emigrations are of frequent occurrence, but that most of the families sooner or later wander back again, after having found that their condition is not bettered by change of residence. Sistova has improved since the war in much the same way that Nicopolis has, but the river-front remains unchanged, and looks to-day very much as it did when, after the crossing in June, the Russians built their pontoon-bridge from the low island opposite and marched their armies through the town to Plevna and the Balkan passes.

We made an interesting excursion of three days to the battle-fields of Plevna, fifty miles distant from Sistova, across a rolling country, sparsely inhabited, but producing a great deal of wheat and Indian-corn. The heat was intense and the dust terrible, but every moment of the excursion was crowded with interest and novelty. Travelling, as the natives do, by private conveyance, and stopping at the khans, which are still the only houses of entertainment in country places, we were thrown into intimate relations with the people, and, it must be confessed, found little in their character to encourage the belief in their capacity for immediate improvement. It is undoubtedly a fact that the peasants between the foot-hills of the Balkans and the Danube are the least agreeable specimens of the race to be found in the country, and it would be unfair to judge of the young nation by the inhabitants of a particular district. Their most curious characteristics are their emotionless expression and their habitual silence. We seldom saw them smile, and almost never heard them laugh. All the river people we met until we crossed the Bulgarian frontier were

OLD MOSQUE, RUSTCHUK

cheery and more or less communicative, and we heard singing, laughter, and constant merry chatter among the people as we passed. But in Bulgaria these cheerful sounds no longer came to our ears; villages near the river were as silent as the grave; the peasants at the landing-places stared at us stupidly as we went along, and no one ever hailed us pleasantly or showed any intelligent interest in our fleet.

BULGARIAN BUFFALO CART

Russian monuments are seen on several hills between Sistova and Rustchuk, about thirty-five miles below, and scarcely a mile of the river but has some interesting history in connection with the struggle along the Danube in the early part of the summer campaign in 1877. By a curious coincidence, we happened to camp the afternoon we left Sistova near the very place where, fourteen years before, on the same date, the writer had crossed the river at the end of a long courier’s ride, described in the pages ofHarper’s Magazinenot long since. It is not strange, therefore, that as we paddled down the beautiful calm reach the following morning the familiar lines of the landscape stimulated a flow of reminiscences of the campaign. Nearing Pyrgos, and in sight of the monument on one of the great rounded hills where the battle was foughtin which young Sergius Leuchtenberg, the cousin of the present Czar, was killed, we were startled by the unmistakable sound of the grunt of a Gatling-gun and the rattle of small-arms. We could not at first believe our ears, each of us thinking this dramatic and suggestive accompaniment to the tales of the war was a mental distortion of ordinary noises brought about by our preoccupation with the subject. However, as we paddled along, increasing our stroke in our growing excitement, we discovered that the sounds came from the hills near Rustchuk, and although we could see no smoke, we could accurately distinguish the reports of rifles in irregular scattering succession, like the prelude of a great battle. Our mystification increased with every moment, and we hastened on past the low willow-fringed shores on the Roumanian side, studying the rocky bluffs across the river and the billowy summits of the bare hills to find a solution of the enigma. The sounds ceased as suddenly as they began, and as we rounded a wide bend full of islands, and came in sight of the minarets of Rustchuk and the great buildings in Giurgevo on the low hills far across the marshes opposite, we met a small Bulgarian gunboat with a machine-gun at the bow and discovered at the same time, on a broad plateau under the old Turkish redoubt back of the town, the summer encampment of the garrison. What we had heard was, undoubtedly, the morning target practice on land and the trial of the machine-gun on the river.

Rustchuk is the most important Bulgarian town on the river, and situated as it is on the main route to Constantinople,viathe Rustchuk-Varna Railway and the Black Sea, and only two hours by rail from Bucharest, is one of the best-known cities on the lower Danube. It is at present in the disagreeable phase of transition from an old Turkish town to a modern trade centre, and has neither the picturesqueness

MARKET-PLACE, SILISTRIA

of an old place nor the comforts of a new one. Imposing shops, with all sorts of Viennese and Parisian goods, chiefly neckties and ready-made clothing, crowd the shanties where native rawhide sandals are made, and the street butcher slaughters his animal before the plate-glass window of a large grocery, filled with English, French, and German delicacies. Some of the streets are well paved and kept in repair, while in others the passer often stumbles over the half-buried shells thrown into the town by the Russians in 1877.

For about thirty miles below Rustchuk both shores are flat and devoid of life. We had our old enemy, a head-wind, against us; and, indeed, from this point to the end of our journey—about 300 miles below—we scarcely had an hour’s relief from this persistent opposition to our progress. We had fought our way for a few miles, when we overtook a tow-boat with several large Greek grain lighters steaming down-river at less speed than we were making. As we ran alongside, the captain of one of the lighters cordially invited us to tie up and take it easy. Perhaps it was not a very sporting thing to do, but it appealed to us as an excellent scheme to defeat the efforts of the head-wind and to see the landscape at our leisure, and we therefore promptly accepted the invitation, and fastened our canoes to the lighters. In this way we slowly went on for several hours, until we came to the town of Turtukai, on the Bulgarian side, where the hills again crowd the river. There we cast off, and instinctively avoiding the Roumanian pickets, whose unwelcome attentions we had escaped for several days, paddled down to a beautiful camping-ground in the middle of a group of islands covered with poplar, wych-elm, willows, and brambles, and a tangle of wild-grape vines growing to the tops of the highest trees.

From the important part the town and fortress of Silistria

MOSQUE IN SILISTRIA

has played in the history of European Turkey for the last hundred years, we anticipated finding a stronghold far more grand and imposing than any on the river, with the possible exception of Belgrade and Peterwardein. Whatever may have been in past times the strategical importance of the place, it certainly gave us little notion of its strength. It occupies the whole of a low point projecting far into the

FROM RUSTCHUK TO SULINA

river, which here spreads out into a broad shallow reach, filled with long low islands. Along the greater part of the water-front of the town are two walls, one within the other, more resembling embankments to protect the town from inundations than constructions for military purposes. Behind these walls, as seen from the river, domes and minarets rise above the roofs of the town, which rambles back from the river to the great bare slopes behind. All over the tops of the hills are visible the lines of great earthworks, rounded and softened by the weathering of many seasons. After the usual passport formalities, we wandered about the town for an hour or more, waiting for it to wake up, and had sufficient leisure to examine the extensive improvements in progress here, which bid fair to reduce at no distant date the picturesque old town to the commonplace level of a modern city. We could not help, however, being interestedin the building of an enormous school-house, which will be, when finished, the most imposing modern structure in the town—a gratifying indication of the successful enforcement of the compulsory education law in Bulgaria.

After the hundreds of miles of uninteresting scenery on the Roumanian shore, it seemed as if monotony could go no further, but opposite Silistria the far-off hills recede still more, the bank grows flatter, and at last degenerates into a swamp, with nothing but the wretched picket huts to break the interminable line of small willow-trees. Sluggish branches of the river straggle off to the left and cut the morass into two large islands, honey-combed with lakes and intersected by lagoons. High grass-covered hills skirt the right bank, and here and there, at long distances apart, villages make irregular brown patches on the yellow slopes. The long reaches become more and more desolate, and in the narrow channels among the numerous islands there is the solitude of an unexplored wilderness, and the banks are a tangle of great trees and undergrowth. Black mud everywhere covers the shallows, and the banks are lined with a sticky, fetid deposit, and sometimes, after sunset, the odor emanating from this mass of river scourings is almost overpowering. We often landed on what appeared to be a hard beach, only to find it a jelly of mud, with a thin crust of sand on top, through which we broke at every step. All the river men we met were suffering from the Danube fever, which, in the lower river, is the constant scourge of the population.

TEN miles below Silistria the Roumanian frontier crosses the river, and the district of the Dobrudscha begins. To our surprise, the line of pickets still continued along the left bank, although we were fairly in the Roumanian kingdom, and now and then a soldier would appear in sight, take a lively interest as we passed, and sometimes order us to come ashore. We treated these summonses with scorn, and paddled along heedless of the shouts which followed us.

The river life was fast becoming more active as we went down. Numerous tow-boats with lighters passed to and fro, and every open reach was lively with gaudily painted sailing-vessels, manned by Turks dressed in all colors of the rainbow, and looking as little like sailors as the craft they were in looked like modern civilized ships. On one occasion we were watching a large fleet of these quaint vessels merrily careering up-stream with a favorable wind, when a sudden squall struck them and scattered them like leaves with the violence of its blast. One succeeded in gaining the land in deep water, and made fast to the trees there, and through the dense showers of rain which followed the wind we could see the remainder of the proud fleet, all scattered and dilapidated, stranded along the shore in every direction. We now had our own boats to look after, for there was no shelter in which to land! A group of friendly Greek lighters in tow gave us but temporary protection fromthe squall, for, as the storm increased in violence and the wind veered round, we found ourselves on as ugly a lee shore as could be imagined—the iron sides of a loaded barge. However, we managed at last to moor the canoes under the overhanging stern of one of the lighters, and, in company with a native boat full of men and women, rode out the storm in safety.

ROUMANIAN PEASANTS SELLING FLOWERS AND FRUIT

From Silistria to Chernavoda the topography of the country near the river alters very little in character, but we noted various other changes which interested us. The type of small boat was now entirely different from the rude skiff farther up-stream, resembling the Turkish caïque, with high pointed bow and stern; and our old friends, the current-mills, no longer had a supplementary scow to support the axle, but, with a wheel on either side, made a sort of caricature of a steamboat anchored in the stream. On the hills above the villages numerous windmills waved their long arms, testifying to the prevalence of wind, and everywhere ancient tumuli broke the rounded contours of the grassy summits. Here, too, Trajan has left an imperishable monument to his mighty conquest—an immense wall of earth, which extends across the Dobrudscha from Chernavoda to Kustendji on the Black Sea, and the high rampart is plainly visible on the great rolling hills, apparently as well preserved in shape after the lapse of so many centuries as the Russian earthworks constructed a decade and a half ago on the neighboring summits. A fine railway bridge is now building across the river at Chernavoda, to connect the Kustendji Railway with the Roumanian system, and immense stone piers on the north bank are already finished. The construction-shops and workmen’s quarters in connection with this enterprise have transformed the simple little village of Chernavoda into a hideously commonplace settlement. At this point the river sweeps round in a wide curve, changing its course from a general easterly to a northerly direction, and at Hirsova, thirty miles below—a long straggling town at the foot of a bold spur of rocky hills—it divides into a number of small branches, which enclose and intersect with sinuous windings a great irregular marsh, twelve or fifteen miles in width, and extending to the River Pruth, at the Russian frontier, fifty miles to the north.

As we left Hirsova, near the end of the day, and saw the

HIRSOVA

grand outlines of the hills grow all purple in the afternoon light, we were slow to realize the fact that our route would no longer lead us past these pleasant slopes, which from the distant Carpathian range downward had shown us an ever-varying and ever-beautiful panorama along the river-bank. The shortest of the sluggish branches of the river skirts the eastern limits of the Roumanian plain, and paddling into this narrow channel, we found ourselves in a brief half-hour in a region quite unlike any we had yet seen. Both banks are low, and covered with tall reeds alternating with willow patches. The only habitations are little fishing-stations, and these are miles apart. Even the line of picket-houses is no longer seen along the shore, for it follows the branch that flows along the eastern boundary of the marsh under the high land there. The fishermen’s dwellings are hovels of the rudest kind, built of mud, thatched with reeds, and surrounded by fences of the same material. How humanbeings can exist in these fever-infested marshes will always remain a mystery to us.

We found a reasonably solid landing-place on a little island near one of these stations, and a short distance above the little hamlet of Gura Ghirlitza. The botanist, whose duty it was to gather drift wood, brought back from his rambles a great bouquet of wild-flowers—melilot, loosestrife, convolvulus, blue veronica, chiccory, tamarisk, snap-dragon, and many others: and we were both so much engaged, one with his botanizing and the other with his pots and pans, that we did not notice the approach of a great lotka full of people until it ran ashore in the mud near our camp two or three yards from the bank. They shouted to us to come and pull them up; but, seeing among the crowd in the boat two soldiers fixing their bayonets, and several other men armed with guns, to say nothing of an officer in full uniform, we did not propose to assist this hostile force to disembark, and paid no attention to them. Finally one of the party jumped out into the mud, helped the rest to land, and the small army bore down upon us in martial array. When they came near enough to see the canoes, the officer in command, an intelligent young fellow of agreeable manners and cultivated speech, suddenly threw aside all show of hostility, and asked us politely what kind of craft these were, and where we had come from in such frail boats. This was a prelude to friendly relations we had not anticipated, for we looked with distrust on every man in uniform. Of course we were only too glad to explain who we were and what we were after, and arms were at once laid aside, and the whole party instantly began to inspect our canoes from bow to stern, enchanted with the polished rudder, astonished at the folding centre-board, and delighted with every detail of the finish. In a half-hour or less, with many apologies for interrupting the preparation of our dinner, they withdrew, after making us promise to return their call at the village the next morning. We heard the grocer and the butcher fire off the guns they had loaded on the way to assist in capturing the suspected smugglers, and we were interrupted no more that night.

GURA GHIRLITZA

Early the next forenoon we landed at the village, and had quite a reception by our friends of the evening before. The whole population gathered around the canoes, and studied them with intelligent curiosity. They were the first natives since we passed the Bulgarian frontier above Widdin who had shown any particular emotion at the sight of the novel craft, and our hearts warmed to them in consequence. Perhaps it was partly on this account that we liked the village, for, after all, it was only a small collection of low, whitewashed, roughly-thatched cottages, straggling along crooked, dusty streets partly shaded by small trees, and everywhere enclosed by fences of dry reeds. But there were a good many bright flowers in the tiny gardens, luxuriantly-growing squashes and gourds were climbing all over the thatched roofs, the clean white linen garments of both sexes were refreshing to look upon, and the brilliant aprons and elaborate red embroidery worn by the women made rich spots of color in the warm sunlight. It was well for us that we went away from Gura Ghirlitza in an agreeable frame of mind, for a persistent head-wind blew straight up-stream, no matter how the river turned and twisted. We passed scores of Turkish vessels dashing along up the choppy current with a great splashing at the bows, and others trying to work down-river by the force of the stream. For several hours we struggled against the gale and the rough sea, between banks with few signs of human life and scarcely a rod of cleared land, and in the afternoon passed through miles of unbroken forest, extending in every direction as far as we could see. From this the most desolate and deserted reach of the whole river we had navigated, we at last emerged quite suddenly into a sunny open country, with a high bluff a short distance below, where tall chimneys showed above the dense foliage on a large island, and in a few moments we were in the main stream again, opposite the bustling town of Braila, where the straggling arms of the river unite, and it again assumes its normal width and majestic aspect. The stream was crowded with vessels of every description, from the native lotkas to the great English freight propellers, whose ugly iron hulls towered high over all local craft. On the shore opposite the town scores of Turkish vessels were made fast to the bank, miles of loaded lighters were anchored along the channel, and great steamers were moored to the quay several ranks deep, all receiving their loads of grain. Thousands of men of every nationality and in motley dress were swarming like bees all over the cargo boats, carrying sacks of grain from the army of carts on the shore and pouring it into the

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