Lippincotts Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 | Page 2

and vicious to develop the

splendid mineral resources of Bulgaria--and the stout peasants and their
wives trundle thousands of barrows of coal along the swinging planks.
Here is raw life, lusty, full of rude beauty, but utterly incult. The men
and women appear to be merely animals gifted with speech. The
women wear almost no clothing: their matted hair drops about their
shapely shoulders as they toil at their burden, singing meanwhile some
merry chorus. Little tenderness is bestowed on these creatures, and it
was not without a slight twinge of the nerves that I saw the huge, burly
master of the boat's crew now and then bestow a ringing slap with his
open hand upon the neck or cheek of one of the poor women who
stumbled with her load or who hesitated for a moment to indulge in
abuse of a comrade. As the boat moved away these people, dancing
about the heaps of coal in the torchlight, looked not unlike demons
disporting in some gruesome nook of Enchanted Land. When they were
gypsies they did not need the aid of the torches: they were sufficiently
demoniacal without artificial aid.
Kalafat and Turnu-Severinu are small towns which would never have
been much heard of had they not been in the region visited by the war.
Turnu-Severinu is noted, however, as the point where Severinus once
built a mighty tower; and not far from the little hamlet may still be seen
the ruins of Trajan's immemorial bridge. Where the Danube is twelve
hundred yards wide and nearly twenty feet deep, Apollodorus of
Damascus did not hesitate, at Trajan's command, to undertake the
construction of a bridge with twenty stone and wooden arches. He
builded well, for one or two of the stone piers still remain perfect after
a lapse of sixteen centuries, and eleven of them, more or less ruined,
are yet visible at low water. Apollodorus was a man of genius, as his
other work, the Trajan Column, proudly standing in Rome, amply
testifies. No doubt he was richly rewarded by Trajan for constructing a
work which, flanked as it was by noble fortifications, bound the
newly-captured Dacian colony to the Roman empire. What mighty men
were these Romans, who carved their way along the Danube banks,
hewing roads and levelling mountains at the same time that they
engaged the savages of the locality in daily battle! There were indeed
giants in those days.

[Illustration: RUSTCHUK.]
When Ada-Kalé is passed, and pretty Orsova, lying in slumbrous quiet
at the foot of noble mountains, is reached, the last trace of Turkish
domination is left behind. In future years, if the treaty of San Stefano
holds, there will be little evidence of Ottoman lack of civilization
anywhere on the Danube, for the forts of the Turks will gradually
disappear, and the Mussulman cannot for an instant hold his own
among Christians where he has no military advantage. But at Orsova,
although the red fez and voluminous trousers are rarely seen, the
influence of Turkey is keenly felt. It is in these remote regions of
Hungary that the real rage against Russia and the burning enthusiasm
and sympathy for the Turks is most openly expressed. Every cottage in
the neighborhood is filled with crude pictures representing events of the
Hungarian revolution; and the peasants, as they look upon those
reminders of perturbed times, reflect that the Russians were
instrumental in preventing the accomplishment of their dearest wishes.
Here the Hungarian is eminently patriotic: he endeavors as much as
possible to forget that he and his are bound to the empire of Austria,
and he speaks of the German and the Slav who are his fellow-subjects
with a sneer. The people whom one encounters in that corner of
Hungary profess a dense ignorance of the German language, but if
pressed can speak it glibly enough. I won an angry frown and an
unpleasant remark from an innkeeper because I did not know that
Austrian postage-stamps are not good in Hungary. Such melancholy
ignorance of the simplest details of existence seemed to my host meet
subject for reproach.
Orsova became an important point as soon as the Turks and Russians
were at war. The peasants of the Banat stared as they saw long lines of
travellers leaving the steamers which had come from Pesth and Bazros,
and invading the two small inns, which are usually more than half
empty. Englishmen, Russians, Austrian officers sent down to keep
careful watch upon the land, French and Prussian, Swiss and Belgian
military attachés and couriers, journalists, artists, amateur
army-followers, crowded the two long streets and exhausted the market.
Next came a hungry and thirsty mob of refugees from Widdin--Jews,

Greeks and gypsies--and these promenaded their variegated misery on
the river-banks from sunrise until sunset. Then out from Roumanian
land