Lippincotts Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878

Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878,
by Various

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Title: Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878
Author: Various
Release Date: July 22, 2006 [EBook #18885]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***

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=LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE=
OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.
AUGUST, 1878.
* * * * *
Footnote: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by J.
B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.
* * * * *

ALONG THE DANUBE.
[Illustration: SOMENDRIA.]
Ada-Kalé is a Turkish fortress which seems to spring directly from the
bosom of the Danube at a point where three curious and quarrelsome
races come into contact, and where the Ottoman thought it necessary to
have a foothold even in times of profound peace. To the traveller from
Western Europe no spectacle on the way to Constantinople was so
impressive as this ancient and picturesque fortification, suddenly
affronting the vision with its odd walls, its minarets, its red-capped
sentries, and the yellow sinister faces peering from balconies suspended
above the current. It was the first glimpse of the Orient which one
obtained; it appropriately introduced one to a domain which is
governed by sword and gun; and it was a pretty spot of color in the
midst of the severe and rather solemn scenery of the Danubian stream.
Ada-Kalé is to be razed to the water's edge--so, at least, the treaty
between Russia and Turkey has ordained--and the Servian
mountaineers will no longer see the Crescent flag flying within
rifle-shot of the crags from which, by their heroic devotion in unequal
battle, they long ago banished it.
The Turks occupying this fortress during the recent war evidently relied
upon Fate for their protection, for the walls of Ada-Kalé are within a
stone's throw of the Roumanian shore, and every Mussulman in the

place could have been captured in twenty minutes. I passed by there
one morning on the road from Orsova, on the frontier of Hungary, to
Bucharest, and was somewhat amused to see an elderly Turk seated in a
small boat near the Roumanian bank fishing. Behind him were two
soldiers, who served as oarsmen, and rowed him gently from point to
point when he gave the signal. Scarcely six hundred feet from him
stood a Wallachian sentry, watching his movements in lazy, indifferent
fashion. And this was at the moment that the Turks were bombarding
Kalafat in Roumania from Widdin on the Bulgarian side of the Danube!
Such a spectacle could be witnessed nowhere save in this land, "where
it is always afternoon," where people at times seem to suspend
respiration because they are too idle to breathe, and where even a dog
will protest if you ask him to move quickly out of your path. The old
Turk doubtless fished in silence and calm until the end of the war, for I
never heard of the removal of either himself or his companions.
The journeys by river and by rail from Lower Roumania to the
romantic and broken country surrounding Orsova are extremely
interesting. The Danube-stretches of shimmering water among the
reedy lowlands--where the only sign of life is a quaint craft painted
with gaudy colors becalmed in some nook, or a guardhouse built on
piles driven into the mud--are perhaps a trifle monotonous, but one has
only to turn from them to the people who come on board the steamer to
have a rich fund of enjoyment. Nowhere are types so abundant and
various as on the routes of travel between Bucharest and Rustchuk, or
Pesth and Belgrade. Every complexion, an extraordinary piquancy and
variety of costume, and a bewildering array of languages and dialects,
are set before the careful observer. As for myself, I found a special
enchantment in the scenery of the lower Danube--in the lonely inlets,
the wildernesses of young shoots in the marshes, the flights of aquatic
birds as the sound of the steamer was heard, the long tongues of land
on which the water-buffaloes lay huddled in stupid content, the tiny
hummocks where villages of wattled hovels were assembled. The
Bulgarian shore stands out in bold relief: Sistova, from the river, is
positively beautiful, but the now historical Simnitza seems only a
mud-flat. At night the boats touch upon the Roumanian side for
fuel--the Turks have always been too lazy