Roumania Past and Present | Page 5

1,500 feet; and beyond these the Carpathian range,
forming, as it were, a great rampart to the north and east, reckons
amongst its eight or nine hundred peaks many that rise to a height of
6,000 to 9,000 feet above the sea-level. The highest of those summits is
either Pionul (in Moldavia) or Caraïman, near Sinaïa (Wallachia), the
summer residence of the Court, which are nearly 9,000 feet high; the
latter is easily accessible, even to ladies if they are fair climbers, and
affords a magnificent view of the surrounding scenery.[7] The aspect of
the country, as the traveller moves inland from the Danube to the
heights of the Carpathians, is very striking; and as the writer travelled
at one time or another along the greater part of the river, both by land
and water, and from the bank at Giurgevo to the frontier in the
mountains, a brief account of his impressions and observations may be
found more interesting than a mere dry geographical description of the
different zones.[8]
[Footnote 3: The mode in which we ascertained these measurements
was by comparing four, independently made. One was by Mr. Weller,
the artist of our maps; the second by the author, being the average of
four or five maps; the third by an English official friend in Roumania,
who has all the best maps at his disposal; and the fourth from Baedeker.
Designating these respectively as a, b, c, and d, we obtained the
following very approximate results:--
From Verciorova to the Sulina From Predeal to boundary S. of mouth.
Mangalia.

a 355 miles a 185 miles b 356 " b 188 " c 358 " c 189 " d 360 " d 190 "
From Fife-Cookson's map, in his work With the Armies of the Balkans,
the measurements respectively are 355 and 186 miles.]
[Footnote 4: The area is obtained by a somewhat similar process to the
linear measurements, excepting that here we have been obliged to
employ figures from various works (notably that of M. Aurelian and
the Reports of Consul Vivian and of the Roumanian Geographical
Society), and to take into consideration the exchange of Bessarabia for
the Dobrudscha, which has not been done by Roumanian writers since
that alteration was made. The Gotha Almanack of 1881 gives the area
as 129,947 square kilos.]
[Footnote 5: There has been no census in Roumania since 1859-60,
when the population is said to have been 4,424,961; now it is set down
as above, and efforts have been made to analyse this estimate and to
classify the population according to nationalities and religion. It is,
however, quite impossible to do so with accuracy; indeed the census of
Galatz taken last year shows that the whole can hardly be regarded as
approximate. What we know is that about 4,600,000 of the population
are Roumanians and of the Orthodox Greek faith; probably 400,000 are
Jews, 200,000 gipsies, and the rest Germans, Szeklers, Servians and
Bulgarians, Hungarians, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, Turks, French,
English, Swiss, &c.]
[Footnote 6: Prince Jon Ghika says 87 mètres.]
[Footnote 7: According to various works and maps, the heights of the
mountain summits differ. In his work, Terra Nostra, edition of 1880, M.
Aurelian gives the height of Pionul as 2,720.1 mètres, or about 8,934
English feet, and that of Caraïman as 2,650.2 mètres, or 8,705 feet; but
some of the maps give measurements differing from these.]
[Footnote 8: Fuller details concerning the soil and agricultural
productions will be found in the chapter devoted to those subjects.]
II.

The appearance of the plain on leaving the flat monotonous banks of
the Danube is anything but prepossessing. Although the land begins to
rise almost immediately, the surrounding scenery is flat and arid. The
soil, which is black or dark grey, is chiefly argillo-siliceous, and the
plain is overrun with coarse grass, weeds, and stunted shrubs,
diversified by fields of maize, patches of yellow gourds, and kitchen
vegetables. Here and there the railway runs through or skirts plantations.
The chief plants in this region (and this applies to the plains generally)
are willows, alders, poplars, and tamarinds, but chiefly willows and
poplars amongst the trees and larger plants; maize, wheat, millet, and
other cereals, and a variety of fruits and vegetables which will be
spoken of in connection with the more elevated regions. The first
impression which is made upon the traveller coming from our own
beautiful hedgerows and pastures, or from the richly cultivated plains
of Transylvania, is that agriculture is slovenly and neglected, and that
impression is never wholly lost in whatever direction he may travel;
although, as we shall see presently, the higher zones are much more
carefully cultivated.[9]
[Illustration: ROUMANIAN PEASANTS IN WORKING DRESS.]
The peasantry at work in the fields present a novel and interesting
appearance to the