Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family | Page 8

lower,
and at another at the upper, end of an apartment marked "refreshment
room." Now in river steaming you walk the deck, if the weather and the
scenery be good; if the reverse, you lounge below; read, write, or play;
and then the meals are arranged with Germanic ingenuity for killing
time and the digestive organs.
On the second day the boat arrived at Widdin, and the agent of the
steam packet company, an old Jew, came on board. I stepped across the
plank and accompanied him to a large white house opposite the
landing-place. On entering, I saw a group of Israel's children in the
midst of a deadly combat of sale and purchase, bawling at the top of
their voices in most villainous Castilian; all were filthy and shabbily
dressed. The agent having mentioned who I was to the group, a
broad-lipped young man with a German mutze surmounting his oriental
costume, stepped forward with a confident air, and in a thick guttural
voice addressed me in an unknown tongue. I looked about for an
answer, when the agent told me in Turkish that he spoke English.
Jew. "You English gentleman, sir, and not know English."
Author. "I have to apologize for not recognizing the accents of my
native country."
Jew. "Bring goods wid you, sir?"
Author. "No, I am not a merchant. Pray can you get me a lodging?"
Jew. "Get you as mush room you like, sir."
Author. "Have you been in England?"

Jew. "Been in London, Amsterdam, and Hamburgh."
We now arrived at the wide folding gates of the khan, which to be sure
had abundance of space for travellers, but the misery and filth of every
apartment disgusted me. One had broken windows, another a broken
floor, a third was covered with half an inch of dust, and the weather
outside was cold and rainy; so I shrugged up my shoulders and asked to
be conducted to another khan. There I was somewhat better off, for I
got into a new room leading out of a cafe where the charcoal burned
freely and warmed the apartment. When the room was washed out I
thought myself fortunate, so dreary and deserted had the other khan
appeared to me.
I now took a walk through the bazaars, but found the place altogether
miserable, being somewhat less village-like than Roustchouk. Lying so
nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here makes such beautiful
curves, and marked on the map with capital letters, it ought (such was
my notion) to be a place having at least one well-built and well-stocked
bazaar, a handsome seraglio, and some good-looking mosques. Nothing
of the sort. The Konak or palace of the Pasha is an old barrack. The
seraglio of the famous Passavan Oglou is in ruins, and the only decent
looking house in the place is the new office of the Steam Navigation
Company, which is on the Danube.
Being Ramadan, I could not see the pasha during the day; but in the
evening, M. Petronievitch, the exiled leader of the Servian National
party, introduced me to Hussein Pasha, the once terrible destroyer of
the Janissaries. This celebrated character appeared to be verging on
eighty, and, afflicted with gout, was sitting in the corner of the divan at
his ease, in the old Turkish ample costume. The white beard, the dress
of the pasha, the rich but faded carpet which covered the floor, the roof
of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in perfect keeping,
and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising two or three feet
from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture, which carried me
back, a generation at least, to the pashas of the old school. Hussein
smoked a narghile of dark red Bohemian cut crystal. M. Petronievitch
and myself were supplied with pipes which were more profusely

mounted with diamonds, than any I had ever before smoked; for
Hussein Pasha is beyond all comparison the wealthiest man in the
Ottoman empire.
After talking over the last news from Constantinople, he asked me what
I thought of the projected steam balloon, which, from its being of a
marvellous nature, appears to have caused a great deal of talk among
the Turks. I expressed little faith in its success; on which he ordered an
attendant to bring him a drawing of a locomotive balloon steered by
flags and all sorts of fancies. "Will not this revolutionize the globe?"
said the pasha; to which I replied, "C'est le premier pas qui coute; there
is no doubt of an aërial voyage to India if they get over the first quarter
of a mile."[1]
I returned to sup with M. Petronievitch at his house, and we had a great
deal of conversation relative to the history, laws,