LETTER X.
The Adriatic—Albania—Gay Costumes and Beauty of the Albanese—Capo d’Istria—Trieste resembles an American Town—Visit to the Austrian Authorities of the Province—Curiosity of the Inhabitants—Gentlemanly Reception by the Military Commandant—Visit to Vienna—Singular Notions of the Austrians respecting the Americans—Similarity of the Scenery to that of New England—Meeting with German Students—Frequent Sight of Soldiers and Military Preparation—Picturesque Scenery of Styria.
The Doge of Venice has a fair bride in the Adriatic. It is the fourth of July, and with the Italian Cape Colonna on our left and the long, low coast of Albania shading the horizon on the east, we are gazing upon her from the deck of the first American frigate that has floated upon her bosom. We head for Venice, and there is a stir of anticipation on board, felt even through the hilarity of our cherished anniversary. I am the only one in the ward-room to whom that wonderful city is familiar, and I feel as if I had forestalled my own happiness—the first impression of it is so enviable.
It is difficult to conceive the gay costumes and handsome features of the Albanese existing in these barren mountains that bind the Adriatic. It has been but a continued undulation of rock and sand, for three days past; and the closer we hug to the shore, the more we look at the broad canvass above us, and pray for wind. We make Capo d’Istria now, a small town nestled in a curve of the sea, and an hour or two more will bring us to Trieste, where we drop anchor, we hope for many an hour of novelty and pleasure.
Trieste lies sixty or eighty miles from Venice, across the head of the gulf. The shore between is piled up to the sky with the “blue Friuli mountains;” and from the town of Trieste, the low coast of Istria breaks away at a right angle to the south, forming the eastern bound of the Adriatic. As we ran into the harbour on our last tack, we passed close under the garden walls of the villa of the ex-queen of Naples, a lovely spot just in the suburbs. The palace of Jerome Bonaparte was also pointed out to us by the pilot, on the hill just above. They have both removed since to Florence, and their palaces are occupied by English. We dropped anchor within a half mile of the pier, and the flags of a dozen American vessels were soon distinguishable among the various colours of the shipping in the port.
I accompanied Commodore Patterson to-day on a visit of ceremony to the Austrian authorities of the province. We made our way with difficulty through the people, crowding in hundreds to the water-side, and following us with the rude freedom of a showman’s audience. The vice-governor, a polite but Frenchified German count, received us with every profession of kindness. His Parisian gesture sat ill enough upon his national high cheekbones, lank hair, and heavy shoulders. We left him to call upon the military commandant, an Irishman, who occupies part of the palace of the ex-king of Westphalia. Our reception by him was gentlemanly, cordial, and dignified. I think the Irish are, after all, the best-mannered people in the world. They are found in every country, as adventurers for honour, and they change neither in character nor manner. They follow foreign fashions, and acquire a foreign language; but in the first they retain their heart, and in the latter their brogue. They are Irishmen always. Count Nugent is high in the favour of the Emperor, has the commission of a field-marshal, and is married to a Neapolitan princess, who is a most accomplished and lovely woman, and related to most of the royal houses of Europe. His reputation as a soldier is well known, and he seems to me to have no drawback to the enviableness of his life, except its expatriation.
Trieste is a busy, populous place, resembling extremely our new towns in America. We took a stroll through the principal streets after our visits were over, and I was surprised at the splendour of the shops, and the elegance of the costumes and equipages. It is said to contain thirty thousand inhabitants.
Vienna.—The frigates were to lie three or four weeks at Trieste. One half of the officers had taken the steamboat for Venice on the second evening of our arrival, and the other half waited impatiently their turn of absence. Vienna was but some four hundred miles distant, and I might never be so near it again. On a rainy evening, at nine o’clock, I left Trieste in the eil-wagon, with a German courier, and commenced the ascent of the spur of the Friuli mountains that overhangs the bay.
My companions inside were a merchant from Gratz, a fantastical and poor Hungarian count, a Corfu shop-keeper, and an Italian ex-militaire and present apothecary, going to Vienna to marry a lady whom he had never seen. After a little bandying of compliments in German, of which I understood nothing except that they were apologies for the incessant smoking of three disgusting pipes, the conversation, fortunately for me, settled into Italian. The mountain was steep and very high, and my friends soon grew conversable. The novelty of two American frigates in the harbour naturally decided the first topic. Our Gratz merchant was surprised at the light colour of the officers he had seen, and doubted if they were not Englishmen in the American service. He had always heard Americans were black. “They are so,” said the soldier-apothecary; “I saw the real Americans yesterday in a boat, quite black.” (One of the cutters of the “Constellation” has a negro crew, which he had probably seen at the pier.) The assertion seemed to satisfy the doubts of all parties. They had wondered how such beautiful ships could come from a savage country. It was now explained. “They were bought from the English, and officered by Englishmen.” I was too much amused by their speculations to undeceive them; and with my head thrust half out of the window to avoid choking with the smoke of their pipes, I gazed back at the glittering lights of the town below, and indulged the never-palling sensation of a first entrance into a new country. The lantern at the peak of the “United States” was the last thing I saw as we rose the brow of the mountain, and started off on a rapid trot towards Vienna.
I awoke at daylight with the sudden stop of the carriage. We were at the low door of a German tavern, and a clear, rosy, good-humoured looking girl bade us good morning, as we alighted one by one. The phrase was so like English, that I asked for a basin of water in my mother tongue. The similarity served me again. She brought it without hesitation; but the question she asked me as she set it down was like nothing that had ever before entered my ears. The count smiled at my embarrassment, and explained that she wished to know if I wanted soap.
I was struck with the cleanliness of everything. The tables, chairs and floors, looked worn away with scrubbing. Breakfast was brought in immediately—eggs, rolls, and coffee, the latter in a glass bottle like a chemist’s retort, corked up tightly, and wrapped in a snowy napkin. It was an excellent breakfast, served with cleanliness and good humour, and cost about fourteen cents each. Even from this single meal, it seemed to me that I had entered a country of simple manners and kind feelings. The conductor gravely kissed the cheek of the girl who had waited on us, my companions lit their pipes afresh, and the postillion, in cocked hat and feather, blew a stave of a waltz on his horn, and fell into a steady trot, which he kept up with phlegmatic perseverance to the end of his post.
As we get away from the sea, the land grows richer, and the farm-houses more frequent. We are in the duchy of Carniola, forty or fifty miles from Trieste. How very unlike Italy and France, and how very like New England it is! There are no ruined castles, nor old cathedrals. Every village has its small white church, with a tapering spire, large manufactories cluster on the water-courses, the small rivers are rapid and deep, the horses large and strong, the barns immense, the crops heavy, the people grave and hard at work, and not a pauper by the post together. We are very far north, too, and the climate is like New England. The wind, though it is midsummer, is bracing, and there is no travelling as in Italy, with one’s hat off and breast open, dissolving at midnight in the luxury of the soft air. The houses, too, are ugly and comfortable, staring with paint and pierced in all directions with windows. The children are white-headed and serious. The hills are half-covered with woods, and clusters of elms are left here and there through the meadows, as if their owners could afford to let them grow for a shade to the mowers. I was perpetually exclaiming, “how like America!”
We dined at Laybach. My companions had found out by my passport that I was an American, and their curiosity was most amusing. The report of the arrival of the two frigates had reached the capital of Illyria, and with the assistance of the information of my friends, I found myself an object of universal attention. The crowd around the door of the hotel looked into the windows while we were eating, and followed me round the house as if I had been a savage. One of the passengers told me they connected the arrival of the ships with some political object, and thought I might be the envoy. The landlord asked me if we had potatoes in our country.
I took a walk through the city after dinner with my mincing friend the count. The low, two-story wooden houses, the sidewalks enclosed with trees, the matter-of-fact looking people, the shut windows, and neat white churches remind me again strongly of America. It was like the more retired streets of Portland or Portsmouth. The Illyrian language spoken here, seemed to me the most inarticulate succession of sounds I had ever heard. In crossing the bridge in the centre of the town, we met a party of German students travelling on foot with their knapsacks. My friend spoke to them to gratify my curiosity. I wished to know where they were going. They all spoke French and Italian, and seemed in high heart, bold, cheerful, and intelligent. They were bound for Egypt, determined to seek their fortunes in the service of the present reforming and liberal pacha. Their enthusiasm, when they were told I was an American, quite thrilled me. They closed about me and looked into my eyes, as if they expected to read the spirit of freedom in them. I was taken by the arms at last, and almost forced into a beer-shop. The large tankards were filled, each touched mine and the others, and “America” was drank with a grave earnestness of manner that moved my heart within me. They shook me by the hand on parting, and gave me a blessing in German, which as the old count translated it, was the first word I have learned of their language. We had met constantly parties of them on the road. They all dress alike, in long travelling frocks of brown stuff, and small green caps with straight visors; but, coarsely as they are clothed, and humbly as they seem to be faring, their faces bear always a mark that can never be mistaken. They look like scholars.
The roads, by the way, are crowded with pedestrians. It seems to be the favourite mode of travelling in this country. We have scarce met a carriage, and I have seen, I am sure, in one day, two hundred passengers on foot. Among them is a class of people peculiar to Germany. I was astonished occasionally at being asked for charity by stout, well-dressed young men, to all appearance as respectable as any travellers on the road. Expressing my surprise, my companion informed me that they were apprentices, and that the custom or law of the country compelled them, after completing their indentures, to travel in some distant province, and depend upon charity and their own exertions for two or three years before becoming masters at their trade. It is a singular custom, and I should think, a useful lesson in hardship and self-reliance. They held out their hats with a confident independence of look that quite satisfied me they felt no degradation in it.
We soon entered the province of Styria, and brighter rivers, greener woods, richer and more graceful uplands and meadows, do not exist in the world. I had thought the scenery of Stockbridge, in my own State, unequalled till now. I could believe myself there, were not the women alone working in the fields, and the roads lined for miles together with military wagons and cavalry upon march. The conscript law of Austria compels every peasant to serve fourteen years! and the labours of agriculture fall, of course, almost exclusively upon females. Soldiers swarm like locusts through the country, but they seem as inoffensive and as much at home as the cattle in the farm-yards. It is a curious contrast, to my eye, to see parks of artillery glistening in the midst of a wheat-field, and soldiers sitting about under the low thatches of these peaceful-looking cottages. I do not think, among the thousands that I have passed in three days’ travel, I have seen a gesture or heard a syllable. If sitting, they smoke and sit still, and if travelling, they economise motion to a degree that is wearisome to the eye.
Words are limited, and the description of scenery becomes tiresome. It is a fault that the sense of beauty, freshening constantly on the traveller, compels him who makes a note of impressions to mark every other line with the same ever-recurring exclamations of pleasure. I saw a hundred miles of unrivalled scenery in Styria, and how can I describe it? I were keeping silence on a world of enjoyment to pass it over. We come to a charming descent into a valley. The town beneath, the river, the embracing mountains, the swell to the ear of its bells ringing some holiday, affect my imagination powerfully. I take out my tablets. What shall I say? How convey to your minds who have not seen it, the charm of a scene I can only describe as I have described a thousand others?