CHAPTER III—LIFE AMONG THE MAGYARS.
A City of renown—Overwhelmed by the Floods—Lying in Clover—What I Saw in the Hungarian Capital—“The Poor Folk’s Bath”—Rather Warm Quarters—Life Among the Magyars—The “Miffs,” of an Imperial Couple—Her Majesty’s Choice—A Model Captain—Charles Matthews and the Bowery Boy—Facts and Fancies of a Snoring Match—The “Judge” and the “Doubter”—The Man Who Wouldn’t Believe—Who were the “Hamals,” and What They Did—People in Strange Garments—Baggy Breeches versus Slop—The Fortress of Belgrade—Servia, and What I Saw of Its People—The Assassination of Prince Miloch—Rather Bad for Poetry.
PESTH was founded by the Romans, who were attracted by the mineral springs in the vicinity. They built a fort and established a sort of water-cure, though not on a large scale.
The city has had a rough time, and a hard struggle for existence. It has been captured and pillaged more than a dozen—some say eighteen—times, and for nearly a century and a half it was in the hands of the Turks, who were not particularly gentle in their treatment of the inhabitants. It has been burned, and it has been overflowed; the last great inundation was in 1838, when two thousand houses were destroyed in Pesth, and six hundred in Buda, on the opposite bank.
Query.—Isn’t there a chance that the “Beautiful Blue Danube” will get high again some time, and sweep away all the fine warehouses along the quay, together with a few million dollars’ worth of the merchandise stored there?
I couldn’t help thinking of that as I contemplated this busy, energetic Chicago of Austro-Hungary, and resolved that I would not leave my trunk over night at the steamboat landing. I entrusted it to a Hungarian trager, who strapped it on his back and motioned me to follow, like a downcast and silent mourner, as he led the way to the hotel I named. I know of but one hotel in all Europe—the Grand Hotel at Paris—which can surpass in extent, completeness, and magnificence, the Grand Hotel Hun-garia at Pesth.
I passed four days very pleasantly at Pesth, visiting its Museum of Antiquities, its Gallery of Paintings, and going to the races, where I saw some fine horses of Hungarian stock, and also some fine ones of Hungarian stock crossed with English. I went to one of the famous baths of Buda, where I bathed and then breakfasted at the restaurant attached to the establishment. Buda, by the way, is directly opposite to Pesth; the two cities were long distinct, but they are now united into a single municipality under the name of Buda-Pesth, and the union is strengthened by a beautiful bridge on the suspension principle. This bridge was completed in 1848, and, though a work of peace, its early uses were singularly warlike. It was inaugurated on the 5th of January, 1849, by the passage of the Hungarian army under Kossuth, pursued by the Austrians. Four months later, the Austrian army retreated over the same bridge, pursued by the Hungarians. Turn about is fair play.
Buda has a more picturesque site than Pesth, as it stands partly on a hill, and is dominated by the Blocksberg, a mountain that overlooks the river, and is crowned by a fortress. There are several baths in Buda, some of them of great extent, and all having hot water from natural springs. You can bathe in a public room, or you can have a bath to yourself; and you have the advantages of a restaurant in the building, so that you may command your breakfast or dinner, and have it brought to your room if you choose, along with anything liquid you wish to select from a wine-card. Then there are gardens attached to the baths, where bands of music entertain the ear, and groups of the youths and maidens and adults of Buda-Pesth sit in the shade and regale themselves after the manner of the German in his sommer-garten.
In one of your promenades you may visit the bain des pauvres, where both sexes bathe together with only the scantiest apparel.
The place is hot and steamy, and the odors anything but charming. A single glance satisfied me, and I was glad to seek the open air and sit at one of the tables in the beer garden, until the perspiration had dried from my forehead and the steam from my clothing. This bath-house is a dome-like structure, lighted by a single window in the top. It was built by the Turks, and was used by them as a convent of dervishes.
Hungary is now as thoroughly Austrian as any part of the Monarchy. The Hungarians have all they ever asked for, and some of them say they have more. They have their own parliament; their finances are kept separate from those of Austria, and they run their own affairs pretty much as they please. The Emperor was crowned King of Hungary, and his prime minister, Count Andrassy, is a Hungarian; the Emperor is well disposed towards the country of the Magyars—one of my friends persists in calling them the Maguires—and as for the Empress, it is well known that she likes the Hungarians much better than the Austrians, and prefers Pesth to Vienna. The gossips whisper that the august couple have their “miffs” occasionally, and one cause of these matrimonial jars is the decided preference which Her Majesty shows for the Hungarians. All things considered, Hungary has reason to be content. She can let alone wars and insurrections, and attend to the development of her resources, which are by no means small, and that is what she is doing, and evidently intends to do.
From Pesth to Belgrade the Danube has a general southerly course, and flows for the most part through a broad plain, extremely fertile but rather sparsely inhabited. There is little animation on the river; the principal objects to catch the eye are the numerous water-mills, but they are an old story to one who has descended the Danube from Lintz to Vienna, and from Vienna to Pesth.
These mills are very simple, inexpensive, and effective, and they utilize a power which would otherwise run to waste. Two barges, or flat boats, one larger than the other, are anchored in the river, and held about twenty feet apart by means of a couple of wooden beams. A rude wheel with the floats at right angles to the current, is built between the two boats; an end of the shaft is supported by each, and in the larger of the boats the shaft turns the machinery of a flour mill. A house is built over the mill, and sometimes the miller lives there with his family. Communication with the shore is maintained by means of a plank or a small boat. The mill costs but little at the outset, and the power that turns it is always ready as long as water runs in the river.
I wonder why these mills are not introduced in America. On our western rivers where the current is strong, they could be used to great advantage, and many thousands of them could be run without interfering with navigation.
The navigation of the great river of Austria is managed by two companies—one Austrian and the other Hungarian. The latter is confined to Hungarian waters, but the other—The Danube Steam Navigation Company—extends its operations along the whole line of the river from Lintz to its mouth, and it even runs a line of sea-going boats between Galatz and Odessa. On the lower Danube below Pesth it has two kinds of boats, the one local and the other express, or, as they call them, “accelerated.” The local boats stop at all the landings, and do not travel much at night. The “accelerated boats” only touch at a few points; and travel day and night, weather permitting. On the local boats your ticket includes nothing but your passage; meals and berths are extras. On the “accelerated boats” you pay for everything in a lump, and have no trouble about settling at each meal or piecemeal.
I took passage on the “accelerated” steamer Franz Josef and found her very comfortable; her cabins were clean, her table was good and well supplied, and her captain was designed by nature to charm the heart of traveling man or woman—especially the latter—and the design of nature had been further developed by art and education. He spoke French like a Parisian, was as handsome as his own picture (it is not always thus); wore such a lovely mustache, and was as polite as a courtier of the days of Louis Quatorze. He had a mixed party to entertain, but he was fully equal to the task.
There were four Russians, two men and two women; all were polite and well bred, and the women were sociable and dignified, without being pert or bashful. There were Servians and Roumanians of both sexes; there were Austrians and Hungarians likewise; there were two Frenchmen—engineers connected with the location of the Roumanian railways; there were two English women of the independent class that travels about the world unprotected by man, and perfectly capable of protecting itself under all circumstances; and there were three Americans.
At dinner I made a comparison of the manners of the table with those of steamboat tables in America, and the comparison was not favorable to my own country. There you generally see men eating in silence and rapidity, and with very little regard for the comfort of their neighbors. Here the meal was eaten leisurely; everybody was civil to everybody else; conversation was general, and instead of fifteen minutes for refreshments, we had an hour and a half, and seasoned the meal with pleasant exchanges of information upon a variety of topics. There was no distinction of age or sex in the conversation, but every one seemed determined to faire son mieux to enable the rest to pass the time agreeably.
The incident described by Charles Matthews on one of the Sound steamers, would have created a first-class sensation here: “Will you have the goodness to pass the salt?” said the English comedian to a Bowery boy, who was shovelling meat and potatoes down his throat with the speed of the most effective kind of dredging machine. “Salt by yer,” said the patriot, without deigning to do more than raise his eyes, and continuing his feeding without so much as an instant’s interruption. “O, I beg your pardon,” said Matthews, looking down and espying the saltcellar close to his plate, “I did’nt see it.”
“Who the ——— said you did?” was the gruff reply. “I said ‘salt by yer.’”
On board the Franz Josef, I had intended to take a private cabin, but when I learned the price of it I changed my mind. The price of passage was eighteen florins (a florin is equal to fifty cents of our money); a private cabin costs twenty-three florins, so that the whole bill would have been forty-one florins! I didn’t relish paying eleven dollars and a half for privacy when there was a good, comfortable berth at my disposal for nothing. The sleeping cabin is under the main saloon, and is divided into cabins holding four persons each—that is if a green curtain let down in front can be called a division. I saw there were many advantages in sleeping there that you would not have in a private cabin.
You could have, for instance, a sample of the snoring of each of the nationalities on board, a thing you do not get every day; if one of the number should happen to indulge in delirium tremens or fits you could see the effect on him without any extra charge.
So I kept my twenty-three florins, and by paying a few kreutzers to one of the servants, our party of three managed to get a cabin all to ourselves. The extra berth we used for stowage purposes, and very convenient we found it. We took our tea and retired early, as we expected to be in Belgrade by daybreak.
And such snoring! I had been told that the English and Americans are the only people who indulge in this amusement, but I found that my information was incorrect. Of those who slept in that cabin at least half did themselves credit by the extent and originality of their nasal music. There was one fat old Russian who struck a chromatic scale with the regularity and accuracy of a country singing-school. He would start with a light snort, then run up to the eighth note, which would be a cross between the report of a rifle and the murmur of a brook under the ice, and then he came down the eight-rounded ladder to a sound exactly like his preliminary snort.
There was a heavy-sided Austrian who kept him company in such a fashion that I thought our boat had turned in to a high pressure one; and there was a Roumanian who had a fashion of dropping his jaw and biting off his snore every five minutes or so. In the first part of the night it was impossible to sleep, and our party turned to betting as to which of the performers would hold out the longest on a single spurt. We kept it up an hour or more, but the men we backed were so unreliable that we all lost money, and finally growing sleepy we gave up the game. Whether we added to the music when we fell asleep, I am unable to say, but I fancy that we did not diminish it. In the morning we heard that the boat was badly shaken at the stern, and the captain said she would have to lie up after the present trip. I will lay a wager that it was the old Servian that did the business.
We were aground in the night and detained by a fog, but the loss of time was a gain in sight-seeing. Without detention we should have passed Peterwarde in in the early morning; as it was we saw it after we had taken breakfast and were in a good mood for contemplation.
It is a picturesque fortress dominating the river and covering an escarped hill that shows a double façade pierced with portholes, with a complex arrangement of bastions, salient and reentering angles, casemates, and sheltered barracks. It can contain ten thousand men without serious crowding; its permanent garrison consists of about one-fourth that number. Here it was that Peter the Hermit assembled his soldiers for the first crusade, and it was from that religious enthusiast that the fortress received its modern name.
We saw here on this part of the Danube, as we had seen above, boats towed by horses, seven or eight in line, against the current; we saw droves of white cattle and we rarely saw any other color than white; we saw women working in the fields, and at Mohacs we saw them wheeling coal in barrows or carrying it in baskets. A little past noon we were looking ahead and saw a city perched on a hill above a fortress, and near it, and nearer to us, was another city on a low tongue of land.
The nearer city was Semlin—the more distant was Belgrade—they pronounce it with the accent on the last syllable and make it rhyme with “hard,” or very nearly so.
The river Save (rhymes with “halve”) here joins the Danube from the East and forms the boundary between Austro-Hungary on the one hand and Servia on the other. Semlin is on one side of the mouth of the Save and Belgrade on the other. Semlin is flat and low and offers nothing picturesque; Belgrade is elevated and pretty and merits the admiration which has been bestowed upon it.
The boat stopped a few moments at Semlin and then moved on to Belgrade, and the two Americans whose acquaintance I had made at Pesth determined to travel with me or I with them as we had a common object in view—to reach Constantinople. They were both reasonably well along in years; one was called “the Judge” for his fair round belly which he was accustomed to line with good capon or anything else that possessed the proper lining qualities. The other was called “the Doctor,” which we soon exchanged to “Doubter” for the reason that he doubted everything that he had not seen, and even after seeing it his doubts generally continued.
“I have known,” said the Judge one day, “a man that could lift a thousand pounds of lead at once.”
“I doubt it,” said the “Doubter.”
The Judge reduced the figure to eight hundred, then to six hundred, and so on down to fifty pounds, but still the doubt was maintained.
I remarked that it was once told of a man in Islip, Long Island, the steward of the Olympic Club, who, in the summer of 1872; had a tame oyster that could sing “The Star Spangled Banner” and fire a gun.
Particularity as to time, place, and circumstance generally carries conviction, but it failed in this instance.
The Judge laughed and made no response, but the “Doubter” shook his head incredulously.
We went ashore; a Servian official examined our passports and another took a hasty survey of our baggage, and then the twain released us. We gave over our baggage to a couple of porters or Hamals as they call them—possibly a corruption of the word camel; the name of the animal whose proclivities to bear burdens are well known.
In most parts of the Orient, particularly in Constantinople, the “Harnals” are a guild or labor-union, and are governed by rules like labor-unions in England or America. And they carry enormous burdens—iron, wood, stone, boxes, and bales, casks of wine, anything and everything goes on their backs, and is carried uphill or down hill to its destination. Remember that few streets of Oriental cities are practicable for wheeled vehicles but that everything to be moved must be moved by hand.
The dress of the hamal is peculiar, and he has a hard cushion slung by straps over his shoulder and resting just above the hips. {72}I have seen one of these fellows carry a load that would be sufficient for a one horse dray in New-York; I have seen another carry a bale of goods said to weigh three hundred and fifty pounds; and I have seen another carry my trunk, my friend’s trunk, and another friend’s trunk, all at once, from a hotel to a steamboat landing, where the respective weights ascertained on the company’s scales were seventy pounds, one hundred and fifty pounds, and one hundred and forty-five pounds, or three hundred and sixty-five pounds in all!
The harnals walk at a dignified pace—you could hardly expect them to run—they look healthy, but either the work is not salubrious or the gods love them, as they die young.
We followed the porters up the hill to the Hotel de Paris, and as soon as we had settled into our rooms and looked through the house we sauntered out to see the city.
In front of the hotel is a public square with a fountain, where people fill water jars or idle away a sunny afternoon. Belgrade is a sort of meeting-place of the Occident and the Orient; the costumes of the lower classes are Oriental, and those of the richer inhabitants were likewise Oriental until within the past ten or twenty years. In the strides which Servia has made towards an existence independent of Turkey, she has looked leaningly and lovingly toward the West and put on some of its customs and habits. Thus you see the lower classes wearing the baggy breeches, the loose jacket, and the red cap of Turkey, while the well-to-do citizen dresses in coats, and vests, and trowsers from the slopshops of Vienna and Paris. He is proud to be thus appareled, though his clothes fit him like ready-made garments everywhere, only a little more so, and he feels not altogether comfortable in them and sometimes sighs for the garments of his youth. There is a good deal of dignity about the Servians of all classes, and you might explode a fire-cracker in the ear of one of them without getting him to move with any rapidity.
We took a short walk to the fortress of Belgrade—a fortress that has made a great deal of noise in the world and has been a bony bone of contention for several centuries. In the fifteenth century it was accounted one of the first citadels in Europe, and in 1521 it was taken by the Turks. Since then it has been captured no less than eight times, and it has been twice transferred by reason of treaties. It is a powerful fortress, even against the artillery of to-day, and occupies a commanding position on a promontory jutting out between the Danube and the Save.
The view from the esplanade is one of the finest on the Danube, and embraces a wide range. Northward stretches the broad plain of Hungary; to the West is the Save and its fertile valleys; in the south there is a landscape of river, plain, and mountain; and at our feet lies the flowing Danube rolling away towards the Draw Gate and the dark waters of the Euxine. The fort encloses a pretty garden and miniature park, and a house where once lived the Turkish pasha. By the side of the house there is a mosque rapidly going to ruin, as also are many parts of the fortress. A crowd of forçats in chains and guarded by half a dozen soldiers, are at work on the bridge which leads across the moat; they make way for us to pass, and the soldiers of the guard honor us with a salute.
From the fortress we drove through the town and out upon a macadamized road to Topchidere, or Valley of the Artillerists. It is nearly two miles from Belgrade to Topchidere, but the view is well worth the journey. There is a pretty park and garden covering quite an extent of ground; trees are arranged in rows, in circles, and in other ways, according to the fancy of the gardener; there are fountains and shaded walks, carriage and bridle paths, and there are numerous and easy seats where one may rest when he is weary. In the centre of the park is the house inhabited by Miloch Obrenovitch, Prince of Servia, who died in 1860, and was deeply and justly mourned.
The house, and particularly the room where he died, is in the same condition as when he left it. He preferred the rude furniture to the most costly palace of modern times, and he set an example of frugality that has been of no small benefit to his people. They showed us the room where he died, with his cane, his shoes, his fez and other articles, just as they were when his physicians declared that Miloch was no more.
In the same building is the room where his son Michael died in 1868, mortally wounded by the shots of assassins in the park where he was riding. The blood-stains remain upon the floor, the bed and bedding, and also upon the table where he was laid when the physicians examined the wound. The place of the assassination is half a mile or more from the house and is marked by a plain monument.
The story is the old, old tale of princely and kingly murders; an intrigue was set on foot by an aspirant to the throne of Servia, Alexander Karageorgevitch, and was assisted by a scandal which had a woman in the case. Karageorgevitch had ruled in Servia, not once, but twice, and naturally he wanted to be there again. He had many friends in Servia, and up to the time of the assassination his return was not impossible. After the murder of Michael there was a judicial inquiry which declared Karageorgevitch instigator of the assassination, and condemned him to perpetual banishment.
The Prince of Servia at the time I write is Milan Obrenovitch IV., a young man who attained his majority in 1872, and consequently has had little opportunity to make his name famous. He is said to be intelligent, and willing to listen to advice; as his country has a constitution and a Congress—called in Servian Skoupchina—he could not take it far on the road to ruin, supposing he wished to do so. He has made journeys to Paris and Vienna, where he was warmly received, and it was his reception at Vienna that made trouble between Turkey and Austria in 1873, and came near plunging the two nations into war. Turkey wanted to know, you know, why Austria had made so much fuss over the Prince of Servia; Austria said it was none of Turkey’s business; Turkey said it was an unfriendly action; Austria said “you’re another;” Turkey pouted, and Austria actually fished out from the pigeon-holes the passports of the Sultan’s representative at Vienna, and was on the point of sending them to that functionary with a first-class ticket (meals and cabin included, wines extra) to Constantinople, when the affair was smoothed over and war was prevented.
Servia lies between Turkey and Austria, and contains about a thousand geographical square miles. It has a population of about a million and a quarter, and of this population all are Christians, with the exception of less than twenty thousand. The country is agreeably diversified with plain and mountain, and the soil is fertile, though far less productive than it should be. The inhabitants are not very enterprising, and have given little attention to public works; the roads in the interior are not generally good, and up to the present time there are no railways. A change is about to come over Servia’s dream in this respect, as she has determined upon the construction of a line of railway southeasterly from Belgrade to connect with the Turkish railway at the frontier, to form the connecting link between the Austrian and Turkish network of railways. When this is completed there will be a through route from London to Constantinople, and the present long but picturesque line of travel will become unpopular. The practical spirit of the age is playing sad havoc with the poetry of the olden time. There is a story that an old sailor exclaimed as he looked at an ocean steamer, “There’s an end of seamanship.” And he wasn’t so far out of the way. The romance and charm of the sea are knocked on the head by our new-fangled inventions.
Servia adopted a new constitution in 1869, and is now a constitutional, hereditary monarchy. The person of the prince is inviolable, but his ministers are not let off so easily. There are two kinds of legislatures, or skaupchinas, the ordinary and the extraordinary; the former meeting once a year, and the latter summoned under extraordinary circumstances. The members are elected by the people, and the constitution guarantees equality before the law, civil and religious liberty, freedom of the press, and the abolition of confiscation. The religion is principally Greek orthodoxy. Roman Catholics abound, but are not numerous, and there are a few Jews—less than two thousand—who are compelled to live in Belgrade, as the law will not permit them to dwell in the interior. Here is religious liberty with a vengeance! There are a few Mohammedans, but the number is steadily diminishing. Belgrade, at the time of my visit, contained twelve Mohammedans and nineteen mosques, some of the latter in ruins and the rest getting that way—a great deal of bread to a little sack! Giving each mosque a single worshipper there would still be seven mosques like the little lions in the boy’s picture of the prophet Daniel—they wouldn’t get any!
The army contains about five thousand regulars and one hundred thousand militia. The finances are in excellent condition; there is no public debt, and the taxes, light in comparison with those of some European countries, generally bring a revenue in excess of the disbursements. Three cheers for Servia. Hip, hip, hooray!!
All this time I have kept you standing waiting in the Topchidere
Park, while I have been droning along about Servia and her government, for which you don’t care any more than a cat does for existence. Well, let us get out of the park and return to the city, where we will dine comfortably and drink the wine of the country, and the less said about it the better. Wine culture in Servia is in its infancy, and there is no occasion to go into ecstacies about the native products.
While we are at dinner a gentleman tells us of the old style of executions and their contrast with the present. When the Turks ruled here, a man sentenced to execution was thrown down a bank about ten feet high, upon half a dozen spikes that stood upright. If one of the spikes entered a vital part and killed him instantly, or in a few minutes, his friends had reason to thank fortune. Sometimes a victim would be caught in the fleshy part of the arm or leg, and in this case he might be days in dying. No food nor drink could be given to him, but he must lie there and perish of hunger and thirst and the inflammation of the wound caused by the pitiless iron. My informant said that less than ten years ago a victim of the law lay thus for five days before death came to his relief, and for the first forty-eight hours his screams were so loud that they could be heard, especially in the stillness of the night, half over the city of Belgrade.
Since the Turks went away a more humane method has been adopted. The criminal condemned to death is fed on the best that the city contains for a month previous to the execution of the sentence of the law. On the fatal day he is allowed as much spirit as he chooses to drink, and in this condition he is taken to a valley outside of the town. There the death warrant is read, and as its last words are pronounced there is a report of a couple of pistols and the man falls dead, shot through the heart. Just before my visit two men were thus executed; they went to their death in a hilarious condition, and were singing and shouting as they marched through the town.
