CHAPTER IV—NEARING THE ORIENT—“BACKSHEESH!”
Among the Fleas—The Mystery of the Bedclothes—A Cool Explanation—Under the Spray—What became of the Dragon—A Queer Story about Flies—What is an “Araba?”—Conversation without Words—Changing Shirts in Public—The Iron Gate—Scene at the Custom House—Official Obstinacy—The “Sick Man”—Scenes in the Orient—The Mysteries of the Quarantine—How We Dodged the Turks—The Turk and his Rosary—Pity the Poor Israelite!—Why an Unlucky Jewess was Whipped—The Secret of the Turkish Loan—How the Money is Spent—Ten Million Dollars Gone!—What is “Backsheesh?”
THEN continuing our journey down the river, we took passage on board a local boat, which proved to be far less cleanly than the “accelerated steamer.”
The table was not good, and the cots had each but a single sheet; the deficiency in bedding, and its inability to keep one warm, were met by a large and assorted lot of fleas that made things lively through the night, and brought our bodies into a condition resembling that of a lobster recovering from a case of measles.
The Judge snored happily through all surrounding troubles, and the “Doubter” was inclined to disbelieve the existence of the industrious insects until, when morning came, he looked at himself in the glass. Even then he continued sceptical, and attributed the red spots on his skin to the claret at Belgrade, and possibly to a bad cigar which he smoked the day before.
As a general thing, you cannot induce a hotel or steamboat servant to admit the existence of anything disagreeable about the scene of his labors; but we found it different on board the Basiasch has nothing attractive; it consists of a railway station, a hotel, and a heap of coal. Before we tied up to the wharf, its population was much larger than five minutes later, when the passengers from the railway had come on board.
We steamed on from Basiasch to Moldowa, where we lay through the night. I took an evening ramble through the town, which possesses nothing remarkable except its population, which is half military and half peasant in character; a sort of Russian Cossack that performs military duty a part of the time, and works in the field when not engaged in the service of the state. Next morning, we were to be called bright and early to continue Ferdinand Max. We interrogated the cabin steward on the deficiency of bedding, and he replied that they had enough when the season began, but the fleas had eaten it up! The explanation was so reasonable, that even the “Doubter” accepted it!
From Belgrade to Basiasch, the scenery of the Danube is much like that above the mouth of the Save. At Basiasch, the railway from Pesth and Vienna reaches the river, and we took on board several passengers who had come by rail from those cities. The quick route from Vienna to Constantinople is by this railway, but it is a dreary ride, and, unless one is in a hurry, he had better stick to the river. our journey at daybreak, but I was up before the call, and out on deck.
We were to be transferred, and were transferred, to another boat, an odd-looking affair with powerful machinery, and with two wheels on each side. Her steering-wheel was astern, directly over the rudder, and though she was small she required all the strength of two men to control her.
On such a boat we left Moldowa, just as day broke in the east, and steamed down the river with the rapidity of a railway train. The banks seemed to be flying past us, or we flying past them, and the spray was dashed quite over the boat, drenching the deck passengers who were huddled forward and by no means leaving dry the erste classe astern. The blush on the eastern horizon extended, and as daylight became clear and full we entered the mountains, and were among the boiling rapids which mark this part of the Danube in the season of low water.
On the right bank appeared the wonderful fortress of Galumbutz, built by Maria Theresa. Out of the river rises a pyramid of rocks, and from base to summit this pyramid is covered with towers and walls, and pierced with windows and port-holes. The foundations of the fortress were Roman, and the tradition is that Trojan Helen was once imprisoned there. Almost in face of this fortress is the famous cave known as the Muckenhole, whence came a species of mosquitoes that annually kill thousands of cattle along this portion of the Danube valley. There is a legend that they arise from the putrefaction of the dragon killed by St. George; they issue from the cave in clouds, and extend their ravages more than a hundred miles in every direction. The government walled up the entrance of the cave in the hope of destroying the pest, but without success; the probability is that the insect inhabits the entire country, and only goes to the cave in bad weather.
The river makes many bends and zig-zags, and at times we went unpleasantly near the rocks. The scenery in this part is wild, and the land generally too rough for cultivation. Along the left bank there is an excellent road, which extends from Moldowa to Orsona, the frontier town of Austro-Hungary, and keeps constantly on the river bank. On the opposite shore there are traces of a Roman road cut into the mountain side, but evidently never completed.
Two hours on this four-wheeled steamer brought us to Drenkova, where we landed and were consigned to carriages and carts. The first-class passengers had carriages that were reasonably comfortable, as they had stuffed seats, and backs to lean against, but the others were thrust into arabas or common carts, some of them having straw to sit upon, some rough seats without backs, and some neither straw nor seats. Sometimes the “araba” is drawn by horses, and sometimes by oxen; in Turkey it is generally drawn by oxen, with an arrangement swinging over their backs to keep away the flies, and the cart has in hot or wet weather an awning over it to protect the travelers. In the present instance we had horses and a driver, the latter a native of the country, and black enough to be half Indian and half negro. He was amiable and anxious to please us, and we got up quite a conversation of signs, as we had not a single word in common. I tried him in English, French, German, Russian, and Italian, and he tried me in Moldavian, all to no purpose. What an inconvenience you find in this thing of languages. Wouldn’t I like to twist the neck of the fellow who proposed to build the Tower of Babel?
The Danube was at its lowest, otherwise we should have saved this land travel, and could have passed the upper Iron Gate by water. As it was, we looked upon the rapids and whirlpools, and on the rocks scattered here and there in the channel, and were not altogether sorry to be on land. At one place the channel for boats is only seventy feet wide at low water, and the current is very swift. The name Iron Gate comes from the Turkish, Demi-Kapour, and is intended to mean a hindrance to navigation, rather than a narrow passage barred with a formidable door. The right bank in this locality is simply magnificent. The mountains are steep and rugged, their summits covered with trees, and their sides presenting enormous masses of grey rocks, capriciously veined with red porphyry, and here and there showing deep crevices that appear to be the mouths of caverns.
After three hours of this sort of travel we were transferred to a small steamer where we managed to get an apology for dinner, and where, when the little cabin was full of men and women, a Hungarian passenger with an enormous mustache and a loud voice opened his valise, removed his coat and vest, and coolly proceeded to change his shirt.
He was not at all abashed to display his back and shoulders to the party, but went on with his toilet very much as if in a room by himself.
Nobody interfered with him, and after he had finished his change he was the best dressed man on the boat, as he could boast a clean shirt while the rest of us were dusty with our ride from Drenkova.
From time to time the Danube in this part of its course expands into large basins like mountain lakes. One of these is particularly beautiful as it seems to be completely enclosed and reveals no passage for the river. By and by, as the steamer moves along, an opening is discovered and we enter a deep gorge with steep mountain walls two thousand feet high on either; hand and with a width to the river from wall to wall in one place of only two hundred yards. The noise of the wheels is echoed and re-echoed from side to side, and the scene forcibly recalled to me the prettiest and wildest portion of the Saguenay in Canada, the Rhine near the Seven Mountains, and the Amoor in the Hingan defile. We are in the defile of the Cazan (Turkish for Caldron) the grandest part of the whole Danube from Ratisbon to Galatz. Everybody is moved to expressions of admiration, all save the “Doubter,” who declares that the Danube disappoints him and is a wearisome and uninteresting stream.
We land at Orsova (pronounced Orehova) to pass once more into carriages and go beyond the Lower Iron Gate. Picturesque Wallachians surround us, with their immense hats of wool and their boots of red leather. We halt a moment at a little brook which has the Austrian custom-house on one side and the Roumanian on the other; a Roumanian official examines our tickets, and allows us to pass without examination.
Speaking of the custom house reminds me of a funny incident.
When I entered Servia at Belgrade I had in my trunk a box of Austrian cigars which I bought in Pesth. Coming out of Belgrade and going on board the steamer I had the same cigars; the Austrian customs-official insisted that all cigars brought into Austria must pay duty, and he demanded a tax on mine in spite of the fact that the cigars came originally from Austria and were only going again into the country of their manufacture. Luckily their weight was less than the quantity allowed to each traveler, otherwise he would have compelled me to pay the tariff. He would listen to nothing except the letter of the law.
The Lower Iron Gate is less picturesque than the Upper. The mountains fall away from the river, and the stream spreads out over a rocky bed about fourteen hundred yards wide and a mile in length. The river falls about twelve feet in a mile and a half, and is filled with whirlpools and rapids, with everywhere a swift current broken into waves that dash over the deck of the steamer in the season when the high waters prevent the passage of boats. Below the rapids the river becomes practicable, and there is no other natural obstacle to navigation below this point and the sea.
At a little distance below the Iron Gate we found the steamer that was to carry us down the Danube, and we were speedily installed in her comfortable cabin, once more and much to our delight we found ourselves on an “accelerated” boat, though it proved less agreeable than the Franz Josef.
Before we leave the Iron Gate let us have a little gossip on the question of the Danube.
From the days of the Romans there has been talk of a canal around the Lower Iron Gate; and on the right bank of the river and near the Servian village of Sip, there were traces of the work begun by the Emperor Trajan to this end. In modern times the subject has been discussed, surveys have been made and estimates completed for a series of canals that should carry boats around both the Iron Gates and render the Danube navigable for its entire length. The money could be raised without difficulty, but there is an obstacle to the work in the shape of the political objections of Turkey. No matter on what basis the enterprise is proposed, Turkey has always set her face against it; the “Sick Man” is fearful that a canal round these falls would still further impair his health and therefore he says “No,” and repeats it with emphasis. Time and again the subject has been discussed at Vienna and Constantinople, and always with the same results—Turkey’s opposition.
On one occasion Austria announced that nolens volens the canal would be made, and thereupon Turkey stood up on her ear—she cannot stand easily on her feet—and threatened to go to war when the first spade full of dirt was lifted, and on more than one occasion Turkey has proposed to close the Danube to commerce by sealing up its mouth and permitting nothing but fish and water to pass either way. I am not sure that she did not want to prevent the ascent or descent of the fish through fear that they would carry something contraband. Turkey is a goose and doesn’t know the necessities of the nineteenth century. She ought to close business as a nation and sell out to somebody of decent intelligence.
It was near sunset when we went on board the steamer below the second Iron Gate. We had made five changes in the day; large boat to four-wheeled one, four wheeler to carriages, carriages to boat, boat to carriages at Orsova, and carriages to boat again. We steamed on during the night, and in the morning when I went on deck I had my first view of Turkey. As there were no houses in sight at my first glimpse I did not think it very different from any other country, but as soon as we sighted a town, and the domes and minarets of the mosques came into view, the scene was changed. Northward lay the great plain of Bulgaria, while to the south was Bosnia, a province of the Ottoman empire. The southern bank was more hilly and broken than the northern, and villages were more numerous there. They looked pretty at a distance, but when you approached them nearly, the beauty vanished.
The first Turkish town I saw was the reverse of attractive, and the picture grew no better very fast, as we descended the river. The streets, as I saw them from the boat, were dirty, and there were piles of rubbish just above the landing. The people on shore were as dirty as the streets, and I speedily made up my mind not to ask for a consular appointment to any of the Turkish towns on the Lower Danube.
We didn’t want to go ashore very much, and we couldn’t have gone very much if we had wanted to. There had been some cholera in Austria in the summer, and the Turkish government had established a quarantine against the Upper Danube. Had we chosen to land at Widin or any of the Turkish towns where the boat stopped we should have been taken with a pair of tongs and led into the quarantine station. We should have been smoked, and scorched, and physicked, and poulticed, and dosed for eleven days in a shed with a flimsy roof and flimsier sides, and with no floor, and with no companions beyond natives of the country, fleas, rats, and stray dogs. If we had survived it, we should have been let off at the end of that time to see the next poor wretch put through, and if we had fallen sick under the treatment we should have been sent to the hospital, which is about three times as bad as the quarantine. Altogether the quarantine was not seductive from an aesthetic point of view, and I determined to keep out of it. If any reader of this volume ever has the choice between a kettle of boiling oil and a Turkish quarantine I advise him to take the oil.
At all the landings where we stopped the officials made a great fuss to keep the loafers back, for fear they would take the cholera. We had no passengers for these landings, but we generally had letters, papers, and merchandise. Letters and papers were received with a stick or a pair of tongs and thrown into a tin box, which a boy instantly carried off to a sulphur fire, where its contents could be disinfected.
Then, and not till then, could they be safely handled. Merchandise was piled on the dock, but what disposition was made of it I could not learn. I bought a paper of cigarette tobacco from a boy on shore. He tossed the package on board and I then threw him half a franc. Before touching it he pushed it into a puddle of water, and after working it about for a while, ventured to grasp it with his dirty fingers.
Cholera couldn’t get through the encrusted skins of these fellows much quicker than a mouse could go through the side of a teapot, and as for the passengers and crew of the steamer, we were anything but a sickly lot. Yet they were fearful that we should do them harm, as much as though they were chickens and we were hawks and eagles.
We kept on our way without many incidents of importance, or rather without any, or I should record them. We met a steamboat flying the Turkish flag and steering clear of us; and we passed a Turkish gunboat tied up to one of the banks, but with steam up. At every Turkish landing we went through the farce of the tongs, but at the northern landings we had none of it. Piles of wheat were lying on the northern bank, and generally there were groups of picturesque Wallachians around them. We met Greek brigs and schooners ascending the river to bring away this wheat, and at a few places we saw these vessels lying at the shore. Their crews were a brigandish-looking lot with red caps, baggy trow-sers, and a general resemblance to the stage robbers in Fra Diavolo.
Further down the Danube we met more of these vessels I counted over sixty in sight at one time, and there were three or four times that number at Braila or near there. A large part of the commerce of the Black Sea is in the hands of Greek merchants, and they are said to be very enterprising. At Galatz and Braila there are many Greek houses and agencies. Some of the older establishments are accounted very wealthy. So nearly do they monopolize business that the language of commerce at Galatz is said to be Greek with a mixture of Italian.
It was the month of Ramadan, or time of fasting, with the Moslems. No good and faithful follower of the prophet is allowed to eat or drink between the rising and the setting of the sun. A gun is fired at sunrise and another at sunset, and between those discharges of artillery the fast is strictly observed. We had a priest or “Iman” on board our steamer, a fellow with a white turban and a long cloak or “caftan,” and with a pleasing face fringed with a dark beard. He observed the fast strictly and neither ate nor drank from sunrise to sunset, but he made up for his abstinence to some extent by a free use of his narghileh or water pipe.
He occupied a seat in the smoking room, a sort of divan where he could double one foot beneath him and rest almost motionless for hours. He carried in his left hand a string of beads, which he slowly told off with the fingers, a habit somewhat analogous to the Roman Catholic custom of counting the beads while saying prayers. With the Moslems this bead business has no religious significance, but is merely a pastime. Once I found him on deck saying his prayers, which he did with many genuflexions, bows, and prostrations. He was required to keep his face turned towards Mecca while praying, and as the boat was just then taking a somewhat tortuous course, I am afraid he did not make a strict compliance with the law.
At night during Ramadan the mosques are lighted and present a brilliant appearance. There is a double row of lights on each minaret, round the railing of the platform where the muezzin stands when he calls the people to prayer, and the effect is quite pretty.
It was nine o’clock at night when we reached Bucharest, the capital of Roumania, so that there was not much to be seen en route. But I was able to collect some information about the country, and as it is one of the Danubian principalities and forms an interrogation point of the “Eastern Question,” we will make a brief examination of its condition.
The principality of Roumania is formed by the union of the ancient provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. It contains about six thousand square leagues of territory, and five million inhabitants. Four millions of the latter belong to the Greek Church, and the rest are Armenians, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Gentiles, Moslems, and a hundred thousand or so don’t know what they are nor what they belong to. Then there are inhabitants who belong somewhere else, such as Germans, Hungarians, Greeks, English, French, Russians, and some who are ashamed to own the nations of their birth, for reasons best known to themselves.
The various sects and nationalities get along quite well together, with the exception of the Jews, who have a very hard time. They have been whipped and otherwise tortured on account of their opinions or as a cloak to robbery, and until quite recently it was not unusual to hear of the banishment or massacre of all the Jewish inhabitants of a village, town, or district. A better sentiment, or rather a less barbarous one, seems to prevail within the last year or two, and it is to be hoped that the persecutions are at an end or soon will be.
As an illustration of the treatment of the Jews, a gentleman told me that one day in Bucharest he heard screams issuing from a yard at the back of the hotel where he was lodged. He went to the window and saw a girl of eighteen or twenty tied to a stake. Her clothing was stripped from her shoulders and a strong man was whipping her while two others stood by. The gentleman asked what she had done, and was told “She is a Jewess!” No other cause was alleged, and the men appeared surprised when the stranger wished to know what crime she had committed.
The government of Roumania is very much like that of Servia, a constitutional principality which is independent, except that it pays a yearly tribute to Turkey. Servia pays twenty-five thousand pounds, and Roumania twice that amount. A member of the Hohenzollern family, under the title of Prince Charles of Roumania, occupies the throne, and his hereditary right is guaranteed by the Sultan, while the independence of Roumania is guaranteed by the seven powers that signed the treaty of Paris—Austria, France, England, Italy, Prussia, Russia, and Turkey. The constitutional rights of the people are like those of Servia, but the finances are not in as good condition, for the reason that the government has created debts in order to construct railways, and make other internal improvements. The network of railways already finished and now constructing is very good, and when united with the Austrian system, the resources of Roumania will be rapidly developed. The standing army has about twenty-five thousand men, and the militia includes every able bodied citizen.
In case of war one hundred thousand men could be put in the field in a very short time.
It must be a great consolation to Servia and Roumania that they are able to make so much trouble as they do, or rather that so much trouble is made about them. They are the bases of the “Eastern Question,” and if it were not for these two principalities, the ministers of foreign affairs in Turkey, Russia, and Austria would have their labor reduced one half, if not more. The correspondence that has passed between those governments concerning the principalities, is nearly as voluminous as that about the Alabama claims; in the past five centuries the principalities have been the cause or the object of about a dozen wars, and very likely will be the cause of fresh wars in time to come.
It is generally believed that Prussia and Italy don’t care a pin what Austria and Russia do with the East, and I fancy that if England and France could only get their money back, they wouldn’t care so much as they did at the time of the Crimean war. I suspect they have found out they made a mistake in backing up Turkey, and would like to get out of it gracefully.
I once championed a fellow who had been badly treated by his; neighbor—at least that was his story—and was in need of pecuniary and other aid. I defended him morally and physically, and more especially I loaned him money to buy a set of tools, and to clothe himself and family until he could earn money enough to repay me.
Well, what did he do? He bought a gold watch and chain with the money, when all the time he had a good silver watch, and then came round for more cash.
Turkey has been borrowing money in Europe, and some of her loans have been guaranteed by France and England. Nearly all the money has been wasted; a very little has gone for the construction of railways, but most of it has been put into palaces, diamonds for the women of the seraglio, ships of war, mosques, and the like, and every day there are thousands of pounds wasted on senseless displays. Here is a specimen case. They built an imperial palace known as the Palace Tshiragan, when they had already palaces enough for a dozen of Sultans. The Sultan moved into the building when it was finished—it cost two million pounds sterling, or about ten million dollars in gold—and he lived there just two days! Then he moved out because he had an unpleasant dream, and the palace will never again be occupied. It stands idle, empty, and beautiful on the banks of the Bosphorus, and will stand thus till destroyed.
A couple of years ago the Sultan commanded that a conservatory should be erected in his garden. Glass and other materials were ordered from Europe, and hundreds of men were set at work. It was finished at a cost of over a million of dollars, and His Majesty went to see it. The old idiot—I wish to be respectful as he is a Sultan—was not in a good temper for some reason, and determined not be pleased. He raised his languid eyes to the roof of the building and then turned away.
“I don’t like it,” he said; “destroy it!”
And before night every piece of glass was broken, and the beautiful conservatory was leveled. This is the way the Sultan and his government have been using the money borrowed at a high rate of interest; and they are now borrowing money at high interest to pay that interest. This thing will go on until Turkey can borrow no more money, and then the whole concern will collapse. When she can’t borrow any more, the probabilities are, she will stop the interest on her present debt and give herself no trouble about the principal. Turkey, as a nation, is very much like a great many of her subjects. Every traveller in the East will tell you that he is constantly appealed to to give “backsheesh”—i. e. a gratuity—not only by those who have served him, but by those who have rendered no service whatever, and do not expect to. From the time you enter the Orient till the time you leave it, that word is dinned into your ears so continually that it seems like one prolonged echo.
As the natives, young or old, masculine, feminine, or neuter (the latter are the guardians of the harems), appeal thus to the individual foreigner, so Turkey as a nation squats or stands before other nations, and takes up the perpetual demand for “backsheesh.” The foreigner, when first entering the Orient, generally submits to the appeal, and gives of his abundance; but he soon finds that begging is universal, and that the purse of Fortunatus would soon touch bottom. So he becomes prudent, especially as the Oriental is never satisfied. Whether you give copper, silver, or gold, by the piece or by the handful, is all the same, the begging or rather the demanding continues.
The nations and moneyed men of Europe are learning the habits of the Turk, and emulating the example of prudent travellers. Turkey is about at the end of her borrowing, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire is one of the near possibilities. Russia is patiently waiting; Austria is waiting; Prussia is waiting; and the other nations are waiting for the dissolving view which will enable them to reconstruct the map of Europe. None of them are likely to take any measures to hurry “the sick man” to his end, as he is going in that direction with a rapidity that ought to be satisfactory to the on-lookers.
Through fleets of ships and steamers we threaded our way from Galatz and along a tortuous channel through a forest of reeds, till we passed Selino, and were tossing on the waters of the Black sea, with the prow of our steamer towards Odessa.
