It is wonderful how soon one gets accustomed to roughing it, and doing without the comforts and luxuries of daily life, and it is delightful to discover that civilization is only skin-deep after all. On the second morning it seemed no hardship to perform our toilet at a mountain spring shrouded in a pine-tree boudoir; empty bottles were very worthy substitutes for silver candlesticks; and for brushing our dress and cleansing our boots, a wild Wallachian peasant quite as useful as a trained femme de chambre.
Dress and fashion, uniforms and coffee-houses, the wearisome chit-chat of a little country town, as well as the intricacies of European politics, had all passed out of our lives as though they had never existed, leaving no regret, scarcely even a memory. It seemed hardly possible to believe that such useless and unnatural things as false hair, diamond ear-rings, military parades, cream-laid note-paper, calling-cards, sugar-tongs, intrigue, envy, and ambition existed somewhere or other about the world. Were there really other forms of music extant than the lullaby of the water-fall, and the wild pibroch of the wind among the fir-stems? other sorts of perfumes than the pine wood fragrance and the breath of wild thyme?
While we were thus revelling in the pure ozone above, two emperors were meeting in some dull corner of the dingy earth below,[83] and all Europe was looking on and holding its breath, in order to catch some echo of the royal syllables interchanged.
For our part, we completely skipped this page of European history, and felt none the worse of it. Everything changes proportion up here, and a real eagle becomes of far more absorbing interest than a double-headed one. We were virtually as isolated as though cast on a desert island in the Pacific; and but for one messenger despatched to assure us of the welfare of our respective families, we had no communication with the world we had left.
Here we had a hundred other sources of interest of more absorbing and healthier kind than the so-called pleasures we had left below. First there was the water-fall, a never-failing element of beauty and interest. It was delightful to sketch it, sitting on a moss-grown stone at the edge of the torrent; it was yet more delightful to clamber up to its base, and clinging on to a rock, receive the breath of its spray full on our face, and enjoy at close quarters the musical thunder of its voice. Not far from this was the place where, three years previously, the great avalanche had swept over the valley, felling prostrate every tree which came in its passage. All across one side of the glen, and half-way up the opposite hill, can still be traced the ravaging march of the destroying forces; for here the woodman never comes with his axe, and each tree still lies prostrate where it was stricken down, like giant ninepins overthrown; and here they will lie undisturbed till they rot away and turn to soft red dust, mute vouchers of the terrible power of unchained nature. One felt inclined to envy the bears and eagles for this glorious sight, of which they alone can have been the fortunate spectators.
Another point of interest indicated by our guides was the bridge of fir-stems over a steep ravine, where years ago a terrified flock of sheep, pursued by a bear in broad daylight, had leaped down over the precipitous edge, upwards of three hundred breaking their legs in their frenzied attempts to escape.
The shepherds who lived above in the stony valley came frequently down to our shelter-hut, and we used to find them comfortably ensconced at our camp-fire, in deep conversation with the guides. In their lonely existence it must have been a pleasant experience to have neighbors at all within reach, and our hospitable camp-fire was doubtless as good as a fashionable club to their simple minds. They brought us of their sheep’s milk and cheese. The latter, called here brindza, was very palatable, and the milk much thicker and richer than cow’s milk, but of a peculiar taste which I failed to appreciate.
There was a shepherdess, too, belonging to the establishment; but let no one, misled by the appellation, instinctively conjure up visions of delicate pastel-paintings or coquettish porcelain figurines, for anything more utterly at variance with the associations suggested by the names of Watteau and Vieux Saxe, than the uncouth, swarthy, one-eyed damsel who inhabited the bergerie, cannot well be imagined. The male shepherds were four in number—two of them calling for no special description; the third, a boy of about fourteen, with large, senseless eyes and a fixed, idiotic stare, looked no more than semi-human. The most distinguished member of the party, and, as we ladies unanimously agreed, decidedly the flower of the flock, was a good-looking young man of some twenty years, with straight-cut, regular features, a high brown fur cap, and a wooden flute on which he played in a queer, monotonous fashion, resembling the droning tones of a bagpipe. He had come from Roumania, he told us, and had been for a time tending flocks in Turkey, where he had picked up something of the language. It was a curious country, he observed, and the people there had curious habits—such, for instance, as that of keeping several wives; the richer a man was, the more wives he kept. Our young shepherd shrugged his shoulders as he made this remark in a supercilious manner, evidently of opinion that women were an evil which should not be unnecessarily multiplied; and certainly, judging from the solitary specimen of female beauty which the stony valley contained, no man could feel tempted to embark in a very extensive harem.
We afterwards ascertained that the interesting shepherd with the fur cap and wooden flute had committed a murder over in Roumania, and been obliged to fly the country on that account. This disclosure rendered us somewhat more reserved in our intercourse with our romantic neighbor, and though we could not exactly put a stop to his visits, we avoided over-intimacy, and always felt more at ease in his society when there was a gun or revolver within handy reach.
Our Wallachian guides proved thoroughly satisfactory in every way—active, obliging, and full of inventive resources. They were very particular about keeping their fast-days as prescribed by the Greek Church, and would refuse all offers of food at such times. When not fasting they were easily made happy by any scraps of cheese or bacon left over from our meals, or by a glassful of spirits of wine judiciously adulterated with water. On one occasion a parcel containing a dozen hard-boiled eggs, grown stale (to put it mildly) from having been overlooked, was received with positive rapture by one of these unsophisticated beings, who devoured them every one with a heartfelt relish not to be mistaken.