Some herdsmen had made contracts for bringing down 300,000 sheep into the plains, paid the fees for the contract, and the stipulated sum to the peasants. All the arrangements seemed in perfect order until the arrival of the flocks upon the different grazing grounds, when they were driven off with violence and brutality by the forest-keepers and their subordinates, who declared that they had no right to the pasturage unless they paid the rent. The poor people produced their contract to show that they had paid the money, and refused to do so a second time; justly observing that, if any illegal action existed in the renting of the pasturage, it regarded the Government and the villagers, and not them, and that the Government should reclaim the money from the peasants. This dispute lasted a week; some of the Wallachians referred it to the local authorities, while others in their distress applied to any person from whom assistance could be expected. Day after day these men, women, and children might be seen in the streets of the town with desponding, careworn faces, anxiously looking out for some of their people who might tell them how the case was prospering. When I saw them no more about the town, I asked one of the principal officials how the affair had terminated; he replied, “Madame, malheureusement le gouvernement n’a pas su encore mettre toutes ces choses en ordre, et il nous arrive souvent de ces cas tristes; mais ça vient d’être arrangé.” He would not enlighten me further on the subject, but I subsequently learnt that a great amount of bakhshish had settled the matter in favor of the Wallachians.
CHAPTER VIII.
PEASANT HOLDINGS.
Small Proprietors South of the Balkans—Flourishing State of the Country a few Years ago—A Rose-Harvest at Kezanlik—Bulgarian Villages—Oppressive and Corrupt System of Taxation and of Petty Government—The Disadvantages counterbalanced by the Industry and Perseverance of the Bulgarian Peasant—The Lending Fund in Bulgaria—Its Short Duration—Bulgarian Peasant often unavoidably in Debt—Bulgarian Cottages—Food and Clothing—Excellent Reports of German and Italian Engineers on the Conduct and Working Power of Bulgarian Laborers—Turkish Peasants—Turkish Villages—Comparative Merits of Turkish and Bulgarian Peasants—Land in Macedonia—Chiefly Large Estates—Chiftliks—The Konak, or Residence of the Owner—Country Life of the Bey and his Family—His Tenants (Yeradjis)—Character of the Yeradji—His Wretched Condition—The Metayer System Unfairly Worked—The Yeradji generally in Debt—Virtually a Serf bound to the Soil—Difficulty of getting Peasants to become Yeradjis—Statute Labor—Cultivation and Crops.
The land south of the Balkans, from the Black Sea to the frontier of Macedonia, is divided into small holdings, which belong to and are farmed by a peasant population of an essentially agricultural nature. Before the late destruction of property in Bulgaria, almost every peasant in those districts was a proprietor of from five to forty acres, which he farmed himself. The larger estates, of which there were a considerable number, were superintended by the proprietors themselves, but farmed by hired laborers. The following figures will give an idea of the average extent of the holdings in those districts: Out of a thousand farms, three had five hundred acres; thirty had between one hundred and five hundred; three hundred between fifty and a hundred; four hundred between ten and fifty; and two hundred and sixty-seven under ten acres. All these lands were well cultivated and yielded rich returns. I was astonished at the beauty and flourishing condition of the country during a journey I made some years ago from Adrianople to Servia. It appeared like a vast and fruitful garden. The peace-loving and toiling Bulgarian was seen everywhere steadily going through his daily work, while his equally active and industrious wife and daughters were cheerfully working by his side. En route, I stopped a few days in the lovely town of Kezanlik, and was most kindly received by its well-to-do and intelligent inhabitants, who pressed their hospitality upon me with a genuine kindness never to be forgotten. I visited the schools, in which the people prided themselves as much as in the astonishing progress the pupils were making in their studies. I was also taken on a round of visits into well-built clean houses where European furniture was beginning to find a place, and contrasted pleasantly with the well-made native tissues that covered sofas and floors. At dawn next morning a tap at my door announced that it was time to rise and witness the rose-gathering, which I wished to see. The roses begin to be collected before sunrise, in order to keep in them all the richness of their perfume. It requires expedition and many hands; so large bands of young men and maidens, adding pleasure to toil whilst gathering the roses, amuse themselves by carrying on their innocent little flirtations and love-makings.
The large garden to which I was conducted belonged to the wealthy Chorbadji in whose house I was staying. It was at some distance from the town, and by the time we reached it the bright rays of a lovely spring morning were fast spreading over the horizon. The field was thickly planted with rose-bushes, with their rich harvest of half-open dew-laden buds. The nightingales, in flights, hovered over them, disputing their possession with the light-hearted Bulgarian harvesters, and chorusing with their rich notes the gay songs of the scattered company, who, dressed in their Prasnik (feast-day) clothes,—the youths in snow-white shirts and gaudy sleeveless vests, the girls in their picturesque costume, the colored kerchiefs on their heads floating in the breeze,—had the appearance of a host of butterflies flitting over the flowers. The girls were actively and cheerfully employed in stripping off the buds and throwing them into the baskets slung on their arms. The youths helped them in the task, and were rewarded each with a bud from his sweetheart, which he placed in his cap. The children ran to and fro emptying the baskets into larger receptacles presided over by the matrons, who sat under the shade of the trees and sorted the roses. The whole picture was so bright and happy, in such harmony with the luxuriant beauty surrounding it, that I was perfectly fascinated by it, and felt almost envious of those happy beings (as I then thought them), the careless simple children of nature. Their happiness was not for long.
It is not a week since my attention was attracted by an article in one of our papers describing the destruction of Kezanlik and the horrors the writer had witnessed. The once smiling and fruitful district was become the valley of the shadow of death.
The general appearance of the villages in Bulgaria was very pleasing. Those in the plains were not so well built or so picturesque as those nestled among the hills, where the abundance and cheapness of the material needed for building afforded greater facilities for more solid and more artistic construction. Some of these villages had increased to such an extent as to look like small towns. This was owing to the more equal division of land among the people and the large number of landed proprietors that cultivated it. In the midst of the difficulties that surrounded them, such as an irregular and unequal system of taxation and the encroachment and tyrannies of petty government officials, Zaptiehs, Circassians, and sometimes native beys—the Bulgarian peasant, by his steady and persevering habits of industry, managed to get on, and in some places, when favored by circumstances, even to become wealthy. A species of lending fund was organized (since the introduction of the vilayet system) by the provincial government, chiefly for the benefit of the peasant class of proprietors. The capital of this fund was derived from an annual tax of two bushels of wheat (or their equivalent in money) levied on every yoke of oxen owned by the farmers, and of money contributed by those not engaged in agriculture, to the value of one-tenth of their income-tax. The agricultural interest of the country derived great advantage from this institution. It helped the small farmers to borrow the sum needed for the cultivation of their crops and the purchase of stock at a reasonable rate of interest, and enabled those who had large estates to improve them without mortgaging; while others were enabled to free their estates from the mortgages which already burdened them. I believe that this excellent institution did not long continue in working order, and that latterly it was beyond the reach of those who really needed the money and might have benefited both their farms and the State by its use.
As a general rule, the Bulgarian peasant is not wealthy. There are many villages that were so deeply in debt that for years they had not been able to pay their taxes. A rising was occasioned in one of the villages of the district of Sofia on this account. The Pasha of Sofia had been pressed by the Porte to send some money to Constantinople; he, on his part, had to collect it from the people. Calling up a Chaoush of Zaptiehs, he told him to make the round of the villages, and, under pain of instant dismissal, not to return empty-handed. The Zaptieh was a bandit, like many of his brethren who have represented the police corps since the diminution of pay and abolition of the excellent body that had been organized by the wise policy of Fuad Pasha and Ali Pasha. He marched with his band into one of the villages and demanded that £400 should at once be paid to him. The men were absent from the village, and the women, not authorized to act in such matters, could not accede to his demand. The Zaptiehs then seized some and locked them up in a barn, and, after subjecting them to gross ill-treatment, left the village. The unfortunate peasants, thus pressed by the authorities for taxes they could not pay, and subjected to foul and violent treatment, revolted.
A Bulgarian cottage is neither neat nor regular in construction. A number of poles are stuck in the ground, secured to each other by wattles, plastered within and without with clay and cow-dung mixed with straw. The walls are generally whitewashed, and the roof raised to a dome covered with tiles or thatch. The interior, divided into three rooms, is neat and clean. One of the apartments is used as the living-room of the family, another as sleeping-room, while the third is reserved for storing provisions and such-like domestic purposes. These rooms are of tolerable height, and from fifteen to twenty feet long and ten to fifteen wide. The earthen floor is hardened and covered with coarse matting and woollen rugs, the handiwork of the inmates. The furniture consists principally of the thick woven tissues used for bedding and carpeting.
Pictures of the saints and relics from Mount Athos adorn the walls; a night-lamp may be seen suspended before the most venerated of these objects, serving the double purpose of veilleuse and mark of regard to the saint. The shelves round the walls contain the crockery and shining copper pans, a pair of pistols, and various other articles. The bedding, neatly rolled up, is piled in one corner, while near the door stand the jars of fresh water. Attached to these cottages are sheds for the farm stock; and a cow-house, pig-sty, and poultry-house, an oven, and sometimes a well, are inclosed in the yard, which is surrounded by walls or fences, and guarded by dogs.