commemorating his victory over nature as well as over man. Nature has not forgiven Trajan the desecration of this, one of her sublimest works, and in the lapse of centuries she has gradually eaten away the hard rock tablet, threatening it with utter destruction, in spite of the projecting stone above it, until solid masonry supports have been erected to hold the shattered inscription in its place. As we were sketching the spot, with its interesting traces of the Roman road showing where the posts were fastened to the rock to support the platforms necessary to widen the path, two natives came paddling up under the edge of the cliff in a dugout canoe, and moored their boat at the corner, where, on the old Roman road-bed, they had a little fishing camp. Canoe, implements, dress, were the same as in the days when their remote ancestors piloted Trajan’s galleys through the dangerous eddies of the defile. Dacia Felix is now only a name, and a shattered tablet and crumbling traces of the first great highway along the Danube alone remain to remind us of the great general’s conquests of this remote region, and to suggest something of the civilization he founded there. But the peasant is still unchanged in type and costume, speaks a language closely allied to the old Roman dialect, tills the ground and catches fish with the same rude implements that Trajan found in the hands of the happy barbarians of Dacia Felix.
It was long after dark before we steered our canoes by the twinkling lights of Orsova to the steamboat-landing there. The tinkle of gypsy music in the garden restaurant by the river-bank echoed across the silently-flowing stream, now silvered by the moon, which tardily rose above the great mountains. We heard again the soft accents of the Magyar tongue and the intoxicating strains of the csáardás. The wild gypsy leader poured his music into our eager ears, drawing his nervous bow under our very hat-brims, lest we should lose some quaver of the stirring chords. Long into the night we sat there, captive to the music and the beauty of the moonlit landscape, loath to lose one moment of the few precious hours that remained to us in bewitching, beloved Hungary.
REMAINS OF TRAJAN’S ROAD NEAR ORSOVA
Like all frontier towns, Orsova has a heterogeneous population, which gives interest to an otherwise dull and unattractive place. Besides its commercial importance on the river, and also on the through railway line from Budapest to Bucharest, it is, in summer-time at least, the halting-place for the great multitudes of Roumanians and Hungarians who resort to the baths of Méhadia, or the Herkulesbad, as it is usually called, from the old Roman name, Thermae Herculis, a most picturesque and luxurious establishment of sulphur baths a few miles inland, in a wonderful gorge of the Carpathians.
Among the motley collection of peasants seen in the streets, the Turk in all his squalor is met here for the first time on the Danube. By the Treaty of Berlin, the small fortified island of Ada Kaleh, three miles below Orsova, was ceded to Austria, and the citadel was ordered to be razed. But as the whole population consisted of Turks, and there seemed to be no humane method of getting rid of them, they were allowed to linger on, not acquiring rights of citizenship in Austria, nor yet responsible to the Sultan in any way, paying no taxes to either Austro-Hungary or Turkey. The wily Turk makes the most of his position, and drives a thriving trade in all sorts of knick-knacks, picks up a good income out of the crowd of tourists who visit the island for a sight of a real Turk in his own home, and sells the best tobacco that can be bought north of the Balkans, and at prices which argue against his assurance that he has paid duty for it at the Austrian customs. Just beyond this island the Danube bends sharply to the south-east, and three or four miles below the Roumanian frontier tumbles its full, broad current over a great ledge of rocks, which for a mile and a half in width extend across the river, and leaving only a narrow and intricate channel for steamers near the Roumanian shore, always dangerous to navigation, and at low-water impassable except by boats of shallow draught. In this mile and a half of rapids the river falls sixteen feet, and the broad defile at this point is known as the Iron Gates.
FROM BELGRADE TO RUSTCHUK