About three hours’ paddle below Widdin we came to the flourishing town of Lom Palanka, famous for the purity of its water, and somewhat renowned for the quality of its wine. We ran ashore, intending to fill our wine-bottles and then to move on to an early camp. We fancied that the Lom Palankians would be eager to welcome us when they saw us land prepared to trade, but the delegation who met us as we floundered out of the mud looked uncommonly hostile, every man wearing a uniform, and all more or less heavily armed. Escape was impossible, so we began to parley, and asked the way to a wine-shop with as much politeness as our meagre vocabulary allowed. The only response to this question was a stern demand for our passports. We promptly produced them, and, to our chagrin and astonishment, saw them disappear in the capacious pocket of the chief officer of the little army. The Custom-house people at Widdin had told us that we could land anywhere to buy stores without giving up our papers, and we explained this as well as we were able, and demanded our passports again, preparing to leave without making our desired purchases. Remonstrances were worse than idle, for they soon led to our arrest, and we were marched off to the police-station, a long way up the main street. The chief was not in his office, and he
BULGARIAN VILLAGE
was unearthed from his hiding-place only after a half-hour’s search by a large scouting party of policemen. The usual series of questions was put to us, and we sandwiched our replies between bursts of indignant language, which perhaps it would be unwise to chronicle here. The pachydermatous young man, bristling with authority, and assuming the indifference of immeasurable superiority, paid little attention to our explanations or our expletives, and after slowly spelling out the words from our passport, “We, Robert, Arthur, Talbot, Gascoyne Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, Earl of Salisbury, Viscount Cranborne, Baron Cecil,” and from the other, “Robert Lincoln,” copied the numbers in a book, ordered us to sign our names, and then let us go. Hot with wrath at the delay, we paddled off, determined to leave Lom Palanka out of sight if we had to sleep in a swamp. We had the good-fortune, however, to discover just after dark a reasonably good camp-ground on a low bank of sun-baked mud covered with coarse grasses, and the next morning found we had chosen the spot where the natives had their summer clam-bakes, for great heaps of fresh-water clamshells, the well-picked bones of a sheep or two, and traces of recent fires were scattered all around us.
CHAPTER XVII
BECALMED
Between Lom Palanka and Sistova, a stretch of about 150 miles—which, by-the-way, we paddled in less than two days and a half—there are only three towns on the river, Cibar Palanka, Rahova, and Nicopolis, and these are all Bulgarian. There are two or three busy grain-shipping stations on the Roumanian side, however, and we could see on the edge of a low plateau, miles back from the river, frequent prosperous-looking places, and, opposite Nicopolis, the church-towers of Turnu Magurelli, one of the most important towns in southern Roumania, rising above the trees. This shore of the river is, for almost the entire distance referred to, a broad, low marsh, intersected by numerous lagoons and shallow, irregular lakes, often ten miles or more in length. The lonely picket-stations are the only human habitations along the bank. In agreeable contrast to this dull and desolate waste of marsh and willow swamp, is the rich pastoral country of Bulgaria opposite. Although villages and farm-houses are not numerous, we saw everywhere abundant signs of life. The meadows were dotted with hay-stacks, and great net-works of deeply-worn cattle-paths scored the smooth slopes of the hills, all burned yellow by the summer sun. Before the greatest heat of the day came on, immense herds of cattle and buffaloes, driven by Turkish cowboys, rushed panting down the hill-side in a cloud of dust to cool themselves in the stream. The buffaloes wallowed in the muddy places, and then lay down with the tops of their heads alone visible above water, like uncouth amphibious animals. Great flocks of sheep stood on the shore by the water’s edge, crowding together in a solid mass, and holding their heads close to the ground to escape the heat from the direct rays of the sun, and multitudes of goats were scattered all over the steep and arid slopes. The shepherds dig little shallow caves in the mud bluffs, with steps leading to them, where they lie and sleep for hours in the daytime; others curl up in the gullies, so that every yard of shade on the rough bank has its human or its animal occupant, and sometimes men and goats, both seeking to avoid the sun, lie down peacefully together in the same narrow cleft or in the shadow of the same projecting corner.