In the broad straight reaches of the river the frequent
ON THE BULGARIAN SHORE, NEAR RAHOVA
sand-banks were covered with water-fowl. Thousands upon thousands of noisy wild-geese, hosts of ducks, plover, and other game birds, rose into the air as we approached, almost deafening us with their cries. Wheeling round in broad circles, they settled down again before we had fairly passed them. Ranks of solemn pelicans awkwardly flopped into the water, and swam ahead of us in stately dignity scarcely out of pistol-shot, turning their huge, ill-balanced beaks from side to side, and if we came too near, flew up with a tremendous splashing and fluttering. Tall herons soared away out of the shallows on every side, and swans and storks sailed overhead in graceful flight. Sometimes we paddled in the full light of noonday up to within a few yards of slender, white cranes wading among the water-grasses, and once approached within a paddle’s length of a large gray heron standing on one leg and blinking in the brilliant glare of the sun. The flora of the river-bank in this region is best described in a quotation from Alfred Parsons’ note-book: “By the camp opposite Kalafat was a very handsome sedge with brown flowers, a mass of blossoms of the flowering rush, and plenty of excellent dewberries. A flat below Lom Palanka was covered with a thorny, leguminous shrub, tufts of small purple flowers and prickly red seed-pods, small yellow asters, tall scabious with pale blossoms, and chiccory, which has been a constant flower for a long distance down the river. The slopes above the limestone cliffs below Rahova were covered with feather sumac and lilac bushes. Wild-grape vines grow all over the willows on an island above Sistova, and the marshy lake near there had great yellow patches of villarsia. On the edge of this lake grow arrow-head and flowering rush, and where the land is drier are seen purple and yellow dwarf thistles, a small scentless heliotrope, and a white scutellaria. Tamarisk grows on the sandy flats.”
TURKISH FLAT-BOAT