EN miles below Silistria the Roumanian frontier crosses the river, and the district of the Dobrudscha begins. To our surprise, the line of pickets still continued along the left bank, although we were fairly in the Roumanian kingdom, and now and then a soldier would appear in sight, take a lively interest as we passed, and sometimes order us to come ashore. We treated these summonses with scorn, and paddled along heedless of the shouts which followed us.
The river life was fast becoming more active as we went down. Numerous tow-boats with lighters passed to and fro, and every open reach was lively with gaudily painted sailing-vessels, manned by Turks dressed in all colors of the rainbow, and looking as little like sailors as the craft they were in looked like modern civilized ships. On one occasion we were watching a large fleet of these quaint vessels merrily careering up-stream with a favorable wind, when a sudden squall struck them and scattered them like leaves with the violence of its blast. One succeeded in gaining the land in deep water, and made fast to the trees there, and through the dense showers of rain which followed the wind we could see the remainder of the proud fleet, all scattered and dilapidated, stranded along the shore in every direction. We now had our own boats to look after, for there was no shelter in which to land! A group of friendly Greek lighters in tow gave us but temporary protection from the squall, for, as the storm increased in violence and the wind veered round, we found ourselves on as ugly a lee shore as could be imagined—the iron sides of a loaded barge. However, we managed at last to moor the canoes under the overhanging stern of one of the lighters, and, in company with a native boat full of men and women, rode out the storm in safety.
ROUMANIAN PEASANTS SELLING FLOWERS AND FRUIT
From Silistria to Chernavoda the topography of the country near the river alters very little in character, but we noted various other changes which interested us. The type of small boat was now entirely different from the rude skiff farther up-stream, resembling the Turkish caïque, with high pointed bow and stern; and our old friends, the current-mills, no longer had a supplementary scow to support the axle, but, with a wheel on either side, made a sort of caricature of a steamboat anchored in the stream. On the hills above the villages numerous windmills waved their long arms, testifying to the prevalence of wind, and everywhere ancient tumuli broke the rounded contours of the grassy summits. Here, too, Trajan has left an imperishable monument to his mighty conquest—an immense wall of earth, which extends across the Dobrudscha from Chernavoda to Kustendji on the Black Sea, and the high rampart is plainly visible on the great rolling hills, apparently as well preserved in shape after the lapse of so many centuries as the Russian earthworks constructed a decade and a half ago on the neighboring summits. A fine railway bridge is now building across the river at Chernavoda, to connect the Kustendji Railway with the Roumanian system, and immense stone piers on the north bank are already finished. The construction-shops and workmen’s quarters in connection with this enterprise have transformed the simple little village of Chernavoda into a hideously commonplace settlement. At this point the river sweeps round in a wide curve, changing its course from a general easterly to a northerly direction, and at Hirsova, thirty miles below—a long straggling town at the foot of a bold spur of rocky hills—it divides into a number of small branches, which enclose and intersect with sinuous windings a great irregular marsh, twelve or fifteen miles in width, and extending to the River Pruth, at the Russian frontier, fifty miles to the north.
As we left Hirsova, near the end of the day, and saw the
HIRSOVA