The young merchants, who frankly told us they were Hebrews, although their type of face did not betray this fact, gave us detailed information about the village, the life there, the character of the people, and the extent of the fish business. From them we learned that Vilkoff counts about 4000 inhabitants, of whom at least 1500 follow the hazardous occupation of fishing for sturgeon in the Black Sea. Five merchants, all of them Jews, divide the trade in fish and caviar between them, and practically own the place and also the people, body and soul. Each trader has his contingent of 300 or more fishermen, whom he supplies with their outfit, all the necessities of life and unlimited vodki, all on the credit system, and takes as payment the entire product of their toil. The natural consequence of this system is that the poor wretches of fishermen are always deeply in debt to the merchants, and pass their whole lives in as degrading a state of slavery as ever was endured by man. The only relief they have from the tyranny of their masters and the hardships of the occupation they follow is all too frequent indulgence in the oblivion of inebriety. Our hosts did not think there was anything extraordinary in our experience with the Custom-house officials, and seemed to think that, considering the fact that no stranger had ever landed at Vilkoff within their memory, we had got on very well there. One of them related an incident which perfectly illustrates the unreasonable severity of the customs regulations as they are carried out in this part of the Danube. On one occasion he came down from Kilia with a lotka loaded with fishermen’s supplies and was detained by head-winds, so he did not arrive until after the Custom-house officials had gone home for the night. The guard on the quay, who had known him from childhood, not only prohibited him from landing his cargo, but would not allow him to go ashore himself. He was therefore obliged to sit in the boat fighting mosquitoes all night long, and wait until nine o’clock in the morning before he could get his passport stamped, so that he could land and go home. This, he assured us, was no unusual adventure, and it is a recognized fact that when the head officer of the Custom-house is at his meals or is taking a nap, the whole business of the port is temporarily suspended. Of course this would hardly be the case if Vilkoff were on any route of travel. But this far-off settlement is not within two days’ drive of a
ROUMANIAN SAILORS AT THE “CORDON”
railway, and no steamer ever comes through the Kilia arm, because the numerous channels into which it divides at Vilkoff are all of them shallow, and only navigable by small fishing-boats.
The sturgeon is chiefly valuable for the roe or caviar which is found in it, but the meat finds ready sale, fresh or pickled. In sturgeon fishing the men employ long strings of large hooks without barbs, suspended by stout cords a yard long from a rope strung with cork floats. These hooks are not baited, but are hung very closely together, so that when the fish is swimming near the surface, as he usually does, he runs against them, and entangling himself by the violence of his struggles is easily captured. We saw a medium-sized fish brought to the warehouse at Vilkoff, where the caviar was extracted. There was just about enough to fill an ordinary bucket, and the trader told us it was worth on the spot about 160 francs. The roe is held together by a net-work of delicate fibres and a gelatinous substance not unlike thin starch in appearance. The eggs are separated from this envelope by carefully rubbing them through a coarse sieve, and the caviar is then ready for the table. The extremely delicate nature of caviar will not permit of its transportation unless it is preserved in some way, and it is usually put on the market in small quantities salted, or in bulk salted and pressed. There is as much difference between the flavor of the fresh and the salted caviar as there is between ripe and dried figs, or between grapes and raisins. The amateur of this delicacy really enjoys it only within twenty-four hours after it is taken from the fish.
The afternoon was fast passing and we were getting impatient to be off when, luckily, at about four o’clock the violence of the gale diminished somewhat, and we at once prepared to start. A ludicrous expression of relief came over the old man’s face when we asked for our passports and told him we were going away. He became cheerful and amiable, and confided in us, as we bade him good-bye, that he was a Pole, and had been in the service of the Government for over forty years, and was very much afraid he would have lost his place if he had permitted us to pass the night in the village. We had a paddle of ten miles before us, and about two hours of daylight to do it in, and we set off in good spirits, looking forward with agreeable anticipations to our camp on the sea-shore. Soon after leaving Vilkoff we entered a maze of channels among low islands, where our horizon was limited by the rank of tall reeds along the shores. We met several lotkas with fishermen paddling up to the village from their summer huts near the sea-coast, and a large patrol-boat full of Roumanian soldiers near a large picket station, and, judging from these indications that we were in the right passage, we paddled steadily on.
In an hour and a half the stream curved round to the south east, and we were enabled to take advantage of the wind and hoisted sail at once. Just as the sun was setting we came into a short reach, scarcely wider than the Danube at Donaueschingen, and there, in front of us, was the straight line of the sea-horizon stretching across between two low, reed-covered points. In a few moments more we sailed out gayly into the Black Sea. The broad open expanse of the sea was before us, all yellow and glowing with the reflection of the gorgeous sunset sky, and the light on the jetty at Sulina glimmered brightly in the distance. But we could see neither beach nor sand-dunes, and for a long distance in front of us and on either side, as far as we could distinguish in the dim light, stumps of trees, ugly snags, and bunches of reeds were sticking up out of the water. No possible camp-ground was visible anywhere, and for a moment we scarcely knew what to do or which way to turn
