THE LAST TOILET IN CAMP
our bows. The wind had risen again at sunset, the shallow water grew rougher and rougher every moment, and delay was fatal unless we chose to pass the night moored to a snag, or in the shelter of the reeds on the shore. At first we thought of taking refuge at one of the fishermen’s huts among the reeds at the mouth of the passage, but, discovering a white building far across the bay in the direction of Sulina, we headed our canoes for that, knowing we should find solid earth there, and paddled harder than we had done since we shot the rapids at the Iron Gates. Drenched with spray from the high cross-seas, we finally reached the other shore just as darkness was shutting down, and, pushing through a great bed of reeds, came out into a little muddy pool, with a landing made of logs close by the little whitewashed house we had seen from a distance. A half-dozen sailors of the Roumanian navy welcomed us heartily as we landed, insisted on carrying up our canoes and luggage, and helped us pitch our camp on a dry sandy spot near their quarters. It was the evening of the 9th of September, and the journey from the Black Forest to the Black Sea had occupied us eleven weeks and one day, including twenty-eight days we had spent in excursions away from the river and our delays at Vienna, Hainburg, and Budapest. We had paddled and sailed 1775 miles through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Russia.
The following morning we were on our feet at dawn, eager to see what sort of country we had reached in the darkness. We found that we were at the “cordon,” or one of the Roumanian customs picket posts, on a point of land called Cape Masoura, and that we had come out into the Black Sea through that branch of the river called the Zaliv. The bay we had crossed in the twilight was an ancient mouth of the river, not navigable within the memory of man. Our camp was on the edge of a broad, rough meadow, bordered on the north by great shallows where the sea is eating into the land, and extending for miles to the southward, where a range of sand-dunes hides Sulina from view, and to the west towards dark masses of the great forest on a low, sandy elevation which marks the line of the ancient sea-coast. The whole tract as far as we could see was gay with wild-flowers. In Alfred Parsons’ note-book are enumerated among the plants found on this sandy flat, sea-lavender (Stalice latifolia), small Michaelmas daisy, just coming into blossom, large-leaved meconopsis, mauve lactuca, and several yellow composite flowers. In the lakes of the delta among the reeds he found water-lilies, villarsia, frogbit, a floating plant like a yucca, with thorny edges to the leaves, a sort of duck-weed with rough primate leaves, and on the river-banks, loosestrife, hemp, agrimony, flowering rush, and a thick undergrowth of marsh fern.
We cooked a most elaborate breakfast, made our farewell camp toilet before the nickle-plated rudder which served us as a mirror, and then parted with everything but our raiment among the sailors, who had been interested but shy spectators of all these operations. The wind was blowing half a gale, but with plenty of daylight before us we had no hesitation in tempting the dangers of the Black Sea, and about the middle of the forenoon left the cheery company happy in the possession of all our pots and pans, and set out in the direction of Sulina. The sailors assured us that we would not be able for several days to enter the river on account of the breakers running at the bar, but we proposed to skirt the coast as far as we could go, and then see what would turn up.
We worked our way out of the tangle of reeds and across the shallows into the open water and turned our bows to the southward, where a long sand-beach stretched away in a graceful curve. A double line of breakers followed the
BY THE BLACK SEA