We have seen a great deal since I wrote to you,—the large silent mosques with their space and simplicity, the triple walls which surround the town, with ancient Greek inscriptions built into them. The Golden Gate in them, thro’ which the emperors made triumphal entry; the walled-up gate, so dealt with because the Turks believe the Christians will re-enter by that gate; wonderful old Christian churches now converted into mosques, with the crosses and Christian symbols mutilated—one, however, very beautiful, where the mosaics were preserved. Then we have seen the large vault underground, supported by 1001 columns in old times, built to supply Byzantium with water; the strange cemeteries of the Turks, the dismallest of places; the stones high and narrow are tumbling about in every direction like ninepins; the graves are in quite untold numbers by the road sides, on banks, in ditches, anywhere and everywhere, without fence, without protection, without reverence; even the cypress trees among them look forlorn, and the stones much more forlorn because of the vermilion and emerald green and cobalt and gold, which once made them gay. It was such a contrast to cross to Skutari, where the British dead, who fell in the Crimea, lie. The ground is enclosed with a well-built wall; it is quite bright with flowering trees and shrubs, and lies on the sunniest slope overlooking the blue sea. Comparatively few graves have any stone, or name, or record; but the greenest, brightest, sunniest, best cared-for turf covers them. The inscriptions suggest such stories; here the record of two brothers about 20, surviving one another 4 days; several erected by brother officers, one to a private by his companions, one by a young sister to her brother, who, she says, “cheerfully surrendered his life to his country”; nineteen, twenty, even eighteen once or twice, are frequent ages for the dead. The hospital, where Miss Nightingale worked, stands just above and looks so good, and solid, and in order. We went a ride yesterday round by the Sweet Waters of Europe, all round the Golden Horn. We came back thro’ the Greek quarter. It was such a comfort to see the windows clean and bright, and without the dismal wooden lattice work, which shuts in the Turkish houses, and the women with bright, uncovered faces sitting at the windows sewing.
I think so constantly of you all, tho’ I write nothing about it.
On the Danube, off Turn Severin,
May 13th, 1880.
To her Mother.
IMPRESSIONS OF THE SERVIANS
I am sitting on board one of the Danube steamers in the twilight writing to you. We are lying at Turn Severin for the night, because they want daylight to go thro’ the Iron Gates. We had a good passage from Constantinople to Varna; the Bosphorus was very beautiful as we sailed up. Just beyond Therapia the population on its shores seems almost suddenly to cease. It makes one feel how it is only the overflow from Constantinople. Beyond Therapia one sees little but Genoese castles, a light-house or two, and a very few tiny villages, cliffs, bare heights and points. It is strange to see the fortified narrowest part, kept by such different nations, and a point where Byzantine and Turk of old looked at one another across the narrow water from their respective fortresses, and measured their respective strength. Varna has no good port; they say it is as far from the steamer as Jaffa, and the passage horrid in rough weather, because no mole is built; but happily it was calm, when we went on shore in a large boat with four rowers. I was interested to land in Bulgaria. One wonders what these young nations are going to be, somewhat as one does about children. The country looked strange and very uninhabited; but it was much more beautiful than I expected. We went by railway thro’ it to Rustchuk. First we went thro’ the flat bottom of a valley, bounded by low wooded hills. A river flowed thro’ it, which often spread into what looked like lakes, they might be floods. Further on, we seemed to mount and pass over hills—I suppose low spurs of the Balkans. There we saw miles and miles of the most exquisite spring-green woods, spreading over waves and waves of hill away to the far distance. We came to downs too, great stretches of swelling hills and hollows of green grass that had never been cultivated; on them here and there we saw herds of buffaloes and horses feeding. At Rustchuk we came upon this boat. We sailed between Roumania and Bulgaria first; then we came to Servia on the right bank of the river, and soon we shall come to Austria on the left. It has been exquisitely beautiful to watch the great stretches of river, with the sky reflected in them, to walk up and down the deck and watch the sun rise and set, to pass the willowy islands, and note the great tracts of uninhabited land, decreasing, I suppose, as we get higher up the river. Yesterday we passed numbers of wild-looking Servians. I never saw any people look so like savages. They were in funny boats just made of a trunk of a tree hollowed out, and cut short off at either end. They looked heavy and clumsy and very primitive; the men had little clumsy wooden paddles, and were dressed so strangely, and looked so poor and crushed down with labour. They were mostly fishing; those on the shore were dressed in something exactly the colour of the sandy banks. I wondered such people could exist on the shores of a great water highway like this. A gentleman on board told me they were “all robbers and murderers,” which made me very angry, for I don’t think he knew anything about them. I was glad to remember Miss Irby, and to be able to say a quiet word about knowing a lady who had worked among them for years; and that I did not believe she had found them such dreadful hardened people as he seemed to think. “Oh,” he said, “she probably lives in one of the towns, and has a dragoman to intervene between her and the people.” “No,” I replied, “I believe not; I think she has travelled all over the country, she is working about schools there, and, I fancy, knows the people.”
We pass by little villages with minarets, and red roofs, and then for miles not a house again, only the great river going on and on; sometimes we pass a funny raft, sometimes a Greek steamer or tug; always every change in sky or shore reflects itself in this great river.
Approaching Pesth,
May 16th.