We go stumbling along the unpaved streets of Galatz by the dim light of a lantern carried before us by a servant. The town, although the chief commercial city of the Danubian Principalities, and numbering its inhabitants by tens of thousands, is of course unlighted. The outward civilisation of these countries showy as it appears, has unhappily gone no further, up to the present time, than jewellery and patent-leather boots. Light, air, and cleanliness are at least two generations a-head of it.
Our hotel, the best in the town, is not better than a Spanish inn on the Moorish frontier. The doors do not shut, the windows do not open. There is a bed, but it is an enemy rather than a friend to repose. The bed-clothes are of a dark smoke-colour, stained in many places with iron-moulds, and burned into little black holes by the ashes of defunct cigars. The bed, bedstead, and bed-clothes are alive with vermin. They crawl down the damp mouldy walls, and swarm on the filthy floor, untouched by the broom of a single housemaid since its planks were laid down. Battalions move in little dark specks over the pillow-case; they creep in and out of the rents and folds of the abominable blanket. On a crazy wooden chair—of which one of the legs is broken—stands a small red pipkin, with a glass of dingy water in the centre. A smoky rag, torn and unhemmed, is laid awry beside it. They are designed for the purposes of ablution.
The walls of the room are very thin; and there is a farewell supper of ladies and gentlemen going on in the next room. I saw the guests mustering as we came in. They were so ringed and chained that they would have excited envy and admiration even at a Jewish wedding. They are all talking together at the top of their voices against the Austrian occupation. The odour of their hot meats and the fine smoke of their cigarettes, come creeping through the many chinks and crannies of the slender partition which divides us. Twice I have heard a scuffling behind my door, and I have felt that an inquisitive eye was applied to a key-hole, from which the lock has long since been wrenched in some midnight freak. Derisive whispering, followed by loud laughter, has also given me the agreeable assurance that my movements are watched with a lively and speculative interest. They appear to add considerably to the entertainment of the company. I am abashed by feeling myself the cause of so much hilarity, and stealthily put out the light. Then I wrap myself up resolutely in a roquelaure, take the bed by assault, and shut my eyes desperately to the consequences; doing drowsy battle with the foe, as I feel them crawling from time to time beneath a moustache or under an eyelid. I am ignominiously routed, however, at last, and rise from that loathsome bed blistered and fevered. The screaming and shouting in the next room has by this time grown demoniacal. My friends are evidently making a night of it: so I begin to wonder whether the talisman of a ducat will not induce a waiter and a lantern to go with me to the steam-boat. I may pace the deck till morning, if I cannot sleep; for the Galatz hotel-keepers have I know protested against passengers being allowed berths on board the vessels when in port.
The silver spell succeeds. A sooty little fellow, like a chimney-sweep, agrees to accompany me, and we go scuffling among rat-holes, open sewers, sleeping vagabonds, and scampering cats down to the quagmire by the water-side; and scrambling over bales of goods, and a confused labyrinth of chains and cordage, gain the deck of the good ship Ferdinand. A cigar, a joke, and a dollar, overcomes the steward’s scruples about a berth, and I wake next morning to the rattling sound of the paddle-wheels.
The boat is very full. It is as difficult to get at the washhand-basins as to fight one’s way to the belle of a ball-room. I pounce on one at last, however, by an adroit flank movement, and prepare for a thoroughly British souse, when a young Wallachian—in full dress, and diamond ear-rings; who has just been putting an amazing quantity of unguents on his hair—comes up and coolly commences cleaning his teeth beside me. He looks round with a bright good-natured smile when he has finished, and is plainly at a loss to understand the melancholy astonishment depicted in my countenance.
The deck is crowded with a strange company. There are the carousing party who broke my rest last night. They glitter from head to foot with baubles and gewgaws; but the gentlemen are unwashed and unshorn, and it is well for the ladies that their rich silk and velvet dresses do not easily show the ravages of time and smoke. They are dressed in the last fashions of Holborn or the Palais Royal, and one of the dames, I learn, is a princess, with more ducats and peasants than she can count. She spends a great part of the day adorning herself in her cabin—the centre of an admiring crowd of tinselled gallants, who assist at her toilette, with compliments and with suggestions of a naïveté quite surprising.
Then there is a fat old Moldavian lady of the old school. She wears a black great-coat lined with a pale fur, and Wellington boots. Her head is swathed and bound up in many bandages. She wears thumb rings, and smokes continually. Our passengers are indeed of the most motley character, for we have quitted the excellent boats of the Danube Company, and are now on board a vessel belonging to the Austrian Lloyd’s, very inferior in size and accommodation, although built for going to sea. The first and second class passengers mingle together indiscriminately, and the whole deck is encumbered with a shouting, screaming, laughing, wrangling mass of parti-coloured humanity. There are Gallician Jew girls, going under the escort of some rascally old speculator to Constantinople, and dressed like our poor mountebank lasses, who go about on stilts at country fairs. They are a bright-eyed kindly race of gipsies and good-natured termagants, with a smile and a saucy word for everybody. Watching them, with great contempt, is a German professor, who has indiscreetly shaved the small hairs from the point of his nose till he has quite a beard on it. There is a long Austrian officer in a short cavalry cloak, who looks not unlike a stork; and there is a small Austrian officer, in a long infantry great-coat, who domineers over him, and is evidently his superior. They are an odd pair, and pace the deck together with a military dignity and precision quite comical. There is a brace of gipsies, hereditary serfs, with dark fiery eyes, rich complexions, and red handkerchiefs tied picturesquely with the striking grace in costume, which distinguished that outcast race in all countries. Then there are Greek and Armenian traders engaged in all sorts of rascally speculations connected with the war and the corn markets—sly, sharp-nosed men who have scraped together large fortunes by inconceivable dodges and scoundrel tricks; who have their correspondents and branch-houses at Marseilles, Trieste, Vienna, Paris, London, and New York; who would overreach a Jew of Petticoat Lane, and snap their fingers at him; who have all the rank vices and keen wit of a race oppressed for centuries, newly-emancipated. All power, wealth, and dominion in the Levant is passing into their hands. Long after I who write these lines shall sketch and scribble no more, the chivalry of the West will have a fearful struggle with them. May Heaven make it victorious! Our party is completed by two bandy beggars, with grey beards and bald heads; a crowd of the common-place men of the Levant, loud, important, patronising, presuming, vile, ignorant, worthless, astounding for their impudence; the captain, a brusque, talkative, self-confident Italian, and his wife, a lady from Ragusa, silent and watchful, with a sweet smile and a meaning eye.
We get under weigh betimes in the morning; for, below Galatz, ships are only allowed to navigate the Danube between daylight and dark, so that in these shortening days they must make the most of it. The noble river is crowded with vessels; and, now and then we meet a valuable raft of timber for ships’ masts floating downwards. This will be stopped by the Russians, to the cruel injury of trade. I learn from an Armenian merchant on board, that a mast such as would sell for fifty pounds at Constantinople may be here bought for five pounds or less; so that there will be some grand speculations in timber whenever peace is declared.
At Tschedal, just below Ismail, we come to anchor; and, after a short delay, a trim little boat shoots smartly out from the Bessarabian shore towards us. It is pulled by six rowers, in the peculiar grey great-coats and black leather cross-belts which distinguish Russian soldiers. At the helm is a seventh soldier decorated with a brass badge and some medal of merit; at the prow stands an eighth; in the seat of honour sits the officer empowered to examine our passports, and to ascertain that our ship carries no military stores or contraband of war. At the bottom of the boat is a pile of muskets, and from the stern flutters the Russian war flag—a blue cross on a white ground.
The trim little boat is soon hooked on to our side, and the officer steps lightly and gracefully on deck. He is a Pole; and, though but twenty-five or twenty-six years old, is already a major of marines. I cannot help thinking also that he is a show-officer. He is dressed within an inch of his life. His uniform would turn half the heads at Almack’s; for it is really charming in its elegant propriety and good taste. It is a dark rifle-green uniform, with plain round gilt buttons, and not made tawdry by embroidery. Two heavy epaulettes of bullion, with glittering silver stars, which announce the rank of the wearer, are its only ornament. His boots might have been drawn through a ring, and look quite like kid gloves on his dainty little feet. His well-shaped helmet is of varnished leather, with the Russian eagle in copper gilt upon it; and this eagle and the bright hilt of his sword flash back the rays of the sun quite dazzlingly. We, poor dingy, travel-stained passengers appear like slaves in the presence of a king before him.