Around the Black Sea / Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania

by William Eleroy Curtis

The western coast of the Black Sea is divided into four parts—the Russian province of Bessarabia at the north, a strip of European Turkey at the south, and between these two contesting nations are Bulgaria and Roumania. The latter is a recent nation, made up of the ancient principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which have the Danube River for their southern and the Carpathian Mountains for the northern and western boundary. Hungary is on the other side of the range.

Roumania is the most advanced of all the Balkan states yet at the same time one third of its area toward the north and west is inhabited by a semi-savage class of shepherds—one of the strangest peoples in Europe. They follow their flocks in utter solitude among the heights of the Carpathians during the warmer months of the year, and in the winter drive them down into the sheltered valleys and plains. They never accept the shelter of a roof, but sleep among their flocks like dogs, no matter how cold the atmosphere or how deep the snow. They seldom speak, and many of them have lost the use of their tongues in their solitary existence. They are a race by themselves. They are entirely illiterate; they cannot abide in towns, and they wear a costume of their own, consisting of coarse white woollen shirts, long mantles of wool as thick as a carpet, and high caps of sheepskin with the wool upon them. They let their hair grow long until it hangs upon their shoulders, and their beards sometimes reach to their waists. They are very superstitious; they know all the signs and omens, and their folk-lore and legends have been the theme of poets and writers of romance for centuries.

There is a race of gypsies in Roumania, too, of greater numbers than are found in any other country. They are called Tzigany and are famous for their musical genius. Tzigany orchestras are the fashion in European restaurants these days, and their wild, weird, passionate music has a fascination and an exhilaration that comes from none other. These gypsies number perhaps a quarter of a million and are related to the tribes that wander about Hungary. They preserve their distinctive habits, customs, and dress as well as their racial purity with fierce jealousy. No Tzigany ever marries any but a gypsy; and they are faithful until death to the members of their own race, although their transactions with the rest of the population are usually open to suspicion.

The population of Roumania is about six million, of whom about three hundred thousand are Jews, 250,000 Roman Catholics, 50,000 Protestants and the rest orthodox Greeks. It is a singular fact that, although a greater part of the population belong to the Greek Church, their greatest pride and satisfaction are found in their descent from the Roman legions which overcame and occupied the country during the reign of the emperor Trajan, a century after the Christian era.

The famous column of Trajan, in the centre of Rome, which is familiar to everybody, bears an epitome in marble of his campaign for the subjugation of Roumania. You will remember that it is covered with carvings, winding around it from top to bottom, like the coils of a serpent, which show the progress of armies and battle scenes. These carved reliefs contain 2,500 human figures and representations of hundreds of animals and other objects, and all of them relate to Roumania. Trajan lies buried beneath this column, but in the Middle Ages the piety of the popes led them to remove his statue, which was originally placed upon the summit, and to replace it by one of St. Peter, so that the rock upon which the Christian church was builded now assumes, responsibility for the Roman campaign along the Danube.

Trajan left his legions in Roumania as a rampart against the barbarians upon the north and east, and, notwithstanding the constant invasions of Avars, Huns, Goths, Tartars, Mongols, Turks, and other hordes from Asia, their descendants have held their ground, and nothing, as I have said, is dearer to them than their consciousness of Latin origin. Many of the customs of the ancient Romans still prevail. And on a certain holiday in all the villages may be witnessed a revival of the Pyrrhic dance so sacred in mythology. The peasants wear robes in imitation of those of the ancient Roman warriors, with bells on their belts and sleeves; they stamp their feet on the ground like the North American Indians, and they shout in unison as the warriors of mythology are said to have shouted in order to prevent Saturn from hearing the voice of the infant Jupiter, the future king of the gods. The Roumanian peasants bestow Latin names upon their children, and even upon their steers. A farmer will call his oxen after Cassius, Cæsar, Brutus, Augustus, and Antony, and the name of Trajan is as common as the name of John with us.

There are several tangible traces of Trajan remaining. One of them is a bridge which he built to convey his army across the Danube in the year 104 A.D. It consisted originally of twenty piers, each 160 feet long, 145 feet high and 58 feet wide. The original piers still remain as solid as the mountains, although the bridge has several times been rebuilt; and the road which leads to the bridge along the right bank of the Danube is still maintained. Whoever cares to go there may find a bronze tablet blackened by the hand of centuries, which still bears a Latin inscription, with the name and the titles and the achievements of Trajan.

The original inhabitants of the country were called Dacians, and their warlike disposition got them into print very frequently. They are discussed by Pliny and Herodotus as the bravest and most honourable of all the barbarian tribes, and Thucydides alludes to their prowess on horseback with the bow and arrow and the determination with which they resisted the advance of the Persian king, Darius. About 325 B.C. Philip of Macedon invaded Dacia and laid siege to one of the towns. That great Grecian conqueror was about to give the signal for an assault upon the walls, when the gates opened and a long line of priests, clad in snow-white robes, with lyres in their hands, came forth and approached the Macedonian camp with songs of peace. Impressed with the spectacle and their confidence in him, Philip spared the citadel, married Meda, the daughter of the king, and entered into a treaty of offence and defence, which was greatly to his advantage in his future campaigns. Even to-day the natives wear gold pieces bearing the busts of Philip and Alexander the Great and their successors upon the Macedonian throne.

The Romans were driven out by the Goths and afterward by the Huns, and for a thousand years the history of the country is one continuous and confusing struggle against successive savage tribes, which marched both east and west, going and coming between Europe and Asia. The high road between the continents led over Roumanian soil, and the trail is now followed very closely by the railway between Budapest and Constanza, the principal port of Roumania upon the Black Sea.

Constantine the Great introduced Christianity, and by the year 360 A.D. Dacia was one of the most thoroughly civilized parts of Christendom, but there was no peace for the people until they obtained their present government. For century after century no settled authority seems to have existed in the country, which was the shuttle-cock of the rival sovereigns of Russia, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. Peter the Great took the country under his protection, and Catherine the Great soon after her accession began to prepare the Roumanians for annexation to Russia. She was not able to carry out her designs, because Austria had become restive at the rapid expansions of Russia in her direction, and it was solely to pacify Austrian fears that Russia in 1774 consented to place Moldavia and Wallachia under the protectorate of the sultan of Turkey.