We had crossed the line of active melon consumption soon after leaving
Budapest; we had for days revelled in a superabundance of them, and,
indeed, had quite become accustomed to the sight of every human being,
old and young, either carrying a melon or preoccupied with eating it. We
had contributed our generous share to the flotsam of melon rinds which
bobbed down the current, and had sampled every unfamiliar variety of the
delicious fruit which had met our notice. It was chiefly, then, from the
unæsthetic motives of appetite that we proposed to land at Vukovár,
which had long been held up to us by melon-eaters as the one place on
the Danube where the fruit was found in perfection. As we came near the
town, remarkable mainly for a new synagogue of doubtful taste, we saw
piles of huge round objects ranged along in the shade of small trees on
the bank, like cannon-balls in an arsenal, and we needed no further
identification of this metropolis of the melon trade. Our approach
seemed to cause an unusual commotion at the landing, and we naturally
attributed this to the activity among the merchants, induced by the
arrival of possible purchasers of the abundant stock in hand. But we
learned from a German-speaking policeman who met us as we went ashore
that the market-women had taken our fleet for the torpedo-boats of which
they had heard, and were in a great fright, believing we were about to
attack the place. We begged him to assure them that we had no use for
the town, but only for some of the projectiles we saw piled up there
under the trees, and feminine terrors were slowly forgotten in the
excitement of trade. Whoever has seen the Southern negro busy with a
watermelon may be able to imagine our satisfaction at the quality of the
fruit we found, and any one familiar with the capacity of a canoe may
appreciate the size of the melons from the fact that we were unable to
take in the monsters. But Vukovár is not all watermelons and timid
market-women, as we found when we strolled up into the town, puzzled
over the signs in the Cyrillic alphabet, and marvelled at the
embroidered garments festooned at the shop doors, at the pretentious
cafés, and the Franco-Italian architecture--the most imposing we had
seen since leaving Budapest.
The heat was intense and the streets almost deserted as we paddled away
directly after mid-day, and floated down past great bluffs, with hot
gullies filled with herds of swine seeking to avoid the heat by frequent
baths, and scarcely distinguishable in color from the baked mud on which
they slept. Late in the day, having joined company with some lumber
rafts we had been passing and repassing for the last day or two, we drew
up the canoes on a pleasant park-like meadow, only a foot or two above
the water, with great trees and firmer turf than we had seen for a long
time. The rafts tied up to the shore just above us, and the smoke of our
several camp-fires soon curled up among the trees, and floated away in
the clear air of the perfect summer evening. Our first visitor was a
Croatian, who, having served in the Austrian army, had learned a little
German, and was only too anxious to air his knowledge. He prepared us
for the visit of a band of gypsies who were camping in the vicinity,
cautioned us to watch all our loose articles, and loudly sang the
praises of one of the gypsy women but lately married,
[Illustration: VUKOVÁR WATERMELONS]
who, he declared, was as beautiful as a queen--probably meaning the
Queen of Servia. To be sure, the next morning, shortly after dawn, a
motley crowd straggled up to our encampment, among them the gypsy belle,
with the bearing
[Illustration: A PIG-WALLOW]
and gait of a duchess. Tobacco stood in the place of a formal
introduction, and even the conscious beauty asked for a cigarette, and
puffed away like a veteran smoker. The keen-eyed old rascal who, by
virtue of advanced age or superior cunning, was recognized as the chief
of the party, took the liveliest interest in our attempts to sketch the
beauty, and when the sketch was done, calmly proposed to give us the
model to carry away with us. As the offer was made in Roumanian, a
language not then familiar to our ears, we did not at first comprehend
the generous nature of the gift.
“Take her with you,” he said. “You’ll go, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will,” replied the dusky beauty, “if they’ll take me to
Bucharest.”
“But if she goes away with us it will make a scandal, and the husband
will have something to say about it,” we timidly suggested.
“Not at all,” insisted the old heathen; “he’s away now, and if he finds
her gone when he comes back, he’ll easily get another wife.”
This morality of the Red Indian order so astonished us that we did not
readily offer the excuse that our boats could carry but one person
apiece, but we sweetened our refusal of the gift by an abundance of
tobacco and a few old clothes, hastily launched our canoes, and
retreated down the river.
The railway from Budapest to Belgrade crosses the Danube at
Peterwardein, little less than a day’s paddle from Vukovár, and the iron
bridge is the last one of the ugly series that disfigures the river at
intervals from its source. Peterwardein, the Gibraltar of the Danube, is
a great fortress, elaborately intricate in construction, towering high
above the stream, and overlooking the modern town of Neusatz opposite,
at the mouth of a branch of the Franzens Canal. A bridge of boats
connects the fortress with the town a short distance below the railway,
and is actually the last bridge over the Danube. The commercial life of
the river seemed to revive again at the mouth of the canal, and as we
sailed past the vine-covered hills of Carlowitz and the town of that
name, our old enemies the freight steamers puffed up-stream, leaving a
dangerous wake, and fouling the sweet air with noisome smoke.
On the perfect summer morning when we left our lovely camping-ground on
a meadow below Carlowitz, and drifted down into the silvery light of
morning which glorified the river, the hills, and the distant landscape,
we were in the mood to enjoy exactly what the Danube offered for our
entertainment. On one bank peasants gathered in large parties at every
convenient spot, and were engaged in various domestic operations, quite
as frank and unconscious in their actions as if they were in the shelter
of their own homes. From the villages at some distance back from the
river whole families migrate at frequent intervals to temporary camps by
the water’s edge, bringing with them their live-stock, cart-loads of
corn, and their accumulated washing. While the women are busy with soap
and mallet, the men winnow grain, and carry it to the current mills to
be ground, and the children watch the pigs and fowls, who are enjoying
in their way this brief outing. On the opposite shore may sometimes be
seen, on a level piece of public land, great collections of ricks of all
sizes and shapes, when the neighboring farmers assemble to thresh their
harvest in common, each according to his own means and methods. Some
beat it out with flails and pitchforks, others drive horses around on
it, and a few make use of the improved machinery of English manufacture.
Here it is readily loaded on lighters, to be towed up to Budapest or
Vienna, or perhaps to be floated down-stream to the English steamers on
the Black Sea. From one group to another, from one shore to the
[Illustration: A GYPSY GIRL]
other, we went as slowly as the resistless current would let us,
fascinated by the cheerful busy life, and always finding each new scene
more attractive than the last. Here the Servian women were beating their
coarse garments, and hanging them untidily to dry on the framework of
the carts. A few rods lower down, at a bivouac of Saxons, piles of
beautiful white linen and the freshest of blue garments contrasted
agreeably with the squalor of the neighboring camp. These peasants we
found polite but reserved; the Servians were usually noisy and
talkative, and the Magyars cheery, sympathetic, and communicative.
Far down the glassy reach beyond Ó Szlankamen to the east a long range
of flat hills now appeared, marking the course of the sluggish Theiss,
and on the opposite bank we saw great rocks, scarcely distinguishable
from the hard mud bluffs, but marking a distinct geological change in
the landscape. Here on the scorched hill-sides frequent villages were
baking in the hot sun, and copper-covered monstrosities of church-spires
flashed and glistened in the brilliant light. A ruined castle towered
high above the river where the hills crowd the stream out of its course,
and then the river broadened into a lake-like expanse, and stretched
away until the left bank, always flat and without a break, lost itself
entirely in the distance, and sky and water seemed to meet as at the sea
horizon. Far away to the south bold blue peaks, the sentinels of the
northern range of mountainous Servia, showed where Belgrade stands; and,
in pleasant perspective, high bluffs on the right bank, with here and
there a church spire, were reflected with all the glories of the
midsummer sky in the perfect mirror of the majestic stream. A wonderful
sunset glow colored all the landscape as we encamped under a high bluff,
in full sight of Semlin and the Servian capital beyond. We fancied we
could see in the glowing distance slender minarets behind the great
fortress which guards the frontier, and in the perfect quiet of the
lingering twilight imagined we could hear the hum of the busy towns. The
song of the shepherd on the opposite meadows echoed sweetly as we lay by
the camp-fire that
[Illustration: THRESHING WHEAT]
beautiful evening and enjoyed for the first time in our wanderings an
hour or two of delightful leisure in the open air.
[Illustration: A CROATIAN BIVOUAC]
It was now nearly eight weeks since we launched our fleet in the
head-waters of the Danube, and, with the exception of a few days spent
at Vienna, Hainburg, Budapest, and on the Franzens Canal, we had passed
the greater part of our time, day and night, in the canoes. On the upper
river, where we cooked over spirit-lamps because we were never able to
have a fire, we had no great inducement to sit up after dark, and
consequently sought our snug beds in the canoes very soon after dinner.
After we reached Hungary, however, we found it not only practicable but
more convenient to use wood for cooking, and from the frontier downward
we always had the proper and agreeable accompaniment of every
comfortable bivouac--a cheerful fire. But it also happened that all
through Hungary we found so much to interest us we could never manage to
stop for the night before dark; and since it always took us two hours or
more to make camp, cook and eat our dinner, and tidy up afterwards, we
were obliged to continue our custom of turning in (literally) as soon as
possible, in order to be able to rise at daybreak. The evening we camped
in sight of Belgrade, the dewless, balmy air of the river so soothed our
nerves, and the glowing landscape was such a pleasure to our eyes, that
we lay in the firelight and, regardless of the morrow, watched for a
long time the glittering constellations as they slowly came in sight;
and when at last we slept, we dreamed of Turks and sieges and the
turmoil of belligerent races, whose territory now lay within reach of a
few paddle strokes.
[Illustration: Ó SZLANKAMEN]
The happy chant of Servian girls marching down the steep paths in the
bluffs, laden with jugs for Danube water, was our accompaniment as we
paddled along in the early morning towards the steamer-landing at
Semlin, the last Hungarian town on the right bank of the Danube, a busy
little commercial place with all the fascinating characteristics of a
frontier town. A populous market-place, numerous cafés of the Turkish
order--the first we had seen--and a population largely Servian, with
more barbaric types, and wearing costumes plainly transitional between
the Hungarian and the Turkish, kept us interested longer than we
anticipated, and well repaid the delay.
[Illustration: SERVIAN WOMEN]
From Semlin to Belgrade is but a half-hour’s paddle down a bend behind
the Krieg’s Insel and across the clear, green stream of the Save. Above
the great fortress which occupies the whole area of a high promontory at
the junction
[Illustration: FORTRESS AT THE JUNCTION OF THE DANUBE AND THE
SAVE--BELGRADE]
of the rivers, where a church and other edifices are half hidden among
bastions and parapets, an immense cream-colored Government building
extends an imposing mass, and, as seen from the river, divides the town
into two parts. To the left is the old Turkish quarter on the Danube, in
recent years almost depopulated of Mahometans, and with only one
insignificant mosque still preserved; and to the right, Belgrade proper,
along the Save and the heights which extend back into the country.
Lumberyards and the usual motley collection of buildings hid the town
from us as we slowly paddled up the sluggish current of the Save to a
great bathing establishment, all gay with flowers, where a large
contingent of the youthful population of the city were disporting
themselves, naked, in canoes of simple construction and gaudy color. Our
arrival caused very little flutter on the shore. We saw one fez on a
small boy, and fancied that on landing we should find everything
suggesting the East, and fierce officials haughtily demanding our
passports. But we moored our canoes alongside the bath-house and went
ashore without a question, found everybody in European dress, and met a
polite soldier-policeman who volunteered to look out for our craft, and
immediately busied himself with boxing the ears of the inquisitive
youngsters who ventured too near the dainty vessels. We were not long,
however, in finding novelties of dress and architecture, for at a short
distance from our landing-place we entered the outskirts of the city,
and passed through a street quite as Eastern in aspect as any in the
heart of Stamboul. Wretched wooden hovels with shattered tiles and
crumbling plaster; dingy low cafés with pallid Turks inhaling with
indolent sighs the stupefying smoke of nargiléhs; open air
cooking-places where unsavory messes sizzled on gridirons; and general
squalor, mustiness, and filth everywhere. From this quarter, steep,
ill-paved streets mount to the higher part of the town, where the
hotels, theatres, and palaces are, and pleasant avenues lead out to the
luxurious residential suburb on the heights beyond. But all Belgrade, at
the date of our visit, was much like the normal condition of Broadway,
and New York in general. The streets were everywhere torn up for
water-pipes and sewers, sidewalks were being widened and levelled, and
there was every indication of a serious attempt to improve the city, or
some job in the control of the City Fathers. The heat was intense and
almost unbearable as we explored the streets and park and wandered
through the fortress. When the sun reached the zenith, all Belgrade was
as quiet as Pompeii, for the inhabitants withdrew in-doors, and left the
streets void of life and movement. Even the hissing of frying fat in the
numerous cook-shops seemed hushed for the time; the vender of kukurutz
(green corn on the ear) slept in a shadow; and
[Illustration: BULGARIAN BOZAJI, BELGRADE]
the Bulgarian bozaji, selling slightly fermented maize beer, alone broke
the drowsy silence with his mournful cries. There was absolutely nothing
to see, and therefore we also sought shelter, and sleepily waited for
the town to come to life again. In the middle of the afternoon a few
hurrying peasant women, their brilliant dresses quite out of harmony
with the commonplace aspect of the streets, flashed along in the
sunshine; one or two men with effeminate lace-trimmed tunics, plaited
like imitations of the Albanian fustinella, strode proudly past,
unconscious that hats of London make and elastic-sided boots made them
look extremely ridiculous; and so the streets gradually resumed their
normal activity as the afternoon coolness came on. We soon yielded to
the tempting invitation of a fresh breeze and sailed away into the
Danube again, escorted by a fleet of Servian canoes with naked crews.
We began to think that in crossing the frontier we had passed the limit
beyond which the modern invention of modesty has not yet been
universally accepted. It certainly seemed so, for the bronzed figures of
the naked youths excited no comment on the shore as we passed. Rounding
the water-battery and drifting along the old Turkish quarter, we came to
a large pleasant meadow, glowing in the rich light of the afternoon sun.
Here scores of men, as unclothed as the horses they bestrode, were
riding their animals out into the shallows, bathing with them in the
yellow stream. Like so many figures from the frieze of the Parthenon,
they sat their horses with perfect grace, saddleless and bridleless, and
now dashed along, throwing up clouds of spray, and again disappeared in
a golden cloud of dust on the meadow. A party of young men and boys,
equally in Spartan attire, were having an exciting foot-race along the
level turf, and this little spot was for the time a sculptors’ paradise.
We drifted slowly along, watching the athletic figures in the wonderful
light, all unconscious in our preoccupation that the current was
carrying us into a scene of still more surprising simplicity and
innocence. Our canoes, if left to themselves, would always turn round
and float down-stream stern foremost; and that afternoon, as on many
other occasions, we found the trick to be of advantage, for we could
longer watch the unusual spectacle on the meadow. When we could see no
more in the direction of the dazzling sun, we paddled the canoes around,
and found ourselves, to our surprise, quite near a number of Servian
families, who were taking a refreshing bath--old and young, men, women,
and children--in the sandy shallows. No bath-house had given them refuge
on the bank, nor had they considered it necessary to disfigure
themselves with drapery, except a few of the women, who wore an apology
for an apron tied around the waist.
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN IN THE SQUARE, BELGRADE]
It was a sudden change from the contemplation of figures of classical
grace to the unwitting interruption of the bath of a dozen unlovely
families, and it was a parallel plunge from the accustomed luxuries of
pleasant camp grounds above Belgrade to the mud flats on the river-side
below. We had drifted along the meadow so slowly that we found the
daylight already waning and a threatening storm close at hand before we
thought of camping. Then we hastened to the first spot where there was a
possible landing. Here we slept until the ring of scythes at the very
bows of our canoes brought us to consciousness again, and we opened the
tents to see a sunny meadow among the trees, all dotted over with the
white figures of peasants slashing at the ranks of coarse grass that
fringed the sun-baked shore.