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.
He speaks French perfectly. He is excruciatingly polite, and is
evidently a man of the world, conscious of being entrusted with a
delicate duty; but rather overdoing it. He would be handsome, but
for small cunning, or rather roguish eyes, when roguish is used in
an undefined sense, and may mean smartness good or bad; but it is
difficult to take his measure. He has evidently seen service. His
hair is of the light rusty brown of nature and exposure. His face is
shorn, except a sweeping moustache peculiarly well trimmed. There are
some lines about his face which tell the old story of suffering and
privation.
He is, as I have said, courteous--more than courteous. He does not
even examine the Greek and Moldo-Wallachian passports; but he pauses
over the French and English to see if the visas are correct. Mine he
examined more narrowly, and then returned it with a gay débonnaire bow,
a polite smile, and a backward step. A Greek keeps up a conversation
with him the whole time he remains on board. I fancy there is more in
it than meets the ear. In speaking to this fellow the major takes a
short, sharp, abrupt, hasty tone of command, like a man in authority
pressed for time. The major does not examine the hold of the vessel,
nor interrogate any of the Austrian officers. There is evidently a
shyness and ill-will between them.
When we have each filed past him in turn, the Pole draws his elegant
figure up to its full slim height, tightens his belt, and marches with
a light gallant step from one end of the vessel to the other. Then he
halts at the gangway, faces about, casts a hawk’s eye round the ship,
and descends the companion-ladder. The trim little bark is hooked
closer on; then the grapnels are loosened, and she spreads her light
sail to the wind. The rowers shelve their oars, and the next moment she
is dashing the spray from her bows, and flying towards the shore with
the speed of a sea-gull. At the stern sits the Pole upright as a dart,
the sunbeams toying with his helmet--a picture to muse on.
Nothing could have been in better taste than the whole thing. It might
have served for a scene of an opera, or a chapter in a delightfully
romantic peace novel. I confess I cannot help feeling something like a
pitying tenderness for the smart cavalier; who may, a few days hence,
be called away to the war, and return to his true love never--be mashed
by a cannon shot, or blown into small pieces by a mine--his life’s
errand all unaccomplished, his bright life suddenly marred. I think,
too, how strange and sad is the destiny which can make such a Pole take
part in a cause which, if successful, will rivet the chains of his
countrymen for ever; and how he would meet his patriot countrymen who
have joined the hostile ranks in hundreds for only one faint hope of
freedom.
Below Ismail the Danube was a perfect forest of masts, and we had some
difficulty in steering our way through the maze of ships. The river is
very narrow in many places. A child could easily throw a stone across
it. The Turkish and Russian labourers in the fields on the Bulgarian
and Bessarabian shores are within hail of each other. And every
breeze blows waifs and strays across the narrow boundary. Turkish and
Russian wild-fowl, wiser than men, chat amicably together about their
prospects for the winter, and call blithely to each other from shore
to shore among the reeds. The character of the country on both sides
of the river is very much the same--flat and uninteresting. Now and
then, however, a charming little valley opens among woods and waters
in the distance, and here and there rises a solitary guard-house, or a
few fishermen burrow among rocks and caverns. Thirty hours after our
departure from Galatz we steam into the crowded port of Sulina, where
one thousand sail are wind-bound.
On Saturday, January 19th, will be Published, Price
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