The Adriatic—Albania—Gay Costumes and Beauty of the
Albanese—Capo d’Istria—Trieste resembles an American
Town—Visit to the Austrian Authorities of the
Province—Curiosity of the Inhabitants—Gentlemanly Reception by
the Military Commandant—Visit to Vienna—Singular Notions of
the Austrians respecting the Americans—Similarity of the
Scenery to that of New England—Meeting with German
Students—Frequent Sight of Soldiers and Military
Preparation—Picturesque Scenery of Styria.
The Doge of Venice has a fair bride in the Adriatic. It is the fourth of
July, and with the Italian Cape Colonna on our left and the long, low
coast of Albania shading the horizon on the east, we are gazing upon her
from the deck of the first American frigate that has floated upon her
bosom. We head for Venice, and there is a stir of anticipation on board,
felt even through the hilarity of our cherished anniversary. I am the
only one in the ward-room to whom that wonderful city is familiar, and I
feel as if I had forestalled my own happiness—the first impression of
it is so enviable.
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It is difficult to conceive the gay costumes and handsome features of
the Albanese existing in these barren mountains that bind the Adriatic.
It has been but a continued undulation of rock and sand, for three days
past; and the closer we hug to the shore, the more we look at the broad
canvass above us, and pray for wind. We make Capo d’Istria now, a small
town nestled in a curve of the sea, and an hour or two more will bring
us to Trieste, where we drop anchor, we hope for many an hour of novelty
and pleasure.
* * * * *
Trieste lies sixty or eighty miles from Venice, across the head of the
gulf. The shore between is piled up to the sky with the “blue Friuli
mountains;” and from the town of Trieste, the low coast of Istria breaks
away at a right angle to the south, forming the eastern bound of the
Adriatic. As we ran into the harbour on our last tack, we passed close
under the garden walls of the villa of the ex-queen of Naples, a lovely
spot just in the suburbs. The palace of Jerome Bonaparte was also
pointed out to us by the pilot, on the hill just above. They have both
removed since to Florence, and their palaces are occupied by English. We
dropped anchor within a half mile of the pier, and the flags of a dozen
American vessels were soon distinguishable among the various colours of
the shipping in the port.
* * * * *
I accompanied Commodore Patterson to-day on a visit of ceremony to the
Austrian authorities of the province. We made our way with difficulty
through the people, crowding in hundreds to the water-side, and
following us with the rude freedom of a showman’s audience. The
vice-governor, a polite but Frenchified German count, received us with
every profession of kindness. His Parisian gesture sat ill enough upon
his national high cheekbones, lank hair, and heavy shoulders. We left
him to call upon the military commandant, an Irishman, who occupies part
of the palace of the ex-king of Westphalia. Our reception by him was
gentlemanly, cordial, and dignified. I think the Irish are, after all,
the best-mannered people in the world. They are found in every country,
as adventurers for honour, and they change neither in character nor
manner. They follow foreign fashions, and acquire a foreign language;
but in the first they retain their heart, and in the latter their
brogue. They are Irishmen always. Count Nugent is high in the favour of
the Emperor, has the commission of a field-marshal, and is married to a
Neapolitan princess, who is a most accomplished and lovely woman, and
related to most of the royal houses of Europe. His reputation as a
soldier is well known, and he seems to me to have no drawback to the
enviableness of his life, except its expatriation.
Trieste is a busy, populous place, resembling extremely our new towns in
America. We took a stroll through the principal streets after our visits
were over, and I was surprised at the splendour of the shops, and the
elegance of the costumes and equipages. It is said to contain thirty
thousand inhabitants.
* * * * *
VIENNA.—The frigates were to lie three or four weeks at Trieste. One
half of the officers had taken the steamboat for Venice on the second
evening of our arrival, and the other half waited impatiently their turn
of absence. Vienna was but some four hundred miles distant, and I might
never be so near it again. On a rainy evening, at nine o’clock, I left
Trieste in the _eil-wagon_, with a German courier, and commenced the
ascent of the spur of the Friuli mountains that overhangs the bay.
My companions inside were a merchant from Gratz, a fantastical and poor
Hungarian count, a Corfu shop-keeper, and an Italian ex-militaire and
present apothecary, going to Vienna to marry a lady whom he had never
seen. After a little bandying of compliments in German, of which I
understood nothing except that they were apologies for the incessant
smoking of three disgusting pipes, the conversation, fortunately for me,
settled into Italian. The mountain was steep and very high, and my
friends soon grew conversable. The novelty of two American frigates in
the harbour naturally decided the first topic. Our Gratz merchant was
surprised at the light colour of the officers he had seen, and doubted
if they were not Englishmen in the American service. He had always heard
Americans were black. “They are so,” said the soldier-apothecary; “I
saw the real Americans yesterday in a boat, quite black.” (One of the
cutters of the “Constellation” has a negro crew, which he had probably
seen at the pier.) The assertion seemed to satisfy the doubts of all
parties. They had wondered how such beautiful ships could come from a
savage country. It was now explained. “They were bought from the
English, and officered by Englishmen.” I was too much amused by their
speculations to undeceive them; and with my head thrust half out of the
window to avoid choking with the smoke of their pipes, I gazed back at
the glittering lights of the town below, and indulged the never-palling
sensation of a first entrance into a new country. The lantern at the
peak of the “United States” was the last thing I saw as we rose the brow
of the mountain, and started off on a rapid trot towards Vienna.
I awoke at daylight with the sudden stop of the carriage. We were at the
low door of a German tavern, and a clear, rosy, good-humoured looking
girl bade us good morning, as we alighted one by one. The phrase was so
like English, that I asked for a basin of water in my mother tongue. The
similarity served me again. She brought it without hesitation; but the
question she asked me as she set it down was like nothing that had ever
before entered my ears. The count smiled at my embarrassment, and
explained that she wished to know if I wanted soap.
I was struck with the cleanliness of everything. The tables, chairs and
floors, looked worn away with scrubbing. Breakfast was brought in
immediately—eggs, rolls, and coffee, the latter in a glass bottle like
a chemist’s retort, corked up tightly, and wrapped in a snowy napkin. It
was an excellent breakfast, served with cleanliness and good humour, and
cost about fourteen cents each. Even from this single meal, it seemed to
me that I had entered a country of simple manners and kind feelings. The
conductor gravely kissed the cheek of the girl who had waited on us, my
companions lit their pipes afresh, and the postillion, in cocked hat and
feather, blew a stave of a waltz on his horn, and fell into a steady
trot, which he kept up with phlegmatic perseverance to the end of his
post.
As we get away from the sea, the land grows richer, and the farm-houses
more frequent. We are in the duchy of Carniola, forty or fifty miles
from Trieste. How very unlike Italy and France, and how very like New
England it is! There are no ruined castles, nor old cathedrals. Every
village has its small white church, with a tapering spire, large
manufactories cluster on the water-courses, the small rivers are rapid
and deep, the horses large and strong, the barns immense, the crops
heavy, the people grave and hard at work, and not a pauper by the post
together. We are very far north, too, and the climate is like New
England. The wind, though it is midsummer, is bracing, and there is no
travelling as in Italy, with one’s hat off and breast open, dissolving
at midnight in the luxury of the soft air. The houses, too, are ugly and
comfortable, staring with paint and pierced in all directions with
windows. The children are white-headed and serious. The hills are
half-covered with woods, and clusters of elms are left here and there
through the meadows, as if their owners could afford to let them grow
for a shade to the mowers. I was perpetually exclaiming, “how like
America!”
We dined at Laybach. My companions had found out by my passport that I
was an American, and their curiosity was most amusing. The report of the
arrival of the two frigates had reached the capital of Illyria, and with
the assistance of the information of my friends, I found myself an
object of universal attention. The crowd around the door of the hotel
looked into the windows while we were eating, and followed me round the
house as if I had been a savage. One of the passengers told me they
connected the arrival of the ships with some political object, and
thought I might be the envoy. The landlord asked me if we had potatoes
in our country.
I took a walk through the city after dinner with my mincing friend the
count. The low, two-story wooden houses, the sidewalks enclosed with
trees, the matter-of-fact looking people, the shut windows, and neat
white churches remind me again strongly of America. It was like the more
retired streets of Portland or Portsmouth. The Illyrian language spoken
here, seemed to me the most inarticulate succession of sounds I had ever
heard. In crossing the bridge in the centre of the town, we met a party
of German students travelling on foot with their knapsacks. My friend
spoke to them to gratify my curiosity. I wished to know where they were
going. They all spoke French and Italian, and seemed in high heart,
bold, cheerful, and intelligent. They were bound for Egypt, determined
to seek their fortunes in the service of the present reforming and
liberal pacha. Their enthusiasm, when they were told I was an American,
quite thrilled me. They closed about me and looked into my eyes, as if
they expected to read the spirit of freedom in them. I was taken by the
arms at last, and almost forced into a beer-shop. The large tankards
were filled, each touched mine and the others, and “America” was drank
with a grave earnestness of manner that moved my heart within me. They
shook me by the hand on parting, and gave me a blessing in German, which
as the old count translated it, was the first word I have learned of
their language. We had met constantly parties of them on the road. They
all dress alike, in long travelling frocks of brown stuff, and small
green caps with straight visors; but, coarsely as they are clothed, and
humbly as they seem to be faring, their faces bear always a mark that
can never be mistaken. They look like scholars.
The roads, by the way, are crowded with pedestrians. It seems to be the
favourite mode of travelling in this country. We have scarce met a
carriage, and I have seen, I am sure, in one day, two hundred passengers
on foot. Among them is a class of people peculiar to Germany. I was
astonished occasionally at being asked for charity by stout,
well-dressed young men, to all appearance as respectable as any
travellers on the road. Expressing my surprise, my companion informed me
that they were _apprentices_, and that the custom or law of the country
compelled them, after completing their indentures, to travel in some
distant province, and depend upon charity and their own exertions for
two or three years before becoming masters at their trade. It is a
singular custom, and I should think, a useful lesson in hardship and
self-reliance. They held out their hats with a confident independence of
look that quite satisfied me they felt no degradation in it.
We soon entered the province of Styria, and brighter rivers, greener
woods, richer and more graceful uplands and meadows, do not exist in the
world. I had thought the scenery of Stockbridge, in my own State,
unequalled till now. I could believe myself there, were not the women
alone working in the fields, and the roads lined for miles together with
military wagons and cavalry upon march. The conscript law of Austria
compels every peasant to serve _fourteen_ years! and the labours of
agriculture fall, of course, almost exclusively upon females. Soldiers
swarm like locusts through the country, but they seem as inoffensive and
as much at home as the cattle in the farm-yards. It is a curious
contrast, to my eye, to see parks of artillery glistening in the midst
of a wheat-field, and soldiers sitting about under the low thatches of
these peaceful-looking cottages. I do not think, among the thousands
that I have passed in three days’ travel, I have seen a gesture or heard
a syllable. If sitting, they smoke and sit still, and if travelling,
they economise motion to a degree that is wearisome to the eye.
Words are limited, and the description of scenery becomes tiresome. It
is a fault that the sense of beauty, freshening constantly on the
traveller, compels him who makes a note of impressions to mark every
other line with the same ever-recurring exclamations of pleasure. I saw
a hundred miles of unrivalled scenery in Styria, and how can I describe
it? I were keeping silence on a world of enjoyment to pass it over. We
come to a charming descent into a valley. The town beneath, the river,
the embracing mountains, the swell to the ear of its bells ringing some
holiday, affect my imagination powerfully. I take out my tablets. What
shall I say? How convey to your minds who have not seen it, the charm of
a scene I can only describe as I have described a thousand others?
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