BELGRADE TO ORSOVA
“... Kazán’s stupendous rocks,
Where eagles eyry in the heights above
And the dark Danube pours it flood below.”
_From the Magyar_
From Belgrade, the Danube, though with many bold windings that now and
again give us the impression that the river is turning sharp corners,
follows a general easterly course until it passes beyond the Hungarian
frontier. Here we are journeying between two Roman provinces, that of
Mœsia on the right which is now Servia, and that of Dacia, the only
province established by Rome beyond the Danube which is now part of
Hungary. Here, too, it may be mentioned the river was known to the
Greeks as the Ister, the main stream being regarded as that of the
Save, which rises near the confines of Istria.
Leaving Belgrade, we pass between the citadel-topped hill and the
tree-grown War Island. When we reach the broad main stream again, the
left or Hungarian bank, broken into islands, continues flat and thickly
wooden with low greenery. On the Servian side are bare rounded hills
which, as we near them, are seen to be dotted with red-roofed white
houses and patches of crops. A tandem team of oxen may be observed
ploughing a steep and stony hillside that appears too precipitous for
cultivation. Through a break in the hills we get a glimpse of the
higher mountains of the Balkans.
Leaving the Servian capital early in the morning, the autumn sunrise
as we pass between these greatly contrasting banks is peculiarly
beautiful. White mist, irradiated by the golden light, affords constant
change of view as the steamer passes through varying banks of it. The
mist appears, indeed, to rise and fall, as now we go through a thick
veil, and now have one or the other and again both shores clearly
visible. As the sun rises higher and the mist disperses, wisps of it
appear to rise columning up from the surface of the water.
An hour or so below Belgrade, where the river has attained a width of
about a mile and a quarter, we reach on the left, opposite a large
island, the mouth of the Temes, one of the Alföld rivers, which
flows down from Temesvár. Here is the landing place for Pancsova, a
considerable lowland town, which stands about three miles up the Temes.
On the Servian side nearly opposite, is Vischnitz, and some distance
below we pass Krotzka, the scene of a disastrous battle between the
Austrians and the Turks in 1739. Austria had joined with Russia in her
war against Turkey, and the Austrian army, advancing from Belgrade,
here encountered the enemy, and were defeated with such great loss that
they were compelled to sue for a peace, by which they had to restore
to the dominion of the Sultan, Belgrade, Orsova, and other territories
which they had acquired by an earlier treaty.
The first stopping place of the steamer on the Servian shore is
Semendria, a town of old-time importance which is indicated by the
extensive ruined fortress right on the river bank. This fortress--some
idea of the size of which may be gathered from the fact that it
has eleven massive castellated towers along the town-side wall--is
sometimes described as Turkish, but is said to have been originally
established in the first half of the fifteenth century by the Servian
prince, Georg Branković on the site of an earlier Roman stronghold. The
many Servian, Turkish and other costumes noticeable among the crowd
under the trees on the bank above the landing place, give a touch of
Oriental colour to the scene.
[Illustration: OLD TURKISH FORT, SEMENDRIA]
As we leave Semendria and pass a number of beautiful tree-covered
islets, four steersmen are again found necessary to control the wheel,
owing to the swiftness of the stream. As the river nears the end of the
ten-mile-long island of Ostrovo--said to be the scene of Maurus Jókai’s
romance “Der Goldmensch”--we pass the influx of the Servian river
Morava.
An interesting scheme has been formulated for regulating the waters of
the Morava, which flows northward, and those of the Vardar, a stream
which rises on the southern side of the same watershed, and connecting
the two streams by means of a canal, so that a new waterway should be
established, 382 miles long, connecting the Danube at this point with
Salonika on the Ægean Sea.
Several small towns are passed, but nothing that makes a special
impression to vary the general one of the broad river, the low hills
and trees, until on the right we see the bold ruins of the Servian
fortress of Rama. Beyond are quarries, and then high hills of
sand--broad expanses, bare and clean as the desert, forming a curious
contrast to the tree-grown slopes immediately beyond. Ahead, the view
is shut in by the hills of a spur of the Carpathians.
On the left the ground becomes hillier, and at Báziás we reach a small
quaint village on a low hillside--a village the quaintness of which is
not to be recognized from the steamer, for the steamer-quay and railway
yards and station occupy the foreshore. Those who pause here will
find the little village--built so closely on the rock face that the
houses above those on the single, strangely uneven street are reached
by narrow paths, hung with wild clematis and other climbers, and series
of steps--reminiscent of Clovelly, though widely different from its
Devonshire equivalent. Glimpses into the balconied yards of some of
the houses, with their flowering oleanders, suggest Italy. The view of
the broad river and the bare hills of Servia from above the village,
or from the Kossuth memorial stone on the steep bank, is particularly
pleasant.
From this little place--terminus of a railway from Temesvár--begins
the wonderful Danube-side road that continues thence, through all the
gorgeous scenery which we are nearing, to the Rumanian frontier. A
short walk along this road from Báziás shows the rocks to be peculiarly
rich in wild flowers, offering endless delight to the botanizer. This
road is known as the Széchenyi road, having been made by the Hungarian
government during the years 1834-8 at the instigation of that Count
Stephen Széchenyi to whose patriotic zeal modern Hungary seems to owe
no small degree of the impetus which has made it as a nation re-born.
The inquirer into the history of modern Hungary is for ever coming
across one or other of the practical things by which this nobleman
sought at once to emphasize the solidarity of the Magyars and to
initiate works that should be of permanent value to the nation. To
him is owing in no small measure the rehabilitation of the national
language, to him is owing the foundation of the Hungarian Academy, to
him was owing the first putting of a regular line of steamers on the
Danube, and to him we owe this road which is carried through all manner
of obstacles for about a hundred miles, a road, innumerable inviting
spots along which we see as we travel down the river.
[Illustration: BÁZIÁS]
Michael Quin, who published a narrative of “A Steam Voyage down the
Danube” from Budapest, in 1835, visited Count Széchenyi, saw the
progress of the road-making, and heard the Count described by the one
Englishman employed on the work in most enthusiastic terms: “he was
in the bloom of life; had served in the army; was a leading member of
the Diet, over which his talents, his superior acquirements, and his
disinterested patriotism, gave him great influence; was constantly
occupied in devising plans for the welfare of Hungary; remained a
bachelor in order that he might be more at liberty to travel about
for the purpose of carrying those plans into execution; and was
now actively engaged in superintending the works going on upon the
Danube, which were entirely the result of his public spirit, and his
indefatigable perseverance.” Széchenyi deserves to be widely known in
the ranks of the truest “heroes of peace.”
Below Báziás the scenery rapidly improves as the hills increase in
height and approach more closely to the water, as the river finds its
way through the gorges of the Southern Carpathians. Fruitful valleys
and upland pastures are seen as we are borne along our way--more
especially on the Hungarian bank where, doubtless, the road has proved
a serviceable link between the river-side villages and towns, and now
affords them access to the railways at Báziás and Orsova.
The first stopping place beyond Báziás is Gradiste, a one-time
fortress, on the Servian shore, near the mouth of the gold-bearing
stream, the Peck, and the next is Ó-Moldova, on the left bank. The
prefix “Ó” signifies old, and Uj (or New) Moldova, with copper mines,
is some miles inland. Some distance along here, above one of the small
villages, a mine is seen high on the hillside.
Near Ó-Moldova is an island of the same name, at the further end of
which the Danube is nearly a mile and a third in breadth, but beyond
which it so rapidly narrows that, within little more than a mile, it
has decreased to about a fifth of that width. Here, among lofty rocky
mountains, we are in a centre of romance and of legend. To a craggy
rock, standing about twenty feet above the water that eddies round its
base, attaches a story of love and revenge; the ruins of Galambócz
(Golubacz) on the left, and of Lászlóvár on the right, remind us of the
days when these were rival fortresses, guarding what was recognized to
be “the key of the Danube”; while a great event in legendary history is
said to have taken place near here.
First we may pause to learn the romantic story attaching to the Babakáj
rock, standing boldly up from the water. It is a story of love and
revenge, with a fulness of detail not often attaching to these local
legends--a crowding of incidents that a novelist might expand into a
volume. The following version is summarized from that of Dr. Beattie. A
Turkish pasha who held a command on the frontier in the early part of
the eighteenth century, having been absent for a time, returned home
to find that Zuleika, one of his seven wives--and the fairest of the
seven--had eloped with a young Hungarian nobleman. The wrathful pasha,
eager for revenge, offered his favourite janissary ten purses of gold
if he could overtake the fugitives, and bring back the fair one and
the head of her lover. The janissary set off in pursuit, and came in
sight of the party just as it was crossing the frontier. The Hungarian,
unaware of the pursuit, thought himself secure once the frontier
was crossed, and dismissing most of those who had aided him in the
abduction, retired with Zuleika to a small place on the safe side of
the frontier. The janissary, having disguised himself and his followers
as Servian peasants, craved for an audience of the brave Hungarian
chief that they might beg for justice at his hands for injuries just
received from Turkish marauders. They were at once admitted, and
instantly throwing off their sheepskin coats, drew their scimitars and
cut down the supposed wife-stealer. Running furiously into the divan,
they seized, bound, and carried off the fainting Zuleika--with the
head of her lover dangling from the neck of the horse that bore her.
Thus was she taken back and hurried into the presence of the enraged
pasha, whom she had deserted for the Hungarian. The pasha ordered her
to be tied in a sack and cast into the Danube, but before his orders
could be obeyed he changed his mind, and deciding that her punishment
should be more protracted, commanded that she should be taken to the
summit of the rock in the river, to be left there to perish, with these
last words ringing in her ears--“Ba-ba-Kaÿ!” “Repent of thy sin!” At
great risk to the executioners, the pasha’s instructions were duly
carried out, and the wretched creature left to her fate. The pasha
gloated over his revenge as he gazed at the head of his enemy and
thought of the faithless one famishing in mid-Danube. Little did he
dream that he was gloating over the wrong head; that the janissary, in
his over-eagerness, had struck down, not the count, who happened to
be absent at the time, but, one of the count’s faithful friends. When
the Hungarian returned to find his fair lady had just been stolen, and
heard of the trick by which the deed had been done, he lost no time in
vain mourning, but decided on instant action. He got together all the
servants he could, and even before the janissary had reached the pasha
with his prisoner, Hungarians and Servians were lying in ambush, ready
at any cost to frustrate any plans against the lady’s life. What force
could not effect, strategy and patience enabled them to do; and so
news was brought to the count of the doom decided upon for his lady.
Thus, as the janissary and his fellows returned from their hazardous
employment of placing Zuleika, like a new Andromeda, as a victim to the
dragons of exposure and starvation, her lover, like a modern Perseus,
was hastening to her rescue in a well-manned barge, creeping along
the further side of the neighbouring island. As soon as the coast was
clear, the barge was pulled to the side of the rock farthest from the
Turkish shore, and made fast with grappling irons, while the Hungarians
clambered up and rescued the fair Zuleika. The boat was then worked
across to the left bank, and, mounted on swift horses, rescuers and
rescued galloped off into safety.
That, however, is not the end. The Turkish pasha declared that his
dreams had been troubled with visions of Zuleika’s rescue, and to
prevent any such baulking of his vengeance he sent his janissary to the
rock in the morning with orders to throw the lady into the water. Once
more that cruelly faithful servant set out on the hazardous exploit of
climbing the rock--to find nothing but the cords which had bound the
prisoner to the summit, and some scraps of Hungarian writing! Realizing
that the truth would jeopardize his own ten purses of gold and further
inflame the pasha’s wrath, the man declared that in her agony the
prisoner must have burst her bonds and hurled herself into the water,
adding, to give vraisemblance to his story, that a part of her dress
had caught and remained on a jutting piece of stone. The pasha was
content, and was considering how he could best fill the vacancy caused
in his harem, when news came that the Imperial troops had reached the
frontier and were making war upon his master the Sultan. At once the
pasha gathered his forces together and set out for the front, reaching
the main army on the very eve of the great battle of Karlowitz. During
the fearful carnage of that day the Hungarian noble sought in vain
to encounter the pasha. In the evening, as it happened, the first
person brought to his tent was the man whom he had failed to meet
during the day! The pasha was mortally wounded, and his last moments
were embittered by the knowledge of Zuleika’s escape, of her having
abjured Islamism and become the wife of her deliverer--the very man
into whose tent he had been borne to die!
[Illustration: RAMA CASTLE]
Such a story seems to fit in with the scenery of the broad river, here
rushing to one of the narrower parts of its course. At this rock--which
owes its name, Babakáj, to the story just narrated--is the beginning
of what is known as the Lower Danube. That this point was recognized
as the key of the Danube, is shown by the ruined castles of which
mention has been made. That of Galambócz, (Golubacz), which stands most
picturesquely on a precipitous rock backed by rugged mountains, is the
most remarkable of the ruins we pass in this stage of our journey. It
is supposed to occupy the site of an ancient Roman castrum wherein
the Greek Empress Helena was imprisoned. The present building is said
to have been erected by “King” Maria Theresa, replacing one that had,
in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, been the stronghold
of a band of Wallachian robbers, under the leadership of a man named
Borichom. These brigands are said to have been the terror of the
country around, to have fought successfully against disciplined troops
five times as numerous as themselves, and when hard-pressed could
always retire to their impregnable stronghold. Even if the castle had
been demolished, they were supposed to be prepared for the emergency
by having secret passages through the rocks, leading to otherwise
inaccessible caverns, in which they kept stores of provisions, and
where they would have been safe from any pursuit. The ruins of
Lászlóvár on the Hungarian side, are insignificant by comparison. Both
places were the scene of much fighting in the Hungaro-Turkish wars.
Among the rugged, rocky hills on the left bank of the river here, are
a number of caverns, one of which calls for particular mention. It
is named the cavern of Galambócz (Golubacz), though on the opposite
side from the castle, and in it, says tradition, a mighty contest
once took place--no less a contest than that by which St. George slew
the dragon! When tradition was first associated with the Danube I
cannot say, for in the “Golden Legend” it is recorded that the dragon
dwelt in “a stagne or a pond like a sea,” near the city of Silene in
Libya. But the whole legend of St. George is of the vaguest, and those
who claim Galambócz Cavern as the scene of the fight at least bring
circumstantial evidence in support of the story. It is said that,
having slain the monster in its cave, St. George left the carcase
there-and there ever since it has lain putrefying, and providing a
perpetual breeding place for an “infinite torment of flys”!
Should any be inclined to doubt the story, they have only to journey
thither in the early summer, and they will be able to see the flies
for themselves, possibly to feel them. Various accounts of the flies,
which are said to resemble mosquitoes, have been published, and one
doubter of their dragon origin says that “when the Danube rises, as
it does in the early part of summer, the caverns are flooded; and the
water remaining in them and becoming putrid, produces this noxious
insect.” They are so destructive, according to one writer, “that oxen
and horses have been killed by them” while “they appear in such swarms
that they look like a volume of smoke, and sometimes cover a space of
six or seven miles. Covered with these insects, horses not infrequently
gallop about till death puts an end to their sufferings. Shepherds
anoint their limbs with a decoction of wormwood and keep large fires
burning,” as protection against them--as the Canadian prairie farmers
light “smudges” to keep off mosquitoes; “but upon any material change
in the weather the whole swarm is destroyed.” It is scarcely likely
that the Golubacz fly breeds only in this one cavern--but if it should
breed in stagnant water along here, it might be well to try the effect
of liberal quantities of oil. Blocking the entrance to the cavern is
said to have been tried by the peasants many years ago, but, says the
record, the insects destroyed the stone and got out!
Along the base of these caverned rocks the Széchenyi road runs,
frequently blasted through the stone which hangs beetling overhead,
and, where the cliffs are most precipitous, sometimes built up on
projecting portions of them. We are here in the first portion of the
magnificent scenery which, though varying in character, continues
all the way to the Iron Gate below Orsova. “From Galambócz onwards,
the scenery presents the same characteristics of wild, solitary
grandeur--beetling cliffs shooting up into the sky--the exclusive
domain of eagles and other birds of prey, screaming as they wheel in
rapid circumvolutions overhead; vast, interminable forests, that climb
the highest mountains and descend into the deepest gorge; cataracts
roaring and leaping from rock to rock; majestic trees, with the soil
washed from under them, and ready to be hurled by the next blast
into the river; others, stripped of their bark, white and mutilated,
dashing along with the current, are but a few of the sights and sounds
which meet the traveller in this primæval wilderness. Almost the only
relieving features are here and there a flock of goats, a rude Servian
fishing boat or a solitary herdsman.”
Those words were written more than half a century ago. The beetling
cliffs, the grand rugged rock faces, and steep tree-grown slopes and
rushing waters remain. The fisherman and goats are yet to be seen,
but I looked in vain, both journeying down and up the river, for the
soaring eagle, feeling sure that it must be æried in these magnificent
heights at the base of which the steamer bears us.
Grand and lonely as it is, though villages and hamlets are passed at
no infrequent intervals, more especially on the Hungarian side, it
no longer suggests “primæval wilderness”--far less so, indeed, than
some of the low-lying stretches between Budapest and Zimony (Semlin).
Passing between these rocky walls the river has narrowed considerably,
and the swift current hastens to the cataracts and rapids which have
been considerably modified by the gigantic engineering undertaking of
improving the channel for shipping. Where, ahead of us on the right,
rises an abrupt face of tawny rock, the river suddenly widens into a
lake-like form.
This great rock, the Greben, over six hundred feet in height, was
partly blasted away for the purposes of navigation. On its face
were marks of the old Roman road, of which we shall see something
later. Here we are in the rapids, the water foaming and breaking over
submerged rock on all sides of us, the steamer’s course being marked by
occasional floating moored tree trunks. Just beyond the Greben, where
we get an almost dramatic change from the narrowed course of the river
between the wooded rocky heights to a broad lake-like expanse, we reach
what is known as the Little Iron Gate, where the current flows over a
series of ridges of rock, giving to the surface a “boiling” character.
The hills have somewhat receded here, and on the right bank is seen the
small old Servian town of Milanovac, and on the left bank the small
village of Svinica, with immediately beyond, a group of ruins on a
rocky knoll close above the water. These are three towers, known as
the Drey Kule and said to be the remains of a Roman castle.
The old builders of the stronghold were probably guided in their
choice of a site by requiring a vantage point overlooking the river,
but the building must also have afforded magnificent views of the
broad, troubled waters and of the grand surrounding mountains. The
lake-like effect of this stretch of the river is increased by the fact
that shortly after passing the Drey Kule the Danube sweeps round in a
northerly direction as it approaches the magnificent gorge or defile of
the Kazán--the grandest part of the whole course of the river.
In the neighbourhood of the Little Iron Gate, above Svinica, the Danube
is over a thousand yards wide, and remarkably shallow. Yet when, in
a few miles, we reach the Kazán, shut in by perpendicular cliffs,
the river is narrowed to a hundred and eighty yards, and is said to
be sixty yards deep. These magnificent masses of rock, some bare and
jagged, some densely clothed with trees, form a series of beautiful
pictures difficult to describe. At one point, on the right, above the
nearer cliffs, rises a bold, bare mass showing white against the blue
sky, in shape like Beachy Head--but a Beachy Head with wooded mountains
for its base.
Along the foot of the wall of rock on the left, runs the wonderful
Széchenyi road, which has opened up the defile that for many centuries
was only to be seen from the water. This road winding about, now a
channel in the face of the rock, now bending inland to cross a gorge,
sets us wishing for time to walk along it, to see the river from the
many points it offers, to visit the little villages seen now and again
where the mountains open out into small valleys.
It has been said that where the Greben rock was partly blasted away
there had been signs of a Roman road built along the face of it. As
we go through the Kazán we are shown points where this road was fixed,
sometimes against the very face of the cliff. Where modern engineering,
by the use of explosives, has cut a highway along the left bank, the
Romans, in making their road along the right one, were compelled to
make it of timber, fixing the supports into holes bored in the cliff,
and presumably strengthening them with struts--or so it was explained
to me by a gentleman of Orsova, who had studied the subject. In places,
the marks--a narrow ridge cut along a few feet above high water, and
holes in which the supporting beams were inserted--are strikingly
clear. This path, where it was taken along the rock face, is said to
have been about six feet in width and to have formed a covered gallery.
Why covered, I have not seen explained, possibly it was as a safeguard
from things falling from above, and if so, is a remarkable parallel
with the shed tunnels by which the trains running through the Rocky
Mountains of the West are protected against snowslides.
Where the Kazán gorge has widened somewhat, high up on the mountain,
the Veterani cavern is pointed out--a place which takes its name from
a gallant Austrian general who, in 1682, with a force of four hundred
men, gallantly and successfully held it for three months against a
greatly superior force. Some years later, in 1718, it was again held
successfully by the Austrians, under Major Stein, against Turkish
attacks. Though the entrance to the cavern is small, it is said to
provide ample accommodation for a garrison of six hundred men, and is
believed to have been utilized for military purposes as early as the
time of the Roman occupation.
[Illustration: THE KAZÁN]
The bare rocks, white and grey, sometimes rising sheer from the deep
water, sometimes with steep slopes covered with high beech, oak, and
walnut forests; the winding road along the left, successively take
the eye and impress the memory with a series of wonderful pictures. At
times it reminded me of some of the gorges in the Canadian rockies,
in the way in which it presents “in the most striking combination,
all those qualities, features and appearances which are the essential
constituents of sublimity in natural landscape”; and it is made the
more impressive by the knowledge that it has been a centre of the
struggles between East and West, that it was one of the routes, the
seemingly insurmountable difficulties of which were conquered by the
indomitable Romans. We see in imagination the narrow path along which
toiling slaves must have passed dragging the heavy boats against the
powerful current. History adds its glamour to a scene that is naturally
grand.
Near the village of Dubova on the Hungarian side, the Danube reaches
its narrowest point for many hundreds of miles--not much wider than
it is at far distant Ulm--the bases of the massive rocks reaching so
near that as we approach they seem, as above Visegrád though far more
grandly, to form the end of a land-locked lake. The passage is reduced
to a hundred and twenty yards where the river has forced its way
through the rocky barrier here, and looking back, the scene is no less
strikingly fine than as we approached. Such a scene as this might well
have been in Shelley’s mind when he wrote: “I have sailed down mighty
rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst
I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains”; or
when he described--
“The vast ravine whose rifts did pour
Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains.”
After passing this narrowest part, the channel begins to widen out
immediately. The mountains on the left begin to fall away, and as
we emerge from the gorge we have the Hungarian village of Ogradena
on the left, and, opposite, a large tablet, cut on the face of the
precipitous rock, which is a direct link with the Roman occupation of
this territory nearly two thousand years ago. It is not possible, as
the steamer bears us swiftly down the stream, to see the details of
the time-worn inscription, which is supposed to commemorate at once
the completion of the wonderful river-side road from near Orsova to
Galambócz (Golubacz), and the Dacian campaign of the year 103. The
inscription--amid much defaced ornamentation--has been read as--
IMP. CÆS. D. NERVÆ. FILIUS. NERVA. TRAJANUS.
AUG. GERM. PONT. MAX....
This tablet seems to bridge the years in a strange fashion; to make
more real to us the extraordinary performance of the first of the great
civilizing powers of the Western world. The position of this wonderful
road of the Roman past indicates that the volume of the Danube waters
has changed but little during the lapse of a couple of thousand years,
and it makes us marvel “how the Romans by sheer manual labour contrived
to open a military thoroughfare along the face of this tremendous
gorge.” Wonderful as is the Széchenyi road along the left bank, made in
days when explosives could be utilized, it is less wonderful than the
earlier achievement along the right bank. It was suggested when “the
great Hungarian” began his road, that it should have been made along
the Servian side, on the course of the old Roman way. But for one or
two points--such as the Kazán defile--the undertaking would certainly
appear less formidable. Perhaps when Servia becomes more progressive,
takes on something of the activity of her neighbour across the river,
the work may be undertaken, and the right bank opened up as the left
has been.
Leaving the Kazán, the river valley opens out widely on the Hungarian
side, while on the Servian the sloping hills recede somewhat from the
river, leaving space for a few cottages dotted here and there among the
trees. Some way ahead, the hills are seen again seemingly shutting in
the river, with against them, in the middle distance, the towers and
roofs of Orsova.
This scattered town, with its broad roads, its tree-grown front,
exercises a peculiar fascination over the visitor. It is not
particularly beautiful in itself, it has no interest-compelling
associations, no buildings of great importance, and yet--it grows on
one. It is true that it is beautifully situated near the junction of
the river Cerna with the Danube, that the views up towards the Kazán
and down to Ada Kaleh, and across the broad swift-running river to the
Servian hills, are all fine.
Miss F. M. F. Skene, returning by way of the Danube in 1847 after a
number of years spent in Greece, wrote on arriving at Orsova: “There is
a certain little town, named Varenna, lying on the brink of the Lake of
Como and looking down coquettishly on its own fair image reflected in
that pure mirror, which used to be my beau ideal of a quiet retreat,
for one wearied of the world and its follies; but as soon as I had seen
this little, romantic, smiling Orsova, I abandoned my former favourite,
feeling that nowhere else had I seen a spot at once so bright and
peaceful. It is assuredly a very lovely place.” Echoing the man who was
no orator as his colleague was, I feel inclined to say “ditto” to Miss
Skene.
Orsova is one of those places possessing the indefinable qualities
which we sum up as “charm,” though no small part of it is, doubtless,
due to its position. The country about it offers goodly variety
for the pedestrian. At a short distance from it, may be visited a
village which, though still in Hungary, is entirely Rumanian--a
broad street of low white houses, and all the people we meet in the
picturesque Rumanian peasant costumes, the women with white blouses
decorated with red and blue Slavonic stitchery, with black aprons
and closely embroidered belts, from which hang the many-coloured
threads of the opraija, meeting the apron on either side, and giving a
quaint effect over the white skirt beneath. Then there is the Orsova
market--a close-set row of booths near the river, at which all sorts
and conditions of things are sold, and where Hungarians, Rumanians,
Servians, Turks and gipsies are to be seen thronging. Nearer the river,
too, and adjoining the market is a bazaar where the Turks from Ada
Kaleh dispose of their wares.
While we were there, we learned that an encampment of the Tsigane
(gipsies) was to be seen two or three miles away, and through the
Rumanian village, past grassy levels starred with myriads of autumn
crocuses, we journeyed to it. The tents were pitched on a bluff above a
nearly dry river-bed, in a newly cut maize field. Among the tents, we
seemed taken back to a time before even the Romans came. The men with
their long curly locks, their clear-cut Phœnician-like profiles, seemed
to take us back to times but dimly known, while the nude children, the
primitive tents, suggested that we were not far from the period when
“wild in woods the naked savage ran,” though these particular “savages”
were sophisticated enough to beg with fawning volubility during our
stay in their unsavoury encampment.
A few miles inland from Orsova, in a lovely confined valley, is Mehadia
(Herkulesbad)--a celebrated “cure,” the hot-springs of which have been
celebrated from the times of the Romans.
[Illustration: THE CROWN CHAPEL, ORSOVA]
About a couple of miles to the east--across the Cerna--is a remarkable
Hungarian shrine, a small chapel approached by a splendid avenue of
tall, tapering poplars. This is the Crown Chapel, marking a historic
spot. When on the failure of the Hungarian Revolution the leaders had
to seek safety in exile, they took with them the crown of St. Stephen
and the other regalia, but nearing the frontier they had not the heart
to confess the failure of their high ideals by taking the national
insignia out of the country, and so sought a wild and lonely spot,
still on Hungarian soil, where they dug a deep hole and buried it,
each taking a pledge not to reveal its whereabouts without the consent
of the rest. Four or five years later, when the national cause seemed
hopelessly lost, the whereabouts of the hidden treasure was told to
the Emperor of Austria, and the exact place where the precious regalia
was buried was found with some difficulty, and the historic articles
recovered. Over the spot the Emperor, as king of Hungary, had the small
chapel erected. The creeper-clad building stands at the end of a fine
poplar avenue at right angles to the road from Orsova to the Rumanian
frontier. When I visited it the surroundings had been devastated two
or three weeks before by a terrible flood, which had swept down the
valley of the Cerna, destroying railway bridges, farms, cottages, and
everything in its course. The raised Orsova road had been washed away
in great gaps, and all around was muddy desolation. The subsiding
waters had left earthy marks some feet up the poplars and other trees,
and the grounds about the chapel were deep in soil deposited by the
rushing flood, while nearer Orsova so much earth had been swept down by
the torrent as to change the position of the Cerna’s outlet into the
Danube.
The charmingly natural figure of the Virgin and Child in the Crown
Chapel was the work of the Austrian sculptor, Meissner, who, having
devoted his life to wordly art, turned at its close to sacred
subjects, and died after completing this piece of work. The right hand
of the Virgin, having been broken off, has been replaced by the work of
an inferior artist.
From near the Crown Chapel the road and railway run closely parallel
along the foot of the hills, and on into Rumania. The frontier is
formed by the little river Bachna, which flows in through a pleasant
valley, and on the further side of this stream is the first Rumanian
village of Verciorova. The passenger steamer passes between this
place and the long island of Ada Kaleh, which forms one of the most
interesting features in this part of the Danube. The island lies about
three miles below Orsova, and to reach it a long, heavy row-boat must
be taken from the little Orsova bazaar, where the Turks come to sell
their tobacco, coffee, sweets, and other wares. The Turkish boatmen,
aided by the swift current of the stream, soon cover the distance, and
landing on the island we find that we have left Hungary and Servia, and
are in a veritable bit of Turkey, “detached,” as the old maps put it.
It was only in 1878 that Ada Kaleh came under the Austro-Hungarian
dominion, and it remains a bit of Turkey enislanded in the Danube, with
the broad river rushing on either side of it, and the lonely hills of
Hungary, Rumania, and Servia encircling it.
The whole place is an old fort. We pass under a gateway through a
thick wall of crumbling rich red brick, and come across similar walls
and arches again and again as soon as we wander away from the central
bazaar, which consists of four narrow streets, a few Turkish shops for
the sale of all sorts of things--largely such “souvenirs” as tourists
are expected to buy, which may be taken as indicating that if English
visitors are not numerous on this part of the Danube other visitors
must come in fair numbers, for they are evidently looked to to play
their part in supporting the small population of the island. In the
streets, or alleys, we see only men and boys, all wearing the deep-red
fez. When we pass by the gardens of some of the houses they are to be
seen boarded up with fences of six or seven feet high--as we pass one
a tiny Turkish maiden, red-fezed like her brother, emerges and offers
a few flowers in a way that suggests that a “tip” is expected--another
indication that, though we are the only visitors on the island at the
moment, Ada Kaleh has taken on the ways of a “show place” and is on the
look-out for strangers.
[Illustration: A CAFÉ IN ADA KALEH]
The bazaar, with its little café tables under the acacias, its
red-bricked paths, its low houses washed with brilliant blues and
greens, its group of men and boys, its shop-keepers standing in their
doorways fingering their “Tespis,” or strings of beads, is a true and
interesting glimpse of the Orient. The plain mosque, above one of the
battered walls, has little to show beyond a magnificent carpet covering
its floor space, though outside is a picturesque roofed-in well, grown
closely round with a wealth of vari-coloured convolvuluses, admiring
which, in company with a Japanese visitor, I learned that in Japan as
in England the flower is known as “the morning glory.” A series of
embayed arches under the walls, all of the same crumbling red brick,
known as the catacombs, suggest something of the security of the place
in the old days when it was a powerful fort. Its military importance
is still acknowledged by a small Austrian garrison being kept on it.
Despite this evidence of changed authority it remains essentially
Turkish.
On one of the gateways of the fortress is a memorial inscription in
Turkish, along which have been placed, within recent years, other
tablets rendering the inscription in Magyar and German. It is to the
following effect:--
“Open is the way of glory
To him who was glorious in deeds
Similar to those of the old times of heroes.
His heart was pure and high-thinking,
His will was great and powerful.
The defeater and the ruin of the enemies,
The benefactor and protector of the people,
His glory was doubled when he conquered this fortress,
And the frontiers of his country were enlarged
Greatly as a powerfully running torrent.
God save him from all evil
Because he has done much good in the world,
He whom we are remembering to-day,
That is to say Mahmud Khan.
1739.”
When Ada Kaleh passed under the Austro-Hungarian Crown, I am told, the
inhabitants wished to return to Turkey, but were induced to remain by
the promise that the Sultan should send them each year a shipload of
tobacco, coffee, and other commodities. On this annual gift, their
gardening, and their fishing, presumably the inhabitants live; they
have the privilege of fishing in the Danube from near Orsova to the
Rumanian frontier by payment of a merely nominal annual fee.
Those interested in fiscal matters will find in Ada Kaleh a perfect
example of a free trade community. There are no customs duties at
all--not even on tobacco--and the Turks have the privilege of selling
their tobacco, coffee, etc., in the enclosed bazaar on the quay at
Orsova. It is the purchasers who have the privilege of paying the
customs on that which they have bought at the bazaar before leaving
the enclosure. This is a sufficiently clear object-lesson to those who
refuse to recognize that duties are paid by the consumer. Indeed,
those who visit Ada Kaleh and ferry across to the bank that they may
walk back to Orsova, find a tiny customs house and officers waiting
to claim duties on such souvenirs as they may have purchased in the
island; a fez, a pair of slippers, a Turkish coffee cup--all are put in
the scales, weighed, and after reference to authorities, are shown to
be dutiable, though a quarter of an hour’s formalities show that the
sum total is but a few pence.
IV
THE LOWER DANUBE