THE IRON GATE TO RUSTZUK
“Broken by masses of submerged rock
The seething waters foam between the hills
In far extending tumult.”
The Lower Danube begins, officially, at the romantic rock of Babakáj,
but in an account such as this, it seems more fitting to make the
division some miles further down, where Hungary is divided from Rumania
by the little tributary, the Bachna. Not only does the river here flow
along another kingdom, but here is also one of the most famous parts
of the great river--the celebrated “Iron Gate” which finds mention
even in school geography books--mention, but, so far as I can recall,
little description. In the manner of one who has acquired a fresh piece
of information, since visiting this place--perhaps, by name, one of
the best-known natural features of Europe--I have put to many people
the question, “What do you understand by the Iron Gate of the Danube?”
The answers have mostly been that it was, of course, a narrow chasm,
a gorge, a defile, with lofty precipitous rocks on either side. Of
those to whom I have put the question only one could give an accurate
reply--and he had been there!
The problem--if problem it can be called--is an old one, for a
traveller more than half a century ago amusingly prefaced his account
of a voyage down this part of the river in the following fashion. He
describes how, having embarked at Orsova, he “proceeded to encounter
the perils of the Eisern Thor--the Iron Gate of the Danube--which is
so apt to be associated in the stranger’s imagination with something
of real personal risk and adventure. The ‘Iron Gate,’ we conjecture,
is some narrow, dark, and gloomy defile, through which the water,
hemmed in by stupendous cliffs, and ‘iron-bound,’ as we say, foams and
billows, and dashes over a channel of rocks, every one of which, when
it cannot drag you into its own whirlpool, is sure to drive you upon
some of its neighbours, which, with another rude shove, that makes your
bark stagger and reel, sends you smack upon a third! ‘But the “gate”?’
‘Why the gate is nothing more or less than other gates, the “outlet”;
and I dare say we shall be very glad when we are “let out quietly.”’
‘Very narrow at that point, ’spose?’ ‘Very. You have seen an iron
gate?’ ‘To be sure I have.’ ‘Well, I’m glad of that because you can
more readily imagine what the “Iron Gate” of the Danube is.’ ‘Yes--and
I’m all impatience to see it; but what if it should be locked when we
arrive?’ ‘Why, in that case we should feel a little awkward.’ ‘Should
we have to wait long?’ ‘Only till we got the key, although we might
have to send to Constantinople for it.’ ‘Constantinople! well, here’s a
pretty situation! I wish I had gone by the “cart.”’ ‘You, certainly had
your choice, and might have done so--the company provide both waggon
and water conveyance to Gladova; but I daresay we shall find the gate
open.’ ‘I hope we shall; and as for the rocks and all that, why we got
over the Wirbel and Strudel and Izlas and twenty others, and ’spose we
get over this, too. It’s only the Gate that puzzles me--the Handbook
says not a word about that--quite unpardonable such an omission! Write
to the publisher----’!”
This is of course, a somewhat exaggerated account, but the name
of the Iron Gate is likely long to cause confusion in the minds of
“visualizing” persons--those who cannot learn the name of an object
without forming a picture of the thing named. Such folk, as long as the
Iron Gate remains the Iron Gate, will be likely to think of it as a
gloomy defile rather than as a fairly wide portion of the river--will
associate the name with the confining banks rather than with the rocks
in the bed of the river--rocks which during high water are entirely
hidden from sight. The great engineering work which has been carried
out in regulating the navigation of the Danube, has modified the terror
of the Iron Gate so that the long ridges of serrated rock are less of a
menace than of old.
Some of this regulating work we saw in the neighbourhood of the Greben.
The completion of it--and in some ways the most remarkable portion--is
here at the Iron Gate, where along the right bank a “canal” was blasted
through the solid rock, to ensure a sufficient channel of water for
boats at all times. Before this regularizing, the Iron Gate portion
of the river was unusable for about three months of each year. The
canal was devised to allow of a minimum depth of nearly ten feet below
Orsova, as the upper regularizing work was done to make a minimum depth
of six and a half above Orsova. This is not the place, nor am I the
writer, to deal with the great engineering feats by which the work was
accomplished.
The navigation of the Iron Gate was opened for traffic on 27 September,
1896, in the presence of the rulers of the three kingdoms that meet
in its neighbourhood, the Emperor Francis Joseph as king of Hungary,
King Carol of Rumania, and King Alexander of Servia, and though the
channel was made, as it was hoped, of sufficient width to allow
vessels to pass in it, the strength of the current is such that such
passing was found to be impracticable, and vessels, when there is
sufficient water, come up-stream outside the canal. During my stay in
the neighbourhood there was sufficient water, and nothing was seen of
the rocks which, for a distance of nearly a mile and a half, form the
Iron Gate. Nothing was seen of the rocks, but much was seen of their
action. For the distance mentioned, the surface of the water from the
left bank to the outer wall of the canal was one foaming and seething
mass, formed by the current rushing against the submerged lines of
jagged stone. The effect of passing through this in the little steam
launch of the chief engineer in control of the navigation works, is
very wonderful. It seems as though the tiny craft would inevitably be
battered by the tumultuous waters against some of the invisible rocks;
but the steersmen seem to know the waters with unfailing sureness,
and it stems the broken current in safety. From the low deck of the
launch those “boiling” waters seemed much more formidable than from
that of the ordinary passenger steamer, though this, too, having gone
on the downward journey through the canal, came back over the cataract
portion. When the rocky ridges are exposed at low water, the scene has
been described as “the gaping jaws as it were of some infernal monster.”
Interesting, even fascinating, in the broad mass of its broken waters,
the Iron Gate, despite its traditional importance, is far less grandly
impressive than is the Kazán.
[Illustration: THE IRON GATE]
The Iron Gate begins immediately below the island of Ada Kaleh--a
signal station with a rising and falling globe indicates whether the
course through is clear--and as we pass down the canal we get but an
imperfect impression of the long-formidable barrier, the dangers of
which it has lessened. On either side of us rise sloping tree-grown
hills, giving way, as we reach the further end, to curious high
sandhills on the left or Rumanian side. Borne swiftly along in
the steamer, we get but a general effect of the scenery, and may
well regret that we have no opportunity of exploring the shores, the
wooded hills and inviting valleys. In the past, when even the steamers
coming up-stream were aided by bands of sturdy peasants towing,
travellers were sometimes given opportunities of “stretching their
legs” by walking. Miss Skene, who journeyed up the river in early
summer in these old circumstances and wrote descriptive letters of her
experiences, may describe for us from the land what we see but vaguely
from the water:
“On the opposite side, we could only see that it was green, and lovely,
and most richly clad, but on the Servian shore where we stood, and
feasted our eyes with the details, we might well be enraptured with the
scene. We stood on a green lawn, where the short, soft grass looked
as though it had been cut daily by some careful hand; and so thickly
was it strewn with the sweetest wild flowers, that no English garden
ever freighted the wind with a heavier load of perfume. So profuse
and inexhaustible were indeed all the productions of Nature in this
beautiful solitude that she seemed to have lavished all her powers
in embellishing it, and revelling in the wild beauty she produced,
till every inch of ground was bursting with life and vegetation. From
the summit of the high hills that rose behind us, down to the very
edge of the water, the forests of young wood contended with the young
shrubberies, and close over the river, the laburnums and wild yellow
roses hung in graceful festoons, till their very blossoms were shed
into the wave. Then, as we proceeded to walk on over the rocks, and
through the thick brushwood, the innumerable birds that burst from
every bush, and scarcely seemed startled at our approach, showed how
rarely a human foot invaded their green haunts. At times we would
catch a glimpse of a deer bounding through the thicket, and they tell
us that these woods are full of wild boar and bears, as well as game
of every description. The sun continued to shine brightly, and we
walked for an hour or more amongst this beautiful scenery--the buzzing
of a thousand insects in the warm air, the singing of the birds, the
innumerable odours from the hill, all seeming to indicate that this was
the very domain of a living summer.”
It was autumn when I journeyed down the Danube, but even then, at every
place I stayed and along such stretches of the river as I explored
afoot, the wealth of flowers was such as to suggest how much greater it
must be in spring and summer. And it may be said that, impressive as
is the ever-changing panorama seen from the comfortable steamers, the
river becomes the more endeared to us the more we can explore of such
details as cannot be seen, or can be but glanced at from the water.
Certainly much of the Servian shore looks so inviting as to suggest
that Miss Skene’s enthusiasm was not too fervid.
Shortly after we emerge from between the hills that border the
cataracts of the Iron Gate, the hills fall away on either side, and
we pass between banks low on the Servian and higher on the Rumanian
shores. Small villages are seen, the second of these on the right
being Kladova, which is interesting as having been the Roman station
of Egeta--the starting point, presumably, of the two important lines
of conquest represented by Trajan’s road along the Danube bank and by
the other which passed north into Dacia from a bridge across the river,
some of the bricks of which “are alive at this day to testify.”
This bridge crossed the Danube from the Servian shore, some distance
below Turn Severin, a Rumanian town which is presumed to take its
name from the scrap of an ancient tower supposed to have been built
by Severinus. Trajan’s bridge is described by Gibbon as having
consisted of twenty-two stone piles with wooden arches; other writers
refer to it as a stone bridge, which seems to be more likely, if it
be true that, when it was destroyed by Hadrian with the object of
preventing the invasion of the Goths, its ruins stopped the course of
the river. Gibbon refers to the river here as being shallow and the
current gentle; but it was assuredly rapid enough when I was there to
suggest that Apollodorus, the architect, must have had a sufficiently
formidable task when he set about building the bridge for Trajan. Only
scraps of the bridge-head are now visible. Michael Joseph Quin, who
made a steam voyage down the Danube in 1834, appears to have been one
of the first of the moderns to fix the situation of the bridge and to
describe it. The “Count” of his notes, it may be mentioned, was Count
Széchenyi, “the great Hungarian,” who was then superintending the
making of his great road, and with whom Quin had the good fortune to
travel some distance down the river below Orsova:
“On our return to the steamer, some discussion arose as to the exact
site of Trajan’s bridge across the Danube, which, though recorded in
history, had hitherto puzzled all the commentators; as, in fact, no
trace of that once magnificent edifice had been discovered for many
ages. The Count suggested that, as the river was now so low, there
was a chance of our settling the question by a personal examination.
Accordingly, we proceeded on foot along the Wallachian (Rumanian)
shore, until we arrived at the ruins of an ancient tower, built on an
eminence, which had evidently been raised by artificial means. The
tower was of Roman construction, and, as we conjectured that it might
have been intended as a guard station for the defence of the bridge,
we ascended the eminence with no slight feelings of curiosity.
“Looking down the river, which is here of no very great width, and
divided by a sandbank, which, however, cannot be perceptible in the
ordinary state of the Danube, we distinctly observed the water curling
over a series of impediments extending in a right line from bank to
bank. At both extremities of this line we perceived on the land the
remains of square pillars; and on approaching the ruin on our side,
we found it constructed of blocks of stone, faced towards the river
with Roman tiles, evidently forming the buttress of the first arch
of the bridge. In the river itself we counted the remains of six or
seven pillars, which had manifestly served to sustain as many arches,
connecting the bank on which we stood with the opposite one. No doubt,
therefore, could remain that here was the site of Trajan’s celebrated
bridge, a marvellous work for the times in which he lived, considering
that it had been constructed on one of the most remote confines of the
Roman empire.”
There are here but low, crumbly banks to the river, and in parts the
water is very shallow. Coming up-stream hereabouts on an early October
morning, I went on deck, hoping to see the sun rise over the broad
Rumanian plain, but found everything hidden, even the near banks, in a
thick fog. The steamer had made an early start that it might pass the
Iron Gate as soon as it was clear daylight, and thus get through the
Kazán for Zimony (Semlin) before night. The start had been too early,
for before the sun was up the vessel ran aground on the Rumanian shore,
and stuck fast for two or three hours, while another steamer was sent
from Turn Severin to haul it off. Even then we were so fast that the
first attempt of the sister ship to tug us off resulted in the snapping
of the steel cable. The second attempt was successful, and when we
continued our journey the fog had entirely gone, and under a brilliant
morning sunshine the Servian shore, with its villages and greenery,
looked particularly beautiful. The Rumanian scenery was almost entirely
shut off by the high bank.
Turn Severin, but little of which is seen from the landing place,
lies inland, pleasantly situated on elevated ground partly hidden
by trees. To reach it, we cross the railway from Bukarest, which
closely neighbours the Danube from Turn Severin to Orsova, and pass
the prominent buildings of medicinal baths. A town of over eight
thousand inhabitants, with a shipyard on the river, it seems to be a
growing place, desirous of taking on anew something of its old-time
importance, for it is supposed to have been of considerable size in the
Roman period. With its public garden, its handsome theatre and other
buildings, its cafés, and general air of comfortable prosperity, it is
an agreeable town, giving pleasant first impressions of Rumania.
Unfortunately, we reached Turn Severin in the late afternoon, when
little beyond a general impression was to be had, for a stay was
rendered impossible owing to the fact that our journey down the Danube
was taken at a time when a cholera “scare” made landing anywhere beyond
the confines of Hungary a matter of difficulty, and staying a matter of
impossibility, except to those prepared to undergo four or five days
of quarantine before being allowed to travel about. It is certainly
well that every precaution should be taken to prevent the spread of
disease, but during the scare which synchronized with our journey, the
restrictions, once the traveller got beyond Hungary, were such that
further progress was rendered difficult. We were only allowed to land
and visit Turn Severin as an act of grace, and conditional upon our
not staying in the town for the night! The same difficulty, we were
told, would confront us all down the rest of the river, and though we
had hoped to reach Sulina on the Black Sea, we had to leave the lower
journey through the Danubian plains unachieved and return. To complete
the story of the river to its mouth it is thus necessary to rely upon
the records of other travellers.
The precautions taken against the cholera, both at Servian and Rumanian
landing places, during this “scare” included the spraying of the people
who landed with disinfectants. A man with a can on his back like a
fire-extinguishing apparatus, and a hose for doing the spraying,
was waiting for those who landed on the shore; beside this, at Turn
Severin, was a travelling disinfecting engine, in which the travellers’
belongings were subjected to treatment. Had time permitted, it might
have been amusing to pass the necessary days in quarantine, as it would
certainly have been interesting to have had the opportunity of seeing
the last portion of the river’s course.
From the picturesque point of view, there is something of sameness in
the last few hundred miles of Danube scenery--nothing of outstanding
beauty or grandeur of scenery is to be looked for below the Iron Gate,
though there is an undoubted beauty of its own belonging to a broad
river passing through a great and variedly fruitful plain. The chief
charm of the lowest part of the journey down the Danube is, however, to
be found less in scenery than in the varieties of people to be seen,
and the great variation of national costume as the traveller touches at
towns in Servia, Rumania, and Bulgaria.
It was at Turn Severin that Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen
landed “under a feigned name and with a false passport,” from an
Austrian steamer, on 20 May, 1866, when he had been called, by an
almost unanimous vote of the Rumanian people, to be their ruler
in place of Prince Alexander, who had been forced to abdicate. A
conference of the Powers at Paris, had decided that the Prince of
Rumania must be a native, but the Rumanians had decided on Prince
Charles, and acting on Bismarck’s advice, he decided to confront
the Powers with a _fait accompli_--hence the secret arrival at Turn
Severin, where incognito was thrown off, and the prince was hailed with
delight. He has justified the _coup_ by proving one of the wisest and
best of European sovereigns.
Shortly below Turn Severin the river, after running in a south-easterly
direction, sweeps round a curve, until it flows for a short distance
in almost the opposite way, bringing into sight again the hills that
have been left, and the distant Balkans to the south-west. Divided by
various islands and at low water exposing many sandbanks, the river
goes on past villages on either side, with signs of pleasant prosperity
which suggest that Michael Quin’s forecast may yet be fulfilled. When
he wrote, the people of Wallachia had largely migrated to Hungary,
owing to the continuously unsettled condition of their own land; but he
confidently predicted that when the population increased, when their
habitations improved and their industry came to be encouraged by the
influence of order and the laws, and they should feel themselves safe
from the spoliation of marauding armies, then they would be enabled “to
convert the whole of that region into a Paradise.”
Both Servia and Rumania are largely and progressively agricultural
and pastoral countries, and much of the flat country through which
the river winds, is pasture and forest. The villages that are passed
on either bank do not call for special mention, until, at Kossiak, is
reached an important centre of the salt industry, and, at Radujevac,
the last town in Servia--for shortly beyond it the river Timok, which
flows in from the south, forms the frontier line between Servia and
Bulgaria. Radujevac, the last of the Servian river-ports, is a small
town and the station for Negotin, a town lying some few miles to the
south, which latter is the centre of a large vineyard district that
gives its name to a wine that is said to be particularly good; indeed
the Negotin wine “is exported abroad in large quantities via Radujevac,
and after being artificially treated, is often re-imported into Servia,
in the guise of an expensive dessert wine.”
Beyond Radujevac, before the frontier river, the Timok, is reached,
are many remains of old Roman fortifications, reminiscent of the timid
and fruitless precautions of Justinian which, said Gibbon, “expose to
a philosophic eye the debility of the empire. From Belgrade to the
Euxine, from the conflux of the Save to the mouth of the Danube, a
chain of above four score fortified places was extended along the banks
of the great river.” The broadening stream, broken up by many islands,
turns south as it nears Widdin on the right, and Calafat on the left
bank, places both of them associated with Russo-Turkish warfare. Widdin
is an important town, and when occupied by the Turks, was strongly
fortified. It stands on low, marshy ground, but in improving scenery,
for behind in the distance are seen the rounded summits of a range of
the Balkan mountains. The mosques and minarets, which it retains from
the time when it was Turkish and the centre of an important pashalik,
give it a picturesque appearance from the river.
Widdin is supposed to be one of the places where, in the year 233,
Constantine the Great defeated a great gathering of the Goths. In one
of the poems of Cynewulf, the fighting on the Danube shore is most
vigorously presented; “Battle was brought against him, the thunder
of war; the hordes of the Huns and the Hrethgoths assembled a host;
fierce-hearted the Franks went forth, the people of Hugas. Spears
shone and wreathen mail; with shout and ringing shield they flew
their battle flags. There were the heroes assembled, openly gathered
together--and the throng of folk fared forth. The wolf of the weald
chanted his song of battle, hid not his war-runes; the dewy-feathered
eagle screamed as he followed the foe. Straight through the cities
that mighty battle throng hasted away to war, in hosts as many as the
King of the Huns might summon to the fray, of warriors round about.
That horde went out, with chosen bands confirmed their forces--till
in a strange land on the Danube’s rim, stark of heart, those spearmen
tarried nigh to the water’s surging, with the noise of multitude.”
Impressive, indeed, is the long account of the battle between the
Roman troops and the barbarian host. One passage may be recalled in
the neighbourhood of the contest: “With strong hand the cruel foe
dealt forth a shower of darts and spears, their battle-adders, over
the yellow shield into the host of the hated. But stout of heart they
strode, pressed on as occasion offered, burst through the hedge of
shields, drove home the sword and ruthless hastened on. Then was the
ensign lifted up, the battle sign before the troops; they sang a song
of triumph. Golden helms and lances gleamed over the battle-plain. The
pagan peoples perished, without quarter sank in death. And straight
they fled away, this Hunnish folk, as the King of the dwellers of
Rome, urging the strife, bade that holy tree be lifted up. The heroes
were scattered afar. Some the battle took; some held their lives
hardly on the armies march; some half-quick, half-dead, fled away into
fastnesses, sheltered themselves behind the stony cliffs, held the land
round about the Danube; and some were drowned in the flowing stream at
the end of life.”[16]
Calafat, on the Rumanian bank, opposite Widdin, is the terminus of a
railway from Bukarest, with a steam ferry to Widdin; is said to have
been founded by the Genoese in the fourteenth century; and to owe its
name to the large number of workmen (_calfats_) whom they employed
here in repairing ships. At both of these places are still to be seen
trenches and batteries used in the wars of 1854 and 1877; in the latter
year Widdin was bombarded from Calafat, and in 1885 it was besieged yet
again during the Servo-Bulgarian War. The history of Widdin is, indeed,
largely a history of warfare from the time when it was the Mœsian
Bononia of the Romans; and it had been besieged many times--thrice in
the nineteenth century--before the Servians made their unsuccessful
attempt in 1885.
Below Widdin, the Danube turns eastward again, and flows sinuously in
that general direction for nearly two hundred miles, before taking
its final north-easterly trend. The wide river, with many islands,
continues through low land, on the left being the vast Wallachian or
Rumanian plain, largely hidden by the islands formed by the river,
while on the right it is in great part also flat, though now and again
the monotony is broken by higher ground. Lom-Palanka, for instance, a
town of about six thousand inhabitants, and the railhead for Sofia, is
described as being beautifully situated on wooded hills, but beyond
both shores become monotonously flat and broken with ditches and pools,
close-grown with reeds and other aquatic vegetation.
The next place of note, Somovit, on the Bulgarian side, is the
railhead of another line to the capital. The railway to Sofia passes
through Plevna, which stands about twenty-five miles south of Somovit.
Plevna was the centre of the most remarkable incident in the latest
Russo-Turkish War, when it was defended in stubborn and magnificent
fashion by Osman Pasha against a mighty Russian and Rumanian army.
Twice in July, 1877, did the enemy unsuccessfully attack the town. In
September (7-13) they made a grand assault, and were repulsed with
a loss of eighteen thousand men. In October, Plevna was formally
invested, but Osman held out until 10 December, when he was compelled
to surrender. It had taken the Russians one hundred and forty-two
days to capture the town, and they had lost forty thousand men in the
operation, while the defenders had lost as many as thirty thousand.
Those travellers who, after journeying down the Danube, wish to visit
Sofia, are recommended to journey thither from Somovit rather than from
Lom-Palanka, not only because it gives the opportunity of seeing the
scene of historic battling, but because the railway line “runs through
a perfect Alpine region.”
The next place after Somovit, also on the Bulgarian shore, is Nicopoli,
picturesquely situated at the foot of bold cliffs and up the slopes
between them. For here the left bank has taken on new beauty, and
in front of it the Danube stretches, about two miles in width, its
surface broken by a number of islands about which pelicans and various
waterfowl abound. Its mosques and minarets remain as indications of the
long period that it was a Turkish town, and to suggest something of the
past when the Crescent and the Cross fought strenuously together for
the mastery.
In 1392, and again three years later, King Sigismund of Hungary
captured Nicopoli. Then Sultan Bajazet, the “Thunderbolt,” came thither
with his army, determined to show that he merited his newly-acquired
title. To use Gibbon’s words he had “turned his arms against the
Kingdom of Hungary, the perpetual theatre of the Turkish victories and
defeats. Sigismond, the Hungarian King, was the son and brother of the
Emperors of the West; his cause was that of Europe and the Church;
and on the report of his danger, the bravest Knights of France and
Germany were eager to march under his standard and that of the Cross.
In the battle of Nicopoli, Bajazet defeated a confederate army of a
hundred thousand Christians, who had proudly boasted, that if the sky
should fall, they could uphold it on their lances. The far greater
part were slain or driven into the Danube; and Sigismond, escaping
to Constantinople by the river and the Black Sea, returned, after
a long circuit, to his exhausted Kingdom. In the pride of victory
Bajazet threatened that he would besiege Buda; that he would subdue
the adjacent countries of Germany and Italy; and that he would feed
his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter’s at Rome.
His progress was checked, not by the miraculous interposition of the
apostle, not by a crusade of the Christian powers, but by a long and
painful fit of the gout. The disorders of the moral are sometimes
corrected by those of the physical world; and an acrimonious humour
falling on a single fibre of one man, may prevent or suspend the misery
of nations.”
In the great Christian host thus destroyed, there was a large body
of the Knights of Malta, all of whom, it is said, perished with
the exception of the Grand Master, who escaped with King Sigismund
in a boat. The historian, it should be added, gives this as the
“general idea” of the fighting, but he goes on to suggest that the
Christian army was not so large as has been said, and that it was the
carelessness of the Christians, no less than the greatness of the
Ottoman leader, that gave so signal a victory to the latter, for he
continues, speaking of the leaders of the French army, “when their
scouts announced the approach of the Turks, the gay and thoughtless
youths were at table, already heated with wine; they instantly clasped
their armour, mounted their horses, rode full speed to the vanguard,
and resented as an affront the advice of Sigismond, which would
have deprived them of the right and honour of the foremost attack.
The battle of Nicopoli would not have been lost if the French would
have obeyed the prudence of the Hungarians; but it might have been
gloriously won had the Hungarians imitated the valour of the French.
They dispersed the first line, consisting of the troops of Asia; forced
a rampart of stakes, which had been planted against the cavalry; broke,
after a bloody conflict, the janizaries themselves; and were at length
overwhelmed by the numerous squadrons that issued from the woods, and
charged on all sides this handful of intrepid warriors.”
The victory placed the Danubian provinces under Turkish rule, and
so may be said to have been responsible for nearly five centuries
of that sporadic struggle which only ended after the termination of
the Russo-Turkish War in 1878. Again and again was Nicopoli a battle
centre. It was besieged once more by the Hungarians in 1444; twice
the Turks were defeated here in the closing decade of the sixteenth
century. The town was occupied by the Russians in 1810, and in 1829 the
Russians destroyed the Turkish flotilla here and stormed the place. In
1877 before the advance on Plevna, Nicopoli was captured and burnt by
the Russians, and was occupied by the Rumanians during the stubborn
attack on Plevna.
In an old guide book it is recorded that a little beyond Nicopoli is
Pellina, a Latin settlement of about two thousand souls, who chose
this spot to avoid persecution, to which they, as Christians, were
subject in Nicopoli. “As the steamboat passes along, a number of them
generally assemble on a hill, having a bishop at their head, and cry
aloud, ‘Brothers, come to us!’ imagining the passengers to be of the
same creed as themselves. The captain returns their invitation by a
salute.” As I have not travelled this portion of the Danube, I cannot
say whether this picturesque incident still occurs. The passing of
Turkish rule has long since done away with any occasion for it. Even
when Miss Skene journeyed up the river, Christian “Infidels” were
sometimes very badly received, for she recorded landing at one place,
to which she gave no name (possibly it was Nicopoli), where she and her
companions were stoned back to their vessel.
Opposite Nicopoli is the small Rumanian town of Turn-Magurelle, with
ruins of a Turkish fortress. The broad river--like an inland sea, as
one traveller puts it--flows on past many reedy islands, from which now
and again large flocks of pelicans are to be seen, until, beyond a very
large island, another Bulgarian place of historic importance is reached
at Sistov, a very picturesquely situated town, about the base and on
the slopes of a hill surmounted by ancient ruins. These ruins are part
of the fortress, destroyed by the Russians in 1810, where the Treaty
of Sistov, between Austria and Turkey, was signed in 1791. It was
probably here that Miss Skene landed when she got the view of the river
described in the following passage. She tells how after “a fortnight’s
imprisonment on board” the captain’s permission to land for half an
hour was hailed with delight, and how she and her companions adopted
his suggestion of making “for the ruins of an old castle visible on the
summit of the hill.” Sistov was still a Turkish town, inhabited by a
people who looked with disfavour on Christian visitors.
“It was with considerable difficulty that we made our way through the
assembled villagers, whose gestures and cries were most expressive
of the hatred and contempt with which they regarded us. Happily the
steamer and its contents engaged them so much, that we succeeded in
getting clear of the village altogether, by a circuitous road, which
was particularly like a road anywhere else, and ascended to the summit
of the hill. The ruins were merely those of an old Turkish castle, in
no way remarkable, but as soon as we disengaged ourselves from them,
and got out on to the open brow of the hill, the view which then burst
upon our sight was most remarkable.
“Here was indeed the Danube at last, which till then, seen in detail,
and most unfavourably, in its swollen and irregular state, we had never
comprehended as the great, the stupendous, the noble river which it is.
Springing in the very heart of that Europe, of which it is the great
artery, and sweeping along with its silver rolling waters, too vast and
majestic to be turbulent, undiminished in volume, unvarying in course
from land to land, till now, where we could distinguish it far off in
the vast plains that lay around us--it came, turning its mighty stream
through the green meadows which it fertilized, and rushing deep and
wide, as though it had gathered all the rivers of earth to its bosom,
beneath our feet, rolled on away to that wild and stormy sea, whose
tremendous billows cannot, even for twenty miles, resist its current.
The country, of which we obtained a panoramic view from this spot, was
but one succession of fertile plains, but the river was still in flood,
and the distance rendered the details of the opposite shore quite
indistinct.”
From Sistov to Rustzuk--a distance of about forty miles the Danube
flows past the low, reed-grown banks, broken up and enislanded by
ditches and small branches of the stream on the left, and past the low,
bare hills of Bulgaria on the right, with little to vary the sameness
beyond the passing of islands and the sight of some of the waterfowl
with which these lower parts of the river abound.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] “The Poems of Cynewulf.” Translated into English prose by Charles
W. Kennedy (1910).