The Danube

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.

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.

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!

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.

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—

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.

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.

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:—

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.