Andrew Archibald Paton - Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family
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Andrew Archibald Paton >> Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family
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15 SERVIA,
YOUNGEST MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN
FAMILY:
OR, A
RESIDENCE IN BELGRADE,
AND
TRAVELS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND WOODLANDS OF
THE INTERIOR,
DURING THE YEARS 1843 AND 1844.
BY
ANDREW ARCHIBALD PATON, ESQ.
AUTHOR OF "THE MODERN SYRIANS."
"Les hommes croient en general connaitre suffisamment l'Empire Ottoman
pour peu qu'ils aient lu l'enorme compilation que le savant M. de
Hammer a publiee ... mais en dehors de ce mouvement central il y a la
vie interieure de province, dont le tableau tout entier reste a
faire."
LONDON:
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1845.
PREFACE.
The narrative and descriptive portion of this work speaks for itself.
In the historical part I have consulted with advantage Von Engel's
"History of Servia," Ranke's "Servian Revolution," Possart's "Servia,"
and Ami Boue's "Turquie d'Europe," but took the precaution of
submitting the facts selected to the censorship of those on the spot
best able to test their accuracy. For this service, I owe a debt of
acknowledgment to M. Hadschitch, the framer of the Servian code; M.
Marinovitch, Secretary of the Senate; and Professor John Shafarik,
whose lectures on Slaavic history, literature, and antiquities, have
obtained unanimous applause.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 1.
Leave Beyrout.--Camp afloat.-Rhodes.--The shores of the Mediterranean
suitable for the cultivation of the arts.--A Moslem of the new
school.--American Presbyterian clergyman.--A Mexican senator.--A
sermon for sailors.--Smyrna.--Buyukdere.--Sir Stratford
Canning.--Embark for Bulgaria.
CHAPTER II.
Varna.--Contrast of Northern and Southern provinces of
Turkey.--Roustchouk.--Conversation with Deftendar.--The Danube.--A
Bulgarian interior.--A dandy of the Lower Danube.--Depart for Widdin.
CHAPTER III.
River steaming.--Arrival at Widdin.--Jew.--Comfortless khan.--Wretched
appearance of Widdin.--Hussein Pasha.--M. Petronievitch.--Steam
balloon.
CHAPTER IV.
Leave Widdin.--The Timok.--Enter Servia.--Brza Palanka.--The Iron
Gates.--Old and New Orsova.--Wallachian Matron.--Semlin.--A
conversation on language.
CHAPTER V.
Description of Belgrade.--Fortifications.--Street and street
population.--Cathedral.--Large square.--Coffee-house.--Deserted
villa.--Baths.
CHAPTER VI.
Europeanization of Belgrade.--Lighting and paving.--Interior of the
fortress.--Turkish Pasha.--Turkish quarter.--Turkish
population.--Panorama of Belgrade.--Dinner party given by the prince.
CHAPTER VII.
Return to Servia.--The Danube.--Semlin.--Wucics and
Petronievitch.--Cathedral solemnity.--Subscription ball.
CHAPTER VIII.
Holman, the blind traveller.--Milutinovich, the poet.--Bulgarian
legend.--Tableau de genre.--Departure for the interior.
CHAPTER IX.
Journey to Shabatz.--Resemblance of manners to those of the middle
ages.--Palesh.--A Servian bride.--Blind
minstrel.--Gipsies.--Macadamized roads.
CHAPTER X.
Shabatz.--A provincial chancery.--Servian collector.--Description of
his house.--Country barber.--Turkish quarter.--Self-taught priest.--A
provincial dinner.--Native soiree.
CHAPTER XI.
Kaimak.--History of a renegade.--A bishop's house.--Progress of
education.--Portrait of Milosh.--Bosnia and the Bosnians.--Moslem
fanaticism.--Death of the collector.
CHAPTER XII.
The banat of Matchva.--Losnitza.--Feuds on the frontier.--Enter the
back-woods.--Convent of Tronosha.--Greek festival.--Congregation of
peasantry.--Rustic finery.
CHAPTER XIII.
Romantic sylvan scenery.--Patriarchal simplicity of
manners.--Krupena.--Sokol.--Its extraordinary position.--Wretched
town.--Alpine scenery.--Cool reception.--Valley of the Rogatschitza.
CHAPTER XIV.
The Drina.--Liubovia.--Quarantine station.--Derlatcha.--A Servian
beauty.--A lunatic priest.--Sorry quarters.--Murder by brigands.
CHAPTER XV.
Arrival at Ushitza.--Wretched street.--Excellent khan.--Turkish
vayvode.--A Persian dervish.--Relations of Moslems and
Christians.--Visit the castle.--Bird's eye view.
CHAPTER XVI.
Poshega.--The river Morava.--Arrival at Csatsak.--A Viennese
doctor.--Project to ascend the Kopaunik.--Visit the bishop.--Ancient
cathedral church.--Greek mass.--Karanovatz.--Emigrant priest.--Albanian
disorders.--Salt mines.
CHAPTER XVII.
Coronation church of the ancient kings of Servia.--Enter the
Highlands.--Valley of the Ybar.--First view of the High Balkan.--Convent
of Studenitza.--Byzantine Architecture.--Phlegmatic monk.--Servian
frontier.--New quarantine.--Russian major.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Cross the Bosniac frontier.--Gipsy encampment.--Novibazar
described.--Rough reception.--Precipitate departure.--Fanaticism.
CHAPTER XIX.
Ascent of the Kopaunik.--Grand prospect.--Descent of the
Kopaunik.--Bruss.--Involuntary bigamy.--Conversation on the Servian
character.--Krushevatz.--Relics of monarchy.
CHAPTER XX.
Formation of the Servian monarchy.--Contest between the Latin and Greek
Churches.--Stephen Dushan.--A great warrior.--Results of his
victories.--Kucs Lasar.--Invasion of Amurath.--Battle of Kossovo.--Death
of Lasar and Amurath.--Fall of the Servian monarchy.--General
observations.
CHAPTER XXI.
A battue missed.--Proceed to Alexinatz.--Foreign-Office
courier.--Bulgarian frontier.--Gipsy Suregee.--Tiupria.--New bridge and
macadamized roads.
CHAPTER XXII.
Visit to Ravanitza.--Jovial party.--Servian and Austrian
jurisdiction.--Convent described.--Eagles reversed.--Bulgarian
festivities.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Manasia.--Has preserved its middle-age character.--Robinson
Crusoe.--Wonderful echo.--Kindness of the
people.--Svilainitza.--Posharevatz.--Baby giantess.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Rich soil.--Mysterious waters.--Treaty of Passarovitz.--The castle of
Semendria.--Relics of the antique.--The Brankovitch
family.--Panesova.--Morrison's pills.
CHAPTER XXV.
Personal appearance of the Servians.--Their moral
character.--Peculiarity of manners.--Christmas
festivities.--Easter.--The Dodola.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Town life.--The public offices.--Manners half-oriental
half-European.--Merchants and tradesmen.--Turkish
population.--Porters.--Barbers.--Cafes.--Public writer.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Poetry.--Journalism.--The fine arts.--The Lyceum.--Mineralogical
cabinet.--Museum.--Servian Education.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Preparations for departure.--Impressions of the East.--Prince
Alexander.--The palace.--Kara Georg.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A memoir of Kara Georg.
CHAPTER XXX.
Milosh Obrenovitch.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The prince.--The government.--The senate.--The minister for foreign
affairs.--The minister of the interior.--Courts of justice.--Finances.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Agriculture and commerce.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The foreign agents.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
VIENNA IN 1844.
Improvements in Vienna.--Palladian style.--Music.--Theatres.--Sir Robert
Gordon.--Prince Metternich.--Armen ball.--Dancing.--Strauss.--Austrian
policy.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Concluding observations on Austria and her prospects.
SERVIA.
CHAPTER I.
Leave Beyrout.--Camp afloat.--Rhodes.--The shores of the Mediterranean
suitable for the cultivation of the arts.--A Moslem of the new
school.--American Presbyterian clergyman.--A Mexican senator.--A
sermon for sailors.--Smyrna.--Buyukdere.--Sir Stratford
Canning.--Embark for Bulgaria.
I have been four years in the East, and feel that I have had quite
enough of it for the present. Notwithstanding the azure skies,
bubbling fountains, Mosaic pavements, and fragrant _narghiles_, I
begin to feel symptoms of ennui, and a thirst for European life, sharp
air, and a good appetite, a blazing fire, well-lighted rooms, female
society, good music, and the piquant vaudevilles of my ancient
friends, Scribe, Bayard, and Melesville.
At length I stand on the pier of Beyrout, while my luggage is being
embarked for the Austrian steamer lying in the roads, which, in the
Levantine slang, has lighted her chibouque, and is polluting yon white
promontory, clear cut in the azure horizon, with a thick black cloud
of Wallsend.
I bade a hurried adieu to my friends, and went on board. The
quarter-deck, which retained its awning day and night, was divided
into two compartments, one of which was reserved for the promenade of
the cabin passengers, the other for the bivouac of the Turks, who
retained their camp habits with amusing minuteness, making the
larboard quarter a vast tent afloat, with its rolled up beds, quilts,
counterpanes, washing gear, and all sorts of water-cans, coffee-pots,
and chibouques, with stores of bread, cheese, fruit, and other
provisions for the voyage. In the East, a family cannot move without
its household paraphernalia, but then it requires a slight addition of
furniture and utensils to settle for years in a strange place. The
settlement of a European family requires a thousand et ceteras and
months of installation, but then it is set in motion for the new world
with a few portmanteaus and travelling bags.
Two days and a half of steaming brought us to Rhodes.
An enchanter has waved his wand! in reading of the wondrous world of
the ancients, one feels a desire to get a peep at Rome before its
destruction by barbarian hordes. A leap backwards of half this period
is what one seems to make at Rhodes, a perfectly preserved city and
fortress of the middle ages. Here has been none of the Vandalism of
Vauban, Cohorn, and those mechanical-pated fellows, who, with their
Dutch dyke-looking parapets, made such havoc of donjons and
picturesque turrets in Europe. Here is every variety of mediaeval
battlement; so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the waiter's
horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
squire.
Two more delightful days of steaming among the Greek Islands now
followed. The heat was moderate, the motion gentle, the sea was liquid
lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their
accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates
permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical
configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of
heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment
of the Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the
palette, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, shining with
its aesthetic ray through lineaments thorough-bred from generation to
generation, invites the sculptor to transfer to marble, grace of
contour and elevation of expression. But let us not envy the balmy
South. The Germanic or northern element, if less susceptible of the
beautiful is more masculine, better balanced, less in extremes. It was
this element that struck down the Roman empire, that peoples America
and Australia, and rules India; that exhausted worlds, and then
created new.
The most prominent individual of the native division of passengers,
was Arif Effendi, a pious Moslem of the new school, who had a great
horror of brandy; first, because it was made from wine; and secondly,
because his own favourite beverage was Jamaica rum; for, as Peter
Parley says, "Of late years, many improvements have taken place among
the Mussulmans, who show a disposition to adopt the best things of
their more enlightened neighbours." We had a great deal of
conversation during the voyage, for he professed to have a great
admiration of England, and a great dislike of France; probably all
owing to the fact of rum coming from Jamaica, and brandy and wine from
Cognac and Bordeaux.
Another individual was a still richer character: an American
Presbyterian clergyman, with furi-bond dilated nostril and a terrific
frown.
"You must lose Canada," said he to me one day, abruptly, "ay, and
Bermuda into the bargain."
"I think you had better round off your acquisitions with a few odd
West India Islands."
"We have stomach enough for that too."
"I hear you have been to Jerusalem."
"Yes; I went to recover my voice, which I lost; for I have one of the
largest congregations in Boston."
"But, my good friend, you breathe nothing but war and conquest."
"The fact is, war is as unavoidable as thunder and lightning; the
atmosphere must be cleared from time to time."
"Were you ever a soldier?"
"No; I was in the American navy. Many a day I was after John Bull on
the shores of Newfoundland."
"After John Bull?"
"Yes, Sir, _sweating_ after him: I delight in energy; give me the man
who will shoulder a millstone, if need be."
"The capture of Canada, Bermuda, and a few odd West India Islands,
would certainly give scope for your energy. This would be taking the
bull by the horns."
"Swinging him by the tail, say I."
The burlesque vigour of his illustrations sometimes ran to
anti-climax. One day, he talked of something (if I recollect right,
the electric telegraph), moving with the rapidity of a flash of
lightning, with a pair of spurs clapped into it.
In spite of all this ultra-national bluster, we found him to be a very
good sort of man, having nothing of the bear but the skin, and in the
test of the quarantine arrangements, the least selfish of the party.
Another passenger was an elderly Mexican senator, who was the essence
of politeness of the good old school. Every morning he stood smiling,
hat in hand, while he inquired how each of us had slept. I shall never
forget the cholera-like contortion of horror he displayed, when the
clerical militant (poking his fun at him), declared that Texas was
within the natural boundary of the State, and that some morning they
would make a breakfast of the whole question.
One day he passed from politics to religion. "I am fond of fun," said
he, "I think it is the sign of a clear conscience. My life has been
spent among sailors. I have begun with many a blue jacket
hail-fellow-well-met in my own rough way, and have ended in weaning
him from wicked courses. None of your gloomy religion for me. When I
see a man whose religion makes him melancholy, and averse from gaiety,
I tell him his god must be my devil."
The originality of this gentleman's intellect and manners, led me
subsequently to make further inquiry; and I find one of his sermons
reported by a recent traveller, who, after stating that his oratory
made a deep impression on the congregation of the Sailors' chapel in
Boston, who sat with their eyes, ears, and mouths open, as if
spell-bound in listening to him, thus continues: "He describes a ship
at sea, bound for the port of Heaven, when the man at the head sung
out, 'Rocks ahead!' 'Port the helm,' cried the mate. 'Ay, ay, sir,'
was the answer; the ship obeyed, and stood upon a tack. But in two
minutes more, the lead indicated a shoal. The man on the out-look sung
out, 'Sandbreaks and breakers ahead!' The captain was now called, and
the mate gave his opinion; but sail where they could, the lead and
the eye showed nothing but dangers all around,--sand banks, coral
reefs, sunken rocks, and dangerous coasts. The chart showed them
clearly enough where the port of Heaven lay; there was no doubt about
its latitude and longitude: but they all sung out, that it was
impossible to reach it; there was no fair way to get to it. My
friends, it was the devil who blew up that sand-bank, and sunk those
rocks, and set the coral insects to work; his object was to prevent
that ship from ever getting to Heaven, to wreck it on its way, and to
make prize of the whole crew for slaves for ever. But just as every
soul was seized with consternation, and almost in despair, a tight
little schooner hove in sight; she was cruizing about, with one Jesus,
a pilot, on board. The captain hailed him, and he answered that he
knew a fair way to the port in question. He pointed out to them an
opening in the rocks, which the largest ship might beat through, with
a channel so deep, that the lead could never reach to the bottom, and
the passage was land-locked the whole way, so that the wind might veer
round to every point in the compass, and blow hurricanes from them
all, and yet it could never raise a dangerous sea in that channel.
What did the crew of that distressed ship do, when Jesus showed them
his chart, and gave them all the bearings? They laughed at him, and
threw his chart back in his face. He find a channel where they could
not! Impossible; and on they sailed in their own course, and everyone
of them perished."
At Smyrna, I signalized my return to the land of the Franks, by
ordering a beef-steak, and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the
paper from a gentleman in drab leggings, who had come from Manchester
to look after the affairs of a commercial house, in which he or his
employers were involved. He wondered that a hotel in the Ottoman
empire should be so unlike one in Europe, and asked me, "If the inns
down in the country were as good as this."
As for Constantinople, I refer all readers to the industry and
accuracy of Mr. White, who might justly have terminated his volumes
with the Oriental epistolary phrase, "What more can I write?" Mr.
White is not a mere sentence balancer, but belongs to the guild of
bona fide Oriental travellers.
In summer, all Pera is on the Bosphorus: so I jumped into a caique,
and rowed up to Buyukdere. On the threshold of the villa of the
British embassy, I met A----, the prince of attaches, who led me to a
beautiful little kiosk, on the extremity of a garden, and there
installed me in his fairy abode of four small rooms, which embraced a
view like that of Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore; here books, the piano,
the _narghile_, and the parterre of flowers, relieved the drudgery of
his Eastern diplomacy. Lord N----, Mr. H----, and Mr. T----, the other
attaches, lived in a house at the other end of the garden.
I here spent a week of delightful repose. The mornings were occupied
_ad libitum_, the gentlemen of the embassy being overwhelmed with
business. At four o'clock dinner was usually served in the airy
vestibule of the embassy villa, and with the occasional accession of
other members of the diplomatic corps we usually formed a large
party. A couple of hours before sunset a caique, which from its size
might have been the galley of a doge, was in waiting, and Lady C----
sometimes took us to a favourite wooded hill or bower-grown creek in
the Paradise-like environs, while a small musical party in the evening
terminated each day. One of the attaches of the Russian embassy, M.
F----, is the favorite dilettante of Buyukdere; he has one of the
finest voices I ever heard, and frequently reminded me of the easy
humour and sonorous profundity of Lablache.
Before embarking the reader on the Black Sea, I cannot forbear a
single remark on the distinguished individual who has so long and so
worthily represented Great Britain at the Ottoman Porte.
Sir. Stratford Canning is certainly unpopular with the extreme
fanatical party, and with all those economists who are for killing the
goose to get at the golden eggs; but the real interests of the Turkish
nation never had a firmer support.
The chief difficulty in the case of this race is the impossibility of
fusion with others. While they decrease in number, the Rayahs increase
in wealth, in numbers, and in intelligence.
The Russians are the Orientals of Europe, but St. Petersburg is a
German town, German industry corrects the old Muscovite sloth and
cunning. The immigrant strangers rise to the highest offices, for the
crown employs them as a counterpoise on the old nobility; as burgher
incorporations were used by the kings of three centuries ago.
No similar process is possible with Moslems: one course therefore
remains open for those who wish to see the Ottoman Empire upheld; a
strenuous insistance on the Porte treating the Rayah population with
justice and moderation. The interests of humanity, and the real and
true interests of the Ottoman Empire, are in this case identical.
Guided by this sound principle, which completely reconciles the policy
of Great Britain with the highest maxims of political morality, Sir.
Stratford Canning has pursued his career with an all-sifting
intelligence, a vigour of character and judgment, an indifference to
temporary repulses, and a sacrifice of personal popularity, which has
called forth the respect and involuntary admiration of parties the
most opposed to his views.
I embarked on board a steamer, skirted the western coast of the Black
Sea, and landed on the following morning in Varna.
CHAPTER II.
Varna.--Contrast of Northern And Southern Provinces of
Turkey.--Roustchouk.--Conversation with Deftendar.--The Danube.--A
Bulgarian interior.--A dandy of the Lower Danube.--Depart for Widdin.
All hail, Bulgaria! No sooner had I secured my quarters and deposited
my baggage, than I sought the main street, in order to catch the
delightfully keen impression which a new region stamps on the mind.
How different are the features of Slaavic Turkey, from those of the
Arabic provinces in which I so long resided. The flat roofs, the
measured pace of the camel, the half-naked negro, the uncouth Bedouin,
the cloudless heavens, the tawny earth, and the meagre apology for
turf, are exchanged for ricketty wooden houses with coarse tiling,
laid in such a way as to eschew the monotony of straight lines;
strings of primitive waggons drawn by buffaloes, and driven by
Bulgarians with black woolly caps, real genuine grass growing on the
downs outside the walls, and a rattling blast from the Black Sea, more
welcome than all the balmy spices of Arabia, for it reminded me that I
was once more in Europe, and must befit my costume to her ruder airs.
This was indeed the north of the Balkan, and I must needs pull out my
pea-jacket. How I relished those winds, waves, clouds, and grey skies!
They reminded me of English nature and Dutch art. The Nore, the Downs,
the Frith of Forth, and sundry dormant Backhuysens, re-awoke to my
fancy.
The moral interest too was different. In Egypt or Syria, where whole
cycles of civilization lie entombed, we interrogate the past; here in
Bulgaria the past is nothing, and we vainly interrogate the future.
The interior of Varna has a very fair bazaar; not covered as in
Constantinople and other large towns, but well furnished. The private
dwellings are generally miserable. The town suffered so severely in
the Russian war of 1828, that it has never recovered its former
prosperity. It has also been twice nearly all burnt since then; so
that, notwithstanding its historical, military, and commercial
importance, it has at present little more than 20,000 inhabitants. The
walls of the town underwent a thorough repair in the spring and summer
of 1843.
The majority of the inhabitants are Turks, and even the native
Bulgarians here speak Turkish better than their own language. One
Bulgarian here told me that he could not speak the national language.
Now in the west of Bulgaria, on the borders of Servia, the Turks speak
Bulgarian better than Turkish.
From Varna to Roustchouk is three days' journey, the latter half of
the road being agreeably diversified with wood, corn, and pasture; and
many of the fields inclosed. Just at sunset, I found myself on the
ridge of the last undulation of the slope of Bulgaria, and again
greeted the ever-noble valley of the Danube. Roustchouk lay before me
hitherward, and beyond the river, the rich flat lands of Wallachia
stretched away to the north.
As I approached the town, I perceived it to be a fortress of vast
extent; but as it is commanded from the heights from which I was
descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south.
The ramparts were built with great solidity, but rusty, old,
dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from
exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo
a considerable repair. The aspect of the place did not improve as we
rumbled down the street, lined with houses one story high, and here
and there a little mosque, with a shabby wooden minaret crowned with
conical tin tops like the extinguishers of candles.
I put up at the khan. My room was without furniture; but, being lately
white-washed, and duly swept out under my own superintendence, and laid
with the best mat in the khan, on which I placed my bed and carpets,
the addition of a couple of rush-bottomed chairs and a deal table,
made it habitable, which was all I desired, as I intended to stay only
a few days. I was supplied with a most miserable dinner; and, to my
horror, the stewed meat was sprinkled with cinnamon. The wine was bad,
and the water still worse, for there are no springs at Roustchouk, and
they use Danube water, filtered through a jar of a porous sandstone
found in the neighbourhood. A jar of this kind stands in every house,
but even when filtered in this way it is far from good.
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