Читать книгу The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" or, Life and Adventures in the Orient - Thomas Wallace Knox - Страница 81

Then, and not till then, could they be safely handled. Merchandise was piled on the dock, but what disposition was made of it I could not learn. I bought a paper of cigarette tobacco from a boy on shore. He tossed the package on board and I then threw him half a franc. Before touching it he pushed it into a puddle of water, and after working it about for a while, ventured to grasp it with his dirty fingers.

Cholera couldn’t get through the encrusted skins of these fellows much quicker than a mouse could go through the side of a teapot, and as for the passengers and crew of the steamer, we were anything but a sickly lot. Yet they were fearful that we should do them harm, as much as though they were chickens and we were hawks and eagles.

We kept on our way without many incidents of importance, or rather without any, or I should record them. We met a steamboat flying the Turkish flag and steering clear of us; and we passed a Turkish gunboat tied up to one of the banks, but with steam up. At every Turkish landing we went through the farce of the tongs, but at the northern landings we had none of it. Piles of wheat were lying on the northern bank, and generally there were groups of picturesque Wallachians around them. We met Greek brigs and schooners ascending the river to bring away this wheat, and at a few places we saw these vessels lying at the shore. Their crews were a brigandish-looking lot with red caps, baggy trow-sers, and a general resemblance to the stage robbers in Fra Diavolo.

Further down the Danube we met more of these vessels I counted over sixty in sight at one time, and there were three or four times that number at Braila or near there. A large part of the commerce of the Black Sea is in the hands of Greek merchants, and they are said to be very enterprising. At Galatz and Braila there are many Greek houses and agencies. Some of the older establishments are accounted very wealthy. So nearly do they monopolize business that the language of commerce at Galatz is said to be Greek with a mixture of Italian.

It was the month of Ramadan, or time of fasting, with the Moslems. No good and faithful follower of the prophet is allowed to eat or drink between the rising and the setting of the sun. A gun is fired at sunrise and another at sunset, and between those discharges of artillery the fast is strictly observed. We had a priest or “Iman” on board our steamer, a fellow with a white turban and a long cloak or “caftan,” and with a pleasing face fringed with a dark beard. He observed the fast strictly and neither ate nor drank from sunrise to sunset, but he made up for his abstinence to some extent by a free use of his narghileh or water pipe.

He occupied a seat in the smoking room, a sort of divan where he could double one foot beneath him and rest almost motionless for hours. He carried in his left hand a string of beads, which he slowly told off with the fingers, a habit somewhat analogous to the Roman Catholic custom of counting the beads while saying prayers. With the Moslems this bead business has no religious significance, but is merely a pastime. Once I found him on deck saying his prayers, which he did with many genuflexions, bows, and prostrations. He was required to keep his face turned towards Mecca while praying, and as the boat was just then taking a somewhat tortuous course, I am afraid he did not make a strict compliance with the law.

At night during Ramadan the mosques are lighted and present a brilliant appearance. There is a double row of lights on each minaret, round the railing of the platform where the muezzin stands when he calls the people to prayer, and the effect is quite pretty.

It was nine o’clock at night when we reached Bucharest, the capital of Roumania, so that there was not much to be seen en route. But I was able to collect some information about the country, and as it is one of the Danubian principalities and forms an interrogation point of the “Eastern Question,” we will make a brief examination of its condition.

The principality of Roumania is formed by the union of the ancient provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. It contains about six thousand square leagues of territory, and five million inhabitants. Four millions of the latter belong to the Greek Church, and the rest are Armenians, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Gentiles, Moslems, and a hundred thousand or so don’t know what they are nor what they belong to. Then there are inhabitants who belong somewhere else, such as Germans, Hungarians, Greeks, English, French, Russians, and some who are ashamed to own the nations of their birth, for reasons best known to themselves.

The various sects and nationalities get along quite well together, with the exception of the Jews, who have a very hard time. They have been whipped and otherwise tortured on account of their opinions or as a cloak to robbery, and until quite recently it was not unusual to hear of the banishment or massacre of all the Jewish inhabitants of a village, town, or district. A better sentiment, or rather a less barbarous one, seems to prevail within the last year or two, and it is to be hoped that the persecutions are at an end or soon will be.

As an illustration of the treatment of the Jews, a gentleman told me that one day in Bucharest he heard screams issuing from a yard at the back of the hotel where he was lodged. He went to the window and saw a girl of eighteen or twenty tied to a stake. Her clothing was stripped from her shoulders and a strong man was whipping her while two others stood by. The gentleman asked what she had done, and was told “She is a Jewess!” No other cause was alleged, and the men appeared surprised when the stranger wished to know what crime she had committed.