7 MAY 1853, Page 14

BOOKS.

THE FRONTIER LANDS OF THE CHRISTIAN AND THE TURK..

THE Turkish provinces which lie on either side of the Danube, and the Austrian territories of Croatia and Solavonia, are the countries visited by the author of these volumes. Starting from the port of Fiume on the Adriatic, he made his way to Petrinia, and thence steamed down the rivers Kulp. and Save to Semlin opposite Belgrade. He then descended the Danube, journeyed in the late autumn through the Turkish dependencies of Wallachia and Moldavia, besides crossing the Danube into Bulgaria to in- vestigate the origin of an insurrection against the Turkish Govern. ment, and passed the winter at Bucharest the capital of Wallachia. This was in 1850. In the ensuing year he ran over yet unvisited parts of Wallachia, traversed Servia—in Mr. Paton's language, "the youngest of the European families "—and Bosnia, still genu- ine Turkish, and finally reached Constantinople by an overland but not the usual overland route.

That mere pleasure induced a man to make this journey, with its perpetual inconveniences, its pretty constant hardships or pri- vations, and during a portion of the time its inclmient weather, is hardly probable. Nor would bookmaking alone be a sufficient mo- tive. Some object beyond either enjoyment or fame animated the "Resident of Twenty Years in the East," and probably something in the diplomatic line either national or correspondential. One thing, however, is pretty clear, that he holds a brief for Turkey. We can believe all that he says about the ridiculous formalities,and suspicions of the Austrian Government ; the all-pervading espion- age, the heavy incubus with which her repressive system crushes out the prosperity and character of her subjects especially the non- German, and the fierce tyranny she employs when roused by terror or by anger. The incessant intrigues of Russia among both the Christians and Mahometans of the Danubian Provinces, inciting the Christians to look to St. Petersburg, and the Mahometans to rise against the Porte for favouring the Christians, so as inces- santly to disturb the Turkish Government and convey the idea that Turkey is crumbling to pieces, may also be credited. We cannot so readily believe that the Turkish Government is ani- mated by a liberal, enlightened, nay a philanthropic spirit, wishing to establish universal toleration, free trade, and all the characteris- tics of progress. There is hardly such enlightenment as our author pictures, in the West—no not even in London. It is too much to look for it in a half-barbaric court, whose most liberal ministers must have thrown off their nationality with their pre- judices, and whose best officers are adventurers or renegades.

The diplomatic object of the writer rather unfavourably affects the character of his work by causing the introduction of historical narrative or political discussion. We have a resume of the history of the various Danubian provinces, not only of late times, but from the first Turkish conquests or earlier. And this of necessity is too brief to be very informing; while the matter is not always new, Ranke and other writers having drawn attention to the history of these regions, especially of Servia. As long as the exposure of Austrian and Russian intrigues springs directly from the facts as they turn up, comment is in place ; but the reader could well spare the general discussions going back to Peter the Great. The Turkish bias is too evident in all the author's general accounts or rather panegyrics of the spirit and objects of the Government, to challenge much confidence as regards the representations in favour of the Porte.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, and too much of writing shown in a disposition to over-detail trifling incidents, the book abounds with interesting matter. Excepting Servia, the region has been little visited by travellers : the few who have ventured thither passed rapidly along, whereas our Eastern resident explored the country in the discharge of his mission. He had better opportu- nities of observing society than a scampering traveller, and from nature or training he was more able to profit by his opportunities. Ho quickly catches the distinguishing traits of an individual or a class, and has a lively mode of depicting what he sees. The landscapes and social condition of the country are well worth studying. Except in a few great towns, where a sort of bastard civilization, such as an imitation of third-rate Russians or Austri- ans can set up, the people are much as they were before the art of printing and the revival of learning changed the Western nations of Europe. The face of the country is what England might have been under the later Plantagenets or the Tudors ; the roads and means of locomotion about the same—horseback and little more than bridle-paths ; the accommodations worse, unless in the case of the hospitality of a wealthy Mussulman. In the few inns which civilization has introduced into independent Servia and protected Wallachia, you generally get the accommodation of an indifferent alehouse with the charges of a first-rate Parisian hotel. The material condition of the mass still more closely resembles that of the middle ages. In favourable years the peasants get a rude sufficiency of coarse subsistence, their condition in clothes and lodg- ing being scarcely above the animals. The moral state is perhaps worse than that of the middle ages, especially among the gentry. The vices of Russian semi-refinement are engrafted on the coarser vices of semi-barbarism. The attempts at taste and luxury on the part of the wealthy are more incongruous than that of the Plan-

• The Frontier Lands of the Christian and the Turk: comprising Travels in the Region of the Lower Danube, in 1850 and 1851. By a British Resident of Twenty Years in the East. In two volumes, Published by Bentley.

tagenets and Tudors. When an attempt is made at modern fashion, a singular mixture of the splendid, the primitive, and the sordid, is found'. Here is an example of a country-house in the neighbour- hood of Bucharest, whither the traveller went to a wintry picnic with a large sledge-party.

"There was an air of profound repose about the landscape, and the chain of low mountains bounding the narrow horizon appeared to cut it off, and protect it from the turmoils and troubles of the outer world. I fear we brought them with us, however ; for the party was little in harmony with the scene, as I soon found when we alighted : the younger ladies were more anxious about their toilettes than anything else; the older ones carefully watched the unloading of sundry hampers, from which peeped out the sealed necks of bottles ; and the gentlemen, both young and old, asked for card- tables. I went to see the house. " It displayed in every detail a singular degree of rudeness combined with attempts at splendour; marble columns supported thatched roofs; great halls with gilded wainscoting were covered by ceilings of coarsely- hewn timber ; and in the principal courtyard an elegant little Byzantine chapel stood beside a vast filthy dog-kennel, for the Amphitryon affected the tastes of Aetteon also—certainly his hounds looked as if they could devour not only him but all his guests together. The long passages, broad staircases, and great ill-furnished antechambers' were thronged by crowds of serfs and gipsies, lying on the stone floors, as they had no other sleeping- place, and were constantly in attendance on their lord.

" The principal saloon was fitted up with somewhat of magnificence, in the style of la Renaissance ' ; it seemed to have been hardly even swept for a couple of centuries at least. The ceiling was painted in medallions and compartments, not altogether without art, but singularly composed : there was Mare in a coat of mail and jack-boots ; Venus crouching in her shell, and hiding her blushes with a gigantic fan ; and Juno looking at them contemptuously through an eye-glass. The furniture was handsome and rococo : inlaid cabinets, crystal chandeliers, and quaint little time-pieces of boule, which had evidently survived many generations of Boyars, con- trasted agreeably with rose-wood sofa-tables and arm-chairs, lately received from Vienna ; and a few books and engravings, fashionable French novels and political caricatures, were scattered about in significant confusion, as the young Boyaress had left them, for she was studious and intellectual,—which I suspect is a rare instance.

"The proud possessor of this domain had so great an aversion to reading, that he could hardly even bring himself to take cognizance of the contents of any letters he might receive; as for answering them, that was altogether out of the question. He would break the seals, and wade painfully through the first page, wondering all the while how people could ever bore them- selves and others by writing; when about to turn it, he would perceive that he had no very distinct notion of the intelligence which his correspondent bad wished to convey; and he would recommence his task, like Sisyphus persevering in his fruitless labour, and yawning and sighing until the letter fell on the floor, and he sank back on his chair fast asleep. His wife was now no longer there to pick it up and answer it."

The half-civilization of the gentry of Wallachia has not extended to the peasants or the country, which is still in a primitive state. This is the approach to the capital, and a striking piece of de- scription it is.

" We left Giurgevo at a brisk pace, and commenced our journey across a vast plain, which seemed to be interminable : I never saw such a plain in my life; hour after hour we hurried forwards, the horizon never rising an inch, and nothing appearing to vary its straight unbroken line whichever way we turned. There was no road, but we followed the track of wheels, lightly marked in the dust, and generally without turning or deviating one iota from its course, which seemed to have been drawn on the globe with a gigantic ruler. Sometimes we would pass through a wood, and occasionally we crossed a river on a bridge formed of unhewn logs. Storks flew heavily from us, and herds of horses, cows, and buffaloes, lazily moved aside as we rushed past them in a cloud of dust, for the Wallachian drivers are un- sparing of their team. We saw only two villages, Bungasko and Roman, at which latter place we crossed the river Ardjish ; where the huts of the peasants seemed to he merely square holes dug in the ground with a roof of branches covered with mud, and a door in one end, accessible by a slope cut for the purpose, but also serving to lead rain-water into it. And yet the people looked healthy, and one might almost say happy ; for, notwithstand- ing the notorious extortions of various kinds to which they are subjected, the extraordinary fertility of the soil shields them from want.

"After ten hours' drive we reached the gates of Bucharest. Here we were stopped and interrogated with regard to our purpose in coming ; but on the whole, I must say, in justice to the Wallachians, that their passport-system, if such a thing can be called a system, is less troublesome than that of most other Continental countries which are afflicted with the weakness of wishing to check and control the movements of travellers. They take the passport at the gates of the town, and forward it to the Consul of the nation to which the foreigner belongs, and then it is applied for when required, that functionary being ex- pected to inform the police of any reasons which may exist to render the traveller's stay unadvisable."

The author's route led him along the military frontier of Austria, where the whole population is enrolled as a militia on a sort of feudal system, originally to defend the Austrian frontier from the Turks and the plague, but now applied to general pur- poses. In reading the description of the people's feelings, the writer's dislike to Austria must not be forgotten, but the account has a probable look.

" The principle is still maintained in full vigour, although the troops thus enrolled are now employed elsewhere when required for other purposes, as they have been for the last two years, when different parts of the empire were disturbed by insurrections. Two hundred thousand men are therefore added by this means to the standing force of Austria; and they cost the Im- perial treasury merely the outlay for arming them, as they receive neither Pay nor rations excepting when removed from their regular quarters for the Purposes of war, and they are then fed, but never paid nor clothed at the public expense, being allowed to seek compensation in plunder, as much from their fellow subjects as from the enemy. Their ordinary routine of service is to mount guard in the watch-towers of the cordon, where they re- main a week ; they are then relieved, and they go to the head-quarters of their company to be drilled for another week ; after this they are again on duty at their posts for a week ; and they are allowed to return to their homes to pass the last week of each month in agricultural labour. Their wretched condition may easily be conceived, as their families are supported on the produce of one quarter of their work ; and the neglected state of husbandry, which, we soon remarked, was a necessary oonsequenee of the life they were obliged to lead. We saw a great many of these peasant-soldiers ; and they certainly looked more like beggars than either peasants or soldiers. Clothed in rags, with rude sandals on their stockingless feet, they wore their cross- belts, bayonets, and pouches, apparently without ever thinking of cleaning them; and over their shoulders a filthy bag was generally thrown, for the purpose of conveying their bread and vegetables to their posts, for they have no other food. Some of them were mere boys, of thirteen or fourteen years of age, dragged from their families and their work to idle away their time in a guard-house, and to learn the hardships and vices of their older comrades. It cannot be expected that a population so situated can have much intrinsic worth, or should be attached to the Government ; and from all I could learn, it appears certain, that if Austria should again be plunged into internal diffi- culties, which it seems hardly possible for her to avoid, not only will the inhabitants of the military frontiers decline repeating the part they have played of late for the repression of civil disorders, but they will also take ad- vantage of the first favourable opportunity to turn those arms of which they have been taught the use against the power which condemns them to such intolerable evils."

. This is a sample of the currency of the Kaiser.

" We returned to our inn, and installed ourselves on the turf seats in ex- pectation of the promised repast. While waiting for it, a poor old woman, the very picture of misery, approached us with a garrulous petition for cha- rity, less intelligible than the eloquent appeal of her eyes and attitude. We asked the innkeeper for the change of an Austrian bank-note, in order that we might give her something ; but he stared in astonishment at such an idea; coin had not been seen at Szeverin for many months. He took the note, tore it in four pieces, and bade us give the old woman one of them if we were so disposed, as it amounted to only a penny : the whole sum represented by this class of paper currency was ten kreutzer, and by the present custom of the people each fraction of it has the value of the corresponding propor- tion of the sum. Her gratitude was as voluble as her supplication had been, and this time our knowledge of the Sclavonian dialects enabled us to distinguished two words,—which were Velikoi bogs!' or ' God is great!' What a state a country must be in when no medium of exchange exists for the articles of smaller worth, of which the wants and resources of the greater part of the population necessarily consist. That specie should have totally disappeared m Austria, must surely be a symptom of the speedy dissolution of the empire; and one is even at a loss to comprehend how society can hold together at all, and not fall asunder by a violent convulsion, when its hum- bler and more numerous classes have no equivalent to convey the exact amount which they have daily to pay or receive in their petty trades and transactions,"

The account of the more genuine Turkish provinces, Bosnia and Bulgaria, would furnish many novel pictures of manners and i scenery, with some adventures. There is also a full description of the author's sojourn at the head-quarters of the Turkish army in Bosnia ; probably painted couleur de rose, but not giving a bad idea of modern Turkish military life.