y minutes. I passed by
there one morning on the road from Orsova, on the frontier of Hungary,
to Bucharest, and was somewhat amused to see an elderly Turk seated
in a small boat near the Roumanian bank fishing. Behind him were two
soldiers, who served as oarsmen, and rowed him gently from point to
point when he gave the signal. Scarcely six hundred feet from him
stood a Wallachian sentry, watching his movements in lazy, indifferent
fashion. And this was at the moment that the Turks were bombarding
Kalafat in Roumania from Widdin on the Bulgarian side of the Danube!
Such a spectacle could be witnessed nowhere save in this land, "where
it is always afternoon," where people at times seem to suspend
respiration because they are too idle to breathe, and where even a dog
will protest if you ask him to move quickly out of your path. The old
Turk doubtless fished in silence and calm until the end of the war,
for I never heard of the removal of either himself or his companions.

The journeys by river and by rail from Lower Roumania to the romantic
and broken country surrounding Orsova are extremely interesting. The
Danube-stretches of shimmering water among the reedy lowlands--where
the only sign of life is a quaint craft painted with gaudy colors
becalmed in some nook, or a guardhouse built on piles driven into the
mud--are perhaps a trifle monotonous, but one has only to turn from
them to the people who come on board the steamer to have a rich fund
of enjoyment. Nowhere are types so abundant and various as on the
routes of travel between Bucharest and Rustchuk, or Pesth and
Belgrade. Every complexion, an extraordinary piquancy and variety of
costume, and a bewildering array of languages and dialects, are
set before the careful observer. As for myself, I found a special
enchantment in the scenery of the lower Danube--in the lonely inlets,
the wildernesses of young shoots in the marshes, the flights of
aquatic birds as the sound of the steamer was heard, the long tongues
of land on which the water-buffaloes lay huddled in stupid content,
the tiny hummocks where villages of wattled hovels were assembled. The
Bulgarian shore stands out in bold relief: Sistova, from the river,
is positively beautiful, but the now historical Simnitza seems only
a mud-flat. At night the boats touch upon the Roumanian side for
fuel--the Turks have always been too lazy and vicious to develop the
splendid mineral resources of Bulgaria--and the stout pea