years, if the treaty of San
Stefano holds, there will be little evidence of Ottoman lack of
civilization anywhere on the Danube, for the forts of the Turks will
gradually disappear, and the Mussulman cannot for an instant hold
his own among Christians where he has no military advantage. But at
Orsova, although the red fez and voluminous trousers are rarely seen,
the influence of Turkey is keenly felt. It is in these remote
regions of Hungary that the real rage against Russia and the burning
enthusiasm and sympathy for the Turks is most openly expressed. Every
cottage in the neighborhood is filled with crude pictures representing
events of the Hungarian revolution; and the peasants, as they look
upon those reminders of perturbed times, reflect that the Russians
were instrumental in preventing the accomplishment of their dearest
wishes. Here the Hungarian is eminently patriotic: he endeavors as
much as possible to forget that he and his are bound to the empire
of Austria, and he speaks of the German and the Slav who are his
fellow-subjects with a sneer. The people whom one encounters in that
corner of Hungary profess a dense ignorance of the German language,
but if pressed can speak it glibly enough. I won an angry frown and
an unpleasant remark from an innkeeper because I did not know that
Austrian postage-stamps are not good in Hungary. Such melancholy
ignorance of the simplest details of existence seemed to my host meet
subject for reproach.

Orsova became an important point as soon as the Turks and Russians
were at war. The peasants of the Banat stared as they saw long lines
of travellers leaving the steamers which had come from Pesth and
Bazros, and invading the two small inns, which are usually more than
half empty. Englishmen, Russians, Austrian officers sent down to keep
careful watch upon the land, French and Prussian, Swiss and Belgian
military attaches and couriers, journalists, artists, amateur
army-followers, crowded the two long streets and exhausted the market.
Next came a hungry and thirsty mob of refugees from Widdin--Jews,
Greeks and gypsies--and these promenaded their variegated misery on
the river-banks from sunrise until sunset. Then out from Roumanian
land poured thousands of wretched peasants, bare-footed, bareheaded,
dying of starvation, fleeing from Turkish invasion, which, happily,
never assumed large proportions. These poor people slept on the
ground, content with the shelter of house-walls: t