Researches on the Danube and the Adriatic; or, contributions to the modern history of Hungary and Transylvania, Dalmatia and Croatia, Servia and Bulgaria

Preface

. This work is an abridged recast, of several English books of travel, through the regions of the Danube, and the Adriatic, for the countries being contiguous, a desire has been more than once expressed to the author, to see them fused into one continuous narrative. Since the last of these works appeared, important events have occurred; a revolution in Servia, a war in Italy, and an agitation in Hungary, but the career of the author as an active political writer having terminated, he leaves to subsequent travellers and historians all the events that have occurred since the Crimean war. At the same time he does not think, that the work in its present state, will prove of less value, as there is an interest, attaching to those regions of the Danube and the Adriatic, not likely to pass away, for some generations at least.

And every thing relating to general history, ethnology, topography, manners and customs, the economical conditions that spring from national character, and the archaeology, that t VI

PREFACE.

. alternately illumines, and is explained by the landmarks of history, has been carefully revised, so as to render the present as much a work of reference, as the form of a book of travels allows. CONTENTS.

Book I. Servia

Page. Chapter i. Syria tn Belgrade 1 Chapter ir. Belgrade 10 Chapter ur. A sketch of Servian history 10 Chapter iv. Life and letters in Belgrade 31 Chapter v. Sliabatz and the banks of the Save 42 Chapter vi. The vale of the Drina 59 Chapter vii. The upper Morava 76 Chapter viii. The Bosniac borders $6 Chapter ix. Eastern Servia 100 Chapter x. The population of Servia Ill

Book II. Highlands And Islands Of The Adriatic

Chapter i. First view of Croatia 118 Chapter ii. First view nf Dalmatia 136 Chapter hi. Sebenico 143 Chapter iv. The Dalmatian Archipelago 154 Chapter v. Cattaro 168 Chapter vt. Montenegro 177 Chapter vii. Montenegrine history 186 Chapter viii. Ragusa 203 Chapter ix. History of Ragusa 218 Chapter x. Ragusan science and literature 231 Chapter xi. Environs of Ragusa 241 Chapter xii. Public institutions of Ragusa 248 Chapter xiii. The Narenta 257 Chapter xiv. The Palace of Diocletian 272 Chapter xv. History of Spalato 281 281 Chapter xvi. Society in Spalato CONTENTS. Page. Chapter xvii. Literature and antiquities in Spalato 303 Chapter xviii. The Dalmatian highlands 320 Chapter xix. Moral, social, and political condition ofthe Morlack 339 Chapter xx. Zara and its environs 346 Chapter xxi. Society of Zara and its revolutions 364 Chapter xxii.

The Croat military frontier 378 Chapter xxiii. The back-woods of Croatia 393 Chapter xxiv. Zengg the capital of the Uskoks 398 Chapter xxv. Fiume and Trieste 406 Chapter xxvi. Oriental Art in Venice 414 Chapter xxvii. Styria

Chapter I. Syria To Belgrade

It was after several years' residence in Egypt and Syria, that I embarked for Turkey in Europe, in one of those comfortable, but not showy Austrian steamers, that ply along the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean. Our first station was at Rhodes, where I felt as if an enchanter had 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 mediæval battlement; so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the warder's horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and sepiire.

Two more delightful days of steaming among the Greek Islands now followed. The heat was moderate, the motion Paton. I. gentle, the sea was liquid lapis lazuli, and the hundredtinted 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 graces of the mind, shining 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 race that struck down the Roman empire, that peoples America and Australia, and rules India; and more than any other on the face of the globe, superadds Patient Effort and Invincible Perseverance, to whatever genius the Almighty has given it, in Art, Science and Literature. The most remarkable of our fellow passengers was an American Presbyterian clergyman, with furibond dilated nostril and a terrific frown. "You must lose Canada," said he to me one day, ab ruptly, "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." "*\Vere you ever a soldier?" "Ko; I was in the American navy. Many a day I was after John Bull on the shores of Newfoundland." "After John Bull?" "Yes, Sir, siveating 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. 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 man ners, led me subsequently to make further inejuiry; and I find one of his sermons reported by a recent traveller, who, after stating that his oratory made a deep im pression on the congregation of the Sailors' chapel in Boston, who sat with their eyes, ears, and mouths open, as if spellbound 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 1 * ahead!' The captain was now called, and themate 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 show-ed them clearly enough where the port of Heaven lay: there was no doubt about its latitude anel longitude: but they all sung out, that it was impossible to reach it; there was no fair way to get to it. M\ 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, un board. The captain hailed him, and he answered that he knew a fair way t" the port in ejuestion. 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 tin 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 bis face.

He find a channel where they could not ! Im possible; and on they sailed in their own course, and every one of them perished." As for Constantinople. I refer all readers to the in dustry anel 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 bomi tide 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 attached, 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 embraceel 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 us tic embassy being overwhelmed with business. At lour o'clock dinner was usually served in the airy vestibule of the embassy villa, and with the occasional accession ot* 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. From the Bosphorus I proceeded to Varna in Bulgaria, but how different are the features of Slavic Turkey, from those of the Arabic provinces in which 1 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, anel the meagre apology for turf, are exchanged for ricketty wooden houses with coarse tiling, laid in such a w-ay 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. Having subsequently seen Varna, Shumla, Rustschuk and Widdin, under circumstances of more stirring interest, I shall say nothing of them at the present time. At the last mentioned town, I was introduced to a historical character. Hussein Pasha, the celebrated destroyer of the Janissaries, whose bloody feat forms one of the great land marks of the modern history of the Ottoman Empire. He appeared to be verging on eighty, and, afflicted with gout, was sitting in the corner of the divan at his ease, in the old Turkish ample costume.

The white beard, the elress of the Pasha, the rich, but faded carpet which covered the floor, the roof of elaborate, but dingy wooden arabesepie, were all in perfect keeping, and the dubious light ot* two thick wax-candles, rising two or three feet from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture, which carrieel me back, a generation at least, to the Pasha of the old school. Hussein smoked a narghile of dark red Bohemian cut crystal, while my introductor Mr. Petronie vitch and myself were supplied with pipes, profusely mounted with diamonds. It is clearly the perfection of the art, and instruments of war, arising from the general advance of civilization, that lies at the root of the extinction of the Feudal Principle and the crushing of the Military Factions and Aristocracies of modern times.

A more perfect instrument of power being in the hands of the Sovereign, local Oligarchies have no longer the same chance in the con flict. But while a large part of Asia still remains Feudal, the Ottoman Empire, from its vicinity to Europe, has in this century been fully drawn within the centralizing vortex. The trouble Mahomed Ali gave the Porte, arose from his having earlier and more promptly than Mahmoud, carried out the unfeudalizing process against Mamelukes, Druses and all and sundry below him, while he himself remained the one great and dangerous Feudatory of the Empire. The destruction of the Janissaries by Hussein may be called the first of the great steps taken by the government of Constantinople to walk in the road of the other long since centralized Monarchies of Europe, and Mahmoud, if I may be pardoned the bull, untied the Gordian Knot in old eastern fashion by cutting it.

The period of re bellious Pashas successfully defying the Porte, such as Pasvan, Oglou, whose capital was this very Widdin, and Daoud Pasha of Bagdad seems to have passed away as well as that of the hereditary Feudal Chiefs scattered all over the Empire — the Dereh Beys of Asia-Minor, the Nobles of Bosnia, the Chiefs of Albania and Kurdistan, and the Emirs and hereditary Sheikhs of Syria have all been made to feel that the centralization and unfeudali zation of the European Monarchies is in course of transfer to the Ottoman Empire. Those vast alternate surges of scattered Townships and Principalities, disfigured by Anarchy, but compatible with much individual and national liberty — and large centralized Monarchies, characterized by overgrown Capitals, standing armies, an advanced material civilization, and a diminution of political freedom, seem to be as inevitable as the cycles observable in the external Universe.

No law seems to be absolute in the political government of the human race, for not only are laws relative to national temperament (for instance, the above remarks would only apply partially to the Saxon Races), but they are also relative to vast cycles, in which the transformation seems as remarkable as that of caterpillar or silk-worm. Aristotle described the multitude of scattered communities which the legions of Rome subsequently fused into one vast Empire. Tacitus wrote during the completest period of centralized tyranny, but as M. Guizot says, Rome began with towns, and returned to towns again. The towns are again become Monarchies, and the Ottoman Empire has been the last to exchange the feudal for the centralized form. The Saxon races we leave out of the question. Pursuing my journey I approached the Iron Gates.

New Orsova, one of the. few remaining retreats of the Turks in Servia, is built on an island, and with its frail houses of yawning rafters looks very old. Old Orsova, opposite which we now arrived, looked cpuite new, and bore the true German type of formal white-washed houses, and high sharp ridged roofs, which called up forthwith the image of a dining-hall, where, punctually as the village clock strikes the hour of twelve, a fairhaired, fat, red faced landlord, serves up the soup, the rindf/eisch, the zitspcise, and the other dishes of the holy Roman empire to the Platzmajor, the Hauptzollanitdirector, the Kanzlei director, the Concepist, the Protocollist, and hoc genus omne. After a night passed in the quarantine, I removed to the inn, and punctually as the clock struck half past twelve, the very party my imagination conjured up as sembled to discuss the mehlspeise in the stencilled parlour of the Hirsch.

Favoured by the most beautiful weather, I started in a sort of caleche for Dreucova. The excellent new macadamized road was as smooth as a bowding-green, and only a lively companion was wanting to complete the exhilaration of my spirits. My fair fellow-traveller was an enormously stout Wallachian matron, on her way to Vienna, to see her daughter, who was then receiving her education at a boarding-school. I spoke no Wallachian, she spoke nothing but Wallachian; so our conversation was carried on by my attempting to make myself understood alternately by the Italian, and the Spanish forms of Latin. "Una bella campagna," said I, as we drove out Orsova. "Bella, bella?" said the lady, evidently puzzled. So I said, "Hermosa." "Ah! formosa; formosa prate," repeated the lady evidently understanding that I meant a fine country.

"Denude veuut?" Whence have you come? "Constantinopolis ; " and so on we went, supposing that we understood each other, she supplying me with new forms of bastard Latin words, and addingwith a smile, Romani, or Wallachian, as the language and people of Wallachia are called by themselves. It is worthy of re mark, that the Wallachians and a small people in Switzer land, are the only descendants of the Romans, that still designate their language as that of the ancient mistress of the world. As I rolled along, the fascinations of nature got the better of my gallantry; the discourse flagged, and then dropped, for I found myself in the midst of the noblest river scenery I had ever beheld, certainly far surpassing that of the Rhine, anel Upper Danube. To the gloom and grandeur of natural portals, formed of lofty precipitous rocks, succeeds the open smiling valley, the verdant meadows, and the distant woodeel hills, with all the soft and varied hues of autumn.

Here we appear to be driving up the avenues of an English park ; yonder, where the mountain sinks sheer into the river, the road must find its way along an open gallery, with a roof weighing millions of tons, projecting from the mountain above. After sunset we arrived at Dreucova, and next morning went on board the steamer, which conveyeel me up the Danube to Semlin. The lower town of Semlin is, from the exhalations on the banks of the river, frightfully in salubrious, but the cemetery enjoys a high and airy situation. The people in the town die off with great rapidity ; but, to compensate for this, the dead are said to be in a highly satisfactory state of preservation. CHAPTEE II. BELGRADE. Few travellers arriving from central Europe, fail to record the striking impression made upon them, by the descent of the Danube, on their first visit to Belgrade, quiet sombre bureaucratic Ofen with the noisy, bustling movement-loving new city, which has sprung up, as it were by enchantment on the opposite side of the water and the long and graceful quay, form, as it were, a fine peristrephic panorama, as the vessel wheels round, and, prow downwards, commences her voyage for the vast and curious East, while the Danubian tourist bids a dizzy farewell to this last snug little centre of European civilization.

We hurry downwards towards the frontiers of Turkey, but nature smiles not.— We have on our left the dreary steppe of central Hungary, and on our right the low distant hills of Baranya. This is not the Danube of Passau, and Lintz, and Molk. and Theben. But now the Drave pours her broad waters into the great artery. The right shore soon becomes somewhat bolder, and agreeably wooded hills enliven the prospect. This little mountain chain is the celebrated Frusca Gora, the stronghold of the Servian language, literature, and nationality on the Austrian side of the Save. This region determinates, and sinks into a low point of land, at the confluence of the Danube with this, one of the largest of all its tributaries, where the waters remain for a space distinct, the Danube faithfully retaining its brown muddy character, while the Save, in juxta position, shows itself dark yet somewhat limpid.

The rock of Belgrade crowned by battlements, and flanked by some crumbling Minarets, becomes more distinct as we approach. Large embrasures, slightly elevated above the water's edge, indicate the intention to com mand all water approaches to the town, and above grass grown and moss-covered fortifications, crowned by red tiled, rickety Turkish houses, look most unlike the magni-

Chapter II. Belgrade

11 ficent towers to which one has been accustomed in the last scene of the siege of Belgrade. But when the traveller arrives from Turkey itself, the impression is considerably different, and the numerous traces which I have seeft of the desolation of this fine Empire, were effaced from my recollection, at Belgrade. Here all was life and activity. It was at the period of my first visit, in 1839, quite an oriental town; but now the haughty parvenu spire of the cathedral throws into shade the minarets of the mosques, graceful even in decay. Many of the bazaar-shops have been fronted and glazed. The oriental dress has become much rarer ; and houses several stories high, in the German fashion, are springing up everywhere. Ascendingthe spire of the cathedral , we have a pano ramic view of the town and environs.

The fortress of Belgrade , jutting out exactly at the point of confluence of the rivers, has the town behind it. The Servian, or principal quarter slopes down to the Save; the Turkish quarter to the Dauube. I might compare Belgrade to a sea-turtle, the head of which is represented by the fortress, the back of the neck by the esplanade or Kalai Meidan, the right flank by the Turkish quarter, the left by the Servian, and the ridge of the back by the street running from the esplanade to the gate of Constantinople. In the town itself, you see distinctly divided from each other, the military force of the sovereign power, within the Citadel, the decadent remainder of the civil moslem popu lation, in a crumbling quarter, and the ascendency of the Christian Servian element, represented by wide spreading streets, all of the German type.

The open square in the centre of the town, forms the line of demarcation between the crescent and the cross. On the one side several large and good houses have been constructed by the wealthiest senators, in the German manner, with flaring new wdiite walls and bright green shutter-blinds. On the other side is a mosque, and dead old garden walls, with walnut trees and Levantine roofs peeping up behind them. Look on this picture, and you have a type of all domestic architecture, lying between you and the snow-fenced huts of Lapland; cast your eyes over the way, and imagination wings lightly to the sweet south with its myrtles, citrons, marbled steps and fragrance-be*-ing gales. The environs contain the materials of a good pano rama. Looking westward, we see the Save, winding its way from the woods of Topshider; the Servian shore is abrupt, the Austrian flat, and subject to inundation; the prospect on the north-west being closed in by the dim dark line of the Frusca Gora, or "Wooded Mountain," which forms the backbone of Slavonia, and is the high wooded region between the Save and the Drave.

North wards are the spires of Semlin, rising up from the Danube, whicli here resumes its easterly course; while south and east stretch the Turkish quarter, wliich I have been describing. The greater part of the town is under the government of the Servian Prefect of Belgrade, but the castle and the Turkish town is under the Pasha. One day 1 accompanied the British Consul General on a visit to the Pasha in the citadel, which we reached by crossing the gkcis or neck of land that connects the castle with the town. This place forms the pleasantest evening lounge in the vicinity of Belgrade; for on the one side is an extensive view, of the Turkish town, and the Danube wending its way down to Semendria; on the other is the Save, its steep bank piled with street upon street, and the hills beyond them sloping away to the Bosniac frontier.

The ramparts are in good condition; and the first object that strikes a stranger on entering are six iron spikes, on which, m the time of the first revolution, the heads of Servians used to be stuck. Milosh once saved his own head from this elevation by his characteristic astuteness. During his alliance with the Turks in 1814, (or 1816,) he had large pecuniary transactions with the Pasha, for he w-as the medium through whom the people paid tlieir tribute. Five heads grinned from five spikes

CHAPTER II. BELGRADE.

13 as he entered the castle, and he comprehended that tbe sixth was reserved for him; the last head set up beinu that of Glavash, a leader, who, like himself, was then supporting the government: so he immediately took care to make the Pasha understand that he was about to set out on a tour in the country, to raise some money for the vizierial strong-box. "Pek eiu," said Soliman Pasha. thinking to catch him next time, and get the money at the same time; so Milosh was allowed to depart; but knowingthat if he returned spike the sixth would not wait long for its head, he at once raised the district of Rudnick, and ended the terrible war which had been begun, under much less favourable auspices, by the more valiant but less astute Kara Georg. We passed a second draw-bridge, and found ourselves in the interior of the fortress.

A large square was formed by ruinous buildings. Extensive barracks were window less and tenantless, but the mosque and the Pasha's Konak were in good order. We were ushered into an audience room of great extent, with a low carved roof and some old-fashioned furniture, the divan being in the corner, and the windows looking over the precipice to the Danube below. Hafiz Pasha, the same who commanded at the battle of Nezib, was about fifty-five, and a gentleman in air and manner, with a grey beard. In course of con versation he told me that he was a Circassian. He asked me about my travels: and with reference to Syria said, " Land operations through Kurdistan against Mehemet Ali were absurd. I suggested an attack by sea, while a land force should make a diversion by Antioch, but 1 was opposed.*' After the usual pipes and coffee we took our leave.

Hafiz Pasha's political relations were necessarily of a very restricted character, as he rules only the few Turks remaining in Servia; that is to say, a few thousands in Belgrade and Ushitza, a few hundreds in Shabatz Sokol and the island of Orsova. He represents the suzerainety of the Porte over the Christian population, without having any thing to do with the details of administration. His income, like that of other mushirs or pashas of three tails, is 8000/. per annum. Hafiz Pasha, if not a successful general, was at all events a brave and honourable man, and his character for justice made him highly respected. One of his predecessors, who was at Belgrade on my first visit there in 1839, was a man of another stamp,— the notorious Youssouf Pasha, who sold Varna during the Russian war. The re-employment of such an individual is a characteristic illustration of Eastern manners.

I now entered the region of gardens and villas, which, previous to the revolution of Kara Georg. was occupied principally by Turks. Passing down a shady lane, my attention was arrested by a rotten moss-grown garden door, at the sight of which memory leaped backwards for four or five years. Here I had spent a happy forenoon with Colonel H , and the physician of the former Pasha, an old Hanoverian, who, as surgeon to a British regiment had gone through all the fatigues of the Peninsular war. i pushed open the door, and there, completely secluded from the bustle of the town, and the view of the stranger, grew the vegetation as luxuriant as ever, relieving with its dark green frame the clear white of the numerous domes and minarets of the Turkish quarter, and the broad-bosomed Danube which filled up the centre of the picture; but the house and stable, w-hich had resounded with the good-humoured laugh of the master, and the neighing of the well-fed little stud (for horse-flesh was the weak side of our Esculapius), were tenantless, ruinous, and silent.