At Semlin I still was encompassed by the scenes and the sounds of
familiar life; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me;
the unveiled faces of women still shone in the light of day. Yet,
whenever I chose to look southward, I saw the Ottoman's fortress -
austere, and darkly impending high over the vale of the Danube -
historic Belgrade. I had come, as it were, to the end of this
wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and
havoc of the East.
The two frontier towns are less than a cannon-shot distant, and yet
their people hold no communion. The Hungarian on the north, and
the Turk and Servian on the southern side of the Save are as much
asunder as though there were fifty broad provinces that lay in the
path between them. Of the men that bustled around me in the
streets of Semlin there was not, perhaps, one who had ever gone
down to look upon the stranger race dwelling under the walls of
that opposite castle. It is the plague, and the dread of the
plague, that divide the one people from the other. All coming and
going stands forbidden by the terrors of the yellow flag. If you
dare to break the laws of the quarantine, you will be tried with
military haste; the court will scream out your sentence to you from
a tribunal some fifty yards off; the priest, instead of gently
whispering to you the sweet hopes of religion, will console you at
duelling distance; and after that you will find yourself carefully
shot, and carelessly buried in the ground of the lazaretto.
When all was in order for our departure we walked down to the
precincts of the quarantine establishment, and here awaited us a
"compromised" {1} officer of the Austrian Government, who lives in
a state of perpetual excommunication. The boats, with their
"compromised" rowers, were also in readiness.
After coming in contact with any creature or thing belonging to the
Ottoman Empire it would be impossible for us to return to the
Austrian territory without undergoing an imprisonment of fourteen
days in the odious lazaretto. We felt, therefore, that before we
committed ourselves it was important to take care that none of the
arrangements necessary for the journey had been forgotten; and in
our anxiety to avoid such a misfortune, we managed the work of
departure from Semlin with nearly as much solemnity as if we had
been departing this life. Some obliging persons, from whom we had
received civilities during our short stay in the place, came down
to say their farewell at the river's side; and now, as we stood
with them at the distance of three or four yards from the
"compromised" officer, they asked if we were perfectly certain that
we had wound up all our affairs in Christendom, and whether we had
no parting requests to make. We repeated the caution to our
servants, and took anxious thought lest by any possibility we might
be cut off from some cherished object of affection:- were they
quite sure that nothing had been forgotten - that there was no
fragrant dressing-case with its gold-compelling letters of credit
from which we might be parting for ever? - No; all our treasures lay
safely stowed in the boat, and we were ready to follow them to the
ends of the earth. Now, therefore, we shook hands with our Semlin
friends, who immediately retreated for three or four paces, so as
to leave us in the centre of a space between them and the
"compromised" officer. The latter then advanced, and asking once
more if we had done with the civilised world, held forth his hand.
I met it with mine, and there was an end to Christendom for many a
day to come.
We soon neared the southern bank of the river, but no sounds came
down from the blank walls above, and there was no living thing that
we could yet see, except one great hovering bird of the vulture
race, flying low, and intent, and wheeling round and round over the
pest-accursed city.
But presently there issued from the postern a group of human
beings - beings with immortal souls, and possibly some reasoning
faculties; but to me the grand point was this, that they had real,
substantial, and incontrovertible turbans. They made for the point
towards which we were steering, and when at last I sprang upon the
shore, I heard, and saw myself now first surrounded by men of
Asiatic blood. I have since ridden through the land of the
Osmanlees, from the Servian border to the Golden Horn - from the
Gulf of Satalieh to the tomb of Achilles; but never have I seen
such ultra-Turkish looking fellows as those who received me on the
banks of the Save. They were men in the humblest order of life,
having come to meet our boat in the hope of earning something by
carrying our luggage up to the city; but poor though they were, it
was plain that they were Turks of the proud old school, and had not
yet forgotten the fierce, careless bearing of their once victorious
race.
Though the province of Servia generally has obtained a kind of
independence, yet Belgrade, as being a place of strength on the
frontier, is still garrisoned by Turkish troops under the command
of a Pasha. Whether the fellows who now surrounded us were
soldiers, or peaceful inhabitants, I did not understand: they wore
the old Turkish costume; vests and jackets of many and brilliant
colours, divided from the loose petticoat-trousers by heavy volumes
of shawl, so thickly folded around their waists as to give the
meagre wearers something of the dignity of true corpulence. This
cincture enclosed a whole bundle of weapons; no man bore less than
one brace of immensely long pistols, and a yataghan (or cutlass),
with a dagger or two of various shapes and sizes; most of these
arms were inlaid with silver, and highly burnished, so that they
contrasted shiningly with the decayed grandeur of the garments to
which they were attached (this carefulness of his arms is a point
of honour with the Osmanlee, who never allows his bright yataghan
to suffer from his own adversity); then the long drooping
mustachios, and the ample folds of the once white turbans, that
lowered over the piercing eyes, and the haggard features of the
men, gave them an air of gloomy pride, and that appearance of
trying to be disdainful under difficulties, which I have since seen
so often in those of the Ottoman people who live, and remember old
times; they seemed as if they were thinking that they would have
been more usefully, more honourably, and more piously employed in
cutting our throats than in carrying our portmanteaus.
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