Roumania Past and Present Part 1

Roumania Past and Present.

by James Samuelson.

PREFACE.

There is no country in Europe which at the present time possesses greater interest for Englishmen than does the Kingdom of Roumania, and there is none with whose present state and past history, nay, with whose very geographical position, they are less familiar.

Only about nine years since Consul-General Green, the British representative there, reported to his Government as follows: 'Ignorance seems to extend even to the geographical position of Bucharest. It is not surprising that letters directed to the Roumanian capital should sometimes travel to India in search of Bokhara, but there can be no excuse for the issue of a writ of summons by one of the superior law courts of the British metropolis, directed to Bucharest in the Kingdom of Egypt, as I have known to happen.' The reader may perhaps attribute such mistakes as these to our insular ignorance of geography, or to the fact that the proverbial blindness of justice prevented her from consulting the map before issuing her process; but the fact remains, that notwithstanding the occurrence of a great war subsequent to the date above specified, which completely changed the map of Europe, wherein Roumania took a very prominent part and England a.s.sisted at the settlement, there are few intelligent readers in this country who could say off-hand where precisely Roumania is situated.

And yet, as already remarked, the country possesses an absorbing interest for us as a nation. Placed, to a large extent through English instrumentality, as an independent kingdom, of daily increasing influence, between Russia and Turkey, for whom she served for centuries as a bone of contention, she is now a formidable barrier against the aggressions of the stronger power upon her weaker neighbour, and it is satisfactory to reflect that, so far, the blood and money of England have not flowed in vain. Then, again, the question of the free navigation of the great stream that serves as her southern boundary is at present occupying the serious consideration of many leading European statesmen, and the solution of the Danubian difficulty will materially affect our trade with the whole of Eastern Europe; whilst the peaceable creation of a peasant proprietary in Roumania about sixteen years since, and the advantages which have accrued to her from this social and political reform, present features of peculiar interest for those who favour the establishment of a similar cla.s.s of landholders in Ireland.

In treating of these two questions, I have laboured under the great disadvantage of not being able to follow current events. It is understood that the Danubian difficulty will be settled on the plan, referred to in the text, suggested by Austria for her own advantage, with certain modifications, having for their object the limitation of her preponderance. My readers will be able to judge for themselves, after reading the brief review of the question, and the references to our own commercial relations with the countries bordering on the Danube in the third and fifth chapters, whether such a settlement is likely to be final. For myself I cannot believe that any solution will be permanently satisfactory which interferes with the jurisdiction of Roumania in her own waters.

As to the land question, it calls up some awkward reflections when its history is contrasted with recent and pa.s.sing events in Ireland. So long as the conquerors in Roumania endeavoured to solve the problem, their efforts were unavailing. At the Convention of Balta-Liman between Russia and Turkey, where 'coercion' was coupled with 'remedial measures,' an ineffectual attempt was made to ameliorate the wretched condition of the peasantry on the old lines of feudalism; but it was not until the country became autonomous and the legitimate representatives of the people took the matter in hand, that an efficient remedy was applied. Then, as the reader will find detailed in the following pages,[1] more than four hundred thousand heads of families amongst the peasantry came into peaceful possession of a large proportion of the land on equitable terms; and whilst the industrious agriculturist is now daily acquiring a more considerable interest in the soil, the landlords, who were merely drawing a revenue from the labour expended upon it by others, are gradually disappearing. That the prosperity and stability of the country have increased through the change is shown in many ways, but more especially by the enhanced value of Roumanian Government securities, of which I have been able to append a short statement in contrast with those of Russia and Turkey.[2]

What has occurred and is pa.s.sing in Ireland the reader need not be told here. Possibly the consideration of the Roumanian land question may have given a bias to my views on the whole subject, and the excited state of the public mind causes me to hesitate in the expression of an opinion which may appear to be dogmatic. Still, looking at all the circ.u.mstances--at the partial resemblance between the former condition of Roumania and the present state of Ireland, at the past history of Irish reforms (such as the abolition of the Irish Church), at the rising land agitation on this side of the Channel, and at the recent recommendation of the Canadian Parliament that autonomy should be extended to Ireland--I have been able to arrive at no other conclusion than that the measures at present before Parliament may bring temporary relief to the peasantry, and temporary, nay let us hope permanent pacification, but that the question will be reopened, coupled probably with that of 'Home Rule,' and that at no distant period.

There are many other circ.u.mstances which warrant us in seeking to obtain a better knowledge of Roumania, but these were the chief considerations which induced me last year to visit the country and some of its leading inst.i.tutions, and to collect the materials which I now venture in the following pages to lay before my readers.

No one knows so well as I do how imperfectly my task has been performed, nor the difficulties with which it has been surrounded, and there are one or two matters of which I should like to unburden myself to the reader. He will probably enquire why I have put the cart before the horse, giving a sketch of the present condition of the country before treating of its past history. The answer is that it was not originally my intention to deal with the latter at any length; but when I came to read and study the works which have appeared on the subject in French and German (of which a tolerably full list is appended to this treatise), so many topics of interest presented themselves for the historical student that I determined to publish a connected history of the country, however imperfect it might be, from the earliest times down to the present day. And in this I was further encouraged by the fact that the attempt has not yet been made in English, excepting in a very perfunctory manner in Consul Wilkinson's work, published by Longmans in 1820, which is now quite out of date. That such a review of Roumanian history, condensed as it necessarily is, was sure to be considered very dry by many readers, seemed to be certain; I therefore placed it after the description of the country as it exists to-day, and for those readers the perusal of the last chapter of that part of the work, dealing with the notabilities of the day, will probably suffice. But I believe that some matters relating to the Roman conquest of Dacia, the character and movements of the barbarians (of which I have prepared and appended a tabular statement), the subsequent history of the country, its struggles for freedom, and the condition of the inhabitants at various periods, will be new to the general student of history and sociology, and if my share has been badly done, it need not prevent him from prosecuting enquiries, for which he will find ample materials in the works of the continental writers to whom I have referred. As regards the controverted questions of the descent of the modern Roumanians and the foundation of the Princ.i.p.alities, I would direct his attention more especially to the recent publications of Roesler and Pic, the first an Austrian and the second a Slav writer, where he will find those subjects fully and warmly debated.

The only other matter on which I desire to give an explanation is my reason for not entering more minutely into what is called 'the Eastern Question,' nor attempting, as other authors have done, to predict the future relations of Roumania in regard to it. An American humourist has said, 'Never prophesy unless you know,' and many a writer on Roumania must wish that he had refrained from dealing with probabilities, or from prognosticating the coining events of history. The future of the East depends upon a variety of divergent considerations: upon the relations of the Government of Russia with its people; the course of events in the newly acquired provinces of Austria, and the delicate relations between Austria and Hungary; the future action of the Prince and people of Bulgaria, the former of whom is at present under Russian influence; upon the growing power and influence of Greece; and, lastly, upon the possible, but not probable, regeneration of Turkey. And without speaking for others, I should feel it presumptuous, under the circ.u.mstances, to deal in prophecies.

As to the best policy for Great Britain, however, that is perfectly clear, and may be summed up in a short sentence. It is to facilitate, by pacific means, the solution of every difficulty and problem as it arises, and wherever it is possible, through our influence, to support and encourage const.i.tutional government against autocracy and despotism.

This we can do with great advantage in our relations with Roumania, and it will be a source of much gratification to me if the information which I have here attempted to disseminate should have the slightest tendency in that direction.

JAMES SAMUELSON.

CLAUGHTON, BIRKENHEAD: _April 20, 1882._

[Footnote 1: Chapter vi. and Appendix IV.]

[Footnote 2: P. 270, _note_.]

PART I.

ROUMANIA, TO-DAY.

We love The king who loves the law, respects his bounds, And reigns content within them; him we serve Truly and with delight who leaves us free.

COWPER.

There virtue reigns as queen in royal throne, And giveth laws alone.

The which the base affections do obey, And yield their services unto her will.

SPENSER.

CHAPTER I.

GEOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE.

Limits, dimensions, and population of Roumania--Comparison with England--Configuration of the surface--Alt.i.tudes of towns--Mountains--Appearance of the country--The region of the plains--Plants and agricultural condition--The peasantry--Female navvies--Costumes--Wells--Subterranean dwellings--Marsh fever--Travelling, past and present--Zone of the hills--Plants, flowers, fruits, and cereals--Cheap fruits--Improved dwellings--Wages of labourers--Petroleum wells--Rock-salt--Mines--The Carpathians--Character of the scenery--Alpine trees and plants--Sinaa--The King's summer residence--The monastery--Conveniences for visitors, baths, &c.--Occupations of visitors--Beautiful scenery--The new palace--The King and Queen--Geology of Roumania--Scanty details--The chief deposits and their localities--Minerals--Salt--Petroleum--Lignite--Ozokerit-- Haemat.i.te--Undeveloped mineral wealth.

I.

The kingdom of Roumania is situated between 22 29' and 29 42' east of Greenwich, and between 43 37' and 48 13' north of the equator. Its general boundaries are, on the _east_ and _south_, the Pruth and the Danube, with the exception of the Dobrudscha south of the latter river, at its embouchures, and on the _west_ and _north_ by the Carpathian mountains, along whose heights the boundary line runs. The limit which separates it from Bulgaria, on the south-east leaves the Danube just east of Silistria, and runs irregularly in a south-easterly direction until it reaches the Black Sea, about nine miles and a half south of Mangalia. (North-east of this line runs the Roumanian Railway from Cernavoda to Constanta or Kustendjie, and south-west of it the Bulgarian line from Rustchuk to Varna.) The kingdom presents the form of an irregular blunted crescent, and it is very difficult to speak of its 'length' and 'breadth;' but so far as we are able to estimate its dimensions they are as follows:--A straight line drawn from Verciorova, the boundary on the west at the 'Iron Gates' of the Danube, to the Sulina mouth of the same river on the east, is about 358 miles; and another from the boundary near Predeal in the Carpathians, on the line of railway from Ploiesti to Kronstadt, Transylvania, to the southernmost limit below Mangalia on the Black Sea, is about 188 miles.[3]

The approximate area of Roumania is 49,250 square miles, and when it is added that the area of England and Wales is nearly 51,000 square miles, the reader will be able to form an estimate of the extent of the country.[4] But having made this comparison, let us carry it a step further. According to the latest estimates of the population there are about 5,376,000 inhabitants in Roumania against 25,968,286 (according to last year's census) in England and Wales; in other words, with an area equal to that of England, Roumania has about one-fifth of its population, or about the same as Ireland.[5]

The general configuration of the surface of the country may be described as an irregular inclined plane sloping down from the summits of the Carpathians to the northern or left bank of the Danube, and it is traversed by numerous watercourses taking their rise in the mountains and falling into the great river, which render it well adapted for every kind of agricultural industry. The character of the gradients will be best understood by a reference to the map, with the aid of the following few figures. The towns of Galatz and Braila or Ibrail, situated on the Danube, are fifteen metres above the sea-level, a metre being, as the reader doubtless knows, equal to 1.095, or as nearly as possible 1-1/10 yard. At Bucarest, the capital, which is thirty or forty miles inland, the land rises to a height of seventy-seven metres;[6] still further inland, where the elevation from the plain to the hill country becomes perceptible, the town of Ploiesti is 141 metres above the sea, whilst Tirgovistea and Iasi (Ja.s.sy), each receding further into the hills, stand respectively at alt.i.tudes of 262 and 318 metres, the last-named city (the former capital of Moldavia) reaching therefore a height of over 1,000 feet above the sea-level. Or again, the plain which stretches along the whole extent of the southern part of the country may be said to occupy, roughly speaking, about a third; then comes a region of hills rising to a height of about 1,500 feet; and beyond these the Carpathian range, forming, as it were, a great rampart to the north and east, reckons amongst its eight or nine hundred peaks many that rise to a height of 6,000 to 9,000 feet above the sea-level. The highest of those summits is either Pionul (in Moldavia) or Caraman, near Sinaa (Wallachia), the summer residence of the Court, which are nearly 9,000 feet high; the latter is easily accessible, even to ladies if they are fair climbers, and affords a magnificent view of the surrounding scenery.[7] The aspect of the country, as the traveller moves inland from the Danube to the heights of the Carpathians, is very striking; and as the writer travelled at one time or another along the greater part of the river, both by land and water, and from the bank at Giurgevo to the frontier in the mountains, a brief account of his impressions and observations may be found more interesting than a mere dry geographical description of the different zones.[8]

[Footnote 3: The mode in which we ascertained these measurements was by comparing four, independently made. One was by Mr. Weller, the artist of our maps; the second by the author, being the average of four or five maps; the third by an English official friend in Roumania, who has all the best maps at his disposal; and the fourth from Baedeker. Designating these respectively as _a_, _b_, _c_, and _d_, we obtained the following very approximate results:--

From Verciorova to the Sulina From Predeal to boundary S. of mouth. Mangalia.

_a_ 355 miles _a_ 185 miles _b_ 356 " _b_ 188 "

_c_ 358 " _c_ 189 "

_d_ 360 " _d_ 190 "

From Fife-Cookson's map, in his work _With the Armies of the Balkans_, the measurements respectively are 355 and 186 miles.]

[Footnote 4: The area is obtained by a somewhat similar process to the linear measurements, excepting that here we have been obliged to employ figures from various works (notably that of M. Aurelian and the Reports of Consul Vivian and of the Roumanian Geographical Society), and to take into consideration the exchange of Bessarabia for the Dobrudscha, which has not been done by Roumanian writers since that alteration was made.

The _Gotha Almanack_ of 1881 gives the area as 129,947 square kilos.]

[Footnote 5: There has been no census in Roumania since 1859-60, when the population is said to have been 4,424,961; now it is set down as above, and efforts have been made to a.n.a.lyse this estimate and to cla.s.sify the population according to nationalities and religion. It is, however, quite impossible to do so with accuracy; indeed the census of Galatz taken last year shows that the whole can hardly be regarded as approximate. What we know is that _about_ 4,600,000 of the population are Roumanians and of the Orthodox Greek faith; probably 400,000 are Jews, 200,000 gipsies, and the rest Germans, Szeklers, Servians and Bulgarians, Hungarians, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, Turks, French, English, Swiss, &c.]

[Footnote 6: Prince Jon Ghika says 87 metres.]

[Footnote 7: According to various works and maps, the heights of the mountain summits differ. In his work, _Terra Nostra_, edition of 1880, M. Aurelian gives the height of Pionul as 2,720.1 metres, or about 8,934 English feet, and that of Caraman as 2,650.2 metres, or 8,705 feet; but some of the maps give measurements differing from these.]

[Footnote 8: Fuller details concerning the soil and agricultural productions will be found in the chapter devoted to those subjects.]

II.

The appearance of the plain on leaving the flat monotonous banks of the Danube is anything but prepossessing. Although the land begins to rise almost immediately, the surrounding scenery is flat and arid. The soil, which is black or dark grey, is chiefly argillo-siliceous, and the plain is overrun with coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, weeds, and stunted shrubs, diversified by fields of maize, patches of yellow gourds, and kitchen vegetables. Here and there the railway runs through or skirts plantations. The chief plants in this region (and this applies to the plains generally) are willows, alders, poplars, and tamarinds, but chiefly willows and poplars amongst the trees and larger plants; maize, wheat, millet, and other cereals, and a variety of fruits and vegetables which will be spoken of in connection with the more elevated regions. The first impression which is made upon the traveller coming from our own beautiful hedgerows and pastures, or from the richly cultivated plains of Transylvania, is that agriculture is slovenly and neglected, and that impression is never wholly lost in whatever direction he may travel; although, as we shall see presently, the higher zones are much more carefully cultivated.[9]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROUMANIAN PEASANTS IN WORKING DRESS.]

The peasantry at work in the fields present a novel and interesting appearance to the stranger, and still more striking are some of their habitations. The men generally wear a long white coa.r.s.e linen blouse with trousers of the same material. The blouse is drawn in at the waist by a coil of cords or by a belt, and frequently sandals are worn, in which case the cords fastening them are wound some distance up the leg.

Hats of common felt, cheap cloth, or high cylindrical caps of sheepskin, complete the external attire. In winter sheepskins take the place of the coa.r.s.e linen tunic. There are two types of face to be met with amongst them, both of which are here depicted. The one has long moustaches and shaven face; the other type, which is said to resemble the Dacians of Trajan's Column, has the hair growing all over the face. The latter appeared to the author to resemble the generality of Russian peasants, and this view was confirmed by one or two lending observers in the country.[10]