The broad river flows on, past many islands, past occasional villages, for many miles, to Hersova, a small town on a height which, like so many of the places along the Lower Danube, suffered severely in the wars between Russia and Turkey. This has been described as “a species of oasis in the desert, prettily situated on an undulating eminence, with a fortified castle, and a large garrison; its chief importance arising from the circumstance that it covers every point in this direction where an enemy might attempt to effect a landing in that rectangular peninsula called the Dobrudja.”[18] On the left bank just beyond--where the tributary Jalomitza flows in--is another landing place, Gura-Jalomitza, near which a branch of the river goes off to the right, forming an extensive island or fen, which is described as a mass of reeds, and intersected by streams and channels, radiating in every direction, and said to abound in wildfowl and herds of half-wild swine. Near the lower end of this island, there stands on the left bank the important town of Braila, the chief Rumanian port of entry, an important centre of the grain and timber trades, and a town with over fifty thousand inhabitants. Its chief interest is as a commercial and shipping centre, for it has nothing of architectural beauty to show, and its surroundings are flat and monotonous. Not far from Braila there are remains of a bridge, which tradition says was built across the Danube about five hundred years before the beginning of our era by Darius the Great. About ten miles below Braila, the larger port of Galatz is reached, a town situated between the confluence of the Sereth and of the Pruth, with the Danube, and where the great river makes its final bend eastwards to the Black Sea, still about ninety miles distant. Galatz has extensive quays and a very large shipping trade, vessels of 2500 tons being able to come thus far up the river. It is a thriving and growing port, with a population not far short of a hundred thousand. The main part of the town is built on the rising ground that lies between the two tributaries named. In St. Mary’s church here is the tomb of the Cossack chief Mazeppa, immortalized in literature by Byron’s narrative poem. Mazeppa was a member of a noble Polish family, who, being page at the Polish Court, intrigued with the wife of one of the nobles, was discovered, and by the irate husband was lashed naked to the back of a wild horse, which was then turned adrift-- “I will not tire With long recital of the rest Since I became the Cossack’s guest. They found me senseless on the plain, They bore me to the nearest hut, They brought me into life again-- Me--one day o’er their realm to reign! Thus the vain fool who sought to glut His rage, refining on my pain, Sent me forth to the wilderness, Bound, naked, bleeding, and alone. To pass the desert to a throne-- What mortal his own doom may guess?”