The Lands of the Tamed Turk; or, the Balkan States of to-day: A narrative of travel through Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Dalmatia and the recently acquired Austrian provinces of Bosnia and the Herzegovina; with observations of the peoples, their races, creeds, institutions and politics, and of the geographical, historical and commercial aspects of the several countriesJaekel, Blair
History
The Lands of the Tamed Turk; or, the Balkan States of to-day: A narrative of travel through Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Dalmatia and the recently acquired Austrian provinces of Bosnia and the Herzegovina; with observations of the peoples, their races, creeds, institutions and politics, and of the geographical, historical and commercial aspects of the several countries
Jaekel, Blair
Balkan Peninsula
If you do not stop to look at the signs—for what is a city of this era
without a host of glaring, gilded advertisements—Buda-Pesth is just as
enticing, but on a somewhat smaller scale, as Vienna, and at the end of
a fortnight we were loth to leave. As the next slip of our Rundreise
book read “Belgrade,” we jammed ourselves into one of the dusty
compartments of a crowded railway train bound for the Servian frontier.
Among our fellow-passengers was an aged, rheumatic Jewish woman,
travelling from Vienna to Constantinople, who became very sociable,
despite her affliction, and lighted one cigarette from the stub of the
other as she unveiled to us her past history in broken German.
The railway line from Buda-Pesth to Belgrade, traversing the great
Hungarian steppes, is devoid of attractive scenery and the journey
of seven hours becomes somewhat tiresome, especially if the season
is summer with its accompanying heat and the train is uncomfortably
crowded. Agriculture along the route seems to be very much on the wane,
but enormous herds of long-horned cattle, flocks of sheep and tens of
thousands of pigs tell succinctly of the product of that portion of
Hungary. Now and again you may see a native driver in heavy leather
boots, white petticoat, or smock, to his knees, and a derby hat (not a
very dignified-appearing combination of apparel), tending a large flock
of unusually huge geese, tapping the laggards deftly with his long
willow switch.
[Illustration: THE ELIZABETH BRIDGE,—BUDA IN THE BACKGROUND.]
The minute you cross the Danube at the Servian frontier you begin
to feel the influence, although a waning one, of a nation that has
been struggling desperately for hundreds of years to regain her lost
provinces—the Turks. It is not so noticeable in Servia as in Bulgaria,
not so noticeable in Bulgaria as in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, but it
is there, nevertheless; the sullen, silent suffering of a nation of
stoics, whose forefathers were defeated in their murderous attempts to
Mohammedanize Europe only at the very gates of Vienna itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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