Some five and twenty years ago it was my fortune to visit the northern districts of Bulgaria. At this time the whole country was under Turkish rule, and the Bulgarian question had hardly begun to attract the notice of the European public. Rustschuk had left a strong impression on my mind, as it happened to be the first place I ever set foot in where the Crescent ruled above the Cross, where I first saw in the flesh Turkish officials in red fezes and Stamboli coats, Bashi-Bazoujcs, and veiled Turkish ladies.
Even then Rustschuk was not the East, but it was very near the East, and the first vision of the Orient, however imperfect and incomplete it may be, is one that makes an indelible impression upon the Western mind. In the days of which I speak Rustschuk was a squalid Turkish village, with a small European quarter, facing the Danube. This quarter consisted, if my recollection serves me, of a German inn, which was more of a pot-house than an hotel, of a Teutonic beer-garden, of half a dozen warehouses, of a Custom-house, a railway station, and a few stores and offices, all situated on the low bluffs that rise above the southern banks of the Danube at this part of its course.
At the period of my first visit Rustschuk was a place of some local importance as the western terminus of the Varna-Rustschuk line, which formed a link in the new route between Constantinople and the West. Previous to the completion of the Orient Railway, some few years ago, all travellers from the West, who were not inclined to make the tedious sea-journey from Marseilles, availed themselves of this new route, which owed its existence to the ill-requited energy of an English company.
An express train was run twice a week from Vienna through Buda Pesth to Bazias, an obscure Hungarian port on the Danube, some little distance east of. Belgrade. From Bazias the Austrian Lloyd steamers carried the passengers down the Danube to Rustschuk.
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