Roumania Past and Present, James Samuelson [best novels to read to improve english .txt] 📗

/> CENTURY)

XI. FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE
PRINCIPALITIES, BETWEEN
THE MIDDLE OF THE THIRTEENTH AND OF THE
FOURTEENTH CENTURIES, TO THE
ACCESSION OF MICHAEL THE BRAVE,
A.D. 1593

XII. THE TIMES AND CAREER OF MICHAEL THE
BRAVE

XIII. FROM THE DEATH OF MICHAEL THE BRAVE
(A.D. 1601) TO THE DEPOSITION OF PRINCE
COUZA (A.D. 1866)

XIV. FROM THE DEPOSITION OF PRINCE COUZA
(1866) TO THE CORONATION OF KING
CHARLES (1881)

XV. PRESENT ROUMANIAN LEADERS AND THEIR
POLICY


APPENDICES.

APPENDIX

I. MOVEMENTS AND SETTLEMENTS OF
NATIONALITIES AND BARBARIAN TRIBES

II. THE 'CAPITULATIONS'

III. THE ROUMANIAN CONSTITUTION

IV. THE PEASANT PROPRIETARY OF ROUMANIA

V. LIST OF WORKS (WITH REFERENCES TO
TEXT)


CLASSIFIED INDEX


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.


[Illustration: Physical Map of ROUMANIA]


CHAPTER I.

GEOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE.

Limits, dimensions, and population of Roumania--Comparison with
England--Configuration of the surface--Altitudes 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--Sinaïa--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--
Hæmatite--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 mètres above the sea-level, a mètre 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 mètres;[6] still further inland, where the elevation from the plain to the hill country becomes perceptible, the town of Ploiesti is 141 mètres above the sea, whilst Tirgovistea and Iasi (Jassy), each receding further into the hills, stand respectively at altitudes of 262 and 318 mètres, 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 Caraïman, near Sinaïa (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 analyse this estimate and to classify 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 mètres.]

[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 mètres, or about 8,934 English feet, and that of Caraïman as 2,650.2 mètres, or 8,705 feet;