Turks, though differing in nothing from the other but in age: both are equally unused. The Turks never make a road but across some portion of inundated or marshy ground. It is a causeway of rude, large, uneven stones; so badly put together, that intervals are left between, in which the horse constantly slips below his fetlock, and moves cautiously and slowly along, at the imminent hazard of breaking his own legs or his rider's neck. Travellers, therefore, prefer wading through water and mud up to their saddle girts, to venturing on these roads; yet all the remains of ancient roads in this country are of a similar structure.

"At four o'clock, we arrived at Burghaz, and entered the town upon one of those ill-constructed causeways, which was continued through all the streets. Burghaz is a very common name for a town in Turkey. It appears from Cantemir, that it is a corruption of rʊgyos, a tower, and was originally a fortified castle under the Greeks; though there are seldon any remains of such a thing now to be seen in the modern villages." pp. 79-80.

*

"We set out from Burghaz at three the next morning; the weather was dark and doubtful, at intervals spitting rain. We wandered from the road in the pitchy darkness, and got entangled in gardens and old houses, and here we floundered for a long time before we regained the road. At length the horizon became streaked with a parallel gleam of light, which indicated a clear day, and extricated us from our difficulties. We were now on the spot which was the limit of the Russian campaign in 1810. The main body of the army proceeded no farther than Shumla; but clouds of Cossac Tartars had passed the Balkan, and rode up to the suburbs of Burghaz, which is within eighty-four miles of Constantinople, having plundered the country the whole way. The country was the same flat, denuded plain as that we had passed the day before, and these Tartars must have felt themselves at home. About nine o'clock, we arrived at a wood, and the trees were the first we had met since we left Constantinople-a distance of one hundred miles. This wood was a grateful variety, and continued for three hours to the vicinity of Kirklesi, where we arrived about mid-day." pp. 81-82.

!

"We rode through a number of ragged, filthy streets, to the more ragged and filthy post-house, where we were to be supplied with fresh horses; for here the engagement of our surrogee from Constantinople terminated. From hence the posts occur every ten or twelve hours, the horses are changed, and the speed of the traveller is as rapid as he pleases to go; and for this he only pays twenty paras, or half a piastre an hour for each horse; that is, he gets four horses and an armed guide to go at what rate he pleases, for about fourpence per mile, or one penny for each horse. * When Mustapha came in, I asked him some question in English, which he did not answer, and supposing he had not heard me, I repeated it in a louder voice. He was now seized with an extraordinary fit of trepidation. He got up immediately and left the room, and I found him afterwards in the yard attempting to give some baccheesh, or gratuity, to the stablemen; but his hand so trembled, that he scattered the paras about the yard. He then hurried me

*

out, and, getting on his horse, rode hastily off, leaving me to follow him as I could. I pursued him to the suburbs of the town, where he stopped at a Bulgarian wine-house, and having got into a Christian place, his trepidation began to subside, and he attempted to account for it. The Turks of this place are so rude and ignorant, that they think a man degraded who understands any other language than Turkish; when I addressed him, therefore, in English, at the post-house, he could not answer, as it would have exposed us both to the contempt and insult of the fellows about us, from which he had no means of protection. It had happened to him, he said, in the same place before, and both he and the gentleman he travelled with were attacked, and in great danger.

"This determined hostility to knowledge is, perhaps, the most extraordinary trait in the Turkish character, and distinguishes them from every other nation at the present day. It is hardly possible to conceive a people priding themselves on being ignorant, and despising those who are not so. Nor is this confined to the rude rabble of Kirklesi. There is a number of janissaries attached to the palaces of the different missions at Constantinople, as guards of honour, and they are in constant communication with the inmates of the palaces. The only one I ever heard of, who acquired a knowledge of a Frank language, was Mustapha, and he was a renegado, and did it at the hazard of his life. The prejudice is not less among the upper and educated classes. The Turks, in their intercourse with foreign nations, are always obliged to use rayas as interpreters. The important function of dragoman to the Porte was always performed by Greeks till the late insurrection; and when the Turks thought they could no longer confide in them, there could not be found in the empire one, of themselves, capable or willing to hold a communication in a foreign language, and they were obliged to confer the situation on a Jew. They have since that, however, established a seminary for the instruction of a few young Turks in different Frank languages, that they may be able to undertake and discharge a duty so important and confidential, and no longer depend on the suspicious fidelity of strangers. This tardy and reluctant adoption of a measure so indispensable, is a strong proof of the pertinacity with which they adhere to ancient prejudices, which no one but a man of the energetic character of the present Sultan could dare to oppose, or oppose with any effect.

"As we had now commenced posting on the account of government, no regard was to be paid to the unfortunate horses. The rule is, if they die on the road between post and post, the traveller pays for them; but he may drive them to death's door, without scruple. Our next post was Fakih, distant twelve hours; and we determined to make up for the past, and go it in half the time."

"From Doolath-Haghe the country is woody and swelling into hills; and here, for the first time, Mustapha thought it right to commence galloping, because the road was no longer open and plain, but obstructed, uneven, and dangerous. I had also another objection: I felt myself very stiff, and even a moderate motion very painful. After riding all

day, for several in succession, and resting at night in my clothes, on the ground, with nothing to keep me from the hard, uneven floor, but a mat or a carpet, I was not much disposed to any gratuitous violent exercise, and I declined the proposal peremptorily. By degrees, however, the surrogee increased his speed, the Tartar followed, and such is the irresistible habit of these animals, that my horse would not stay behind; in a few minutes, therefore, we were all in full speed, over a road where it required caution to walk. We dashed up hills and down acclivities, stumbled over rocks and fallen trees, and tore away through brambles and branches, floundered in mud, and splashed through mountain torrents; and, for twelve miles, scarcely pulled bridle till we arrived at Fakih, the next-post-house. I thought this steeple-chase would have knocked me up, and disabled me from proceeding; but Mustapha assured me, from the experience of others whom he had attended, the effect would be quite the contrary. In fact, it was so: this violent exercise was like the champooing of a Turkish vapour-bath; the muscles were relaxed, the joints suppled, and, on dismounting, I felt as active and fresh as when I set out." pp. 84-89.

The Balkan mountains have long been considered as one of the most formidable barriers, on the side of Europe, of the Turkish empire. They have been represented as impracticable and impassable, if skilfully and gallantly defended; and they have, in fact, arrested the progress of the Russian armies on several occasions. But although the mountains are steep and lofty, the ravines and gorges few, narrow, precipitous, and difficult of access, the roads miserable, the country desolate, yet no one who recollects the events of the last thirty years, who remembers that neither Pyrenees, nor Appenines, nor the Alps themselves could oppose any invincible obstacle to the career of disciplined troops and able commanders, will view this range of mountains as offering any insurmountable difficulties to the march of an invading army. Indeed, when we are told that in 1820, clouds of Cossacks passed the Balkan, and advanced to Burghaz, we know not why mounted infantry might not then have borne them company, in numbers sufficient to have secured the most important points of the defile, by which they traversed these mountains. The real obstacles are, perhaps, the deep snows of winter, the sickliness and scarcity of water in the summer and autumn, causing a great waste of life to northern troops, and the character and habits of the Turks themselves, which adapt them better for the defence of mountain passes, for irregular warfare, where the contest is between man and man, than for the tactics of regular warfare and the evolutions of a day of battle. We will give Mr. Walsh's description of one of the passes, and his observations on the chain as a means of military defence. At Fakih, the next post to Drolath-Haghe, the low

Balkans commence, and continue about thirty miles to Haydho's, a large Turkish town, where the high Balkans commence :

"We now ascended the first ridge of the High Balkan, and had a specimen of its rainy character; the wind had changed to the south, and dark heavy masses of mist were hanging on the hills.

"In about one hour we descended again, and came to another of those fertile and lonely plains which abound every where in the recesses of these mountains. It was ten or twelve miles long, and three or four broad, with a river winding its way through the centre. It was filled with villages, cattle, corn-fields, vineyards, and fruit-trees, all of which were in the highest state of rural beauty. The trees had lost none of their foliage, the winter corn was springing above ground, and the pasture was rich and verdant; but the circumstance most striking was, the inaccessible mountains by which it seemed to be surrounded. If Dr. Johnson had ever travelled through these countries, I should have supposed he had described his valley of Rasselas from the actual scenery of this place. On looking round, I could not see where we got in, and how we could get out. We followed, however, the course of the river, till we came to the perpendicular front of the ridge at the opposite side of the valley. Here, as if by some spell of open Sesame!' the face of the mountain seemed to gape, as if rent asunder, and presented to us a narrow chasm, into which we entered along with the river.

“This ravine is, perhaps, one of the most magnificent and picturesque in Europe, and far exceeds the Trosachs of Lough Catherine, or any that I had ever seen before. Its perpendicular sides ascend to an immense height, covered with wood from the bottom to the top, and leaving a very narrow stripe of blue sky between. For some time we pursued the bed of the river, descending still deeper into this gorge; and I supposed we intended to follow it the whole way, in the dim twilight in which we were involved, till we should emerge with it at the other side of the mountains; but after a short time we left it, and began to ascend gradually, till we reached the summit of this second ridge. Here we found the masses of clouds, which had appeared so picturesque, were diffused into a uniform haze, which circumscribed our view to a very small distance, and poured down torrents of rain. The road was now become disagreeable and dangerous: it was sometimes very steep, and so slippery, that the horses could not keep their feet, but were continually falling. We passed several ravines over tottering bridges of slight boards, which were so loosely put together, that they rose at one end, while any weight pressed the other.

"In this way we got on till the shades of evening warned us to hasten. We proceeded, therefore, down a steep, with the rapidity usual to Turks on difficult ground, and were dashing across one of those fragile wooden bridges, thrown over a deep ravine, when it suddenly gave way with a crash, and the surrogee and his horse, who were foremost, disappeared. The surrogee was thrown forward, and, clinging to the broken planks, he scrambled out on the other side, but his horse went through. His hind feet, however, got entangled in the frame-work below, and here it remained suspended."

Here after some time consumed in extricating the horse, our author adds:

"Had the horse been killed, I was informed that I should have to pay the Sultan for the consequences of his rotten bridge. We now descended a very steep mountain; the Tartar was just behind me, when the feet of his horse giving way, he tumbled over and over, and both he and his rider rolled past me to the bottom of the hill. I thought they were killed ; but fortunately the ground was soft, and neither received much damage. The shades of evening had already closed when we arrived at a valley, in the bosom of which is situated the romantic village of Lopenitza, where we purposed to pass the night.

"We left our kind hosts before daylight, on a dismal, dark, drizzling morning. We made our way with difficulty, through low rocky hills, stumbling among ravines, and wishing for the light of day. Atlength it appeared, accompanied by a bitter cold north-east wind: in a little time it became so piercing, that we all got numbed and powerless. It was accompanied by a dark dry sky, which seemed to threaten snow, and was a specimen of those Scythian or Hyperboreau blasts which come suddenly and intensely over these regions. Our road lay still among the last ridges of the Balkan, with occasional plains. In one of these we fell in again with the river with which we entered the mountains; it is here called Buyûk Kametchi, and runs parallel to the Balkans into the Black Sea. I should like to have traced this mysterious stream through the dark, deep, and subterraneous recesses through which I was told it passed. One would imagine that, thus running through the level ground at one side of the mountains, and issuing out at the other, having penetrated at the base and wound its way through the chain, it would afford a level for a road below, without the necessity of carrying it over the immense ridge; and no doubt, in any other country but Turkey, such a road would have been made. It is possible, however, that the Turks would not wish to remove this formidable barrier, which nature has placed between them and their northern enemies, or afford them a greater facility of invasion by cutting a level road through the very heart of it. Having crossed this river, we proceeded to Shumla, where we arrived, after a long and fatiguing ride, at three o'clock. Not apprised of the effect of this cold, I attempted to dismount, but was so entirely deprived of feeling or motion, that I fell powerless to the ground, like a sack of corn.

*

In the morning we found the stable full of horses, that had come in in the night, so at day-dawn we set out. Our way lay over a hill which commanded the whole country, and I stopped on the summit at sunrise to view it.

"Behind us lay the vast ridge of the Balkans which we had passed, presenting a steeper and more inaccessible face at this side than at the other; running along the horizon in a right line, like a vast wall which ascended to the clouds. The ancients had such an idea of the height of this ridge, that Pomponius Mela affirms, the Euxine and Adriatic could be seen from it at the same time; and Pliny says it was six miles high. Hæmi excelsitas vi millibus passuum, higher than the chain of