William Eleroy Curtis

“ Every stranger is surprised to find such handsome residences, such luxurious hotels, such imposing public buildings and such fine mercantile houses and business blocks in the capital of so primitive a country as Roumania, and there is a striking contrast between the city and the country life in that little kingdom. Outside of the larger cities the peasants cling tenaciously to their ancient customs and costumes and habits of life. No country in Europe, unless it be Dalmatia, has so much of what artists call “local colour.” ”

“ Booths for the sale of tea and beer, catch-penny shows, seats for the weary, band stands and kiosks occur at frequent intervals, and in the long twilight of the summer evenings all the people of the town come out to promenade up and down this pleasant way, to listen to the military bands, to greet each other and gossip, and to learn what is going on in their little world. ”

“ There is a railway from Baku to Moscow, and through sleeping cars. The track hugs the shore of the Caspian Sea for more than a hundred miles, passing first through a flat, desolate desert, broken by many rocks of slate and mounds of sun-burned clay. But after several streams are crossed, mountains appear in the distance and the soil, as well as the climate, improves. The dryness of the desert is moistened by damp breezes that blow down from the Caucasus and bring life to the earth. ”

“ Here and there the farming land is broken by a lofty precipice rising a thousand feet or more directly out of luxuriant vegetation, just as an artist would put some bold figure into a picture to offer a contrast to the peaceful, cultivated slope. And the lofty mountain peaks look bolder and sterner because they rise so near the wheat fields, the gentle valleys dotted with white villages, and the sombre forests that are so thick and so green. ”

“ The army grows bigger, the taxes grow higher, the people grow poorer, and labour becomes scarcer in Russia every year. Military rank seems to be essential to happiness and social prestige. Nearly every man you meet on the street or in the hotels and cafés wears a uniform and everybody has a military rank. The school teacher, the apothecary, the lawyer, and doctor, and architect, the clerks in the custom-house, the post-office and city hall—even the convicts in the prisons—wear uniforms, and the registrars of the schools of the university are dressed like major-generals. ”

“ One does not need to use his imagination to see how the entire villages and communities are elevated through a single pupil who has spent, it may be, no more than a couple of years in an American mission boarding-school in some remote city and who, upon his return, not only exercises a silent influence for education and morals, but may at once open a school for the children of his own village. ”

“ This coast is much more beautiful than that of Dalmatia, although it lacks the life and colour that is given the latter by the costumes of the women and the men. It is more like the drive from Cork to the Lakes of Killarney than any other place I know. The French Riviera is more finished and polished and complete, the villas are finer; the hotels are more imposing and the architects and landscape gardeners have embellished nature to a greater extent, but there is more natural beauty on the Crimean coast. ”

“ Florence Nightingale is the immortal, as she was the most interesting figure of the Crimean war, and every school child knows her name. Millions of people throughout the world recognized her as “the Angel of the Crimea,” although they have never heard the name of the commander of the Light Brigade or the names of the generals-in-chief of either army. And I do not believe that one man or woman out of a thousand to-day can tell who commanded the British troops or the French allies; I doubt if one in ten thousand could give the name of the Russian general commander-in-chief ”

“ All the great invaders of the prehistoric period smote the Caucasus with their impotent swords, but never passed beyond; and the first Europeans to find their way through the rocky labyrinths were Greek and Genoese traders, who crawled through the cañons on foot in the Middle Ages in search of customers. Much was risked for gold and glory in man’s struggle with nature that lasted many centuries here, and it was not until the territory was added to the Russian Empire early in the nineteenth century that the Caucasus became passable. ”

“ The Circassians are a superstitious and a poetic people, and like the North American Indians, have a legend attached to every freak of nature and a story to explain every mystery. Their imaginations are as fertile and as full of poetic conceits as the “Children of the Mist” on the coast of Ireland. It is unfortunate that somebody has not taken the trouble to translate their traditions and folk-lore into English. The Circassians really have no literature, although their poets have written many charming lines and there are two or three local histories of merit. ”

“ The head of that department said to me:
“‘Take these young men and make good Americans of them if you want to, but make them good teachers; we need them for our schools; train these men; we need good men in Turkey; make them good men.’”
“Do you teach the Christian religion?” I asked.
“We are absolutely non-sectarian, but try to practise the Christian religion. We do not ask our students to become Christians, but every student who enters this institution has an opportunity to learn what the Christian religion is, and can accept it if he pleases, but he is never asked to do so. ”

“ American missionaries tell me that the education of women has been a critical subject of discussion among the inhabitants of Sivas and that part of Turkey. In the interior provinces it has been the common belief that women cannot learn to read under the most favourable circumstances; in intellectual ability it was customary to class them with animals. Not infrequently in conversation with men of the last generation the statement would be made that a girl could no more learn to read than a donkey, and at any rate, of what possible use in the world could a reading woman be? ”

“ RAILWAY CONCESSIONS IN TURKEY Shortly after the overthrow of the despotism in Turkey, the new government formulated a comprehensive scheme of public improvements intended to promote the material development of the Ottoman Empire, which was forbidden for a third of a century by Abdul Hamid, the late sultan. He seemed to think that progress and prosperity were inconsistent with the welfare of a nation, or at least a menace to the authority of an autocrat, and as long as he kept his subjects in poverty and ignorance, his sceptre was safe in his hands. ”

“ American colleges in Turkey are not charitable institutions by any means. While they need endowments, and must have them in order to make both ends meet, they do not need them any more than Harvard, or Yale, or Princeton, or any other college in Massachusetts or Kansas. The same amount of money will go a great deal farther here than in the United States, because our students do not expect so much, and the standard of living is lower here. Hence, I am confident that the American colleges in Turkey are more nearly self-supporting, on the average, than similar institutions in the United States. ”

“ All the Americans want is money. They don’t care for art, or science, or religion. I have heard that they dig up the bones of their ancestors from the cemeteries and sell them to the farmers for fertilizers, they are so greedy to get money, but I never saw any of them do it. I never saw an American to know him, but I suppose they look like other people. ”

“ The administration of King Carol is as thorough as the Germans in promoting technical education and in introducing scientific theories into practice in municipal and national administration. Many of the young men go to Paris or to Berlin for post-graduate courses, and several of them have become distinguished in science, literature, music, and art. The Roumanian taste for painting is as bizarre as that for music. The pictures by native artists in the art stores and galleries of Bukharest are vivid in colour and action and daring in their conceptions. ”

“ You seldom see the narghile, or Turkish water pipe with a long tube. The bazaars cover many acres, which are cut up into narrow, winding streets sheltered from the sun by roofs of masonry or awnings of matting, and, as usual, the trade is classified for the convenience of the public. The vegetable dealers, the butchers, the candlestick makers, the hardware and iron mongers, the leather mongers and print dealers, all have their own streets, and the shops are so close together that rival merchants can chatter together while waiting for customers. ”

“ The Tartars have been the terror of Asia for centuries. You have read, of course, about the invasions of the Tartar hordes from time to time that have overrun the eastern part of Europe. They are always fierce, always restless, and do not thrive under the restraints of civilization. A Tartar will fight his weight in wildcats on any provocation, but an Armenian is a man of peace. ”

“ We aim to make our students full men; to elevate them to the highest standard of manhood, and that is the reason of the influence and the success of the American schools. We have practically no competition in that line of education.
“Very often the same families who send pupils to us will first send them to a French school to study French, but they afterward send them to us to get what they call the American training; that standard of manhood and sterling character which most of our graduates have taken away with their diplomas. ”

“ And on a certain holiday in all the villages may be witnessed a revival of the Pyrrhic dance so sacred in mythology. The peasants wear robes in imitation of those of the ancient Roman warriors, with bells on their belts and sleeves; they stamp their feet on the ground like the North American Indians, and they shout in unison as the warriors of mythology are said to have shouted in order to prevent Saturn from hearing the voice of the infant Jupiter, the future king of the gods. ”

“ A Georgian dandy is a great sight, and you see them everywhere in the Caucasus. The most perfect costume and the most becoming to their dark complexions, intensely black hair and beards, and their glowing black eyes is, I think, a pure white coat and a shako of white lamb’s-wool. And with that colour the Georgian gentleman usually wears a long dagger with an ivory handle and an ivory sheath and a revolver mounted to match; although other people might fancy a gentleman done up in scarlet, who is also worth looking at. ”

“ The Germans are altogether the best farmers and make the most money, because of their economical methods, their intelligent industry, and their thrifty habits. About half way between Tiflis and Baku is a German colony that looks like an oasis in the desert. It is surrounded by mile after mile of vineyards.
Women work in the fields on equal terms with the men without any distinction of labour, and sometimes one is tempted to think that they carry the heavier ends of the load. ”

“ Upon the retail trading streets of Pera, the foreign section of Constantinople, you can see thousands of unveiled Turkish women any afternoon and thousands more of women whose veils are thrust aside so that their physical and mental visions are clear, and they can look a man in the face without a blush of embarrassment or shame. In Stamboul, which is almost exclusively of native inhabitants, the innovation is not so general, but a stranger would scarcely notice the difference. ”

“ The Woronzoff palace occupies a terrace one hundred and fifty feet or so above the Black Sea, and a stately stairway, fit for any palace, extends from the threshold of the main entrance to the edge of the water, being guarded on both sides by marble lions, some of them asleep, some of them awake, some of them yawning and others in a playful mood. The façade was copied from one of the palaces of the Alhambra, which critics have pronounced very much out of place on a Tudor castle. Four Byzantine towers at the corners of the walls have also been objected to as untasteful intrusions. ”

“ The ruins of the villages that have been burned and the graves of the neighbours that have been killed will be perpetual reminders of what the Albanians consider to be a tyrannical and unjust treatment of their province.
A similar mistake was made in Macedonia, where the sympathy of the people was so strongly on the side of their nextdoor neighbours, the Albanians, that the government feared a revolution. Instead of trying to prevent it by giving the Macedonians new roads and schools and other public improvements they need so much, an order was issued to disarm the entire population. ”

“ Each of the one hundred and fifty-nine American missionaries in Turkey to-day has a district like the diocese of an Episcopal bishop, with a dozen or twenty churches under his care. He visits them regularly, advises with their pastors, superintends their schools, and exercises a paternal authority over the people. They consult him concerning their temporal as well as their spiritual welfare, not only the members of his congregation, but men of every class. No class of people in all Turkey are so trusted by the officials and the public and by every race as the American missionaries. ”

“ Perhaps dress has a good deal to do with setting off the shape and the features of the men. I have heard that fine feathers make fine birds. No national costume is more stately or adds more to the stature and the pose of a wearer. Perhaps the high-stepping heroes of romance and tragedy whom we were constantly meeting on the sidewalk would not look so well in an ordinary suit of store clothes, but one can at least give them the credit of wearing their ancestral garments with stunning effect.
A certain Georgian dandy patronized the Hotel de Londres, where we were stopping, to excess. ”

“ The average Russian peasant is honest and industrious; he pays his taxes and gives one fifth of all his income to the church, but he has a terrible appetite for strong drink, and vodka, the Russian brandy, made of potatoes, is his curse. The government, however, has done a great deal to promote temperance. It has a monopoly of the liquor business, both in manufacture and sale, and its policy to prohibit the sale of liquor in agricultural villages has been strictly applied to a considerable section in southern Russia, where no strong drink of any kind can be obtained. ”