In the Track of the Troops Part 9

Petroff admitted with ready grace that I was right, and thrusting his fingers through the wild cl.u.s.tering curls of his black hair, as if to let the air circle more freely about his head, he turned sharp round, and pointed to a cottage which stood at a short distance from the high-road, at the entrance to the village.

"That is our home, sir; we shall feel happy if you will enter it."

I willingly complied, and turned with them into the by-path that led to it.

The cottage was a mere hut, long and low, one end of which const.i.tuted the forge, the other end, divided into three compartments, being the dwelling-house. Here I found the hand of Marika very evident, in the neatness and cleanliness of everything in and around the place. The owners were very poor, but there was sufficient for comfort and health.

On a shelf in a corner lay the Bible which the family had received from the colporteur. It was the only book in the house, and evidently a cherished treasure.

In another corner, on a rudely-made but warm couch, lay a treasure of a different stamp--a boy, apparently about two years of age. As I looked at the curly black hair, the well-shaped nose, the firm, rosy lips, and the broad brow, I turned to Petroff with a smile, and said--

"I need not ask if that boy is yours."

The man did not at once reply, but seized the child, which our entrance had awakened, and raised it high above his head.

"Do you hear that, little Dob? The gentleman knows who you are by your mother's eyes."

"Nay," said I, with a laugh, "by its father's nose. But now that you mention the eyes, I do recognise the mother's plainly. How old is he?"

This was the first of a series of questions which opened the hearts of these people to me. On the strength of these jet-black eyes and the well-shaped nose, to say nothing of the colporteur and the Bible, Lancey and I struck up quite an intimate friends.h.i.+p, insomuch that at parting, little Dob gave me a familiar dab on the face, and Ivanka turned up her sweet little mouth to be kissed--quite readily and of her own accord.

There is nothing on earth so captivating as a trustful child. My heart was knit to little Ivanka on the spot, and it was plain that little Dob and Lancey were mutually attracted.

I remained at that village several days longer than I had intended, in order to cultivate the acquaintance of the blacksmith's family. During that time I saw a good deal of the other villagers, and found that Petroff was by no means a typical specimen. He was above his compeers in all respects, except in his own opinion; one of Nature's gentlemen, in short, who are to be found, not numerously perhaps, but certainly, in almost every land, with unusual strength of intellect, and breadth of thought, and power of frame, and force of will, and n.o.bility of aspiration. Such men in free countries, become leaders of the good and brave. In despotic lands they become either the deliverers of their country or the pests of society--the terror of rulers, the fomentors of national discord. Doubtless, in many cases, where right principles are brought to bear on them, they learn to submit, and, sometimes, become mitigators of the evils which they cannot cure.

Most of the other inhabitants of this village, some of whom were Mohammedans, and some Christians of the Greek Church, were sufficiently commonplace and uninteresting. Many of them appeared to be simply lazy and inert. Others were kindly enough, but stupid, and some were harsh, coa.r.s.e, and cruel, very much as we find the peasantry in other parts of the world where they are ill-treated or uncared for.

While staying here I had occasion to go on sh.o.r.e one morning, and witnessed a somewhat remarkable scene in a cafe.

Lancey and I, having made a longer excursion than usual and the day being rather hot, resolved to refresh ourselves in a native coffee-house. On entering we found it already pretty well filled with Bulgarians, of whom a few were Moslems. They were apparently of the poorer cla.s.s. Most of them sat on low stools, smoking chibouks--long pipes, with clay heads and amber mouth-pieces--and drinking coffee. The Christians were all engrossed, at the moment of our arrival, with a stranger, who from his appearance and the package of books which lay open at his side, I at once judged to be a colporteur. Dobri Petroff, I observed, was near him, and interested so deeply in what was going on, that he did not at first perceive us.

Having selected some New Testaments and Bibles from his pack, the colporteur handed them round for inspection. These, I found, were printed in the modern Bulgarian tongue. The people greatly admired the binding of the volumes, and began to evince considerable interest in what the colporteur said about them. At last he proposed to read, and as no objection was made, he read and commented on several pa.s.sages.

Although a German, he spoke Bulgarian fluently, and ere long had aroused considerable interest, for the people had little or no knowledge of the Bible; the only one to which they had access being that which lay on the pulpit of the Greek Church of the village, and which, being written in the ancient Slavic language, was incomprehensible by them.

The priests in the Greek Church there are generally uneducated men, and their intoned services and "unknown tongue" do not avail much in the way of enlightenment. The schoolmasters, I was told by those who had good opportunity of judging, are much better educated than the priests. I observed that one of these, who had on a former visit been pointed out to me by my friend Dobri, sat not far from the colporteur smoking his chibouk with a grave critical expression of countenance.

At last the colporteur turned to the 115th Psalm, and I now began to perceive that the man had a purpose, and was gradually leading the people on.

It is well known that the Greek Church, although dest.i.tute of images in its religious buildings, accords the same reverence, or homage, to pictures which the Romish Church does to the former. At first, as the colporteur read, the people listened with grave attention; but when he came to the verses that describe the idols of the heathen as being made of, "silver and gold, the work of men's hands," with mouths that could not speak, and eyes that could not see, and ears that could not hear, several of the more earnest listeners began to frown, and it was evident that they regarded the language of the colporteur's book as applicable to their sacred pictures, and resented the implied censure. When he came to the eighth verse, and read, "They that make them are like unto them, so is every one that trusteth in them," there were indignant murmurs; for these untutored peasants, whatever their church might teach about such subtleties as wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d _through_ pictures, accepted the condemnatory words in simplicity.

"Why are you angry?" asked the colporteur, looking round.

"Because," answered a stern old man who sat, close to me, "your words condemn _us_ as well as the heathen. They make out the pictures of our saints to be idols--images and pictures being one and the same thing."

"But these are not _my_ words," said the colporteur, "they are the words of G.o.d."

"If these words are true," returned the old man, with increasing sternness, "then _we_ are all wrong; but these words are not true--they are only the words of _your_ Bible, about which we know nothing."

"My friends," returned the colporteur, holding up the volume from which he had been reading, "this is not only my Bible, it is also yours, the same that is read in your own churches, only rendered into your own modern tongue."

At this point Dobri Petroff, who, I observed, had been listening keenly to what was said, started up with vehemence, and exclaimed--

"If this be true, we can prove it. Our Bible lies in the neighbouring church, and here sits our schoolmaster who reads the ancient Slavic like his mother-tongue. Come, let us clear up the matter at once."

This proposal was heartily agreed to. The Bulgarians in the cafe rose _en ma.s.se_, and, headed by the village schoolmaster, went to the church, where they found the Bible that the priests were in the habit of reading, or rather intoning, and turned up the 115th Psalm. It was found to correspond exactly with that of the colporteur!

The result was at first received in dead silence, and with looks of surprise by the majority. This was followed by murmuring comments and some disputes. It was evident that the seeds of an inquiring spirit had been sown that day, which would bear fruit in the future. The colporteur, wisely forbearing to press his victory at that time, left the truth to simmer. [See note 1.]

I joined him as he went out of the church, and, during a brief conversation, learned from him that an extensive work is being quietly carried on in Turkey, which, although not attracting much attention, is nevertheless surely undermining the huge edifice of Error by means of the lever of Truth.

Among other things, he said that in the year 1876 so many as twenty-eight thousand Bibles, translated into the modern native tongue, had been circulated in the Turkish Empire and in Greece by the British and Foreign Bible Society, while the Americans, who are busily engaged in the blessed work in Armenia, had distributed twenty thousand copies.

Leaving the village of Yenilik and my Bulgarian friends with much regret, I continued the voyage up the Danube, landing here and there for a day or two and revelling in the bright weather, the rich prospects and the peaceful scenes of industry apparent everywhere, as man and beast rejoiced in the opening year.

Time pa.s.sed rapidly as well as pleasantly. Sometimes I left the yacht in charge of Mr Whitlaw, and in company with my trusty servant travelled about the country, conversing with Turks wherever I met them, thus becoming more and more versed in their language, and doing my best, without much success, to improve Lancey in the same.

Note 1. The facts on which the above is founded were given to the author by the Reverend Doctor Thomson, who has resided in Turkey as the agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society for upwards of thirty years.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE BLACK CLOUDS GATHER.

While I was enjoying myself thus, among the towns and villages on the banks of the Danube, admiring the scenery, cultivating the acquaintance of the industrious rural population of the great river, and making an occasional trip into the interior, the dogs of war were let loose, and the curtain rose on the darkest tragedy of the nineteenth century.

The comic and the tragic are inextricably mingled in this world. I believe that this is no accident, but, like everything else, a special arrangement. "All fun makes man a fool," but "all sorrow" makes him a desperado. The feeling of anxiety aroused by the war news was, I may say, mitigated by the manner of its announcement.

"Sir," cried Lancey, bursting into the cabin one afternoon while I was preparing for a trip ash.o.r.e, "the Roossians 'as declared war, an' the whole country is gettin' hup in harms!"

Of course I had been well aware for some time past that there was a prospect, nay, a probability, of war; but I had not allowed myself to believe it, because I have a strong natural tendency to give civilised men credit for more sense than they appear to possess. That Russia would really draw the sword, and sacrifice millions of treasure, and thousands of her best young lives, to accomplish an object that could be more easily and surely attained by diplomacy, with the expenditure of little money and no bloodshed, seemed to me incredible. That the other European nations should allow this state of things to come to pa.s.s, seemed so ridiculous that I had all along shut my eyes to facts, and proceeded on my voyage in the confidence of a peaceful solution of the "Eastern question."

"In days of old," I said to my skipper, in our last conversation on this subject, which we were fond of discussing, "the nations were less educated than now, and less imbued perhaps with the principles of the peace-teaching gospel, which many of them profess to believe; but now the Christian world is almost out of its teens; intercommunication of ideas and interests is almost miraculously facile. Thought is well-nigh instantaneously flashed from hemisphere to hemisphere, if not from pole to pole; commerce is so highly cultivated that international exhibitions of the raw material and the fabrics of all nations are the order of the day; while good-will between man and man--to say nothing of woman--is so prevalent, that I really find it hard to believe in the possibility of a great European war."

"Nevertheless," replied Mr Whitlaw, in a tone of cynicism, to which at times he gave pretty free indulgence, "the Crimean war occurred in the nineteenth century, and the American civil war, and the young widows of the Franco-Prussian war are not yet grey-haired, while their children have scarcely reached their teens. Truly, civilisation and the progress of knowledge, which men boast of so much, seem to be of little value."

I pointed out to Mr Whitlaw that he was wrong in supposing that civilisation is of little value. "If you compare the condition of the United States or England," I said, "with that of the Red Indians of your own land, or with the semi-barbarous states of Asia, you must allow that civilisation has done much. It seems to me that the fault of mankind lies in expecting too much of that condition. Civilisation teaches man how to make the world most comfortable to himself and to his fellows; but there is a higher attainment than that, and it is only Christianity which can teach man how to sacrifice himself for others, and, in so doing, to attain the same ends as those arrived at by civilisation, with more important and lasting ends in addition."

"Well, then, on that principle," objected the skipper, "you ought to expect war just now, for there is very little Christianity going that I can see, though plenty of civilisation."

"On these points we differ, Mr Whitlaw," said I, "for there seems to me very little civilisation at present, considering the age of the world; and, on the other hand, there is much genuine Christianity,--more, I believe, than meets the careless or the jaundiced eye. However, now that war _has_ been declared, it becomes necessary that we should get out of the Danube as fast as possible."

Accordingly, the yacht's head was turned eastward, and we descended rapidly with the stream. My intention was good, but the result was disastrous; not an unwonted state of things, the best intentions in human affairs being frequently doomed to miscarry.

I must ask the reader now to turn aside with me from my own personal adventures, to events which had occurred near the banks of the Pruth,-- the river that divides Russia from Turkey.

Here, on Tuesday, the 24th of April 1877, a scene of the utmost animation and excitement prevailed. The Emperor of "all the Russias"

was about to review his troops previous to the declaration of war on Turkey. Up to that time, of course, war had been expected--as regards the army, eagerly desired; but no declaration had absolutely been made.