costume as the savages put on the
inexpressibles of Captain Cook—are little better
even now than vast villages. The true life
of the Danubian provinces is in the country
—in the plains that stretch from the banks
of the Danube towards the Krappacks and
Dneister—out amidst the fields where grew,
probably, the corn which made the bread
we, sitting here at breakfast in London, have
this day eaten—out into the forests that
furnish the wood with which Constantinople
is built—out into the districts where men
live like moles in the earth, and where you
may ride over the roofs of a village without
suspecting its existence, unless your horse
stumble into a chimney hole.

If Moldo-Wallachia possessed a proper
government, and were insured against the
dangers of conquest, it would probably
produce ten times the amount of grain it now
produces. The cultivated fields, so far from
succeeding one another in unbroken succession,
are loosely scattered over the country, and
divided by patches of forest and waste land,
and sometimes by vast extent of marsh. They
are allowed to lie fallow every other year
from the want of a proper system of manuring.
The seed time is generally in autumn; but if
a short crop is feared, an inferior quality of
grain is sown in other lands in the spring.
Six oxen drag a heavy plough, which makes a
deep furrow. Every year, as in a new country,
virgin tracts are brought under
cultivation to replace others, which have been
wilfully abandoned, or have been ruined by
violent inundations of the Danube, or its
tributary torrents. These newly-conquered
fields are first planted with cabbages, which
grow to an enormous size, and are supposed
to exhaust certain salts which would be
injurious to the production of wheat, of barley,
of maize, of peas, of beans, of lentils, and
other grain and pulse. Maize was first
introduced into these countries in the last century,
and yields prodigious returns.

The Danubian provinces are familiar to the
Englishman chiefly as corn-growing countries;
but we must repeat, in order to leave a
correct impression, that great portions of them
are still clothed in primæval forest. Patriots,
taking this fact to be a sign of barbarism,
insist that the wood-lands are every day
giving way to cultivation, and pride
themselves on the fact; but a grave Italian writer,
who seems to fear that some day the world
will be in want of fuel, deplores this circumstance,
and attributes it to what he considers
an extravagant, absurd, and almost impious
use of good things granted by Providence,
namely, the custom of paving a few of the
principal streets, or rather kennels, of Jassy
and Bucharest with wood. The worthy man,
however, might have spared himself the
anxiety which this hideous waste appears to
have created in his mind. There is no danger
that Moldo-Wallachia will soon be
disforested, and the sentimental, perhaps, will
rejoice in this fact, when they know that the
vast seas of foliage which form the horizon of
the plains and roll over the mountains are
inhabited by prodigious colonies of nightingales.
In no place in the world are there
found so many of these delightful songsters
as in Wallachia. In the months of May and
June it is considered to be one of the greatest
enjoyments that man can taste, to go out by
moonlight and listen to the concert of nightingales,
swelling full and melodious above the
rustling of the leaves, and the rattling of
small water-courses. Benighted travellers
often stop their waggons by the side of some
forest-lake that spreads over half a glade,
on purpose to listen to this marvellous
music, and then after having feasted their
ears for a while, give the order to march,
upon which, amid the clacking of whips, the
shouts of the drivers, and the creaking of
the wheels, all those sweet sounds are stifled,
and you are brought back as it were from
fairy-land to the country of Boyards, serfs,
and gipsies.

Let us suppose the reader to be wending his
way according to this primitive style, through
one of the vast plains that stretch westward
from the Dimbowitza. If it be summer there
is little danger, even after midnight, from the
wolves; and the bears remain up amidst the
krappacks. You may, therefore, jolt along in
safety, unless you happen to deviate into a
morass, or upset into one of the crevices, which
so frequently occur. It is pleasant to travel
by night on account of the great comparative
coolness of that time; but nothing can exceed
the delight of moving leisurely along in the
early hours of the morning, when the air is
full of grey light, and the skies are covered
by flights of birds on the look out for a breakfast;
when bustards go rustling through the
underwood, when partridges start up from the
dewy grass and take semicircular flights to
get out of the way of the intruders, and when
awkward storks are seen perched upon boughs
watching for serpents and other reptiles to
take home to their young. The sunrise in
those districts is wonderfully fine, clear, and
red. Once the winter season passed the
weather is balmy and agreeable, except in the
afternoon, when the fierce heat shrivels the
vegetation, and causes the traveller to droop.
This is why the dark hours, or those which
usher in the day, are preferred for travelling;
and if you are out in the plains at that time,
you are sure to hear the discordant creaking
of wheels approaching or receding in different
directions, just as in the enchanted forest to
which Don Quixote was taken by the
humorous (and not very amiable) hospitality of
his ducal hosts.

The approach to a Wallachian village in
these wild regions is remarkable. On emerging
perhaps from a sombre wood, along the skirts
of which hang white patches of morning mist,
you dimly see signs of cultivation, fields of
maize or wheat and beds of cucumbers and