passengers being allowed berths on board the
vessels when in port.

The silver spell succeeds. A sooty little
fellow, like a chimney-sweep, agrees to
accompany me, and we go scuffling among rat-
holes, open sewers, sleeping vagabonds, and
scampering cats down to the quagmire
by the water-side; and scrambling over bales
of goods, and a confused labyrinth of chains
and cordage, gain the deck of the good ship
Ferdinand. A cigar, a joke, and a dollar,
overcomes the steward's scruples about a
berth, and I wake next morning to the
rattling sound of the paddle-wheels.

The boat is very full. It is as difficult to
get at the washhand-basins as to fight one's
way to the belle of a ball-room. I pounce
on one at last, however, by an adroit flank
movement, and prepare for a thoroughly
British souse, when a young Wallachian—
in full dress, and diamond ear-rings; who has
just been putting an amazing quantity of
unguents on his hair—comes up and coolly
commences cleaning his teeth beside me. He
looks round with a bright good-natured
smile when he has finished, and is plainly at
a loss to understand the melancholy
astonishment depicted in my countenance.

The deck is crowded with a strange
company. There are the carousing party who
broke my rest last night. They glitter from
head to foot with baubles and gewgaws;
but the gentlemen are unwashed and
unshorn, and it is well for the ladies that their
rich silk and velvet dresses do not easily
show the ravages of time and smoke. They
are dressed in the last fashions of Holborn
or the Palais Royal, and one of the dames, I
learn, is a princess, with more ducats and
peasants than she can count. She spends a
great part of the day adorning herself in her
cabin—the centre of an admiring crowd of
tinselled gallants, who assist at her toilette,
with compliments and with suggestions of a
naiveté quite surprising.

Then there is a fat old Moldavian lady of
the old school. She wears a black great-
coat lined with a pale fur, and Wellington
boots. Her head is swathed and bound up in
many bandages. She wears thumb rings, and
smokes continually. Our passengers are
indeed of the most motley character, for we have
quitted the excellent boats of the Danube
Company, and are now on board a vessel
belonging to the Austrian Lloyd's, very
inferior in size and accommodation, although
built for going to sea. The first and second
class passengers mingle together
indiscriminately, and the whole deck is encumbered
with a shouting, screaming, laughing, wrangling
mass of parti-coloured humanity. There
are Gallician Jew girls, going under the
escort of some rascally old speculator to
Constantinople, and dressed like our poor
mountebank lasses, who go about on stilts
at country fairs. They are a bright-eyed
kindly race of gipsies and good-natured
termagants, with a smile and a saucy word
for everybody. Watching them, with great
contempt, is a German professor, who has
indiscreetly shaved the small hairs from the
point of his nose till he has quite a beard
on it. There is a long Austrian officer in a
short cavalry cloak, who looks not unlike a
stork; and there is a small Austrian officer,
in a long infantry great-coat, who domineers
over him, and is evidently his superior. They
are an odd pair, and pace the deck together
with a military dignity and precision quite
comical. There is a brace of gipsies,
hereditary serfs, with dark fiery eyes, rich
complexions, and red handkerchiefs tied
picturesquely with the striking grace in costume,
which distinguished that outcast race in all
countries. Then there are Greek and
Armenian traders engaged in all sorts of rascally
speculations connected with the war and
the corn markets—sly, sharp-nosed men who
have scraped together large fortunes by
inconceivable dodges and scoundrel tricks; who
have their correspondents and branch-houses
at Marseilles, Trieste, Vienna, Paris, London,
and New York; who would overreach a Jew
of Petticoat Lane, and snap their fingers at
him; who have all the rank vices and keen
wit of a race oppressed for centuries, newly-
emancipated. All power, wealth, and
dominion in the Levant is passing into their
hands. Long after I who write these lines
shall sketch and scribble no more, the
chivalry of the West will have a fearful struggle
with them. May Heaven make it victorious!
Our party is completed by two bandy beggars,
with grey beards and bald heads; a crowd of
the common-place men of the Levant, loud,
important, patronising, presuming, vile, ignorant,
worthless, astounding for their
impudence; the captain, a brusque, talkative, self-
confident Italian, and his wife, a lady from
Ragusa, silent and watchful, with a sweet
smile and a meaning eye.

We get under weigh betimes in the
morning; for, below Galatz, ships are only
allowed to navigate the Danube between
daylight and dark, so that in these shortening
days they must make the most of it.
The noble river is crowded with vessels;
and, now and then we meet a valuable raft of
timber for ships' masts floating downwards.
This will be stopped by the Russians, to the
cruel injury of trade. I learn from an Armenian
merchant on board, that a mast such as
would sell for fifty pounds at Constantinople
may be here bought for five pounds or less;
so that there will be some grand speculations
in timber whenever peace is declared.

At Tschedal, just below Ismail, we come to
anchor; and, after a short delay, a trim
little boat shoots smartly out from the
Bessarabian shore towards us. It is pulled by
six rowers, in the peculiar grey great-coats
and black leather cross-belts which distinguish
Russian soldiers. At the helm is a
seventh soldier decorated with a brass badge