say purposely, giving ear to a report current
among all sailors in these seas. When the
Russian government was reproached with a
direct breach of faith in virtually blockading
the mouth of the Danube during nine months
of the year, they took their own way of
clearing themselves from the imputation. It
was eminently Russian. A great fuss was
made: men and machines were furiously
employed to remove the obstructions but
everything that was cleared out on one day,
was scrupulously replaced on the next.

The state of the Sulina mouth of the
Danube therefore, remains a most notable
scandal. Vessels can only get over the bar when
lightened of their cargoes, and are subject
to all manner of official hindrance and fiscal
extortion. They are sometimes detained a
whole winter, to the serious loss of owners,
to the stoppage of trade, to the increase of
the price of food; also to the grave injury
of the Moldo-Wallachian ports of Galatz
and Ibraila, and the comparative ruin of the
navigation of the whole Danube. Wrecks
are awfully numerous; the loss of life,
appalling, as I had after opportunities of
observing.

Sulina is, at this time, a miserable collection
of huts hastily run up to meet the
pressing exigencies of the moment, being
mere temporary erections of dried reeds.
Their interiors—of which I visited several—
presented no incorrect idea of the very extreme
of discomfort in this raw damp climate. In
some huts were haggard grisly men asleep,
after an ague fit; and withered women, like
the dried figs of a bad season with respect to
personal appearance, cowering over their
smoky fires, and grumbling as they cooked
their unsavoury meals, or tore damp sticks
for fuel. They had seldom any furniture
besides an earthenware pan, or a black pot to
stew their food. They had also generally a
mat of rushes, dried or undried as the case
might be, to sleep on, and they made fires
on the bare earth outside their hovels. The
central streets—mere muddy lanes—were
choked up with sailors; among them, plenty
of bad truculent Greeks from the Pirate
Islands, seated before the doors of dram
booths, gambling with filthy cards, and swearing
canting oaths in the pauses of their sneaking
debauch. On the face of each skulking
rake the stamp of scoundrel was branded, so
plainly that a child might read it. It is a
pity that we know these rascals too well,
to connect one pleasant thought with their
fine features and pretty dresses.

These, perhaps, were some of the selfsame
revellers who lurked about the seas as
buccaneers at the beginning of the war, armed
to the teeth, and who bore down one night
upon a British merchant ship becalmed; who
stabbed the watch; then cut the throats of
the sleeping crew; then played ghastly tricks
to their mangled remains; then plundered
the vessel, and then departed. The ship drifted
with her dreadful burden over the beautiful
waters of the Ægean, where she was found,
some hours afterwards by a man-of-war's
boat, which put off, irate at having hoisted
signals to the death-laden bark in vain!

From the open doors of other booths and
hovels I heard nasal droning songs, the
uncouth sounds of rude instruments, and
the shrill tones of wrangling women of no
good repute. Here, also, were a crowd of
Maltese and lonians, who bring our name
into discredit wherever they are known.
Lounging groups of superstitious mariners of
the Adriatic added their lazy figures to the
heterogeneous mass—a wild company amongst
whom it is never prudent to venture; for their
knives gleam on small pretence; and their
victims are never heard of more. Human
life is held of a strange cheapness by these
miscreants, and the law is powerless.

Towards sundown, I returned to the ship;
and, after dinner, as the evening closed quite
in, a wandering Italian boy came on board.
He was one of those itinerant musicians who
roam over every country in the world;
gathering up a little hoard with many a
stern, unchronicled act of self-denial, and
passing bitter days enough, poor lads, Heaven
help them! This specimen had a hurdygurdy,
an ivory whistle, and a rich impudent voice,
with which he trolled forth a number of those
ballads popular in the Austrian and Neapolitan
sea-ports. They were mostly in the
form of a dialogue between a young sailor's
sweetheart, a girl, and her mother, on the old
subject of love and ruse, of which the salt is
savoured among the people of every land,
and the fresh, lively charm is felt from pole
to pole. At the end of each verse the singer
always lingered on the last note with an
arch relish; and, carrying it on through his
whistle, trilled out a sparkling impromptu
chorus, which had a world of droll life and
inuendo in it. Some of the airs he whistled
had a dashing, seafaring pathos, quite
captivating; and we fairly lay back and had a
laugh at his roguish jests, as pleasant and
refreshing as is awakened by the airy couplets
of a French vaudeville. Yet those
ballads seemed to speak aside to me, with
a touching and eloquent plea for a race
whose children have been taught to solace
their captivity with songs, till they have
mercifully learned a wondrous cunning in
them; and who (knowing that their hopes
are a coin with which they can buy but
shadows) have courted oblivion so long, that
they have found all beauty, freedom, heart-food,
their brightest, quickest life, within a
dream.

It was very pretty and affecting to see our
captain and his wife—a lady from Ragusa—
exchange bashful smiles and tell-tale glances,
as they both listened to some song which
perhaps revealed their own story, and
invested it with the fascination of a romance.
Once, the volatile sailor was so moved, by an