United States or Angola ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Hafiz Pasha's political relations are necessarily of a very restricted character, as he rules only the few Turks remaining in Servia; that is to say, a few thousands in Belgrade and Ushitza, a few hundreds in Shabatz Sokol and the island of Orsova. He represents the suzerainety of the Porte over the Christian population, without having any thing to do with the details of administration.
There is a small mosque with minarets visible amongst a group of the funeral cypress-tree, so characteristic of the presence of the Turk. Our road to Mehadia was away from the river, following instead the lead of a lateral valley. As we drove out of Orsova we passed a lot of Wallack huts forming a kind of suburb.
Timar had turned the conversation to Athalie because because he envied the officer the smile of Timéa's face. It was as if he had said, "You have no right to Timéa's smile you are engaged; marry Athalie!" "Now, let us talk of serious matters. My friend in Orsova writes me that I am to befriend you. Good; I will try. You are in a position anything but pleasant: the ship intrusted to you is wrecked.
The emperor surrendered Belgrade, relinquished to them Orsova, agreed to demolish all the fortresses of his own province of Media, and ceded to Turkey Servia and various other contiguous districts. It was a humiliating treaty for Austria.
Early one morning we started for Orsova, a drive of thirty miles, splendid scenery all the way. The latter part of our journey was by the side of the Danube, on the Szechenyi road again. We passed a number of hay-ricks in trees, which I have before described. Some of them were built up in the form of an inverted cone. The luxuriance of the foliage is very striking.
Old Orsova, opposite which we now arrived, looked quite new, and bore the true German type of formal white-washed houses, and high sharp ridged roofs, which called up forthwith the image of a dining-hall, where, punctually as the village-clock strikes the hour of twelve, a fair-haired, fat, red-faced landlord, serves up the soup, the rindfleisch, the zuspeise, and all the other dishes of the holy Roman empire to the Platz Major, the Haupt-zoll-amt director, the Kanzlei director, the Concepist, the Protocollist, and hoc genus omne.
The iron chest which held the palladium of the kingdom, the sacred crown of St Stephen, was buried in a waste spot, covered with willows, not far from the road. There is a somewhat Oriental look about Orsova. In the market-place there is a profusion of bright-coloured stuffs, prayer-carpets, and Turkish slippers. A narrow island of no great length, just below Orsova, is still held by the Turks.
Early in March the Turks opened the campaign by sending an army of twenty thousand men to besiege Orsova, an important fortress on an island of the Danube, about one hundred miles below Belgrade. They planted their batteries upon both the northern and the southern banks of the Danube, and opened a storm of shot and shell upon the fortress.
From a military point of view the importance of its capture was in that it was a railroad junction and that the Germans now held the line of communication between the Orsova region, constituting the extreme western portion of Wallachia, and the rest of Rumania.
Then at Orsova we turned north, and went by way of Bucharest, Roman, and Lemberg into Galicia, finally making our way back again to Vienna, and thence to Paris and home. In those days much of the ground I have mentioned was practically unknown to English tourists.
Word Of The Day