PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.

FOUR centuries have passed away since the Crescent replaced the Cross on the dome of Saint Sophia, and the empire of Constantine crumbled before the might of Othman; four centuries of ever increasing intellect, civilization and prosperity. Nations, then semi-barbaric, have not only emerged from the darkness of the middle ages into the full light of the great epoch in which we now live, but their population, as it were culminating from the very acmé of civilization, have borne their talent, industry, and energy, to the most distant regions of the habitable globe. The wilderness has been cultivated, and the desert peopled; cities have been founded, and railroads laid down in what were, at the period of the Ottoman conquest, the undisturbed solitudes of primæval nature; and nations, great and powerful, have sprung into existence in quarters of the globe then undiscovered. Yet when the traveller, fresh from the busy scenes of active life, industry, and usefulness, visits the

VOL. I.

B

land of the Crescent, expecting to meet with similar evidences of progress and improvement, and seeing none, exclaims Where are the monuments of the power and the energy of the mighty people who laid the Christian empire of the East in the dust? Where are the proofs that they have for four centuries held dominion over one of the most beautiful and fertile countries in our hemisphere? Where !-the undrained marsh, the sandchoked river, the grass-grown market-place, the deserted field, the crumbling fortress, the broken arch; these re-echo, Where! Stagnation, death-like stagnation, has ever characterized the rule of the race of Othman.

Crushed and degraded below the level of humanity, generation after generation of the unhappy Christians of these provinces of European Turkey have passed away like the leaves of the forest, without leaving a vestige behind to tell that they existed. Unheeded and uncared for by those nations of Europe, who were employing every energy to reclaim from his savage state the swarthy son of distant India and Africa, and make him a participator in the blessings of civilization and revealed religion, forgetful of the shame and reproach that lay at their very threshold; forgetful that while the life-blood of Europe quickened the extremities of the universe, a portion of her very self remained torpid and corpselike.

The dawn of a brighter day has, however, at length arisen on the night of Turkish misrule; a touch of the Promethean fire of the Spirit of the Age has kindled the hearts of this neglected and uncared-for people; awaken

ing, as it were, from a trance to a consciousness of their own power, to an appreciation of that lofty destiny, from which they have been for centuries excluded; wherever we wander in these provinces, whether on the summit of the highest mountain, or the secluded valley, on the banks of the Danube, or the shores of the sea, we perceive indications of a movement-evidences of a determination in the people to emancipate themselves from the degrading bondage in which they are held by their Mahometan rulers.

What a vital question is then the future destiny of these people for the other countries of Europe; here we have, so to speak, the molten ore of which nations are cast in fusion at our very door. Let the statesmen of civilized Europe look to it, and may some skilful hand be found in the hour of emergency to make a way fo the seething mass to flow in its predestined mould of a great and powerful community, else they may repent, when too late, if they allow it to burst its barrier, and volcano-like spread ruin and desolation around.

Such is the country and the people we have endeavoured to portray to the reader: in doing so we have divested ourselves of prejudice in every statement we have made; for however much we might sympathize for those who suffer, we have invented nothing, perverted nothing, exaggerated nothing.

Having already made an extensive tour in Asiatic and European Turkey, and given a description of our tour in a previous work, we were no strangers either to the country, the language, or the manners of the people; but since the progress of events has brought these countries of Eastern Europe into prominent notice, and knowing the anomalous position of the inhabitants, with reference to their rulers, towards whom they entertain no sympathy of race, nor for the most part of religion, we were again induced in 1847 and 1850 to become a Nomade, and visit those districts we had neglected during a former tour, and more carefully study the political bias of a people destined, ere long, to play an important part in the political drama of

the world.

In our pictures of European Turkey and those provinces of Austria on the Lower Danube, composed of so many nationalities, and so little known to the civilized communities of Western Europe, our aim has been to describe the customs and manners of the people, their moral, political, and social condition; to which we have added occasional sketches of their ancient and contemporary history, present state of civilization, and future prospects. We have also alluded to the varied productions of the soil and its capabilities; the state of agriculture, commerce, and industry, and shown the numerous advantages these fine provinces possess in their mountains and defiles, fertile valleys and plains, encircling seas and navigable rivers, when considered in a commercial and political point of view.