city in many graceful windings. It occupies sufficient space for a large number of inhabitants, but the population is by no means so great as it appears, on account of the gardens and public places which surround nearly every residence. Most of the houses have all their apartments upon the ground floor. They are built in this manner because of the earthquakes which occur so frequently in these countries. For the same reason few of them are elegantly constructed.

The streets are generally unnamed and unpaved; they are long, narrow, and crooked, and revoltingly filthy at all times. Instead of pavements, most of them are roughly laid with planks, under which channels have been constructed to carry away the water and impurities of the city; but these wretched conduits are almost always obstructed. You think nothing can exceed the disagreeable uncleanliness of the city in winter, until you find it in summer with the additional aggravation of whirlwinds of dust. It is not extravagant to say that it is often ankle-deep; few, however, ever measure it in this manner, for in Bucharest feet are luxuries, carriages are absolute necessities. No respectable person is ever seen in the streets of the city on foot, any more than without clothes. The human being was not more inseparable from the quadruped in the fabulous centaur, than is respectability from an equipage in this community. A moderate income is obliged to support one vehicle, and often two. During my stay here I have seen no one on foot in the streets, except the beggars and gipsies; but you may frequently see the occupants of such houses as your day-laborers would despise, alighting from one kind of a carriage in winter, and another in summer. People are supplied with two or three equipages here, as among you they furnish themselves with the same number of boots or shoes. They are the grand ambition of life, and, as in countries older in civilization, the great aim in the possession of an equipage is to eclipse some rival in the display of vehicle or steed. The Albanian breed is valued most highly, and is only at the command of the most wealthy. The coachman, in his ragged and filthy garments, seems perched on his seat purposely to display to better advantage the elegant form and gorgeous caparisons of the horses, which are covered

from head to foot with silk and cashmere, elaborately ornamented with gold, silver, and gems. There are fashionable drives for the display of all this extravagance, and they are usually thronged. Next to theatrical displays and gaming, the drive is the most serious employment of the Bucharians. Games of chance are frequently pursued with a passion amounting to frenzy; more than one nobleman has lost his entire fortune in a single evening's play.

The indolence of the Moldo-Wallachians is proverbial; they prefer repose to everything. Nowhere have I found such an utter aversion for the proper use of the pedal extremities. But a better day is coming. A few of the streets are already paved; more examples will follow when their superiority is seen. Carriages will become a luxury for the vain and wealthy alone; and Bucharest, the City of Joy, receding still further from Asia in its progress, will receive a new impetus toward the civilization of Europe, when her citizens can tread her streets without disgrace.

A great point has already been attained in the destruction of the dogs with which the city was formerly infested. One of my countrymen who visited it in 1835, stated their numbers at thirty thousand. Unfed and homeless, their battles were, of course, perpetual. Woe to the unfortunate whelp who secured a bone for his private repast. He was immediately the object of attack from troops of starving curs, with inflamed eyes and foaming mouths, and with whom the victory was a matter of life or death. Everything fled before these tyrants of the streets. The authorities of the city were at last obliged to attempt some remedy, and a few paras were offered for every carcass. The Bohemians, to whom the calling seemed a natural one, armed with long sticks pointed with iron, entered upon their duties at five o'clock in the morning, and pursued them until mid-day. The carnage was dreadful, but it resulted in the relief of the city from the grievous evil under which it had so long suffered.

As in most eastern and Russian cities, each trade has a particular quarter assigned to it. The quarter of Leipsikani is occupied by traders whose supplies come from the annual fair of Leipsic. There is also the bazaar of the bacans or gro

cers; the sarafs, or bakers; the kajokars, or fur-dealers; the abadji, or clothiers; the zerkenkauls, or toy-shops; the matchelars, or butchers; the kofetars, confectioners; the skaoumelé, or musicians. Jews also have their department, called ovrai, which has no communication whatever with those of the Armenians, Servians, Bulgarians, German and French, who surround them.

The most obvious characteristic of Bucharest is the inequality which marks its buildings. Its elegant public edifices are side by side with miserable hovels. In this respect it bears no resemblance to the European cities which it endeavors to imitate. The diversity of costumes is also very striking to a stranger, even to those who have been accustomed to the various garbs of a Russian city. Here it is not unfrequent for the father to preserve the national costume, while the youngsters of the family adopt the European fashions. The French language is generally taught, precisely as the classics are made a part of education in your schools; it is also the general language of polite circles; its use and the recognized forms of French society and French mode, are exclusively adopted by the aristocracy. It is as yet, however, quite impossible to ingraft the taste and cultivation of western Europe upon this odd melange of population, just emerging from eastern barbarism and obscurity.

Among other objects attractive to a stranger in Bucharest is the hospital of Coltza, with its ruined tower, which was built in 1715, by the soldiers of Charles XII., of Sweden. It will be remembered that this "Madman of the North" took refuge, with a remnant of his troops, in Turkey, after his defeat by the Russians. His heroic pranks while here perplexed the grave Turks with profound astonishment. They called him the Demirbash, or the "Iron Headed." Tradition still speaks of his whimsical but courageous feats, and this monument of the presence of his troops is regarded with special interest by natives as well as travelers.*

Charles, while living in Turkey, on the hospitality of the sultan, had a freakish quarrel with the authorities, and actually defied the whole military force. His officers and ministers, his chaplain bowing before him, supplicated him not to sacrifice them by his rashness; but he fortified his house, and, as Voltaire says:

Besides this relic the visitor will find at Bucharest several interesting structures, such as the Convent of St. George, the Khan of Mahmouk Bey, an immense caravansary, of two stories, with a double balcony in its interior; the Museum of Antiquities and Natural History, the College of St. Sava, &c., &c. It possesses also a library of some six or eight thousand volumes, and is rich in oriental manuscripts.

Instead of wearying myself with the details of these charitable and scientific establishments, true to my instincts, I preferred making my observations in the Mahalas, upon the habits, costumes, and manners of the poorer classes. Their habitual food consists of a porridge made from coarse wheat or other grain. They scarcely ever taste animal food of any kind. Notwithstanding the affectation of European and more particularly French manners by the wealthier classes, the character of the people is decidedly oriental, and many of the formal manners of the Arabian knights are still retained in their social intercourse. When a lady enters a saloon she kisses the brow of the mistress of the house; a young girl drops gracefully upon one knee and presses her lips upon the hand of the hostess, presenting her cheek as she rises. Smoking is evidently the chief business of the sterner sex. Upon the entrance of a visitor, a chiboque is brought by a slave, from which the master of the house draws a few whiffs and then offers it to his guest.

"Il se defend avec quarante domestiques contre une armée,"—" He defended himself with forty domestics against an army." The Turks sent a delegation of venerable janissaries to entreat him to yield. He would not see them, but sent he would cut off their beards. They retired in them word that unless they left the mansion amazement, saying, "Ah, the Head of Iron, if he will perish, let him perish!" The army, with ten cannon, bore down upon the house, the janissaries penetrated its chambers, but as Charles opened a door with his little force, "the Turks," says Voltaire, "burdened with booty, were so struck at the appearance of the strange man whom they had so much wondered at, that they threw away their arms, leaped out of the windows, or hid themselves in the cel lars." In less than fifteen minutes the crazy king and his crew killed two hundred of the Turks from his windows. They had, at last, to burn him out. He dashed in among them, cutting right and left. The account of the scene in Voltaire, is exceedingly amusing. Don Quixote never equaled the feat.

dessert with every imaginable luxury. During the entire repast, numerous servants busily plied large feather fans, that the guests might remain undisturbed by gnats and flies, which infest these climates. Such is high life in Bucharest!

I must not close these rambling remarks without attempting some description of one of my first adventures in Bucharest, with a sense of gratitude that I am alive to tell the tale. One morning I awoke after a night of profound sleep, and rubbing my eyes, bethought myself that a bath would not be amiss. I went forth to inquire for

one.

The Turkish and Wallachian baths are both patronized here, and as I had heard the latter highly extolled, I determined to test them. They are situated in a disagreeable quarter of the city called Leipsikani; the building which incloses them resembles an immense bee-hive, and I walked three times around it without finding the entrance. A kind of trapdoor was then discovered by the friend who accompanied me, somewhat similar to those by which cellars are protected in country towns. Having raised it, we descended eight steps, and found ourselves in the center of a round hall, perhaps a hundred feet in circumference. Its walls were of rose-colored marble, spotted with blue; its pure white pavement was also of marble; and the whole area was surrounded with a kind of divan, comfortably cushioned. The light, dimmed by the thick vapor through which it passes, is only admitted by a circular window, about a foot in diameter, of concave and convex glass, inserted in the freestone dome. This is supported by eight granite pillars, each of them containing tubes through which the water of as many different degrees of heat falls into the same number of marble vases. I also discovered more than seven sleepers" stretched around apparently in as profound a slumber as is generally ascribed to those mythical personages.

66

Utter silence reigned over the luxurious scene, and I was inquiring of myself if we had not wandered into the kingdom of the gnomes, when my companion clapped his hands, and immediately there appeared before us, as if he had sprung out of the earth at our feet, a little figure, crooked as Æsop, bearded like a fawn, and covered with the most curious habiliments. Again I appealed to myself, with VOL. V.-38

as little prospect of a satisfactory reply, if this was not one of the genii of the Thousand and One Nights.

"Silam alekoum," said the strange figure, (which being interpreted is, I salute you,) bowing his odd little form to the ground very good humoredly.

He now clapped his misshapen hands, accompanying the motion with a chuckling sound. Two servants answered this summons; their skins were yellow and dry as parchment, their eyes were dull and deep set, they were dressed like pugilists, and appeared large, strong, and young enough to sustain the character. Our presence was a sufficient explanation of our wishes, and without a word, one hand was laid upon our neck, and in a twinkling we were completely divested of every article of clothing by the other. One of them then placed wooden slippers, about six inches in height, upon our feet, while the other wound three or four yards of gray cloth about our forms; turbans completed our equipment for the bath.

We were now conducted to a small arched closet, the temperature of which was a little more than tepid. The water flowed over the warm pavement from every side, and escaped by a channel in the wall. We remained here but about two minutes, and were then taken to an apartment, a little larger than the first, arched in the same manner, and furnished with three large scallop-shells, each supplied with water still warmer than the other from tubes continually overflowing the receptacles, and filling the space with so condensed and penetrating an odor, that I nearly fainted.

At the end of ten minutes, which appeared like so many ages, one of the servants opened the door of a third apartment, larger than either of the two preceding ones, in the midst of which I was thrust, without the slightest explanation from our silent attendants; my companion also submitted with martyr-like-composure to the same fate. I immediately came to the conclusion that this was a furnace where people were burned alive. I made an effort to remonstrate, but in vain; my voice was lost in my throat, my knees trembled, my head swam, and I sank down in utter helplessness. In a few seconds my chest dilated and natural respiration was resumed. I opened my eyes to ascertain my true position. In the midst of

the apartment, which was a vast amphitheater with vaulted arches so skillfully cemented that they seemed cut from the solid granite, was a large circular basin which represented a wheel; the water, spouting from the center and divisions, formed a fountain of distinct compartments, furnished by eight brass tubes with mouths of girasol-a gem resembling the opal. Four of these compartments were occupied by bathers, whose purpled visages were expressive of the most blissful beatitude. Wishing to share their enjoyment, I looked round, and finding that the attendants had disappeared, like a child in the absence of his master, I darted with one bound into the deceitful fountain. Fatal imprudence! I paid dearly for my impatient curiosity.

These compartments are heated by subterranean conduits, the temperature of the water varying in each. In my precipitation, ignorant that it was necessary to pass from one to the other of the graduated baths, I had plunged my limbs into the hottest basin, the temperature of which was sixty-four degrees Reaumer, only six less than the spring of Neidubrum, in which the villagers boil eggs.

It is useless to add that I sprang out quite as soon as I had sprang in, with an exclamation that excited the hilarity of my fellow-bathers, whose mirth was only increased by the sight of my legs, which were as red as well-boiled lobsters.

Quite infuriated, I called my attendant; no sound answered my voice save a sad . and hoarse echo. I attempted to escape, notwithstanding my ridiculous figure; but the door was firmly clasped. My strength had returned after a few moments of faintness; but it was now again deserting me, and though I was not frightened, these transitions were certainly far from agree able. Firmly persuaded that twenty-four hours of this discipline would reduce a man to his original elements, I attentively examined my companions, and they seemed to me gradually shriveling up in the misty atmosphere which enveloped them. Yet I could not but admit that their silence appeared to proceed from their ecstatic enjoyment. I came to the conclusion that the ineffable delights of this voluptuous bath could only be enjoyed after long experience.

My meditations were, however, interrupted by the opening of the door and the

reappearance of the bayaches, or servants. One of them bore a bowl of clay, in which he dissolved some rose perfumed soap; the other unfolded a package of coarse cloth. The latter made a sign expressive of his desire for me to extend myself upon a marble table, and I obeyed with the utmost docility, for I assure you I had been thoroughly subdued; he then dipped his cloth in the soapy water, and with it rubbed my face and the entire surface of my body. The second bayache now seized me firmly by the neck and legs in order to prevent me from kicking, while the other rubbed my back and breast with hair gloves; then lifting me up, as if I had been a feather, he laid me at full length in the first compartment of the fountain. After being thoroughly rinsed in this from the soap with which I was pasted from head to foot, I passed successively through the seven others, until I reached the one where I had been so cruelly scalded. It was now quite as endurable as the others, though its temperature remained the same.

I was then again stretched on the table, for the purpose, as it seemed to me, of having all the bones of my body dislocated. To crown the tortures to which I was doomed, one of my executioners turning my face down upon the table, now leaped upon me, and applied his feet with vigorous kicks to my back and loins.

I presume many of these details will seem incredible to you; but you may be assured that I am a faithful chronicler, except that my description must fall short of the reality. For about three minutes I was perfectly convinced that every vertebra in my spine was broken; my terror nearly bereft me of my senses, but upon returning to full consciousness I found the other bayache vigorously rubbing the soles of my feet with pumice stone.

This was the last act in the tragedy; my fate began to brighten, the woolen slippers were replaced upon my feet, the cloth was again wound about my form, and my head was recrowned with the turban. I returned through the small apartments to the common hall, and was given into the hands of the bayache who has special charge of that department. After enveloping me in a warm covering, he rolled me on the divan, precisely as a baker kneads his bread, perfumed me with rose water of the sweetest odor, and contemplated his work in silent complacency.