Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878, by Various

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Title: Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878

Author: Various

Release Date: July 22, 2006 [EBook #18885]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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=LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE=

OF

_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

AUGUST, 1878.

* * * * *

Footnote: Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.

* * * * *

ALONG THE DANUBE.

[Illustration: SOMENDRIA.]

Ada-Kale is a Turkish fortress which seems to spring directly from the
bosom of the Danube at a point where three curious and quarrelsome
races come into contact, and where the Ottoman thought it necessary to
have a foothold even in times of profound peace. To the traveller
from Western Europe no spectacle on the way to Constantinople was so
impressive as this ancient and picturesque fortification, suddenly
affronting the vision with its odd walls, its minarets, its red-capped
sentries, and the yellow sinister faces peering from balconies
suspended above the current. It was the first glimpse of the Orient
which one obtained; it appropriately introduced one to a domain which
is governed by sword and gun; and it was a pretty spot of color in the
midst of the severe and rather solemn scenery of the Danubian stream.
Ada-Kale is to be razed to the water's edge--so, at least, the treaty
between Russia and Turkey has ordained--and the Servian mountaineers
will no longer see the Crescent flag flying within rifle-shot of the
crags from which, by their heroic devotion in unequal battle, they
long ago banished it.

The Turks occupying this fortress during the recent war evidently
relied upon Fate for their protection, for the walls of Ada-Kale are
within a stone's throw of the Roumanian shore, and every Mussulman
in the place could have been captured in twent