At all the landings where we stopped the officials made a great fuss to keep the loafers back, for fear they would take the chol{ 086}era. We had no passengers for these landings, but we generally had letters, papers, and merchandise. Letters and papers were received with a stick or a pair of tongs and thrown into a tin box, which a boy instantly carried off to a sulphur fire, where its contents could be disinfected.
Then, and not till then, could they be safely handled. Merchandise was piled on the dock, but what disposition was made of it I could not learn. I bought a paper of cigarette tobacco from a boy on shore. He tossed the package on board and I then threw him half a franc. Before touching it he pushed it into a puddle of water, and after working it about for a while, ventured to grasp it with his dirty fingers.
Cholera couldn’t get through the encrusted skins of these fellows much quicker than a mouse could go through the side of a teapot, and as for the passengers and crew of the steamer, we were anything but a sickly lot. Yet they were fearful that we should do them harm, as much as though they were chickens and we were hawks and eagles.
We kept on our way without many incidents of importance, or rather without any, or I should record them. We met a steamboat flying the Turkish flag and steering clear of us; and we passed a { 087}Turkish gunboat tied up to one of the banks, but with steam up. At every Turkish landing we went through the farce of the tongs, but at the northern landings we had none of it. Piles of wheat were lying on the northern bank, and generally there were groups of picturesque Wallachians around them. We met Greek brigs and schooners ascending the river to bring away this wheat, and at a few places we saw these vessels lying at the shore. Their crews were a brigandish-looking lot with red caps, baggy trow-sers, and a general resemblance to the stage robbers in _Fra Diavolo_.
Further down the Danube we met more of these vessels I counted over sixty in sight at one time, and there were three or four times that number at Braila or near there. A large part of the commerce of the Black Sea is in the hands of Greek merchants, and they are said to be very enterprising. At Galatz and Braila there are many Greek houses and agencies. Some of the older establishments are accounted very wealthy. So nearly do they monopolize business that the language of commerce at Galatz is said to be Greek with a mixture of Italian.