When, after a walk of considerable length, we reached the hamlet that was the object of our excursion, we excited universal attention and astonishment among the women and children who crowded the cottage doors, and who were universally clad in coarse white linen; the females wearing huge silver earrings, round bracelets of coloured glass, and rings of every dimension. All were barefooted; and the children, who huddled together in groups to gaze upon the passing strangers, were wretched-looking little mortals, with their light hair hanging in elf-locks about their ears, and their rags fluttering in the breeze. The hovels were universally built of mud, and roofed with reeds and the long leaves of the Indian-corn; with chimneys of basket-work. In short, I never beheld a more thorough demonstration of the fact that human necessities actually exceed but little those of the inferior animals, and that the thousand wants which grow up around civilization are merely factitious. These isolated individuals were scantly and coarsely clothed; fed almost entirely upon vegetables and the black wheaten bread, of which the grain was grown in their own gardens; Indian corn that supplied them at once with food, fuel, and bedding; lodged in hovels better suited to cattle than to human beings: and yet they were not merely healthful and happy, but, as I have already noticed, they had their innocent vanities, and indulged in all the glories of coloured glass trinkets.
The only men whom we saw in the hamlet were engaged in packing water-melons into the wicker bullock-cars destined to convey them to the market at Galatz; and of some of these we immediately possessed ourselves. A shawl flung over the tall stems of some flag-reeds, and propped by a rake, was soon converted into an awning for me, and we made a most primitive and delicious meal, seated on the fresh grass among the wild flowers. As we sauntered quietly back to the river-side, we collected some of the shells that had been driven up the creek by the river tide; and captured a fine tortoise that was sunning itself on the turf, which we carried on board; where we returned tolerably fatigued with our ramble in the wilds of Silistria.