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CHAP. I.

Festival of

the Courban

Bairam.

us, saying, that it was his intention to remain the following day in Shumla, for the ceremony and festival of the COURBAN BAIRAM'.

See the Life p. 523.

(1) Meaning the Lesser Bairam, which takes place seventy days after the Greater festival. Upon this occasion there is a cessation from labour during three days; rejoicings are made, and presents distributed. Corban, or Courban, signifies a sacrifice; it is generally the sacrifice of a lamb, which is sent to some one as a gift.

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FROM THE PASSAGE OF MOUNT HÆMUS, TO BÛKOREST. Occurrences at Shumla-Medals-Electrum-Marcianopolis-Situation of Shumla-Scordisci-Comparative Vocabulary of the English, Bulgarian, Albanian, Erse, and Turkish Languages — Population and Trade of Shumla-Courban Bairam-Tatchekeui-Remarkable Quadruped-Lazgarat-Torlach-Pisanitza -Rustchûk - River Danube -Trade of Rustchûk—Passage of the River—Giurdzgio— Change in the mode of travelling-Tiya, or Tiasum-Breaking of Bridge-Kapúka, or Napouka-General description of WalachiaCondition of the Hospodar-State of the Peasantry-Language of Walachia-Religion-Epulæ Ferales-Approach to Bûkorest-Reception of the Ambassador-Public Entry-English Consul-Audience

of

?

of the Hospodar-Statistics-Population-Commerce-Metropolitan Monastery Schools Magdalen Hospital-Ceremony of the Resurrection-Triple Consulate-Gipsies.

CHAP. II. As we were to remain at Shumla until the thirteenth, we

Occurrences at Shumla.

Medals.

sent forward an express message to Búkorest, to our friend Mr. Summerer, then residing as agent for the British nation at Búkorest (with whom we had contracted an intimacy at Péra), requesting that he would send a carriage and horses to meet us, after our passage of the Danube, at Rustchûk. The Ambassador also ordered carriages for all the principal persons of his suite to be brought to the same place; and wrote to the Prince of Walachia, announcing his approach. We thought we had now quitted altogether the land cf classical antiquities; but to our surprise we obtained in this place three Greek medals: we found them upon the evening of our arrival, in the hands of a silversmith; and if the shops had not been shut the next day, owing to the festival of the Courban Bairam, we had reason to believe that we might have purchased others. These medals are curious, and therefore they merit a particular description. The first is nothing more than a silver medal of Alexander the Great. It exhibits the head of the king as Hercules, decorated with the lion's spoils; with the common reverse of a sitting figure of Jupiter, beautifully executed. As it serves to call to mind Alexander's Expedition into Mosia, and his passage of Mount Hæmus, it derives an additional interest from the circumstance of its locality. But the medal itself is remarkable: it has neither legend nor monogram; and it affords the only instance we

ever

ever saw of a fine reverse upon the medals of Alexander. Generally, the style of workmanship exhibited by the reverses of Alexander's medals is very inferior to that which the portrait displays; but this is by the hand of a superior artist.

The second is a medal of Rhescuporis, king of THRACE in a much later age. He was the uncle of the young Prince Cotys the Fifth. After sharing the sovereignty with him, about the seventh year of the Christian æra, he put him treacherously to death. His ferocious and ambitious character is described as the very opposite to that of his victim, who, to the mildness of his manners, joined an accomplished and liberal mind. Ovid addressed to Cotys one of his Epistles'. Rhescuporis ruled over those wild and desolate Plains of THRACE, which we had so recently traversed; and the character of the people has not altered, in all the centuries that have since elapsed: they were constantly in a state of insurrection. It was to Augustus that he owed his kingdom: and during the lifetime of that Emperor, he restrained his ambitious projects within

(1) In which Cotys is represented as distinguished by his application to literature and poetry. When we consider that the Roman Poet is writing from the barbarous region of his exile to a Thracian Prince, the following lines, upon the effect of such studies, are read with additional interest :

"Adde, quod ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes,

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.

Nec regum quisquam magis est instructus ab illis,
Mitibus aut studiis tempora plura dedit.

Carmina testantur; quæ, si tua nomina demas

Threïcium juvenem composuisse negem,

Neve sub hoc tractu vates foret unicus Orpheus;
Bistonis ingenio terra superba tuo est."

(2) Vide Tacit. Annal. lib. ii. c. 65, &c.

CHAP. II.

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CHAP. II.

Electrum.

It

within due bounds; but, upon the death of his patron, he gave full scope to his designs of aggrandizement, and took possession of the more cultivated and fertile territories belonging to Cotys'. It is necessary to insert this brief sketch of his history, in order to account for the remarkable fact of such a coinage, under Rhescuporis, as that which we have now to describe; for this medal is of Electrum, a compound of gold and silver; known to the Antients in a very early age, whereof antient specimens are very uncommon. might have been after the death of Cotys, when the auriferous mines of Macedonia fell into the hands of Rhescuporis, that Electrum was thus employed; for as this mixed metal is known to exist in a natural state, it is more probable that the Electron medals of Rhescuporis were struck in the natural compound, than that any such amalgamation was chemically prepared in the beginning of the first century, and in such a barbarous country, for the purpose of coining. Having possession of the Macedonian mines, Rhescuporis might have employed for this purpose the amalgamation of gold and silver, obtained, by a simple process, from the sulphurets, after the sublimation and separation of the sulphur and the lead'. Owing

(1) Tacit. Annal. lib. ii. c. 65, &c.

(2) Ibid. For the manner in which Rhescuporis afterwards fell into the hands of Tiberius, see Suetonius in Tiber. Paterculus, &c. He was conducted to Rome; and being convicted in the Senate of the death of his nephew, and the violent usurpation of his dominions, was sentenced to a perpetual imprisonment, and banished to Alexandria in Egypt; where, for his subsequent conduct, he was put to death.

(3) This process will be fully explained in the sequel, when we treat of the Hungarian mines,

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