Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
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a vast deposit, estimated to contain two hundred and fifty million tons; and, finally, there are gold-mines at Offenbanya, at Topanfalva, the region of the gold-seekers, where thousands of primitive mills are working the sands of Verès-Patak, “The Transylvanian Pactolus,” and exporting every year about two million francs’ worth of the precious metal.
Here is a district that would seem to be greatly favoured by nature, and yet its wealth is of very little profit to its population. If the more important centres, like Torotzko, Petroseny, and Lonyai, possess a few establishments suited to the comfortable conditions of modern industrial life; if they have regular buildings laid out with rule and line, and outhouses and shops, real workmen’s towns in fact; if they have a certain number of houses with balconies and verandahs, that is not the case at Vulkan or at Werst.
Some sixty houses, irregularly clustering along the only street, capped with a fanciful roof, the ridge overhanging the mud wall, the front towards the garden, an attic with a skylight as a top storey, a dilapidated barn as an annexe: a stable all awry, covered with straw; here and there a well surmounted by a beam from which hangs a bucket; two or three ponds which run over during a storm; streams, of which the tortuous ruts indicate the course; such is the village of Werst, built on both sides of the road between the slanting slopes of the hill. But it is all very fresh and attractive; there are flowers at the doors and windows; curtains of verdure screening the walls; plants in disorder mingling with the old gold of the thatch; poplars, elms, beeches, pines, maples, climbing above the houses as high as they can. Beyond are the zigzagged flanks of the hills, and in the background the tops of the mountains, blue in the distance, and mingling their blue with the sky.
Neither German nor Hungarian is spoken at Werst, nor in any of this part of Transylvania; the people speak Roumanian—even the gipsies do so, of whom a few families are established rather than camped in the different villages of the country. These strangers adopt the language of the country as they adopt the religion. Those of Werst form a sort of little clan, under the authority of a voivode, with their huts, their “barakas” with pointed roofs, their legions of children, so different in the manners and regularity of their life from those of their congeners who wander about Europe. They even belong to the Greek Church, and conform to the religion of the Christians among whom they have settled. As religious head Werst has a pope, who resides at Vulkan, and superintends the two villages, which are only half a mile apart.
Civilization is like air or water. Wherever there is a passage, be it only a fissure, it will penetrate and modify the conditions of a country. But it must be admitted that no fissure has yet been found through this southern portion of the Carpathians. Vulkan, as Elisée Reclus says, is “the last post of civilization in the valley of the Wallachian Syl, and we need not be astonished at Werst being one of the most backward villages of the county of Kolosvar. And how could it be otherwise in these places, where everyone is born and lives and dies without ever leaving them?
But perhaps you will say there is a schoolmaster and a judge at Werst? Yes, without doubt. But Magister Hermod was only able to teach what he knew—that is, to read a little, to write a little, to reckon a little. His personal instruction did not go beyond that. Of science, history, geography, literature, he knew nothing beyond the popular songs and legends of the surrounding country. In that respect his memory was richly stored. He was strong in matters of romance, and the few scholars of the village gained great profit from his lessons.
As to the judge, we may as well say something concerning this chief magistrate of Werst.
The biro, Master Koltz, was a little man, of from fifty-five to sixty years old, a Roumanian by birth, his hair close cut and grey, his moustache still black, his eyes more gentle than fiery. Solidly built, like a mountaineer, he wore the large felt hat on his head, the high belt with ornamental buckle round his waist, the sleeveless vest, and the short baggy breeches tucked into his high leather boots. As much mayor as judge, for his functions obliged him to intervene in the many disputes between neighbour and neighbour, he was chiefly occupied in administering his village with a great show of authority, and not without some benefit to his purse. In fact, all transactions, purchases or sales, were subject to a tax for his benefit, to say nothing of the tolls with which travellers for pleasure or trade filled his pocket.
This lucrative position kept Master Koltz in easy circumstances. If most of the peasants of the country were ground down by the usury of the Israelitish money-lenders, who were the real proprietors of the soil, the biro had managed to escape. His goods were free from hypothecations, “intabulations,” as they are called in the country; and he owed nothing. He would rather have lent than borrowed, and would certainly have done so with-out fleecing the poor people. He owned several pasturages, good grazing grounds for his flocks; lands under fair cultivation, although he would have nothing to do with the new methods; vineyards which flattered his vanity when he walked down the lines of stocks covered with the grapes he sold at a goodly profit, although he retained a fair proportion for his private consumption.
It need not be said that the house of Master Koltz was the best in the village, at the angle of the terrace which crossed the long road as it ascended. A stone house, if you please, with its façade continued round on to the garden; its door between the third and fourth windows, with the festoons of verdure bordering the gutter with their slender branchlets; with the two great beech-trees spreading their boughs above the flowery thatch. Behind lay a fine orchard, with its beds of vegetables like a chess board, and its rows of fruit-trees skirting the slope of the hill. Inside the house were fine clean rooms, some to dine in, some to sleep in, with their painted furniture, tables, beds, benches and stools, their sideboards, on which shone the pots and dishes; the beams of the ceiling, from which hung vases decorated with ribbons and gaily-coloured stuffs; the heavy coffers, covered with cloths and quilts, which served as chests and cupboards, the white walls, the highly-coloured portraits of Roumanian patriots—amongst others the popular hero of the fifteenth century, the voivode Vayda-Hunyad.
It was a charming house, which would have been too large for a man by himself. But Master Koltz was not alone. A widower for twelve years, he had a daughter, the lovely Miriota, who was much admired from Werst to Vulkan, and even beyond. She might have been called by one of those strange Pagan names, Florica, Darna, Danritia, which are much in honour in Wallachian families. But no! she was Miriota; that is to say, the little sheep. But she had grown, this little sheep, and was now a graceful girl of twenty, fair, with brown eyes, a gentle look, charming features, and a pleasing figure. In truth, she could not look other than attractive, with her chemisette embroidered with red thread up to the collar and on the wrists and on the shoulders, her petticoat clasped by a belt with silver buckles, her “catrinza,” or double apron, with red and blue stripes, knotted to her waist, her little boots of yellow leather, the light handkerchief on her head, her long hair floating behind her, the plait of which was ornamented with a ribbon or a metal clasp.
Yes! a handsome girl was Miriota Koltz, and—no harm to her—she was rich, that is, for this village lost in the depths of the Carpathians. A good manager? Undoubtedly; for she managed her father’s house in intelligent fashion. Was she educated? Yes; at Magister Hermod’s school she had learnt to read, to write, to cipher, and she ciphered, wrote, and read correctly; but she had not been pushed very far—and there were reasons for it. On the other hand, she knew about as much as was to be known of the Transylvanian traditions and sagas. She knew as much as her master. She knew the legend of Leany-Ko, the Rock of the Virgin, in which a rather fanciful princess escapes from the pursuit of the Tartars; the legend of the Dragon’s Cave in the Valley of the King’s Stairs; the legend of the fortress of Deva, which was built in the “days of the Fairies;” the legend of the Detunata, the “Thunderclap,” that famous basaltic mountain like a gigantic stone fiddle, on which the devil plays on stormy nights; the legend of Retyezat, with its summit cut down by a witch; the legend of the Valley of Thorda, which was cleft by the stroke of the sword of Saint Ladislas. We must confess that Miriota believed in all these mythological fictions; but she was none the less a charming and amiable girl.
A good many young men of the district found her so, even without considering that she was the only heiress of the biro, Master Koltz, the first magistrate of Werst. But there was