Bulgaria e-book - iMedia

That day, though we had started late, the horses carried us thirtyfive
miles, and I camped at the site of a burned-out village. The Turk
made no objection to this. Previously coming over the same route
with an ox-cart, my Macedonian driver had objected to camping
except in occupied villages where there were garrisons. He feared
Bashi-Bazouks (the Turkish irregular bands which occasionally
showed themselves in the rear of the Bulgarian army) and wolves.
Probably, too, he feared ghosts, or was uneasy and lonely when out
of range of the village smells. Now I preferred a burned village site,
because the only clean villages were the burned ones; and for the
reason of water it was necessary to camp at some village or village
site. Mr. Turk went up hugely in my estimation when I found that he
had no objections to the site of a burned village as a camping-place.
But the first night in camp shattered all my illusions. The Turk
unharnessed and lit the camp fire. I cooked my supper and gave
him a share. Then he squatted by the fire and resumed smoking. The
horses over which he had shed tears waited. After the Turk’s third
cigarette I suggested that the horses should be watered and fed.
The village well was about 300 yards away, and the Turk evidently
did not like the idea of moving from the fire. He did not move, but
argued in Turkish of which I understood nothing. Finally I elicited
the fact that the horses were too tired to drink and too tired to eat the
barley I had brought for them. As a remedy for tiredness they were to
be left without water and food all night.
As plainly as was possible I insisted to the Turk that the horses
must be watered at once, and afterwards given a good ration of
barley. I dragged him from the fire to the horses and made my
meaning clear enough. The Turk was stubborn. Clearly either I was
to water the horses myself or they were to be left without water,
and my old traditions of horse-mastery would not allow me to have
them fed without being watered. So this was the extent of the Turk’s
devotion to his horses!
It was necessary to be firm, and I took up the cart whip to the
Turk and convinced him almost at once that the horses were not “too
tired” to drink.
Mr. Turk did not resent the blows in the least. He refrained from
cutting my throat as I slept that evening. Afterwards a mere wave of
the hand towards the whip made him move with alacrity. At the end
of the journey, when I gave him a good “tip,” he knelt down gallantly
in the mud of Mustapha Pasha and kissed my hand and carried it to
his forehead.
So faded away my last hope of meeting the Terrible Turk of
tradition in the Balkans. Perhaps he exists still in Asia Minor. As
I saw the Turk in Bulgaria and in European Turkey, he was a dull
monogamic person with no fiery pride, no picturesque devilry, but a
great passion for sweetmeats—not merely his own “Turkish Delight,”
but all kinds of lollipops: his shops were full of Scotch and English
confectionery.
But the Bulgarian, not the Turk, is our theme. This introduction,
however, will make it plain that, as the result of a direct knowledge
of the Balkans, during some months in which I had the opportunity
of sharing in Bulgarian peasant life, I came to the admiration I have
now for the Bulgarian people in spite of a preliminary prejudice. And
this conversion of view was not the result of becoming involved in
some passionate political attitude regarding Balkan affairs. I am not
now prepared to take up the view of the fanatic Bulgar-worshippers
who must not only exalt the Bulgarian nation as a modern Chosen
People, but must represent Servian, Greek, and Turk as malignant
and devilish in order to throw up in the highest light their ideas of
Bulgarian saintliness.
The Balkans are apt to have strange effects on the traveller.
Perhaps it is the blood-mist that hangs always over the Balkan plains
and glens which gets into the head and intoxicates one: perhaps
it is the call to the wild in us from the primitive human nature of
the Balkan peoples. Whatever the reason, it is a common thing for
the unemotional English traveller to go to the Balkans as a tourist
and return as a passionate enthusiast for some Balkan Peninsula
nationality. He becomes, perhaps, a pro-Turk, and thereafter will
argue with fierceness that the Turk is the only man who leads an
idyllic life in Europe to-day, and that the way to human regeneration
is through a conversion to Turkishness. He fills his house with
Turkish visitors and writes letters to the papers pointing out the
savagery we show in the “Turk’s Head” competition for our cavalrymen
at military tournaments. Or he may become a pro-Bulgar with a
taste for the company of highly flavoured Macedonian revolutionary
priests and a grisly habit of turning the conversation to the subject
of outrage and massacre. To become a pro-Servian is not a common
fashion, but pro-Albanians and pro-Montenegrins and Philhellenists
are common enough.
The word “crank,” if it can be read in a kindly sense and stripped