Monotony the South African veldt

In a couple of hours, you can transport yourself from Rustschuk to a city where there are handsome shops, luxurious restaurants, theatres, book-stalls, promenades, and well-dressed women, and where every attempt is made to satisfy to the full the desires of the world and the flesh, not to mention the devil. Even if your sober judgment bids you prefer the primitive simplicity of Bulgarian life, it is a comfort to feel, as you do at Rustchuk, that if the fancy seizes you, the luxuries of the West lie close at hand.

Varna

The distance from Rustschuk to Varna is about a hundred and forty miles. The one train which makes the journey daily, takes over ten hours in the transit, so that the speed, including stoppages, which though frequent are not lengthy, is at the rate of fourteen miles an hour.

Until you approach Varna there is little of any kind in the look of the country to attract a traveller’s attention. For mile after mile you traverse a wide expanse of low, rolling hills, recalling in its apparent solitude and in its unchanging monotony the South African veldt. There is, however, this marked difference, that, though the traces of human habitations are few and far between, the whole country-side is covered, as far as the eye can reach, with cultivated fields, in which, at the time I traversed it, the young green wheat-stalks were sprouting in every direction.

On the pasture lands, immense herds and flocks were grazing lazily. Every now and then I caught sight of a field being ploughed by the most rudimentary of ploughs, drawn by a yoke of buffaloes; but, with the exception of the herdsman and the ploughman, I saw hardly a trace of field labourers. The month of April is a slack season in Bulgarian agriculture. The sowing time is well-nigh over, and the crops are not yet ripe for gathering. Still, even making allowance for the season, it was difficult to imagine whence the labour had come from, which had brought all this vast extent of ground under cultivation.