On hearing that the Deftendar spoke English perfectly, and had long resided in England, I felt a curiosity to see him, and accordingly presented myself at the Konak, and was shown to the divan of the Deftendar.  I pulled aside a pendent curtain, and entered a room of large dimensions, faded decorations, and a broad red divan, the cushions of which were considerably the worse for wear.  Such was the bureau of the Deftendar Effendi, who sat surrounded with papers, and the implements of writing.  He was a man apparently of fifty-five years of age, slightly inclining to corpulence, with a very short neck, surmounted by large features, coarsely chiselled; but not devoid of a certain intelligence in his eye, and dignity in general effect.  He spoke English with a correct accent, but slowly, occasionally stopping to remember a word; thus showing that his English was not imperfect from want of knowledge, but rusty from want of practice.  He was an Egyptian Turk, and had been for eight years the commercial agent of Mohammed Ali at Malta, and had, moreover, visited the principal countries of Europe.

I then took a series of short and rapid whiffs of my pipe while I bethought me of the best manner of treating the subject of my visit, and then said, “that few orientals could draw a distinction between politics and geography; but that with a man of his calibre and experience, I was safe from misinterpretation—­that I was collecting the materials for a work on the Danubian provinces, and that for any information which he might give me, consistently with the exigencies of his official position, I should feel much indebted, as I thought I was least likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of my journey to the authorities, while information derived from the fountain-head was the most valuable.”

The Deftendar, after commending my openness, said, “I suspect that you will find very little to remark in the pashalic of Silistria.  It is an agricultural country, and the majority of the inhabitants are Turks.  The Rayahs are very peaceable, and pay very few taxes, considering the agricultural wealth of the country.  You may rest assured that there is not a province of the Ottoman empire, which is better governed than the pashalic of Silistria.  Now and then, a rude Turk appropriates to himself a Bulgarian girl; but the government cannot be responsible for these individual excesses.  We have no malcontents within the province; hut there are a few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb the tranquillity of Bulgaria:  but the Wallachian government has taken measures to prevent them from carrying their projects into execution.”  After some further conversation, on indifferent topics, I took my leave.

The succeeding days were devoted to a general reconnaissance of the place; but I must say that Roustchouk, although capital of the pashalic of Silistria, and containing thirty or forty thousand inhabitants, pleased me less than any town of its size that I had seen in the East.  The streets are dirty and badly paved, without a single good bazaar or cafe to kill time in, or a single respectable edifice of any description to look at.  The redeeming resource was the promenade on the banks of the Danube, which has here attained almost its full volume, and uniting the waters of Alp, Carpathian, and Balkan, rushes impatiently to the Euxine.