38 GARDNER. [Feb. 25, 1856. 



posed oil them. The number of families, according to the Prince, does 

 not exceed 20,000. 



" The Gipsies, or Tzigans, whose numbers are great, amounting to 

 120,000 souls, are an intelligent and industrious race, and in their 

 general condition of prsedial slavery (for few are in reality emancipated) 

 are a reproach to the country and to the Government. Many of them 

 are taught arts. They are the blacksmiths, locksmiths, bricklayers, 

 masons, farriers, musicians, and cooks especially, of the whole country. 

 A short time since Mr. Willis, of Bombay, nephew of Mr. Young, the 

 celebrated husbandman, who held large estates near Theodosia in the 

 Crimea, which, after his decease, Mr. Willis was proceeding to sell, passed 

 through Jassy on his route to Odessa. On a friendly visit to me the con- 

 versation fell on thi,s singular people, and I sent for one who had a forge 

 near the consulate, and whom I had often employed. I had often thought 

 them to be of distant Indian origin, but they give themselves the Egyptian 

 appellative of Pharaon. Mr. Willis, who spoke Hindostanee, found 

 that he could hold converse with them in that language. The glare of 

 wild surprise in the eyes of the Gipsy at finding a stranger speaking a 

 common language, made a strong impression on both of us. In a work 

 on the frescoes of Thebes, the Egyptian task-master is represented as 

 overlooking the Jews making bricks, and the observations on the latter 

 are that the same features are to be met with at present at Rag Fair, in 

 London. It is the case with the poor Tzigan or Gipsy. His features are 

 quite Egyptian, but, poor fellow, he is become the brickmaker under 

 harder masters than his fathers had ever been to the Jews. The period of 

 the immigration of the Gipsies into Moldavia, I could never learn from 

 the Moldavians. Their numbers during the former reigns of their princes 

 or rulers excited alarm, and they were distributed as serfs amongst the 

 Boyards, treated as the brute beasts of the field, and disposed of by sale 

 or by transfer. A late order of the Assembly-General emancipated the 

 Gipsies in the church domains, and Prince Michael Stourdza emanci- 

 pated his own, but the Boyards composing the Assembly did not permit 

 the Gipsies on their own estates to partake of the same benefit; and it 

 is a measure which has never had any real execution with the others. 

 Tliey remain in their condition of prsedial slavery, and are employed for 

 every servile or menial ofliice. They dwell in winter in subterranean 

 excavations, the roof alone appearing above ground, and in summer in 

 brown serge tents of their own fabric. The Russians in their winter 

 campaigns in Turkey, and in these provinces, have imitated these exca- 

 vations in lieu of encampments, and they seem admirably adapted for it. 

 The idea may also have originated from the castrum of the Roman 

 legions in Dacia, during the winter. The children, to the age of 10 

 or 12, are in a complete state of nudity, but the men and women, the 



