XIV 



collecting in the dobrudscha — continued 



When I next visited the Dobrudscha in the middle 

 of May 1907, matters were not looking very- 

 promising. A serious uprising of the peasants had 

 just been suppressed by troops and artillery. Many 

 villages had been entirely destroyed, and the un- 

 fortunate peasants had been shot down, comrne les 

 motiches, as a lady described it to me in the train 

 on my way to Bucharest. To add to the distress, 

 the low-lying country all around the Danube mouth 

 was inundated from the melting snows, while at the 

 same time the fertile country too high to feel the 

 effect of floods was suffering from drought. A 

 somewhat unusual combination to have, too much 

 and too little water at the same time, but so it was. 

 No rain had fallen for some months, and it was 

 feared that the entire corn crop would be a failure 

 unless rain fell within a few days. 



The fishermen also had risen in revolt, and the 



administrator, for whose protection and assistance 



282 



