The City of Hanging Gardens 



635 



ond Naples from the sea — for here, too, 

 the homes are three and even five stories 

 high, a most rare architectural form for 

 the Orient. 



We rounded the hill, one of the two 

 steep palisades upon which Tirnova 

 stands, and drew up at the Boris, the 

 Waldorf-Astoria of Tirnova. In my 

 journal I set down my first impression 

 of the house as "nice, but primitive." 

 A correspondent takes notes as he goes 

 along, and it is interesting to see how 

 his opinions change with the fleeting 

 hours. We followed the German-speak- 

 ing host up one of those quaint winding 

 stairs that recall to an American Tom 

 Corwin's home, and secured a room, a 

 chamber with a charming view over the 

 Sorrento of the Balkans. 



Then the tourist and I ventured out 

 to "do" Tirnova. From our window we 

 had solved its peculiar topography — the 

 town stood on two sides of a gigantic 

 mountain, into the valley at whose base 

 another mountain jutted, with the rem- 

 nants of the suburbs. It was from these 

 slopes, then, that the houses rose, narrow 

 and tall, and of every contour, as they 

 stood in tiers, ever higher, along streets 

 that zigzagged and ambled, so that one 

 never quite knew if the destination was 

 the top or the base of the mountain. Con- 

 sequently houses stood at the upper side 

 of the roadways only, and as one saw 

 the passing burros from below they ap- 

 peared to be threading the housetops. 

 The illusion was a most distinctive one, 

 reminding us of the grazing donkeys of 

 Iceland, who inhabit the roofs of their 

 masters' cottages. There was another 

 curious feature to these buildings of Tir- 

 nova. Usually the Balkins are not 

 overly generous in the matter of win- 

 dows, and here especially, where the 

 window-panes are of the many-divided 

 varieties abundant in New England a 

 century past, and are set double against 

 the cruel upland winters, the number of 

 windows might be taken as an indicator 

 of the size of the purse. But it matters 

 not, with rich or poor, on that side of 

 the house which faces the beautiful river 



— and the side is usually the rear — win- 

 dows are ubiquitous, and to those of us 

 accustomed to the Turkish bazaar, to 

 find windows in the rear wall of a Bul- 

 garian booth comes as a decided surprise. 

 At these windows, and at those beside 

 the street itself, lace curtains, or curtains 

 of a native reed matting, painted in 

 gaudy figures of forms animate, hang, 

 making even quainter the scene. 



The great charm of Tirnova, however, 

 lies in its balconies. Every home — and 

 it must be remembered that store and 

 home are synonymous in the nearer East 

 — has a door, very largely of window 

 glass, in the center of the second-story 

 front, opening upon a little balcony, 

 where oleander shrubs in heavy green 

 tubs blossom the summer through. There 

 the lady sits to sew, or to watch her little 

 ones, or to lean down and chat with pass- 

 ing neighbors. At either side of the bal- 

 cony is a single window, and in rainy 

 weather she retreats to these. Strangely 

 enough, at Tirnova homes of the rich 

 are limited to two stories ; it is the poor 

 who inhabit the tenements, the four and 

 five story structures. But to return to the 

 balconies. Many of them, not content 

 with the oleanders, will have an arbor of 

 grapevines stretched over them, so that 

 the Bulgar dame may sit enshrined in a 

 bower of foliage, from which she may 

 pluck at will the juicy pendent bunches, 

 casting the hulls down on the passer on 

 the narrow sidewalk, or oftener in the 

 comparatively broad street below. 



But we are picking Tirnova to pieces 

 — analyzing it, and that robs it of the 

 charm of the ensemble. We must ramble 

 out of doors, here and there, in and out, 

 in this Nibelungen-land, noting this and 

 that as it comes and goes, to enjoy the 

 whole. Let us follow the street as it 

 may go. At one hand the houses rise 

 dense, owing to the varying heights and 

 forms, and here the gilded cupola of a 

 Bulgar church breaks the monotone. 

 Now we descend the hill, and upper 

 stories overhang, as they do at Niirn- 

 berg, but here so close as almost to 

 touch the neisrhbor's wall, and we walk 



