Noyes’ first contact with Bulgaria occurred as he approached Vidin streaming down the Danube. The city appeared as “a genuine Turkish city” with a population of about twenty thousand souls and the residence of a “Greek Bishop”. As his boat approached the city, “the magnificence” of Vidin he saw from a distance disappeared. The doctor showed greater interest in the natural scenery than in the city. The action of water, assisted by other natural causes had produced on the Bulgarian hills “curious and fantastic shapes”, which, in many instances, had “the exact resemblances of military works.”
Noyes visited Lorn, Nikopol, and other cities and made observations about the past and present condition of these places. The old cities consisted, according to Noyes, of three parts: the grad or fortress, occupying the most elevated position; and “barosch” or lower city, and the parlance or suburbs outside the city proper where the lower classes resided. The old cities were destroyed during the Ottoman conquest and were never rebuilt. The contemporary cities were of “genuine Turkish character”, unaffected by European ideas. The author regarded Ruse as the most important transportation center on the Lower Danube and noted its morocco and silk factories.
Managed by a Christian
Noyes devoted twenty-six pages describing Silistra. The ravages of war were to be seen everywhere. As the author passed through the city gates, it seemed to him “as if the genius of death reigned within those solitary walls” of the city-fortress where “people glide along the narrow streets and stony lanes more like ghosts than human beings.” He was surprised to find that there was not one hotel or lodging of any kind in the city owned or managed by a Christian. The Turkish part was “filthy and dusty,” while the houses of the Bulgarians were low cabins with windowless court-yards.
Noyes was very much aware of the terrible sufferings that war brought on the people. As he passed through the city of Svishtov he compared the beautiful vineyards around the town with the destruction produced by war. The Russo-Turkish war, he wrote, “From a war of monarchs, came so near merging into a war of races.”
Going through the Bulgarian countryside, the American physician wrote: “There is but one sight more sad than that of deserted cities and villages: it is to behold well-filled cities of the dead in places once busy with life to step from gravestone to gravestone in solitudes once throbbing with multitudes of human beings. This sense of loneliness in the wilds of Bulgaria often weighed upon me with a secret terror.”