The Danube Read Free Page B

brambling cross the hill northwards, chattering as they fly. ‘Not spectacular birds, but theycan travel, even in this weather. These hills are like Mecca, a magnet for migrating birds. They approach from these flat and watery areas, and use the ascending, thermal currents of the hill to gain height. And from high above here they glide down the other side of the hills, in autumn towards the south, in spring towards the north.’
    The hills are a nature reserve because of the fragile species of moss and plants growing there, rather than the birds. There are wild thyme, tufted grasses called festuca , rosehip bushes and even a small, stunted mulberry tree, sheltering in a gully. In communist times there was a quota in schools to bring silk caterpillars from the mulberries, to revive the Romanian silk industry. ‘It's a good tree for birds, because of its long fruiting period,’ Daniel says. ‘The rose-coloured starlings like them a lot.’ The caterpillars feed on the leaves of the white mulberry. Silk was brought from China to Europe from the first century AD . In AD 552, during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great, two monks succeeded in smuggling a bamboo stick full of silkworms back to Constantinople. 8 From then on, the mulberry spread rapidly through Greece and the Balkans as many regions developed their own silk production.
    The Danube divides into three branches at Tulcea. The northernmost, Chilia arm arches along the shore of Ukraine to the Black Sea. The city of Izmail guards the entrance and its coat of arms depicts a Christian cross on a red background divided by a sword from the crescent moon of Islam.
    Danube's swiftly flowing waters
    Are at last in our firm hands;
    Caucasus respects our prowess,
    Russia rules Crimean lands.

    Turkish-Tatar hordes no longer
    May disturb our calm domain.
    Proud Selim won't be the stronger
    evermore, as Crescent wanes. 9
    The poem is by Gavrila Derzhavin and comprised the first Russian national anthem. Selim was the Turkish sultan. It was written to commemorate the capture of the supposedly unassailable Turkish fortress of Izmail by theRussian commander Alexander Suvorov in 1791. The aftermath was not so heroic. Forty thousand Turkish men, women and children were massacred by Russian troops after the siege, as soldiers went from house to house – hence the red background, perhaps, on the crest. When it was all over, Suvorov went to his tent and wept. 10 Today it is a town of nearly ninety thousand people, with a large Chinese community.
    The middle, Sulina, branch of the Danube is the busiest route, straightened by an Englishman, Charles Hartley, on his way home from fighting in the Crimean War. He went on to widen the Suez Canal, and participated in the straightening of a route through the meandering Mississippi delta. 11 But he cut his teeth on the Danube, and started a battle between transport engineers keen to get their goods to market as quickly as possible, and environmentalists who love the twisting, turning, changing river, which continues to this day.
    The southernmost arm, Sfântu Gheorghe or ‘Saint George’ branch, which stretches to the horizon beneath us on Beştepe hill, is the oldest. From where we stand, we look across at hills, polished smooth by the sleeves of the wind. There are few trees, and even those that have gained a root-hold in this windswept place are small and bent like flags. And there is little rainfall, barely forty centimetres a year.
    Where the birds feed depends on the water levels in the delta. In the late spring, when rain and melting snow upstream swell the river to a swirling brown flood, pelicans and waders have to go further afield to fish. Neither of the two pelican species in the Danube can dive, so they need shallow water to feed in. Human interference in the landscape – such as the building of wind farms – forces the pelicans to make wider and wider detours. And the longer they spend away from their nests, the