Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/119

 given a name in which the suffix eni betrays their foreign origin: Costeni, the colonists of the coast (Roumanian: coastă).

For the needs of commercial traffic, for the carriers of Transylvanian wares, a market was set up, with its inns and shops for the sale of small cheaply manufactured articles and iron-ware, better than those which came from the crude hands of the gypsies, the traditional metal workers of all the Roumanian provinces after their invasion by the Mongol hordes in the middle of the 12th century. This market, the târg, still exists and, before the fresh reform of the High Road, old wooden columns supported the blackened roofs of șindile. In their murky depths, as in the shops of old Portugal, in Evora for example, the old-fashioned merchant, always a Roumanian (not, as in Moldavia, a Jew), leisurely attended to the peasant who came only on holidays to replenish the provisions of his tiny white dwelling, or to sit for a few hours under the shelter of dried branches to sip a glass of the delicious local wine, to the strains of the old and young gypsy fiddlers, all born musicians.

Certain of the richer landowners had their abode in these pleasant and serene surroundings. Tall houses arose with sunny cerdacs set upon the same wooden columns which characterise the old-time inns, and with stately pyramidal roofs and small windows. The coach of which the lesser boyars were proud, traversed the streets, paved as in ancient Roman times with large round slabs of stone, the caldarâm of the Turks, and the importance