The bulk of the Circassian territory formed a strip along the Danube, near Lorn. In that little town there was an agency of the Imperial Steam Navigation Company of the Danube, under the direction of Agent Rojesko, who for weeks on end opened none of his windows overlooking the river, to keep the house free from the stench of the sick and the corpses arriving on ships laden with Circassians suffering from typhus. Records and reports, as well as the testimony of travellers, show Rojesko toiling away tirelessly and courageously to prevent and forestall contagion, to help the refugees, to find them food and shelter, provide them with medicines and work.
Along the river, in these territories the geography of which was then still uncertain, one comes across a lot of these figures: traders, consuls, doctors and adventurers, the outposts of law and order or the vanguards which have pressed forward just a little too far, and been swallowed up in chaos. Such was the epic Rojesko, who combined the preciseness of an Austrian official with the initiative of a lost explorer; such were Dr Barozzi, sent on official missions on the vessels leaving Samsun with their loads of Circassians, and the “Spaniard” (i.e. Sephardic Jew) Alexander Tedeschi, who ended up at Varna as consul for Austria-Hungary and France. Then there were officials and captains of the Lloyd Triestino Line, and the sinister St Clair, an English ex-captain who, with the name of “Sinkler”, became a minor local satrap hostile to the Bulgarians and friendly with the Turks and brigands – a sort of mixture of Conrad’s Kurtz, Kipling’s man who would be king, and Lawrence of Arabia. Once their job or term of office is over these figures disappear, like sailors who go ashore and vanish among the crowds, leaving no trace other than in the rolls of some administration.