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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Servia, Youngest Member of the European
+Family, by Andrew Archibald Paton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family
+       or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands
+       and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and
+       1844.
+
+Author: Andrew Archibald Paton
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2005 [EBook #16999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERVIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State
+University Libraries., Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar
+Viswanathan, and Distributed Proofreaders Europe at
+http://dp.rastko.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 SERVIA,
+
+                    YOUNGEST MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN
+                                FAMILY:
+
+
+                                 OR, A
+
+                        RESIDENCE IN BELGRADE,
+
+                                  AND
+
+               TRAVELS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND WOODLANDS OF
+                            THE INTERIOR,
+
+                    DURING THE YEARS 1843 AND 1844.
+
+                                  BY
+
+                     ANDREW ARCHIBALD PATON, ESQ.
+
+                    AUTHOR OF "THE MODERN SYRIANS."
+
+
+"Les hommes croient en general connaitre suffisamment l'Empire Ottoman
+pour peu qu'ils aient lu l'enorme compilation que le savant M. de
+Hammer a publiee ... mais en dehors de ce mouvement central il y a la
+vie interieure de province, dont le tableau tout entier reste a
+faire."
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
+                           PATERNOSTER ROW.
+
+                                 1845.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The narrative and descriptive portion of this work speaks for itself.
+In the historical part I have consulted with advantage Von Engel's
+"History of Servia," Ranke's "Servian Revolution," Possart's "Servia,"
+and Ami Boue's "Turquie d'Europe," but took the precaution of
+submitting the facts selected to the censorship of those on the spot
+best able to test their accuracy. For this service, I owe a debt of
+acknowledgment to M. Hadschitch, the framer of the Servian code; M.
+Marinovitch, Secretary of the Senate; and Professor John Shafarik,
+whose lectures on Slaavic history, literature, and antiquities, have
+obtained unanimous applause.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.
+
+Leave Beyrout.--Camp afloat.-Rhodes.--The shores of the Mediterranean
+suitable for the cultivation of the arts.--A Moslem of the new
+school.--American Presbyterian clergyman.--A Mexican senator.--A
+sermon for sailors.--Smyrna.--Buyukdere.--Sir Stratford
+Canning.--Embark for Bulgaria.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Varna.--Contrast of Northern and Southern provinces of
+Turkey.--Roustchouk.--Conversation with Deftendar.--The Danube.--A
+Bulgarian interior.--A dandy of the Lower Danube.--Depart for Widdin.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+River steaming.--Arrival at Widdin.--Jew.--Comfortless khan.--Wretched
+appearance of Widdin.--Hussein Pasha.--M. Petronievitch.--Steam
+balloon.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Leave Widdin.--The Timok.--Enter Servia.--Brza Palanka.--The Iron
+Gates.--Old and New Orsova.--Wallachian Matron.--Semlin.--A
+conversation on language.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Description of Belgrade.--Fortifications.--Street and street
+population.--Cathedral.--Large square.--Coffee-house.--Deserted
+villa.--Baths.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Europeanization of Belgrade.--Lighting and paving.--Interior of the
+fortress.--Turkish Pasha.--Turkish quarter.--Turkish
+population.--Panorama of Belgrade.--Dinner party given by the prince.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Return to Servia.--The Danube.--Semlin.--Wucics and
+Petronievitch.--Cathedral solemnity.--Subscription ball.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Holman, the blind traveller.--Milutinovich, the poet.--Bulgarian
+legend.--Tableau de genre.--Departure for the interior.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Journey to Shabatz.--Resemblance of manners to those of the middle
+ages.--Palesh.--A Servian bride.--Blind
+minstrel.--Gipsies.--Macadamized roads.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Shabatz.--A provincial chancery.--Servian collector.--Description of
+his house.--Country barber.--Turkish quarter.--Self-taught priest.--A
+provincial dinner.--Native soiree.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Kaimak.--History of a renegade.--A bishop's house.--Progress of
+education.--Portrait of Milosh.--Bosnia and the Bosnians.--Moslem
+fanaticism.--Death of the collector.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The banat of Matchva.--Losnitza.--Feuds on the frontier.--Enter the
+back-woods.--Convent of Tronosha.--Greek festival.--Congregation of
+peasantry.--Rustic finery.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Romantic sylvan scenery.--Patriarchal simplicity of
+manners.--Krupena.--Sokol.--Its extraordinary position.--Wretched
+town.--Alpine scenery.--Cool reception.--Valley of the Rogatschitza.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Drina.--Liubovia.--Quarantine station.--Derlatcha.--A Servian
+beauty.--A lunatic priest.--Sorry quarters.--Murder by brigands.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Arrival at Ushitza.--Wretched street.--Excellent khan.--Turkish
+vayvode.--A Persian dervish.--Relations of Moslems and
+Christians.--Visit the castle.--Bird's eye view.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Poshega.--The river Morava.--Arrival at Csatsak.--A Viennese
+doctor.--Project to ascend the Kopaunik.--Visit the bishop.--Ancient
+cathedral church.--Greek mass.--Karanovatz.--Emigrant priest.--Albanian
+disorders.--Salt mines.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Coronation church of the ancient kings of Servia.--Enter the
+Highlands.--Valley of the Ybar.--First view of the High Balkan.--Convent
+of Studenitza.--Byzantine Architecture.--Phlegmatic monk.--Servian
+frontier.--New quarantine.--Russian major.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Cross the Bosniac frontier.--Gipsy encampment.--Novibazar
+described.--Rough reception.--Precipitate departure.--Fanaticism.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Ascent of the Kopaunik.--Grand prospect.--Descent of the
+Kopaunik.--Bruss.--Involuntary bigamy.--Conversation on the Servian
+character.--Krushevatz.--Relics of monarchy.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Formation of the Servian monarchy.--Contest between the Latin and Greek
+Churches.--Stephen Dushan.--A great warrior.--Results of his
+victories.--Kucs Lasar.--Invasion of Amurath.--Battle of Kossovo.--Death
+of Lasar and Amurath.--Fall of the Servian monarchy.--General
+observations.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A battue missed.--Proceed to Alexinatz.--Foreign-Office
+courier.--Bulgarian frontier.--Gipsy Suregee.--Tiupria.--New bridge and
+macadamized roads.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Visit to Ravanitza.--Jovial party.--Servian and Austrian
+jurisdiction.--Convent described.--Eagles reversed.--Bulgarian
+festivities.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Manasia.--Has preserved its middle-age character.--Robinson
+Crusoe.--Wonderful echo.--Kindness of the
+people.--Svilainitza.--Posharevatz.--Baby giantess.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Rich soil.--Mysterious waters.--Treaty of Passarovitz.--The castle of
+Semendria.--Relics of the antique.--The Brankovitch
+family.--Panesova.--Morrison's pills.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Personal appearance of the Servians.--Their moral
+character.--Peculiarity of manners.--Christmas
+festivities.--Easter.--The Dodola.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Town life.--The public offices.--Manners half-oriental
+half-European.--Merchants and tradesmen.--Turkish
+population.--Porters.--Barbers.--Cafes.--Public writer.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Poetry.--Journalism.--The fine arts.--The Lyceum.--Mineralogical
+cabinet.--Museum.--Servian Education.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+Preparations for departure.--Impressions of the East.--Prince
+Alexander.--The palace.--Kara Georg.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+A memoir of Kara Georg.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Milosh Obrenovitch.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+The prince.--The government.--The senate.--The minister for foreign
+affairs.--The minister of the interior.--Courts of justice.--Finances.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+Agriculture and commerce.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+The foreign agents.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+VIENNA IN 1844.
+
+Improvements in Vienna.--Palladian style.--Music.--Theatres.--Sir Robert
+Gordon.--Prince Metternich.--Armen ball.--Dancing.--Strauss.--Austrian
+policy.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+Concluding observations on Austria and her prospects.
+
+
+
+
+SERVIA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Leave Beyrout.--Camp afloat.--Rhodes.--The shores of the Mediterranean
+suitable for the cultivation of the arts.--A Moslem of the new
+school.--American Presbyterian clergyman.--A Mexican senator.--A
+sermon for sailors.--Smyrna.--Buyukdere.--Sir Stratford
+Canning.--Embark for Bulgaria.
+
+
+I have been four years in the East, and feel that I have had quite
+enough of it for the present. Notwithstanding the azure skies,
+bubbling fountains, Mosaic pavements, and fragrant _narghiles_, I
+begin to feel symptoms of ennui, and a thirst for European life, sharp
+air, and a good appetite, a blazing fire, well-lighted rooms, female
+society, good music, and the piquant vaudevilles of my ancient
+friends, Scribe, Bayard, and Melesville.
+
+At length I stand on the pier of Beyrout, while my luggage is being
+embarked for the Austrian steamer lying in the roads, which, in the
+Levantine slang, has lighted her chibouque, and is polluting yon white
+promontory, clear cut in the azure horizon, with a thick black cloud
+of Wallsend.
+
+I bade a hurried adieu to my friends, and went on board. The
+quarter-deck, which retained its awning day and night, was divided
+into two compartments, one of which was reserved for the promenade of
+the cabin passengers, the other for the bivouac of the Turks, who
+retained their camp habits with amusing minuteness, making the
+larboard quarter a vast tent afloat, with its rolled up beds, quilts,
+counterpanes, washing gear, and all sorts of water-cans, coffee-pots,
+and chibouques, with stores of bread, cheese, fruit, and other
+provisions for the voyage. In the East, a family cannot move without
+its household paraphernalia, but then it requires a slight addition of
+furniture and utensils to settle for years in a strange place. The
+settlement of a European family requires a thousand et ceteras and
+months of installation, but then it is set in motion for the new world
+with a few portmanteaus and travelling bags.
+
+Two days and a half of steaming brought us to Rhodes.
+
+An enchanter has waved his wand! in reading of the wondrous world of
+the ancients, one feels a desire to get a peep at Rome before its
+destruction by barbarian hordes. A leap backwards of half this period
+is what one seems to make at Rhodes, a perfectly preserved city and
+fortress of the middle ages. Here has been none of the Vandalism of
+Vauban, Cohorn, and those mechanical-pated fellows, who, with their
+Dutch dyke-looking parapets, made such havoc of donjons and
+picturesque turrets in Europe. Here is every variety of mediaeval
+battlement; so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the waiter's
+horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
+squire.
+
+Two more delightful days of steaming among the Greek Islands now
+followed. The heat was moderate, the motion gentle, the sea was liquid
+lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their
+accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates
+permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical
+configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of
+heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment
+of the Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the
+palette, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, shining with
+its aesthetic ray through lineaments thorough-bred from generation to
+generation, invites the sculptor to transfer to marble, grace of
+contour and elevation of expression. But let us not envy the balmy
+South. The Germanic or northern element, if less susceptible of the
+beautiful is more masculine, better balanced, less in extremes. It was
+this element that struck down the Roman empire, that peoples America
+and Australia, and rules India; that exhausted worlds, and then
+created new.
+
+The most prominent individual of the native division of passengers,
+was Arif Effendi, a pious Moslem of the new school, who had a great
+horror of brandy; first, because it was made from wine; and secondly,
+because his own favourite beverage was Jamaica rum; for, as Peter
+Parley says, "Of late years, many improvements have taken place among
+the Mussulmans, who show a disposition to adopt the best things of
+their more enlightened neighbours." We had a great deal of
+conversation during the voyage, for he professed to have a great
+admiration of England, and a great dislike of France; probably all
+owing to the fact of rum coming from Jamaica, and brandy and wine from
+Cognac and Bordeaux.
+
+Another individual was a still richer character: an American
+Presbyterian clergyman, with furi-bond dilated nostril and a terrific
+frown.
+
+"You must lose Canada," said he to me one day, abruptly, "ay, and
+Bermuda into the bargain."
+
+"I think you had better round off your acquisitions with a few odd
+West India Islands."
+
+"We have stomach enough for that too."
+
+"I hear you have been to Jerusalem."
+
+"Yes; I went to recover my voice, which I lost; for I have one of the
+largest congregations in Boston."
+
+"But, my good friend, you breathe nothing but war and conquest."
+
+"The fact is, war is as unavoidable as thunder and lightning; the
+atmosphere must be cleared from time to time."
+
+"Were you ever a soldier?"
+
+"No; I was in the American navy. Many a day I was after John Bull on
+the shores of Newfoundland."
+
+"After John Bull?"
+
+"Yes, Sir, _sweating_ after him: I delight in energy; give me the man
+who will shoulder a millstone, if need be."
+
+"The capture of Canada, Bermuda, and a few odd West India Islands,
+would certainly give scope for your energy. This would be taking the
+bull by the horns."
+
+"Swinging him by the tail, say I."
+
+The burlesque vigour of his illustrations sometimes ran to
+anti-climax. One day, he talked of something (if I recollect right,
+the electric telegraph), moving with the rapidity of a flash of
+lightning, with a pair of spurs clapped into it.
+
+In spite of all this ultra-national bluster, we found him to be a very
+good sort of man, having nothing of the bear but the skin, and in the
+test of the quarantine arrangements, the least selfish of the party.
+
+Another passenger was an elderly Mexican senator, who was the essence
+of politeness of the good old school. Every morning he stood smiling,
+hat in hand, while he inquired how each of us had slept. I shall never
+forget the cholera-like contortion of horror he displayed, when the
+clerical militant (poking his fun at him), declared that Texas was
+within the natural boundary of the State, and that some morning they
+would make a breakfast of the whole question.
+
+One day he passed from politics to religion. "I am fond of fun," said
+he, "I think it is the sign of a clear conscience. My life has been
+spent among sailors. I have begun with many a blue jacket
+hail-fellow-well-met in my own rough way, and have ended in weaning
+him from wicked courses. None of your gloomy religion for me. When I
+see a man whose religion makes him melancholy, and averse from gaiety,
+I tell him his god must be my devil."
+
+The originality of this gentleman's intellect and manners, led me
+subsequently to make further inquiry; and I find one of his sermons
+reported by a recent traveller, who, after stating that his oratory
+made a deep impression on the congregation of the Sailors' chapel in
+Boston, who sat with their eyes, ears, and mouths open, as if
+spell-bound in listening to him, thus continues: "He describes a ship
+at sea, bound for the port of Heaven, when the man at the head sung
+out, 'Rocks ahead!' 'Port the helm,' cried the mate. 'Ay, ay, sir,'
+was the answer; the ship obeyed, and stood upon a tack. But in two
+minutes more, the lead indicated a shoal. The man on the out-look sung
+out, 'Sandbreaks and breakers ahead!' The captain was now called, and
+the mate gave his opinion; but sail where they could, the lead and
+the eye showed nothing but dangers all around,--sand banks, coral
+reefs, sunken rocks, and dangerous coasts. The chart showed them
+clearly enough where the port of Heaven lay; there was no doubt about
+its latitude and longitude: but they all sung out, that it was
+impossible to reach it; there was no fair way to get to it. My
+friends, it was the devil who blew up that sand-bank, and sunk those
+rocks, and set the coral insects to work; his object was to prevent
+that ship from ever getting to Heaven, to wreck it on its way, and to
+make prize of the whole crew for slaves for ever. But just as every
+soul was seized with consternation, and almost in despair, a tight
+little schooner hove in sight; she was cruizing about, with one Jesus,
+a pilot, on board. The captain hailed him, and he answered that he
+knew a fair way to the port in question. He pointed out to them an
+opening in the rocks, which the largest ship might beat through, with
+a channel so deep, that the lead could never reach to the bottom, and
+the passage was land-locked the whole way, so that the wind might veer
+round to every point in the compass, and blow hurricanes from them
+all, and yet it could never raise a dangerous sea in that channel.
+What did the crew of that distressed ship do, when Jesus showed them
+his chart, and gave them all the bearings? They laughed at him, and
+threw his chart back in his face. He find a channel where they could
+not! Impossible; and on they sailed in their own course, and everyone
+of them perished."
+
+At Smyrna, I signalized my return to the land of the Franks, by
+ordering a beef-steak, and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the
+paper from a gentleman in drab leggings, who had come from Manchester
+to look after the affairs of a commercial house, in which he or his
+employers were involved. He wondered that a hotel in the Ottoman
+empire should be so unlike one in Europe, and asked me, "If the inns
+down in the country were as good as this."
+
+As for Constantinople, I refer all readers to the industry and
+accuracy of Mr. White, who might justly have terminated his volumes
+with the Oriental epistolary phrase, "What more can I write?" Mr.
+White is not a mere sentence balancer, but belongs to the guild of
+bona fide Oriental travellers.
+
+In summer, all Pera is on the Bosphorus: so I jumped into a caique,
+and rowed up to Buyukdere. On the threshold of the villa of the
+British embassy, I met A----, the prince of attaches, who led me to a
+beautiful little kiosk, on the extremity of a garden, and there
+installed me in his fairy abode of four small rooms, which embraced a
+view like that of Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore; here books, the piano,
+the _narghile_, and the parterre of flowers, relieved the drudgery of
+his Eastern diplomacy. Lord N----, Mr. H----, and Mr. T----, the other
+attaches, lived in a house at the other end of the garden.
+
+I here spent a week of delightful repose. The mornings were occupied
+_ad libitum_, the gentlemen of the embassy being overwhelmed with
+business. At four o'clock dinner was usually served in the airy
+vestibule of the embassy villa, and with the occasional accession of
+other members of the diplomatic corps we usually formed a large
+party. A couple of hours before sunset a caique, which from its size
+might have been the galley of a doge, was in waiting, and Lady C----
+sometimes took us to a favourite wooded hill or bower-grown creek in
+the Paradise-like environs, while a small musical party in the evening
+terminated each day. One of the attaches of the Russian embassy, M.
+F----, is the favorite dilettante of Buyukdere; he has one of the
+finest voices I ever heard, and frequently reminded me of the easy
+humour and sonorous profundity of Lablache.
+
+Before embarking the reader on the Black Sea, I cannot forbear a
+single remark on the distinguished individual who has so long and so
+worthily represented Great Britain at the Ottoman Porte.
+
+Sir. Stratford Canning is certainly unpopular with the extreme
+fanatical party, and with all those economists who are for killing the
+goose to get at the golden eggs; but the real interests of the Turkish
+nation never had a firmer support.
+
+The chief difficulty in the case of this race is the impossibility of
+fusion with others. While they decrease in number, the Rayahs increase
+in wealth, in numbers, and in intelligence.
+
+The Russians are the Orientals of Europe, but St. Petersburg is a
+German town, German industry corrects the old Muscovite sloth and
+cunning. The immigrant strangers rise to the highest offices, for the
+crown employs them as a counterpoise on the old nobility; as burgher
+incorporations were used by the kings of three centuries ago.
+
+No similar process is possible with Moslems: one course therefore
+remains open for those who wish to see the Ottoman Empire upheld; a
+strenuous insistance on the Porte treating the Rayah population with
+justice and moderation. The interests of humanity, and the real and
+true interests of the Ottoman Empire, are in this case identical.
+Guided by this sound principle, which completely reconciles the policy
+of Great Britain with the highest maxims of political morality, Sir.
+Stratford Canning has pursued his career with an all-sifting
+intelligence, a vigour of character and judgment, an indifference to
+temporary repulses, and a sacrifice of personal popularity, which has
+called forth the respect and involuntary admiration of parties the
+most opposed to his views.
+
+I embarked on board a steamer, skirted the western coast of the Black
+Sea, and landed on the following morning in Varna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Varna.--Contrast of Northern And Southern Provinces of
+Turkey.--Roustchouk.--Conversation with Deftendar.--The Danube.--A
+Bulgarian interior.--A dandy of the Lower Danube.--Depart for Widdin.
+
+
+All hail, Bulgaria! No sooner had I secured my quarters and deposited
+my baggage, than I sought the main street, in order to catch the
+delightfully keen impression which a new region stamps on the mind.
+
+How different are the features of Slaavic Turkey, from those of the
+Arabic provinces in which I so long resided. The flat roofs, the
+measured pace of the camel, the half-naked negro, the uncouth Bedouin,
+the cloudless heavens, the tawny earth, and the meagre apology for
+turf, are exchanged for ricketty wooden houses with coarse tiling,
+laid in such a way as to eschew the monotony of straight lines;
+strings of primitive waggons drawn by buffaloes, and driven by
+Bulgarians with black woolly caps, real genuine grass growing on the
+downs outside the walls, and a rattling blast from the Black Sea, more
+welcome than all the balmy spices of Arabia, for it reminded me that I
+was once more in Europe, and must befit my costume to her ruder airs.
+This was indeed the north of the Balkan, and I must needs pull out my
+pea-jacket. How I relished those winds, waves, clouds, and grey skies!
+They reminded me of English nature and Dutch art. The Nore, the Downs,
+the Frith of Forth, and sundry dormant Backhuysens, re-awoke to my
+fancy.
+
+The moral interest too was different. In Egypt or Syria, where whole
+cycles of civilization lie entombed, we interrogate the past; here in
+Bulgaria the past is nothing, and we vainly interrogate the future.
+
+The interior of Varna has a very fair bazaar; not covered as in
+Constantinople and other large towns, but well furnished. The private
+dwellings are generally miserable. The town suffered so severely in
+the Russian war of 1828, that it has never recovered its former
+prosperity. It has also been twice nearly all burnt since then; so
+that, notwithstanding its historical, military, and commercial
+importance, it has at present little more than 20,000 inhabitants. The
+walls of the town underwent a thorough repair in the spring and summer
+of 1843.
+
+The majority of the inhabitants are Turks, and even the native
+Bulgarians here speak Turkish better than their own language. One
+Bulgarian here told me that he could not speak the national language.
+Now in the west of Bulgaria, on the borders of Servia, the Turks speak
+Bulgarian better than Turkish.
+
+From Varna to Roustchouk is three days' journey, the latter half of
+the road being agreeably diversified with wood, corn, and pasture; and
+many of the fields inclosed. Just at sunset, I found myself on the
+ridge of the last undulation of the slope of Bulgaria, and again
+greeted the ever-noble valley of the Danube. Roustchouk lay before me
+hitherward, and beyond the river, the rich flat lands of Wallachia
+stretched away to the north.
+
+As I approached the town, I perceived it to be a fortress of vast
+extent; but as it is commanded from the heights from which I was
+descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south.
+The ramparts were built with great solidity, but rusty, old,
+dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from
+exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo
+a considerable repair. The aspect of the place did not improve as we
+rumbled down the street, lined with houses one story high, and here
+and there a little mosque, with a shabby wooden minaret crowned with
+conical tin tops like the extinguishers of candles.
+
+I put up at the khan. My room was without furniture; but, being lately
+white-washed, and duly swept out under my own superintendence, and laid
+with the best mat in the khan, on which I placed my bed and carpets,
+the addition of a couple of rush-bottomed chairs and a deal table,
+made it habitable, which was all I desired, as I intended to stay only
+a few days. I was supplied with a most miserable dinner; and, to my
+horror, the stewed meat was sprinkled with cinnamon. The wine was bad,
+and the water still worse, for there are no springs at Roustchouk, and
+they use Danube water, filtered through a jar of a porous sandstone
+found in the neighbourhood. A jar of this kind stands in every house,
+but even when filtered in this way it is far from good.
+
+On hearing that the Deftendar spoke English perfectly, and had long
+resided in England, I felt a curiosity to see him, and accordingly
+presented myself at the Konak, and was shown to the divan of the
+Deftendar. I pulled aside a pendent curtain, and entered a room of
+large dimensions, faded decorations, and a broad red divan, the
+cushions of which were considerably the worse for wear. Such was the
+bureau of the Deftendar Effendi, who sat surrounded with papers, and
+the implements of writing. He was a man apparently of fifty-five
+years of age, slightly inclining to corpulence, with a very short
+neck, surmounted by large features, coarsely chiselled; but not devoid
+of a certain intelligence in his eye, and dignity in general effect.
+He spoke English with a correct accent, but slowly, occasionally
+stopping to remember a word; thus showing that his English was not
+imperfect from want of knowledge, but rusty from want of practice. He
+was an Egyptian Turk, and had been for eight years the commercial
+agent of Mohammed Ali at Malta, and had, moreover, visited the
+principal countries of Europe.
+
+I then took a series of short and rapid whiffs of my pipe while I
+bethought me of the best manner of treating the subject of my visit,
+and then said, "that few orientals could draw a distinction between
+politics and geography; but that with a man of his calibre and
+experience, I was safe from misinterpretation--that I was collecting
+the materials for a work on the Danubian provinces, and that for any
+information which he might give me, consistently with the exigencies
+of his official position, I should feel much indebted, as I thought I
+was least likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of
+my journey to the authorities, while information derived from the
+fountain-head was the most valuable."
+
+The Deftendar, after commending my openness, said, "I suspect that you
+will find very little to remark in the pashalic of Silistria. It is an
+agricultural country, and the majority of the inhabitants are Turks.
+The Rayahs are very peaceable, and pay very few taxes, considering the
+agricultural wealth of the country. You may rest assured that there is
+not a province of the Ottoman empire, which is better governed than
+the pashalic of Silistria. Now and then, a rude Turk appropriates to
+himself a Bulgarian girl; but the government cannot be responsible for
+these individual excesses. We have no malcontents within the province;
+hut there are a few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb
+the tranquillity of Bulgaria: but the Wallachian government has taken
+measures to prevent them from carrying their projects into execution."
+After some further conversation, on indifferent topics, I took my
+leave.
+
+The succeeding days were devoted to a general reconnaissance of the
+place; but I must say that Roustchouk, although capital of the
+pashalic of Silistria, and containing thirty or forty thousand
+inhabitants, pleased me less than any town of its size that I had seen
+in the East. The streets are dirty and badly paved, without a single
+good bazaar or cafe to kill time in, or a single respectable edifice
+of any description to look at. The redeeming resource was the
+promenade on the banks of the Danube, which has here attained almost
+its full volume, and uniting the waters of Alp, Carpathian, and
+Balkan, rushes impatiently to the Euxine.
+
+At length the day of departure came. The attendant had just removed
+the tumbler of coffee, tossing the fragments of toast into the
+court-yard, an operation which appeared to have a magnetic effect on
+the bills of the poultry; and then, with his accustomed impropriety,
+placed the plate as a basis to my hookah, telling me that F----, a
+Bulgarian Christian, wished to speak with me.
+
+"Let him walk in," said I, as I took the first delightful whiff; and
+F----, darkening the window that looked out on the verandah, gave me a
+fugitive look of recognition, and then entering and making his
+salutation in a kindly hearty manner, asked me to eat my mid-day meal
+with him.
+
+"Indeed," quoth I, "I accept your invitation. I have not gone to pay
+my visit to the Bey, because I remain here too short a time to need
+his good offices; but I am anxious to make the acquaintance of the
+people,--so I am your guest."
+
+When the hour arrived, I adjusted the tassel of my fez, put on my
+great coat, and proceeded to the Christian quarter; where, after
+various turnings and windings, I at length arrived at a high wooden
+gateway, new and unpainted.
+
+An uncouth tuning of fiddles, the odour of savoury fare, and a hearty
+laugh from within, told me that I had no further to go; for all these
+gates are so like each other, one never knows a house till after
+close observation. On entering I passed over a plat of grass, and
+piercing a wooden tenement by a dark passage, found myself in a
+three-sided court, where several persons were sitting on rush-bottomed
+chairs.
+
+F---- came forward, took both my hands in his, and then presented me
+to the company. On being seated, I exchanged salutations, and then
+looked round, and perceived that the three sides of the court were
+composed of rambling wooden tenements; the fourth was a little garden
+in which a few flowers were cultivated.
+
+The elders sat, the youngers stood at a distance;--so respectful is
+youth to age in all this eastern world. The first figure in the former
+group was the father of our host; the acrid humours of extreme age had
+crimsoned his eye-lids, and his head shook from side to side, as he
+attempted to rise to salute me, but I held him to his seat. The wife
+of our host was a model of fragile delicate beauty. Her nose, mouth,
+and chin, were exquisitely chiselled, and her skin was smooth and
+white as alabaster; but the eye-lid drooped; the eye hung fire, and
+under each orb the skin was slightly blue, but so blending with the
+paleness of the rest of the face, as rather to give distinctness to
+the character of beauty, than to detract from the general effect. Her
+second child hung on her left arm, and a certain graceful negligence
+in the plaits of her hair and the arrangement of her bosom, showed
+that the cares of the young mother had superseded the nicety of the
+coquette.
+
+The only other person in the company worthy of remark, was a Frank.
+His surtout was of cloth of second or third quality, but profusely
+braided. His stock appeared to strangle him, and a diamond breast-pin
+was stuck in a shirt of texture one degree removed from sail-cloth.
+His blood, as I afterwards learned, was so crossed by Greek, Tsinsar,
+and Wallachian varieties, that it would have puzzled the united
+genealogists of Europe to tell his breed; and his language was a
+mangled subdivision of that dialect which passes for French in the
+fashionable centres of the Grecaille.
+
+_Exquisite_. "Quangt etes vous venie, Monsieur?"
+
+_Author_. "Il y a huit jours."
+
+_Exquisite_ (looking at a large ring on his _fore_ finger). "Ce sont
+de bons diables dans ce pays-ci; mais tout est un po barbare."
+
+"Assez barbare," said I, as I saw that the exquisite's nails were in
+the deepest possible mourning.
+
+_Exquisite_. "Avez vous ete a Boukarest?"
+
+_Author_. "Non--pas encore."
+
+_Exquisite_. "Ah je wous assire que Boukarest est maintenant comme
+Paris et Londres;"
+
+_Author_. "Avez-vous vu Paris et Londres?"
+
+_Exquisite_. "Non--mais Boukarest vaut cent fois Galatz et Braila."
+
+During this colloquy, the gipsy music was playing; the first fiddle
+was really not bad: and the nonchalant rogue-humour of his countenance
+did not belie his alliance to that large family, which has produced
+"so many blackguards, but never a single blockhead."
+
+Dinner was now announced. F----'s wife, relieved of her child, acted
+as first waitress. The fare consisted mostly of varieties of fowl,
+with a pilaff of rice, in the Turkish manner, all decidedly good; but
+the wine rather sweet and muddy. When I asked for a glass of water, it
+was handed me in a little bowl of silver, which mine hostess had just
+dashed into a jar of filtered lymph. Dinner concluded, the party rose,
+each crossing himself, and reciting a short formula of prayer;
+meanwhile a youthful relation of the house stood with the
+washing-basin and soap turret poised on his left hand, while with the
+right he poured on my hands water from a slender-spouted tin ewer.
+Behind him stood the hostess holding a clean towel with a tiny web of
+silver thread running across its extremities, and on my right stood
+the ex-diners with sleeves tucked up, all in a row, waiting their turn
+at the wash-hand basin.
+
+After smoking a chibouque, I took my leave; for I had promised to
+spend the afternoon in the house of a Swiss, who, along with the agent
+of the steam-boat company and a third individual, made up the sum
+total of the resident Franko-Levantines in Roustchouk.
+
+A gun fired in the evening warned me that the steamer had arrived;
+and, anxious to push on for Servia, I embarked forthwith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+River Steaming.--Arrival at Widdin--Jew.--Comfortless Khan.--Wretched
+appearance of Widdin.--Hussein Pasha.--M. Petronievitch.--Steam
+Balloon.
+
+
+River steaming is, according to my notions, the best of all sorts of
+locomotion. Steam at sea makes you sick, and the voyage is generally
+over before you have gained your sea legs and your land appetite. In
+mail or stage you have no sickness and see the country, but you are
+squeezed sideways by helpless corpulence, and in front cooped into
+uneasiness by two pairs of egotistical knees and toes. As for
+locomotives, tunnels, cuts, and viaducts--this is not travelling to
+see the country, but arrival without seeing it. This eighth wonder of
+the world, so admirably adapted for business, is the despair of
+picturesque tourists, as well as post-horse, chaise, and gig letters.
+Our cathedral towns, instead of being distinguished from afar by their
+cloud-capt towers, are only recognizable at their respective stations
+by the pyramids of gooseberry tarts and ham sandwiches being at one
+place at the lower, and at another at the upper, end of an apartment
+marked "refreshment room." Now in river steaming you walk the deck, if
+the weather and the scenery be good; if the reverse, you lounge below;
+read, write, or play; and then the meals are arranged with Germanic
+ingenuity for killing time and the digestive organs.
+
+On the second day the boat arrived at Widdin, and the agent of the
+steam packet company, an old Jew, came on board. I stepped across the
+plank and accompanied him to a large white house opposite the
+landing-place. On entering, I saw a group of Israel's children in the
+midst of a deadly combat of sale and purchase, bawling at the top of
+their voices in most villainous Castilian; all were filthy and
+shabbily dressed. The agent having mentioned who I was to the group, a
+broad-lipped young man with a German _mutze_ surmounting his oriental
+costume, stepped forward with a confident air, and in a thick guttural
+voice addressed me in an unknown tongue. I looked about for an answer,
+when the agent told me in Turkish that he spoke English.
+
+_Jew_. "You English gentleman, sir, and not know English."
+
+_Author_. "I have to apologize for not recognizing the accents of my
+native country."
+
+_Jew_. "Bring goods wid you, sir?"
+
+_Author_. "No, I am not a merchant. Pray can you get me a lodging?"
+
+_Jew_. "Get you as mush room you like, sir."
+
+_Author_. "Have you been in England?"
+
+_Jew_. "Been in London, Amsterdam, and Hamburgh."
+
+We now arrived at the wide folding gates of the khan, which to be sure
+had abundance of space for travellers, but the misery and filth of
+every apartment disgusted me. One had broken windows, another a
+broken floor, a third was covered with half an inch of dust, and the
+weather outside was cold and rainy; so I shrugged up my shoulders and
+asked to be conducted to another khan. There I was somewhat better
+off, for I got into a new room leading out of a cafe where the
+charcoal burned freely and warmed the apartment. When the room was
+washed out I thought myself fortunate, so dreary and deserted had the
+other khan appeared to me.
+
+I now took a walk through the bazaars, but found the place altogether
+miserable, being somewhat less village-like than Roustchouk. Lying so
+nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here makes such beautiful
+curves, and marked on the map with capital letters, it ought (such was
+my notion) to be a place having at least one well-built and
+well-stocked bazaar, a handsome seraglio, and some good-looking
+mosques. Nothing of the sort. The Konak or palace of the Pasha is an
+old barrack. The seraglio of the famous Passavan Oglou is in ruins,
+and the only decent looking house in the place is the new office of
+the Steam Navigation Company, which is on the Danube.
+
+Being Ramadan, I could not see the pasha during the day; but in the
+evening, M. Petronievitch, the exiled leader of the Servian National
+party, introduced me to Hussein Pasha, the once terrible destroyer of
+the Janissaries. This celebrated character appeared to be verging on
+eighty, and, afflicted with gout, was sitting in the corner of the
+divan at his ease, in the old Turkish ample costume. The white beard,
+the dress of the pasha, the rich but faded carpet which covered the
+floor, the roof of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in
+perfect keeping, and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising
+two or three feet from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture,
+which carried me back, a generation at least, to the pashas of the old
+school. Hussein smoked a narghile of dark red Bohemian cut crystal. M.
+Petronievitch and myself were supplied with pipes which were more
+profusely mounted with diamonds, than any I had ever before smoked;
+for Hussein Pasha is beyond all comparison the wealthiest man in the
+Ottoman empire.
+
+After talking over the last news from Constantinople, he asked me what
+I thought of the projected steam balloon, which, from its being of a
+marvellous nature, appears to have caused a great deal of talk among
+the Turks. I expressed little faith in its success; on which he
+ordered an attendant to bring him a drawing of a locomotive balloon
+steered by flags and all sorts of fancies. "Will not this
+revolutionize the globe?" said the pasha; to which I replied, "C'est
+le premier pas qui coute; there is no doubt of an a�rial voyage to
+India if they get over the first quarter of a mile."[1]
+
+I returned to sup with M. Petronievitch at his house, and we had a
+great deal of conversation relative to the history, laws, manners,
+customs, and politics of Servia; but as I subsequently obtained
+accurate notions of that country by personal observation, it is not
+necessary on the present occasion to return to our conversation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Hussein Pasha has since retired from Widdin, where he
+made the greater part of his fortune, for he was engaged in immense
+agricultural and commercial speculations; he was succeeded by Mustapha
+Nourri Pasha, formerly private secretary to Sultan Mahommud, who has
+also made a large fortune, as merchant and ship-owner.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Leave Widdin.--The Timok.--Enter Servia.--Brza Palanka.--The Iron
+Gates.--Old and New Orsova.--Wallachian Matron.--Semlin.--A
+Conversation on Language.
+
+
+I left Widdin for the Servian frontier, in a car of the country, with
+a couple of horses, the ground being gently undulated, but the
+mountains to the south were at a considerable distance. On our right,
+agreeable glimpses of the Danube presented themselves from time to
+time. In six hours we arrived at the Timok, the river that separates
+Servia from Bulgaria. The only habitation in the place was a log-house
+for the Turkish custom-house officer. We were more than an hour in
+getting our equipage across the ferry, for the long drought had so
+reduced the water, that the boat was unable to meet the usual
+landing-place by at least four feet of steep embankment; in vain did
+the horses attempt to mount the acclivity; every spring was followed
+by a relapse, and at last one horse sunk jammed in between the ferry
+boat and the bank; so that we were obliged to loose the harness, send
+the horses on shore, and drag the dirty car as we best could up the
+half dried muddy slope. At last we succeeded, and a smart trot along
+the Danube brought us to the Servian lazaretto, which was a new
+symmetrical building, the promenade of which, on the Danube, showed an
+attempt at a sort of pleasure-ground.
+
+I entered at sunset, and next morning on showing my tongue to the
+doctor, and paying a fee of one piastre (twopence) was free, and again
+put myself in motion. Lofty mountains seemed to rise to the west, and
+the cultivated plain now became broken into small ridges, partly
+covered with forest trees. The ploughing oxen now became rarer; but
+herds of swine, grubbing at acorns and the roots of bushes, showed
+that I was changing the scene, and making the acquaintance not only
+of a new country, but of a new people. The peasants, instead of having
+woolly caps and frieze clothes as in Bulgaria, all wore the red fez,
+and were dressed mostly in blue cloth; some of those in the villages
+wore black glazed caps; and in general the race appeared to be
+physically stronger and nobler than that which I had left. The
+Bulgarians seemed to be a set of silent serfs, deserving (when not
+roused by some unusual circumstance) rather the name of machines than
+of men: these Servian fellows seemed lazier, but all possessed a
+manliness of address and demeanour, which cannot be discovered in the
+Bulgarian.
+
+Brza Palanka, at which we now arrived, is the only Danubian port which
+the Servians possess, below the Iron Gates; consequently, the only one
+which is in uninterrupted communication with Galatz and the sea. A
+small Sicilian vessel, laden with salt, passed into the Black Sea, and
+actually ascended the Danube to this point, which is within a few
+hours of the Hungarian frontier. As we approached the Iron Gates, the
+valley became a mere gorge, with barely room for the road, and
+fumbling through a cavernous fortification, we soon came in sight of
+the Austro-Hungarian frontier.
+
+_New_ Orsova, one of the few remaining retreats of the Turks in
+Servia, is built on an island, and with its frail houses of yawning
+rafters looks very _old_. Old Orsova, opposite which we now arrived,
+looked quite _new_, and bore the true German type of formal
+white-washed houses, and high sharp ridged roofs, which called up
+forthwith the image of a dining-hall, where, punctually as the
+village-clock strikes the hour of twelve, a fair-haired, fat,
+red-faced landlord, serves up the soup, the _rindfleisch_, the
+_zuspeise_, and all the other dishes of the holy Roman empire to the
+Platz Major, the Haupt-zoll-amt director, the Kanzlei director, the
+Concepist, the Protocollist, and _hoc genus omne_.
+
+After a night passed in the quarantine, I removed to the inn, and
+punctually as the clock struck half past twelve, the very party my
+imagination conjured up, assembled to discuss the _mehlspeise_ in the
+stencilled parlour of the Hirsch.
+
+Favoured by the most beautiful weather, I started in a sort of caleche
+for Dreucova. The excellent new macadamized road was as smooth as a
+bowling-green, and only a lively companion was wanting to complete the
+exhilaration of my spirits.
+
+My fair fellow-traveller was an enormously stout Wallachian matron, on
+her way to Vienna, to see her _daughter_, who was then receiving her
+education at a boarding-school. I spoke no Wallachian, she spoke
+nothing but Wallachian; so our conversation was carried on by my
+attempting to make myself understood alternately by the Italian, and
+the Spanish forms of Latin.
+
+"_Una bella Campagna_," said I, as we drove out Orsova.
+
+"_Bella, bella_?" said the lady, evidently puzzled.
+
+So I said, "_Hermosa_."
+
+"_Ah! formosa; formosa prate_," repeated the lady, evidently
+understanding that I meant a fine country.
+
+"_Deunde venut_?" Whence have you come?
+
+"Constantinopolis;" and so on we went, supposing that we understood
+each other, she supplying me with new forms of bastard Latin words,
+and adding with a smile, _Romani_, or Wallachian, as the language and
+people of Wallachia are called by themselves. It is worthy of remark,
+that the Wallachians and a small people in Switzerland, are the only
+descendants of the Romans, that still designate their language as that
+of the ancient mistress of the world.
+
+As I rolled along, the fascinations of nature got the better of my
+gallantry; the discourse flagged, and then dropped, for I found myself
+in the midst of the noblest river scenery I had ever beheld, certainly
+far surpassing that of the Rhine, and Upper Danube. To the gloom and
+grandeur of natural portals, formed of lofty precipitous rocks,
+succeeds the open smiling valley, the verdant meadows, and the distant
+wooded hills, with all the soft and varied hues of autumn. Here we
+appear to be driving up the avenues of an English park; yonder, where
+the mountain sinks sheer into the river, the road must find its way
+along an open gallery, with a roof weighing millions of tons,
+projecting from the mountain above.
+
+After sunset we arrived at Dreucova, and next morning went on board
+the steamer, which conveyed me up the Danube to Semlin. The lower town
+of Semlin is, from the exhalations on the banks of the river,
+frightfully insalubrious, but the cemetery enjoys a high and airy
+situation. The people in the town die off with great rapidity; but, to
+compensate for this, the dead are said to be in a highly satisfactory
+state of preservation. The inns here, once so bad, have greatly
+improved; but mine host, zum Golden Lowen, on my recent visits, always
+managed to give a very good dinner, including two sorts of savoury
+game. I recollect on a former visit, going to another inn, and found
+in the dining-room an individual, whose ruddy nose, and good-humoured
+nerveless smile, denoted a fondness for the juice of the grape, and
+seitel after seitel disappeared with rapidity. By-the-bye, old father
+Danube is as well entitled to be represented with a perriwig of grapes
+as his brother the Rhine. Hungary in general, has a right merry
+bacchanalian climate. Schiller or Symian wine is in the same parallel
+of latitude as Claret, Oedenburger as Burgundy, and a line run
+westwards from Tokay would almost touch the vineyards of Champagne.
+Csaplovich remarks in his quaint way, that the four principal wines of
+Hungary are cultivated by the four principal nations in it. That is to
+say, the Slavonians cultivate the Schiller, Germans the Oedenburger
+and Ruster, Magyars and Wallachians the Menesher. Good Schiller is the
+best Syrmian wine. But I must return from this digression to the guest
+of the Adler. On hearing that I was an Englishman, he expressed a wish
+to hear as much of England as possible, and appeared thunderstruck,
+when I told him that London had nearly two millions of inhabitants,
+being four hundred thousand more than the population of the whole of
+the Banat. This individual had of course learned five languages with
+his mother's milk, and therefore thought that the inhabitants of such
+a country as England must know ten at least. When I told him that the
+majority of the people in England knew nothing but English, he said,
+somewhat contemptuously, "O! you told me the fair side of the English
+character: but you did not tell me that the people was so ignorant."
+He then good-humouredly warned me against practising on his credulity.
+I pointed out how unnecessary other languages were for England itself;
+but that all languages could be learned in London.
+
+"Can Wallachian be learned in London?"
+
+"I have my doubts about Wallachian, but"--
+
+"Can Magyar be learned in London?"
+
+"I suspect not."
+
+"Can Servian be learnt in London?"
+
+"I confess, I don't think that any body in London teaches Servian;
+but"--
+
+"There again, you travellers are always making statements unfounded on
+fact. I have mentioned three leading languages, and nobody in your
+city knows anything about them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Description of Belgrade.--Fortifications.--Streets and Street
+Population.--Cathedral.--Large Square.--Coffe-house.--Deserted
+Villa.--Baths.
+
+
+Through the courtesy and attention of Mr. Consul-general Fonblanque
+and the numerous friends of M. Petronievitch, I was, in the course of
+a few days, as familiar with all the principal objects and individuals
+in Belgrade, as if I had resided months in the city.
+
+The fare of a boat from Semlin to Belgrade by Austrian rowers is five
+zwanzigers, or about _3s. 6d._ English; and the time occupied is half
+an hour, that is to say, twenty minutes for the descent of the Danube,
+and about ten minutes for the ascent of the Save. On arrival at the
+low point of land at the confluence, we perceived the distinct line of
+the two rivers, the Danube faithfully retaining its brown, muddy
+character, while the Save is much clearer. We now had a much closer
+view of the fortress opposite. Large embrasures, slightly elevated
+above the water's edge, were intended for guns of great calibre; but
+above, a gallimaufry of grass-grown and moss-covered fortifications
+were crowned by ricketty, red-tiled houses, and looking very unlike
+the magnificent towers in the last scene of the Siege of Belgrade, at
+Drury Lane. Just within the banks of the Save were some of the large
+boats which trade on the river; the new ones as curiously carved,
+painted, and even gilded, as some of those one sees at Dort and
+Rotterdam. They have no deck--for a ridge of rafters covers the goods,
+and the boatmen move about on ledges at the gunwale.
+
+The fortress of Belgrade, jutting out exactly at the point of
+confluence of the rivers, has the town behind it. The Servian, or
+principal quarter, slopes down to the Save; the Turkish quarter to
+the Danube. I might compare Belgrade to a sea-turtle, the head of
+which is represented by the fortress, the back of the neck by the
+esplanade or Kalai Meidan, the right flank by the Turkish quarter, the
+left by the Servian, and the ridge of the back by the street running
+from the esplanade to the gate of Constantinople.
+
+We landed at the left side of our imaginary turtle, or at the quay of
+the Servian quarter, which runs along the Save. The sloping bank was
+paved with stones; and above was a large edifice with an arcade, one
+end of which served as the custom-house, the other as the Austrian
+consulate.
+
+The population was diversified. Shabby old Turks were selling fruit;
+and boatmen, both Moslem and Christian--the former with turbans, the
+latter with short fez's--were waiting for a fare. To the left was a
+Turkish guard-house, at a gate leading to the esplanade, with as smart
+a row of burnished muskets as one could expect. All within this gate
+is under the jurisdiction of the Turkish Pasha of the fortress; all
+without the gate in question, is under the government of the Servian
+Prefect of Belgrade.
+
+We now turned into a curious old street, built quite in the Turkish
+fashion, and composed of rafters knocked carelessly together, and
+looking as if the first strong gust of wind would send them smack over
+the water into Hungary without the formality of a quarantine; but many
+of the shops were smartly garnished with clothes, haberdashery, and
+trinkets, mostly from Bohemia and Moravia; and in some I saw large
+blocks of rock-salt.
+
+Notwithstanding the rigmarole construction of the quarter on the
+water's edge, (save and except at the custom-house,) it is the most
+busy quarter in the town: here are the places of business of the
+principal merchants in the place. This class is generally of the
+Tsinsar nation, as the descendants of the Roman colonists in Macedonia
+are called; their language is a corrupt Latin, and resembles the
+Wallachian dialect very closely.
+
+We now ascended by a steep street to the upper town. The most
+prominent object in the first open space we came to is the cathedral,
+a new and large but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt
+bell-tower, in the Russian manner; and the walls of the interior are
+covered with large paintings of no merit. But one must not be too
+critical: a kindling of intellectual energy ever seems, in most
+countries, to precede excellence in the imitative arts, which latter,
+too often survives the ruins of those ruder and nobler qualities which
+assure the vigorous existence of states or provinces.
+
+In the centre of the town is an open square, which forms a sort of
+line of demarcation between the crescent and the cross. On the one
+side, several large and good houses have been constructed by the
+wealthiest senators, in the German manner, with flaring new white
+walls and bright green shutter-blinds. On the other side is a mosque,
+and dead old garden walls, with walnut trees and Levantine roofs
+peeping up behind them. Look on this picture, and you have the type of
+all domestic architecture lying between you and the snow-fenced huts
+of Lapland; cast your eyes over the way, and imagination wings
+lightly to the sweet south with its myrtles, citrons, marbled steeps
+and fragrance-bearing gales.
+
+Beside the mosque is the new Turkish coffee-house, which is kept by an
+Arab by nation and a Moslem by religion, but born at Lucknow. One day,
+in asking for the mullah of the mosque, who had gone to Bosnia, I
+entered into conversation with him; but on learning that I was an
+Englishman he fought shy, being, like most Indian Moslems when
+travelling in Turkey, ashamed of their sovereign being a protected
+ally of a Frank government.
+
+I now entered the region of gardens and villas, which, previous to the
+revolution of Kara Georg, was occupied principally by Turks. Passing
+down a shady lane my attention was arrested by a rotten moss-grown
+garden door, at the sight of which memory leaped backwards for four or
+five years. Here I had spent a happy forenoon with Colonel H----, and
+the physician of the former Pasha, an old Hanoverian, who, as surgeon
+to a British regiment had gone through all the fatigues of the
+Peninsular war. I pushed open the door, and there, completely secluded
+from the bustle of the town, and the view of the stranger, grew the
+vegetation as luxuriant as ever, relieving with its dark green frame
+the clear white of the numerous domes and minarets of the Turkish
+quarter, and the broad-bosomed Danube which filled up the centre of
+the picture; but the house and stable, which had resounded with the
+good-humoured laugh of the master, and the neighing of the well-fed
+little stud (for horse-flesh was the weak side of our Esculapius),
+were tenantless, ruinous, and silent. The doctor had died in the
+interval at Widdin, in the service of Hussein Pasha. I mechanically
+withdrew, abstracted from external nature by the "memory of joys that
+were past, pleasant and mournful to the soul."
+
+I then took a Turkish bath; but the inferiority of those in Belgrade
+to similar luxuries in Constantinople, Damascus, and Cairo, was
+strikingly apparent on entering. The edifice and the furniture were of
+the commonest description. The floors of the interior of brick
+instead of marble, and the plaster and the cement of the walls in a
+most defective state. The atmosphere in the drying room was so cold
+from the want of proper windows and doors, that I was afraid lest I
+should catch a catarrh. The Oriental bath, when paved with fine
+grained marbles, and well appointed in the departments of linen,
+sherbet, and _narghile_, is a great luxury; but the bath at Belgrade
+was altogether detestable. In the midst of the drying business a
+violent dispute broke out between the proprietor and an Arnaout, whom
+the former styled a _cokoshary_, or hen-eater, another term for a
+robber; for when lawless Arnaouts arrive in a village, after eating up
+half the contents of the poultry-yard, they demand a tribute in the
+shape of _compensation for the wear and tear of their teeth_ while
+consuming the provisions they have forcibly exacted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Europeanization of Belgrade.--Lighting and Paving.--Interior of the
+Fortress--Turkish Pasha.--Turkish Quarter.--Turkish
+Population.--Panorama of Belgrade--Dinner party given by the Prince.
+
+
+The melancholy I experienced in surveying the numerous traces of
+desolation in Turkey was soon effaced at Belgrade. Here all was life
+and activity. It was at the period of my first visit, in 1839, quite
+an oriental town; but now the haughty parvenu spire of the cathedral
+throws into the shade the minarets of the mosques, graceful even in
+decay. Many of the bazaar-shops have been fronted and glazed. The
+oriental dress has become much rarer; and houses several stories
+high, in the German fashion, are springing up everywhere. But in two
+important particulars Belgrade is as oriental as if it were situated
+on the Tigris or Barrada--lighting and paving. It is impossible in wet
+weather to pay a couple of visits without coming home up to the ankles
+in mud; and at night all locomotion without a lantern is impossible.
+Belgrade, from its elevation, could be most easily lighted with gas,
+and at a very small expense; as even if there be no coal in Servia,
+there is abundance of it at Moldava, which is on the Danube between
+Belgrade and Orsova; that is to say, considerably above the Iron
+Gates. I make this remark, not so much to reproach my Servian friends
+with backwardness, but to stimulate them to all easily practicable
+improvements.
+
+One day I accompanied M. de Fonblanque on a visit to the Pasha in the
+citadel, which we reached by crossing the glacis or neck of land that
+connects the castle with the town. This place forms the pleasantest
+evening lounge in the vicinity of Belgrade; for on the one side is an
+extensive view of the Turkish town, and the Danube wending its way
+down to Semendria; on the other is the Save, its steep bank piled with
+street upon street, and the hills beyond them sloping away to the
+Bosniac frontier.
+
+The ramparts are in good condition; and the first object that strikes
+a stranger on entering, are six iron spikes, on which, in the time of
+the first revolution, the heads of Servians used to be stuck. Milosh
+once saved his own head from this elevation by his characteristic
+astuteness. During his alliance with the Turks in 1814, (or 1815,) he
+had large pecuniary transactions with the Pasha, for he was the medium
+through whom the people paid their tribute. Five heads grinned from
+five spikes as he entered the castle, and he comprehended that the
+sixth was reserved for him; the last head set up being that of
+Glavash, a leader, who, like himself, was then supporting the
+government: so he immediately took care to make the Pasha understand
+that he was about to set out on a tour in the country, to raise some
+money for the vizierial strong-box. "Peh eiu," said Soliman Pasha,
+thinking to catch him next time, and get the money at the same time;
+so Milosh was allowed to depart; but knowing that if he returned spike
+the sixth would not wait long for its head, he at once raised the
+district of Rudnick, and ended the terrible war which had been begun
+under much less favourable auspices, by the more valiant but less
+astute Kara Georg.
+
+We passed a second draw-bridge, and found ourselves in the interior of
+the fortress. A large square was formed by ruinous buildings.
+Extensive barracks were windowless and tenantless, but the mosque and
+the Pasha's Konak were in good order. We were ushered into an
+audience-room of great extent, with a low carved roof and some
+old-fashioned furniture, the divan being in the corner, and the
+windows looking over the precipice to the Danube below. Hafiz Pasha,
+the same who commanded at the battle of Nezib, was about fifty-five,
+and a gentleman in air and manner, with a grey beard. In course of
+conversation he told me that he was a Circassian. He asked me about my
+travels: and with reference to Syria said, "Land operations through
+Kurdistan against Mehemet Ali were absurd. I suggested an attack by
+sea, while a land force should make a diversion by Antioch, but I was
+opposed." After the usual pipes and coffee we took our leave.
+
+Hafiz Pasha's political relations are necessarily of a very restricted
+character, as he rules only the few Turks remaining in Servia; that is
+to say, a few thousands in Belgrade and Ushitza, a few hundreds in
+Shabatz Sokol and the island of Orsova. He represents the suzerainety
+of the Porte over the Christian population, without having any thing
+to do with the details of administration. His income, like that of
+other mushirs or pashas of three tails, is 8000l. per annum. Hafiz
+Pasha, if not a successful general, was at all events a brave and
+honourable man, and his character for justice made him highly
+respected. One of his predecessors, who was at Belgrade on my first
+visit there in 1839, was a man of another stamp,--the notorious
+Youssouf Pasha, who sold Varna during the Russian war. The
+re-employment of such an individual is a characteristic illustration
+of Eastern manners.
+
+As my first stay at Belgrade extended to between two and three months,
+I saw a good deal of Hafiz Pasha, who has a great taste for geography,
+and seemed to be always studying at the maps. He seemed to think that
+nothing would be so useful to Turkey as good roads, made to run from
+the principal ports of Asia Minor up to the depots of the interior, so
+as to connect Sivas, Tokat, Angora, Konieh, Kaiserieh, &c. with
+Samsoun, Tersoos, and other ports. He wittily reversed the proverb
+"_El rafyk som el taryk_" (companionship makes secure roads) by
+saying, "_el taryk som el rafyk_" (good roads increase passenger
+traffic).
+
+At the Bairam reception, the Pasha wore his great nishau of diamonds.
+Prince Alexander wore a blue uniform with gold epaulettes, and an
+aigrette of brilliants in his fez. His predecessor, Michael, on such
+occasions, wore a cocked hat, which used to give offence, as the fez
+is considered by the Turks indispensable to a recognition of the
+suzerainety of the Porte.
+
+Being Bairam, I was induced to saunter into the Turkish quarter of the
+town, where all wore the handsome holyday dresses of the old fashion,
+being mostly of crimson cloth, edged with gold lace. My cicerone, a
+Servian, pointed out those shops belonging to the sultan, still marked
+with the letter f, intended, I suppose, for _mulk_ or imperial
+property. We then turned to the left, and came into a singular looking
+street, composed of the ruins of ornamented houses in the imposing,
+but too elaborate style of architecture, which was in vogue in Vienna,
+during the life of Charles the Sixth, and which was a corruption of
+the style de Louis Quatorze. These buildings were half-way up concealed
+from view by common old bazaar shops. This was the "Lange Gasse," or
+main street of the German town during the Austrian occupation of
+twenty-two years, from 1717 to 1739. Most of these houses were built
+with great solidity, and many still have the stucco ornaments that
+distinguish this style. The walls of the palace of Prince Eugene are
+still standing complete, but the court-yard is filled up with
+rubbish, at least six feet high, and what were formerly the rooms of
+the ground-floor have become almost cellars. The edifice is called to
+this day, "_Princeps Konak_." This mixture of the coarse, but
+picturesque features of oriental life, with the dilapidated
+stateliness of palaces in the style of the full-bottom-wigged
+Vanbrughs of Austria, has the oddest effect imaginable.
+
+The Turks remaining in Belgrade have mostly sunk into poverty, and
+occupy themselves principally with water-carrying, wood-splitting, &c.
+The better class latterly kept up their position, by making good sales
+of houses and shops; for building ground is now in some situations
+very expensive. Mr. Fonblanque pays 100�. sterling per annum for his
+rooms, which is a great deal, compared with the rates of house-rent in
+Hungary just over the water.
+
+One day, I ascended the spire of the cathedral, in order to have a
+view of the city and environs. Belgrade, containing only 35,000
+inhabitants, cannot boast of looking very like a metropolis; but the
+environs contain the materials of a good panorama. Looking westward,
+we see the winding its way from the woods of Topshider; the Servian
+shore is abrupt, the Austrian flat, and subject to inundation; the
+prospect on the north-west being closed in by the dim dark line of the
+Frusca Gora, or "Wooded Mountain," which forms the backbone of
+Slavonia, and is the high wooded region between the Save and the
+Drave. Northwards, are the spires of Semlin, rising up from the
+Danube, which here resumes its easterly course; while south and east
+stretch the Turkish quarter, which I have been describing.
+
+There are no formal levees or receptions at the palace of Prince
+Alexander, except on his own fete day. Once or twice a year he
+entertains at dinner the Pasha, the ministers, and the foreign
+consuls-general. In the winter, the prince gives one or two balls.
+
+One of the former species of entertainments took place during my stay,
+and I received the prince's invitation. At the appointed day, I found
+the avenue to the residence thronged with people Who were listening to
+the band that played in the court-yard; and on arriving fit the top
+of the stairs, was led by an officer in a blue uniform, who seemed to
+direct the ceremonies of the day, into the saloon, in which I had, on
+my arrival in Belgrade, paid my respects to the prince, which might be
+pronounced the fac simile of the drawing-room of a Hungarian nobleman;
+the parquet was inlaid and polished, the chairs and sofas covered with
+crimson and white satin damask, which is an unusual luxury in these
+regions, the roof admirably painted in subdued colours, in the best
+Vienna style. High white porcelain urn-like stoves heated the suite of
+rooms.
+
+The company had that picturesque variety of character and costume
+which every traveller delights in. The prince, a muscular middle sized
+dark complexioned man, of about thirty-five, with a serious composed
+air, wore a plain blue military uniform. The princess and her _dames
+de compagnie_ wore the graceful native Servian costume. The Pasha wore
+the Nizam dress, and the Nishan Iftihar; Baron Lieven, the Russian
+Commissioner, in the uniform of a general, glittered with innumerable
+orders; Colonel Philippovich, a man of distinguished talents,
+represented Austria. The archbishop, in his black velvet cap, a large
+enamelled cross hanging by a massive gold chain from his neck, sat in
+stately isolation; and the six feet four inches high Garashanin,
+minister of the interior, conversed with Stojan Simitch, the president
+of the senate, one of the few Servians in high office, who retains his
+old Turkish costume, and has a frame that reminds one of the Farnese
+Hercules. Then what a medley of languages; Servian, German, Russian,
+Turkish, and French, all in full buzz!
+
+We proceeded to the dining-room, where the _cuisine_ was in every
+respect in the German manner. When the dessert appeared, the prince
+rose with a creaming glass of champagne in his hand, and proposed the
+health of the sultan, acknowledged by the pasha; and then, after a
+short pause, the health of Czar Nicolay Paulovitch, acknowledged by
+Baron Lieven; then came the health of other crowned heads. Baron
+Lieven now rose and proposed the health of the Prince. The Pasha and
+the Princess were toasted in turn; and then M. Wastchenko, the Russian
+consul general rose, and in animated terms, drank to the prosperity of
+Servia. The entertainment, which commenced at one o'clock, was
+prolonged to an advanced period of the afternoon, and closed with
+coffee, liqueurs, and chibouques in the drawing-room; the princess and
+the ladies having previously withdrawn to the private apartments.
+
+My time during the rest of the year was taken up with political,
+statistical, and historical inquiries, the results of which will be
+found condensed at the termination of the narrative part of this work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Return to Servia.--The Danube.--Semlin.--Wucics and
+Petronievitch.--Cathedral Solemnity.--Subscription Ball.
+
+
+After an absence of six months in England, I returned to the Danube.
+Vienna and Pesth offered no attractions in the month of August, and I
+felt impatient to put in execution my long cherished project of
+travelling through the most romantic woodlands of Servia. Suppose me
+then at the first streak of dawn, in the beginning of August, 1844,
+hurrying after the large wheelbarrow which carries the luggage of the
+temporary guests of the Queen of England at Pesth to the steamer lying
+just below the long bridge of boats that connects the quiet sombre
+bureaucratic Ofen with the noisy, bustling, movement-loving new city,
+which has sprung up as it were by enchantment on the opposite side of
+the water. I step on board--the signal is given for starting--the
+lofty and crimson-peaked Bloxberg--the vine-clad hill that produces
+the fiery Ofener wine, and the long and graceful quay, form, as it
+were, a fine peristrephic panorama, as the vessel wheels round, and,
+prow downwards, commences her voyage for the vast and curious East,
+while the Danubian tourist bids a dizzy farewell to this last snug
+little centre of European civilization. We hurry downwards towards the
+frontiers of Turkey, but nature smiles not,--We have on our left the
+dreary steppe of central Hungary, and on our right the low distant
+hills of Baranya. Alas! this is not the Danube of Passau, and Lintz,
+and Molk, and Theben. But now the Drave pours her broad waters into
+the great artery. The right shore soon becomes somewhat bolder, and
+agreeably wooded hills enliven the prospect. This little mountain
+chain is the celebrated Frusca Gora, the stronghold of the Servian
+language, literature, and nationality on the Austrian aide of the
+Save.
+
+A few days after my arrival, Wucics and Petronievitch, the two pillars
+of the party of Kara Georgevitch, the reigning prince, and the
+opponents of the ousted Obrenovitch family, returned from banishment
+in consequence of communications that had passed between the British
+and Russian governments. Great preparations were made to receive the
+popular favourites.
+
+One morning I was attracted to the window, and saw an immense flock of
+sheep slowly paraded along, their heads being decorated with ribbons,
+followed by oxen, with large citrons stuck on the tips of their horns.
+
+One vender of shawls and carpets had covered all the front of his shop
+with his gaudy wares, in order to do honour to the patriots, and at
+the same time to attract the attention of purchasers.
+
+The tolling of the cathedral bell announced the approach of the
+procession, which was preceded by a long train of rustic cavaliers,
+noble, vigorous-looking men. Standing at the balcony, we missed the
+sight of the heroes of the day, who had gone round by other streets.
+We, therefore, went to the cathedral, where all the principal persons
+in Servia were assembled. One old man, with grey, filmy, lack-lustre
+eyes, pendant jaws, and white beard, was pointed out to me as a
+centenarian witness of this national manifestation.
+
+The grand screen, which in the Greek churches veils the sanctuary from
+the vulgar gaze, was hung with rich silks, and on a raised platform,
+covered with carpets, stood the archbishop, a dignified
+high-priest-looking figure, with crosier in hand, surrounded by his
+deacons in superbly embroidered robes. The huzzas of the populace grew
+louder as the procession approached the cathedral, a loud and
+prolonged buzz of excited attention accompanied the opening of the
+grand central portal, and Wucics and Petronievitch, grey with the dust
+with which the immense cavalcade had besprinkled them, came forward,
+kissed the cross and gospels, which the archbishop presented to them,
+and, kneeling down, returned thanks for their safe restoration. On
+regaining their legs, the archbishop advanced to the edge of the
+platform, and began a discourse describing the grief the nation had
+experienced at their departure, the universal joy for their return,
+and the hope that they would ever keep peace and union in view in all
+matters of state, and that in their duties to the state they must
+never forget their responsibility to the Most High.
+
+Wucics, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian
+peasant, heard with a reverential inclination of the head the
+elegantly polished discourse of the gold-bedizened prelate, but nought
+relaxed one single muscle of that adamantine visage; the finer but
+more luminous features of Petronievitch were evidently under the
+control of a less powerful will. At certain passages of the discourse,
+his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons then prayed
+successively for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and the prince.
+
+And now uprose from every tongue, and every heart, a hymn for the
+longevity of Wucics and Petronievitch. "The solemn song for many days"
+is the expressive title of this sublime chant. This hymn is so old
+that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of Christianity in the
+East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be beyond the ravages of
+time, and the caprices of convention.
+
+The procession then returned, the band playing the Wucics march, to
+the houses of the two heroes of the day.
+
+We dined; and just as dessert appeared the whiz of a rocket announced
+the commencement of fire-works. As most of us had seen the splendid
+bouquet of rockets, which, during the fetes of July, amuse the
+Parisians, we entertained slender expectations of being pleased with
+an illumination at Belgrade. On going out, however, the scene proved
+highly interesting. In the grand square were two columns _a la
+Vicentina_, covered with lamps. One side of the square was illuminated
+with the word Wucics, and the other with the word Avram in colossal
+letters. At a later period of the evening the downs were covered with
+fires roasting innumerable sheep and oxen, a custom which seems in all
+countries to accompany popular rejoicing.
+
+I had never seen a Servian full-dress ball, but the arrival of Wucics
+and Petronievitch procured me the opportunity of witnessing an
+entertainment of this description. The principal apartment in the new
+Konak, built by prince Michael, was the ball-room, which, by eight
+o'clock, was filled, as the phrase goes, by all "the rank and fashion"
+of Belgrade. Senators of the old school, in their benishes and
+shalwars, and senators of the new school in pantaloons and stiff
+cravats. As Servia has become, morally speaking, Europe's youngest
+daughter, this is all very well: but I must ever think that in the
+article of dress this innovation is not an improvement. I hope that
+the ladies of Servia will never reject their graceful national
+costume for the shifting modes and compressed waists of European
+capitals.
+
+No head-dress, that I have seen in the Levant, is better calculated to
+set off beauty than that of the ladies of Servia. From a small Greek
+fez they suspend a gold tassel, which contrasts with the black and
+glossy hair, which is laid smooth and flat down the temple. Even now,
+while I write, memory piques me with the graceful toss of the head,
+and the rustle of the yellow satin gown of the sister of the princess,
+who was admitted to be the handsomest woman in the room, and with her
+tunic of crimson velvet embroidered in gold, and faced with sable,
+would have been, in her strictly indigenous costume, the queen of any
+fancy ball in old Europe.
+
+Wucics and Petronievitch were of course received with shouts and
+clapping of hands, and took the seats prepared for them at the upper
+end of the hall. The Servian national dance was then performed, being
+a species of cotillion in alternate quick and slow movements.
+
+I need not repeat the other events of the evening; how forms and
+features were passed in review; how the jewelled, smooth-skinned,
+doll-like beauties usurped the admiration of the minute, and how the
+indefinably sympathetic air of less pretentious belles prolonged their
+magnetic sway to the close of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Holman, the Blind Traveller.--Milutinovich, the Poet.--Bulgarian
+Legend.--Tableau de genre.--Departure for the Interior.
+
+
+Belgrade, unlike other towns on the Danube, is much less visited by
+Europeans, since the introduction of steam navigation, than it was
+previously. Servia used to be the _porte cochere_ of the East; and
+most travellers, both before and since the lively Lady Mary Wortley
+Montague, took the high road to Constantinople by Belgrade, Sofia,
+Philippopoli, and Adrianople. No mere tourist would now-a-days think
+of undertaking the fatiguing ride across European Turkey, when he can
+whizz past Widdin and Roustchouk, and even cut off the grand tongue at
+the mouth of the Danube, by going in an omnibus from Czernovoda to
+Kustendgi; consequently the arrival of an English traveller from the
+interior, is a somewhat rare occurrence.
+
+One day I was going out at the gateway, and saw a strange figure, with
+a long white beard and a Spanish cap, mounted on a sorry horse, and at
+once recognized it to be that of Holman, the blind traveller.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Holman?" said I.
+
+"I know that voice well."
+
+"I last saw you in Aleppo," said I; and he at once named me.
+
+I then got him off his horse, and into quarters.
+
+This singular individual had just come through the most dangerous
+parts of Bosnia in perfect safety; a feat which a blind man can
+perform more easily than one who enjoys the most perfect vision; for
+all compassionate and assist a fellow-creature in this deplorable
+plight.
+
+Next day I took Mr. Holman through the town, and described to him the
+lions of Belgrade; and taking a walk on the esplanade, I turned his
+face to the cardinal points of the compass, successively explaining
+the objects lying in each direction, and, after answering a few of his
+cross questions, the blind traveller seemed to know as much of
+Belgrade as was possible for a person in his condition.
+
+He related to me, that since our meeting at Aleppo, he had visited
+Damascus and other eastern cities; and at length, after sundry
+adventures, had arrived on the Adriatic, and visited the Vladika of
+Montenegro, who had given him a good reception. He then proceeded
+through Herzegovina and Bosnia to Seraievo, where he passed three
+days, and he informed me that from Seraievo to the frontiers of Servia
+was nearly all forest, with here and there the skeletons of robbers
+hung up in chains.
+
+Mr. Holman subsequently went, as I understood, to Wallachia and
+Transylvania.
+
+Having delayed my departure for the interior, in order to witness the
+national festivities, nothing remained but the purgatory of
+preparation, the squabbling about the hire of horses, the purchase of
+odds and ends for convenience on the road, for no such thing as a
+canteen is to be had at Belgrade. Some persons recommended my hiring a
+Turkish Araba; but as this is practicable only on the regularly
+constructed roads, I should have lost the sight of the most
+picturesque regions, or been compelled to take my chance of getting
+horses, and leaving my baggage behind. To avoid this inconvenience, I
+resolved to perform the whole journey on horseback.
+
+The government showed me every attention, and orders were sent by the
+minister of the interior to all governors, vice-governors, and
+employes, enjoining them to furnish me with every assistance, and
+communicate whatever information I might desire; to which, as the
+reader will see in the sequel, the fullest effect was given by those
+individuals.
+
+On the day of departure, a tap was heard at the door, and enter Holman
+to bid me good-bye. Another tap at the door, and enter Milutinovich,
+who is the best of the living poets of Servia, and has been sometimes
+called the Ossian of the Balkan. As for his other pseudonyme, "the
+Homer of a hundred sieges," that must have been invented by Mr. George
+Robins, the Demosthenes of "_one_ hundred rostra." The reading public
+in Servia is not yet large enough to enable a man of letters to live
+solely by his works; so our bard has a situation in the ministry of
+public instruction. One of the most remarkable compositions of
+Milutinovich is an address to a young surgeon, who, to relieve the
+poet from difficulties, expended in the printing of his poems a sum
+which he had destined for his own support at a university, in order to
+obtain his degree.
+
+Now, it may not be generally known that one of the oldest legends of
+Bulgaria is that of "Poor Lasar," which runs somewhat thus:--
+
+"The day departed, and the stranger came, as the moon rose on the
+silver snow. 'Welcome,' said the poor Lasar to the stranger;
+'Luibitza, light the faggot, and prepare the supper.'
+
+"Luibitza answered: 'The forest is wide, and the lighted faggot burns
+bright, but where is the supper? Have we not fasted since yesterday?'
+
+"Shame and confusion smote the heart of poor Lasar.
+
+"'Art thou a Bulgarian,' said the stranger, 'and settest not food
+before thy guest?'
+
+"Poor Lasar looked in the cupboard, and looked in the garret, nor
+crumb, nor onion, were found in either. Shame and confusion smote the
+heart of poor Lasar.
+
+"'Here is fat and fair flesh,' said the stranger, pointing to Janko,
+the curly-haired boy. Luibitza shrieked and fell. 'Never,' said Lasar,
+'shall it be said that a Bulgarian was wanting to his guest,' He
+seized a hatchet, and Janko was slaughtered as a lamb. Ah, who can
+describe the supper of the stranger!
+
+"Lasar fell into a deep sleep, and at midnight he heard the stranger
+cry aloud, 'Arise, Lasar, for I am the Lord thy God; the hospitality
+of Bulgaria is untarnished. Thy son Janko is restored to life, and thy
+stores are filled.'
+
+"Long lived the rich Lasar, the fair Luibitza, and the curly-haired
+Janko."
+
+Milutinovich, in his address to the youthful surgeon, compares his
+transcendent generosity to the sacrifice made by Lasar in the wild and
+distasteful legend I have here given.
+
+I introduced the poet and the traveller to each other, and explained
+their respective merits and peculiarities. Poor old Milutinovich, who
+looked on his own journey to Montenegro as a memorable feat, was
+awe-struck when I mentioned the innumerable countries in the four
+quarters of the world which had been visited by the blind traveller.
+He immediately recollected of having read an account of him in the
+Augsburg Gazette, and with a reverential simplicity begged me to
+convey to him his desire to kiss, his beard. Holman consented with a
+smile, and Milutinovich, advancing as if he were about to worship a
+deity, lifted the peak of white hairs from the beard of the aged
+stranger, pressed them to his lips, and prayed aloud that he might
+return to his home in safety.
+
+In old Europe, Milutinovich would have been called an actor; but his
+deportment, if it had the originality, had also the childish
+simplicity of nature.
+
+When the hour of departure arrived, I descended to the court yard,
+which would have furnished good materials for a _tableau de genre_, a
+lofty, well built, German-looking house, rising on three sides,
+surrounded a most rudely paved court, which was inclosed on the fourth
+by a stable and hay-loft, not one-third the height of the rest.
+Various mustachioed _far niente_ looking figures, wrapped _cap-a-pie_
+in dressing gowns, lolled out of the first floor corridor, and smoked
+their chibouques with unusual activity, while the ground floor was
+occupied by German washer-women and their soap-suds; three of the
+arcades being festooned with shirts and drawers hung up to dry, and
+stockings, with apertures at the toes and heels for the free
+circulation of the air. Loud exclamations, and the sound of the click
+of balls, proceeded from the large archway, on which a cafe opened. In
+the midst of the yard stood our horses, which, with their heavily
+padded and high cantelled Turkish saddles, somewhat _a la
+Wouvermans_, were held by Fonblanque's robust Pandour in his crimson
+jacket and white fustanella. My man Paul gave a smack of the whip, and
+off we cantered for the highlands and woodlands of Servia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Journey to Shabatz.--Resemblance of Manners to those of the Middle
+Ages.--Palesh.--A Servian Bride.--Blind
+Minstrel.--Gypsies.--Macadamized Road.
+
+
+The immediate object of my first journey was Shabatz; the second town
+in Servia, which is situated further up the Save than Belgrade, and is
+thus close upon the frontier of Bosnia. We consequently had the river
+on our right hand all the way. After five hours' travelling, the
+mountains, which hung back as long as we were in the vicinity of
+Belgrade, now approached, and draped in forest green, looked down on
+the winding Save and the pinguid flats of the Slavonian frontier. Just
+before the sun set, we wound by a circuitous road to an eminence
+which, projected promontory-like into the river's course. Three rude
+crosses were planted on a steep, not unworthy the columnar harmony of
+Grecian marble.
+
+When it was quite dark, we arrived at the Colubara, and passed the
+ferry which, during the long Servian revolution, was always considered
+a post of importance, as commanding a communication between Shabatz
+and the capital. An old man accompanied us, who was returning to his
+native place on the frontiers of Bosnia, having gone to welcome Wucics
+and Petronievitch. He amused me by asking me "if the king of my
+country lived in a strong castle?" I answered, "No, we have a queen,
+whose strength is in the love of all her subjects." Indeed, it is
+impossible to travel in the interior of Turkey without having the mind
+perpetually carried back to the middle ages by a thousand quaint
+remarks and circumstances, inseparable from the moral and political
+constitution of a half civilized and quasi-federal empire. For, in
+nearly all the mountainous parts of Turkey, the power of the
+government is almost nominal, and even up to a very recent period the
+position of the Dere Beys savoured strongly of feudalism.
+
+We arrived at Palesh, the khan of which looked like a new coffee-shop
+in a Turkish bazaar, and I thought that we should have a sorry night's
+quarters; but mine host, leading the way with a candle up a ladder,
+and though a trap-door, put us into a clean newly-carpeted room, and
+in an hour the boy entered with Turkish wash-hand apparatus; and after
+ablution the khan keeper produced supper, consisting of soup, which
+contained so much lemon juice, that, without a wry face, I could
+scarcely eat it--boiled lamb, from which the soup had been made, and
+then a stew of the same with Tomata sauce. A bed was then spread out
+on the floor _a la turque_, which was rather hard; but as the sheets
+were snowy white, I reckoned myself very lucky.
+
+I must say that there is a degree of cleanliness within doors, which I
+had been led to consider as somewhat foreign to the habits of Slaavic
+populations. The lady of the Austrian consul-general in Belgrade told
+me that she was struck with the propriety of the dwellings of the
+poor, as contrasted with those in Galicia, where she had resided for
+many years; and every traveller in Germany is struck with the
+difference which exists between the villages of Bohemia and those in
+Saxony, and other adjacent German provinces.
+
+From Palesh we started with fine weather for Skela, through a
+beautifully wooded park, some fields being here and there inclosed
+with wattling. Skela is a new ferry on the Save, to facilitate the
+communication with Austria.
+
+Near here are redoubts, where Kara Georg, the father of the reigning
+prince, held out during the disasters of 1813, until all the women and
+children were transferred in safety to the Austrian territory. Here we
+met a very pretty girl, who, in answer to the salute of my
+fellow-travellers, bent herself almost to the earth. On asking the
+reason, I was told that she was a bride, whom custom compels, for a
+stated period, to make this humble reverence.
+
+We then came to the Skela, and seeing a large house within an
+enclosure, I asked what it was, and was told that it was the
+reconciliation-house, (_primiritelnj sud_,) a court of first instance,
+in which cases are decided by the village elders, without expense to
+the litigants, and beyond which suits are seldom carried to the higher
+courts. There is throughout all the interior of Servia a stout
+opposition to the nascent lawyer class in Belgrade. I have been more
+than once amused on hearing an advocate, greedy of practice, style
+this laudable economy and patriarchal simplicity--"Avarice and
+aversion from civilization." As it began to rain we entered a tavern,
+and ordered a fowl to be roasted, as the soup and stews of yester-even
+were not to my taste. A booby, with idiocy marked on his countenance,
+was lounging about the door, and when our mid-day meal was done I
+ordered the man to give him a glass of _slivovitsa_, as plum brandy is
+called. He then came forward, trembling, as if about to receive
+sentence of death, and taking off his greasy fez, said, "I drink to
+our prince Kara Georgovich, and to the progress and enlightenment of
+the nation." I looked with astonishment at the torn, wretched
+habiliments of this idiot swineherd. He was too stupid to entertain
+these sentiments himself; but this trifling circumstance was the
+feather which indicated how the wind blew. The Servians are by no
+means a nation of talkers; they are a serious people; and if the
+determination to rise were not in the minds of the people, it would
+not be on the lips of the baboon-visaged oaf of an insignificant
+hamlet.
+
+The rain now began to pour in torrents, so to make the most of it, we
+ordered another magnum of strong red wine, and procured from the
+neighbourhood a blind fiddler, who had acquired a local reputation.
+His instrument, the favourite one of Servia, is styled a _goosely_,
+being a testudo-formed viol; no doubt a relic of the antique, for the
+Servian monarchy derived all its arts from the Greeks of the Lower
+Empire. But the musical entertainment, in spite of the magnum of wine,
+and the jovial challenges of our fellow traveller from the Drina,
+threw me into a species of melancholy. The voice of the minstrel, and
+the tone of the instrument, were soft and melodious, but so
+profoundly plaintive as to be painful. The song described the
+struggle of Osman Bairactar with Michael, a Servian chief, and, as it
+was explained to me, called up successive images of a war of
+extermination, with its pyramids of ghastly trunkless heads, and
+fields of charcoal, to mark the site of some peaceful village, amid
+the blaze of which its inhabitants had wandered to an eternal home in
+the snows and trackless woods of the Balkan. When I looked out of the
+tavern window the dense vapours and torrents of rain did not elevate
+my spirits; and when I cast my eyes on the minstrel I saw a peasant,
+whose robust frame might have supported a large family, reduced by the
+privation of sight, to waste his best years in strumming on a
+monotonous viol for a few piastres.
+
+I flung him a gratuity, and begged him to desist.
+
+After musing an hour, I again ordered the horses, although it still
+rained, and set forth, the road being close to the river, at one part
+of which a fleet of decked boats were moored. I perceived that they
+were all navigated by Bosniac Moslems, one of whom, smoking his pipe
+under cover, wore the green turban of a Shereef; they were all loaded
+with raw produce, intended for sale at Belgrade or Semlin.
+
+The rain increasing, we took shelter in a wretched khan, with a mud
+floor, and a fire of logs blazing in the centre, the smoke escaping as
+it best could by the front and back doors. Gipsies and Servian
+peasants sat round it in a large circle; the former being at once
+recognizable, not only from their darker skins, but from their traits
+being finer than those of the Servian peasantry. The gipsies fought
+bravely against the Turks under Kara Georg, and are now for the most
+part settled, although politically separated from the rest of the
+community, and living under their own responsible head; but, as in
+other countries, they prefer horse dealing and smith's work to other
+trades.
+
+As there was no chance of the storm abating, I resolved to pass the
+night here on discovering that there was a separate room, which our
+host said he occasionally unlocked, for the better order of
+travellers: but as there was no bed, I had recourse to my carpet and
+pillow, for the expense of _Uebergewicht_ had deterred me from
+bringing a canteen and camp bed from England.
+
+Next morning, on waking, the sweet chirp of a bird, gently echoed in
+the adjoining woods, announced that the storm had ceased, and nature
+resumed her wonted calm. On arising, I went to the door, and the
+unclouded effulgence of dawn bursting through the dripping boughs and
+rain-bespangled leaves, seemed to realize the golden tree of the
+garden of the Abbassides. The road from this point to Shabatz was one
+continuous avenue of stately oaks--nature's noblest order of sylvan
+architecture; at some places, gently rising to views of the winding
+Save, with sun, sky, and freshening breeze to quicken the sensations,
+or falling into the dell, where the stream darkly pellucid, murmured
+under the sombre foliage.
+
+The road, as we approached Shabatz, proved to be macadamized in a
+certain fashion: a deep trench was dug on each side; stakes about a
+foot and a half high, interlaced with wicker-work, were stuck into the
+ground within the trench, and the road was then filled up with gravel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Shabatz.--A Provincial Chancery.--Servian Collector.--Description of
+his House.--Country Barber.--Turkish Quarter.--Self-taught Priest.--A
+Provincial Dinner.--Native Soiree.
+
+
+I entered Shabatz by a wide street, paved in some places with wood.
+The bazaars are all open, and Shabatz looks like a good town in
+Bulgaria. I saw very few shops with glazed fronts and counters in the
+European manner.
+
+I alighted at the principal khan, which had attached to it just such a
+cafe and billiard table as one sees in country towns in Hungary. How
+odd! to see the Servians, who here all wear the old Turkish costume,
+except the turban--immersed in the tactics of _carambolage_, skipping
+most gaily and un-orientally around the table, then balancing
+themselves on one leg, enveloped in enormous inexpressibles, bending
+low, and cocking the eye to catch the choicest bits.
+
+Surrendering our horses to the care of the khan keeper, I proceeded to
+the konak, or government house, to present my letters. This proved to
+be a large building, in the style of Constantinople, which, with its
+line of bow windows, and kiosk-fashioned rooms, surmounted with
+projecting roofs, might have passed muster on the Bosphorus.
+
+On entering, I was ushered into the office of the collector, to await
+his arrival, and, at a first glance, might have supposed myself in a
+formal Austrian kanzley.
+
+There were the flat desks, the strong boxes, and the shelves of coarse
+foolscap; but a pile of long chibouques, and a young man, with a
+slight Northumbrian burr, and Servian dress, showed that I was on the
+right bank of the Save.
+
+The collector now made his appearance, a roundly-built, serious,
+burgomaster-looking personage, who appeared as if one of Vander
+Helst's portraits had stepped out of the canvass, so closely does the
+present Servian dress resemble that of Holland, in the seventeenth
+century, in all but the hat.
+
+Having read the letter, he cleared his throat with a loud hem, and
+then said with great deliberation, "Gospody Ilia Garashanin informs me
+that having seen many countries, you also wish to see Servia, and that
+I am to show you whatever you desire to see, and obey whatever you
+choose to command; and now you are my guest while you remain here. Go
+you, Simo, to the khan," continued the collector, addressing a tall
+momk or pandour, who, armed to the teeth, stood with his hands crossed
+at the door, "and get the gentleman's baggage taken to my house.--I
+hope," added he, "you will be pleased with Shabatz; but you must not
+be critical, for we are still a rude people."
+
+_Author_. "Childhood must precede manhood; that is the order of
+nature."
+
+_Collector_. "Ay, ay, our birth was slow, and painful; Servia, as you
+say, is yet a child."
+
+_Author_. "Yes, but a stout, chubby, healthy child."
+
+A gleam of satisfaction produced a thaw of the collector's ice-bound
+visage, and, descending to the street, I accompanied him until we
+arrived at a house two stories high, which we entered by a wide new
+wooden gate, and then mounting a staircase, scrupulously clean, were
+shown into his principal room, which was surrounded by a divan _a la
+Turque_; but it had no carpet, so we went straight in with our boots
+on. A German chest of drawers was in one corner; the walls were plain
+white-washed, and so was a stove about six feet high; the only
+ornament of the room was a small snake moulding in the centre of the
+roof. Some oak chairs were ranged along the lower end of the room, and
+a table stood in the middle, covered with a German linen cloth,
+representing Pesth and Ofen; the Bloxberg being thrice as lofty as the
+reality, the genius of the artist having set it in the clouds. The
+steamer had a prow like a Roman galley, a stern like a royal yacht,
+and even the steam from the chimney described graceful volutes, with
+academic observance of the line of beauty.
+
+"We are still somewhat rude and un-European in Shabatz," said Gospody
+Ninitch, for such was the name in which the collector rejoiced.
+
+"Indeed," quoth I, sitting at my ease on the divan, "there is no room
+for criticism. The Turks now-a-days take some things from Europe; but
+Europe might do worse than adopt the divan more extensively; for,
+believe me, to an arriving traveller it is the greatest of all
+luxuries."
+
+Here the servants entered with chibouques. "I certainly think," said
+he, "that no one would smoke a cigar who could smoke a chibouque."
+
+"And no man would sit on an oak chair who could sit on a divan:" so
+the Gospody smiled and transferred his ample person to the still
+ampler divan.
+
+The barber now entered; for in the hurry of departure I had forgotten
+part of my toilette apparatus: but it was evident that I was the first
+Frank who had ever been under his razor; for when his operations were
+finished, he seized my comb, and began to comb my whiskers backwards,
+as if they had formed part of a Mussulman's beard. When I thought I
+was done with him, I resumed the conversation, but was speedily
+interrupted by something like a loud box on the ear, and, turning
+round my head, perceived that the cause of this sensation was the
+barber having, in his finishing touch, stuck an ivory ear-pick against
+my tympanum; but, calling for a wash-hand basin, I begged to be
+relieved from all further ministrations; so putting half a zwanziger
+on the face of the round pocket mirror which he proffered to me, he
+departed with a "_S'Bogom_," or, "God be with you."
+
+The collector now accompanied me on a walk through the Servian town,
+and emerging on a wide space, we discovered the fortress of Shabatz,
+which is the quarter in which the remaining Turks live, presenting a
+line of irregular trenches, of battered appearance, scarcely raised
+above the level of the surrounding country. The space between the
+town and the fortress is called the Shabatzko Polje, and in the time
+of the civil war was the scene of fierce combats. When the Save
+overflows in spring, it is generally under water.
+
+Crossing a ruinous wooden bridge over a wet ditch, we saw a rusty
+unserviceable brass cannon, which vain-gloriously assumed the
+prerogative of commanding the entrance. To the left, a citadel of four
+bastions, connected by a curtain, was all but a ruin.
+
+As we entered, a cafe, with bare walls and a few shabby Turks smoking
+in it, completed, along with the dirty street, a picture
+characteristic of the fallen fortunes of Islam in Servia.
+
+"There comes the cadi," said the collector, and I looked out for at
+least one individual with turban of fine texture, decent robes, and
+venerable appearance; but a man of gigantic stature, and rude aspect,
+wearing a grey peasant's turban, welcomed us with undignified
+cordiality. We followed him down the street, and sometimes crossing
+the mud on pieces of wood, sometimes "putting one's foot in it," we
+reached a savage-looking timber kiosk, and, mounting a ladder, seated
+ourselves on the window ledge.
+
+There flowed the Save in all its peaceful smoothness; looking out of
+the window, I perceived that the high rampart, on which the kiosk was
+constructed, was built at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the
+water, and that the intervening space was covered with boats, hauled
+up high and dry, and animated with the process of building and
+repairing the barges employed in the river trade. The kiosk, in which
+we were sitting, was a species of cafe, and it being Ramadan time, we
+were presented with sherbet by a kahwagi, who, to judge by his look,
+was a eunuch. I was afterwards told that the Turks remaining in the
+fortified town are so poor, that they had not a decent room to show me
+into.
+
+A Turk, about fifty years of age, now entered. His habiliments were
+somewhere between decent and shabby genteel, and his voice and manners
+had that distinguished gentleness which wins--because it feels--its
+way. This was the Disdar Aga, the last relic of the wealthy Turks of
+the place: for before the Servian revolution Shabatz had its twenty
+thousand Osmanlis; and a tract of gardens on the other side of the
+_Polje_, was pointed out as having been covered with the villas of the
+wealthy, which were subsequently burnt down.
+
+Our conversation was restricted to a few general observations, as
+other persons were present, but the Disdar Aga promised to call on me
+on the following day. I was asked if I had been in Seraievo.[2] I
+answered in the negative, but added, "I have heard so much of
+Seraievo, that I desire ardently to see it. But I am afraid of the
+Haiducks."[3]
+
+_Cadi_. "And not without reason; for Seraievo, with its delicious
+gardens, must be seen in summer. In winter the roads are free from
+haiducks, because they cannot hold out in the snow; but then Seraievo,
+having lost the verdure and foliage of its environs, ceases to be
+attractive, except in its bazaars, for they are without an equal."
+
+_Author_. "I always thought that the finest bazaar of Turkey in
+Europe, was that of Adrianople."
+
+_Cadi_. "Ay, but not equal to Seraievo; when you see the Bosniacs, in
+their cleanly apparel and splendid arms walking down the bazaar, you
+might think yourself in the serai of a sultan; then all the esnafs are
+in their divisions like regiments of Nizam."
+
+The Disdar Aga now accompanied me to the gate, and bidding me
+farewell, with graceful urbanity, re-entered the bastioned miniature
+citadel in which he lived almost alone. The history of this individual
+is singular: his family was cut to pieces in the dreadful scenes of
+1806; and, when a mere boy, he found himself a prisoner in the Servian
+camp. Being thus without protectors, he was adopted by Luka
+Lasarevitch, the valiant lieutenant of Kara Georg, and baptized as a
+Christian with the name of John, but having been reclaimed by the
+Turks on the re-conquest of Servia in 1813, he returned to the faith
+of his fathers.
+
+We now returned into the town, and there sat the same Luka
+Lasarevitch, now a merchant and town councillor, at the door of his
+warehouse, an octogenarian, with thirteen wounds on his body.
+
+Going home, I asked the collector if the Aga and Luka were still
+friends. "To this very day," said he, "notwithstanding the difference
+of religion, the Aga looks upon Luka as his father, and Luka looks
+upon the Aga as his son." To those who have lived in other parts of
+Turkey this account must appear very curious. I found that the Aga was
+as highly respected by the Christians as by the Turks, for his
+strictly honourable character.
+
+We now paid a visit to the Arch-priest, Iowan Paulovitch, a
+self-taught ecclesiastic: the room in which he received us was filled
+with books, mostly Servian; but I perceived among them German
+translations. On asking him if he had heard any thing of English
+literature, he showed me translations into German of Shakspeare,
+Young's Night Thoughts, and a novel of Bulwer. The Greek secular
+clergy marry; and in the course of conversation it came out that his
+son was one of the young Servians sent by the government to study
+mining-engineering, at Schemnitz, in Hungary. The Church of the
+Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, in which he officiates, was built in
+1828. I remarked that it had only a wooden bell tower, which had been
+afterwards erected in the church yard; no belfry existing in the
+building itself. The reason of this is, that, up to the period
+mentioned, the Servians were unaccustomed to have bells sounded.
+
+Our host provided most ample fare for supper, preceded by a glass of
+slivovitsa. We began with soup, rendered slightly acid with lemon
+juice, then came fowl, stewed with turnips and sugar. This was
+followed by pudding of almonds, raisins, and pancake. Roast capon
+brought up the rear. A white wine of the country was served during
+supper, but along with dessert we had a good red wine of Negotin,
+served in Bohemian coloured glasses. I have been thus minute on the
+subject of food, for the dinners I ate at Belgrade I do not count as
+Servian, having been all in the German fashion.
+
+The wife of the collector sat at dinner, but at the foot of the table;
+a position characteristic of that of women in Servia--midway between
+the graceful precedence of Europe and the contemptuous exclusion of
+the East.
+
+After hand-washing, we returned to the divan, and while pipes and
+coffee were handed round, a noise in the court yard denoted a visiter,
+and a middle-aged man, with embroidered clothes, and silver-mounted
+pistols in his girdle, entered. This was the Natchalnik, or local
+governor, who had come from his own village, two hours off, to pay his
+visit; he was accompanied by the two captains under his command, one
+of whom was a military dandy. His ample girdle was richly embroidered,
+out of which projected silver-mounted old fashioned pistols. His
+crimson shaksheers were also richly embroidered, and the corner of a
+gilt flowered cambric pocket handkerchief showed itself at his breast.
+His companion wore a different aspect, with large features, dusky in
+tint as those of a gipsy, and dressed in plain coarse blue clothes. He
+was presented to me as a man who had grown from boyhood to manhood to
+the tune of the whistling bullets of Kara Georg and his Turkish
+opponents. After the usual salutations, the Natchalnik began--
+
+"We have heard that Gospody Wellington has received from the English
+nation an estate for his distinguished services."
+
+_Author_. "That is true; but the presentation took place a great many
+years ago."
+
+_Natch_. "What is the age of Gospody Wellington?"
+
+_Author_. "About seventy-five. He was born in 1769, the year in which
+Napoleon and Mohammed Ali first saw the light."
+
+This seemed to awaken the interest of the party.
+
+The roughly-clad trooper drew in his chair, and leaning his elbow on
+his knees, opened wide a pair of expectant eyes; the Natchalnik, after
+a long puff of his pipe, said, with some magisterial decision, "That
+was a moment when nature had her sleeves tucked up. I think our Kara
+Georg must also have been born about that time."
+
+_Natch_. "Is Gospody Wellington still in service?"
+
+_Author_. "Yes; he is commander-in-chief."
+
+_Natch_. "Well, God grant that his sons, and his sons' sons, may
+render as great services to the nation."
+
+Our conversation was prolonged to a late hour in the evening, in which
+a variety of anecdotes were related of the ingenious methods employed
+by Milosh to fill his coffers as rapidly as possible.
+
+Mine host, taking a candle, then led me to my bedroom, a small
+carpeted apartment, with a German bed; the coverlet was of green
+satin, quilted, and the sheets were clean and fragrant; and I
+observed, that they were striped with an alternate fine and coarse
+woof.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: The capital of Bosnia, a large and beautiful city, which
+is often called the Damascus of the North.]
+
+[Footnote 3: In this part of Turkey in Europe robbers, as well as
+rebels, are called Haiducks: like the caterans of the Highlands of
+Scotland, they were merely held to be persons at war with the
+authority: and in the Servian revolution, patriots, rebels, and
+robbers, were confounded in the common term of Haiducks.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Kaimak.--History of a Renegade.--A Bishop's house.--Progress of
+Education.--Portrait of Milosh.--Bosnia and the Bosniacs.--Moslem
+Fanaticism.--Death of the Collector.
+
+
+The fatigues of travelling procured me a sound sleep. I rose
+refreshed, and proceeded into the divan. The hostess then came
+forward, and before I could perceive, or prevent her object, she
+kissed my hand. "Kako se spavali; Dobro?"--"How have you slept? I hope
+you are refreshed," and other kindly inquiries followed on, while she
+took from the hand of an attendant a silver salver, on which was a
+glass of slivovitsa, a plate of rose marmalade, and a large Bohemian
+cut crystal globular goblet of water, the contents of which, along
+with a chibouque, were the prelude to breakfast, which consisted of
+coffee and toast, and instead of milk we had rich boiled kaimak, as
+Turkish clotted cream is called.
+
+I have always been surprised to find that this undoubted luxury, which
+is to be found in every town in Turkey, should be unknown throughout
+the greater part of Europe. After comfortably smoking another
+chibouque, and chatting about Shabatz and the Shabatzians, the
+collector informed me that the time was come for returning the visit
+of the Natchalnik, and paying that of the Bishop.
+
+The Natchalnik received us in the Konak of Gospody Iefrem, the brother
+of Milosh, and our interview was in no respect different from a usual
+Turkish visit. We then descended to the street; the sun an hour before
+its meridian shone brightly, but the centre of the broad street was
+very muddy, from the late rain; so we picked our steps with some care,
+until we arrived in the vicinity of the bridge, when I perceived the
+eunuch-looking coffee-keeper navigating the slough, accompanied by a
+Mussulman in a red checked shawl turban.--"Here is a man that wishes
+to make your acquaintance," said Eunuch-face.--"I heard you were
+paying visits yesterday in the Turkish quarter," said the strange
+figure, saluting me. I returned the salute, and addressed him in
+Arabic; he answered in a strong Egyptian accent. However, as the depth
+of the surrounding mud, and the glare of the sun, rendered a further
+colloquy somewhat inconvenient, we postponed our meeting until the
+evening. On our way to the Bishop, I asked the collector what that man
+was doing there.
+
+_Collector_. "His history is a singular one. You yesterday saw a Turk,
+who was baptized, and then returned to Islamism. This is a Servian,
+who turned Turk thirty years ago, and now wishes to be a Christian
+again. He has passed most of that time in the distant parts of Turkey,
+and has children grown up and settled there. He has come to me
+secretly, and declares his desire to be a Christian again; but he is
+afraid the Turks will kill him."
+
+_Author_. "Has he been long here?"
+
+_Collector_. "Two months. He went first into the Turkish town; and
+having incurred their suspicions, he left them, and has now taken up
+his quarters in the khan, with a couple of horses and a servant."
+
+_Author_. "What does he do?"
+
+_Collector_. "He pretends to be a doctor, and cures the people; but he
+generally exacts a considerable sum before prescribing, and he has had
+disputes with people who say that they are not healed so quickly as
+they expect."
+
+_Author_. "Do you think he is sincere in wishing to be a Christian
+again?"
+
+_Collector_. "God knows. What can one think of a man who has changed
+his religion, but that no dependence can be placed on him? The Turks
+are shy of him."
+
+We had now arrived at the house of the Bishop, and were shown into a
+well-carpeted room, in the old Turkish style, with the roof gilded and
+painted in dark colours, and an un-artistlike panorama of
+Constantinople running round the cornice. I seated myself on an
+old-fashioned, wide, comfortable divan, with richly embroidered, but
+somewhat faded cushions, and, throwing off my shoes, tucked my legs
+comfortably under me.
+
+"This house," said the collector, "is a relic of old Shabatz; most of
+the other houses of this class were burnt down. You see no German
+furniture here; tell me whether you prefer the Turkish style, or the
+European."
+
+_Author_. "In warm weather give me a room of this kind, where the sun
+is excluded, and where one can loll at ease, and smoke a narghile; but
+in winter I like to see a blazing fire, and to hear the music of a
+tea-urn."
+
+The Bishop now entered, and we advanced to the door to meet him. I
+bowed low, and the rest of the company kissed his hand; he was a
+middle sized man, of about sixty, but frail from long-continued ill
+health, dressed in a furred pelisse, a dark blue body robe, and Greek
+ecclesiastical cap of velvet, while from a chain hung round his neck
+was suspended the gold cross, distinctive of his rank. The usual
+refreshments of coffee, sweetmeats, &c. were brought in, not by
+servants, but by ecclesiastical novices.
+
+_Bishop_. "I think I have seen you before?"
+
+_Author_. "Indeed, you have: I met your reverence at the house of
+Gospody Ilia in Belgrade."
+
+_Bishop_. "Ay, ay," (trying to recollect;) "my memory sometimes fails
+me since my illness. Did you stay long at Belgrade?"
+
+_Author_. "I remained to witness the cathedral service for the return
+of Wucics and Petronievitch. I assure you I was struck with the
+solemnity of the scene, and the deportment of the archbishop. As I do
+not understand enough of Servian, his speech was translated to me word
+for word, and it seems to me that he has the four requisites of an
+orator,--a commanding presence, a pleasing voice, good thoughts, and
+good language."
+
+We then talked of education, on which the Bishop said, "The civil and
+ecclesiastical authorities go hand in hand in the work. When I was a
+young man, a great proportion of the youth could neither read nor
+write: thanks to our system of national education, in a few years the
+peasantry will all read. In the towns the sons of those inhabitants
+who are in easy circumstances, are all learning German, history, and
+other branches preparatory to the course of the Gymnasium of Belgrade,
+which is the germ of a university."
+
+_Author_. "I hope it will prosper; the Slaavs of the middle ages did
+much for science."[4]
+
+_Bishop_. "I assure you times are greatly changed with us; the general
+desire for education surprises and delights me."
+
+We now took our leave of the Bishop, and on our way homewards called
+at a house which contained portraits of Kara Georg, Milosh, Michael,
+Alexander, and other personages who have figured in Servian history. I
+was much amused with that of Milosh, which was painted in oil,
+altogether without _chiaro scuro_; but his decorations, button holes,
+and even a large mole on his cheek, were done with the most painful
+minuteness. In his left hand he held a scroll, on which was inscribed
+_Ustav_, or Constitution, his right hand was partly doubled a la
+finger post; it pointed significantly to the said scroll, the
+forefinger being adorned with a large diamond ring.
+
+On arriving at the collector's house, I found the Aga awaiting me.
+This man inspired me with great interest. I looked upon him, residing
+in his lone tower, the last of a once wealthy and powerful race now
+steeped in poverty, as a sort of master of Ravenswood in a Wolf's
+crag. At first he was bland and ceremonious; but on learning that I
+had lived long in the interior of society in Damascus and Aleppo, and
+finding that the interest with which he inspired me was real and not
+assumed, he became expansive without lapsing into familiarity, and
+told me his sad tale, which I would place at the service of the gentle
+reader, could I forget the stronger allegiance I owe to the
+unsolicited confidence of an unfortunate stranger.
+
+When I spoke of the renegade, he pretended not to know whom I meant;
+but I saw, by a slight unconscious wink of his eye, that knowing him
+too well, he wished to see and hear no more of him. As he was rising
+to take leave, a step was heard creaking on the stairs, and on turning
+in the direction of the door, I saw the red and white checked turban
+of the renegade emerging from the banister; but no sooner did he
+perceive the Aga, than, turning round again, down went the red checked
+turban out of sight.
+
+When the Aga was gone, the collector gave me a significant look, and,
+knocking the ashes out of his pipe into a plate on the floor, said,
+"Changed times, changed times, poor fellow; his salary is only 250
+piastres a month, and his relations used to be little kings in
+Shabatz; but the other fellows in the Turkish quarter, although so
+wretchedly poor that they have scarcely bread to eat, are as proud and
+insolent as ever."
+
+_Author_. "What is the reason of that?"
+
+_Collector_. "Because they are so near the Bosniac frontier, where
+there is a large Moslem population. The Moslems of Shabatz pay no
+taxes, either to the Servian government or the sultan, for they are
+accounted _Redif_, or Militia, for which they receive a ducat a year
+from the sultan, as a returning fee. The Christian peasants here are
+very rich; some of them have ten and twenty thousand ducats buried
+under the earth; but these impoverished Bosniacs in the fortress are
+as proud and insolent as ever."
+
+_Author_. "You say Bosniacs! Are they not Turks?"
+
+_Collector_. "No, the only Turks here are the Aga and the Cadi; all
+the rest are Bosniacs, the descendants of men of our own race and
+language, who on the Turkish invasion accepted Islamism, but retained
+the language, and many Christian customs, such as saints' days,
+Christian names, and in most cases monogamy."
+
+_Author_. "That is very curious; then, perhaps, as they are not full
+Moslems, they may be more tolerant of Christians."
+
+_Collector_. "The very reverse. The Bosniac Christians are not half so
+well off as the Bulgarians, who have to deal with the real Turks. The
+arch-priest will be here to dinner, and he will be able to give you
+some account of the Bosniac Christians. But Bosnia is a beautiful
+country; how do you intend to proceed from here?"
+
+_Author_. "I intend to go to Vallievo and Ushitza."
+
+_Collector_. "He that leaves Servia without seeing Sokol, has seen
+nothing."
+
+_Author_. "What is to be seen at Sokol?"
+
+_Collector_. "The most wonderful place in the world, a perfect eagle's
+eyrie. A whole town and castle built on the capital of a column of
+rock."
+
+_Author_. "But I did not contemplate going there; so I must change my
+route: I took no letters for that quarter."
+
+_Collector_. "Leave all that to me; you will first go to Losnitza, on
+the banks of the Drina, and I will despatch a messenger to-night,
+apprising the authorities of your approach. When you have seen Sokol,
+you will admit that it was worth the journey."
+
+The renegade having seen the Aga clear off, now came to pay his visit,
+and the normal good-nature of the collector procured him a tolerant
+welcome. When we were left alone, the renegade began by abusing the
+Moslems in the fortress as a set of scoundrels. "I could not live an
+hour longer among such rascals," said he, "and I am now in the khan
+with my servant and a couple of horses, where you must come and see
+me. I will give you as good a pipe of Djebel tobacco as ever you
+smoked."
+
+_Author_. "You must excuse me, I must set out on my travels to-morrow.
+You were in Egypt, I believe."
+
+_Renegade_. "I was long there; my two sons, and a married daughter,
+are in Cairo to this day."
+
+_Author_. "What do they do?"
+
+_Renegade_. "My daughter is married, and I taught my sons all I know
+of medicine, and they practise it in the old way."
+
+_Author_. "Where did you study?"
+
+_Renegade_ (tossing his head and smiling). "Here, and there, and
+everywhere. I am no Ilekim Bashi; but I have an ointment that heals
+all bruises and sores in an incredibly short space of time."
+
+Me gave a most unsatisfactory account of his return to Turkey in
+Europe; first to Bosnia, or Herzegovina, where he was, or pretended to
+be, physician to Husreff Mehmed Pasha, and then to Seraievo. When we
+spoke of Hafiz Pasha, of Belgrade, he said, "I know him well, but he
+does not know me; I recollect him at Carpout and Diarbecr before
+the battle of Nisib, when he had thirty or forty pashas under him. He
+could shoot at a mark, or ride, with the youngest man in the army."
+
+The collector now re-entered with the Natchalnik and his captains, and
+the renegade took his leave, I regretting that I had not seen more of
+him; for a true recital of his adventures must have made an amusing
+chapter.
+
+"Here is the captain, who is to escort you to Ushitza," said the
+Natchalnik, pointing to a muscular man at his left. "He will take you
+safe and sound."
+
+_Author_. "I see he is a stout fellow. I would rather have him for a
+friend than meet him as an enemy. He has the face of an honest man,
+too."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I warrant you as safe in his custody, as if you were in
+that of Gospody Wellington."
+
+_Author_. "You may rest assured that if I were in the custody of the
+Duke of Wellington, I should not reckon myself very safe. One of his
+offices is to take care of a tower, in which the Queen locks up
+traitorous subjects. Did you never hear of the Tower of London?"
+
+_Natchalnik_. "No; all we know of London is the wonderful bridge that
+goes under the water, where an army can pass from one side to the
+other, while the fleet lies anchored over their heads."
+
+The Natchalnik now bid me farewell, and I gave my rendezvous to the
+captain for next morning. During the discussion of dinner, the
+arch-priest gave us an illustration of Bosniac fanaticism: A few
+months ago a church at Belina was about to be opened, which had been a
+full year in course of building, by virtue of a Firman of the Sultan;
+the Moslems murmuring, but doing nothing. When finished, the Bishop
+went to consecrate it; but two hours after sunset, an immense mob of
+Moslems, armed with pickaxes and shovels, rased it to the ground,
+having first taken the Cross and Gospels and thrown them into a
+latrina. The Bishop complained to the Mutsellim, who imprisoned one or
+two of them, exacted a fine, which he put in his own pocket, and let
+them out next day; the ruins of the Church remain _in statu quo_.
+
+The collector now produced some famous wine, that had been eleven
+years in bottle. We were unusually merry, and fell into toasts and
+speeches. I felt as if I had been his intimate friend for years, for
+he had not one atom of Levantine "humbug" in his composition. Poor
+fellow, little did he think, that in a few short weeks from this
+period his blood would flow as freely as the wine which he poured into
+my cup.
+
+Next morning, on awaking, all the house was in a bustle: the sun shone
+brightly on the green satin coverlet of my bed, and a tap at the door
+announced the collector, who entered in his dressing gown with the
+apparatus of brandy and sweetmeats, and joined his favourable augury
+to mine for the day's journey.
+
+"You will have a rare journey," said the collector; "the country is a
+garden, the weather is clear, and neither hot nor cold. The nearer you
+get to Bosnia, the more beautiful is the landscape."
+
+We each drank a thimbleful of slivovitsa, he to my prosperous journey,
+while I proposed health and long life to him; but, as the sequel
+showed, "_l'homme propose, et Dieu dispose_." After breakfast, I bade
+Madame Ninitch adieu, and descended to the court-yard, where two
+carriages of the collector awaited us, our horses being attached
+behind.
+
+And now an eternal farewell to the worthy collector. At this time a
+conspiracy was organized by the Obrenowitch faction, through the
+emigrants residing in Hungary. They secretly furnished themselves
+with thirty-four or thirty-five hussar uniforms at Pesth, bought
+horses, and having bribed the Austrian frontier guard, passed the Save
+with a trumpeter about a month after this period, and entering
+Shabatz, stated that a revolution had broken out at Belgrade, that
+prince Kara Georgevitch was murdered, and Michael proclaimed, with the
+support of the cabinets of Europe! The affrighted inhabitants knew not
+what to believe, and allowed the detachment to ride through the town.
+Arrived at the government-house, the collector issued from the porch,
+to ask what they wanted, and received for answer a pistol-shot, which
+stretched him dead on the spot. The soi-disant Austrian hussars
+subsequently attempted to raise the country, but, failing in this,
+were nearly all taken and executed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 4: The first University in Europe was that of Prague. It was
+established some years before the University of Paris, if I recollect
+right.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The Banat of Matchva.--Losnitza.--Feuds on the Frontier.--Enter the
+Back-woods.--Convent of Tronosha.--Greek Festival.--Congregation of
+Peasantry.--Rustic Finery.
+
+
+Through the richest land, forming part of the ancient banat of
+Matchva, which was in the earlier periods of Servian and Hungarian
+history so often a source of conflict and contention, we approached
+distant grey hills, which gradually rose from the horizon, and, losing
+their indistinctness, revealed a chain so charmingly accidented, that
+I quickened my pace, as if about to enter a fairy region. Thick turf
+covered the pasture lands; the old oak and the tender sapling
+diversified the plain. Some clouds hung on the horizon, whose
+delicate lilac and fawn tints, forming a harmonizing contrast with the
+deep deep blue of the heavens, showed the transparency of the
+atmosphere, and brought healthful elevation of spirits. Even the
+brutes bespoke the harmony of creation; for, singular to say, we saw
+several crows perched on the backs of swine!
+
+Towards evening, we entered a region of cottages among gardens
+inclosed by bushes, trees, and verdant fences, with the rural quiet
+and cleanliness of an English village in the last century, lighted up
+by an Italian sunset. Having crossed the little bridge, a pandour, who
+was sitting under the willows, rose, came forward, and, touching his
+hat, presented the Natchalnik's compliments, and said that he was
+instructed to conduct me to his house. Losnitza is situated on the
+last undulation of the Gutchevo range, as the mountains we had all day
+kept in view were called. So leaving the town on our left, we struck
+into a secluded path, which wound up the hill, and in ten minutes we
+dismounted at a house having the air of a Turkish villa, which
+overlooked the surrounding country, and was entered by an enclosed
+court-yard with high walls.
+
+The Natchalnik of Losnitza was a grey-headed tall gaunt figure, who
+spoke very little; but as the Bosniac frontier is subject to troubles
+he had been selected for his great personal courage, for he had served
+under Kara Georg from 1804.[5]
+
+_Natchalnik_. "It is not an easy matter to keep things straight; the
+population on this side is all organized, so as to concentrate eight
+thousand men in a few hours. The Bosniacs are all armed; and as the
+two populations detest each other cordially, and are separated only by
+the Drina, the public tranquillity often incurs great danger: but
+whenever a crisis is at hand I mount my horse and go to Mahmoud Pasha
+at Zwornik; and the affair is generally quietly settled with a cup of
+coffee."
+
+_Author_. "Ay, ay; as the Arabs say, the burning of a little tobacco
+saves the burning of a great deal of powder. What is the population of
+Zwornik?"
+
+_Natchalnik_. "About twelve or fifteen thousand; the place has fallen
+off; it had formerly between thirty and forty thousand souls."
+
+_Author_. "Have you had any disputes lately?"
+
+_Natchalnik_. "Why, yes; Great Zwornik is on the Bosniac side of the
+Drina; but Little Zwornik on the Servian side is also held by Moslems.
+Not long ago the men of Little Zwornik wished to extend their domain;
+but I planted six hundred men in a wood, and then rode down alone and
+warned them off. They treated me contemptuously; but as soon as they
+saw the six hundred men issuing from the wood they gave up the point:
+and Mahmoud Pasha admitted I was right; but he had been afraid to risk
+his popularity by preventive measures."
+
+The selamlik of the Natchalnik was comfortably carpeted and fitted up,
+but no trace of European furniture was to be seen. The rooms of the
+collector at Shabatz still smacked of the vicinity to Austria; but
+here we were with the natives. Dinner was preceded by cheese, onions,
+and slivovitsa as a _rinfresco_, and our beds were improvised in the
+Turkish manner by mattresses, sheets, and coverlets, laid on the
+divans. May I never have a worse bed![6]
+
+Next morning, on waking, I went into the kiosk to enjoy the cool fresh
+air, the incipient sunshine, and the noble prospect; the banat of
+Matchva which we had yesterday traversed, stretched away to the
+westward, an ocean of verdure and ripe yellow fruits.
+
+"Where is the Drina?" said I to our host.
+
+"Look downwards," said he; "you see that line of poplars and willows;
+there flows the Drina, hid from view: the steep gardens and wooded
+hills that abruptly rise from the other bank are in Bosnia."
+
+The town doctor now entered, a middle-aged man, who had been partly
+educated in Dalmatia, and consequently spoke Italian; he told us that
+his salary was �40 a year; and that in consequence of the extreme
+cheapness of provisions he managed to live as well in this place as he
+could on the Adriatic for treble the sum.
+
+Other persons, mostly employes, now came to see us, and we descended
+to the town. The bazaar was open and paved with stone; but except its
+extreme cleanliness, it was not in the least different from those one
+sees in Bulgaria and other parts of Turkey in Europe. Up to 1835 many
+Turks lived in Losnitza; but at that time they all removed to Bosnia;
+the mosque still remains, and is used as a grain magazine. A mud fort
+crowns the eminence, having been thrown up during the wars of Kara
+Georg, and might still be serviceable in case of hostile operations.
+
+Before going to Sokol the Natchalnik persuaded me to take a Highland
+ramble into the Gutchevo range, and first visit Tronosha, a large
+convent three hours off in the woods, which was to be on the following
+day the rendezvous of all the surrounding peasantry, in their holyday
+dresses, in order to celebrate the festival of consecration.
+
+At the appointed hour our host appeared, having donned his best
+clothes, which were covered with gold embroidery. His sabre and
+pistols were no less rich and curious, and he mounted a horse worth at
+least sixty or seventy pounds sterling. Several other notables of
+Losnitza, similarly broidered and accoutred, and mounted on caracoling
+horses, accompanied us; and we formed a cavalcade that would have
+astonished even Mr. Batty.
+
+Ascending rapidly, we were soon lost in the woods, catching only now
+and then a view of the golden plain through the dark green oaks and
+pines. For full three hours our brilliant little party dashed up hill
+and down dale, through the most majestic forests, delightful to the
+gaze but unrelieved by a patch of cultivation, and miserably
+profitless to the commonwealth, till we came to a height covered with
+loose rocks and pasture. "There is Tronosha," said the Natchalnik,
+pulling up, and pointing to a tapering white spire and slender column
+of blue smoke that rose from a _cul-de-sac_ formed by the opposite
+hills, which, like the woods we had traversed, wore such a shaggy and
+umbrageous drapery, that with a slight transposition, I could exclaim,
+"Si lupus essem, nollem alibi quam in _Servia_ lupus esse!" A steep
+descent brought us to some meadows on which cows were grazing by the
+side of a rapid stream, and I felt the open apace a relief after the
+gloom of the endless forest.
+
+Crossing the stream, we struck into the sylvan _cul-de-sac_, and
+arrived in a few minutes at an edifice with strong walls, towers, and
+posterns, that looked more like a secluded and fortified manor-house
+in the seventeenth century than a convent; for in more troubled times,
+such establishments, though tolerated by the old Turkish government,
+were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders.
+
+A fine jolly old monk, with a powerful voice, welcomed the Natchalnik
+at the gate, and putting his hand on his left breast, said to me,
+"_Dobro doche Gospody_!" (Welcome, master!)
+
+We then, according to the custom of the country, went into the chapel,
+and, kneeling down, said our thanksgiving for safe arrival. I
+remarked, on taking a turn through the chapel and examining it
+minutely, that the pictures were all in the old Byzantine
+style--crimson-faced saints looking up to golden skies.
+
+Crossing the court, I looked about me, and perceived that the cloister
+was a gallery, with wooden beams supporting the roof, running round
+three sides of the building, the basement being built in stone, at one
+part of which a hollowed tree shoved in an aperture formed a spout for
+a stream of clear cool water. The Igoumen, or superior, received us at
+the foot of the wooden staircase which ascended to the gallery. He was
+a sleek middle-aged man, with a new silk gown, and seemed out of his
+wits with delight at my arrival in this secluded spot, and taking me
+by the hand led me to a sort of seat of honour placed in a prominent
+part of the gallery, which seemed to correspond with the _makaa_ of
+Saracenic architecture.
+
+No sooner had the Igoumen gone to superintend the arrangements of the
+evening, than a shabbily dressed filthy priest, of such sinister
+aspect, that, to use a common phrase, "his looks would have hanged
+him," now came up, and in a fulsome eulogy welcomed me to the convent.
+He related how he had been born in Syrmium, and had been thirteen
+years in Bosnia; but I suspected that some screw was loose, and on
+making inquiry found that he had been sent to this retired convent in
+consequence of incorrigible drunkenness. The Igoumen now returned, and
+gave the clerical Lumnacivagabundus such a look that he skulked off on
+the instant.
+
+After coffee, sweetmeats, &c., we passed through the yard, and
+piercing the postern gate, unexpectedly came upon a most animated
+scene. A green glade that ran up to the foot of the hill, was covered
+with the preparations for the approaching festivities--wood was
+splitting, fires lighting, fifty or sixty sheep were spitted, pyramids
+of bread, dishes of all sorts and sizes, and jars of wine in wicker
+baskets were mingled with throat-cut fowls, lying on the banks of the
+stream aide by side with pigs at their last squeak.
+
+Dinner was served in the refectory to about twenty individuals,
+including the monks and our party. The Igoumen drank to the health of
+the prince, and then of Wucics and Petronievitch, declaring that
+thanks were due to God and those European powers who had brought about
+their return. The shabby priest, with the gallows look, then sang a
+song of his own composition, on their return. Not being able to
+understand it, I asked my neighbour what he thought of the song.
+"Why," said he, "the lay is worthy of the minstrel--doggrel and
+dissonance." Some old national songs were sung, and I again asked my
+neighbour for a criticism on the poetry. "That last song," said he,
+"is like a river that flows easily and naturally from one beautiful
+valley to another."
+
+In the evening we went out, and the countless fires lighting up the
+lofty oaks had a most pleasing effect. The sheep were by this time
+cut up, and lying in fragments, around which the supper parties were
+seated cross-legged. Other peasants danced slowly, in a circle, to the
+drone of the somniferous Servian bagpipe.
+
+When I went to bed, the assembled peasantry were in the full tide of
+merriment, but without excess. The only person somewhat the worse of
+the bottle was the threadbare priest with the gallows look.
+
+I fell asleep with a low confused murmur of droning bagpipes, jingling
+drinking cups, occasional laughter, and other noises. I dreamed, I
+know not what absurdities; suddenly a solemn swelling chorus of
+countless voices gently interrupted my slumbers--the room was filled
+with light, and the sun on high was beginning to begild an irregular
+parallelogram in the wainscot, when I started up, and hastily drew on
+some clothes. Going out to the _makaa_, I perceived yesterday's
+assembly of merry-making peasants quadrupled in number, and all
+dressed in their holiday costume, thickset on their knees down the
+avenue to the church, and following a noble old hymn, I sprang out of
+the postern, and, helping myself with the grasp of trunks of trees,
+and bared roots and bushes, clambered up one of the sides of the
+hollow, and attaining a clear space, looked down with wonder and
+pleasure on the singular scene. The whole pit, of this theatre of
+verdure appeared covered with a carpet of white and crimson, for such
+were the prevailing colours of the rustic costumes. When I thought of
+the trackless solitude of the sylvan ridges round me, I seemed to
+witness one of the early communions of Christianity, in those ages
+when incense ascended to the Olympic deities in gorgeous temples,
+while praise to the true God rose from the haunts of the wolf, the
+lonely cavern, or the subterranean vault.
+
+When church service was over I examined the dresses more minutely. The
+upper tunic of the women was a species of surtout of undyed cloth,
+bordered with a design of red cloth of a liner description. The
+stockings in colour and texture resembled those of Persia, but were
+generally embroidered at the ankle with gold and silver thread. After
+the mid-day meal we descended, accompanied by the monks. The lately
+crowded court-yard was silent and empty. "What," said I, "all
+dispersed already?" The superior smiled, and said nothing. On going out
+of the gate, I paused in a state of slight emotion. The whole
+assembled peasantry were marshalled in two rows, and standing
+uncovered in solemn silence, so as to make a living avenue to the
+bridge.
+
+The Igoumen then publicly expressed the pleasure my visit had given to
+the people, and in their name thanked me, and wished me a prosperous
+journey, repeating a phrase I had heard before: "God be praised that
+Servia has at length seen the day that strangers come from afar to see
+and know the people!"
+
+I took off my fez, and said, "Do you know, Father Igoumen, what has
+given me the most pleasure in the course of my visit?"
+
+_Ig_. "I can scarcely guess."
+
+_Author_. "I have seen a large assembly of peasantry, and not a trace
+of poverty, vice, or misery; the best proof that both the civil and
+ecclesiastical authorities do their duty."
+
+The Igoumen, smiling with satisfaction, made a short speech to the
+people. I mounted my horse; the convent bells began to toll as I waved
+my hand to the assembly, and "Sretnj poot!" (a prosperous journey!)
+burst from a thousand tongues. The scene was so moving that I could
+scarcely refrain a tear. Clapping spurs to my horse I cantered over
+the bridge and gave him his will of the bridle till the steepness of
+the ascent compelled a slower pace.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 5: Servia is divided into seventeen provinces, each governed
+by a Natchalnik, whose duty it is to keep order and report to the
+minister of war and interior. He has of course no control over the
+legal courts of law attached to each provincial government; he has a
+Cashier and a Secretary, and each province is divided into Cantons
+(Sres), over each of which a captain rules. The average population of
+a province is 50,000 souls, and there are generally three Cantons in a
+province, which are governed by captains.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Whether from the climate or superior cleanliness, there
+are certainly much fewer fleas in Servia than in Turkey; and I saw
+other vermin only once.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Romantic sylvan scenery.--Patriarchal simplicity of
+manners.--Krupena,--Sokol.--Its extraordinary position.--Wretched
+town.--Alpine scenery.--Cool reception.--Valley of the Rogatschitza.
+
+
+Words fail me to describe the beauty of the road from Tronosha to
+Krupena. The heights and distances, without being alpine in reality,
+were sufficiently so to an eye unpractised in measuring scenery of the
+highest class; but in all the softer enchantments nature had revelled
+in prodigality. The gloom of the oak forest was relieved and broken by
+a hundred plantations of every variety of tree that the climate would
+bear, and every hue, from the sombre evergreen to the early suspicions
+of the yellow leaf of autumn. Even the tops of the mountains were
+free from sterility, for they were capped with green as bright, with
+trees as lofty, and with pasture as rich, as that of the valleys
+below.
+
+The people, too, were very different from the inhabitants of Belgrade,
+where political intrigue, and want of the confidence which sincerity
+inspires, paralyze social intercourse. But the men of the back-woods,
+neither poor nor barbarous, delighted me by the patriarchal simplicity
+of their manners, and the poetic originality of their language. Even
+in gayer moments I seemed to witness the sweet comedy of nature, in
+which man is ludicrous from his peculiarities, but "is not yet
+ridiculous from the affectations and assumptions of artificial life."
+
+Half-way to Krupena we reposed at a brook, where the carpets were laid
+out and we smoked a pipe. A curious illustration occurred here of the
+abundance of wood in Servia. A boy, after leading a horse into the
+brook, tugged the halter and led the unwilling horse out of the stream
+again. "Let him drink, let him drink his fill," said a woman; "if
+everything else must be paid with gold, at least wood and water cost
+nothing."
+
+Mounting our horses again, we were met by six troopers bearing the
+compliments of the captain of Krupena, who was awaiting us with
+twenty-two or three irregular cavalry on an eminence. We both
+dismounted and-went through the ceremony of public complimenting, both
+evidently enjoying the fun; he the visit of an illustrious stranger,
+and I the formality of a military reception. I perceived in a moment
+that this captain, although a good fellow, was fond of a little fuss;
+so I took him by the hand, made a turn across the grass, cast a
+nonchalant look on his troop, and condescended to express my
+approbation of their martial bearing. True it is that they were men of
+rude and energetic aspect, very fairly mounted. After patronizing him
+with a little further chat and compliment we remounted; and I
+perceived Krupena at the distance of about a mile, in the middle of a
+little plain surrounded by gardens; but the neighbouring hills were
+here and there bare of vegetation.
+
+Some of the troopers in front sang a sort of chorus, and now and then
+a fellow to show off his horse, would ride _a la djereed_, and instead
+of flinging a dart, would fire his pistols. Others joined us, and our
+party was swelled to a considerable cavalcade as we entered the
+village, where the peasants were drawn up in a row to receive me.
+
+Their captain then led the way up the stairs of his house to a
+chardak, or wooden balcony, on which was a table laid out with
+flowers. The elders of the village now came separately, and had some
+conversation: the priest on entering laid a melon on the table, a
+usual method of showing civility in this part of the country. One of
+the attendant crowd was a man from Montenegro, who said he was a
+house-painter. He related that he was employed by Mahmoud Pasha, of
+Zwornik, to paint one of the rooms in his house; when he had half
+accomplished his task, the dispute about the domain of Little Zwornik
+arose, on which he and his companion, a German, were thrown into
+prison, being accused of being a Servian captain in disguise. They
+were subsequently liberated, but shot at; the ball going through the
+leg of the narrator. This is another instance of the intense hatred
+the Servians and the Bosniac Moslems bear to each other. It must be
+remarked, that the Christians, in relating a tale, usually make the
+most of it.
+
+The last dish of our dinner was a roast lamb, served on a large
+circular wooden board, the head being split in twain, and laid on the
+top of the pyramid of dismembered parts. We had another jovial
+evening, in which the wine-cup was plied freely, but not to an
+extravagant excess, and the usual toasts and speeches were drunk and
+made. Even in returning to rest, I had not yet done with the pleasing
+testimonies of welcome. On entering the bed-chamber, I found many
+fresh and fragrant flowers inserted in the chinks of the wainscot.
+
+Krupena was originally exclusively a Moslem town, and a part of the
+old bazaar remains. The original inhabitants, who escaped the sword,
+went either to Sokol or into Bosnia. The hodgia, or Moslem
+schoolmaster, being on some business at Krupena, came in the morning
+to see us. His dress was nearly all in white, and his legs bare from
+the knee. He told me that the Vayvode of Sokol had a curious mental
+malady. Having lately lost a son, a daughter, and a grandson, he could
+no longer smoke, for when his servant entered with a pipe, he imagined
+he saw his children burning in the tobacco.
+
+During the whole day we toiled upwards, through woods and wilds of a
+character more rocky than that of the previous day, and on attaining
+the ridge of the Gutchevo range, I looked down with astonishment on
+Sokol, which, though lying at our feet, was yet perched on a lone
+fantastic crag, which exactly suited the description of the collector
+of Shabatz,--"a city and castle built on the capital of a column of
+rock." Beyond it was a range of mountains further in Bosnia; further
+on, another outline, and then another, and another. I at once felt
+that, as a tourist, I had broken fresh ground, that I was seeing
+scenes of grandeur unknown to the English public. It was long since I
+had sketched. I instinctively seized my book, but threw it away in
+despair, and, yielding to the rapture of the moment, allowed my eyes
+to mount step after step of this enchanted Alpine ladder.
+
+We now, by a narrow, steep, and winding path cut on the face of a
+precipice, descended to Sokol, and passing through a rotting wooden
+bazaar, entered a wretched khan, and ascending a sort of staircase,
+were shown into a room with dusty mustabahs; a greasy old cushion,
+with the flock protruding through its cover, was laid down for me, but
+I, with polite excuses, preferred the bare board to this odious
+flea-hive. The more I declined the cushion, the more pressing became
+the khan-keeper that I should carry away with me some reminiscence of
+Sokol. Finding that his upholstery was not appreciated, the
+khan-keeper went to the other end of the apartment, and began to make
+a fire for coffee; for this being Ramadan time, all the fires were
+out, and most of the people were asleep. Meanwhile the captain sent
+for the Disdar Aga. I offered to go into the citadel, and pay him a
+visit, but the captain said, "You have no idea how sensitive these
+people are: even now they are forming all sorts of conjectures as to
+the object of your visit; we must, therefore, take them quietly in
+their own way, and do nothing to alarm them. In a few minutes the
+Disdar Aga will be here; you can then judge, by the temper he is in,
+of the length of your stay, and the extent to which you wish to carry
+your curiosity."
+
+I admitted that the captain was speaking sense, and waited patiently
+till the Aga made his appearance.
+
+Footsteps were heard on the staircase, and the Mutsellim entered,--a
+Turk, about forty-five years of age, who looked cross, as most men are
+when called from a sound sleep. His fez was round as a wool-bag, and
+looked as if he had stuffed a shawl into it before putting it on, and
+his face and eyes had something of the old Mongol or Tartar look. He
+was accompanied by a Bosniac, who was very proud and insolent in his
+demeanour. After the usual compliments, I said, "I have seen some
+countries and cities, but no place so curious as Sokol. I left
+Belgrade on a tour through the interior, not knowing of its existence.
+Otherwise I would have asked letters of Hafiz Pasha to you: for,
+intending to go to Nish, he gave me a letter to the Pasha there. But
+the people of this country having advised me not to miss the wonder of
+Servia, I have come, seduced by the account of its beauty, not
+doubting of your good reception of strangers:" on which I took out the
+letter of Hafiz Pasha, the direction of which he read, and then he
+said, in a husky voice which became his cross look,--
+
+"I do not understand your speech; if you have seen Belgrade, you must
+find Sokol contemptible. As for your seeing the citadel, it is
+impossible; for the key is with the Disdar Aga, and he is asleep, and
+even if you were to get in, there is nothing to be seen."
+
+After some further conversation, in the course of which I saw that it
+would be better not to attempt "to catch the Tartar," I restricted
+myself to taking a survey of the town. Continuing our walk in the same
+direction as that by which we entered, we completed the threading of
+the bazaar, which was truly abominable, and arrived at the gate of the
+citadel, which was open; so that the story of the key and the
+slumbers of the Disdar Aga was all fudge. I looked in, but did not
+enter. There are no new works, and it is a castle such as those one
+sees on the Rhine; but its extraordinary position renders it
+impregnable in a country impracticable for artillery. Although
+blockaded in the time of the Revolution, and the Moslem garrison
+reduced to only seven men, it never was taken by the Servians;
+although Belgrade, Ushitza, and all the other castles, had fallen into
+their hands. Close to the castle is a mosque in wood, with a minaret
+of wood, although the finest stone imaginable is in abundance all
+around. The Mutsellim opened the door, and showed me the interior,
+with blank walls and a faded carpet, opposite the Moharrem. He would
+not allow me to go up the minaret, evidently afraid I would peep over
+into the castle.
+
+Retracing our steps I perceived a needle-shaped rock that overlooked
+the abyss under the fortress, so taking off my boots, I scrambled up
+and attained the pinnacle; but the view was so fearful, that, afraid
+of getting dizzy, I turned to descend, but found it a much more
+dangerous affair than the ascent; at length by the assistance of Paul
+I got down to the Mutsellim, who was sitting impatiently on a piece of
+rock, wondering at the unaccountable Englishman. I asked him what he
+supposed to be the height of the rock on which the citadel was built,
+above the level of the valley below.
+
+"What do I know of engineering?" said he, taking me out of hearing: "I
+confess I do not understand your object. I hear that on the road you
+have been making inquiries as to the state of Bosnia: what interest
+can England have in raising disturbances in that country?"
+
+"The same interest that she has in producing political disorder in one
+of the provinces of the moon. In some semi-barbarous provinces of
+Hungary, people confound political geography with political intrigue.
+In Aleppo, too, I recollect standing at the Bab-el-Nasr, attempting to
+spell out an inscription recording its erection, and I was grossly
+insulted and called a Mehendis (engineer); but you seem a man of more
+sense and discernment."
+
+"Well, you are evidently not a _chapkun_. There is nothing more to be
+seen in Sokol. Had it not been Ramadan we should have treated you
+better, be your intentions good or bad. I wish you a pleasant journey;
+and if you wish to arrive at Liubovia before night-fall the sooner you
+set out the better, for the roads are not safe after dark."
+
+We now descended by paths like staircases cut in the rocks to the
+valley below. Paul dismounted in a fright from his horse, and led her
+down; but my long practice of riding in the Druse country had given me
+an easy indifference to roads that would have appalled me before my
+residence there. When we got a little way along the valley, I looked
+back, and the view from below was, in a different style, as remarkable
+as that from above. Sokol looked like a little castle of Edinburgh
+placed in the clouds, and a precipice on the other side of the valley
+presented a perpendicular stature of not less than five hundred feet.
+
+A few hours' travelling through the narrow valley of the Bogatschitza
+brought us to the bank of the Drina, where, leaving the up-heaved
+monuments of a chaotic world, we bade adieu to the Tremendous, and
+again saluted the Beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Drina.--Liubovia.--Quarantine Station.--Derlatcha.--A Servian
+beauty.--A lunatic priest.--Sorry quarters.--Murder by brigands.
+
+
+The Save is the largest tributary of the Danube, and the Drina is the
+largest tributary of the Save, but it is not navigable; no river
+scenery, however, can possibly be prettier than that of the Drina; as
+in the case of the Upper Danube from Linz to Vienna, the river winds
+between precipitous banks tufted with wood, but it was tame after the
+thrilling enchantments of Sokol. At one place a Roman causeway ran
+along the river, and we were told that a Roman bridge crossed a
+tributary of the Drina in this neighbourhood, which to this day bears
+the name of Latinski Tiupria, or Latin bridge.
+
+At Liubovia the hills receded, and the valley was about half a mile
+wide, consisting of fine meadow land with thinly scattered oaks,
+athwart which the evening sun poured its golden floods, suggesting
+pleasing images of abundance without effort. This part of Servia is a
+wilderness, if you will, so scant is it of inhabitants, so free from
+any thing like inclosures, or fields, farms, labourers, gardens, or
+gardeners; and yet it is, and looks a garden in one place, a trim
+English lawn and park in another: you almost say to yourself, "The man
+or house cannot be far off: what lovely and extensive grounds, where
+can the hall or castle be hid?"[7]
+
+Liubovia is the quarantine station on the high road from Belgrade to
+Seraievo. A line of buildings, parlatorio, magazines, and
+lodging-houses, faced the river. The director would fain have me pass
+the night, but the captain of Derlatcha had received notice of our
+advent, and we were obliged to push on, and rested only for coffee and
+pipes. The director was a Servian from the Austrian side of the
+Danube, and spoke German. He told me that three thousand individuals
+per annum performed quarantine, passing from Bosnia to Sokol and
+Belgrade, and that the principal imports Were hides, chestnuts, zinc,
+and iron manufactures from the town of Seraievo. On the opposite bank
+of the river was a wooden Bosniac guard-house.
+
+Remounting our horses after sunset, we continued along the Drina, now
+dubiously illuminated by the chill pallor of the rising moon, while
+hill and dale resounded with the songs of our men. No sooner had one
+finished an old metrical legend of the days of Stephan the powerful
+and Lasar the good, than another began a lay of Kara Georg, the
+"William Tell" of these mountains. Sometimes when we came to a good
+echo the pistols were fired off; at one place the noise had aroused a
+peasant, who came running across the grass to the road crying out, "O
+good men, the night is advancing: go no further, but tarry with me:
+the stranger will have a plain supper and a hard couch, but a hearty
+welcome." We thanked him for his proffer, but held on.
+
+At about ten o'clock we entered a thick dark wood, and after an ascent
+of a quarter of an hour emerged upon a fine open lawn in front of a
+large house with lights gleaming in the windows. The ripple of the
+Drina was no longer audible, but we saw it at some distance below us,
+like a cuirass of polished steel. As we entered the inclosure we found
+the house in a bustle. The captain, a tall strong corpulent man of
+about forty years of age, came forward and welcomed me.
+
+"I almost despaired of your coming to-night," said he; "for on this
+ticklish frontier it is always safer to terminate one's journey by
+sunset. The rogues pass so easily from one side of the water to the
+other, that it is difficult to clear the country of them."
+
+He then led me into the house, and going through a passage, entered a
+square room of larger dimensions than is usual in the rural parts of
+Servia. A good Turkey carpet covered the upper part of the room, which
+was fenced round by cushions placed against the wall, but not raised
+above the level of the floor. The wall of the lower end of the room
+had a row of strong wooden pegs, on which were hung the hereditary and
+holyday clothes of the family, for males and females. Furs, velvets,
+gold embroidery, and silver mounted Bosniac pistols, guns, and
+carbines elaborately ornamented.
+
+The captain, who appeared to be a plain, simple, and somewhat jolly
+sort of man, now presented me to his wife, who came from the Austrian
+aide of the Save, and spoke German. She seemed, and indeed was, a trim
+methodical housewife, as the order of her domestic arrangements
+clearly showed. Another female, whom I afterwards learned to be the
+wife of an individual of the neighbourhood who was absent, attracted
+my attention. Her age was about four and twenty, when the lines of
+thinking begin to mingle with those of early youth. In fact, from her
+tint I saw that she would soon be _passata_: her features too were by
+no means classical or regular, and yet she had unquestionably some of
+that super-human charm which Raphael sometimes infused into his female
+figures, as in the St. Cecilia. As I repeated and prolonged my gaze,
+I felt that I had seen no eyes in Belgrade like those of the beauty of
+the Drina, who reminded me of the highest characteristic of
+expression--"a spirit scarcely disguised enough in the flesh." The
+presence of a traveller from an unknown country seemed to fill her
+with delight; and her wonder was childish, as if I had come from some
+distant constellation in the firmament.
+
+Next day, the father of the captain made his appearance. The same old
+man, whom I had met at Palesh, and who had asked me, "if the king of
+my country lived in a strong castle?" We dined at mid-day by fine
+weather, the windows of the principal apartments being thrown open, so
+as to have the view of the valley, which was here nearly as wide as at
+Liubovia, but with broken ground. For the first time since leaving
+Belgrade we dined, not at an European table, but squatted round a
+sofra, a foot high, in the Eastern manner, although we ate with knives
+and forks. The cookery was excellent; a dish of stewed lamb being
+worthy of any table in the world.
+
+Our host, the captain, never having seen Ushitza, offered to
+accompany me thither; so we started early in the afternoon, having the
+Drina still on our right, and Bosniac villages, from time to time
+visible, and pretty to look at, but I should hope somewhat cleaner
+than Sokol. On arrival at Bashevitza the elders of the village stood
+in a row to receive us close to the house of conciliation. I perceived
+a mosque near this place, and asked if it was employed for any
+purpose. "No," said the captain, "it is empty. The Turks prayed in it,
+after their own fashion, to that God who is theirs and ours; and the
+house of God should not be made a grain magazine, as in many other
+Turkish villages scattered throughout Servia." At this place a number
+of wild ducks were visible, perched on rocks in the Drina, but were
+very shy; only once did one of our men get within shot, which missed;
+his gun being an old Turkish one, like most of the arms in this
+country, which are sometimes as dangerous to the marksman as to the
+mark.
+
+Towards evening we quitted the lovely Drina, which, a little higher
+up, is no longer the boundary between Servia and Bosnia, being
+entirely within the latter frontier, and entered the vale of
+Rogatschitza, watered by a river of that name, which was crossed by an
+ancient Servian bridge, with pointed arches of admirable proportions.
+The village where we passed the night was newly settled, the main
+street being covered with turf, a sign that few houses or traffic
+exist here. The khan was a hovel; but while it was swept out, and
+prepared for us, I sat down with the captain on a shopboard, in the
+little bazaar, where coffee was served. A priest, with an emaciated
+visage, sore eyes, and a distracted look, came up, and wished me good
+evening, and began a lengthened tale of grievances. I asked the
+khan-keeper who he was, and received for answer that he was a Greek
+priest from Bosnia, who had hoarded some money, and had been squeezed
+by the Moslem tyrant of his village, which drove him mad. Confused
+ejaculations, mingled with sighs, fell from him, as if he supposed his
+story to be universally known.
+
+"Sit down, good man," said I, "and tell me your tale, for I am a
+stranger, and never heard it before. Tell it me, beginning with the
+beginning, and ending with the end."
+
+"Bogami Gospody," said the priest, wiping the copious tears, "I was
+once the happiest man in Bosnia; the sun never rose without my
+thanking God for having given me so much peace and happiness: but Ali
+Kiahya, where I lived, received information that I had money hid. One
+day his Momkes took me before him. My appeals for mercy and justice
+were useless. I was thrown down on my face, and received 617 strokes
+on my soles, praying for courage to hold out. At the 618th stroke my
+strength of mind and body failed, and I yielded up all my money, seven
+hundred dollars, to preserve my life. For a whole year I drank not a
+drop of wine, nothing but brandy, brandy, brandy."
+
+Here the priest sobbed aloud. My heart was wrung, but I was in no
+condition to assist him; so I bade him be of good cheer, and look on
+his misfortune as a gloomy avenue to happier and brighter days.
+
+We slept on hay, put under our carpets and pillows, this being the
+first time since leaving Belgrade that we did not sleep in sheets. We
+next day ascended the Rogatschitza river to its source, and then, by
+a long ascent through pines and rocks, attained the parting of the
+waters.[8]
+
+Leaving the basin of the Drina, we descended to that of the Morava by
+a steep road, until we came to beautifully rich meadows, which are
+called the Ushitkza Luka, or meadows, which are to this day a
+debatable ground for the Moslem inhabitants of Ushitza, and the
+Servian villages in the neighbourhood. From here to Ushitza the road
+is paved, but by whom we could not learn. The stones were not large
+enough to warrant the belief of its being a Roman causeway, and it is
+probably a relic of the Servian empire.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 7: On my return from Servia, I found that the author of
+Eothen had recorded a similar impression derived from the Tartar
+journey on the high road from Belgrade towards Constantinople: but the
+remark is much more applicable to the sylvan beauty of the interior of
+Servia.]
+
+[Footnote 8: After seeing Ushitza, the captain, who accompanied me,
+returned to his family, at Derlatcha, and, I lament to say, that at
+this place he was attacked by the robbers, who, in summer, lurk in the
+thick woods on the two frontiers. The captain galloped off, but his
+two servants were killed on the spot.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Arrival at Ushitza.--Wretched streets.--Excellent Khan.--Turkish
+Vayvode.--A Persian Dervish.--Relations of Moslems and
+Christians.--Visit the Castle.--Bird's eye view.
+
+
+Before entering Ushitza we had a fair prospect of it from a gentle
+eminence. A castle, in the style of the middle ages, mosque minarets,
+and a church spire, rose above other objects; each memorializing the
+three distinct periods of Servian history: the old feudal monarchy,
+the Turkish occupation, and the new principality. We entered the
+bazaars, which were rotting and ruinous, the air infected with the
+loathsome vapours of dung-hills, and their putrescent carcases,
+tanpits with green hides, horns, and offal: here and there a hideous
+old rat showed its head at some crevice in the boards, to complete the
+picture of impurity and desolation.
+
+Strange to say, after this ordeal we put up at an excellent khan, the
+best we had seen in Servia, being a mixture of the German Wirthshaus,
+and the Italian osteria, kept by a Dalmatian, who had lived twelve
+years at Scutari in Albania. His upper room was very neatly furnished
+and new carpeted.
+
+In the afternoon we went to pay a visit to the Vayvode, who lived
+among gardens in the upper town, out of the stench of the bazaars.
+Arrived at the house we mounted a few ruined steps, and passing
+through a little garden fenced with wooden paling, were shown into a
+little carpeted kiosk, where coffee and pipes were presented, but not
+partaken of by the Turks present, it being still Ramadan. The Vayvode
+was an elderly man, with a white turban and a green benish, having
+weak eyes, and a alight hesitation in his speech; but civil and
+good-natured, without any of the absurd suspicions of the Mutsellim of
+Sokol. He at once granted me permission to see the castle, with the
+remark, "Your seeing it can do us no good and no harm, Belgrade
+castle is like a bazaar, any one can go out and in that likes." In the
+course of conversation he told us that Ushitza is the principal
+remaining settlement of the Moslems in Servia; their number here
+amounting to three thousand five hundred, while there are only six
+hundred Servians, making altogether a population of somewhat more than
+four thousand souls. The Vayvode himself spoke Turkish on this
+occasion; but the usual language at Sokol is Bosniac (the same as
+Servian).
+
+We now took our leave of the Vayvode, and continued ascending the same
+street, composed of low one-storied houses, covered with irregular
+tiles, and inclosed with high wooden palings to secure as much privacy
+as possible for the harems. The palings and gardens ceased; and on a
+terrace built on an open space stood a mosque, surrounded by a few
+trees; not cypresses, for the climate scarce allows of them, but those
+of the forests we had passed. The portico was shattered to fragments,
+and remained as it was at the close of the revolution. Close by, is a
+Turbieh or saint's tomb, but nobody could tell me to whom or at what
+period it was erected.
+
+Within a little inclosed garden I espied a strangely dressed figure, a
+dark-coloured Dervish, with long glossy black hair. He proved to be a
+Persian, who had travelled all over the East. Without the conical hat
+of his order, the Dervish would have made a fine study for a
+Neapolitan brigand; but his manners were easy, and his conversation
+plausible, like those of his countrymen, which form as wide a contrast
+to the silent hauteur of the Turk, and the rude fanaticism of the
+Bosniac, as can well be imagined. His servant, a withered
+baboon-looking little fellow, in the same dress, now made his
+appearance and presented coffee.
+
+_Author_. "Who would have expected to see a Persian on the borders of
+Bosnia? You Dervishes are great travellers."
+
+_Dervish_. "You Ingleez travel a great deal more; not content with
+Frengistan, you go to Hind, and Sind, and Yemen.[9] The first
+Englishman I ever saw, was at Meshed, (south-east of the Caspian,)
+and now I meet you in Roumelly."
+
+_Author_. "Do you intend to go back?"
+
+_Dervish_. "I am in the hands of Allah Talaa. These good Bosniacs here
+have built me this house, and given me this garden. They love me, and
+I love them."
+
+_Author_. "I am anxious to see the mosque, and mount the minaret if it
+be permitted, but I do not know the custom of the place. A Frank
+enters mosques in Constantinople, Cairo, and Aleppo."
+
+_Dervish_. "You are mistaken; the mosques of Aleppo are shut to
+Franks."
+
+_Author_. "Pardon me; Franks are excluded from the mosque of Zekerieh
+in Aleppo, but not from the Osmanieh, and the Adelieh."
+
+_Dervish_. "There is the Muezzin; I dare say he will make no
+difficulty."
+
+The Muezzin, anxious for his backshish, made no scruple; and now some
+Moslems entered, and kissed the hand of the Dervish. When the
+conversation became general, one of them told me, in a low tone, that
+he gave all that he got in charity, and was much liked. The Dervish
+cut some flowers, and presented each of us with one.
+
+The Muezzin now looked at his watch, and gave me a wink, expressive of
+the approach of the time for evening prayer; so I followed him into
+the church, which had bare white-washed walls with nothing to remark;
+and then taking my hand, he led me up the dark and dismal spiral
+staircase to the top of the minaret; on emerging on the balcony of
+which, we had a general view of the town and environs.
+
+Ushitza lies in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains. The Dietina,
+a tributary of the Morava, traverses the town, and is crossed by two
+elegantly proportioned, but somewhat ruinous, bridges. The principal
+object in the landscape is the castle, built on a picturesque jagged
+eminence, separated from the precipitous mountains to the south only
+by a deep gully, through which the Dietina struggles into the valley.
+The stagnation of the art of war in Turkey has preserved it nearly as
+it must have been some centuries ago. In Europe, feudal castles are
+complete ruins; in a country such as this, where contests are of a
+guerilla character, they are neglected, but neither destroyed nor
+totally abandoned. The centre space in the valley is occupied by the
+town itself, which shows great gaps; whole streets which stood here
+before the Servian revolution, have been turned into orchards. The
+general view is pleasing enough; for the castle, although not so
+picturesque as that of Sokol, affords fine materials for a picture;
+but the white-washed Servian church, the fac simile of everyone in
+Hungary, rather detracts from the external interest of the view.
+
+In the evening the Vayvode sent a message by his pandour, to say that
+he would pay me a visit along with the Agas of the town, who, six in
+number, shortly afterwards came. It being now evening, they had no
+objection to smoke; and as they sat round the room they related
+wondrous things of Ushitza towards the close of the last century,
+which being the entre-pot between Servia and Bosnia, had a great trade,
+and contained then twelve thousand houses, or about sixty thousand
+inhabitants; so I easily accounted for the gaps in the middle of the
+town. The Vayvode complained bitterly of the inconveniencies to which
+the quarantine subjected them in restricting the free communication
+with the neighbouring province; but he admitted that the late
+substitution of a quarantine of twenty-four hours, for one of ten days
+as formerly, was a great alleviation; "but even this," added the
+Vayvode, "is a hindrance: when there was no quarantine, Ushitza was
+every Monday frequented by thousands of Bosniacs, whom even
+twenty-four hours' quarantine deter."
+
+I asked him if the people understood Turkish or Arabic, and if
+preaching was held. He answered, that only he and a few of the Agas
+understood Turkish,--that the Mollah was a deeply-read man, who said
+the prayers in the mosque in Arabic, as is customary everywhere; but
+that there was no preaching, since the people only knew their prayers
+in Arabic, but could not understand a sermon, and spoke nothing but
+Bosniac. I think that somebody told me that Vaaz, or preaching, is
+held in the Bosniac language at Seraievo. But my memory fails me in
+certainty on this point.
+
+After a pleasant chat of about an hour they went away. Our beds were,
+as the ingenious Mr. Pepys says, "good, but lousy."
+
+Next day, the Servian Natchalnik, who, on my arrival, had been absent
+at Topola with the prince, came to see me; he was a middle-aged man,
+with most perfect self-possession, polite without familiarity or
+effort to please; he had more of the manner of a Moslem grandee, than
+of a Christian subject of the Sultan.
+
+_Natchalnik_. "Believe me, the people are much pleased that men of
+learning travel through the country; it is a sign that we are not
+forgotten in Europe; thank God and the European powers, that we are
+now making progress."
+
+_Author_. "Servia is certainly making progress; there can be no
+spectacle more delightful to a rightly constituted mind, than that of
+a hopeful young nation approaching its puberty. You Servians are in a
+considerable minority here in Ushitza. I hope you live on good terms
+with the Moslems."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "Yes, on tolerable terms; but the old ones, who remember
+the former abject position of the Christians, cannot reconcile
+themselves to my riding on horseback through the bazaars, and get
+angry when the Servians sing in the woods, or five off muskets during
+a rejoicing."
+
+The Vayvode now arrived with a large company of Moslems, and we
+proceeded on foot to see the castle, our road being mostly through
+those gardens, on which the old town stood, and following the side of
+the river, to the spot where the high banks almost close in, so as to
+form a gorge. We ascended a winding path, and entered the gate, which
+formed the outlet of a long, gloomy, and solidly built passage.
+
+A group of armed militia men received us as we entered, and on
+regaining the daylight within the walls, we saw nothing but the usual
+spectacle of crumbling crenellated towers, abandoned houses, rotten
+planks, and unserviceable dismounted brass guns. The doujou, or keep,
+was built on a detached rock, connected by an old wooden bridge. The
+gate was strengthened with heavy nails, and closed by a couple of
+enormous old fashioned padlocks. The Vayvode gave us a hint not to ask
+a sight of the interior, by stating that it was only opened at the
+period of inspection of the Imperial Commissioner. The bridge which
+overlooked the romantic gorge,--the rocks here rising precipitately
+from both sides of the Dietina,--seemed the favourite lounge of the
+garrison, for a little kiosk of rude planks had been knocked up;
+carpets were laid out; the Vayvode invited us to repose a little after
+our steep ascent; pipes and coffee were produced.
+
+I remarked that the castle must have suffered severely in the
+revolution.
+
+"This very place," said the Vayvode, "was the scene of the severest
+conflict. The Turks had twenty-one guns, and the Servians seven. So
+many were killed, that that bank was filled up with dead bodies."
+
+"I remember it well," said a toothless, lisping old Turk, with bare
+brown legs, and large feet stuck in a pair of new red shining
+slippers: "that oval tower has not been opened for a long time. If any
+one were to go in, his head would be cut off by an invisible hangiar."
+I smiled, but was immediately assured by several by-standers that it
+was a positive fact! Our party, swelled by fresh additions, all well
+armed, that made us look like a large body of Haiducks going on a
+marauding expedition, now issued by a gate in the castle, opposite to
+that by which I entered, and began to toil up the hill that overlooks
+Ushitza, in order to have a bird's-eye view of the whole town and
+valley. On our way up, the Natchalnik told me, that although long
+resident here, he had never seen the interior of the castle, and that
+I was the first Christian to whom its gates had been opened since the
+revolution.
+
+The old Vayvode, notwithstanding his cumbrous robes, climbed as
+briskly as any of us to the detached fort on the peak of the hill,
+whence we looked down on Ushitza and all its environs; but I was
+disappointed in the prospect, the objects being too much below the
+level of the eye. The landscape was spotty. Ushitza, instead of
+appearing a town, looked like a straggling assemblage of cottages and
+gardens. The best view is that below the bridge, looking to the
+castle.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 9: This is a phrase, and had no relation to the occupation
+of Sind or Aden.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Poshega.--The river Morava.--Arrival at Csatsak.--A Viennese
+Doctor.--Project to ascend the Kopaunik.--Visit the Bishop.--Ancient
+Cathedral Church.--Greek Mass.--Karanovatz.--Emigrant Priest.--Albania
+Disorders.--Salt Mines.
+
+
+On leaving Ushitza, the Natchalnik accompanied me with a cavalcade of
+twenty or thirty Christians, a few miles out of the town. The
+afternoon was beautiful; the road lay through hilly ground, and after
+two hours' riding, we saw Poshega in the middle of a wide level plain;
+after descending to which, we crossed the Scrapesh by an elegant
+bridge of sixteen arches, and entering the village, put up at a
+miserable khan, although Poshega is the embryo of a town symmetrically
+and geometrically laid out. Twelve years ago a Turk wounded a Servian
+in the streets of Ushitza, in a quarrel about some trifling matter.
+The Servian pulled out a pistol, and shot the Turk dead on the spot.
+Both nations seized their arms, and rushing out of the houses, a
+bloody affray took place, several being left dead on the spot. The
+Servians, feeling their numerical inferiority, now transplanted
+themselves to the little hamlet of Poshega, which is in a finer plain
+than that of Ushitza; but the colony does not appear to prosper, for
+most of the Servians have since returned to Ushitza.
+
+Poshega, from remnants of a nobler architecture, must have been a
+Roman colony. At the new church a stone is built into the wall, having
+the fragment of an inscription:--
+
+     A V I A.  G E N T
+    I L  F L A I I  S P R
+
+and various other stones are to be seen, one with a figure sculptured
+on it.
+
+Continuing our way down the rich valley of the Morava, which is here
+several miles wide, and might contain ten times the present
+population, we arrived at Csatsak, which proved to be as symmetrically
+laid out as Poshega. Csatsak is old and new, but the old Turkish town
+has disappeared, and the new Servian Csatsak is still a foetus. The
+plan on which all these new places are constructed, is simple, and
+consists of a circular or square market place, with bazaar shops in
+the Turkish manner, and straight streets diverging from them. I put up
+at the khan, and then went to the Natchalnik's house to deliver my
+letter. Going through green lanes, we at length stopped at a high
+wooden paling, over-topped with rose and other bushes. Entering, we
+found ourselves on a smooth carpet of turf, and opposite a pretty
+rural cottage, somewhat in the style of a citizen's villa in the
+environs of London. The Natchalnik was not at home, but was gracefully
+represented by his young wife, a fair specimen of the beauty of
+Csatsak; and presently the Deputy and the Judge came to see us. A dark
+complexioned, good-natured looking man, between thirty and forty, now
+entered, with an European air, German trowsers and waistcoat, but a
+Turkish riding cloak. "There comes the doctor," said the lady, and the
+figure with the Turkish riding cloak thus announced himself:--
+
+_Doctor_. "I' bin a' Wiener."
+
+_Author_. "Gratulire: dass iss a' lustige Stadt."
+
+_Doctor_. "Glaub'ns mir, lust'ger als Csatsak."
+
+_Author_. "I' glaub's."
+
+The Judge, a sedate, elderly, and slightly corpulent man, asked me
+what route I had pursued, and intended to pursue. I informed him of
+the particulars of my journey, and added that I intended to follow the
+valley of the Morava to its confluence with the Danube. "The good
+folks of Belgrade do not travel for their pleasure, and could give me
+little information; therefore, I have chalked out my route from the
+study of the map."
+
+"You have gone out of your way to see Sokol," said he; "you may as
+well extend your tour to Novibazaar, and the Kopaunik. You are fond of
+maps: go to the peak of the Kopaunik, and you will see all Servia
+rolled out before you from Bosnia to Bulgaria, and from the Balkan to
+the Danube; not a map, or a copy, but the original."
+
+"The temptation is irresistible.--My mind is made up to follow your
+advice."
+
+We now went in a body, and paid our visit to the Bishop of Csatsak,
+who lives in the finest house in the place; a large well-built villa,
+on a slight eminence within a grassy inclosure. The Bishop received us
+in an open kiosk, on the first floor, fitted all round with cushions,
+and commanding a fine view of the hills which inclose the plain of the
+Morava. The thick woods and the precipitous rocks, which impart rugged
+beauty to the valley of the Drina, are here unknown; the eye wanders
+over a rich yellow champaign, to hills which were too distant to
+present distinct details, but vaguely grey and beautiful in the
+transparent atmosphere of a Servian early autumn.
+
+The Bishop was a fine specimen of the Church militant,--a stout fiery
+man of sixty, in full-furred robes, and a black velvet cap. His
+energetic denunciations of the lawless appropriations of Milosh, had
+for many years procured him the enmity of that remarkable individual;
+but he was now in the full tide of popularity.
+
+His questions referred principally to the state of parties in England,
+and I could not help thinking that his philosophy must have been
+something like that of the American parson in the quarantine at
+Smyrna, who thought that fierce combats and contests were as necessary
+to clear the moral atmosphere, as thunder and lightning to purify the
+visible heavens. We now took leave of the Bishop, and went homewards,
+for there had been several candidates for entertaining me; but I
+decided for the jovial doctor, who lived in the house that was
+formerly occupied by Jovan Obrenovitch, the youngest and favourite
+brother of Milosh.
+
+Next morning, as early as six o'clock, I was aroused by the
+announcement that the Natchalnik had returned from the country, and
+was waiting to see me. On rising, I found him to be a plain, simple
+Servian of the old school; he informed me that this being a saint's
+day, the Bishop would not commence mass until I was arrived. "What?"
+thought I to myself, "does the Bishop think that these obstreperous
+Britons are all of the Greek religion." The doctor thought that I
+should not go; "for," said he, "whoever wishes to exercise the virtue
+of patience may do so in a Greek mass or a Hungarian law-suit!" But
+the Natchalnik decided for going; and I, always ready to conform to
+the custom of the country, accompanied him.
+
+The cathedral church was a most ancient edifice of Byzantine
+architecture, which had been first a church, and then a mosque, and
+then a church again. The honeycombs and stalactite ornaments in the
+corners, as well as a marble stone in the floor, adorned with
+geometrical arabesques, showed its services to Islamism. But the
+pictures of the Crucifixion, and the figures of the priests, reminded
+me that I was in a Christian temple.
+
+The Bishop, in pontificalibus, was dressed in a crimson velvet and
+white satin dress, embroidered in gold, which had cost �300 at Vienna;
+and as he sat in his chair, with mitre on head, and crosier in hand,
+looked, with his white bushy beard, an imposing representative of
+spiritual authority. Sometimes he softened, and looked bland, as if
+it would not have been beneath him to grant absolution to an emperor.
+
+A priest was consecrated on the occasion; but the service was so long,
+(full two hours and a half,) that I was fatigued with the endless
+bowings and motions, and thought more than once of the benevolent wish
+of the doctor, to see me preserved from a Greek mass and a Hungarian
+law-suit; but the singing was good, simple, massive, and antique in
+colouring. At the close of the service, thin wax tapers were presented
+to the congregation, which each of them lighted. After which they
+advanced and kissed the Cross and Gospels, which were covered with
+most minute silver and gold filagree work.
+
+The prolonged service had given me a good appetite; and when I
+returned to the doctor, he smiled, and said, "I am sure you are ready
+for your _cafe au lait_."
+
+"I confess it was rather _langweilig_."
+
+"Take my advice for the future, and steer clear of a Greek mass, or a
+Hungarian law-suit."
+
+We now went to take farewell of the Bishop, whom we found, as
+yesterday, in the kiosk, with a fresh set of fur robes, and looking
+as superb as ever, with a large and splendid ring on his forefinger.
+
+"If you had not come during a fast," growled he, with as good-humoured
+a smile as could be expected from so formidable a personage, "I would
+have given you a dinner. The English, I know, fight well at sea; but I
+do not know if they like salt fish."
+
+A story is related of this Bishop, that on the occasion of some former
+traveller rising to depart, he asked, "Are your pistols in good
+order?" On the traveller answering in the affirmative, the Bishop
+rejoined, "Well, now you may depart with my blessing!"
+
+Csatsak, although the seat of a Bishop and a Natchalnik, is only a
+village, and is insignificant when one thinks of the magnificent plain
+in which it stands. At every step I made in this country I thought of
+the noble field which it offers for a system of colonization congenial
+to the feelings, and subservient to the interests of the present
+occupants.
+
+We now journeyed to Karanovatz, where we arrived after sunset, and
+proceeded in the dark up a paved street, till we saw on our left a
+_cafe_, with lights gleaming through the windows, and a crowd of
+people, some inside, some outside, sipping their coffee. An
+individual, who announced himself as the captain of Karanovatz,
+stepped forward, accompanied by others, and conducted me to his house.
+Scarcely had I sat down on his divan when two handmaidens entered, one
+of them bearing a large basin in her hand.
+
+"My guest," said the captain, "you must be fatigued with your ride.
+This house is your's. Suppose yourself at home in the country beyond
+the sea."
+
+"What," said I, looking to the handmaidens, "supper already! You have
+divined my arrival to a minute."
+
+"Oh, no; we must put you at your ease before supper time; it is warm
+water."
+
+"Nothing can be more welcome to a traveller." So the handmaidens
+advanced, and while one pulled off my socks, I lolling luxuriously on
+the divan, and smoking my pipe, the other washed my feet with water,
+tepid to a degree, and then dried them. With these agreeable
+sensations still soothing me, coffee was brought by the lady of the
+house, on a very pretty service; and I could not help admitting that
+there was less roughing in Servian travel than I expected.
+
+After supper, the pariah priest came in, a middle-aged man.
+
+_Author_. "Do you remember the Turkish period at Karanovatz?"
+
+_Priest_. "No; I came here only lately. My native place is Wuchitern,
+on the borders of a large lake in the High Balkan; but, in common with
+many of the Christian inhabitants, I was obliged to emigrate last
+year."
+
+_Author_. "For what reason?"
+
+_Priest_. "A horde of Albanians, from fifteen to twenty thousand in
+number, burst from the Pashalic of Scodra upon the peaceful
+inhabitants of the Pashalic of Vrania, committing the greatest
+horrors, burning down villages, and putting the inhabitants to the
+torture, in order to get money, and dishonouring all the handsomest
+women. The Porte sent a large force, disarmed the rascals, and sent
+the leaders to the galleys; but I and my people find ourselves so
+well here that we feel little temptation to return."
+
+The grand exploit in the life of our host was a caravan journey to
+Saloniki, where he had the satisfaction of seeing the sea, a
+circumstance which distinguished him, not only from the good folks of
+Karanovatz, but from most of his countrymen in general.
+
+"People that live near the sea," said he, "get their salt cheap
+enough; but that is not the case in Servia. When Baron Herder made his
+exploration of the stones and mountains of Servia, he discovered salt
+in abundance somewhere near the Kopaunik; but Milosh, who at that time
+had the monopoly of the importation of Wallachian salt in his own
+hands, begged him to keep the place secret, for fear his own profits
+would suffer a diminution. Thus we must pay a large price for foreign
+salt, when we have plenty of it at our own doors."[10]
+
+Next day, we walked about Caranovatz. It is symmetrically built like
+Csatsak, but better paved and cleaner.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 10: I have since heard that the Servian salt is to be
+worked.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Coronation Church of the ancient Kings of Servia.--Enter the
+Highlands.--Valley of the Ybar.--First view of the High
+Balkan.--Convent of Studenitza.--Byzantine Architecture.--Phlegmatic
+Monk.--Servian Frontier.--New Quarantine.--Russian Major.
+
+
+We again started after mid-day, with the captain and his momkes, and,
+proceeding through meadows, arrived at Zhitchka Jicha. This is an
+ancient Servian convent, of Byzantine architecture, where seven kings
+of Servia were crowned, a door being broken into the wall for the
+entrance of each sovereign, and built up again on his departure. It is
+situated on a rising ground, just where the river Ybar enters the
+plain of Karanovatz. The environs are beautiful. The hills are of
+moderate height, covered with verdure and foliage; only campaniles
+were wanting to the illusion of my being in Italy, somewhere about
+Verona or Vicenza, where the last picturesque undulations of the Alps
+meet the bountiful alluvia of the Po. Quitting the valley of the
+Morava, we struck southwards into the highlands. Here the scene
+changed; the valley of the Ybar became narrow, the vegetation scanty;
+and, at evening, we arrived at a tent made of thick matted branches of
+trees, which had been strewn for us with fresh hay. The elders of
+Magletch, a hamlet an hour off, came with an offer of their services,
+in case they were wanted.
+
+The sun set; and a bright crackling fire of withered branches of pine,
+mingling its light with the rays of the moon in the clear chill of a
+September evening, threw a wild and unworldly pallor over the sterile
+scene of our bivouac, and the uncouth figures of the elders. They
+offered me a supper; but contenting myself with a roasted head of
+Indian corn, and rolling my cloak and pea jacket about me, I fell
+asleep: but felt so cold that, at two o'clock, I roused the
+encampment, sounded to horse, and, in a few minutes, was again
+mounting the steep paths that lead to Studenitza.
+
+Day gradually dawned, and the scene became wilder and wilder; not a
+chalet was to be seen, for the ruined castle of Magletch on its lone
+crag, betokened nothing of humanity. Tall cedars replaced the oak and
+the beech, the scanty herbage was covered with hoar-frost. The clear
+brooks murmured chillingly down the unshaded gullies, and a grand line
+of sterile peaks to the South, showed me that I was approaching the
+backbone of the Balkan. All on a sadden I found the path overlooking
+a valley, with a few cocks of hay on a narrow meadow; and another turn
+of the road showed me the lines of a Byzantine edifice with a graceful
+dome, sheltered in a wood from the chilling winter blasts of this
+highland region. Descending, and crossing the stream, we now proceeded
+up to the eminence on which the convent was placed, and I perceived
+thick walls and stout turrets, which bade a sturdy defiance to all
+hostile intentions, except such as might be supported by artillery.
+
+On dismounting and entering the wicket, I found myself in an extensive
+court, one side of which was formed by a newly built crescent-shaped
+cloister; the other by a line of irregular out-houses with wooden
+stairs, _chardacks_ and other picturesque but fragile appendages of
+Turkish domestic architecture.
+
+Between these pigeon-holes and the new substantial, but mean-looking
+cloister, on the other side rose the church of polished white marble,
+a splendid specimen of pure Byzantine architecture, if I dare apply
+such an adjective to that fantastic middle manner, which succeeded to
+the style of the fourth century, and was subsequently re-cast by
+Christians and Moslems into what are called the Gothic and
+Saracenic.[11]
+
+A fat, feeble-voiced, lymphatic-faced Superior, leaning on a long
+staff, received us; but the conversation was all on one side, for
+"_Blagodarim_," (I thank you,) was all that I could get out of him.
+After reposing a little in the parlour, I came out to view the church
+again, and expressed my pleasure at seeing so fair an edifice in the
+midst of such a wilderness.
+
+The Superior slowly raised his eyebrows, looked first at the church,
+then at me, and relapsed into a frowning interrogative stupor; at
+last, suddenly rekindling as if he had comprehended my meaning, added
+"_Blagodarim_" (I thank you). A shrewd young man, from a village a few
+miles off, now came forward just as the Superior's courage pricked him
+on to ask if there were any convents in my country; "Very few," said
+I.
+
+"But there are," said the young pert Servian, "a great many schools
+and colleges where useful sciences are taught to the young, and
+hospitals, where active physicians cure diseases."
+
+This was meant as a cut to the reverend Farniente. He looked blank,
+but evidently wanted the boldness and ingenuity to frame an answer to
+this redoubtable innovator. At last he gaped at me to help him out of
+the dilemma.
+
+"I should be sorry," said I, "if any thing were to happen to this
+convent. It is a most interesting and beautiful monument of the
+ancient kingdom of Servia; I hope it will be preserved and honourably
+kept up to a late period."
+
+"_Blagodarim_, (I am obliged to you,)" said the Superior, pleased at
+the Gordian knot being loosed, and then relapsed into his atrophy,
+without moving a muscle of his countenance.
+
+I now examined the church; the details of the architecture showed that
+it had suffered severely from the Turks. The curiously twisted pillars
+of the outer door were sadly chipped, while noseless angels, and
+fearfully mutilated lions guarded the inner portal. Passing through a
+vestibule, we saw the remains of the font, which must have been
+magnificent; and covered with a cupola, the stumps of the white marble
+columns which support it are still visible; high on the wall is a
+piece of sculpture, supposed to represent St. George.
+
+Entering the church, I saw on the right the tomb of St. Simeon, the
+sainted king of Servia; beside it hung his banner with the half-moon
+on it, the insignium of the South Slavonic nation from the dawn of
+heraldry. Near the altar was the body of his son, St. Stephen, the
+patron saint of Servia. Those who accompanied us paid little attention
+to the architecture of the church, but burst into raptures at the
+sight of the carved wood of the screen, which had been most minutely
+and elaborately cut by Tsinsars, (as the Macedonian Latins are called
+to this day).
+
+Close to the church is a chapel with the following inscription:
+
+"I, Stephen Urosh, servant of God, great grandson of Saint Simeon and
+son of the great king Urosh, king of all the Servian lands and coasts,
+built this temple in honour of the holy and just Joachim and Anna,
+1314. Whoever destroys this temple of Christ be accursed of God and of
+me a sinner."
+
+Thirty-five churches in this district, mostly in ruins, attest the
+piety of the Neman dynasty. The convent of Studenitza was built
+towards the end of the twelfth century, by the first of the dynasty.
+The old cloister of the convent was burnt down by the Turks. The new
+cloister was built in 1839. In fact it is a wonder that so fine a
+monument as the church should have been preserved at all.
+
+There is a total want of arable land in this part of Servia, and the
+pasture is neither good nor abundant; but the Ybar is the most
+celebrated of all the streams of Servia for large quantities of trout.
+
+Next day we continued our route direct South, through scenery of the
+same rugged and sterile description as that we had passed on the way
+hither. How different from the velvet verdure and woodland music of
+the Gutchevo and the Drina! At one place on the bank of the Ybar,
+there was room for only a led horse, by a passage cut in the rock.
+This place bears the name of Demir Kapu, or Iron Gate. In the evening
+we arrived at the frontier quarantine, called Raska, which is situated
+at two hours' distance from Novibazar.
+
+In the midst of an amphitheatre of hills destitute of vegetation,
+which appeared low from the valley, although they must have been high
+enough above the level of the sea, was such a busy scene as one may
+find in the back settlements of Eastern Russia. Within an extensive
+inclosure of high palings was a heterogeneous mass of new buildings,
+some unfinished, and resounding with the saw, the plane, and the
+hatchet; others in possession of the employes in their uniforms;
+others again devoted to the safe keeping of the well-armed caravans,
+which bring their cordovans, oils, and cottons, from Saloniki, through
+Macedonia, and over the Balkan, to the gates of Belgrade.
+
+On dismounting, the Director, a thin elderly man, with a modest and
+pleasing manner, told me in German that he was a native of the
+Austrian side of the Save, and had been attached to the quarantine at
+Semlin; that he had joined the quarantine service, with the permission
+of his government, and after having directed various other
+establishments, was now occupied in organizing this new point.
+
+The _traiteur_ of the quarantine gave us for dinner a very fair
+pillaff, as well as roast and boiled fowl; and going outside to our
+bench, in front of the finished buildings, I began to smoke. A
+slightly built and rather genteel-looking man, with a braided surtout,
+and a piece of ribbon at his button-hole, was sitting on the step of
+the next door, and wished me good evening in German. I asked him who
+he was, and he told me that he was a Pole, and had been a major in the
+Russian service, but was compelled to quit it in consequence of a
+duel.
+
+I asked him if he was content with his present condition; and he
+answered, "Indeed, I am not; I am perfectly miserable, and sometimes
+think of returning to Russia, _coute qui coute_.--My salary is �20
+sterling a year, and everything is dear here; for there is no
+village, but an artificial settlement; and I have neither books nor
+European society. I can hold out pretty well now, for the weather is
+fine; but I assure you that in winter, when the snow is on the ground,
+it exhausts my patience." We now took a turn down the inclosure to his
+house, which was the ground-floor of the guard-house. Here was a bed
+on wooden boards, a single chair and table, without any other
+furniture.
+
+The Director, obliging me, made up a bed for me in his own house,
+since the only resource at the _traiteur's_ would have been my own
+carpet and pillow.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 11: Ingenious treaties have been written on the origin of the
+Gothic and Saracenic styles of architecture; but it seems to me
+impossible to contemplate many Byzantine edifices without feeling
+persuaded that this manner is the parent of both. Taking the Lower
+Empire for the point of departure, the Christian style spread north to
+the Baltic and westwards to the Atlantic. Saint Stephen's in Vienna,
+standing half way between Byzantium and Wisby, has a Byzantine facade
+and a Gothic tower. The Saracenic style followed the Moslem conquests
+round by the southern coasts of the Mediterranean to Morocco and
+Andaloss. Thus both the northern and the eastern styles met each
+other, first in Sicily and then in Spain, both having started from
+Constantinople.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Cross the Bosniac Frontier.--Gipsy Encampment.--Novibazar
+described.--Rough Reception.--Precipitate Departure.--Fanaticism.
+
+
+Next day we were all afoot at an early hour, in order to pay a visit
+to Novibazar. In order to obviate the performance of quarantine on our
+return, I took an officer of the establishment, and a couple of men,
+with me, who in the Levant are called Guardiani; but here the German
+word Ueber-reiter, or over-rider, was adopted.
+
+We continued along the river Raska for about an hour, and then
+descried a line of wooden palings going up hill and down dale, at
+right angles with the course we were holding. This was the frontier of
+the principality of Servia, and here began the direct rule of the
+Sultan and the Pashalic of Bosnia. At the guard-house half a dozen
+Momkes, with old fashioned Albanian guns, presented arms.
+
+After half an hour's riding, the valley became wider, and we passed
+through meadow lands, cultivated by Moslem Bosniacs in their white
+turbans; and two hours further, entered a fertile circular plain,
+about a mile and a half in diameter, surrounded by low hills, which
+had a chalky look, in the midst of which rose the minarets and
+bastions of the town and castle of Novibazar. Numerous gipsy tents
+covered the plain, and at one of them, a withered old gipsy woman,
+with white dishevelled hair hanging down on each side of her burnt
+umber face, cried out in a rage, "See how the Royal Servian people
+now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback,"
+alluding to the ancient custom of Christians not being permitted to
+ride on horseback in a town.[12]
+
+On entering, I perceived the houses to be of a most forbidding
+aspect, being built of mud, with only a base of bricks, extending
+about three feet from the ground. None of the windows were glazed;
+this being the first town of this part of Turkey in Europe that I had
+seen in such a plight. The over-rider stopped at a large
+stable-looking building, which was the khan of the place. Near the
+door were some bare wooden benches, on which some Moslems, including
+the khan-keeper, were reposing. The horses were foddered at the other
+extremity, and a fire burned in the middle of the floor, the smoke
+escaping by the doors. We now sent our letter to Youssouf Bey, the
+governor, but word was brought back that he was in the harem.
+
+We now sallied forth to view the town. The castle, which occupies the
+centre, is on a slight eminence, and flanked with eight bastions; it
+contains no regular troops, but merely some _redif_, or militia.
+Besides one small well-built stone mosque, there is nothing else to
+remark in the place. Some of the bazaar shops seemed tolerably well
+furnished; but the place is, on the whole, miserable and filthy in
+the extreme. The total number of mosques is seventeen.
+
+The afternoon being now advanced, I went to call upon the Mutsellim.
+His konak was situated in a solitary street, close to the fields.
+Going through an archway, we found ourselves in the court of a house
+of two stories. The ground-floor was the prison, with small windows
+and grated wooden bars. Above was an open corridor, on which the
+apartments of the Bey opened. Two rusty, old fashioned cannons were in
+the middle of the court. Two wretched-looking men, and a woman,
+detained for theft, occupied one of the cells. They asked us if we
+knew where somebody, with an unpronounceable name, had gone. But not
+having had the honour of knowing any body of the light-fingered
+profession, we could give no satisfactory information on the subject.
+
+The Momke, whom we had asked after the governor, now re-descended the
+rickety steps, and announced that the Bey was still asleep; so I
+walked out, but in the course of our ramble learned that he was
+afraid to see us, on account of the fanatics in the town: for, from
+the immediate vicinity of this place to Servia, the inhabitants
+entertain a stronger hatred of Christians than is usual in the other
+parts of Turkey, where commerce, and the presence of Frank influences,
+cause appearances to be respected. But the people here recollected
+only of one party of Franks ever visiting the town.[13]
+
+We now sauntered into the fields; and seeing the cemetery, which
+promised from its elevation to afford a good general view of the town,
+we ascended, and were sorry to see so really pleasing a situation
+abused by filth, indolence, and barbarism.
+
+The castle was on the elevated centre of the town; and the town
+sloping on all aides down to the gardens, was as nearly as possible in
+the centre of the plain. When we had sufficiently examined the carved
+stone kaouks and turbans on the tomb stones, we re-descended towards
+the town. A savage-looking Bosniac now started up from behind a low
+outhouse, and trembling with rage and fanaticism began to abuse us:
+"Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you have come for. Do you expect
+to see your cross planted some day on the castle?"
+
+The old story, thought I to myself; the fellow takes me for a military
+engineer, exhausting the resources of my art in a plan for the
+reduction of the redoubtable fortress and city of Novibazar.
+
+"Take care how you insult an honourable gentleman," said the
+over-rider; "we will complain to the Bey."
+
+"What do we care for the Bey?" said the fellow, laughing in the
+exuberance of his impudence. I now stopped, looked him full in the
+face, and asked him coolly what he wanted.
+
+"I will show you that when you get into the bazaar," and then he
+suddenly bolted down a lane out of sight.
+
+A Christian, who had been hanging on at a short distance, came up and
+said--
+
+"I advise you to take yourself out of the dust as quickly as possible.
+The whole town is in a state of alarm; and unless you are prepared for
+resistance, something serious may happen: for the fellows here are
+all wild Arnaouts, and do not understand travelling Franks."
+
+"Your advice is a good one; I am obliged to you for the hint, and I
+will attend to it."
+
+Had there been a Pasha or consul in the place, I would have got the
+fellow punished for his insolence: but knowing that our small party
+was no match for armed fanatics, and that there was nothing more to be
+seen in the place, we avoided the bazaar, and went round by a side
+street, paid our khan bill,[14] and, mounting our horses, trotted
+rapidly out of the town, for fear of a stray shot; but the over-rider
+on getting clear of the suburbs instead of relaxing got into a gallop.
+
+"Halt," cried I, "we are clear of the rascals, and fairly out of
+town;" and coming up to the eminence crowned with the Giurgeve
+Stupovi, on which was a church, said to have been built by Stephen
+Dushan the Powerful, I resolved to ascend, and got the over-rider to
+go so far; but some Bosniacs in a field warned us off with menacing
+gestures. The over-rider said, "For God's sake let us go straight
+home. If I go back to Novibazar my life may be taken."
+
+Not wishing to bring the poor fellow into trouble, I gave up the
+project, and returned to the quarantine.
+
+Novibazar, which is about ten hours distant from the territory of
+Montenegro, and thrice that distance from Scutari, is, politically
+speaking, in the Pashalic of Bosnia. The Servian or Bosniac language
+here ceases to be the preponderating language, and the Albanian begins
+and stretches southward to Epirus. But through all the Pashalic of
+Scutari, Servian is much spoken.
+
+Colonel Hodges, her Britannic Majesty's first consul-general in
+Servia, a gentleman of great activity and intelligence, from the
+laudable desire to procure the establishment of an entre-pot for
+British manufactures in the interior, got a certain chieftain of a
+clan Vassoevitch, named British vice-consul at Novibazar. From this
+man's influence, there can be no doubt that had he stuck to trade he
+might have proved useful; but, inflated with vanity, he irritated the
+fanaticism of the Bosniacs, by setting himself up as a little
+Christian potentate. As a necessary consequence, he was obliged to fly
+for his life, and his house was burned to the ground. The Vassoevitch
+clan have from time immemorial occupied certain mountains near
+Novibazar, and pretend, or pretended, to complete independence of the
+Porte, like the Montenegrines.
+
+While I returned to the quarantine, and dismounted, the Director, to
+whom the over-rider related our adventure, came up laughing, and said,
+"What do you think of the rites of Novibazar hospitality?"
+
+_Author_. "More honoured in the breach than in the observance, as our
+national poet would have said."
+
+_Director_. "I know well enough what you mean."
+
+_By-stander_. "The cause of the hatred of these fellows to you is,
+that they fear that some fine day they will be under Christian rule.
+We are pleased to see the like of you here. Our brethren on the other
+side may derive a glimmering hope of liberation from the
+circumstance."
+
+_Author_. "My government is at present on the best terms with the
+Porte: the readiness with which such hopes arise in the minds of the
+people, is my motive for avoiding political conversations with Rayahs
+on those dangerous topics."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 12: Most of the gipsies here profess Islamism.]
+
+[Footnote 13: I presume Messrs. Boue and party.]
+
+[Footnote 14: The Austrian zwanziger goes here for only three piastres;
+in Servia it goes for five.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Ascent of the Kopaunik.--Grand Prospect.--Descent of the
+Kopaunik.--Bruss.--Involuntary Bigamy.--Conversation on the Servian
+character.--Krushevatz.--Relics of the Servian monarchy.
+
+
+A middle-aged, showily dressed man, presented himself as the captain
+who was to conduct me to the top of the Kopaunik. His clerk was a fat,
+knock-kneed, lubberly-looking fellow, with a red face, a short neck, a
+low forehead, and bushy eyebrows and mustachios, as fair as those of a
+Norwegian; to add to his droll appearance, one of his eyes was
+bandaged up.
+
+"As sure as I am alive, that fellow will go off in an apoplexy. What a
+figure! I would give something to see that fellow climbing up the
+ladder of a steamer from a boat on a blowy day."
+
+"Or dancing to the bagpipe," said Paul.
+
+The sky was cloudy, and the captain seemed irresolute, whether to
+advise me to make the ascent or proceed to Banya. The plethoric
+one-eyed clerk, with more regard to his own comfort than my pleasure,
+was secretly persuading the captain that the expedition would end in a
+ducking to the skin, and, turning to me, said, "You, surely, do not
+intend to go up to day, Sir? Take the advice of those who know the
+country?"
+
+"Nonsense," said I, "this is mere fog, which will clear away in an
+hour. If I do not ascend the Kopaunik now, I can never do so again."
+
+Plethora then went away to get the director to lend his advice on the
+same side; and after much whispering he came back, and announced that
+my horse was unshod, and could not ascend the rocks. The director was
+amused with the clumsy bustle of this fellow to save himself a little
+exercise. I, at length, said to the doubting captain, "My good friend,
+an Englishman is like a Servian, when he takes a resolution he does
+not change it. Pray order the horses."
+
+We now crossed the Ybar, and ascending for hours through open pasture
+lands, arrived at some rocks interspersed with stunted ilex, where a
+lamb was roasting for our dinner. The meridian sun had long ere this
+pierced the clouds that overhung our departure, and the sight of the
+lamb completely irradiated the rubicund visage of the plethoric clerk.
+A low round table was set down on the grass, under the shade of a
+large boulder stone. An ilex growing from its interstices seemed to
+live on its wits, for not an ounce of soil was visible for its
+subsistence. Our ride gave us a sharp appetite, and we did due
+execution on the lamb. The clerk, fixing his eyes steadily on the
+piece he had singled out, tucked up his sleeves, as for a surgical
+operation, and bone after bone was picked, and thrown over the rock;
+and when all were satisfied, the clerk was evidently at the
+climacteric of his powers of mastication. After reposing a little, we
+again mounted horse.
+
+A gentle wind skimmed the white straggling clouds from the blue sky.
+Warmer and warmer grew the sunlit valleys; wider and wider grew the
+prospect as we ascended. Balkan after Balkan rose on the distant
+horizon. Ever and anon I paused and looked round with delight; but
+before reaching the summit I tantalized myself with a few hundred
+yards of ascent, to treasure the glories in store for the pause, the
+turn, and the view. When, at length, I stood on the highest peak; the
+prospect was literally gorgeous. Servia lay rolled out at my feet.
+There was the field of Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar and
+entombed the ancient empire of Servia. I mused an instant on this
+great landmark of European history, and following the finger of an old
+peasant, who accompanied us, I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad--the
+scene of one of the bloodiest fights that preceded the resurrection of
+Servia as a principality. The Morava glistened in its wide valley like
+a silver thread in a carpet of green, beyond which the dark mountains
+of Rudnik rose to the north, while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania,
+Macedonia, and Bulgaria walled in the prospect.
+
+"_Nogo Svet_.--This is the whole world," said the peasant, who stood
+by me.
+
+I myself thought, that if an artist wished for a landscape as the
+scene of Satan taking up our Saviour into a high mountain, he could
+find none more appropriate than this. The Kopaunik is not lofty; not
+much above six thousand English feet above the level of the sea. But
+it is so placed in the Servian basin, that the eye embraces the whole
+breadth from Bosnia to Bulgaria, and very nearly the whole length from
+Macedonia to Hungary.
+
+I now thanked the captain for his trouble, bade him adieu, and, with a
+guide, descended the north eastern slope of the mountain. The
+declivity was rapid, but thick turf assured us a safe footing. Towards
+night-fall we entered a region interspersed with trees, and came to a
+miserable hamlet of shepherds, where we were fain to put up in a hut.
+This was the humblest habitation we had entered in Servia. It was
+built of logs of wood and wattling. A fire burned in the middle of the
+floor, the smoke of which, finding no vent but the door, tried our
+eyes severely, and had covered the roof with a brilliant jet.
+
+Hay being laid in a corner, my carpet and pillow were spread out on
+it; but sleep was impossible from the fleas. At length, the sheer
+fatigue of combating them threw me towards morning into a slumber; and
+on awaking, I looked up, and saw a couple of armed men crouching over
+the glowing embers of the fire. These were the Bolouk Bashi and
+Pandour, sent by the Natchalnik of Krushevatz, to conduct us to that
+town.
+
+I now rose, and breakfasted on new milk, mingled with brandy and
+sugar, no bad substitute for better fare, and mounted horse.
+
+We now descended the Grashevatzka river to Bruss, with low hills on
+each side, covered with grass, and partly wooded. Bruss is prettily
+situated on a rising ground, at the confluence of two tributaries of
+the Morava. It has a little bazaar opening on a lawn, where the
+captain of Zhupa had come to meet me. After coffee, we again mounted,
+and proceeded to Zhupa. Here the aspect of the country changed; the
+verdant hills became chalky, and covered with vineyards, which,
+before the fall of the empire, were celebrated. To this day tradition
+points out a cedar and some vines, planted by Militza, the consort of
+Lasar.
+
+The vine-dressers all stood in a row to receive us. A carpet had been
+placed under an oak, by the side of the river, and a round low table
+in the middle of it was soon covered with soup, sheeps' kidneys, and a
+fat capon, roasted to a minute, preceded by onions and cheese, as a
+rinfresco, and followed by choice grapes and clotted cream, as a
+dessert.
+
+"I think," said I to the entertainer, as I shook the crumbs out of my
+napkin, and took the first whiff of my chibouque, "that if Stephan
+Dushan's chief cook were to rise from the grave, he could not give us
+better fare."
+
+_Captain_. "God sends us good provender, good pasture, good flocks and
+herds, good corn and fruits, and wood and water. The land is rich; the
+climate is excellent; but we are often in political troubles."
+
+_Author_. "These recent affairs are trifles, and you are too young to
+recollect the revolution of Kara Georg."
+
+_Captain_. "Yes, I am; but do you see that Bolouk Bashi who
+accompanied you hither; his history is a droll illustration of past
+times. Simo Slivovats is a brave soldier, but, although a Servian, has
+two wives."
+
+_Author_. "Is he a Moslem?"
+
+_Captain_. "Not at all. In the time of Kara Georg he was an active
+guerilla fighter, and took prisoner a Turk called Sidi Mengia, whose
+life he spared. In the year 1813, when Servia was temporarily
+re-conquered by the Turks, the same Sidi Mengia returned to Zhupa, and
+said, 'Where is the brave Servian who saved my life?' The Bolouk Bashi
+being found, he said to him, 'My friend, you deserve another wife for
+your generosity.' 'I cannot marry two wives,' said Simo; 'my religion
+forbids it.' But the handsomest woman in the country being sought out,
+Sidi Mengia sent a message to the priest of the place, ordering him to
+marry Simo to the young woman. The priest refused; but Sidi Mengia
+sent a second threatening message; so the priest married the couple.
+The two wives live together to this day in the house of Simo at
+Zhupa. The archbishop, since the departure of the Turks, has
+repeatedly called on Simo to repudiate his second wife; but the
+principal obstacle is the first wife, who looks upon the second as a
+sort of sister: under these anomalous circumstances, Simo was under a
+sort of excommunication, until he made a fashion of repudiating the
+second wife, by the first adopting her as a sister."
+
+The captain, who was an intelligent modest man, would fain have kept
+me till next day; but I felt anxious to get to Alexinatz; and on
+arrival at a hill called Vrbnitzkobrdo, the vale of the Morava again
+opened upon us in all its beauty and fertility, in the midst of which
+lay Krushevatz, which was the last metropolis of the Servian empire;
+and even now scarce can fancy picture to itself a nobler site for an
+internal capital. Situated half-way between the source and the mouth
+of the Morava, the plain has breadth enough for swelling zones of
+suburbs, suburban villas, gardens, fields, and villages.
+
+It was far in the night when we arrived at Krushevatz. The Natchalnik
+was waiting with lanterns, and gave us a hearty welcome. As I went
+upstairs his wife kissed my hand, and I in sport wished to kiss her's;
+but the Natchalnik said, "We still hold to the old national custom,
+that the wife kisses the hand of a stranger." Our host was a
+fair-haired man, with small features and person, a brisk manner and
+sharp intelligence, but tempered by a slight spice of vanity. The
+_tout ensemble_ reminded me of the Berlin character.
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I am afraid that, happy as we are to receive such
+strangers as you, we are not sufficiently acquainted with the proper
+ceremonies to be used on the occasion."
+
+_Author_. "The stranger must conform to the usage of the country, not
+the country to the standard of the stranger. I came here to see the
+Servians as they are in their own nature, and not in their imitations
+of Europe. In the East there is more ceremony than in the West; and if
+you go to Europe you will be surprised at the absence of ceremonious
+compliments there."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "The people in the interior are a simple and uncorrupted
+race; their only monitor is nature."
+
+_Author_. "That is true: the European who judges of the Servians by
+the intrigues of Belgrade, will form an unfavourable opinion of them;
+the mass of the nation, in spite of its faults, is sound. Many of the
+men at the head of affairs, such as Simitch, Garashanin, &c., are men
+of integrity; but in the second class at Belgrade, there is a great
+mixture of rogues."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I know the common people well: they are laborious,
+grateful, and obedient; they bear ill-usage for a time, but in the end
+get impatient, and are with difficulty appeased. When I or any other
+governor say to one of the people, 'Brother, this or that must be
+done,' he crosses his hands on his breast, and says, 'It shall be
+done;' but he takes particular notice of what I do, and whether I
+perform what is due on my part. If I fail, woe betide me. The
+Obrenovitch party forgot this; hence their fall."
+
+Next day we went to look at the remains of Servian royalty. A
+shattered gateway and ruined walls, are all that now remain of the
+once extensive palace of Knes Lasar Czar Serbski; but the chapel is as
+perfect as it was when it occupied the centre of the imperial
+quadrangle. It is a curious monument of the period, in a Byzantine
+sort of style; but not for a moment to be compared in beauty to the
+church of Studenitza. Above one of the doors is carved the double
+eagle, the insignium of empire. The great solidity of this edifice
+recommended it to the Turks as an arsenal; hence its careful
+preservation. The late Servian governor had the Vandalism to whitewash
+the exterior, so that at a distance it looks like a vulgar parish
+church. Within is a great deal of gilding and bad painting; pity that
+the late governor did not whitewash the inside instead of the out. The
+Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine bricks were disposed
+in diamond figures between the stones. This antique principle of
+tesselation applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular walls, and
+occasionally adopted and varied _ad infinitum_ by the Saracens, is
+magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the ducal palace of
+Venice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Formation of the Servian Monarchy.--Contest between the Latin and
+Greek Churches.--Stephan Dushan.--A Great Warrior.--Results of his
+Victories.--Knes Lasar.--Invasion of Amurath.--Battle of
+Kossovo.--Death of Lasar and Amurath.--Fall of the Servian
+Monarchy.--General Observations.
+
+
+I cannot present what I have to say on the feudal monarchy of Servia
+more appropriately than in connexion with the architectural monuments
+of the period.
+
+The Servians, known in Europe from the seventh century, at which
+period they migrated from the Carpathians to the Danube, were in the
+twelfth century divided into petty states.
+
+     "Le premier Roi fut un soldat heureux."
+
+Neman the First, who lived near the present Novibazar, first cemented
+these scattered principalities into a united monarchy. He assumed the
+double eagle as the insignium of his dignity, and considered the
+archangel Michael as the patron saint of his family. He was brave in
+battle, cunning in politics, and the convent of Studenitza is a
+splendid monument of his love of the arts. Here he died, and was
+buried in 1195.
+
+Servia and Bosnia were, at this remote period, the debatable territory
+between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, so divided was
+opinion at that time even in Servia Proper, where now a Roman Catholic
+community is not to be found, that two out of the three sons of this
+prince were inclined to the Latin ritual.
+
+Stephan, the son of Neman, ultimately held by the Greek Church, and
+was crowned by his brother Sava, Greek Archbishop of Servia. The
+Chronicles of Daniel tell that "he was led to the altar, anointed with
+oil, clad in purple, and the archbishop, placing the crown on his
+head, cried aloud three times, 'Long live Stephan the first crowned
+King and Autocrat of Servia,' on which all the assembled magnates and
+people cried, _'nogo lieto_!' (many years!)"
+
+The Servian kingdom was gradually extended under his successors, and
+attained its climax under Stephan Dushan, surnamed the Powerful, who
+was, according to all contemporary accounts, of tall stature and a
+commanding kingly presence. He began his reign in the year 1336, and
+in the course of the four following years, overran nearly the whole of
+what is now called Turkey in Europe; and having besieged the Emperor
+Andronicus in Thessalonica, compelled him to cede Albania and
+Macedonia. Prisrend, in the former province, was selected as the
+capital; the pompous honorary charges and frivolous ceremonial of the
+Greek emperors were introduced at his court, and the short-lived
+national order of the Knights of St. Stephan was instituted by him in
+1346.
+
+He then turned his arms northwards, and defeated Louis of Hungary in
+several engagements. He was preparing to invade Thrace, and attempt
+the conquest of Constantinople, in 1356, with eighty thousand men, but
+death cut him off in the midst of his career.
+
+The brilliant victories of Stephan Dushan were a misfortune to
+Christendom. They shattered the Greek empire, the last feeble bulwark
+of Europe, and paved the way for those ultimate successes of the
+Asiatic conquerors, which a timely union of strength might have
+prevented. Stephan Dushan was the little Napoleon of his day; he
+conquered, but did not consolidate: and his scourging wars were
+insufficiently balanced by the advantage of the code of laws to which
+he gave his name.
+
+His son Urosh, being a weak and incapable prince, was murdered by one
+of the generals of the army, and thus ended the Neman dynasty, after
+having subsisted 212 years, and produced eight kings and two emperors.
+The crown now devolved on Knes, or Prince Lasar, a connexion of the
+house of Neman, who was crowned Czar, but is more generally called
+Knes Lasar. Of all the ancient rulers of the country, his memory is
+held the dearest by the Servians of the present day. He appears to
+have been a pious and generous prince, and at the same time to have
+been a brave but unsuccessful general.
+
+Amurath, the Ottoman Sultan, who had already taken all Roumelia,
+south of the Balkan, now resolved to pass these mountains, and invade
+Servia Proper; but, to make sure of success, secretly offered the
+crown to Wuk Brankovich, a Servian chief, as a reward for his
+treachery to Lasar.
+
+Wuk caught at the bait, and when the armies were in sight of each
+other, accused Milosh Kobilich, the son-in-law of Lasar, of being a
+traitor. On the night before the battle, Lasar assembled all the
+knights and nobles to decide the matter between Wuk and Milosh. Lasar
+then took a silver cup of wine, handed it over to Milosh, and said,
+"Take this cup of wine from my hand and drink it." Milosh drank it, in
+token of his fidelity, and said, "Now there is no time for disputing.
+To-morrow I will prove that my accuser is a calumniator, and that I am
+a faithful subject of my prince and father-in-law."
+
+Milosh then embraced the plan of assassinating Amurath in his tent,
+and taking with him two stout youths, secretly left the Servian camp,
+and presented himself at the Turkish lines, with his lance reversed,
+as a sign of desertion. Arrived at the tent of Amurath, he knelt
+down, and, pretending to kiss the hand of the Sultan, drew forth his
+dagger, and stabbed him in the body, from which wound Amurath died.
+Hence the usage of the Ottomans not to permit strangers to approach
+the Sultan, otherwise than with their arms held by attendants.
+
+The celebrated battle of Kossovo then took place. The wing commanded
+by Wuk gave way, he being the first to retreat. The division commanded
+by Lasar held fast for some time, and, at length, yielded to the
+superior force of the Turks. Lasar himself lost his life in the
+battle, and thus ended the Servian monarchy on the 15th of June, 1389.
+
+The state of Servia, previous to its subjugation by the Turks, appears
+to have been strikingly analogous to that of the other feudal
+monarchies of Europe; the revenue being derived mostly from crown
+lands, the military service of the nobles being considered an
+equivalent for the tenure of their possessions. Society consisted of
+ecclesiastics, nobles, knights, gentlemen, and peasants. A citizen
+class seldom or never figures on the scene. Its merchants were
+foreigners, Byzantines, Venetians, or Ragusans, and history speaks of
+no Bruges or Augsburg in Servia, Bosnia, or Albania.
+
+The religion of the state was that of the oriental church; the secular
+head of which was not the patriarch of Constantinople; but, as is now
+the case in Russia, the emperor himself, assisted by a synod, at the
+head of which was the patriarch of Servia and its dependencies.
+
+The first article of the code of Stephan Dushan runs thus: "Care must
+be taken of the Christian religion, the holy churches, the convents,
+and the ecclesiastics." And elsewhere, with reference to the Latin
+heresy, as it was called, "the Orthodox Czar" was bound to use the
+most vigorous means for its extirpation; those who resisted were to be
+put to death.
+
+At the death of a noble, his arms belonged by right to the Czar; but
+his dresses, gold and silver plate, precious stones, and gilt girdles
+fell to his male children, whom failing, to the daughters. If a noble
+insulted another noble, he paid a fine; if a gentleman insulted a
+noble, he was flogged.
+
+The laity were called "dressers in white:" hence one must conclude
+that light coloured dresses were used by the people, and black by the
+clergy. Beards were worn and held sacred: plucking the beard of a
+noble was punished by the loss of the right hand.
+
+Rape was punished with cutting off the nose of the man; the girl
+received at the same time a third of the man's fortune, as a
+compensation. Seduction, if not followed by marriage, was expiated by
+a pound of gold, if the party were rich; half a pound of gold, if the
+party were in mediocre circumstances; and cutting off the nose if the
+party were poor.
+
+If a woman's husband were absent at the wars, she must wait ten years
+for his return, or for news of him. If she got sure news of his death,
+she must wait a year before marrying again. Otherwise a second
+marriage was considered adultery.
+
+Great protection was afforded to friendly merchants, who were mostly
+Venetians. All lords of manors were enjoined to give them hospitality,
+and were responsible for losses sustained by robbery within their
+jurisdiction. The lessees of the gold and silver mines of Servia, as
+well as the workmen of the state mint, were also Venetians; and on
+looking through Professor Shafarik's collection, I found all the coins
+closely resembling in die those of Venice. Saint Stephan is seen
+giving to the king of the day the banner of Servia, in the same way as
+Saint Mark gives the banner of the republic of Venice to the Doge, as
+seen on the old coins of that state.
+
+The process of embalming was carried to high perfection, for the mummy
+of the canonized Knes Lasar is to be seen to this day. I made a
+pilgrimage some years ago to Vrdnik, a retired monastery in the Frusca
+Gora, where his mummy is preserved with the most religious care, in
+the church, exposed to the atmosphere. It is, of course, shrunk,
+shrivelled, and of a dark brown colour, bedecked with an antique
+embroidered mantle, said to be the same worn at the battle of Kossovo.
+The fingers were covered with the most costly rings, no doubt since
+added.
+
+It appears that the Roman practice of burning the dead, (probably
+preserved by the Tsinsars, the descendants of the colonists in
+Macedonia,) was not uncommon, for any village in which such an act
+took place was subject to fine.
+
+If there be Moslems in secret to this day in Andalusia, and if there
+were worshippers of Odin and Thor till lately on the shores of the
+Baltic, may not some secret votaries of Jupiter and Mars have lingered
+among the recesses of the Balkan, for centuries after Christianity had
+shed its light over Europe?
+
+The Servian monarchy having terminated more than half a century before
+the invention of printing, and most of the manuscripts of the period
+having been destroyed, or dispersed during the long Turkish
+occupation, very little is known of the literature of this period
+except the annals of Servia, by Archbishop Daniel, the original
+manuscript of which is now in the Hiliendar monastery of Mount Athos.
+The language used was the old Slaavic, now a dead language, but used
+to this day as the vehicle of divine service in all Greco-Slaavic
+communities from the Adriatic to the utmost confines of Russia, and
+the parent of all the modern varieties of the Southern and Eastern
+Slaavic languages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A Battue missed.--Proceed to Alexinatz.--Foreign-Office
+Courier.--Bulgarian frontier.--Gipsey Suregee.--Tiupria.--New bridge
+and macadamized road.
+
+
+The Natchalnik was the Nimrod of his district, and had made
+arrangements to treat me to a grand hunt of bears and boars on the
+Jastrabatz, with a couple of hundred peasants to beat the woods; but
+the rain poured, the wind blew, my sport was spoiled, and I missed
+glorious materials for a Snyders in print. Thankful was I, however,
+that the element had spared me during the journey in the hills, and
+that we were in snug quarters during the bad weather. A day later I
+should have been caught in the peasant's chimneyless-hut at the foot
+of the Balkan, and then should have roughed it in earnest.
+
+When the weather settled, I was again in motion, ascending that branch
+of the Morava which comes from Nissa. There was nothing to remark in
+this part of Servia, which proved to be the least interesting part of
+our route, being wanting as well in boldness of outline as in
+luxuriant vegetation.
+
+On approaching a khan, at a short distance from Alexinatz, I perceived
+an individual whom I guessed to be the captain of the place, along
+with a Britannic-looking figure in a Polish frock. This was Captain
+W----, a queen's messenger of the new school.
+
+While we were drinking a cup of coffee, a Turkish Bin Bashi came upon
+his way to Belgrade from the army of Roumelia at Kalkendel; he told us
+that the Pasha of Nish had gone with all his force to Procupli to
+disarm the Arnaouts. I very naturally took out the map to learn where
+Procupli was; on which the Bin Bashi asked me if I was a military
+engineer! "That boy will be the death of me!"--so nobody but military
+engineers are permitted to look at maps.
+
+For a month I had seen or heard nothing of Europe and Europeans
+except the doctor at Csatsak, and his sage maxims about Greek masses
+and Hungarian law-suits. I therefore made prize of the captain, who
+was an intelligent man, with an abundance of fresh political
+chit-chat, and odds and ends of scandal from Paddington to the Bank,
+and from Pall-mall to Parliament-street, brimful of extracts and
+essences of Athenaeums, United-Services, and other hebdomadals.
+Formerly Foreign-Office messengers were the cast-off butlers and
+valets of secretaries of state. For some time back they have been
+taken from the half-pay list and the educated classes. One or two can
+boast of very fair literary attainments; and a man who once a year
+spends a few weeks in all the principal capitals of Europe, from
+Madrid to St. Petersburg and Constantinople, necessarily picks up a
+great knowledge of the world. The British messengers post out from
+London to Semlin, where they leave their carriages, ride across to
+Alexinatz on the Bulgarian frontier, whence the despatches are carried
+by a Tartar to Constantinople, via Philippopoli and Adrianople.
+
+On arriving at Alexinatz, a good English dinner awaited us at the
+konak of the queen's messenger. It seemed so odd, and yet was so very
+comfortable, to have roast beef, plum pudding, sherry, brown stout,
+Stilton cheese, and other insular groceries at the foot of the Balkan.
+There was, moreover, a small library, with which the temporary
+occupants of the konak killed the month's interval between arrival and
+departure.
+
+Next day I visited the quarantine buildings with the inspector; they
+are all new, and erected in the Austrian manner. The number of those
+who purge their quarantine is about fourteen thousand individuals per
+annum, being mostly Bulgarians who wander into Servia at harvest time,
+and place at the disposal of the haughty, warlike, and somewhat
+indolent Servians their more humble and laborious services. A village
+of three hundred houses, a church, and a national school, have sprung
+up within the last few years at this point. The imports from Roumelia
+and Bulgaria are mostly Cordovan leather; the exports, Austrian
+manufactures, which pass through Servia.
+
+When the new macadamized road from Belgrade to this point is
+finished, there can be no doubt that the trade will increase. The
+possible effect of which is, that the British manufactures, which are
+sold at the fairs of Transbalkan Bulgaria, may be subject to greater
+competition. After spending a few days at Alexinatz, I started with
+post horses for Tiupria, as the horse I had ridden had been so
+severely galled, that I was obliged to send him to Belgrade.
+
+Tiupria, being on the high road across Servia, has a large khan, at
+which I put up. I had observed armed guards at the entrance of the
+town, and felt at a loss to account for the cause. The rooms of the
+khan being uninhabitable, I sent Paul with my letter of introduction
+to the Natchalnik, and sat down in the khan kitchen, which was a
+parlour at the same time; an apartment, with a brick floor, one side
+of which was fitted up with a broad wooden bench (the bare boards
+being in every respect preferable in such cases to cushions, as one
+has a better chance of cleanliness).
+
+The other side of the apartment was like a hedge alehouse in England,
+with a long table and moveable benches. Several Servians sat here
+drinking coffee and smoking; others drinking wine. The Cahwagi was
+standing with his apron on, at a little charcoal furnace, stirring his
+small coffee-pot until the cream came. I ordered some wine for myself,
+as well as the Suregee, but the latter said, "I do not drink wine." I
+now looked him in the face, and saw that he was of a very dark
+complexion; for I had made the last stage after sunset, and had not
+remarked him.
+
+_Author_. "Are you a Chingany (gipsy)?"
+
+_Gipsy_. "Yes."
+
+_Author_. "Now I recollect most of the gipsies here are Moslems; how
+do you show your adherence to Islamism?"
+
+_Gipsy_. "I go regularly to mosque, and say my prayers."
+
+_Author_. "What language do you speak?"
+
+_Gipsy_. "In business Turkish or Servian; but with my family
+Chingany."
+
+I now asked the Cahwagi the cause of the guards being posted in the
+streets; and he told me of the attempt at Shabatz, by disguised
+hussars, in which the worthy collector met his death. Paul not
+returning, I felt impatient, and wondered what had become of him. At
+length he returned, and told me that he had been taken in the streets
+as a suspicious character, without a lantern, carried to the
+guard-house, and then to the house of the Natchalnik, to whom he
+presented the letter, and from whom he now returned, with a pandour,
+and a message to come immediately.
+
+The Natchalnik met us half-way with the lanterns, and reproached me
+for not at once descending at his house. Being now fatigued, I soon
+went to bed in an apartment hung round with all sorts of arms. There
+were Albanian guns, Bosniac pistols, Vienna fowling-pieces, and all
+manner of Damascus and Khorassan blades.
+
+Next morning, on awaking, I looked out at my window, and found myself
+in a species of kiosk, which hung over the Morava, now no longer a
+mountain stream, but a broad and almost navigable river. The lands on
+the opposite side were flat, but well cultivated, and two bridges, an
+old and a new one, spanned the river. Hence the name Tiupria, from the
+Turkish _keupri_ (bridge,) for here the high road from Belgrade to
+Constantinople crosses the Morava.
+
+The Natchalnik, a tall, muscular, broad-shouldered man, now entered,
+and, saluting me like an old friend, asked me how I slept.
+
+_Author_. "I thank you, never better in my life. My yesterday's ride
+gave me a sharp exercise, without excessive fatigue. I need not ask
+you how you are, for you are the picture of health and herculean
+strength."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I was strong in my day, but now and then nature tells
+me that I am considerably on the wrong side of my climacteric."
+
+_Author_. "Pray tell me what is the reason of this accumulation of
+arms. I never slept with such ample means of defence within my
+reach,--quite an arsenal."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "You have no doubt heard of the attempt of the
+Obrenovitch faction at Shabatz. We are under no apprehension of their
+doing any thing here; for they have no partizans: but I am an old
+soldier, and deem it prudent to take precautions, even when
+appearances do not seem to demand them very imperiously. I wish the
+rascals would show face in this quarter, just to prevent our arms from
+getting rusty. Our greatest loss is that of Ninitch, the collector."
+
+_Author_. "Poor follow. I knew him as well as any man can know another
+in a few days. He made a most favourable impression on me: it seems as
+it were but yesternight that I toasted him in a bumper, and wished him
+long life, which, like many other wishes of mine, was not destined to
+be fulfilled. How little we think of the frail plank that separates us
+from the ocean of eternity!"
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I was once, myself, very near the other world, having
+entered as a volunteer in the Russian army that crossed the Balkan in
+1828. I burned a mosque in defiance of the orders of Marshal Diebitch;
+the consequence was that I was tried by a court-martial, and condemned
+to be shot: but on putting in a petition, and stating that I had done
+so through ignorance, and in accomplishment of a vow of vengeance, my
+father and brother having been killed by the Turks in the war of
+liberation, seven of our houses[15] having been burned at the same
+time, Marshal Diebitch on reading the petition pardoned me."
+
+The doctor of the place now entered; a very little man with a pale
+complexion, and a black braided surtout. He informed me that he had
+been for many years a Surgeon in the Austrian navy. On my asking him
+how he liked that service, he answered, "Very well; for we rarely go
+out to the Mediterranean; our home-ports, Venice and Trieste, are
+agreeable, and our usual station in the Levant is Smyrna, which is
+equally pleasant. The Austrian vessels being generally frigates of
+moderate size, the officers live in a more friendly and comfortable
+way than if they were of heavier metal. But were I not a surgeon, I
+should prefer the wider sphere of distinction which colonial and
+trans-oceanic life and incident opens to the British naval officer;
+for I, myself, once made a voyage to the Brazils."
+
+We now went to see the handsome new bridge in course of construction
+over the Morava. The architect, a certain Baron Cordon, who had been
+bred a military engineer, happened to be there at the time, and
+obligingly explained the details. At every step I see the immense
+advantages which this country derives from its vicinity to Austria in
+a material point of view; and yet the Austrian and Servian governments
+seem perpetually involved in the most inexplicable squabbles. A gang
+of poor fellows who had been compromised in the unsuccessful attempts
+of last year by the Obrenovitch party, were working in chains,
+macadamizing the road.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: Houses or horses; my notes having been written with
+rapidity, the word is indistinct.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Visit to Ravanitza.--Jovial party.--Servian and Austrian
+jurisdiction.--Convent described.--Eagles reversed.--Bulgarian
+festivities.
+
+
+The Natchalnik having got up a party, we proceeded in light cars of
+the country to Ravanitza, a convent two or three hours off in the
+mountains to the eastward. The country was gently undulating,
+cultivated, and mostly inclosed, the roads not bad, and the _ensemble_
+such as English landscapes were represented to be half a century ago.
+When we approached Ravanitza we were again lost in the forest.
+Ascending by the side of a mountain-rill, the woods opened, and the
+convent rose in an amphitheatre at the foot of an abrupt rocky
+mountain; a pleasing spot, but wanting the grandeur and beauty of the
+sites on the Bosniac frontier.
+
+[Illustration: Ravanitza.]
+
+The superior was a tall, polite, middle-aged man. "I expected you long
+ago," said he; "the Archbishop advised me of your arrival: but we
+thought something might have happened, or that you had missed us."
+
+"I prolonged my tour," said I, "beyond the limits of my original
+project. The circumstance of this convent having been the burial-place
+of Knes Lasar, was a sufficient motive for my on no account missing a
+sight of it."
+
+The superior now led us into the refectory, where a long table had
+been laid out for dinner, for with the number of Tiuprians, as well as
+the monks of this convent, and some from the neighbouring convent of
+Manasia, we mustered a very numerous and very gay party. The wine was
+excellent; and I could not help thinking with the jovial Abbot of
+Quimper:
+
+    "Quand nos joyeux verres
+    Se font des le matin,
+    Tout le jour, mes freres,
+    Devient un festin."
+
+By dint of _interlarding_ my discourse with sundry apophthegms of
+_Bacon_, and stale paradoxes of Rochefoucaud, I passed current
+throughout Servia considerably above my real value; so after the usual
+toasts due to the powers that be, the superior proposed my health in a
+very long harangue. Before I had time to reply, the party broke into
+the beautiful hymn for longevity, which I had heard pealing in the
+cathedral of Belgrade for the return of Wucics and Petronievitch. I
+assured them that I was unworthy of such an honour, but could not help
+remarking that this hymn "for many years" immediately after the
+drinking of a health, was one of the most striking and beautiful
+customs I had noticed in Servia.
+
+A very curious discussion arose after dinner, relative to the
+different footing of Servians in Austria, and Austrians in Servia. The
+former when in Austria, are under the Austrian law; the latter in
+Servia, under the jurisdiction of their own consul. Being appealed to,
+I explained that in former times the Ottoman Sultans easily permitted
+consular jurisdiction in Turkey, without stipulating corresponding
+privileges for their own subjects; for Christendom, and particularly
+Austria, was considered _Dar El Harb_, or perpetually the seat of war,
+in which it was illegal for subjects of the Sultan to reside.
+
+In the afternoon we made a survey of the convent and church, which
+were built by Knes Lasar, and surrounded by a wall and seven towers.
+
+The church, like all the other edifices of this description, is
+Byzantine; but being built of stone, wants the refinement which shone
+in the sculptures and marbles of Studenitza. I remarked, however, that
+the cupolas were admirably proportioned and most harmoniously
+disposed. Before entering I looked above the door, and perceived that
+the double eagles carved there are reversed. Instead of having body to
+body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as in the arms of Austria
+and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks inward to beak.
+
+On entering we were shown the different vessels, one of which is a
+splendid cup, presented by Peter the Great, and several of the same
+description from the empress Catharine, some in gold, silver, and
+steel; others in gold, silver, and bronze.
+
+The body of Knes Lasar, after having been for some time hid, was
+buried here in 1394, remained till 1684, at which period it was taken
+over to Virdnik in Syrmium, where it remains to this day.
+
+In the cool of the evening the superior took me to a spring of clear
+delicious water, gushing from rocks environed with trees. A boy with a
+large crystal goblet, dashed it into the clear lymph, and presented it
+to me. The superior fell into eulogy of his favourite Valclusa, and I
+drank not only this but several glasses, with circumstantial
+criticisms on its excellence; so that the superior seemed delighted at
+my having rendered such ample justice to the water he so loudly
+praised, _Entre nous_,--the excellence of his wine, and the toasts
+that we had drunk to the health of innumerable loyal and virtuous
+individuals, rendered me a greater amateur of water-bibbing than
+usual.
+
+After some time we returned, and saw a lamb roasting for supper in the
+open air; a hole being dug in the earth, chopped vine-twigs are burnt
+below it, the crimson glow of which soon roasts the lamb, and imparts
+a particular fragrance to the flesh. After supper we went out in the
+mild dark evening to a mount, where a bonfire blazed and glared on the
+high square tower of the convent, and cushions were laid for
+chibouques and coffee. The not unpleasing drone of bagpipes resounded
+through the woods, and a number of Bulgarians executed their national
+dance in a circle, taking hold of each other's girdle, and keeping
+time with the greatest exactness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Manasia--Has preserved its middle-age character.--Robinson
+Crusoe.--Wonderful Echo.--Kindness of the
+people.--Svilainitza.--Posharevatz.--Baby Giantess.
+
+
+Next day, accompanied by the doctor, and a portion of the party of
+yesterday, we proceeded to the convent of Manasia, five hours off; our
+journey being mostly through forests, with the most wretched roads.
+Sometimes we had to cross streams of considerable depth; at other
+places the oaks, arching over head, almost excluded the light: at
+length, on doubling a precipitous promontory of rock, a wide open
+valley burst upon us, at the extremity of which we saw the donjons and
+crenellated towers of a perfect feudal castle surrounding and fencing
+in the domes of an antique church. Again I say, that those who wish
+to see the castellated monuments of the middle ages just as they were
+left by the builders, must come to this country. With us in old
+Europe, they are either modernized or in ruins, and in many of them
+every tower and gate reflects the taste of a separate period; some
+edifices showing a grotesque progress from Gothic to Italian, and from
+Italian to Roman _a la Louis Quinze_: a succession which corresponds
+with the portraits within doors, which begin with coats of mail, or
+padded velvet, and end with bag-wigs and shoe-buckles. But here, at
+Manasia,
+
+    "The battle towers, the donjon keep,
+     The loophole grates, where captives weep.
+     The flanking walls that round it sweep,
+        In yellow lustre shone;"
+
+and we were quietly carried back to the year of our Lord 1400; for
+this castle and church were built by Stephan, Despot of Servia, the
+son of Knes Lasar. Stephan, Instead of being "the Czar of all the
+Servian lands and coasts," became a mere hospodar, who must do as he
+was bid by his masters, the Turks.
+
+Manasia being entirely secluded from the world, the monastic
+establishment was of a humbler and simpler nature than that of
+Ravanitza, and the monks, good honest men, but mere peasants in cowls.
+
+After dinner, a strong broad-faced monk, whom I recognized as having
+been of the company at Ravanitza, called for a bumper, and began in a
+solemn matter-of-fact way, the following speech: "You are a great
+traveller in our eyes; for none of us ever went further than Syrmium.
+The greatest traveller of your country that we know of was that
+wonderful navigator, Robinson Crusoe, of York, who, poor man, met with
+many and great difficulties, but at length, by the blessing of God,
+was restored to his native country, his family, and his friends. We
+trust that the Almighty will guard over you, and that you will never,
+in the course of your voyages and travels, be thrown like him on a
+desert island; and now we drink your health, and long life to you."
+When the toast was drunk, I thanked the company, but added that from
+the revolutions in locomotion, I ran a far greater chance now-a-days
+of being blown out of a steam-boat, or smashed to pieces on a
+railway.
+
+From the rocks above Manasia is one of the most remarkable echoes I
+ever heard; at the distance of sixty or seventy yards from one of the
+towers the slightest whisper is rendered with the most amusing
+exactness.
+
+From Manasia we went to Miliva, where the peasantry were standing in a
+row, by the side of a rustic tent, made of branches of trees. Grapes,
+roast fowl, &c. were laid out for us; but thanking them for their
+proffered hospitality, we passed on. From this place the road to
+Svilainitza is level, the country fertile, and more populous than we
+had seen any where else in Servia. At some places the villagers had
+prepared bouquets; at another place a school, of fifty or sixty
+children, was drawn up in the street, and sang a hymn of welcome.
+
+At Svilainitza the people would not allow me to go any further; and we
+were conducted to the chateau of M. Ressavatz, the wealthiest man in
+Servia. This villa is the _fac simile_ of the new ones in the banat of
+Temesvav, having the rooms papered, a luxury in Servia, where the
+most of the rooms, even in good houses, are merely size-coloured.
+
+Svilainitza is remarkable, as the only place in Servia where silk is
+cultivated to any extent, the Ressavatz family having paid especial
+attention to it. In fact, Svilainitza means the place of silk.
+
+From Svilainitza, we next morning started for Posharevatz, or
+Passarovitz, by an excellent macadamized road, through a country
+richly cultivated and interspersed with lofty oaks. I arrived at
+mid-day, and was taken to the house of M. Tutsakovitch, the president
+of the court of appeal, who had expected us on the preceding evening.
+He was quite a man of the world, having studied jurisprudence in the
+Austrian Universities. The outer chamber, or hall of his house, was
+ranged with shining pewter plates in the olden manner, and his best
+room was furnished in the best German style.
+
+In a few minutes M. Ressavatz, the Natchalnik, came, a serious but
+friendly man, with an eye that bespoke an expansive intellect.
+
+"This part of Servia," said I, "is _Ressavatz qua_, _Ressavatz la_.
+We last night slept at your brother's house, at Svilainitza, which is
+the only chateau I have seen in Servia; and to-day the rapid and
+agreeable journey I made hither was due to the macadamized road,
+which, I am told, you were the means of constructing."
+
+The Natchalnik bowed, and the president said, "This road originated
+entirely with M. Ressavatz, who went through a world of trouble before
+he could get the peasantry of the intervening villages to lend their
+assistance. Great was the first opposition to the novelty; but now the
+people are all delighted at being able to drive in winter without
+sinking up to their horses' knees in mud."
+
+We now proceeded to view the government buildings, which are all new,
+and in good order, being somewhat more extensive than those elsewhere;
+for Posharevatz, besides having ninety thousand inhabitants in its own
+_nahie_,[16] or government, is a sort of judicial capital for Eastern
+Servia.
+
+The principal edifice is a barrack, but the regular troops were at
+this time all at Shabatz. The president showed me through the court of
+appeal. Most of the apartments were occupied with clerks, and fitted
+up with shelves for registers. The court of justice was an apartment
+larger than the rest, without a raised bench, having merely a long
+table, covered with a green cloth, at one end of which was a crucifix
+and Gospels, for the taking of oaths, and the seats for the president
+and assessors.
+
+We then went to the billiard-room with the Natchalnik, and played a
+couple of games, both of which I lost, although the Natchalnik, from
+sheer politeness, played badly; and at sunset we returned to the
+president's house, where a large party was assembled to dinner. We
+then adjourned to the comfortable inner apartment, where, as the chill
+of autumn was beginning to creep over us, we found a blazing fire; and
+the president having made some punch, that showed profound
+acquaintance with the jurisprudence of conviviality, the best amateurs
+of Posharevatz sang their best songs, which pleased me somewhat, for
+my ears had gradually been broken into the habits of the Servian muse.
+Being pressed myself to sing an English national song, I gratified
+their curiosity with "God save the Queen," and "Rule Britannia,"
+explaining that these two songs contained the essence of English
+nationality: the one expressive of our unbounded loyalty, the other of
+our equally unbounded ocean dominion.
+
+_President_. "You have been visiting the rocks and mountains of
+Servia; but there is a natural curiosity in this neighbourhood, which
+is much more wonderful. Have you heard of the baby giantess?"
+
+_Author_. "Yes, I have. I was told that a child was six feet high, and
+a perfect woman."
+
+_President_. "No, a child of two years and three months is as big as
+other children of six or seven years, and her womanhood such as is
+usual in girls of sixteen."
+
+_Author_. "It is almost incredible."
+
+_President_. "Well, you may convince yourself with your own eyes,
+before you leave this blessed town."
+
+The Natchalnik then called a Momke, and gave orders for the child to
+be brought next day. At the appointed hour the father and mother came
+with the child. It was indeed a baby giantess, higher than its
+brother, who was six years of age. Its hands were thick and strong,
+the flesh plump, and the mammae most prominently developed. Seeing the
+room filled with people, it began to cry, but its attention being
+diverted by a nodding mandarin of stucco provided for the purpose, the
+nurse enabled us to verify all the president had said. This phenomenon
+was born the 29th of June, 1842, old style, and the lunar influences
+were in operation on the tenth month after birth. I remarked to the
+president, that if the father had more avarice than decency, he might
+go to Europe, and return with his weight in gold.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 16: _Nahie_ is a Turkish word, and meant "_district_." The
+original word means "_direction_," and is applied to winds, and the
+point of the compass.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Rich Soil.--Mysterious Waters.--Treaty of Passarovitz.--The Castle of
+Semendria--Relics of the Antique.--The Brankovitch
+Family.--Pancsova.--Morrison's Pills.
+
+
+The soil at Posharevatz is remarkably rich, the greasy humus being
+from fifteen to twenty-five feet thick, and consequently able to
+nourish the noblest forest trees. In the Banat, which is the granary
+of the Austrian empire, trees grow well for fifteen, twenty, or
+twenty-five years, and then die away. The cause of this is, that the
+earth, although rich, is only from three to six feet thick, with sand
+or cold clay below; thus as soon as the roots descend to the
+substrata, in which they find no nourishment, rottenness appears on
+the top branches, and gradually descends.
+
+At Kruahevitza, not very far from Pasharevatz, is a cave, which is, I
+am told, entered with difficulty, into the basin of which water
+gradually flows at intervals, and then disappears, as the doctor of
+the place (a Saxon) told me, with an extraordinary noise resembling
+the molar rumble of railway travelling. This spring is called
+Potainitza, or the mysterious waters.
+
+Posharevatz, miscalled Passarowitz, is historically remarkable, as the
+place where Prince Eugene, in 1718, after his brilliant victories of
+the previous year, including the capture of Belgrade, signed, with the
+Turks, the treaty which gave back to the house of Austria not only the
+whole of Hungary, but added great part of Servia and Little Wallachia,
+as far as the Aluta. With this period began the Austrian rule in
+Servia, and at this time the French fashioned Lange Gasse of Belgrade
+rose amid the "swelling domes and pointed minarets of the white
+eagle's nest."[17]
+
+Several quaint incidents had recalled this period during my tour. For
+instance, at Manasia, I saw rudely engraven on the church wall,--
+
+                Wolfgang Zastoff,
+     Kaiserlicher Forst-Meister im Maidan.
+                Die 1 Aug. 1721.
+
+Semendria is three hours' ride from Posharevatz; the road crosses the
+Morava, and everywhere the country is fertile, populous, and well
+cultivated. Innumerable massive turrets, mellowed by the sun of a
+clear autumn, and rising from wide rolling waters, announced my
+approach to the shores of the Danube. I seemed entering one of those
+fabled strong holds, with which the early Italian artists adorned
+their landscapes. If Semendria be not the most picturesque of the
+Servian castles of the elder period, it is certainly by far the most
+extensive of them. Nay, it is colossal. The rampart next the Danube
+has been shorn of its fair proportions, so as to make it suit the
+modern art of war. Looking at Semendria from one of the three land
+sides, you have a castle of Ercole di Ferrara; looking at it from the
+water, you have the boulevard of a Van der Meulen.
+
+The Natchalnik accompanied me in a visit to the fortress, protected
+from accident by a couple of soldiers; for the castle of Semendria is
+still, like that of Shabatz, in the hands of a few Turkish spahis and
+their families. The news from Shabatz having produced a alight
+ferment, we found several armed Moslems at the gate; but they did not
+allow the Servians to pass, with the exception of the Natchalnik and
+another man. "This is new," said he; "I never knew them to be so wary
+and suspicious before." We now found ourselves within the walls of the
+fortress. A shabby wooden _cafe_ was opposite to us; a mosque of the
+same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right. The
+cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we
+might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or
+fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee. His worship was so
+proud, that he scarcely deigned to speak. The Disdar Aga, a somewhat
+more approximative personage, now entered the tottering chardak, (the
+carpenters of Semendria seem to have emigrated _en masse_,) and
+proffered himself as Cicerone of the castle.
+
+Mean and abominable huts, with patches of garden ground filled up the
+space inclosed by the gorgeous ramparts and massive towers of
+Semendria. The further we walked the nobler appeared the last relic of
+the dotage of old feudal Servia. In one of the towers next the Danube
+is a sculptured Roman tombstone. One graceful figure points to a
+sarcophagus, close to which a female sits in tears; in a word, a
+remnant of the antique--of that harmony which dies not away, but
+swells on the finer organs of perception.
+
+"_Eski, Eski_. Very old," said the Disdar Aga, who accompanied me.
+
+"It is Roman," said I.
+
+"_Roumgi_?" said he, thinking I meant _Greek_.
+
+"No, _Latinski_," said a third, which is the name usually given to
+_Roman_ remains.
+
+As at Sokol and Ushitza, I was not permitted to enter the inner
+citadel;[18] so, returning to the gate, where we were rejoined by the
+soldiers, we went to the fourth tower, on the left of the Stamboul
+Kapu, and looking up, we saw inserted and forming part of the wall, a
+large stone, on which was cut, in _basso rilievo_, a figure of Europa
+reposing on a bull. Here was no fragile grace, as in the other figure;
+a few simple lines bespoke the careless hardihood of antique art.
+
+The castle of Semendria was built in 1432, by the Brankovitch, who
+succeeded the family of Knes Lasar as _despots_, or native rulers of
+Servia, under the Turks; and the construction of this enormous pile
+was permitted by their masters, under the pretext of the strengthening
+of Servia against the Hungarians. The last of these _despots_ of
+Servia was George Brankovitch, the historian, who passed over to
+Austria, was raised to the dignity of a count; and after being kept
+many years as a state prisoner, suspected of secret correspondence
+with the Turks, died at Eger, in Bohemia, in 1711. The legitimate
+Brankovitch line is now extinct.[19]
+
+Leaving the fortress, we returned to the Natchalnik's house. I was
+struck with the size, beauty, and flavour of the grapes here; I have
+nowhere tasted such delicious fruit of this description. "Groja
+Smederevsko" are celebrated through all Servia, and ought to make
+excellent wine.
+
+The road from Semendria to Belgrade skirts the Danube, across which
+one sees the plains of the Banat and military frontier. The only place
+of any consequence on that side of the river is Pancsova, the sight of
+which reminded me of a conversation I had there some years ago.
+
+The major of the town, after swallowing countless boxes of Morrison's
+pills, died in the belief that he had not begun to take them soon
+enough. The consumption of these drugs at that time almost surpassed
+belief. There was scarcely a sickly or hypochondriac person, from the
+Hill of Presburg to the Iron Gates, who had not taken large quantities
+of them. Being curious to know the cause of this extensive
+consumption, I asked for an explanation.
+
+"You must know," said an individual, "that the Anglo-mania is nowhere
+stronger than in this part of the world. Whatever comes from England,
+be it Congreve rockets, or vegetable pills, must needs be perfect. Dr.
+Morrison is indebted to his high office for the enormous consumption
+of his drugs. It is clear that the president of the British College
+must be a man in the enjoyment of the esteem of the government and the
+faculty of medicine; and his title is a passport to his pills in
+foreign countries."
+
+I laughed heartily, and explained that the British College of Health,
+and the College of Physicians, were not identical.
+
+The road from this point to Belgrade presents no particular interest.
+Half an hour from the city I crossed the celebrated trenches of
+Marshal Laudohn; and rumbling through a long cavernous gateway, called
+the Stamboul Kapousi, or gate of Constantinople, again found myself in
+Belgrade, thankful for the past, and congratulating myself on the
+circumstances of my trip. I had seen a state of patriarchal manners,
+the prominent features of which will be at no distant time rolled flat
+and smooth, by the pressure of old Europe, and the salient angles of
+which will disappear through the agency of the hotel and the
+stagecoach, with its bevy of tourists, who, with greater facilities
+for seeing the beauties of nature, will arrive and depart, shrouded
+from the mass of the people, by the mercenaries that hang on the
+beaten tracks of the traveller.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 17: In Servian, Belgrade is called Beograd, "white
+city;"--poetically, "white eagle's nest."]
+
+[Footnote 18: I think that a traveller ought to see all that he can;
+but, of course, has no right to feel surprised at being excluded from
+citadels.]
+
+[Footnote 19: One of the representatives of the ancient imperial family
+is the Earl of Devon, for Urosh the Great married Helen of
+Courtenay.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Personal Appearance of the Servians.--Their Moral
+Character.--Peculiarities of Manners.--Christmas
+Festivities.--Easter.--The Dodola.
+
+
+The Servians are a remarkably tall and robust race of men; in form and
+feature they bespeak strength of body and energy of mind: but one
+seldom sees that thorough-bred look, which, so frequently found in the
+poorest peasants of Italy and Greece, shows that the descendants of
+the most polite of the ancients, although disinherited of dominion,
+have not lost the corporeal attributes of nobility. But the women of
+Servia I think very pretty. In body they are not so well shaped as the
+Greek women; but their complexions are fine, the hair generally black
+and glossy, and their head-dress particularly graceful. Not being
+addicted to the bath, like other eastern women, they prolong their
+beauty beyond the average climacteric; and their houses, with rooms
+opening on a court-yard and small garden, are favourable to health and
+beauty. They are not exposed to the elements as the men; nor are they
+cooped up within four walls, like many eastern women, without a
+sufficient circulation of air.
+
+Through all the interior of Servia, the female is reckoned an inferior
+being, and fit only to be the plaything of youth and the nurse of old
+age. This peculiarity of manners has not sprung from the four
+centuries of Turkish occupation, but appears to have been inherent in
+old Slaavic manners, and such as we read of in Russia, a very few
+generations ago; but as the European standard is now rapidly adopted
+at Belgrade, there can be little doubt that it will thence, in the
+course of time, spread over all Servia.
+
+The character of the Servian closely resembles that of the Scottish
+Highlander. He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in
+simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments
+being the bagpipe and fiddle: but unlike the Greek be shows little
+aptitude for trade; and unlike the Bulgarian, he is very lazy in
+agricultural operations. All this corresponds with the Scottish Celtic
+character; and without absolute dishonesty, a certain low cunning in
+the prosecution of his material interests completes the parallel.
+
+The old customs of Servia are rapidly disappearing under the pressure
+of laws and European institutions. Many of these could not have
+existed except in a society in which might made right. One of these
+was the vow of eternal brotherhood and friendship between two
+individuals; a treaty offensive and defensive, to assist each other in
+the difficult passages of life. This bond is considered sacred and
+indissoluble. Frequently remarkable instances of it are found in the
+wars of Kara Georg. But now that regular guarantees for the security
+of life and property exist, the custom appears to have fallen into
+desuetude. These confederacies in the dual state, as in Servia, or
+multiple, as in the clan system of Scotland and Albania, are always
+strongest in turbulent times and regions.[20]
+
+Another of the old customs of Servia was sufficiently characteristic
+of its lawless state. Abduction of females was common. Sometimes a
+young man would collect a party of his companions, break into a
+village, and carry off a maiden. To prevent re-capture they generally
+went into the woods, where the nuptial knot was tied by a priest
+_nolens volens_. Then commenced the negotiation for a reconciliation
+with the parents, which was generally successful; as in many instances
+the female had been the secret lover of the young man, and the other
+villagers used to add their persuasion, in order to bring about a
+pacific solution. But if the relations of the girl mode a legal affair
+of it, the young woman was asked if it was by her own will that she
+was taken away; and if she made the admission then a reconciliation
+took place: if not, those concerned in the abduction were fined, Kara
+Georg put a stop to this by proclamation, punishing the author of an
+abduction with death, the priest with dismissal, and the assistants
+with the bastinado.
+
+The Haiducks, or outlawed robbers, who during the first quarter of the
+present century infested the woods of Servia, resembled the Caterans
+of the Highlands of Scotland, being as much rebels as robbers, and
+imagined that in setting authority at defiance they were not acting
+dishonourably, but combating for a principle of independence. They
+robbed only the rich Moslems, and were often generous to the poor.
+Thus robbery and rebellion being confounded, the term Haiduck is not
+considered opprobrious; and several old Servians have confessed to me
+that they had been Haiducks in their youth, I am sure that the
+adventures of a Servian Rob Roy might form the materials of a stirring
+Romance. There are many Haiducks still in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and on
+the western Balkan; but the race in Servia is extinct, and plunder is
+the only object of the few robbers who now infest the woods in the
+west of Servia.
+
+Such are the customs that have just disappeared; but many national
+peculiarities still remain. At Christmas, for instance, every peasant
+goes to the woods, and cuts down a young oak; as soon as he returns
+home, which is in the twilight; he says to the assembled family, "A
+happy Christmas eve to the house;" on which a male of the family
+scatters a little grain on the ground and answers, "God be gracious to
+you, our happy and honoured father." The housewife then lays the young
+oak on the fire, to which are thrown a few nuts and a little straw,
+and the evening ends in merriment.
+
+Next day, after divine service, the family assemble around the dinner
+table, each bearing a lighted candle; and they say aloud, "Christ is
+born: let us honour Christ and his birth." The usual Christmas drink
+is hot wine mixed with honey. They have also the custom of First Foot.
+This personage is selected beforehand, under the idea that he will
+bring luck with him for the ensuing year. On entering the First Foot
+says, "Christ is born!" and receives for answer, "Yes, he is born!"
+while the First Foot scatters a few grains of corn on the floor. He
+then advances and stirs up the wood on the fire, so that it crackles
+and emits sparks; on which the First Foot says, "As many sparks so
+many cattle, so many horses, so many goats, so many sheep, so many
+boars, so many bee hives, and so much luck and prosperity.'" He then
+throws a little money into the ashes, or hangs some hemp on the door;
+and Christmas ends with presents and festivities.
+
+At Easter, they amuse themselves with the game of breaking hard-boiled
+eggs, having first examined those of an opponent to see that they are
+not filled with wax. From this time until Ascension day the common
+formula of greeting is "Christ has arisen!" to which answer is made,
+"Yes; he has truly arisen or ascended!" And on the second Monday after
+Easter the graves of dead relations are visited.
+
+One of the most extraordinary customs of Servia is that of the Dodola.
+When a long drought has taken place, a handsome young woman is
+stripped, and so dressed up with grass, flowers, cabbage and other
+leaves, that her face is scarcely visible; she then, in company with
+several girls of twelve or fifteen years of age, goes from house to
+house singing a song, the burden of which is a wish for rain. It is
+then the custom of the mistress of the house at which the Dodola is
+stopped to throw a little water on her. This custom used also to be
+kept up in the Servian districts of Hungary; but has been forbidden by
+the priests.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 20: The most perfect confederacy of this description is that
+of the Druses, which has stood the test of eight centuries, and in its
+secret organization is complete beyond any thing attained by
+freemasonry.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Town life.--The public offices.--Manners half-Oriental
+half-European.--Merchants and Tradesmen.--Turkish
+population.--Porters.--Barbers.--Cafes.--Public Writer.
+
+
+On passing from the country to the town the politician views with
+interest the transitional state of society: but the student of manners
+finds nothing salient, picturesque, or remarkable; everything is
+verging to German routine. If you meet a young man in any department,
+and ask what he does; he tells you that he is a Concepist or
+Protocollist.
+
+In the public offices, the paper is, as in Germany, atrociously
+coarse, being something like that with which parcels are wrapped up in
+England; and sand is used instead of blotting paper. They commence
+business early in the morning, at eight o'clock, and go on till
+twelve, at which hour everybody goes to the mid-day meal. They
+commence again at four o'clock, and terminate at seven, which is the
+hour of supper. The reason of this is, that almost everybody takes a
+siesta.
+
+The public offices throughout the interior of Servia are plain houses,
+with white-washed walls, deal desks, shelves, and presses, but having
+been recently built, have generally a respectable appearance. The
+Chancery of State and Senate house are also quite new constructions,
+close to the palace; but in the country, a Natchalnik transacts a
+great deal of business in his own house.
+
+Servia contains within itself the forms of the East and the West, as
+separately and distinctly as possible. See a Natchalnik in the back
+woods squatted on his divan, with his enormous trowsers, smoking his
+pipe, and listening to the contents of a paper, which his secretary,
+crouching and kneeling on the carpet, reads to him, and you have the
+Bey, the Kaimacam, or the Mutsellim before you. See M. Petronievitch
+scribbling in his cabinet, and you have the _Furstlicher
+Haus-Hof-Staats-und Conferenz-Minister_ of the meridian of Saxe or
+Hesse.
+
+Servia being an agricultural country, and not possessing a sea-port,
+there does not exist an influential, mercantile, or capitalist class
+_per se_. Greeks, Jews, and Tsinsars, form a considerable proportion
+of those engaged in the foreign trade: it is to be remarked that most
+of this class are secret adherents of the Obrenovitch party, while the
+wealthy native Servians support Kara Georgevitch.
+
+In Belgrade, the best tradesmen are Germans, or Servians, who have
+learned their business at Pesth; or Temeswar; but nearly all the
+retailers are Servians.
+
+Having treated so fully the aspects and machinery of Oriental life, in
+my work on native society in Damascus and Aleppo, it is not necessary
+that I should say here any thing of Moslem manners and customs. The
+Turks in Belgrade are nearly all of a very poor class, and follow the
+humblest occupations. The river navigation causes many hands to be
+employed in boating; and it always seemed to me that the proportion
+of the turbans on the river exceeded that of the Christian short fez.
+Most of the porters on the quay of Belgrade are Turks in their
+turbans, which gives the landing-place, on arrival from Semlin, a more
+Oriental look than the Moslem population of the town warrants. From
+the circumstance of trucks being nearly unknown in this country, these
+Turkish porters carry weights that would astonish an Englishman, and
+show great address in balancing and dividing heavy weights among them.
+
+Most of the barbers in Belgrade are Turks, and have that superior
+dexterity which distinguishes their craft in the east. There are also
+Christian barbers; but the Moslems are in greater force. I never saw
+any Servian shave himself; nearly all resort to the barber. Even the
+Christian barbers, in imitation of the Oriental fashion, shave the
+straggling edges of the eyebrows, and with pincers tug out the small
+hairs of the nostrils.
+
+The native _cafes_ are nearly all kept by Moslems; one, as I have
+stated elsewhere, by an Arab, born in Oude in India; another by a
+Jew, which is frequented by the children of Israel, and is very dirty.
+I once went in to smoke a narghile, and see the place, but made my
+escape forthwith. Several Jews, who spoke Spanish to each other, were
+playing backgammon on a raised bench, and seemed to have in their furs
+and dresses that "_malproprete profonde et huileuse_" which M. de
+Custine tells us characterizes the dirt of the north as contrasted
+with that of the southern nations. The _cafe_ of the Indian, on the
+contrary, was perfectly clean and new.
+
+Moslem boatmen, porters, barbers, &c. serve Christians and all and
+sundry. But in addition to these, there is a sort of bazaar in the
+Turkish quarter, occupied by tradespeople, who subsist almost
+exclusively by the wants of their co-religionists living in the
+quarter, as well as of the Turkish garrison in the fortress. The only
+one of this class who frequented me, was the public writer, who had
+several assistants; he was not a native of Belgrade, but a Bulgarian
+Turk from Ternovo. He drew up petitions to the Pasha in due form, and,
+moreover, engraved seals very neatly. His assistants, when not
+engaged in either of these occupations, copied Korans for sale. His
+own handwriting was excellent, and he knew all the styles, Arab,
+Deewanee, Persian, Reka, &c. What keeps him mostly in my mind, was the
+delight with which he entered into, and illustrated, the proverbs at
+the end of M. Joubert's grammar, which the secretary of the Russian
+Consul-general had lent him. Some of the proverbs are so applicable to
+Oriental manners, that I hope the reader will excuse the digression.
+
+"Kiss the hand thou hast not been able to cut."
+
+"Hide thy friend's name from thine enemy."
+
+"Eat and drink with thy friend; never buy and sell with him."
+
+"This is a fast day, said the cat, seeing the liver she could not get
+at."
+
+"Of three things one--Power, gold, or quit the town."
+
+"The candle does not light its base."
+
+"The orphan cuts his own navel-string," &c.
+
+The rural population of Servia must necessarily advance slowly, but
+each five years, for a generation to come, will,--I have little
+doubt,--alter the aspect of the town population, as much relatively
+as the five that are by-gone. Let the lines of railway now in progress
+from Belgium to Hungary be completed, and Belgrade may again become a
+stage in the high road to the East. A line by the valleys of the
+Morava and the Maritsa, with its large towns, Philippopoli and
+Adrianople, is certainly not more chimerical and absurd than many that
+are now projected. Who can doubt of its _ultimate_ accomplishment, in
+spite of the alternate precipitancy and prostration of enterprise?
+Meanwhile imagination loses itself in attempting to picture the
+altered face of affairs in these secluded regions, when subjected to
+the operation of a revolution, which posterity will pronounce to be
+greater than those which made the fifteenth century the morning of the
+just terminated period of civilization.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Poetry.--Journalism.--The Fine Arts.--The Lyceum.--Mineralogical
+cabinet.--Museum.--Servian Education.
+
+
+In the whole range of the Slaavic family there is no nation possessing
+so extensive a collection of excellent popular poetry. The romantic
+beauty of the region which they inhabit, the relics of a wild
+mythology, which, in its general features, has some resemblance to
+that of Greece and Scandinavia,--the adventurous character of the
+population, the vicissitudes of guerilla warfare, and a hundred
+picturesque incidents which are lost to the muses when war is carried
+on on a large scale by standing armies, are all given in a dialect,
+which, for musical sweetness, is to other Slavonic tongues what the
+Italian is to the languages of Western Europe.[21]
+
+The journalism of Servia began at Vienna; and a certain M. Davidovitch
+was for many years the interpreter of Europe to his less enlightened
+countrymen. The journal which he edited is now published at Pesth, and
+printed in Cyrillian letters. There were in 1843 two newspapers at
+Belgrade, the _State Gazette_ and the _Courier_; but the latter has
+since been dropped, the editor having vainly attempted to get its
+circulation allowed in the Servian districts of Hungary. Many copies
+were smuggled over in boats, but it was an unremunerating speculation;
+and the editor, M. Simonovitch, who was bred a Hungarian advocate, is
+now professor of law in the Lyceum. Yankee hyperbole was nothing to
+the high flying of this gentleman. In one number, I recollect the
+passage, "These are the reasons why all the people of Servia, young
+and old, rich and poor, danced and shouted for joy, when the Lord gave
+them as a Prince a son of the never-to-be-forgotten Kara Georg." A
+Croatian newspaper, containing often very interesting information on
+Bosnia, is published at Agram, the language being the same as the
+Servian, but printed in Roman instead of Cyrillian letters. The _State
+Gazette_ of Belgrade gives the news of the interior and exterior, but
+avoids all reflections on the policy of Russia or Austria. An article,
+which I wrote on Servia for an English publication, was reproduced in
+a translation minus all the allusions to these two powers; and I think
+that, considering the dependent position of Servia, abstinence from
+such discussions is dictated by the soundest policy.
+
+The "Golubitza," or Dove, a miscellany in prose and verse, neatly got
+up in imitation of the German Taschenbucher, and edited by M.
+Hadschitch, is the only annual in Servia. In imitation of more
+populous cities, Belgrade has also a "Literary Society," for the
+formation of a complete dictionary of the language, and the
+encouragement of popular literature. I could not help smiling at the
+thirteenth statute of the society, which determines that the seal
+should represent an uncultivated field, with the rising sun shining on
+a monument, on which the arms of Servia are carved.
+
+The fine arts are necessarily at a very low ebb in Servia. The useful
+being so imperfect, the ornamental scarcely exists at all. The
+pictures in the churches are mostly in the Byzantine manner, in which
+deep browns and dark reds are relieved with gilding, while the
+subjects are characterized by such extravagancies as one sees in the
+pictures of the early German painters, a school which undoubtedly took
+its rise from the importations of Byzantine pictures at Venice, and
+their expedition thence across the Alps. At present everything
+artistic in Servia bears a coarse German impress, such as for instance
+the pictures in the cathedral of Belgrade.
+
+Thus has civilization performed one of her great evolutions. The light
+that set on the Thracian Bosphorus rose in the opposite direction from
+the land of the once barbarous Hermans, and now feebly re-illumines
+the modern Servia.
+
+One of the most hopeful institutions of Belgrade is the Lyceum, or
+germ of a university, as they are proud to call it. One day I went to
+see it, along with Professor Shafarik, and looked over the
+mineralogical collection made in Servia, by Baron Herder, which
+included rich specimens of silver, copper, and lead ore, as well as
+marble, white as that of Carrara. The Studenitza marble is slightly
+grey, but takes a good polish. The coal specimens were imperfectly
+petrified, and of bad quality, the progress of ignition being very
+slow. Servia is otherwise rich in minerals; but it is lamentable to
+see such vast wealth dormant, since none of the mines are worked.
+
+We then went to an apartment decorated like a little ball-room, which
+is what is called the cabinet of antiquities. A noble bronze head,
+tying on the German stove, in the corner of the room, a handsome Roman
+lamp and some antique coins, were all that could be shown of the
+ancient Moesia; but there is a fair collection of Byzantine and Servian
+coins, the latter struck in the Venetian manner, and resembling old
+sequins.
+
+A parchment document, which extended to twice the length of a man,
+was now unrolled, and proved to be a patent of Stephan Urosh, the
+father of Stephan Dushan, endowing the great convent of Dechani, in
+Albania. Another curiosity in the collection is the first banner of
+Kara Georg, which the Servians consider as a national relic. It is in
+red silk, and bears the emblem of the cross, with the inscription
+"Jesus Christ conquers."
+
+We then went to the professor's room, which was furnished with the
+newest Russ, Bohemian, and other Slaavic publications, and after a
+short conversation visited the classes then sitting. The end of
+education in Servia being practical, prominence is given to geometry,
+natural philosophy, Slaavic history and literature, &c. Latin and
+Greek are admitted to have been the keys to polite literature, some
+two centuries and a half ago; but so many lofty and noble chambers
+having been opened since then, and routine having no existence in
+Servia, her youth are not destined to spend a quarter of a lifetime in
+the mere nurseries of humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 21: To those who take an interest in this subject, I have
+great pleasure in recommending a perusal of "Servian Popular Poetry,"
+(London, 1827,) translated by Dr. Bowring; but the introductory
+matter, having been written nearly twenty years ago, is, of course,
+far from being abreast of the present state of information on the
+subjects of which it treats.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+Preparations for Departure.--Impressions of the East.--Prince
+Alexander.--The Palace.--Kara Georg.
+
+
+The gloom of November now darkens the scene; the yellow leaves sweep
+round the groves of the Topshider, and an occasional blast from the
+Frusca Gora, ruffling the Danube with red turbid waves, bids me
+begone; so I take up pen to indite my last memoranda, and then for
+England ho!
+
+Some pleasant parties were given by M. Fonblanque, and his colleagues;
+but although I have freely made Dutch pictures of the "natives," I do
+not feel at liberty to be equally circumstantial with the
+inexhaustible wit and good humour of our hospitable Consul-general. I
+have preserved only a scrap of a conversation which passed at the
+dinner table of Colonel Danilefsky, the Russian agent, which shows the
+various impressions of Franks in the East.
+
+A.B.C.D. discovered.
+
+_A_. "Of all the places I have seen in the east, I certainly prefer
+Constantinople. Not so much for its beauty; since habit reconciles one
+to almost any scene. But because one can there command a greater
+number of those minor European comforts, which make up the aggregate
+of human happiness."
+
+_B_. "I am not precisely of your way of thinking. I look back to my
+residence at Cairo with pleasure, and would like well enough to spend
+another winter there. The Turkish houses here are miserable barracks,
+cold in winter, and unprotected from the sun in summer."
+
+_C_. "The word East is certainly more applicable to the Arab than the
+Turkish countries."
+
+_D_. "I have seen only Constantinople, and think that it deserves all
+that Byron and Anastasius have said of it."
+
+_C_. "I am afraid that A. has received his impressions of the East
+from Central Asia, which is a somewhat barbarous country."
+
+_A_. "_Pardonnez-moi_. The valley of the Oxus is well cultivated, but
+the houses are none of the best."
+
+_B_. "I give my voice for Cairo. It is a city full of curious details,
+as well in its architecture, as in its street population; to say
+nothing of its other resources--its pleasant promenades, and the
+occasional society of men of taste and letters--'_mais il faut aimer
+la chaleur_.'"
+
+_C_. "Well, then, we will take the winter of Cairo; the spring of
+Damascus, and the summer of the Bosphorus."
+
+M. Petronievitch took me to see the Prince, who has got into his new
+residence outside the Constantinople gate, which looks like one of the
+villas one sees in the environs of Vienna. In the centre of the
+parterre is a figure with a trident, which represents the Morava, the
+national river of Servia, and is in reality a Roman statue found near
+Grotzka. The usual allowance of sentries, sentry-boxes, and striped
+palisades stood at the entrance, and we were shown into an apartment,
+half in the German, and half in the Oriental style. The divan cover
+was embroidered with gold thread.
+
+The Prince now entered, and received me with an easy self-possession
+that showed no trace of the reserve and timidity which foreigners had
+remarked a year before.
+
+    "New honours ...
+     Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
+     But with the aid of use."
+
+_Prince_. "I expected to have seen you at Topola. We had a large
+assemblage of the peasantry, and an ecclesiastical festival, such as
+they are celebrated in Servia."
+
+_Author_. "Your highness may rest assured that had I known that, I
+should not have failed to go. At Tronosha I saw a similar festival,
+and I am firmly convinced that no peasantry in Europe is freer from
+want."
+
+_Prince_. "Every beginning is difficult; our principle must be,
+'Endeavour and Progress.' Were you pleased with your tour?"
+
+_Author_. "I think that your Highness has one of the most romantic
+principalities in Europe. Without the grandeur of the Alps, Servia has
+more than the beauty of the Apennines."
+
+_Prince_. "The country is beautiful, but I wish to see agriculture
+prosper."
+
+_Author_. "I am happy to hear that: your highness's father had a great
+name as a soldier; I hope that your rule will be distinguished by
+rapid advancement in the arts of civilization; that you will be the
+Kara Georg of peace."
+
+This led to a conversation relative to the late Kara Georg; and the
+prince rising, led me into another apartment, where the portrait of
+his father, the duplicate of one painted for the emperor Alexander,
+hung from the wall. He was represented in the Turkish dress, and wore
+his pistols in his girdle; the countenance expressed not only
+intelligence but a certain refinement, which one would scarcely expect
+in a warrior peasant: but all his contemporaries agree in representing
+him to have possessed an inherent superiority and nobility of nature,
+which in any station would have raised him above his equals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+A Memoir of Kara Georg.
+
+
+The Turkish conquest was followed by the gradual dispersion or
+disappearance of the native nobility of Servia, the last of whom, the
+Brankovitch, lived as _despots_ in the castle of Semendria, up to the
+beginning of the eighteenth century; so that at this moment scarcely a
+single representative of the old stock is to be found.[22]
+
+The nobility of Bosnia, occupying the middle region between the sphere
+of the Eastern and Western churches, were in a state of religious
+indifference, although nominally Catholic; and in order to preserve
+their lands and influence, accepted Islamism _en masse_; they and the
+Albanians being the only instances, in all the wars of the Moslems, of
+a European nobility embracing the Mohamedan faith in a body. Chance
+might have given the Bosniacs a leader of energy and military talents.
+In that case, these men, instead of now wearing turbans in their grim
+feudal castles, might, frizzed and perfumed, be waltzing in pumps; and
+Shakespear and Mozart might now be delighting the citizens assembled
+in the Theatre Royal Seraievo!
+
+The period preceding the second siege of Vienna was the spring-tide of
+Islam conquest. After this event, in 1684, began the ebb. Hungary was
+lost to the Porte, and six years afterwards thirty-seven thousand
+Servian families emigrated into that kingdom; this first led the way
+to contact with the civilization of Germany: and in the attendance on
+the Austrian schools by the youth of the Servian nation during the
+eighteenth century, were sown the seeds of the now budding
+civilization of the principality.
+
+Servia Proper, for a short time wrested from the Porte by the
+victories of Prince Eugene, again became a part of the dominions of
+the Sultan. But a turbulent militia overawed the government and
+tyrannized over the Rayahs. Pasvan Oglou and his bands at Widdin were,
+at the end of last century, in open revolt against the Porte. Other
+chiefs had followed his example; and for the first time the Divan
+thought of associating Christian Rayahs with the spahis, to put down
+these rebels, who had organized a system which savoured more of
+brigandage than of government. They frequently used the holiday
+dresses of the peasants as horse-cloths, interrupted the divine
+service of the Christian Rayahs, and gratified their licentious
+appetites unrestrained.
+
+The Dahis, as these brigand-chiefs were called, resolved to anticipate
+the approaching struggle by a massacre of the most influential
+Christians. This atrocious massacre was carried out with indescribable
+horrors. In the dead of the night a party of Dahis Cavasses would
+surround a house, drive open gates and doors with sledge-hammers; the
+awakened and affrighted inmates would rush to the windows, and seeing
+the court-yard filled with armed men with dark lanterns, the shrieks
+of women and children were added to the confusion; and the unhappy
+father was often murdered with the half-naked females of his family
+clinging to his neck, but unable to save him. The rest of the
+population looked on with silent stupefaction: but Kara Georg, a
+peasant, born at Topola about the year 1767, getting timely
+information that his name was in the list of the doomed, fled into the
+woods, and gradually organized a formidable armed force.
+
+His efforts were everywhere successful. In the name of the Porte he
+combated the Dahis, who had usurped local authority, in defiance of
+the Pasha of Belgrade. The Divan, little anticipating the ultimate
+issue of the struggle in Servia, was at first delighted at the success
+of Kara Georg; but soon saw with consternation that the rising of the
+Servian peasants grew into a formidable rebellion, and ordered the
+Pashas of Bosnia and Scodra to assemble all their disposable forces,
+and invade Servia. Between forty and fifty thousand Bosniacs burst
+into Servia on the west, in the spring of 1806, cutting to pieces all
+who refused to receive Turkish authority.
+
+Kara Georg undauntedly met the storm; with amazing rapidity he marched
+into the west of Servia, cut up in detail several detached bodies of
+Turks, being here much favoured by the broken ground, and put to death
+several village-elders who had submitted to them. The Turks then
+retired to Shabatz; and Kara Georg at the head of only seven thousand
+foot and two thousand horse, in all nine thousand men, took up a
+position at an hour's distance, and threw up trenches. The following
+is the account which Wuk Stephanovitch gives of this engagement.
+
+"The Turks demanded the delivery of the Servian arms. The Servians
+answered, 'Come and take them.' On two successive mornings the Turks
+came out of Shabatz and stormed the breastwork which the Servians had
+thrown up, but without effect. They then sent this message to the
+Servians: 'You have held good for two days; but we will try it again
+with all our force, and then see whether we give up the country to
+the Drina, or whether we drive you to Semendria.'
+
+"In the night before the decisive battle (August, 1806,) Kara Georg
+sent his cavalry round into a wood, with orders to fall on the enemy's
+flank as soon as the first shot should be fired.
+
+"To the infantry within the breastworks he gave orders that they
+should not fire until the Turks were so close that every shot might
+tell. By break of day the Seraskier with his whole army poured out of
+his camp at Shabatz, the bravest Beys of Bosnia bearing their banners
+in the van. The Servians waited patiently until they came close, and
+then opening fire did deadly execution. The standard-bearers fell,
+confusion ensued, and the Servian cavalry issuing from the wood at the
+same time that Kara Georg passed the breastworks at the head of the
+infantry, the defence was changed into an attack; and the rout of the
+Turks was complete. The Seraskier Kullin was killed, as well as Sinan
+Pasha, and several other chiefs. The rest of the Turkish army was cut
+up in the woods, and all the country as far as the Drina evacuated by
+them."
+
+The Porte saw with astonishment the total failure of its schemes for
+the re-conquest of Servia, resolved to temporize, and agreed to allow
+them a local and national government with a reduction of tribute; but
+previous to the ratification of the agreement withdrew its consent to
+the fortresses going into the hands of Christian Rayahs; on which Kara
+Georg resolved to seize Belgrade by stratagem.
+
+Before daybreak on the 12th of December, 1806, a Greek Albanian named
+Konda, who had been in the Turkish service, and knew Belgrade well,
+but now fought in the Christian ranks, accompanied by six Servians,
+passed the ditch and palisades that surrounded the city of Belgrade,
+at a point between two posts so as not to be seen, and proceeding to
+one of the gates, fell upon the guard, which defended itself well.
+Four of the Servians were killed; but the Turks being at length
+overpowered, Konda and the two remaining Servians broke open the gate
+with an axe, on which a corps of Servians rushed in. The Turks being
+attracted to this point, Kara Georg passed the ditch at another place
+with a large force.
+
+After a sanguinary engagement in the streets, and the conflagration of
+many houses, the windows of which served as embrasures to the Turks,
+victory declared for the Christians, and the Turks took refuge in the
+citadel.
+
+The Servians, now in possession of the town, resolved to starve the
+Turks out of the fortress; and having occupied a flat island at the
+confluence of the Save and the Danube, were enabled to intercept their
+provisions; on which the Pasha capitulated and embarked for Widdin.
+
+The succeeding years were passed in the vicissitudes of a guerilla
+warfare, neither party obtaining any marked success; and an auxiliary
+corps of Russians assisted in preventing the Turks from making the
+re-conquest of Servia.
+
+Baron, subsequently Marshal Diebitch, on a confidential mission from
+the Russian government in Servia during the years 1810, 1811, writes
+as follows:[23]
+
+"George Petrovitch, to whom the Turks have given the surname of Kara
+or Black, is an important character. His countenance shows a greatness
+of mind, which is not to be mistaken; and when we take into
+consideration the times, circumstances, and the impossibility of his
+having received an education, we must admit that he has a mind of a
+masculine and commanding order. The imputation of cruelty and
+bloodthirstiness appears to be unjust. When the country was without
+the shadow of a constitution, and when he commanded an unorganized and
+uncultivated nation, he was compelled to be severe; he dared not
+vacillate or relax his discipline: but now that there are courts of
+law, and legal forms, he hands every case over to the regular
+tribunals."
+
+"He has very little to say for himself, and is rude in his manners;
+but his judgments in civil affairs are promptly and soundly formed,
+and to great address he joins unwearied industry. As a soldier, there
+is but one opinion of his talents, bravery, and enduring firmness."
+
+Kara Georg was now a Russian lieutenant-general, and exercised an
+almost unlimited power in Servia; the revolution, after a struggle of
+eight years, appeared to be successful, but the momentous events then
+passing in Europe, completely altered the aspect of affairs. Russia in
+1812, on the approach of the countless legions of Napoleon,
+precipitately concluded the treaty of Bucharest, the eighth article of
+which formally assured a separate administration to the Servians.
+
+Next year, however, was fatal to Kara Georg. In 1813, the vigour of
+the Ottoman empire, undivided by exertions for the prosecution of the
+Russian war, was now concentrated on the re-subjugation of Servia. A
+general panic seemed to seize the nation; and Kara Georg and his
+companions in arms sought a retreat on the Austrian territory, and
+thence passed into Wallachia. In 1814, three hundred Christians were
+impaled at Belgrade by the Pasha, and every valley in Servia presented
+the spectacle of infuriated Turkish spahis, avenging on the Servians
+the blood, exile, and confiscation of the ten preceding years.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 22: The last of the Brankovitch line wrote a history of
+Servia; but the most valuable portion of the matter is to be found in
+Raitch, a subsequent historical writer.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The original is now in the possession of the Servian
+government, and I was permitted to peruse it; but although
+interesting, it is too long for insertion.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Milosh Obrenovitch.
+
+
+At this period Milosh Obrenovitch appears prominently on the political
+tapis. He spent his youth in herding the famed swine of Servia; and
+during the revolution was employed by Kara Georg to watch the passes
+of the Balkan, lest the Servians should be taken aback by troops from
+Albania and Bosnia. He now saw that a favourable conjuncture had come
+for his advancement from the position of chieftain to that of chief;
+he therefore lost no time in making terms with the Turks, offering to
+collect the tribute, to serve them faithfully, and to aid them in the
+re-subjugation of the people: he was, therefore, loaded with caresses
+by the Turks as a faithful subject of the Porte. His offers were at
+once accepted; and he now displayed singular activity in the
+extirpation of all the other popular chiefs, who still held out in the
+woods and fastnesses, and sent their heads to the Pasha; but the
+decapitation of Glavash, who was, like himself, supporting the
+government, showed that when he had accomplished the ends of Soliman
+Pasha, his own turn would come; he therefore employed the ruse
+described in page 55, made his escape, and, convinced that it was
+impossible ever to come to terms with Soliman Pasha, raised the
+standard of open revolt. The people, grown desperate through the
+ill-treatment of the spahis, who had returned, responded to his call,
+and rose in a body. The scenes of 1804-5-6, were about to be renewed;
+but the Porte quickly made up its mind to treat with Milosh, who
+behaved, during this campaign, with great bravery, and was generally
+successful. Milosh consequently came to Belgrade, made his submission,
+in the name of the nation, to Marashly Ali Pasha, the governor of
+Belgrade, and was reinstated as tribute-collector for the Porte; and
+the war of mutual extermination was ended by the Turks retaining all
+the castles, as stipulated in the eighth article of the treaty of
+Bucharest.
+
+Many of the chiefs, impatient at the speedy submission of Milosh,
+wished to fight the matter out, and Kara Georg, in order to give
+effect to their plans, landed in Servia. Milosh pretended to be
+friendly to his designs, but secretly betrayed his place of
+concealment to the governor, whose men broke into the cottage where he
+slept, and put him to death. Thus ended the brave and unfortunate Kara
+Georg, who was, no doubt, a rebel against his sovereign, the Sultan,
+and, according to Turkish law, deserving of death; but this base act
+of treachery, on the part of Milosh, who was not the less a rebel, is
+justly considered as a stain on his character.
+
+M. Boue, who made the acquaintance of Milosh in 1836, gives a short
+account of him.
+
+Milosh rose early to the sound of military music, and then went to his
+open gallery, where he smoked a pipe, and entered on the business of
+the day. Although able neither to read, write, nor sign his name, he
+could dictate and correct despatches; and in the evening he caused the
+articles in the _Journal des Debats_, the _Constitutionnel_, and the
+_Augsburg Gazette_, to be translated to him.
+
+The Belgrade chief of police[24] having offended Milosh by the boldness
+of his language, and having joined the detractors of the prince at a
+critical moment, although he owed everything to him, Milosh ordered
+his head to be struck off. Fortunately his brother Prince Ievren met
+the people charged with the bloody commission; he blamed them, and
+wished to hinder the deed: and knowing that the police director was
+already on his way to Belgrade from Posharevatz, where he had been
+staying, he asked the momkes to return another way, saying they had
+missed him. The police director thus arrived at Belgrade, was
+overwhelmed with reproaches by Milosh, and pardoned.
+
+A young man having refused to marry one of his cast-off mistresses, he
+was enlisted in the army, but after some months submitted to his fate.
+
+He used to raise to places, in the Turkish fashion, men who were
+unprepared by their studies for them. One of his cooks became a
+colonel. Another colonel had been a merry-andrew. Having once received
+a good medical advice from his butler, he told him that nature
+intended him for a doctor, and sent him to study medicine under Dr.
+Cunibert.
+
+"When Milosh sent his meat to market, all other sales were stopped,
+until he had sold off his own at a higher price than that current, on
+the ground of the meat being better."
+
+"The prince considered all land in Servia to belong to him, and
+perpetually wished to appropriate any property that seemed better than
+his own, fixing his own price, which was sometimes below the value,
+which the proprietor dared not refuse to take, whatever labour had
+been bestowed on it. At Kragujevatz, he prevented the completion of
+the house of M. Raditchevitch, because some statues of wood, and
+ornaments, which were not to be found in his own palace, were in the
+plan. An almanack having been printed, with a portrait of his niece
+Auka, he caused all the copies to be given back by the subscribers,
+and the portraits cut out."
+
+There can be no doubt, that, after the miserable end of Kara Georg,
+and the violent revolutionary wars, an unlimited dictatorship was the
+best regimen for the restoration of order. Milosh was, therefore, many
+years at the head of affairs of Servia before symptoms of opposition
+appeared. Allowances are certainly to be made for him; he had seen no
+government but the old Turkish regime, and had no notion of any other
+way of governing but by decapitation and confiscation. But this
+system, which was all very well for a prince of the fifteenth century,
+exhausted the patience of the new generation, many of whom were bred
+at the Austrian universities. Without seeking for democratic
+institutions, for which Servia is totally unfit, they loudly demanded
+written laws, which should remove life and property from the domain of
+individual caprice, and which, without affecting the suzerainty of the
+Porte, should bring Servia within the sphere of European
+institutions. They murmured at Milosh making a colossal fortune out of
+the administration of the principality, while he rendered no account
+of his intromissions, either to the Sultan or to the people, and
+seized lands and houses merely because he took a fancy to them.[25]
+Hence arose the _national party_ in Servia, which included nearly all
+the opulent and educated classes; which is not surprising, since his
+rule was so stringent that he would allow no carriage but his own to
+be seen in the streets of Belgrade: and, on his fall, so many orders
+were sent to the coach-makers of Pesth, that trade was brisk for all
+the summer.
+
+The details of the debates of the period would exhaust the reader's
+patience. I shall, therefore, at once proceed to the summing up.
+
+1st. In the nine years' revolt of Kara Georg nearly the whole
+sedentary Turkish population disappeared from Servia, and the Ottoman
+power became, according to their own expression, _assassiz_
+(foundationless).
+
+2nd. The eighth article of the treaty of Bucharest, concluded by
+Russia with the Porte, which remained a dead letter, was followed by
+the fifth article in the treaty of Akerman, formally securing the
+Servians a separate administration.
+
+3rd. The consummate skill with which Milosh played his fast and loose
+game with the Porte, had the same consequences as the above, and
+ultimately led to
+
+4th. The formal act of the Sultan constituting Servia a tributary
+principality to the Porte, in a _Hatti Sherif_, of the 22nd November,
+1830.
+
+5th. From this period, up to the end of 1838, was the hard struggle
+between Milosh, seeking for absolute power, supported by the peasantry
+of Rudnik, his native district, and the "Primates," as the heads of
+the national party are called, seeking for a habeas-corpus act and a
+legislative assembly.
+
+Milosh was in 1838 forcibly expelled from Servia; and his son Michael
+having been likewise set aside in 1842, and the son of Kara Georg
+selected by the sublime Porte and the people of Servia, against the
+views of Russia, the long-debated "Servian Question" arose, which
+received a satisfactory solution by the return of Wucics and
+Petronievitch, the exiled supports of Kara Georgevitch, through the
+mediation of the Earl of Aberdeen.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 24: M, Boue, in giving this anecdote, calls him "Newspaper
+Editor:" this is a mistake.]
+
+[Footnote 25: It is very true that the present Prince of Servia does
+not possess anything like the power which Milosh wielded; he cannot
+hang a man up at the first pear-tree: but it is a mistake on the part
+of the liberals of France and England, to suppose that the revolutions
+which expelled Milosh and Michael were democratic. There has been no
+turning upside down of the social pyramid; and in the absence of a
+hereditary aristocracy, the wealthiest and most influential persons in
+Servia, such as Ressavatz, Simitch, Garashanin, &c. support Alexander
+Kara Georgevitch.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+The Prince.--The Government.--The Senate.--The Minister for Foreign
+Affairs.--The Minister of the Interior.--Courts of Justice.--Finances.
+
+
+Kara Georgevitch means son of Kara Georg, his father's name having
+been Georg Petrovitch, or son of Peter; this manner of naming being
+common to all the southern Slaaves, except the Croats and Dalmatians.
+This is the opposite of the Arabic custom, which confers on a father
+the title of parent of his eldest son, as Abou-Selim, Abou-Hassan, &c.
+while his own name is dropped by his friends and family.
+
+The Prince's household appointments are about �20,000 sterling, and,
+making allowance for the difference of provisions, servants' wages,
+horse keep, &c. is equal to about �50,000 sterling in England, which
+is not a large sum for a principality of the size of Servia.
+
+The senate consists of twenty-one individuals, four of whom are
+ministers. The senators are not elected by the people, but are named
+by the prince, and form an oligarchy composed of the wealthiest and
+most influential persons. They hold their offices for life; they must
+be at least thirty-five years, and possess landed property.
+
+The presidency of the senate is an imaginary dignity; the duties of
+vice-president being performed by M. Stojan Simitch, the herculean
+figure I have described on my first visit to Belgrade; and it is
+allowed that he performs his duties with great sagacity, tact, and
+impartiality. He is a Servian of the old school, speaks Servian and
+Turkish, but no European language. The revolutions of this country
+have brought to power many men, like M. Simitch, of good natural
+talents, and defective education. The rising generation has more
+instruction, and has entered the career of material improvements; but
+I doubt if the present red tape routine will produce a race having
+the shrewdness of their fathers. If these forms--the unavoidable
+accompaniments of a more advanced stage of society,--circumscribe the
+sphere of individual exertion, they possess, on the other hand, the
+advantage of rendering the recurrence of military dictatorship
+impossible.
+
+M. Petronievitch, the present minister for foreign affairs, and
+director of the private chancery of the Prince, is unquestionably the
+most remarkable public character now in Servia. He passed some time in
+a commercial house at Trieste, which gave him a knowledge of Italian;
+and the bustle of a sea-port first enlarged his views. Nine years of
+his life were passed at Constantinople as a hostage for the Servian
+nation, guaranteeing the non-renewal of the revolt; no slight act of
+devotion, when one considers that the obligations of the contracting
+parties reposed rather on expediency than on moral principles. Here he
+made the acquaintance of all the leading personages at the Ottoman
+Porte, and learned colloquial Turkish in perfection. Petronievitch is
+astute by education and position, but he has a good heart and a
+capacious intellect, and his defects belong not to the man, but to
+the man's education and circumstances. Although placable in his
+resentments, he is without the usual baser counterpart of such pliant
+characters, and has never shown himself deficient in moral courage.
+Most travellers trace in his countenance a resemblance to the busts
+and portraits of Fox. His moral character bears a miniature
+resemblance to that which history has ascribed to Macchiavelli.
+
+In the course of a very tortuous political career, he has kept the
+advancement and civilization of Servia steadily in view, and has
+always shown himself regardless of sordid gain. He is one of the very
+few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of
+_community_ has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to _self_, and
+this disinterestedness is, in spite of his defects, the secret of his
+popularity.
+
+The commander of the military force is M. Wucics, who is also minister
+of the interior, a man of great personal courage; and although
+unacquainted with the tactics of European warfare, said to possess
+high capacity for the command of an irregular force. He possesses
+great energy of character, and is free from the taint of venality;
+but he is at the same time somewhat proud and vindictive. His
+predecessor in the ministry of the interior was M. Ilia Garashanin,
+the rising man in Servia. Sound practical sense, and unimpeachable
+integrity, without a shade of intrigue, distinguish this senator. May
+Servia have many Garashanins!
+
+The standing army is a mere skeleton. The reason of this is obvious.
+Servia forms part of one great empire, and adjoins two others;
+therefore, the largest disciplined force that she might bring into the
+field, in the event of hostilities, could make no impression for
+offensive objects; while for defensive purposes, the countless
+riflemen, taking advantage of the difficult nature of the country, are
+amply sufficient.
+
+Let the Servians thank their stars that their army is a skeleton. Let
+all Europe rejoice that the pen is rapidly superseding the sword; that
+there now exists a council-board, to which strong and weak are equally
+amenable. May this diplomarchy ultimately compass the ends of the
+earth, and every war be reckoned a civil war, an arch-high-treason
+against confederate hemispheres!
+
+The portfolios of justice and finance are usually in the hands of men
+of business-habits, who mix little in politics.
+
+The courts of law have something of the promptitude of oriental
+justice, without its flagrant venality. The salaries of the judges are
+small: for instance, the president of the appeal court at Belgrade has
+the miserable sum of �300 sterling per annum. M. Hadschitch, who
+framed the code of laws, has �700 sterling per annum.
+
+The criminal code is founded on that of Austria. The civil code is a
+localized modification of the _Code Napoleon_. The first translation
+of the latter code was almost literal, and made without reference to
+the manners and historical antecedents of Servia: some of the blunders
+in it were laughable:--_Hypotheque_ was translated as if it had been
+_Apotheke_, and made out to be a _depot of drugs_! When the translator
+was asked for the reason of this extraordinary prominence of the drug
+depot subject, he accounted for it by the consummate skill attained
+by France in medicine and surgery!
+
+A small lawyer party is beginning in Belgrade, but they are disliked
+by the people, who prefer short _viva voce_ procedure, and dislike
+documents. It is remarked, that when a man is supposed to be in the
+right, he wishes to carry on his own suit; when he has a bad case, he
+resorts to a lawyer.
+
+The ecclesiastical affairs of this department occupy a considerable
+portion of the minister's attention.
+
+In consequence of the wars which Stephan Dushan, the Servian emperor,
+carried on against the Greeks in the fourteenth century, he made the
+archbishop of Servia independent of the patriarch of Constantinople,
+who, in turn, excommunicated Stephan and his nominee. This
+independence continued up to the year 1765, at which period, in
+consequence of the repeated encouragement given by the patriarchs of
+Servia to revolts against the Turkish authority, the nation was again
+subjected to the immediate spiritual jurisdiction of Constantinople.
+Wuk Stephanovitch gives the following anecdote, illustrative of the
+abuses which existed in the selection of the superior clergy from this
+time, and up to the Servian revolution, all the charges being sold to
+the highest bidder, or given to courtiers, destitute of religion, and
+often of common morality.
+
+In 1797, a Greek priest came to Orsova, complaining that he had not
+funds sufficient to enable him to arrive at his destination. A
+collection was made for him; but instead of going to the place he
+pretended to be bound for, he passed over to the island of New Orsova,
+and entered, in a military capacity, the service of the local
+governor, and became a petty chief of irregular Turkish troops. He
+then became a salt inspector; and the commandant wishing to get rid of
+him, asked what he could do for him; on which he begged to be made
+Archbishop of Belgrade! This modest request not being complied with,
+the Turkish commandant sent him to Sofia, with a recommendation to the
+Grand Vizier to appoint him to that see; but the vacancy had already
+been filled up by a priest of Nissa, who had been interpreter to the
+Vizier, and who no sooner seated himself, than he commenced a system
+of the most odious exactions.
+
+In the time of Kara Georg, the Patriarchate of Constantinople was not
+recognized, and the Archbishop of Carlovitz in Hungary was looked up
+to as the spiritual head of the nation; but after the treaty of
+Adrianople, the Servian government, on paying a peppercorn tribute to
+the Patriarch of Constantinople, was admitted to have the exclusive
+direction of its ecclesiastical affairs. The Archbishop's salary is
+800_l_. per annum, and that of his three Bishops about half as much.
+
+The finances of Servia are in good condition. The income, according to
+a return made to me from the finance department, is in round numbers,
+eight hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, and the expenditure
+eight hundred and thirty thousand. The greater part of the revenue
+being produced by the _poresa_, which is paid by all heads of
+families, from the time of their marriage to their sixtieth year, and
+in fact, includes nearly all the adult population; for, as is the case
+in most eastern countries, nearly every man marries early. The
+bachelors pay a separate tax. Some of the other items in the budget
+are curious: under the head of "Interest of a hundred thousand ducats
+lent by the government to the people at six per cent." we find a sum
+of fourteen thousand four hundred dollars. Not only has Servia no
+public debt, but she lends money. Interest is high in Servia; not
+because there is a want of capital, but because there are no means of
+investment. The consequence is that the immense savings of the
+peasantry are hoarded in the earth. A father of a family dies, or _in
+extremis_ is speechless, and unable to reveal the spot; thus large
+sums are annually lost to Servia. The favourite speculation in the
+capital is the building of houses.
+
+The largest gipsy colonies are to be found on this part of the Danube,
+in Servia, in Wallachia, and in the Banat. The tax on the gipsies in
+Servia amounts to more than six thousand dollars. They are under a
+separate jurisdiction, but have the choice of remaining nomade, or
+settling; in the latter case they are fiscally classed with the
+Servians. Some settled gipsies are peasants, but for the most part
+smiths. Both settled and nomade gipsies, are alike remarkable for
+their musical talents. Having fought with great bravery during the war
+of emancipation, they are not so despised in Servia as in some other
+countries.
+
+For produce of the state forests, appears the very insignificant sum
+of one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The interior of Servia being
+so thickly wooded, every Servian is allowed to cut as much timber as
+he likes. The last item in the budget sounds singularly enough: two
+thousand three hundred and forty-one dollars are set down as the
+produce of sales of stray cattle, which are first delivered up to the
+captain of the district, who makes the seizure publicly, and then
+hands them over to the judge for sale, if there be no claimant within
+a given time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+Agriculture and Commerce.
+
+
+Upon the whole, it must be admitted, that the peasantry of Servia have
+drawn a high prize in the lottery of existence. Abject want and
+pauperism is nearly unknown. In fact, from the great abundance of
+excellent land, every man with ordinary industry can support his wife
+and family, and have a large surplus. The peasant has no landlord but
+the Sultan, who receives a fixed tribute from the Servian government,
+and does not interfere with the internal administration. The father of
+a family, after having contributed a _maximum_ tax of six dollars per
+annum, is sole master of the surplus; so that in fact the taxes are
+almost nominal, and the rent a mere peppercorn; the whole amounting
+on an average to about four shillings and sixpence per caput per
+annum.
+
+A very small proportion of the whole soil of Servia is cultivated.
+Some say only one sixth, others only one eighth; and even the present
+mode of cultivation scarcely differs from that which prevails in other
+parts of Turkey. The reason is obvious: if the present production of
+Servia became insufficient for the subsistence of the population, they
+have only to take in waste lands; and improved processes of
+agriculture will remain unheeded, until the population begins to press
+on the limits of the means of subsistence; a consummation not likely
+to be brought about for many generations to come.
+
+Although situated to the south of Hungary, the climate and productions
+are altogether northern. I never saw an olive-tree in Servia, although
+plentiful in the corresponding latitudes of France and Italy (43�--44�
+50'); but both sorts of melons are abundant, although from want of
+cultivation not nearly so good as those of Hungary. The same may be
+said of all other fruits except the grapes of Semendria, which I
+believe are equal to any in the world. The Servians seem to have in
+general very little taste for gardening, much less in fact than the
+Turks, in consequence perhaps of the unsurpassed beauty and luxuriance
+of nature. The fruit-tree which seems to be the most common in Servia
+is the plum, from which the ordinary brandy of the country is made.
+Almost every village has a plantation of this tree in its vicinity.
+Vegetables are tolerably abundant in some parts of the interior of
+Servia, but Belgrade is very badly supplied. There seems to be no
+kitchen gardens in the environs; at least I saw none. Most of the
+vegetables as well as milk come from Semlin.
+
+The harvest in August is the period of merriment. All Servian peasants
+assist each other in getting in the grain as soon as it is ready,
+without fee or reward; the cultivator providing entertainment for his
+laborious guests. In the vale of the Lower Morava, where there is less
+pasture and more corn, this is not sufficient, and hired Bulgarians
+assist.
+
+The innumerable swine which are reared in the vast forests of the
+interior, at no expense to the inhabitants, are the great staple of
+Servian product and export. In districts where acorns abound, they
+fatten to an inconceivable size. They are first pushed swimming across
+the Save, as a substitute for quarantine, and then driven to Pesth and
+Vienna by easy stages; latterly large quantities have been sent up the
+Danube in boats towed by steam.
+
+Another extensive trade in this part of the world is in leeches.
+Turkey in Europe, being for the most part uncultivated, is covered
+with ponds and marshes, where leeches are found in abundance. In
+consequence of the extensive use now made of these reptiles, in
+preference to the old practice of the lancet, the price has risen; and
+the European source being exhausted, Turkey swarms with Frenchmen
+engaged in this traffic. Semlin and Belgrade are the entrepots of this
+trade. They have a singular phraseology; and it is amusing to hear
+them talk of their "marchandises mortes." One company had established
+a series of relays and reservoirs, into which the leeches were
+deposited, refreshed, and again put in motion; as the journey for a
+great distance, without such refreshment, usually proves fatal.
+
+The steam navigation on the Danube has been of incalculable benefit to
+Servia; it renders the principality accessible to the rest of Europe,
+and Europe easily accessible to Servia. The steam navigation of the
+Save has likewise given a degree of animation to these lower regions,
+which was little dreamt of a few years ago. The Save is the greatest
+of all the tributaries of the Danube, and is uninterruptedly navigable
+for steamers a distance of two hundred miles. This river is the
+natural canal for the connexion of Servia and the Banat with the
+Adriatic. It also offers to our summer tourists, on the completion of
+the Lombard-Venetian railway, an entirely new and agreeable route to
+the East. By railroad, from Milan to Venice; by steamer from thence to
+Trieste; by land to Sissek; and the rest of the way by the rapid
+descent of the Save and the Danube. By the latter route very few
+turnings and windings are necessary; for a straight line drawn from
+Milan to Kustendji on the Black Sea, the point of embarkation for
+Constantinople, almost touches Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, and the
+Danube.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+The Foreign Agents.
+
+
+So much for the native government. The foreign agents in Belgrade are
+few in number. The most prominent individual during my stay there was
+Baron Lieven, a Russian general, who had been sent there on a special
+mission by the emperor, to steer the policy of Russia out of the
+shoals of the Servian question.
+
+On calling there with Mr. Fonblanque, I found a tall military-looking
+man, between forty and forty-five years of age. He entered at once,
+and without mystery, into the subject of his mission, and concluded by
+saying that "Servia owed her political existence solely to Russia,
+which gave the latter a moral right of intervention over and above the
+stipulations of treaties, to which no other power could pretend." As
+the public is already familiar with the arguments pro and contra on
+this question, it is at present unnecessary to recur to them.
+
+Baron Lieven had in the posture of affairs at that time a difficult
+part to play, inasmuch as a powerful party sought to throw off the
+protectorate of Russia. The baron, without possessing an intellect of
+the highest order, was a man of good sound judgment, and in his
+proceedings showed a great deal of frankness and military decision,
+qualities which attained his ends in all probability with greater
+success than if he had been endowed with that profound astuteness
+which we usually attribute to Russians. This was his fifth mission
+into the Turkish dominions; so that, although not possessing the
+language, he was yet well acquainted with the Turkish character and
+Eastern affairs in general. His previous mission had for its object to
+announce to the Sultan that, in accordance with the stipulations of
+the treaty of the 15th of July, 1840, the military and naval forces of
+the Emperor of Russia were at the service of his Highness.
+
+Baron Lieven was accompanied to Servia by his lady, a highly talented
+person, who spoke English admirably; and the evenings spent in his
+hospitable house were among the most agreeable reminiscences of my
+residence at Belgrade.
+
+The stationary Russian consul-general was M. Wastchenko, a stout
+middle-aged gentleman, with the look of a well-conditioned alderman.
+M. Wastchenko had been originally in a commercial establishment at
+Odessa; but having acquired a knowledge of the Turkish language he was
+attached to the embassy at Constantinople, and subsequently nominated
+Russian consul at Belgrade, under the consul-general for the
+principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia; but his services having been
+highly approved by Count Nesselrode, he was advanced to the rank and
+pay of consul-general. M. Wastchenko possesses in an eminent degree
+what Swift calls the aldermanly, but never to be over estimated
+quality, Discretion; he was considered generally a very safe man. In
+fact, a sort of man who is a favourite with all chanceries; the
+quality of such a mind being rather to avoid complications than to
+excite admiration by activity in the pen or the tongue. M. Wastchenko
+was most thoroughly acquainted with everything, and every man, in
+Servia. He spoke the language fluently, and lived familiarly with the
+principal persons in Belgrade. He had never travelled in Europe, and,
+strange to say, had never been in St. Petersburg.
+
+The present Russian consul-general in Servia is Colonel Danilefsky, who
+distinguished himself, when a mere youth, by high scientific attainments
+in military colleges of Russia, rose rapidly to a colonelcy, and was
+sent out on a mission to the khan of Khiva; the success of which ensured
+his promotion to the Servian consulate-general, an important position as
+regards the interests of Russia.
+
+From the circumstance of there being three thousand Austrian subjects
+in Belgrade, the consul-general of that power has a mass of real
+consular business to transact, while the functions of the other agents
+are solely political. France has generally an agent of good capacity
+in Servia, in consequence of the influence that the march of affairs
+in the principality might have on the general destinies of Turkey in
+Europe. Great Britain was represented by Mr. Consul-general
+Fonblanque, a gentleman whose conduct has been sharply criticized by
+those who suppose that the tactics of party in the East are like those
+in England, all fair and above-board: but let those gentlemen that sit
+at home at ease, experience a few of the rude tempestuous blasts which
+fall to the lot of individuals who speak and write truths unpalatable
+to those who will descend to any device to compass a political object,
+and they would sing another song.
+
+I now take leave of Servia, wishing her Prince and her people every
+prosperity, and entertaining the hope that she will wisely limit all
+her future efforts to the cultivation of the arts of peace and
+civilization. From Belgrade I crossed to Semlin, whence I proceeded by
+steam to Vienna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+VIENNA IN 1844[26]
+
+
+Improvements in Vienna.--Palladian style--Music.--Theatres.--Sir
+Robert Gordon.--Prince Metternich.--Armen
+Ball.--Dancing.--Strauss.--Austrian Policy.
+
+
+Vienna has been more improved and embellished within the last few
+years than during the previous quarter of a century. The Graben and
+the Kohlmarket have been joined, and many old projecting houses have
+been taken down, and replaced by new tenements, with the facades put
+back, so as to facilitate the thoroughfare. Until very lately, almost
+every public building and private palace in Vienna was in the
+Frenchified style of the last century, when each petty prince in
+Germany wished to have a miniature Versailles in his village capital.
+All the new edifices are in the Palladian style; which is suitable,
+not only to the climate, but to the narrow streets, where Greek
+architecture would be lost for want of space, and where the great
+height of the houses gives mass to this (the Palladian) style, without
+the necessity of any considerable perspective. The circumstance of
+many of the architects here being Italian, may probably, in some
+measure, account for the general adoption of this style. It is
+singular, that although Vienna possesses in St. Stephen's one of the
+most beautiful specimens of Gothic architecture, not a single edifice
+in this taste of recent date is to be seen, although a revival of it
+is noticeable in several other parts of Germany.
+
+Music is one of the necessaries of existence in Vienna, and the
+internal consumption is apparently as great as ever: there is
+now-a-days no Mozart or Haydn to supply imperishable fabrics for the
+markets of the world; but the orchestras are as good as ever. The
+Sinfonia-Eroica of Beethoven catching my eye in a programme, I failed
+not to renew my homage to this prince of sweet and glorious sounds,
+and was loyally indignant on hearing a fellow-countryman say, that,
+though rich in harmony, he was poor in melody. No; Beethoven's wealth
+is boundless; his riches embarrass him; he is the sultan of melody:
+while others dally with their beauties to satiety, he wanders from
+grace to grace, scarce pausing to enjoy. Is it possible to hear his
+symphonies without recognizing in them the germs of innumerable modern
+melodies, the precious metal which others beat out, wherewith to plate
+their baser compositions,--exhaustless materials for the use of his
+successors, like those noble temples which antiquity has raised in the
+East, to become, in the sequel, the quarries from which whole cities
+of lowlier dwellings are constructed?
+
+At the Karnthner Thor I heard the Huguenots admirably performed.
+Decorations excepted, I really thought it better done than at the
+Academie Royale. Meyerbeer's brilliant and original conceptions, in
+turning the chorus into an oral orchestra, are better realized. A
+French vaudeville company performed on the alternate nights. Carl, the
+rich Jew manager of the Wieden, and proprietor of the Leopold-Stadt
+Theatre, is adding largely to his fortune, thanks to the rich and racy
+drolleries of Nestroz and Schulz, who are the Matthews and Liston of
+Vienna. The former of these excellent actors is certainly the most
+successful farce-writer in Germany. Without any of Raimund's
+sentimental-humorous dialogue, he has a far happier eye for character,
+and only the untranslatable dialect of Vienna has preserved him from
+foreign play-wrights.
+
+Sir Robert Gordon, her Majesty's ambassador, whose unbounded and truly
+sumptuous hospitalities are worthy of his high position, did me the
+honour to take me to one of Princess Metternich's receptions, in the
+apartments of the chancery of state, one side of which is devoted to
+business, the other to the private residence of the minister. After
+passing through a vestibule on the first floor, paved with marble, we
+entered a well-lighted saloon of palatial altitude, at the further
+end of which sat the youthful and fascinating princess, in
+conversation with M. Bailli de Tatischeff ex-ambassador of Russia.
+
+There, almost blind and bent double with the weight of eighty years,
+sat the whilom profoundly sagacious diplomatist, whose accomplished
+manners and quick perception of character have procured him a European
+reputation. He quitted public business some years ago, but even in
+retirement Vienna had its attractions for him. There is an
+unaccountable fascination in a residence in this capital; those who
+live long in it become _ipsis Vindobonensibus Vindobonensiores_.
+
+Prince Metternich, who was busy when we entered with a group,
+examining some views of Venice, received me with that quaker-like
+simplicity which forms the last polish of the perfect gentleman and
+man of the world; "_les extremes se touchent_," in manners as in
+literature: but for the riband of the Golden Fleece, which crossed his
+breast, there was nothing to remind me that I was conversing with the
+statesman, who, after the armistice of Plesswitz, held the destinies
+of all Europe in his hands. After some conversation, the prince asked
+me to call upon him on a certain forenoon.
+
+Most of the diplomatic corps were present, one of whom was the amiable
+and well-known Marshal Saldanha, who, a few years ago, played so
+prominent a part in the affairs of Portugal. The usual resources of
+whist and the tea-buffet changed the conversational circle, and at
+midnight there was a general movement to the Kleine Redouten Saal,
+where the Armen Ball had attracted so crowded an assemblage, that more
+than one archduchess had her share of elbowing. Strauss was in all his
+glory; the long-drawn impassioned breathings of Lanner having ceased
+for ever, the dulcet hilarity of his rival now reigns supreme; and his
+music, when directed by himself, still abounds in those exquisite
+little touches, that inspire _hope_ like the breath of a May morning.
+Strange to say, the intoxicating waltz is gone out of vogue with the
+humbler classes of Vienna,--its natal soil. Quadrilles, mazurkas, and
+other exotics, are now danced by every "Stubenmad'l" in Lerchenfeld,
+to the exclusion of the national dance.
+
+On the third day after this, at the appointed hour, I waited upon Prince
+Metternich. In the outer antechamber an elderly well-conditioned
+red-faced usher, in loosely made clothes of fine black cloth, rose from
+a table, and on my announcing myself, said, "If you will go into that
+apartment, and take a seat, his Excellency will be disengaged in a short
+time." I now entered a large apartment, looking out on the little garden
+of the bastion: an officer, in a fresh new white Austrian uniform, stood
+motionless and pensive at one of the windows, waiting his turn with a
+most formidable roll of papers. The other individual in the room was a
+Hungarian, who moved about, sat down, and rose up, with the most
+restless impatience, twirled his mustachios, and kept up a most lively
+conversation with a caged parrot which stood on the table.
+
+Two large pictures, hanging from the wall opposite the windows, were a
+full length portrait of the emperor in his robes, the other a picture
+of St. John Nepomuck, the patron saint of Bohemia, holding an olive
+branch in his hand. The apartment, although large, was very simply
+furnished, but admirably decorated in subdued colours, in the Italian
+manner. A great improvement has lately taken place in internal
+decoration in Vienna, which corresponds with that of external
+architecture. A few years ago, most large apartments were fitted up in
+the style of Louis XV., which was worthy of the degenerate nobles and
+crapulous financiers for whom it was invented, and was, in fact, a
+sort of Byzantine of the boudoir, which succeeded the nobler and
+simpler manner of the age of Louis XIV., and tormenting every straight
+line into meretricious curves, ended with over-loading caricature
+itself.
+
+I found Prince Metternich in his cabinet, surrounded with book-cases,
+filled mostly with works on history, statistics, and geography, and I
+hope I am not committing any indiscretion in saying that his
+conversation savoured more of the abstractions of history and
+political philosophy than that of any other practical statesman I had
+seen. I do not think that I am passing a dubious compliment, since M.
+Guizot, the most eminently practical of the statesmen of France, is at
+the same time the man who has most successfully illustrated the
+effects of modifications of political institutions on the main current
+of human happiness.
+
+It must be admitted that Prince Metternich has a profound acquaintance
+with the minutest sympathies and antipathies of all the European
+races; and this is the quality most needed in the direction of an
+empire which comprises not a nation, but a congregation of nations;
+not cohering through sympathy with each other, but kept together by
+the arts of statesmanship, and the bond of loyalty to the reigning
+house. The ethnographical map of Europe is as clear in his mind's eye
+as the boot of Italy, the hand of the Morea, and the shield of the
+Spanish peninsula in those of a physical geographer. It is not
+affirming too much to say that in many difficult questions in which
+the _mezzo termine_ proposed by Austria has been acceded to by the
+other powers, the solution has been due as much to the sagacity of the
+individual, as to the less ambitious policy which generally
+characterizes Austria.
+
+The last time I saw this distinguished individual was in the month of
+November following, on my way to England, I venture to give a scrap of
+the conversation.
+
+_Mett_. "The idea of Charlemagne was the formation of a vast state,
+comprising heterogeneous nations united under one head; but with all
+his genius he was unequal to the task of its accomplishment. Napoleon
+entertained the same plan with his confederation of the Rhine; but all
+such systems are ephemeral when power is centralized, and the minor
+states are looked upon as instruments, and not as principals. Austria
+is the only empire on record that has succeeded under those
+circumstances. The cabinet of Austria, when it seeks the solution of
+any internal question, invariably reverses the positions, and
+hypothetically puts itself in the position of the provincial interest
+under consideration. That is the secret of the prosperity of Austria."
+
+_Author_. "I certainly have been often struck with the historical
+fact, that 1830 produced revolutions then and subsequently in France,
+Belgium, Poland, Spain, and innumerable smaller states; while in
+Austria, with all its reputed combustible elements, not a single town
+or village revolted."
+
+_Mett_. "That tangible fact speaks for itself."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 26: This chapter was written in Vienna in the beginning of
+1844; but I did not wish to break the current of my observations on
+Servia by the record of my intervening journey to England.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+Concluding Observations on Austria and her Prospects.
+
+
+The heterogeneousness of the inhabitants of London and Paris is from
+the influx of foreigners; but the odd mixture of German, Italian,
+Slaavic, and I know not how many other races in Vienna, is almost all
+generated within the limits of the monarchy. Masses, rubbing against
+each other, get their asperities smoothed in the contact; but the
+characteristics of various nationalities remain in Vienna in
+considerable strength, and do not seem likely soon to disappear by any
+process of attrition. There goes the German--honest, good-natured, and
+laborious; the Hungarian--proud, insolent, lazy, hospitable, generous,
+and sincere; and the plausible Slaav--his eye, twinkling with the
+prospect of seizing, by a knowledge of human nature, what others
+attain by slower means.
+
+How curious again, is the meeting of nations that labour and enjoy! In
+Paris, the Germans and the English are more numerous than any other
+foreigners. The former toil, drudge, save their littles to make a
+meikle. The latter, whatever they may be at home, are, in Paris,
+generally loungers and consumers of the fruits of the earth. The
+Hungarian's errand in Vienna is to spend money: the Italian's to make
+it. The Hungarian, A.B., is one of the squirearchy of his country,
+whose name is legion, or a military man, whiling away his furlough
+amid the excitements of a gay capital. The Italian, C.D., is a
+painter, a sculptor, a musician, or an employe; and there is scarcely
+to be found an idle man among the twenty thousand of his
+fellow-countrymen, who inhabit the metropolis.
+
+The Hungarian nobility, of the higher class, are, in appearance and
+habits, completely identified with their German brethren; but it is in
+the middle nobility that we recognize the swarthy complexion, the
+haughty air and features, more or less of a Mongolian cast. The
+Hungarians and native Germans are mutually proud of each other, and
+mutually dislike each other. I never knew a Hungarian who was not in
+his heart pleased with the idea, that the King of Hungary was also an
+emperor, whose lands, broad and wide, occupied so large a space in the
+map of Europe; and I never knew an Austrian proper, who was not proud
+of Hungary and the Hungarians, in spite of all their defects. The
+Hungarian of the above description herds with his fellow-countrymen,
+and preserves, to the end of his stay, his character of foreigner;
+visits assiduously places of public resort, preferring the theatre and
+ball-room to the museum or picture-gallery.
+
+Of all men living in Vienna, the Bohemians carry off the palm for
+acuteness and ingenuity. The relation of Bohemia to the Austrian
+empire has some resemblance to that of Scotland to the colonies of
+Britain, in the supply of mariners to the vessel of state. The
+population of Bohemia is a ninth part of that of the whole empire; but
+I dare say that a fourth of the bureaucracy of Austria is Bohemian.
+To account for this, we must take into consideration the great number
+of men of sharp intellect, good education, and scanty fortune, that
+annually leave that country.
+
+The population of Scotland is about a ninth of that of the United
+Kingdom. The Scot is well educated. He has less loose cash than his
+brother John Bull, and consequently prefers the sweets of office to
+the costly incense of the hustings and the senate. How few,
+comparatively speaking, of those who have made themselves illustrious
+in the imperial Parliament, from the Union to our own time, came from
+the north of the Tweed; but how the Malcolms, the Elphinstones, the
+Munros, and the Burns, crowd the records of Indian statesmanship!
+
+The power that controls the political tendencies of Austria is that of
+the _mass_ of the bureaucracy; consequently, looking at the proportion
+of Bohemian to other employes in the departments of public service,
+the influence exercised by this singularly sagacious people, over the
+destinies of the monarchy, may be duly appreciated. Count Kollowrath,
+the minister of the interior, and Baron Kubeck, the minister of
+finance, are both Bohemians, and thus, next to the Chancellor of
+State, occupy the most important offices in the empire.
+
+The Bohemians of the middling and poorer classes, have certainly less
+sincerity and straight-forwardness than their neighbours. An anecdote
+is related illustrative of the slyness of the Bohemians, compared with
+the simple honesty of the German, and the candid unscrupulousness of
+the Hungarian: "During the late war, three soldiers, of each of these
+three nations, met in the parlour of a French inn, over the
+chimney-piece of which hung a watch. When they had gone, the German
+said, 'That is a good watch; I wish I had bought it.' 'I am sorry I
+did not take it,' said the Hungarian. 'I have it in my pocket,' said
+the Bohemian."
+
+The rising man in the empire is the Bohemian Baron Kubeck, who is
+thoroughly acquainted with every detail in the economical condition of
+Austria. The great object of this able financier is to cut down the
+expenses of the empire. No doubt that it would be unwise for Austria,
+an inland state, to reduce her military expenses; but the
+_viel-schreiberei_ might be diminished, and the pruning-hook might
+safety be applied to the bureaucracy; but a powerful under-current
+places this region beyond the power of Baron Kubeck. He is also a
+free-trader; but here again he meets with a powerful opposition: no
+sooner does he propose a modification of the tariff, than the saloons
+of the Archdukes are filled with manufacturers and monopolists, who
+draw such a terrific picture of the ruin which they pretend is to
+overwhelm them, that the government, true to its tradition of never
+doing any thing unpopular, of always avoiding collision with public
+opinion, and of protecting vested interests, even to the detriment of
+the real interest of the public, draws back; and the old jog-trot is
+maintained.
+
+The mass of the aristocracy continues as usual without the slightest
+political influence, or the slightest taste for state affairs. The
+Count or Prince of thirty or forty thousand a year, is as contented
+with his chamberlain's key embroidered on his coat-skirt, as if he
+controlled the avenues to real power; but the silent operation of an
+important change is visible in all the departments of the internal
+government of Austria. The national reforms of the Emperor Joseph were
+too abrupt and sweeping to be salutary. By good luck the reaction
+which they produced being co-incident with the first French
+Revolution, the firebrands which that great explosion scattered over
+all monarchical Europe, fell innocuous in Austria. The second French
+revolution rather retarded than accelerated useful reforms. Now that
+the fear of democracy recedes, an inclination for salutary changes
+shows itself everywhere. A desire for incorporations becomes
+stronger, and the government shows none of its quondam anxiety about
+public companies and institutions. The censorship has been greatly
+relaxed, and many liberal newspapers and periodicals, formerly
+excluded, are now frequently admitted. Any one who knew Austria some
+years ago, would be surprised to see the "Examiner," and
+"Constitutionnel" lying on the tables of the Clubs.
+
+A desire for the revival of the provincial estates (Landstande), is
+entertained by many influential persons. These provincial parliaments
+existed up to the time of the Emperor Joseph, who, with his rage for
+novelty, and his desire for despotic and centralized power, abolished
+them. The section of the aristocracy desirous for this revival is
+certainly small, but intelligent, and impatient for a sphere of
+activity. They have neither radical nor democratic principles; they
+admit that Austria, from the heterogeneous nature of her population,
+is not adapted for constitutional government; but maintain that the
+revival of municipal institutions is quite compatible with the present
+elements of the monarchy, and that the difficulties presented by the
+antagonist nationalities are best solved by allowing a development of
+provincial public life, restricted to the control of local affairs,
+and leaving the central government quite unfettered in its general
+foreign and domestic policy.
+
+St. Marc Girardin remarks, with no less piquancy of language than
+accuracy of observation, that "no country is judged with less favour
+than Austria; and none troubles herself less about misrepresentation.
+Austria carries her repugnance to publicity so far as even to dislike
+eulogium. Praise often offends her as much as blame; for he that
+applauds to-day may condemn to-morrow; to set one's self up for
+praise, is to set one's self up for discussion. Austria will have none
+of it, for her political worship is the religion of silence, and her
+worship of _that_ goes almost to excess. Her schools are worthy of the
+highest admiration; we hear nothing about them. She is, after England,
+the first country in Europe for railways; and we hear nothing of them,
+except by a stray paragraph in the Augsburg Gazette."
+
+The national railroad scheme of Austria is certainly the most splendid
+effort of the _tout pour le peuple--rien par le peuple_ system that
+has been hitherto seen; the scheme is the first of its class: but its
+class is not the first, not the best in the abstract, but the best in
+an absolute country, where the spirit of association is scarcely in
+embryo. From Vienna to Cracow is now but a step. Prague and Dresden
+will shake hands with Vienna next year. If we look southwards, line
+upon line interpose themselves between Vienna and the Adriatic, but
+the great Sommering has been pierced. The line to Trieste is open
+beyond Gratz, the Styrian capital. The Lombard-Venetian line proceeds
+rapidly, and is to be joined to that of Trieste. In 1847, the
+traveller may go, without fail, from Milan to Stettin on the Baltic.
+But the most interesting line for us is that of Gallicia, in connexion
+with that of Silesia. If prolonged from Czernowitz to Galatz, along
+the dead flat of Moldavia, the Black Sea and the German Ocean will be
+joined; _Samsoun and the Tigris will thus be, in all probability, at
+no distant day, on the high road to our Indian empire_.
+
+But to return to Austria; this spectacle of rapid material
+improvement, without popular commotion, and without the trumpets and
+alarm-bells of praise and blame, is satisfactory: but when we look to
+the reverse of the picture, and see the cumbrous debt, the frequent
+deficits, and the endless borrowing, we think the time has come for
+great financial reforms,--as Schiller hath it:--
+
+     "Warum denn nicht mit einem grossen Schritte anfangen, Da sie mit
+     einem grossen Schritte doch enden mussen?"
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+MR. PATON'S WORK ON SYRIA, Post 8vo, price 10_s_. 6_d_.
+
+
+THE MODERN SYRIANS;
+
+OR,
+
+NATIVE SOCIETY IN DAMASCUS, ALEPPO, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE DRUSES.
+
+
+"Lebanon and its inhabitants, particularly the Druses, Damascus, and
+Aleppo, are his leading subjects. His statements, under the first of
+those heads, form by far the most valuable portion of the work,
+affording, as it does, information not elsewhere to be found
+respecting the social condition, the politics, and the state of
+religion in a highly interesting region, our knowledge of which has
+hitherto been of the slightest description. Next to this, in interest,
+is the account of Aleppo, which has been less visited by English
+travellers than Damascus; but even at Damascus, the information of
+this writer has considerable novelty, and embraces many points of
+interest arising from his leisurely sojourn, from his mixing more than
+other travellers with the native population, and from his ability to
+converse with them in their own language. Hence we have pictures more
+distinct in their outlines, facts more positive, and information more
+real than the passing traveller, ignorant of the local language, can
+be reasonably expected to exhibit ... makes larger additions to the
+common stock of information concerning Syria, than any work which
+could easily be named since 'Burckhardt's Travels in Syria'
+appeared."--_Eclectic Review_.
+
+"Remarkably clever and entertaining."--_Times_.
+
+"In many of the conversations and reports in this volume, there seems
+to us a _reality_, which European writing and discourse often
+want."--_Spectator_.
+
+"I willingly testify to the fact of your having enjoyed facilities
+over all our modern travellers, for accurately describing the manners,
+customs, and statistics of Syria."--_Letter of Mr. Consul-General
+Barker_.
+
+For a detailed analysis, see _Athenaeum_, 24th Aug. 1844.
+
+
+LONDON: LONGMAN & CO., PATERNOSTER-ROW.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Servia, Youngest Member of the
+European Family, by Andrew Archibald Paton
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Servia, by Andrew Archibald Paton, Esq.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Servia, Youngest Member of the European
+Family, by Andrew Archibald Paton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family
+       or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands
+              and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and
+              1844.
+
+Author: Andrew Archibald Paton
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2005 [EBook #16999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERVIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Digital &amp; Multimedia Center, Michigan State
+University Libraries., Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar
+Viswanathan, and Distributed Proofreaders Europe at
+http://dp.rastko.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>SERVIA,</h1>
+
+<h3>YOUNGEST MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN
+FAMILY:</h3>
+
+<h4>OR, A</h4>
+
+<h2>RESIDENCE IN BELGRADE,</h2>
+
+<h4>AND</h4>
+
+<h3>TRAVELS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND WOODLANDS OF
+THE INTERIOR,</h3>
+
+<h4>DURING THE YEARS 1843 AND 1844.</h4>
+
+<h3>&nbsp;</h3>
+<h3>&nbsp;</h3>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>ANDREW ARCHIBALD PATON, ESQ.</h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE MODERN SYRIANS."</h4>
+
+
+<p class="blockquot">&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="blockquot">&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="blockquot">"Les hommes croient en g&eacute;n&eacute;ral conna&icirc;tre suffisamment l'Empire Ottoman
+  pour peu qu'ils aient lu l'&eacute;norme compilation que le savant M. de Hammer a
+  publi&eacute;e ... mais en dehors de ce mouvement central il y a la vie int&eacute;rieure
+  de province, dont le tableau tout entier reste &agrave; faire."</p>
+<h3>&nbsp;</h3>
+<h3>&nbsp;</h3>
+<h3>LONDON:</h3>
+<h3>LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,</h3>
+
+<h4>PATERNOSTER ROW.</h4>
+
+<h3>1845.</h3>
+
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="blockquot">The narrative and descriptive portion of this work speaks for itself.
+In the historical part I have consulted with advantage Von Engel's
+"History of Servia," Rank&eacute;'s "Servian Revolution," Possart's "Servia,"
+and Ami Bou&eacute;'s "Turquie d'Europe," but took the precaution of
+submitting the facts selected to the censorship of those on the spot
+best able to test their accuracy. For this service, I owe a debt of
+acknowledgment to M. Hadschitch, the framer of the Servian code; M.
+Marinovitch, Secretary of the Senate; and Professor John Shafarik,
+whose lectures on Slaavic history, literature, and antiquities, have
+obtained unanimous applause.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a></h2>
+<h2>&nbsp;</h2>
+<h2>&nbsp;</h2>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER 1.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_I">Leave Beyrout.&mdash;Camp afloat.&mdash;Rhodes.&mdash;The shores of the
+Mediterranean suitable for the cultivation of the arts.&mdash;A
+Moslem of the new school.&mdash;American Presbyterian
+clergyman.&mdash;A Mexican senator.&mdash;A sermon for sailors.&mdash;Smyrna.&mdash;Buyukd&eacute;r&eacute;.&mdash;Sir
+Stratford Canning.&mdash;Embark
+for Bulgaria.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_II">Varna.&mdash;Contrast of Northern and Southern provinces of
+Turkey.&mdash;Roustchouk.&mdash;Conversation with Deftendar.&mdash;The
+Danube.&mdash;A Bulgarian interior.&mdash;A dandy of the
+Lower Danube.&mdash;Depart for Widdin.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_III">River steaming.&mdash;Arrival at Widdin.&mdash;Jew.&mdash;Comfortless
+khan.&mdash;Wretched appearance of Widdin.&mdash;Hussein Pasha.&mdash;M.
+Petronievitch.&mdash;Steam balloon.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+	 <td>&nbsp;</td>
+	 <td>&nbsp;</td>
+	 <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+   <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">Leave Widdin.&mdash;The Timok.&mdash;Enter Servia.&mdash;Brza Palanka.&mdash;The
+Iron Gates.&mdash;Old and New Orsova.&mdash;Wallachian
+Matron.&mdash;Semlin.&mdash;A conversation on language.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_V">Description of Belgrade.&mdash;Fortifications.&mdash;Street and street
+population.&mdash;Cathedral.&mdash;Large square.&mdash;Coffee-house.&mdash;Deserted
+villa.&mdash;Baths.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">Europeanization of Belgrade.&mdash;Lighting and paving.&mdash;Interior
+of the fortress.&mdash;Turkish Pasha.&mdash;Turkish quarter.&mdash;Turkish
+population.&mdash;Panorama of Belgrade.&mdash;Dinner
+party given by the prince.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">Return to Servia.&mdash;The Danube.&mdash;Semlin.&mdash;Wucics and
+Petronievitch.&mdash;Cathedral solemnity.&mdash;Subscription ball.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">Holman, the blind traveller.&mdash;Milutinovich, the poet.&mdash;Bulgarian
+legend.&mdash;Tableau de genre.&mdash;Departure for the interior.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">Journey to Shabatz.&mdash;Resemblance of manners to those of
+the middle ages.&mdash;Palesh.&mdash;A Servian bride.&mdash;Blind minstrel.&mdash;Gipsies.&mdash;Macadamized
+roads.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_X">Shabatz.&mdash;A provincial chancery.&mdash;Servian collector.&mdash;Description
+of his house.&mdash;Country barber.&mdash;Turkish quarter.&mdash;Self-taught
+priest.&mdash;A provincial dinner.&mdash;Native soir&eacute;e.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">Kaimak.&mdash;History of a renegade.&mdash;A bishop's house.&mdash;Progress
+of education.&mdash;Portrait of Milosh.&mdash;Bosnia and the
+Bosnians.&mdash;Moslem fanaticism.&mdash;Death of the collector.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">The banat of Matchva.&mdash;Losnitza.&mdash;Feuds on the frontier.&mdash;Enter
+the back-woods.&mdash;Convent of Tronosha.&mdash;Greek
+festival.&mdash;Congregation of peasantry.&mdash;Rustic finery.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">Romantic sylvan scenery.&mdash;Patriarchal simplicity of manners.&mdash;Krupena.&mdash;Sokol.&mdash;Its
+extraordinary position.&mdash;Wretched town.&mdash;Alpine scenery.&mdash;Cool reception.&mdash;Valley
+of the Rogatschitza.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">The Drina.&mdash;Liubovia.&mdash;Quarantine station.&mdash;Derlatcha.&mdash;A
+Servian beauty.&mdash;A lunatic priest.&mdash;Sorry quarters.&mdash;Murder
+by brigands.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">Arrival at Ushitza.&mdash;Wretched street.&mdash;Excellent khan.&mdash;Turkish
+vayvode.&mdash;A Persian dervish.&mdash;Relations of
+Moslems and Christians.&mdash;Visit the castle.&mdash;Bird's eye
+view.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">Poshega.&mdash;The river Morava.&mdash;Arrival at Csatsak.&mdash;A
+Viennese doctor.&mdash;Project to ascend the Kopaunik.&mdash;Visit
+the bishop.&mdash;Ancient cathedral church.&mdash;Greek mass.&mdash;Karanovatz.&mdash;Emigrant
+priest.&mdash;Albanian disorders.&mdash;Salt
+mines.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">Coronation church of the ancient kings of Servia.&mdash;Enter
+the Highlands.&mdash;Valley of the Ybar.&mdash;First view of the
+High Balkan.&mdash;Convent of Studenitza.&mdash;Byzantine Architecture.&mdash;Phlegmatic
+monk.&mdash;Servian frontier.&mdash;New
+quarantine.&mdash;Russian major.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">Cross the Bosniac frontier.&mdash;Gipsy encampment.&mdash;Novibazar
+described.&mdash;Rough reception.&mdash;Precipitate departure.&mdash;Fanaticism.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td>
+
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">Ascent of the Kopaunik.&mdash;Grand prospect.&mdash;Descent of
+the Kopaunik.&mdash;Bruss.&mdash;Involuntary bigamy.&mdash;Conversation
+on the Servian character.&mdash;Krushevatz.&mdash;Relics of
+monarchy.</a></td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td>
+  </tr>
+   <tr>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">Formation of the Servian monarchy.&mdash;Contest between the
+Latin and Greek Churches.&mdash;Stephen Dushan.&mdash;A great
+warrior.&mdash;Results of his victories.&mdash;Kucs Lasar.&mdash;Invasion
+of Amurath.&mdash;Battle of Kossovo.&mdash;Death of Lasar
+and Amurath.&mdash;Fall of the Servian monarchy.&mdash;General
+observations.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">A battue missed.&mdash;Proceed to Alexinatz.&mdash;Foreign-Office
+courier.&mdash;Bulgarian frontier.&mdash;Gipsy Suregee.&mdash;Tiupria.&mdash;New
+bridge and macadamized roads.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">Visit to Ravanitza.&mdash;Jovial party.&mdash;Servian and Austrian
+jurisdiction.&mdash;Convent described.&mdash;Eagles reversed.&mdash;Bulgarian
+festivities.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">Manasia.&mdash;Has preserved its middle-age character.&mdash;Robinson
+Crusoe.&mdash;Wonderful echo.&mdash;Kindness of the people.&mdash;Svilainitza.&mdash;Posharevatz.&mdash;Baby
+giantess.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_246">246</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">Rich soil.&mdash;Mysterious waters.&mdash;Treaty of Passarovitz.&mdash;The
+castle of Semendria.&mdash;Relics of the antique.&mdash;The Brankovitch
+family.&mdash;Panesova.&mdash;Morrison's pills.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">Personal appearance of the Servians.&mdash;Their moral character.&mdash;Peculiarity
+of manners.&mdash;Christmas festivities.&mdash;Easter.&mdash;The
+Dodola.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">Town life.&mdash;The public offices.&mdash;Manners half-oriental half-European.&mdash;Merchants
+and tradesmen.&mdash;Turkish population.&mdash;Porters.&mdash;Barbers.&mdash;Caf&eacute;s.&mdash;Public
+writer.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_272">272</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">Poetry.&mdash;Journalism.&mdash;The fine arts.&mdash;The Lyceum.&mdash;Mineralogical
+cabinet.&mdash;Museum.&mdash;Servian Education.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_279">279</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">Preparations for departure.&mdash;Impressions of the East.&mdash;Prince
+Alexander.&mdash;The palace.&mdash;Kara Georg.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_285">285</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">A memoir of Kara Georg.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">Milosh Obrenovitch.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">The prince.&mdash;The government.&mdash;The senate.&mdash;The minister
+for foreign affairs.&mdash;The minister of the interior.&mdash;Courts
+of justice.&mdash;Finances.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">Agriculture and commerce.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">The foreign agents.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">VIENNA IN 1844.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">Improvements in Vienna.&mdash;Palladian style.&mdash;Music.&mdash;Theatres.&mdash;Sir
+Robert Gordon.&mdash;Prince Metternich.&mdash;Armen
+ball.&mdash;Dancing.&mdash;Strauss.&mdash;Austrian policy.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_330">330</a></td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">CHAPTER XXXV.</a></td>
+
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr>
+   <tr>
+     <td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">Concluding observations on Austria and her prospects.</a></td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg">&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td>
+   </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="SERVIA" id="SERVIA"></a>SERVIA.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<div><b> Leave Beyrout.&mdash;Camp afloat.&mdash;Rhodes.&mdash;The shores of the
+  Mediterranean suitable for the cultivation of the arts.&mdash;A
+  Moslem of the new school.&mdash;American Presbyterian
+  clergyman.&mdash;A Mexican senator.&mdash;A sermon for
+  sailors.&mdash;Smyrna.&mdash;Buyukd&eacute;r&eacute;.&mdash;Sir
+  Stratford Canning.&mdash;Embark
+for Bulgaria. </b></div>
+<p>&nbsp;
+
+</p>
+<p>I have been four years in the East, and feel that I have had quite
+enough of it for the present. Notwithstanding the azure skies,
+bubbling fountains, Mosaic pavements, and fragrant <i>narghil&eacute;s</i>, I
+begin to feel symptoms of ennui, and a thirst for European life, sharp
+air, and a good appetite, a blazing fire, well-lighted rooms, female
+society, good music, and the piquant vaudevilles of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>my ancient
+friends, Scribe, Bayard, and Melesville.</p>
+
+<p>At length I stand on the pier of Beyrout, while my luggage is being
+embarked for the Austrian steamer lying in the roads, which, in the
+Levantine slang, has lighted her chibouque, and is polluting yon white
+promontory, clear cut in the azure horizon, with a thick black cloud
+of Wallsend.</p>
+
+<p>I bade a hurried adieu to my friends, and went on board. The
+quarter-deck, which retained its awning day and night, was divided
+into two compartments, one of which was reserved for the promenade of
+the cabin passengers, the other for the bivouac of the Turks, who
+retained their camp habits with amusing minuteness, making the
+larboard quarter a vast tent afloat, with its rolled up beds, quilts,
+counterpanes, washing gear, and all sorts of water-cans, coffee-pots,
+and chibouques, with stores of bread, cheese, fruit, and other
+provisions for the voyage. In the East, a family cannot move without
+its household paraphernalia, but then it requires a slight addition of
+furniture and utensils to settle <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>for years in a strange place. The
+settlement of a European family requires a thousand et ceteras and
+months of installation, but then it is set in motion for the new world
+with a few portmanteaus and travelling bags.</p>
+
+<p>Two days and a half of steaming brought us to Rhodes.</p>
+
+<p>An enchanter has waved his wand! in reading of the wondrous world of
+the ancients, one feels a desire to get a peep at Rome before its
+destruction by barbarian hordes. A leap backwards of half this period
+is what one seems to make at Rhodes, a perfectly preserved city and
+fortress of the middle ages. Here has been none of the Vandalism of
+Vauban, Cohorn, and those mechanical-pated fellows, who, with their
+Dutch dyke-looking parapets, made such havoc of donjons and
+picturesque turrets in Europe. Here is every variety of medi&aelig;val
+battlement; so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the waiter's
+horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
+squire.</p>
+
+<p>Two more delightful days of steaming among <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>the Greek Islands now
+followed. The heat was moderate, the motion gentle, the sea was liquid
+lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their
+accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates
+permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical
+configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of
+heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment
+of the Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the
+palette, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, shining with
+its &aelig;sthetic ray through lineaments thorough-bred from generation to
+generation, invites the sculptor to transfer to marble, grace of
+contour and elevation of expression. But let us not envy the balmy
+South. The Germanic or northern element, if less susceptible of the
+beautiful is more masculine, better balanced, less in extremes. It was
+this element that struck down the Roman empire, that peoples America
+and Australia, and rules India; that exhausted worlds, and then
+created new.</p>
+
+<p>The most prominent individual of the native <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>division of passengers,
+was Arif Effendi, a pious Moslem of the new school, who had a great
+horror of brandy; first, because it was made from wine; and secondly,
+because his own favourite beverage was Jamaica rum; for, as Peter
+Parley says, "Of late years, many improvements have taken place among
+the Mussulmans, who show a disposition to adopt the best things of
+their more enlightened neighbours." We had a great deal of
+conversation during the voyage, for he professed to have a great
+admiration of England, and a great dislike of France; probably all
+owing to the fact of rum coming from Jamaica, and brandy and wine from
+Cognac and Bordeaux.</p>
+
+<p>Another individual was a still richer character: an American
+Presbyterian clergyman, with furi-bond dilated nostril and a terrific
+frown.</p>
+
+<p>"You must lose Canada," said he to me one day, abruptly, "ay, and
+Bermuda into the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you had better round off your acquisitions with a few odd
+West India Islands."</p>
+
+<p>"We have stomach enough for that too."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I hear you have been to Jerusalem."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I went to recover my voice, which I lost; for I have one of the
+largest congregations in Boston."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my good friend, you breathe nothing but war and conquest."</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, war is as unavoidable as thunder and lightning; the
+atmosphere must be cleared from time to time."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you ever a soldier?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I was in the American navy. Many a day I was after John Bull on
+the shores of Newfoundland."</p>
+
+<p>"After John Bull?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Sir, <i>sweating</i> after him: I delight in energy; give me the man
+who will shoulder a millstone, if need be."</p>
+
+<p>"The capture of Canada, Bermuda, and a few odd West India Islands,
+would certainly give scope for your energy. This would be taking the
+bull by the horns."</p>
+
+<p>"Swinging him by the tail, say I."</p>
+
+<p>The burlesque vigour of his illustrations some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>times ran to
+anti-climax. One day, he talked of something (if I recollect right,
+the electric telegraph), moving with the rapidity of a flash of
+lightning, with a pair of spurs clapped into it.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of all this ultra-national bluster, we found him to be a very
+good sort of man, having nothing of the bear but the skin, and in the
+test of the quarantine arrangements, the least selfish of the party.</p>
+
+<p>Another passenger was an elderly Mexican senator, who was the essence
+of politeness of the good old school. Every morning he stood smiling,
+hat in hand, while he inquired how each of us had slept. I shall never
+forget the cholera-like contortion of horror he displayed, when the
+clerical militant (poking his fun at him), declared that Texas was
+within the natural boundary of the State, and that some morning they
+would make a breakfast of the whole question.</p>
+
+<p>One day he passed from politics to religion. "I am fond of fun," said
+he, "I think it is the sign of a clear conscience. My life has been
+spent among sailors. I have begun with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>many a blue jacket
+hail-fellow-well-met in my own rough way, and have ended in weaning
+him from wicked courses. None of your gloomy religion for me. When I
+see a man whose religion makes him melancholy, and averse from gaiety,
+I tell him his god must be my devil."</p>
+
+<p>The originality of this gentleman's intellect and manners, led me
+subsequently to make further inquiry; and I find one of his sermons
+reported by a recent traveller, who, after stating that his oratory
+made a deep impression on the congregation of the Sailors' chapel in
+Boston, who sat with their eyes, ears, and mouths open, as if
+spell-bound in listening to him, thus continues: "He describes a ship
+at sea, bound for the port of Heaven, when the man at the head sung
+out, 'Rocks ahead!' 'Port the helm,' cried the mate. 'Ay, ay, sir,'
+was the answer; the ship obeyed, and stood upon a tack. But in two
+minutes more, the lead indicated a shoal. The man on the out-look sung
+out, 'Sandbreaks and breakers ahead!' The captain was now called, and
+the mate gave his opinion; but sail where they could, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>the lead and
+the eye showed nothing but dangers all around,&mdash;sand banks, coral
+reefs, sunken rocks, and dangerous coasts. The chart showed them
+clearly enough where the port of Heaven lay; there was no doubt about
+its latitude and longitude: but they all sung out, that it was
+impossible to reach it; there was no fair way to get to it. My
+friends, it was the devil who blew up that sand-bank, and sunk those
+rocks, and set the coral insects to work; his object was to prevent
+that ship from ever getting to Heaven, to wreck it on its way, and to
+make prize of the whole crew for slaves for ever. But just as every
+soul was seized with consternation, and almost in despair, a tight
+little schooner hove in sight; she was cruizing about, with one Jesus,
+a pilot, on board. The captain hailed him, and he answered that he
+knew a fair way to the port in question. He pointed out to them an
+opening in the rocks, which the largest ship might beat through, with
+a channel so deep, that the lead could never reach to the bottom, and
+the passage was land-locked the whole way, so that the wind might veer
+round to every <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>point in the compass, and blow hurricanes from them
+all, and yet it could never raise a dangerous sea in that channel.
+What did the crew of that distressed ship do, when Jesus showed them
+his chart, and gave them all the bearings? They laughed at him, and
+threw his chart back in his face. He find a channel where they could
+not! Impossible; and on they sailed in their own course, and everyone
+of them perished."</p>
+
+<p>At Smyrna, I signalized my return to the land of the Franks, by
+ordering a beef-steak, and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the
+paper from a gentleman in drab leggings, who had come from Manchester
+to look after the affairs of a commercial house, in which he or his
+employers were involved. He wondered that a hotel in the Ottoman
+empire should be so unlike one in Europe, and asked me, "If the inns
+down in the country were as good as this."</p>
+
+<p>As for Constantinople, I refer all readers to the industry and
+accuracy of Mr. White, who might justly have terminated his volumes
+with the Oriental epistolary phrase, "What more can I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>write?" Mr.
+White is not a mere sentence balancer, but belongs to the guild of
+bon&acirc; fide Oriental travellers.</p>
+
+<p>In summer, all Pera is on the Bosphorus: so I jumped into a caique,
+and rowed up to Buyukd&eacute;r&eacute;. On the threshold of the villa of the
+British embassy, I met A&mdash;&mdash;, the prince of attach&eacute;s, who led me to a
+beautiful little kiosk, on the extremity of a garden, and there
+installed me in his fairy abode of four small rooms, which embraced a
+view like that of Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore; here books, the piano,
+the <i>narghil&eacute;</i>, and the parterre of flowers, relieved the drudgery of
+his Eastern diplomacy. Lord N&mdash;&mdash;, Mr. H&mdash;&mdash;, and Mr. T&mdash;&mdash;, the other
+attach&eacute;s, lived in a house at the other end of the garden.</p>
+
+<p>I here spent a week of delightful repose. The mornings were occupied
+<i>ad libitum</i>, the gentlemen of the embassy being overwhelmed with
+business. At four o'clock dinner was usually served in the airy
+vestibule of the embassy villa, and with the occasional accession of
+other members of the diplomatic corps we usually <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>formed a large
+party. A couple of hours before sunset a caique, which from its size
+might have been the galley of a doge, was in waiting, and Lady C&mdash;&mdash;
+sometimes took us to a favourite wooded hill or bower-grown creek in
+the Paradise-like environs, while a small musical party in the evening
+terminated each day. One of the attach&eacute;s of the Russian embassy, M.
+F&mdash;&mdash;, is the favorite dilettante of Buyukd&eacute;r&eacute;; he has one of the
+finest voices I ever heard, and frequently reminded me of the easy
+humour and sonorous profundity of Lablache.</p>
+
+<p>Before embarking the reader on the Black Sea, I cannot forbear a
+single remark on the distinguished individual who has so long and so
+worthily represented Great Britain at the Ottoman Porte.</p>
+
+<p>Sir. Stratford Canning is certainly unpopular with the extreme
+fanatical party, and with all those economists who are for killing the
+goose to get at the golden eggs; but the real interests of the Turkish
+nation never had a firmer support.</p>
+
+<p>The chief difficulty in the case of this race is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>the impossibility of
+fusion with others. While they decrease in number, the Rayahs increase
+in wealth, in numbers, and in intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians are the Orientals of Europe, but St. Petersburg is a
+German town, German industry corrects the old Muscovite sloth and
+cunning. The immigrant strangers rise to the highest offices, for the
+crown employs them as a counterpoise on the old nobility; as burgher
+incorporations were used by the kings of three centuries ago.</p>
+
+<p>No similar process is possible with Moslems: one course therefore
+remains open for those who wish to see the Ottoman Empire upheld; a
+strenuous insistance on the Porte treating the Rayah population with
+justice and moderation. The interests of humanity, and the real and
+true interests of the Ottoman Empire, are in this case identical.
+Guided by this sound principle, which completely reconciles the policy
+of Great Britain with the highest maxims of political morality, Sir.
+Stratford Canning has pursued his career with an all-sifting
+intelligence, a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>vigour of character and judgment, an indifference to
+temporary repulses, and a sacrifice of personal popularity, which has
+called forth the respect and involuntary admiration of parties the
+most opposed to his views.</p>
+
+<p>I embarked on board a steamer, skirted the western coast of the Black
+Sea, and landed on the following morning in Varna.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<div><b> Varna.&mdash;Contrast of Northern And Southern Provinces of
+  Turkey.&mdash;Roustchouk.&mdash;Conversation with Deftendar.&mdash;The
+  Danube.&mdash;A Bulgarian interior.&mdash;A dandy of the
+  Lower Danube.&mdash;Depart for Widdin.
+</b></div>
+<p>&nbsp;
+
+</p>
+<p>All hail, Bulgaria! No sooner had I secured my quarters and deposited
+my baggage, than I sought the main street, in order to catch the
+delightfully keen impression which a new region stamps on the mind.</p>
+
+<p>How different are the features of Slaavic Turkey, from those of the
+Arabic provinces in which I so long resided. The flat roofs, the
+measured pace of the camel, the half-naked negro, the uncouth Bedouin,
+the cloudless heavens, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>tawny earth, and the meagre apology for
+turf, are exchanged for ricketty wooden houses with coarse tiling,
+laid in such a way as to eschew the monotony of straight lines;
+strings of primitive waggons drawn by buffaloes, and driven by
+Bulgarians with black woolly caps, real genuine grass growing on the
+downs outside the walls, and a rattling blast from the Black Sea, more
+welcome than all the balmy spices of Arabia, for it reminded me that I
+was once more in Europe, and must befit my costume to her ruder airs.
+This was indeed the north of the Balkan, and I must needs pull out my
+pea-jacket. How I relished those winds, waves, clouds, and grey skies!
+They reminded me of English nature and Dutch art. The Nore, the Downs,
+the Frith of Forth, and sundry dormant Backhuysens, re-awoke to my
+fancy.</p>
+
+<p>The moral interest too was different. In Egypt or Syria, where whole
+cycles of civilization lie entombed, we interrogate the past; here in
+Bulgaria the past is nothing, and we vainly interrogate the future.</p>
+
+<p>The interior of Varna has a very fair bazaar; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>not covered as in
+Constantinople and other large towns, but well furnished. The private
+dwellings are generally miserable. The town suffered so severely in
+the Russian war of 1828, that it has never recovered its former
+prosperity. It has also been twice nearly all burnt since then; so
+that, notwithstanding its historical, military, and commercial
+importance, it has at present little more than 20,000 inhabitants. The
+walls of the town underwent a thorough repair in the spring and summer
+of 1843.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of the inhabitants are Turks, and even the native
+Bulgarians here speak Turkish better than their own language. One
+Bulgarian here told me that he could not speak the national language.
+Now in the west of Bulgaria, on the borders of Servia, the Turks speak
+Bulgarian better than Turkish.</p>
+
+<p>From Varna to Roustchouk is three days' journey, the latter half of
+the road being agreeably diversified with wood, corn, and pasture; and
+many of the fields inclosed. Just at sunset, I found myself on the
+ridge of the last undulation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>of the slope of Bulgaria, and again
+greeted the ever-noble valley of the Danube. Roustchouk lay before me
+hitherward, and beyond the river, the rich flat lands of Wallachia
+stretched away to the north.</p>
+
+<p>As I approached the town, I perceived it to be a fortress of vast
+extent; but as it is commanded from the heights from which I was
+descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south.
+The ramparts were built with great solidity, but rusty, old,
+dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from
+exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo
+a considerable repair. The aspect of the place did not improve as we
+rumbled down the street, lined with houses one story high, and here
+and there a little mosque, with a shabby wooden minaret crowned with
+conical tin tops like the extinguishers of candles.</p>
+
+<p>I put up at the khan. My room was without furniture; but, being lately
+white-washed, and duly swept out under my own superintendence, and laid
+with the best mat in the khan, on which I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>placed my bed and carpets,
+the addition of a couple of rush-bottomed chairs and a deal table,
+made it habitable, which was all I desired, as I intended to stay only
+a few days. I was supplied with a most miserable dinner; and, to my
+horror, the stewed meat was sprinkled with cinnamon. The wine was bad,
+and the water still worse, for there are no springs at Roustchouk, and
+they use Danube water, filtered through a jar of a porous sandstone
+found in the neighbourhood. A jar of this kind stands in every house,
+but even when filtered in this way it is far from good.</p>
+
+<p>On hearing that the Deftendar spoke English perfectly, and had long
+resided in England, I felt a curiosity to see him, and accordingly
+presented myself at the Konak, and was shown to the divan of the
+Deftendar. I pulled aside a pendent curtain, and entered a room of
+large dimensions, faded decorations, and a broad red divan, the
+cushions of which were considerably the worse for wear. Such was the
+bureau of the Deftendar Effendi, who sat surrounded with papers, and
+the implements of writing. He was a man apparently of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>fifty-five
+years of age, slightly inclining to corpulence, with a very short
+neck, surmounted by large features, coarsely chiselled; but not devoid
+of a certain intelligence in his eye, and dignity in general effect.
+He spoke English with a correct accent, but slowly, occasionally
+stopping to remember a word; thus showing that his English was not
+imperfect from want of knowledge, but rusty from want of practice. He
+was an Egyptian Turk, and had been for eight years the commercial
+agent of Mohammed Ali at Malta, and had, moreover, visited the
+principal countries of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>I then took a series of short and rapid whiffs of my pipe while I
+bethought me of the best manner of treating the subject of my visit,
+and then said, "that few orientals could draw a distinction between
+politics and geography; but that with a man of his calibre and
+experience, I was safe from misinterpretation&mdash;that I was collecting
+the materials for a work on the Danubian provinces, and that for any
+information which he might give me, consistently with the exigencies
+of his official position, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>I should feel much indebted, as I thought I
+was least likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of
+my journey to the authorities, while information derived from the
+fountain-head was the most valuable."</p>
+
+<p>The Deftendar, after commending my openness, said, "I suspect that you
+will find very little to remark in the pashalic of Silistria. It is an
+agricultural country, and the majority of the inhabitants are Turks.
+The Rayahs are very peaceable, and pay very few taxes, considering the
+agricultural wealth of the country. You may rest assured that there is
+not a province of the Ottoman empire, which is better governed than
+the pashalic of Silistria. Now and then, a rude Turk appropriates to
+himself a Bulgarian girl; but the government cannot be responsible for
+these individual excesses. We have no malcontents within the province;
+hut there are a few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb
+the tranquillity of Bulgaria: but the Wallachian government has taken
+measures to prevent them from carrying their projects into execution."
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>After some further conversation, on indifferent topics, I took my
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>The succeeding days were devoted to a general reconnaissance of the
+place; but I must say that Roustchouk, although capital of the
+pashalic of Silistria, and containing thirty or forty thousand
+inhabitants, pleased me less than any town of its size that I had seen
+in the East. The streets are dirty and badly paved, without a single
+good bazaar or caf&eacute; to kill time in, or a single respectable edifice
+of any description to look at. The redeeming resource was the
+promenade on the banks of the Danube, which has here attained almost
+its full volume, and uniting the waters of Alp, Carpathian, and
+Balkan, rushes impatiently to the Euxine.</p>
+
+<p>At length the day of departure came. The attendant had just removed
+the tumbler of coffee, tossing the fragments of toast into the
+court-yard, an operation which appeared to have a magnetic effect on
+the bills of the poultry; and then, with his accustomed impropriety,
+placed the plate as a basis to my hookah, telling me that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>F&mdash;&mdash;, a
+Bulgarian Christian, wished to speak with me.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him walk in," said I, as I took the first delightful whiff; and
+F&mdash;&mdash;, darkening the window that looked out on the verandah, gave me a
+fugitive look of recognition, and then entering and making his
+salutation in a kindly hearty manner, asked me to eat my mid-day meal
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," quoth I, "I accept your invitation. I have not gone to pay
+my visit to the Bey, because I remain here too short a time to need
+his good offices; but I am anxious to make the acquaintance of the
+people,&mdash;so I am your guest."</p>
+
+<p>When the hour arrived, I adjusted the tassel of my fez, put on my
+great coat, and proceeded to the Christian quarter; where, after
+various turnings and windings, I at length arrived at a high wooden
+gateway, new and unpainted.</p>
+
+<p>An uncouth tuning of fiddles, the odour of savoury fare, and a hearty
+laugh from within, told me that I had no further to go; for all these
+gates are so like each other, one never knows a house <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>till after
+close observation. On entering I passed over a plat of grass, and
+piercing a wooden tenement by a dark passage, found myself in a
+three-sided court, where several persons were sitting on rush-bottomed
+chairs.</p>
+
+<p>F&mdash;&mdash; came forward, took both my hands in his, and then presented me
+to the company. On being seated, I exchanged salutations, and then
+looked round, and perceived that the three sides of the court were
+composed of rambling wooden tenements; the fourth was a little garden
+in which a few flowers were cultivated.</p>
+
+<p>The elders sat, the youngers stood at a distance;&mdash;so respectful is
+youth to age in all this eastern world. The first figure in the former
+group was the father of our host; the acrid humours of extreme age had
+crimsoned his eye-lids, and his head shook from side to side, as he
+attempted to rise to salute me, but I held him to his seat. The wife
+of our host was a model of fragile delicate beauty. Her nose, mouth,
+and chin, were exquisitely chiselled, and her skin was smooth and
+white as alabaster; but the eye-lid <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>drooped; the eye hung fire, and
+under each orb the skin was slightly blue, but so blending with the
+paleness of the rest of the face, as rather to give distinctness to
+the character of beauty, than to detract from the general effect. Her
+second child hung on her left arm, and a certain graceful negligence
+in the plaits of her hair and the arrangement of her bosom, showed
+that the cares of the young mother had superseded the nicety of the
+coquette.</p>
+
+<p>The only other person in the company worthy of remark, was a Frank.
+His surtout was of cloth of second or third quality, but profusely
+braided. His stock appeared to strangle him, and a diamond breast-pin
+was stuck in a shirt of texture one degree removed from sail-cloth.
+His blood, as I afterwards learned, was so crossed by Greek, Tsinsar,
+and Wallachian varieties, that it would have puzzled the united
+genealogists of Europe to tell his breed; and his language was a
+mangled subdivision of that dialect which passes for French in the
+fashionable centres of the Grecaille.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Exquisite</i>. "Quangt &ecirc;tes vous venie, Monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Il y a huit jours."</p>
+
+<p><i>Exquisite</i> (looking at a large ring on his <i>fore</i> finger). "Ce sont
+de bons diables dans ce pays-ci; mais tout est un po barbare."</p>
+
+<p>"Assez barbare," said I, as I saw that the exquisite's nails were in
+the deepest possible mourning.</p>
+
+<p><i>Exquisite</i>. "Avez vous &eacute;te &agrave; Boukarest?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Non&mdash;pas encore."</p>
+
+<p><i>Exquisite</i>. "Ah je wous assire que Boukarest est maintenant comme
+Paris et Londres;"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Avez-vous vu Paris et Londres?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Exquisite</i>. "Non&mdash;mais Boukarest vaut cent fois Galatz et Braila."</p>
+
+<p>During this colloquy, the gipsy music was playing; the first fiddle
+was really not bad: and the nonchalant rogue-humour of his countenance
+did not belie his alliance to that large family, which has produced
+"so many blackguards, but never a single blockhead."</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was now announced. F&mdash;&mdash;'s wife, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>relieved of her child, acted
+as first waitress. The fare consisted mostly of varieties of fowl,
+with a pilaff of rice, in the Turkish manner, all decidedly good; but
+the wine rather sweet and muddy. When I asked for a glass of water, it
+was handed me in a little bowl of silver, which mine hostess had just
+dashed into a jar of filtered lymph. Dinner concluded, the party rose,
+each crossing himself, and reciting a short formula of prayer;
+meanwhile a youthful relation of the house stood with the
+washing-basin and soap turret poised on his left hand, while with the
+right he poured on my hands water from a slender-spouted tin ewer.
+Behind him stood the hostess holding a clean towel with a tiny web of
+silver thread running across its extremities, and on my right stood
+the ex-diners with sleeves tucked up, all in a row, waiting their turn
+at the wash-hand basin.</p>
+
+<p>After smoking a chibouque, I took my leave; for I had promised to
+spend the afternoon in the house of a Swiss, who, along with the agent
+of the steam-boat company and a third individual, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>made up the sum
+total of the resident Franko-Levantines in Roustchouk.</p>
+
+<p>A gun fired in the evening warned me that the steamer had arrived;
+and, anxious to push on for Servia, I embarked forthwith.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<div><b> River Steaming.&mdash;Arrival at Widdin&mdash;Jew.&mdash;Comfortless
+  Khan.&mdash;Wretched appearance of Widdin.&mdash;Hussein
+Pasha.&mdash;M. Petronievitch.&mdash;Steam Balloon. </b></div>
+<p>&nbsp;
+
+</p>
+<p>River steaming is, according to my notions, the best of all sorts of
+locomotion. Steam at sea makes you sick, and the voyage is generally
+over before you have gained your sea legs and your land appetite. In
+mail or stage you have no sickness and see the country, but you are
+squeezed sideways by helpless corpulence, and in front cooped into
+uneasiness by two pairs of egotistical knees and toes. As for
+locomotives, tunnels, cuts, and viaducts&mdash;this is not travelling to
+see the country, but arrival without seeing it. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>This eighth wonder of
+the world, so admirably adapted for business, is the despair of
+picturesque tourists, as well as post-horse, chaise, and gig letters.
+Our cathedral towns, instead of being distinguished from afar by their
+cloud-capt towers, are only recognizable at their respective stations
+by the pyramids of gooseberry tarts and ham sandwiches being at one
+place at the lower, and at another at the upper, end of an apartment
+marked "refreshment room." Now in river steaming you walk the deck, if
+the weather and the scenery be good; if the reverse, you lounge below;
+read, write, or play; and then the meals are arranged with Germanic
+ingenuity for killing time and the digestive organs.</p>
+
+<p>On the second day the boat arrived at Widdin, and the agent of the
+steam packet company, an old Jew, came on board. I stepped across the
+plank and accompanied him to a large white house opposite the
+landing-place. On entering, I saw a group of Israel's children in the
+midst of a deadly combat of sale and purchase, bawling at the top of
+their voices in most villainous Cas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>tilian; all were filthy and
+shabbily dressed. The agent having mentioned who I was to the group, a
+broad-lipped young man with a German <i>m&uuml;tze</i> surmounting his oriental
+costume, stepped forward with a confident air, and in a thick guttural
+voice addressed me in an unknown tongue. I looked about for an answer,
+when the agent told me in Turkish that he spoke English.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jew</i>. "You English gentleman, sir, and not know English."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I have to apologize for not recognizing the accents of my
+native country."</p>
+
+<p><i>Jew</i>. "Bring goods wid you, sir?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "No, I am not a merchant. Pray can you get me a lodging?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Jew</i>. "Get you as mush room you like, sir."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Have you been in England?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Jew</i>. "Been in London, Amsterdam, and Hamburgh."</p>
+
+<p>We now arrived at the wide folding gates of the khan, which to be sure
+had abundance of space for travellers, but the misery and filth of
+every apartment disgusted me. One had broken <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>windows, another a
+broken floor, a third was covered with half an inch of dust, and the
+weather outside was cold and rainy; so I shrugged up my shoulders and
+asked to be conducted to another khan. There I was somewhat better
+off, for I got into a new room leading out of a caf&eacute; where the
+charcoal burned freely and warmed the apartment. When the room was
+washed out I thought myself fortunate, so dreary and deserted had the
+other khan appeared to me.</p>
+
+<p>I now took a walk through the bazaars, but found the place altogether
+miserable, being somewhat less village-like than Roustchouk. Lying so
+nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here makes such beautiful
+curves, and marked on the map with capital letters, it ought (such was
+my notion) to be a place having at least one well-built and
+well-stocked bazaar, a handsome seraglio, and some good-looking
+mosques. Nothing of the sort. The Konak or palace of the Pasha is an
+old barrack. The seraglio of the famous Passavan Oglou is in ruins,
+and the only decent looking house in the place is the new office of
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>Steam Navigation Company, which is on the Danube.</p>
+
+<p>Being Ramadan, I could not see the pasha during the day; but in the
+evening, M. Petronievitch, the exiled leader of the Servian National
+party, introduced me to Hussein Pasha, the once terrible destroyer of
+the Janissaries. This celebrated character appeared to be verging on
+eighty, and, afflicted with gout, was sitting in the corner of the
+divan at his ease, in the old Turkish ample costume. The white beard,
+the dress of the pasha, the rich but faded carpet which covered the
+floor, the roof of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in
+perfect keeping, and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising
+two or three feet from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture,
+which carried me back, a generation at least, to the pashas of the old
+school. Hussein smoked a narghil&eacute; of dark red Bohemian cut crystal. M.
+Petronievitch and myself were supplied with pipes which were more
+profusely mounted with diamonds, than any I had ever before smoked;
+for Hussein Pasha is beyond all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>comparison the wealthiest man in the
+Ottoman empire.</p>
+
+<p>After talking over the last news from Constantinople, he asked me what
+I thought of the projected steam balloon, which, from its being of a
+marvellous nature, appears to have caused a great deal of talk among
+the Turks. I expressed little faith in its success; on which he
+ordered an attendant to bring him a drawing of a locomotive balloon
+steered by flags and all sorts of fancies. "Will not this
+revolutionize the globe?" said the pasha; to which I replied, "C'est
+le premier pas qui co&ucirc;te; there is no doubt of an a&euml;rial voyage to
+India if they get over the first quarter of a mile."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>I returned to sup with M. Petronievitch at his house, and we had a
+great deal of conversation relative to the history, laws, manners,
+customs, and politics of Servia; but as I subsequently obtained
+accurate notions of that country by personal observation, it is not
+necessary on the present occasion to return to our conversation.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Hussein Pasha has since retired from Widdin, where he
+made the greater part of his fortune, for he was engaged in immense
+agricultural and commercial speculations; he was succeeded by Mustapha
+Nourri Pasha, formerly private secretary to Sultan Mahommud, who has
+also made a large fortune, as merchant and ship-owner.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Leave Widdin.&mdash;The Timok.&mdash;Enter Servia.&mdash;Brza Palanka.&mdash;The
+Iron Gates.&mdash;Old and New Orsova.&mdash;Wallachian
+Matron.&mdash;Semlin.&mdash;A Conversation on Language.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>I left Widdin for the Servian frontier, in a car of the country, with
+a couple of horses, the ground being gently undulated, but the
+mountains to the south were at a considerable distance. On our right,
+agreeable glimpses of the Danube presented themselves from time to
+time. In six hours we arrived at the Timok, the river that separates
+Servia from Bulgaria. The only habitation in the place was a log-house
+for the Turkish custom-house officer. We were more than an hour in
+getting our equipage across the ferry, for the long <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>drought had so
+reduced the water, that the boat was unable to meet the usual
+landing-place by at least four feet of steep embankment; in vain did
+the horses attempt to mount the acclivity; every spring was followed
+by a relapse, and at last one horse sunk jammed in between the ferry
+boat and the bank; so that we were obliged to loose the harness, send
+the horses on shore, and drag the dirty car as we best could up the
+half dried muddy slope. At last we succeeded, and a smart trot along
+the Danube brought us to the Servian lazaretto, which was a new
+symmetrical building, the promenade of which, on the Danube, showed an
+attempt at a sort of pleasure-ground.</p>
+
+<p>I entered at sunset, and next morning on showing my tongue to the
+doctor, and paying a fee of one piastre (twopence) was free, and again
+put myself in motion. Lofty mountains seemed to rise to the west, and
+the cultivated plain now became broken into small ridges, partly
+covered with forest trees. The ploughing oxen now became rarer; but
+herds of swine, grubbing at acorns and the roots of bushes, showed
+that I was chang<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>ing the scene, and making the acquaintance not only
+of a new country, but of a new people. The peasants, instead of having
+woolly caps and frieze clothes as in Bulgaria, all wore the red fez,
+and were dressed mostly in blue cloth; some of those in the villages
+wore black glazed caps; and in general the race appeared to be
+physically stronger and nobler than that which I had left. The
+Bulgarians seemed to be a set of silent serfs, deserving (when not
+roused by some unusual circumstance) rather the name of machines than
+of men: these Servian fellows seemed lazier, but all possessed a
+manliness of address and demeanour, which cannot be discovered in the
+Bulgarian.</p>
+
+<p>Brza Palanka, at which we now arrived, is the only Danubian port which
+the Servians possess, below the Iron Gates; consequently, the only one
+which is in uninterrupted communication with Galatz and the sea. A
+small Sicilian vessel, laden with salt, passed into the Black Sea, and
+actually ascended the Danube to this point, which is within a few
+hours of the Hungarian frontier. As we approached the Iron Gates, the
+valley became a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>mere gorge, with barely room for the road, and
+fumbling through a cavernous fortification, we soon came in sight of
+the Austro-Hungarian frontier.</p>
+
+<p><i>New</i> Orsova, one of the few remaining retreats of the Turks in
+Servia, is built on an island, and with its frail houses of yawning
+rafters looks very <i>old</i>. Old Orsova, opposite which we now arrived,
+looked quite <i>new</i>, and bore the true German type of formal
+white-washed houses, and high sharp ridged roofs, which called up
+forthwith the image of a dining-hall, where, punctually as the
+village-clock strikes the hour of twelve, a fair-haired, fat,
+red-faced landlord, serves up the soup, the <i>rindfleisch</i>, the
+<i>zuspeise</i>, and all the other dishes of the holy Roman empire to the
+Platz Major, the Haupt-zoll-amt director, the Kanzlei director, the
+Concepist, the Protocollist, and <i>hoc genus omne</i>.</p>
+
+<p>After a night passed in the quarantine, I removed to the inn, and
+punctually as the clock struck half past twelve, the very party my
+imagination conjured up, assembled to discuss the <i>mehlspeise</i> in the
+stencilled parlour of the Hirsch.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Favoured by the most beautiful weather, I started in a sort of cal&ecirc;che
+for Dreucova. The excellent new macadamized road was as smooth as a
+bowling-green, and only a lively companion was wanting to complete the
+exhilaration of my spirits.</p>
+
+<p>My fair fellow-traveller was an enormously stout Wallachian matron, on
+her way to Vienna, to see her <i>daughter</i>, who was then receiving her
+education at a boarding-school. I spoke no Wallachian, she spoke
+nothing but Wallachian; so our conversation was carried on by my
+attempting to make myself understood alternately by the Italian, and
+the Spanish forms of Latin.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Una bella Campagna</i>," said I, as we drove out Orsova.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Bella, bella</i>?" said the lady, evidently puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>So I said, "<i>Hermosa</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ah! formosa; formosa prate</i>," repeated the lady, evidently
+understanding that I meant a fine country.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Deunde venut</i>?" Whence have you come?</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Constantinopolis;" and so on we went, supposing that we understood
+each other, she supplying me with new forms of bastard Latin words,
+and adding with a smile, <i>Romani</i>, or Wallachian, as the language and
+people of Wallachia are called by themselves. It is worthy of remark,
+that the Wallachians and a small people in Switzerland, are the only
+descendants of the Romans, that still designate their language as that
+of the ancient mistress of the world.</p>
+
+<p>As I rolled along, the fascinations of nature got the better of my
+gallantry; the discourse flagged, and then dropped, for I found myself
+in the midst of the noblest river scenery I had ever beheld, certainly
+far surpassing that of the Rhine, and Upper Danube. To the gloom and
+grandeur of natural portals, formed of lofty precipitous rocks,
+succeeds the open smiling valley, the verdant meadows, and the distant
+wooded hills, with all the soft and varied hues of autumn. Here we
+appear to be driving up the avenues of an English park; yonder, where
+the mountain sinks sheer into the river, the road must find its way
+along <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>an open gallery, with a roof weighing millions of tons,
+projecting from the mountain above.</p>
+
+<p>After sunset we arrived at Dreucova, and next morning went on board
+the steamer, which conveyed me up the Danube to Semlin. The lower town
+of Semlin is, from the exhalations on the banks of the river,
+frightfully insalubrious, but the cemetery enjoys a high and airy
+situation. The people in the town die off with great rapidity; but, to
+compensate for this, the dead are said to be in a highly satisfactory
+state of preservation. The inns here, once so bad, have greatly
+improved; but mine host, zum Golden L&ouml;wen, on my recent visits, always
+managed to give a very good dinner, including two sorts of savoury
+game. I recollect on a former visit, going to another inn, and found
+in the dining-room an individual, whose ruddy nose, and good-humoured
+nerveless smile, denoted a fondness for the juice of the grape, and
+seitel after seitel disappeared with rapidity. By-the-bye, old father
+Danube is as well entitled to be represented with a perriwig of grapes
+as his brother the Rhine. Hungary in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>general, has a right merry
+bacchanalian climate. Schiller or Symian wine is in the same parallel
+of latitude as Claret, Oedenburger as Burgundy, and a line run
+westwards from Tokay would almost touch the vineyards of Champagne.
+Csaplovich remarks in his quaint way, that the four principal wines of
+Hungary are cultivated by the four principal nations in it. That is to
+say, the Slavonians cultivate the Schiller, Germans the Oedenburger
+and Ruster, Magyars and Wallachians the Menesher. Good Schiller is the
+best Syrmian wine. But I must return from this digression to the guest
+of the Adler. On hearing that I was an Englishman, he expressed a wish
+to hear as much of England as possible, and appeared thunderstruck,
+when I told him that London had nearly two millions of inhabitants,
+being four hundred thousand more than the population of the whole of
+the Banat. This individual had of course learned five languages with
+his mother's milk, and therefore thought that the inhabitants of such
+a country as England must know ten at least. When I told him that the
+majority of the people in England <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>knew nothing but English, he said,
+somewhat contemptuously, "O! you told me the fair side of the English
+character: but you did not tell me that the people was so ignorant."
+He then good-humouredly warned me against practising on his credulity.
+I pointed out how unnecessary other languages were for England itself;
+but that all languages could be learned in London.</p>
+
+<p>"Can Wallachian be learned in London?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have my doubts about Wallachian, but"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Can Magyar be learned in London?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect not."</p>
+
+<p>"Can Servian be learnt in London?"</p>
+
+<p>"I confess, I don't think that any body in London teaches Servian;
+but"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There again, you travellers are always making statements unfounded on
+fact. I have mentioned three leading languages, and nobody in your
+city knows anything about them."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Description of Belgrade.&mdash;Fortifications.&mdash;Streets and Street
+Population.&mdash;Cathedral.&mdash;Large Square.&mdash;Coffe-house.&mdash;Deserted
+Villa.&mdash;Baths.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Through the courtesy and attention of Mr. Consul-general Fonblanque
+  and the numerous friends of M. Petronievitch, I was, in the course of
+  a few days, as familiar with all the principal objects and individuals
+  in Belgrade, as if I had resided months in the city.</p>
+<p>The fare of a boat from Semlin to Belgrade by Austrian rowers is five
+zwanzigers, or about <i>3s. 6d.</i> English; and the time occupied is half
+an hour, that is to say, twenty minutes for the descent of the Danube,
+and about ten minutes for the ascent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>of the Save. On arrival at the
+low point of land at the confluence, we perceived the distinct line of
+the two rivers, the Danube faithfully retaining its brown, muddy
+character, while the Save is much clearer. We now had a much closer
+view of the fortress opposite. Large embrasures, slightly elevated
+above the water's edge, were intended for guns of great calibre; but
+above, a gallimaufry of grass-grown and moss-covered fortifications
+were crowned by ricketty, red-tiled houses, and looking very unlike
+the magnificent towers in the last scene of the Siege of Belgrade, at
+Drury Lane. Just within the banks of the Save were some of the large
+boats which trade on the river; the new ones as curiously carved,
+painted, and even gilded, as some of those one sees at Dort and
+Rotterdam. They have no deck&mdash;for a ridge of rafters covers the goods,
+and the boatmen move about on ledges at the gunwale.</p>
+
+<p>The fortress of Belgrade, jutting out exactly at the point of
+confluence of the rivers, has the town behind it. The Servian, or
+principal quarter, slopes down to the Save; the Turkish quarter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>to
+the Danube. I might compare Belgrade to a sea-turtle, the head of
+which is represented by the fortress, the back of the neck by the
+esplanade or Kalai Meidan, the right flank by the Turkish quarter, the
+left by the Servian, and the ridge of the back by the street running
+from the esplanade to the gate of Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>We landed at the left side of our imaginary turtle, or at the quay of
+the Servian quarter, which runs along the Save. The sloping bank was
+paved with stones; and above was a large edifice with an arcade, one
+end of which served as the custom-house, the other as the Austrian
+consulate.</p>
+
+<p>The population was diversified. Shabby old Turks were selling fruit;
+and boatmen, both Moslem and Christian&mdash;the former with turbans, the
+latter with short fez's&mdash;were waiting for a fare. To the left was a
+Turkish guard-house, at a gate leading to the esplanade, with as smart
+a row of burnished muskets as one could expect. All within this gate
+is under the jurisdiction of the Turkish Pasha of the fortress; all
+without the gate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>in question, is under the government of the Servian
+Prefect of Belgrade.</p>
+
+<p>We now turned into a curious old street, built quite in the Turkish
+fashion, and composed of rafters knocked carelessly together, and
+looking as if the first strong gust of wind would send them smack over
+the water into Hungary without the formality of a quarantine; but many
+of the shops were smartly garnished with clothes, haberdashery, and
+trinkets, mostly from Bohemia and Moravia; and in some I saw large
+blocks of rock-salt.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the rigmarole construction of the quarter on the
+water's edge, (save and except at the custom-house,) it is the most
+busy quarter in the town: here are the places of business of the
+principal merchants in the place. This class is generally of the
+Tsinsar nation, as the descendants of the Roman colonists in Macedonia
+are called; their language is a corrupt Latin, and resembles the
+Wallachian dialect very closely.</p>
+
+<p>We now ascended by a steep street to the upper town. The most
+prominent object in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>first open space we came to is the cathedral,
+a new and large but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt
+bell-tower, in the Russian manner; and the walls of the interior are
+covered with large paintings of no merit. But one must not be too
+critical: a kindling of intellectual energy ever seems, in most
+countries, to precede excellence in the imitative arts, which latter,
+too often survives the ruins of those ruder and nobler qualities which
+assure the vigorous existence of states or provinces.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the town is an open square, which forms a sort of
+line of demarcation between the crescent and the cross. On the one
+side, several large and good houses have been constructed by the
+wealthiest senators, in the German manner, with flaring new white
+walls and bright green shutter-blinds. On the other side is a mosque,
+and dead old garden walls, with walnut trees and Levantine roofs
+peeping up behind them. Look on this picture, and you have the type of
+all domestic architecture lying between you and the snow-fenced huts
+of Lap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>land; cast your eyes over the way, and imagination wings
+lightly to the sweet south with its myrtles, citrons, marbled steeps
+and fragrance-bearing gales.</p>
+
+<p>Beside the mosque is the new Turkish coffee-house, which is kept by an
+Arab by nation and a Moslem by religion, but born at Lucknow. One day,
+in asking for the mullah of the mosque, who had gone to Bosnia, I
+entered into conversation with him; but on learning that I was an
+Englishman he fought shy, being, like most Indian Moslems when
+travelling in Turkey, ashamed of their sovereign being a protected
+ally of a Frank government.</p>
+
+<p>I now entered the region of gardens and villas, which, previous to the
+revolution of Kara Georg, was occupied principally by Turks. Passing
+down a shady lane my attention was arrested by a rotten moss-grown
+garden door, at the sight of which memory leaped backwards for four or
+five years. Here I had spent a happy forenoon with Colonel H&mdash;&mdash;, and
+the physician of the former Pasha, an old Hanoverian, who, as surgeon
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>to a British regiment had gone through all the fatigues of the
+Peninsular war. I pushed open the door, and there, completely secluded
+from the bustle of the town, and the view of the stranger, grew the
+vegetation as luxuriant as ever, relieving with its dark green frame
+the clear white of the numerous domes and minarets of the Turkish
+quarter, and the broad-bosomed Danube which filled up the centre of
+the picture; but the house and stable, which had resounded with the
+good-humoured laugh of the master, and the neighing of the well-fed
+little stud (for horse-flesh was the weak side of our Esculapius),
+were tenantless, ruinous, and silent. The doctor had died in the
+interval at Widdin, in the service of Hussein Pasha. I mechanically
+withdrew, abstracted from external nature by the "memory of joys that
+were past, pleasant and mournful to the soul."</p>
+
+<p>I then took a Turkish bath; but the inferiority of those in Belgrade
+to similar luxuries in Constantinople, Damascus, and Cairo, was
+strikingly apparent on entering. The edifice and the furniture were of
+the commonest description. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>floors of the interior of brick
+instead of marble, and the plaster and the cement of the walls in a
+most defective state. The atmosphere in the drying room was so cold
+from the want of proper windows and doors, that I was afraid lest I
+should catch a catarrh. The Oriental bath, when paved with fine
+grained marbles, and well appointed in the departments of linen,
+sherbet, and <i>narghil&eacute;</i>, is a great luxury; but the bath at Belgrade
+was altogether detestable. In the midst of the drying business a
+violent dispute broke out between the proprietor and an Arnaout, whom
+the former styled a <i>cokoshary</i>, or hen-eater, another term for a
+robber; for when lawless Arnaouts arrive in a village, after eating up
+half the contents of the poultry-yard, they demand a tribute in the
+shape of <i>compensation for the wear and tear of their teeth</i> while
+consuming the provisions they have forcibly exacted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Europeanization of Belgrade.&mdash;Lighting and Paving.&mdash;Interior
+of the Fortress&mdash;Turkish Pasha.&mdash;Turkish Quarter.&mdash;Turkish
+Population.&mdash;Panorama of Belgrade&mdash;Dinner
+party given by the Prince.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The melancholy I experienced in surveying the numerous traces of
+  desolation in Turkey was soon effaced at Belgrade. Here all was life
+  and activity. It was at the period of my first visit, in 1839, quite
+  an oriental town; but now the haughty parvenu spire of the cathedral
+  throws into the shade the minarets of the mosques, graceful even in
+  decay. Many of the bazaar-shops have been fronted and glazed. The
+  oriental dress has become much rarer; and houses <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>several stories
+  high, in the German fashion, are springing up everywhere. But in two
+  important particulars Belgrade is as oriental as if it were situated
+  on the Tigris or Barrada&mdash;lighting and paving. It is impossible in wet
+  weather to pay a couple of visits without coming home up to the ankles
+  in mud; and at night all locomotion without a lantern is impossible.
+  Belgrade, from its elevation, could be most easily lighted with gas,
+  and at a very small expense; as even if there be no coal in Servia,
+  there is abundance of it at Moldava, which is on the Danube between
+  Belgrade and Orsova; that is to say, considerably above the Iron
+  Gates. I make this remark, not so much to reproach my Servian friends
+  with backwardness, but to stimulate them to all easily practicable
+  improvements.</p>
+<p>One day I accompanied M. de Fonblanque on a visit to the Pasha in the
+citadel, which we reached by crossing the glacis or neck of land that
+connects the castle with the town. This place forms the pleasantest
+evening lounge in the vicinity of Belgrade; for on the one side is an
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>extensive view of the Turkish town, and the Danube wending its way
+down to Semendria; on the other is the Save, its steep bank piled with
+street upon street, and the hills beyond them sloping away to the
+Bosniac frontier.</p>
+
+<p>The ramparts are in good condition; and the first object that strikes
+a stranger on entering, are six iron spikes, on which, in the time of
+the first revolution, the heads of Servians used to be stuck. Milosh
+once saved his own head from this elevation by his characteristic
+astuteness. During his alliance with the Turks in 1814, (or 1815,) he
+had large pecuniary transactions with the Pasha, for he was the medium
+through whom the people paid their tribute. Five heads grinned from
+five spikes as he entered the castle, and he comprehended that the
+sixth was reserved for him; the last head set up being that of
+Glavash, a leader, who, like himself, was then supporting the
+government: so he immediately took care to make the Pasha understand
+that he was about to set out on a tour in the country, to raise some
+money for the vizierial strong-box. "Peh eiu," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>said Soliman Pasha,
+thinking to catch him next time, and get the money at the same time;
+so Milosh was allowed to depart; but knowing that if he returned spike
+the sixth would not wait long for its head, he at once raised the
+district of Rudnick, and ended the terrible war which had been begun
+under much less favourable auspices, by the more valiant but less
+astute Kara Georg.</p>
+
+<p>We passed a second draw-bridge, and found ourselves in the interior of
+the fortress. A large square was formed by ruinous buildings.
+Extensive barracks were windowless and tenantless, but the mosque and
+the Pasha's Konak were in good order. We were ushered into an
+audience-room of great extent, with a low carved roof and some
+old-fashioned furniture, the divan being in the corner, and the
+windows looking over the precipice to the Danube below. Hafiz Pasha,
+the same who commanded at the battle of Nezib, was about fifty-five,
+and a gentleman in air and manner, with a grey beard. In course of
+conversation he told me that he was a Circassian. He asked me about my
+travels: and with reference to Syria <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>said, "Land operations through
+Kurdistan against Mehemet Ali were absurd. I suggested an attack by
+sea, while a land force should make a diversion by Antioch, but I was
+opposed." After the usual pipes and coffee we took our leave.</p>
+
+<p>Hafiz Pasha's political relations are necessarily of a very restricted
+character, as he rules only the few Turks remaining in Servia; that is
+to say, a few thousands in Belgrade and Ushitza, a few hundreds in
+Shabatz Sokol and the island of Orsova. He represents the suzerainety
+of the Porte over the Christian population, without having any thing
+to do with the details of administration. His income, like that of
+other mushirs or pashas of three tails, is 8000l. per annum. Hafiz
+Pasha, if not a successful general, was at all events a brave and
+honourable man, and his character for justice made him highly
+respected. One of his predecessors, who was at Belgrade on my first
+visit there in 1839, was a man of another stamp,&mdash;the notorious
+Youssouf Pasha, who sold Varna during the Russian war. The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>re-employment of such an individual is a characteristic illustration
+of Eastern manners.</p>
+
+<p>As my first stay at Belgrade extended to between two and three months,
+I saw a good deal of Hafiz Pasha, who has a great taste for geography,
+and seemed to be always studying at the maps. He seemed to think that
+nothing would be so useful to Turkey as good roads, made to run from
+the principal ports of Asia Minor up to the d&eacute;p&ocirc;ts of the interior, so
+as to connect Sivas, Tokat, Angora, Konieh, Kaiserieh, &amp;c. with
+Samsoun, Tersoos, and other ports. He wittily reversed the proverb
+"<i>El rafyk s&ouml;m el taryk</i>" (companionship makes secure roads) by
+saying, "<i>el taryk s&ouml;m el rafyk</i>" (good roads increase passenger
+traffic).</p>
+
+<p>At the Bairam reception, the Pasha wore his great nishau of diamonds.
+Prince Alexander wore a blue uniform with gold epaulettes, and an
+aigrette of brilliants in his fez. His predecessor, Michael, on such
+occasions, wore a cocked hat, which used to give offence, as the fez
+is considered by the Turks indispensable to a recognition of the
+suzerainety of the Porte.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Being Bairam, I was induced to saunter into the Turkish quarter of the
+town, where all wore the handsome holyday dresses of the old fashion,
+being mostly of crimson cloth, edged with gold lace. My cicerone, a
+Servian, pointed out those shops belonging to the sultan, still marked
+with the letter f, intended, I suppose, for <i>mulk</i> or imperial
+property. We then turned to the left, and came into a singular looking
+street, composed of the ruins of ornamented houses in the imposing,
+but too elaborate style of architecture, which was in vogue in Vienna,
+during the life of Charles the Sixth, and which was a corruption of
+the style de Louis Quatorze. These buildings were half-way up concealed
+from view by common old bazaar shops. This was the "Lange Gasse," or
+main street of the German town during the Austrian occupation of
+twenty-two years, from 1717 to 1739. Most of these houses were built
+with great solidity, and many still have the stucco ornaments that
+distinguish this style. The walls of the palace of Prince Eugene are
+still standing complete, but the court-yard is filled up with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>rubbish, at least six feet high, and what were formerly the rooms of
+the ground-floor have become almost cellars. The edifice is called to
+this day, "<i>Princeps Konak</i>." This mixture of the coarse, but
+picturesque features of oriental life, with the dilapidated
+stateliness of palaces in the style of the full-bottom-wigged
+Vanbrughs of Austria, has the oddest effect imaginable.</p>
+
+<p>The Turks remaining in Belgrade have mostly sunk into poverty, and
+occupy themselves principally with water-carrying, wood-splitting, &amp;c.
+The better class latterly kept up their position, by making good sales
+of houses and shops; for building ground is now in some situations
+very expensive. Mr. Fonblanque pays 100&pound;. sterling per annum for his
+rooms, which is a great deal, compared with the rates of house-rent in
+Hungary just over the water.</p>
+
+<p>One day, I ascended the spire of the cathedral, in order to have a
+view of the city and environs. Belgrade, containing only 35,000
+inhabitants, cannot boast of looking very like a metropolis; but the
+environs contain the materials of a good pan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>orama. Looking westward,
+we see the winding its way from the woods of Topshider; the Servian
+shore is abrupt, the Austrian flat, and subject to inundation; the
+prospect on the north-west being closed in by the dim dark line of the
+Frusca Gora, or "Wooded Mountain," which forms the backbone of
+Slavonia, and is the high wooded region between the Save and the
+Drave. Northwards, are the spires of Semlin, rising up from the
+Danube, which here resumes its easterly course; while south and east
+stretch the Turkish quarter, which I have been describing.</p>
+
+<p>There are no formal levees or receptions at the palace of Prince
+Alexander, except on his own f&ecirc;te day. Once or twice a year he
+entertains at dinner the Pasha, the ministers, and the foreign
+consuls-general. In the winter, the prince gives one or two balls.</p>
+
+<p>One of the former species of entertainments took place during my stay,
+and I received the prince's invitation. At the appointed day, I found
+the avenue to the residence thronged with people Who were listening to
+the band that played <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>in the court-yard; and on arriving fit the top
+of the stairs, was led by an officer in a blue uniform, who seemed to
+direct the ceremonies of the day, into the saloon, in which I had, on
+my arrival in Belgrade, paid my respects to the prince, which might be
+pronounced the fac simile of the drawing-room of a Hungarian nobleman;
+the parquet was inlaid and polished, the chairs and sofas covered with
+crimson and white satin damask, which is an unusual luxury in these
+regions, the roof admirably painted in subdued colours, in the best
+Vienna style. High white porcelain urn-like stoves heated the suite of
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>The company had that picturesque variety of character and costume
+which every traveller delights in. The prince, a muscular middle sized
+dark complexioned man, of about thirty-five, with a serious composed
+air, wore a plain blue military uniform. The princess and her <i>dames
+de compagnie</i> wore the graceful native Servian costume. The Pasha wore
+the Nizam dress, and the Nishan Iftihar; Baron Lieven, the Russian
+Commissioner, in the uniform of a general, glittered with innu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>merable
+orders; Colonel Philippovich, a man of distinguished talents,
+represented Austria. The archbishop, in his black velvet cap, a large
+enamelled cross hanging by a massive gold chain from his neck, sat in
+stately isolation; and the six feet four inches high Garashanin,
+minister of the interior, conversed with Stojan Simitch, the president
+of the senate, one of the few Servians in high office, who retains his
+old Turkish costume, and has a frame that reminds one of the Farnese
+Hercules. Then what a medley of languages; Servian, German, Russian,
+Turkish, and French, all in full buzz!</p>
+
+<p>We proceeded to the dining-room, where the <i>cuisine</i> was in every
+respect in the German manner. When the dessert appeared, the prince
+rose with a creaming glass of champagne in his hand, and proposed the
+health of the sultan, acknowledged by the pasha; and then, after a
+short pause, the health of Czar Nicolay Paulovitch, acknowledged by
+Baron Lieven; then came the health of other crowned heads. Baron
+Lieven now rose and proposed the health of the Prince. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>The Pasha and
+the Princess were toasted in turn; and then M. Wastchenko, the Russian
+consul general rose, and in animated terms, drank to the prosperity of
+Servia. The entertainment, which commenced at one o'clock, was
+prolonged to an advanced period of the afternoon, and closed with
+coffee, liqueurs, and chibouques in the drawing-room; the princess and
+the ladies having previously withdrawn to the private apartments.</p>
+
+<p>My time during the rest of the year was taken up with political,
+statistical, and historical inquiries, the results of which will be
+found condensed at the termination of the narrative part of this work.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Return to Servia.&mdash;The Danube.&mdash;Semlin.&mdash;Wucics
+and Petronievitch.&mdash;Cathedral Solemnity.&mdash;Subscription
+Ball.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>After an absence of six months in England, I returned to the Danube.
+  Vienna and Pesth offered no attractions in the month of August, and I
+  felt impatient to put in execution my long cherished project of
+  travelling through the most romantic woodlands of Servia. Suppose me
+  then at the first streak of dawn, in the beginning of August, 1844,
+  hurrying after the large wheelbarrow which carries the luggage of the
+  temporary guests of the Queen of England at Pesth to the steamer lying
+  just below the long bridge of boats that con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>nects the quiet sombre
+  bureaucratic Ofen with the noisy, bustling, movement-loving new city,
+  which has sprung up as it were by enchantment on the opposite side of
+  the water. I step on board&mdash;the signal is given for starting&mdash;the
+  lofty and crimson-peaked Bloxberg&mdash;the vine-clad hill that produces
+  the fiery Ofener wine, and the long and graceful quay, form, as it
+  were, a fine peristrephic panorama, as the vessel wheels round, and,
+  prow downwards, commences her voyage for the vast and curious East,
+  while the Danubian tourist bids a dizzy farewell to this last snug
+  little centre of European civilization. We hurry downwards towards the
+  frontiers of Turkey, but nature smiles not,&mdash;We have on our left the
+  dreary steppe of central Hungary, and on our right the low distant
+  hills of Baranya. Alas! this is not the Danube of Passau, and Lintz,
+  and M&ouml;lk, and Theben. But now the Drave pours her broad waters into
+  the great artery. The right shore soon becomes somewhat bolder, and
+  agreeably wooded hills enliven the prospect. This little mountain
+  chain is the celebrated Frusca Gora, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>the stronghold of the Servian
+  language, literature, and nationality on the Austrian aide of the
+  Save.</p>
+<p>A few days after my arrival, Wucics and Petronievitch, the two pillars
+of the party of Kara Georgevitch, the reigning prince, and the
+opponents of the ousted Obrenovitch family, returned from banishment
+in consequence of communications that had passed between the British
+and Russian governments. Great preparations were made to receive the
+popular favourites.</p>
+
+<p>One morning I was attracted to the window, and saw an immense flock of
+sheep slowly paraded along, their heads being decorated with ribbons,
+followed by oxen, with large citrons stuck on the tips of their horns.</p>
+
+<p>One vender of shawls and carpets had covered all the front of his shop
+with his gaudy wares, in order to do honour to the patriots, and at
+the same time to attract the attention of purchasers.</p>
+
+<p>The tolling of the cathedral bell announced the approach of the
+procession, which was preceded <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>by a long train of rustic cavaliers,
+noble, vigorous-looking men. Standing at the balcony, we missed the
+sight of the heroes of the day, who had gone round by other streets.
+We, therefore, went to the cathedral, where all the principal persons
+in Servia were assembled. One old man, with grey, filmy, lack-lustre
+eyes, pendant jaws, and white beard, was pointed out to me as a
+centenarian witness of this national manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>The grand screen, which in the Greek churches veils the sanctuary from
+the vulgar gaze, was hung with rich silks, and on a raised platform,
+covered with carpets, stood the archbishop, a dignified
+high-priest-looking figure, with crosier in hand, surrounded by his
+deacons in superbly embroidered robes. The huzzas of the populace grew
+louder as the procession approached the cathedral, a loud and
+prolonged buzz of excited attention accompanied the opening of the
+grand central portal, and Wucics and Petronievitch, grey with the dust
+with which the immense cavalcade had besprinkled them, came forward,
+kissed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>the cross and gospels, which the archbishop presented to them,
+and, kneeling down, returned thanks for their safe restoration. On
+regaining their legs, the archbishop advanced to the edge of the
+platform, and began a discourse describing the grief the nation had
+experienced at their departure, the universal joy for their return,
+and the hope that they would ever keep peace and union in view in all
+matters of state, and that in their duties to the state they must
+never forget their responsibility to the Most High.</p>
+
+<p>Wucics, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian
+peasant, heard with a reverential inclination of the head the
+elegantly polished discourse of the gold-bedizened prelate, but nought
+relaxed one single muscle of that adamantine visage; the finer but
+more luminous features of Petronievitch were evidently under the
+control of a less powerful will. At certain passages of the discourse,
+his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons then prayed
+suc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>cessively for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and the prince.</p>
+
+<p>And now uprose from every tongue, and every heart, a hymn for the
+longevity of Wucics and Petronievitch. "The solemn song for many days"
+is the expressive title of this sublime chant. This hymn is so old
+that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of Christianity in the
+East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be beyond the ravages of
+time, and the caprices of convention.</p>
+
+<p>The procession then returned, the band playing the Wucics march, to
+the houses of the two heroes of the day.</p>
+
+<p>We dined; and just as dessert appeared the whiz of a rocket announced
+the commencement of fire-works. As most of us had seen the splendid
+bouquet of rockets, which, during the f&ecirc;tes of July, amuse the
+Parisians, we entertained slender expectations of being pleased with
+an illumination at Belgrade. On going out, however, the scene proved
+highly interesting. In the grand square <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>were two columns <i>&agrave; la
+Vicentina</i>, covered with lamps. One side of the square was illuminated
+with the word Wucics, and the other with the word Avram in colossal
+letters. At a later period of the evening the downs were covered with
+fires roasting innumerable sheep and oxen, a custom which seems in all
+countries to accompany popular rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>I had never seen a Servian full-dress ball, but the arrival of Wucics
+and Petronievitch procured me the opportunity of witnessing an
+entertainment of this description. The principal apartment in the new
+Konak, built by prince Michael, was the ball-room, which, by eight
+o'clock, was filled, as the phrase goes, by all "the rank and fashion"
+of Belgrade. Senators of the old school, in their benishes and
+shalwars, and senators of the new school in pantaloons and stiff
+cravats. As Servia has become, morally speaking, Europe's youngest
+daughter, this is all very well: but I must ever think that in the
+article of dress this innovation is not an improvement. I hope that
+the ladies of Servia will never reject their graceful national
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>costume for the shifting modes and compressed waists of European
+capitals.</p>
+
+<p>No head-dress, that I have seen in the Levant, is better calculated to
+set off beauty than that of the ladies of Servia. From a small Greek
+fez they suspend a gold tassel, which contrasts with the black and
+glossy hair, which is laid smooth and flat down the temple. Even now,
+while I write, memory piques me with the graceful toss of the head,
+and the rustle of the yellow satin gown of the sister of the princess,
+who was admitted to be the handsomest woman in the room, and with her
+tunic of crimson velvet embroidered in gold, and faced with sable,
+would have been, in her strictly indigenous costume, the queen of any
+fancy ball in old Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Wucics and Petronievitch were of course received with shouts and
+clapping of hands, and took the seats prepared for them at the upper
+end of the hall. The Servian national dance was then performed, being
+a species of cotillion in alternate quick and slow movements.</p>
+
+<p>I need not repeat the other events of the even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>ing; how forms and
+features were passed in review; how the jewelled, smooth-skinned,
+doll-like beauties usurped the admiration of the minute, and how the
+indefinably sympathetic air of less pretentious belles prolonged their
+magnetic sway to the close of the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Holman, the Blind Traveller.&mdash;Milutinovich, the Poet.&mdash;Bulgarian
+Legend.&mdash;Tableau de genre.&mdash;Departure for
+the Interior.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Belgrade, unlike other towns on the Danube, is much less visited by
+  Europeans, since the introduction of steam navigation, than it was
+  previously. Servia used to be the <i>porte coch&egrave;re</i> of the East; and
+  most travellers, both before and since the lively Lady Mary Wortley
+  Montague, took the high road to Constantinople by Belgrade, Sofia,
+  Philippopoli, and Adrianople. No mere tourist would now-a-days think
+  of undertaking the fatiguing ride across European Turkey, when he can
+  whizz past Widdin and Roustchouk, and even cut off the grand tongue at
+  the mouth of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>Danube, by going in an omnibus from Czernovoda to
+  Kustendgi; consequently the arrival of an English traveller from the
+  interior, is a somewhat rare occurrence.</p>
+<p>One day I was going out at the gateway, and saw a strange figure, with
+a long white beard and a Spanish cap, mounted on a sorry horse, and at
+once recognized it to be that of Holman, the blind traveller.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Mr. Holman?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that voice well."</p>
+
+<p>"I last saw you in Aleppo," said I; and he at once named me.</p>
+
+<p>I then got him off his horse, and into quarters.</p>
+
+<p>This singular individual had just come through the most dangerous
+parts of Bosnia in perfect safety; a feat which a blind man can
+perform more easily than one who enjoys the most perfect vision; for
+all compassionate and assist a fellow-creature in this deplorable
+plight.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I took Mr. Holman through the town, and described to him the
+lions of Belgrade; and taking a walk on the esplanade, I turned his
+face <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>to the cardinal points of the compass, successively explaining
+the objects lying in each direction, and, after answering a few of his
+cross questions, the blind traveller seemed to know as much of
+Belgrade as was possible for a person in his condition.</p>
+
+<p>He related to me, that since our meeting at Aleppo, he had visited
+Damascus and other eastern cities; and at length, after sundry
+adventures, had arrived on the Adriatic, and visited the Vladika of
+Montenegro, who had given him a good reception. He then proceeded
+through Herzegovina and Bosnia to Seraievo, where he passed three
+days, and he informed me that from Seraievo to the frontiers of Servia
+was nearly all forest, with here and there the skeletons of robbers
+hung up in chains.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Holman subsequently went, as I understood, to Wallachia and
+Transylvania.</p>
+
+<p>Having delayed my departure for the interior, in order to witness the
+national festivities, nothing remained but the purgatory of
+preparation, the squabbling about the hire of horses, the purchase <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>of
+odds and ends for convenience on the road, for no such thing as a
+canteen is to be had at Belgrade. Some persons recommended my hiring a
+Turkish Araba; but as this is practicable only on the regularly
+constructed roads, I should have lost the sight of the most
+picturesque regions, or been compelled to take my chance of getting
+horses, and leaving my baggage behind. To avoid this inconvenience, I
+resolved to perform the whole journey on horseback.</p>
+
+<p>The government showed me every attention, and orders were sent by the
+minister of the interior to all governors, vice-governors, and
+employ&eacute;s, enjoining them to furnish me with every assistance, and
+communicate whatever information I might desire; to which, as the
+reader will see in the sequel, the fullest effect was given by those
+individuals.</p>
+
+<p>On the day of departure, a tap was heard at the door, and enter Holman
+to bid me good-bye. Another tap at the door, and enter Milutinovich,
+who is the best of the living poets of Servia, and has been sometimes
+called the Ossian of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>Balkan. As for his other pseudonyme, "the
+Homer of a hundred sieges," that must have been invented by Mr. George
+Robins, the Demosthenes of "<i>one</i> hundred rostra." The reading public
+in Servia is not yet large enough to enable a man of letters to live
+solely by his works; so our bard has a situation in the ministry of
+public instruction. One of the most remarkable compositions of
+Milutinovich is an address to a young surgeon, who, to relieve the
+poet from difficulties, expended in the printing of his poems a sum
+which he had destined for his own support at a university, in order to
+obtain his degree.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it may not be generally known that one of the oldest legends of
+Bulgaria is that of "Poor Lasar," which runs somewhat thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The day departed, and the stranger came, as the moon rose on the
+silver snow. 'Welcome,' said the poor Lasar to the stranger;
+'Luibitza, light the faggot, and prepare the supper.'</p>
+
+<p>"Luibitza answered: 'The forest is wide, and the lighted faggot burns
+bright, but where is the supper? Have we not fasted since yesterday?'</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Shame and confusion smote the heart of poor Lasar.</p>
+
+<p>"'Art thou a Bulgarian,' said the stranger, 'and settest not food
+before thy guest?'</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Lasar looked in the cupboard, and looked in the garret, nor
+crumb, nor onion, were found in either. Shame and confusion smote the
+heart of poor Lasar.</p>
+
+<p>"'Here is fat and fair flesh,' said the stranger, pointing to Janko,
+the curly-haired boy. Luibitza shrieked and fell. 'Never,' said Lasar,
+'shall it be said that a Bulgarian was wanting to his guest,' He
+seized a hatchet, and Janko was slaughtered as a lamb. Ah, who can
+describe the supper of the stranger!</p>
+
+<p>"Lasar fell into a deep sleep, and at midnight he heard the stranger
+cry aloud, 'Arise, Lasar, for I am the Lord thy God; the hospitality
+of Bulgaria is untarnished. Thy son Janko is restored to life, and thy
+stores are filled.'</p>
+
+<p>"Long lived the rich Lasar, the fair Luibitza, and the curly-haired
+Janko."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Milutinovich, in his address to the youthful surgeon, compares his
+transcendent generosity to the sacrifice made by Lasar in the wild and
+distasteful legend I have here given.</p>
+
+<p>I introduced the poet and the traveller to each other, and explained
+their respective merits and peculiarities. Poor old Milutinovich, who
+looked on his own journey to Montenegro as a memorable feat, was
+awe-struck when I mentioned the innumerable countries in the four
+quarters of the world which had been visited by the blind traveller.
+He immediately recollected of having read an account of him in the
+Augsburg Gazette, and with a reverential simplicity begged me to
+convey to him his desire to kiss, his beard. Holman consented with a
+smile, and Milutinovich, advancing as if he were about to worship a
+deity, lifted the peak of white hairs from the beard of the aged
+stranger, pressed them to his lips, and prayed aloud that he might
+return to his home in safety.</p>
+
+<p>In old Europe, Milutinovich would have been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>called an actor; but his
+deportment, if it had the originality, had also the childish
+simplicity of nature.</p>
+
+<p>When the hour of departure arrived, I descended to the court yard,
+which would have furnished good materials for a <i>tableau de genre</i>, a
+lofty, well built, German-looking house, rising on three sides,
+surrounded a most rudely paved court, which was inclosed on the fourth
+by a stable and hay-loft, not one-third the height of the rest.
+Various mustachioed <i>far niente</i> looking figures, wrapped <i>cap-&agrave;-pie</i>
+in dressing gowns, lolled out of the first floor corridor, and smoked
+their chibouques with unusual activity, while the ground floor was
+occupied by German washer-women and their soap-suds; three of the
+arcades being festooned with shirts and drawers hung up to dry, and
+stockings, with apertures at the toes and heels for the free
+circulation of the air. Loud exclamations, and the sound of the click
+of balls, proceeded from the large archway, on which a cafe opened. In
+the midst of the yard stood our horses, which, with their heavily
+padded <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>and high cantelled Turkish saddles, somewhat <i>&agrave; la
+Wouvermans</i>, were held by Fonblanque's robust Pandour in his crimson
+jacket and white fustanella. My man Paul gave a smack of the whip, and
+off we cantered for the highlands and woodlands of Servia.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Journey to Shabatz.&mdash;Resemblance of Manners to those of
+the Middle Ages.&mdash;Palesh.&mdash;A Servian Bride.&mdash;Blind
+Minstrel.&mdash;Gypsies.&mdash;Macadamized Road.
+</b>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The immediate object of my first journey was Shabatz; the second town
+  in Servia, which is situated further up the Save than Belgrade, and is
+  thus close upon the frontier of Bosnia. We consequently had the river
+  on our right hand all the way. After five hours' travelling, the
+  mountains, which hung back as long as we were in the vicinity of
+  Belgrade, now approached, and draped in forest green, looked down on
+  the winding Save and the pinguid flats of the Slavonian frontier. Just
+  before the sun set, we wound by a circuitous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>road to an eminence
+  which, projected promontory-like into the river's course. Three rude
+  crosses were planted on a steep, not unworthy the columnar harmony of
+  Grecian marble.</p>
+<p>When it was quite dark, we arrived at the Colubara, and passed the
+ferry which, during the long Servian revolution, was always considered
+a post of importance, as commanding a communication between Shabatz
+and the capital. An old man accompanied us, who was returning to his
+native place on the frontiers of Bosnia, having gone to welcome Wucics
+and Petronievitch. He amused me by asking me "if the king of my
+country lived in a strong castle?" I answered, "No, we have a queen,
+whose strength is in the love of all her subjects." Indeed, it is
+impossible to travel in the interior of Turkey without having the mind
+perpetually carried back to the middle ages by a thousand quaint
+remarks and circumstances, inseparable from the moral and political
+constitution of a half civilized and quasi-federal empire. For, in
+nearly all the mountainous parts of Turkey, the power of the
+government is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>almost nominal, and even up to a very recent period the
+position of the D&eacute;r&eacute; Beys savoured strongly of feudalism.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at Palesh, the khan of which looked like a new coffee-shop
+in a Turkish bazaar, and I thought that we should have a sorry night's
+quarters; but mine host, leading the way with a candle up a ladder,
+and though a trap-door, put us into a clean newly-carpeted room, and
+in an hour the boy entered with Turkish wash-hand apparatus; and after
+ablution the khan keeper produced supper, consisting of soup, which
+contained so much lemon juice, that, without a wry face, I could
+scarcely eat it&mdash;boiled lamb, from which the soup had been made, and
+then a stew of the same with Tomata sauce. A bed was then spread out
+on the floor <i>&agrave; la turque</i>, which was rather hard; but as the sheets
+were snowy white, I reckoned myself very lucky.</p>
+
+<p>I must say that there is a degree of cleanliness within doors, which I
+had been led to consider as somewhat foreign to the habits of Slaavic
+populations. The lady of the Austrian consul-general <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>in Belgrade told
+me that she was struck with the propriety of the dwellings of the
+poor, as contrasted with those in Galicia, where she had resided for
+many years; and every traveller in Germany is struck with the
+difference which exists between the villages of Bohemia and those in
+Saxony, and other adjacent German provinces.</p>
+
+<p>From Palesh we started with fine weather for Skela, through a
+beautifully wooded park, some fields being here and there inclosed
+with wattling. Skela is a new ferry on the Save, to facilitate the
+communication with Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Near here are redoubts, where Kara Georg, the father of the reigning
+prince, held out during the disasters of 1813, until all the women and
+children were transferred in safety to the Austrian territory. Here we
+met a very pretty girl, who, in answer to the salute of my
+fellow-travellers, bent herself almost to the earth. On asking the
+reason, I was told that she was a bride, whom custom compels, for a
+stated period, to make this humble reverence.</p>
+
+<p>We then came to the Skela, and seeing a large <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>house within an
+enclosure, I asked what it was, and was told that it was the
+reconciliation-house, (<i>primiritelnj sud</i>,) a court of first instance,
+in which cases are decided by the village elders, without expense to
+the litigants, and beyond which suits are seldom carried to the higher
+courts. There is throughout all the interior of Servia a stout
+opposition to the nascent lawyer class in Belgrade. I have been more
+than once amused on hearing an advocate, greedy of practice, style
+this laudable economy and patriarchal simplicity&mdash;"Avarice and
+aversion from civilization." As it began to rain we entered a tavern,
+and ordered a fowl to be roasted, as the soup and stews of yester-even
+were not to my taste. A booby, with idiocy marked on his countenance,
+was lounging about the door, and when our mid-day meal was done I
+ordered the man to give him a glass of <i>slivovitsa</i>, as plum brandy is
+called. He then came forward, trembling, as if about to receive
+sentence of death, and taking off his greasy fez, said, "I drink to
+our prince Kara Georgovich, and to the progress and enlightenment of
+the nation." I looked with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>astonishment at the torn, wretched
+habiliments of this idiot swineherd. He was too stupid to entertain
+these sentiments himself; but this trifling circumstance was the
+feather which indicated how the wind blew. The Servians are by no
+means a nation of talkers; they are a serious people; and if the
+determination to rise were not in the minds of the people, it would
+not be on the lips of the baboon-visaged oaf of an insignificant
+hamlet.</p>
+
+<p>The rain now began to pour in torrents, so to make the most of it, we
+ordered another magnum of strong red wine, and procured from the
+neighbourhood a blind fiddler, who had acquired a local reputation.
+His instrument, the favourite one of Servia, is styled a <i>goosely</i>,
+being a testudo-formed viol; no doubt a relic of the antique, for the
+Servian monarchy derived all its arts from the Greeks of the Lower
+Empire. But the musical entertainment, in spite of the magnum of wine,
+and the jovial challenges of our fellow traveller from the Drina,
+threw me into a species of melancholy. The voice of the minstrel, and
+the tone of the instrument, were soft and melodious, but so
+pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>foundly plaintive as to be painful. The song described the
+struggle of Osman Bairactar with Michael, a Servian chief, and, as it
+was explained to me, called up successive images of a war of
+extermination, with its pyramids of ghastly trunkless heads, and
+fields of charcoal, to mark the site of some peaceful village, amid
+the blaze of which its inhabitants had wandered to an eternal home in
+the snows and trackless woods of the Balkan. When I looked out of the
+tavern window the dense vapours and torrents of rain did not elevate
+my spirits; and when I cast my eyes on the minstrel I saw a peasant,
+whose robust frame might have supported a large family, reduced by the
+privation of sight, to waste his best years in strumming on a
+monotonous viol for a few piastres.</p>
+
+<p>I flung him a gratuity, and begged him to desist.</p>
+
+<p>After musing an hour, I again ordered the horses, although it still
+rained, and set forth, the road being close to the river, at one part
+of which a fleet of decked boats were moored. I perceived <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>that they
+were all navigated by Bosniac Moslems, one of whom, smoking his pipe
+under cover, wore the green turban of a Shereef; they were all loaded
+with raw produce, intended for sale at Belgrade or Semlin.</p>
+
+<p>The rain increasing, we took shelter in a wretched khan, with a mud
+floor, and a fire of logs blazing in the centre, the smoke escaping as
+it best could by the front and back doors. Gipsies and Servian
+peasants sat round it in a large circle; the former being at once
+recognizable, not only from their darker skins, but from their traits
+being finer than those of the Servian peasantry. The gipsies fought
+bravely against the Turks under Kara Georg, and are now for the most
+part settled, although politically separated from the rest of the
+community, and living under their own responsible head; but, as in
+other countries, they prefer horse dealing and smith's work to other
+trades.</p>
+
+<p>As there was no chance of the storm abating, I resolved to pass the
+night here on discovering that there was a separate room, which our
+host <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>said he occasionally unlocked, for the better order of
+travellers: but as there was no bed, I had recourse to my carpet and
+pillow, for the expense of <i>Uebergewicht</i> had deterred me from
+bringing a canteen and camp bed from England.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, on waking, the sweet chirp of a bird, gently echoed in
+the adjoining woods, announced that the storm had ceased, and nature
+resumed her wonted calm. On arising, I went to the door, and the
+unclouded effulgence of dawn bursting through the dripping boughs and
+rain-bespangled leaves, seemed to realize the golden tree of the
+garden of the Abbassides. The road from this point to Shabatz was one
+continuous avenue of stately oaks&mdash;nature's noblest order of sylvan
+architecture; at some places, gently rising to views of the winding
+Save, with sun, sky, and freshening breeze to quicken the sensations,
+or falling into the dell, where the stream darkly pellucid, murmured
+under the sombre foliage.</p>
+
+<p>The road, as we approached Shabatz, proved to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>be macadamized in a
+certain fashion: a deep trench was dug on each side; stakes about a
+foot and a half high, interlaced with wicker-work, were stuck into the
+ground within the trench, and the road was then filled up with gravel.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Shabatz.&mdash;A Provincial Chancery.&mdash;Servian Collector.&mdash;Description
+of his House.&mdash;Country Barber.&mdash;Turkish
+Quarter.&mdash;Self-taught Priest.&mdash;A Provincial Dinner.&mdash;Native
+Soir&eacute;e.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>I entered Shabatz by a wide street, paved in some places with wood.
+  The bazaars are all open, and Shabatz looks like a good town in
+  Bulgaria. I saw very few shops with glazed fronts and counters in the
+  European manner.</p>
+<p>I alighted at the principal khan, which had attached to it just such a
+caf&eacute; and billiard table as one sees in country towns in Hungary. How
+odd! to see the Servians, who here all wear the old Turkish costume,
+except the turban&mdash;immersed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>in the tactics of <i>carambolage</i>, skipping
+most gaily and un-orientally around the table, then balancing
+themselves on one leg, enveloped in enormous inexpressibles, bending
+low, and cocking the eye to catch the choicest bits.</p>
+
+<p>Surrendering our horses to the care of the khan keeper, I proceeded to
+the konak, or government house, to present my letters. This proved to
+be a large building, in the style of Constantinople, which, with its
+line of bow windows, and kiosk-fashioned rooms, surmounted with
+projecting roofs, might have passed muster on the Bosphorus.</p>
+
+<p>On entering, I was ushered into the office of the collector, to await
+his arrival, and, at a first glance, might have supposed myself in a
+formal Austrian kanzley.</p>
+
+<p>There were the flat desks, the strong boxes, and the shelves of coarse
+foolscap; but a pile of long chibouques, and a young man, with a
+slight Northumbrian burr, and Servian dress, showed that I was on the
+right bank of the Save.</p>
+
+<p>The collector now made his appearance, a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>roundly-built, serious,
+burgomaster-looking personage, who appeared as if one of Vander
+Helst's portraits had stepped out of the canvass, so closely does the
+present Servian dress resemble that of Holland, in the seventeenth
+century, in all but the hat.</p>
+
+<p>Having read the letter, he cleared his throat with a loud hem, and
+then said with great deliberation, "Gospody Ilia Garashanin informs me
+that having seen many countries, you also wish to see Servia, and that
+I am to show you whatever you desire to see, and obey whatever you
+choose to command; and now you are my guest while you remain here. Go
+you, Simo, to the khan," continued the collector, addressing a tall
+momk or pandour, who, armed to the teeth, stood with his hands crossed
+at the door, "and get the gentleman's baggage taken to my house.&mdash;I
+hope," added he, "you will be pleased with Shabatz; but you must not
+be critical, for we are still a rude people."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Childhood must precede manhood; that is the order of
+nature."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "Ay, ay, our birth was slow, and painful; Servia, as you
+say, is yet a child."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Yes, but a stout, chubby, healthy child."</p>
+
+<p>A gleam of satisfaction produced a thaw of the collector's ice-bound
+visage, and, descending to the street, I accompanied him until we
+arrived at a house two stories high, which we entered by a wide new
+wooden gate, and then mounting a staircase, scrupulously clean, were
+shown into his principal room, which was surrounded by a divan <i>&agrave; la
+Turque</i>; but it had no carpet, so we went straight in with our boots
+on. A German chest of drawers was in one corner; the walls were plain
+white-washed, and so was a stove about six feet high; the only
+ornament of the room was a small snake moulding in the centre of the
+roof. Some oak chairs were ranged along the lower end of the room, and
+a table stood in the middle, covered with a German linen cloth,
+representing Pesth and Ofen; the Bloxberg being thrice as lofty as the
+reality, the genius of the artist having set it in the clouds. The
+steamer had a prow <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>like a Roman galley, a stern like a royal yacht,
+and even the steam from the chimney described graceful volutes, with
+academic observance of the line of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"We are still somewhat rude and un-European in Shabatz," said Gospody
+Ninitch, for such was the name in which the collector rejoiced.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed," quoth I, sitting at my ease on the divan, "there is no room
+for criticism. The Turks now-a-days take some things from Europe; but
+Europe might do worse than adopt the divan more extensively; for,
+believe me, to an arriving traveller it is the greatest of all
+luxuries."</p>
+
+<p>Here the servants entered with chibouques. "I certainly think," said
+he, "that no one would smoke a cigar who could smoke a chibouque."</p>
+
+<p>"And no man would sit on an oak chair who could sit on a divan:" so
+the Gospody smiled and transferred his ample person to the still
+ampler divan.</p>
+
+<p>The barber now entered; for in the hurry of departure I had forgotten
+part of my toilette apparatus: but it was evident that I was the first
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>Frank who had ever been under his razor; for when his operations were
+finished, he seized my comb, and began to comb my whiskers backwards,
+as if they had formed part of a Mussulman's beard. When I thought I
+was done with him, I resumed the conversation, but was speedily
+interrupted by something like a loud box on the ear, and, turning
+round my head, perceived that the cause of this sensation was the
+barber having, in his finishing touch, stuck an ivory ear-pick against
+my tympanum; but, calling for a wash-hand basin, I begged to be
+relieved from all further ministrations; so putting half a zwanziger
+on the face of the round pocket mirror which he proffered to me, he
+departed with a "<i>S'Bogom</i>," or, "God be with you."</p>
+
+<p>The collector now accompanied me on a walk through the Servian town,
+and emerging on a wide space, we discovered the fortress of Shabatz,
+which is the quarter in which the remaining Turks live, presenting a
+line of irregular trenches, of battered appearance, scarcely raised
+above the level of the surrounding country. The space be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>tween the
+town and the fortress is called the Shabatzko Polje, and in the time
+of the civil war was the scene of fierce combats. When the Save
+overflows in spring, it is generally under water.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing a ruinous wooden bridge over a wet ditch, we saw a rusty
+unserviceable brass cannon, which vain-gloriously assumed the
+prerogative of commanding the entrance. To the left, a citadel of four
+bastions, connected by a curtain, was all but a ruin.</p>
+
+<p>As we entered, a caf&eacute;, with bare walls and a few shabby Turks smoking
+in it, completed, along with the dirty street, a picture
+characteristic of the fallen fortunes of Islam in Servia.</p>
+
+<p>"There comes the cadi," said the collector, and I looked out for at
+least one individual with turban of fine texture, decent robes, and
+venerable appearance; but a man of gigantic stature, and rude aspect,
+wearing a grey peasant's turban, welcomed us with undignified
+cordiality. We followed him down the street, and sometimes crossing
+the mud on pieces of wood, sometimes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>"putting one's foot in it," we
+reached a savage-looking timber kiosk, and, mounting a ladder, seated
+ourselves on the window ledge.</p>
+
+<p>There flowed the Save in all its peaceful smoothness; looking out of
+the window, I perceived that the high rampart, on which the kiosk was
+constructed, was built at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the
+water, and that the intervening space was covered with boats, hauled
+up high and dry, and animated with the process of building and
+repairing the barges employed in the river trade. The kiosk, in which
+we were sitting, was a species of caf&eacute;, and it being Ramadan time, we
+were presented with sherbet by a kahwagi, who, to judge by his look,
+was a eunuch. I was afterwards told that the Turks remaining in the
+fortified town are so poor, that they had not a decent room to show me
+into.</p>
+
+<p>A Turk, about fifty years of age, now entered. His habiliments were
+somewhere between decent and shabby genteel, and his voice and manners
+had that distinguished gentleness which wins&mdash;because it feels&mdash;its
+way. This was the Disdar <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>Aga, the last relic of the wealthy Turks of
+the place: for before the Servian revolution Shabatz had its twenty
+thousand Osmanlis; and a tract of gardens on the other side of the
+<i>Polje</i>, was pointed out as having been covered with the villas of the
+wealthy, which were subsequently burnt down.</p>
+
+<p>Our conversation was restricted to a few general observations, as
+other persons were present, but the Disdar Aga promised to call on me
+on the following day. I was asked if I had been in Seraievo.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> I
+answered in the negative, but added, "I have heard so much of
+Seraievo, that I desire ardently to see it. But I am afraid of the
+Haiducks."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span><i>Cadi</i>. "And not without reason; for Seraievo, with its delicious
+gardens, must be seen in summer. In winter the roads are free from
+haiducks, because they cannot hold out in the snow; but then Seraievo,
+having lost the verdure and foliage of its environs, ceases to be
+attractive, except in its bazaars, for they are without an equal."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I always thought that the finest bazaar of Turkey in
+Europe, was that of Adrianople."</p>
+
+<p><i>Cadi</i>. "Ay, but not equal to Seraievo; when you see the Bosniacs, in
+their cleanly apparel and splendid arms walking down the bazaar, you
+might think yourself in the serai of a sultan; then all the esnafs are
+in their divisions like regiments of Nizam."</p>
+
+<p>The Disdar Aga now accompanied me to the gate, and bidding me
+farewell, with graceful urbanity, re-entered the bastioned miniature
+citadel in which he lived almost alone. The history of this individual
+is singular: his family was cut to pieces in the dreadful scenes of
+1806; and, when a mere boy, he found himself a prisoner in the Servian
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>camp. Being thus without protectors, he was adopted by Luka
+Lasarevitch, the valiant lieutenant of Kara Georg, and baptized as a
+Christian with the name of John, but having been reclaimed by the
+Turks on the re-conquest of Servia in 1813, he returned to the faith
+of his fathers.</p>
+
+<p>We now returned into the town, and there sat the same Luka
+Lasarevitch, now a merchant and town councillor, at the door of his
+warehouse, an octogenarian, with thirteen wounds on his body.</p>
+
+<p>Going home, I asked the collector if the Aga and Luka were still
+friends. "To this very day," said he, "notwithstanding the difference
+of religion, the Aga looks upon Luka as his father, and Luka looks
+upon the Aga as his son." To those who have lived in other parts of
+Turkey this account must appear very curious. I found that the Aga was
+as highly respected by the Christians as by the Turks, for his
+strictly honourable character.</p>
+
+<p>We now paid a visit to the Arch-priest, Iowan Paulovitch, a
+self-taught ecclesiastic: the room in which he received us was filled
+with books, mostly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>Servian; but I perceived among them German
+translations. On asking him if he had heard any thing of English
+literature, he showed me translations into German of Shakspeare,
+Young's Night Thoughts, and a novel of Bulwer. The Greek secular
+clergy marry; and in the course of conversation it came out that his
+son was one of the young Servians sent by the government to study
+mining-engineering, at Schemnitz, in Hungary. The Church of the
+Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, in which he officiates, was built in
+1828. I remarked that it had only a wooden bell tower, which had been
+afterwards erected in the church yard; no belfry existing in the
+building itself. The reason of this is, that, up to the period
+mentioned, the Servians were unaccustomed to have bells sounded.</p>
+
+<p>Our host provided most ample fare for supper, preceded by a glass of
+slivovitsa. We began with soup, rendered slightly acid with lemon
+juice, then came fowl, stewed with turnips and sugar. This was
+followed by pudding of almonds, raisins, and pancake. Roast capon
+brought up the rear. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>A white wine of the country was served during
+supper, but along with dessert we had a good red wine of Negotin,
+served in Bohemian coloured glasses. I have been thus minute on the
+subject of food, for the dinners I ate at Belgrade I do not count as
+Servian, having been all in the German fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The wife of the collector sat at dinner, but at the foot of the table;
+a position characteristic of that of women in Servia&mdash;midway between
+the graceful precedence of Europe and the contemptuous exclusion of
+the East.</p>
+
+<p>After hand-washing, we returned to the divan, and while pipes and
+coffee were handed round, a noise in the court yard denoted a visiter,
+and a middle-aged man, with embroidered clothes, and silver-mounted
+pistols in his girdle, entered. This was the Natchalnik, or local
+governor, who had come from his own village, two hours off, to pay his
+visit; he was accompanied by the two captains under his command, one
+of whom was a military dandy. His ample girdle was richly embroidered,
+out of which projected silver-mounted old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>fashioned pistols. His
+crimson shaksheers were also richly embroidered, and the corner of a
+gilt flowered cambric pocket handkerchief showed itself at his breast.
+His companion wore a different aspect, with large features, dusky in
+tint as those of a gipsy, and dressed in plain coarse blue clothes. He
+was presented to me as a man who had grown from boyhood to manhood to
+the tune of the whistling bullets of Kara Georg and his Turkish
+opponents. After the usual salutations, the Natchalnik began&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We have heard that Gospody Wellington has received from the English
+nation an estate for his distinguished services."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "That is true; but the presentation took place a great many
+years ago."</p>
+
+<p><i>Natch</i>. "What is the age of Gospody Wellington?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "About seventy-five. He was born in 1769, the year in which
+Napoleon and Mohammed Ali first saw the light."</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to awaken the interest of the party.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>The roughly-clad trooper drew in his chair, and leaning his elbow on
+his knees, opened wide a pair of expectant eyes; the Natchalnik, after
+a long puff of his pipe, said, with some magisterial decision, "That
+was a moment when nature had her sleeves tucked up. I think our Kara
+Georg must also have been born about that time."</p>
+
+<p><i>Natch</i>. "Is Gospody Wellington still in service?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Yes; he is commander-in-chief."</p>
+
+<p><i>Natch</i>. "Well, God grant that his sons, and his sons' sons, may
+render as great services to the nation."</p>
+
+<p>Our conversation was prolonged to a late hour in the evening, in which
+a variety of anecdotes were related of the ingenious methods employed
+by Milosh to fill his coffers as rapidly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Mine host, taking a candle, then led me to my bedroom, a small
+carpeted apartment, with a German bed; the coverlet was of green
+satin, quilted, and the sheets were clean and fragrant; and I
+observed, that they were striped with an alternate fine and coarse
+woof.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The capital of Bosnia, a large and beautiful city, which
+is often called the Damascus of the North.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> In this part of Turkey in Europe robbers, as well as
+rebels, are called Haiducks: like the caterans of the Highlands of
+Scotland, they were merely held to be persons at war with the
+authority: and in the Servian revolution, patriots, rebels, and
+robbers, were confounded in the common term of Haiducks.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Kaimak.&mdash;History of a Renegade.&mdash;A Bishop's house.&mdash;Progress
+of Education.&mdash;Portrait of Milosh.&mdash;Bosnia and
+the Bosniacs.&mdash;Moslem Fanaticism.&mdash;Death of the Collector.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The fatigues of travelling procured me a sound sleep. I rose
+  refreshed, and proceeded into the divan. The hostess then came
+  forward, and before I could perceive, or prevent her object, she
+  kissed my hand. "Kako se spavali; Dobro?"&mdash;"How have you slept? I hope
+  you are refreshed," and other kindly inquiries followed on, while she
+  took from the hand of an attendant a silver salver, on which was a
+  glass of slivovitsa, a plate of rose marmalade, and a large Bohemian
+  cut crystal globular goblet of water, the contents of which, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>along
+  with a chibouque, were the prelude to breakfast, which consisted of
+  coffee and toast, and instead of milk we had rich boiled kaimak, as
+  Turkish clotted cream is called.</p>
+<p>I have always been surprised to find that this undoubted luxury, which
+is to be found in every town in Turkey, should be unknown throughout
+the greater part of Europe. After comfortably smoking another
+chibouque, and chatting about Shabatz and the Shabatzians, the
+collector informed me that the time was come for returning the visit
+of the Natchalnik, and paying that of the Bishop.</p>
+
+<p>The Natchalnik received us in the Konak of Gospody Iefrem, the brother
+of Milosh, and our interview was in no respect different from a usual
+Turkish visit. We then descended to the street; the sun an hour before
+its meridian shone brightly, but the centre of the broad street was
+very muddy, from the late rain; so we picked our steps with some care,
+until we arrived in the vicinity of the bridge, when I perceived the
+eunuch-looking coffee-keeper navigating the slough, ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>companied by a
+Mussulman in a red checked shawl turban.&mdash;"Here is a man that wishes
+to make your acquaintance," said Eunuch-face.&mdash;"I heard you were
+paying visits yesterday in the Turkish quarter," said the strange
+figure, saluting me. I returned the salute, and addressed him in
+Arabic; he answered in a strong Egyptian accent. However, as the depth
+of the surrounding mud, and the glare of the sun, rendered a further
+colloquy somewhat inconvenient, we postponed our meeting until the
+evening. On our way to the Bishop, I asked the collector what that man
+was doing there.</p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "His history is a singular one. You yesterday saw a Turk,
+who was baptized, and then returned to Islamism. This is a Servian,
+who turned Turk thirty years ago, and now wishes to be a Christian
+again. He has passed most of that time in the distant parts of Turkey,
+and has children grown up and settled there. He has come to me
+secretly, and declares his desire to be a Christian again; but he is
+afraid the Turks will kill him."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Has he been long here?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "Two months. He went first into the Turkish town; and
+having incurred their suspicions, he left them, and has now taken up
+his quarters in the khan, with a couple of horses and a servant."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "What does he do?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "He pretends to be a doctor, and cures the people; but he
+generally exacts a considerable sum before prescribing, and he has had
+disputes with people who say that they are not healed so quickly as
+they expect."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Do you think he is sincere in wishing to be a Christian
+again?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "God knows. What can one think of a man who has changed
+his religion, but that no dependence can be placed on him? The Turks
+are shy of him."</p>
+
+<p>We had now arrived at the house of the Bishop, and were shown into a
+well-carpeted room, in the old Turkish style, with the roof gilded and
+painted in dark colours, and an un-artistlike panorama of
+Constantinople running round the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>cornice. I seated myself on an
+old-fashioned, wide, comfortable divan, with richly embroidered, but
+somewhat faded cushions, and, throwing off my shoes, tucked my legs
+comfortably under me.</p>
+
+<p>"This house," said the collector, "is a relic of old Shabatz; most of
+the other houses of this class were burnt down. You see no German
+furniture here; tell me whether you prefer the Turkish style, or the
+European."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "In warm weather give me a room of this kind, where the sun
+is excluded, and where one can loll at ease, and smoke a narghil&eacute;; but
+in winter I like to see a blazing fire, and to hear the music of a
+tea-urn."</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop now entered, and we advanced to the door to meet him. I
+bowed low, and the rest of the company kissed his hand; he was a
+middle sized man, of about sixty, but frail from long-continued ill
+health, dressed in a furred pelisse, a dark blue body robe, and Greek
+ecclesiastical cap of velvet, while from a chain hung round his neck
+was suspended the gold cross, distinctive <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>of his rank. The usual
+refreshments of coffee, sweetmeats, &amp;c. were brought in, not by
+servants, but by ecclesiastical novices.</p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop</i>. "I think I have seen you before?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Indeed, you have: I met your reverence at the house of
+Gospody Ilia in Belgrade."</p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop</i>. "Ay, ay," (trying to recollect;) "my memory sometimes fails
+me since my illness. Did you stay long at Belgrade?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I remained to witness the cathedral service for the return
+of Wucics and Petronievitch. I assure you I was struck with the
+solemnity of the scene, and the deportment of the archbishop. As I do
+not understand enough of Servian, his speech was translated to me word
+for word, and it seems to me that he has the four requisites of an
+orator,&mdash;a commanding presence, a pleasing voice, good thoughts, and
+good language."</p>
+
+<p>We then talked of education, on which the Bishop said, "The civil and
+ecclesiastical authorities go hand in hand in the work. When I was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>a
+young man, a great proportion of the youth could neither read nor
+write: thanks to our system of national education, in a few years the
+peasantry will all read. In the towns the sons of those inhabitants
+who are in easy circumstances, are all learning German, history, and
+other branches preparatory to the course of the Gymnasium of Belgrade,
+which is the germ of a university."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I hope it will prosper; the Slaavs of the middle ages did
+much for science."<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Bishop</i>. "I assure you times are greatly changed with us; the general
+desire for education surprises and delights me."</p>
+
+<p>We now took our leave of the Bishop, and on our way homewards called
+at a house which contained portraits of Kara Georg, Milosh, Michael,
+Alexander, and other personages who have figured in Servian history. I
+was much amused with that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>of Milosh, which was painted in oil,
+altogether without <i>chiaro scuro</i>; but his decorations, button holes,
+and even a large mole on his cheek, were done with the most painful
+minuteness. In his left hand he held a scroll, on which was inscribed
+<i>Ustav</i>, or Constitution, his right hand was partly doubled &agrave; la
+finger post; it pointed significantly to the said scroll, the
+forefinger being adorned with a large diamond ring.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at the collector's house, I found the Aga awaiting me.
+This man inspired me with great interest. I looked upon him, residing
+in his lone tower, the last of a once wealthy and powerful race now
+steeped in poverty, as a sort of master of Ravenswood in a Wolf's
+crag. At first he was bland and ceremonious; but on learning that I
+had lived long in the interior of society in Damascus and Aleppo, and
+finding that the interest with which he inspired me was real and not
+assumed, he became expansive without lapsing into familiarity, and
+told me his sad tale, which I would place at the service of the gentle
+reader, could I forget the stronger allegiance I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>owe to the
+unsolicited confidence of an unfortunate stranger.</p>
+
+<p>When I spoke of the renegade, he pretended not to know whom I meant;
+but I saw, by a slight unconscious wink of his eye, that knowing him
+too well, he wished to see and hear no more of him. As he was rising
+to take leave, a step was heard creaking on the stairs, and on turning
+in the direction of the door, I saw the red and white checked turban
+of the renegade emerging from the banister; but no sooner did he
+perceive the Aga, than, turning round again, down went the red checked
+turban out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>When the Aga was gone, the collector gave me a significant look, and,
+knocking the ashes out of his pipe into a plate on the floor, said,
+"Changed times, changed times, poor fellow; his salary is only 250
+piastres a month, and his relations used to be little kings in
+Shabatz; but the other fellows in the Turkish quarter, although so
+wretchedly poor that they have scarcely bread to eat, are as proud and
+insolent as ever."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "What is the reason of that?"</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "Because they are so near the Bosniac frontier, where
+there is a large Moslem population. The Moslems of Shabatz pay no
+taxes, either to the Servian government or the sultan, for they are
+accounted <i>Redif</i>, or Militia, for which they receive a ducat a year
+from the sultan, as a returning fee. The Christian peasants here are
+very rich; some of them have ten and twenty thousand ducats buried
+under the earth; but these impoverished Bosniacs in the fortress are
+as proud and insolent as ever."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "You say Bosniacs! Are they not Turks?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "No, the only Turks here are the Aga and the Cadi; all
+the rest are Bosniacs, the descendants of men of our own race and
+language, who on the Turkish invasion accepted Islamism, but retained
+the language, and many Christian customs, such as saints' days,
+Christian names, and in most cases monogamy."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "That is very curious; then, perhaps, as they are not full
+Moslems, they may be more tolerant of Christians."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "The very reverse. The Bosniac Christians are not half so
+well off as the Bulgarians, who have to deal with the real Turks. The
+arch-priest will be here to dinner, and he will be able to give you
+some account of the Bosniac Christians. But Bosnia is a beautiful
+country; how do you intend to proceed from here?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I intend to go to Vallievo and Ushitza."</p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "He that leaves Servia without seeing Sokol, has seen
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "What is to be seen at Sokol?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "The most wonderful place in the world, a perfect eagle's
+eyrie. A whole town and castle built on the capital of a column of
+rock."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "But I did not contemplate going there; so I must change my
+route: I took no letters for that quarter."</p>
+
+<p><i>Collector</i>. "Leave all that to me; you will first go to Losnitza, on
+the banks of the Drina, and I will despatch a messenger to-night,
+apprising the authorities of your approach. When you have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>seen Sokol,
+you will admit that it was worth the journey."</p>
+
+<p>The renegade having seen the Aga clear off, now came to pay his visit,
+and the normal good-nature of the collector procured him a tolerant
+welcome. When we were left alone, the renegade began by abusing the
+Moslems in the fortress as a set of scoundrels. "I could not live an
+hour longer among such rascals," said he, "and I am now in the khan
+with my servant and a couple of horses, where you must come and see
+me. I will give you as good a pipe of Djebel tobacco as ever you
+smoked."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "You must excuse me, I must set out on my travels to-morrow.
+You were in Egypt, I believe."</p>
+
+<p><i>Renegade</i>. "I was long there; my two sons, and a married daughter,
+are in Cairo to this day."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "What do they do?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Renegade</i>. "My daughter is married, and I taught my sons all I know
+of medicine, and they practise it in the old way."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Where did you study?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Renegade</i> (tossing his head and smiling). "Here, and there, and
+everywhere. I am no Ilekim Bashi; but I have an ointment that heals
+all bruises and sores in an incredibly short space of time."</p>
+
+<p>Me gave a most unsatisfactory account of his return to Turkey in
+Europe; first to Bosnia, or Herzegovina, where he was, or pretended to
+be, physician to Husreff Mehmed Pasha, and then to Seraievo. When we
+spoke of Hafiz Pasha, of Belgrade, he said, "I know him well, but he
+does not know me; I recollect him at Carpout and Diarbecr before
+the battle of Nisib, when he had thirty or forty pashas under him. He
+could shoot at a mark, or ride, with the youngest man in the army."</p>
+
+<p>The collector now re-entered with the Natchalnik and his captains, and
+the renegade took his leave, I regretting that I had not seen more of
+him; for a true recital of his adventures must have made an amusing
+chapter.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is the captain, who is to escort you to Ushitza," said the
+Natchalnik, pointing to a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>muscular man at his left. "He will take you
+safe and sound."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I see he is a stout fellow. I would rather have him for a
+friend than meet him as an enemy. He has the face of an honest man,
+too."</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "I warrant you as safe in his custody, as if you were in
+that of Gospody Wellington."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "You may rest assured that if I were in the custody of the
+Duke of Wellington, I should not reckon myself very safe. One of his
+offices is to take care of a tower, in which the Queen locks up
+traitorous subjects. Did you never hear of the Tower of London?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "No; all we know of London is the wonderful bridge that
+goes under the water, where an army can pass from one side to the
+other, while the fleet lies anchored over their heads."</p>
+
+<p>The Natchalnik now bid me farewell, and I gave my rendezvous to the
+captain for next morning. During the discussion of dinner, the
+arch-priest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>gave us an illustration of Bosniac fanaticism: A few
+months ago a church at Belina was about to be opened, which had been a
+full year in course of building, by virtue of a Firman of the Sultan;
+the Moslems murmuring, but doing nothing. When finished, the Bishop
+went to consecrate it; but two hours after sunset, an immense mob of
+Moslems, armed with pickaxes and shovels, rased it to the ground,
+having first taken the Cross and Gospels and thrown them into a
+latrina. The Bishop complained to the Mutsellim, who imprisoned one or
+two of them, exacted a fine, which he put in his own pocket, and let
+them out next day; the ruins of the Church remain <i>in statu quo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The collector now produced some famous wine, that had been eleven
+years in bottle. We were unusually merry, and fell into toasts and
+speeches. I felt as if I had been his intimate friend for years, for
+he had not one atom of Levantine "humbug" in his composition. Poor
+fellow, little did he think, that in a few short weeks from this
+period his blood would flow as freely as the wine which he poured into
+my cup.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Next morning, on awaking, all the house was in a bustle: the sun shone
+brightly on the green satin coverlet of my bed, and a tap at the door
+announced the collector, who entered in his dressing gown with the
+apparatus of brandy and sweetmeats, and joined his favourable augury
+to mine for the day's journey.</p>
+
+<p>"You will have a rare journey," said the collector; "the country is a
+garden, the weather is clear, and neither hot nor cold. The nearer you
+get to Bosnia, the more beautiful is the landscape."</p>
+
+<p>We each drank a thimbleful of slivovitsa, he to my prosperous journey,
+while I proposed health and long life to him; but, as the sequel
+showed, "<i>l'homme propose, et Dieu dispose</i>." After breakfast, I bade
+Madame Ninitch adieu, and descended to the court-yard, where two
+carriages of the collector awaited us, our horses being attached
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>And now an eternal farewell to the worthy collector. At this time a
+conspiracy was organized by the Obrenowitch faction, through the
+emigrants <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>residing in Hungary. They secretly furnished themselves
+with thirty-four or thirty-five hussar uniforms at Pesth, bought
+horses, and having bribed the Austrian frontier guard, passed the Save
+with a trumpeter about a month after this period, and entering
+Shabatz, stated that a revolution had broken out at Belgrade, that
+prince Kara Georgevitch was murdered, and Michael proclaimed, with the
+support of the cabinets of Europe! The affrighted inhabitants knew not
+what to believe, and allowed the detachment to ride through the town.
+Arrived at the government-house, the collector issued from the porch,
+to ask what they wanted, and received for answer a pistol-shot, which
+stretched him dead on the spot. The soi-disant Austrian hussars
+subsequently attempted to raise the country, but, failing in this,
+were nearly all taken and executed.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The first University in Europe was that of Prague. It was
+established some years before the University of Paris, if I recollect
+right.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+The Banat of Matchva.&mdash;Losnitza.&mdash;Feuds on the Frontier.&mdash;Enter
+the Back-woods.&mdash;Convent of Tronosha.&mdash;Greek
+Festival.&mdash;Congregation of Peasantry.&mdash;Rustic Finery.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Through the richest land, forming part of the ancient banat of
+  Matchva, which was in the earlier periods of Servian and Hungarian
+  history so often a source of conflict and contention, we approached
+  distant grey hills, which gradually rose from the horizon, and, losing
+  their indistinctness, revealed a chain so charmingly accidented, that
+  I quickened my pace, as if about to enter a fairy region. Thick turf
+  covered the pasture lands; the old oak and the tender sapling
+  diversified the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>plain. Some clouds hung on the horizon, whose
+  delicate lilac and fawn tints, forming a harmonizing contrast with the
+  deep deep blue of the heavens, showed the transparency of the
+  atmosphere, and brought healthful elevation of spirits. Even the
+  brutes bespoke the harmony of creation; for, singular to say, we saw
+  several crows perched on the backs of swine!</p>
+<p>Towards evening, we entered a region of cottages among gardens
+inclosed by bushes, trees, and verdant fences, with the rural quiet
+and cleanliness of an English village in the last century, lighted up
+by an Italian sunset. Having crossed the little bridge, a pandour, who
+was sitting under the willows, rose, came forward, and, touching his
+hat, presented the Natchalnik's compliments, and said that he was
+instructed to conduct me to his house. Losnitza is situated on the
+last undulation of the Gutchevo range, as the mountains we had all day
+kept in view were called. So leaving the town on our left, we struck
+into a secluded path, which wound up the hill, and in ten minutes we
+dismounted at a house having the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>air of a Turkish villa, which
+overlooked the surrounding country, and was entered by an enclosed
+court-yard with high walls.</p>
+
+<p>The Natchalnik of Losnitza was a grey-headed tall gaunt figure, who
+spoke very little; but as the Bosniac frontier is subject to troubles
+he had been selected for his great personal courage, for he had served
+under Kara Georg from 1804.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "It is not an easy matter to keep things straight; the
+population on this side is all organized, so as to concentrate eight
+thousand men in a few hours. The Bosniacs are all armed; and as the
+two populations detest each other cordially, and are separated only by
+the Drina, the public tranquillity often incurs great danger: but
+whenever a crisis is at hand I mount my horse and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>go to Mahmoud Pasha
+at Zwornik; and the affair is generally quietly settled with a cup of
+coffee."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Ay, ay; as the Arabs say, the burning of a little tobacco
+saves the burning of a great deal of powder. What is the population of
+Zwornik?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "About twelve or fifteen thousand; the place has fallen
+off; it had formerly between thirty and forty thousand souls."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Have you had any disputes lately?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "Why, yes; Great Zwornik is on the Bosniac side of the
+Drina; but Little Zwornik on the Servian side is also held by Moslems.
+Not long ago the men of Little Zwornik wished to extend their domain;
+but I planted six hundred men in a wood, and then rode down alone and
+warned them off. They treated me contemptuously; but as soon as they
+saw the six hundred men issuing from the wood they gave up the point:
+and Mahmoud Pasha admitted I was right; but he had been afraid to risk
+his popularity by preventive measures."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The selamlik of the Natchalnik was comfortably carpeted and fitted up,
+but no trace of European furniture was to be seen. The rooms of the
+collector at Shabatz still smacked of the vicinity to Austria; but
+here we were with the natives. Dinner was preceded by cheese, onions,
+and slivovitsa as a <i>rinfresco</i>, and our beds were improvised in the
+Turkish manner by mattresses, sheets, and coverlets, laid on the
+divans. May I never have a worse bed!<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Next morning, on waking, I went into the kiosk to enjoy the cool fresh
+air, the incipient sunshine, and the noble prospect; the banat of
+Matchva which we had yesterday traversed, stretched away to the
+westward, an ocean of verdure and ripe yellow fruits.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the Drina?" said I to our host.</p>
+
+<p>"Look downwards," said he; "you see that line of poplars and willows;
+there flows the Drina, hid from view: the steep gardens and wooded
+hills <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>that abruptly rise from the other bank are in Bosnia."</p>
+
+<p>The town doctor now entered, a middle-aged man, who had been partly
+educated in Dalmatia, and consequently spoke Italian; he told us that
+his salary was &pound;40 a year; and that in consequence of the extreme
+cheapness of provisions he managed to live as well in this place as he
+could on the Adriatic for treble the sum.</p>
+
+<p>Other persons, mostly employ&eacute;s, now came to see us, and we descended
+to the town. The bazaar was open and paved with stone; but except its
+extreme cleanliness, it was not in the least different from those one
+sees in Bulgaria and other parts of Turkey in Europe. Up to 1835 many
+Turks lived in Losnitza; but at that time they all removed to Bosnia;
+the mosque still remains, and is used as a grain magazine. A mud fort
+crowns the eminence, having been thrown up during the wars of Kara
+Georg, and might still be serviceable in case of hostile operations.</p>
+
+<p>Before going to Sokol the Natchalnik persuaded me to take a Highland
+ramble into the Gutchevo <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>range, and first visit Tronosha, a large
+convent three hours off in the woods, which was to be on the following
+day the rendezvous of all the surrounding peasantry, in their holyday
+dresses, in order to celebrate the festival of consecration.</p>
+
+<p>At the appointed hour our host appeared, having donned his best
+clothes, which were covered with gold embroidery. His sabre and
+pistols were no less rich and curious, and he mounted a horse worth at
+least sixty or seventy pounds sterling. Several other notables of
+Losnitza, similarly broidered and accoutred, and mounted on caracoling
+horses, accompanied us; and we formed a cavalcade that would have
+astonished even Mr. Batty.</p>
+
+<p>Ascending rapidly, we were soon lost in the woods, catching only now
+and then a view of the golden plain through the dark green oaks and
+pines. For full three hours our brilliant little party dashed up hill
+and down dale, through the most majestic forests, delightful to the
+gaze but unrelieved by a patch of cultivation, and miserably
+profitless to the commonwealth, till we came to a height covered with
+loose rocks and pasture. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>"There is Tronosha," said the Natchalnik,
+pulling up, and pointing to a tapering white spire and slender column
+of blue smoke that rose from a <i>cul-de-sac</i> formed by the opposite
+hills, which, like the woods we had traversed, wore such a shaggy and
+umbrageous drapery, that with a slight transposition, I could exclaim,
+"Si lupus essem, nollem alibi quam in <i>Servi&acirc;</i> lupus esse!" A steep
+descent brought us to some meadows on which cows were grazing by the
+side of a rapid stream, and I felt the open apace a relief after the
+gloom of the endless forest.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing the stream, we struck into the sylvan <i>cul-de-sac</i>, and
+arrived in a few minutes at an edifice with strong walls, towers, and
+posterns, that looked more like a secluded and fortified manor-house
+in the seventeenth century than a convent; for in more troubled times,
+such establishments, though tolerated by the old Turkish government,
+were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders.</p>
+
+<p>A fine jolly old monk, with a powerful voice, welcomed the Natchalnik
+at the gate, and putting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>his hand on his left breast, said to me,
+"<i>Dobro doche Gospody</i>!" (Welcome, master!)</p>
+
+<p>We then, according to the custom of the country, went into the chapel,
+and, kneeling down, said our thanksgiving for safe arrival. I
+remarked, on taking a turn through the chapel and examining it
+minutely, that the pictures were all in the old Byzantine
+style&mdash;crimson-faced saints looking up to golden skies.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing the court, I looked about me, and perceived that the cloister
+was a gallery, with wooden beams supporting the roof, running round
+three sides of the building, the basement being built in stone, at one
+part of which a hollowed tree shoved in an aperture formed a spout for
+a stream of clear cool water. The Igoumen, or superior, received us at
+the foot of the wooden staircase which ascended to the gallery. He was
+a sleek middle-aged man, with a new silk gown, and seemed out of his
+wits with delight at my arrival in this secluded spot, and taking me
+by the hand led me to a sort of seat of honour placed in a prominent
+part of the gallery, which seemed to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>correspond with the <i>maka&aacute;</i> of
+Saracenic architecture.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the Igoumen gone to superintend the arrangements of the
+evening, than a shabbily dressed filthy priest, of such sinister
+aspect, that, to use a common phrase, "his looks would have hanged
+him," now came up, and in a fulsome eulogy welcomed me to the convent.
+He related how he had been born in Syrmium, and had been thirteen
+years in Bosnia; but I suspected that some screw was loose, and on
+making inquiry found that he had been sent to this retired convent in
+consequence of incorrigible drunkenness. The Igoumen now returned, and
+gave the clerical Lumnacivagabundus such a look that he skulked off on
+the instant.</p>
+
+<p>After coffee, sweetmeats, &amp;c., we passed through the yard, and
+piercing the postern gate, unexpectedly came upon a most animated
+scene. A green glade that ran up to the foot of the hill, was covered
+with the preparations for the approaching festivities&mdash;wood was
+splitting, fires lighting, fifty or sixty sheep were spitted, pyramids
+of bread, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>dishes of all sorts and sizes, and jars of wine in wicker
+baskets were mingled with throat-cut fowls, lying on the banks of the
+stream aide by side with pigs at their last squeak.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was served in the refectory to about twenty individuals,
+including the monks and our party. The Igoumen drank to the health of
+the prince, and then of Wucics and Petronievitch, declaring that
+thanks were due to God and those European powers who had brought about
+their return. The shabby priest, with the gallows look, then sang a
+song of his own composition, on their return. Not being able to
+understand it, I asked my neighbour what he thought of the song.
+"Why," said he, "the lay is worthy of the minstrel&mdash;doggrel and
+dissonance." Some old national songs were sung, and I again asked my
+neighbour for a criticism on the poetry. "That last song," said he,
+"is like a river that flows easily and naturally from one beautiful
+valley to another."</p>
+
+<p>In the evening we went out, and the countless fires lighting up the
+lofty oaks had a most pleasing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>effect. The sheep were by this time
+cut up, and lying in fragments, around which the supper parties were
+seated cross-legged. Other peasants danced slowly, in a circle, to the
+drone of the somniferous Servian bagpipe.</p>
+
+<p>When I went to bed, the assembled peasantry were in the full tide of
+merriment, but without excess. The only person somewhat the worse of
+the bottle was the threadbare priest with the gallows look.</p>
+
+<p>I fell asleep with a low confused murmur of droning bagpipes, jingling
+drinking cups, occasional laughter, and other noises. I dreamed, I
+know not what absurdities; suddenly a solemn swelling chorus of
+countless voices gently interrupted my slumbers&mdash;the room was filled
+with light, and the sun on high was beginning to begild an irregular
+parallelogram in the wainscot, when I started up, and hastily drew on
+some clothes. Going out to the <i>maka&aacute;</i>, I perceived yesterday's
+assembly of merry-making peasants quadrupled in number, and all
+dressed in their holiday costume, thickset on their knees down <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>the
+avenue to the church, and following a noble old hymn, I sprang out of
+the postern, and, helping myself with the grasp of trunks of trees,
+and bared roots and bushes, clambered up one of the sides of the
+hollow, and attaining a clear space, looked down with wonder and
+pleasure on the singular scene. The whole pit, of this theatre of
+verdure appeared covered with a carpet of white and crimson, for such
+were the prevailing colours of the rustic costumes. When I thought of
+the trackless solitude of the sylvan ridges round me, I seemed to
+witness one of the early communions of Christianity, in those ages
+when incense ascended to the Olympic deities in gorgeous temples,
+while praise to the true God rose from the haunts of the wolf, the
+lonely cavern, or the subterranean vault.</p>
+
+<p>When church service was over I examined the dresses more minutely. The
+upper tunic of the women was a species of surtout of undyed cloth,
+bordered with a design of red cloth of a liner description. The
+stockings in colour and texture resembled those of Persia, but were
+generally em<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>broidered at the ankle with gold and silver thread. After
+the mid-day meal we descended, accompanied by the monks. The lately
+crowded court-yard was silent and empty. "What," said I, "all
+dispersed already?" The superior smiled, and said nothing. On going out
+of the gate, I paused in a state of slight emotion. The whole
+assembled peasantry were marshalled in two rows, and standing
+uncovered in solemn silence, so as to make a living avenue to the
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>The Igoumen then publicly expressed the pleasure my visit had given to
+the people, and in their name thanked me, and wished me a prosperous
+journey, repeating a phrase I had heard before: "God be praised that
+Servia has at length seen the day that strangers come from afar to see
+and know the people!"</p>
+
+<p>I took off my fez, and said, "Do you know, Father Igoumen, what has
+given me the most pleasure in the course of my visit?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Ig</i>. "I can scarcely guess."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I have seen a large assembly of peasantry, and not a trace
+of poverty, vice, or misery; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>the best proof that both the civil and
+ecclesiastical authorities do their duty."</p>
+
+<p>The Igoumen, smiling with satisfaction, made a short speech to the
+people. I mounted my horse; the convent bells began to toll as I waved
+my hand to the assembly, and "Sretnj poot!" (a prosperous journey!)
+burst from a thousand tongues. The scene was so moving that I could
+scarcely refrain a tear. Clapping spurs to my horse I cantered over
+the bridge and gave him his will of the bridle till the steepness of
+the ascent compelled a slower pace.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Servia is divided into seventeen provinces, each governed
+by a Natchalnik, whose duty it is to keep order and report to the
+minister of war and interior. He has of course no control over the
+legal courts of law attached to each provincial government; he has a
+Cashier and a Secretary, and each province is divided into Cantons
+(Sres), over each of which a captain rules. The average population of
+a province is 50,000 souls, and there are generally three Cantons in a
+province, which are governed by captains.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Whether from the climate or superior cleanliness, there
+are certainly much fewer fleas in Servia than in Turkey; and I saw
+other vermin only once.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<div><b> Romantic sylvan scenery.&mdash;Patriarchal simplicity of manners.&mdash;Krupena,&mdash;Sokol.&mdash;Its extraordinary position.&mdash;Wretched
+  town.&mdash;Alpine scenery.&mdash;Cool reception.&mdash;Valley
+  of the Rogatschitza.
+</b></div>
+<p>&nbsp;
+
+</p>
+<p>Words fail me to describe the beauty of the road from Tronosha to
+Krupena. The heights and distances, without being alpine in reality,
+were sufficiently so to an eye unpractised in measuring scenery of the
+highest class; but in all the softer enchantments nature had revelled
+in prodigality. The gloom of the oak forest was relieved and broken by
+a hundred plantations of every variety of tree that the climate would
+bear, and every hue, from the sombre evergreen to the early suspicions
+of the yellow leaf of autumn. Even the tops of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>the mountains were
+free from sterility, for they were capped with green as bright, with
+trees as lofty, and with pasture as rich, as that of the valleys
+below.</p>
+
+<p>The people, too, were very different from the inhabitants of Belgrade,
+where political intrigue, and want of the confidence which sincerity
+inspires, paralyze social intercourse. But the men of the back-woods,
+neither poor nor barbarous, delighted me by the patriarchal simplicity
+of their manners, and the poetic originality of their language. Even
+in gayer moments I seemed to witness the sweet comedy of nature, in
+which man is ludicrous from his peculiarities, but "is not yet
+ridiculous from the affectations and assumptions of artificial life."</p>
+
+<p>Half-way to Krupena we reposed at a brook, where the carpets were laid
+out and we smoked a pipe. A curious illustration occurred here of the
+abundance of wood in Servia. A boy, after leading a horse into the
+brook, tugged the halter and led the unwilling horse out of the stream
+again. "Let him drink, let him drink his fill," said a woman; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>"if
+everything else must be paid with gold, at least wood and water cost
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Mounting our horses again, we were met by six troopers bearing the
+compliments of the captain of Krupena, who was awaiting us with
+twenty-two or three irregular cavalry on an eminence. We both
+dismounted and-went through the ceremony of public complimenting, both
+evidently enjoying the fun; he the visit of an illustrious stranger,
+and I the formality of a military reception. I perceived in a moment
+that this captain, although a good fellow, was fond of a little fuss;
+so I took him by the hand, made a turn across the grass, cast a
+nonchalant look on his troop, and condescended to express my
+approbation of their martial bearing. True it is that they were men of
+rude and energetic aspect, very fairly mounted. After patronizing him
+with a little further chat and compliment we remounted; and I
+perceived Krupena at the distance of about a mile, in the middle of a
+little plain surrounded by gardens; but the neighbouring hills were
+here and there bare of vegetation.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some of the troopers in front sang a sort of chorus, and now and then
+a fellow to show off his horse, would ride <i>&agrave; la djereed</i>, and instead
+of flinging a dart, would fire his pistols. Others joined us, and our
+party was swelled to a considerable cavalcade as we entered the
+village, where the peasants were drawn up in a row to receive me.</p>
+
+<p>Their captain then led the way up the stairs of his house to a
+chardak, or wooden balcony, on which was a table laid out with
+flowers. The elders of the village now came separately, and had some
+conversation: the priest on entering laid a melon on the table, a
+usual method of showing civility in this part of the country. One of
+the attendant crowd was a man from Montenegro, who said he was a
+house-painter. He related that he was employed by Mahmoud Pasha, of
+Zwornik, to paint one of the rooms in his house; when he had half
+accomplished his task, the dispute about the domain of Little Zwornik
+arose, on which he and his companion, a German, were thrown into
+prison, being accused of being a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>Servian captain in disguise. They
+were subsequently liberated, but shot at; the ball going through the
+leg of the narrator. This is another instance of the intense hatred
+the Servians and the Bosniac Moslems bear to each other. It must be
+remarked, that the Christians, in relating a tale, usually make the
+most of it.</p>
+
+<p>The last dish of our dinner was a roast lamb, served on a large
+circular wooden board, the head being split in twain, and laid on the
+top of the pyramid of dismembered parts. We had another jovial
+evening, in which the wine-cup was plied freely, but not to an
+extravagant excess, and the usual toasts and speeches were drunk and
+made. Even in returning to rest, I had not yet done with the pleasing
+testimonies of welcome. On entering the bed-chamber, I found many
+fresh and fragrant flowers inserted in the chinks of the wainscot.</p>
+
+<p>Krupena was originally exclusively a Moslem town, and a part of the
+old bazaar remains. The original inhabitants, who escaped the sword,
+went either to Sokol or into Bosnia. The hodgia, or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>Moslem
+schoolmaster, being on some business at Krupena, came in the morning
+to see us. His dress was nearly all in white, and his legs bare from
+the knee. He told me that the Vayvode of Sokol had a curious mental
+malady. Having lately lost a son, a daughter, and a grandson, he could
+no longer smoke, for when his servant entered with a pipe, he imagined
+he saw his children burning in the tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole day we toiled upwards, through woods and wilds of a
+character more rocky than that of the previous day, and on attaining
+the ridge of the Gutchevo range, I looked down with astonishment on
+Sokol, which, though lying at our feet, was yet perched on a lone
+fantastic crag, which exactly suited the description of the collector
+of Shabatz,&mdash;"a city and castle built on the capital of a column of
+rock." Beyond it was a range of mountains further in Bosnia; further
+on, another outline, and then another, and another. I at once felt
+that, as a tourist, I had broken fresh ground, that I was seeing
+scenes of grandeur unknown to the English public. It was long since I
+had sketched. I instinctively <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>seized my book, but threw it away in
+despair, and, yielding to the rapture of the moment, allowed my eyes
+to mount step after step of this enchanted Alpine ladder.</p>
+
+<p>We now, by a narrow, steep, and winding path cut on the face of a
+precipice, descended to Sokol, and passing through a rotting wooden
+bazaar, entered a wretched khan, and ascending a sort of staircase,
+were shown into a room with dusty mustabahs; a greasy old cushion,
+with the flock protruding through its cover, was laid down for me, but
+I, with polite excuses, preferred the bare board to this odious
+flea-hive. The more I declined the cushion, the more pressing became
+the khan-keeper that I should carry away with me some reminiscence of
+Sokol. Finding that his upholstery was not appreciated, the
+khan-keeper went to the other end of the apartment, and began to make
+a fire for coffee; for this being Ramadan time, all the fires were
+out, and most of the people were asleep. Meanwhile the captain sent
+for the Disdar Aga. I offered to go into the citadel, and pay him a
+visit, but the captain said, "You have no idea how sensitive these
+people <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>are: even now they are forming all sorts of conjectures as to
+the object of your visit; we must, therefore, take them quietly in
+their own way, and do nothing to alarm them. In a few minutes the
+Disdar Aga will be here; you can then judge, by the temper he is in,
+of the length of your stay, and the extent to which you wish to carry
+your curiosity."</p>
+
+<p>I admitted that the captain was speaking sense, and waited patiently
+till the Aga made his appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Footsteps were heard on the staircase, and the Mutsellim entered,&mdash;a
+Turk, about forty-five years of age, who looked cross, as most men are
+when called from a sound sleep. His fez was round as a wool-bag, and
+looked as if he had stuffed a shawl into it before putting it on, and
+his face and eyes had something of the old Mongol or Tartar look. He
+was accompanied by a Bosniac, who was very proud and insolent in his
+demeanour. After the usual compliments, I said, "I have seen some
+countries and cities, but no place so curious as Sokol. I left
+Belgrade on a tour through the interior, not knowing of its existence.
+Other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>wise I would have asked letters of Hafiz Pasha to you: for,
+intending to go to Nish, he gave me a letter to the Pasha there. But
+the people of this country having advised me not to miss the wonder of
+Servia, I have come, seduced by the account of its beauty, not
+doubting of your good reception of strangers:" on which I took out the
+letter of Hafiz Pasha, the direction of which he read, and then he
+said, in a husky voice which became his cross look,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand your speech; if you have seen Belgrade, you must
+find Sokol contemptible. As for your seeing the citadel, it is
+impossible; for the key is with the Disdar Aga, and he is asleep, and
+even if you were to get in, there is nothing to be seen."</p>
+
+<p>After some further conversation, in the course of which I saw that it
+would be better not to attempt "to catch the Tartar," I restricted
+myself to taking a survey of the town. Continuing our walk in the same
+direction as that by which we entered, we completed the threading of
+the bazaar, which was truly abominable, and arrived at the gate of the
+citadel, which was open; so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>that the story of the key and the
+slumbers of the Disdar Aga was all fudge. I looked in, but did not
+enter. There are no new works, and it is a castle such as those one
+sees on the Rhine; but its extraordinary position renders it
+impregnable in a country impracticable for artillery. Although
+blockaded in the time of the Revolution, and the Moslem garrison
+reduced to only seven men, it never was taken by the Servians;
+although Belgrade, Ushitza, and all the other castles, had fallen into
+their hands. Close to the castle is a mosque in wood, with a minaret
+of wood, although the finest stone imaginable is in abundance all
+around. The Mutsellim opened the door, and showed me the interior,
+with blank walls and a faded carpet, opposite the Moharrem. He would
+not allow me to go up the minaret, evidently afraid I would peep over
+into the castle.</p>
+
+<p>Retracing our steps I perceived a needle-shaped rock that overlooked
+the abyss under the fortress, so taking off my boots, I scrambled up
+and attained the pinnacle; but the view was so fearful, that, afraid
+of getting dizzy, I turned to descend, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>but found it a much more
+dangerous affair than the ascent; at length by the assistance of Paul
+I got down to the Mutsellim, who was sitting impatiently on a piece of
+rock, wondering at the unaccountable Englishman. I asked him what he
+supposed to be the height of the rock on which the citadel was built,
+above the level of the valley below.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I know of engineering?" said he, taking me out of hearing: "I
+confess I do not understand your object. I hear that on the road you
+have been making inquiries as to the state of Bosnia: what interest
+can England have in raising disturbances in that country?"</p>
+
+<p>"The same interest that she has in producing political disorder in one
+of the provinces of the moon. In some semi-barbarous provinces of
+Hungary, people confound political geography with political intrigue.
+In Aleppo, too, I recollect standing at the Bab-el-Nasr, attempting to
+spell out an inscription recording its erection, and I was grossly
+insulted and called a Mehendis (engineer); but you seem a man of more
+sense and discernment."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you are evidently not a <i>chapkun</i>. There <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>is nothing more to be
+seen in Sokol. Had it not been Ramadan we should have treated you
+better, be your intentions good or bad. I wish you a pleasant journey;
+and if you wish to arrive at Liubovia before night-fall the sooner you
+set out the better, for the roads are not safe after dark."</p>
+
+<p>We now descended by paths like staircases cut in the rocks to the
+valley below. Paul dismounted in a fright from his horse, and led her
+down; but my long practice of riding in the Druse country had given me
+an easy indifference to roads that would have appalled me before my
+residence there. When we got a little way along the valley, I looked
+back, and the view from below was, in a different style, as remarkable
+as that from above. Sokol looked like a little castle of Edinburgh
+placed in the clouds, and a precipice on the other side of the valley
+presented a perpendicular stature of not less than five hundred feet.</p>
+
+<p>A few hours' travelling through the narrow valley of the Bogatschitza
+brought us to the bank of the Drina, where, leaving the up-heaved
+monuments of a chaotic world, we bade adieu to the Tremendous, and
+again saluted the Beautiful.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+The Drina.&mdash;Liubovia.&mdash;Quarantine Station.&mdash;Derlatcha.&mdash;A
+Servian beauty.&mdash;A lunatic priest.&mdash;Sorry quarters.&mdash;Murder
+by brigands.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The Save is the largest tributary of the Danube, and the Drina is the
+  largest tributary of the Save, but it is not navigable; no river
+  scenery, however, can possibly be prettier than that of the Drina; as
+  in the case of the Upper Danube from Linz to Vienna, the river winds
+  between precipitous banks tufted with wood, but it was tame after the
+  thrilling enchantments of Sokol. At one place a Roman causeway ran
+  along the river, and we were told that a Roman bridge crossed a
+  tributary of the Drina in this neighbourhood, which to this day bears
+  the name of Latinski Tiupria, or Latin bridge.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At Liubovia the hills receded, and the valley was about half a mile
+wide, consisting of fine meadow land with thinly scattered oaks,
+athwart which the evening sun poured its golden floods, suggesting
+pleasing images of abundance without effort. This part of Servia is a
+wilderness, if you will, so scant is it of inhabitants, so free from
+any thing like inclosures, or fields, farms, labourers, gardens, or
+gardeners; and yet it is, and looks a garden in one place, a trim
+English lawn and park in another: you almost say to yourself, "The man
+or house cannot be far off: what lovely and extensive grounds, where
+can the hall or castle be hid?"<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>Liubovia is the quarantine station on the high road from Belgrade to
+Seraievo. A line of buildings, parlatorio, magazines, and
+lodging-houses, faced the river. The director would fain have me pass
+the night, but the captain of Derlatcha had received notice of our
+advent, and we were obliged to push on, and rested only for coffee and
+pipes. The director was a Servian from the Austrian side of the
+Danube, and spoke German. He told me that three thousand individuals
+per annum performed quarantine, passing from Bosnia to Sokol and
+Belgrade, and that the principal imports Were hides, chestnuts, zinc,
+and iron manufactures from the town of Seraievo. On the opposite bank
+of the river was a wooden Bosniac guard-house.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>Remounting our horses after sunset, we continued along the Drina, now
+dubiously illuminated by the chill pallor of the rising moon, while
+hill and dale resounded with the songs of our men. No sooner had one
+finished an old metrical legend of the days of Stephan the powerful
+and Lasar the good, than another began a lay of Kara Georg, the
+"William Tell" of these mountains. Sometimes when we came to a good
+echo the pistols were fired off; at one place the noise had aroused a
+peasant, who came running across the grass to the road crying out, "O
+good men, the night is advancing: go no further, but tarry with me:
+the stranger will have a plain supper and a hard <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>couch, but a hearty
+welcome." We thanked him for his proffer, but held on.</p>
+
+<p>At about ten o'clock we entered a thick dark wood, and after an ascent
+of a quarter of an hour emerged upon a fine open lawn in front of a
+large house with lights gleaming in the windows. The ripple of the
+Drina was no longer audible, but we saw it at some distance below us,
+like a cuirass of polished steel. As we entered the inclosure we found
+the house in a bustle. The captain, a tall strong corpulent man of
+about forty years of age, came forward and welcomed me.</p>
+
+<p>"I almost despaired of your coming to-night," said he; "for on this
+ticklish frontier it is always safer to terminate one's journey by
+sunset. The rogues pass so easily from one side of the water to the
+other, that it is difficult to clear the country of them."</p>
+
+<p>He then led me into the house, and going through a passage, entered a
+square room of larger dimensions than is usual in the rural parts of
+Servia. A good Turkey carpet covered the upper part of the room, which
+was fenced round by cushions placed against the wall, but not raised
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>above the level of the floor. The wall of the lower end of the room
+had a row of strong wooden pegs, on which were hung the hereditary and
+holyday clothes of the family, for males and females. Furs, velvets,
+gold embroidery, and silver mounted Bosniac pistols, guns, and
+carbines elaborately ornamented.</p>
+
+<p>The captain, who appeared to be a plain, simple, and somewhat jolly
+sort of man, now presented me to his wife, who came from the Austrian
+aide of the Save, and spoke German. She seemed, and indeed was, a trim
+methodical housewife, as the order of her domestic arrangements
+clearly showed. Another female, whom I afterwards learned to be the
+wife of an individual of the neighbourhood who was absent, attracted
+my attention. Her age was about four and twenty, when the lines of
+thinking begin to mingle with those of early youth. In fact, from her
+tint I saw that she would soon be <i>passata</i>: her features too were by
+no means classical or regular, and yet she had unquestionably some of
+that super-human charm which Raphael sometimes infused into his female
+figures, as in the St. Cecilia. As <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>I repeated and prolonged my gaze,
+I felt that I had seen no eyes in Belgrade like those of the beauty of
+the Drina, who reminded me of the highest characteristic of
+expression&mdash;"a spirit scarcely disguised enough in the flesh." The
+presence of a traveller from an unknown country seemed to fill her
+with delight; and her wonder was childish, as if I had come from some
+distant constellation in the firmament.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, the father of the captain made his appearance. The same old
+man, whom I had met at Palesh, and who had asked me, "if the king of
+my country lived in a strong castle?" We dined at mid-day by fine
+weather, the windows of the principal apartments being thrown open, so
+as to have the view of the valley, which was here nearly as wide as at
+Liubovia, but with broken ground. For the first time since leaving
+Belgrade we dined, not at an European table, but squatted round a
+sofra, a foot high, in the Eastern manner, although we ate with knives
+and forks. The cookery was excellent; a dish of stewed lamb being
+worthy of any table in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Our host, the captain, never having seen Ush<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>itza, offered to
+accompany me thither; so we started early in the afternoon, having the
+Drina still on our right, and Bosniac villages, from time to time
+visible, and pretty to look at, but I should hope somewhat cleaner
+than Sokol. On arrival at Bashevitza the elders of the village stood
+in a row to receive us close to the house of conciliation. I perceived
+a mosque near this place, and asked if it was employed for any
+purpose. "No," said the captain, "it is empty. The Turks prayed in it,
+after their own fashion, to that God who is theirs and ours; and the
+house of God should not be made a grain magazine, as in many other
+Turkish villages scattered throughout Servia." At this place a number
+of wild ducks were visible, perched on rocks in the Drina, but were
+very shy; only once did one of our men get within shot, which missed;
+his gun being an old Turkish one, like most of the arms in this
+country, which are sometimes as dangerous to the marksman as to the
+mark.</p>
+
+<p>Towards evening we quitted the lovely Drina, which, a little higher
+up, is no longer the boundary between Servia and Bosnia, being
+entirely within <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>the latter frontier, and entered the vale of
+Rogatschitza, watered by a river of that name, which was crossed by an
+ancient Servian bridge, with pointed arches of admirable proportions.
+The village where we passed the night was newly settled, the main
+street being covered with turf, a sign that few houses or traffic
+exist here. The khan was a hovel; but while it was swept out, and
+prepared for us, I sat down with the captain on a shopboard, in the
+little bazaar, where coffee was served. A priest, with an emaciated
+visage, sore eyes, and a distracted look, came up, and wished me good
+evening, and began a lengthened tale of grievances. I asked the
+khan-keeper who he was, and received for answer that he was a Greek
+priest from Bosnia, who had hoarded some money, and had been squeezed
+by the Moslem tyrant of his village, which drove him mad. Confused
+ejaculations, mingled with sighs, fell from him, as if he supposed his
+story to be universally known.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, good man," said I, "and tell me your tale, for I am a
+stranger, and never heard it before. Tell it me, beginning with the
+beginning, and ending with the end."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Bogami Gospody," said the priest, wiping the copious tears, "I was
+once the happiest man in Bosnia; the sun never rose without my
+thanking God for having given me so much peace and happiness: but Ali
+Kiahya, where I lived, received information that I had money hid. One
+day his Momkes took me before him. My appeals for mercy and justice
+were useless. I was thrown down on my face, and received 617 strokes
+on my soles, praying for courage to hold out. At the 618th stroke my
+strength of mind and body failed, and I yielded up all my money, seven
+hundred dollars, to preserve my life. For a whole year I drank not a
+drop of wine, nothing but brandy, brandy, brandy."</p>
+
+<p>Here the priest sobbed aloud. My heart was wrung, but I was in no
+condition to assist him; so I bade him be of good cheer, and look on
+his misfortune as a gloomy avenue to happier and brighter days.</p>
+
+<p>We slept on hay, put under our carpets and pillows, this being the
+first time since leaving Belgrade that we did not sleep in sheets. We
+next day ascended the Rogatschitza river to its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>source, and then, by
+a long ascent through pines and rocks, attained the parting of the
+waters.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>Leaving the basin of the Drina, we descended to that of the Morava by
+a steep road, until we came to beautifully rich meadows, which are
+called the Ushitkza Luka, or meadows, which are to this day a
+debatable ground for the Moslem inhabitants of Ushitza, and the
+Servian villages in the neighbourhood. From here to Ushitza the road
+is paved, but by whom we could not learn. The stones were not large
+enough to warrant the belief of its being a Roman causeway, and it is
+probably a relic of the Servian empire.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> On my return from Servia, I found that the author of
+Eothen had recorded a similar impression derived from the Tartar
+journey on the high road from Belgrade towards Constantinople: but the
+remark is much more applicable to the sylvan beauty of the interior of
+Servia.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> After seeing Ushitza, the captain, who accompanied me,
+returned to his family, at Derlatcha, and, I lament to say, that at
+this place he was attacked by the robbers, who, in summer, lurk in the
+thick woods on the two frontiers. The captain galloped off, but his
+two servants were killed on the spot.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Arrival at Ushitza.&mdash;Wretched streets.&mdash;Excellent Khan.&mdash;Turkish
+Vayvode.&mdash;A Persian Dervish.&mdash;Relations of
+Moslems and Christians.&mdash;Visit the Castle.&mdash;Bird's eye
+view.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Before entering Ushitza we had a fair prospect of it from a gentle
+  eminence. A castle, in the style of the middle ages, mosque minarets,
+  and a church spire, rose above other objects; each memorializing the
+  three distinct periods of Servian history: the old feudal monarchy,
+  the Turkish occupation, and the new principality. We entered the
+  bazaars, which were rotting and ruinous, the air infected with the
+  loathsome vapours of dung-hills, and their putrescent carcases,
+  tanpits with green hides, horns, and offal: here and there a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>hideous
+  old rat showed its head at some crevice in the boards, to complete the
+  picture of impurity and desolation.</p>
+<p>Strange to say, after this ordeal we put up at an excellent khan, the
+best we had seen in Servia, being a mixture of the German Wirthshaus,
+and the Italian osteria, kept by a Dalmatian, who had lived twelve
+years at Scutari in Albania. His upper room was very neatly furnished
+and new carpeted.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon we went to pay a visit to the Vayvode, who lived
+among gardens in the upper town, out of the stench of the bazaars.
+Arrived at the house we mounted a few ruined steps, and passing
+through a little garden fenced with wooden paling, were shown into a
+little carpeted kiosk, where coffee and pipes were presented, but not
+partaken of by the Turks present, it being still Ramadan. The Vayvode
+was an elderly man, with a white turban and a green benish, having
+weak eyes, and a alight hesitation in his speech; but civil and
+good-natured, without any of the absurd suspicions of the Mutsellim of
+Sokol. He at once granted me permission to see the castle, with the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>remark, "Your seeing it can do us no good and no harm, Belgrade
+castle is like a bazaar, any one can go out and in that likes." In the
+course of conversation he told us that Ushitza is the principal
+remaining settlement of the Moslems in Servia; their number here
+amounting to three thousand five hundred, while there are only six
+hundred Servians, making altogether a population of somewhat more than
+four thousand souls. The Vayvode himself spoke Turkish on this
+occasion; but the usual language at Sokol is Bosniac (the same as
+Servian).</p>
+
+<p>We now took our leave of the Vayvode, and continued ascending the same
+street, composed of low one-storied houses, covered with irregular
+tiles, and inclosed with high wooden palings to secure as much privacy
+as possible for the harems. The palings and gardens ceased; and on a
+terrace built on an open space stood a mosque, surrounded by a few
+trees; not cypresses, for the climate scarce allows of them, but those
+of the forests we had passed. The portico was shattered to fragments,
+and remained as it was at the close of the revolution. Close by, is a
+Turbieh or saint's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>tomb, but nobody could tell me to whom or at what
+period it was erected.</p>
+
+<p>Within a little inclosed garden I espied a strangely dressed figure, a
+dark-coloured Dervish, with long glossy black hair. He proved to be a
+Persian, who had travelled all over the East. Without the conical hat
+of his order, the Dervish would have made a fine study for a
+Neapolitan brigand; but his manners were easy, and his conversation
+plausible, like those of his countrymen, which form as wide a contrast
+to the silent hauteur of the Turk, and the rude fanaticism of the
+Bosniac, as can well be imagined. His servant, a withered
+baboon-looking little fellow, in the same dress, now made his
+appearance and presented coffee.</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Who would have expected to see a Persian on the borders of
+Bosnia? You Dervishes are great travellers."</p>
+
+<p><i>Dervish</i>. "You Ingleez travel a great deal more; not content with
+Frengistan, you go to Hind, and Sind, and Yemen.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> The first
+Englishman I ever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>saw, was at Meshed, (south-east of the Caspian,)
+and now I meet you in Roumelly."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Do you intend to go back?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Dervish</i>. "I am in the hands of Allah Talaa. These good Bosniacs here
+have built me this house, and given me this garden. They love me, and
+I love them."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I am anxious to see the mosque, and mount the minaret if it
+be permitted, but I do not know the custom of the place. A Frank
+enters mosques in Constantinople, Cairo, and Aleppo."</p>
+
+<p><i>Dervish</i>. "You are mistaken; the mosques of Aleppo are shut to
+Franks."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Pardon me; Franks are excluded from the mosque of Zekerieh
+in Aleppo, but not from the Osmanieh, and the Adelieh."</p>
+
+<p><i>Dervish</i>. "There is the Muezzin; I dare say he will make no
+difficulty."</p>
+
+<p>The Muezzin, anxious for his backshish, made no scruple; and now some
+Moslems entered, and kissed the hand of the Dervish. When the
+conversation became general, one of them told me, in a low tone, that
+he gave all that he got in charity, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>and was much liked. The Dervish
+cut some flowers, and presented each of us with one.</p>
+
+<p>The Muezzin now looked at his watch, and gave me a wink, expressive of
+the approach of the time for evening prayer; so I followed him into
+the church, which had bare white-washed walls with nothing to remark;
+and then taking my hand, he led me up the dark and dismal spiral
+staircase to the top of the minaret; on emerging on the balcony of
+which, we had a general view of the town and environs.</p>
+
+<p>Ushitza lies in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains. The Dietina,
+a tributary of the Morava, traverses the town, and is crossed by two
+elegantly proportioned, but somewhat ruinous, bridges. The principal
+object in the landscape is the castle, built on a picturesque jagged
+eminence, separated from the precipitous mountains to the south only
+by a deep gully, through which the Dietina struggles into the valley.
+The stagnation of the art of war in Turkey has preserved it nearly as
+it must have been some centuries ago. In Europe, feudal castles are
+complete ruins; in a country such as this, where contests are of a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>guerilla character, they are neglected, but neither destroyed nor
+totally abandoned. The centre space in the valley is occupied by the
+town itself, which shows great gaps; whole streets which stood here
+before the Servian revolution, have been turned into orchards. The
+general view is pleasing enough; for the castle, although not so
+picturesque as that of Sokol, affords fine materials for a picture;
+but the white-washed Servian church, the fac simile of everyone in
+Hungary, rather detracts from the external interest of the view.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening the Vayvode sent a message by his pandour, to say that
+he would pay me a visit along with the Agas of the town, who, six in
+number, shortly afterwards came. It being now evening, they had no
+objection to smoke; and as they sat round the room they related
+wondrous things of Ushitza towards the close of the last century,
+which being the entre-p&ocirc;t between Servia and Bosnia, had a great trade,
+and contained then twelve thousand houses, or about sixty thousand
+inhabitants; so I easily accounted for the gaps in the middle of the
+town. The Vayvode complained bitterly of the inconveniencies to which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>the quarantine subjected them in restricting the free communication
+with the neighbouring province; but he admitted that the late
+substitution of a quarantine of twenty-four hours, for one of ten days
+as formerly, was a great alleviation; "but even this," added the
+Vayvode, "is a hindrance: when there was no quarantine, Ushitza was
+every Monday frequented by thousands of Bosniacs, whom even
+twenty-four hours' quarantine deter."</p>
+
+<p>I asked him if the people understood Turkish or Arabic, and if
+preaching was held. He answered, that only he and a few of the Agas
+understood Turkish,&mdash;that the Mollah was a deeply-read man, who said
+the prayers in the mosque in Arabic, as is customary everywhere; but
+that there was no preaching, since the people only knew their prayers
+in Arabic, but could not understand a sermon, and spoke nothing but
+Bosniac. I think that somebody told me that Vaaz, or preaching, is
+held in the Bosniac language at Seraievo. But my memory fails me in
+certainty on this point.</p>
+
+<p>After a pleasant chat of about an hour they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>went away. Our beds were,
+as the ingenious Mr. Pepys says, "good, but lousy."</p>
+
+<p>Next day, the Servian Natchalnik, who, on my arrival, had been absent
+at Topola with the prince, came to see me; he was a middle-aged man,
+with most perfect self-possession, polite without familiarity or
+effort to please; he had more of the manner of a Moslem grandee, than
+of a Christian subject of the Sultan.</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "Believe me, the people are much pleased that men of
+learning travel through the country; it is a sign that we are not
+forgotten in Europe; thank God and the European powers, that we are
+now making progress."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Servia is certainly making progress; there can be no
+spectacle more delightful to a rightly constituted mind, than that of
+a hopeful young nation approaching its puberty. You Servians are in a
+considerable minority here in Ushitza. I hope you live on good terms
+with the Moslems."</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "Yes, on tolerable terms; but the old ones, who remember
+the former abject position of the Christians, cannot reconcile
+themselves <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>to my riding on horseback through the bazaars, and get
+angry when the Servians sing in the woods, or five off muskets during
+a rejoicing."</p>
+
+<p>The Vayvode now arrived with a large company of Moslems, and we
+proceeded on foot to see the castle, our road being mostly through
+those gardens, on which the old town stood, and following the side of
+the river, to the spot where the high banks almost close in, so as to
+form a gorge. We ascended a winding path, and entered the gate, which
+formed the outlet of a long, gloomy, and solidly built passage.</p>
+
+<p>A group of armed militia men received us as we entered, and on
+regaining the daylight within the walls, we saw nothing but the usual
+spectacle of crumbling crenellated towers, abandoned houses, rotten
+planks, and unserviceable dismounted brass guns. The doujou, or keep,
+was built on a detached rock, connected by an old wooden bridge. The
+gate was strengthened with heavy nails, and closed by a couple of
+enormous old fashioned padlocks. The Vayvode gave us a hint not to ask
+a sight of the interior, by stating that it was only opened at the
+period of inspec<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>tion of the Imperial Commissioner. The bridge which
+overlooked the romantic gorge,&mdash;the rocks here rising precipitately
+from both sides of the Dietina,&mdash;seemed the favourite lounge of the
+garrison, for a little kiosk of rude planks had been knocked up;
+carpets were laid out; the Vayvode invited us to repose a little after
+our steep ascent; pipes and coffee were produced.</p>
+
+<p>I remarked that the castle must have suffered severely in the
+revolution.</p>
+
+<p>"This very place," said the Vayvode, "was the scene of the severest
+conflict. The Turks had twenty-one guns, and the Servians seven. So
+many were killed, that that bank was filled up with dead bodies."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember it well," said a toothless, lisping old Turk, with bare
+brown legs, and large feet stuck in a pair of new red shining
+slippers: "that oval tower has not been opened for a long time. If any
+one were to go in, his head would be cut off by an invisible hangiar."
+I smiled, but was immediately assured by several by-standers that it
+was a positive fact! Our party, swelled by fresh additions, all well
+armed, that made us look like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>a large body of Haiducks going on a
+marauding expedition, now issued by a gate in the castle, opposite to
+that by which I entered, and began to toil up the hill that overlooks
+Ushitza, in order to have a bird's-eye view of the whole town and
+valley. On our way up, the Natchalnik told me, that although long
+resident here, he had never seen the interior of the castle, and that
+I was the first Christian to whom its gates had been opened since the
+revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The old Vayvode, notwithstanding his cumbrous robes, climbed as
+briskly as any of us to the detached fort on the peak of the hill,
+whence we looked down on Ushitza and all its environs; but I was
+disappointed in the prospect, the objects being too much below the
+level of the eye. The landscape was spotty. Ushitza, instead of
+appearing a town, looked like a straggling assemblage of cottages and
+gardens. The best view is that below the bridge, looking to the
+castle.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> This is a phrase, and had no relation to the occupation
+of Sind or Aden.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Poshega.&mdash;The river Morava.&mdash;Arrival at Csatsak.&mdash;A
+Viennese Doctor.&mdash;Project to ascend the Kopaunik.&mdash;Visit
+the Bishop.&mdash;Ancient Cathedral Church.&mdash;Greek
+Mass.&mdash;Karanovatz.&mdash;Emigrant Priest.&mdash;Albania Disorders.&mdash;Salt
+Mines.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>On leaving Ushitza, the Natchalnik accompanied me with a cavalcade of
+  twenty or thirty Christians, a few miles out of the town. The
+  afternoon was beautiful; the road lay through hilly ground, and after
+  two hours' riding, we saw Poshega in the middle of a wide level plain;
+  after descending to which, we crossed the Scrapesh by an elegant
+  bridge of sixteen arches, and entering the village, put up at a
+  miserable khan, although Poshega is the embryo of a town symmetrically
+  and geometrically laid out. Twelve years ago a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>Turk wounded a Servian
+  in the streets of Ushitza, in a quarrel about some trifling matter.
+  The Servian pulled out a pistol, and shot the Turk dead on the spot.
+  Both nations seized their arms, and rushing out of the houses, a
+  bloody affray took place, several being left dead on the spot. The
+  Servians, feeling their numerical inferiority, now transplanted
+  themselves to the little hamlet of Poshega, which is in a finer plain
+  than that of Ushitza; but the colony does not appear to prosper, for
+  most of the Servians have since returned to Ushitza.</p>
+<p>Poshega, from remnants of a nobler architecture, must have been a
+Roman colony. At the new church a stone is built into the wall, having
+the fragment of an inscription:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+  <p>A V I A.&nbsp; G E N T </p>
+  <p>I L&nbsp;&nbsp; F L A<i>I&nbsp; </i>I&nbsp;&nbsp; S P R</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>and various other stones are to be seen, one with a figure sculptured
+on it.</p>
+
+<p>Continuing our way down the rich valley of the Morava, which is here
+several miles wide, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>might contain ten times the present
+population, we arrived at Csatsak, which proved to be as symmetrically
+laid out as Poshega. Csatsak is old and new, but the old Turkish town
+has disappeared, and the new Servian Csatsak is still a foetus. The
+plan on which all these new places are constructed, is simple, and
+consists of a circular or square market place, with bazaar shops in
+the Turkish manner, and straight streets diverging from them. I put up
+at the khan, and then went to the Natchalnik's house to deliver my
+letter. Going through green lanes, we at length stopped at a high
+wooden paling, over-topped with rose and other bushes. Entering, we
+found ourselves on a smooth carpet of turf, and opposite a pretty
+rural cottage, somewhat in the style of a citizen's villa in the
+environs of London. The Natchalnik was not at home, but was gracefully
+represented by his young wife, a fair specimen of the beauty of
+Csatsak; and presently the Deputy and the Judge came to see us. A dark
+complexioned, good-natured looking man, between thirty and forty, now
+entered, with an European air, German trowsers and waistcoat, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>but a
+Turkish riding cloak. "There comes the doctor," said the lady, and the
+figure with the Turkish riding cloak thus announced himself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Doctor</i>. "I' bin a' Wiener."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Gratulire: dass iss a' lustige Stadt."</p>
+
+<p><i>Doctor</i>. "Glaub'ns mir, lust'ger als Csatsak."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I' glaub's."</p>
+
+<p>The Judge, a sedate, elderly, and slightly corpulent man, asked me
+what route I had pursued, and intended to pursue. I informed him of
+the particulars of my journey, and added that I intended to follow the
+valley of the Morava to its confluence with the Danube. "The good
+folks of Belgrade do not travel for their pleasure, and could give me
+little information; therefore, I have chalked out my route from the
+study of the map."</p>
+
+<p>"You have gone out of your way to see Sokol," said he; "you may as
+well extend your tour to Novibazaar, and the Kopaunik. You are fond of
+maps: go to the peak of the Kopaunik, and you will see all Servia
+rolled out before you from Bosnia to Bulgaria, and from the Balkan to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>the Danube; not a map, or a copy, but the original."</p>
+
+<p>"The temptation is irresistible.&mdash;My mind is made up to follow your
+advice."</p>
+
+<p>We now went in a body, and paid our visit to the Bishop of Csatsak,
+who lives in the finest house in the place; a large well-built villa,
+on a slight eminence within a grassy inclosure. The Bishop received us
+in an open kiosk, on the first floor, fitted all round with cushions,
+and commanding a fine view of the hills which inclose the plain of the
+Morava. The thick woods and the precipitous rocks, which impart rugged
+beauty to the valley of the Drina, are here unknown; the eye wanders
+over a rich yellow champaign, to hills which were too distant to
+present distinct details, but vaguely grey and beautiful in the
+transparent atmosphere of a Servian early autumn.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop was a fine specimen of the Church militant,&mdash;a stout fiery
+man of sixty, in full-furred robes, and a black velvet cap. His
+energetic denunciations of the lawless appropriations of Milosh, had
+for many years procured him the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>enmity of that remarkable individual;
+but he was now in the full tide of popularity.</p>
+
+<p>His questions referred principally to the state of parties in England,
+and I could not help thinking that his philosophy must have been
+something like that of the American parson in the quarantine at
+Smyrna, who thought that fierce combats and contests were as necessary
+to clear the moral atmosphere, as thunder and lightning to purify the
+visible heavens. We now took leave of the Bishop, and went homewards,
+for there had been several candidates for entertaining me; but I
+decided for the jovial doctor, who lived in the house that was
+formerly occupied by Jovan Obrenovitch, the youngest and favourite
+brother of Milosh.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, as early as six o'clock, I was aroused by the
+announcement that the Natchalnik had returned from the country, and
+was waiting to see me. On rising, I found him to be a plain, simple
+Servian of the old school; he informed me that this being a saint's
+day, the Bishop would not commence mass until I was arrived. "What?"
+thought I to myself, "does the Bishop <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>think that these obstreperous
+Britons are all of the Greek religion." The doctor thought that I
+should not go; "for," said he, "whoever wishes to exercise the virtue
+of patience may do so in a Greek mass or a Hungarian law-suit!" But
+the Natchalnik decided for going; and I, always ready to conform to
+the custom of the country, accompanied him.</p>
+
+<p>The cathedral church was a most ancient edifice of Byzantine
+architecture, which had been first a church, and then a mosque, and
+then a church again. The honeycombs and stalactite ornaments in the
+corners, as well as a marble stone in the floor, adorned with
+geometrical arabesques, showed its services to Islamism. But the
+pictures of the Crucifixion, and the figures of the priests, reminded
+me that I was in a Christian temple.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishop, in pontificalibus, was dressed in a crimson velvet and
+white satin dress, embroidered in gold, which had cost &pound;300 at Vienna;
+and as he sat in his chair, with mitre on head, and crosier in hand,
+looked, with his white bushy beard, an imposing representative of
+spiritual authority. Sometimes he softened, and looked bland, as if
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>it would not have been beneath him to grant absolution to an emperor.</p>
+
+<p>A priest was consecrated on the occasion; but the service was so long,
+(full two hours and a half,) that I was fatigued with the endless
+bowings and motions, and thought more than once of the benevolent wish
+of the doctor, to see me preserved from a Greek mass and a Hungarian
+law-suit; but the singing was good, simple, massive, and antique in
+colouring. At the close of the service, thin wax tapers were presented
+to the congregation, which each of them lighted. After which they
+advanced and kissed the Cross and Gospels, which were covered with
+most minute silver and gold filagree work.</p>
+
+<p>The prolonged service had given me a good appetite; and when I
+returned to the doctor, he smiled, and said, "I am sure you are ready
+for your <i>caf&eacute; au lait</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I confess it was rather <i>langweilig</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Take my advice for the future, and steer clear of a Greek mass, or a
+Hungarian law-suit."</p>
+
+<p>We now went to take farewell of the Bishop, whom we found, as
+yesterday, in the kiosk, with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>a fresh set of fur robes, and looking
+as superb as ever, with a large and splendid ring on his forefinger.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had not come during a fast," growled he, with as good-humoured
+a smile as could be expected from so formidable a personage, "I would
+have given you a dinner. The English, I know, fight well at sea; but I
+do not know if they like salt fish."</p>
+
+<p>A story is related of this Bishop, that on the occasion of some former
+traveller rising to depart, he asked, "Are your pistols in good
+order?" On the traveller answering in the affirmative, the Bishop
+rejoined, "Well, now you may depart with my blessing!"</p>
+
+<p>Csatsak, although the seat of a Bishop and a Natchalnik, is only a
+village, and is insignificant when one thinks of the magnificent plain
+in which it stands. At every step I made in this country I thought of
+the noble field which it offers for a system of colonization congenial
+to the feelings, and subservient to the interests of the present
+occupants.</p>
+
+<p>We now journeyed to Karanovatz, where we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>arrived after sunset, and
+proceeded in the dark up a paved street, till we saw on our left a
+<i>caf&eacute;</i>, with lights gleaming through the windows, and a crowd of
+people, some inside, some outside, sipping their coffee. An
+individual, who announced himself as the captain of Karanovatz,
+stepped forward, accompanied by others, and conducted me to his house.
+Scarcely had I sat down on his divan when two handmaidens entered, one
+of them bearing a large basin in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"My guest," said the captain, "you must be fatigued with your ride.
+This house is your's. Suppose yourself at home in the country beyond
+the sea."</p>
+
+<p>"What," said I, looking to the handmaidens, "supper already! You have
+divined my arrival to a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; we must put you at your ease before supper time; it is warm
+water."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can be more welcome to a traveller." So the handmaidens
+advanced, and while one pulled off my socks, I lolling luxuriously on
+the divan, and smoking my pipe, the other washed my feet with water,
+tepid to a degree, and then <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>dried them. With these agreeable
+sensations still soothing me, coffee was brought by the lady of the
+house, on a very pretty service; and I could not help admitting that
+there was less roughing in Servian travel than I expected.</p>
+
+<p>After supper, the pariah priest came in, a middle-aged man.</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Do you remember the Turkish period at Karanovatz?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Priest</i>. "No; I came here only lately. My native place is Wuchitern,
+on the borders of a large lake in the High Balkan; but, in common with
+many of the Christian inhabitants, I was obliged to emigrate last
+year."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "For what reason?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Priest</i>. "A horde of Albanians, from fifteen to twenty thousand in
+number, burst from the Pashalic of Scodra upon the peaceful
+inhabitants of the Pashalic of Vrania, committing the greatest
+horrors, burning down villages, and putting the inhabitants to the
+torture, in order to get money, and dishonouring all the handsomest
+women. The Porte sent a large force, disarmed the rascals, and sent
+the leaders to the galleys; but I and my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>people find ourselves so
+well here that we feel little temptation to return."</p>
+
+<p>The grand exploit in the life of our host was a caravan journey to
+Saloniki, where he had the satisfaction of seeing the sea, a
+circumstance which distinguished him, not only from the good folks of
+Karanovatz, but from most of his countrymen in general.</p>
+
+<p>"People that live near the sea," said he, "get their salt cheap
+enough; but that is not the case in Servia. When Baron Herder made his
+exploration of the stones and mountains of Servia, he discovered salt
+in abundance somewhere near the Kopaunik; but Milosh, who at that time
+had the monopoly of the importation of Wallachian salt in his own
+hands, begged him to keep the place secret, for fear his own profits
+would suffer a diminution. Thus we must pay a large price for foreign
+salt, when we have plenty of it at our own doors."<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>Next day, we walked about Caranovatz. It is symmetrically built like
+Csatsak, but better paved and cleaner.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> I have since heard that the Servian salt is to be
+worked.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Coronation Church of the ancient Kings of Servia.&mdash;Enter
+the Highlands.&mdash;Valley of the Ybar.&mdash;First view of the
+High Balkan.&mdash;Convent of Studenitza.&mdash;Byzantine Architecture.&mdash;Phlegmatic
+Monk.&mdash;Servian Frontier.&mdash;New
+Quarantine.&mdash;Russian Major.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>We again started after mid-day, with the captain and his momkes, and,
+  proceeding through meadows, arrived at Zhitchka Jicha. This is an
+  ancient Servian convent, of Byzantine architecture, where seven kings
+  of Servia were crowned, a door being broken into the wall for the
+  entrance of each sovereign, and built up again on his departure. It is
+  situated on a rising ground, just where the river Ybar enters the
+  plain of Karanovatz. The environs are beautiful. The hills are of
+  moderate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>height, covered with verdure and foliage; only campaniles
+  were wanting to the illusion of my being in Italy, somewhere about
+  Verona or Vicenza, where the last picturesque undulations of the Alps
+  meet the bountiful alluvia of the Po. Quitting the valley of the
+  Morava, we struck southwards into the highlands. Here the scene
+  changed; the valley of the Ybar became narrow, the vegetation scanty;
+  and, at evening, we arrived at a tent made of thick matted branches of
+  trees, which had been strewn for us with fresh hay. The elders of
+  Magletch, a hamlet an hour off, came with an offer of their services,
+  in case they were wanted.</p>
+<p>The sun set; and a bright crackling fire of withered branches of pine,
+mingling its light with the rays of the moon in the clear chill of a
+September evening, threw a wild and unworldly pallor over the sterile
+scene of our bivouac, and the uncouth figures of the elders. They
+offered me a supper; but contenting myself with a roasted head of
+Indian corn, and rolling my cloak and pea jacket about me, I fell
+asleep: but felt so cold that, at two o'clock, I roused the
+encamp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>ment, sounded to horse, and, in a few minutes, was again
+mounting the steep paths that lead to Studenitza.</p>
+
+<p>Day gradually dawned, and the scene became wilder and wilder; not a
+chalet was to be seen, for the ruined castle of Magletch on its lone
+crag, betokened nothing of humanity. Tall cedars replaced the oak and
+the beech, the scanty herbage was covered with hoar-frost. The clear
+brooks murmured chillingly down the unshaded gullies, and a grand line
+of sterile peaks to the South, showed me that I was approaching the
+backbone of the Balkan. All on a sadden I found the path overlooking
+a valley, with a few cocks of hay on a narrow meadow; and another turn
+of the road showed me the lines of a Byzantine edifice with a graceful
+dome, sheltered in a wood from the chilling winter blasts of this
+highland region. Descending, and crossing the stream, we now proceeded
+up to the eminence on which the convent was placed, and I perceived
+thick walls and stout turrets, which bade a sturdy defiance to all
+hostile intentions, except such as might be supported by artillery.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On dismounting and entering the wicket, I found myself in an extensive
+court, one side of which was formed by a newly built crescent-shaped
+cloister; the other by a line of irregular out-houses with wooden
+stairs, <i>chardacks</i> and other picturesque but fragile appendages of
+Turkish domestic architecture.</p>
+
+<p>Between these pigeon-holes and the new substantial, but mean-looking
+cloister, on the other side rose the church of polished white marble,
+a splendid specimen of pure Byzantine architecture, if I dare apply
+such an adjective to that fantastic middle manner, which succeeded to
+the style of the fourth century, and was subsequently re-cast by
+Christians and Moslems into what are called the Gothic and
+Saracenic.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span></p>
+<p>A fat, feeble-voiced, lymphatic-faced Superior, leaning on a long
+staff, received us; but the conversation was all on one side, for
+"<i>Blagodarim</i>," (I thank you,) was all that I could get out of him.
+After reposing a little in the parlour, I came out to view the church
+again, and expressed my pleasure at seeing so fair an edifice in the
+midst of such a wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>The Superior slowly raised his eyebrows, looked first at the church,
+then at me, and relapsed into a frowning interrogative stupor; at
+last, suddenly rekindling as if he had comprehended my meaning, added
+"<i>Blagodarim</i>" (I thank you). A shrewd young man, from a village a few
+miles off, now came forward just as the Superior's courage pricked him
+on to ask if there were any convents in my country; "Very few," said
+I.</p>
+
+<p>"But there are," said the young pert Servian, "a great many schools
+and colleges where useful sciences are taught to the young, and
+hospitals, where active physicians cure diseases."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>This was meant as a cut to the reverend Farniente. He looked blank,
+but evidently wanted the boldness and ingenuity to frame an answer to
+this redoubtable innovator. At last he gaped at me to help him out of
+the dilemma.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be sorry," said I, "if any thing were to happen to this
+convent. It is a most interesting and beautiful monument of the
+ancient kingdom of Servia; I hope it will be preserved and honourably
+kept up to a late period."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Blagodarim</i>, (I am obliged to you,)" said the Superior, pleased at
+the Gordian knot being loosed, and then relapsed into his atrophy,
+without moving a muscle of his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>I now examined the church; the details of the architecture showed that
+it had suffered severely from the Turks. The curiously twisted pillars
+of the outer door were sadly chipped, while noseless angels, and
+fearfully mutilated lions guarded the inner portal. Passing through a
+vestibule, we saw the remains of the font, which must have been
+magnificent; and covered with a cupola, the stumps of the white marble
+columns which support it are still visible; high on the wall is a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>piece of sculpture, supposed to represent St. George.</p>
+
+<p>Entering the church, I saw on the right the tomb of St. Simeon, the
+sainted king of Servia; beside it hung his banner with the half-moon
+on it, the insignium of the South Slavonic nation from the dawn of
+heraldry. Near the altar was the body of his son, St. Stephen, the
+patron saint of Servia. Those who accompanied us paid little attention
+to the architecture of the church, but burst into raptures at the
+sight of the carved wood of the screen, which had been most minutely
+and elaborately cut by Tsinsars, (as the Macedonian Latins are called
+to this day).</p>
+
+<p>Close to the church is a chapel with the following inscription:</p>
+
+<p>"I, Stephen Urosh, servant of God, great grandson of Saint Simeon and
+son of the great king Urosh, king of all the Servian lands and coasts,
+built this temple in honour of the holy and just Joachim and Anna,
+1314. Whoever destroys this temple of Christ be accursed of God and of
+me a sinner."</p>
+
+<p>Thirty-five churches in this district, mostly in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>ruins, attest the
+piety of the Neman dynasty. The convent of Studenitza was built
+towards the end of the twelfth century, by the first of the dynasty.
+The old cloister of the convent was burnt down by the Turks. The new
+cloister was built in 1839. In fact it is a wonder that so fine a
+monument as the church should have been preserved at all.</p>
+
+<p>There is a total want of arable land in this part of Servia, and the
+pasture is neither good nor abundant; but the Ybar is the most
+celebrated of all the streams of Servia for large quantities of trout.</p>
+
+<p>Next day we continued our route direct South, through scenery of the
+same rugged and sterile description as that we had passed on the way
+hither. How different from the velvet verdure and woodland music of
+the Gutchevo and the Drina! At one place on the bank of the Ybar,
+there was room for only a led horse, by a passage cut in the rock.
+This place bears the name of Demir Kapu, or Iron Gate. In the evening
+we arrived at the frontier quarantine, called Raska, which is situated
+at two hours' distance from Novibazar.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the midst of an amphitheatre of hills destitute of vegetation,
+which appeared low from the valley, although they must have been high
+enough above the level of the sea, was such a busy scene as one may
+find in the back settlements of Eastern Russia. Within an extensive
+inclosure of high palings was a heterogeneous mass of new buildings,
+some unfinished, and resounding with the saw, the plane, and the
+hatchet; others in possession of the employ&eacute;s in their uniforms;
+others again devoted to the safe keeping of the well-armed caravans,
+which bring their cordovans, oils, and cottons, from Saloniki, through
+Macedonia, and over the Balkan, to the gates of Belgrade.</p>
+
+<p>On dismounting, the Director, a thin elderly man, with a modest and
+pleasing manner, told me in German that he was a native of the
+Austrian side of the Save, and had been attached to the quarantine at
+Semlin; that he had joined the quarantine service, with the permission
+of his government, and after having directed various other
+establishments, was now occupied in organizing this new point.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The <i>traiteur</i> of the quarantine gave us for dinner a very fair
+pillaff, as well as roast and boiled fowl; and going outside to our
+bench, in front of the finished buildings, I began to smoke. A
+slightly built and rather genteel-looking man, with a braided surtout,
+and a piece of ribbon at his button-hole, was sitting on the step of
+the next door, and wished me good evening in German. I asked him who
+he was, and he told me that he was a Pole, and had been a major in the
+Russian service, but was compelled to quit it in consequence of a
+duel.</p>
+
+<p>I asked him if he was content with his present condition; and he
+answered, "Indeed, I am not; I am perfectly miserable, and sometimes
+think of returning to Russia, <i>co&ucirc;te qui co&ucirc;te</i>.&mdash;My salary is &pound;20
+sterling a year, and everything is dear here; for there is no
+village, but an artificial settlement; and I have neither books nor
+European society. I can hold out pretty well now, for the weather is
+fine; but I assure you that in winter, when the snow is on the ground,
+it exhausts my patience." We now took a turn down the inclosure to his
+house, which was the ground-floor of the guard-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>house. Here was a bed
+on wooden boards, a single chair and table, without any other
+furniture.</p>
+
+<p>The Director, obliging me, made up a bed for me in his own house,
+since the only resource at the <i>traiteur's</i> would have been my own
+carpet and pillow.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Ingenious treaties have been written on the origin of the
+Gothic and Saracenic styles of architecture; but it seems to me
+impossible to contemplate many Byzantine edifices without feeling
+persuaded that this manner is the parent of both. Taking the Lower
+Empire for the point of departure, the Christian style spread north to
+the Baltic and westwards to the Atlantic. Saint Stephen's in Vienna,
+standing half way between Byzantium and Wisby, has a Byzantine fa&ccedil;ade
+and a Gothic tower. The Saracenic style followed the Moslem conquests
+round by the southern coasts of the Mediterranean to Morocco and
+Andaloss. Thus both the northern and the eastern styles met each
+other, first in Sicily and then in Spain, both having started from
+Constantinople.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Cross the Bosniac Frontier.&mdash;Gipsy Encampment.&mdash;Novibazar
+described.&mdash;Rough Reception.&mdash;Precipitate Departure.&mdash;Fanaticism.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Next day we were all afoot at an early hour, in order to pay a visit
+  to Novibazar. In order to obviate the performance of quarantine on our
+  return, I took an officer of the establishment, and a couple of men,
+  with me, who in the Levant are called Guardiani; but here the German
+  word Ueber-reiter, or over-rider, was adopted.</p>
+<p>We continued along the river Raska for about an hour, and then
+descried a line of wooden palings going up hill and down dale, at
+right angles with the course we were holding. This was the frontier of
+the principality of Servia, and here <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>began the direct rule of the
+Sultan and the Pashalic of Bosnia. At the guard-house half a dozen
+Momkes, with old fashioned Albanian guns, presented arms.</p>
+
+<p>After half an hour's riding, the valley became wider, and we passed
+through meadow lands, cultivated by Moslem Bosniacs in their white
+turbans; and two hours further, entered a fertile circular plain,
+about a mile and a half in diameter, surrounded by low hills, which
+had a chalky look, in the midst of which rose the minarets and
+bastions of the town and castle of Novibazar. Numerous gipsy tents
+covered the plain, and at one of them, a withered old gipsy woman,
+with white dishevelled hair hanging down on each side of her burnt
+umber face, cried out in a rage, "See how the Royal Servian people
+now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback,"
+alluding to the ancient custom of Christians not being permitted to
+ride on horseback in a town.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>On entering, I perceived the houses to be of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> most forbidding
+aspect, being built of mud, with only a base of bricks, extending
+about three feet from the ground. None of the windows were glazed;
+this being the first town of this part of Turkey in Europe that I had
+seen in such a plight. The over-rider stopped at a large
+stable-looking building, which was the khan of the place. Near the
+door were some bare wooden benches, on which some Moslems, including
+the khan-keeper, were reposing. The horses were foddered at the other
+extremity, and a fire burned in the middle of the floor, the smoke
+escaping by the doors. We now sent our letter to Youssouf Bey, the
+governor, but word was brought back that he was in the harem.</p>
+
+<p>We now sallied forth to view the town. The castle, which occupies the
+centre, is on a slight eminence, and flanked with eight bastions; it
+contains no regular troops, but merely some <i>redif</i>, or militia.
+Besides one small well-built stone mosque, there is nothing else to
+remark in the place. Some of the bazaar shops seemed tolerably well
+furnished; but the place is, on the whole, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>miserable and filthy in
+the extreme. The total number of mosques is seventeen.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon being now advanced, I went to call upon the Mutsellim.
+His konak was situated in a solitary street, close to the fields.
+Going through an archway, we found ourselves in the court of a house
+of two stories. The ground-floor was the prison, with small windows
+and grated wooden bars. Above was an open corridor, on which the
+apartments of the Bey opened. Two rusty, old fashioned cannons were in
+the middle of the court. Two wretched-looking men, and a woman,
+detained for theft, occupied one of the cells. They asked us if we
+knew where somebody, with an unpronounceable name, had gone. But not
+having had the honour of knowing any body of the light-fingered
+profession, we could give no satisfactory information on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>The Momke, whom we had asked after the governor, now re-descended the
+rickety steps, and announced that the Bey was still asleep; so I
+walked out, but in the course of our ramble learned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>that he was
+afraid to see us, on account of the fanatics in the town: for, from
+the immediate vicinity of this place to Servia, the inhabitants
+entertain a stronger hatred of Christians than is usual in the other
+parts of Turkey, where commerce, and the presence of Frank influences,
+cause appearances to be respected. But the people here recollected
+only of one party of Franks ever visiting the town.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>We now sauntered into the fields; and seeing the cemetery, which
+promised from its elevation to afford a good general view of the town,
+we ascended, and were sorry to see so really pleasing a situation
+abused by filth, indolence, and barbarism.</p>
+
+<p>The castle was on the elevated centre of the town; and the town
+sloping on all aides down to the gardens, was as nearly as possible in
+the centre of the plain. When we had sufficiently examined the carved
+stone kaouks and turbans on the tomb stones, we re-descended towards
+the town. A savage-looking Bosniac now started up from behind a low
+outhouse, and trembling with rage and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>fanaticism began to abuse us:
+"Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you have come for. Do you expect
+to see your cross planted some day on the castle?"</p>
+
+<p>The old story, thought I to myself; the fellow takes me for a military
+engineer, exhausting the resources of my art in a plan for the
+reduction of the redoubtable fortress and city of Novibazar.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care how you insult an honourable gentleman," said the
+over-rider; "we will complain to the Bey."</p>
+
+<p>"What do we care for the Bey?" said the fellow, laughing in the
+exuberance of his impudence. I now stopped, looked him full in the
+face, and asked him coolly what he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"I will show you that when you get into the bazaar," and then he
+suddenly bolted down a lane out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>A Christian, who had been hanging on at a short distance, came up and
+said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I advise you to take yourself out of the dust as quickly as possible.
+The whole town is in a state of alarm; and unless you are prepared for
+resistance, something serious may happen: for the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>fellows here are
+all wild Arnaouts, and do not understand travelling Franks."</p>
+
+<p>"Your advice is a good one; I am obliged to you for the hint, and I
+will attend to it."</p>
+
+<p>Had there been a Pasha or consul in the place, I would have got the
+fellow punished for his insolence: but knowing that our small party
+was no match for armed fanatics, and that there was nothing more to be
+seen in the place, we avoided the bazaar, and went round by a side
+street, paid our khan bill,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> and, mounting our horses, trotted
+rapidly out of the town, for fear of a stray shot; but the over-rider
+on getting clear of the suburbs instead of relaxing got into a gallop.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt," cried I, "we are clear of the rascals, and fairly out of
+town;" and coming up to the eminence crowned with the Giurgeve
+Stupovi, on which was a church, said to have been built by Stephen
+Dushan the Powerful, I resolved to ascend, and got the over-rider to
+go so far; but some Bosniacs in a field warned us off with menacing
+gestures. The over-rider said, "For<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> God's sake let us go straight
+home. If I go back to Novibazar my life may be taken."</p>
+
+<p>Not wishing to bring the poor fellow into trouble, I gave up the
+project, and returned to the quarantine.</p>
+
+<p>Novibazar, which is about ten hours distant from the territory of
+Montenegro, and thrice that distance from Scutari, is, politically
+speaking, in the Pashalic of Bosnia. The Servian or Bosniac language
+here ceases to be the preponderating language, and the Albanian begins
+and stretches southward to Epirus. But through all the Pashalic of
+Scutari, Servian is much spoken.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Hodges, her Britannic Majesty's first consul-general in
+Servia, a gentleman of great activity and intelligence, from the
+laudable desire to procure the establishment of an entre-p&ocirc;t for
+British manufactures in the interior, got a certain chieftain of a
+clan Vassoevitch, named British vice-consul at Novibazar. From this
+man's influence, there can be no doubt that had he stuck to trade he
+might have proved useful; but, inflated with vanity, he irritated the
+fana<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>ticism of the Bosniacs, by setting himself up as a little
+Christian potentate. As a necessary consequence, he was obliged to fly
+for his life, and his house was burned to the ground. The Vassoevitch
+clan have from time immemorial occupied certain mountains near
+Novibazar, and pretend, or pretended, to complete independence of the
+Porte, like the Montenegrines.</p>
+
+<p>While I returned to the quarantine, and dismounted, the Director, to
+whom the over-rider related our adventure, came up laughing, and said,
+"What do you think of the rites of Novibazar hospitality?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "More honoured in the breach than in the observance, as our
+national poet would have said."</p>
+
+<p><i>Director</i>. "I know well enough what you mean."</p>
+
+<p><i>By-stander</i>. "The cause of the hatred of these fellows to you is,
+that they fear that some fine day they will be under Christian rule.
+We are pleased to see the like of you here. Our brethren on the other
+side may derive a glimmering hope of liberation from the
+circumstance."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "My government is at present on the best terms with the
+Porte: the readiness with which such hopes arise in the minds of the
+people, is my motive for avoiding political conversations with Rayahs
+on those dangerous topics."</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Most of the gipsies here profess Islamism.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> I presume Messrs. Bou&eacute; and party.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The Austrian zwanziger goes here for only three piastres;
+in Servia it goes for five.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Ascent of the Kopaunik.&mdash;Grand Prospect.&mdash;Descent of
+the Kopaunik.&mdash;Bruss.&mdash;Involuntary Bigamy.&mdash;Conversation
+on the Servian character.&mdash;Krushevatz.&mdash;Relics of
+the Servian monarchy.
+</b>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>A middle-aged, showily dressed man, presented himself as the captain
+  who was to conduct me to the top of the Kopaunik. His clerk was a fat,
+  knock-kneed, lubberly-looking fellow, with a red face, a short neck, a
+  low forehead, and bushy eyebrows and mustachios, as fair as those of a
+  Norwegian; to add to his droll appearance, one of his eyes was
+  bandaged up.</p>
+<p>"As sure as I am alive, that fellow will go off in an apoplexy. What a
+figure! I would give <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>something to see that fellow climbing up the
+ladder of a steamer from a boat on a blowy day."</p>
+
+<p>"Or dancing to the bagpipe," said Paul.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was cloudy, and the captain seemed irresolute, whether to
+advise me to make the ascent or proceed to Banya. The plethoric
+one-eyed clerk, with more regard to his own comfort than my pleasure,
+was secretly persuading the captain that the expedition would end in a
+ducking to the skin, and, turning to me, said, "You, surely, do not
+intend to go up to day, Sir? Take the advice of those who know the
+country?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense," said I, "this is mere fog, which will clear away in an
+hour. If I do not ascend the Kopaunik now, I can never do so again."</p>
+
+<p>Plethora then went away to get the director to lend his advice on the
+same side; and after much whispering he came back, and announced that
+my horse was unshod, and could not ascend the rocks. The director was
+amused with the clumsy bustle of this fellow to save himself a little
+exercise. I, at length, said to the doubting captain, "My good friend,
+an Englishman is like a Servian, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>when he takes a resolution he does
+not change it. Pray order the horses."</p>
+
+<p>We now crossed the Ybar, and ascending for hours through open pasture
+lands, arrived at some rocks interspersed with stunted ilex, where a
+lamb was roasting for our dinner. The meridian sun had long ere this
+pierced the clouds that overhung our departure, and the sight of the
+lamb completely irradiated the rubicund visage of the plethoric clerk.
+A low round table was set down on the grass, under the shade of a
+large boulder stone. An ilex growing from its interstices seemed to
+live on its wits, for not an ounce of soil was visible for its
+subsistence. Our ride gave us a sharp appetite, and we did due
+execution on the lamb. The clerk, fixing his eyes steadily on the
+piece he had singled out, tucked up his sleeves, as for a surgical
+operation, and bone after bone was picked, and thrown over the rock;
+and when all were satisfied, the clerk was evidently at the
+climacteric of his powers of mastication. After reposing a little, we
+again mounted horse.</p>
+
+<p>A gentle wind skimmed the white straggling <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>clouds from the blue sky.
+Warmer and warmer grew the sunlit valleys; wider and wider grew the
+prospect as we ascended. Balkan after Balkan rose on the distant
+horizon. Ever and anon I paused and looked round with delight; but
+before reaching the summit I tantalized myself with a few hundred
+yards of ascent, to treasure the glories in store for the pause, the
+turn, and the view. When, at length, I stood on the highest peak; the
+prospect was literally gorgeous. Servia lay rolled out at my feet.
+There was the field of Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar and
+entombed the ancient empire of Servia. I mused an instant on this
+great landmark of European history, and following the finger of an old
+peasant, who accompanied us, I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad&mdash;the
+scene of one of the bloodiest fights that preceded the resurrection of
+Servia as a principality. The Morava glistened in its wide valley like
+a silver thread in a carpet of green, beyond which the dark mountains
+of Rudnik rose to the north, while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania,
+Macedonia, and Bulgaria walled in the prospect.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"<i>Nogo Svet</i>.&mdash;This is the whole world," said the peasant, who stood
+by me.</p>
+
+<p>I myself thought, that if an artist wished for a landscape as the
+scene of Satan taking up our Saviour into a high mountain, he could
+find none more appropriate than this. The Kopaunik is not lofty; not
+much above six thousand English feet above the level of the sea. But
+it is so placed in the Servian basin, that the eye embraces the whole
+breadth from Bosnia to Bulgaria, and very nearly the whole length from
+Macedonia to Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>I now thanked the captain for his trouble, bade him adieu, and, with a
+guide, descended the north eastern slope of the mountain. The
+declivity was rapid, but thick turf assured us a safe footing. Towards
+night-fall we entered a region interspersed with trees, and came to a
+miserable hamlet of shepherds, where we were fain to put up in a hut.
+This was the humblest habitation we had entered in Servia. It was
+built of logs of wood and wattling. A fire burned in the middle of the
+floor, the smoke of which, finding no vent but the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>door, tried our
+eyes severely, and had covered the roof with a brilliant jet.</p>
+
+<p>Hay being laid in a corner, my carpet and pillow were spread out on
+it; but sleep was impossible from the fleas. At length, the sheer
+fatigue of combating them threw me towards morning into a slumber; and
+on awaking, I looked up, and saw a couple of armed men crouching over
+the glowing embers of the fire. These were the Bolouk Bashi and
+Pandour, sent by the Natchalnik of Krushevatz, to conduct us to that
+town.</p>
+
+<p>I now rose, and breakfasted on new milk, mingled with brandy and
+sugar, no bad substitute for better fare, and mounted horse.</p>
+
+<p>We now descended the Grashevatzka river to Bruss, with low hills on
+each side, covered with grass, and partly wooded. Bruss is prettily
+situated on a rising ground, at the confluence of two tributaries of
+the Morava. It has a little bazaar opening on a lawn, where the
+captain of Zhupa had come to meet me. After coffee, we again mounted,
+and proceeded to Zhupa. Here the aspect of the country changed; the
+verdant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>hills became chalky, and covered with vineyards, which,
+before the fall of the empire, were celebrated. To this day tradition
+points out a cedar and some vines, planted by Militza, the consort of
+Lasar.</p>
+
+<p>The vine-dressers all stood in a row to receive us. A carpet had been
+placed under an oak, by the side of the river, and a round low table
+in the middle of it was soon covered with soup, sheeps' kidneys, and a
+fat capon, roasted to a minute, preceded by onions and cheese, as a
+rinfresco, and followed by choice grapes and clotted cream, as a
+dessert.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said I to the entertainer, as I shook the crumbs out of my
+napkin, and took the first whiff of my chibouque, "that if Stephan
+Dushan's chief cook were to rise from the grave, he could not give us
+better fare."</p>
+
+<p><i>Captain</i>. "God sends us good provender, good pasture, good flocks and
+herds, good corn and fruits, and wood and water. The land is rich; the
+climate is excellent; but we are often in political troubles."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "These recent affairs are trifles, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>you are too young to
+recollect the revolution of Kara Georg."</p>
+
+<p><i>Captain</i>. "Yes, I am; but do you see that Bolouk Bashi who
+accompanied you hither; his history is a droll illustration of past
+times. Simo Slivovats is a brave soldier, but, although a Servian, has
+two wives."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Is he a Moslem?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Captain</i>. "Not at all. In the time of Kara Georg he was an active
+guerilla fighter, and took prisoner a Turk called Sidi Mengia, whose
+life he spared. In the year 1813, when Servia was temporarily
+re-conquered by the Turks, the same Sidi Mengia returned to Zhupa, and
+said, 'Where is the brave Servian who saved my life?' The Bolouk Bashi
+being found, he said to him, 'My friend, you deserve another wife for
+your generosity.' 'I cannot marry two wives,' said Simo; 'my religion
+forbids it.' But the handsomest woman in the country being sought out,
+Sidi Mengia sent a message to the priest of the place, ordering him to
+marry Simo to the young woman. The priest refused; but Sidi Mengia
+sent a second threatening message; so the priest married the couple.
+The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>two wives live together to this day in the house of Simo at
+Zhupa. The archbishop, since the departure of the Turks, has
+repeatedly called on Simo to repudiate his second wife; but the
+principal obstacle is the first wife, who looks upon the second as a
+sort of sister: under these anomalous circumstances, Simo was under a
+sort of excommunication, until he made a fashion of repudiating the
+second wife, by the first adopting her as a sister."</p>
+
+<p>The captain, who was an intelligent modest man, would fain have kept
+me till next day; but I felt anxious to get to Alexinatz; and on
+arrival at a hill called Vrbnitzkobrdo, the vale of the Morava again
+opened upon us in all its beauty and fertility, in the midst of which
+lay Krushevatz, which was the last metropolis of the Servian empire;
+and even now scarce can fancy picture to itself a nobler site for an
+internal capital. Situated half-way between the source and the mouth
+of the Morava, the plain has breadth enough for swelling zones of
+suburbs, suburban villas, gardens, fields, and villages.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was far in the night when we arrived at Krushevatz. The Natchalnik
+was waiting with lanterns, and gave us a hearty welcome. As I went
+upstairs his wife kissed my hand, and I in sport wished to kiss her's;
+but the Natchalnik said, "We still hold to the old national custom,
+that the wife kisses the hand of a stranger." Our host was a
+fair-haired man, with small features and person, a brisk manner and
+sharp intelligence, but tempered by a slight spice of vanity. The
+<i>tout ensemble</i> reminded me of the Berlin character.</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "I am afraid that, happy as we are to receive such
+strangers as you, we are not sufficiently acquainted with the proper
+ceremonies to be used on the occasion."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "The stranger must conform to the usage of the country, not
+the country to the standard of the stranger. I came here to see the
+Servians as they are in their own nature, and not in their imitations
+of Europe. In the East there is more ceremony than in the West; and if
+you go to Europe you will be surprised at the absence of ceremonious
+compliments there."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "The people in the interior are a simple and uncorrupted
+race; their only monitor is nature."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "That is true: the European who judges of the Servians by
+the intrigues of Belgrade, will form an unfavourable opinion of them;
+the mass of the nation, in spite of its faults, is sound. Many of the
+men at the head of affairs, such as Simitch, Garashanin, &amp;c., are men
+of integrity; but in the second class at Belgrade, there is a great
+mixture of rogues."</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "I know the common people well: they are laborious,
+grateful, and obedient; they bear ill-usage for a time, but in the end
+get impatient, and are with difficulty appeased. When I or any other
+governor say to one of the people, 'Brother, this or that must be
+done,' he crosses his hands on his breast, and says, 'It shall be
+done;' but he takes particular notice of what I do, and whether I
+perform what is due on my part. If I fail, woe betide me. The
+Obrenovitch party forgot this; hence their fall."</p>
+
+<p>Next day we went to look at the remains of Servian royalty. A
+shattered gateway and ruined <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>walls, are all that now remain of the
+once extensive palace of Knes Lasar Czar Serbski; but the chapel is as
+perfect as it was when it occupied the centre of the imperial
+quadrangle. It is a curious monument of the period, in a Byzantine
+sort of style; but not for a moment to be compared in beauty to the
+church of Studenitza. Above one of the doors is carved the double
+eagle, the insignium of empire. The great solidity of this edifice
+recommended it to the Turks as an arsenal; hence its careful
+preservation. The late Servian governor had the Vandalism to whitewash
+the exterior, so that at a distance it looks like a vulgar parish
+church. Within is a great deal of gilding and bad painting; pity that
+the late governor did not whitewash the inside instead of the out. The
+Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine bricks were disposed
+in diamond figures between the stones. This antique principle of
+tesselation applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular walls, and
+occasionally adopted and varied <i>ad infinitum</i> by the Saracens, is
+magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the ducal palace of
+Venice.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Formation of the Servian Monarchy.&mdash;Contest between the
+Latin and Greek Churches.&mdash;Stephan Dushan.&mdash;A Great
+Warrior.&mdash;Results of his Victories.&mdash;Knes Lasar.&mdash;Invasion
+of Amurath.&mdash;Battle of Kossovo.&mdash;Death of Lasar
+and Amurath.&mdash;Fall of the Servian Monarchy.&mdash;General
+Observations.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>I cannot present what I have to say on the feudal monarchy of Servia
+  more appropriately than in connexion with the architectural monuments
+  of the period.</p>
+<p>The Servians, known in Europe from the seventh century, at which
+period they migrated from the Carpathians to the Danube, were in the
+twelfth century divided into petty states.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Le premier Roi fut un soldat heureux."</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+<p>Neman the First, who lived near the present Novibazar, first cemented
+these scattered principalities into a united monarchy. He assumed the
+double eagle as the insignium of his dignity, and considered the
+archangel Michael as the patron saint of his family. He was brave in
+battle, cunning in politics, and the convent of Studenitza is a
+splendid monument of his love of the arts. Here he died, and was
+buried in 1195.</p>
+
+<p>Servia and Bosnia were, at this remote period, the debatable territory
+between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, so divided was
+opinion at that time even in Servia Proper, where now a Roman Catholic
+community is not to be found, that two out of the three sons of this
+prince were inclined to the Latin ritual.</p>
+
+<p>Stephan, the son of Neman, ultimately held by the Greek Church, and
+was crowned by his brother Sava, Greek Archbishop of Servia. The
+Chronicles of Daniel tell that "he was led to the altar, anointed with
+oil, clad in purple, and the archbishop, placing the crown on his
+head, cried aloud three times, 'Long live Stephan the first crowned
+King and Autocrat of Servia,' on which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>all the assembled magnates and
+people cried, <i>'nogo lieto</i>!' (many years!)"</p>
+
+<p>The Servian kingdom was gradually extended under his successors, and
+attained its climax under Stephan Dushan, surnamed the Powerful, who
+was, according to all contemporary accounts, of tall stature and a
+commanding kingly presence. He began his reign in the year 1336, and
+in the course of the four following years, overran nearly the whole of
+what is now called Turkey in Europe; and having besieged the Emperor
+Andronicus in Thessalonica, compelled him to cede Albania and
+Macedonia. Prisrend, in the former province, was selected as the
+capital; the pompous honorary charges and frivolous ceremonial of the
+Greek emperors were introduced at his court, and the short-lived
+national order of the Knights of St. Stephan was instituted by him in
+1346.</p>
+
+<p>He then turned his arms northwards, and defeated Louis of Hungary in
+several engagements. He was preparing to invade Thrace, and attempt
+the conquest of Constantinople, in 1356, with eighty thousand men, but
+death cut him off in the midst of his career.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The brilliant victories of Stephan Dushan were a misfortune to
+Christendom. They shattered the Greek empire, the last feeble bulwark
+of Europe, and paved the way for those ultimate successes of the
+Asiatic conquerors, which a timely union of strength might have
+prevented. Stephan Dushan was the little Napoleon of his day; he
+conquered, but did not consolidate: and his scourging wars were
+insufficiently balanced by the advantage of the code of laws to which
+he gave his name.</p>
+
+<p>His son Urosh, being a weak and incapable prince, was murdered by one
+of the generals of the army, and thus ended the Neman dynasty, after
+having subsisted 212 years, and produced eight kings and two emperors.
+The crown now devolved on Knes, or Prince Lasar, a connexion of the
+house of Neman, who was crowned Czar, but is more generally called
+Knes Lasar. Of all the ancient rulers of the country, his memory is
+held the dearest by the Servians of the present day. He appears to
+have been a pious and generous prince, and at the same time to have
+been a brave but unsuccessful general.</p>
+
+<p>Amurath, the Ottoman Sultan, who had already <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>taken all Roumelia,
+south of the Balkan, now resolved to pass these mountains, and invade
+Servia Proper; but, to make sure of success, secretly offered the
+crown to Wuk Brankovich, a Servian chief, as a reward for his
+treachery to Lasar.</p>
+
+<p>Wuk caught at the bait, and when the armies were in sight of each
+other, accused Milosh Kobilich, the son-in-law of Lasar, of being a
+traitor. On the night before the battle, Lasar assembled all the
+knights and nobles to decide the matter between Wuk and Milosh. Lasar
+then took a silver cup of wine, handed it over to Milosh, and said,
+"Take this cup of wine from my hand and drink it." Milosh drank it, in
+token of his fidelity, and said, "Now there is no time for disputing.
+To-morrow I will prove that my accuser is a calumniator, and that I am
+a faithful subject of my prince and father-in-law."</p>
+
+<p>Milosh then embraced the plan of assassinating Amurath in his tent,
+and taking with him two stout youths, secretly left the Servian camp,
+and presented himself at the Turkish lines, with his lance reversed,
+as a sign of desertion. Arrived at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>the tent of Amurath, he knelt
+down, and, pretending to kiss the hand of the Sultan, drew forth his
+dagger, and stabbed him in the body, from which wound Amurath died.
+Hence the usage of the Ottomans not to permit strangers to approach
+the Sultan, otherwise than with their arms held by attendants.</p>
+
+<p>The celebrated battle of Kossovo then took place. The wing commanded
+by Wuk gave way, he being the first to retreat. The division commanded
+by Lasar held fast for some time, and, at length, yielded to the
+superior force of the Turks. Lasar himself lost his life in the
+battle, and thus ended the Servian monarchy on the 15th of June, 1389.</p>
+
+<p>The state of Servia, previous to its subjugation by the Turks, appears
+to have been strikingly analogous to that of the other feudal
+monarchies of Europe; the revenue being derived mostly from crown
+lands, the military service of the nobles being considered an
+equivalent for the tenure of their possessions. Society consisted of
+ecclesiastics, nobles, knights, gentlemen, and peasants. A citizen
+class seldom or never figures <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>on the scene. Its merchants were
+foreigners, Byzantines, Venetians, or Ragusans, and history speaks of
+no Bruges or Augsburg in Servia, Bosnia, or Albania.</p>
+
+<p>The religion of the state was that of the oriental church; the secular
+head of which was not the patriarch of Constantinople; but, as is now
+the case in Russia, the emperor himself, assisted by a synod, at the
+head of which was the patriarch of Servia and its dependencies.</p>
+
+<p>The first article of the code of Stephan Dushan runs thus: "Care must
+be taken of the Christian religion, the holy churches, the convents,
+and the ecclesiastics." And elsewhere, with reference to the Latin
+heresy, as it was called, "the Orthodox Czar" was bound to use the
+most vigorous means for its extirpation; those who resisted were to be
+put to death.</p>
+
+<p>At the death of a noble, his arms belonged by right to the Czar; but
+his dresses, gold and silver plate, precious stones, and gilt girdles
+fell to his male children, whom failing, to the daughters. If a noble
+insulted another noble, he paid a fine; if a gentleman insulted a
+noble, he was flogged.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The laity were called "dressers in white:" hence one must conclude
+that light coloured dresses were used by the people, and black by the
+clergy. Beards were worn and held sacred: plucking the beard of a
+noble was punished by the loss of the right hand.</p>
+
+<p>Rape was punished with cutting off the nose of the man; the girl
+received at the same time a third of the man's fortune, as a
+compensation. Seduction, if not followed by marriage, was expiated by
+a pound of gold, if the party were rich; half a pound of gold, if the
+party were in mediocre circumstances; and cutting off the nose if the
+party were poor.</p>
+
+<p>If a woman's husband were absent at the wars, she must wait ten years
+for his return, or for news of him. If she got sure news of his death,
+she must wait a year before marrying again. Otherwise a second
+marriage was considered adultery.</p>
+
+<p>Great protection was afforded to friendly merchants, who were mostly
+Venetians. All lords of manors were enjoined to give them hospitality,
+and were responsible for losses sustained by robbery within their
+jurisdiction. The lessees of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>gold and silver mines of Servia, as
+well as the workmen of the state mint, were also Venetians; and on
+looking through Professor Shafarik's collection, I found all the coins
+closely resembling in die those of Venice. Saint Stephan is seen
+giving to the king of the day the banner of Servia, in the same way as
+Saint Mark gives the banner of the republic of Venice to the Doge, as
+seen on the old coins of that state.</p>
+
+<p>The process of embalming was carried to high perfection, for the mummy
+of the canonized Knes Lasar is to be seen to this day. I made a
+pilgrimage some years ago to Vrdnik, a retired monastery in the Frusca
+Gora, where his mummy is preserved with the most religious care, in
+the church, exposed to the atmosphere. It is, of course, shrunk,
+shrivelled, and of a dark brown colour, bedecked with an antique
+embroidered mantle, said to be the same worn at the battle of Kossovo.
+The fingers were covered with the most costly rings, no doubt since
+added.</p>
+
+<p>It appears that the Roman practice of burning the dead, (probably
+preserved by the Tsinsars, the descendants of the colonists in
+Macedonia,) was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>not uncommon, for any village in which such an act
+took place was subject to fine.</p>
+
+<p>If there be Moslems in secret to this day in Andalusia, and if there
+were worshippers of Odin and Thor till lately on the shores of the
+Baltic, may not some secret votaries of Jupiter and Mars have lingered
+among the recesses of the Balkan, for centuries after Christianity had
+shed its light over Europe?</p>
+
+<p>The Servian monarchy having terminated more than half a century before
+the invention of printing, and most of the manuscripts of the period
+having been destroyed, or dispersed during the long Turkish
+occupation, very little is known of the literature of this period
+except the annals of Servia, by Archbishop Daniel, the original
+manuscript of which is now in the Hiliendar monastery of Mount Athos.
+The language used was the old Slaavic, now a dead language, but used
+to this day as the vehicle of divine service in all Greco-Slaavic
+communities from the Adriatic to the utmost confines of Russia, and
+the parent of all the modern varieties of the Southern and Eastern
+Slaavic languages.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+A Battue missed.&mdash;Proceed to Alexinatz.&mdash;Foreign-Office
+Courier.&mdash;Bulgarian frontier.&mdash;Gipsey Suregee.&mdash;Tiupria.&mdash;New
+bridge and macadamized road.
+</b>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The Natchalnik was the Nimrod of his district, and had made
+  arrangements to treat me to a grand hunt of bears and boars on the
+  Jastrabatz, with a couple of hundred peasants to beat the woods; but
+  the rain poured, the wind blew, my sport was spoiled, and I missed
+  glorious materials for a Snyders in print. Thankful was I, however,
+  that the element had spared me during the journey in the hills, and
+  that we were in snug quarters during the bad weather. A day later I
+  should have been caught in the peasant's chimneyless-hut at the foot
+  of the Balkan, and then should have roughed it in earnest.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When the weather settled, I was again in motion, ascending that branch
+of the Morava which comes from Nissa. There was nothing to remark in
+this part of Servia, which proved to be the least interesting part of
+our route, being wanting as well in boldness of outline as in
+luxuriant vegetation.</p>
+
+<p>On approaching a khan, at a short distance from Alexinatz, I perceived
+an individual whom I guessed to be the captain of the place, along
+with a Britannic-looking figure in a Polish frock. This was Captain
+W&mdash;&mdash;, a queen's messenger of the new school.</p>
+
+<p>While we were drinking a cup of coffee, a Turkish Bin Bashi came upon
+his way to Belgrade from the army of Roumelia at Kalkendel; he told us
+that the Pasha of Nish had gone with all his force to Procupli to
+disarm the Arnaouts. I very naturally took out the map to learn where
+Procupli was; on which the Bin Bashi asked me if I was a military
+engineer! "That boy will be the death of me!"&mdash;so nobody but military
+engineers are permitted to look at maps.</p>
+
+<p>For a month I had seen or heard nothing of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>Europe and Europeans
+except the doctor at Csatsak, and his sage maxims about Greek masses
+and Hungarian law-suits. I therefore made prize of the captain, who
+was an intelligent man, with an abundance of fresh political
+chit-chat, and odds and ends of scandal from Paddington to the Bank,
+and from Pall-mall to Parliament-street, brimful of extracts and
+essences of Athen&aelig;ums, United-Services, and other hebdomadals.
+Formerly Foreign-Office messengers were the cast-off butlers and
+valets of secretaries of state. For some time back they have been
+taken from the half-pay list and the educated classes. One or two can
+boast of very fair literary attainments; and a man who once a year
+spends a few weeks in all the principal capitals of Europe, from
+Madrid to St. Petersburg and Constantinople, necessarily picks up a
+great knowledge of the world. The British messengers post out from
+London to Semlin, where they leave their carriages, ride across to
+Alexinatz on the Bulgarian frontier, whence the despatches are carried
+by a Tartar to Constantinople, vi&acirc; Philippopoli and Adrianople.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at Alexinatz, a good English dinner <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>awaited us at the
+konak of the queen's messenger. It seemed so odd, and yet was so very
+comfortable, to have roast beef, plum pudding, sherry, brown stout,
+Stilton cheese, and other insular groceries at the foot of the Balkan.
+There was, moreover, a small library, with which the temporary
+occupants of the konak killed the month's interval between arrival and
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>Next day I visited the quarantine buildings with the inspector; they
+are all new, and erected in the Austrian manner. The number of those
+who purge their quarantine is about fourteen thousand individuals per
+annum, being mostly Bulgarians who wander into Servia at harvest time,
+and place at the disposal of the haughty, warlike, and somewhat
+indolent Servians their more humble and laborious services. A village
+of three hundred houses, a church, and a national school, have sprung
+up within the last few years at this point. The imports from Roumelia
+and Bulgaria are mostly Cordovan leather; the exports, Austrian
+manufactures, which pass through Servia.</p>
+
+<p>When the new macadamized road from Belgrade <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>to this point is
+finished, there can be no doubt that the trade will increase. The
+possible effect of which is, that the British manufactures, which are
+sold at the fairs of Transbalkan Bulgaria, may be subject to greater
+competition. After spending a few days at Alexinatz, I started with
+post horses for Tiupria, as the horse I had ridden had been so
+severely galled, that I was obliged to send him to Belgrade.</p>
+
+<p>Tiupria, being on the high road across Servia, has a large khan, at
+which I put up. I had observed armed guards at the entrance of the
+town, and felt at a loss to account for the cause. The rooms of the
+khan being uninhabitable, I sent Paul with my letter of introduction
+to the Natchalnik, and sat down in the khan kitchen, which was a
+parlour at the same time; an apartment, with a brick floor, one side
+of which was fitted up with a broad wooden bench (the bare boards
+being in every respect preferable in such cases to cushions, as one
+has a better chance of cleanliness).</p>
+
+<p>The other side of the apartment was like a hedge alehouse in England,
+with a long table <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>and moveable benches. Several Servians sat here
+drinking coffee and smoking; others drinking wine. The Cahwagi was
+standing with his apron on, at a little charcoal furnace, stirring his
+small coffee-pot until the cream came. I ordered some wine for myself,
+as well as the Suregee, but the latter said, "I do not drink wine." I
+now looked him in the face, and saw that he was of a very dark
+complexion; for I had made the last stage after sunset, and had not
+remarked him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Are you a Chingany (gipsy)?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Gipsy</i>. "Yes."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Now I recollect most of the gipsies here are Moslems; how
+do you show your adherence to Islamism?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Gipsy</i>. "I go regularly to mosque, and say my prayers."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "What language do you speak?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Gipsy</i>. "In business Turkish or Servian; but with my family
+Chingany."</p>
+
+<p>I now asked the Cahwagi the cause of the guards being posted in the
+streets; and he told me of the attempt at Shabatz, by disguised
+hussars, in which the worthy collector met his death. Paul <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>not
+returning, I felt impatient, and wondered what had become of him. At
+length he returned, and told me that he had been taken in the streets
+as a suspicious character, without a lantern, carried to the
+guard-house, and then to the house of the Natchalnik, to whom he
+presented the letter, and from whom he now returned, with a pandour,
+and a message to come immediately.</p>
+
+<p>The Natchalnik met us half-way with the lanterns, and reproached me
+for not at once descending at his house. Being now fatigued, I soon
+went to bed in an apartment hung round with all sorts of arms. There
+were Albanian guns, Bosniac pistols, Vienna fowling-pieces, and all
+manner of Damascus and Khorassan blades.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, on awaking, I looked out at my window, and found myself
+in a species of kiosk, which hung over the Morava, now no longer a
+mountain stream, but a broad and almost navigable river. The lands on
+the opposite side were flat, but well cultivated, and two bridges, an
+old and a new one, spanned the river. Hence the name Tiupria, from the
+Turkish <i>keupri</i> (bridge,) <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>for here the high road from Belgrade to
+Constantinople crosses the Morava.</p>
+
+<p>The Natchalnik, a tall, muscular, broad-shouldered man, now entered,
+and, saluting me like an old friend, asked me how I slept.</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I thank you, never better in my life. My yesterday's ride
+gave me a sharp exercise, without excessive fatigue. I need not ask
+you how you are, for you are the picture of health and herculean
+strength."</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "I was strong in my day, but now and then nature tells
+me that I am considerably on the wrong side of my climacteric."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Pray tell me what is the reason of this accumulation of
+arms. I never slept with such ample means of defence within my
+reach,&mdash;quite an arsenal."</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "You have no doubt heard of the attempt of the
+Obrenovitch faction at Shabatz. We are under no apprehension of their
+doing any thing here; for they have no partizans: but I am an old
+soldier, and deem it prudent to take precautions, even when
+appearances <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>do not seem to demand them very imperiously. I wish the
+rascals would show face in this quarter, just to prevent our arms from
+getting rusty. Our greatest loss is that of Ninitch, the collector."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Poor follow. I knew him as well as any man can know another
+in a few days. He made a most favourable impression on me: it seems as
+it were but yesternight that I toasted him in a bumper, and wished him
+long life, which, like many other wishes of mine, was not destined to
+be fulfilled. How little we think of the frail plank that separates us
+from the ocean of eternity!"</p>
+
+<p><i>Natchalnik</i>. "I was once, myself, very near the other world, having
+entered as a volunteer in the Russian army that crossed the Balkan in
+1828. I burned a mosque in defiance of the orders of Marshal Diebitch;
+the consequence was that I was tried by a court-martial, and condemned
+to be shot: but on putting in a petition, and stating that I had done
+so through ignorance, and in accomplishment of a vow of vengeance, my
+father and brother having been killed by the Turks in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>war of
+liberation, seven of our houses<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> having been burned at the same
+time, Marshal Diebitch on reading the petition pardoned me."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor of the place now entered; a very little man with a pale
+complexion, and a black braided surtout. He informed me that he had
+been for many years a Surgeon in the Austrian navy. On my asking him
+how he liked that service, he answered, "Very well; for we rarely go
+out to the Mediterranean; our home-ports, Venice and Trieste, are
+agreeable, and our usual station in the Levant is Smyrna, which is
+equally pleasant. The Austrian vessels being generally frigates of
+moderate size, the officers live in a more friendly and comfortable
+way than if they were of heavier metal. But were I not a surgeon, I
+should prefer the wider sphere of distinction which colonial and
+trans-oceanic life and incident opens to the British naval officer;
+for I, myself, once made a voyage to the Brazils."</p>
+
+<p>We now went to see the handsome new bridge in course of construction
+over the Morava. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>architect, a certain Baron Cordon, who had been
+bred a military engineer, happened to be there at the time, and
+obligingly explained the details. At every step I see the immense
+advantages which this country derives from its vicinity to Austria in
+a material point of view; and yet the Austrian and Servian governments
+seem perpetually involved in the most inexplicable squabbles. A gang
+of poor fellows who had been compromised in the unsuccessful attempts
+of last year by the Obrenovitch party, were working in chains,
+macadamizing the road.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Houses or horses; my notes having been written with
+rapidity, the word is indistinct.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Visit to Ravanitza.&mdash;Jovial party.&mdash;Servian and Austrian
+jurisdiction.&mdash;Convent described.&mdash;Eagles reversed.&mdash;Bulgarian
+festivities.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The Natchalnik having got up a party, we proceeded in light cars of
+  the country to Ravanitza, a convent two or three hours off in the
+  mountains to the eastward. The country was gently undulating,
+  cultivated, and mostly inclosed, the roads not bad, and the <i>ensemble</i>
+  such as English landscapes were represented to be half a century ago.
+  When we approached Ravanitza we were again lost in the forest.
+  Ascending by the side of a mountain-rill, the woods opened, and the
+  convent rose in an amphitheatre at the foot of an abrupt rocky
+  mountain; a pleasing spot, but wanting the grandeur and beauty of the
+  sites on the Bosniac frontier.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image_01.jpg" width="600" height="400" alt="Ravanitza." title="Ravanitza." />
+<span class="caption">Ravanitza.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The superior was a tall, polite, middle-aged man. "I expected you long
+ago," said he; "the Archbishop advised me of your arrival: but we
+thought something might have happened, or that you had missed us."</p>
+
+<p>"I prolonged my tour," said I, "beyond the limits of my original
+project. The circumstance of this convent having been the burial-place
+of Knes Lasar, was a sufficient motive for my on no account missing a
+sight of it."</p>
+
+<p>The superior now led us into the refectory, where a long table had
+been laid out for dinner, for with the number of Tiuprians, as well as
+the monks of this convent, and some from the neighbouring convent of
+Manasia, we mustered a very numerous and very gay party. The wine was
+excellent; and I could not help thinking with the jovial Abbot of
+Quimper:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Quand nos joyeux verres<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Se font d&egrave;s le matin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tout le jour, mes fr&egrave;res,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Devient un festin."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p>
+<p>By dint of <i>interlarding</i> my discourse with sundry apophthegms of
+<i>Bacon</i>, and stale paradoxes of Rochefoucaud, I passed current
+throughout Servia considerably above my real value; so after the usual
+toasts due to the powers that be, the superior proposed my health in a
+very long harangue. Before I had time to reply, the party broke into
+the beautiful hymn for longevity, which I had heard pealing in the
+cathedral of Belgrade for the return of Wucics and Petronievitch. I
+assured them that I was unworthy of such an honour, but could not help
+remarking that this hymn "for many years" immediately after the
+drinking of a health, was one of the most striking and beautiful
+customs I had noticed in Servia.</p>
+
+<p>A very curious discussion arose after dinner, relative to the
+different footing of Servians in Austria, and Austrians in Servia. The
+former when in Austria, are under the Austrian law; the latter in
+Servia, under the jurisdiction of their own consul. Being appealed to,
+I explained that in former times the Ottoman Sultans easily permitted
+consular jurisdiction in Turkey, without stipulating corresponding
+privileges for their own subjects; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>for Christendom, and particularly
+Austria, was considered <i>Dar El Harb</i>, or perpetually the seat of war,
+in which it was illegal for subjects of the Sultan to reside.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon we made a survey of the convent and church, which
+were built by Knes Lasar, and surrounded by a wall and seven towers.</p>
+
+<p>The church, like all the other edifices of this description, is
+Byzantine; but being built of stone, wants the refinement which shone
+in the sculptures and marbles of Studenitza. I remarked, however, that
+the cupolas were admirably proportioned and most harmoniously
+disposed. Before entering I looked above the door, and perceived that
+the double eagles carved there are reversed. Instead of having body to
+body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as in the arms of Austria
+and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks inward to beak.</p>
+
+<p>On entering we were shown the different vessels, one of which is a
+splendid cup, presented by Peter the Great, and several of the same
+description from the empress Catharine, some in gold, silver, and
+steel; others in gold, silver, and bronze.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The body of Knes Lasar, after having been for some time hid, was
+buried here in 1394, remained till 1684, at which period it was taken
+over to Virdnik in Syrmium, where it remains to this day.</p>
+
+<p>In the cool of the evening the superior took me to a spring of clear
+delicious water, gushing from rocks environed with trees. A boy with a
+large crystal goblet, dashed it into the clear lymph, and presented it
+to me. The superior fell into eulogy of his favourite Valclusa, and I
+drank not only this but several glasses, with circumstantial
+criticisms on its excellence; so that the superior seemed delighted at
+my having rendered such ample justice to the water he so loudly
+praised, <i>Entre nous</i>,&mdash;the excellence of his wine, and the toasts
+that we had drunk to the health of innumerable loyal and virtuous
+individuals, rendered me a greater amateur of water-bibbing than
+usual.</p>
+
+<p>After some time we returned, and saw a lamb roasting for supper in the
+open air; a hole being dug in the earth, chopped vine-twigs are burnt
+below it, the crimson glow of which soon roasts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>the lamb, and imparts
+a particular fragrance to the flesh. After supper we went out in the
+mild dark evening to a mount, where a bonfire blazed and glared on the
+high square tower of the convent, and cushions were laid for
+chibouques and coffee. The not unpleasing drone of bagpipes resounded
+through the woods, and a number of Bulgarians executed their national
+dance in a circle, taking hold of each other's girdle, and keeping
+time with the greatest exactness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Manasia&mdash;Has preserved its middle-age character.&mdash;Robinson
+Crusoe.&mdash;Wonderful Echo.&mdash;Kindness of the people.&mdash;Svilainitza.&mdash;Posharevatz.&mdash;Baby
+Giantess.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Next day, accompanied by the doctor, and a portion of the party of
+  yesterday, we proceeded to the convent of Manasia, five hours off; our
+  journey being mostly through forests, with the most wretched roads.
+  Sometimes we had to cross streams of considerable depth; at other
+  places the oaks, arching over head, almost excluded the light: at
+  length, on doubling a precipitous promontory of rock, a wide open
+  valley burst upon us, at the extremity of which we saw the donjons and
+  crenellated towers of a perfect feudal castle surrounding and fencing
+  in the domes of an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>antique church. Again I say, that those who wish
+  to see the castellated monuments of the middle ages just as they were
+  left by the builders, must come to this country. With us in old
+  Europe, they are either modernized or in ruins, and in many of them
+  every tower and gate reflects the taste of a separate period; some
+  edifices showing a grotesque progress from Gothic to Italian, and from
+  Italian to Roman <i>&agrave; la Louis Quinze</i>: a succession which corresponds
+  with the portraits within doors, which begin with coats of mail, or
+  padded velvet, and end with bag-wigs and shoe-buckles. But here, at
+  Manasia,</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The battle towers, the donjon keep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The loophole grates, where captives weep.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The flanking walls that round it sweep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In yellow lustre shone;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and we were quietly carried back to the year of our Lord 1400; for
+this castle and church were built by Stephan, Despot of Servia, the
+son of Knes Lasar. Stephan, Instead of being "the Czar of all the
+Servian lands and coasts," became a mere hospodar, who must do as he
+was bid by his masters, the Turks.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Manasia being entirely secluded from the world, the monastic
+establishment was of a humbler and simpler nature than that of
+Ravanitza, and the monks, good honest men, but mere peasants in cowls.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, a strong broad-faced monk, whom I recognized as having
+been of the company at Ravanitza, called for a bumper, and began in a
+solemn matter-of-fact way, the following speech: "You are a great
+traveller in our eyes; for none of us ever went further than Syrmium.
+The greatest traveller of your country that we know of was that
+wonderful navigator, Robinson Crusoe, of York, who, poor man, met with
+many and great difficulties, but at length, by the blessing of God,
+was restored to his native country, his family, and his friends. We
+trust that the Almighty will guard over you, and that you will never,
+in the course of your voyages and travels, be thrown like him on a
+desert island; and now we drink your health, and long life to you."
+When the toast was drunk, I thanked the company, but added that from
+the revolutions in locomotion, I ran a far greater chance now-a-days
+of being <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>blown out of a steam-boat, or smashed to pieces on a
+railway.</p>
+
+<p>From the rocks above Manasia is one of the most remarkable echoes I
+ever heard; at the distance of sixty or seventy yards from one of the
+towers the slightest whisper is rendered with the most amusing
+exactness.</p>
+
+<p>From Manasia we went to Miliva, where the peasantry were standing in a
+row, by the side of a rustic tent, made of branches of trees. Grapes,
+roast fowl, &amp;c. were laid out for us; but thanking them for their
+proffered hospitality, we passed on. From this place the road to
+Svilainitza is level, the country fertile, and more populous than we
+had seen any where else in Servia. At some places the villagers had
+prepared bouquets; at another place a school, of fifty or sixty
+children, was drawn up in the street, and sang a hymn of welcome.</p>
+
+<p>At Svilainitza the people would not allow me to go any further; and we
+were conducted to the chateau of M. Ressavatz, the wealthiest man in
+Servia. This villa is the <i>fac simile</i> of the new ones in the banat of
+Temesvav, having the rooms <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>papered, a luxury in Servia, where the
+most of the rooms, even in good houses, are merely size-coloured.</p>
+
+<p>Svilainitza is remarkable, as the only place in Servia where silk is
+cultivated to any extent, the Ressavatz family having paid especial
+attention to it. In fact, Svilainitza means the place of silk.</p>
+
+<p>From Svilainitza, we next morning started for Posharevatz, or
+Passarovitz, by an excellent macadamized road, through a country
+richly cultivated and interspersed with lofty oaks. I arrived at
+mid-day, and was taken to the house of M. Tutsakovitch, the president
+of the court of appeal, who had expected us on the preceding evening.
+He was quite a man of the world, having studied jurisprudence in the
+Austrian Universities. The outer chamber, or hall of his house, was
+ranged with shining pewter plates in the olden manner, and his best
+room was furnished in the best German style.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes M. Ressavatz, the Natchalnik, came, a serious but
+friendly man, with an eye that bespoke an expansive intellect.</p>
+
+<p>"This part of Servia," said I, "is <i>Ressavatz qu&agrave;</i>, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span><i>Ressavatz l&agrave;</i>.
+We last night slept at your brother's house, at Svilainitza, which is
+the only ch&acirc;teau I have seen in Servia; and to-day the rapid and
+agreeable journey I made hither was due to the macadamized road,
+which, I am told, you were the means of constructing."</p>
+
+<p>The Natchalnik bowed, and the president said, "This road originated
+entirely with M. Ressavatz, who went through a world of trouble before
+he could get the peasantry of the intervening villages to lend their
+assistance. Great was the first opposition to the novelty; but now the
+people are all delighted at being able to drive in winter without
+sinking up to their horses' knees in mud."</p>
+
+<p>We now proceeded to view the government buildings, which are all new,
+and in good order, being somewhat more extensive than those elsewhere;
+for Posharevatz, besides having ninety thousand inhabitants in its own
+<i>nahie</i>,<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> or government, is a sort of judicial capital for Eastern
+Servia.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span></p>
+<p>The principal edifice is a barrack, but the regular troops were at
+this time all at Shabatz. The president showed me through the court of
+appeal. Most of the apartments were occupied with clerks, and fitted
+up with shelves for registers. The court of justice was an apartment
+larger than the rest, without a raised bench, having merely a long
+table, covered with a green cloth, at one end of which was a crucifix
+and Gospels, for the taking of oaths, and the seats for the president
+and assessors.</p>
+
+<p>We then went to the billiard-room with the Natchalnik, and played a
+couple of games, both of which I lost, although the Natchalnik, from
+sheer politeness, played badly; and at sunset we returned to the
+president's house, where a large party was assembled to dinner. We
+then adjourned to the comfortable inner apartment, where, as the chill
+of autumn was beginning to creep over us, we found a blazing fire; and
+the president having made some punch, that showed profound
+acquaintance with the jurisprudence of conviviality, the best amateurs
+of Posharevatz sang their best songs, which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>pleased me somewhat, for
+my ears had gradually been broken into the habits of the Servian muse.
+Being pressed myself to sing an English national song, I gratified
+their curiosity with "God save the Queen," and "Rule Britannia,"
+explaining that these two songs contained the essence of English
+nationality: the one expressive of our unbounded loyalty, the other of
+our equally unbounded ocean dominion.</p>
+
+<p><i>President</i>. "You have been visiting the rocks and mountains of
+Servia; but there is a natural curiosity in this neighbourhood, which
+is much more wonderful. Have you heard of the baby giantess?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Yes, I have. I was told that a child was six feet high, and
+a perfect woman."</p>
+
+<p><i>President</i>. "No, a child of two years and three months is as big as
+other children of six or seven years, and her womanhood such as is
+usual in girls of sixteen."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "It is almost incredible."</p>
+
+<p><i>President</i>. "Well, you may convince yourself with your own eyes,
+before you leave this blessed town."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Natchalnik then called a Momke, and gave orders for the child to
+be brought next day. At the appointed hour the father and mother came
+with the child. It was indeed a baby giantess, higher than its
+brother, who was six years of age. Its hands were thick and strong,
+the flesh plump, and the mamm&aelig; most prominently developed. Seeing the
+room filled with people, it began to cry, but its attention being
+diverted by a nodding mandarin of stucco provided for the purpose, the
+nurse enabled us to verify all the president had said. This phenomenon
+was born the 29th of June, 1842, old style, and the lunar influences
+were in operation on the tenth month after birth. I remarked to the
+president, that if the father had more avarice than decency, he might
+go to Europe, and return with his weight in gold.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Nahie</i> is a Turkish word, and meant "<i>district</i>." The
+original word means "<i>direction</i>," and is applied to winds, and the
+point of the compass.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Rich Soil.&mdash;Mysterious Waters.&mdash;Treaty of Passarovitz.&mdash;The
+Castle of Semendria&mdash;Relics of the Antique.&mdash;The
+Brankovitch Family.&mdash;Pancsova.&mdash;Morrison's Pills.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The soil at Posharevatz is remarkably rich, the greasy humus being
+  from fifteen to twenty-five feet thick, and consequently able to
+  nourish the noblest forest trees. In the Banat, which is the granary
+  of the Austrian empire, trees grow well for fifteen, twenty, or
+  twenty-five years, and then die away. The cause of this is, that the
+  earth, although rich, is only from three to six feet thick, with sand
+  or cold clay below; thus as soon as the roots descend to the
+  substrata, in which they find <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>no nourishment, rottenness appears on
+  the top branches, and gradually descends.</p>
+<p>At Kruahevitza, not very far from Pasharevatz, is a cave, which is, I
+am told, entered with difficulty, into the basin of which water
+gradually flows at intervals, and then disappears, as the doctor of
+the place (a Saxon) told me, with an extraordinary noise resembling
+the molar rumble of railway travelling. This spring is called
+Potainitza, or the mysterious waters.</p>
+
+<p>Posharevatz, miscalled Passarowitz, is historically remarkable, as the
+place where Prince Eugene, in 1718, after his brilliant victories of
+the previous year, including the capture of Belgrade, signed, with the
+Turks, the treaty which gave back to the house of Austria not only the
+whole of Hungary, but added great part of Servia and Little Wallachia,
+as far as the Aluta. With this period began the Austrian rule in
+Servia, and at this time the French fashioned Lange Gasse of Belgrade
+rose amid the "swelling domes and pointed minarets of the white
+eagle's nest."<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p>
+<p>Several quaint incidents had recalled this period during my tour. For
+instance, at Manasia, I saw rudely engraven on the church wall,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left:10em ">Wolfgang Zastoff,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left:5em ">Kaiserlicher Forst-Meister im Maidan.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left:10em ">Die 1 Aug. 1721.</span></p>
+
+<p>Semendria is three hours' ride from Posharevatz; the road crosses the
+Morava, and everywhere the country is fertile, populous, and well
+cultivated. Innumerable massive turrets, mellowed by the sun of a
+clear autumn, and rising from wide rolling waters, announced my
+approach to the shores of the Danube. I seemed entering one of those
+fabled strong holds, with which the early Italian artists adorned
+their landscapes. If Semendria be not the most picturesque of the
+Servian castles of the elder period, it is certainly by far the most
+extensive of them. Nay, it is colossal. The rampart next the Danube
+has been shorn of its fair proportions, so as to make it suit the
+modern art of war. Looking at Semendria from one of the three land
+sides, you have a castle of Ercole di Ferrara; looking at it from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>the
+water, you have the boulevard of a Van der Meulen.</p>
+
+<p>The Natchalnik accompanied me in a visit to the fortress, protected
+from accident by a couple of soldiers; for the castle of Semendria is
+still, like that of Shabatz, in the hands of a few Turkish spahis and
+their families. The news from Shabatz having produced a alight
+ferment, we found several armed Moslems at the gate; but they did not
+allow the Servians to pass, with the exception of the Natchalnik and
+another man. "This is new," said he; "I never knew them to be so wary
+and suspicious before." We now found ourselves within the walls of the
+fortress. A shabby wooden <i>caf&eacute;</i> was opposite to us; a mosque of the
+same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right. The
+cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we
+might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or
+fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee. His worship was so
+proud, that he scarcely deigned to speak. The Disdar Aga, a somewhat
+more approximative personage, now entered the tottering chardak, (the
+carpenters of Semendria seem to have emigrated <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span><i>en masse</i>,) and
+proffered himself as Cicerone of the castle.</p>
+
+<p>Mean and abominable huts, with patches of garden ground filled up the
+space inclosed by the gorgeous ramparts and massive towers of
+Semendria. The further we walked the nobler appeared the last relic of
+the dotage of old feudal Servia. In one of the towers next the Danube
+is a sculptured Roman tombstone. One graceful figure points to a
+sarcophagus, close to which a female sits in tears; in a word, a
+remnant of the antique&mdash;of that harmony which dies not away, but
+swells on the finer organs of perception.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Eski, Eski</i>. Very old," said the Disdar Aga, who accompanied me.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Roman," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Roumgi</i>?" said he, thinking I meant <i>Greek</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"No, <i>Latinski</i>," said a third, which is the name usually given to
+<i>Roman</i> remains.</p>
+
+<p>As at Sokol and Ushitza, I was not permitted to enter the inner
+citadel;<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> so, returning to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>gate, where we were rejoined by the
+soldiers, we went to the fourth tower, on the left of the Stamboul
+Kapu, and looking up, we saw inserted and forming part of the wall, a
+large stone, on which was cut, in <i>basso rilievo</i>, a figure of Europa
+reposing on a bull. Here was no fragile grace, as in the other figure;
+a few simple lines bespoke the careless hardihood of antique art.</p>
+
+<p>The castle of Semendria was built in 1432, by the Brankovitch, who
+succeeded the family of Knes Lasar as <i>despots</i>, or native rulers of
+Servia, under the Turks; and the construction of this enormous pile
+was permitted by their masters, under the pretext of the strengthening
+of Servia against the Hungarians. The last of these <i>despots</i> of
+Servia was George Brankovitch, the historian, who passed over to
+Austria, was raised to the dignity of a count; and after being kept
+many years as a state prisoner, suspected of secret correspondence
+with the Turks, died at Eger, in Bohemia, in 1711. The legitimate
+Brankovitch line is now extinct.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p>
+<p>Leaving the fortress, we returned to the Natchalnik's house. I was
+struck with the size, beauty, and flavour of the grapes here; I have
+nowhere tasted such delicious fruit of this description. "Groja
+Smederevsko" are celebrated through all Servia, and ought to make
+excellent wine.</p>
+
+<p>The road from Semendria to Belgrade skirts the Danube, across which
+one sees the plains of the Banat and military frontier. The only place
+of any consequence on that side of the river is Pancsova, the sight of
+which reminded me of a conversation I had there some years ago.</p>
+
+<p>The major of the town, after swallowing countless boxes of Morrison's
+pills, died in the belief that he had not begun to take them soon
+enough. The consumption of these drugs at that time almost surpassed
+belief. There was scarcely a sickly or hypochondriac person, from the
+Hill of Presburg to the Iron Gates, who had not taken large quantities
+of them. Being curious to know the cause of this extensive
+consumption, I asked for an explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"You must know," said an individual, "that the Anglo-mania is nowhere
+stronger than in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>this part of the world. Whatever comes from England,
+be it Congreve rockets, or vegetable pills, must needs be perfect. Dr.
+Morrison is indebted to his high office for the enormous consumption
+of his drugs. It is clear that the president of the British College
+must be a man in the enjoyment of the esteem of the government and the
+faculty of medicine; and his title is a passport to his pills in
+foreign countries."</p>
+
+<p>I laughed heartily, and explained that the British College of Health,
+and the College of Physicians, were not identical.</p>
+
+<p>The road from this point to Belgrade presents no particular interest.
+Half an hour from the city I crossed the celebrated trenches of
+Marshal Laudohn; and rumbling through a long cavernous gateway, called
+the Stamboul Kapousi, or gate of Constantinople, again found myself in
+Belgrade, thankful for the past, and congratulating myself on the
+circumstances of my trip. I had seen a state of patriarchal manners,
+the prominent features of which will be at no distant time rolled flat
+and smooth, by the pressure of old Europe, and the salient angles of
+which will disappear <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>through the agency of the hotel and the
+stagecoach, with its bevy of tourists, who, with greater facilities
+for seeing the beauties of nature, will arrive and depart, shrouded
+from the mass of the people, by the mercenaries that hang on the
+beaten tracks of the traveller.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> In Servian, Belgrade is called Beograd, "white
+city;"&mdash;poetically, "white eagle's nest."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> I think that a traveller ought to see all that he can;
+but, of course, has no right to feel surprised at being excluded from
+citadels.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> One of the representatives of the ancient imperial family
+is the Earl of Devon, for Urosh the Great married Helen of
+Courtenay.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Personal Appearance of the Servians.&mdash;Their Moral
+Character.&mdash;Peculiarities of Manners.&mdash;Christmas
+Festivities.&mdash;Easter.&mdash;The Dodola.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The Servians are a remarkably tall and robust race of men; in form and
+  feature they bespeak strength of body and energy of mind: but one
+  seldom sees that thorough-bred look, which, so frequently found in the
+  poorest peasants of Italy and Greece, shows that the descendants of
+  the most polite of the ancients, although disinherited of dominion,
+  have not lost the corporeal attributes of nobility. But the women of
+  Servia I think very pretty. In body they are not so well shaped as the
+  Greek women; but their complexions are fine, the hair generally black
+  and glossy, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>their head-dress particularly graceful. Not being
+  addicted to the bath, like other eastern women, they prolong their
+  beauty beyond the average climacteric; and their houses, with rooms
+  opening on a court-yard and small garden, are favourable to health and
+  beauty. They are not exposed to the elements as the men; nor are they
+  cooped up within four walls, like many eastern women, without a
+  sufficient circulation of air.</p>
+<p>Through all the interior of Servia, the female is reckoned an inferior
+being, and fit only to be the plaything of youth and the nurse of old
+age. This peculiarity of manners has not sprung from the four
+centuries of Turkish occupation, but appears to have been inherent in
+old Slaavic manners, and such as we read of in Russia, a very few
+generations ago; but as the European standard is now rapidly adopted
+at Belgrade, there can be little doubt that it will thence, in the
+course of time, spread over all Servia.</p>
+
+<p>The character of the Servian closely resembles that of the Scottish
+Highlander. He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in
+simple and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments
+being the bagpipe and fiddle: but unlike the Greek be shows little
+aptitude for trade; and unlike the Bulgarian, he is very lazy in
+agricultural operations. All this corresponds with the Scottish Celtic
+character; and without absolute dishonesty, a certain low cunning in
+the prosecution of his material interests completes the parallel.</p>
+
+<p>The old customs of Servia are rapidly disappearing under the pressure
+of laws and European institutions. Many of these could not have
+existed except in a society in which might made right. One of these
+was the vow of eternal brotherhood and friendship between two
+individuals; a treaty offensive and defensive, to assist each other in
+the difficult passages of life. This bond is considered sacred and
+indissoluble. Frequently remarkable instances of it are found in the
+wars of Kara Georg. But now that regular guarantees for the security
+of life and property exist, the custom appears to have fallen into
+desuetude. These confederacies in the dual state, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>as in Servia, or
+multiple, as in the clan system of Scotland and Albania, are always
+strongest in turbulent times and regions.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another of the old customs of Servia was sufficiently characteristic
+of its lawless state. Abduction of females was common. Sometimes a
+young man would collect a party of his companions, break into a
+village, and carry off a maiden. To prevent re-capture they generally
+went into the woods, where the nuptial knot was tied by a priest
+<i>nolens volens</i>. Then commenced the negotiation for a reconciliation
+with the parents, which was generally successful; as in many instances
+the female had been the secret lover of the young man, and the other
+villagers used to add their persuasion, in order to bring about a
+pacific solution. But if the relations of the girl mode a legal affair
+of it, the young woman was asked if it was by her own will that she
+was taken away; and if she made the admission then a reconciliation
+took place: if not, those concerned in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>abduction were fined, Kara
+Georg put a stop to this by proclamation, punishing the author of an
+abduction with death, the priest with dismissal, and the assistants
+with the bastinado.</p>
+
+<p>The Haiducks, or outlawed robbers, who during the first quarter of the
+present century infested the woods of Servia, resembled the Caterans
+of the Highlands of Scotland, being as much rebels as robbers, and
+imagined that in setting authority at defiance they were not acting
+dishonourably, but combating for a principle of independence. They
+robbed only the rich Moslems, and were often generous to the poor.
+Thus robbery and rebellion being confounded, the term Haiduck is not
+considered opprobrious; and several old Servians have confessed to me
+that they had been Haiducks in their youth, I am sure that the
+adventures of a Servian Rob Roy might form the materials of a stirring
+Romance. There are many Haiducks still in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and on
+the western Balkan; but the race in Servia is extinct, and plunder is
+the only object of the few robbers who now infest the woods in the
+west of Servia.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such are the customs that have just disappeared; but many national
+peculiarities still remain. At Christmas, for instance, every peasant
+goes to the woods, and cuts down a young oak; as soon as he returns
+home, which is in the twilight; he says to the assembled family, "A
+happy Christmas eve to the house;" on which a male of the family
+scatters a little grain on the ground and answers, "God be gracious to
+you, our happy and honoured father." The housewife then lays the young
+oak on the fire, to which are thrown a few nuts and a little straw,
+and the evening ends in merriment.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, after divine service, the family assemble around the dinner
+table, each bearing a lighted candle; and they say aloud, "Christ is
+born: let us honour Christ and his birth." The usual Christmas drink
+is hot wine mixed with honey. They have also the custom of First Foot.
+This personage is selected beforehand, under the idea that he will
+bring luck with him for the ensuing year. On entering the First Foot
+says, "Christ is born!" and receives for answer, "Yes, he is born!"
+while the First Foot scatters a few <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>grains of corn on the floor. He
+then advances and stirs up the wood on the fire, so that it crackles
+and emits sparks; on which the First Foot says, "As many sparks so
+many cattle, so many horses, so many goats, so many sheep, so many
+boars, so many bee hives, and so much luck and prosperity.'" He then
+throws a little money into the ashes, or hangs some hemp on the door;
+and Christmas ends with presents and festivities.</p>
+
+<p>At Easter, they amuse themselves with the game of breaking hard-boiled
+eggs, having first examined those of an opponent to see that they are
+not filled with wax. From this time until Ascension day the common
+formula of greeting is "Christ has arisen!" to which answer is made,
+"Yes; he has truly arisen or ascended!" And on the second Monday after
+Easter the graves of dead relations are visited.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most extraordinary customs of Servia is that of the Dodola.
+When a long drought has taken place, a handsome young woman is
+stripped, and so dressed up with grass, flowers, cabbage and other
+leaves, that her face is scarcely visible; she then, in company with
+several girls of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>twelve or fifteen years of age, goes from house to
+house singing a song, the burden of which is a wish for rain. It is
+then the custom of the mistress of the house at which the Dodola is
+stopped to throw a little water on her. This custom used also to be
+kept up in the Servian districts of Hungary; but has been forbidden by
+the priests.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> The most perfect confederacy of this description is that
+of the Druses, which has stood the test of eight centuries, and in its
+secret organization is complete beyond any thing attained by
+freemasonry.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Town life.&mdash;The public offices.&mdash;Manners half-Oriental
+half-European.&mdash;Merchants and Tradesmen.&mdash;Turkish population.&mdash;Porters.&mdash;Barbers.&mdash;Caf&eacute;s.&mdash;Public  Writer.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>On passing from the country to the town the politician views with
+  interest the transitional state of society: but the student of manners
+  finds nothing salient, picturesque, or remarkable; everything is
+  verging to German routine. If you meet a young man in any department,
+  and ask what he does; he tells you that he is a Concepist or
+  Protocollist.</p>
+<p>In the public offices, the paper is, as in Germany, atrociously
+coarse, being something like that with which parcels are wrapped up in
+England; and sand is used instead of blotting paper. They <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>commence
+business early in the morning, at eight o'clock, and go on till
+twelve, at which hour everybody goes to the mid-day meal. They
+commence again at four o'clock, and terminate at seven, which is the
+hour of supper. The reason of this is, that almost everybody takes a
+siesta.</p>
+
+<p>The public offices throughout the interior of Servia are plain houses,
+with white-washed walls, deal desks, shelves, and presses, but having
+been recently built, have generally a respectable appearance. The
+Chancery of State and Senate house are also quite new constructions,
+close to the palace; but in the country, a Natchalnik transacts a
+great deal of business in his own house.</p>
+
+<p>Servia contains within itself the forms of the East and the West, as
+separately and distinctly as possible. See a Natchalnik in the back
+woods squatted on his divan, with his enormous trowsers, smoking his
+pipe, and listening to the contents of a paper, which his secretary,
+crouching and kneeling on the carpet, reads to him, and you have the
+Bey, the Kaimacam, or the Mutsellim before you. See M. Petronievitch
+scribbling in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>his cabinet, and you have the <i>F&uuml;rstlicher
+Haus-Hof-Staats-und Conferenz-Minister</i> of the meridian of Saxe or
+Hesse.</p>
+
+<p>Servia being an agricultural country, and not possessing a sea-port,
+there does not exist an influential, mercantile, or capitalist class
+<i>per se</i>. Greeks, Jews, and Tsinsars, form a considerable proportion
+of those engaged in the foreign trade: it is to be remarked that most
+of this class are secret adherents of the Obrenovitch party, while the
+wealthy native Servians support Kara Georgevitch.</p>
+
+<p>In Belgrade, the best tradesmen are Germans, or Servians, who have
+learned their business at Pesth; or Temeswar; but nearly all the
+retailers are Servians.</p>
+
+<p>Having treated so fully the aspects and machinery of Oriental life, in
+my work on native society in Damascus and Aleppo, it is not necessary
+that I should say here any thing of Moslem manners and customs. The
+Turks in Belgrade are nearly all of a very poor class, and follow the
+humblest occupations. The river navigation causes many hands to be
+employed in boating; and it always <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>seemed to me that the proportion
+of the turbans on the river exceeded that of the Christian short fez.
+Most of the porters on the quay of Belgrade are Turks in their
+turbans, which gives the landing-place, on arrival from Semlin, a more
+Oriental look than the Moslem population of the town warrants. From
+the circumstance of trucks being nearly unknown in this country, these
+Turkish porters carry weights that would astonish an Englishman, and
+show great address in balancing and dividing heavy weights among them.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the barbers in Belgrade are Turks, and have that superior
+dexterity which distinguishes their craft in the east. There are also
+Christian barbers; but the Moslems are in greater force. I never saw
+any Servian shave himself; nearly all resort to the barber. Even the
+Christian barbers, in imitation of the Oriental fashion, shave the
+straggling edges of the eyebrows, and with pincers tug out the small
+hairs of the nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>The native <i>caf&eacute;s</i> are nearly all kept by Moslems; one, as I have
+stated elsewhere, by an Arab, born <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>in Oude in India; another by a
+Jew, which is frequented by the children of Israel, and is very dirty.
+I once went in to smoke a narghil&eacute;, and see the place, but made my
+escape forthwith. Several Jews, who spoke Spanish to each other, were
+playing backgammon on a raised bench, and seemed to have in their furs
+and dresses that "<i>malpropret&eacute; profonde et huileuse</i>" which M. de
+Custine tells us characterizes the dirt of the north as contrasted
+with that of the southern nations. The <i>caf&eacute;</i> of the Indian, on the
+contrary, was perfectly clean and new.</p>
+
+<p>Moslem boatmen, porters, barbers, &amp;c. serve Christians and all and
+sundry. But in addition to these, there is a sort of bazaar in the
+Turkish quarter, occupied by tradespeople, who subsist almost
+exclusively by the wants of their co-religionists living in the
+quarter, as well as of the Turkish garrison in the fortress. The only
+one of this class who frequented me, was the public writer, who had
+several assistants; he was not a native of Belgrade, but a Bulgarian
+Turk from Ternovo. He drew up petitions to the Pasha in due form, and,
+moreover, engraved seals very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>neatly. His assistants, when not
+engaged in either of these occupations, copied Korans for sale. His
+own handwriting was excellent, and he knew all the styles, Arab,
+Deewanee, Persian, Reka, &amp;c. What keeps him mostly in my mind, was the
+delight with which he entered into, and illustrated, the proverbs at
+the end of M. Joubert's grammar, which the secretary of the Russian
+Consul-general had lent him. Some of the proverbs are so applicable to
+Oriental manners, that I hope the reader will excuse the digression.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss the hand thou hast not been able to cut."</p>
+
+<p>"Hide thy friend's name from thine enemy."</p>
+
+<p>"Eat and drink with thy friend; never buy and sell with him."</p>
+
+<p>"This is a fast day, said the cat, seeing the liver she could not get
+at."</p>
+
+<p>"Of three things one&mdash;Power, gold, or quit the town."</p>
+
+<p>"The candle does not light its base."</p>
+
+<p>"The orphan cuts his own navel-string," &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>The rural population of Servia must necessarily advance slowly, but
+each five years, for a generation to come, will,&mdash;I have little
+doubt,&mdash;alter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>the aspect of the town population, as much relatively
+as the five that are by-gone. Let the lines of railway now in progress
+from Belgium to Hungary be completed, and Belgrade may again become a
+stage in the high road to the East. A line by the valleys of the
+Morava and the Maritsa, with its large towns, Philippopoli and
+Adrianople, is certainly not more chimerical and absurd than many that
+are now projected. Who can doubt of its <i>ultimate</i> accomplishment, in
+spite of the alternate precipitancy and prostration of enterprise?
+Meanwhile imagination loses itself in attempting to picture the
+altered face of affairs in these secluded regions, when subjected to
+the operation of a revolution, which posterity will pronounce to be
+greater than those which made the fifteenth century the morning of the
+just terminated period of civilization.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+
+<div><b>Poetry.&mdash;Journalism.&mdash;The Fine Arts.&mdash;The Lyceum.&mdash;Mineralogical
+cabinet.&mdash;Museum.&mdash;Servian Education.</b></div>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>In the whole range of the Slaavic family there is no nation possessing
+  so extensive a collection of excellent popular poetry. The romantic
+  beauty of the region which they inhabit, the relics of a wild
+  mythology, which, in its general features, has some resemblance to
+  that of Greece and Scandinavia,&mdash;the adventurous character of the
+  population, the vicissitudes of guerilla warfare, and a hundred
+  picturesque incidents which are lost to the muses when war is carried
+  on on a large scale by standing armies, are all given in a dialect,
+  which, for musical sweetness, is to other Slavonic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>tongues what the
+  Italian is to the languages of Western Europe.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+<p>The journalism of Servia began at Vienna; and a certain M. Davidovitch
+was for many years the interpreter of Europe to his less enlightened
+countrymen. The journal which he edited is now published at Pesth, and
+printed in Cyrillian letters. There were in 1843 two newspapers at
+Belgrade, the <i>State Gazette</i> and the <i>Courier</i>; but the latter has
+since been dropped, the editor having vainly attempted to get its
+circulation allowed in the Servian districts of Hungary. Many copies
+were smuggled over in boats, but it was an unremunerating speculation;
+and the editor, M. Simonovitch, who was bred a Hungarian advocate, is
+now professor of law in the Lyceum. Yankee hyperbole was nothing to
+the high flying of this gentleman. In one number, I recollect the
+passage, "These are the reasons why all the people of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>Servia, young
+and old, rich and poor, danced and shouted for joy, when the Lord gave
+them as a Prince a son of the never-to-be-forgotten Kara Georg." A
+Croatian newspaper, containing often very interesting information on
+Bosnia, is published at Agram, the language being the same as the
+Servian, but printed in Roman instead of Cyrillian letters. The <i>State
+Gazette</i> of Belgrade gives the news of the interior and exterior, but
+avoids all reflections on the policy of Russia or Austria. An article,
+which I wrote on Servia for an English publication, was reproduced in
+a translation minus all the allusions to these two powers; and I think
+that, considering the dependent position of Servia, abstinence from
+such discussions is dictated by the soundest policy.</p>
+
+<p>The "Golubitza," or Dove, a miscellany in prose and verse, neatly got
+up in imitation of the German Taschenb&uuml;cher, and edited by M.
+Hadschitch, is the only annual in Servia. In imitation of more
+populous cities, Belgrade has also a "Literary Society," for the
+formation of a complete dictionary of the language, and the
+encouragement of popular literature. I could not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>help smiling at the
+thirteenth statute of the society, which determines that the seal
+should represent an uncultivated field, with the rising sun shining on
+a monument, on which the arms of Servia are carved.</p>
+
+<p>The fine arts are necessarily at a very low ebb in Servia. The useful
+being so imperfect, the ornamental scarcely exists at all. The
+pictures in the churches are mostly in the Byzantine manner, in which
+deep browns and dark reds are relieved with gilding, while the
+subjects are characterized by such extravagancies as one sees in the
+pictures of the early German painters, a school which undoubtedly took
+its rise from the importations of Byzantine pictures at Venice, and
+their expedition thence across the Alps. At present everything
+artistic in Servia bears a coarse German impress, such as for instance
+the pictures in the cathedral of Belgrade.</p>
+
+<p>Thus has civilization performed one of her great evolutions. The light
+that set on the Thracian Bosphorus rose in the opposite direction from
+the land of the once barbarous Hermans, and now feebly re-illumines
+the modern Servia.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of the most hopeful institutions of Belgrade is the Lyceum, or
+germ of a university, as they are proud to call it. One day I went to
+see it, along with Professor Shafarik, and looked over the
+mineralogical collection made in Servia, by Baron Herder, which
+included rich specimens of silver, copper, and lead ore, as well as
+marble, white as that of Carrara. The Studenitza marble is slightly
+grey, but takes a good polish. The coal specimens were imperfectly
+petrified, and of bad quality, the progress of ignition being very
+slow. Servia is otherwise rich in minerals; but it is lamentable to
+see such vast wealth dormant, since none of the mines are worked.</p>
+
+<p>We then went to an apartment decorated like a little ball-room, which
+is what is called the cabinet of antiquities. A noble bronze head,
+tying on the German stove, in the corner of the room, a handsome Roman
+lamp and some antique coins, were all that could be shown of the
+ancient Moesia; but there is a fair collection of Byzantine and Servian
+coins, the latter struck in the Venetian manner, and resembling old
+sequins.</p>
+
+<p>A parchment document, which extended to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>twice the length of a man,
+was now unrolled, and proved to be a patent of Stephan Urosh, the
+father of Stephan Dushan, endowing the great convent of Dechani, in
+Albania. Another curiosity in the collection is the first banner of
+Kara Georg, which the Servians consider as a national relic. It is in
+red silk, and bears the emblem of the cross, with the inscription
+"Jesus Christ conquers."</p>
+
+<p>We then went to the professor's room, which was furnished with the
+newest Russ, Bohemian, and other Slaavic publications, and after a
+short conversation visited the classes then sitting. The end of
+education in Servia being practical, prominence is given to geometry,
+natural philosophy, Slaavic history and literature, &amp;c. Latin and
+Greek are admitted to have been the keys to polite literature, some
+two centuries and a half ago; but so many lofty and noble chambers
+having been opened since then, and routine having no existence in
+Servia, her youth are not destined to spend a quarter of a lifetime in
+the mere nurseries of humanity.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> To those who take an interest in this subject, I have
+great pleasure in recommending a perusal of "Servian Popular Poetry,"
+(London, 1827,) translated by Dr. Bowring; but the introductory
+matter, having been written nearly twenty years ago, is, of course,
+far from being abreast of the present state of information on the
+subjects of which it treats.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Preparations for Departure.&mdash;Impressions of the East.&mdash;Prince
+Alexander.&mdash;The Palace.&mdash;Kara Georg.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The gloom of November now darkens the scene; the yellow leaves sweep
+  round the groves of the Topshider, and an occasional blast from the
+  Frusca Gora, ruffling the Danube with red turbid waves, bids me
+  begone; so I take up pen to indite my last memoranda, and then for
+  England ho!</p>
+<p>Some pleasant parties were given by M. Fonblanque, and his colleagues;
+but although I have freely made Dutch pictures of the "natives," I do
+not feel at liberty to be equally circumstantial with the
+inexhaustible wit and good humour <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>of our hospitable Consul-general. I
+have preserved only a scrap of a conversation which passed at the
+dinner table of Colonel Danilefsky, the Russian agent, which shows the
+various impressions of Franks in the East.</p>
+
+<p>A.B.C.D. discovered.</p>
+
+<p><i>A</i>. "Of all the places I have seen in the east, I certainly prefer
+Constantinople. Not so much for its beauty; since habit reconciles one
+to almost any scene. But because one can there command a greater
+number of those minor European comforts, which make up the aggregate
+of human happiness."</p>
+
+<p><i>B</i>. "I am not precisely of your way of thinking. I look back to my
+residence at Cairo with pleasure, and would like well enough to spend
+another winter there. The Turkish houses here are miserable barracks,
+cold in winter, and unprotected from the sun in summer."</p>
+
+<p><i>C</i>. "The word East is certainly more applicable to the Arab than the
+Turkish countries."</p>
+
+<p><i>D</i>. "I have seen only Constantinople, and think that it deserves all
+that Byron and Anastasius have said of it."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>C</i>. "I am afraid that A. has received his impressions of the East
+from Central Asia, which is a somewhat barbarous country."</p>
+
+<p><i>A</i>. "<i>Pardonnez-moi</i>. The valley of the Oxus is well cultivated, but
+the houses are none of the best."</p>
+
+<p><i>B</i>. "I give my voice for Cairo. It is a city full of curious details,
+as well in its architecture, as in its street population; to say
+nothing of its other resources&mdash;its pleasant promenades, and the
+occasional society of men of taste and letters&mdash;'<i>mais il faut aimer
+la chaleur</i>.'"</p>
+
+<p><i>C</i>. "Well, then, we will take the winter of Cairo; the spring of
+Damascus, and the summer of the Bosphorus."</p>
+
+<p>M. Petronievitch took me to see the Prince, who has got into his new
+residence outside the Constantinople gate, which looks like one of the
+villas one sees in the environs of Vienna. In the centre of the
+parterre is a figure with a trident, which represents the Morava, the
+national river of Servia, and is in reality a Roman statue found near
+Grotzka. The usual allowance of sentries, sentry-boxes, and striped
+palisades stood at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>entrance, and we were shown into an apartment,
+half in the German, and half in the Oriental style. The divan cover
+was embroidered with gold thread.</p>
+
+<p>The Prince now entered, and received me with an easy self-possession
+that showed no trace of the reserve and timidity which foreigners had
+remarked a year before.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"New honours ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">But with the aid of use."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>Prince</i>. "I expected to have seen you at Topola. We had a large
+assemblage of the peasantry, and an ecclesiastical festival, such as
+they are celebrated in Servia."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "Your highness may rest assured that had I known that, I
+should not have failed to go. At Tronosha I saw a similar festival,
+and I am firmly convinced that no peasantry in Europe is freer from
+want."</p>
+
+<p><i>Prince</i>. "Every beginning is difficult; our principle must be,
+'Endeavour and Progress.' Were you pleased with your tour?"</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I think that your Highness has one of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>the most romantic
+principalities in Europe. Without the grandeur of the Alps, Servia has
+more than the beauty of the Apennines."</p>
+
+<p><i>Prince</i>. "The country is beautiful, but I wish to see agriculture
+prosper."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I am happy to hear that: your highness's father had a great
+name as a soldier; I hope that your rule will be distinguished by
+rapid advancement in the arts of civilization; that you will be the
+Kara Georg of peace."</p>
+
+<p>This led to a conversation relative to the late Kara Georg; and the
+prince rising, led me into another apartment, where the portrait of
+his father, the duplicate of one painted for the emperor Alexander,
+hung from the wall. He was represented in the Turkish dress, and wore
+his pistols in his girdle; the countenance expressed not only
+intelligence but a certain refinement, which one would scarcely expect
+in a warrior peasant: but all his contemporaries agree in representing
+him to have possessed an inherent superiority and nobility of nature,
+which in any station would have raised him above his equals.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+A Memoir of Kara Georg.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The Turkish conquest was followed by the gradual dispersion or
+  disappearance of the native nobility of Servia, the last of whom, the
+  Brankovitch, lived as <i>despots</i> in the castle of Semendria, up to the
+  beginning of the eighteenth century; so that at this moment scarcely a
+  single representative of the old stock is to be found.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+<p>The nobility of Bosnia, occupying the middle region between the sphere
+of the Eastern and Western churches, were in a state of religious
+indifference, although nominally Catholic; and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> order to preserve
+their lands and influence, accepted Islamism <i>en masse</i>; they and the
+Albanians being the only instances, in all the wars of the Moslems, of
+a European nobility embracing the Mohamedan faith in a body. Chance
+might have given the Bosniacs a leader of energy and military talents.
+In that case, these men, instead of now wearing turbans in their grim
+feudal castles, might, frizzed and perfumed, be waltzing in pumps; and
+Shakespear and Mozart might now be delighting the citizens assembled
+in the Theatre Royal Seraievo!</p>
+
+<p>The period preceding the second siege of Vienna was the spring-tide of
+Islam conquest. After this event, in 1684, began the ebb. Hungary was
+lost to the Porte, and six years afterwards thirty-seven thousand
+Servian families emigrated into that kingdom; this first led the way
+to contact with the civilization of Germany: and in the attendance on
+the Austrian schools by the youth of the Servian nation during the
+eighteenth century, were sown the seeds of the now budding
+civilization of the principality.</p>
+
+<p>Servia Proper, for a short time wrested from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>the Porte by the
+victories of Prince Eugene, again became a part of the dominions of
+the Sultan. But a turbulent militia overawed the government and
+tyrannized over the Rayahs. Pasvan Oglou and his bands at Widdin were,
+at the end of last century, in open revolt against the Porte. Other
+chiefs had followed his example; and for the first time the Divan
+thought of associating Christian Rayahs with the spahis, to put down
+these rebels, who had organized a system which savoured more of
+brigandage than of government. They frequently used the holiday
+dresses of the peasants as horse-cloths, interrupted the divine
+service of the Christian Rayahs, and gratified their licentious
+appetites unrestrained.</p>
+
+<p>The Dahis, as these brigand-chiefs were called, resolved to anticipate
+the approaching struggle by a massacre of the most influential
+Christians. This atrocious massacre was carried out with indescribable
+horrors. In the dead of the night a party of Dahis Cavasses would
+surround a house, drive open gates and doors with sledge-hammers; the
+awakened and affrighted inmates would rush to the windows, and seeing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>the court-yard filled with armed men with dark lanterns, the shrieks
+of women and children were added to the confusion; and the unhappy
+father was often murdered with the half-naked females of his family
+clinging to his neck, but unable to save him. The rest of the
+population looked on with silent stupefaction: but Kara Georg, a
+peasant, born at Topola about the year 1767, getting timely
+information that his name was in the list of the doomed, fled into the
+woods, and gradually organized a formidable armed force.</p>
+
+<p>His efforts were everywhere successful. In the name of the Porte he
+combated the Dahis, who had usurped local authority, in defiance of
+the Pasha of Belgrade. The Divan, little anticipating the ultimate
+issue of the struggle in Servia, was at first delighted at the success
+of Kara Georg; but soon saw with consternation that the rising of the
+Servian peasants grew into a formidable rebellion, and ordered the
+Pashas of Bosnia and Scodra to assemble all their disposable forces,
+and invade Servia. Between forty and fifty thousand Bosniacs burst
+into Servia on the west, in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>spring of 1806, cutting to pieces all
+who refused to receive Turkish authority.</p>
+
+<p>Kara Georg undauntedly met the storm; with amazing rapidity he marched
+into the west of Servia, cut up in detail several detached bodies of
+Turks, being here much favoured by the broken ground, and put to death
+several village-elders who had submitted to them. The Turks then
+retired to Shabatz; and Kara Georg at the head of only seven thousand
+foot and two thousand horse, in all nine thousand men, took up a
+position at an hour's distance, and threw up trenches. The following
+is the account which Wuk Stephanovitch gives of this engagement.</p>
+
+<p>"The Turks demanded the delivery of the Servian arms. The Servians
+answered, 'Come and take them.' On two successive mornings the Turks
+came out of Shabatz and stormed the breastwork which the Servians had
+thrown up, but without effect. They then sent this message to the
+Servians: 'You have held good for two days; but we will try it again
+with all our force, and then see whether we give up the country to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>the Drina, or whether we drive you to Semendria.'</p>
+
+<p>"In the night before the decisive battle (August, 1806,) Kara Georg
+sent his cavalry round into a wood, with orders to fall on the enemy's
+flank as soon as the first shot should be fired.</p>
+
+<p>"To the infantry within the breastworks he gave orders that they
+should not fire until the Turks were so close that every shot might
+tell. By break of day the Seraskier with his whole army poured out of
+his camp at Shabatz, the bravest Beys of Bosnia bearing their banners
+in the van. The Servians waited patiently until they came close, and
+then opening fire did deadly execution. The standard-bearers fell,
+confusion ensued, and the Servian cavalry issuing from the wood at the
+same time that Kara Georg passed the breastworks at the head of the
+infantry, the defence was changed into an attack; and the rout of the
+Turks was complete. The Seraskier Kullin was killed, as well as Sinan
+Pasha, and several other chiefs. The rest of the Turkish army was cut
+up in the woods, and all the country as far as the Drina evacuated by
+them."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Porte saw with astonishment the total failure of its schemes for
+the re-conquest of Servia, resolved to temporize, and agreed to allow
+them a local and national government with a reduction of tribute; but
+previous to the ratification of the agreement withdrew its consent to
+the fortresses going into the hands of Christian Rayahs; on which Kara
+Georg resolved to seize Belgrade by stratagem.</p>
+
+<p>Before daybreak on the 12th of December, 1806, a Greek Albanian named
+Konda, who had been in the Turkish service, and knew Belgrade well,
+but now fought in the Christian ranks, accompanied by six Servians,
+passed the ditch and palisades that surrounded the city of Belgrade,
+at a point between two posts so as not to be seen, and proceeding to
+one of the gates, fell upon the guard, which defended itself well.
+Four of the Servians were killed; but the Turks being at length
+overpowered, Konda and the two remaining Servians broke open the gate
+with an axe, on which a corps of Servians rushed in. The Turks being
+attracted to this point, Kara Georg passed the ditch at another place
+with a large force.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After a sanguinary engagement in the streets, and the conflagration of
+many houses, the windows of which served as embrasures to the Turks,
+victory declared for the Christians, and the Turks took refuge in the
+citadel.</p>
+
+<p>The Servians, now in possession of the town, resolved to starve the
+Turks out of the fortress; and having occupied a flat island at the
+confluence of the Save and the Danube, were enabled to intercept their
+provisions; on which the Pasha capitulated and embarked for Widdin.</p>
+
+<p>The succeeding years were passed in the vicissitudes of a guerilla
+warfare, neither party obtaining any marked success; and an auxiliary
+corps of Russians assisted in preventing the Turks from making the
+re-conquest of Servia.</p>
+
+<p>Baron, subsequently Marshal Diebitch, on a confidential mission from
+the Russian government in Servia during the years 1810, 1811, writes
+as follows:<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>"George Petrovitch, to whom the Turks have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>given the surname of Kara
+or Black, is an important character. His countenance shows a greatness
+of mind, which is not to be mistaken; and when we take into
+consideration the times, circumstances, and the impossibility of his
+having received an education, we must admit that he has a mind of a
+masculine and commanding order. The imputation of cruelty and
+bloodthirstiness appears to be unjust. When the country was without
+the shadow of a constitution, and when he commanded an unorganized and
+uncultivated nation, he was compelled to be severe; he dared not
+vacillate or relax his discipline: but now that there are courts of
+law, and legal forms, he hands every case over to the regular
+tribunals."</p>
+
+<p>"He has very little to say for himself, and is rude in his manners;
+but his judgments in civil affairs are promptly and soundly formed,
+and to great address he joins unwearied industry. As a soldier, there
+is but one opinion of his talents, bravery, and enduring firmness."</p>
+
+<p>Kara Georg was now a Russian lieutenant-general, and exercised an
+almost unlimited power in Servia; the revolution, after a struggle of
+eight <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>years, appeared to be successful, but the momentous events then
+passing in Europe, completely altered the aspect of affairs. Russia in
+1812, on the approach of the countless legions of Napoleon,
+precipitately concluded the treaty of Bucharest, the eighth article of
+which formally assured a separate administration to the Servians.</p>
+
+<p>Next year, however, was fatal to Kara Georg. In 1813, the vigour of
+the Ottoman empire, undivided by exertions for the prosecution of the
+Russian war, was now concentrated on the re-subjugation of Servia. A
+general panic seemed to seize the nation; and Kara Georg and his
+companions in arms sought a retreat on the Austrian territory, and
+thence passed into Wallachia. In 1814, three hundred Christians were
+impaled at Belgrade by the Pasha, and every valley in Servia presented
+the spectacle of infuriated Turkish spahis, avenging on the Servians
+the blood, exile, and confiscation of the ten preceding years.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> The last of the Brankovitch line wrote a history of
+Servia; but the most valuable portion of the matter is to be found in
+Raitch, a subsequent historical writer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> The original is now in the possession of the Servian
+government, and I was permitted to peruse it; but although
+interesting, it is too long for insertion.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Milosh Obrenovitch.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>At this period Milosh Obrenovitch appears prominently on the political
+  tapis. He spent his youth in herding the famed swine of Servia; and
+  during the revolution was employed by Kara Georg to watch the passes
+  of the Balkan, lest the Servians should be taken aback by troops from
+  Albania and Bosnia. He now saw that a favourable conjuncture had come
+  for his advancement from the position of chieftain to that of chief;
+  he therefore lost no time in making terms with the Turks, offering to
+  collect the tribute, to serve them faithfully, and to aid them in the
+  re-subjugation of the people: he was, therefore, loaded <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>with caresses
+  by the Turks as a faithful subject of the Porte. His offers were at
+  once accepted; and he now displayed singular activity in the
+  extirpation of all the other popular chiefs, who still held out in the
+  woods and fastnesses, and sent their heads to the Pasha; but the
+  decapitation of Glavash, who was, like himself, supporting the
+  government, showed that when he had accomplished the ends of Soliman
+  Pasha, his own turn would come; he therefore employed the ruse
+  described in page 55, made his escape, and, convinced that it was
+  impossible ever to come to terms with Soliman Pasha, raised the
+  standard of open revolt. The people, grown desperate through the
+  ill-treatment of the spahis, who had returned, responded to his call,
+  and rose in a body. The scenes of 1804-5-6, were about to be renewed;
+  but the Porte quickly made up its mind to treat with Milosh, who
+  behaved, during this campaign, with great bravery, and was generally
+  successful. Milosh consequently came to Belgrade, made his submission,
+  in the name of the nation, to Marashly Ali Pasha, the governor of
+  Belgrade, and was reinstated as tribute-collector for the Porte; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>and
+  the war of mutual extermination was ended by the Turks retaining all
+  the castles, as stipulated in the eighth article of the treaty of
+  Bucharest.</p>
+<p>Many of the chiefs, impatient at the speedy submission of Milosh,
+wished to fight the matter out, and Kara Georg, in order to give
+effect to their plans, landed in Servia. Milosh pretended to be
+friendly to his designs, but secretly betrayed his place of
+concealment to the governor, whose men broke into the cottage where he
+slept, and put him to death. Thus ended the brave and unfortunate Kara
+Georg, who was, no doubt, a rebel against his sovereign, the Sultan,
+and, according to Turkish law, deserving of death; but this base act
+of treachery, on the part of Milosh, who was not the less a rebel, is
+justly considered as a stain on his character.</p>
+
+<p>M. Bou&eacute;, who made the acquaintance of Milosh in 1836, gives a short
+account of him.</p>
+
+<p>Milosh rose early to the sound of military music, and then went to his
+open gallery, where he smoked a pipe, and entered on the business of
+the day. Although able neither to read, write, nor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>sign his name, he
+could dictate and correct despatches; and in the evening he caused the
+articles in the <i>Journal des D&eacute;bats</i>, the <i>Constitutionnel</i>, and the
+<i>Augsburg Gazette</i>, to be translated to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Belgrade chief of police<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> having offended Milosh by the boldness
+of his language, and having joined the detractors of the prince at a
+critical moment, although he owed everything to him, Milosh ordered
+his head to be struck off. Fortunately his brother Prince Ievren met
+the people charged with the bloody commission; he blamed them, and
+wished to hinder the deed: and knowing that the police director was
+already on his way to Belgrade from Posharevatz, where he had been
+staying, he asked the momkes to return another way, saying they had
+missed him. The police director thus arrived at Belgrade, was
+overwhelmed with reproaches by Milosh, and pardoned.</p>
+
+<p>A young man having refused to marry one of his cast-off mistresses, he
+was enlisted in the army, but after some months submitted to his fate.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+<p>He used to raise to places, in the Turkish fashion, men who were
+unprepared by their studies for them. One of his cooks became a
+colonel. Another colonel had been a merry-andrew. Having once received
+a good medical advice from his butler, he told him that nature
+intended him for a doctor, and sent him to study medicine under Dr.
+Cunibert.</p>
+
+<p>"When Milosh sent his meat to market, all other sales were stopped,
+until he had sold off his own at a higher price than that current, on
+the ground of the meat being better."</p>
+
+<p>"The prince considered all land in Servia to belong to him, and
+perpetually wished to appropriate any property that seemed better than
+his own, fixing his own price, which was sometimes below the value,
+which the proprietor dared not refuse to take, whatever labour had
+been bestowed on it. At Kragujevatz, he prevented the completion of
+the house of M. Raditchevitch, because some statues of wood, and
+ornaments, which were not to be found in his own palace, were in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>plan. An almanack having been printed, with a portrait of his niece
+Auka, he caused all the copies to be given back by the subscribers,
+and the portraits cut out."</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt, that, after the miserable end of Kara Georg,
+and the violent revolutionary wars, an unlimited dictatorship was the
+best regimen for the restoration of order. Milosh was, therefore, many
+years at the head of affairs of Servia before symptoms of opposition
+appeared. Allowances are certainly to be made for him; he had seen no
+government but the old Turkish r&eacute;gime, and had no notion of any other
+way of governing but by decapitation and confiscation. But this
+system, which was all very well for a prince of the fifteenth century,
+exhausted the patience of the new generation, many of whom were bred
+at the Austrian universities. Without seeking for democratic
+institutions, for which Servia is totally unfit, they loudly demanded
+written laws, which should remove life and property from the domain of
+individual caprice, and which, without affecting the suzerainty of the
+Porte, should bring Servia within the sphere of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>European
+institutions. They murmured at Milosh making a colossal fortune out of
+the administration of the principality, while he rendered no account
+of his intromissions, either to the Sultan or to the people, and
+seized lands and houses merely because he took a fancy to them.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a>
+Hence arose the <i>national party</i> in Servia, which included nearly all
+the opulent and educated classes; which is not surprising, since his
+rule was so stringent that he would allow no carriage but his own to
+be seen in the streets of Belgrade: and, on his fall, so many orders
+were sent to the coach-makers of Pesth, that trade was brisk for all
+the summer.</p>
+
+<p>The details of the debates of the period would exhaust the reader's
+patience. I shall, therefore, at once proceed to the summing up.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span></p>
+<p>1st. In the nine years' revolt of Kara Georg nearly the whole
+sedentary Turkish population disappeared from Servia, and the Ottoman
+power became, according to their own expression, <i>assassiz</i>
+(foundationless).</p>
+
+<p>2nd. The eighth article of the treaty of Bucharest, concluded by
+Russia with the Porte, which remained a dead letter, was followed by
+the fifth article in the treaty of Akerman, formally securing the
+Servians a separate administration.</p>
+
+<p>3rd. The consummate skill with which Milosh played his fast and loose
+game with the Porte, had the same consequences as the above, and
+ultimately led to</p>
+
+<p>4th. The formal act of the Sultan constituting Servia a tributary
+principality to the Porte, in a <i>Hatti Sherif</i>, of the 22nd November,
+1830.</p>
+
+<p>5th. From this period, up to the end of 1838, was the hard struggle
+between Milosh, seeking for absolute power, supported by the peasantry
+of Rudnik, his native district, and the "Primates," as the heads of
+the national party are called, seeking for a habeas-corpus act and a
+legislative assembly.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Milosh was in 1838 forcibly expelled from Servia; and his son Michael
+having been likewise set aside in 1842, and the son of Kara Georg
+selected by the sublime Porte and the people of Servia, against the
+views of Russia, the long-debated "Servian Question" arose, which
+received a satisfactory solution by the return of Wucics and
+Petronievitch, the exiled supports of Kara Georgevitch, through the
+mediation of the Earl of Aberdeen.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> M, Bou&eacute;, in giving this anecdote, calls him "Newspaper
+Editor:" this is a mistake.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> It is very true that the present Prince of Servia does
+not possess anything like the power which Milosh wielded; he cannot
+hang a man up at the first pear-tree: but it is a mistake on the part
+of the liberals of France and England, to suppose that the revolutions
+which expelled Milosh and Michael were democratic. There has been no
+turning upside down of the social pyramid; and in the absence of a
+hereditary aristocracy, the wealthiest and most influential persons in
+Servia, such as Ressavatz, Simitch, Garashanin, &amp;c. support Alexander
+Kara Georgevitch.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+The Prince.&mdash;The Government.&mdash;The Senate.&mdash;The Minister
+for Foreign Affairs.&mdash;The Minister of the Interior.&mdash;Courts
+of Justice.&mdash;Finances.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Kara Georgevitch means son of Kara Georg, his father's name having
+  been Georg Petrovitch, or son of Peter; this manner of naming being
+  common to all the southern Slaaves, except the Croats and Dalmatians.
+  This is the opposite of the Arabic custom, which confers on a father
+  the title of parent of his eldest son, as Abou-Selim, Abou-Hassan, &amp;c.
+  while his own name is dropped by his friends and family.</p>
+<p>The Prince's household appointments are about &pound;20,000 sterling, and,
+making allowance for the difference of provisions, servants' wages,
+horse <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>keep, &amp;c. is equal to about &pound;50,000 sterling in England, which
+is not a large sum for a principality of the size of Servia.</p>
+
+<p>The senate consists of twenty-one individuals, four of whom are
+ministers. The senators are not elected by the people, but are named
+by the prince, and form an oligarchy composed of the wealthiest and
+most influential persons. They hold their offices for life; they must
+be at least thirty-five years, and possess landed property.</p>
+
+<p>The presidency of the senate is an imaginary dignity; the duties of
+vice-president being performed by M. Stojan Simitch, the herculean
+figure I have described on my first visit to Belgrade; and it is
+allowed that he performs his duties with great sagacity, tact, and
+impartiality. He is a Servian of the old school, speaks Servian and
+Turkish, but no European language. The revolutions of this country
+have brought to power many men, like M. Simitch, of good natural
+talents, and defective education. The rising generation has more
+instruction, and has entered the career of material improvements; but
+I doubt if the present red tape routine will produce a race <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>having
+the shrewdness of their fathers. If these forms&mdash;the unavoidable
+accompaniments of a more advanced stage of society,&mdash;circumscribe the
+sphere of individual exertion, they possess, on the other hand, the
+advantage of rendering the recurrence of military dictatorship
+impossible.</p>
+
+<p>M. Petronievitch, the present minister for foreign affairs, and
+director of the private chancery of the Prince, is unquestionably the
+most remarkable public character now in Servia. He passed some time in
+a commercial house at Trieste, which gave him a knowledge of Italian;
+and the bustle of a sea-port first enlarged his views. Nine years of
+his life were passed at Constantinople as a hostage for the Servian
+nation, guaranteeing the non-renewal of the revolt; no slight act of
+devotion, when one considers that the obligations of the contracting
+parties reposed rather on expediency than on moral principles. Here he
+made the acquaintance of all the leading personages at the Ottoman
+Porte, and learned colloquial Turkish in perfection. Petronievitch is
+astute by education and position, but he has a good heart and a
+capacious intellect, and his defects belong not to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>man, but to
+the man's education and circumstances. Although placable in his
+resentments, he is without the usual baser counterpart of such pliant
+characters, and has never shown himself deficient in moral courage.
+Most travellers trace in his countenance a resemblance to the busts
+and portraits of Fox. His moral character bears a miniature
+resemblance to that which history has ascribed to Macchiavelli.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of a very tortuous political career, he has kept the
+advancement and civilization of Servia steadily in view, and has
+always shown himself regardless of sordid gain. He is one of the very
+few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of
+<i>community</i> has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to <i>self</i>, and
+this disinterestedness is, in spite of his defects, the secret of his
+popularity.</p>
+
+<p>The commander of the military force is M. Wucics, who is also minister
+of the interior, a man of great personal courage; and although
+unacquainted with the tactics of European warfare, said to possess
+high capacity for the command of an irregular force. He possesses
+great energy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>of character, and is free from the taint of venality;
+but he is at the same time somewhat proud and vindictive. His
+predecessor in the ministry of the interior was M. Ilia Garashanin,
+the rising man in Servia. Sound practical sense, and unimpeachable
+integrity, without a shade of intrigue, distinguish this senator. May
+Servia have many Garashanins!</p>
+
+<p>The standing army is a mere skeleton. The reason of this is obvious.
+Servia forms part of one great empire, and adjoins two others;
+therefore, the largest disciplined force that she might bring into the
+field, in the event of hostilities, could make no impression for
+offensive objects; while for defensive purposes, the countless
+riflemen, taking advantage of the difficult nature of the country, are
+amply sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>Let the Servians thank their stars that their army is a skeleton. Let
+all Europe rejoice that the pen is rapidly superseding the sword; that
+there now exists a council-board, to which strong and weak are equally
+amenable. May this diplomarchy ultimately compass the ends of the
+earth, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>and every war be reckoned a civil war, an arch-high-treason
+against confederate hemispheres!</p>
+
+<p>The portfolios of justice and finance are usually in the hands of men
+of business-habits, who mix little in politics.</p>
+
+<p>The courts of law have something of the promptitude of oriental
+justice, without its flagrant venality. The salaries of the judges are
+small: for instance, the president of the appeal court at Belgrade has
+the miserable sum of &pound;300 sterling per annum. M. Hadschitch, who
+framed the code of laws, has &pound;700 sterling per annum.</p>
+
+<p>The criminal code is founded on that of Austria. The civil code is a
+localized modification of the <i>Code Napol&eacute;on</i>. The first translation
+of the latter code was almost literal, and made without reference to
+the manners and historical antecedents of Servia: some of the blunders
+in it were laughable:&mdash;<i>Hypoth&egrave;que</i> was translated as if it had been
+<i>Apotheke</i>, and made out to be a <i>dep&ocirc;t of drugs</i>! When the translator
+was asked for the reason of this extraordinary prominence of the drug
+dep&ocirc;t <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>subject, he accounted for it by the consummate skill attained
+by France in medicine and surgery!</p>
+
+<p>A small lawyer party is beginning in Belgrade, but they are disliked
+by the people, who prefer short <i>viv&acirc; voce</i> procedure, and dislike
+documents. It is remarked, that when a man is supposed to be in the
+right, he wishes to carry on his own suit; when he has a bad case, he
+resorts to a lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>The ecclesiastical affairs of this department occupy a considerable
+portion of the minister's attention.</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of the wars which Stephan Dushan, the Servian emperor,
+carried on against the Greeks in the fourteenth century, he made the
+archbishop of Servia independent of the patriarch of Constantinople,
+who, in turn, excommunicated Stephan and his nominee. This
+independence continued up to the year 1765, at which period, in
+consequence of the repeated encouragement given by the patriarchs of
+Servia to revolts against the Turkish authority, the nation was again
+subjected to the immediate spiritual juris<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>diction of Constantinople.
+Wuk Stephanovitch gives the following anecdote, illustrative of the
+abuses which existed in the selection of the superior clergy from this
+time, and up to the Servian revolution, all the charges being sold to
+the highest bidder, or given to courtiers, destitute of religion, and
+often of common morality.</p>
+
+<p>In 1797, a Greek priest came to Orsova, complaining that he had not
+funds sufficient to enable him to arrive at his destination. A
+collection was made for him; but instead of going to the place he
+pretended to be bound for, he passed over to the island of New Orsova,
+and entered, in a military capacity, the service of the local
+governor, and became a petty chief of irregular Turkish troops. He
+then became a salt inspector; and the commandant wishing to get rid of
+him, asked what he could do for him; on which he begged to be made
+Archbishop of Belgrade! This modest request not being complied with,
+the Turkish commandant sent him to Sofia, with a recommendation to the
+Grand Vizier to appoint him to that see; but the vacancy had already
+been filled up by a priest of Nissa, who had been in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>terpreter to the
+Vizier, and who no sooner seated himself, than he commenced a system
+of the most odious exactions.</p>
+
+<p>In the time of Kara Georg, the Patriarchate of Constantinople was not
+recognized, and the Archbishop of Carlovitz in Hungary was looked up
+to as the spiritual head of the nation; but after the treaty of
+Adrianople, the Servian government, on paying a peppercorn tribute to
+the Patriarch of Constantinople, was admitted to have the exclusive
+direction of its ecclesiastical affairs. The Archbishop's salary is
+800<i>l</i>. per annum, and that of his three Bishops about half as much.</p>
+
+<p>The finances of Servia are in good condition. The income, according to
+a return made to me from the finance department, is in round numbers,
+eight hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, and the expenditure
+eight hundred and thirty thousand. The greater part of the revenue
+being produced by the <i>poresa</i>, which is paid by all heads of
+families, from the time of their marriage to their sixtieth year, and
+in fact, includes nearly all the adult population; for, as is the case
+in most eastern countries, nearly every man marries <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>early. The
+bachelors pay a separate tax. Some of the other items in the budget
+are curious: under the head of "Interest of a hundred thousand ducats
+lent by the government to the people at six per cent." we find a sum
+of fourteen thousand four hundred dollars. Not only has Servia no
+public debt, but she lends money. Interest is high in Servia; not
+because there is a want of capital, but because there are no means of
+investment. The consequence is that the immense savings of the
+peasantry are hoarded in the earth. A father of a family dies, or <i>in
+extremis</i> is speechless, and unable to reveal the spot; thus large
+sums are annually lost to Servia. The favourite speculation in the
+capital is the building of houses.</p>
+
+<p>The largest gipsy colonies are to be found on this part of the Danube,
+in Servia, in Wallachia, and in the Banat. The tax on the gipsies in
+Servia amounts to more than six thousand dollars. They are under a
+separate jurisdiction, but have the choice of remaining nomade, or
+settling; in the latter case they are fiscally classed with the
+Servians. Some settled gipsies are peasants, but for the most part
+smiths. Both settled and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>nomade gipsies, are alike remarkable for
+their musical talents. Having fought with great bravery during the war
+of emancipation, they are not so despised in Servia as in some other
+countries.</p>
+
+<p>For produce of the state forests, appears the very insignificant sum
+of one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The interior of Servia being
+so thickly wooded, every Servian is allowed to cut as much timber as
+he likes. The last item in the budget sounds singularly enough: two
+thousand three hundred and forty-one dollars are set down as the
+produce of sales of stray cattle, which are first delivered up to the
+captain of the district, who makes the seizure publicly, and then
+hands them over to the judge for sale, if there be no claimant within
+a given time.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Agriculture and Commerce.
+</b>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Upon the whole, it must be admitted, that the peasantry of Servia have
+  drawn a high prize in the lottery of existence. Abject want and
+  pauperism is nearly unknown. In fact, from the great abundance of
+  excellent land, every man with ordinary industry can support his wife
+  and family, and have a large surplus. The peasant has no landlord but
+  the Sultan, who receives a fixed tribute from the Servian government,
+  and does not interfere with the internal administration. The father of
+  a family, after having contributed a <i>maximum</i> tax of six dollars per
+  annum, is sole master of the surplus; so that in fact the taxes are
+  almost nominal, and the rent a mere peppercorn; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>the whole amounting
+  on an average to about four shillings and sixpence per caput per
+  annum.</p>
+<p>A very small proportion of the whole soil of Servia is cultivated.
+Some say only one sixth, others only one eighth; and even the present
+mode of cultivation scarcely differs from that which prevails in other
+parts of Turkey. The reason is obvious: if the present production of
+Servia became insufficient for the subsistence of the population, they
+have only to take in waste lands; and improved processes of
+agriculture will remain unheeded, until the population begins to press
+on the limits of the means of subsistence; a consummation not likely
+to be brought about for many generations to come.</p>
+
+<p>Although situated to the south of Hungary, the climate and productions
+are altogether northern. I never saw an olive-tree in Servia, although
+plentiful in the corresponding latitudes of France and Italy (43&deg;&mdash;44&deg;
+50'); but both sorts of melons are abundant, although from want of
+cultivation not nearly so good as those of Hungary. The same may be
+said of all other fruits except the grapes of Semendria, which I
+believe are equal to any in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>the world. The Servians seem to have in
+general very little taste for gardening, much less in fact than the
+Turks, in consequence perhaps of the unsurpassed beauty and luxuriance
+of nature. The fruit-tree which seems to be the most common in Servia
+is the plum, from which the ordinary brandy of the country is made.
+Almost every village has a plantation of this tree in its vicinity.
+Vegetables are tolerably abundant in some parts of the interior of
+Servia, but Belgrade is very badly supplied. There seems to be no
+kitchen gardens in the environs; at least I saw none. Most of the
+vegetables as well as milk come from Semlin.</p>
+
+<p>The harvest in August is the period of merriment. All Servian peasants
+assist each other in getting in the grain as soon as it is ready,
+without fee or reward; the cultivator providing entertainment for his
+laborious guests. In the vale of the Lower Morava, where there is less
+pasture and more corn, this is not sufficient, and hired Bulgarians
+assist.</p>
+
+<p>The innumerable swine which are reared in the vast forests of the
+interior, at no expense to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>inhabitants, are the great staple of
+Servian product and export. In districts where acorns abound, they
+fatten to an inconceivable size. They are first pushed swimming across
+the Save, as a substitute for quarantine, and then driven to Pesth and
+Vienna by easy stages; latterly large quantities have been sent up the
+Danube in boats towed by steam.</p>
+
+<p>Another extensive trade in this part of the world is in leeches.
+Turkey in Europe, being for the most part uncultivated, is covered
+with ponds and marshes, where leeches are found in abundance. In
+consequence of the extensive use now made of these reptiles, in
+preference to the old practice of the lancet, the price has risen; and
+the European source being exhausted, Turkey swarms with Frenchmen
+engaged in this traffic. Semlin and Belgrade are the entre-p&ocirc;ts of this
+trade. They have a singular phraseology; and it is amusing to hear
+them talk of their "marchandises mortes." One company had established
+a series of relays and reservoirs, into which the leeches were
+deposited, refreshed, and again put in motion; as the journey for a
+great distance, without such refreshment, usually proves fatal.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The steam navigation on the Danube has been of incalculable benefit to
+Servia; it renders the principality accessible to the rest of Europe,
+and Europe easily accessible to Servia. The steam navigation of the
+Save has likewise given a degree of animation to these lower regions,
+which was little dreamt of a few years ago. The Save is the greatest
+of all the tributaries of the Danube, and is uninterruptedly navigable
+for steamers a distance of two hundred miles. This river is the
+natural canal for the connexion of Servia and the Banat with the
+Adriatic. It also offers to our summer tourists, on the completion of
+the Lombard-Venetian railway, an entirely new and agreeable route to
+the East. By railroad, from Milan to Venice; by steamer from thence to
+Trieste; by land to Sissek; and the rest of the way by the rapid
+descent of the Save and the Danube. By the latter route very few
+turnings and windings are necessary; for a straight line drawn from
+Milan to Kustendji on the Black Sea, the point of embarkation for
+Constantinople, almost touches Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, and the
+Danube.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+The Foreign Agents.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>So much for the native government. The foreign agents in Belgrade are
+  few in number. The most prominent individual during my stay there was
+  Baron Lieven, a Russian general, who had been sent there on a special
+  mission by the emperor, to steer the policy of Russia out of the
+  shoals of the Servian question.</p>
+<p>On calling there with Mr. Fonblanque, I found a tall military-looking
+man, between forty and forty-five years of age. He entered at once,
+and without mystery, into the subject of his mission, and concluded by
+saying that "Servia owed her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>political existence solely to Russia,
+which gave the latter a moral right of intervention over and above the
+stipulations of treaties, to which no other power could pretend." As
+the public is already familiar with the arguments pro and contra on
+this question, it is at present unnecessary to recur to them.</p>
+
+<p>Baron Lieven had in the posture of affairs at that time a difficult
+part to play, inasmuch as a powerful party sought to throw off the
+protectorate of Russia. The baron, without possessing an intellect of
+the highest order, was a man of good sound judgment, and in his
+proceedings showed a great deal of frankness and military decision,
+qualities which attained his ends in all probability with greater
+success than if he had been endowed with that profound astuteness
+which we usually attribute to Russians. This was his fifth mission
+into the Turkish dominions; so that, although not possessing the
+language, he was yet well acquainted with the Turkish character and
+Eastern affairs in general. His previous mission had for its object to
+announce to the Sultan that, in accordance with the stipulations <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>of
+the treaty of the 15th of July, 1840, the military and naval forces of
+the Emperor of Russia were at the service of his Highness.</p>
+
+<p>Baron Lieven was accompanied to Servia by his lady, a highly talented
+person, who spoke English admirably; and the evenings spent in his
+hospitable house were among the most agreeable reminiscences of my
+residence at Belgrade.</p>
+
+<p>The stationary Russian consul-general was M. Wastchenko, a stout
+middle-aged gentleman, with the look of a well-conditioned alderman.
+M. Wastchenko had been originally in a commercial establishment at
+Odessa; but having acquired a knowledge of the Turkish language he was
+attached to the embassy at Constantinople, and subsequently nominated
+Russian consul at Belgrade, under the consul-general for the
+principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia; but his services having been
+highly approved by Count Nesselrode, he was advanced to the rank and
+pay of consul-general. M. Wastchenko possesses in an eminent degree
+what Swift calls the aldermanly, but never to be over estimated
+quality, Discretion; he was considered generally a very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>safe man. In
+fact, a sort of man who is a favourite with all chanceries; the
+quality of such a mind being rather to avoid complications than to
+excite admiration by activity in the pen or the tongue. M. Wastchenko
+was most thoroughly acquainted with everything, and every man, in
+Servia. He spoke the language fluently, and lived familiarly with the
+principal persons in Belgrade. He had never travelled in Europe, and,
+strange to say, had never been in St. Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>The present Russian consul-general in Servia is Colonel Danilefsky,
+who distinguished himself, when a mere youth, by high scientific
+attainments in military colleges of Russia, rose rapidly to a
+colonelcy, and was sent out on a mission to the khan of Khiva; the
+success of which ensured his promotion to the Servian
+consulate-general, an important position as regards the interests of
+Russia.</p>
+
+<p>From the circumstance of there being three thousand Austrian subjects
+in Belgrade, the consul-general of that power has a mass of real
+consular business to transact, while the functions of the other agents
+are solely political. France <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>has generally an agent of good capacity
+in Servia, in consequence of the influence that the march of affairs
+in the principality might have on the general destinies of Turkey in
+Europe. Great Britain was represented by Mr. Consul-general
+Fonblanque, a gentleman whose conduct has been sharply criticized by
+those who suppose that the tactics of party in the East are like those
+in England, all fair and above-board: but let those gentlemen that sit
+at home at ease, experience a few of the rude tempestuous blasts which
+fall to the lot of individuals who speak and write truths unpalatable
+to those who will descend to any device to compass a political object,
+and they would sing another song.</p>
+
+<p>I now take leave of Servia, wishing her Prince and her people every
+prosperity, and entertaining the hope that she will wisely limit all
+her future efforts to the cultivation of the arts of peace and
+civilization. From Belgrade I crossed to Semlin, whence I proceeded by
+steam to Vienna.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<p><b><span class="smcap">Vienna in</span> 1844<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></b></p>
+
+<div><b>
+Improvements in Vienna.&mdash;Palladian style&mdash;Music.&mdash;Theatres.&mdash;Sir
+Robert Gordon.&mdash;Prince Metternich.&mdash;Armen
+Ball.&mdash;Dancing.&mdash;Strauss.&mdash;Austrian Policy.
+</b>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>Vienna has been more improved and embellished within the last few
+  years than during the previous quarter of a century. The Graben and
+  the Kohlmarket have been joined, and many old projecting houses have
+  been taken down, and replaced by new tenements, with the fa&ccedil;ades put
+  back, so as to facilitate the thoroughfare. Until very lately, almost
+  every public building and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>private palace in Vienna was in the
+  Frenchified style of the last century, when each petty prince in
+  Germany wished to have a miniature Versailles in his village capital.
+  All the new edifices are in the Palladian style; which is suitable,
+  not only to the climate, but to the narrow streets, where Greek
+  architecture would be lost for want of space, and where the great
+  height of the houses gives mass to this (the Palladian) style, without
+  the necessity of any considerable perspective. The circumstance of
+  many of the architects here being Italian, may probably, in some
+  measure, account for the general adoption of this style. It is
+  singular, that although Vienna possesses in St. Stephen's one of the
+  most beautiful specimens of Gothic architecture, not a single edifice
+  in this taste of recent date is to be seen, although a revival of it
+  is noticeable in several other parts of Germany.</p>
+<p>Music is one of the necessaries of existence in Vienna, and the
+internal consumption is apparently as great as ever: there is
+now-a-days no Mozart or Haydn to supply imperishable fabrics for the
+markets of the world; but the orchestras <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>are as good as ever. The
+Sinfonia-Eroica of Beethoven catching my eye in a programme, I failed
+not to renew my homage to this prince of sweet and glorious sounds,
+and was loyally indignant on hearing a fellow-countryman say, that,
+though rich in harmony, he was poor in melody. No; Beethoven's wealth
+is boundless; his riches embarrass him; he is the sultan of melody:
+while others dally with their beauties to satiety, he wanders from
+grace to grace, scarce pausing to enjoy. Is it possible to hear his
+symphonies without recognizing in them the germs of innumerable modern
+melodies, the precious metal which others beat out, wherewith to plate
+their baser compositions,&mdash;exhaustless materials for the use of his
+successors, like those noble temples which antiquity has raised in the
+East, to become, in the sequel, the quarries from which whole cities
+of lowlier dwellings are constructed?</p>
+
+<p>At the K&auml;rnthner Thor I heard the Huguenots admirably performed.
+Decorations excepted, I really thought it better done than at the
+Acad&eacute;mie Royale. Meyerbeer's brilliant and original conceptions, in
+turning the chorus into an oral or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>chestra, are better realized. A
+French vaudeville company performed on the alternate nights. Carl, the
+rich Jew manager of the Wieden, and proprietor of the Leopold-Stadt
+Theatre, is adding largely to his fortune, thanks to the rich and racy
+drolleries of Nestroz and Schulz, who are the Matthews and Liston of
+Vienna. The former of these excellent actors is certainly the most
+successful farce-writer in Germany. Without any of Raimund's
+sentimental-humorous dialogue, he has a far happier eye for character,
+and only the untranslatable dialect of Vienna has preserved him from
+foreign play-wrights.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Robert Gordon, her Majesty's ambassador, whose unbounded and truly
+sumptuous hospitalities are worthy of his high position, did me the
+honour to take me to one of Princess Metternich's receptions, in the
+apartments of the chancery of state, one side of which is devoted to
+business, the other to the private residence of the minister. After
+passing through a vestibule on the first floor, paved with marble, we
+entered a well-lighted saloon of palatial altitude, at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>further
+end of which sat the youthful and fascinating princess, in
+conversation with M. Bailli de Tatischeff ex-ambassador of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>There, almost blind and bent double with the weight of eighty years,
+sat the whilom profoundly sagacious diplomatist, whose accomplished
+manners and quick perception of character have procured him a European
+reputation. He quitted public business some years ago, but even in
+retirement Vienna had its attractions for him. There is an
+unaccountable fascination in a residence in this capital; those who
+live long in it become <i>ipsis Vindobonensibus Vindobonensiores</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Prince Metternich, who was busy when we entered with a group,
+examining some views of Venice, received me with that quaker-like
+simplicity which forms the last polish of the perfect gentleman and
+man of the world; "<i>les extr&ecirc;mes se touchent</i>," in manners as in
+literature: but for the riband of the Golden Fleece, which crossed his
+breast, there was nothing to remind me that I was conversing with the
+statesman, who, after the armistice of Plesswitz, held the destinies
+of all Europe in his hands. After some conversation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>the prince asked
+me to call upon him on a certain forenoon.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the diplomatic corps were present, one of whom was the amiable
+and well-known Marshal Saldanha, who, a few years ago, played so
+prominent a part in the affairs of Portugal. The usual resources of
+whist and the tea-buffet changed the conversational circle, and at
+midnight there was a general movement to the Kleine Redouten Saal,
+where the Armen Ball had attracted so crowded an assemblage, that more
+than one archduchess had her share of elbowing. Strauss was in all his
+glory; the long-drawn impassioned breathings of Lanner having ceased
+for ever, the dulcet hilarity of his rival now reigns supreme; and his
+music, when directed by himself, still abounds in those exquisite
+little touches, that inspire <i>hope</i> like the breath of a May morning.
+Strange to say, the intoxicating waltz is gone out of vogue with the
+humbler classes of Vienna,&mdash;its natal soil. Quadrilles, mazurkas, and
+other exotics, are now danced by every "Stubenm&auml;d'l" in Lerchenfeld,
+to the exclusion of the national dance.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the third day after this, at the appointed hour, I waited upon
+Prince Metternich. In the outer antechamber an elderly
+well-conditioned red-faced usher, in loosely made clothes of fine
+black cloth, rose from a table, and on my announcing myself, said, "If
+you will go into that apartment, and take a seat, his Excellency will
+be disengaged in a short time." I now entered a large apartment,
+looking out on the little garden of the bastion: an officer, in a
+fresh new white Austrian uniform, stood motionless and pensive at one
+of the windows, waiting his turn with a most formidable roll of
+papers. The other individual in the room was a Hungarian, who moved
+about, sat down, and rose up, with the most restless impatience,
+twirled his mustachios, and kept up a most lively conversation with a
+caged parrot which stood on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Two large pictures, hanging from the wall opposite the windows, were a
+full length portrait of the emperor in his robes, the other a picture
+of St. John Nepomuck, the patron saint of Bohemia, holding an olive
+branch in his hand. The apartment, although large, was very simply
+furnished, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span>but admirably decorated in subdued colours, in the Italian
+manner. A great improvement has lately taken place in internal
+decoration in Vienna, which corresponds with that of external
+architecture. A few years ago, most large apartments were fitted up in
+the style of Louis XV., which was worthy of the degenerate nobles and
+crapulous financiers for whom it was invented, and was, in fact, a
+sort of Byzantine of the boudoir, which succeeded the nobler and
+simpler manner of the age of Louis XIV., and tormenting every straight
+line into meretricious curves, ended with over-loading caricature
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>I found Prince Metternich in his cabinet, surrounded with book-cases,
+filled mostly with works on history, statistics, and geography, and I
+hope I am not committing any indiscretion in saying that his
+conversation savoured more of the abstractions of history and
+political philosophy than that of any other practical statesman I had
+seen. I do not think that I am passing a dubious compliment, since M.
+Guizot, the most eminently practical of the statesmen of France, is at
+the same time the man who has most successfully <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>illustrated the
+effects of modifications of political institutions on the main current
+of human happiness.</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that Prince Metternich has a profound acquaintance
+with the minutest sympathies and antipathies of all the European
+races; and this is the quality most needed in the direction of an
+empire which comprises not a nation, but a congregation of nations;
+not cohering through sympathy with each other, but kept together by
+the arts of statesmanship, and the bond of loyalty to the reigning
+house. The ethnographical map of Europe is as clear in his mind's eye
+as the boot of Italy, the hand of the Morea, and the shield of the
+Spanish peninsula in those of a physical geographer. It is not
+affirming too much to say that in many difficult questions in which
+the <i>mezzo termine</i> proposed by Austria has been acceded to by the
+other powers, the solution has been due as much to the sagacity of the
+individual, as to the less ambitious policy which generally
+characterizes Austria.</p>
+
+<p>The last time I saw this distinguished individual <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span>was in the month of
+November following, on my way to England, I venture to give a scrap of
+the conversation.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mett</i>. "The idea of Charlemagne was the formation of a vast state,
+comprising heterogeneous nations united under one head; but with all
+his genius he was unequal to the task of its accomplishment. Napoleon
+entertained the same plan with his confederation of the Rhine; but all
+such systems are ephemeral when power is centralized, and the minor
+states are looked upon as instruments, and not as principals. Austria
+is the only empire on record that has succeeded under those
+circumstances. The cabinet of Austria, when it seeks the solution of
+any internal question, invariably reverses the positions, and
+hypothetically puts itself in the position of the provincial interest
+under consideration. That is the secret of the prosperity of Austria."</p>
+
+<p><i>Author</i>. "I certainly have been often struck with the historical
+fact, that 1830 produced revolutions then and subsequently in France,
+Belgium, Poland, Spain, and innumerable smaller states; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>while in
+Austria, with all its reputed combustible elements, not a single town
+or village revolted."</p>
+
+<p><i>Mett</i>. "That tangible fact speaks for itself."</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> This chapter was written in Vienna in the beginning of
+1844; but I did not wish to break the current of my observations on
+Servia by the record of my intervening journey to England.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+<div><b>
+Concluding Observations on Austria and her Prospects.
+</b></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>The heterogeneousness of the inhabitants of London and Paris is from
+  the influx of foreigners; but the odd mixture of German, Italian,
+  Slaavic, and I know not how many other races in Vienna, is almost all
+  generated within the limits of the monarchy. Masses, rubbing against
+  each other, get their asperities smoothed in the contact; but the
+  characteristics of various nationalities remain in Vienna in
+  considerable strength, and do not seem likely soon to disappear by any
+  process of attrition. There goes the German&mdash;honest, good-natured, and
+  laborious; the Hungarian&mdash;proud, insolent, lazy, hospitable, generous,
+  and sincere; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>and the plausible Slaav&mdash;his eye, twinkling with the
+  prospect of seizing, by a knowledge of human nature, what others
+  attain by slower means.</p>
+<p>How curious again, is the meeting of nations that labour and enjoy! In
+Paris, the Germans and the English are more numerous than any other
+foreigners. The former toil, drudge, save their littles to make a
+meikle. The latter, whatever they may be at home, are, in Paris,
+generally loungers and consumers of the fruits of the earth. The
+Hungarian's errand in Vienna is to spend money: the Italian's to make
+it. The Hungarian, A.B., is one of the squirearchy of his country,
+whose name is legion, or a military man, whiling away his furlough
+amid the excitements of a gay capital. The Italian, C.D., is a
+painter, a sculptor, a musician, or an employ&eacute;; and there is scarcely
+to be found an idle man among the twenty thousand of his
+fellow-countrymen, who inhabit the metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>The Hungarian nobility, of the higher class, are, in appearance and
+habits, completely identified with their German brethren; but it is in
+the middle nobility that we recognize the swarthy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>complexion, the
+haughty air and features, more or less of a Mongolian cast. The
+Hungarians and native Germans are mutually proud of each other, and
+mutually dislike each other. I never knew a Hungarian who was not in
+his heart pleased with the idea, that the King of Hungary was also an
+emperor, whose lands, broad and wide, occupied so large a space in the
+map of Europe; and I never knew an Austrian proper, who was not proud
+of Hungary and the Hungarians, in spite of all their defects. The
+Hungarian of the above description herds with his fellow-countrymen,
+and preserves, to the end of his stay, his character of foreigner;
+visits assiduously places of public resort, preferring the theatre and
+ball-room to the museum or picture-gallery.</p>
+
+<p>Of all men living in Vienna, the Bohemians carry off the palm for
+acuteness and ingenuity. The relation of Bohemia to the Austrian
+empire has some resemblance to that of Scotland to the colonies of
+Britain, in the supply of mariners to the vessel of state. The
+population of Bohemia is a ninth part of that of the whole empire; but
+I dare say that a fourth of the bureaucracy of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>Austria is Bohemian.
+To account for this, we must take into consideration the great number
+of men of sharp intellect, good education, and scanty fortune, that
+annually leave that country.</p>
+
+<p>The population of Scotland is about a ninth of that of the United
+Kingdom. The Scot is well educated. He has less loose cash than his
+brother John Bull, and consequently prefers the sweets of office to
+the costly incense of the hustings and the senate. How few,
+comparatively speaking, of those who have made themselves illustrious
+in the imperial Parliament, from the Union to our own time, came from
+the north of the Tweed; but how the Malcolms, the Elphinstones, the
+Munros, and the Burns, crowd the records of Indian statesmanship!</p>
+
+<p>The power that controls the political tendencies of Austria is that of
+the <i>mass</i> of the bureaucracy; consequently, looking at the proportion
+of Bohemian to other employ&eacute;s in the departments of public service,
+the influence exercised by this singularly sagacious people, over the
+destinies of the monarchy, may be duly appreciated. Count Kollowrath,
+the minister of the interior, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>Baron K&uuml;beck, the minister of
+finance, are both Bohemians, and thus, next to the Chancellor of
+State, occupy the most important offices in the empire.</p>
+
+<p>The Bohemians of the middling and poorer classes, have certainly less
+sincerity and straight-forwardness than their neighbours. An anecdote
+is related illustrative of the slyness of the Bohemians, compared with
+the simple honesty of the German, and the candid unscrupulousness of
+the Hungarian: "During the late war, three soldiers, of each of these
+three nations, met in the parlour of a French inn, over the
+chimney-piece of which hung a watch. When they had gone, the German
+said, 'That is a good watch; I wish I had bought it.' 'I am sorry I
+did not take it,' said the Hungarian. 'I have it in my pocket,' said
+the Bohemian."</p>
+
+<p>The rising man in the empire is the Bohemian Baron K&uuml;beck, who is
+thoroughly acquainted with every detail in the economical condition of
+Austria. The great object of this able financier is to cut down the
+expenses of the empire. No doubt that it would be unwise for Austria,
+an inland state, to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>reduce her military expenses; but the
+<i>viel-schreiberei</i> might be diminished, and the pruning-hook might
+safety be applied to the bureaucracy; but a powerful under-current
+places this region beyond the power of Baron K&uuml;beck. He is also a
+free-trader; but here again he meets with a powerful opposition: no
+sooner does he propose a modification of the tariff, than the saloons
+of the Archdukes are filled with manufacturers and monopolists, who
+draw such a terrific picture of the ruin which they pretend is to
+overwhelm them, that the government, true to its tradition of never
+doing any thing unpopular, of always avoiding collision with public
+opinion, and of protecting vested interests, even to the detriment of
+the real interest of the public, draws back; and the old jog-trot is
+maintained.</p>
+
+<p>The mass of the aristocracy continues as usual without the slightest
+political influence, or the slightest taste for state affairs. The
+Count or Prince of thirty or forty thousand a year, is as contented
+with his chamberlain's key embroidered on his coat-skirt, as if he
+controlled the avenues to real power; but the silent operation of an
+import<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span>ant change is visible in all the departments of the internal
+government of Austria. The national reforms of the Emperor Joseph were
+too abrupt and sweeping to be salutary. By good luck the reaction
+which they produced being co-incident with the first French
+Revolution, the firebrands which that great explosion scattered over
+all monarchical Europe, fell innocuous in Austria. The second French
+revolution rather retarded than accelerated useful reforms. Now that
+the fear of democracy recedes, an inclination for salutary changes
+shows itself everywhere. A desire for incorporations becomes
+stronger, and the government shows none of its quondam anxiety about
+public companies and institutions. The censorship has been greatly
+relaxed, and many liberal newspapers and periodicals, formerly
+excluded, are now frequently admitted. Any one who knew Austria some
+years ago, would be surprised to see the "Examiner," and
+"Constitutionnel" lying on the tables of the Clubs.</p>
+
+<p>A desire for the revival of the provincial estates (Landst&auml;nde), is
+entertained by many influential persons. These provincial parliaments
+existed up <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>to the time of the Emperor Joseph, who, with his rage for
+novelty, and his desire for despotic and centralized power, abolished
+them. The section of the aristocracy desirous for this revival is
+certainly small, but intelligent, and impatient for a sphere of
+activity. They have neither radical nor democratic principles; they
+admit that Austria, from the heterogeneous nature of her population,
+is not adapted for constitutional government; but maintain that the
+revival of municipal institutions is quite compatible with the present
+elements of the monarchy, and that the difficulties presented by the
+antagonist nationalities are best solved by allowing a development of
+provincial public life, restricted to the control of local affairs,
+and leaving the central government quite unfettered in its general
+foreign and domestic policy.</p>
+
+<p>St. Marc Girardin remarks, with no less piquancy of language than
+accuracy of observation, that "no country is judged with less favour
+than Austria; and none troubles herself less about misrepresentation.
+Austria carries her repugnance to publicity so far as even to dislike
+eulogium. Praise often offends her as much as blame; for he that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span>applauds to-day may condemn to-morrow; to set one's self up for
+praise, is to set one's self up for discussion. Austria will have none
+of it, for her political worship is the religion of silence, and her
+worship of <i>that</i> goes almost to excess. Her schools are worthy of the
+highest admiration; we hear nothing about them. She is, after England,
+the first country in Europe for railways; and we hear nothing of them,
+except by a stray paragraph in the Augsburg Gazette."</p>
+
+<p>The national railroad scheme of Austria is certainly the most splendid
+effort of the <i>tout pour le peuple&mdash;rien par le peuple</i> system that
+has been hitherto seen; the scheme is the first of its class: but its
+class is not the first, not the best in the abstract, but the best in
+an absolute country, where the spirit of association is scarcely in
+embryo. From Vienna to Cracow is now but a step. Prague and Dresden
+will shake hands with Vienna next year. If we look southwards, line
+upon line interpose themselves between Vienna and the Adriatic, but
+the great S&ouml;mmering has been pierced. The line to Trieste is open
+beyond Gr&auml;tz, the Styrian capital. The Lombard-Venetian line proceeds
+rapidly, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>is to be joined to that of Trieste. In 1847, the
+traveller may go, without fail, from Milan to Stettin on the Baltic.
+But the most interesting line for us is that of Gallicia, in connexion
+with that of Silesia. If prolonged from Czernowitz to Galatz, along
+the dead flat of Moldavia, the Black Sea and the German Ocean will be
+joined; <i>Samsoun and the Tigris will thus be, in all probability, at
+no distant day, on the high road to our Indian empire</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to Austria; this spectacle of rapid material
+improvement, without popular commotion, and without the trumpets and
+alarm-bells of praise and blame, is satisfactory: but when we look to
+the reverse of the picture, and see the cumbrous debt, the frequent
+deficits, and the endless borrowing, we think the time has come for
+great financial reforms,&mdash;as Schiller hath it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Warum denn nicht mit einem grossen Schritte anfangen, Da sie mit
+einem grossen Schritte doch enden m&uuml;ssen?"</p></div>
+
+
+<h3>THE END.</h3>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>MR. PATON'S WORK ON SYRIA, </h3>
+<h4>Post 8vo, price 10<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>.</h4>
+
+<h2>THE MODERN SYRIANS;</h2>
+
+<h4>OR,</h4>
+
+<h4>NATIVE SOCIETY IN DAMASCUS, ALEPPO, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE DRUSES.</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>"Lebanon and its inhabitants, particularly the Druses, Damascus, and
+Aleppo, are his leading subjects. His statements, under the first of
+those heads, form by far the most valuable portion of the work,
+affording, as it does, information not elsewhere to be found
+respecting the social condition, the politics, and the state of
+religion in a highly interesting region, our knowledge of which has
+hitherto been of the slightest description. Next to this, in interest,
+is the account of Aleppo, which has been less visited by English
+travellers than Damascus; but even at Damascus, the information of
+this writer has considerable novelty, and embraces many points of
+interest arising from his leisurely sojourn, from his mixing more than
+other travellers with the native population, and from his ability to
+converse with them in their own language. Hence we have pictures more
+distinct in their outlines, facts more positive, and information more
+real than the passing traveller, ignorant of the local language, can
+be reasonably expected to exhibit ... makes larger additions to the
+common stock of information concerning Syria, than any work which
+could easily be named since 'Burckhardt's Travels in Syria'
+appeared."&mdash;<i>Eclectic Review</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Remarkably clever and entertaining."&mdash;<i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"In many of the conversations and reports in this volume, there seems
+to us a <i>reality</i>, which European writing and discourse often
+want."&mdash;<i>Spectator</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I willingly testify to the fact of your having enjoyed facilities
+over all our modern travellers, for accurately describing the manners,
+customs, and statistics of Syria."&mdash;<i>Letter of Mr. Consul-General
+Barker</i>.</p>
+
+<p>For a detailed analysis, see <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 24th Aug. 1844.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>LONDON: LONGMAN &amp; CO., PATERNOSTER-ROW.</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Servia, Youngest Member of the
+European Family, by Andrew Archibald Paton
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+</pre>
+
+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Servia, Youngest Member of the European
+Family, by Andrew Archibald Paton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family
+       or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands
+       and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and
+       1844.
+
+Author: Andrew Archibald Paton
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2005 [EBook #16999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERVIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State
+University Libraries., Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar
+Viswanathan, and Distributed Proofreaders Europe at
+http://dp.rastko.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 SERVIA,
+
+                    YOUNGEST MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN
+                                FAMILY:
+
+
+                                 OR, A
+
+                        RESIDENCE IN BELGRADE,
+
+                                  AND
+
+               TRAVELS IN THE HIGHLANDS AND WOODLANDS OF
+                            THE INTERIOR,
+
+                    DURING THE YEARS 1843 AND 1844.
+
+                                  BY
+
+                     ANDREW ARCHIBALD PATON, ESQ.
+
+                    AUTHOR OF "THE MODERN SYRIANS."
+
+
+"Les hommes croient en general connaitre suffisamment l'Empire Ottoman
+pour peu qu'ils aient lu l'enorme compilation que le savant M. de
+Hammer a publiee ... mais en dehors de ce mouvement central il y a la
+vie interieure de province, dont le tableau tout entier reste a
+faire."
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS,
+                           PATERNOSTER ROW.
+
+                                 1845.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The narrative and descriptive portion of this work speaks for itself.
+In the historical part I have consulted with advantage Von Engel's
+"History of Servia," Ranke's "Servian Revolution," Possart's "Servia,"
+and Ami Boue's "Turquie d'Europe," but took the precaution of
+submitting the facts selected to the censorship of those on the spot
+best able to test their accuracy. For this service, I owe a debt of
+acknowledgment to M. Hadschitch, the framer of the Servian code; M.
+Marinovitch, Secretary of the Senate; and Professor John Shafarik,
+whose lectures on Slaavic history, literature, and antiquities, have
+obtained unanimous applause.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER 1.
+
+Leave Beyrout.--Camp afloat.-Rhodes.--The shores of the Mediterranean
+suitable for the cultivation of the arts.--A Moslem of the new
+school.--American Presbyterian clergyman.--A Mexican senator.--A
+sermon for sailors.--Smyrna.--Buyukdere.--Sir Stratford
+Canning.--Embark for Bulgaria.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Varna.--Contrast of Northern and Southern provinces of
+Turkey.--Roustchouk.--Conversation with Deftendar.--The Danube.--A
+Bulgarian interior.--A dandy of the Lower Danube.--Depart for Widdin.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+River steaming.--Arrival at Widdin.--Jew.--Comfortless khan.--Wretched
+appearance of Widdin.--Hussein Pasha.--M. Petronievitch.--Steam
+balloon.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Leave Widdin.--The Timok.--Enter Servia.--Brza Palanka.--The Iron
+Gates.--Old and New Orsova.--Wallachian Matron.--Semlin.--A
+conversation on language.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Description of Belgrade.--Fortifications.--Street and street
+population.--Cathedral.--Large square.--Coffee-house.--Deserted
+villa.--Baths.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Europeanization of Belgrade.--Lighting and paving.--Interior of the
+fortress.--Turkish Pasha.--Turkish quarter.--Turkish
+population.--Panorama of Belgrade.--Dinner party given by the prince.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Return to Servia.--The Danube.--Semlin.--Wucics and
+Petronievitch.--Cathedral solemnity.--Subscription ball.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Holman, the blind traveller.--Milutinovich, the poet.--Bulgarian
+legend.--Tableau de genre.--Departure for the interior.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Journey to Shabatz.--Resemblance of manners to those of the middle
+ages.--Palesh.--A Servian bride.--Blind
+minstrel.--Gipsies.--Macadamized roads.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Shabatz.--A provincial chancery.--Servian collector.--Description of
+his house.--Country barber.--Turkish quarter.--Self-taught priest.--A
+provincial dinner.--Native soiree.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Kaimak.--History of a renegade.--A bishop's house.--Progress of
+education.--Portrait of Milosh.--Bosnia and the Bosnians.--Moslem
+fanaticism.--Death of the collector.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The banat of Matchva.--Losnitza.--Feuds on the frontier.--Enter the
+back-woods.--Convent of Tronosha.--Greek festival.--Congregation of
+peasantry.--Rustic finery.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Romantic sylvan scenery.--Patriarchal simplicity of
+manners.--Krupena.--Sokol.--Its extraordinary position.--Wretched
+town.--Alpine scenery.--Cool reception.--Valley of the Rogatschitza.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Drina.--Liubovia.--Quarantine station.--Derlatcha.--A Servian
+beauty.--A lunatic priest.--Sorry quarters.--Murder by brigands.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Arrival at Ushitza.--Wretched street.--Excellent khan.--Turkish
+vayvode.--A Persian dervish.--Relations of Moslems and
+Christians.--Visit the castle.--Bird's eye view.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Poshega.--The river Morava.--Arrival at Csatsak.--A Viennese
+doctor.--Project to ascend the Kopaunik.--Visit the bishop.--Ancient
+cathedral church.--Greek mass.--Karanovatz.--Emigrant priest.--Albanian
+disorders.--Salt mines.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Coronation church of the ancient kings of Servia.--Enter the
+Highlands.--Valley of the Ybar.--First view of the High Balkan.--Convent
+of Studenitza.--Byzantine Architecture.--Phlegmatic monk.--Servian
+frontier.--New quarantine.--Russian major.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Cross the Bosniac frontier.--Gipsy encampment.--Novibazar
+described.--Rough reception.--Precipitate departure.--Fanaticism.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Ascent of the Kopaunik.--Grand prospect.--Descent of the
+Kopaunik.--Bruss.--Involuntary bigamy.--Conversation on the Servian
+character.--Krushevatz.--Relics of monarchy.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Formation of the Servian monarchy.--Contest between the Latin and Greek
+Churches.--Stephen Dushan.--A great warrior.--Results of his
+victories.--Kucs Lasar.--Invasion of Amurath.--Battle of Kossovo.--Death
+of Lasar and Amurath.--Fall of the Servian monarchy.--General
+observations.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A battue missed.--Proceed to Alexinatz.--Foreign-Office
+courier.--Bulgarian frontier.--Gipsy Suregee.--Tiupria.--New bridge and
+macadamized roads.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Visit to Ravanitza.--Jovial party.--Servian and Austrian
+jurisdiction.--Convent described.--Eagles reversed.--Bulgarian
+festivities.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Manasia.--Has preserved its middle-age character.--Robinson
+Crusoe.--Wonderful echo.--Kindness of the
+people.--Svilainitza.--Posharevatz.--Baby giantess.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Rich soil.--Mysterious waters.--Treaty of Passarovitz.--The castle of
+Semendria.--Relics of the antique.--The Brankovitch
+family.--Panesova.--Morrison's pills.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Personal appearance of the Servians.--Their moral
+character.--Peculiarity of manners.--Christmas
+festivities.--Easter.--The Dodola.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Town life.--The public offices.--Manners half-oriental
+half-European.--Merchants and tradesmen.--Turkish
+population.--Porters.--Barbers.--Cafes.--Public writer.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Poetry.--Journalism.--The fine arts.--The Lyceum.--Mineralogical
+cabinet.--Museum.--Servian Education.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+Preparations for departure.--Impressions of the East.--Prince
+Alexander.--The palace.--Kara Georg.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+A memoir of Kara Georg.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Milosh Obrenovitch.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+The prince.--The government.--The senate.--The minister for foreign
+affairs.--The minister of the interior.--Courts of justice.--Finances.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+Agriculture and commerce.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+The foreign agents.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+VIENNA IN 1844.
+
+Improvements in Vienna.--Palladian style.--Music.--Theatres.--Sir Robert
+Gordon.--Prince Metternich.--Armen ball.--Dancing.--Strauss.--Austrian
+policy.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+Concluding observations on Austria and her prospects.
+
+
+
+
+SERVIA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Leave Beyrout.--Camp afloat.--Rhodes.--The shores of the Mediterranean
+suitable for the cultivation of the arts.--A Moslem of the new
+school.--American Presbyterian clergyman.--A Mexican senator.--A
+sermon for sailors.--Smyrna.--Buyukdere.--Sir Stratford
+Canning.--Embark for Bulgaria.
+
+
+I have been four years in the East, and feel that I have had quite
+enough of it for the present. Notwithstanding the azure skies,
+bubbling fountains, Mosaic pavements, and fragrant _narghiles_, I
+begin to feel symptoms of ennui, and a thirst for European life, sharp
+air, and a good appetite, a blazing fire, well-lighted rooms, female
+society, good music, and the piquant vaudevilles of my ancient
+friends, Scribe, Bayard, and Melesville.
+
+At length I stand on the pier of Beyrout, while my luggage is being
+embarked for the Austrian steamer lying in the roads, which, in the
+Levantine slang, has lighted her chibouque, and is polluting yon white
+promontory, clear cut in the azure horizon, with a thick black cloud
+of Wallsend.
+
+I bade a hurried adieu to my friends, and went on board. The
+quarter-deck, which retained its awning day and night, was divided
+into two compartments, one of which was reserved for the promenade of
+the cabin passengers, the other for the bivouac of the Turks, who
+retained their camp habits with amusing minuteness, making the
+larboard quarter a vast tent afloat, with its rolled up beds, quilts,
+counterpanes, washing gear, and all sorts of water-cans, coffee-pots,
+and chibouques, with stores of bread, cheese, fruit, and other
+provisions for the voyage. In the East, a family cannot move without
+its household paraphernalia, but then it requires a slight addition of
+furniture and utensils to settle for years in a strange place. The
+settlement of a European family requires a thousand et ceteras and
+months of installation, but then it is set in motion for the new world
+with a few portmanteaus and travelling bags.
+
+Two days and a half of steaming brought us to Rhodes.
+
+An enchanter has waved his wand! in reading of the wondrous world of
+the ancients, one feels a desire to get a peep at Rome before its
+destruction by barbarian hordes. A leap backwards of half this period
+is what one seems to make at Rhodes, a perfectly preserved city and
+fortress of the middle ages. Here has been none of the Vandalism of
+Vauban, Cohorn, and those mechanical-pated fellows, who, with their
+Dutch dyke-looking parapets, made such havoc of donjons and
+picturesque turrets in Europe. Here is every variety of mediaeval
+battlement; so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the waiter's
+horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
+squire.
+
+Two more delightful days of steaming among the Greek Islands now
+followed. The heat was moderate, the motion gentle, the sea was liquid
+lapis lazuli, and the hundred-tinted islets around us, wrought their
+accustomed spell. Surely there is something in climate which creates
+permanent abodes of art! The Mediterranean, with its hydrographical
+configuration, excluding from its great peninsulas the extremes of
+heat and cold, seems destined to nourish the most exquisite sentiment
+of the Beautiful. Those brilliant or softly graduated tints invite the
+palette, and the cultivation of the graces of the mind, shining with
+its aesthetic ray through lineaments thorough-bred from generation to
+generation, invites the sculptor to transfer to marble, grace of
+contour and elevation of expression. But let us not envy the balmy
+South. The Germanic or northern element, if less susceptible of the
+beautiful is more masculine, better balanced, less in extremes. It was
+this element that struck down the Roman empire, that peoples America
+and Australia, and rules India; that exhausted worlds, and then
+created new.
+
+The most prominent individual of the native division of passengers,
+was Arif Effendi, a pious Moslem of the new school, who had a great
+horror of brandy; first, because it was made from wine; and secondly,
+because his own favourite beverage was Jamaica rum; for, as Peter
+Parley says, "Of late years, many improvements have taken place among
+the Mussulmans, who show a disposition to adopt the best things of
+their more enlightened neighbours." We had a great deal of
+conversation during the voyage, for he professed to have a great
+admiration of England, and a great dislike of France; probably all
+owing to the fact of rum coming from Jamaica, and brandy and wine from
+Cognac and Bordeaux.
+
+Another individual was a still richer character: an American
+Presbyterian clergyman, with furi-bond dilated nostril and a terrific
+frown.
+
+"You must lose Canada," said he to me one day, abruptly, "ay, and
+Bermuda into the bargain."
+
+"I think you had better round off your acquisitions with a few odd
+West India Islands."
+
+"We have stomach enough for that too."
+
+"I hear you have been to Jerusalem."
+
+"Yes; I went to recover my voice, which I lost; for I have one of the
+largest congregations in Boston."
+
+"But, my good friend, you breathe nothing but war and conquest."
+
+"The fact is, war is as unavoidable as thunder and lightning; the
+atmosphere must be cleared from time to time."
+
+"Were you ever a soldier?"
+
+"No; I was in the American navy. Many a day I was after John Bull on
+the shores of Newfoundland."
+
+"After John Bull?"
+
+"Yes, Sir, _sweating_ after him: I delight in energy; give me the man
+who will shoulder a millstone, if need be."
+
+"The capture of Canada, Bermuda, and a few odd West India Islands,
+would certainly give scope for your energy. This would be taking the
+bull by the horns."
+
+"Swinging him by the tail, say I."
+
+The burlesque vigour of his illustrations sometimes ran to
+anti-climax. One day, he talked of something (if I recollect right,
+the electric telegraph), moving with the rapidity of a flash of
+lightning, with a pair of spurs clapped into it.
+
+In spite of all this ultra-national bluster, we found him to be a very
+good sort of man, having nothing of the bear but the skin, and in the
+test of the quarantine arrangements, the least selfish of the party.
+
+Another passenger was an elderly Mexican senator, who was the essence
+of politeness of the good old school. Every morning he stood smiling,
+hat in hand, while he inquired how each of us had slept. I shall never
+forget the cholera-like contortion of horror he displayed, when the
+clerical militant (poking his fun at him), declared that Texas was
+within the natural boundary of the State, and that some morning they
+would make a breakfast of the whole question.
+
+One day he passed from politics to religion. "I am fond of fun," said
+he, "I think it is the sign of a clear conscience. My life has been
+spent among sailors. I have begun with many a blue jacket
+hail-fellow-well-met in my own rough way, and have ended in weaning
+him from wicked courses. None of your gloomy religion for me. When I
+see a man whose religion makes him melancholy, and averse from gaiety,
+I tell him his god must be my devil."
+
+The originality of this gentleman's intellect and manners, led me
+subsequently to make further inquiry; and I find one of his sermons
+reported by a recent traveller, who, after stating that his oratory
+made a deep impression on the congregation of the Sailors' chapel in
+Boston, who sat with their eyes, ears, and mouths open, as if
+spell-bound in listening to him, thus continues: "He describes a ship
+at sea, bound for the port of Heaven, when the man at the head sung
+out, 'Rocks ahead!' 'Port the helm,' cried the mate. 'Ay, ay, sir,'
+was the answer; the ship obeyed, and stood upon a tack. But in two
+minutes more, the lead indicated a shoal. The man on the out-look sung
+out, 'Sandbreaks and breakers ahead!' The captain was now called, and
+the mate gave his opinion; but sail where they could, the lead and
+the eye showed nothing but dangers all around,--sand banks, coral
+reefs, sunken rocks, and dangerous coasts. The chart showed them
+clearly enough where the port of Heaven lay; there was no doubt about
+its latitude and longitude: but they all sung out, that it was
+impossible to reach it; there was no fair way to get to it. My
+friends, it was the devil who blew up that sand-bank, and sunk those
+rocks, and set the coral insects to work; his object was to prevent
+that ship from ever getting to Heaven, to wreck it on its way, and to
+make prize of the whole crew for slaves for ever. But just as every
+soul was seized with consternation, and almost in despair, a tight
+little schooner hove in sight; she was cruizing about, with one Jesus,
+a pilot, on board. The captain hailed him, and he answered that he
+knew a fair way to the port in question. He pointed out to them an
+opening in the rocks, which the largest ship might beat through, with
+a channel so deep, that the lead could never reach to the bottom, and
+the passage was land-locked the whole way, so that the wind might veer
+round to every point in the compass, and blow hurricanes from them
+all, and yet it could never raise a dangerous sea in that channel.
+What did the crew of that distressed ship do, when Jesus showed them
+his chart, and gave them all the bearings? They laughed at him, and
+threw his chart back in his face. He find a channel where they could
+not! Impossible; and on they sailed in their own course, and everyone
+of them perished."
+
+At Smyrna, I signalized my return to the land of the Franks, by
+ordering a beef-steak, and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the
+paper from a gentleman in drab leggings, who had come from Manchester
+to look after the affairs of a commercial house, in which he or his
+employers were involved. He wondered that a hotel in the Ottoman
+empire should be so unlike one in Europe, and asked me, "If the inns
+down in the country were as good as this."
+
+As for Constantinople, I refer all readers to the industry and
+accuracy of Mr. White, who might justly have terminated his volumes
+with the Oriental epistolary phrase, "What more can I write?" Mr.
+White is not a mere sentence balancer, but belongs to the guild of
+bona fide Oriental travellers.
+
+In summer, all Pera is on the Bosphorus: so I jumped into a caique,
+and rowed up to Buyukdere. On the threshold of the villa of the
+British embassy, I met A----, the prince of attaches, who led me to a
+beautiful little kiosk, on the extremity of a garden, and there
+installed me in his fairy abode of four small rooms, which embraced a
+view like that of Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore; here books, the piano,
+the _narghile_, and the parterre of flowers, relieved the drudgery of
+his Eastern diplomacy. Lord N----, Mr. H----, and Mr. T----, the other
+attaches, lived in a house at the other end of the garden.
+
+I here spent a week of delightful repose. The mornings were occupied
+_ad libitum_, the gentlemen of the embassy being overwhelmed with
+business. At four o'clock dinner was usually served in the airy
+vestibule of the embassy villa, and with the occasional accession of
+other members of the diplomatic corps we usually formed a large
+party. A couple of hours before sunset a caique, which from its size
+might have been the galley of a doge, was in waiting, and Lady C----
+sometimes took us to a favourite wooded hill or bower-grown creek in
+the Paradise-like environs, while a small musical party in the evening
+terminated each day. One of the attaches of the Russian embassy, M.
+F----, is the favorite dilettante of Buyukdere; he has one of the
+finest voices I ever heard, and frequently reminded me of the easy
+humour and sonorous profundity of Lablache.
+
+Before embarking the reader on the Black Sea, I cannot forbear a
+single remark on the distinguished individual who has so long and so
+worthily represented Great Britain at the Ottoman Porte.
+
+Sir. Stratford Canning is certainly unpopular with the extreme
+fanatical party, and with all those economists who are for killing the
+goose to get at the golden eggs; but the real interests of the Turkish
+nation never had a firmer support.
+
+The chief difficulty in the case of this race is the impossibility of
+fusion with others. While they decrease in number, the Rayahs increase
+in wealth, in numbers, and in intelligence.
+
+The Russians are the Orientals of Europe, but St. Petersburg is a
+German town, German industry corrects the old Muscovite sloth and
+cunning. The immigrant strangers rise to the highest offices, for the
+crown employs them as a counterpoise on the old nobility; as burgher
+incorporations were used by the kings of three centuries ago.
+
+No similar process is possible with Moslems: one course therefore
+remains open for those who wish to see the Ottoman Empire upheld; a
+strenuous insistance on the Porte treating the Rayah population with
+justice and moderation. The interests of humanity, and the real and
+true interests of the Ottoman Empire, are in this case identical.
+Guided by this sound principle, which completely reconciles the policy
+of Great Britain with the highest maxims of political morality, Sir.
+Stratford Canning has pursued his career with an all-sifting
+intelligence, a vigour of character and judgment, an indifference to
+temporary repulses, and a sacrifice of personal popularity, which has
+called forth the respect and involuntary admiration of parties the
+most opposed to his views.
+
+I embarked on board a steamer, skirted the western coast of the Black
+Sea, and landed on the following morning in Varna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Varna.--Contrast of Northern And Southern Provinces of
+Turkey.--Roustchouk.--Conversation with Deftendar.--The Danube.--A
+Bulgarian interior.--A dandy of the Lower Danube.--Depart for Widdin.
+
+
+All hail, Bulgaria! No sooner had I secured my quarters and deposited
+my baggage, than I sought the main street, in order to catch the
+delightfully keen impression which a new region stamps on the mind.
+
+How different are the features of Slaavic Turkey, from those of the
+Arabic provinces in which I so long resided. The flat roofs, the
+measured pace of the camel, the half-naked negro, the uncouth Bedouin,
+the cloudless heavens, the tawny earth, and the meagre apology for
+turf, are exchanged for ricketty wooden houses with coarse tiling,
+laid in such a way as to eschew the monotony of straight lines;
+strings of primitive waggons drawn by buffaloes, and driven by
+Bulgarians with black woolly caps, real genuine grass growing on the
+downs outside the walls, and a rattling blast from the Black Sea, more
+welcome than all the balmy spices of Arabia, for it reminded me that I
+was once more in Europe, and must befit my costume to her ruder airs.
+This was indeed the north of the Balkan, and I must needs pull out my
+pea-jacket. How I relished those winds, waves, clouds, and grey skies!
+They reminded me of English nature and Dutch art. The Nore, the Downs,
+the Frith of Forth, and sundry dormant Backhuysens, re-awoke to my
+fancy.
+
+The moral interest too was different. In Egypt or Syria, where whole
+cycles of civilization lie entombed, we interrogate the past; here in
+Bulgaria the past is nothing, and we vainly interrogate the future.
+
+The interior of Varna has a very fair bazaar; not covered as in
+Constantinople and other large towns, but well furnished. The private
+dwellings are generally miserable. The town suffered so severely in
+the Russian war of 1828, that it has never recovered its former
+prosperity. It has also been twice nearly all burnt since then; so
+that, notwithstanding its historical, military, and commercial
+importance, it has at present little more than 20,000 inhabitants. The
+walls of the town underwent a thorough repair in the spring and summer
+of 1843.
+
+The majority of the inhabitants are Turks, and even the native
+Bulgarians here speak Turkish better than their own language. One
+Bulgarian here told me that he could not speak the national language.
+Now in the west of Bulgaria, on the borders of Servia, the Turks speak
+Bulgarian better than Turkish.
+
+From Varna to Roustchouk is three days' journey, the latter half of
+the road being agreeably diversified with wood, corn, and pasture; and
+many of the fields inclosed. Just at sunset, I found myself on the
+ridge of the last undulation of the slope of Bulgaria, and again
+greeted the ever-noble valley of the Danube. Roustchouk lay before me
+hitherward, and beyond the river, the rich flat lands of Wallachia
+stretched away to the north.
+
+As I approached the town, I perceived it to be a fortress of vast
+extent; but as it is commanded from the heights from which I was
+descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south.
+The ramparts were built with great solidity, but rusty, old,
+dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from
+exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo
+a considerable repair. The aspect of the place did not improve as we
+rumbled down the street, lined with houses one story high, and here
+and there a little mosque, with a shabby wooden minaret crowned with
+conical tin tops like the extinguishers of candles.
+
+I put up at the khan. My room was without furniture; but, being lately
+white-washed, and duly swept out under my own superintendence, and laid
+with the best mat in the khan, on which I placed my bed and carpets,
+the addition of a couple of rush-bottomed chairs and a deal table,
+made it habitable, which was all I desired, as I intended to stay only
+a few days. I was supplied with a most miserable dinner; and, to my
+horror, the stewed meat was sprinkled with cinnamon. The wine was bad,
+and the water still worse, for there are no springs at Roustchouk, and
+they use Danube water, filtered through a jar of a porous sandstone
+found in the neighbourhood. A jar of this kind stands in every house,
+but even when filtered in this way it is far from good.
+
+On hearing that the Deftendar spoke English perfectly, and had long
+resided in England, I felt a curiosity to see him, and accordingly
+presented myself at the Konak, and was shown to the divan of the
+Deftendar. I pulled aside a pendent curtain, and entered a room of
+large dimensions, faded decorations, and a broad red divan, the
+cushions of which were considerably the worse for wear. Such was the
+bureau of the Deftendar Effendi, who sat surrounded with papers, and
+the implements of writing. He was a man apparently of fifty-five
+years of age, slightly inclining to corpulence, with a very short
+neck, surmounted by large features, coarsely chiselled; but not devoid
+of a certain intelligence in his eye, and dignity in general effect.
+He spoke English with a correct accent, but slowly, occasionally
+stopping to remember a word; thus showing that his English was not
+imperfect from want of knowledge, but rusty from want of practice. He
+was an Egyptian Turk, and had been for eight years the commercial
+agent of Mohammed Ali at Malta, and had, moreover, visited the
+principal countries of Europe.
+
+I then took a series of short and rapid whiffs of my pipe while I
+bethought me of the best manner of treating the subject of my visit,
+and then said, "that few orientals could draw a distinction between
+politics and geography; but that with a man of his calibre and
+experience, I was safe from misinterpretation--that I was collecting
+the materials for a work on the Danubian provinces, and that for any
+information which he might give me, consistently with the exigencies
+of his official position, I should feel much indebted, as I thought I
+was least likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of
+my journey to the authorities, while information derived from the
+fountain-head was the most valuable."
+
+The Deftendar, after commending my openness, said, "I suspect that you
+will find very little to remark in the pashalic of Silistria. It is an
+agricultural country, and the majority of the inhabitants are Turks.
+The Rayahs are very peaceable, and pay very few taxes, considering the
+agricultural wealth of the country. You may rest assured that there is
+not a province of the Ottoman empire, which is better governed than
+the pashalic of Silistria. Now and then, a rude Turk appropriates to
+himself a Bulgarian girl; but the government cannot be responsible for
+these individual excesses. We have no malcontents within the province;
+hut there are a few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb
+the tranquillity of Bulgaria: but the Wallachian government has taken
+measures to prevent them from carrying their projects into execution."
+After some further conversation, on indifferent topics, I took my
+leave.
+
+The succeeding days were devoted to a general reconnaissance of the
+place; but I must say that Roustchouk, although capital of the
+pashalic of Silistria, and containing thirty or forty thousand
+inhabitants, pleased me less than any town of its size that I had seen
+in the East. The streets are dirty and badly paved, without a single
+good bazaar or cafe to kill time in, or a single respectable edifice
+of any description to look at. The redeeming resource was the
+promenade on the banks of the Danube, which has here attained almost
+its full volume, and uniting the waters of Alp, Carpathian, and
+Balkan, rushes impatiently to the Euxine.
+
+At length the day of departure came. The attendant had just removed
+the tumbler of coffee, tossing the fragments of toast into the
+court-yard, an operation which appeared to have a magnetic effect on
+the bills of the poultry; and then, with his accustomed impropriety,
+placed the plate as a basis to my hookah, telling me that F----, a
+Bulgarian Christian, wished to speak with me.
+
+"Let him walk in," said I, as I took the first delightful whiff; and
+F----, darkening the window that looked out on the verandah, gave me a
+fugitive look of recognition, and then entering and making his
+salutation in a kindly hearty manner, asked me to eat my mid-day meal
+with him.
+
+"Indeed," quoth I, "I accept your invitation. I have not gone to pay
+my visit to the Bey, because I remain here too short a time to need
+his good offices; but I am anxious to make the acquaintance of the
+people,--so I am your guest."
+
+When the hour arrived, I adjusted the tassel of my fez, put on my
+great coat, and proceeded to the Christian quarter; where, after
+various turnings and windings, I at length arrived at a high wooden
+gateway, new and unpainted.
+
+An uncouth tuning of fiddles, the odour of savoury fare, and a hearty
+laugh from within, told me that I had no further to go; for all these
+gates are so like each other, one never knows a house till after
+close observation. On entering I passed over a plat of grass, and
+piercing a wooden tenement by a dark passage, found myself in a
+three-sided court, where several persons were sitting on rush-bottomed
+chairs.
+
+F---- came forward, took both my hands in his, and then presented me
+to the company. On being seated, I exchanged salutations, and then
+looked round, and perceived that the three sides of the court were
+composed of rambling wooden tenements; the fourth was a little garden
+in which a few flowers were cultivated.
+
+The elders sat, the youngers stood at a distance;--so respectful is
+youth to age in all this eastern world. The first figure in the former
+group was the father of our host; the acrid humours of extreme age had
+crimsoned his eye-lids, and his head shook from side to side, as he
+attempted to rise to salute me, but I held him to his seat. The wife
+of our host was a model of fragile delicate beauty. Her nose, mouth,
+and chin, were exquisitely chiselled, and her skin was smooth and
+white as alabaster; but the eye-lid drooped; the eye hung fire, and
+under each orb the skin was slightly blue, but so blending with the
+paleness of the rest of the face, as rather to give distinctness to
+the character of beauty, than to detract from the general effect. Her
+second child hung on her left arm, and a certain graceful negligence
+in the plaits of her hair and the arrangement of her bosom, showed
+that the cares of the young mother had superseded the nicety of the
+coquette.
+
+The only other person in the company worthy of remark, was a Frank.
+His surtout was of cloth of second or third quality, but profusely
+braided. His stock appeared to strangle him, and a diamond breast-pin
+was stuck in a shirt of texture one degree removed from sail-cloth.
+His blood, as I afterwards learned, was so crossed by Greek, Tsinsar,
+and Wallachian varieties, that it would have puzzled the united
+genealogists of Europe to tell his breed; and his language was a
+mangled subdivision of that dialect which passes for French in the
+fashionable centres of the Grecaille.
+
+_Exquisite_. "Quangt etes vous venie, Monsieur?"
+
+_Author_. "Il y a huit jours."
+
+_Exquisite_ (looking at a large ring on his _fore_ finger). "Ce sont
+de bons diables dans ce pays-ci; mais tout est un po barbare."
+
+"Assez barbare," said I, as I saw that the exquisite's nails were in
+the deepest possible mourning.
+
+_Exquisite_. "Avez vous ete a Boukarest?"
+
+_Author_. "Non--pas encore."
+
+_Exquisite_. "Ah je wous assire que Boukarest est maintenant comme
+Paris et Londres;"
+
+_Author_. "Avez-vous vu Paris et Londres?"
+
+_Exquisite_. "Non--mais Boukarest vaut cent fois Galatz et Braila."
+
+During this colloquy, the gipsy music was playing; the first fiddle
+was really not bad: and the nonchalant rogue-humour of his countenance
+did not belie his alliance to that large family, which has produced
+"so many blackguards, but never a single blockhead."
+
+Dinner was now announced. F----'s wife, relieved of her child, acted
+as first waitress. The fare consisted mostly of varieties of fowl,
+with a pilaff of rice, in the Turkish manner, all decidedly good; but
+the wine rather sweet and muddy. When I asked for a glass of water, it
+was handed me in a little bowl of silver, which mine hostess had just
+dashed into a jar of filtered lymph. Dinner concluded, the party rose,
+each crossing himself, and reciting a short formula of prayer;
+meanwhile a youthful relation of the house stood with the
+washing-basin and soap turret poised on his left hand, while with the
+right he poured on my hands water from a slender-spouted tin ewer.
+Behind him stood the hostess holding a clean towel with a tiny web of
+silver thread running across its extremities, and on my right stood
+the ex-diners with sleeves tucked up, all in a row, waiting their turn
+at the wash-hand basin.
+
+After smoking a chibouque, I took my leave; for I had promised to
+spend the afternoon in the house of a Swiss, who, along with the agent
+of the steam-boat company and a third individual, made up the sum
+total of the resident Franko-Levantines in Roustchouk.
+
+A gun fired in the evening warned me that the steamer had arrived;
+and, anxious to push on for Servia, I embarked forthwith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+River Steaming.--Arrival at Widdin--Jew.--Comfortless Khan.--Wretched
+appearance of Widdin.--Hussein Pasha.--M. Petronievitch.--Steam
+Balloon.
+
+
+River steaming is, according to my notions, the best of all sorts of
+locomotion. Steam at sea makes you sick, and the voyage is generally
+over before you have gained your sea legs and your land appetite. In
+mail or stage you have no sickness and see the country, but you are
+squeezed sideways by helpless corpulence, and in front cooped into
+uneasiness by two pairs of egotistical knees and toes. As for
+locomotives, tunnels, cuts, and viaducts--this is not travelling to
+see the country, but arrival without seeing it. This eighth wonder of
+the world, so admirably adapted for business, is the despair of
+picturesque tourists, as well as post-horse, chaise, and gig letters.
+Our cathedral towns, instead of being distinguished from afar by their
+cloud-capt towers, are only recognizable at their respective stations
+by the pyramids of gooseberry tarts and ham sandwiches being at one
+place at the lower, and at another at the upper, end of an apartment
+marked "refreshment room." Now in river steaming you walk the deck, if
+the weather and the scenery be good; if the reverse, you lounge below;
+read, write, or play; and then the meals are arranged with Germanic
+ingenuity for killing time and the digestive organs.
+
+On the second day the boat arrived at Widdin, and the agent of the
+steam packet company, an old Jew, came on board. I stepped across the
+plank and accompanied him to a large white house opposite the
+landing-place. On entering, I saw a group of Israel's children in the
+midst of a deadly combat of sale and purchase, bawling at the top of
+their voices in most villainous Castilian; all were filthy and
+shabbily dressed. The agent having mentioned who I was to the group, a
+broad-lipped young man with a German _mutze_ surmounting his oriental
+costume, stepped forward with a confident air, and in a thick guttural
+voice addressed me in an unknown tongue. I looked about for an answer,
+when the agent told me in Turkish that he spoke English.
+
+_Jew_. "You English gentleman, sir, and not know English."
+
+_Author_. "I have to apologize for not recognizing the accents of my
+native country."
+
+_Jew_. "Bring goods wid you, sir?"
+
+_Author_. "No, I am not a merchant. Pray can you get me a lodging?"
+
+_Jew_. "Get you as mush room you like, sir."
+
+_Author_. "Have you been in England?"
+
+_Jew_. "Been in London, Amsterdam, and Hamburgh."
+
+We now arrived at the wide folding gates of the khan, which to be sure
+had abundance of space for travellers, but the misery and filth of
+every apartment disgusted me. One had broken windows, another a
+broken floor, a third was covered with half an inch of dust, and the
+weather outside was cold and rainy; so I shrugged up my shoulders and
+asked to be conducted to another khan. There I was somewhat better
+off, for I got into a new room leading out of a cafe where the
+charcoal burned freely and warmed the apartment. When the room was
+washed out I thought myself fortunate, so dreary and deserted had the
+other khan appeared to me.
+
+I now took a walk through the bazaars, but found the place altogether
+miserable, being somewhat less village-like than Roustchouk. Lying so
+nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here makes such beautiful
+curves, and marked on the map with capital letters, it ought (such was
+my notion) to be a place having at least one well-built and
+well-stocked bazaar, a handsome seraglio, and some good-looking
+mosques. Nothing of the sort. The Konak or palace of the Pasha is an
+old barrack. The seraglio of the famous Passavan Oglou is in ruins,
+and the only decent looking house in the place is the new office of
+the Steam Navigation Company, which is on the Danube.
+
+Being Ramadan, I could not see the pasha during the day; but in the
+evening, M. Petronievitch, the exiled leader of the Servian National
+party, introduced me to Hussein Pasha, the once terrible destroyer of
+the Janissaries. This celebrated character appeared to be verging on
+eighty, and, afflicted with gout, was sitting in the corner of the
+divan at his ease, in the old Turkish ample costume. The white beard,
+the dress of the pasha, the rich but faded carpet which covered the
+floor, the roof of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in
+perfect keeping, and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising
+two or three feet from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture,
+which carried me back, a generation at least, to the pashas of the old
+school. Hussein smoked a narghile of dark red Bohemian cut crystal. M.
+Petronievitch and myself were supplied with pipes which were more
+profusely mounted with diamonds, than any I had ever before smoked;
+for Hussein Pasha is beyond all comparison the wealthiest man in the
+Ottoman empire.
+
+After talking over the last news from Constantinople, he asked me what
+I thought of the projected steam balloon, which, from its being of a
+marvellous nature, appears to have caused a great deal of talk among
+the Turks. I expressed little faith in its success; on which he
+ordered an attendant to bring him a drawing of a locomotive balloon
+steered by flags and all sorts of fancies. "Will not this
+revolutionize the globe?" said the pasha; to which I replied, "C'est
+le premier pas qui coute; there is no doubt of an aerial voyage to
+India if they get over the first quarter of a mile."[1]
+
+I returned to sup with M. Petronievitch at his house, and we had a
+great deal of conversation relative to the history, laws, manners,
+customs, and politics of Servia; but as I subsequently obtained
+accurate notions of that country by personal observation, it is not
+necessary on the present occasion to return to our conversation.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Hussein Pasha has since retired from Widdin, where he
+made the greater part of his fortune, for he was engaged in immense
+agricultural and commercial speculations; he was succeeded by Mustapha
+Nourri Pasha, formerly private secretary to Sultan Mahommud, who has
+also made a large fortune, as merchant and ship-owner.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Leave Widdin.--The Timok.--Enter Servia.--Brza Palanka.--The Iron
+Gates.--Old and New Orsova.--Wallachian Matron.--Semlin.--A
+Conversation on Language.
+
+
+I left Widdin for the Servian frontier, in a car of the country, with
+a couple of horses, the ground being gently undulated, but the
+mountains to the south were at a considerable distance. On our right,
+agreeable glimpses of the Danube presented themselves from time to
+time. In six hours we arrived at the Timok, the river that separates
+Servia from Bulgaria. The only habitation in the place was a log-house
+for the Turkish custom-house officer. We were more than an hour in
+getting our equipage across the ferry, for the long drought had so
+reduced the water, that the boat was unable to meet the usual
+landing-place by at least four feet of steep embankment; in vain did
+the horses attempt to mount the acclivity; every spring was followed
+by a relapse, and at last one horse sunk jammed in between the ferry
+boat and the bank; so that we were obliged to loose the harness, send
+the horses on shore, and drag the dirty car as we best could up the
+half dried muddy slope. At last we succeeded, and a smart trot along
+the Danube brought us to the Servian lazaretto, which was a new
+symmetrical building, the promenade of which, on the Danube, showed an
+attempt at a sort of pleasure-ground.
+
+I entered at sunset, and next morning on showing my tongue to the
+doctor, and paying a fee of one piastre (twopence) was free, and again
+put myself in motion. Lofty mountains seemed to rise to the west, and
+the cultivated plain now became broken into small ridges, partly
+covered with forest trees. The ploughing oxen now became rarer; but
+herds of swine, grubbing at acorns and the roots of bushes, showed
+that I was changing the scene, and making the acquaintance not only
+of a new country, but of a new people. The peasants, instead of having
+woolly caps and frieze clothes as in Bulgaria, all wore the red fez,
+and were dressed mostly in blue cloth; some of those in the villages
+wore black glazed caps; and in general the race appeared to be
+physically stronger and nobler than that which I had left. The
+Bulgarians seemed to be a set of silent serfs, deserving (when not
+roused by some unusual circumstance) rather the name of machines than
+of men: these Servian fellows seemed lazier, but all possessed a
+manliness of address and demeanour, which cannot be discovered in the
+Bulgarian.
+
+Brza Palanka, at which we now arrived, is the only Danubian port which
+the Servians possess, below the Iron Gates; consequently, the only one
+which is in uninterrupted communication with Galatz and the sea. A
+small Sicilian vessel, laden with salt, passed into the Black Sea, and
+actually ascended the Danube to this point, which is within a few
+hours of the Hungarian frontier. As we approached the Iron Gates, the
+valley became a mere gorge, with barely room for the road, and
+fumbling through a cavernous fortification, we soon came in sight of
+the Austro-Hungarian frontier.
+
+_New_ Orsova, one of the few remaining retreats of the Turks in
+Servia, is built on an island, and with its frail houses of yawning
+rafters looks very _old_. Old Orsova, opposite which we now arrived,
+looked quite _new_, and bore the true German type of formal
+white-washed houses, and high sharp ridged roofs, which called up
+forthwith the image of a dining-hall, where, punctually as the
+village-clock strikes the hour of twelve, a fair-haired, fat,
+red-faced landlord, serves up the soup, the _rindfleisch_, the
+_zuspeise_, and all the other dishes of the holy Roman empire to the
+Platz Major, the Haupt-zoll-amt director, the Kanzlei director, the
+Concepist, the Protocollist, and _hoc genus omne_.
+
+After a night passed in the quarantine, I removed to the inn, and
+punctually as the clock struck half past twelve, the very party my
+imagination conjured up, assembled to discuss the _mehlspeise_ in the
+stencilled parlour of the Hirsch.
+
+Favoured by the most beautiful weather, I started in a sort of caleche
+for Dreucova. The excellent new macadamized road was as smooth as a
+bowling-green, and only a lively companion was wanting to complete the
+exhilaration of my spirits.
+
+My fair fellow-traveller was an enormously stout Wallachian matron, on
+her way to Vienna, to see her _daughter_, who was then receiving her
+education at a boarding-school. I spoke no Wallachian, she spoke
+nothing but Wallachian; so our conversation was carried on by my
+attempting to make myself understood alternately by the Italian, and
+the Spanish forms of Latin.
+
+"_Una bella Campagna_," said I, as we drove out Orsova.
+
+"_Bella, bella_?" said the lady, evidently puzzled.
+
+So I said, "_Hermosa_."
+
+"_Ah! formosa; formosa prate_," repeated the lady, evidently
+understanding that I meant a fine country.
+
+"_Deunde venut_?" Whence have you come?
+
+"Constantinopolis;" and so on we went, supposing that we understood
+each other, she supplying me with new forms of bastard Latin words,
+and adding with a smile, _Romani_, or Wallachian, as the language and
+people of Wallachia are called by themselves. It is worthy of remark,
+that the Wallachians and a small people in Switzerland, are the only
+descendants of the Romans, that still designate their language as that
+of the ancient mistress of the world.
+
+As I rolled along, the fascinations of nature got the better of my
+gallantry; the discourse flagged, and then dropped, for I found myself
+in the midst of the noblest river scenery I had ever beheld, certainly
+far surpassing that of the Rhine, and Upper Danube. To the gloom and
+grandeur of natural portals, formed of lofty precipitous rocks,
+succeeds the open smiling valley, the verdant meadows, and the distant
+wooded hills, with all the soft and varied hues of autumn. Here we
+appear to be driving up the avenues of an English park; yonder, where
+the mountain sinks sheer into the river, the road must find its way
+along an open gallery, with a roof weighing millions of tons,
+projecting from the mountain above.
+
+After sunset we arrived at Dreucova, and next morning went on board
+the steamer, which conveyed me up the Danube to Semlin. The lower town
+of Semlin is, from the exhalations on the banks of the river,
+frightfully insalubrious, but the cemetery enjoys a high and airy
+situation. The people in the town die off with great rapidity; but, to
+compensate for this, the dead are said to be in a highly satisfactory
+state of preservation. The inns here, once so bad, have greatly
+improved; but mine host, zum Golden Lowen, on my recent visits, always
+managed to give a very good dinner, including two sorts of savoury
+game. I recollect on a former visit, going to another inn, and found
+in the dining-room an individual, whose ruddy nose, and good-humoured
+nerveless smile, denoted a fondness for the juice of the grape, and
+seitel after seitel disappeared with rapidity. By-the-bye, old father
+Danube is as well entitled to be represented with a perriwig of grapes
+as his brother the Rhine. Hungary in general, has a right merry
+bacchanalian climate. Schiller or Symian wine is in the same parallel
+of latitude as Claret, Oedenburger as Burgundy, and a line run
+westwards from Tokay would almost touch the vineyards of Champagne.
+Csaplovich remarks in his quaint way, that the four principal wines of
+Hungary are cultivated by the four principal nations in it. That is to
+say, the Slavonians cultivate the Schiller, Germans the Oedenburger
+and Ruster, Magyars and Wallachians the Menesher. Good Schiller is the
+best Syrmian wine. But I must return from this digression to the guest
+of the Adler. On hearing that I was an Englishman, he expressed a wish
+to hear as much of England as possible, and appeared thunderstruck,
+when I told him that London had nearly two millions of inhabitants,
+being four hundred thousand more than the population of the whole of
+the Banat. This individual had of course learned five languages with
+his mother's milk, and therefore thought that the inhabitants of such
+a country as England must know ten at least. When I told him that the
+majority of the people in England knew nothing but English, he said,
+somewhat contemptuously, "O! you told me the fair side of the English
+character: but you did not tell me that the people was so ignorant."
+He then good-humouredly warned me against practising on his credulity.
+I pointed out how unnecessary other languages were for England itself;
+but that all languages could be learned in London.
+
+"Can Wallachian be learned in London?"
+
+"I have my doubts about Wallachian, but"--
+
+"Can Magyar be learned in London?"
+
+"I suspect not."
+
+"Can Servian be learnt in London?"
+
+"I confess, I don't think that any body in London teaches Servian;
+but"--
+
+"There again, you travellers are always making statements unfounded on
+fact. I have mentioned three leading languages, and nobody in your
+city knows anything about them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Description of Belgrade.--Fortifications.--Streets and Street
+Population.--Cathedral.--Large Square.--Coffe-house.--Deserted
+Villa.--Baths.
+
+
+Through the courtesy and attention of Mr. Consul-general Fonblanque
+and the numerous friends of M. Petronievitch, I was, in the course of
+a few days, as familiar with all the principal objects and individuals
+in Belgrade, as if I had resided months in the city.
+
+The fare of a boat from Semlin to Belgrade by Austrian rowers is five
+zwanzigers, or about _3s. 6d._ English; and the time occupied is half
+an hour, that is to say, twenty minutes for the descent of the Danube,
+and about ten minutes for the ascent of the Save. On arrival at the
+low point of land at the confluence, we perceived the distinct line of
+the two rivers, the Danube faithfully retaining its brown, muddy
+character, while the Save is much clearer. We now had a much closer
+view of the fortress opposite. Large embrasures, slightly elevated
+above the water's edge, were intended for guns of great calibre; but
+above, a gallimaufry of grass-grown and moss-covered fortifications
+were crowned by ricketty, red-tiled houses, and looking very unlike
+the magnificent towers in the last scene of the Siege of Belgrade, at
+Drury Lane. Just within the banks of the Save were some of the large
+boats which trade on the river; the new ones as curiously carved,
+painted, and even gilded, as some of those one sees at Dort and
+Rotterdam. They have no deck--for a ridge of rafters covers the goods,
+and the boatmen move about on ledges at the gunwale.
+
+The fortress of Belgrade, jutting out exactly at the point of
+confluence of the rivers, has the town behind it. The Servian, or
+principal quarter, slopes down to the Save; the Turkish quarter to
+the Danube. I might compare Belgrade to a sea-turtle, the head of
+which is represented by the fortress, the back of the neck by the
+esplanade or Kalai Meidan, the right flank by the Turkish quarter, the
+left by the Servian, and the ridge of the back by the street running
+from the esplanade to the gate of Constantinople.
+
+We landed at the left side of our imaginary turtle, or at the quay of
+the Servian quarter, which runs along the Save. The sloping bank was
+paved with stones; and above was a large edifice with an arcade, one
+end of which served as the custom-house, the other as the Austrian
+consulate.
+
+The population was diversified. Shabby old Turks were selling fruit;
+and boatmen, both Moslem and Christian--the former with turbans, the
+latter with short fez's--were waiting for a fare. To the left was a
+Turkish guard-house, at a gate leading to the esplanade, with as smart
+a row of burnished muskets as one could expect. All within this gate
+is under the jurisdiction of the Turkish Pasha of the fortress; all
+without the gate in question, is under the government of the Servian
+Prefect of Belgrade.
+
+We now turned into a curious old street, built quite in the Turkish
+fashion, and composed of rafters knocked carelessly together, and
+looking as if the first strong gust of wind would send them smack over
+the water into Hungary without the formality of a quarantine; but many
+of the shops were smartly garnished with clothes, haberdashery, and
+trinkets, mostly from Bohemia and Moravia; and in some I saw large
+blocks of rock-salt.
+
+Notwithstanding the rigmarole construction of the quarter on the
+water's edge, (save and except at the custom-house,) it is the most
+busy quarter in the town: here are the places of business of the
+principal merchants in the place. This class is generally of the
+Tsinsar nation, as the descendants of the Roman colonists in Macedonia
+are called; their language is a corrupt Latin, and resembles the
+Wallachian dialect very closely.
+
+We now ascended by a steep street to the upper town. The most
+prominent object in the first open space we came to is the cathedral,
+a new and large but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt
+bell-tower, in the Russian manner; and the walls of the interior are
+covered with large paintings of no merit. But one must not be too
+critical: a kindling of intellectual energy ever seems, in most
+countries, to precede excellence in the imitative arts, which latter,
+too often survives the ruins of those ruder and nobler qualities which
+assure the vigorous existence of states or provinces.
+
+In the centre of the town is an open square, which forms a sort of
+line of demarcation between the crescent and the cross. On the one
+side, several large and good houses have been constructed by the
+wealthiest senators, in the German manner, with flaring new white
+walls and bright green shutter-blinds. On the other side is a mosque,
+and dead old garden walls, with walnut trees and Levantine roofs
+peeping up behind them. Look on this picture, and you have the type of
+all domestic architecture lying between you and the snow-fenced huts
+of Lapland; cast your eyes over the way, and imagination wings
+lightly to the sweet south with its myrtles, citrons, marbled steeps
+and fragrance-bearing gales.
+
+Beside the mosque is the new Turkish coffee-house, which is kept by an
+Arab by nation and a Moslem by religion, but born at Lucknow. One day,
+in asking for the mullah of the mosque, who had gone to Bosnia, I
+entered into conversation with him; but on learning that I was an
+Englishman he fought shy, being, like most Indian Moslems when
+travelling in Turkey, ashamed of their sovereign being a protected
+ally of a Frank government.
+
+I now entered the region of gardens and villas, which, previous to the
+revolution of Kara Georg, was occupied principally by Turks. Passing
+down a shady lane my attention was arrested by a rotten moss-grown
+garden door, at the sight of which memory leaped backwards for four or
+five years. Here I had spent a happy forenoon with Colonel H----, and
+the physician of the former Pasha, an old Hanoverian, who, as surgeon
+to a British regiment had gone through all the fatigues of the
+Peninsular war. I pushed open the door, and there, completely secluded
+from the bustle of the town, and the view of the stranger, grew the
+vegetation as luxuriant as ever, relieving with its dark green frame
+the clear white of the numerous domes and minarets of the Turkish
+quarter, and the broad-bosomed Danube which filled up the centre of
+the picture; but the house and stable, which had resounded with the
+good-humoured laugh of the master, and the neighing of the well-fed
+little stud (for horse-flesh was the weak side of our Esculapius),
+were tenantless, ruinous, and silent. The doctor had died in the
+interval at Widdin, in the service of Hussein Pasha. I mechanically
+withdrew, abstracted from external nature by the "memory of joys that
+were past, pleasant and mournful to the soul."
+
+I then took a Turkish bath; but the inferiority of those in Belgrade
+to similar luxuries in Constantinople, Damascus, and Cairo, was
+strikingly apparent on entering. The edifice and the furniture were of
+the commonest description. The floors of the interior of brick
+instead of marble, and the plaster and the cement of the walls in a
+most defective state. The atmosphere in the drying room was so cold
+from the want of proper windows and doors, that I was afraid lest I
+should catch a catarrh. The Oriental bath, when paved with fine
+grained marbles, and well appointed in the departments of linen,
+sherbet, and _narghile_, is a great luxury; but the bath at Belgrade
+was altogether detestable. In the midst of the drying business a
+violent dispute broke out between the proprietor and an Arnaout, whom
+the former styled a _cokoshary_, or hen-eater, another term for a
+robber; for when lawless Arnaouts arrive in a village, after eating up
+half the contents of the poultry-yard, they demand a tribute in the
+shape of _compensation for the wear and tear of their teeth_ while
+consuming the provisions they have forcibly exacted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Europeanization of Belgrade.--Lighting and Paving.--Interior of the
+Fortress--Turkish Pasha.--Turkish Quarter.--Turkish
+Population.--Panorama of Belgrade--Dinner party given by the Prince.
+
+
+The melancholy I experienced in surveying the numerous traces of
+desolation in Turkey was soon effaced at Belgrade. Here all was life
+and activity. It was at the period of my first visit, in 1839, quite
+an oriental town; but now the haughty parvenu spire of the cathedral
+throws into the shade the minarets of the mosques, graceful even in
+decay. Many of the bazaar-shops have been fronted and glazed. The
+oriental dress has become much rarer; and houses several stories
+high, in the German fashion, are springing up everywhere. But in two
+important particulars Belgrade is as oriental as if it were situated
+on the Tigris or Barrada--lighting and paving. It is impossible in wet
+weather to pay a couple of visits without coming home up to the ankles
+in mud; and at night all locomotion without a lantern is impossible.
+Belgrade, from its elevation, could be most easily lighted with gas,
+and at a very small expense; as even if there be no coal in Servia,
+there is abundance of it at Moldava, which is on the Danube between
+Belgrade and Orsova; that is to say, considerably above the Iron
+Gates. I make this remark, not so much to reproach my Servian friends
+with backwardness, but to stimulate them to all easily practicable
+improvements.
+
+One day I accompanied M. de Fonblanque on a visit to the Pasha in the
+citadel, which we reached by crossing the glacis or neck of land that
+connects the castle with the town. This place forms the pleasantest
+evening lounge in the vicinity of Belgrade; for on the one side is an
+extensive view of the Turkish town, and the Danube wending its way
+down to Semendria; on the other is the Save, its steep bank piled with
+street upon street, and the hills beyond them sloping away to the
+Bosniac frontier.
+
+The ramparts are in good condition; and the first object that strikes
+a stranger on entering, are six iron spikes, on which, in the time of
+the first revolution, the heads of Servians used to be stuck. Milosh
+once saved his own head from this elevation by his characteristic
+astuteness. During his alliance with the Turks in 1814, (or 1815,) he
+had large pecuniary transactions with the Pasha, for he was the medium
+through whom the people paid their tribute. Five heads grinned from
+five spikes as he entered the castle, and he comprehended that the
+sixth was reserved for him; the last head set up being that of
+Glavash, a leader, who, like himself, was then supporting the
+government: so he immediately took care to make the Pasha understand
+that he was about to set out on a tour in the country, to raise some
+money for the vizierial strong-box. "Peh eiu," said Soliman Pasha,
+thinking to catch him next time, and get the money at the same time;
+so Milosh was allowed to depart; but knowing that if he returned spike
+the sixth would not wait long for its head, he at once raised the
+district of Rudnick, and ended the terrible war which had been begun
+under much less favourable auspices, by the more valiant but less
+astute Kara Georg.
+
+We passed a second draw-bridge, and found ourselves in the interior of
+the fortress. A large square was formed by ruinous buildings.
+Extensive barracks were windowless and tenantless, but the mosque and
+the Pasha's Konak were in good order. We were ushered into an
+audience-room of great extent, with a low carved roof and some
+old-fashioned furniture, the divan being in the corner, and the
+windows looking over the precipice to the Danube below. Hafiz Pasha,
+the same who commanded at the battle of Nezib, was about fifty-five,
+and a gentleman in air and manner, with a grey beard. In course of
+conversation he told me that he was a Circassian. He asked me about my
+travels: and with reference to Syria said, "Land operations through
+Kurdistan against Mehemet Ali were absurd. I suggested an attack by
+sea, while a land force should make a diversion by Antioch, but I was
+opposed." After the usual pipes and coffee we took our leave.
+
+Hafiz Pasha's political relations are necessarily of a very restricted
+character, as he rules only the few Turks remaining in Servia; that is
+to say, a few thousands in Belgrade and Ushitza, a few hundreds in
+Shabatz Sokol and the island of Orsova. He represents the suzerainety
+of the Porte over the Christian population, without having any thing
+to do with the details of administration. His income, like that of
+other mushirs or pashas of three tails, is 8000l. per annum. Hafiz
+Pasha, if not a successful general, was at all events a brave and
+honourable man, and his character for justice made him highly
+respected. One of his predecessors, who was at Belgrade on my first
+visit there in 1839, was a man of another stamp,--the notorious
+Youssouf Pasha, who sold Varna during the Russian war. The
+re-employment of such an individual is a characteristic illustration
+of Eastern manners.
+
+As my first stay at Belgrade extended to between two and three months,
+I saw a good deal of Hafiz Pasha, who has a great taste for geography,
+and seemed to be always studying at the maps. He seemed to think that
+nothing would be so useful to Turkey as good roads, made to run from
+the principal ports of Asia Minor up to the depots of the interior, so
+as to connect Sivas, Tokat, Angora, Konieh, Kaiserieh, &c. with
+Samsoun, Tersoos, and other ports. He wittily reversed the proverb
+"_El rafyk som el taryk_" (companionship makes secure roads) by
+saying, "_el taryk som el rafyk_" (good roads increase passenger
+traffic).
+
+At the Bairam reception, the Pasha wore his great nishau of diamonds.
+Prince Alexander wore a blue uniform with gold epaulettes, and an
+aigrette of brilliants in his fez. His predecessor, Michael, on such
+occasions, wore a cocked hat, which used to give offence, as the fez
+is considered by the Turks indispensable to a recognition of the
+suzerainety of the Porte.
+
+Being Bairam, I was induced to saunter into the Turkish quarter of the
+town, where all wore the handsome holyday dresses of the old fashion,
+being mostly of crimson cloth, edged with gold lace. My cicerone, a
+Servian, pointed out those shops belonging to the sultan, still marked
+with the letter f, intended, I suppose, for _mulk_ or imperial
+property. We then turned to the left, and came into a singular looking
+street, composed of the ruins of ornamented houses in the imposing,
+but too elaborate style of architecture, which was in vogue in Vienna,
+during the life of Charles the Sixth, and which was a corruption of
+the style de Louis Quatorze. These buildings were half-way up concealed
+from view by common old bazaar shops. This was the "Lange Gasse," or
+main street of the German town during the Austrian occupation of
+twenty-two years, from 1717 to 1739. Most of these houses were built
+with great solidity, and many still have the stucco ornaments that
+distinguish this style. The walls of the palace of Prince Eugene are
+still standing complete, but the court-yard is filled up with
+rubbish, at least six feet high, and what were formerly the rooms of
+the ground-floor have become almost cellars. The edifice is called to
+this day, "_Princeps Konak_." This mixture of the coarse, but
+picturesque features of oriental life, with the dilapidated
+stateliness of palaces in the style of the full-bottom-wigged
+Vanbrughs of Austria, has the oddest effect imaginable.
+
+The Turks remaining in Belgrade have mostly sunk into poverty, and
+occupy themselves principally with water-carrying, wood-splitting, &c.
+The better class latterly kept up their position, by making good sales
+of houses and shops; for building ground is now in some situations
+very expensive. Mr. Fonblanque pays 100L. sterling per annum for his
+rooms, which is a great deal, compared with the rates of house-rent in
+Hungary just over the water.
+
+One day, I ascended the spire of the cathedral, in order to have a
+view of the city and environs. Belgrade, containing only 35,000
+inhabitants, cannot boast of looking very like a metropolis; but the
+environs contain the materials of a good panorama. Looking westward,
+we see the winding its way from the woods of Topshider; the Servian
+shore is abrupt, the Austrian flat, and subject to inundation; the
+prospect on the north-west being closed in by the dim dark line of the
+Frusca Gora, or "Wooded Mountain," which forms the backbone of
+Slavonia, and is the high wooded region between the Save and the
+Drave. Northwards, are the spires of Semlin, rising up from the
+Danube, which here resumes its easterly course; while south and east
+stretch the Turkish quarter, which I have been describing.
+
+There are no formal levees or receptions at the palace of Prince
+Alexander, except on his own fete day. Once or twice a year he
+entertains at dinner the Pasha, the ministers, and the foreign
+consuls-general. In the winter, the prince gives one or two balls.
+
+One of the former species of entertainments took place during my stay,
+and I received the prince's invitation. At the appointed day, I found
+the avenue to the residence thronged with people Who were listening to
+the band that played in the court-yard; and on arriving fit the top
+of the stairs, was led by an officer in a blue uniform, who seemed to
+direct the ceremonies of the day, into the saloon, in which I had, on
+my arrival in Belgrade, paid my respects to the prince, which might be
+pronounced the fac simile of the drawing-room of a Hungarian nobleman;
+the parquet was inlaid and polished, the chairs and sofas covered with
+crimson and white satin damask, which is an unusual luxury in these
+regions, the roof admirably painted in subdued colours, in the best
+Vienna style. High white porcelain urn-like stoves heated the suite of
+rooms.
+
+The company had that picturesque variety of character and costume
+which every traveller delights in. The prince, a muscular middle sized
+dark complexioned man, of about thirty-five, with a serious composed
+air, wore a plain blue military uniform. The princess and her _dames
+de compagnie_ wore the graceful native Servian costume. The Pasha wore
+the Nizam dress, and the Nishan Iftihar; Baron Lieven, the Russian
+Commissioner, in the uniform of a general, glittered with innumerable
+orders; Colonel Philippovich, a man of distinguished talents,
+represented Austria. The archbishop, in his black velvet cap, a large
+enamelled cross hanging by a massive gold chain from his neck, sat in
+stately isolation; and the six feet four inches high Garashanin,
+minister of the interior, conversed with Stojan Simitch, the president
+of the senate, one of the few Servians in high office, who retains his
+old Turkish costume, and has a frame that reminds one of the Farnese
+Hercules. Then what a medley of languages; Servian, German, Russian,
+Turkish, and French, all in full buzz!
+
+We proceeded to the dining-room, where the _cuisine_ was in every
+respect in the German manner. When the dessert appeared, the prince
+rose with a creaming glass of champagne in his hand, and proposed the
+health of the sultan, acknowledged by the pasha; and then, after a
+short pause, the health of Czar Nicolay Paulovitch, acknowledged by
+Baron Lieven; then came the health of other crowned heads. Baron
+Lieven now rose and proposed the health of the Prince. The Pasha and
+the Princess were toasted in turn; and then M. Wastchenko, the Russian
+consul general rose, and in animated terms, drank to the prosperity of
+Servia. The entertainment, which commenced at one o'clock, was
+prolonged to an advanced period of the afternoon, and closed with
+coffee, liqueurs, and chibouques in the drawing-room; the princess and
+the ladies having previously withdrawn to the private apartments.
+
+My time during the rest of the year was taken up with political,
+statistical, and historical inquiries, the results of which will be
+found condensed at the termination of the narrative part of this work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Return to Servia.--The Danube.--Semlin.--Wucics and
+Petronievitch.--Cathedral Solemnity.--Subscription Ball.
+
+
+After an absence of six months in England, I returned to the Danube.
+Vienna and Pesth offered no attractions in the month of August, and I
+felt impatient to put in execution my long cherished project of
+travelling through the most romantic woodlands of Servia. Suppose me
+then at the first streak of dawn, in the beginning of August, 1844,
+hurrying after the large wheelbarrow which carries the luggage of the
+temporary guests of the Queen of England at Pesth to the steamer lying
+just below the long bridge of boats that connects the quiet sombre
+bureaucratic Ofen with the noisy, bustling, movement-loving new city,
+which has sprung up as it were by enchantment on the opposite side of
+the water. I step on board--the signal is given for starting--the
+lofty and crimson-peaked Bloxberg--the vine-clad hill that produces
+the fiery Ofener wine, and the long and graceful quay, form, as it
+were, a fine peristrephic panorama, as the vessel wheels round, and,
+prow downwards, commences her voyage for the vast and curious East,
+while the Danubian tourist bids a dizzy farewell to this last snug
+little centre of European civilization. We hurry downwards towards the
+frontiers of Turkey, but nature smiles not,--We have on our left the
+dreary steppe of central Hungary, and on our right the low distant
+hills of Baranya. Alas! this is not the Danube of Passau, and Lintz,
+and Molk, and Theben. But now the Drave pours her broad waters into
+the great artery. The right shore soon becomes somewhat bolder, and
+agreeably wooded hills enliven the prospect. This little mountain
+chain is the celebrated Frusca Gora, the stronghold of the Servian
+language, literature, and nationality on the Austrian aide of the
+Save.
+
+A few days after my arrival, Wucics and Petronievitch, the two pillars
+of the party of Kara Georgevitch, the reigning prince, and the
+opponents of the ousted Obrenovitch family, returned from banishment
+in consequence of communications that had passed between the British
+and Russian governments. Great preparations were made to receive the
+popular favourites.
+
+One morning I was attracted to the window, and saw an immense flock of
+sheep slowly paraded along, their heads being decorated with ribbons,
+followed by oxen, with large citrons stuck on the tips of their horns.
+
+One vender of shawls and carpets had covered all the front of his shop
+with his gaudy wares, in order to do honour to the patriots, and at
+the same time to attract the attention of purchasers.
+
+The tolling of the cathedral bell announced the approach of the
+procession, which was preceded by a long train of rustic cavaliers,
+noble, vigorous-looking men. Standing at the balcony, we missed the
+sight of the heroes of the day, who had gone round by other streets.
+We, therefore, went to the cathedral, where all the principal persons
+in Servia were assembled. One old man, with grey, filmy, lack-lustre
+eyes, pendant jaws, and white beard, was pointed out to me as a
+centenarian witness of this national manifestation.
+
+The grand screen, which in the Greek churches veils the sanctuary from
+the vulgar gaze, was hung with rich silks, and on a raised platform,
+covered with carpets, stood the archbishop, a dignified
+high-priest-looking figure, with crosier in hand, surrounded by his
+deacons in superbly embroidered robes. The huzzas of the populace grew
+louder as the procession approached the cathedral, a loud and
+prolonged buzz of excited attention accompanied the opening of the
+grand central portal, and Wucics and Petronievitch, grey with the dust
+with which the immense cavalcade had besprinkled them, came forward,
+kissed the cross and gospels, which the archbishop presented to them,
+and, kneeling down, returned thanks for their safe restoration. On
+regaining their legs, the archbishop advanced to the edge of the
+platform, and began a discourse describing the grief the nation had
+experienced at their departure, the universal joy for their return,
+and the hope that they would ever keep peace and union in view in all
+matters of state, and that in their duties to the state they must
+never forget their responsibility to the Most High.
+
+Wucics, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian
+peasant, heard with a reverential inclination of the head the
+elegantly polished discourse of the gold-bedizened prelate, but nought
+relaxed one single muscle of that adamantine visage; the finer but
+more luminous features of Petronievitch were evidently under the
+control of a less powerful will. At certain passages of the discourse,
+his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons then prayed
+successively for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and the prince.
+
+And now uprose from every tongue, and every heart, a hymn for the
+longevity of Wucics and Petronievitch. "The solemn song for many days"
+is the expressive title of this sublime chant. This hymn is so old
+that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of Christianity in the
+East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be beyond the ravages of
+time, and the caprices of convention.
+
+The procession then returned, the band playing the Wucics march, to
+the houses of the two heroes of the day.
+
+We dined; and just as dessert appeared the whiz of a rocket announced
+the commencement of fire-works. As most of us had seen the splendid
+bouquet of rockets, which, during the fetes of July, amuse the
+Parisians, we entertained slender expectations of being pleased with
+an illumination at Belgrade. On going out, however, the scene proved
+highly interesting. In the grand square were two columns _a la
+Vicentina_, covered with lamps. One side of the square was illuminated
+with the word Wucics, and the other with the word Avram in colossal
+letters. At a later period of the evening the downs were covered with
+fires roasting innumerable sheep and oxen, a custom which seems in all
+countries to accompany popular rejoicing.
+
+I had never seen a Servian full-dress ball, but the arrival of Wucics
+and Petronievitch procured me the opportunity of witnessing an
+entertainment of this description. The principal apartment in the new
+Konak, built by prince Michael, was the ball-room, which, by eight
+o'clock, was filled, as the phrase goes, by all "the rank and fashion"
+of Belgrade. Senators of the old school, in their benishes and
+shalwars, and senators of the new school in pantaloons and stiff
+cravats. As Servia has become, morally speaking, Europe's youngest
+daughter, this is all very well: but I must ever think that in the
+article of dress this innovation is not an improvement. I hope that
+the ladies of Servia will never reject their graceful national
+costume for the shifting modes and compressed waists of European
+capitals.
+
+No head-dress, that I have seen in the Levant, is better calculated to
+set off beauty than that of the ladies of Servia. From a small Greek
+fez they suspend a gold tassel, which contrasts with the black and
+glossy hair, which is laid smooth and flat down the temple. Even now,
+while I write, memory piques me with the graceful toss of the head,
+and the rustle of the yellow satin gown of the sister of the princess,
+who was admitted to be the handsomest woman in the room, and with her
+tunic of crimson velvet embroidered in gold, and faced with sable,
+would have been, in her strictly indigenous costume, the queen of any
+fancy ball in old Europe.
+
+Wucics and Petronievitch were of course received with shouts and
+clapping of hands, and took the seats prepared for them at the upper
+end of the hall. The Servian national dance was then performed, being
+a species of cotillion in alternate quick and slow movements.
+
+I need not repeat the other events of the evening; how forms and
+features were passed in review; how the jewelled, smooth-skinned,
+doll-like beauties usurped the admiration of the minute, and how the
+indefinably sympathetic air of less pretentious belles prolonged their
+magnetic sway to the close of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Holman, the Blind Traveller.--Milutinovich, the Poet.--Bulgarian
+Legend.--Tableau de genre.--Departure for the Interior.
+
+
+Belgrade, unlike other towns on the Danube, is much less visited by
+Europeans, since the introduction of steam navigation, than it was
+previously. Servia used to be the _porte cochere_ of the East; and
+most travellers, both before and since the lively Lady Mary Wortley
+Montague, took the high road to Constantinople by Belgrade, Sofia,
+Philippopoli, and Adrianople. No mere tourist would now-a-days think
+of undertaking the fatiguing ride across European Turkey, when he can
+whizz past Widdin and Roustchouk, and even cut off the grand tongue at
+the mouth of the Danube, by going in an omnibus from Czernovoda to
+Kustendgi; consequently the arrival of an English traveller from the
+interior, is a somewhat rare occurrence.
+
+One day I was going out at the gateway, and saw a strange figure, with
+a long white beard and a Spanish cap, mounted on a sorry horse, and at
+once recognized it to be that of Holman, the blind traveller.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Holman?" said I.
+
+"I know that voice well."
+
+"I last saw you in Aleppo," said I; and he at once named me.
+
+I then got him off his horse, and into quarters.
+
+This singular individual had just come through the most dangerous
+parts of Bosnia in perfect safety; a feat which a blind man can
+perform more easily than one who enjoys the most perfect vision; for
+all compassionate and assist a fellow-creature in this deplorable
+plight.
+
+Next day I took Mr. Holman through the town, and described to him the
+lions of Belgrade; and taking a walk on the esplanade, I turned his
+face to the cardinal points of the compass, successively explaining
+the objects lying in each direction, and, after answering a few of his
+cross questions, the blind traveller seemed to know as much of
+Belgrade as was possible for a person in his condition.
+
+He related to me, that since our meeting at Aleppo, he had visited
+Damascus and other eastern cities; and at length, after sundry
+adventures, had arrived on the Adriatic, and visited the Vladika of
+Montenegro, who had given him a good reception. He then proceeded
+through Herzegovina and Bosnia to Seraievo, where he passed three
+days, and he informed me that from Seraievo to the frontiers of Servia
+was nearly all forest, with here and there the skeletons of robbers
+hung up in chains.
+
+Mr. Holman subsequently went, as I understood, to Wallachia and
+Transylvania.
+
+Having delayed my departure for the interior, in order to witness the
+national festivities, nothing remained but the purgatory of
+preparation, the squabbling about the hire of horses, the purchase of
+odds and ends for convenience on the road, for no such thing as a
+canteen is to be had at Belgrade. Some persons recommended my hiring a
+Turkish Araba; but as this is practicable only on the regularly
+constructed roads, I should have lost the sight of the most
+picturesque regions, or been compelled to take my chance of getting
+horses, and leaving my baggage behind. To avoid this inconvenience, I
+resolved to perform the whole journey on horseback.
+
+The government showed me every attention, and orders were sent by the
+minister of the interior to all governors, vice-governors, and
+employes, enjoining them to furnish me with every assistance, and
+communicate whatever information I might desire; to which, as the
+reader will see in the sequel, the fullest effect was given by those
+individuals.
+
+On the day of departure, a tap was heard at the door, and enter Holman
+to bid me good-bye. Another tap at the door, and enter Milutinovich,
+who is the best of the living poets of Servia, and has been sometimes
+called the Ossian of the Balkan. As for his other pseudonyme, "the
+Homer of a hundred sieges," that must have been invented by Mr. George
+Robins, the Demosthenes of "_one_ hundred rostra." The reading public
+in Servia is not yet large enough to enable a man of letters to live
+solely by his works; so our bard has a situation in the ministry of
+public instruction. One of the most remarkable compositions of
+Milutinovich is an address to a young surgeon, who, to relieve the
+poet from difficulties, expended in the printing of his poems a sum
+which he had destined for his own support at a university, in order to
+obtain his degree.
+
+Now, it may not be generally known that one of the oldest legends of
+Bulgaria is that of "Poor Lasar," which runs somewhat thus:--
+
+"The day departed, and the stranger came, as the moon rose on the
+silver snow. 'Welcome,' said the poor Lasar to the stranger;
+'Luibitza, light the faggot, and prepare the supper.'
+
+"Luibitza answered: 'The forest is wide, and the lighted faggot burns
+bright, but where is the supper? Have we not fasted since yesterday?'
+
+"Shame and confusion smote the heart of poor Lasar.
+
+"'Art thou a Bulgarian,' said the stranger, 'and settest not food
+before thy guest?'
+
+"Poor Lasar looked in the cupboard, and looked in the garret, nor
+crumb, nor onion, were found in either. Shame and confusion smote the
+heart of poor Lasar.
+
+"'Here is fat and fair flesh,' said the stranger, pointing to Janko,
+the curly-haired boy. Luibitza shrieked and fell. 'Never,' said Lasar,
+'shall it be said that a Bulgarian was wanting to his guest,' He
+seized a hatchet, and Janko was slaughtered as a lamb. Ah, who can
+describe the supper of the stranger!
+
+"Lasar fell into a deep sleep, and at midnight he heard the stranger
+cry aloud, 'Arise, Lasar, for I am the Lord thy God; the hospitality
+of Bulgaria is untarnished. Thy son Janko is restored to life, and thy
+stores are filled.'
+
+"Long lived the rich Lasar, the fair Luibitza, and the curly-haired
+Janko."
+
+Milutinovich, in his address to the youthful surgeon, compares his
+transcendent generosity to the sacrifice made by Lasar in the wild and
+distasteful legend I have here given.
+
+I introduced the poet and the traveller to each other, and explained
+their respective merits and peculiarities. Poor old Milutinovich, who
+looked on his own journey to Montenegro as a memorable feat, was
+awe-struck when I mentioned the innumerable countries in the four
+quarters of the world which had been visited by the blind traveller.
+He immediately recollected of having read an account of him in the
+Augsburg Gazette, and with a reverential simplicity begged me to
+convey to him his desire to kiss, his beard. Holman consented with a
+smile, and Milutinovich, advancing as if he were about to worship a
+deity, lifted the peak of white hairs from the beard of the aged
+stranger, pressed them to his lips, and prayed aloud that he might
+return to his home in safety.
+
+In old Europe, Milutinovich would have been called an actor; but his
+deportment, if it had the originality, had also the childish
+simplicity of nature.
+
+When the hour of departure arrived, I descended to the court yard,
+which would have furnished good materials for a _tableau de genre_, a
+lofty, well built, German-looking house, rising on three sides,
+surrounded a most rudely paved court, which was inclosed on the fourth
+by a stable and hay-loft, not one-third the height of the rest.
+Various mustachioed _far niente_ looking figures, wrapped _cap-a-pie_
+in dressing gowns, lolled out of the first floor corridor, and smoked
+their chibouques with unusual activity, while the ground floor was
+occupied by German washer-women and their soap-suds; three of the
+arcades being festooned with shirts and drawers hung up to dry, and
+stockings, with apertures at the toes and heels for the free
+circulation of the air. Loud exclamations, and the sound of the click
+of balls, proceeded from the large archway, on which a cafe opened. In
+the midst of the yard stood our horses, which, with their heavily
+padded and high cantelled Turkish saddles, somewhat _a la
+Wouvermans_, were held by Fonblanque's robust Pandour in his crimson
+jacket and white fustanella. My man Paul gave a smack of the whip, and
+off we cantered for the highlands and woodlands of Servia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Journey to Shabatz.--Resemblance of Manners to those of the Middle
+Ages.--Palesh.--A Servian Bride.--Blind
+Minstrel.--Gypsies.--Macadamized Road.
+
+
+The immediate object of my first journey was Shabatz; the second town
+in Servia, which is situated further up the Save than Belgrade, and is
+thus close upon the frontier of Bosnia. We consequently had the river
+on our right hand all the way. After five hours' travelling, the
+mountains, which hung back as long as we were in the vicinity of
+Belgrade, now approached, and draped in forest green, looked down on
+the winding Save and the pinguid flats of the Slavonian frontier. Just
+before the sun set, we wound by a circuitous road to an eminence
+which, projected promontory-like into the river's course. Three rude
+crosses were planted on a steep, not unworthy the columnar harmony of
+Grecian marble.
+
+When it was quite dark, we arrived at the Colubara, and passed the
+ferry which, during the long Servian revolution, was always considered
+a post of importance, as commanding a communication between Shabatz
+and the capital. An old man accompanied us, who was returning to his
+native place on the frontiers of Bosnia, having gone to welcome Wucics
+and Petronievitch. He amused me by asking me "if the king of my
+country lived in a strong castle?" I answered, "No, we have a queen,
+whose strength is in the love of all her subjects." Indeed, it is
+impossible to travel in the interior of Turkey without having the mind
+perpetually carried back to the middle ages by a thousand quaint
+remarks and circumstances, inseparable from the moral and political
+constitution of a half civilized and quasi-federal empire. For, in
+nearly all the mountainous parts of Turkey, the power of the
+government is almost nominal, and even up to a very recent period the
+position of the Dere Beys savoured strongly of feudalism.
+
+We arrived at Palesh, the khan of which looked like a new coffee-shop
+in a Turkish bazaar, and I thought that we should have a sorry night's
+quarters; but mine host, leading the way with a candle up a ladder,
+and though a trap-door, put us into a clean newly-carpeted room, and
+in an hour the boy entered with Turkish wash-hand apparatus; and after
+ablution the khan keeper produced supper, consisting of soup, which
+contained so much lemon juice, that, without a wry face, I could
+scarcely eat it--boiled lamb, from which the soup had been made, and
+then a stew of the same with Tomata sauce. A bed was then spread out
+on the floor _a la turque_, which was rather hard; but as the sheets
+were snowy white, I reckoned myself very lucky.
+
+I must say that there is a degree of cleanliness within doors, which I
+had been led to consider as somewhat foreign to the habits of Slaavic
+populations. The lady of the Austrian consul-general in Belgrade told
+me that she was struck with the propriety of the dwellings of the
+poor, as contrasted with those in Galicia, where she had resided for
+many years; and every traveller in Germany is struck with the
+difference which exists between the villages of Bohemia and those in
+Saxony, and other adjacent German provinces.
+
+From Palesh we started with fine weather for Skela, through a
+beautifully wooded park, some fields being here and there inclosed
+with wattling. Skela is a new ferry on the Save, to facilitate the
+communication with Austria.
+
+Near here are redoubts, where Kara Georg, the father of the reigning
+prince, held out during the disasters of 1813, until all the women and
+children were transferred in safety to the Austrian territory. Here we
+met a very pretty girl, who, in answer to the salute of my
+fellow-travellers, bent herself almost to the earth. On asking the
+reason, I was told that she was a bride, whom custom compels, for a
+stated period, to make this humble reverence.
+
+We then came to the Skela, and seeing a large house within an
+enclosure, I asked what it was, and was told that it was the
+reconciliation-house, (_primiritelnj sud_,) a court of first instance,
+in which cases are decided by the village elders, without expense to
+the litigants, and beyond which suits are seldom carried to the higher
+courts. There is throughout all the interior of Servia a stout
+opposition to the nascent lawyer class in Belgrade. I have been more
+than once amused on hearing an advocate, greedy of practice, style
+this laudable economy and patriarchal simplicity--"Avarice and
+aversion from civilization." As it began to rain we entered a tavern,
+and ordered a fowl to be roasted, as the soup and stews of yester-even
+were not to my taste. A booby, with idiocy marked on his countenance,
+was lounging about the door, and when our mid-day meal was done I
+ordered the man to give him a glass of _slivovitsa_, as plum brandy is
+called. He then came forward, trembling, as if about to receive
+sentence of death, and taking off his greasy fez, said, "I drink to
+our prince Kara Georgovich, and to the progress and enlightenment of
+the nation." I looked with astonishment at the torn, wretched
+habiliments of this idiot swineherd. He was too stupid to entertain
+these sentiments himself; but this trifling circumstance was the
+feather which indicated how the wind blew. The Servians are by no
+means a nation of talkers; they are a serious people; and if the
+determination to rise were not in the minds of the people, it would
+not be on the lips of the baboon-visaged oaf of an insignificant
+hamlet.
+
+The rain now began to pour in torrents, so to make the most of it, we
+ordered another magnum of strong red wine, and procured from the
+neighbourhood a blind fiddler, who had acquired a local reputation.
+His instrument, the favourite one of Servia, is styled a _goosely_,
+being a testudo-formed viol; no doubt a relic of the antique, for the
+Servian monarchy derived all its arts from the Greeks of the Lower
+Empire. But the musical entertainment, in spite of the magnum of wine,
+and the jovial challenges of our fellow traveller from the Drina,
+threw me into a species of melancholy. The voice of the minstrel, and
+the tone of the instrument, were soft and melodious, but so
+profoundly plaintive as to be painful. The song described the
+struggle of Osman Bairactar with Michael, a Servian chief, and, as it
+was explained to me, called up successive images of a war of
+extermination, with its pyramids of ghastly trunkless heads, and
+fields of charcoal, to mark the site of some peaceful village, amid
+the blaze of which its inhabitants had wandered to an eternal home in
+the snows and trackless woods of the Balkan. When I looked out of the
+tavern window the dense vapours and torrents of rain did not elevate
+my spirits; and when I cast my eyes on the minstrel I saw a peasant,
+whose robust frame might have supported a large family, reduced by the
+privation of sight, to waste his best years in strumming on a
+monotonous viol for a few piastres.
+
+I flung him a gratuity, and begged him to desist.
+
+After musing an hour, I again ordered the horses, although it still
+rained, and set forth, the road being close to the river, at one part
+of which a fleet of decked boats were moored. I perceived that they
+were all navigated by Bosniac Moslems, one of whom, smoking his pipe
+under cover, wore the green turban of a Shereef; they were all loaded
+with raw produce, intended for sale at Belgrade or Semlin.
+
+The rain increasing, we took shelter in a wretched khan, with a mud
+floor, and a fire of logs blazing in the centre, the smoke escaping as
+it best could by the front and back doors. Gipsies and Servian
+peasants sat round it in a large circle; the former being at once
+recognizable, not only from their darker skins, but from their traits
+being finer than those of the Servian peasantry. The gipsies fought
+bravely against the Turks under Kara Georg, and are now for the most
+part settled, although politically separated from the rest of the
+community, and living under their own responsible head; but, as in
+other countries, they prefer horse dealing and smith's work to other
+trades.
+
+As there was no chance of the storm abating, I resolved to pass the
+night here on discovering that there was a separate room, which our
+host said he occasionally unlocked, for the better order of
+travellers: but as there was no bed, I had recourse to my carpet and
+pillow, for the expense of _Uebergewicht_ had deterred me from
+bringing a canteen and camp bed from England.
+
+Next morning, on waking, the sweet chirp of a bird, gently echoed in
+the adjoining woods, announced that the storm had ceased, and nature
+resumed her wonted calm. On arising, I went to the door, and the
+unclouded effulgence of dawn bursting through the dripping boughs and
+rain-bespangled leaves, seemed to realize the golden tree of the
+garden of the Abbassides. The road from this point to Shabatz was one
+continuous avenue of stately oaks--nature's noblest order of sylvan
+architecture; at some places, gently rising to views of the winding
+Save, with sun, sky, and freshening breeze to quicken the sensations,
+or falling into the dell, where the stream darkly pellucid, murmured
+under the sombre foliage.
+
+The road, as we approached Shabatz, proved to be macadamized in a
+certain fashion: a deep trench was dug on each side; stakes about a
+foot and a half high, interlaced with wicker-work, were stuck into the
+ground within the trench, and the road was then filled up with gravel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Shabatz.--A Provincial Chancery.--Servian Collector.--Description of
+his House.--Country Barber.--Turkish Quarter.--Self-taught Priest.--A
+Provincial Dinner.--Native Soiree.
+
+
+I entered Shabatz by a wide street, paved in some places with wood.
+The bazaars are all open, and Shabatz looks like a good town in
+Bulgaria. I saw very few shops with glazed fronts and counters in the
+European manner.
+
+I alighted at the principal khan, which had attached to it just such a
+cafe and billiard table as one sees in country towns in Hungary. How
+odd! to see the Servians, who here all wear the old Turkish costume,
+except the turban--immersed in the tactics of _carambolage_, skipping
+most gaily and un-orientally around the table, then balancing
+themselves on one leg, enveloped in enormous inexpressibles, bending
+low, and cocking the eye to catch the choicest bits.
+
+Surrendering our horses to the care of the khan keeper, I proceeded to
+the konak, or government house, to present my letters. This proved to
+be a large building, in the style of Constantinople, which, with its
+line of bow windows, and kiosk-fashioned rooms, surmounted with
+projecting roofs, might have passed muster on the Bosphorus.
+
+On entering, I was ushered into the office of the collector, to await
+his arrival, and, at a first glance, might have supposed myself in a
+formal Austrian kanzley.
+
+There were the flat desks, the strong boxes, and the shelves of coarse
+foolscap; but a pile of long chibouques, and a young man, with a
+slight Northumbrian burr, and Servian dress, showed that I was on the
+right bank of the Save.
+
+The collector now made his appearance, a roundly-built, serious,
+burgomaster-looking personage, who appeared as if one of Vander
+Helst's portraits had stepped out of the canvass, so closely does the
+present Servian dress resemble that of Holland, in the seventeenth
+century, in all but the hat.
+
+Having read the letter, he cleared his throat with a loud hem, and
+then said with great deliberation, "Gospody Ilia Garashanin informs me
+that having seen many countries, you also wish to see Servia, and that
+I am to show you whatever you desire to see, and obey whatever you
+choose to command; and now you are my guest while you remain here. Go
+you, Simo, to the khan," continued the collector, addressing a tall
+momk or pandour, who, armed to the teeth, stood with his hands crossed
+at the door, "and get the gentleman's baggage taken to my house.--I
+hope," added he, "you will be pleased with Shabatz; but you must not
+be critical, for we are still a rude people."
+
+_Author_. "Childhood must precede manhood; that is the order of
+nature."
+
+_Collector_. "Ay, ay, our birth was slow, and painful; Servia, as you
+say, is yet a child."
+
+_Author_. "Yes, but a stout, chubby, healthy child."
+
+A gleam of satisfaction produced a thaw of the collector's ice-bound
+visage, and, descending to the street, I accompanied him until we
+arrived at a house two stories high, which we entered by a wide new
+wooden gate, and then mounting a staircase, scrupulously clean, were
+shown into his principal room, which was surrounded by a divan _a la
+Turque_; but it had no carpet, so we went straight in with our boots
+on. A German chest of drawers was in one corner; the walls were plain
+white-washed, and so was a stove about six feet high; the only
+ornament of the room was a small snake moulding in the centre of the
+roof. Some oak chairs were ranged along the lower end of the room, and
+a table stood in the middle, covered with a German linen cloth,
+representing Pesth and Ofen; the Bloxberg being thrice as lofty as the
+reality, the genius of the artist having set it in the clouds. The
+steamer had a prow like a Roman galley, a stern like a royal yacht,
+and even the steam from the chimney described graceful volutes, with
+academic observance of the line of beauty.
+
+"We are still somewhat rude and un-European in Shabatz," said Gospody
+Ninitch, for such was the name in which the collector rejoiced.
+
+"Indeed," quoth I, sitting at my ease on the divan, "there is no room
+for criticism. The Turks now-a-days take some things from Europe; but
+Europe might do worse than adopt the divan more extensively; for,
+believe me, to an arriving traveller it is the greatest of all
+luxuries."
+
+Here the servants entered with chibouques. "I certainly think," said
+he, "that no one would smoke a cigar who could smoke a chibouque."
+
+"And no man would sit on an oak chair who could sit on a divan:" so
+the Gospody smiled and transferred his ample person to the still
+ampler divan.
+
+The barber now entered; for in the hurry of departure I had forgotten
+part of my toilette apparatus: but it was evident that I was the first
+Frank who had ever been under his razor; for when his operations were
+finished, he seized my comb, and began to comb my whiskers backwards,
+as if they had formed part of a Mussulman's beard. When I thought I
+was done with him, I resumed the conversation, but was speedily
+interrupted by something like a loud box on the ear, and, turning
+round my head, perceived that the cause of this sensation was the
+barber having, in his finishing touch, stuck an ivory ear-pick against
+my tympanum; but, calling for a wash-hand basin, I begged to be
+relieved from all further ministrations; so putting half a zwanziger
+on the face of the round pocket mirror which he proffered to me, he
+departed with a "_S'Bogom_," or, "God be with you."
+
+The collector now accompanied me on a walk through the Servian town,
+and emerging on a wide space, we discovered the fortress of Shabatz,
+which is the quarter in which the remaining Turks live, presenting a
+line of irregular trenches, of battered appearance, scarcely raised
+above the level of the surrounding country. The space between the
+town and the fortress is called the Shabatzko Polje, and in the time
+of the civil war was the scene of fierce combats. When the Save
+overflows in spring, it is generally under water.
+
+Crossing a ruinous wooden bridge over a wet ditch, we saw a rusty
+unserviceable brass cannon, which vain-gloriously assumed the
+prerogative of commanding the entrance. To the left, a citadel of four
+bastions, connected by a curtain, was all but a ruin.
+
+As we entered, a cafe, with bare walls and a few shabby Turks smoking
+in it, completed, along with the dirty street, a picture
+characteristic of the fallen fortunes of Islam in Servia.
+
+"There comes the cadi," said the collector, and I looked out for at
+least one individual with turban of fine texture, decent robes, and
+venerable appearance; but a man of gigantic stature, and rude aspect,
+wearing a grey peasant's turban, welcomed us with undignified
+cordiality. We followed him down the street, and sometimes crossing
+the mud on pieces of wood, sometimes "putting one's foot in it," we
+reached a savage-looking timber kiosk, and, mounting a ladder, seated
+ourselves on the window ledge.
+
+There flowed the Save in all its peaceful smoothness; looking out of
+the window, I perceived that the high rampart, on which the kiosk was
+constructed, was built at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the
+water, and that the intervening space was covered with boats, hauled
+up high and dry, and animated with the process of building and
+repairing the barges employed in the river trade. The kiosk, in which
+we were sitting, was a species of cafe, and it being Ramadan time, we
+were presented with sherbet by a kahwagi, who, to judge by his look,
+was a eunuch. I was afterwards told that the Turks remaining in the
+fortified town are so poor, that they had not a decent room to show me
+into.
+
+A Turk, about fifty years of age, now entered. His habiliments were
+somewhere between decent and shabby genteel, and his voice and manners
+had that distinguished gentleness which wins--because it feels--its
+way. This was the Disdar Aga, the last relic of the wealthy Turks of
+the place: for before the Servian revolution Shabatz had its twenty
+thousand Osmanlis; and a tract of gardens on the other side of the
+_Polje_, was pointed out as having been covered with the villas of the
+wealthy, which were subsequently burnt down.
+
+Our conversation was restricted to a few general observations, as
+other persons were present, but the Disdar Aga promised to call on me
+on the following day. I was asked if I had been in Seraievo.[2] I
+answered in the negative, but added, "I have heard so much of
+Seraievo, that I desire ardently to see it. But I am afraid of the
+Haiducks."[3]
+
+_Cadi_. "And not without reason; for Seraievo, with its delicious
+gardens, must be seen in summer. In winter the roads are free from
+haiducks, because they cannot hold out in the snow; but then Seraievo,
+having lost the verdure and foliage of its environs, ceases to be
+attractive, except in its bazaars, for they are without an equal."
+
+_Author_. "I always thought that the finest bazaar of Turkey in
+Europe, was that of Adrianople."
+
+_Cadi_. "Ay, but not equal to Seraievo; when you see the Bosniacs, in
+their cleanly apparel and splendid arms walking down the bazaar, you
+might think yourself in the serai of a sultan; then all the esnafs are
+in their divisions like regiments of Nizam."
+
+The Disdar Aga now accompanied me to the gate, and bidding me
+farewell, with graceful urbanity, re-entered the bastioned miniature
+citadel in which he lived almost alone. The history of this individual
+is singular: his family was cut to pieces in the dreadful scenes of
+1806; and, when a mere boy, he found himself a prisoner in the Servian
+camp. Being thus without protectors, he was adopted by Luka
+Lasarevitch, the valiant lieutenant of Kara Georg, and baptized as a
+Christian with the name of John, but having been reclaimed by the
+Turks on the re-conquest of Servia in 1813, he returned to the faith
+of his fathers.
+
+We now returned into the town, and there sat the same Luka
+Lasarevitch, now a merchant and town councillor, at the door of his
+warehouse, an octogenarian, with thirteen wounds on his body.
+
+Going home, I asked the collector if the Aga and Luka were still
+friends. "To this very day," said he, "notwithstanding the difference
+of religion, the Aga looks upon Luka as his father, and Luka looks
+upon the Aga as his son." To those who have lived in other parts of
+Turkey this account must appear very curious. I found that the Aga was
+as highly respected by the Christians as by the Turks, for his
+strictly honourable character.
+
+We now paid a visit to the Arch-priest, Iowan Paulovitch, a
+self-taught ecclesiastic: the room in which he received us was filled
+with books, mostly Servian; but I perceived among them German
+translations. On asking him if he had heard any thing of English
+literature, he showed me translations into German of Shakspeare,
+Young's Night Thoughts, and a novel of Bulwer. The Greek secular
+clergy marry; and in the course of conversation it came out that his
+son was one of the young Servians sent by the government to study
+mining-engineering, at Schemnitz, in Hungary. The Church of the
+Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, in which he officiates, was built in
+1828. I remarked that it had only a wooden bell tower, which had been
+afterwards erected in the church yard; no belfry existing in the
+building itself. The reason of this is, that, up to the period
+mentioned, the Servians were unaccustomed to have bells sounded.
+
+Our host provided most ample fare for supper, preceded by a glass of
+slivovitsa. We began with soup, rendered slightly acid with lemon
+juice, then came fowl, stewed with turnips and sugar. This was
+followed by pudding of almonds, raisins, and pancake. Roast capon
+brought up the rear. A white wine of the country was served during
+supper, but along with dessert we had a good red wine of Negotin,
+served in Bohemian coloured glasses. I have been thus minute on the
+subject of food, for the dinners I ate at Belgrade I do not count as
+Servian, having been all in the German fashion.
+
+The wife of the collector sat at dinner, but at the foot of the table;
+a position characteristic of that of women in Servia--midway between
+the graceful precedence of Europe and the contemptuous exclusion of
+the East.
+
+After hand-washing, we returned to the divan, and while pipes and
+coffee were handed round, a noise in the court yard denoted a visiter,
+and a middle-aged man, with embroidered clothes, and silver-mounted
+pistols in his girdle, entered. This was the Natchalnik, or local
+governor, who had come from his own village, two hours off, to pay his
+visit; he was accompanied by the two captains under his command, one
+of whom was a military dandy. His ample girdle was richly embroidered,
+out of which projected silver-mounted old fashioned pistols. His
+crimson shaksheers were also richly embroidered, and the corner of a
+gilt flowered cambric pocket handkerchief showed itself at his breast.
+His companion wore a different aspect, with large features, dusky in
+tint as those of a gipsy, and dressed in plain coarse blue clothes. He
+was presented to me as a man who had grown from boyhood to manhood to
+the tune of the whistling bullets of Kara Georg and his Turkish
+opponents. After the usual salutations, the Natchalnik began--
+
+"We have heard that Gospody Wellington has received from the English
+nation an estate for his distinguished services."
+
+_Author_. "That is true; but the presentation took place a great many
+years ago."
+
+_Natch_. "What is the age of Gospody Wellington?"
+
+_Author_. "About seventy-five. He was born in 1769, the year in which
+Napoleon and Mohammed Ali first saw the light."
+
+This seemed to awaken the interest of the party.
+
+The roughly-clad trooper drew in his chair, and leaning his elbow on
+his knees, opened wide a pair of expectant eyes; the Natchalnik, after
+a long puff of his pipe, said, with some magisterial decision, "That
+was a moment when nature had her sleeves tucked up. I think our Kara
+Georg must also have been born about that time."
+
+_Natch_. "Is Gospody Wellington still in service?"
+
+_Author_. "Yes; he is commander-in-chief."
+
+_Natch_. "Well, God grant that his sons, and his sons' sons, may
+render as great services to the nation."
+
+Our conversation was prolonged to a late hour in the evening, in which
+a variety of anecdotes were related of the ingenious methods employed
+by Milosh to fill his coffers as rapidly as possible.
+
+Mine host, taking a candle, then led me to my bedroom, a small
+carpeted apartment, with a German bed; the coverlet was of green
+satin, quilted, and the sheets were clean and fragrant; and I
+observed, that they were striped with an alternate fine and coarse
+woof.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: The capital of Bosnia, a large and beautiful city, which
+is often called the Damascus of the North.]
+
+[Footnote 3: In this part of Turkey in Europe robbers, as well as
+rebels, are called Haiducks: like the caterans of the Highlands of
+Scotland, they were merely held to be persons at war with the
+authority: and in the Servian revolution, patriots, rebels, and
+robbers, were confounded in the common term of Haiducks.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Kaimak.--History of a Renegade.--A Bishop's house.--Progress of
+Education.--Portrait of Milosh.--Bosnia and the Bosniacs.--Moslem
+Fanaticism.--Death of the Collector.
+
+
+The fatigues of travelling procured me a sound sleep. I rose
+refreshed, and proceeded into the divan. The hostess then came
+forward, and before I could perceive, or prevent her object, she
+kissed my hand. "Kako se spavali; Dobro?"--"How have you slept? I hope
+you are refreshed," and other kindly inquiries followed on, while she
+took from the hand of an attendant a silver salver, on which was a
+glass of slivovitsa, a plate of rose marmalade, and a large Bohemian
+cut crystal globular goblet of water, the contents of which, along
+with a chibouque, were the prelude to breakfast, which consisted of
+coffee and toast, and instead of milk we had rich boiled kaimak, as
+Turkish clotted cream is called.
+
+I have always been surprised to find that this undoubted luxury, which
+is to be found in every town in Turkey, should be unknown throughout
+the greater part of Europe. After comfortably smoking another
+chibouque, and chatting about Shabatz and the Shabatzians, the
+collector informed me that the time was come for returning the visit
+of the Natchalnik, and paying that of the Bishop.
+
+The Natchalnik received us in the Konak of Gospody Iefrem, the brother
+of Milosh, and our interview was in no respect different from a usual
+Turkish visit. We then descended to the street; the sun an hour before
+its meridian shone brightly, but the centre of the broad street was
+very muddy, from the late rain; so we picked our steps with some care,
+until we arrived in the vicinity of the bridge, when I perceived the
+eunuch-looking coffee-keeper navigating the slough, accompanied by a
+Mussulman in a red checked shawl turban.--"Here is a man that wishes
+to make your acquaintance," said Eunuch-face.--"I heard you were
+paying visits yesterday in the Turkish quarter," said the strange
+figure, saluting me. I returned the salute, and addressed him in
+Arabic; he answered in a strong Egyptian accent. However, as the depth
+of the surrounding mud, and the glare of the sun, rendered a further
+colloquy somewhat inconvenient, we postponed our meeting until the
+evening. On our way to the Bishop, I asked the collector what that man
+was doing there.
+
+_Collector_. "His history is a singular one. You yesterday saw a Turk,
+who was baptized, and then returned to Islamism. This is a Servian,
+who turned Turk thirty years ago, and now wishes to be a Christian
+again. He has passed most of that time in the distant parts of Turkey,
+and has children grown up and settled there. He has come to me
+secretly, and declares his desire to be a Christian again; but he is
+afraid the Turks will kill him."
+
+_Author_. "Has he been long here?"
+
+_Collector_. "Two months. He went first into the Turkish town; and
+having incurred their suspicions, he left them, and has now taken up
+his quarters in the khan, with a couple of horses and a servant."
+
+_Author_. "What does he do?"
+
+_Collector_. "He pretends to be a doctor, and cures the people; but he
+generally exacts a considerable sum before prescribing, and he has had
+disputes with people who say that they are not healed so quickly as
+they expect."
+
+_Author_. "Do you think he is sincere in wishing to be a Christian
+again?"
+
+_Collector_. "God knows. What can one think of a man who has changed
+his religion, but that no dependence can be placed on him? The Turks
+are shy of him."
+
+We had now arrived at the house of the Bishop, and were shown into a
+well-carpeted room, in the old Turkish style, with the roof gilded and
+painted in dark colours, and an un-artistlike panorama of
+Constantinople running round the cornice. I seated myself on an
+old-fashioned, wide, comfortable divan, with richly embroidered, but
+somewhat faded cushions, and, throwing off my shoes, tucked my legs
+comfortably under me.
+
+"This house," said the collector, "is a relic of old Shabatz; most of
+the other houses of this class were burnt down. You see no German
+furniture here; tell me whether you prefer the Turkish style, or the
+European."
+
+_Author_. "In warm weather give me a room of this kind, where the sun
+is excluded, and where one can loll at ease, and smoke a narghile; but
+in winter I like to see a blazing fire, and to hear the music of a
+tea-urn."
+
+The Bishop now entered, and we advanced to the door to meet him. I
+bowed low, and the rest of the company kissed his hand; he was a
+middle sized man, of about sixty, but frail from long-continued ill
+health, dressed in a furred pelisse, a dark blue body robe, and Greek
+ecclesiastical cap of velvet, while from a chain hung round his neck
+was suspended the gold cross, distinctive of his rank. The usual
+refreshments of coffee, sweetmeats, &c. were brought in, not by
+servants, but by ecclesiastical novices.
+
+_Bishop_. "I think I have seen you before?"
+
+_Author_. "Indeed, you have: I met your reverence at the house of
+Gospody Ilia in Belgrade."
+
+_Bishop_. "Ay, ay," (trying to recollect;) "my memory sometimes fails
+me since my illness. Did you stay long at Belgrade?"
+
+_Author_. "I remained to witness the cathedral service for the return
+of Wucics and Petronievitch. I assure you I was struck with the
+solemnity of the scene, and the deportment of the archbishop. As I do
+not understand enough of Servian, his speech was translated to me word
+for word, and it seems to me that he has the four requisites of an
+orator,--a commanding presence, a pleasing voice, good thoughts, and
+good language."
+
+We then talked of education, on which the Bishop said, "The civil and
+ecclesiastical authorities go hand in hand in the work. When I was a
+young man, a great proportion of the youth could neither read nor
+write: thanks to our system of national education, in a few years the
+peasantry will all read. In the towns the sons of those inhabitants
+who are in easy circumstances, are all learning German, history, and
+other branches preparatory to the course of the Gymnasium of Belgrade,
+which is the germ of a university."
+
+_Author_. "I hope it will prosper; the Slaavs of the middle ages did
+much for science."[4]
+
+_Bishop_. "I assure you times are greatly changed with us; the general
+desire for education surprises and delights me."
+
+We now took our leave of the Bishop, and on our way homewards called
+at a house which contained portraits of Kara Georg, Milosh, Michael,
+Alexander, and other personages who have figured in Servian history. I
+was much amused with that of Milosh, which was painted in oil,
+altogether without _chiaro scuro_; but his decorations, button holes,
+and even a large mole on his cheek, were done with the most painful
+minuteness. In his left hand he held a scroll, on which was inscribed
+_Ustav_, or Constitution, his right hand was partly doubled a la
+finger post; it pointed significantly to the said scroll, the
+forefinger being adorned with a large diamond ring.
+
+On arriving at the collector's house, I found the Aga awaiting me.
+This man inspired me with great interest. I looked upon him, residing
+in his lone tower, the last of a once wealthy and powerful race now
+steeped in poverty, as a sort of master of Ravenswood in a Wolf's
+crag. At first he was bland and ceremonious; but on learning that I
+had lived long in the interior of society in Damascus and Aleppo, and
+finding that the interest with which he inspired me was real and not
+assumed, he became expansive without lapsing into familiarity, and
+told me his sad tale, which I would place at the service of the gentle
+reader, could I forget the stronger allegiance I owe to the
+unsolicited confidence of an unfortunate stranger.
+
+When I spoke of the renegade, he pretended not to know whom I meant;
+but I saw, by a slight unconscious wink of his eye, that knowing him
+too well, he wished to see and hear no more of him. As he was rising
+to take leave, a step was heard creaking on the stairs, and on turning
+in the direction of the door, I saw the red and white checked turban
+of the renegade emerging from the banister; but no sooner did he
+perceive the Aga, than, turning round again, down went the red checked
+turban out of sight.
+
+When the Aga was gone, the collector gave me a significant look, and,
+knocking the ashes out of his pipe into a plate on the floor, said,
+"Changed times, changed times, poor fellow; his salary is only 250
+piastres a month, and his relations used to be little kings in
+Shabatz; but the other fellows in the Turkish quarter, although so
+wretchedly poor that they have scarcely bread to eat, are as proud and
+insolent as ever."
+
+_Author_. "What is the reason of that?"
+
+_Collector_. "Because they are so near the Bosniac frontier, where
+there is a large Moslem population. The Moslems of Shabatz pay no
+taxes, either to the Servian government or the sultan, for they are
+accounted _Redif_, or Militia, for which they receive a ducat a year
+from the sultan, as a returning fee. The Christian peasants here are
+very rich; some of them have ten and twenty thousand ducats buried
+under the earth; but these impoverished Bosniacs in the fortress are
+as proud and insolent as ever."
+
+_Author_. "You say Bosniacs! Are they not Turks?"
+
+_Collector_. "No, the only Turks here are the Aga and the Cadi; all
+the rest are Bosniacs, the descendants of men of our own race and
+language, who on the Turkish invasion accepted Islamism, but retained
+the language, and many Christian customs, such as saints' days,
+Christian names, and in most cases monogamy."
+
+_Author_. "That is very curious; then, perhaps, as they are not full
+Moslems, they may be more tolerant of Christians."
+
+_Collector_. "The very reverse. The Bosniac Christians are not half so
+well off as the Bulgarians, who have to deal with the real Turks. The
+arch-priest will be here to dinner, and he will be able to give you
+some account of the Bosniac Christians. But Bosnia is a beautiful
+country; how do you intend to proceed from here?"
+
+_Author_. "I intend to go to Vallievo and Ushitza."
+
+_Collector_. "He that leaves Servia without seeing Sokol, has seen
+nothing."
+
+_Author_. "What is to be seen at Sokol?"
+
+_Collector_. "The most wonderful place in the world, a perfect eagle's
+eyrie. A whole town and castle built on the capital of a column of
+rock."
+
+_Author_. "But I did not contemplate going there; so I must change my
+route: I took no letters for that quarter."
+
+_Collector_. "Leave all that to me; you will first go to Losnitza, on
+the banks of the Drina, and I will despatch a messenger to-night,
+apprising the authorities of your approach. When you have seen Sokol,
+you will admit that it was worth the journey."
+
+The renegade having seen the Aga clear off, now came to pay his visit,
+and the normal good-nature of the collector procured him a tolerant
+welcome. When we were left alone, the renegade began by abusing the
+Moslems in the fortress as a set of scoundrels. "I could not live an
+hour longer among such rascals," said he, "and I am now in the khan
+with my servant and a couple of horses, where you must come and see
+me. I will give you as good a pipe of Djebel tobacco as ever you
+smoked."
+
+_Author_. "You must excuse me, I must set out on my travels to-morrow.
+You were in Egypt, I believe."
+
+_Renegade_. "I was long there; my two sons, and a married daughter,
+are in Cairo to this day."
+
+_Author_. "What do they do?"
+
+_Renegade_. "My daughter is married, and I taught my sons all I know
+of medicine, and they practise it in the old way."
+
+_Author_. "Where did you study?"
+
+_Renegade_ (tossing his head and smiling). "Here, and there, and
+everywhere. I am no Ilekim Bashi; but I have an ointment that heals
+all bruises and sores in an incredibly short space of time."
+
+Me gave a most unsatisfactory account of his return to Turkey in
+Europe; first to Bosnia, or Herzegovina, where he was, or pretended to
+be, physician to Husreff Mehmed Pasha, and then to Seraievo. When we
+spoke of Hafiz Pasha, of Belgrade, he said, "I know him well, but he
+does not know me; I recollect him at Carpout and Diarbecr before
+the battle of Nisib, when he had thirty or forty pashas under him. He
+could shoot at a mark, or ride, with the youngest man in the army."
+
+The collector now re-entered with the Natchalnik and his captains, and
+the renegade took his leave, I regretting that I had not seen more of
+him; for a true recital of his adventures must have made an amusing
+chapter.
+
+"Here is the captain, who is to escort you to Ushitza," said the
+Natchalnik, pointing to a muscular man at his left. "He will take you
+safe and sound."
+
+_Author_. "I see he is a stout fellow. I would rather have him for a
+friend than meet him as an enemy. He has the face of an honest man,
+too."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I warrant you as safe in his custody, as if you were in
+that of Gospody Wellington."
+
+_Author_. "You may rest assured that if I were in the custody of the
+Duke of Wellington, I should not reckon myself very safe. One of his
+offices is to take care of a tower, in which the Queen locks up
+traitorous subjects. Did you never hear of the Tower of London?"
+
+_Natchalnik_. "No; all we know of London is the wonderful bridge that
+goes under the water, where an army can pass from one side to the
+other, while the fleet lies anchored over their heads."
+
+The Natchalnik now bid me farewell, and I gave my rendezvous to the
+captain for next morning. During the discussion of dinner, the
+arch-priest gave us an illustration of Bosniac fanaticism: A few
+months ago a church at Belina was about to be opened, which had been a
+full year in course of building, by virtue of a Firman of the Sultan;
+the Moslems murmuring, but doing nothing. When finished, the Bishop
+went to consecrate it; but two hours after sunset, an immense mob of
+Moslems, armed with pickaxes and shovels, rased it to the ground,
+having first taken the Cross and Gospels and thrown them into a
+latrina. The Bishop complained to the Mutsellim, who imprisoned one or
+two of them, exacted a fine, which he put in his own pocket, and let
+them out next day; the ruins of the Church remain _in statu quo_.
+
+The collector now produced some famous wine, that had been eleven
+years in bottle. We were unusually merry, and fell into toasts and
+speeches. I felt as if I had been his intimate friend for years, for
+he had not one atom of Levantine "humbug" in his composition. Poor
+fellow, little did he think, that in a few short weeks from this
+period his blood would flow as freely as the wine which he poured into
+my cup.
+
+Next morning, on awaking, all the house was in a bustle: the sun shone
+brightly on the green satin coverlet of my bed, and a tap at the door
+announced the collector, who entered in his dressing gown with the
+apparatus of brandy and sweetmeats, and joined his favourable augury
+to mine for the day's journey.
+
+"You will have a rare journey," said the collector; "the country is a
+garden, the weather is clear, and neither hot nor cold. The nearer you
+get to Bosnia, the more beautiful is the landscape."
+
+We each drank a thimbleful of slivovitsa, he to my prosperous journey,
+while I proposed health and long life to him; but, as the sequel
+showed, "_l'homme propose, et Dieu dispose_." After breakfast, I bade
+Madame Ninitch adieu, and descended to the court-yard, where two
+carriages of the collector awaited us, our horses being attached
+behind.
+
+And now an eternal farewell to the worthy collector. At this time a
+conspiracy was organized by the Obrenowitch faction, through the
+emigrants residing in Hungary. They secretly furnished themselves
+with thirty-four or thirty-five hussar uniforms at Pesth, bought
+horses, and having bribed the Austrian frontier guard, passed the Save
+with a trumpeter about a month after this period, and entering
+Shabatz, stated that a revolution had broken out at Belgrade, that
+prince Kara Georgevitch was murdered, and Michael proclaimed, with the
+support of the cabinets of Europe! The affrighted inhabitants knew not
+what to believe, and allowed the detachment to ride through the town.
+Arrived at the government-house, the collector issued from the porch,
+to ask what they wanted, and received for answer a pistol-shot, which
+stretched him dead on the spot. The soi-disant Austrian hussars
+subsequently attempted to raise the country, but, failing in this,
+were nearly all taken and executed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 4: The first University in Europe was that of Prague. It was
+established some years before the University of Paris, if I recollect
+right.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The Banat of Matchva.--Losnitza.--Feuds on the Frontier.--Enter the
+Back-woods.--Convent of Tronosha.--Greek Festival.--Congregation of
+Peasantry.--Rustic Finery.
+
+
+Through the richest land, forming part of the ancient banat of
+Matchva, which was in the earlier periods of Servian and Hungarian
+history so often a source of conflict and contention, we approached
+distant grey hills, which gradually rose from the horizon, and, losing
+their indistinctness, revealed a chain so charmingly accidented, that
+I quickened my pace, as if about to enter a fairy region. Thick turf
+covered the pasture lands; the old oak and the tender sapling
+diversified the plain. Some clouds hung on the horizon, whose
+delicate lilac and fawn tints, forming a harmonizing contrast with the
+deep deep blue of the heavens, showed the transparency of the
+atmosphere, and brought healthful elevation of spirits. Even the
+brutes bespoke the harmony of creation; for, singular to say, we saw
+several crows perched on the backs of swine!
+
+Towards evening, we entered a region of cottages among gardens
+inclosed by bushes, trees, and verdant fences, with the rural quiet
+and cleanliness of an English village in the last century, lighted up
+by an Italian sunset. Having crossed the little bridge, a pandour, who
+was sitting under the willows, rose, came forward, and, touching his
+hat, presented the Natchalnik's compliments, and said that he was
+instructed to conduct me to his house. Losnitza is situated on the
+last undulation of the Gutchevo range, as the mountains we had all day
+kept in view were called. So leaving the town on our left, we struck
+into a secluded path, which wound up the hill, and in ten minutes we
+dismounted at a house having the air of a Turkish villa, which
+overlooked the surrounding country, and was entered by an enclosed
+court-yard with high walls.
+
+The Natchalnik of Losnitza was a grey-headed tall gaunt figure, who
+spoke very little; but as the Bosniac frontier is subject to troubles
+he had been selected for his great personal courage, for he had served
+under Kara Georg from 1804.[5]
+
+_Natchalnik_. "It is not an easy matter to keep things straight; the
+population on this side is all organized, so as to concentrate eight
+thousand men in a few hours. The Bosniacs are all armed; and as the
+two populations detest each other cordially, and are separated only by
+the Drina, the public tranquillity often incurs great danger: but
+whenever a crisis is at hand I mount my horse and go to Mahmoud Pasha
+at Zwornik; and the affair is generally quietly settled with a cup of
+coffee."
+
+_Author_. "Ay, ay; as the Arabs say, the burning of a little tobacco
+saves the burning of a great deal of powder. What is the population of
+Zwornik?"
+
+_Natchalnik_. "About twelve or fifteen thousand; the place has fallen
+off; it had formerly between thirty and forty thousand souls."
+
+_Author_. "Have you had any disputes lately?"
+
+_Natchalnik_. "Why, yes; Great Zwornik is on the Bosniac side of the
+Drina; but Little Zwornik on the Servian side is also held by Moslems.
+Not long ago the men of Little Zwornik wished to extend their domain;
+but I planted six hundred men in a wood, and then rode down alone and
+warned them off. They treated me contemptuously; but as soon as they
+saw the six hundred men issuing from the wood they gave up the point:
+and Mahmoud Pasha admitted I was right; but he had been afraid to risk
+his popularity by preventive measures."
+
+The selamlik of the Natchalnik was comfortably carpeted and fitted up,
+but no trace of European furniture was to be seen. The rooms of the
+collector at Shabatz still smacked of the vicinity to Austria; but
+here we were with the natives. Dinner was preceded by cheese, onions,
+and slivovitsa as a _rinfresco_, and our beds were improvised in the
+Turkish manner by mattresses, sheets, and coverlets, laid on the
+divans. May I never have a worse bed![6]
+
+Next morning, on waking, I went into the kiosk to enjoy the cool fresh
+air, the incipient sunshine, and the noble prospect; the banat of
+Matchva which we had yesterday traversed, stretched away to the
+westward, an ocean of verdure and ripe yellow fruits.
+
+"Where is the Drina?" said I to our host.
+
+"Look downwards," said he; "you see that line of poplars and willows;
+there flows the Drina, hid from view: the steep gardens and wooded
+hills that abruptly rise from the other bank are in Bosnia."
+
+The town doctor now entered, a middle-aged man, who had been partly
+educated in Dalmatia, and consequently spoke Italian; he told us that
+his salary was L40 a year; and that in consequence of the extreme
+cheapness of provisions he managed to live as well in this place as he
+could on the Adriatic for treble the sum.
+
+Other persons, mostly employes, now came to see us, and we descended
+to the town. The bazaar was open and paved with stone; but except its
+extreme cleanliness, it was not in the least different from those one
+sees in Bulgaria and other parts of Turkey in Europe. Up to 1835 many
+Turks lived in Losnitza; but at that time they all removed to Bosnia;
+the mosque still remains, and is used as a grain magazine. A mud fort
+crowns the eminence, having been thrown up during the wars of Kara
+Georg, and might still be serviceable in case of hostile operations.
+
+Before going to Sokol the Natchalnik persuaded me to take a Highland
+ramble into the Gutchevo range, and first visit Tronosha, a large
+convent three hours off in the woods, which was to be on the following
+day the rendezvous of all the surrounding peasantry, in their holyday
+dresses, in order to celebrate the festival of consecration.
+
+At the appointed hour our host appeared, having donned his best
+clothes, which were covered with gold embroidery. His sabre and
+pistols were no less rich and curious, and he mounted a horse worth at
+least sixty or seventy pounds sterling. Several other notables of
+Losnitza, similarly broidered and accoutred, and mounted on caracoling
+horses, accompanied us; and we formed a cavalcade that would have
+astonished even Mr. Batty.
+
+Ascending rapidly, we were soon lost in the woods, catching only now
+and then a view of the golden plain through the dark green oaks and
+pines. For full three hours our brilliant little party dashed up hill
+and down dale, through the most majestic forests, delightful to the
+gaze but unrelieved by a patch of cultivation, and miserably
+profitless to the commonwealth, till we came to a height covered with
+loose rocks and pasture. "There is Tronosha," said the Natchalnik,
+pulling up, and pointing to a tapering white spire and slender column
+of blue smoke that rose from a _cul-de-sac_ formed by the opposite
+hills, which, like the woods we had traversed, wore such a shaggy and
+umbrageous drapery, that with a slight transposition, I could exclaim,
+"Si lupus essem, nollem alibi quam in _Servia_ lupus esse!" A steep
+descent brought us to some meadows on which cows were grazing by the
+side of a rapid stream, and I felt the open apace a relief after the
+gloom of the endless forest.
+
+Crossing the stream, we struck into the sylvan _cul-de-sac_, and
+arrived in a few minutes at an edifice with strong walls, towers, and
+posterns, that looked more like a secluded and fortified manor-house
+in the seventeenth century than a convent; for in more troubled times,
+such establishments, though tolerated by the old Turkish government,
+were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders.
+
+A fine jolly old monk, with a powerful voice, welcomed the Natchalnik
+at the gate, and putting his hand on his left breast, said to me,
+"_Dobro doche Gospody_!" (Welcome, master!)
+
+We then, according to the custom of the country, went into the chapel,
+and, kneeling down, said our thanksgiving for safe arrival. I
+remarked, on taking a turn through the chapel and examining it
+minutely, that the pictures were all in the old Byzantine
+style--crimson-faced saints looking up to golden skies.
+
+Crossing the court, I looked about me, and perceived that the cloister
+was a gallery, with wooden beams supporting the roof, running round
+three sides of the building, the basement being built in stone, at one
+part of which a hollowed tree shoved in an aperture formed a spout for
+a stream of clear cool water. The Igoumen, or superior, received us at
+the foot of the wooden staircase which ascended to the gallery. He was
+a sleek middle-aged man, with a new silk gown, and seemed out of his
+wits with delight at my arrival in this secluded spot, and taking me
+by the hand led me to a sort of seat of honour placed in a prominent
+part of the gallery, which seemed to correspond with the _makaa_ of
+Saracenic architecture.
+
+No sooner had the Igoumen gone to superintend the arrangements of the
+evening, than a shabbily dressed filthy priest, of such sinister
+aspect, that, to use a common phrase, "his looks would have hanged
+him," now came up, and in a fulsome eulogy welcomed me to the convent.
+He related how he had been born in Syrmium, and had been thirteen
+years in Bosnia; but I suspected that some screw was loose, and on
+making inquiry found that he had been sent to this retired convent in
+consequence of incorrigible drunkenness. The Igoumen now returned, and
+gave the clerical Lumnacivagabundus such a look that he skulked off on
+the instant.
+
+After coffee, sweetmeats, &c., we passed through the yard, and
+piercing the postern gate, unexpectedly came upon a most animated
+scene. A green glade that ran up to the foot of the hill, was covered
+with the preparations for the approaching festivities--wood was
+splitting, fires lighting, fifty or sixty sheep were spitted, pyramids
+of bread, dishes of all sorts and sizes, and jars of wine in wicker
+baskets were mingled with throat-cut fowls, lying on the banks of the
+stream aide by side with pigs at their last squeak.
+
+Dinner was served in the refectory to about twenty individuals,
+including the monks and our party. The Igoumen drank to the health of
+the prince, and then of Wucics and Petronievitch, declaring that
+thanks were due to God and those European powers who had brought about
+their return. The shabby priest, with the gallows look, then sang a
+song of his own composition, on their return. Not being able to
+understand it, I asked my neighbour what he thought of the song.
+"Why," said he, "the lay is worthy of the minstrel--doggrel and
+dissonance." Some old national songs were sung, and I again asked my
+neighbour for a criticism on the poetry. "That last song," said he,
+"is like a river that flows easily and naturally from one beautiful
+valley to another."
+
+In the evening we went out, and the countless fires lighting up the
+lofty oaks had a most pleasing effect. The sheep were by this time
+cut up, and lying in fragments, around which the supper parties were
+seated cross-legged. Other peasants danced slowly, in a circle, to the
+drone of the somniferous Servian bagpipe.
+
+When I went to bed, the assembled peasantry were in the full tide of
+merriment, but without excess. The only person somewhat the worse of
+the bottle was the threadbare priest with the gallows look.
+
+I fell asleep with a low confused murmur of droning bagpipes, jingling
+drinking cups, occasional laughter, and other noises. I dreamed, I
+know not what absurdities; suddenly a solemn swelling chorus of
+countless voices gently interrupted my slumbers--the room was filled
+with light, and the sun on high was beginning to begild an irregular
+parallelogram in the wainscot, when I started up, and hastily drew on
+some clothes. Going out to the _makaa_, I perceived yesterday's
+assembly of merry-making peasants quadrupled in number, and all
+dressed in their holiday costume, thickset on their knees down the
+avenue to the church, and following a noble old hymn, I sprang out of
+the postern, and, helping myself with the grasp of trunks of trees,
+and bared roots and bushes, clambered up one of the sides of the
+hollow, and attaining a clear space, looked down with wonder and
+pleasure on the singular scene. The whole pit, of this theatre of
+verdure appeared covered with a carpet of white and crimson, for such
+were the prevailing colours of the rustic costumes. When I thought of
+the trackless solitude of the sylvan ridges round me, I seemed to
+witness one of the early communions of Christianity, in those ages
+when incense ascended to the Olympic deities in gorgeous temples,
+while praise to the true God rose from the haunts of the wolf, the
+lonely cavern, or the subterranean vault.
+
+When church service was over I examined the dresses more minutely. The
+upper tunic of the women was a species of surtout of undyed cloth,
+bordered with a design of red cloth of a liner description. The
+stockings in colour and texture resembled those of Persia, but were
+generally embroidered at the ankle with gold and silver thread. After
+the mid-day meal we descended, accompanied by the monks. The lately
+crowded court-yard was silent and empty. "What," said I, "all
+dispersed already?" The superior smiled, and said nothing. On going out
+of the gate, I paused in a state of slight emotion. The whole
+assembled peasantry were marshalled in two rows, and standing
+uncovered in solemn silence, so as to make a living avenue to the
+bridge.
+
+The Igoumen then publicly expressed the pleasure my visit had given to
+the people, and in their name thanked me, and wished me a prosperous
+journey, repeating a phrase I had heard before: "God be praised that
+Servia has at length seen the day that strangers come from afar to see
+and know the people!"
+
+I took off my fez, and said, "Do you know, Father Igoumen, what has
+given me the most pleasure in the course of my visit?"
+
+_Ig_. "I can scarcely guess."
+
+_Author_. "I have seen a large assembly of peasantry, and not a trace
+of poverty, vice, or misery; the best proof that both the civil and
+ecclesiastical authorities do their duty."
+
+The Igoumen, smiling with satisfaction, made a short speech to the
+people. I mounted my horse; the convent bells began to toll as I waved
+my hand to the assembly, and "Sretnj poot!" (a prosperous journey!)
+burst from a thousand tongues. The scene was so moving that I could
+scarcely refrain a tear. Clapping spurs to my horse I cantered over
+the bridge and gave him his will of the bridle till the steepness of
+the ascent compelled a slower pace.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 5: Servia is divided into seventeen provinces, each governed
+by a Natchalnik, whose duty it is to keep order and report to the
+minister of war and interior. He has of course no control over the
+legal courts of law attached to each provincial government; he has a
+Cashier and a Secretary, and each province is divided into Cantons
+(Sres), over each of which a captain rules. The average population of
+a province is 50,000 souls, and there are generally three Cantons in a
+province, which are governed by captains.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Whether from the climate or superior cleanliness, there
+are certainly much fewer fleas in Servia than in Turkey; and I saw
+other vermin only once.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Romantic sylvan scenery.--Patriarchal simplicity of
+manners.--Krupena,--Sokol.--Its extraordinary position.--Wretched
+town.--Alpine scenery.--Cool reception.--Valley of the Rogatschitza.
+
+
+Words fail me to describe the beauty of the road from Tronosha to
+Krupena. The heights and distances, without being alpine in reality,
+were sufficiently so to an eye unpractised in measuring scenery of the
+highest class; but in all the softer enchantments nature had revelled
+in prodigality. The gloom of the oak forest was relieved and broken by
+a hundred plantations of every variety of tree that the climate would
+bear, and every hue, from the sombre evergreen to the early suspicions
+of the yellow leaf of autumn. Even the tops of the mountains were
+free from sterility, for they were capped with green as bright, with
+trees as lofty, and with pasture as rich, as that of the valleys
+below.
+
+The people, too, were very different from the inhabitants of Belgrade,
+where political intrigue, and want of the confidence which sincerity
+inspires, paralyze social intercourse. But the men of the back-woods,
+neither poor nor barbarous, delighted me by the patriarchal simplicity
+of their manners, and the poetic originality of their language. Even
+in gayer moments I seemed to witness the sweet comedy of nature, in
+which man is ludicrous from his peculiarities, but "is not yet
+ridiculous from the affectations and assumptions of artificial life."
+
+Half-way to Krupena we reposed at a brook, where the carpets were laid
+out and we smoked a pipe. A curious illustration occurred here of the
+abundance of wood in Servia. A boy, after leading a horse into the
+brook, tugged the halter and led the unwilling horse out of the stream
+again. "Let him drink, let him drink his fill," said a woman; "if
+everything else must be paid with gold, at least wood and water cost
+nothing."
+
+Mounting our horses again, we were met by six troopers bearing the
+compliments of the captain of Krupena, who was awaiting us with
+twenty-two or three irregular cavalry on an eminence. We both
+dismounted and-went through the ceremony of public complimenting, both
+evidently enjoying the fun; he the visit of an illustrious stranger,
+and I the formality of a military reception. I perceived in a moment
+that this captain, although a good fellow, was fond of a little fuss;
+so I took him by the hand, made a turn across the grass, cast a
+nonchalant look on his troop, and condescended to express my
+approbation of their martial bearing. True it is that they were men of
+rude and energetic aspect, very fairly mounted. After patronizing him
+with a little further chat and compliment we remounted; and I
+perceived Krupena at the distance of about a mile, in the middle of a
+little plain surrounded by gardens; but the neighbouring hills were
+here and there bare of vegetation.
+
+Some of the troopers in front sang a sort of chorus, and now and then
+a fellow to show off his horse, would ride _a la djereed_, and instead
+of flinging a dart, would fire his pistols. Others joined us, and our
+party was swelled to a considerable cavalcade as we entered the
+village, where the peasants were drawn up in a row to receive me.
+
+Their captain then led the way up the stairs of his house to a
+chardak, or wooden balcony, on which was a table laid out with
+flowers. The elders of the village now came separately, and had some
+conversation: the priest on entering laid a melon on the table, a
+usual method of showing civility in this part of the country. One of
+the attendant crowd was a man from Montenegro, who said he was a
+house-painter. He related that he was employed by Mahmoud Pasha, of
+Zwornik, to paint one of the rooms in his house; when he had half
+accomplished his task, the dispute about the domain of Little Zwornik
+arose, on which he and his companion, a German, were thrown into
+prison, being accused of being a Servian captain in disguise. They
+were subsequently liberated, but shot at; the ball going through the
+leg of the narrator. This is another instance of the intense hatred
+the Servians and the Bosniac Moslems bear to each other. It must be
+remarked, that the Christians, in relating a tale, usually make the
+most of it.
+
+The last dish of our dinner was a roast lamb, served on a large
+circular wooden board, the head being split in twain, and laid on the
+top of the pyramid of dismembered parts. We had another jovial
+evening, in which the wine-cup was plied freely, but not to an
+extravagant excess, and the usual toasts and speeches were drunk and
+made. Even in returning to rest, I had not yet done with the pleasing
+testimonies of welcome. On entering the bed-chamber, I found many
+fresh and fragrant flowers inserted in the chinks of the wainscot.
+
+Krupena was originally exclusively a Moslem town, and a part of the
+old bazaar remains. The original inhabitants, who escaped the sword,
+went either to Sokol or into Bosnia. The hodgia, or Moslem
+schoolmaster, being on some business at Krupena, came in the morning
+to see us. His dress was nearly all in white, and his legs bare from
+the knee. He told me that the Vayvode of Sokol had a curious mental
+malady. Having lately lost a son, a daughter, and a grandson, he could
+no longer smoke, for when his servant entered with a pipe, he imagined
+he saw his children burning in the tobacco.
+
+During the whole day we toiled upwards, through woods and wilds of a
+character more rocky than that of the previous day, and on attaining
+the ridge of the Gutchevo range, I looked down with astonishment on
+Sokol, which, though lying at our feet, was yet perched on a lone
+fantastic crag, which exactly suited the description of the collector
+of Shabatz,--"a city and castle built on the capital of a column of
+rock." Beyond it was a range of mountains further in Bosnia; further
+on, another outline, and then another, and another. I at once felt
+that, as a tourist, I had broken fresh ground, that I was seeing
+scenes of grandeur unknown to the English public. It was long since I
+had sketched. I instinctively seized my book, but threw it away in
+despair, and, yielding to the rapture of the moment, allowed my eyes
+to mount step after step of this enchanted Alpine ladder.
+
+We now, by a narrow, steep, and winding path cut on the face of a
+precipice, descended to Sokol, and passing through a rotting wooden
+bazaar, entered a wretched khan, and ascending a sort of staircase,
+were shown into a room with dusty mustabahs; a greasy old cushion,
+with the flock protruding through its cover, was laid down for me, but
+I, with polite excuses, preferred the bare board to this odious
+flea-hive. The more I declined the cushion, the more pressing became
+the khan-keeper that I should carry away with me some reminiscence of
+Sokol. Finding that his upholstery was not appreciated, the
+khan-keeper went to the other end of the apartment, and began to make
+a fire for coffee; for this being Ramadan time, all the fires were
+out, and most of the people were asleep. Meanwhile the captain sent
+for the Disdar Aga. I offered to go into the citadel, and pay him a
+visit, but the captain said, "You have no idea how sensitive these
+people are: even now they are forming all sorts of conjectures as to
+the object of your visit; we must, therefore, take them quietly in
+their own way, and do nothing to alarm them. In a few minutes the
+Disdar Aga will be here; you can then judge, by the temper he is in,
+of the length of your stay, and the extent to which you wish to carry
+your curiosity."
+
+I admitted that the captain was speaking sense, and waited patiently
+till the Aga made his appearance.
+
+Footsteps were heard on the staircase, and the Mutsellim entered,--a
+Turk, about forty-five years of age, who looked cross, as most men are
+when called from a sound sleep. His fez was round as a wool-bag, and
+looked as if he had stuffed a shawl into it before putting it on, and
+his face and eyes had something of the old Mongol or Tartar look. He
+was accompanied by a Bosniac, who was very proud and insolent in his
+demeanour. After the usual compliments, I said, "I have seen some
+countries and cities, but no place so curious as Sokol. I left
+Belgrade on a tour through the interior, not knowing of its existence.
+Otherwise I would have asked letters of Hafiz Pasha to you: for,
+intending to go to Nish, he gave me a letter to the Pasha there. But
+the people of this country having advised me not to miss the wonder of
+Servia, I have come, seduced by the account of its beauty, not
+doubting of your good reception of strangers:" on which I took out the
+letter of Hafiz Pasha, the direction of which he read, and then he
+said, in a husky voice which became his cross look,--
+
+"I do not understand your speech; if you have seen Belgrade, you must
+find Sokol contemptible. As for your seeing the citadel, it is
+impossible; for the key is with the Disdar Aga, and he is asleep, and
+even if you were to get in, there is nothing to be seen."
+
+After some further conversation, in the course of which I saw that it
+would be better not to attempt "to catch the Tartar," I restricted
+myself to taking a survey of the town. Continuing our walk in the same
+direction as that by which we entered, we completed the threading of
+the bazaar, which was truly abominable, and arrived at the gate of the
+citadel, which was open; so that the story of the key and the
+slumbers of the Disdar Aga was all fudge. I looked in, but did not
+enter. There are no new works, and it is a castle such as those one
+sees on the Rhine; but its extraordinary position renders it
+impregnable in a country impracticable for artillery. Although
+blockaded in the time of the Revolution, and the Moslem garrison
+reduced to only seven men, it never was taken by the Servians;
+although Belgrade, Ushitza, and all the other castles, had fallen into
+their hands. Close to the castle is a mosque in wood, with a minaret
+of wood, although the finest stone imaginable is in abundance all
+around. The Mutsellim opened the door, and showed me the interior,
+with blank walls and a faded carpet, opposite the Moharrem. He would
+not allow me to go up the minaret, evidently afraid I would peep over
+into the castle.
+
+Retracing our steps I perceived a needle-shaped rock that overlooked
+the abyss under the fortress, so taking off my boots, I scrambled up
+and attained the pinnacle; but the view was so fearful, that, afraid
+of getting dizzy, I turned to descend, but found it a much more
+dangerous affair than the ascent; at length by the assistance of Paul
+I got down to the Mutsellim, who was sitting impatiently on a piece of
+rock, wondering at the unaccountable Englishman. I asked him what he
+supposed to be the height of the rock on which the citadel was built,
+above the level of the valley below.
+
+"What do I know of engineering?" said he, taking me out of hearing: "I
+confess I do not understand your object. I hear that on the road you
+have been making inquiries as to the state of Bosnia: what interest
+can England have in raising disturbances in that country?"
+
+"The same interest that she has in producing political disorder in one
+of the provinces of the moon. In some semi-barbarous provinces of
+Hungary, people confound political geography with political intrigue.
+In Aleppo, too, I recollect standing at the Bab-el-Nasr, attempting to
+spell out an inscription recording its erection, and I was grossly
+insulted and called a Mehendis (engineer); but you seem a man of more
+sense and discernment."
+
+"Well, you are evidently not a _chapkun_. There is nothing more to be
+seen in Sokol. Had it not been Ramadan we should have treated you
+better, be your intentions good or bad. I wish you a pleasant journey;
+and if you wish to arrive at Liubovia before night-fall the sooner you
+set out the better, for the roads are not safe after dark."
+
+We now descended by paths like staircases cut in the rocks to the
+valley below. Paul dismounted in a fright from his horse, and led her
+down; but my long practice of riding in the Druse country had given me
+an easy indifference to roads that would have appalled me before my
+residence there. When we got a little way along the valley, I looked
+back, and the view from below was, in a different style, as remarkable
+as that from above. Sokol looked like a little castle of Edinburgh
+placed in the clouds, and a precipice on the other side of the valley
+presented a perpendicular stature of not less than five hundred feet.
+
+A few hours' travelling through the narrow valley of the Bogatschitza
+brought us to the bank of the Drina, where, leaving the up-heaved
+monuments of a chaotic world, we bade adieu to the Tremendous, and
+again saluted the Beautiful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Drina.--Liubovia.--Quarantine Station.--Derlatcha.--A Servian
+beauty.--A lunatic priest.--Sorry quarters.--Murder by brigands.
+
+
+The Save is the largest tributary of the Danube, and the Drina is the
+largest tributary of the Save, but it is not navigable; no river
+scenery, however, can possibly be prettier than that of the Drina; as
+in the case of the Upper Danube from Linz to Vienna, the river winds
+between precipitous banks tufted with wood, but it was tame after the
+thrilling enchantments of Sokol. At one place a Roman causeway ran
+along the river, and we were told that a Roman bridge crossed a
+tributary of the Drina in this neighbourhood, which to this day bears
+the name of Latinski Tiupria, or Latin bridge.
+
+At Liubovia the hills receded, and the valley was about half a mile
+wide, consisting of fine meadow land with thinly scattered oaks,
+athwart which the evening sun poured its golden floods, suggesting
+pleasing images of abundance without effort. This part of Servia is a
+wilderness, if you will, so scant is it of inhabitants, so free from
+any thing like inclosures, or fields, farms, labourers, gardens, or
+gardeners; and yet it is, and looks a garden in one place, a trim
+English lawn and park in another: you almost say to yourself, "The man
+or house cannot be far off: what lovely and extensive grounds, where
+can the hall or castle be hid?"[7]
+
+Liubovia is the quarantine station on the high road from Belgrade to
+Seraievo. A line of buildings, parlatorio, magazines, and
+lodging-houses, faced the river. The director would fain have me pass
+the night, but the captain of Derlatcha had received notice of our
+advent, and we were obliged to push on, and rested only for coffee and
+pipes. The director was a Servian from the Austrian side of the
+Danube, and spoke German. He told me that three thousand individuals
+per annum performed quarantine, passing from Bosnia to Sokol and
+Belgrade, and that the principal imports Were hides, chestnuts, zinc,
+and iron manufactures from the town of Seraievo. On the opposite bank
+of the river was a wooden Bosniac guard-house.
+
+Remounting our horses after sunset, we continued along the Drina, now
+dubiously illuminated by the chill pallor of the rising moon, while
+hill and dale resounded with the songs of our men. No sooner had one
+finished an old metrical legend of the days of Stephan the powerful
+and Lasar the good, than another began a lay of Kara Georg, the
+"William Tell" of these mountains. Sometimes when we came to a good
+echo the pistols were fired off; at one place the noise had aroused a
+peasant, who came running across the grass to the road crying out, "O
+good men, the night is advancing: go no further, but tarry with me:
+the stranger will have a plain supper and a hard couch, but a hearty
+welcome." We thanked him for his proffer, but held on.
+
+At about ten o'clock we entered a thick dark wood, and after an ascent
+of a quarter of an hour emerged upon a fine open lawn in front of a
+large house with lights gleaming in the windows. The ripple of the
+Drina was no longer audible, but we saw it at some distance below us,
+like a cuirass of polished steel. As we entered the inclosure we found
+the house in a bustle. The captain, a tall strong corpulent man of
+about forty years of age, came forward and welcomed me.
+
+"I almost despaired of your coming to-night," said he; "for on this
+ticklish frontier it is always safer to terminate one's journey by
+sunset. The rogues pass so easily from one side of the water to the
+other, that it is difficult to clear the country of them."
+
+He then led me into the house, and going through a passage, entered a
+square room of larger dimensions than is usual in the rural parts of
+Servia. A good Turkey carpet covered the upper part of the room, which
+was fenced round by cushions placed against the wall, but not raised
+above the level of the floor. The wall of the lower end of the room
+had a row of strong wooden pegs, on which were hung the hereditary and
+holyday clothes of the family, for males and females. Furs, velvets,
+gold embroidery, and silver mounted Bosniac pistols, guns, and
+carbines elaborately ornamented.
+
+The captain, who appeared to be a plain, simple, and somewhat jolly
+sort of man, now presented me to his wife, who came from the Austrian
+aide of the Save, and spoke German. She seemed, and indeed was, a trim
+methodical housewife, as the order of her domestic arrangements
+clearly showed. Another female, whom I afterwards learned to be the
+wife of an individual of the neighbourhood who was absent, attracted
+my attention. Her age was about four and twenty, when the lines of
+thinking begin to mingle with those of early youth. In fact, from her
+tint I saw that she would soon be _passata_: her features too were by
+no means classical or regular, and yet she had unquestionably some of
+that super-human charm which Raphael sometimes infused into his female
+figures, as in the St. Cecilia. As I repeated and prolonged my gaze,
+I felt that I had seen no eyes in Belgrade like those of the beauty of
+the Drina, who reminded me of the highest characteristic of
+expression--"a spirit scarcely disguised enough in the flesh." The
+presence of a traveller from an unknown country seemed to fill her
+with delight; and her wonder was childish, as if I had come from some
+distant constellation in the firmament.
+
+Next day, the father of the captain made his appearance. The same old
+man, whom I had met at Palesh, and who had asked me, "if the king of
+my country lived in a strong castle?" We dined at mid-day by fine
+weather, the windows of the principal apartments being thrown open, so
+as to have the view of the valley, which was here nearly as wide as at
+Liubovia, but with broken ground. For the first time since leaving
+Belgrade we dined, not at an European table, but squatted round a
+sofra, a foot high, in the Eastern manner, although we ate with knives
+and forks. The cookery was excellent; a dish of stewed lamb being
+worthy of any table in the world.
+
+Our host, the captain, never having seen Ushitza, offered to
+accompany me thither; so we started early in the afternoon, having the
+Drina still on our right, and Bosniac villages, from time to time
+visible, and pretty to look at, but I should hope somewhat cleaner
+than Sokol. On arrival at Bashevitza the elders of the village stood
+in a row to receive us close to the house of conciliation. I perceived
+a mosque near this place, and asked if it was employed for any
+purpose. "No," said the captain, "it is empty. The Turks prayed in it,
+after their own fashion, to that God who is theirs and ours; and the
+house of God should not be made a grain magazine, as in many other
+Turkish villages scattered throughout Servia." At this place a number
+of wild ducks were visible, perched on rocks in the Drina, but were
+very shy; only once did one of our men get within shot, which missed;
+his gun being an old Turkish one, like most of the arms in this
+country, which are sometimes as dangerous to the marksman as to the
+mark.
+
+Towards evening we quitted the lovely Drina, which, a little higher
+up, is no longer the boundary between Servia and Bosnia, being
+entirely within the latter frontier, and entered the vale of
+Rogatschitza, watered by a river of that name, which was crossed by an
+ancient Servian bridge, with pointed arches of admirable proportions.
+The village where we passed the night was newly settled, the main
+street being covered with turf, a sign that few houses or traffic
+exist here. The khan was a hovel; but while it was swept out, and
+prepared for us, I sat down with the captain on a shopboard, in the
+little bazaar, where coffee was served. A priest, with an emaciated
+visage, sore eyes, and a distracted look, came up, and wished me good
+evening, and began a lengthened tale of grievances. I asked the
+khan-keeper who he was, and received for answer that he was a Greek
+priest from Bosnia, who had hoarded some money, and had been squeezed
+by the Moslem tyrant of his village, which drove him mad. Confused
+ejaculations, mingled with sighs, fell from him, as if he supposed his
+story to be universally known.
+
+"Sit down, good man," said I, "and tell me your tale, for I am a
+stranger, and never heard it before. Tell it me, beginning with the
+beginning, and ending with the end."
+
+"Bogami Gospody," said the priest, wiping the copious tears, "I was
+once the happiest man in Bosnia; the sun never rose without my
+thanking God for having given me so much peace and happiness: but Ali
+Kiahya, where I lived, received information that I had money hid. One
+day his Momkes took me before him. My appeals for mercy and justice
+were useless. I was thrown down on my face, and received 617 strokes
+on my soles, praying for courage to hold out. At the 618th stroke my
+strength of mind and body failed, and I yielded up all my money, seven
+hundred dollars, to preserve my life. For a whole year I drank not a
+drop of wine, nothing but brandy, brandy, brandy."
+
+Here the priest sobbed aloud. My heart was wrung, but I was in no
+condition to assist him; so I bade him be of good cheer, and look on
+his misfortune as a gloomy avenue to happier and brighter days.
+
+We slept on hay, put under our carpets and pillows, this being the
+first time since leaving Belgrade that we did not sleep in sheets. We
+next day ascended the Rogatschitza river to its source, and then, by
+a long ascent through pines and rocks, attained the parting of the
+waters.[8]
+
+Leaving the basin of the Drina, we descended to that of the Morava by
+a steep road, until we came to beautifully rich meadows, which are
+called the Ushitkza Luka, or meadows, which are to this day a
+debatable ground for the Moslem inhabitants of Ushitza, and the
+Servian villages in the neighbourhood. From here to Ushitza the road
+is paved, but by whom we could not learn. The stones were not large
+enough to warrant the belief of its being a Roman causeway, and it is
+probably a relic of the Servian empire.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 7: On my return from Servia, I found that the author of
+Eothen had recorded a similar impression derived from the Tartar
+journey on the high road from Belgrade towards Constantinople: but the
+remark is much more applicable to the sylvan beauty of the interior of
+Servia.]
+
+[Footnote 8: After seeing Ushitza, the captain, who accompanied me,
+returned to his family, at Derlatcha, and, I lament to say, that at
+this place he was attacked by the robbers, who, in summer, lurk in the
+thick woods on the two frontiers. The captain galloped off, but his
+two servants were killed on the spot.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Arrival at Ushitza.--Wretched streets.--Excellent Khan.--Turkish
+Vayvode.--A Persian Dervish.--Relations of Moslems and
+Christians.--Visit the Castle.--Bird's eye view.
+
+
+Before entering Ushitza we had a fair prospect of it from a gentle
+eminence. A castle, in the style of the middle ages, mosque minarets,
+and a church spire, rose above other objects; each memorializing the
+three distinct periods of Servian history: the old feudal monarchy,
+the Turkish occupation, and the new principality. We entered the
+bazaars, which were rotting and ruinous, the air infected with the
+loathsome vapours of dung-hills, and their putrescent carcases,
+tanpits with green hides, horns, and offal: here and there a hideous
+old rat showed its head at some crevice in the boards, to complete the
+picture of impurity and desolation.
+
+Strange to say, after this ordeal we put up at an excellent khan, the
+best we had seen in Servia, being a mixture of the German Wirthshaus,
+and the Italian osteria, kept by a Dalmatian, who had lived twelve
+years at Scutari in Albania. His upper room was very neatly furnished
+and new carpeted.
+
+In the afternoon we went to pay a visit to the Vayvode, who lived
+among gardens in the upper town, out of the stench of the bazaars.
+Arrived at the house we mounted a few ruined steps, and passing
+through a little garden fenced with wooden paling, were shown into a
+little carpeted kiosk, where coffee and pipes were presented, but not
+partaken of by the Turks present, it being still Ramadan. The Vayvode
+was an elderly man, with a white turban and a green benish, having
+weak eyes, and a alight hesitation in his speech; but civil and
+good-natured, without any of the absurd suspicions of the Mutsellim of
+Sokol. He at once granted me permission to see the castle, with the
+remark, "Your seeing it can do us no good and no harm, Belgrade
+castle is like a bazaar, any one can go out and in that likes." In the
+course of conversation he told us that Ushitza is the principal
+remaining settlement of the Moslems in Servia; their number here
+amounting to three thousand five hundred, while there are only six
+hundred Servians, making altogether a population of somewhat more than
+four thousand souls. The Vayvode himself spoke Turkish on this
+occasion; but the usual language at Sokol is Bosniac (the same as
+Servian).
+
+We now took our leave of the Vayvode, and continued ascending the same
+street, composed of low one-storied houses, covered with irregular
+tiles, and inclosed with high wooden palings to secure as much privacy
+as possible for the harems. The palings and gardens ceased; and on a
+terrace built on an open space stood a mosque, surrounded by a few
+trees; not cypresses, for the climate scarce allows of them, but those
+of the forests we had passed. The portico was shattered to fragments,
+and remained as it was at the close of the revolution. Close by, is a
+Turbieh or saint's tomb, but nobody could tell me to whom or at what
+period it was erected.
+
+Within a little inclosed garden I espied a strangely dressed figure, a
+dark-coloured Dervish, with long glossy black hair. He proved to be a
+Persian, who had travelled all over the East. Without the conical hat
+of his order, the Dervish would have made a fine study for a
+Neapolitan brigand; but his manners were easy, and his conversation
+plausible, like those of his countrymen, which form as wide a contrast
+to the silent hauteur of the Turk, and the rude fanaticism of the
+Bosniac, as can well be imagined. His servant, a withered
+baboon-looking little fellow, in the same dress, now made his
+appearance and presented coffee.
+
+_Author_. "Who would have expected to see a Persian on the borders of
+Bosnia? You Dervishes are great travellers."
+
+_Dervish_. "You Ingleez travel a great deal more; not content with
+Frengistan, you go to Hind, and Sind, and Yemen.[9] The first
+Englishman I ever saw, was at Meshed, (south-east of the Caspian,)
+and now I meet you in Roumelly."
+
+_Author_. "Do you intend to go back?"
+
+_Dervish_. "I am in the hands of Allah Talaa. These good Bosniacs here
+have built me this house, and given me this garden. They love me, and
+I love them."
+
+_Author_. "I am anxious to see the mosque, and mount the minaret if it
+be permitted, but I do not know the custom of the place. A Frank
+enters mosques in Constantinople, Cairo, and Aleppo."
+
+_Dervish_. "You are mistaken; the mosques of Aleppo are shut to
+Franks."
+
+_Author_. "Pardon me; Franks are excluded from the mosque of Zekerieh
+in Aleppo, but not from the Osmanieh, and the Adelieh."
+
+_Dervish_. "There is the Muezzin; I dare say he will make no
+difficulty."
+
+The Muezzin, anxious for his backshish, made no scruple; and now some
+Moslems entered, and kissed the hand of the Dervish. When the
+conversation became general, one of them told me, in a low tone, that
+he gave all that he got in charity, and was much liked. The Dervish
+cut some flowers, and presented each of us with one.
+
+The Muezzin now looked at his watch, and gave me a wink, expressive of
+the approach of the time for evening prayer; so I followed him into
+the church, which had bare white-washed walls with nothing to remark;
+and then taking my hand, he led me up the dark and dismal spiral
+staircase to the top of the minaret; on emerging on the balcony of
+which, we had a general view of the town and environs.
+
+Ushitza lies in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains. The Dietina,
+a tributary of the Morava, traverses the town, and is crossed by two
+elegantly proportioned, but somewhat ruinous, bridges. The principal
+object in the landscape is the castle, built on a picturesque jagged
+eminence, separated from the precipitous mountains to the south only
+by a deep gully, through which the Dietina struggles into the valley.
+The stagnation of the art of war in Turkey has preserved it nearly as
+it must have been some centuries ago. In Europe, feudal castles are
+complete ruins; in a country such as this, where contests are of a
+guerilla character, they are neglected, but neither destroyed nor
+totally abandoned. The centre space in the valley is occupied by the
+town itself, which shows great gaps; whole streets which stood here
+before the Servian revolution, have been turned into orchards. The
+general view is pleasing enough; for the castle, although not so
+picturesque as that of Sokol, affords fine materials for a picture;
+but the white-washed Servian church, the fac simile of everyone in
+Hungary, rather detracts from the external interest of the view.
+
+In the evening the Vayvode sent a message by his pandour, to say that
+he would pay me a visit along with the Agas of the town, who, six in
+number, shortly afterwards came. It being now evening, they had no
+objection to smoke; and as they sat round the room they related
+wondrous things of Ushitza towards the close of the last century,
+which being the entre-pot between Servia and Bosnia, had a great trade,
+and contained then twelve thousand houses, or about sixty thousand
+inhabitants; so I easily accounted for the gaps in the middle of the
+town. The Vayvode complained bitterly of the inconveniencies to which
+the quarantine subjected them in restricting the free communication
+with the neighbouring province; but he admitted that the late
+substitution of a quarantine of twenty-four hours, for one of ten days
+as formerly, was a great alleviation; "but even this," added the
+Vayvode, "is a hindrance: when there was no quarantine, Ushitza was
+every Monday frequented by thousands of Bosniacs, whom even
+twenty-four hours' quarantine deter."
+
+I asked him if the people understood Turkish or Arabic, and if
+preaching was held. He answered, that only he and a few of the Agas
+understood Turkish,--that the Mollah was a deeply-read man, who said
+the prayers in the mosque in Arabic, as is customary everywhere; but
+that there was no preaching, since the people only knew their prayers
+in Arabic, but could not understand a sermon, and spoke nothing but
+Bosniac. I think that somebody told me that Vaaz, or preaching, is
+held in the Bosniac language at Seraievo. But my memory fails me in
+certainty on this point.
+
+After a pleasant chat of about an hour they went away. Our beds were,
+as the ingenious Mr. Pepys says, "good, but lousy."
+
+Next day, the Servian Natchalnik, who, on my arrival, had been absent
+at Topola with the prince, came to see me; he was a middle-aged man,
+with most perfect self-possession, polite without familiarity or
+effort to please; he had more of the manner of a Moslem grandee, than
+of a Christian subject of the Sultan.
+
+_Natchalnik_. "Believe me, the people are much pleased that men of
+learning travel through the country; it is a sign that we are not
+forgotten in Europe; thank God and the European powers, that we are
+now making progress."
+
+_Author_. "Servia is certainly making progress; there can be no
+spectacle more delightful to a rightly constituted mind, than that of
+a hopeful young nation approaching its puberty. You Servians are in a
+considerable minority here in Ushitza. I hope you live on good terms
+with the Moslems."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "Yes, on tolerable terms; but the old ones, who remember
+the former abject position of the Christians, cannot reconcile
+themselves to my riding on horseback through the bazaars, and get
+angry when the Servians sing in the woods, or five off muskets during
+a rejoicing."
+
+The Vayvode now arrived with a large company of Moslems, and we
+proceeded on foot to see the castle, our road being mostly through
+those gardens, on which the old town stood, and following the side of
+the river, to the spot where the high banks almost close in, so as to
+form a gorge. We ascended a winding path, and entered the gate, which
+formed the outlet of a long, gloomy, and solidly built passage.
+
+A group of armed militia men received us as we entered, and on
+regaining the daylight within the walls, we saw nothing but the usual
+spectacle of crumbling crenellated towers, abandoned houses, rotten
+planks, and unserviceable dismounted brass guns. The doujou, or keep,
+was built on a detached rock, connected by an old wooden bridge. The
+gate was strengthened with heavy nails, and closed by a couple of
+enormous old fashioned padlocks. The Vayvode gave us a hint not to ask
+a sight of the interior, by stating that it was only opened at the
+period of inspection of the Imperial Commissioner. The bridge which
+overlooked the romantic gorge,--the rocks here rising precipitately
+from both sides of the Dietina,--seemed the favourite lounge of the
+garrison, for a little kiosk of rude planks had been knocked up;
+carpets were laid out; the Vayvode invited us to repose a little after
+our steep ascent; pipes and coffee were produced.
+
+I remarked that the castle must have suffered severely in the
+revolution.
+
+"This very place," said the Vayvode, "was the scene of the severest
+conflict. The Turks had twenty-one guns, and the Servians seven. So
+many were killed, that that bank was filled up with dead bodies."
+
+"I remember it well," said a toothless, lisping old Turk, with bare
+brown legs, and large feet stuck in a pair of new red shining
+slippers: "that oval tower has not been opened for a long time. If any
+one were to go in, his head would be cut off by an invisible hangiar."
+I smiled, but was immediately assured by several by-standers that it
+was a positive fact! Our party, swelled by fresh additions, all well
+armed, that made us look like a large body of Haiducks going on a
+marauding expedition, now issued by a gate in the castle, opposite to
+that by which I entered, and began to toil up the hill that overlooks
+Ushitza, in order to have a bird's-eye view of the whole town and
+valley. On our way up, the Natchalnik told me, that although long
+resident here, he had never seen the interior of the castle, and that
+I was the first Christian to whom its gates had been opened since the
+revolution.
+
+The old Vayvode, notwithstanding his cumbrous robes, climbed as
+briskly as any of us to the detached fort on the peak of the hill,
+whence we looked down on Ushitza and all its environs; but I was
+disappointed in the prospect, the objects being too much below the
+level of the eye. The landscape was spotty. Ushitza, instead of
+appearing a town, looked like a straggling assemblage of cottages and
+gardens. The best view is that below the bridge, looking to the
+castle.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 9: This is a phrase, and had no relation to the occupation
+of Sind or Aden.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Poshega.--The river Morava.--Arrival at Csatsak.--A Viennese
+Doctor.--Project to ascend the Kopaunik.--Visit the Bishop.--Ancient
+Cathedral Church.--Greek Mass.--Karanovatz.--Emigrant Priest.--Albania
+Disorders.--Salt Mines.
+
+
+On leaving Ushitza, the Natchalnik accompanied me with a cavalcade of
+twenty or thirty Christians, a few miles out of the town. The
+afternoon was beautiful; the road lay through hilly ground, and after
+two hours' riding, we saw Poshega in the middle of a wide level plain;
+after descending to which, we crossed the Scrapesh by an elegant
+bridge of sixteen arches, and entering the village, put up at a
+miserable khan, although Poshega is the embryo of a town symmetrically
+and geometrically laid out. Twelve years ago a Turk wounded a Servian
+in the streets of Ushitza, in a quarrel about some trifling matter.
+The Servian pulled out a pistol, and shot the Turk dead on the spot.
+Both nations seized their arms, and rushing out of the houses, a
+bloody affray took place, several being left dead on the spot. The
+Servians, feeling their numerical inferiority, now transplanted
+themselves to the little hamlet of Poshega, which is in a finer plain
+than that of Ushitza; but the colony does not appear to prosper, for
+most of the Servians have since returned to Ushitza.
+
+Poshega, from remnants of a nobler architecture, must have been a
+Roman colony. At the new church a stone is built into the wall, having
+the fragment of an inscription:--
+
+     A V I A.  G E N T
+    I L  F L A I I  S P R
+
+and various other stones are to be seen, one with a figure sculptured
+on it.
+
+Continuing our way down the rich valley of the Morava, which is here
+several miles wide, and might contain ten times the present
+population, we arrived at Csatsak, which proved to be as symmetrically
+laid out as Poshega. Csatsak is old and new, but the old Turkish town
+has disappeared, and the new Servian Csatsak is still a foetus. The
+plan on which all these new places are constructed, is simple, and
+consists of a circular or square market place, with bazaar shops in
+the Turkish manner, and straight streets diverging from them. I put up
+at the khan, and then went to the Natchalnik's house to deliver my
+letter. Going through green lanes, we at length stopped at a high
+wooden paling, over-topped with rose and other bushes. Entering, we
+found ourselves on a smooth carpet of turf, and opposite a pretty
+rural cottage, somewhat in the style of a citizen's villa in the
+environs of London. The Natchalnik was not at home, but was gracefully
+represented by his young wife, a fair specimen of the beauty of
+Csatsak; and presently the Deputy and the Judge came to see us. A dark
+complexioned, good-natured looking man, between thirty and forty, now
+entered, with an European air, German trowsers and waistcoat, but a
+Turkish riding cloak. "There comes the doctor," said the lady, and the
+figure with the Turkish riding cloak thus announced himself:--
+
+_Doctor_. "I' bin a' Wiener."
+
+_Author_. "Gratulire: dass iss a' lustige Stadt."
+
+_Doctor_. "Glaub'ns mir, lust'ger als Csatsak."
+
+_Author_. "I' glaub's."
+
+The Judge, a sedate, elderly, and slightly corpulent man, asked me
+what route I had pursued, and intended to pursue. I informed him of
+the particulars of my journey, and added that I intended to follow the
+valley of the Morava to its confluence with the Danube. "The good
+folks of Belgrade do not travel for their pleasure, and could give me
+little information; therefore, I have chalked out my route from the
+study of the map."
+
+"You have gone out of your way to see Sokol," said he; "you may as
+well extend your tour to Novibazaar, and the Kopaunik. You are fond of
+maps: go to the peak of the Kopaunik, and you will see all Servia
+rolled out before you from Bosnia to Bulgaria, and from the Balkan to
+the Danube; not a map, or a copy, but the original."
+
+"The temptation is irresistible.--My mind is made up to follow your
+advice."
+
+We now went in a body, and paid our visit to the Bishop of Csatsak,
+who lives in the finest house in the place; a large well-built villa,
+on a slight eminence within a grassy inclosure. The Bishop received us
+in an open kiosk, on the first floor, fitted all round with cushions,
+and commanding a fine view of the hills which inclose the plain of the
+Morava. The thick woods and the precipitous rocks, which impart rugged
+beauty to the valley of the Drina, are here unknown; the eye wanders
+over a rich yellow champaign, to hills which were too distant to
+present distinct details, but vaguely grey and beautiful in the
+transparent atmosphere of a Servian early autumn.
+
+The Bishop was a fine specimen of the Church militant,--a stout fiery
+man of sixty, in full-furred robes, and a black velvet cap. His
+energetic denunciations of the lawless appropriations of Milosh, had
+for many years procured him the enmity of that remarkable individual;
+but he was now in the full tide of popularity.
+
+His questions referred principally to the state of parties in England,
+and I could not help thinking that his philosophy must have been
+something like that of the American parson in the quarantine at
+Smyrna, who thought that fierce combats and contests were as necessary
+to clear the moral atmosphere, as thunder and lightning to purify the
+visible heavens. We now took leave of the Bishop, and went homewards,
+for there had been several candidates for entertaining me; but I
+decided for the jovial doctor, who lived in the house that was
+formerly occupied by Jovan Obrenovitch, the youngest and favourite
+brother of Milosh.
+
+Next morning, as early as six o'clock, I was aroused by the
+announcement that the Natchalnik had returned from the country, and
+was waiting to see me. On rising, I found him to be a plain, simple
+Servian of the old school; he informed me that this being a saint's
+day, the Bishop would not commence mass until I was arrived. "What?"
+thought I to myself, "does the Bishop think that these obstreperous
+Britons are all of the Greek religion." The doctor thought that I
+should not go; "for," said he, "whoever wishes to exercise the virtue
+of patience may do so in a Greek mass or a Hungarian law-suit!" But
+the Natchalnik decided for going; and I, always ready to conform to
+the custom of the country, accompanied him.
+
+The cathedral church was a most ancient edifice of Byzantine
+architecture, which had been first a church, and then a mosque, and
+then a church again. The honeycombs and stalactite ornaments in the
+corners, as well as a marble stone in the floor, adorned with
+geometrical arabesques, showed its services to Islamism. But the
+pictures of the Crucifixion, and the figures of the priests, reminded
+me that I was in a Christian temple.
+
+The Bishop, in pontificalibus, was dressed in a crimson velvet and
+white satin dress, embroidered in gold, which had cost L300 at Vienna;
+and as he sat in his chair, with mitre on head, and crosier in hand,
+looked, with his white bushy beard, an imposing representative of
+spiritual authority. Sometimes he softened, and looked bland, as if
+it would not have been beneath him to grant absolution to an emperor.
+
+A priest was consecrated on the occasion; but the service was so long,
+(full two hours and a half,) that I was fatigued with the endless
+bowings and motions, and thought more than once of the benevolent wish
+of the doctor, to see me preserved from a Greek mass and a Hungarian
+law-suit; but the singing was good, simple, massive, and antique in
+colouring. At the close of the service, thin wax tapers were presented
+to the congregation, which each of them lighted. After which they
+advanced and kissed the Cross and Gospels, which were covered with
+most minute silver and gold filagree work.
+
+The prolonged service had given me a good appetite; and when I
+returned to the doctor, he smiled, and said, "I am sure you are ready
+for your _cafe au lait_."
+
+"I confess it was rather _langweilig_."
+
+"Take my advice for the future, and steer clear of a Greek mass, or a
+Hungarian law-suit."
+
+We now went to take farewell of the Bishop, whom we found, as
+yesterday, in the kiosk, with a fresh set of fur robes, and looking
+as superb as ever, with a large and splendid ring on his forefinger.
+
+"If you had not come during a fast," growled he, with as good-humoured
+a smile as could be expected from so formidable a personage, "I would
+have given you a dinner. The English, I know, fight well at sea; but I
+do not know if they like salt fish."
+
+A story is related of this Bishop, that on the occasion of some former
+traveller rising to depart, he asked, "Are your pistols in good
+order?" On the traveller answering in the affirmative, the Bishop
+rejoined, "Well, now you may depart with my blessing!"
+
+Csatsak, although the seat of a Bishop and a Natchalnik, is only a
+village, and is insignificant when one thinks of the magnificent plain
+in which it stands. At every step I made in this country I thought of
+the noble field which it offers for a system of colonization congenial
+to the feelings, and subservient to the interests of the present
+occupants.
+
+We now journeyed to Karanovatz, where we arrived after sunset, and
+proceeded in the dark up a paved street, till we saw on our left a
+_cafe_, with lights gleaming through the windows, and a crowd of
+people, some inside, some outside, sipping their coffee. An
+individual, who announced himself as the captain of Karanovatz,
+stepped forward, accompanied by others, and conducted me to his house.
+Scarcely had I sat down on his divan when two handmaidens entered, one
+of them bearing a large basin in her hand.
+
+"My guest," said the captain, "you must be fatigued with your ride.
+This house is your's. Suppose yourself at home in the country beyond
+the sea."
+
+"What," said I, looking to the handmaidens, "supper already! You have
+divined my arrival to a minute."
+
+"Oh, no; we must put you at your ease before supper time; it is warm
+water."
+
+"Nothing can be more welcome to a traveller." So the handmaidens
+advanced, and while one pulled off my socks, I lolling luxuriously on
+the divan, and smoking my pipe, the other washed my feet with water,
+tepid to a degree, and then dried them. With these agreeable
+sensations still soothing me, coffee was brought by the lady of the
+house, on a very pretty service; and I could not help admitting that
+there was less roughing in Servian travel than I expected.
+
+After supper, the pariah priest came in, a middle-aged man.
+
+_Author_. "Do you remember the Turkish period at Karanovatz?"
+
+_Priest_. "No; I came here only lately. My native place is Wuchitern,
+on the borders of a large lake in the High Balkan; but, in common with
+many of the Christian inhabitants, I was obliged to emigrate last
+year."
+
+_Author_. "For what reason?"
+
+_Priest_. "A horde of Albanians, from fifteen to twenty thousand in
+number, burst from the Pashalic of Scodra upon the peaceful
+inhabitants of the Pashalic of Vrania, committing the greatest
+horrors, burning down villages, and putting the inhabitants to the
+torture, in order to get money, and dishonouring all the handsomest
+women. The Porte sent a large force, disarmed the rascals, and sent
+the leaders to the galleys; but I and my people find ourselves so
+well here that we feel little temptation to return."
+
+The grand exploit in the life of our host was a caravan journey to
+Saloniki, where he had the satisfaction of seeing the sea, a
+circumstance which distinguished him, not only from the good folks of
+Karanovatz, but from most of his countrymen in general.
+
+"People that live near the sea," said he, "get their salt cheap
+enough; but that is not the case in Servia. When Baron Herder made his
+exploration of the stones and mountains of Servia, he discovered salt
+in abundance somewhere near the Kopaunik; but Milosh, who at that time
+had the monopoly of the importation of Wallachian salt in his own
+hands, begged him to keep the place secret, for fear his own profits
+would suffer a diminution. Thus we must pay a large price for foreign
+salt, when we have plenty of it at our own doors."[10]
+
+Next day, we walked about Caranovatz. It is symmetrically built like
+Csatsak, but better paved and cleaner.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 10: I have since heard that the Servian salt is to be
+worked.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Coronation Church of the ancient Kings of Servia.--Enter the
+Highlands.--Valley of the Ybar.--First view of the High
+Balkan.--Convent of Studenitza.--Byzantine Architecture.--Phlegmatic
+Monk.--Servian Frontier.--New Quarantine.--Russian Major.
+
+
+We again started after mid-day, with the captain and his momkes, and,
+proceeding through meadows, arrived at Zhitchka Jicha. This is an
+ancient Servian convent, of Byzantine architecture, where seven kings
+of Servia were crowned, a door being broken into the wall for the
+entrance of each sovereign, and built up again on his departure. It is
+situated on a rising ground, just where the river Ybar enters the
+plain of Karanovatz. The environs are beautiful. The hills are of
+moderate height, covered with verdure and foliage; only campaniles
+were wanting to the illusion of my being in Italy, somewhere about
+Verona or Vicenza, where the last picturesque undulations of the Alps
+meet the bountiful alluvia of the Po. Quitting the valley of the
+Morava, we struck southwards into the highlands. Here the scene
+changed; the valley of the Ybar became narrow, the vegetation scanty;
+and, at evening, we arrived at a tent made of thick matted branches of
+trees, which had been strewn for us with fresh hay. The elders of
+Magletch, a hamlet an hour off, came with an offer of their services,
+in case they were wanted.
+
+The sun set; and a bright crackling fire of withered branches of pine,
+mingling its light with the rays of the moon in the clear chill of a
+September evening, threw a wild and unworldly pallor over the sterile
+scene of our bivouac, and the uncouth figures of the elders. They
+offered me a supper; but contenting myself with a roasted head of
+Indian corn, and rolling my cloak and pea jacket about me, I fell
+asleep: but felt so cold that, at two o'clock, I roused the
+encampment, sounded to horse, and, in a few minutes, was again
+mounting the steep paths that lead to Studenitza.
+
+Day gradually dawned, and the scene became wilder and wilder; not a
+chalet was to be seen, for the ruined castle of Magletch on its lone
+crag, betokened nothing of humanity. Tall cedars replaced the oak and
+the beech, the scanty herbage was covered with hoar-frost. The clear
+brooks murmured chillingly down the unshaded gullies, and a grand line
+of sterile peaks to the South, showed me that I was approaching the
+backbone of the Balkan. All on a sadden I found the path overlooking
+a valley, with a few cocks of hay on a narrow meadow; and another turn
+of the road showed me the lines of a Byzantine edifice with a graceful
+dome, sheltered in a wood from the chilling winter blasts of this
+highland region. Descending, and crossing the stream, we now proceeded
+up to the eminence on which the convent was placed, and I perceived
+thick walls and stout turrets, which bade a sturdy defiance to all
+hostile intentions, except such as might be supported by artillery.
+
+On dismounting and entering the wicket, I found myself in an extensive
+court, one side of which was formed by a newly built crescent-shaped
+cloister; the other by a line of irregular out-houses with wooden
+stairs, _chardacks_ and other picturesque but fragile appendages of
+Turkish domestic architecture.
+
+Between these pigeon-holes and the new substantial, but mean-looking
+cloister, on the other side rose the church of polished white marble,
+a splendid specimen of pure Byzantine architecture, if I dare apply
+such an adjective to that fantastic middle manner, which succeeded to
+the style of the fourth century, and was subsequently re-cast by
+Christians and Moslems into what are called the Gothic and
+Saracenic.[11]
+
+A fat, feeble-voiced, lymphatic-faced Superior, leaning on a long
+staff, received us; but the conversation was all on one side, for
+"_Blagodarim_," (I thank you,) was all that I could get out of him.
+After reposing a little in the parlour, I came out to view the church
+again, and expressed my pleasure at seeing so fair an edifice in the
+midst of such a wilderness.
+
+The Superior slowly raised his eyebrows, looked first at the church,
+then at me, and relapsed into a frowning interrogative stupor; at
+last, suddenly rekindling as if he had comprehended my meaning, added
+"_Blagodarim_" (I thank you). A shrewd young man, from a village a few
+miles off, now came forward just as the Superior's courage pricked him
+on to ask if there were any convents in my country; "Very few," said
+I.
+
+"But there are," said the young pert Servian, "a great many schools
+and colleges where useful sciences are taught to the young, and
+hospitals, where active physicians cure diseases."
+
+This was meant as a cut to the reverend Farniente. He looked blank,
+but evidently wanted the boldness and ingenuity to frame an answer to
+this redoubtable innovator. At last he gaped at me to help him out of
+the dilemma.
+
+"I should be sorry," said I, "if any thing were to happen to this
+convent. It is a most interesting and beautiful monument of the
+ancient kingdom of Servia; I hope it will be preserved and honourably
+kept up to a late period."
+
+"_Blagodarim_, (I am obliged to you,)" said the Superior, pleased at
+the Gordian knot being loosed, and then relapsed into his atrophy,
+without moving a muscle of his countenance.
+
+I now examined the church; the details of the architecture showed that
+it had suffered severely from the Turks. The curiously twisted pillars
+of the outer door were sadly chipped, while noseless angels, and
+fearfully mutilated lions guarded the inner portal. Passing through a
+vestibule, we saw the remains of the font, which must have been
+magnificent; and covered with a cupola, the stumps of the white marble
+columns which support it are still visible; high on the wall is a
+piece of sculpture, supposed to represent St. George.
+
+Entering the church, I saw on the right the tomb of St. Simeon, the
+sainted king of Servia; beside it hung his banner with the half-moon
+on it, the insignium of the South Slavonic nation from the dawn of
+heraldry. Near the altar was the body of his son, St. Stephen, the
+patron saint of Servia. Those who accompanied us paid little attention
+to the architecture of the church, but burst into raptures at the
+sight of the carved wood of the screen, which had been most minutely
+and elaborately cut by Tsinsars, (as the Macedonian Latins are called
+to this day).
+
+Close to the church is a chapel with the following inscription:
+
+"I, Stephen Urosh, servant of God, great grandson of Saint Simeon and
+son of the great king Urosh, king of all the Servian lands and coasts,
+built this temple in honour of the holy and just Joachim and Anna,
+1314. Whoever destroys this temple of Christ be accursed of God and of
+me a sinner."
+
+Thirty-five churches in this district, mostly in ruins, attest the
+piety of the Neman dynasty. The convent of Studenitza was built
+towards the end of the twelfth century, by the first of the dynasty.
+The old cloister of the convent was burnt down by the Turks. The new
+cloister was built in 1839. In fact it is a wonder that so fine a
+monument as the church should have been preserved at all.
+
+There is a total want of arable land in this part of Servia, and the
+pasture is neither good nor abundant; but the Ybar is the most
+celebrated of all the streams of Servia for large quantities of trout.
+
+Next day we continued our route direct South, through scenery of the
+same rugged and sterile description as that we had passed on the way
+hither. How different from the velvet verdure and woodland music of
+the Gutchevo and the Drina! At one place on the bank of the Ybar,
+there was room for only a led horse, by a passage cut in the rock.
+This place bears the name of Demir Kapu, or Iron Gate. In the evening
+we arrived at the frontier quarantine, called Raska, which is situated
+at two hours' distance from Novibazar.
+
+In the midst of an amphitheatre of hills destitute of vegetation,
+which appeared low from the valley, although they must have been high
+enough above the level of the sea, was such a busy scene as one may
+find in the back settlements of Eastern Russia. Within an extensive
+inclosure of high palings was a heterogeneous mass of new buildings,
+some unfinished, and resounding with the saw, the plane, and the
+hatchet; others in possession of the employes in their uniforms;
+others again devoted to the safe keeping of the well-armed caravans,
+which bring their cordovans, oils, and cottons, from Saloniki, through
+Macedonia, and over the Balkan, to the gates of Belgrade.
+
+On dismounting, the Director, a thin elderly man, with a modest and
+pleasing manner, told me in German that he was a native of the
+Austrian side of the Save, and had been attached to the quarantine at
+Semlin; that he had joined the quarantine service, with the permission
+of his government, and after having directed various other
+establishments, was now occupied in organizing this new point.
+
+The _traiteur_ of the quarantine gave us for dinner a very fair
+pillaff, as well as roast and boiled fowl; and going outside to our
+bench, in front of the finished buildings, I began to smoke. A
+slightly built and rather genteel-looking man, with a braided surtout,
+and a piece of ribbon at his button-hole, was sitting on the step of
+the next door, and wished me good evening in German. I asked him who
+he was, and he told me that he was a Pole, and had been a major in the
+Russian service, but was compelled to quit it in consequence of a
+duel.
+
+I asked him if he was content with his present condition; and he
+answered, "Indeed, I am not; I am perfectly miserable, and sometimes
+think of returning to Russia, _coute qui coute_.--My salary is L20
+sterling a year, and everything is dear here; for there is no
+village, but an artificial settlement; and I have neither books nor
+European society. I can hold out pretty well now, for the weather is
+fine; but I assure you that in winter, when the snow is on the ground,
+it exhausts my patience." We now took a turn down the inclosure to his
+house, which was the ground-floor of the guard-house. Here was a bed
+on wooden boards, a single chair and table, without any other
+furniture.
+
+The Director, obliging me, made up a bed for me in his own house,
+since the only resource at the _traiteur's_ would have been my own
+carpet and pillow.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 11: Ingenious treaties have been written on the origin of the
+Gothic and Saracenic styles of architecture; but it seems to me
+impossible to contemplate many Byzantine edifices without feeling
+persuaded that this manner is the parent of both. Taking the Lower
+Empire for the point of departure, the Christian style spread north to
+the Baltic and westwards to the Atlantic. Saint Stephen's in Vienna,
+standing half way between Byzantium and Wisby, has a Byzantine facade
+and a Gothic tower. The Saracenic style followed the Moslem conquests
+round by the southern coasts of the Mediterranean to Morocco and
+Andaloss. Thus both the northern and the eastern styles met each
+other, first in Sicily and then in Spain, both having started from
+Constantinople.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Cross the Bosniac Frontier.--Gipsy Encampment.--Novibazar
+described.--Rough Reception.--Precipitate Departure.--Fanaticism.
+
+
+Next day we were all afoot at an early hour, in order to pay a visit
+to Novibazar. In order to obviate the performance of quarantine on our
+return, I took an officer of the establishment, and a couple of men,
+with me, who in the Levant are called Guardiani; but here the German
+word Ueber-reiter, or over-rider, was adopted.
+
+We continued along the river Raska for about an hour, and then
+descried a line of wooden palings going up hill and down dale, at
+right angles with the course we were holding. This was the frontier of
+the principality of Servia, and here began the direct rule of the
+Sultan and the Pashalic of Bosnia. At the guard-house half a dozen
+Momkes, with old fashioned Albanian guns, presented arms.
+
+After half an hour's riding, the valley became wider, and we passed
+through meadow lands, cultivated by Moslem Bosniacs in their white
+turbans; and two hours further, entered a fertile circular plain,
+about a mile and a half in diameter, surrounded by low hills, which
+had a chalky look, in the midst of which rose the minarets and
+bastions of the town and castle of Novibazar. Numerous gipsy tents
+covered the plain, and at one of them, a withered old gipsy woman,
+with white dishevelled hair hanging down on each side of her burnt
+umber face, cried out in a rage, "See how the Royal Servian people
+now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback,"
+alluding to the ancient custom of Christians not being permitted to
+ride on horseback in a town.[12]
+
+On entering, I perceived the houses to be of a most forbidding
+aspect, being built of mud, with only a base of bricks, extending
+about three feet from the ground. None of the windows were glazed;
+this being the first town of this part of Turkey in Europe that I had
+seen in such a plight. The over-rider stopped at a large
+stable-looking building, which was the khan of the place. Near the
+door were some bare wooden benches, on which some Moslems, including
+the khan-keeper, were reposing. The horses were foddered at the other
+extremity, and a fire burned in the middle of the floor, the smoke
+escaping by the doors. We now sent our letter to Youssouf Bey, the
+governor, but word was brought back that he was in the harem.
+
+We now sallied forth to view the town. The castle, which occupies the
+centre, is on a slight eminence, and flanked with eight bastions; it
+contains no regular troops, but merely some _redif_, or militia.
+Besides one small well-built stone mosque, there is nothing else to
+remark in the place. Some of the bazaar shops seemed tolerably well
+furnished; but the place is, on the whole, miserable and filthy in
+the extreme. The total number of mosques is seventeen.
+
+The afternoon being now advanced, I went to call upon the Mutsellim.
+His konak was situated in a solitary street, close to the fields.
+Going through an archway, we found ourselves in the court of a house
+of two stories. The ground-floor was the prison, with small windows
+and grated wooden bars. Above was an open corridor, on which the
+apartments of the Bey opened. Two rusty, old fashioned cannons were in
+the middle of the court. Two wretched-looking men, and a woman,
+detained for theft, occupied one of the cells. They asked us if we
+knew where somebody, with an unpronounceable name, had gone. But not
+having had the honour of knowing any body of the light-fingered
+profession, we could give no satisfactory information on the subject.
+
+The Momke, whom we had asked after the governor, now re-descended the
+rickety steps, and announced that the Bey was still asleep; so I
+walked out, but in the course of our ramble learned that he was
+afraid to see us, on account of the fanatics in the town: for, from
+the immediate vicinity of this place to Servia, the inhabitants
+entertain a stronger hatred of Christians than is usual in the other
+parts of Turkey, where commerce, and the presence of Frank influences,
+cause appearances to be respected. But the people here recollected
+only of one party of Franks ever visiting the town.[13]
+
+We now sauntered into the fields; and seeing the cemetery, which
+promised from its elevation to afford a good general view of the town,
+we ascended, and were sorry to see so really pleasing a situation
+abused by filth, indolence, and barbarism.
+
+The castle was on the elevated centre of the town; and the town
+sloping on all aides down to the gardens, was as nearly as possible in
+the centre of the plain. When we had sufficiently examined the carved
+stone kaouks and turbans on the tomb stones, we re-descended towards
+the town. A savage-looking Bosniac now started up from behind a low
+outhouse, and trembling with rage and fanaticism began to abuse us:
+"Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you have come for. Do you expect
+to see your cross planted some day on the castle?"
+
+The old story, thought I to myself; the fellow takes me for a military
+engineer, exhausting the resources of my art in a plan for the
+reduction of the redoubtable fortress and city of Novibazar.
+
+"Take care how you insult an honourable gentleman," said the
+over-rider; "we will complain to the Bey."
+
+"What do we care for the Bey?" said the fellow, laughing in the
+exuberance of his impudence. I now stopped, looked him full in the
+face, and asked him coolly what he wanted.
+
+"I will show you that when you get into the bazaar," and then he
+suddenly bolted down a lane out of sight.
+
+A Christian, who had been hanging on at a short distance, came up and
+said--
+
+"I advise you to take yourself out of the dust as quickly as possible.
+The whole town is in a state of alarm; and unless you are prepared for
+resistance, something serious may happen: for the fellows here are
+all wild Arnaouts, and do not understand travelling Franks."
+
+"Your advice is a good one; I am obliged to you for the hint, and I
+will attend to it."
+
+Had there been a Pasha or consul in the place, I would have got the
+fellow punished for his insolence: but knowing that our small party
+was no match for armed fanatics, and that there was nothing more to be
+seen in the place, we avoided the bazaar, and went round by a side
+street, paid our khan bill,[14] and, mounting our horses, trotted
+rapidly out of the town, for fear of a stray shot; but the over-rider
+on getting clear of the suburbs instead of relaxing got into a gallop.
+
+"Halt," cried I, "we are clear of the rascals, and fairly out of
+town;" and coming up to the eminence crowned with the Giurgeve
+Stupovi, on which was a church, said to have been built by Stephen
+Dushan the Powerful, I resolved to ascend, and got the over-rider to
+go so far; but some Bosniacs in a field warned us off with menacing
+gestures. The over-rider said, "For God's sake let us go straight
+home. If I go back to Novibazar my life may be taken."
+
+Not wishing to bring the poor fellow into trouble, I gave up the
+project, and returned to the quarantine.
+
+Novibazar, which is about ten hours distant from the territory of
+Montenegro, and thrice that distance from Scutari, is, politically
+speaking, in the Pashalic of Bosnia. The Servian or Bosniac language
+here ceases to be the preponderating language, and the Albanian begins
+and stretches southward to Epirus. But through all the Pashalic of
+Scutari, Servian is much spoken.
+
+Colonel Hodges, her Britannic Majesty's first consul-general in
+Servia, a gentleman of great activity and intelligence, from the
+laudable desire to procure the establishment of an entre-pot for
+British manufactures in the interior, got a certain chieftain of a
+clan Vassoevitch, named British vice-consul at Novibazar. From this
+man's influence, there can be no doubt that had he stuck to trade he
+might have proved useful; but, inflated with vanity, he irritated the
+fanaticism of the Bosniacs, by setting himself up as a little
+Christian potentate. As a necessary consequence, he was obliged to fly
+for his life, and his house was burned to the ground. The Vassoevitch
+clan have from time immemorial occupied certain mountains near
+Novibazar, and pretend, or pretended, to complete independence of the
+Porte, like the Montenegrines.
+
+While I returned to the quarantine, and dismounted, the Director, to
+whom the over-rider related our adventure, came up laughing, and said,
+"What do you think of the rites of Novibazar hospitality?"
+
+_Author_. "More honoured in the breach than in the observance, as our
+national poet would have said."
+
+_Director_. "I know well enough what you mean."
+
+_By-stander_. "The cause of the hatred of these fellows to you is,
+that they fear that some fine day they will be under Christian rule.
+We are pleased to see the like of you here. Our brethren on the other
+side may derive a glimmering hope of liberation from the
+circumstance."
+
+_Author_. "My government is at present on the best terms with the
+Porte: the readiness with which such hopes arise in the minds of the
+people, is my motive for avoiding political conversations with Rayahs
+on those dangerous topics."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 12: Most of the gipsies here profess Islamism.]
+
+[Footnote 13: I presume Messrs. Boue and party.]
+
+[Footnote 14: The Austrian zwanziger goes here for only three piastres;
+in Servia it goes for five.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Ascent of the Kopaunik.--Grand Prospect.--Descent of the
+Kopaunik.--Bruss.--Involuntary Bigamy.--Conversation on the Servian
+character.--Krushevatz.--Relics of the Servian monarchy.
+
+
+A middle-aged, showily dressed man, presented himself as the captain
+who was to conduct me to the top of the Kopaunik. His clerk was a fat,
+knock-kneed, lubberly-looking fellow, with a red face, a short neck, a
+low forehead, and bushy eyebrows and mustachios, as fair as those of a
+Norwegian; to add to his droll appearance, one of his eyes was
+bandaged up.
+
+"As sure as I am alive, that fellow will go off in an apoplexy. What a
+figure! I would give something to see that fellow climbing up the
+ladder of a steamer from a boat on a blowy day."
+
+"Or dancing to the bagpipe," said Paul.
+
+The sky was cloudy, and the captain seemed irresolute, whether to
+advise me to make the ascent or proceed to Banya. The plethoric
+one-eyed clerk, with more regard to his own comfort than my pleasure,
+was secretly persuading the captain that the expedition would end in a
+ducking to the skin, and, turning to me, said, "You, surely, do not
+intend to go up to day, Sir? Take the advice of those who know the
+country?"
+
+"Nonsense," said I, "this is mere fog, which will clear away in an
+hour. If I do not ascend the Kopaunik now, I can never do so again."
+
+Plethora then went away to get the director to lend his advice on the
+same side; and after much whispering he came back, and announced that
+my horse was unshod, and could not ascend the rocks. The director was
+amused with the clumsy bustle of this fellow to save himself a little
+exercise. I, at length, said to the doubting captain, "My good friend,
+an Englishman is like a Servian, when he takes a resolution he does
+not change it. Pray order the horses."
+
+We now crossed the Ybar, and ascending for hours through open pasture
+lands, arrived at some rocks interspersed with stunted ilex, where a
+lamb was roasting for our dinner. The meridian sun had long ere this
+pierced the clouds that overhung our departure, and the sight of the
+lamb completely irradiated the rubicund visage of the plethoric clerk.
+A low round table was set down on the grass, under the shade of a
+large boulder stone. An ilex growing from its interstices seemed to
+live on its wits, for not an ounce of soil was visible for its
+subsistence. Our ride gave us a sharp appetite, and we did due
+execution on the lamb. The clerk, fixing his eyes steadily on the
+piece he had singled out, tucked up his sleeves, as for a surgical
+operation, and bone after bone was picked, and thrown over the rock;
+and when all were satisfied, the clerk was evidently at the
+climacteric of his powers of mastication. After reposing a little, we
+again mounted horse.
+
+A gentle wind skimmed the white straggling clouds from the blue sky.
+Warmer and warmer grew the sunlit valleys; wider and wider grew the
+prospect as we ascended. Balkan after Balkan rose on the distant
+horizon. Ever and anon I paused and looked round with delight; but
+before reaching the summit I tantalized myself with a few hundred
+yards of ascent, to treasure the glories in store for the pause, the
+turn, and the view. When, at length, I stood on the highest peak; the
+prospect was literally gorgeous. Servia lay rolled out at my feet.
+There was the field of Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar and
+entombed the ancient empire of Servia. I mused an instant on this
+great landmark of European history, and following the finger of an old
+peasant, who accompanied us, I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad--the
+scene of one of the bloodiest fights that preceded the resurrection of
+Servia as a principality. The Morava glistened in its wide valley like
+a silver thread in a carpet of green, beyond which the dark mountains
+of Rudnik rose to the north, while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania,
+Macedonia, and Bulgaria walled in the prospect.
+
+"_Nogo Svet_.--This is the whole world," said the peasant, who stood
+by me.
+
+I myself thought, that if an artist wished for a landscape as the
+scene of Satan taking up our Saviour into a high mountain, he could
+find none more appropriate than this. The Kopaunik is not lofty; not
+much above six thousand English feet above the level of the sea. But
+it is so placed in the Servian basin, that the eye embraces the whole
+breadth from Bosnia to Bulgaria, and very nearly the whole length from
+Macedonia to Hungary.
+
+I now thanked the captain for his trouble, bade him adieu, and, with a
+guide, descended the north eastern slope of the mountain. The
+declivity was rapid, but thick turf assured us a safe footing. Towards
+night-fall we entered a region interspersed with trees, and came to a
+miserable hamlet of shepherds, where we were fain to put up in a hut.
+This was the humblest habitation we had entered in Servia. It was
+built of logs of wood and wattling. A fire burned in the middle of the
+floor, the smoke of which, finding no vent but the door, tried our
+eyes severely, and had covered the roof with a brilliant jet.
+
+Hay being laid in a corner, my carpet and pillow were spread out on
+it; but sleep was impossible from the fleas. At length, the sheer
+fatigue of combating them threw me towards morning into a slumber; and
+on awaking, I looked up, and saw a couple of armed men crouching over
+the glowing embers of the fire. These were the Bolouk Bashi and
+Pandour, sent by the Natchalnik of Krushevatz, to conduct us to that
+town.
+
+I now rose, and breakfasted on new milk, mingled with brandy and
+sugar, no bad substitute for better fare, and mounted horse.
+
+We now descended the Grashevatzka river to Bruss, with low hills on
+each side, covered with grass, and partly wooded. Bruss is prettily
+situated on a rising ground, at the confluence of two tributaries of
+the Morava. It has a little bazaar opening on a lawn, where the
+captain of Zhupa had come to meet me. After coffee, we again mounted,
+and proceeded to Zhupa. Here the aspect of the country changed; the
+verdant hills became chalky, and covered with vineyards, which,
+before the fall of the empire, were celebrated. To this day tradition
+points out a cedar and some vines, planted by Militza, the consort of
+Lasar.
+
+The vine-dressers all stood in a row to receive us. A carpet had been
+placed under an oak, by the side of the river, and a round low table
+in the middle of it was soon covered with soup, sheeps' kidneys, and a
+fat capon, roasted to a minute, preceded by onions and cheese, as a
+rinfresco, and followed by choice grapes and clotted cream, as a
+dessert.
+
+"I think," said I to the entertainer, as I shook the crumbs out of my
+napkin, and took the first whiff of my chibouque, "that if Stephan
+Dushan's chief cook were to rise from the grave, he could not give us
+better fare."
+
+_Captain_. "God sends us good provender, good pasture, good flocks and
+herds, good corn and fruits, and wood and water. The land is rich; the
+climate is excellent; but we are often in political troubles."
+
+_Author_. "These recent affairs are trifles, and you are too young to
+recollect the revolution of Kara Georg."
+
+_Captain_. "Yes, I am; but do you see that Bolouk Bashi who
+accompanied you hither; his history is a droll illustration of past
+times. Simo Slivovats is a brave soldier, but, although a Servian, has
+two wives."
+
+_Author_. "Is he a Moslem?"
+
+_Captain_. "Not at all. In the time of Kara Georg he was an active
+guerilla fighter, and took prisoner a Turk called Sidi Mengia, whose
+life he spared. In the year 1813, when Servia was temporarily
+re-conquered by the Turks, the same Sidi Mengia returned to Zhupa, and
+said, 'Where is the brave Servian who saved my life?' The Bolouk Bashi
+being found, he said to him, 'My friend, you deserve another wife for
+your generosity.' 'I cannot marry two wives,' said Simo; 'my religion
+forbids it.' But the handsomest woman in the country being sought out,
+Sidi Mengia sent a message to the priest of the place, ordering him to
+marry Simo to the young woman. The priest refused; but Sidi Mengia
+sent a second threatening message; so the priest married the couple.
+The two wives live together to this day in the house of Simo at
+Zhupa. The archbishop, since the departure of the Turks, has
+repeatedly called on Simo to repudiate his second wife; but the
+principal obstacle is the first wife, who looks upon the second as a
+sort of sister: under these anomalous circumstances, Simo was under a
+sort of excommunication, until he made a fashion of repudiating the
+second wife, by the first adopting her as a sister."
+
+The captain, who was an intelligent modest man, would fain have kept
+me till next day; but I felt anxious to get to Alexinatz; and on
+arrival at a hill called Vrbnitzkobrdo, the vale of the Morava again
+opened upon us in all its beauty and fertility, in the midst of which
+lay Krushevatz, which was the last metropolis of the Servian empire;
+and even now scarce can fancy picture to itself a nobler site for an
+internal capital. Situated half-way between the source and the mouth
+of the Morava, the plain has breadth enough for swelling zones of
+suburbs, suburban villas, gardens, fields, and villages.
+
+It was far in the night when we arrived at Krushevatz. The Natchalnik
+was waiting with lanterns, and gave us a hearty welcome. As I went
+upstairs his wife kissed my hand, and I in sport wished to kiss her's;
+but the Natchalnik said, "We still hold to the old national custom,
+that the wife kisses the hand of a stranger." Our host was a
+fair-haired man, with small features and person, a brisk manner and
+sharp intelligence, but tempered by a slight spice of vanity. The
+_tout ensemble_ reminded me of the Berlin character.
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I am afraid that, happy as we are to receive such
+strangers as you, we are not sufficiently acquainted with the proper
+ceremonies to be used on the occasion."
+
+_Author_. "The stranger must conform to the usage of the country, not
+the country to the standard of the stranger. I came here to see the
+Servians as they are in their own nature, and not in their imitations
+of Europe. In the East there is more ceremony than in the West; and if
+you go to Europe you will be surprised at the absence of ceremonious
+compliments there."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "The people in the interior are a simple and uncorrupted
+race; their only monitor is nature."
+
+_Author_. "That is true: the European who judges of the Servians by
+the intrigues of Belgrade, will form an unfavourable opinion of them;
+the mass of the nation, in spite of its faults, is sound. Many of the
+men at the head of affairs, such as Simitch, Garashanin, &c., are men
+of integrity; but in the second class at Belgrade, there is a great
+mixture of rogues."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I know the common people well: they are laborious,
+grateful, and obedient; they bear ill-usage for a time, but in the end
+get impatient, and are with difficulty appeased. When I or any other
+governor say to one of the people, 'Brother, this or that must be
+done,' he crosses his hands on his breast, and says, 'It shall be
+done;' but he takes particular notice of what I do, and whether I
+perform what is due on my part. If I fail, woe betide me. The
+Obrenovitch party forgot this; hence their fall."
+
+Next day we went to look at the remains of Servian royalty. A
+shattered gateway and ruined walls, are all that now remain of the
+once extensive palace of Knes Lasar Czar Serbski; but the chapel is as
+perfect as it was when it occupied the centre of the imperial
+quadrangle. It is a curious monument of the period, in a Byzantine
+sort of style; but not for a moment to be compared in beauty to the
+church of Studenitza. Above one of the doors is carved the double
+eagle, the insignium of empire. The great solidity of this edifice
+recommended it to the Turks as an arsenal; hence its careful
+preservation. The late Servian governor had the Vandalism to whitewash
+the exterior, so that at a distance it looks like a vulgar parish
+church. Within is a great deal of gilding and bad painting; pity that
+the late governor did not whitewash the inside instead of the out. The
+Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine bricks were disposed
+in diamond figures between the stones. This antique principle of
+tesselation applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular walls, and
+occasionally adopted and varied _ad infinitum_ by the Saracens, is
+magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the ducal palace of
+Venice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Formation of the Servian Monarchy.--Contest between the Latin and
+Greek Churches.--Stephan Dushan.--A Great Warrior.--Results of his
+Victories.--Knes Lasar.--Invasion of Amurath.--Battle of
+Kossovo.--Death of Lasar and Amurath.--Fall of the Servian
+Monarchy.--General Observations.
+
+
+I cannot present what I have to say on the feudal monarchy of Servia
+more appropriately than in connexion with the architectural monuments
+of the period.
+
+The Servians, known in Europe from the seventh century, at which
+period they migrated from the Carpathians to the Danube, were in the
+twelfth century divided into petty states.
+
+     "Le premier Roi fut un soldat heureux."
+
+Neman the First, who lived near the present Novibazar, first cemented
+these scattered principalities into a united monarchy. He assumed the
+double eagle as the insignium of his dignity, and considered the
+archangel Michael as the patron saint of his family. He was brave in
+battle, cunning in politics, and the convent of Studenitza is a
+splendid monument of his love of the arts. Here he died, and was
+buried in 1195.
+
+Servia and Bosnia were, at this remote period, the debatable territory
+between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, so divided was
+opinion at that time even in Servia Proper, where now a Roman Catholic
+community is not to be found, that two out of the three sons of this
+prince were inclined to the Latin ritual.
+
+Stephan, the son of Neman, ultimately held by the Greek Church, and
+was crowned by his brother Sava, Greek Archbishop of Servia. The
+Chronicles of Daniel tell that "he was led to the altar, anointed with
+oil, clad in purple, and the archbishop, placing the crown on his
+head, cried aloud three times, 'Long live Stephan the first crowned
+King and Autocrat of Servia,' on which all the assembled magnates and
+people cried, _'nogo lieto_!' (many years!)"
+
+The Servian kingdom was gradually extended under his successors, and
+attained its climax under Stephan Dushan, surnamed the Powerful, who
+was, according to all contemporary accounts, of tall stature and a
+commanding kingly presence. He began his reign in the year 1336, and
+in the course of the four following years, overran nearly the whole of
+what is now called Turkey in Europe; and having besieged the Emperor
+Andronicus in Thessalonica, compelled him to cede Albania and
+Macedonia. Prisrend, in the former province, was selected as the
+capital; the pompous honorary charges and frivolous ceremonial of the
+Greek emperors were introduced at his court, and the short-lived
+national order of the Knights of St. Stephan was instituted by him in
+1346.
+
+He then turned his arms northwards, and defeated Louis of Hungary in
+several engagements. He was preparing to invade Thrace, and attempt
+the conquest of Constantinople, in 1356, with eighty thousand men, but
+death cut him off in the midst of his career.
+
+The brilliant victories of Stephan Dushan were a misfortune to
+Christendom. They shattered the Greek empire, the last feeble bulwark
+of Europe, and paved the way for those ultimate successes of the
+Asiatic conquerors, which a timely union of strength might have
+prevented. Stephan Dushan was the little Napoleon of his day; he
+conquered, but did not consolidate: and his scourging wars were
+insufficiently balanced by the advantage of the code of laws to which
+he gave his name.
+
+His son Urosh, being a weak and incapable prince, was murdered by one
+of the generals of the army, and thus ended the Neman dynasty, after
+having subsisted 212 years, and produced eight kings and two emperors.
+The crown now devolved on Knes, or Prince Lasar, a connexion of the
+house of Neman, who was crowned Czar, but is more generally called
+Knes Lasar. Of all the ancient rulers of the country, his memory is
+held the dearest by the Servians of the present day. He appears to
+have been a pious and generous prince, and at the same time to have
+been a brave but unsuccessful general.
+
+Amurath, the Ottoman Sultan, who had already taken all Roumelia,
+south of the Balkan, now resolved to pass these mountains, and invade
+Servia Proper; but, to make sure of success, secretly offered the
+crown to Wuk Brankovich, a Servian chief, as a reward for his
+treachery to Lasar.
+
+Wuk caught at the bait, and when the armies were in sight of each
+other, accused Milosh Kobilich, the son-in-law of Lasar, of being a
+traitor. On the night before the battle, Lasar assembled all the
+knights and nobles to decide the matter between Wuk and Milosh. Lasar
+then took a silver cup of wine, handed it over to Milosh, and said,
+"Take this cup of wine from my hand and drink it." Milosh drank it, in
+token of his fidelity, and said, "Now there is no time for disputing.
+To-morrow I will prove that my accuser is a calumniator, and that I am
+a faithful subject of my prince and father-in-law."
+
+Milosh then embraced the plan of assassinating Amurath in his tent,
+and taking with him two stout youths, secretly left the Servian camp,
+and presented himself at the Turkish lines, with his lance reversed,
+as a sign of desertion. Arrived at the tent of Amurath, he knelt
+down, and, pretending to kiss the hand of the Sultan, drew forth his
+dagger, and stabbed him in the body, from which wound Amurath died.
+Hence the usage of the Ottomans not to permit strangers to approach
+the Sultan, otherwise than with their arms held by attendants.
+
+The celebrated battle of Kossovo then took place. The wing commanded
+by Wuk gave way, he being the first to retreat. The division commanded
+by Lasar held fast for some time, and, at length, yielded to the
+superior force of the Turks. Lasar himself lost his life in the
+battle, and thus ended the Servian monarchy on the 15th of June, 1389.
+
+The state of Servia, previous to its subjugation by the Turks, appears
+to have been strikingly analogous to that of the other feudal
+monarchies of Europe; the revenue being derived mostly from crown
+lands, the military service of the nobles being considered an
+equivalent for the tenure of their possessions. Society consisted of
+ecclesiastics, nobles, knights, gentlemen, and peasants. A citizen
+class seldom or never figures on the scene. Its merchants were
+foreigners, Byzantines, Venetians, or Ragusans, and history speaks of
+no Bruges or Augsburg in Servia, Bosnia, or Albania.
+
+The religion of the state was that of the oriental church; the secular
+head of which was not the patriarch of Constantinople; but, as is now
+the case in Russia, the emperor himself, assisted by a synod, at the
+head of which was the patriarch of Servia and its dependencies.
+
+The first article of the code of Stephan Dushan runs thus: "Care must
+be taken of the Christian religion, the holy churches, the convents,
+and the ecclesiastics." And elsewhere, with reference to the Latin
+heresy, as it was called, "the Orthodox Czar" was bound to use the
+most vigorous means for its extirpation; those who resisted were to be
+put to death.
+
+At the death of a noble, his arms belonged by right to the Czar; but
+his dresses, gold and silver plate, precious stones, and gilt girdles
+fell to his male children, whom failing, to the daughters. If a noble
+insulted another noble, he paid a fine; if a gentleman insulted a
+noble, he was flogged.
+
+The laity were called "dressers in white:" hence one must conclude
+that light coloured dresses were used by the people, and black by the
+clergy. Beards were worn and held sacred: plucking the beard of a
+noble was punished by the loss of the right hand.
+
+Rape was punished with cutting off the nose of the man; the girl
+received at the same time a third of the man's fortune, as a
+compensation. Seduction, if not followed by marriage, was expiated by
+a pound of gold, if the party were rich; half a pound of gold, if the
+party were in mediocre circumstances; and cutting off the nose if the
+party were poor.
+
+If a woman's husband were absent at the wars, she must wait ten years
+for his return, or for news of him. If she got sure news of his death,
+she must wait a year before marrying again. Otherwise a second
+marriage was considered adultery.
+
+Great protection was afforded to friendly merchants, who were mostly
+Venetians. All lords of manors were enjoined to give them hospitality,
+and were responsible for losses sustained by robbery within their
+jurisdiction. The lessees of the gold and silver mines of Servia, as
+well as the workmen of the state mint, were also Venetians; and on
+looking through Professor Shafarik's collection, I found all the coins
+closely resembling in die those of Venice. Saint Stephan is seen
+giving to the king of the day the banner of Servia, in the same way as
+Saint Mark gives the banner of the republic of Venice to the Doge, as
+seen on the old coins of that state.
+
+The process of embalming was carried to high perfection, for the mummy
+of the canonized Knes Lasar is to be seen to this day. I made a
+pilgrimage some years ago to Vrdnik, a retired monastery in the Frusca
+Gora, where his mummy is preserved with the most religious care, in
+the church, exposed to the atmosphere. It is, of course, shrunk,
+shrivelled, and of a dark brown colour, bedecked with an antique
+embroidered mantle, said to be the same worn at the battle of Kossovo.
+The fingers were covered with the most costly rings, no doubt since
+added.
+
+It appears that the Roman practice of burning the dead, (probably
+preserved by the Tsinsars, the descendants of the colonists in
+Macedonia,) was not uncommon, for any village in which such an act
+took place was subject to fine.
+
+If there be Moslems in secret to this day in Andalusia, and if there
+were worshippers of Odin and Thor till lately on the shores of the
+Baltic, may not some secret votaries of Jupiter and Mars have lingered
+among the recesses of the Balkan, for centuries after Christianity had
+shed its light over Europe?
+
+The Servian monarchy having terminated more than half a century before
+the invention of printing, and most of the manuscripts of the period
+having been destroyed, or dispersed during the long Turkish
+occupation, very little is known of the literature of this period
+except the annals of Servia, by Archbishop Daniel, the original
+manuscript of which is now in the Hiliendar monastery of Mount Athos.
+The language used was the old Slaavic, now a dead language, but used
+to this day as the vehicle of divine service in all Greco-Slaavic
+communities from the Adriatic to the utmost confines of Russia, and
+the parent of all the modern varieties of the Southern and Eastern
+Slaavic languages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A Battue missed.--Proceed to Alexinatz.--Foreign-Office
+Courier.--Bulgarian frontier.--Gipsey Suregee.--Tiupria.--New bridge
+and macadamized road.
+
+
+The Natchalnik was the Nimrod of his district, and had made
+arrangements to treat me to a grand hunt of bears and boars on the
+Jastrabatz, with a couple of hundred peasants to beat the woods; but
+the rain poured, the wind blew, my sport was spoiled, and I missed
+glorious materials for a Snyders in print. Thankful was I, however,
+that the element had spared me during the journey in the hills, and
+that we were in snug quarters during the bad weather. A day later I
+should have been caught in the peasant's chimneyless-hut at the foot
+of the Balkan, and then should have roughed it in earnest.
+
+When the weather settled, I was again in motion, ascending that branch
+of the Morava which comes from Nissa. There was nothing to remark in
+this part of Servia, which proved to be the least interesting part of
+our route, being wanting as well in boldness of outline as in
+luxuriant vegetation.
+
+On approaching a khan, at a short distance from Alexinatz, I perceived
+an individual whom I guessed to be the captain of the place, along
+with a Britannic-looking figure in a Polish frock. This was Captain
+W----, a queen's messenger of the new school.
+
+While we were drinking a cup of coffee, a Turkish Bin Bashi came upon
+his way to Belgrade from the army of Roumelia at Kalkendel; he told us
+that the Pasha of Nish had gone with all his force to Procupli to
+disarm the Arnaouts. I very naturally took out the map to learn where
+Procupli was; on which the Bin Bashi asked me if I was a military
+engineer! "That boy will be the death of me!"--so nobody but military
+engineers are permitted to look at maps.
+
+For a month I had seen or heard nothing of Europe and Europeans
+except the doctor at Csatsak, and his sage maxims about Greek masses
+and Hungarian law-suits. I therefore made prize of the captain, who
+was an intelligent man, with an abundance of fresh political
+chit-chat, and odds and ends of scandal from Paddington to the Bank,
+and from Pall-mall to Parliament-street, brimful of extracts and
+essences of Athenaeums, United-Services, and other hebdomadals.
+Formerly Foreign-Office messengers were the cast-off butlers and
+valets of secretaries of state. For some time back they have been
+taken from the half-pay list and the educated classes. One or two can
+boast of very fair literary attainments; and a man who once a year
+spends a few weeks in all the principal capitals of Europe, from
+Madrid to St. Petersburg and Constantinople, necessarily picks up a
+great knowledge of the world. The British messengers post out from
+London to Semlin, where they leave their carriages, ride across to
+Alexinatz on the Bulgarian frontier, whence the despatches are carried
+by a Tartar to Constantinople, via Philippopoli and Adrianople.
+
+On arriving at Alexinatz, a good English dinner awaited us at the
+konak of the queen's messenger. It seemed so odd, and yet was so very
+comfortable, to have roast beef, plum pudding, sherry, brown stout,
+Stilton cheese, and other insular groceries at the foot of the Balkan.
+There was, moreover, a small library, with which the temporary
+occupants of the konak killed the month's interval between arrival and
+departure.
+
+Next day I visited the quarantine buildings with the inspector; they
+are all new, and erected in the Austrian manner. The number of those
+who purge their quarantine is about fourteen thousand individuals per
+annum, being mostly Bulgarians who wander into Servia at harvest time,
+and place at the disposal of the haughty, warlike, and somewhat
+indolent Servians their more humble and laborious services. A village
+of three hundred houses, a church, and a national school, have sprung
+up within the last few years at this point. The imports from Roumelia
+and Bulgaria are mostly Cordovan leather; the exports, Austrian
+manufactures, which pass through Servia.
+
+When the new macadamized road from Belgrade to this point is
+finished, there can be no doubt that the trade will increase. The
+possible effect of which is, that the British manufactures, which are
+sold at the fairs of Transbalkan Bulgaria, may be subject to greater
+competition. After spending a few days at Alexinatz, I started with
+post horses for Tiupria, as the horse I had ridden had been so
+severely galled, that I was obliged to send him to Belgrade.
+
+Tiupria, being on the high road across Servia, has a large khan, at
+which I put up. I had observed armed guards at the entrance of the
+town, and felt at a loss to account for the cause. The rooms of the
+khan being uninhabitable, I sent Paul with my letter of introduction
+to the Natchalnik, and sat down in the khan kitchen, which was a
+parlour at the same time; an apartment, with a brick floor, one side
+of which was fitted up with a broad wooden bench (the bare boards
+being in every respect preferable in such cases to cushions, as one
+has a better chance of cleanliness).
+
+The other side of the apartment was like a hedge alehouse in England,
+with a long table and moveable benches. Several Servians sat here
+drinking coffee and smoking; others drinking wine. The Cahwagi was
+standing with his apron on, at a little charcoal furnace, stirring his
+small coffee-pot until the cream came. I ordered some wine for myself,
+as well as the Suregee, but the latter said, "I do not drink wine." I
+now looked him in the face, and saw that he was of a very dark
+complexion; for I had made the last stage after sunset, and had not
+remarked him.
+
+_Author_. "Are you a Chingany (gipsy)?"
+
+_Gipsy_. "Yes."
+
+_Author_. "Now I recollect most of the gipsies here are Moslems; how
+do you show your adherence to Islamism?"
+
+_Gipsy_. "I go regularly to mosque, and say my prayers."
+
+_Author_. "What language do you speak?"
+
+_Gipsy_. "In business Turkish or Servian; but with my family
+Chingany."
+
+I now asked the Cahwagi the cause of the guards being posted in the
+streets; and he told me of the attempt at Shabatz, by disguised
+hussars, in which the worthy collector met his death. Paul not
+returning, I felt impatient, and wondered what had become of him. At
+length he returned, and told me that he had been taken in the streets
+as a suspicious character, without a lantern, carried to the
+guard-house, and then to the house of the Natchalnik, to whom he
+presented the letter, and from whom he now returned, with a pandour,
+and a message to come immediately.
+
+The Natchalnik met us half-way with the lanterns, and reproached me
+for not at once descending at his house. Being now fatigued, I soon
+went to bed in an apartment hung round with all sorts of arms. There
+were Albanian guns, Bosniac pistols, Vienna fowling-pieces, and all
+manner of Damascus and Khorassan blades.
+
+Next morning, on awaking, I looked out at my window, and found myself
+in a species of kiosk, which hung over the Morava, now no longer a
+mountain stream, but a broad and almost navigable river. The lands on
+the opposite side were flat, but well cultivated, and two bridges, an
+old and a new one, spanned the river. Hence the name Tiupria, from the
+Turkish _keupri_ (bridge,) for here the high road from Belgrade to
+Constantinople crosses the Morava.
+
+The Natchalnik, a tall, muscular, broad-shouldered man, now entered,
+and, saluting me like an old friend, asked me how I slept.
+
+_Author_. "I thank you, never better in my life. My yesterday's ride
+gave me a sharp exercise, without excessive fatigue. I need not ask
+you how you are, for you are the picture of health and herculean
+strength."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I was strong in my day, but now and then nature tells
+me that I am considerably on the wrong side of my climacteric."
+
+_Author_. "Pray tell me what is the reason of this accumulation of
+arms. I never slept with such ample means of defence within my
+reach,--quite an arsenal."
+
+_Natchalnik_. "You have no doubt heard of the attempt of the
+Obrenovitch faction at Shabatz. We are under no apprehension of their
+doing any thing here; for they have no partizans: but I am an old
+soldier, and deem it prudent to take precautions, even when
+appearances do not seem to demand them very imperiously. I wish the
+rascals would show face in this quarter, just to prevent our arms from
+getting rusty. Our greatest loss is that of Ninitch, the collector."
+
+_Author_. "Poor follow. I knew him as well as any man can know another
+in a few days. He made a most favourable impression on me: it seems as
+it were but yesternight that I toasted him in a bumper, and wished him
+long life, which, like many other wishes of mine, was not destined to
+be fulfilled. How little we think of the frail plank that separates us
+from the ocean of eternity!"
+
+_Natchalnik_. "I was once, myself, very near the other world, having
+entered as a volunteer in the Russian army that crossed the Balkan in
+1828. I burned a mosque in defiance of the orders of Marshal Diebitch;
+the consequence was that I was tried by a court-martial, and condemned
+to be shot: but on putting in a petition, and stating that I had done
+so through ignorance, and in accomplishment of a vow of vengeance, my
+father and brother having been killed by the Turks in the war of
+liberation, seven of our houses[15] having been burned at the same
+time, Marshal Diebitch on reading the petition pardoned me."
+
+The doctor of the place now entered; a very little man with a pale
+complexion, and a black braided surtout. He informed me that he had
+been for many years a Surgeon in the Austrian navy. On my asking him
+how he liked that service, he answered, "Very well; for we rarely go
+out to the Mediterranean; our home-ports, Venice and Trieste, are
+agreeable, and our usual station in the Levant is Smyrna, which is
+equally pleasant. The Austrian vessels being generally frigates of
+moderate size, the officers live in a more friendly and comfortable
+way than if they were of heavier metal. But were I not a surgeon, I
+should prefer the wider sphere of distinction which colonial and
+trans-oceanic life and incident opens to the British naval officer;
+for I, myself, once made a voyage to the Brazils."
+
+We now went to see the handsome new bridge in course of construction
+over the Morava. The architect, a certain Baron Cordon, who had been
+bred a military engineer, happened to be there at the time, and
+obligingly explained the details. At every step I see the immense
+advantages which this country derives from its vicinity to Austria in
+a material point of view; and yet the Austrian and Servian governments
+seem perpetually involved in the most inexplicable squabbles. A gang
+of poor fellows who had been compromised in the unsuccessful attempts
+of last year by the Obrenovitch party, were working in chains,
+macadamizing the road.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: Houses or horses; my notes having been written with
+rapidity, the word is indistinct.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Visit to Ravanitza.--Jovial party.--Servian and Austrian
+jurisdiction.--Convent described.--Eagles reversed.--Bulgarian
+festivities.
+
+
+The Natchalnik having got up a party, we proceeded in light cars of
+the country to Ravanitza, a convent two or three hours off in the
+mountains to the eastward. The country was gently undulating,
+cultivated, and mostly inclosed, the roads not bad, and the _ensemble_
+such as English landscapes were represented to be half a century ago.
+When we approached Ravanitza we were again lost in the forest.
+Ascending by the side of a mountain-rill, the woods opened, and the
+convent rose in an amphitheatre at the foot of an abrupt rocky
+mountain; a pleasing spot, but wanting the grandeur and beauty of the
+sites on the Bosniac frontier.
+
+[Illustration: Ravanitza.]
+
+The superior was a tall, polite, middle-aged man. "I expected you long
+ago," said he; "the Archbishop advised me of your arrival: but we
+thought something might have happened, or that you had missed us."
+
+"I prolonged my tour," said I, "beyond the limits of my original
+project. The circumstance of this convent having been the burial-place
+of Knes Lasar, was a sufficient motive for my on no account missing a
+sight of it."
+
+The superior now led us into the refectory, where a long table had
+been laid out for dinner, for with the number of Tiuprians, as well as
+the monks of this convent, and some from the neighbouring convent of
+Manasia, we mustered a very numerous and very gay party. The wine was
+excellent; and I could not help thinking with the jovial Abbot of
+Quimper:
+
+    "Quand nos joyeux verres
+    Se font des le matin,
+    Tout le jour, mes freres,
+    Devient un festin."
+
+By dint of _interlarding_ my discourse with sundry apophthegms of
+_Bacon_, and stale paradoxes of Rochefoucaud, I passed current
+throughout Servia considerably above my real value; so after the usual
+toasts due to the powers that be, the superior proposed my health in a
+very long harangue. Before I had time to reply, the party broke into
+the beautiful hymn for longevity, which I had heard pealing in the
+cathedral of Belgrade for the return of Wucics and Petronievitch. I
+assured them that I was unworthy of such an honour, but could not help
+remarking that this hymn "for many years" immediately after the
+drinking of a health, was one of the most striking and beautiful
+customs I had noticed in Servia.
+
+A very curious discussion arose after dinner, relative to the
+different footing of Servians in Austria, and Austrians in Servia. The
+former when in Austria, are under the Austrian law; the latter in
+Servia, under the jurisdiction of their own consul. Being appealed to,
+I explained that in former times the Ottoman Sultans easily permitted
+consular jurisdiction in Turkey, without stipulating corresponding
+privileges for their own subjects; for Christendom, and particularly
+Austria, was considered _Dar El Harb_, or perpetually the seat of war,
+in which it was illegal for subjects of the Sultan to reside.
+
+In the afternoon we made a survey of the convent and church, which
+were built by Knes Lasar, and surrounded by a wall and seven towers.
+
+The church, like all the other edifices of this description, is
+Byzantine; but being built of stone, wants the refinement which shone
+in the sculptures and marbles of Studenitza. I remarked, however, that
+the cupolas were admirably proportioned and most harmoniously
+disposed. Before entering I looked above the door, and perceived that
+the double eagles carved there are reversed. Instead of having body to
+body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as in the arms of Austria
+and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks inward to beak.
+
+On entering we were shown the different vessels, one of which is a
+splendid cup, presented by Peter the Great, and several of the same
+description from the empress Catharine, some in gold, silver, and
+steel; others in gold, silver, and bronze.
+
+The body of Knes Lasar, after having been for some time hid, was
+buried here in 1394, remained till 1684, at which period it was taken
+over to Virdnik in Syrmium, where it remains to this day.
+
+In the cool of the evening the superior took me to a spring of clear
+delicious water, gushing from rocks environed with trees. A boy with a
+large crystal goblet, dashed it into the clear lymph, and presented it
+to me. The superior fell into eulogy of his favourite Valclusa, and I
+drank not only this but several glasses, with circumstantial
+criticisms on its excellence; so that the superior seemed delighted at
+my having rendered such ample justice to the water he so loudly
+praised, _Entre nous_,--the excellence of his wine, and the toasts
+that we had drunk to the health of innumerable loyal and virtuous
+individuals, rendered me a greater amateur of water-bibbing than
+usual.
+
+After some time we returned, and saw a lamb roasting for supper in the
+open air; a hole being dug in the earth, chopped vine-twigs are burnt
+below it, the crimson glow of which soon roasts the lamb, and imparts
+a particular fragrance to the flesh. After supper we went out in the
+mild dark evening to a mount, where a bonfire blazed and glared on the
+high square tower of the convent, and cushions were laid for
+chibouques and coffee. The not unpleasing drone of bagpipes resounded
+through the woods, and a number of Bulgarians executed their national
+dance in a circle, taking hold of each other's girdle, and keeping
+time with the greatest exactness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Manasia--Has preserved its middle-age character.--Robinson
+Crusoe.--Wonderful Echo.--Kindness of the
+people.--Svilainitza.--Posharevatz.--Baby Giantess.
+
+
+Next day, accompanied by the doctor, and a portion of the party of
+yesterday, we proceeded to the convent of Manasia, five hours off; our
+journey being mostly through forests, with the most wretched roads.
+Sometimes we had to cross streams of considerable depth; at other
+places the oaks, arching over head, almost excluded the light: at
+length, on doubling a precipitous promontory of rock, a wide open
+valley burst upon us, at the extremity of which we saw the donjons and
+crenellated towers of a perfect feudal castle surrounding and fencing
+in the domes of an antique church. Again I say, that those who wish
+to see the castellated monuments of the middle ages just as they were
+left by the builders, must come to this country. With us in old
+Europe, they are either modernized or in ruins, and in many of them
+every tower and gate reflects the taste of a separate period; some
+edifices showing a grotesque progress from Gothic to Italian, and from
+Italian to Roman _a la Louis Quinze_: a succession which corresponds
+with the portraits within doors, which begin with coats of mail, or
+padded velvet, and end with bag-wigs and shoe-buckles. But here, at
+Manasia,
+
+    "The battle towers, the donjon keep,
+     The loophole grates, where captives weep.
+     The flanking walls that round it sweep,
+        In yellow lustre shone;"
+
+and we were quietly carried back to the year of our Lord 1400; for
+this castle and church were built by Stephan, Despot of Servia, the
+son of Knes Lasar. Stephan, Instead of being "the Czar of all the
+Servian lands and coasts," became a mere hospodar, who must do as he
+was bid by his masters, the Turks.
+
+Manasia being entirely secluded from the world, the monastic
+establishment was of a humbler and simpler nature than that of
+Ravanitza, and the monks, good honest men, but mere peasants in cowls.
+
+After dinner, a strong broad-faced monk, whom I recognized as having
+been of the company at Ravanitza, called for a bumper, and began in a
+solemn matter-of-fact way, the following speech: "You are a great
+traveller in our eyes; for none of us ever went further than Syrmium.
+The greatest traveller of your country that we know of was that
+wonderful navigator, Robinson Crusoe, of York, who, poor man, met with
+many and great difficulties, but at length, by the blessing of God,
+was restored to his native country, his family, and his friends. We
+trust that the Almighty will guard over you, and that you will never,
+in the course of your voyages and travels, be thrown like him on a
+desert island; and now we drink your health, and long life to you."
+When the toast was drunk, I thanked the company, but added that from
+the revolutions in locomotion, I ran a far greater chance now-a-days
+of being blown out of a steam-boat, or smashed to pieces on a
+railway.
+
+From the rocks above Manasia is one of the most remarkable echoes I
+ever heard; at the distance of sixty or seventy yards from one of the
+towers the slightest whisper is rendered with the most amusing
+exactness.
+
+From Manasia we went to Miliva, where the peasantry were standing in a
+row, by the side of a rustic tent, made of branches of trees. Grapes,
+roast fowl, &c. were laid out for us; but thanking them for their
+proffered hospitality, we passed on. From this place the road to
+Svilainitza is level, the country fertile, and more populous than we
+had seen any where else in Servia. At some places the villagers had
+prepared bouquets; at another place a school, of fifty or sixty
+children, was drawn up in the street, and sang a hymn of welcome.
+
+At Svilainitza the people would not allow me to go any further; and we
+were conducted to the chateau of M. Ressavatz, the wealthiest man in
+Servia. This villa is the _fac simile_ of the new ones in the banat of
+Temesvav, having the rooms papered, a luxury in Servia, where the
+most of the rooms, even in good houses, are merely size-coloured.
+
+Svilainitza is remarkable, as the only place in Servia where silk is
+cultivated to any extent, the Ressavatz family having paid especial
+attention to it. In fact, Svilainitza means the place of silk.
+
+From Svilainitza, we next morning started for Posharevatz, or
+Passarovitz, by an excellent macadamized road, through a country
+richly cultivated and interspersed with lofty oaks. I arrived at
+mid-day, and was taken to the house of M. Tutsakovitch, the president
+of the court of appeal, who had expected us on the preceding evening.
+He was quite a man of the world, having studied jurisprudence in the
+Austrian Universities. The outer chamber, or hall of his house, was
+ranged with shining pewter plates in the olden manner, and his best
+room was furnished in the best German style.
+
+In a few minutes M. Ressavatz, the Natchalnik, came, a serious but
+friendly man, with an eye that bespoke an expansive intellect.
+
+"This part of Servia," said I, "is _Ressavatz qua_, _Ressavatz la_.
+We last night slept at your brother's house, at Svilainitza, which is
+the only chateau I have seen in Servia; and to-day the rapid and
+agreeable journey I made hither was due to the macadamized road,
+which, I am told, you were the means of constructing."
+
+The Natchalnik bowed, and the president said, "This road originated
+entirely with M. Ressavatz, who went through a world of trouble before
+he could get the peasantry of the intervening villages to lend their
+assistance. Great was the first opposition to the novelty; but now the
+people are all delighted at being able to drive in winter without
+sinking up to their horses' knees in mud."
+
+We now proceeded to view the government buildings, which are all new,
+and in good order, being somewhat more extensive than those elsewhere;
+for Posharevatz, besides having ninety thousand inhabitants in its own
+_nahie_,[16] or government, is a sort of judicial capital for Eastern
+Servia.
+
+The principal edifice is a barrack, but the regular troops were at
+this time all at Shabatz. The president showed me through the court of
+appeal. Most of the apartments were occupied with clerks, and fitted
+up with shelves for registers. The court of justice was an apartment
+larger than the rest, without a raised bench, having merely a long
+table, covered with a green cloth, at one end of which was a crucifix
+and Gospels, for the taking of oaths, and the seats for the president
+and assessors.
+
+We then went to the billiard-room with the Natchalnik, and played a
+couple of games, both of which I lost, although the Natchalnik, from
+sheer politeness, played badly; and at sunset we returned to the
+president's house, where a large party was assembled to dinner. We
+then adjourned to the comfortable inner apartment, where, as the chill
+of autumn was beginning to creep over us, we found a blazing fire; and
+the president having made some punch, that showed profound
+acquaintance with the jurisprudence of conviviality, the best amateurs
+of Posharevatz sang their best songs, which pleased me somewhat, for
+my ears had gradually been broken into the habits of the Servian muse.
+Being pressed myself to sing an English national song, I gratified
+their curiosity with "God save the Queen," and "Rule Britannia,"
+explaining that these two songs contained the essence of English
+nationality: the one expressive of our unbounded loyalty, the other of
+our equally unbounded ocean dominion.
+
+_President_. "You have been visiting the rocks and mountains of
+Servia; but there is a natural curiosity in this neighbourhood, which
+is much more wonderful. Have you heard of the baby giantess?"
+
+_Author_. "Yes, I have. I was told that a child was six feet high, and
+a perfect woman."
+
+_President_. "No, a child of two years and three months is as big as
+other children of six or seven years, and her womanhood such as is
+usual in girls of sixteen."
+
+_Author_. "It is almost incredible."
+
+_President_. "Well, you may convince yourself with your own eyes,
+before you leave this blessed town."
+
+The Natchalnik then called a Momke, and gave orders for the child to
+be brought next day. At the appointed hour the father and mother came
+with the child. It was indeed a baby giantess, higher than its
+brother, who was six years of age. Its hands were thick and strong,
+the flesh plump, and the mammae most prominently developed. Seeing the
+room filled with people, it began to cry, but its attention being
+diverted by a nodding mandarin of stucco provided for the purpose, the
+nurse enabled us to verify all the president had said. This phenomenon
+was born the 29th of June, 1842, old style, and the lunar influences
+were in operation on the tenth month after birth. I remarked to the
+president, that if the father had more avarice than decency, he might
+go to Europe, and return with his weight in gold.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 16: _Nahie_ is a Turkish word, and meant "_district_." The
+original word means "_direction_," and is applied to winds, and the
+point of the compass.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Rich Soil.--Mysterious Waters.--Treaty of Passarovitz.--The Castle of
+Semendria--Relics of the Antique.--The Brankovitch
+Family.--Pancsova.--Morrison's Pills.
+
+
+The soil at Posharevatz is remarkably rich, the greasy humus being
+from fifteen to twenty-five feet thick, and consequently able to
+nourish the noblest forest trees. In the Banat, which is the granary
+of the Austrian empire, trees grow well for fifteen, twenty, or
+twenty-five years, and then die away. The cause of this is, that the
+earth, although rich, is only from three to six feet thick, with sand
+or cold clay below; thus as soon as the roots descend to the
+substrata, in which they find no nourishment, rottenness appears on
+the top branches, and gradually descends.
+
+At Kruahevitza, not very far from Pasharevatz, is a cave, which is, I
+am told, entered with difficulty, into the basin of which water
+gradually flows at intervals, and then disappears, as the doctor of
+the place (a Saxon) told me, with an extraordinary noise resembling
+the molar rumble of railway travelling. This spring is called
+Potainitza, or the mysterious waters.
+
+Posharevatz, miscalled Passarowitz, is historically remarkable, as the
+place where Prince Eugene, in 1718, after his brilliant victories of
+the previous year, including the capture of Belgrade, signed, with the
+Turks, the treaty which gave back to the house of Austria not only the
+whole of Hungary, but added great part of Servia and Little Wallachia,
+as far as the Aluta. With this period began the Austrian rule in
+Servia, and at this time the French fashioned Lange Gasse of Belgrade
+rose amid the "swelling domes and pointed minarets of the white
+eagle's nest."[17]
+
+Several quaint incidents had recalled this period during my tour. For
+instance, at Manasia, I saw rudely engraven on the church wall,--
+
+                Wolfgang Zastoff,
+     Kaiserlicher Forst-Meister im Maidan.
+                Die 1 Aug. 1721.
+
+Semendria is three hours' ride from Posharevatz; the road crosses the
+Morava, and everywhere the country is fertile, populous, and well
+cultivated. Innumerable massive turrets, mellowed by the sun of a
+clear autumn, and rising from wide rolling waters, announced my
+approach to the shores of the Danube. I seemed entering one of those
+fabled strong holds, with which the early Italian artists adorned
+their landscapes. If Semendria be not the most picturesque of the
+Servian castles of the elder period, it is certainly by far the most
+extensive of them. Nay, it is colossal. The rampart next the Danube
+has been shorn of its fair proportions, so as to make it suit the
+modern art of war. Looking at Semendria from one of the three land
+sides, you have a castle of Ercole di Ferrara; looking at it from the
+water, you have the boulevard of a Van der Meulen.
+
+The Natchalnik accompanied me in a visit to the fortress, protected
+from accident by a couple of soldiers; for the castle of Semendria is
+still, like that of Shabatz, in the hands of a few Turkish spahis and
+their families. The news from Shabatz having produced a alight
+ferment, we found several armed Moslems at the gate; but they did not
+allow the Servians to pass, with the exception of the Natchalnik and
+another man. "This is new," said he; "I never knew them to be so wary
+and suspicious before." We now found ourselves within the walls of the
+fortress. A shabby wooden _cafe_ was opposite to us; a mosque of the
+same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right. The
+cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we
+might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or
+fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee. His worship was so
+proud, that he scarcely deigned to speak. The Disdar Aga, a somewhat
+more approximative personage, now entered the tottering chardak, (the
+carpenters of Semendria seem to have emigrated _en masse_,) and
+proffered himself as Cicerone of the castle.
+
+Mean and abominable huts, with patches of garden ground filled up the
+space inclosed by the gorgeous ramparts and massive towers of
+Semendria. The further we walked the nobler appeared the last relic of
+the dotage of old feudal Servia. In one of the towers next the Danube
+is a sculptured Roman tombstone. One graceful figure points to a
+sarcophagus, close to which a female sits in tears; in a word, a
+remnant of the antique--of that harmony which dies not away, but
+swells on the finer organs of perception.
+
+"_Eski, Eski_. Very old," said the Disdar Aga, who accompanied me.
+
+"It is Roman," said I.
+
+"_Roumgi_?" said he, thinking I meant _Greek_.
+
+"No, _Latinski_," said a third, which is the name usually given to
+_Roman_ remains.
+
+As at Sokol and Ushitza, I was not permitted to enter the inner
+citadel;[18] so, returning to the gate, where we were rejoined by the
+soldiers, we went to the fourth tower, on the left of the Stamboul
+Kapu, and looking up, we saw inserted and forming part of the wall, a
+large stone, on which was cut, in _basso rilievo_, a figure of Europa
+reposing on a bull. Here was no fragile grace, as in the other figure;
+a few simple lines bespoke the careless hardihood of antique art.
+
+The castle of Semendria was built in 1432, by the Brankovitch, who
+succeeded the family of Knes Lasar as _despots_, or native rulers of
+Servia, under the Turks; and the construction of this enormous pile
+was permitted by their masters, under the pretext of the strengthening
+of Servia against the Hungarians. The last of these _despots_ of
+Servia was George Brankovitch, the historian, who passed over to
+Austria, was raised to the dignity of a count; and after being kept
+many years as a state prisoner, suspected of secret correspondence
+with the Turks, died at Eger, in Bohemia, in 1711. The legitimate
+Brankovitch line is now extinct.[19]
+
+Leaving the fortress, we returned to the Natchalnik's house. I was
+struck with the size, beauty, and flavour of the grapes here; I have
+nowhere tasted such delicious fruit of this description. "Groja
+Smederevsko" are celebrated through all Servia, and ought to make
+excellent wine.
+
+The road from Semendria to Belgrade skirts the Danube, across which
+one sees the plains of the Banat and military frontier. The only place
+of any consequence on that side of the river is Pancsova, the sight of
+which reminded me of a conversation I had there some years ago.
+
+The major of the town, after swallowing countless boxes of Morrison's
+pills, died in the belief that he had not begun to take them soon
+enough. The consumption of these drugs at that time almost surpassed
+belief. There was scarcely a sickly or hypochondriac person, from the
+Hill of Presburg to the Iron Gates, who had not taken large quantities
+of them. Being curious to know the cause of this extensive
+consumption, I asked for an explanation.
+
+"You must know," said an individual, "that the Anglo-mania is nowhere
+stronger than in this part of the world. Whatever comes from England,
+be it Congreve rockets, or vegetable pills, must needs be perfect. Dr.
+Morrison is indebted to his high office for the enormous consumption
+of his drugs. It is clear that the president of the British College
+must be a man in the enjoyment of the esteem of the government and the
+faculty of medicine; and his title is a passport to his pills in
+foreign countries."
+
+I laughed heartily, and explained that the British College of Health,
+and the College of Physicians, were not identical.
+
+The road from this point to Belgrade presents no particular interest.
+Half an hour from the city I crossed the celebrated trenches of
+Marshal Laudohn; and rumbling through a long cavernous gateway, called
+the Stamboul Kapousi, or gate of Constantinople, again found myself in
+Belgrade, thankful for the past, and congratulating myself on the
+circumstances of my trip. I had seen a state of patriarchal manners,
+the prominent features of which will be at no distant time rolled flat
+and smooth, by the pressure of old Europe, and the salient angles of
+which will disappear through the agency of the hotel and the
+stagecoach, with its bevy of tourists, who, with greater facilities
+for seeing the beauties of nature, will arrive and depart, shrouded
+from the mass of the people, by the mercenaries that hang on the
+beaten tracks of the traveller.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 17: In Servian, Belgrade is called Beograd, "white
+city;"--poetically, "white eagle's nest."]
+
+[Footnote 18: I think that a traveller ought to see all that he can;
+but, of course, has no right to feel surprised at being excluded from
+citadels.]
+
+[Footnote 19: One of the representatives of the ancient imperial family
+is the Earl of Devon, for Urosh the Great married Helen of
+Courtenay.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Personal Appearance of the Servians.--Their Moral
+Character.--Peculiarities of Manners.--Christmas
+Festivities.--Easter.--The Dodola.
+
+
+The Servians are a remarkably tall and robust race of men; in form and
+feature they bespeak strength of body and energy of mind: but one
+seldom sees that thorough-bred look, which, so frequently found in the
+poorest peasants of Italy and Greece, shows that the descendants of
+the most polite of the ancients, although disinherited of dominion,
+have not lost the corporeal attributes of nobility. But the women of
+Servia I think very pretty. In body they are not so well shaped as the
+Greek women; but their complexions are fine, the hair generally black
+and glossy, and their head-dress particularly graceful. Not being
+addicted to the bath, like other eastern women, they prolong their
+beauty beyond the average climacteric; and their houses, with rooms
+opening on a court-yard and small garden, are favourable to health and
+beauty. They are not exposed to the elements as the men; nor are they
+cooped up within four walls, like many eastern women, without a
+sufficient circulation of air.
+
+Through all the interior of Servia, the female is reckoned an inferior
+being, and fit only to be the plaything of youth and the nurse of old
+age. This peculiarity of manners has not sprung from the four
+centuries of Turkish occupation, but appears to have been inherent in
+old Slaavic manners, and such as we read of in Russia, a very few
+generations ago; but as the European standard is now rapidly adopted
+at Belgrade, there can be little doubt that it will thence, in the
+course of time, spread over all Servia.
+
+The character of the Servian closely resembles that of the Scottish
+Highlander. He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in
+simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments
+being the bagpipe and fiddle: but unlike the Greek be shows little
+aptitude for trade; and unlike the Bulgarian, he is very lazy in
+agricultural operations. All this corresponds with the Scottish Celtic
+character; and without absolute dishonesty, a certain low cunning in
+the prosecution of his material interests completes the parallel.
+
+The old customs of Servia are rapidly disappearing under the pressure
+of laws and European institutions. Many of these could not have
+existed except in a society in which might made right. One of these
+was the vow of eternal brotherhood and friendship between two
+individuals; a treaty offensive and defensive, to assist each other in
+the difficult passages of life. This bond is considered sacred and
+indissoluble. Frequently remarkable instances of it are found in the
+wars of Kara Georg. But now that regular guarantees for the security
+of life and property exist, the custom appears to have fallen into
+desuetude. These confederacies in the dual state, as in Servia, or
+multiple, as in the clan system of Scotland and Albania, are always
+strongest in turbulent times and regions.[20]
+
+Another of the old customs of Servia was sufficiently characteristic
+of its lawless state. Abduction of females was common. Sometimes a
+young man would collect a party of his companions, break into a
+village, and carry off a maiden. To prevent re-capture they generally
+went into the woods, where the nuptial knot was tied by a priest
+_nolens volens_. Then commenced the negotiation for a reconciliation
+with the parents, which was generally successful; as in many instances
+the female had been the secret lover of the young man, and the other
+villagers used to add their persuasion, in order to bring about a
+pacific solution. But if the relations of the girl mode a legal affair
+of it, the young woman was asked if it was by her own will that she
+was taken away; and if she made the admission then a reconciliation
+took place: if not, those concerned in the abduction were fined, Kara
+Georg put a stop to this by proclamation, punishing the author of an
+abduction with death, the priest with dismissal, and the assistants
+with the bastinado.
+
+The Haiducks, or outlawed robbers, who during the first quarter of the
+present century infested the woods of Servia, resembled the Caterans
+of the Highlands of Scotland, being as much rebels as robbers, and
+imagined that in setting authority at defiance they were not acting
+dishonourably, but combating for a principle of independence. They
+robbed only the rich Moslems, and were often generous to the poor.
+Thus robbery and rebellion being confounded, the term Haiduck is not
+considered opprobrious; and several old Servians have confessed to me
+that they had been Haiducks in their youth, I am sure that the
+adventures of a Servian Rob Roy might form the materials of a stirring
+Romance. There are many Haiducks still in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and on
+the western Balkan; but the race in Servia is extinct, and plunder is
+the only object of the few robbers who now infest the woods in the
+west of Servia.
+
+Such are the customs that have just disappeared; but many national
+peculiarities still remain. At Christmas, for instance, every peasant
+goes to the woods, and cuts down a young oak; as soon as he returns
+home, which is in the twilight; he says to the assembled family, "A
+happy Christmas eve to the house;" on which a male of the family
+scatters a little grain on the ground and answers, "God be gracious to
+you, our happy and honoured father." The housewife then lays the young
+oak on the fire, to which are thrown a few nuts and a little straw,
+and the evening ends in merriment.
+
+Next day, after divine service, the family assemble around the dinner
+table, each bearing a lighted candle; and they say aloud, "Christ is
+born: let us honour Christ and his birth." The usual Christmas drink
+is hot wine mixed with honey. They have also the custom of First Foot.
+This personage is selected beforehand, under the idea that he will
+bring luck with him for the ensuing year. On entering the First Foot
+says, "Christ is born!" and receives for answer, "Yes, he is born!"
+while the First Foot scatters a few grains of corn on the floor. He
+then advances and stirs up the wood on the fire, so that it crackles
+and emits sparks; on which the First Foot says, "As many sparks so
+many cattle, so many horses, so many goats, so many sheep, so many
+boars, so many bee hives, and so much luck and prosperity.'" He then
+throws a little money into the ashes, or hangs some hemp on the door;
+and Christmas ends with presents and festivities.
+
+At Easter, they amuse themselves with the game of breaking hard-boiled
+eggs, having first examined those of an opponent to see that they are
+not filled with wax. From this time until Ascension day the common
+formula of greeting is "Christ has arisen!" to which answer is made,
+"Yes; he has truly arisen or ascended!" And on the second Monday after
+Easter the graves of dead relations are visited.
+
+One of the most extraordinary customs of Servia is that of the Dodola.
+When a long drought has taken place, a handsome young woman is
+stripped, and so dressed up with grass, flowers, cabbage and other
+leaves, that her face is scarcely visible; she then, in company with
+several girls of twelve or fifteen years of age, goes from house to
+house singing a song, the burden of which is a wish for rain. It is
+then the custom of the mistress of the house at which the Dodola is
+stopped to throw a little water on her. This custom used also to be
+kept up in the Servian districts of Hungary; but has been forbidden by
+the priests.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 20: The most perfect confederacy of this description is that
+of the Druses, which has stood the test of eight centuries, and in its
+secret organization is complete beyond any thing attained by
+freemasonry.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Town life.--The public offices.--Manners half-Oriental
+half-European.--Merchants and Tradesmen.--Turkish
+population.--Porters.--Barbers.--Cafes.--Public Writer.
+
+
+On passing from the country to the town the politician views with
+interest the transitional state of society: but the student of manners
+finds nothing salient, picturesque, or remarkable; everything is
+verging to German routine. If you meet a young man in any department,
+and ask what he does; he tells you that he is a Concepist or
+Protocollist.
+
+In the public offices, the paper is, as in Germany, atrociously
+coarse, being something like that with which parcels are wrapped up in
+England; and sand is used instead of blotting paper. They commence
+business early in the morning, at eight o'clock, and go on till
+twelve, at which hour everybody goes to the mid-day meal. They
+commence again at four o'clock, and terminate at seven, which is the
+hour of supper. The reason of this is, that almost everybody takes a
+siesta.
+
+The public offices throughout the interior of Servia are plain houses,
+with white-washed walls, deal desks, shelves, and presses, but having
+been recently built, have generally a respectable appearance. The
+Chancery of State and Senate house are also quite new constructions,
+close to the palace; but in the country, a Natchalnik transacts a
+great deal of business in his own house.
+
+Servia contains within itself the forms of the East and the West, as
+separately and distinctly as possible. See a Natchalnik in the back
+woods squatted on his divan, with his enormous trowsers, smoking his
+pipe, and listening to the contents of a paper, which his secretary,
+crouching and kneeling on the carpet, reads to him, and you have the
+Bey, the Kaimacam, or the Mutsellim before you. See M. Petronievitch
+scribbling in his cabinet, and you have the _Furstlicher
+Haus-Hof-Staats-und Conferenz-Minister_ of the meridian of Saxe or
+Hesse.
+
+Servia being an agricultural country, and not possessing a sea-port,
+there does not exist an influential, mercantile, or capitalist class
+_per se_. Greeks, Jews, and Tsinsars, form a considerable proportion
+of those engaged in the foreign trade: it is to be remarked that most
+of this class are secret adherents of the Obrenovitch party, while the
+wealthy native Servians support Kara Georgevitch.
+
+In Belgrade, the best tradesmen are Germans, or Servians, who have
+learned their business at Pesth; or Temeswar; but nearly all the
+retailers are Servians.
+
+Having treated so fully the aspects and machinery of Oriental life, in
+my work on native society in Damascus and Aleppo, it is not necessary
+that I should say here any thing of Moslem manners and customs. The
+Turks in Belgrade are nearly all of a very poor class, and follow the
+humblest occupations. The river navigation causes many hands to be
+employed in boating; and it always seemed to me that the proportion
+of the turbans on the river exceeded that of the Christian short fez.
+Most of the porters on the quay of Belgrade are Turks in their
+turbans, which gives the landing-place, on arrival from Semlin, a more
+Oriental look than the Moslem population of the town warrants. From
+the circumstance of trucks being nearly unknown in this country, these
+Turkish porters carry weights that would astonish an Englishman, and
+show great address in balancing and dividing heavy weights among them.
+
+Most of the barbers in Belgrade are Turks, and have that superior
+dexterity which distinguishes their craft in the east. There are also
+Christian barbers; but the Moslems are in greater force. I never saw
+any Servian shave himself; nearly all resort to the barber. Even the
+Christian barbers, in imitation of the Oriental fashion, shave the
+straggling edges of the eyebrows, and with pincers tug out the small
+hairs of the nostrils.
+
+The native _cafes_ are nearly all kept by Moslems; one, as I have
+stated elsewhere, by an Arab, born in Oude in India; another by a
+Jew, which is frequented by the children of Israel, and is very dirty.
+I once went in to smoke a narghile, and see the place, but made my
+escape forthwith. Several Jews, who spoke Spanish to each other, were
+playing backgammon on a raised bench, and seemed to have in their furs
+and dresses that "_malproprete profonde et huileuse_" which M. de
+Custine tells us characterizes the dirt of the north as contrasted
+with that of the southern nations. The _cafe_ of the Indian, on the
+contrary, was perfectly clean and new.
+
+Moslem boatmen, porters, barbers, &c. serve Christians and all and
+sundry. But in addition to these, there is a sort of bazaar in the
+Turkish quarter, occupied by tradespeople, who subsist almost
+exclusively by the wants of their co-religionists living in the
+quarter, as well as of the Turkish garrison in the fortress. The only
+one of this class who frequented me, was the public writer, who had
+several assistants; he was not a native of Belgrade, but a Bulgarian
+Turk from Ternovo. He drew up petitions to the Pasha in due form, and,
+moreover, engraved seals very neatly. His assistants, when not
+engaged in either of these occupations, copied Korans for sale. His
+own handwriting was excellent, and he knew all the styles, Arab,
+Deewanee, Persian, Reka, &c. What keeps him mostly in my mind, was the
+delight with which he entered into, and illustrated, the proverbs at
+the end of M. Joubert's grammar, which the secretary of the Russian
+Consul-general had lent him. Some of the proverbs are so applicable to
+Oriental manners, that I hope the reader will excuse the digression.
+
+"Kiss the hand thou hast not been able to cut."
+
+"Hide thy friend's name from thine enemy."
+
+"Eat and drink with thy friend; never buy and sell with him."
+
+"This is a fast day, said the cat, seeing the liver she could not get
+at."
+
+"Of three things one--Power, gold, or quit the town."
+
+"The candle does not light its base."
+
+"The orphan cuts his own navel-string," &c.
+
+The rural population of Servia must necessarily advance slowly, but
+each five years, for a generation to come, will,--I have little
+doubt,--alter the aspect of the town population, as much relatively
+as the five that are by-gone. Let the lines of railway now in progress
+from Belgium to Hungary be completed, and Belgrade may again become a
+stage in the high road to the East. A line by the valleys of the
+Morava and the Maritsa, with its large towns, Philippopoli and
+Adrianople, is certainly not more chimerical and absurd than many that
+are now projected. Who can doubt of its _ultimate_ accomplishment, in
+spite of the alternate precipitancy and prostration of enterprise?
+Meanwhile imagination loses itself in attempting to picture the
+altered face of affairs in these secluded regions, when subjected to
+the operation of a revolution, which posterity will pronounce to be
+greater than those which made the fifteenth century the morning of the
+just terminated period of civilization.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Poetry.--Journalism.--The Fine Arts.--The Lyceum.--Mineralogical
+cabinet.--Museum.--Servian Education.
+
+
+In the whole range of the Slaavic family there is no nation possessing
+so extensive a collection of excellent popular poetry. The romantic
+beauty of the region which they inhabit, the relics of a wild
+mythology, which, in its general features, has some resemblance to
+that of Greece and Scandinavia,--the adventurous character of the
+population, the vicissitudes of guerilla warfare, and a hundred
+picturesque incidents which are lost to the muses when war is carried
+on on a large scale by standing armies, are all given in a dialect,
+which, for musical sweetness, is to other Slavonic tongues what the
+Italian is to the languages of Western Europe.[21]
+
+The journalism of Servia began at Vienna; and a certain M. Davidovitch
+was for many years the interpreter of Europe to his less enlightened
+countrymen. The journal which he edited is now published at Pesth, and
+printed in Cyrillian letters. There were in 1843 two newspapers at
+Belgrade, the _State Gazette_ and the _Courier_; but the latter has
+since been dropped, the editor having vainly attempted to get its
+circulation allowed in the Servian districts of Hungary. Many copies
+were smuggled over in boats, but it was an unremunerating speculation;
+and the editor, M. Simonovitch, who was bred a Hungarian advocate, is
+now professor of law in the Lyceum. Yankee hyperbole was nothing to
+the high flying of this gentleman. In one number, I recollect the
+passage, "These are the reasons why all the people of Servia, young
+and old, rich and poor, danced and shouted for joy, when the Lord gave
+them as a Prince a son of the never-to-be-forgotten Kara Georg." A
+Croatian newspaper, containing often very interesting information on
+Bosnia, is published at Agram, the language being the same as the
+Servian, but printed in Roman instead of Cyrillian letters. The _State
+Gazette_ of Belgrade gives the news of the interior and exterior, but
+avoids all reflections on the policy of Russia or Austria. An article,
+which I wrote on Servia for an English publication, was reproduced in
+a translation minus all the allusions to these two powers; and I think
+that, considering the dependent position of Servia, abstinence from
+such discussions is dictated by the soundest policy.
+
+The "Golubitza," or Dove, a miscellany in prose and verse, neatly got
+up in imitation of the German Taschenbucher, and edited by M.
+Hadschitch, is the only annual in Servia. In imitation of more
+populous cities, Belgrade has also a "Literary Society," for the
+formation of a complete dictionary of the language, and the
+encouragement of popular literature. I could not help smiling at the
+thirteenth statute of the society, which determines that the seal
+should represent an uncultivated field, with the rising sun shining on
+a monument, on which the arms of Servia are carved.
+
+The fine arts are necessarily at a very low ebb in Servia. The useful
+being so imperfect, the ornamental scarcely exists at all. The
+pictures in the churches are mostly in the Byzantine manner, in which
+deep browns and dark reds are relieved with gilding, while the
+subjects are characterized by such extravagancies as one sees in the
+pictures of the early German painters, a school which undoubtedly took
+its rise from the importations of Byzantine pictures at Venice, and
+their expedition thence across the Alps. At present everything
+artistic in Servia bears a coarse German impress, such as for instance
+the pictures in the cathedral of Belgrade.
+
+Thus has civilization performed one of her great evolutions. The light
+that set on the Thracian Bosphorus rose in the opposite direction from
+the land of the once barbarous Hermans, and now feebly re-illumines
+the modern Servia.
+
+One of the most hopeful institutions of Belgrade is the Lyceum, or
+germ of a university, as they are proud to call it. One day I went to
+see it, along with Professor Shafarik, and looked over the
+mineralogical collection made in Servia, by Baron Herder, which
+included rich specimens of silver, copper, and lead ore, as well as
+marble, white as that of Carrara. The Studenitza marble is slightly
+grey, but takes a good polish. The coal specimens were imperfectly
+petrified, and of bad quality, the progress of ignition being very
+slow. Servia is otherwise rich in minerals; but it is lamentable to
+see such vast wealth dormant, since none of the mines are worked.
+
+We then went to an apartment decorated like a little ball-room, which
+is what is called the cabinet of antiquities. A noble bronze head,
+tying on the German stove, in the corner of the room, a handsome Roman
+lamp and some antique coins, were all that could be shown of the
+ancient Moesia; but there is a fair collection of Byzantine and Servian
+coins, the latter struck in the Venetian manner, and resembling old
+sequins.
+
+A parchment document, which extended to twice the length of a man,
+was now unrolled, and proved to be a patent of Stephan Urosh, the
+father of Stephan Dushan, endowing the great convent of Dechani, in
+Albania. Another curiosity in the collection is the first banner of
+Kara Georg, which the Servians consider as a national relic. It is in
+red silk, and bears the emblem of the cross, with the inscription
+"Jesus Christ conquers."
+
+We then went to the professor's room, which was furnished with the
+newest Russ, Bohemian, and other Slaavic publications, and after a
+short conversation visited the classes then sitting. The end of
+education in Servia being practical, prominence is given to geometry,
+natural philosophy, Slaavic history and literature, &c. Latin and
+Greek are admitted to have been the keys to polite literature, some
+two centuries and a half ago; but so many lofty and noble chambers
+having been opened since then, and routine having no existence in
+Servia, her youth are not destined to spend a quarter of a lifetime in
+the mere nurseries of humanity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 21: To those who take an interest in this subject, I have
+great pleasure in recommending a perusal of "Servian Popular Poetry,"
+(London, 1827,) translated by Dr. Bowring; but the introductory
+matter, having been written nearly twenty years ago, is, of course,
+far from being abreast of the present state of information on the
+subjects of which it treats.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+Preparations for Departure.--Impressions of the East.--Prince
+Alexander.--The Palace.--Kara Georg.
+
+
+The gloom of November now darkens the scene; the yellow leaves sweep
+round the groves of the Topshider, and an occasional blast from the
+Frusca Gora, ruffling the Danube with red turbid waves, bids me
+begone; so I take up pen to indite my last memoranda, and then for
+England ho!
+
+Some pleasant parties were given by M. Fonblanque, and his colleagues;
+but although I have freely made Dutch pictures of the "natives," I do
+not feel at liberty to be equally circumstantial with the
+inexhaustible wit and good humour of our hospitable Consul-general. I
+have preserved only a scrap of a conversation which passed at the
+dinner table of Colonel Danilefsky, the Russian agent, which shows the
+various impressions of Franks in the East.
+
+A.B.C.D. discovered.
+
+_A_. "Of all the places I have seen in the east, I certainly prefer
+Constantinople. Not so much for its beauty; since habit reconciles one
+to almost any scene. But because one can there command a greater
+number of those minor European comforts, which make up the aggregate
+of human happiness."
+
+_B_. "I am not precisely of your way of thinking. I look back to my
+residence at Cairo with pleasure, and would like well enough to spend
+another winter there. The Turkish houses here are miserable barracks,
+cold in winter, and unprotected from the sun in summer."
+
+_C_. "The word East is certainly more applicable to the Arab than the
+Turkish countries."
+
+_D_. "I have seen only Constantinople, and think that it deserves all
+that Byron and Anastasius have said of it."
+
+_C_. "I am afraid that A. has received his impressions of the East
+from Central Asia, which is a somewhat barbarous country."
+
+_A_. "_Pardonnez-moi_. The valley of the Oxus is well cultivated, but
+the houses are none of the best."
+
+_B_. "I give my voice for Cairo. It is a city full of curious details,
+as well in its architecture, as in its street population; to say
+nothing of its other resources--its pleasant promenades, and the
+occasional society of men of taste and letters--'_mais il faut aimer
+la chaleur_.'"
+
+_C_. "Well, then, we will take the winter of Cairo; the spring of
+Damascus, and the summer of the Bosphorus."
+
+M. Petronievitch took me to see the Prince, who has got into his new
+residence outside the Constantinople gate, which looks like one of the
+villas one sees in the environs of Vienna. In the centre of the
+parterre is a figure with a trident, which represents the Morava, the
+national river of Servia, and is in reality a Roman statue found near
+Grotzka. The usual allowance of sentries, sentry-boxes, and striped
+palisades stood at the entrance, and we were shown into an apartment,
+half in the German, and half in the Oriental style. The divan cover
+was embroidered with gold thread.
+
+The Prince now entered, and received me with an easy self-possession
+that showed no trace of the reserve and timidity which foreigners had
+remarked a year before.
+
+    "New honours ...
+     Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
+     But with the aid of use."
+
+_Prince_. "I expected to have seen you at Topola. We had a large
+assemblage of the peasantry, and an ecclesiastical festival, such as
+they are celebrated in Servia."
+
+_Author_. "Your highness may rest assured that had I known that, I
+should not have failed to go. At Tronosha I saw a similar festival,
+and I am firmly convinced that no peasantry in Europe is freer from
+want."
+
+_Prince_. "Every beginning is difficult; our principle must be,
+'Endeavour and Progress.' Were you pleased with your tour?"
+
+_Author_. "I think that your Highness has one of the most romantic
+principalities in Europe. Without the grandeur of the Alps, Servia has
+more than the beauty of the Apennines."
+
+_Prince_. "The country is beautiful, but I wish to see agriculture
+prosper."
+
+_Author_. "I am happy to hear that: your highness's father had a great
+name as a soldier; I hope that your rule will be distinguished by
+rapid advancement in the arts of civilization; that you will be the
+Kara Georg of peace."
+
+This led to a conversation relative to the late Kara Georg; and the
+prince rising, led me into another apartment, where the portrait of
+his father, the duplicate of one painted for the emperor Alexander,
+hung from the wall. He was represented in the Turkish dress, and wore
+his pistols in his girdle; the countenance expressed not only
+intelligence but a certain refinement, which one would scarcely expect
+in a warrior peasant: but all his contemporaries agree in representing
+him to have possessed an inherent superiority and nobility of nature,
+which in any station would have raised him above his equals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+A Memoir of Kara Georg.
+
+
+The Turkish conquest was followed by the gradual dispersion or
+disappearance of the native nobility of Servia, the last of whom, the
+Brankovitch, lived as _despots_ in the castle of Semendria, up to the
+beginning of the eighteenth century; so that at this moment scarcely a
+single representative of the old stock is to be found.[22]
+
+The nobility of Bosnia, occupying the middle region between the sphere
+of the Eastern and Western churches, were in a state of religious
+indifference, although nominally Catholic; and in order to preserve
+their lands and influence, accepted Islamism _en masse_; they and the
+Albanians being the only instances, in all the wars of the Moslems, of
+a European nobility embracing the Mohamedan faith in a body. Chance
+might have given the Bosniacs a leader of energy and military talents.
+In that case, these men, instead of now wearing turbans in their grim
+feudal castles, might, frizzed and perfumed, be waltzing in pumps; and
+Shakespear and Mozart might now be delighting the citizens assembled
+in the Theatre Royal Seraievo!
+
+The period preceding the second siege of Vienna was the spring-tide of
+Islam conquest. After this event, in 1684, began the ebb. Hungary was
+lost to the Porte, and six years afterwards thirty-seven thousand
+Servian families emigrated into that kingdom; this first led the way
+to contact with the civilization of Germany: and in the attendance on
+the Austrian schools by the youth of the Servian nation during the
+eighteenth century, were sown the seeds of the now budding
+civilization of the principality.
+
+Servia Proper, for a short time wrested from the Porte by the
+victories of Prince Eugene, again became a part of the dominions of
+the Sultan. But a turbulent militia overawed the government and
+tyrannized over the Rayahs. Pasvan Oglou and his bands at Widdin were,
+at the end of last century, in open revolt against the Porte. Other
+chiefs had followed his example; and for the first time the Divan
+thought of associating Christian Rayahs with the spahis, to put down
+these rebels, who had organized a system which savoured more of
+brigandage than of government. They frequently used the holiday
+dresses of the peasants as horse-cloths, interrupted the divine
+service of the Christian Rayahs, and gratified their licentious
+appetites unrestrained.
+
+The Dahis, as these brigand-chiefs were called, resolved to anticipate
+the approaching struggle by a massacre of the most influential
+Christians. This atrocious massacre was carried out with indescribable
+horrors. In the dead of the night a party of Dahis Cavasses would
+surround a house, drive open gates and doors with sledge-hammers; the
+awakened and affrighted inmates would rush to the windows, and seeing
+the court-yard filled with armed men with dark lanterns, the shrieks
+of women and children were added to the confusion; and the unhappy
+father was often murdered with the half-naked females of his family
+clinging to his neck, but unable to save him. The rest of the
+population looked on with silent stupefaction: but Kara Georg, a
+peasant, born at Topola about the year 1767, getting timely
+information that his name was in the list of the doomed, fled into the
+woods, and gradually organized a formidable armed force.
+
+His efforts were everywhere successful. In the name of the Porte he
+combated the Dahis, who had usurped local authority, in defiance of
+the Pasha of Belgrade. The Divan, little anticipating the ultimate
+issue of the struggle in Servia, was at first delighted at the success
+of Kara Georg; but soon saw with consternation that the rising of the
+Servian peasants grew into a formidable rebellion, and ordered the
+Pashas of Bosnia and Scodra to assemble all their disposable forces,
+and invade Servia. Between forty and fifty thousand Bosniacs burst
+into Servia on the west, in the spring of 1806, cutting to pieces all
+who refused to receive Turkish authority.
+
+Kara Georg undauntedly met the storm; with amazing rapidity he marched
+into the west of Servia, cut up in detail several detached bodies of
+Turks, being here much favoured by the broken ground, and put to death
+several village-elders who had submitted to them. The Turks then
+retired to Shabatz; and Kara Georg at the head of only seven thousand
+foot and two thousand horse, in all nine thousand men, took up a
+position at an hour's distance, and threw up trenches. The following
+is the account which Wuk Stephanovitch gives of this engagement.
+
+"The Turks demanded the delivery of the Servian arms. The Servians
+answered, 'Come and take them.' On two successive mornings the Turks
+came out of Shabatz and stormed the breastwork which the Servians had
+thrown up, but without effect. They then sent this message to the
+Servians: 'You have held good for two days; but we will try it again
+with all our force, and then see whether we give up the country to
+the Drina, or whether we drive you to Semendria.'
+
+"In the night before the decisive battle (August, 1806,) Kara Georg
+sent his cavalry round into a wood, with orders to fall on the enemy's
+flank as soon as the first shot should be fired.
+
+"To the infantry within the breastworks he gave orders that they
+should not fire until the Turks were so close that every shot might
+tell. By break of day the Seraskier with his whole army poured out of
+his camp at Shabatz, the bravest Beys of Bosnia bearing their banners
+in the van. The Servians waited patiently until they came close, and
+then opening fire did deadly execution. The standard-bearers fell,
+confusion ensued, and the Servian cavalry issuing from the wood at the
+same time that Kara Georg passed the breastworks at the head of the
+infantry, the defence was changed into an attack; and the rout of the
+Turks was complete. The Seraskier Kullin was killed, as well as Sinan
+Pasha, and several other chiefs. The rest of the Turkish army was cut
+up in the woods, and all the country as far as the Drina evacuated by
+them."
+
+The Porte saw with astonishment the total failure of its schemes for
+the re-conquest of Servia, resolved to temporize, and agreed to allow
+them a local and national government with a reduction of tribute; but
+previous to the ratification of the agreement withdrew its consent to
+the fortresses going into the hands of Christian Rayahs; on which Kara
+Georg resolved to seize Belgrade by stratagem.
+
+Before daybreak on the 12th of December, 1806, a Greek Albanian named
+Konda, who had been in the Turkish service, and knew Belgrade well,
+but now fought in the Christian ranks, accompanied by six Servians,
+passed the ditch and palisades that surrounded the city of Belgrade,
+at a point between two posts so as not to be seen, and proceeding to
+one of the gates, fell upon the guard, which defended itself well.
+Four of the Servians were killed; but the Turks being at length
+overpowered, Konda and the two remaining Servians broke open the gate
+with an axe, on which a corps of Servians rushed in. The Turks being
+attracted to this point, Kara Georg passed the ditch at another place
+with a large force.
+
+After a sanguinary engagement in the streets, and the conflagration of
+many houses, the windows of which served as embrasures to the Turks,
+victory declared for the Christians, and the Turks took refuge in the
+citadel.
+
+The Servians, now in possession of the town, resolved to starve the
+Turks out of the fortress; and having occupied a flat island at the
+confluence of the Save and the Danube, were enabled to intercept their
+provisions; on which the Pasha capitulated and embarked for Widdin.
+
+The succeeding years were passed in the vicissitudes of a guerilla
+warfare, neither party obtaining any marked success; and an auxiliary
+corps of Russians assisted in preventing the Turks from making the
+re-conquest of Servia.
+
+Baron, subsequently Marshal Diebitch, on a confidential mission from
+the Russian government in Servia during the years 1810, 1811, writes
+as follows:[23]
+
+"George Petrovitch, to whom the Turks have given the surname of Kara
+or Black, is an important character. His countenance shows a greatness
+of mind, which is not to be mistaken; and when we take into
+consideration the times, circumstances, and the impossibility of his
+having received an education, we must admit that he has a mind of a
+masculine and commanding order. The imputation of cruelty and
+bloodthirstiness appears to be unjust. When the country was without
+the shadow of a constitution, and when he commanded an unorganized and
+uncultivated nation, he was compelled to be severe; he dared not
+vacillate or relax his discipline: but now that there are courts of
+law, and legal forms, he hands every case over to the regular
+tribunals."
+
+"He has very little to say for himself, and is rude in his manners;
+but his judgments in civil affairs are promptly and soundly formed,
+and to great address he joins unwearied industry. As a soldier, there
+is but one opinion of his talents, bravery, and enduring firmness."
+
+Kara Georg was now a Russian lieutenant-general, and exercised an
+almost unlimited power in Servia; the revolution, after a struggle of
+eight years, appeared to be successful, but the momentous events then
+passing in Europe, completely altered the aspect of affairs. Russia in
+1812, on the approach of the countless legions of Napoleon,
+precipitately concluded the treaty of Bucharest, the eighth article of
+which formally assured a separate administration to the Servians.
+
+Next year, however, was fatal to Kara Georg. In 1813, the vigour of
+the Ottoman empire, undivided by exertions for the prosecution of the
+Russian war, was now concentrated on the re-subjugation of Servia. A
+general panic seemed to seize the nation; and Kara Georg and his
+companions in arms sought a retreat on the Austrian territory, and
+thence passed into Wallachia. In 1814, three hundred Christians were
+impaled at Belgrade by the Pasha, and every valley in Servia presented
+the spectacle of infuriated Turkish spahis, avenging on the Servians
+the blood, exile, and confiscation of the ten preceding years.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 22: The last of the Brankovitch line wrote a history of
+Servia; but the most valuable portion of the matter is to be found in
+Raitch, a subsequent historical writer.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The original is now in the possession of the Servian
+government, and I was permitted to peruse it; but although
+interesting, it is too long for insertion.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Milosh Obrenovitch.
+
+
+At this period Milosh Obrenovitch appears prominently on the political
+tapis. He spent his youth in herding the famed swine of Servia; and
+during the revolution was employed by Kara Georg to watch the passes
+of the Balkan, lest the Servians should be taken aback by troops from
+Albania and Bosnia. He now saw that a favourable conjuncture had come
+for his advancement from the position of chieftain to that of chief;
+he therefore lost no time in making terms with the Turks, offering to
+collect the tribute, to serve them faithfully, and to aid them in the
+re-subjugation of the people: he was, therefore, loaded with caresses
+by the Turks as a faithful subject of the Porte. His offers were at
+once accepted; and he now displayed singular activity in the
+extirpation of all the other popular chiefs, who still held out in the
+woods and fastnesses, and sent their heads to the Pasha; but the
+decapitation of Glavash, who was, like himself, supporting the
+government, showed that when he had accomplished the ends of Soliman
+Pasha, his own turn would come; he therefore employed the ruse
+described in page 55, made his escape, and, convinced that it was
+impossible ever to come to terms with Soliman Pasha, raised the
+standard of open revolt. The people, grown desperate through the
+ill-treatment of the spahis, who had returned, responded to his call,
+and rose in a body. The scenes of 1804-5-6, were about to be renewed;
+but the Porte quickly made up its mind to treat with Milosh, who
+behaved, during this campaign, with great bravery, and was generally
+successful. Milosh consequently came to Belgrade, made his submission,
+in the name of the nation, to Marashly Ali Pasha, the governor of
+Belgrade, and was reinstated as tribute-collector for the Porte; and
+the war of mutual extermination was ended by the Turks retaining all
+the castles, as stipulated in the eighth article of the treaty of
+Bucharest.
+
+Many of the chiefs, impatient at the speedy submission of Milosh,
+wished to fight the matter out, and Kara Georg, in order to give
+effect to their plans, landed in Servia. Milosh pretended to be
+friendly to his designs, but secretly betrayed his place of
+concealment to the governor, whose men broke into the cottage where he
+slept, and put him to death. Thus ended the brave and unfortunate Kara
+Georg, who was, no doubt, a rebel against his sovereign, the Sultan,
+and, according to Turkish law, deserving of death; but this base act
+of treachery, on the part of Milosh, who was not the less a rebel, is
+justly considered as a stain on his character.
+
+M. Boue, who made the acquaintance of Milosh in 1836, gives a short
+account of him.
+
+Milosh rose early to the sound of military music, and then went to his
+open gallery, where he smoked a pipe, and entered on the business of
+the day. Although able neither to read, write, nor sign his name, he
+could dictate and correct despatches; and in the evening he caused the
+articles in the _Journal des Debats_, the _Constitutionnel_, and the
+_Augsburg Gazette_, to be translated to him.
+
+The Belgrade chief of police[24] having offended Milosh by the boldness
+of his language, and having joined the detractors of the prince at a
+critical moment, although he owed everything to him, Milosh ordered
+his head to be struck off. Fortunately his brother Prince Ievren met
+the people charged with the bloody commission; he blamed them, and
+wished to hinder the deed: and knowing that the police director was
+already on his way to Belgrade from Posharevatz, where he had been
+staying, he asked the momkes to return another way, saying they had
+missed him. The police director thus arrived at Belgrade, was
+overwhelmed with reproaches by Milosh, and pardoned.
+
+A young man having refused to marry one of his cast-off mistresses, he
+was enlisted in the army, but after some months submitted to his fate.
+
+He used to raise to places, in the Turkish fashion, men who were
+unprepared by their studies for them. One of his cooks became a
+colonel. Another colonel had been a merry-andrew. Having once received
+a good medical advice from his butler, he told him that nature
+intended him for a doctor, and sent him to study medicine under Dr.
+Cunibert.
+
+"When Milosh sent his meat to market, all other sales were stopped,
+until he had sold off his own at a higher price than that current, on
+the ground of the meat being better."
+
+"The prince considered all land in Servia to belong to him, and
+perpetually wished to appropriate any property that seemed better than
+his own, fixing his own price, which was sometimes below the value,
+which the proprietor dared not refuse to take, whatever labour had
+been bestowed on it. At Kragujevatz, he prevented the completion of
+the house of M. Raditchevitch, because some statues of wood, and
+ornaments, which were not to be found in his own palace, were in the
+plan. An almanack having been printed, with a portrait of his niece
+Auka, he caused all the copies to be given back by the subscribers,
+and the portraits cut out."
+
+There can be no doubt, that, after the miserable end of Kara Georg,
+and the violent revolutionary wars, an unlimited dictatorship was the
+best regimen for the restoration of order. Milosh was, therefore, many
+years at the head of affairs of Servia before symptoms of opposition
+appeared. Allowances are certainly to be made for him; he had seen no
+government but the old Turkish regime, and had no notion of any other
+way of governing but by decapitation and confiscation. But this
+system, which was all very well for a prince of the fifteenth century,
+exhausted the patience of the new generation, many of whom were bred
+at the Austrian universities. Without seeking for democratic
+institutions, for which Servia is totally unfit, they loudly demanded
+written laws, which should remove life and property from the domain of
+individual caprice, and which, without affecting the suzerainty of the
+Porte, should bring Servia within the sphere of European
+institutions. They murmured at Milosh making a colossal fortune out of
+the administration of the principality, while he rendered no account
+of his intromissions, either to the Sultan or to the people, and
+seized lands and houses merely because he took a fancy to them.[25]
+Hence arose the _national party_ in Servia, which included nearly all
+the opulent and educated classes; which is not surprising, since his
+rule was so stringent that he would allow no carriage but his own to
+be seen in the streets of Belgrade: and, on his fall, so many orders
+were sent to the coach-makers of Pesth, that trade was brisk for all
+the summer.
+
+The details of the debates of the period would exhaust the reader's
+patience. I shall, therefore, at once proceed to the summing up.
+
+1st. In the nine years' revolt of Kara Georg nearly the whole
+sedentary Turkish population disappeared from Servia, and the Ottoman
+power became, according to their own expression, _assassiz_
+(foundationless).
+
+2nd. The eighth article of the treaty of Bucharest, concluded by
+Russia with the Porte, which remained a dead letter, was followed by
+the fifth article in the treaty of Akerman, formally securing the
+Servians a separate administration.
+
+3rd. The consummate skill with which Milosh played his fast and loose
+game with the Porte, had the same consequences as the above, and
+ultimately led to
+
+4th. The formal act of the Sultan constituting Servia a tributary
+principality to the Porte, in a _Hatti Sherif_, of the 22nd November,
+1830.
+
+5th. From this period, up to the end of 1838, was the hard struggle
+between Milosh, seeking for absolute power, supported by the peasantry
+of Rudnik, his native district, and the "Primates," as the heads of
+the national party are called, seeking for a habeas-corpus act and a
+legislative assembly.
+
+Milosh was in 1838 forcibly expelled from Servia; and his son Michael
+having been likewise set aside in 1842, and the son of Kara Georg
+selected by the sublime Porte and the people of Servia, against the
+views of Russia, the long-debated "Servian Question" arose, which
+received a satisfactory solution by the return of Wucics and
+Petronievitch, the exiled supports of Kara Georgevitch, through the
+mediation of the Earl of Aberdeen.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 24: M, Boue, in giving this anecdote, calls him "Newspaper
+Editor:" this is a mistake.]
+
+[Footnote 25: It is very true that the present Prince of Servia does
+not possess anything like the power which Milosh wielded; he cannot
+hang a man up at the first pear-tree: but it is a mistake on the part
+of the liberals of France and England, to suppose that the revolutions
+which expelled Milosh and Michael were democratic. There has been no
+turning upside down of the social pyramid; and in the absence of a
+hereditary aristocracy, the wealthiest and most influential persons in
+Servia, such as Ressavatz, Simitch, Garashanin, &c. support Alexander
+Kara Georgevitch.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+The Prince.--The Government.--The Senate.--The Minister for Foreign
+Affairs.--The Minister of the Interior.--Courts of Justice.--Finances.
+
+
+Kara Georgevitch means son of Kara Georg, his father's name having
+been Georg Petrovitch, or son of Peter; this manner of naming being
+common to all the southern Slaaves, except the Croats and Dalmatians.
+This is the opposite of the Arabic custom, which confers on a father
+the title of parent of his eldest son, as Abou-Selim, Abou-Hassan, &c.
+while his own name is dropped by his friends and family.
+
+The Prince's household appointments are about L20,000 sterling, and,
+making allowance for the difference of provisions, servants' wages,
+horse keep, &c. is equal to about L50,000 sterling in England, which
+is not a large sum for a principality of the size of Servia.
+
+The senate consists of twenty-one individuals, four of whom are
+ministers. The senators are not elected by the people, but are named
+by the prince, and form an oligarchy composed of the wealthiest and
+most influential persons. They hold their offices for life; they must
+be at least thirty-five years, and possess landed property.
+
+The presidency of the senate is an imaginary dignity; the duties of
+vice-president being performed by M. Stojan Simitch, the herculean
+figure I have described on my first visit to Belgrade; and it is
+allowed that he performs his duties with great sagacity, tact, and
+impartiality. He is a Servian of the old school, speaks Servian and
+Turkish, but no European language. The revolutions of this country
+have brought to power many men, like M. Simitch, of good natural
+talents, and defective education. The rising generation has more
+instruction, and has entered the career of material improvements; but
+I doubt if the present red tape routine will produce a race having
+the shrewdness of their fathers. If these forms--the unavoidable
+accompaniments of a more advanced stage of society,--circumscribe the
+sphere of individual exertion, they possess, on the other hand, the
+advantage of rendering the recurrence of military dictatorship
+impossible.
+
+M. Petronievitch, the present minister for foreign affairs, and
+director of the private chancery of the Prince, is unquestionably the
+most remarkable public character now in Servia. He passed some time in
+a commercial house at Trieste, which gave him a knowledge of Italian;
+and the bustle of a sea-port first enlarged his views. Nine years of
+his life were passed at Constantinople as a hostage for the Servian
+nation, guaranteeing the non-renewal of the revolt; no slight act of
+devotion, when one considers that the obligations of the contracting
+parties reposed rather on expediency than on moral principles. Here he
+made the acquaintance of all the leading personages at the Ottoman
+Porte, and learned colloquial Turkish in perfection. Petronievitch is
+astute by education and position, but he has a good heart and a
+capacious intellect, and his defects belong not to the man, but to
+the man's education and circumstances. Although placable in his
+resentments, he is without the usual baser counterpart of such pliant
+characters, and has never shown himself deficient in moral courage.
+Most travellers trace in his countenance a resemblance to the busts
+and portraits of Fox. His moral character bears a miniature
+resemblance to that which history has ascribed to Macchiavelli.
+
+In the course of a very tortuous political career, he has kept the
+advancement and civilization of Servia steadily in view, and has
+always shown himself regardless of sordid gain. He is one of the very
+few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of
+_community_ has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to _self_, and
+this disinterestedness is, in spite of his defects, the secret of his
+popularity.
+
+The commander of the military force is M. Wucics, who is also minister
+of the interior, a man of great personal courage; and although
+unacquainted with the tactics of European warfare, said to possess
+high capacity for the command of an irregular force. He possesses
+great energy of character, and is free from the taint of venality;
+but he is at the same time somewhat proud and vindictive. His
+predecessor in the ministry of the interior was M. Ilia Garashanin,
+the rising man in Servia. Sound practical sense, and unimpeachable
+integrity, without a shade of intrigue, distinguish this senator. May
+Servia have many Garashanins!
+
+The standing army is a mere skeleton. The reason of this is obvious.
+Servia forms part of one great empire, and adjoins two others;
+therefore, the largest disciplined force that she might bring into the
+field, in the event of hostilities, could make no impression for
+offensive objects; while for defensive purposes, the countless
+riflemen, taking advantage of the difficult nature of the country, are
+amply sufficient.
+
+Let the Servians thank their stars that their army is a skeleton. Let
+all Europe rejoice that the pen is rapidly superseding the sword; that
+there now exists a council-board, to which strong and weak are equally
+amenable. May this diplomarchy ultimately compass the ends of the
+earth, and every war be reckoned a civil war, an arch-high-treason
+against confederate hemispheres!
+
+The portfolios of justice and finance are usually in the hands of men
+of business-habits, who mix little in politics.
+
+The courts of law have something of the promptitude of oriental
+justice, without its flagrant venality. The salaries of the judges are
+small: for instance, the president of the appeal court at Belgrade has
+the miserable sum of L300 sterling per annum. M. Hadschitch, who
+framed the code of laws, has L700 sterling per annum.
+
+The criminal code is founded on that of Austria. The civil code is a
+localized modification of the _Code Napoleon_. The first translation
+of the latter code was almost literal, and made without reference to
+the manners and historical antecedents of Servia: some of the blunders
+in it were laughable:--_Hypotheque_ was translated as if it had been
+_Apotheke_, and made out to be a _depot of drugs_! When the translator
+was asked for the reason of this extraordinary prominence of the drug
+depot subject, he accounted for it by the consummate skill attained
+by France in medicine and surgery!
+
+A small lawyer party is beginning in Belgrade, but they are disliked
+by the people, who prefer short _viva voce_ procedure, and dislike
+documents. It is remarked, that when a man is supposed to be in the
+right, he wishes to carry on his own suit; when he has a bad case, he
+resorts to a lawyer.
+
+The ecclesiastical affairs of this department occupy a considerable
+portion of the minister's attention.
+
+In consequence of the wars which Stephan Dushan, the Servian emperor,
+carried on against the Greeks in the fourteenth century, he made the
+archbishop of Servia independent of the patriarch of Constantinople,
+who, in turn, excommunicated Stephan and his nominee. This
+independence continued up to the year 1765, at which period, in
+consequence of the repeated encouragement given by the patriarchs of
+Servia to revolts against the Turkish authority, the nation was again
+subjected to the immediate spiritual jurisdiction of Constantinople.
+Wuk Stephanovitch gives the following anecdote, illustrative of the
+abuses which existed in the selection of the superior clergy from this
+time, and up to the Servian revolution, all the charges being sold to
+the highest bidder, or given to courtiers, destitute of religion, and
+often of common morality.
+
+In 1797, a Greek priest came to Orsova, complaining that he had not
+funds sufficient to enable him to arrive at his destination. A
+collection was made for him; but instead of going to the place he
+pretended to be bound for, he passed over to the island of New Orsova,
+and entered, in a military capacity, the service of the local
+governor, and became a petty chief of irregular Turkish troops. He
+then became a salt inspector; and the commandant wishing to get rid of
+him, asked what he could do for him; on which he begged to be made
+Archbishop of Belgrade! This modest request not being complied with,
+the Turkish commandant sent him to Sofia, with a recommendation to the
+Grand Vizier to appoint him to that see; but the vacancy had already
+been filled up by a priest of Nissa, who had been interpreter to the
+Vizier, and who no sooner seated himself, than he commenced a system
+of the most odious exactions.
+
+In the time of Kara Georg, the Patriarchate of Constantinople was not
+recognized, and the Archbishop of Carlovitz in Hungary was looked up
+to as the spiritual head of the nation; but after the treaty of
+Adrianople, the Servian government, on paying a peppercorn tribute to
+the Patriarch of Constantinople, was admitted to have the exclusive
+direction of its ecclesiastical affairs. The Archbishop's salary is
+800_l_. per annum, and that of his three Bishops about half as much.
+
+The finances of Servia are in good condition. The income, according to
+a return made to me from the finance department, is in round numbers,
+eight hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, and the expenditure
+eight hundred and thirty thousand. The greater part of the revenue
+being produced by the _poresa_, which is paid by all heads of
+families, from the time of their marriage to their sixtieth year, and
+in fact, includes nearly all the adult population; for, as is the case
+in most eastern countries, nearly every man marries early. The
+bachelors pay a separate tax. Some of the other items in the budget
+are curious: under the head of "Interest of a hundred thousand ducats
+lent by the government to the people at six per cent." we find a sum
+of fourteen thousand four hundred dollars. Not only has Servia no
+public debt, but she lends money. Interest is high in Servia; not
+because there is a want of capital, but because there are no means of
+investment. The consequence is that the immense savings of the
+peasantry are hoarded in the earth. A father of a family dies, or _in
+extremis_ is speechless, and unable to reveal the spot; thus large
+sums are annually lost to Servia. The favourite speculation in the
+capital is the building of houses.
+
+The largest gipsy colonies are to be found on this part of the Danube,
+in Servia, in Wallachia, and in the Banat. The tax on the gipsies in
+Servia amounts to more than six thousand dollars. They are under a
+separate jurisdiction, but have the choice of remaining nomade, or
+settling; in the latter case they are fiscally classed with the
+Servians. Some settled gipsies are peasants, but for the most part
+smiths. Both settled and nomade gipsies, are alike remarkable for
+their musical talents. Having fought with great bravery during the war
+of emancipation, they are not so despised in Servia as in some other
+countries.
+
+For produce of the state forests, appears the very insignificant sum
+of one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The interior of Servia being
+so thickly wooded, every Servian is allowed to cut as much timber as
+he likes. The last item in the budget sounds singularly enough: two
+thousand three hundred and forty-one dollars are set down as the
+produce of sales of stray cattle, which are first delivered up to the
+captain of the district, who makes the seizure publicly, and then
+hands them over to the judge for sale, if there be no claimant within
+a given time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+Agriculture and Commerce.
+
+
+Upon the whole, it must be admitted, that the peasantry of Servia have
+drawn a high prize in the lottery of existence. Abject want and
+pauperism is nearly unknown. In fact, from the great abundance of
+excellent land, every man with ordinary industry can support his wife
+and family, and have a large surplus. The peasant has no landlord but
+the Sultan, who receives a fixed tribute from the Servian government,
+and does not interfere with the internal administration. The father of
+a family, after having contributed a _maximum_ tax of six dollars per
+annum, is sole master of the surplus; so that in fact the taxes are
+almost nominal, and the rent a mere peppercorn; the whole amounting
+on an average to about four shillings and sixpence per caput per
+annum.
+
+A very small proportion of the whole soil of Servia is cultivated.
+Some say only one sixth, others only one eighth; and even the present
+mode of cultivation scarcely differs from that which prevails in other
+parts of Turkey. The reason is obvious: if the present production of
+Servia became insufficient for the subsistence of the population, they
+have only to take in waste lands; and improved processes of
+agriculture will remain unheeded, until the population begins to press
+on the limits of the means of subsistence; a consummation not likely
+to be brought about for many generations to come.
+
+Although situated to the south of Hungary, the climate and productions
+are altogether northern. I never saw an olive-tree in Servia, although
+plentiful in the corresponding latitudes of France and Italy (43 deg.--44 deg.
+50'); but both sorts of melons are abundant, although from want of
+cultivation not nearly so good as those of Hungary. The same may be
+said of all other fruits except the grapes of Semendria, which I
+believe are equal to any in the world. The Servians seem to have in
+general very little taste for gardening, much less in fact than the
+Turks, in consequence perhaps of the unsurpassed beauty and luxuriance
+of nature. The fruit-tree which seems to be the most common in Servia
+is the plum, from which the ordinary brandy of the country is made.
+Almost every village has a plantation of this tree in its vicinity.
+Vegetables are tolerably abundant in some parts of the interior of
+Servia, but Belgrade is very badly supplied. There seems to be no
+kitchen gardens in the environs; at least I saw none. Most of the
+vegetables as well as milk come from Semlin.
+
+The harvest in August is the period of merriment. All Servian peasants
+assist each other in getting in the grain as soon as it is ready,
+without fee or reward; the cultivator providing entertainment for his
+laborious guests. In the vale of the Lower Morava, where there is less
+pasture and more corn, this is not sufficient, and hired Bulgarians
+assist.
+
+The innumerable swine which are reared in the vast forests of the
+interior, at no expense to the inhabitants, are the great staple of
+Servian product and export. In districts where acorns abound, they
+fatten to an inconceivable size. They are first pushed swimming across
+the Save, as a substitute for quarantine, and then driven to Pesth and
+Vienna by easy stages; latterly large quantities have been sent up the
+Danube in boats towed by steam.
+
+Another extensive trade in this part of the world is in leeches.
+Turkey in Europe, being for the most part uncultivated, is covered
+with ponds and marshes, where leeches are found in abundance. In
+consequence of the extensive use now made of these reptiles, in
+preference to the old practice of the lancet, the price has risen; and
+the European source being exhausted, Turkey swarms with Frenchmen
+engaged in this traffic. Semlin and Belgrade are the entrepots of this
+trade. They have a singular phraseology; and it is amusing to hear
+them talk of their "marchandises mortes." One company had established
+a series of relays and reservoirs, into which the leeches were
+deposited, refreshed, and again put in motion; as the journey for a
+great distance, without such refreshment, usually proves fatal.
+
+The steam navigation on the Danube has been of incalculable benefit to
+Servia; it renders the principality accessible to the rest of Europe,
+and Europe easily accessible to Servia. The steam navigation of the
+Save has likewise given a degree of animation to these lower regions,
+which was little dreamt of a few years ago. The Save is the greatest
+of all the tributaries of the Danube, and is uninterruptedly navigable
+for steamers a distance of two hundred miles. This river is the
+natural canal for the connexion of Servia and the Banat with the
+Adriatic. It also offers to our summer tourists, on the completion of
+the Lombard-Venetian railway, an entirely new and agreeable route to
+the East. By railroad, from Milan to Venice; by steamer from thence to
+Trieste; by land to Sissek; and the rest of the way by the rapid
+descent of the Save and the Danube. By the latter route very few
+turnings and windings are necessary; for a straight line drawn from
+Milan to Kustendji on the Black Sea, the point of embarkation for
+Constantinople, almost touches Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, and the
+Danube.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+The Foreign Agents.
+
+
+So much for the native government. The foreign agents in Belgrade are
+few in number. The most prominent individual during my stay there was
+Baron Lieven, a Russian general, who had been sent there on a special
+mission by the emperor, to steer the policy of Russia out of the
+shoals of the Servian question.
+
+On calling there with Mr. Fonblanque, I found a tall military-looking
+man, between forty and forty-five years of age. He entered at once,
+and without mystery, into the subject of his mission, and concluded by
+saying that "Servia owed her political existence solely to Russia,
+which gave the latter a moral right of intervention over and above the
+stipulations of treaties, to which no other power could pretend." As
+the public is already familiar with the arguments pro and contra on
+this question, it is at present unnecessary to recur to them.
+
+Baron Lieven had in the posture of affairs at that time a difficult
+part to play, inasmuch as a powerful party sought to throw off the
+protectorate of Russia. The baron, without possessing an intellect of
+the highest order, was a man of good sound judgment, and in his
+proceedings showed a great deal of frankness and military decision,
+qualities which attained his ends in all probability with greater
+success than if he had been endowed with that profound astuteness
+which we usually attribute to Russians. This was his fifth mission
+into the Turkish dominions; so that, although not possessing the
+language, he was yet well acquainted with the Turkish character and
+Eastern affairs in general. His previous mission had for its object to
+announce to the Sultan that, in accordance with the stipulations of
+the treaty of the 15th of July, 1840, the military and naval forces of
+the Emperor of Russia were at the service of his Highness.
+
+Baron Lieven was accompanied to Servia by his lady, a highly talented
+person, who spoke English admirably; and the evenings spent in his
+hospitable house were among the most agreeable reminiscences of my
+residence at Belgrade.
+
+The stationary Russian consul-general was M. Wastchenko, a stout
+middle-aged gentleman, with the look of a well-conditioned alderman.
+M. Wastchenko had been originally in a commercial establishment at
+Odessa; but having acquired a knowledge of the Turkish language he was
+attached to the embassy at Constantinople, and subsequently nominated
+Russian consul at Belgrade, under the consul-general for the
+principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia; but his services having been
+highly approved by Count Nesselrode, he was advanced to the rank and
+pay of consul-general. M. Wastchenko possesses in an eminent degree
+what Swift calls the aldermanly, but never to be over estimated
+quality, Discretion; he was considered generally a very safe man. In
+fact, a sort of man who is a favourite with all chanceries; the
+quality of such a mind being rather to avoid complications than to
+excite admiration by activity in the pen or the tongue. M. Wastchenko
+was most thoroughly acquainted with everything, and every man, in
+Servia. He spoke the language fluently, and lived familiarly with the
+principal persons in Belgrade. He had never travelled in Europe, and,
+strange to say, had never been in St. Petersburg.
+
+The present Russian consul-general in Servia is Colonel Danilefsky, who
+distinguished himself, when a mere youth, by high scientific attainments
+in military colleges of Russia, rose rapidly to a colonelcy, and was
+sent out on a mission to the khan of Khiva; the success of which ensured
+his promotion to the Servian consulate-general, an important position as
+regards the interests of Russia.
+
+From the circumstance of there being three thousand Austrian subjects
+in Belgrade, the consul-general of that power has a mass of real
+consular business to transact, while the functions of the other agents
+are solely political. France has generally an agent of good capacity
+in Servia, in consequence of the influence that the march of affairs
+in the principality might have on the general destinies of Turkey in
+Europe. Great Britain was represented by Mr. Consul-general
+Fonblanque, a gentleman whose conduct has been sharply criticized by
+those who suppose that the tactics of party in the East are like those
+in England, all fair and above-board: but let those gentlemen that sit
+at home at ease, experience a few of the rude tempestuous blasts which
+fall to the lot of individuals who speak and write truths unpalatable
+to those who will descend to any device to compass a political object,
+and they would sing another song.
+
+I now take leave of Servia, wishing her Prince and her people every
+prosperity, and entertaining the hope that she will wisely limit all
+her future efforts to the cultivation of the arts of peace and
+civilization. From Belgrade I crossed to Semlin, whence I proceeded by
+steam to Vienna.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+VIENNA IN 1844[26]
+
+
+Improvements in Vienna.--Palladian style--Music.--Theatres.--Sir
+Robert Gordon.--Prince Metternich.--Armen
+Ball.--Dancing.--Strauss.--Austrian Policy.
+
+
+Vienna has been more improved and embellished within the last few
+years than during the previous quarter of a century. The Graben and
+the Kohlmarket have been joined, and many old projecting houses have
+been taken down, and replaced by new tenements, with the facades put
+back, so as to facilitate the thoroughfare. Until very lately, almost
+every public building and private palace in Vienna was in the
+Frenchified style of the last century, when each petty prince in
+Germany wished to have a miniature Versailles in his village capital.
+All the new edifices are in the Palladian style; which is suitable,
+not only to the climate, but to the narrow streets, where Greek
+architecture would be lost for want of space, and where the great
+height of the houses gives mass to this (the Palladian) style, without
+the necessity of any considerable perspective. The circumstance of
+many of the architects here being Italian, may probably, in some
+measure, account for the general adoption of this style. It is
+singular, that although Vienna possesses in St. Stephen's one of the
+most beautiful specimens of Gothic architecture, not a single edifice
+in this taste of recent date is to be seen, although a revival of it
+is noticeable in several other parts of Germany.
+
+Music is one of the necessaries of existence in Vienna, and the
+internal consumption is apparently as great as ever: there is
+now-a-days no Mozart or Haydn to supply imperishable fabrics for the
+markets of the world; but the orchestras are as good as ever. The
+Sinfonia-Eroica of Beethoven catching my eye in a programme, I failed
+not to renew my homage to this prince of sweet and glorious sounds,
+and was loyally indignant on hearing a fellow-countryman say, that,
+though rich in harmony, he was poor in melody. No; Beethoven's wealth
+is boundless; his riches embarrass him; he is the sultan of melody:
+while others dally with their beauties to satiety, he wanders from
+grace to grace, scarce pausing to enjoy. Is it possible to hear his
+symphonies without recognizing in them the germs of innumerable modern
+melodies, the precious metal which others beat out, wherewith to plate
+their baser compositions,--exhaustless materials for the use of his
+successors, like those noble temples which antiquity has raised in the
+East, to become, in the sequel, the quarries from which whole cities
+of lowlier dwellings are constructed?
+
+At the Karnthner Thor I heard the Huguenots admirably performed.
+Decorations excepted, I really thought it better done than at the
+Academie Royale. Meyerbeer's brilliant and original conceptions, in
+turning the chorus into an oral orchestra, are better realized. A
+French vaudeville company performed on the alternate nights. Carl, the
+rich Jew manager of the Wieden, and proprietor of the Leopold-Stadt
+Theatre, is adding largely to his fortune, thanks to the rich and racy
+drolleries of Nestroz and Schulz, who are the Matthews and Liston of
+Vienna. The former of these excellent actors is certainly the most
+successful farce-writer in Germany. Without any of Raimund's
+sentimental-humorous dialogue, he has a far happier eye for character,
+and only the untranslatable dialect of Vienna has preserved him from
+foreign play-wrights.
+
+Sir Robert Gordon, her Majesty's ambassador, whose unbounded and truly
+sumptuous hospitalities are worthy of his high position, did me the
+honour to take me to one of Princess Metternich's receptions, in the
+apartments of the chancery of state, one side of which is devoted to
+business, the other to the private residence of the minister. After
+passing through a vestibule on the first floor, paved with marble, we
+entered a well-lighted saloon of palatial altitude, at the further
+end of which sat the youthful and fascinating princess, in
+conversation with M. Bailli de Tatischeff ex-ambassador of Russia.
+
+There, almost blind and bent double with the weight of eighty years,
+sat the whilom profoundly sagacious diplomatist, whose accomplished
+manners and quick perception of character have procured him a European
+reputation. He quitted public business some years ago, but even in
+retirement Vienna had its attractions for him. There is an
+unaccountable fascination in a residence in this capital; those who
+live long in it become _ipsis Vindobonensibus Vindobonensiores_.
+
+Prince Metternich, who was busy when we entered with a group,
+examining some views of Venice, received me with that quaker-like
+simplicity which forms the last polish of the perfect gentleman and
+man of the world; "_les extremes se touchent_," in manners as in
+literature: but for the riband of the Golden Fleece, which crossed his
+breast, there was nothing to remind me that I was conversing with the
+statesman, who, after the armistice of Plesswitz, held the destinies
+of all Europe in his hands. After some conversation, the prince asked
+me to call upon him on a certain forenoon.
+
+Most of the diplomatic corps were present, one of whom was the amiable
+and well-known Marshal Saldanha, who, a few years ago, played so
+prominent a part in the affairs of Portugal. The usual resources of
+whist and the tea-buffet changed the conversational circle, and at
+midnight there was a general movement to the Kleine Redouten Saal,
+where the Armen Ball had attracted so crowded an assemblage, that more
+than one archduchess had her share of elbowing. Strauss was in all his
+glory; the long-drawn impassioned breathings of Lanner having ceased
+for ever, the dulcet hilarity of his rival now reigns supreme; and his
+music, when directed by himself, still abounds in those exquisite
+little touches, that inspire _hope_ like the breath of a May morning.
+Strange to say, the intoxicating waltz is gone out of vogue with the
+humbler classes of Vienna,--its natal soil. Quadrilles, mazurkas, and
+other exotics, are now danced by every "Stubenmad'l" in Lerchenfeld,
+to the exclusion of the national dance.
+
+On the third day after this, at the appointed hour, I waited upon Prince
+Metternich. In the outer antechamber an elderly well-conditioned
+red-faced usher, in loosely made clothes of fine black cloth, rose from
+a table, and on my announcing myself, said, "If you will go into that
+apartment, and take a seat, his Excellency will be disengaged in a short
+time." I now entered a large apartment, looking out on the little garden
+of the bastion: an officer, in a fresh new white Austrian uniform, stood
+motionless and pensive at one of the windows, waiting his turn with a
+most formidable roll of papers. The other individual in the room was a
+Hungarian, who moved about, sat down, and rose up, with the most
+restless impatience, twirled his mustachios, and kept up a most lively
+conversation with a caged parrot which stood on the table.
+
+Two large pictures, hanging from the wall opposite the windows, were a
+full length portrait of the emperor in his robes, the other a picture
+of St. John Nepomuck, the patron saint of Bohemia, holding an olive
+branch in his hand. The apartment, although large, was very simply
+furnished, but admirably decorated in subdued colours, in the Italian
+manner. A great improvement has lately taken place in internal
+decoration in Vienna, which corresponds with that of external
+architecture. A few years ago, most large apartments were fitted up in
+the style of Louis XV., which was worthy of the degenerate nobles and
+crapulous financiers for whom it was invented, and was, in fact, a
+sort of Byzantine of the boudoir, which succeeded the nobler and
+simpler manner of the age of Louis XIV., and tormenting every straight
+line into meretricious curves, ended with over-loading caricature
+itself.
+
+I found Prince Metternich in his cabinet, surrounded with book-cases,
+filled mostly with works on history, statistics, and geography, and I
+hope I am not committing any indiscretion in saying that his
+conversation savoured more of the abstractions of history and
+political philosophy than that of any other practical statesman I had
+seen. I do not think that I am passing a dubious compliment, since M.
+Guizot, the most eminently practical of the statesmen of France, is at
+the same time the man who has most successfully illustrated the
+effects of modifications of political institutions on the main current
+of human happiness.
+
+It must be admitted that Prince Metternich has a profound acquaintance
+with the minutest sympathies and antipathies of all the European
+races; and this is the quality most needed in the direction of an
+empire which comprises not a nation, but a congregation of nations;
+not cohering through sympathy with each other, but kept together by
+the arts of statesmanship, and the bond of loyalty to the reigning
+house. The ethnographical map of Europe is as clear in his mind's eye
+as the boot of Italy, the hand of the Morea, and the shield of the
+Spanish peninsula in those of a physical geographer. It is not
+affirming too much to say that in many difficult questions in which
+the _mezzo termine_ proposed by Austria has been acceded to by the
+other powers, the solution has been due as much to the sagacity of the
+individual, as to the less ambitious policy which generally
+characterizes Austria.
+
+The last time I saw this distinguished individual was in the month of
+November following, on my way to England, I venture to give a scrap of
+the conversation.
+
+_Mett_. "The idea of Charlemagne was the formation of a vast state,
+comprising heterogeneous nations united under one head; but with all
+his genius he was unequal to the task of its accomplishment. Napoleon
+entertained the same plan with his confederation of the Rhine; but all
+such systems are ephemeral when power is centralized, and the minor
+states are looked upon as instruments, and not as principals. Austria
+is the only empire on record that has succeeded under those
+circumstances. The cabinet of Austria, when it seeks the solution of
+any internal question, invariably reverses the positions, and
+hypothetically puts itself in the position of the provincial interest
+under consideration. That is the secret of the prosperity of Austria."
+
+_Author_. "I certainly have been often struck with the historical
+fact, that 1830 produced revolutions then and subsequently in France,
+Belgium, Poland, Spain, and innumerable smaller states; while in
+Austria, with all its reputed combustible elements, not a single town
+or village revolted."
+
+_Mett_. "That tangible fact speaks for itself."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 26: This chapter was written in Vienna in the beginning of
+1844; but I did not wish to break the current of my observations on
+Servia by the record of my intervening journey to England.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+Concluding Observations on Austria and her Prospects.
+
+
+The heterogeneousness of the inhabitants of London and Paris is from
+the influx of foreigners; but the odd mixture of German, Italian,
+Slaavic, and I know not how many other races in Vienna, is almost all
+generated within the limits of the monarchy. Masses, rubbing against
+each other, get their asperities smoothed in the contact; but the
+characteristics of various nationalities remain in Vienna in
+considerable strength, and do not seem likely soon to disappear by any
+process of attrition. There goes the German--honest, good-natured, and
+laborious; the Hungarian--proud, insolent, lazy, hospitable, generous,
+and sincere; and the plausible Slaav--his eye, twinkling with the
+prospect of seizing, by a knowledge of human nature, what others
+attain by slower means.
+
+How curious again, is the meeting of nations that labour and enjoy! In
+Paris, the Germans and the English are more numerous than any other
+foreigners. The former toil, drudge, save their littles to make a
+meikle. The latter, whatever they may be at home, are, in Paris,
+generally loungers and consumers of the fruits of the earth. The
+Hungarian's errand in Vienna is to spend money: the Italian's to make
+it. The Hungarian, A.B., is one of the squirearchy of his country,
+whose name is legion, or a military man, whiling away his furlough
+amid the excitements of a gay capital. The Italian, C.D., is a
+painter, a sculptor, a musician, or an employe; and there is scarcely
+to be found an idle man among the twenty thousand of his
+fellow-countrymen, who inhabit the metropolis.
+
+The Hungarian nobility, of the higher class, are, in appearance and
+habits, completely identified with their German brethren; but it is in
+the middle nobility that we recognize the swarthy complexion, the
+haughty air and features, more or less of a Mongolian cast. The
+Hungarians and native Germans are mutually proud of each other, and
+mutually dislike each other. I never knew a Hungarian who was not in
+his heart pleased with the idea, that the King of Hungary was also an
+emperor, whose lands, broad and wide, occupied so large a space in the
+map of Europe; and I never knew an Austrian proper, who was not proud
+of Hungary and the Hungarians, in spite of all their defects. The
+Hungarian of the above description herds with his fellow-countrymen,
+and preserves, to the end of his stay, his character of foreigner;
+visits assiduously places of public resort, preferring the theatre and
+ball-room to the museum or picture-gallery.
+
+Of all men living in Vienna, the Bohemians carry off the palm for
+acuteness and ingenuity. The relation of Bohemia to the Austrian
+empire has some resemblance to that of Scotland to the colonies of
+Britain, in the supply of mariners to the vessel of state. The
+population of Bohemia is a ninth part of that of the whole empire; but
+I dare say that a fourth of the bureaucracy of Austria is Bohemian.
+To account for this, we must take into consideration the great number
+of men of sharp intellect, good education, and scanty fortune, that
+annually leave that country.
+
+The population of Scotland is about a ninth of that of the United
+Kingdom. The Scot is well educated. He has less loose cash than his
+brother John Bull, and consequently prefers the sweets of office to
+the costly incense of the hustings and the senate. How few,
+comparatively speaking, of those who have made themselves illustrious
+in the imperial Parliament, from the Union to our own time, came from
+the north of the Tweed; but how the Malcolms, the Elphinstones, the
+Munros, and the Burns, crowd the records of Indian statesmanship!
+
+The power that controls the political tendencies of Austria is that of
+the _mass_ of the bureaucracy; consequently, looking at the proportion
+of Bohemian to other employes in the departments of public service,
+the influence exercised by this singularly sagacious people, over the
+destinies of the monarchy, may be duly appreciated. Count Kollowrath,
+the minister of the interior, and Baron Kubeck, the minister of
+finance, are both Bohemians, and thus, next to the Chancellor of
+State, occupy the most important offices in the empire.
+
+The Bohemians of the middling and poorer classes, have certainly less
+sincerity and straight-forwardness than their neighbours. An anecdote
+is related illustrative of the slyness of the Bohemians, compared with
+the simple honesty of the German, and the candid unscrupulousness of
+the Hungarian: "During the late war, three soldiers, of each of these
+three nations, met in the parlour of a French inn, over the
+chimney-piece of which hung a watch. When they had gone, the German
+said, 'That is a good watch; I wish I had bought it.' 'I am sorry I
+did not take it,' said the Hungarian. 'I have it in my pocket,' said
+the Bohemian."
+
+The rising man in the empire is the Bohemian Baron Kubeck, who is
+thoroughly acquainted with every detail in the economical condition of
+Austria. The great object of this able financier is to cut down the
+expenses of the empire. No doubt that it would be unwise for Austria,
+an inland state, to reduce her military expenses; but the
+_viel-schreiberei_ might be diminished, and the pruning-hook might
+safety be applied to the bureaucracy; but a powerful under-current
+places this region beyond the power of Baron Kubeck. He is also a
+free-trader; but here again he meets with a powerful opposition: no
+sooner does he propose a modification of the tariff, than the saloons
+of the Archdukes are filled with manufacturers and monopolists, who
+draw such a terrific picture of the ruin which they pretend is to
+overwhelm them, that the government, true to its tradition of never
+doing any thing unpopular, of always avoiding collision with public
+opinion, and of protecting vested interests, even to the detriment of
+the real interest of the public, draws back; and the old jog-trot is
+maintained.
+
+The mass of the aristocracy continues as usual without the slightest
+political influence, or the slightest taste for state affairs. The
+Count or Prince of thirty or forty thousand a year, is as contented
+with his chamberlain's key embroidered on his coat-skirt, as if he
+controlled the avenues to real power; but the silent operation of an
+important change is visible in all the departments of the internal
+government of Austria. The national reforms of the Emperor Joseph were
+too abrupt and sweeping to be salutary. By good luck the reaction
+which they produced being co-incident with the first French
+Revolution, the firebrands which that great explosion scattered over
+all monarchical Europe, fell innocuous in Austria. The second French
+revolution rather retarded than accelerated useful reforms. Now that
+the fear of democracy recedes, an inclination for salutary changes
+shows itself everywhere. A desire for incorporations becomes
+stronger, and the government shows none of its quondam anxiety about
+public companies and institutions. The censorship has been greatly
+relaxed, and many liberal newspapers and periodicals, formerly
+excluded, are now frequently admitted. Any one who knew Austria some
+years ago, would be surprised to see the "Examiner," and
+"Constitutionnel" lying on the tables of the Clubs.
+
+A desire for the revival of the provincial estates (Landstande), is
+entertained by many influential persons. These provincial parliaments
+existed up to the time of the Emperor Joseph, who, with his rage for
+novelty, and his desire for despotic and centralized power, abolished
+them. The section of the aristocracy desirous for this revival is
+certainly small, but intelligent, and impatient for a sphere of
+activity. They have neither radical nor democratic principles; they
+admit that Austria, from the heterogeneous nature of her population,
+is not adapted for constitutional government; but maintain that the
+revival of municipal institutions is quite compatible with the present
+elements of the monarchy, and that the difficulties presented by the
+antagonist nationalities are best solved by allowing a development of
+provincial public life, restricted to the control of local affairs,
+and leaving the central government quite unfettered in its general
+foreign and domestic policy.
+
+St. Marc Girardin remarks, with no less piquancy of language than
+accuracy of observation, that "no country is judged with less favour
+than Austria; and none troubles herself less about misrepresentation.
+Austria carries her repugnance to publicity so far as even to dislike
+eulogium. Praise often offends her as much as blame; for he that
+applauds to-day may condemn to-morrow; to set one's self up for
+praise, is to set one's self up for discussion. Austria will have none
+of it, for her political worship is the religion of silence, and her
+worship of _that_ goes almost to excess. Her schools are worthy of the
+highest admiration; we hear nothing about them. She is, after England,
+the first country in Europe for railways; and we hear nothing of them,
+except by a stray paragraph in the Augsburg Gazette."
+
+The national railroad scheme of Austria is certainly the most splendid
+effort of the _tout pour le peuple--rien par le peuple_ system that
+has been hitherto seen; the scheme is the first of its class: but its
+class is not the first, not the best in the abstract, but the best in
+an absolute country, where the spirit of association is scarcely in
+embryo. From Vienna to Cracow is now but a step. Prague and Dresden
+will shake hands with Vienna next year. If we look southwards, line
+upon line interpose themselves between Vienna and the Adriatic, but
+the great Sommering has been pierced. The line to Trieste is open
+beyond Gratz, the Styrian capital. The Lombard-Venetian line proceeds
+rapidly, and is to be joined to that of Trieste. In 1847, the
+traveller may go, without fail, from Milan to Stettin on the Baltic.
+But the most interesting line for us is that of Gallicia, in connexion
+with that of Silesia. If prolonged from Czernowitz to Galatz, along
+the dead flat of Moldavia, the Black Sea and the German Ocean will be
+joined; _Samsoun and the Tigris will thus be, in all probability, at
+no distant day, on the high road to our Indian empire_.
+
+But to return to Austria; this spectacle of rapid material
+improvement, without popular commotion, and without the trumpets and
+alarm-bells of praise and blame, is satisfactory: but when we look to
+the reverse of the picture, and see the cumbrous debt, the frequent
+deficits, and the endless borrowing, we think the time has come for
+great financial reforms,--as Schiller hath it:--
+
+     "Warum denn nicht mit einem grossen Schritte anfangen, Da sie mit
+     einem grossen Schritte doch enden mussen?"
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+MR. PATON'S WORK ON SYRIA, Post 8vo, price 10_s_. 6_d_.
+
+
+THE MODERN SYRIANS;
+
+OR,
+
+NATIVE SOCIETY IN DAMASCUS, ALEPPO, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE DRUSES.
+
+
+"Lebanon and its inhabitants, particularly the Druses, Damascus, and
+Aleppo, are his leading subjects. His statements, under the first of
+those heads, form by far the most valuable portion of the work,
+affording, as it does, information not elsewhere to be found
+respecting the social condition, the politics, and the state of
+religion in a highly interesting region, our knowledge of which has
+hitherto been of the slightest description. Next to this, in interest,
+is the account of Aleppo, which has been less visited by English
+travellers than Damascus; but even at Damascus, the information of
+this writer has considerable novelty, and embraces many points of
+interest arising from his leisurely sojourn, from his mixing more than
+other travellers with the native population, and from his ability to
+converse with them in their own language. Hence we have pictures more
+distinct in their outlines, facts more positive, and information more
+real than the passing traveller, ignorant of the local language, can
+be reasonably expected to exhibit ... makes larger additions to the
+common stock of information concerning Syria, than any work which
+could easily be named since 'Burckhardt's Travels in Syria'
+appeared."--_Eclectic Review_.
+
+"Remarkably clever and entertaining."--_Times_.
+
+"In many of the conversations and reports in this volume, there seems
+to us a _reality_, which European writing and discourse often
+want."--_Spectator_.
+
+"I willingly testify to the fact of your having enjoyed facilities
+over all our modern travellers, for accurately describing the manners,
+customs, and statistics of Syria."--_Letter of Mr. Consul-General
+Barker_.
+
+For a detailed analysis, see _Athenaeum_, 24th Aug. 1844.
+
+
+LONDON: LONGMAN & CO., PATERNOSTER-ROW.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Servia, Youngest Member of the
+European Family, by Andrew Archibald Paton
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