t and deposited me
in Belgrade. I had to give up my passport and my troubles began. I
had come to see Serbia, and finally saw the whole of it and have
described it in another book. But for obvious reasons I did not then
recount all that befell me; I did not even understand it all.

Looking back on that tour I can only wonder at the dogged
persistence with which I overcame all the obstacles which the Serb
police put in my way. Short of forbidding me to travel they did all
they could.

In accordance with my promise to M. Militchevitch, "To do nothing
without consulting the British Consul," I went to the consulate,
where I found a nice young man, who had but recently arrived and
seemed to know nothing whatever about the country. He was playing
with a dachsdog and told me cheerfully I could go anywhere I liked
"and none of them will dare touch you." But he warned me that it
would be very expensive as carriages were two pounds a day. I
suggested mildly that the land being a poor one this could not
possibly be the regular charge, but that people sometimes had to pay
extra for the privilege of being British Consul; which apparently he
had never thought of. It proved correct though. Serbia in those days
was the cheapest spot in Europe. Never again in all probability will
the peasant be so well off.

But before starting up country I meant to see Belgrade, and began by
asking at the hotel where the King was to be seen. For a King, in
1902 at any rate, was still an object of interest, and one of the
"show sights" of most European countries. The waiter replied "You
want to see our King? You won't see him. He dares not come out of
the Konak. He is probably drunk." Nor in fact during the time I
spent in Belgrade did he ever come out.

In Belgrade the first thing I learnt was that I was "shadowed" by
the police. To the uninitiated this is most uncanny. The same man
keeps turning up. He does it very badly as a rule. You sit and have
coffee on one side of a street and he sits and drinks beer at the
restaurant opposite. You wander on and think: "What an ass I was to
think he was following me!" and meet him at the next corner. Most
disquieting of all perhaps is to come suddenly out of your bedroom
and almost tumble over him in the corridor. All these and more were
my experiences in the first weeks of my tour. And always I said to
myself in triumph: "They can't do anything to me for I have not done
anything." I could not even buy a r