ndezvous 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 cour