id 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