oad, 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