mans_, 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 supp