about Uskub is a great cemetery, and on every hand rise
little rounded hills bristling with gravestones like almonds in a
tipsy-cake. Strange old streets there are in Uskub. One comes suddenly
upon half-buried mosques with grass growing from their dilapidated
domes, a refuge only for chickens; some deserted baths, and in the midst
of all, its outer walls like a prison and with prison windows, the old
caravanserai.

We crept to its gateway and through a crack saw visions of a romantic
courtyard. The gate was locked, and we asked a little shoemaker--

"Who has the key?"

"It is now a leather tannery," he answered, and directed us to a
shoemaker in another street. This was full of shoemakers, and we chased
the key from shop to shop. It was like "Hunt the slipper." At last we
ran it to earth in the second waistcoat of a negligent individual in a
fez.

How happy the merchant of old must have felt when he entered the
courtyard after a long journey! The court was big and square, with a
fountain in the centre, the pillars were blue, and the arches red. Tiers
upon tiers of little rooms were built around; the expensive ones had
windows and the cheap ones none, and the door of each was marked by the
smoke of a thousand fires which had been lit within. Underneath were
cubby holes for the merchants' goods, and behind it all was a great dark
stable for the animals. Once shut up in the caravanserai one was safe
from robbers, revolutions, and the outside world. Lying in the doorway,
as if cast there by some gigantic ogre in a fit of temper, were two
immense marble vases, and two queer carved stone figures. Who made these
figures? Mystery--for Turkey does not carve. The old caravanserai no
longer gives protection to the harassed traveller, it only cures his
boots, for it has fallen from sanctuary to shoemakers, and the leather
workers of Uskub cure their hides therein. Hence, despite its beauty, we
did not loiter long, for we have ever held a bad smell more powerful
than a beautiful view.

Why don't towns look tragic when their bricks reek of tragedy? Why is
industrial misery the only form in which the cry of the oppressed is
allowed to take visible shape and to make the reputation of Realist
artists? In Uskub is concentrated the whole problem of the Balkans and
of Macedonia. Her brightly painted streets are filled with Serb, Bulgar,
and Turk, each disliking the rule of the other, the Bulgar hating the
Serb only worse than the Tur