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A POLISH RUSSIAN OFFICER.

195

The traiteur of the quarantine gave us for dinner a very fair pillaff, as well as roast and boiled fowl; and going outside to our bench, in front of the finished buildings, I began to smoke. A slightly built and rather genteel-looking man, with a braided surtout, and a piece of ribbon at his button-hole, was sitting on the step of the next door, and wished me good evening in German. I asked him who he was, and he told me that he was a Pole, and had been a major in the Russian service, but was compelled to quit it in consequence of a duel.

I asked him if he was content with his present condition; and he answered, " Indeed, I am not; I am perfectly miserable, and sometimes think of returning to Russia, coûte qui coûte.—My salary is £20 sterling a year, and every thing is dear here; for there is no village, but an artificial settlement; and I have neither books nor European society. I can hold out pretty well now, for the weather is fine; but I assure you that in winter, when the snow is on the ground, it exhausts my patience." We now took a turn down the inclosure to his house, which was the ground-floor of the guard

196

KINDNESS OF THE DIRECTOR.

house. Here was a bed on wooden boards, a single chair and table, without any other furni

ture.

The Director, obliging me, made up a bed for me in his own house, since the only resource at the traiteur's would have been my own carpet and pillow.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Cross the Bosniac Frontier.-Gipsy Encampment.-Novibazar described.-Rough Reception.-Precipitate Depar

ture.-Fanaticism.

NEXT day we were all afoot at an early hour, in order to pay a visit to Novibazar. In order to obviate the performance of quarantine on our return, I took an officer of the establishment, and a couple of men, with me, who in the Levant are called Guardiani; but here the German word Ueber-reiter, or over-rider, was adopted.

We continued along the river Raska for about an hour, and then descried a line of wooden palings going up hill and down dale, at right angles with the course we were holding. This was the frontier of the principality of Servia, and here

198

GIPSY ENCAMPMENT.

began the direct rule of the Sultan and the Pashalic of Bosnia. At the guard-house half a dozen Momkes, with old fashioned Albanian guns, presented arms.

After half an hour's riding, the valley became wider, and we passed through meadow lands, cultivated by Moslem Bosniacs in their white turbans; and two hours further, entered a fertile circular plain, about a mile and a half in diameter, surrounded by low hills, which had a chalky look, in the midst of which rose the minarets and bastions of the town and castle of Novibazar. Numerous gipsy tents covered the plain, and at one of them, a withered old gipsy woman, with white dishevelled hair hanging down on each side of her burnt umber face, cried out in a rage, "See how the Royal Servian people now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback," alluding to the ancient custom of Christians not being permitted to ride on horseback in a town'.

On entering, I perceived the houses to be of a

1 Most of the gipsies here profess Islamism.

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most forbidding aspect, being built of mud, with only a base of bricks, extending about three feet from the ground. None of the windows were glazed; this being the first town of this part of Turkey in Europe that I had seen in such a plight. The over-rider stopped at a large stablelooking building, which was the khan of the place, Near the door were some bare wooden benches, on which some Moslems, including the khankeeper, were reposing. The horses were foddered at the other extremity, and a fire burned in the middle of the floor, the smoke escaping by the doors. We now sent our letter to Youssouf Bey, the governor, but word was brought back that he was in the harem.

We now sallied forth to view the town. The castle, which occupies the centre, is on a slight eminence, and flanked with eight bastions; it contains no regular troops, but merely some redif, or militia. Besides one small well-built stone mosque, there is nothing else to remark in the place. Some of the bazaar shops seemed tolerably well furnished; but the place is, on the whole,

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