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no nourishment, rottenness appears on the top branches, and gradually descends.

At Krushevitza, not very far from Pasharevatz, is a cave, which is, I am told, entered with difficulty, into the basin of which water gradually flows at intervals, and then disappears, as the doctor of the place (a Saxon) told me, with an extraordinary noise resembling the molar rumble of railway travelling. This spring is called Potainitza, or the mysterious waters.

Posharevatz, miscalled Passarowitz, is historically remarkable, as the place where Prince Eugene, in 1718, after his brilliant victories of the previous year, including the capture of Belgrade, signed, with the Turks, the treaty which gave back to the house of Austria not only the whole of Hungary, but added great part of Servia and Little Wallachia, as far as the Aluta. With this period began the Austrian rule in Servia, and at this time the French fashioned Lange Gasse of Belgrade rose amid the "swelling domes and pointed minarets of the white eagle's nest'."

1 In Servian, Belgrade is called Beograd, "white city ;"poetically, "white eagle's nest."

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Several quaint incidents had recalled this period during my tour. For instance, at Manasia, I saw rudely engraven on the church wall,

Wolfgang Zastoff,

Kaiserlicher Forst-Meister im Maidan.

Die 1 Aug. 1721.

Semendria is three hours' ride from Posharevatz; the road crosses the Morava, and every where the country is fertile, populous, and well cultivated. Innumerable massive turrets, mellowed by the sun of a clear autumn, and rising from wide rolling waters, announced my approach to the shores of the Danube. I seemed entering one of those fabled strong holds, with which the early Italian artists adorned their landscapes. If Semendria be not the most picturesque of the Servian castles of the elder period, it is certainly by far the most extensive of them. Nay, it is colossal. The rampart next the Danube has been shorn of its fair proportions, so as to make it suit the modern art of war. from one of the three

Looking at Semendria land sides, you have a

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the water, you have the boulevard of a Van der Meulen.

The Natchalnik accompanied me in a visit to the fortress, protected from accident by a couple of soldiers; for the castle of Semendria is still, like that of Shabatz, in the hands of a few Turkish spahis and their families. The news from Shabatz having produced a slight ferment, we found several armed Moslems at the gate; but they did not allow the Servians to pass, with the exception of the Natchalnik and another man. "This is new," said he; "I never knew them to be so wary and suspicious before." We now found ourselves within the walls of the fortress. A shabby wooden café was opposite to us; a mosque of the same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right. The cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee. His worship was so proud, that he scarcely deigned to speak. The Disdar Aga, a somewhat more approximative personage, now entered the tottering chardak, (the carpenters of Semendria seem to have emigrated

ROMAN ANTIQUITIES.

259

en masse,) and proffered himself as Cicerone of the castle.

Mean and abominable huts, with patches of garden ground, filled up the space inclosed by the gorgeous ramparts and massive towers of Semendria. The further we walked the nobler appeared the last relic of the dotage of old feudal Servia. In one of the towers next the Danube is a sculptured Roman tombstone. One graceful figure points to a sarcophagus, close to which a female sits in tears; in a word, a remnant of the antique-of that harmony which dies not away, but swells on the finer organs of perception.

"Eski, Eski. Very old," said the Disdar Aga, who accompanied me.

"It is Roman,” said I.

"Roumgi?" said he, thinking I meant Greek. "No, Latinski,” said a third, which is the name usually given to Roman remains.

As at Sokol and Ushitza, I was not permitted to enter the inner citadel'; so, returning to the

I think that a traveller ought to see all that he can; but, of course, has no right to feel surprised at being excluded

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gate, where we were rejoined by the soldiers, we went to the fourth tower, on the left of the Stamboul Kapu, and looking up, we saw inserted and forming part of the wall, a large stone, on which was cut, in basso rilievo, a figure of Europa reposing on a bull. Here was no fragile grace, as in the other figure; a few simple lines bespoke the careless hardihood of antique art.

The castle of Semendria was built in 1432, by the Brankovitch, who succeeded the family of Knes Lasar as despots, or native rulers of Servia, under the Turks; and the construction of this enormous pile was permitted by their masters, under the pretext of the strengthening of Servia against the Hungarians. The last of these despots of Servia was George Brankovitch, the historian, who passed over to Austria, was raised to the dignity of a count; and after being kept many years as a state prisoner, suspected of secret correspondence with the Turks, died at Eger, in Bohemia, in 1711. The legitimate Brankovitch line is now extinct 2.

2 One of the representatives of the ancient imperial family is the Earl of Devon, for Urosh the Great married Helen of Courtenay.

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