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 supper, consisting of soup, which
contained so much lemon juice, that, without a wry face, I could
scarcely eat it--boiled lamb, from which the soup had been made, and
then a stew of the same with Tomata sauce. A bed was then spread out
on the floor _a la turque_, which was rather hard; but as the sheets
were snowy white, I reckoned myself very lucky.
I must say that there is a degree of cleanliness within doors, which I
had been led to consider as somewhat foreign to the habits of Slaavic
populations. The lady of the Austrian consul-general in Belgrade told
me that she was struck with the propriety of the dwellings of the
poor, as contrasted with those in Galicia, where she had resided for
many years; and every traveller in Germany is struck with the
difference which exists between the villages of Bohemia and those in
Saxony, and other adjacent German provinces.
From Palesh we started with fine weather for Skela, through a
beautifully wooded park, some fields being here and there inclosed
with wattling. Skela is a new ferry on the Save, to facilitate the
communication with Austria.
Near here are redoubts, where Kara Georg, the father of the reigning
prince, held out during the disasters of 1813, until all the women and
children were transferred in safety to the Austrian territory. Here we
met a very pretty girl, who, in answer to the salute of my
fellow-travellers, bent herself almost to the earth. On asking the
reason, I was told that she was a bride, whom custom compels, for a
stated period, to make this humble reverence.
We then came to the Skela, and seeing a large house within an
enclosure, I asked what it was, and was told that it was the
reconciliation-house, (_primiritelnj sud_,) a court of first instance,
in which cases are decided by the village elders, without expense to
the litigants, and beyond which suits are seldom carried to the higher
courts. There is throughout all the interior of Servia a stout
opposition to the nascent lawyer class in Belgrade. I have been more
than once amused on hearing an advocate, greedy of practice, style
this laudable economy and patriarchal simplicity--"Avarice and
aversion from civilization." As it began to rain we entered a tavern,
and ordered a fowl to be roasted, as the soup and stews of yester-even
were not to my taste. A booby, with idiocy marked on his countenance,
was lounging about the door, and when our mid-day meal was done I
ordered the man to give him a glass of _slivovitsa_, as plum brandy is
called. He then came forward, trembling, as if about to receive
sentence of death, and taking off his greasy fez, said, "I drink to
our prince Kara Georgovich, and to the progress and enlightenment of
the nation." I looked with astonishment at the torn, wretched
habiliments of this idiot swineherd. He was too stupid to entertain
these sentiments himself; but this trifling circumstance was the
feather which indicated how the wind blew. The Servians are by no
means a nation of talkers; they are a serious people; and if the
determination to rise were not in the minds of the people, it would
not be on the lips of the baboon-visaged oaf of an insignificant
hamlet.
The rain now began to pour in torrents, so to make the most of it, we
ordered another magnum of strong red wine, and procured from the
neighbourhood a blind fiddler, who had acquired a local reputation.
His instrument, the favourite one of Servia, is styled a _goosely_,
being a testudo-formed viol; no doubt a relic of the antique, for the
Servian monarchy derived all its arts from the Greeks of the Lower
Empire. But the musical entertainment, in spite of the magnum of wine,
and the jovial challenges of our fellow traveller from the Drina,
threw me into a species of melancholy. The voice of the minstrel, and
the tone of the instrument, were soft and melodious, but so
profoundly plaintive as to be painful. The song described the
struggle of Osman Bairactar with Michael, a Servian chief, and, as it
was explained to me, called up successive images of a war of
extermination, with its pyramids of ghastly trunkless heads, and
fields of charcoal, to mark the site of some peaceful village, amid
the blaze of which its inhabitants had wandered to an eternal home in
the snows and trackless woods of the Balkan. When I looked out of the
tavern window the dense vapours and torrents of rain did not elevate
my spirits; and when I cast my eyes on the minstrel I saw a peasant,
whose robust frame might have supported a large family, reduced by the
privation of sight, to waste his best years in strumming on a
monotonous viol for a few piastres.
I flung him a gratuity, and begged him to desist.
After musing an hour, I again ordered the horses, although it still
rained, and set forth, the road being close to the river, at one part
of which a fleet of decked boats were moored. I perceived that they
were all navigated by Bosniac Moslems, one of whom, smoking his pipe
under cover, wore the green turban of a Shereef; they were all loaded
with raw produce, intended for sale at Belgrade or Semlin.
The rain increasing, we took shelter in a wretched khan, with a mud
floor, and a fire of logs blazing in the centre, the smoke escaping as
it best could by the front and back doors. Gipsies and Servian
peasants sat round it in a large circle; the former being at once
recognizable, not only from their darker skins, but from their traits
being finer than those of the Servian peasantry. The gipsies fought
bravely against the Turks under Kara Georg, and are now for the most
part settled, although politically separated from the rest of the
community, and living under their own responsible head; but, as in
other countries, they prefer horse dealing and smith's work to other
trades.
As there was no chance of the storm abating, I resolved to pass the
night here on discovering that there was a separate room, which our
host said he occasionally unlocked, for the better order of
travellers: but as there was no bed, I had recourse to my carpet and
pillow, for the expense of _Uebergewicht_ had deterred me from
bringing a canteen and camp bed from England.
Next morning, on waking, the sweet chirp of a bird, gently echoed in
the adjoining woods, announced that the storm had ceased, and nature
resumed her wonted calm. On arising, I went to the door, and the
unclouded effulgence of dawn bursting through the dripping boughs and
rain-bespangled leaves, seemed to realize the golden tree of the
garden of the Abbassides. The road from this point to Shabatz was one
continuous avenue of stately oaks--nature's noblest order of sylvan
architecture; at some places, gently rising to views of the winding
Save, with sun, sky, and freshening breeze to quicken the sensations,
or falling into the dell, where the stream darkly pellucid, murmured
under the sombre foliage.
The road, as we approached Shabatz, proved to be macadamized in a
certain fashion: a deep trench was dug on each side; stakes about a
foot and a half high, interlaced with wicker-work, were stuck into the
ground within the trench, and the road was then filled up with gravel.