BY

REV. W. DENTON, M.A.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

ROUTE—MEAUX—STRASBOURG—BRUCHSALS—ULM—SALTZBURG—HUNGARY—ENGLISH INFLUENCE—ADMIRATION FOR ENGLISH CHURCH— HATRED OF AUSTRIA—HUNGARIAN WINES—STEAMBOAT—SEMLIN.

My journey from London to Belgrade occupied a week; but the traveller need not be more than four days upon the road, provided that continuous travel is not too fatiguing to him, and he can manage to take his rest in a railway carriage. As to myself, not being compelled to travel without intermission, I slept at Paris, at Vienna, and at Pest; and instead of taking the speediest route to Servia by way of Bazias, I lost many hours by going down the Danube from Pest to Semlin in the steamboat. Premising this, it may be useful to those who may wish to visit Servia, if I say a few words upon my journey to Belgrade.

On Monday evening, April 14, I left the London Bridge station for Paris, where I arrived on the following morning. After remaining for the rest of the day in that city, I left again by the evening train for Strasbourg. The night was clear; and as the train rattled past Meaux, I was just able to catch a glimpse of the cathedral, and could make out the outline of this pretty and compact little city, which is for ever famous as the seat of the greatest and most eloquent of French bishops, in the days when the French Church abounded in eloquent preachers, and was adored by such men as Fénelon, Bourdaloue, and Massillon. Above all these his compeers towered Jacques Benigne Bossuet, the lordly “eagle of Meaux;” and in the chancel of this small cathedral, to which he has given a world-wide renown, his ashes rested in peace until a few years since, when, in an excess of ultramontane zeal, they were removed from their place of honour and re-interred in one of the side chapels.

At daybreak, we were passing through Alsace, with its rich mountains of iron-stone, offering, as the prospectus of the railway company should have stated, formidable engineering difficulties to the construction of the line, which now, however, are so many proofs of tho skill with which they have been overcome. Before we reached Strasbourg the country becomes much flatter, and the chief ornament of the low grounds are the formal but picturesque rows of Lombardy poplars which skirt the high road and the banks of the small streams. Although this tree cannot vie in majesty with the “pillar elm” which gives so much beauty to an English landscape, yet the poplar is not without a grace of its own, and is deservedly a favourite with landscape gardeners and with planters near the Rhine. Soon after daybreak, long before we could see any trace of the city itself, we caught sight of the beautiful spire of the cathedral, seeming, in the distance, to rise like another gigantic poplar from the midst of an extensive plain. Here we crossed the Rhine, and left the French territory behind us, and at Kehl, the frontier town of Germany, had our passports examined by the officers of the Grand Duke of Baden, in whose dominions we now were.

The route from Kehl through Carlsruhe to Bruchsals, where we stayed for two hours, was through fine and interesting scenery. On the north of the line, the country is, on the whole, fiat, but well cultivated; but in the south, the railway runs at the foot of a range of hills shaggy with sombre masses of beech and fir trees, and broken up by wild ravines and dark gorges. On the summit and far down the slopes of these hills, patches of snow were still lying; and wherever the high ridge was broken, we caught sight of the Swiss mountains in front of us, still covered with their winter garb.

Bruchsals is a dull, uninteresting, and dingy town, with a deserted palace, and squalid churches, with whitewashed towers, and ugly, bulbous spires, religiously coated from time to time with black paint. I walked into one of these churches, and found some very good flamboyant tracery, stone pulpit, and what a recent writer calls a “narthex gallery,” and a fine stone-vaulted roof. The pseudo-classical reredos of the high altar, however, blocks up the finest window tracery in the church, and the furniture and ornaments are of the most trumpery and tinselly description. We were tempted to look into one altar which was evidently “made a double debt to pay,” and was put to the most sordid uses, The cover was of dirty linen, freckled with iron-mould ; and inside, instead of the relics of saints, it contained a strange and motley assortment of the relics of old brushes, stumps of brooms long since departed, miscellaneous rubbish, and dirty dusters. After two hours’ stay at Bruchsals, too short for rest and long enough materially to interfere with our journey, we continued our way.

The next place at which we stayed was Stuttgard, with its pretty environs gradually softening down into osier-covered flats and charming Cuyp-like meadows, embroidered with tiny silver streams of water. As we approached Ulm, where General Mack allowed the Austrian army which he commanded to be surrounded by the French troops, and then surrendered it to the Emperor Napoleon, the railway, instead of being tunnelled through the hills, ascends to their summit and passes by the side of a frightful ravine with only two or three feet between the rail and the precipice. On reaching Ulm, I had my first view of the Danube; and as my second evening in a railway-carriage was closing in, I passed from the territory of Wirtemberg into Bavaria, It-was dark when the train stopped at Augeburg and Munich, and at three o’clock in the morning we were all roused from a sound sleep to have our passports and baggage again examined, on this occasion by the Austrian authorities at the frontier city of
Saltzburg. Here I exchanged my French and German coin for small pieces of paper, the only currency to be met with in the empire of Austria. The ground at this place was covered with snow, and the fine clear night enabled the traveller to catch the magnificent outline of the Tyrolese Alps, with their jagged peaks and icy avalanches thrown into bold relief by the dark background of sky. As morning dawned we found ourselves passing along the right bank of the Danube, full, in this part of its course, of the most picturesque scenery.

Here we were whirled past -little railway stations, which seemed to be adult German toys made of carved wood and terra-cotta ornaments, resting on a base of green and yellow lava, scrupulously neat and very picturesque, and seemingly very familiar to us from their resemblance to the treasures of our infancy.

Early in the afternoon of Thursday we reached Vienna, and, having rested there for the night, left by train at noon the next day for Pest. Except in the neighbourhood of Presburg, where the railway passes along the western roots of the Carpathian range of mountains, the road to the modem capital of Hungary lies over a long flat expanse, unbroken by any height, until we come to Gran Nana, and again catch sight of the Danube. The country up to that point is indeed rich and fertile, scored over with furrows of wondrous length and marvellous straightness, but monotonous in the extreme. The chief, and, indeed, almost the only, relief to the eye are the pretty acacia hedges in the neighbourhood of the stations along the line of road. Unlike the stations from Munich to Vienna, these Hungarian ones are uninteresting and neglected, not to say squalid. The bilingular board, which tells the name of the place both in vernacular Hungarian and in official German, informs the traveller that he is still in this empire of heterogeneous races, which it seems impossible to weld into one people.

Here we were reminded that we were approaching the termination of Western civilization, and were on the very skirts of the unchanging East. Instead of boys with newspapers, brandishing the Times or the Standard before our eyes, and offering us our choice of the daily literature of the West, little girls, with long plaits of hair dangling behind them, were quietly soliciting the attention of the travellers to their water-jars, and offering them a glass of clear spring water in exchange for their kreutzers.

There is one great pleasure which the English traveller will appreciate: in his journey through Hungary. Nowhere else on the Continent will he meet with so many persons who are able to speak English. And as the acquisition. of our language, in the first place, arises from genuine love for English literature and from admiration of the English constitution, Hungarians make, for that reason, the most agreeable companions with whom an Englishman can travel. In former times, the French language and literature exerted a powerful and perceptible influence on the Continent. With the decline—I don’t know whether I might not properly say, the fall of French literature—the prevalence of the French language has diminished, and throughout Germany and Hungary the English language is rapidly taking its place. I do not remember that we were at any time in a railway carriage without finding some fellow-traveller who possessed a knowledge of English, oftentimes accurate, and with a most perfect command over the pronunciation. In our journey from Vienna to Pest, we had amongst our fellow-passengers a miller from Buda,¹ and his son, a student of the Polytechnic School at Dresden. They assured us that the improvements in agriculture throughout Hungary, since the visit made by many of their countrymen to England at the time of the Exhibition of 1851, was very perceptible; and that the improvement had extended to the farm dwellings, and in some measure to the cottages of the labourers. Since that time the demand for agricultural implements had been so large and constant, that three or four English firms have now agents settled in Hungary, through whom they are supplied. Subsequent to this conversation, our attention was directed to the large quantities of agricultural implements, bearing the well-known names of English makers, waiting to be forwarded to all parts of Hungary from Bazias, where they had arrived from England by the way of the Black Sea. The large sale of such goods is the more
remarkable, as the farmers throughout Hungary are heavy sufferers from the depression of all things in their country; and money, especially coin, is at the present moment very scarce, in consequence of the means to which the Austrian Government has been obliged to resort, in order to sustain for a time the disordered finances of the empire.

But the influence of England, as we were sometimes pleasingly reminded, extends beyond the regions of politics and of literature. In the interior of Hungary expressions of warmest admiration for the English Church may be heard from the lips of persons who have no thoughts of abandoning their own Church, but who long for its reform after the model of that which has been carried out by the Church in England. At a railway station in one of the largest towns in Hungary I met with two ladies, one of whom had been educated in a school at a little village in Essex, and who contrasted most unfavourably the sermons to which at times she was compelled to listen, with those she had been accustomed to hear as a schoolgirl in England. It was strange to hear in tho interior of Hungary from passengers on the railway, casually met with, the names of friends now at rest, whose teaching was still freshly remembered. One of the ladies mentioned to me that her father, on his death-bed, had placed in the hands of his two daughters the Paroissien, or Church service-book of the Roman Church, bound in one volume with a copy of the Common Prayer-Book of the English Church, and that this dying gift was religiously cherished by those to whom they were bequeathed. It was pleasing to meet at this distance from England with those who were kept steadfast to their own Church by the catholic teaching of a country pastor in England; and I could not help musing on what might possibly be the influence, for ever unknown until the day of judgment, of the earnest and faithful services and teaching of even the most remote and humblest of the village churches of England.

For a long time past the reiteration of the Iast dogma of the Roman Church, the immaculate conception by the mother of the Blessed Virgin, has filled the sermons of zealous parish priests with matter painful to a delicate mind. This and the blessedness of paying Peter’s pence, with anecdotes of the good fortune both here and in purgatory of those who are punctual and liberal in such payments, have latterly been the staple of not very edifying homilies, to the loss of the proper influence of the Church. On all sides, in France, in Germany, and especially in Austria, during our journey we heard words of bitter hatred and accusations of fearful import made against the priesthood of these countries by men: who are still avowedly faithful sons of the Church. Feeble indeed appears to be the hold which the Roman Catholic, Church still maintains over the affections of her children in Continental Europe; and amidst the shortcomings and defects of the Church in England, which none know more surely than those who are her truest sons, it is still a comfort to feel that in no part of the world does the Church exert so direct an influence and has so deep a hold upon the love and obedience of her sons as in our own country.

I cannot pass over the subject of Hungary without one word on the state of feeling which exists with reference to Austria. The Imperial Government has contrived to obliterate the line of separation between the conservative and movement parties of Hungary. Time was when the enemies of Austria were chiefly to be found in a particular class of society. They are now to be met with amongst all classes, or rather they embrace almost every individual of every class. Indeed, one grows almost to pity and even to sympathise with a Government of whom no one, by any chance, speaks a word of commendation. I met, in my short trip, with Hungarians of every grade in society—tradesmen, merchants, literary men, magnates, and the representatives of old historic families, and not men only, but women also—and amongst all these there was but one sentiment, that of bitter hatred to Austria, tempered and softened, but rendered more dangerous by contempt.

This feeling: of hostility to the ruling body extends towards the officers of the Government. In the restaurants or at railway stations, if an Austrian officer is seated at a table, however crowded the room may be, he occupies it alone ; nay, to dress like these detested Austrians is enough to close the doors of the leaders of Hungarian fashion upon an Hungarian himself. Hatred to the Government of Austria, which is fast becoming hatred to the Emperor also, the uncrowned ruler of Hungary, is a national sentiment which is deepening every moment, and which only waits the fast-hastening moment of Austria’s necessity to show itself in acts of hostility.

This animosity is not at all peculiar to the Magyar race. During the war with Hungary, it is well known that the Croats of Hungary, under the influence of their Ban Jellachich, remained faithful to Austria, and rendered the empire most important services. They are now to be classed amongst the most bitter of her opponents. The deception practised by the Government of Vienna towards the Ban of Croatia, and the refusal of the Emperor to ratify the engagements made in his name with this people, is believed to have broken the heart of Jellachich; and the circumstances of his death are not likely to be effaced from the minds of those who loved him. The Serbs of Austria, again, a numerous, and from their geographical situation a most influential body, are naturally discontented with the assistance which the Catholic Emperor lends the Turks in all differences between the Porte and the Christian subjects of Turkey; and sympathy for the unmerited sufferings of their brethren is naturally and necessarily fostering a spirit of opposition to the Government at Vienna. Alas! for that nation, when the time of trial comes! Peterwarden² at present groans with the number of suspected but untried prisoners from Venetia, but Austria will require to prepare many a fortress more if all who rebel against her strange and capricious rule, and her vexatious and childish interference, are to be confined in dungeons such as that which juts out into the Danube. May her rulers be wise, and, above all, learn to be truthful whilst they can! The truest friends of Austria are those who will faithfully point out the errors of her government, not those who palliate or attempt to deny the misrule and the mistakes of her rulers. Almost every race subject to Austria considers itself oppressed, and this is surely a great prima facie proof that they are so.

A nation may be mistaken as to the means by which, in its madness, it endeavours to rid itself of its oppressors, but no nation can be mistaken as to the fact of the existence of wrong and oppression.

It was the evening of Friday when we arrived at Pesth ; and as we were driven to our hotel through the streets behind a splendid pair of horses with marvellously little harness, we felt that we were in a country of horsemen, and in a land where men, according to the Hungarian saying, are born drivers. Our hotel on the quay was the cleanest, and in other respects the most comfortable, of any in which I had slept since leaving London; and the supper or dinner—in railway travelling the order of one’s meals gets sadly dislocated—was the best which we had tasted during our journey. Hungarian wines now made their appearance at table, and we could not help expressing our surprise that such wines are so little known to us in England. The Villani wine, which we tasted here for the first time, but which we afterwards frequently met with, is a remarkably cheap wine, and, with much of the body of port, possesses the delicacy of good claret. Little judge as I am of wine, I could not but feel that the
admiration of my companion was not without cause. Much of this wine, we were afterwards told, is, in fact, imported into England, having first been disguised and adulterated by the French dealers, and called Bordeaux or Burgundy. Pure, however, as we drank it at Pesth and in Servia, such a wine would, I imagine, speedily become a favourite drink at our English tables.

Believing, without taking’ the trouble to make much inquiry, that we could reach Semlin immediately opposite Belgrade before daybreak next morning, we left Pesth, by the steamboat of the Austrian Lloyds’ Company, early on Saturday morning. In this expectation, however, we were disappointed; and it was not until between three and four o’clock on Sunday afternoon that we arrived at Semlin. For a little distance, after leaving Pesth, the right bank of the Danube is interesting and at particular spots very fine. The height on which the fortress of Buda is situated, and a still more commanding height a little below Buda, crowned with fortifications, and intended ss a standing menace to Pesth, are all the more picturesque from contrast with the low grounds opposite. Our course now led us between some well-wooded islands, sufficiently diversified to make the scenery interesting; soon, however, this was exchanged for a broad stream, bounded on both sides by banks which were perfectly alike, very rich,
covered with scemingly interminable forests of young trees gay with the light green foliage of spring, and fringed with margins of gigantic rushes, and lines of mud-banks in the foreground. Here and there we came upon a village, which as it was almost hidden behind the trees, and sunk below the level of the banks of the river, we should have passed without notice, except for the watermills, which lie on the river and proclaim the fact of the existence of a village. This, and teams of thirty or forty horses, dragging a line of heavily laden barges against the stream, were almost the only signs that the country in the neighbourhood of the river was inhabited. Belts of young oaks stretching to the water, with an occasional meadow coming to the river’s edge, full of troops of half-wild horses, are pleasing enough in themselves; but where this kind of scenery extends without any great variety for two or three hundred miles, it becomes tedious and monotonous in the extreme.

The chief-cabin passengers on board of our steamboat consisted, with the exception of ourselves, of Hungarian Iadies and gentlemen, and an Austrian officer going to Semlin with some troops, The costume of the Hungarian gentry is very graceful; the short black cloak, or else a tunic of the same colour, both richly embroidered, and the former ornamented invariably with a cord falling on the back, tightly-fitting pearl-grey pantaloons, and Hessian boots, make a very becoming and gentlemanly dress. The costume of the ladies, though perhaps less distinctive, is worn with equal taste, Indeed, no ladies appear more gracefully than those of Hungary, and their naturally fine and tall figures are set off by the seemingly unstudied, but becoming way in which they dress

Onur fore-cabin passengers were, of course, of a different class, and the dresses here were of a more motley character. We had taken on board at Pesth drafts from two or three Austrian and Hungarian regiments, proceeding to the garrison down the river; shepherds from Croatia and the Banat, some in tattered cloaks of blanket, others in huge jackets of sheepskin made with the fleece on the inside; traders from Belgrade and other parts of Servia, with their very picturesque national: costume, half-Hungarian, half-Turkish; Greek sailors, Wallachian drovers, Bosnian and Bulgarian peasants—each class in a distinctive dress. Amongst these were sturdy men, with long black locks hanging down their necks, who spent the day in playing with their children, and who were waited on submissively by their wives; whilst, calm and indifferent amidst the Babel of voices and the confusion which reigned around, a Turk, bound to Constantinople, squatted on the deck and smoked his chiboque in peace. Every landing-place added to the variety of these deck passengers.

At dusk, on Saturday, when we hoped we were getting near to Semlin, the vessel’s head was swung round, and, soon after sunset, we anchored for the night: with a river full of shallows, and a river-bank which possesses no very distinctive features, it is dangerous to allow the vessel to go on in the nighttime. Next morning we passed the mouth of the Drave, and saw the frowning walls of Peterwarden, where the Italian prisoners are mostly confined; and, after a few more hours of a tedious passage, be-
tween three and four in the afternoon reached Semlin, the last town in the dominions of the Emperor of Austria, at which we were to stop. Here, again, our baggage was to be examined—why, it would be difficult to say, unless we could be suspected of carrying contraband out of Austria, as at Saltzburg we might have brought it in. Had we anything prohibited? was demanded. I answered, “No.” “Not any books?” ‘Well, I had a few books—Ranke’s “History of Servia,” Bowring’s “Servian Anthology,” and a few others, which, with a Bible and Common Prayer-book, I had thrust into my portmanteau on leaving London. They were looked at, and, after due consideration, as became so weighty a matter, passed, and I was free to land at Semlin.

The care which the Austrian Government takes to prevent its subjects being corrupted by improper books is ludicrously great. For a long time “My Novel,” by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, was a prohibited book in the territories of the Kaiser, because Dr. Riccabocca, one of the characteis, is an Italian exile; and the novel was only removed from the “Index Expurgatorius” of Austria, and allowed to be read by the liege subjects of the Emperor, when the author had become Secretary of State in a Conservative administration, and there appeared some probability that Austria might require the support of the Cabinet of which Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer was a distinguished member. The censorship of the press, and the regulation of the post-office, are managed in such a way as to appear very capricious to those who suffer; people in all parts of Austria complain that they are allowed to receive English newspapers with some regularity for a few weeks, and are occasionally permitted to read articles which, at least by implication, are not complimentary to the government of the Emperor: when suddenly two or three numbers in succession are seized, and when curiosity is whetted as to the kind of article or the scrap of news which has given alarm at Vienna, and a sight of the-obnoxious newspaper has been with difficulty procured, it is oftentimes found that there was not a word which could have afforded any reason for the confiscation, but that this was done solely in exercise of the power which the very paternal Government chooses to exert, and in virtue of its solicitude to make its children feel that they are still in leading-strings and in the swaddling-bands of infancy, and watched over with tender and parental care.

Semlin, where we had now landed, stands immediately opposite Belgrade, and, like that city, is situated on the point of land at the junction of the Save with the Danube. The population of this part of Hungary is, for the most part, Servian ; and the inhabitants, who are members of the orthodox or Eastern Church, are under the spiritual jurisdiction of the patriarch of Carlovitz,³ the metropolitan of those Servians who are resident in Austria. Many of the historic monuments, not only of the Servians, but of the Servian empire, such as it was in the days of Stephen Dushan, are in this part of Hungary; and when the yoke of the Ottoman power pressed heavily upon the people of Servia Proper, large numbers of the inhabitants fled from their oppressors, and settled amongst their brethren on the north bank of the Save. At the close of the seventeenth century six and thirty thousand families emigrated with the patriarch of Servia, and this number was afterwards largely increased by those who fled from their local tyrants and from some act of temporary oppression. For a long time direct inducements were held out by Austria to these emigrants, in the shape of advantages such as grants of land and freedom from all taxation, and stipulations securing the freedom of religious worship under the government of their own bishops, and in accordance with the rites of the orthodox Church.⁴ By such means as these Sclavonia was filled with its present Servian population.

The town of Semlin derives all its importance from its nearness to Belgrade; the siege of which fortress has secured to its Austrian neighbour the notice of history, whilst the quarantine establishment which formerly existed there in great rigour, the large garrison which is still maintained there, and the regulation which compels all passengers proceeding to Belgrade from the West to land at this place, secures to Semlin a certain amount of trade. For the convenience of traffic it has been built in the low grounds on the margin of the Danube, and, as a consequence, it is very unhealthy, and subject at all times to agues and fevers. The whole appearance of the town proclaims that it is one of the odds and ends of the Austrian empire, and strangely recalls to mind the rugged unoccupied ground which is found in the outskirts of thriving and increasing town, or round an unfinished railway station. Acres of ground, half-flooded and patchy with pools of stagnant water; pollarded willows alternating with booths and small houses to the bank of the river; wooden guard-houses, rickety sentry-boxes, and little boarded and temporary huts for Custom-house officers, pitched without order upon a bank of cinders and chips, interpose between the landing-place and the older part of the town, where the Turks, who for some time possessed Semlin, have left the traces of their occupation.

In the centre of the town is a square, consisting of a large pebble-paved space. On one side of this stands an inn. A church and parsonage, with low Turkish houses, consisting only of apartments on the ground-floor, with heavy far-projecting roofs of tiles and narrow-barred windows, occupy another side. Sheds for goods and cattle, and a long blank wall, with walnut-trees showing themselves above, fill up a third; whilst a shop or two jutting before, and trying to shut out of sight the cemetery upon the rising ground behind, make the fourth side, From this square small narrow lanes run in all directions.

As most travellers who are proceeding to Belgrade will be detained under one pretext or another in Semlin, and as the guide-book here begins to grow chary of information, let me add that “The Lion” inn will be found commodious, clean, and tolerable, to any one who is not unreasonably fastidious. The furniture is scanty, and the floors, of course, are bare of carpets; but this is very necessary, for most part of the year, in this climate. The ground-floor rooms consist of the bar, which opens into the travellers’ common room, a smell room where meat is hung and animals perhaps slaughtered, and a porter’s lodge. The open space in the centre is full, if such a figure of speech be allowable, with dust and the accumulated fragments of crockery. All this, however, is but of little moment to the traveller who has been accustomed to the want of accommodation, and to the dirtiness of an inn in the interior of Germany. At Semlin, as in Servia, to which it properly belongs, even though things be dingy and dusty, they are rarely unclean. The sleeping apartments are very fair; and I preserve a grateful memory of the good temper and obliging disposition of the Servian Dame Quickly who presides over this inn. I am not sure whether the town boasts of another inn of the size of this one; but whether this be so or not, if a traveller wishes to rest for the night, he will be able to do so at “The Lion.”

After endeavouring to make up for the imperfect toilet of the last two days, I walked out to visit the Servian church of St. Nicholas, which stands near the square, On the west of this building is situated the ample parsonage attached to the church, and whilst looking at the tombs of one or two of the former priests who rest in the churchyard, one of the servants, and a barefooted lad, who proved to be one of the children of the present priest, came and invited us to inspect the church. It is a plain building without much character, divided internally into sanctuary, choir, nave, and narthex, and having an external porch running half across the western front, the other half being occupied by a tower, the ground stage of which is a receptacle for wood and timber, whilst the upper part is a belfry having four bells. In the nave of the church a pulpit projects from the north wall, and is entered by stairs made in the thickness of the wall. The ambo, which is of two steps, stands in front of the central door of
the iconostasis, and is placed half on and half projecting before the line of separation between the choir and nave. The altar is of wood, and the font in the south-west
comer of the narthex of copper. As in all Servian churches which have narthex gallery, the one in this church is now unused for the purposes for which it was originally built, and was filled with school desks and lumber. On the altar stood two icons, that on the north side of St. Nicholas, the patron saint, and that on the south of our blessed Lord. But what struck me as most noteworthy about this church, was an iron cross fastened to the south wall of the church on the outside. It is some six feet in height, most beautifully foliated, and as it appeared to me, of very superior workmanship, and well worthy the attention of any one who may be staying at Semlin for a few hours. At the intersection of the arms of the cross with the upright is a small triptich, with figures of saints inside and outside; now, however, from exposure to the weather, almost entirely obliterated. The cross is most probably of Italian workmanship, and has no doubt been removed from the place for which it was made and in which it originally stood.

Next morning, being impatient to leave Semlin for Belgrade, we rose early with the hope of getting across by the first ferry-boat, but we found that it was a holiday, and were told that we could not cross. This was the more tantalising as the steamboats were taking their passengers on board, for places above and below Belgrade, within the Austrian territory. In this strait we were told that we had better see the Platz commandant, without whose permission we could not leave the dominions of the Kaiser. On proceeding to his house we found that he was still in bed, and we had to wait until he could be seen. Having obtained an interview, the requisite permission was at length granted, and we now thought our difficulties at an end. On arriving, however, at the landing-place, we found that though the Platz commandant had full power to grant us permission to depart, yet that the scrupulous officer of Customs, in the absence of his superior, could not undertake to satisfy himself that the signature to our permit was really that of the Platz commandant. We had, therefore, to undertake a new journey to the house of the inspector of Austrian customs. He, like the Platzcommandant, was still slumbering in bed, and we had to await his rising. On seeing the document which we presented to him, he pronounced the signature to be the veritable production of the Platz commandant ; but that though we had obtained the necessary permission, yet that it was of no avail, as no boat was crossing the Danube on that day. Seeing us somewhat annoyed at this news, the inspector, however, kindly offered to use his endeavours to procure us a boat, for which, however, on account of the circumstances, and in consideration of the day, we must, he informed us, pay rather highly. We refused to consider this an obstacle, and he undertook to procure us a boat, which, after waiting nearly another hour, was brought round to the landing-place. It proved to be the boat of the inspector himself, and that he had been so long engaged in the difficult task of hiring himself to serve us. After a row of nearly three miles, the estimated distance between Semlin and Belgrade, across the Save, along two or three low marshy islands, half covered with water and brown sickly-looking grass, and dotted over with Austrian guard-houses, which are built on piles and ascended by a ladder, we at length found ourselves in front of the quay at Belgrade.

1. BoJ note: At this time, Budapest was separated into three towns, with Buda being the administrative and noble centre of Hungary, while Pest was the mercantile centre. ↩︎
2. BoJ note: Petrovaradin Fortress, which also served as a dungeon. ↩︎
3. BoJ note: since the early 1700s, the Orthodox in the Austrian Empire were represented by the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan of Sremski Karlovci. ↩︎
4. BoJ note: nominally, this was a right that Serbian Orthodox Church negotiated in 1690 and enshrined in the “Privileges” of Leopold I, but the adherence to the “Privileges” varied depending on the political needs of Vienna. ↩︎