The steam navigation on the Danube has been of incalculable benefit to Servia; it renders the principality accessible to the rest of Europe, and Europe easily accessible to Servia.  The steam navigation of the Save has likewise given a degree of animation to these lower regions, which was little dreamt of a few years ago.  The Save is the greatest of all the tributaries of the Danube, and is uninterruptedly navigable for steamers a distance of two hundred miles.  This river is the natural canal for the connexion of Servia and the Banat with the Adriatic.  It also offers to our summer tourists, on the completion of the Lombard-Venetian railway, an entirely new and agreeable route to the East.  By railroad, from Milan to Venice; by steamer from thence to Trieste; by land to Sissek; and the rest of the way by the rapid descent of the Save and the Danube.  By the latter route very few turnings and windings are necessary; for a straight line drawn from Milan to Kustendji on the Black Sea, the point of embarkation for Constantinople, almost touches Venice, Trieste, Belgrade, and the Danube.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

The Foreign Agents.

So much for the native government.  The foreign agents in Belgrade are few in number.  The most prominent individual during my stay there was Baron Lieven, a Russian general, who had been sent there on a special mission by the emperor, to steer the policy of Russia out of the shoals of the Servian question.

On calling there with Mr. Fonblanque, I found a tall military-looking man, between forty and forty-five years of age.  He entered at once, and without mystery, into the subject of his mission, and concluded by saying that “Servia owed her political existence solely to Russia, which gave the latter a moral right of intervention over and above the stipulations of treaties, to which no other power could pretend.”  As the public is already familiar with the arguments pro and contra on this question, it is at present unnecessary to recur to them.

Baron Lieven had in the posture of affairs at that time a difficult part to play, inasmuch as a powerful party sought to throw off the protectorate of Russia.  The baron, without possessing an intellect of the highest order, was a man of good sound judgment, and in his proceedings showed a great deal of frankness and military decision, qualities which attained his ends in all probability with greater success than if he had been endowed with that profound astuteness which we usually attribute to Russians.  This was his fifth mission into the Turkish dominions; so that, although not possessing the language, he was yet well acquainted with the Turkish character and Eastern affairs in general.  His previous mission had for its object to announce to the Sultan that, in accordance with the stipulations of the treaty of the 15th of July, 1840, the military and naval forces of the Emperor of Russia were at the service of his Highness.