New Orsova, one of the few remaining retreats of the Turks in Servia, is built on an island, and with its frail houses of yawning rafters looks very old.  Old Orsova, opposite which we now arrived, looked quite new, and bore the true German type of formal white-washed houses, and high sharp ridged roofs, which called up forthwith the image of a dining-hall, where, punctually as the village-clock strikes the hour of twelve, a fair-haired, fat, red-faced landlord, serves up the soup, the rindfleisch, the zuspeise, and all the other dishes of the holy Roman empire to the Platz Major, the Haupt-zoll-amt director, the Kanzlei director, the Concepist, the Protocollist, and hoc genus omne.

After a night passed in the quarantine, I removed to the inn, and punctually as the clock struck half past twelve, the very party my imagination conjured up, assembled to discuss the mehlspeise in the stencilled parlour of the Hirsch.

Favoured by the most beautiful weather, I started in a sort of caleche for Dreucova.  The excellent new macadamized road was as smooth as a bowling-green, and only a lively companion was wanting to complete the exhilaration of my spirits.

My fair fellow-traveller was an enormously stout Wallachian matron, on her way to Vienna, to see her daughter, who was then receiving her education at a boarding-school.  I spoke no Wallachian, she spoke nothing but Wallachian; so our conversation was carried on by my attempting to make myself understood alternately by the Italian, and the Spanish forms of Latin.

“Una bella Campagna,” said I, as we drove out Orsova.

“Bella, bella?” said the lady, evidently puzzled.

So I said, “Hermosa.”

“Ah! formosa; formosa prate,” repeated the lady, evidently understanding that I meant a fine country.

“Deunde venut?” Whence have you come?

“Constantinopolis;” and so on we went, supposing that we understood each other, she supplying me with new forms of bastard Latin words, and adding with a smile, Romani, or Wallachian, as the language and people of Wallachia are called by themselves.  It is worthy of remark, that the Wallachians and a small people in Switzerland, are the only descendants of the Romans, that still designate their language as that of the ancient mistress of the world.

As I rolled along, the fascinations of nature got the better of my gallantry; the discourse flagged, and then dropped, for I found myself in the midst of the noblest river scenery I had ever beheld, certainly far surpassing that of the Rhine, and Upper Danube.  To the gloom and grandeur of natural portals, formed of lofty precipitous rocks, succeeds the open smiling valley, the verdant meadows, and the distant wooded hills, with all the soft and varied hues of autumn.  Here we appear to be driving up the avenues of an English park; yonder, where the mountain sinks sheer into the river, the road must find its way along an open gallery, with a roof weighing millions of tons, projecting from the mountain above.