The collector now accompanied me on a walk through the Servian town, and emerging on a wide space, we discovered the fortress of Shabatz, which is the quarter in which the remaining Turks live, presenting a line of irregular trenches, of battered appearance, scarcely raised above the level of the surrounding country.  The space between the town and the fortress is called the Shabatzko Polje, and in the time of the civil war was the scene of fierce combats.  When the Save overflows in spring, it is generally under water.

Crossing a ruinous wooden bridge over a wet ditch, we saw a rusty unserviceable brass cannon, which vain-gloriously assumed the prerogative of commanding the entrance.  To the left, a citadel of four bastions, connected by a curtain, was all but a ruin.

As we entered, a cafe, with bare walls and a few shabby Turks smoking in it, completed, along with the dirty street, a picture characteristic of the fallen fortunes of Islam in Servia.

“There comes the cadi,” said the collector, and I looked out for at least one individual with turban of fine texture, decent robes, and venerable appearance; but a man of gigantic stature, and rude aspect, wearing a grey peasant’s turban, welcomed us with undignified cordiality.  We followed him down the street, and sometimes crossing the mud on pieces of wood, sometimes “putting one’s foot in it,” we reached a savage-looking timber kiosk, and, mounting a ladder, seated ourselves on the window ledge.

There flowed the Save in all its peaceful smoothness; looking out of the window, I perceived that the high rampart, on which the kiosk was constructed, was built at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the water, and that the intervening space was covered with boats, hauled up high and dry, and animated with the process of building and repairing the barges employed in the river trade.  The kiosk, in which we were sitting, was a species of cafe, and it being Ramadan time, we were presented with sherbet by a kahwagi, who, to judge by his look, was a eunuch.  I was afterwards told that the Turks remaining in the fortified town are so poor, that they had not a decent room to show me into.

A Turk, about fifty years of age, now entered.  His habiliments were somewhere between decent and shabby genteel, and his voice and manners had that distinguished gentleness which wins—­because it feels—­its way.  This was the Disdar Aga, the last relic of the wealthy Turks of the place:  for before the Servian revolution Shabatz had its twenty thousand Osmanlis; and a tract of gardens on the other side of the Polje, was pointed out as having been covered with the villas of the wealthy, which were subsequently burnt down.

Our conversation was restricted to a few general observations, as other persons were present, but the Disdar Aga promised to call on me on the following day.  I was asked if I had been in Seraievo.[2] I answered in the negative, but added, “I have heard so much of Seraievo, that I desire ardently to see it.  But I am afraid of the Haiducks."[3]