Ascending rapidly, we were soon lost in the woods, catching only now and then a view of the golden plain through the dark green oaks and pines.  For full three hours our brilliant little party dashed up hill and down dale, through the most majestic forests, delightful to the gaze but unrelieved by a patch of cultivation, and miserably profitless to the commonwealth, till we came to a height covered with loose rocks and pasture.  “There is Tronosha,” said the Natchalnik, pulling up, and pointing to a tapering white spire and slender column of blue smoke that rose from a cul-de-sac formed by the opposite hills, which, like the woods we had traversed, wore such a shaggy and umbrageous drapery, that with a slight transposition, I could exclaim, “Si lupus essem, nollem alibi quam in Servia lupus esse!” A steep descent brought us to some meadows on which cows were grazing by the side of a rapid stream, and I felt the open apace a relief after the gloom of the endless forest.

Crossing the stream, we struck into the sylvan cul-de-sac, and arrived in a few minutes at an edifice with strong walls, towers, and posterns, that looked more like a secluded and fortified manor-house in the seventeenth century than a convent; for in more troubled times, such establishments, though tolerated by the old Turkish government, were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders.

A fine jolly old monk, with a powerful voice, welcomed the Natchalnik at the gate, and putting his hand on his left breast, said to me, “Dobro doche Gospody!” (Welcome, master!)

We then, according to the custom of the country, went into the chapel, and, kneeling down, said our thanksgiving for safe arrival.  I remarked, on taking a turn through the chapel and examining it minutely, that the pictures were all in the old Byzantine style—­crimson-faced saints looking up to golden skies.

Crossing the court, I looked about me, and perceived that the cloister was a gallery, with wooden beams supporting the roof, running round three sides of the building, the basement being built in stone, at one part of which a hollowed tree shoved in an aperture formed a spout for a stream of clear cool water.  The Igoumen, or superior, received us at the foot of the wooden staircase which ascended to the gallery.  He was a sleek middle-aged man, with a new silk gown, and seemed out of his wits with delight at my arrival in this secluded spot, and taking me by the hand led me to a sort of seat of honour placed in a prominent part of the gallery, which seemed to correspond with the makaa of Saracenic architecture.

No sooner had the Igoumen gone to superintend the arrangements of the evening, than a shabbily dressed filthy priest, of such sinister aspect, that, to use a common phrase, “his looks would have hanged him,” now came up, and in a fulsome eulogy welcomed me to the convent.  He related how he had been born in Syrmium, and had been thirteen years in Bosnia; but I suspected that some screw was loose, and on making inquiry found that he had been sent to this retired convent in consequence of incorrigible drunkenness.  The Igoumen now returned, and gave the clerical Lumnacivagabundus such a look that he skulked off on the instant.