We now descended by paths like staircases cut in the rocks to the valley below.  Paul dismounted in a fright from his horse, and led her down; but my long practice of riding in the Druse country had given me an easy indifference to roads that would have appalled me before my residence there.  When we got a little way along the valley, I looked back, and the view from below was, in a different style, as remarkable as that from above.  Sokol looked like a little castle of Edinburgh placed in the clouds, and a precipice on the other side of the valley presented a perpendicular stature of not less than five hundred feet.

A few hours’ travelling through the narrow valley of the Bogatschitza brought us to the bank of the Drina, where, leaving the up-heaved monuments of a chaotic world, we bade adieu to the Tremendous, and again saluted the Beautiful.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Drina.—­Liubovia.—­Quarantine Station.—­Derlatcha.—­A Servian beauty.—­A lunatic priest.—­Sorry quarters.—­Murder by brigands.

The Save is the largest tributary of the Danube, and the Drina is the largest tributary of the Save, but it is not navigable; no river scenery, however, can possibly be prettier than that of the Drina; as in the case of the Upper Danube from Linz to Vienna, the river winds between precipitous banks tufted with wood, but it was tame after the thrilling enchantments of Sokol.  At one place a Roman causeway ran along the river, and we were told that a Roman bridge crossed a tributary of the Drina in this neighbourhood, which to this day bears the name of Latinski Tiupria, or Latin bridge.

At Liubovia the hills receded, and the valley was about half a mile wide, consisting of fine meadow land with thinly scattered oaks, athwart which the evening sun poured its golden floods, suggesting pleasing images of abundance without effort.  This part of Servia is a wilderness, if you will, so scant is it of inhabitants, so free from any thing like inclosures, or fields, farms, labourers, gardens, or gardeners; and yet it is, and looks a garden in one place, a trim English lawn and park in another:  you almost say to yourself, “The man or house cannot be far off:  what lovely and extensive grounds, where can the hall or castle be hid?"[7]

Liubovia is the quarantine station on the high road from Belgrade to Seraievo.  A line of buildings, parlatorio, magazines, and lodging-houses, faced the river.  The director would fain have me pass the night, but the captain of Derlatcha had received notice of our advent, and we were obliged to push on, and rested only for coffee and pipes.  The director was a Servian from the Austrian side of the Danube, and spoke German.  He told me that three thousand individuals per annum performed quarantine, passing from Bosnia to Sokol and Belgrade, and that the principal imports Were hides, chestnuts, zinc, and iron manufactures from the town of Seraievo.  On the opposite bank of the river was a wooden Bosniac guard-house.