Author.  “Do you intend to go back?”

Dervish.  “I am in the hands of Allah Talaa.  These good Bosniacs here have built me this house, and given me this garden.  They love me, and I love them.”

Author.  “I am anxious to see the mosque, and mount the minaret if it be permitted, but I do not know the custom of the place.  A Frank enters mosques in Constantinople, Cairo, and Aleppo.”

Dervish.  “You are mistaken; the mosques of Aleppo are shut to Franks.”

Author.  “Pardon me; Franks are excluded from the mosque of Zekerieh in Aleppo, but not from the Osmanieh, and the Adelieh.”

Dervish.  “There is the Muezzin; I dare say he will make no difficulty.”

The Muezzin, anxious for his backshish, made no scruple; and now some Moslems entered, and kissed the hand of the Dervish.  When the conversation became general, one of them told me, in a low tone, that he gave all that he got in charity, and was much liked.  The Dervish cut some flowers, and presented each of us with one.

The Muezzin now looked at his watch, and gave me a wink, expressive of the approach of the time for evening prayer; so I followed him into the church, which had bare white-washed walls with nothing to remark; and then taking my hand, he led me up the dark and dismal spiral staircase to the top of the minaret; on emerging on the balcony of which, we had a general view of the town and environs.

Ushitza lies in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains.  The Dietina, a tributary of the Morava, traverses the town, and is crossed by two elegantly proportioned, but somewhat ruinous, bridges.  The principal object in the landscape is the castle, built on a picturesque jagged eminence, separated from the precipitous mountains to the south only by a deep gully, through which the Dietina struggles into the valley.  The stagnation of the art of war in Turkey has preserved it nearly as it must have been some centuries ago.  In Europe, feudal castles are complete ruins; in a country such as this, where contests are of a guerilla character, they are neglected, but neither destroyed nor totally abandoned.  The centre space in the valley is occupied by the town itself, which shows great gaps; whole streets which stood here before the Servian revolution, have been turned into orchards.  The general view is pleasing enough; for the castle, although not so picturesque as that of Sokol, affords fine materials for a picture; but the white-washed Servian church, the fac simile of everyone in Hungary, rather detracts from the external interest of the view.