After half an hour’s riding, the valley became wider, and we passed through meadow lands, cultivated by Moslem Bosniacs in their white turbans; and two hours further, entered a fertile circular plain, about a mile and a half in diameter, surrounded by low hills, which had a chalky look, in the midst of which rose the minarets and bastions of the town and castle of Novibazar.  Numerous gipsy tents covered the plain, and at one of them, a withered old gipsy woman, with white dishevelled hair hanging down on each side of her burnt umber face, cried out in a rage, “See how the Royal Servian people now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback,” alluding to the ancient custom of Christians not being permitted to ride on horseback in a town.[12]

On entering, I perceived the houses to be of a most forbidding aspect, being built of mud, with only a base of bricks, extending about three feet from the ground.  None of the windows were glazed; this being the first town of this part of Turkey in Europe that I had seen in such a plight.  The over-rider stopped at a large stable-looking building, which was the khan of the place.  Near the door were some bare wooden benches, on which some Moslems, including the khan-keeper, were reposing.  The horses were foddered at the other extremity, and a fire burned in the middle of the floor, the smoke escaping by the doors.  We now sent our letter to Youssouf Bey, the governor, but word was brought back that he was in the harem.

We now sallied forth to view the town.  The castle, which occupies the centre, is on a slight eminence, and flanked with eight bastions; it contains no regular troops, but merely some redif, or militia.  Besides one small well-built stone mosque, there is nothing else to remark in the place.  Some of the bazaar shops seemed tolerably well furnished; but the place is, on the whole, miserable and filthy in the extreme.  The total number of mosques is seventeen.

The afternoon being now advanced, I went to call upon the Mutsellim.  His konak was situated in a solitary street, close to the fields.  Going through an archway, we found ourselves in the court of a house of two stories.  The ground-floor was the prison, with small windows and grated wooden bars.  Above was an open corridor, on which the apartments of the Bey opened.  Two rusty, old fashioned cannons were in the middle of the court.  Two wretched-looking men, and a woman, detained for theft, occupied one of the cells.  They asked us if we knew where somebody, with an unpronounceable name, had gone.  But not having had the honour of knowing any body of the light-fingered profession, we could give no satisfactory information on the subject.

The Momke, whom we had asked after the governor, now re-descended the rickety steps, and announced that the Bey was still asleep; so I walked out, but in the course of our ramble learned that he was afraid to see us, on account of the fanatics in the town:  for, from the immediate vicinity of this place to Servia, the inhabitants entertain a stronger hatred of Christians than is usual in the other parts of Turkey, where commerce, and the presence of Frank influences, cause appearances to be respected.  But the people here recollected only of one party of Franks ever visiting the town.[13]