The sky was cloudy, and the captain seemed irresolute, whether to advise me to make the ascent or proceed to Banya.  The plethoric one-eyed clerk, with more regard to his own comfort than my pleasure, was secretly persuading the captain that the expedition would end in a ducking to the skin, and, turning to me, said, “You, surely, do not intend to go up to day, Sir?  Take the advice of those who know the country?”

“Nonsense,” said I, “this is mere fog, which will clear away in an hour.  If I do not ascend the Kopaunik now, I can never do so again.”

Plethora then went away to get the director to lend his advice on the same side; and after much whispering he came back, and announced that my horse was unshod, and could not ascend the rocks.  The director was amused with the clumsy bustle of this fellow to save himself a little exercise.  I, at length, said to the doubting captain, “My good friend, an Englishman is like a Servian, when he takes a resolution he does not change it.  Pray order the horses.”

We now crossed the Ybar, and ascending for hours through open pasture lands, arrived at some rocks interspersed with stunted ilex, where a lamb was roasting for our dinner.  The meridian sun had long ere this pierced the clouds that overhung our departure, and the sight of the lamb completely irradiated the rubicund visage of the plethoric clerk.  A low round table was set down on the grass, under the shade of a large boulder stone.  An ilex growing from its interstices seemed to live on its wits, for not an ounce of soil was visible for its subsistence.  Our ride gave us a sharp appetite, and we did due execution on the lamb.  The clerk, fixing his eyes steadily on the piece he had singled out, tucked up his sleeves, as for a surgical operation, and bone after bone was picked, and thrown over the rock; and when all were satisfied, the clerk was evidently at the climacteric of his powers of mastication.  After reposing a little, we again mounted horse.

A gentle wind skimmed the white straggling clouds from the blue sky.  Warmer and warmer grew the sunlit valleys; wider and wider grew the prospect as we ascended.  Balkan after Balkan rose on the distant horizon.  Ever and anon I paused and looked round with delight; but before reaching the summit I tantalized myself with a few hundred yards of ascent, to treasure the glories in store for the pause, the turn, and the view.  When, at length, I stood on the highest peak; the prospect was literally gorgeous.  Servia lay rolled out at my feet.  There was the field of Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar and entombed the ancient empire of Servia.  I mused an instant on this great landmark of European history, and following the finger of an old peasant, who accompanied us, I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad—­the scene of one of the bloodiest fights that preceded the resurrection of Servia as a principality.  The Morava glistened in its wide valley like a silver thread in a carpet of green, beyond which the dark mountains of Rudnik rose to the north, while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria walled in the prospect.