Leaving the fortress, we returned to the Natchalnik’s house.  I was struck with the size, beauty, and flavour of the grapes here; I have nowhere tasted such delicious fruit of this description.  “Groja Smederevsko” are celebrated through all Servia, and ought to make excellent wine.

The road from Semendria to Belgrade skirts the Danube, across which one sees the plains of the Banat and military frontier.  The only place of any consequence on that side of the river is Pancsova, the sight of which reminded me of a conversation I had there some years ago.

The major of the town, after swallowing countless boxes of Morrison’s pills, died in the belief that he had not begun to take them soon enough.  The consumption of these drugs at that time almost surpassed belief.  There was scarcely a sickly or hypochondriac person, from the Hill of Presburg to the Iron Gates, who had not taken large quantities of them.  Being curious to know the cause of this extensive consumption, I asked for an explanation.

“You must know,” said an individual, “that the Anglo-mania is nowhere stronger than in this part of the world.  Whatever comes from England, be it Congreve rockets, or vegetable pills, must needs be perfect.  Dr. Morrison is indebted to his high office for the enormous consumption of his drugs.  It is clear that the president of the British College must be a man in the enjoyment of the esteem of the government and the faculty of medicine; and his title is a passport to his pills in foreign countries.”

I laughed heartily, and explained that the British College of Health, and the College of Physicians, were not identical.

The road from this point to Belgrade presents no particular interest.  Half an hour from the city I crossed the celebrated trenches of Marshal Laudohn; and rumbling through a long cavernous gateway, called the Stamboul Kapousi, or gate of Constantinople, again found myself in Belgrade, thankful for the past, and congratulating myself on the circumstances of my trip.  I had seen a state of patriarchal manners, the prominent features of which will be at no distant time rolled flat and smooth, by the pressure of old Europe, and the salient angles of which will disappear through the agency of the hotel and the stagecoach, with its bevy of tourists, who, with greater facilities for seeing the beauties of nature, will arrive and depart, shrouded from the mass of the people, by the mercenaries that hang on the beaten tracks of the traveller.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 17:  In Servian, Belgrade is called Beograd, “white city;”—­poetically, “white eagle’s nest.”]

[Footnote 18:  I think that a traveller ought to see all that he can; but, of course, has no right to feel surprised at being excluded from citadels.]

[Footnote 19:  One of the representatives of the ancient imperial family is the Earl of Devon, for Urosh the Great married Helen of Courtenay.]