Servia contains within itself the forms of the East and the West, as separately and distinctly as possible.  See a Natchalnik in the back woods squatted on his divan, with his enormous trowsers, smoking his pipe, and listening to the contents of a paper, which his secretary, crouching and kneeling on the carpet, reads to him, and you have the Bey, the Kaimacam, or the Mutsellim before you.  See M. Petronievitch scribbling in his cabinet, and you have the Furstlicher Haus-Hof-Staats-und Conferenz-Minister of the meridian of Saxe or Hesse.

Servia being an agricultural country, and not possessing a sea-port, there does not exist an influential, mercantile, or capitalist class per se.  Greeks, Jews, and Tsinsars, form a considerable proportion of those engaged in the foreign trade:  it is to be remarked that most of this class are secret adherents of the Obrenovitch party, while the wealthy native Servians support Kara Georgevitch.

In Belgrade, the best tradesmen are Germans, or Servians, who have learned their business at Pesth; or Temeswar; but nearly all the retailers are Servians.

Having treated so fully the aspects and machinery of Oriental life, in my work on native society in Damascus and Aleppo, it is not necessary that I should say here any thing of Moslem manners and customs.  The Turks in Belgrade are nearly all of a very poor class, and follow the humblest occupations.  The river navigation causes many hands to be employed in boating; and it always seemed to me that the proportion of the turbans on the river exceeded that of the Christian short fez.  Most of the porters on the quay of Belgrade are Turks in their turbans, which gives the landing-place, on arrival from Semlin, a more Oriental look than the Moslem population of the town warrants.  From the circumstance of trucks being nearly unknown in this country, these Turkish porters carry weights that would astonish an Englishman, and show great address in balancing and dividing heavy weights among them.

Most of the barbers in Belgrade are Turks, and have that superior dexterity which distinguishes their craft in the east.  There are also Christian barbers; but the Moslems are in greater force.  I never saw any Servian shave himself; nearly all resort to the barber.  Even the Christian barbers, in imitation of the Oriental fashion, shave the straggling edges of the eyebrows, and with pincers tug out the small hairs of the nostrils.

The native cafes are nearly all kept by Moslems; one, as I have stated elsewhere, by an Arab, born in Oude in India; another by a Jew, which is frequented by the children of Israel, and is very dirty.  I once went in to smoke a narghile, and see the place, but made my escape forthwith.  Several Jews, who spoke Spanish to each other, were playing backgammon on a raised bench, and seemed to have in their furs and dresses that “malproprete profonde et huileuse” which M. de Custine tells us characterizes the dirt of the north as contrasted with that of the southern nations.  The cafe of the Indian, on the contrary, was perfectly clean and new.