known.  The method of killing them is peculiar.  The children of the house are generally selected for this office.  One secures a very scraggy fowl, while another arms himself with a hatchet of such formidable dimensions as to recall in the beholder all sorts of unpleasant reminiscences about Lady Jane Grey, Mauger, and other historic characters.  The struggling bird is then beheaded, and stripped of his plumage almost before his pulses have ceased to beat.  The first occasion on which I saw one of these executions, I could not help thinking of a certain cicerone at Rome, who, albeit that he spoke very good French and Italian, always broke out in English when he saw a picture of a martyrdom of any kind soever; ‘That one very good man, cut his head off.’  The man had but one idea of death, and the same may be said of these primitive people, who look upon decapitation as the easiest termination to a half-starved life.

Leaving Kotauski, where I passed the night of the 21st, at 7 A.M., I reached Brod at 8.30 in the evening.  The distance is considerable, but might have been accomplished in a far shorter time, had not the country been one sheet of ice, which rendered progression both difficult and dangerous.  Each person of whom I enquired the distance told me more than the one before, until I thought that a Bosnian ‘saht’ (hour) was a more inexplicable measure than a German ‘stunde’ or a Scottish ‘mile and a bittoch.’  At length, however, the lights of Brod proclaimed our approach to the Turkish town of that name.  On the left bank of the Save stands Austrian Brod, which, like all the Slavonic towns near the river, is thoroughly Turkish in character.  Late as it was, I hoped to cross the river the same night, and proceeded straight to the Mudir, who raised no objections, and procured men to ferry me across.  But we had scarcely left the shore when we were challenged by the Austrian sentry on the other side.  As the garrisons of all the towns on the frontier are composed of Grenzer regiments, or confinarii, whose native dialect is Illyric, a most animated discussion took place between the sentry on the one hand, and the whole of my suite, which had increased considerably since my arrival in the town.  My servant Eugene, who had been educated for a priest, and could talk pretty well, tried every species of argument, but without success; the soldier evidently had the best of it, and clenched the question with the most unanswerable argument—­that we were quite at liberty to cross if we liked; but that he should fire into us as soon as we came into good view.  There was therefore no help for it, and unwillingly enough, I returned to a khan, and crossed over early the following morning.  At his offices, close to the river, I found M.M., le Directeur de la Quarantine, and general manager of all the other departments.  He accompanied me to the hotel, which, though not exactly first-rate, appeared luxurious after my three months of khans and tents.  I was somewhat taken aback at finding that the steamer to Belgrade was not due for two days, and moreover that the fogs had been so dense that it had not yet passed up on its voyage to Sissek; whence it would return to Belgrade, calling at Brod, and other places en route.