The ride was truly enjoyable.  We soon left the road, and took our way along a forest path in Indian file, our picturesque guide leading the way.  The path came to an end before long, and we then followed the course of a little stream; but as it wound about in a most tortuous manner we were obliged to be continually crossing and recrossing.  Sometimes we rode through a jungle of reeds, at least eight feet high; then we had to scramble up a sandy bank.  The horses were like cats, and did their scrambling well; and at rare intervals we found ourselves on a fair stretch of open lawn which fringes the dense forest.  There were bits here and there which reminded one of Devonshire, where the luxuriant ferns dipped their waving plumes into the cool waters of the rocky stream.  In the forest, too, there were exquisite fairy-spots, where, as Spenser says, is found “beauty enregistered in every nook.”

After a time the way grew more wild in the character of the scenery, and at length the route we took was so rough that we had to dismount and lead our horses up the side of a steep hill.  It was tiresome work, for the heat was intense; but gaining the top, we were rewarded by a grand view of the Balkan Mountains rising directly south.  We ought to have made out Widdin and a stretch of the Danube at Palanka; but the middle of the day is the worst time for the details of a distant view.

Shortly after this we arrived at a small uncivilised-looking village.  The men were powerfully built in point of figure, and the women rather handsome.  Both sexes wear picturesque garments.  This village, like many others of the same kind, we found encircled by plum-orchards.  Thousands of barrels of dried plums are sent from Servia every year, not only to Western Europe, but to America.  Besides the consumption of the fruit in its innocent form of prunes, it is made into the spirit called slivovitz, the curse of Hungary and Roumania.

We made a halt at this village, and sent out a man to look up some horses.  He brought in several, but none of them were strong enough for my purpose.  It was then proposed that we should ride on to the next village.  Here we got dinner but no horses.  The meal was very simple but not unpalatable, finishing up with excellent Turkish coffee.

I am writing now of the status quo ante bellum, and I must say I was struck with the well-to-do aspect of the peasants in Servia.  By peasants I mean the class answering to the German bauer.  It is true they lack many things that Western civilisation regards as necessaries; but have they not had the Turks for their masters far into this century?  Turning over Lady Mary Wortley Montague’s Letters,[4] there occurs the following paragraph in her account of a journey through Servia in 1717:—­