Arriving at the next village, we found the whole place in a hubbub and commotion.  The men were arming and collecting horses.  We went straight to the post-office to hear the rights of the story; the facts were mainly as I have related them.  The excitement appeared to increase as the crowd flocked in from the fields.  Horses were being saddled, powder served out, and arrangements made for a systematic battue of the robbers.  After amusing ourselves by watching the warlike preparations, we rode on to Kucainia.

We were hospitably received by a fellow-countryman who is working the mines there.  We did justice to his capital dinner, and told our robber story, which our host capped with the rumours of a communistic rising down south.

After a short stay at Kucainia, we made arrangements for returning over the Danube; but this time we proposed to strike the river at Belo-breska, higher up than Milanovacz.  We had dropped our other friend, so H——­ and I hired a light cart for the thirty miles to Belo-breska, my new horse meanwhile being tied on behind, and so we jogged along.  The road was good, but, like the good people in Thackeray’s novels, totally uninteresting.  We drove continually through fields of maize—­I say through the fields, for there was no hedge or fence anywhere.  The soil appeared to be splendidly fertile and well cultivated.

Arrived at Belo-breska, our object was to get across the Danube, and luckily we found a large flat-bottomed boat used for cattle.  The owner demanded a ducat (about nine shillings) for taking us across.  I thought it a monstrous charge, but the fellow had us in his power.  I do not think the Servians are much liked by those who have to do business with them.  From all I heard, Canning’s lines about the sharp practice of some nearer neighbours would apply very well to the Servians:—­

    “In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch
    Is giving too little, and asking too much.”

No sooner had we landed on the Hungarian side of the river than up came a customhouse official, who informed me that I must pay duty for my horse.  Of course, as a law-respecting Briton, I was ready enough to comply; but the fellow could not tell me what the charge was, saying his chief was absent, and might not be back for some hours.

This was exasperating to the last degree; the more so that it seemed so stupid that the man left in charge could not consult a tariff of taxes, or elicit from the villagers some information.  He was stolidly obstinate, and refused to let my horse go at any price, though I offered him what H——­ and I both thought a reasonable number of florins for the horse-duty.  In less than ten minutes I had worked myself into a rage—­a foolish thing to do with the thermometer at 96 deg. in the shade; but H——­ was provokingly calm, which irritated me still more.  There is an old French verse which, rendered into English, says—­

    “Some of your griefs you have cured,
      And the sharpest you still have survived;
    But what torments of pain you endured
      From evils that never arrived!”