The costume is very pretty and peculiar; it consists of a loose chemise, a short skirt of homespun, with a double apron front and back, formed of a very deep thick fringe of various colours.  This peculiar garment is called an obreska; I think it has no counterpart in female fashions elsewhere.  When the under-garment is white and fresh the effect is very good; but in the case of the very poor, if there are but scanty rags beneath, then, to speak mildly, the fringe is an inefficient covering.  But to-day every damsel is in her best; and how jauntily she wears the coloured scarf twisted round her head, which falls in graceful folds!  The Wallacks generally have their bare feet covered, not with boots, but with thongs of leather, something in the form of a sandal.  The Servian women dress quite differently, wear tight-fitting garments, richly embroidered when their means permit.  The men also figure largely in embroidery.

In the evening the peasants had a dance on the open space in front of the czarda, or village inn.  Of course we were there to look on.  I should observe that we had arranged to stay the night at Moldova, for the afternoon had been taken up in visiting a large manufactory for sulphuric acid in the neighbourhood.  The dance which wound up the day’s amusements can be easily described.  “Many a youth and many a maid” form a wide circle with arms interlaced, they move round and round in a marzurka step to the sound of music.  It appeared to me rather slow and monotonous.  I do not know whether the figure breaks up, leaving each couple more to their own devices; but we left them still revolving in a circle.

The following morning we were off on our travels again.  A short drive took us to Old Moldova, a village within the Military Frontier, regularly constructed, with guardhouse and other Government buildings, facing the Danube.  At this point begins the splendid road by the side of the river, made by the Hungarian Government in 1840.  It reaches as far as Orsova, taking the left bank of the Danube.  It would have been easier to have followed Trajan’s lead, and have made the road on the right bank; but there were political reasons for deciding otherwise.  The Hungarian Government, as a matter of course, would only construct this great work within their own territory:  the other side of the river is Servian.  The engineering difficulties in making this road were very great, but they have been everywhere overcome, and the result is a splendid piece of work.

Arriving at the Danube, we took a steamboat that would land us in Milanovacz in Servia.  The scenery here is magnificent; we were now in the defile of Kasan.  The waters of the mighty river are contracted within a narrow gorge, which in fact cleaves asunder the Carpathian range for a space of more than fifty miles.  The limestone rock forms a precipitous wall on either side, rising in some places to an altitude of more than two thousand feet sheer from the water’s edge.  The scenery of this wonderful pass is very varied; the bare rock with its vertical precipice gives place to a disturbed broken mass of cliff and scaur, flung about in every sort of fantastic form, or towering aloft like the ruined ramparts of some Titan’s castle.  Over all this a luxuriant vegetation has thrown a veil of exceeding beauty.