apparently more general here than at any other place I visit in Europe.  I apprehend it to be a peculiarity that has become hereditary with the citizens, from their city having been so often and for so long the theatre of uncertain fate and distracting political disturbances.  It is the half-startled expression of people with the ever-present knowledge of insecurity.  But they are a warm-hearted, impulsive set of fellows, and when, while looking through the museum, we happen across Her Britannic Majesty’s representative at the Servian court, who is doing the same thing, one of them unhesitatingly approaches that gentleman, cap in hand, and, with considerable enthusiasm of manner, announces that they have with them a countryman of his who is riding around the world on a bicycle.  This cooler-blooded and dignified gentleman is not near so demonstrative in his acknowledgment as they doubtless anticipated he would be; whereat they appear quite puzzled and mystified.

Three carriages with cyclers and their friends accompany us a dozen kilometres out to a wayside mehana (the Oriental name hereabouts for hotels, wayside inns, etc.); Douchan Popovitz, and Hugo Tichy, the captain of the club, will ride forty-five kilometres with me to Semendria, and at 4 o’clock we mount our wheels and ride away southward into Servia.  Arriving at the mehana, wine is brought, and then the two Servians accompanying me, and those returning, kiss each other, after the manner and custom of their country; then a general hand-shaking and well-wishes all around, and the carriages turn toward Belgrade, while we wheelmen alternately ride and trundle over a muddy — for it has rained since noon — and mountainous road till 7.30, when relatives of Douchan Popovitz, in the village of Grotzka, kindly offer us the hospitality of their house till morning, which we hesitate not to avail ourselves of.  When about to part at the mehana, the immortal Igali unwinds from around his waist that long blue girdle, the arranging and rearranging of which has been a familiar feature of the last week’s experiences, and presents it to me for a souvenir of himself, a courtesy which I return by presenting him with several of the Byzantine coins given to me by the Belgrade antiquary as before mentioned.  Beyond Semendria, where the captain leaves us for the return journey, we leave the course of the Danube, which I have been following in a general way for over two weeks, and strike due southward up the smaller, but not less beautiful, valley of the Morava River, where we have the intense satisfaction of finding roads that are both dry and level, enabling us, in spite of the broiling heat, to bowl along at a sixteen-kilometre pace to the village, where we halt for dinner and the usual three hours noontide siesta.  Seeing me jotting down my notes with a short piece of lead-pencil, the proprietor of the mehana at Semendria, where we take a parting glass of wine with the captain, and who admires America and the Americans, steps in-doors for a minute, and returns with a telescopic pencil-case, attached to a silken cord of the Servian” national colors, which he places abound my neck, requesting me to wear it around the world, and, when I arrive at my journey’s end, sometimes to think of Servia.