statistical, and historical inquiries, the results of which will be
found condensed at the termination of the narrative part of this work.




CHAPTER VII.

Return to Servia.--The Danube.--Semlin.--Wucics and
Petronievitch.--Cathedral Solemnity.--Subscription Ball.


After an absence of six months in England, I returned to the Danube.
Vienna and Pesth offered no attractions in the month of August, and I
felt impatient to put in execution my long cherished project of
travelling through the most romantic woodlands of Servia. Suppose me
then at the first streak of dawn, in the beginning of August, 1844,
hurrying after the large wheelbarrow which carries the luggage of the
temporary guests of the Queen of England at Pesth to the steamer lying
just below the long bridge of boats that connects the quiet sombre
bureaucratic Ofen with the noisy, bustling, movement-loving new city,
which has sprung up as it were by enchantment on the opposite side of
the water. I step on board--the signal is given for starting--the
lofty and crimson-peaked Bloxberg--the vine-clad hill that produces
the fiery Ofener wine, and the long and graceful quay, form, as it
were, a fine peristrephic panorama, as the vessel wheels round, and,
prow downwards, commences her voyage for the vast and curious East,
while the Danubian tourist bids a dizzy farewell to this last snug
little centre of European civilization. We hurry downwards towards the
frontiers of Turkey, but nature smiles not,--We have on our left the