struggle of Osman Bairactar with Michael, a Servian chief, and, as it
was explained to me, called up successive images of a war of
extermination, with its pyramids of ghastly trunkless heads, and
fields of charcoal, to mark the site of some peaceful village, amid
the blaze of which its inhabitants had wandered to an eternal home in
the snows and trackless woods of the Balkan. When I looked out of the
tavern window the dense vapours and torrents of rain did not elevate
my spirits; and when I cast my eyes on the minstrel I saw a peasant,
whose robust frame might have supported a large family, reduced by the
privation of sight, to waste his best years in strumming on a
monotonous viol for a few piastres.

I flung him a gratuity, and begged him to desist.

After musing an hour, I again ordered the horses, although it still
rained, and set forth, the road being close to the river, at one part
of which a fleet of decked boats were moored. I perceived that they
were all navigated by Bosniac Moslems, one of whom, smoking his pipe
under cover, wore the green turban of a Shereef; they were all loaded
with raw produce, intended for sale at Belgrade or Semlin.

The rain increasing, we took shelter in a wretched khan, with a mud
floor, and a fire of logs blazing in the centre, the smoke escaping as
it best could by the front and back doors. Gipsies and Servian
peasants sat round it in a large circle; the former being at once
recognizable, not only from their darker skins, but from their traits
being finer than those of the Servian peasantry. The gipsies fought
bravely against the Turks under Kara Georg, and are now for the most
part settled, although politically separated from the rest of the
community, and living under their own responsible head; but, as in