As we entered, a cafe, with bare walls and a few shabby Turks smoking
in it, completed, along with the dirty street, a picture
characteristic of the fallen fortunes of Islam in Servia.

"There comes the cadi," said the collector, and I looked out for at
least one individual with turban of fine texture, decent robes, and
venerable appearance; but a man of gigantic stature, and rude aspect,
wearing a grey peasant's turban, welcomed us with undignified
cordiality. We followed him down the street, and sometimes crossing
the mud on pieces of wood, sometimes "putting one's foot in it," we
reached a savage-looking timber kiosk, and, mounting a ladder, seated
ourselves on the window ledge.

There flowed the Save in all its peaceful smoothness; looking out of
the window, I perceived that the high rampart, on which the kiosk was
constructed, was built at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the
water, and that the intervening space was covered with boats, hauled
up high and dry, and animated with the process of building and
repairing the barges employed in the river trade. The kiosk, in which
we were sitting, was a species of cafe, and it being Ramadan time, we
were presented with sherbet by a kahwagi, who, to judge by his look,
was a eunuch. I was afterwards told that the Turks remaining in the
fortified town are so poor, that they had not a decent room to show me
into.

A Turk, about fifty years of age, now entered. His habiliments were
somewhere between decent and shabby genteel, and his voice and manners
had that distinguished gentleness which wins--because it feels--its
way. This was the Disdar Aga, the last relic of the wealthy Turks of