the storm. There were large articles of furniture, the bodies of men,
women, and children, together with horses and cows, all floating on the
whirling waters.... It rained a waterspout for nearly five hours, and in
consequence the small valleys leading down from the mountain were in
some places thirty feet deep, for a time, in rushing water.... The
tramways in some places are destroyed; the mountain railway wrecked; the
vineyards on the hillside simply ruined.... You will scarcely credit me
when I tell you that a house situated at the bottom of the valley and
near the railway station was literally battered in by a _drift_ of
hailstones. The doors and windows were burst in before the inmates could
escape, and they were actually buried alive in ice. When I saw the house
twenty-two hours afterwards it was still four feet deep in hailstones,
though they had been clearing them away with spades. Just as I got there
they recovered the body of a poor woman who had perished. From this
spot, and for about a mile up the valley, no less than fifty-seven
bodies were found."]




CHAPTER III.

Maidenpek--Well-to-do condition of Servians--Lady Mary Wortley
Montague's journey through Servia--Troubles in Bulgaria--Communists
at Negotin--Copper mines--Forest ride--Robbers on the
road--Kucainia--Belo-breska--Across the Danube--Detention at
customhouse--Weisskirchen--Sleeping Wallacks.


We reached Maidenpek without further mishap, and here I began to make