Several quaint incidents had recalled this period during my tour. For instance, at Manasia, I saw rudely engraven on the church wall,—
Wolfgang Zastoff,
Kaiserlicher Forst-Meister im Maidan.
Die 1 Aug. 1721.
Semendria is three hours' ride from Posharevatz; the road crosses the Morava, and everywhere the country is fertile, populous, and well cultivated. Innumerable massive turrets, mellowed by the sun of a clear autumn, and rising from wide rolling waters, announced my approach to the shores of the Danube. I seemed entering one of those fabled strong holds, with which the early Italian artists adorned their landscapes. If Semendria be not the most picturesque of the Servian castles of the elder period, it is certainly by far the most extensive of them. Nay, it is colossal. The rampart next the Danube has been shorn of its fair proportions, so as to make it suit the modern art of war. Looking at Semendria from one of the three land sides, you have a castle of Ercole di Ferrara; looking at it from the water, you have the boulevard of a Van der Meulen.
The Natchalnik accompanied me in a visit to the fortress, protected from accident by a couple of soldiers; for the castle of Semendria is still, like that of Shabatz, in the hands of a few Turkish spahis and their families. The news from Shabatz having produced a alight ferment, we found several armed Moslems at the gate; but they did not allow the Servians to pass, with the exception of the Natchalnik and another man. "This is new," said he; "I never knew them to be so wary and suspicious before." We now found ourselves within the walls of the fortress. A shabby wooden café was opposite to us; a mosque of the same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right. The cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee. His worship was so proud, that he scarcely deigned to speak. The Disdar Aga, a somewhat more approximative personage, now entered the tottering chardak, (the carpenters of Semendria seem to have emigrated en masse,) and proffered himself as Cicerone of the castle.
Mean and abominable huts, with patches of garden ground filled up the space inclosed by the gorgeous ramparts and massive towers of Semendria. The further we walked the nobler appeared the last relic of the dotage of old feudal Servia. In one of the towers next the Danube is a sculptured Roman tombstone. One graceful figure points to a sarcophagus, close to which a female sits in tears; in a word, a remnant of the antique—of that harmony which dies not away, but swells on the finer organs of perception.
"Eski, Eski. Very old," said the Disdar Aga, who accompanied me.
"It is Roman," said I.
"Roumgi?" said he, thinking I meant Greek.
"No, Latinski," said a third, which is the name usually given to Roman remains.