The friends in chorus promised that if she got better they would give the doctor a pig—a fat pig. The fat pig was earned, and many other pigs, and fruits, and presents of all kinds were received by the doctor and her staff from grateful patients.
CHAPTER XVI
There was now only one more dispensary to be established, and on September 9th I drove with Colonel Dragomiravitz, who was accompanied by his wife, and little son, to choose the site. We examined the map before we left, and the Colonel suggested Pruyelina. But when we reached this place, I didn't like its appearance. There was only the one road of approach, and Jelendo, a village further along the road, became our objective. But as we drove, the Colonel remembered that at Ovcharska Banja there were 150 Bosnian and Herzegovinian refugees, and that, hidden away amongst the mountains, were many villages, with neglected populations, and he decided that he would like the dispensary to be placed at Ovcharska.
Our road lay through Milanovatz and Chachak. At the latter place we stopped, and Colonel D. and I drank Turkish coffee at the hotel, whilst Madame took her little boy to spend the day with his grandmother. What has now become of them?
Beyond Chachak the country was gorgeously beautiful. The road lay alongside the wide Morava, and we faced, all the time, the forested Ovcharska mountains, 3,000 feet in height, a surprise of beauty even in this beautiful country. But when we turned the last corner, and found ourselves in the Ovcharska valley, I could scarcely contain my joy. A narrow and thickly-wooded valley, between high mountains, also densely forested; on the left of the wood, the adventurous Morava was rushing over boulders, and tumbling down steep rocks, in quest of its long-looked-for Nirvana, in the sea, and on the right of the road, which wound in and out amongst the trees of a thick wood, were again high mountains. Banja is the Serbian for baths, and Ovcharska is a nucleus of hot springs; they are not mineral, but contain, it is said, much radium. These springs bubbled here, there, and everywhere.
A few enclosures with wooden huts served as bathing centres, and peasant women, and men, suffering from rheumatism and other ailments, were bathing, in perfect faith that cures would follow. There was no village, but in a clearing of the forest stood one house, used by the timber contractor. This would, I saw at once, be suitable for emergency winter quarters. The only other buildings were little wooden cabins, which had recently been put up for the poor Bosnian and Herzegovinian refugees. Many of these were, in their picturesque clothes, strolling and sitting in the sunshine outside their huts.
This place was even more beautiful than Rudnik. But to my intense disappointment I saw no possible camping-ground for our dispensary. I told the Colonel; he thought there might be room enough where we stood, but I knew the necessary dimensions, and it was impossible.
"Very well," he said, "then we must go on to Jelendo." But he was evidently disappointed.