CHAPTER XIV
EAST SERVIA
At Nish the hotel received me on my return with much friendliness, but, though evidently anxious to oblige, was quite unable to give me any information as to East Servia, and prayed me to return to Belgrade by train. This not suiting my ideas at all, I started from Nish at 5 a.m. for Zaichar, and trusted the unravelling of the route to luck and my driver, one Marko, a stolid and friendly being.
Servia is an amazing land. The more I saw of it the more struck was I with its great fertility and its great capabilities, its rich and breezy uplands and its warm well-watered valleys. Corn, vines, tobacco, green crops, and every variety of fruit grow luxuriantly even with the present most primitive methods of cultivation. With knowledge and a little capital Servia should be a rich land. Unluckily both are wanting; the lamentable political differences which tear the kingdom make both almost impossible of attainment, and the small minority of plucky and intelligent men are struggling against almost impossible odds.
Nish had suspected me vaguely, but the farther I got up country the more forcibly did I realise that Servia was a raw quivering mass of politics, and that a change of some sort was imminent. Being provided with no letters of introduction, no one knew to which party I belonged, and I was cross-questioned and re-questioned with a persistency that, to put it mildly, was fatiguing. Before I had realised the extreme state of political tension, I rashly revealed, in reply to a straight question, that I had come direct from Cetinje, and was at once supposed to be supporting the possible succession of Prince Mirko to the Servian throne.
"If you say such things," said a man to me, "you must expect to be suspected, because we have no heir to the throne."
"But what is that to me? I have no wish to occupy your throne."
"Why have you come here?"
"To see Servia."
"Why do you wish to see Servia? Have you ever spoken to Prince Mirko?" and so on and so on, a long string of questions directed towards finding out which of the possible successors to that rickety seat I favoured.