Through the Land of the Serb

by M. E. Durham

At Pozhega we had to put up the horses for an hour and find food for ourselves. The landlady—a stout woman with a good-natured face—was considerably exhausted, having been to the top of the hill to see the men shot. She had risen very early and had walked all the way, but there was a great crowd, and much to her annoyance she had not got a good view of the end. Nor could I make her understand that I had purposely avoided the sight myself.

From Pozhega it was but a few hours' drive to Ushitza, my next stopping-place, the prettiest little town that I know in Servia—a place that no traveller in the country should omit to visit. It sprawls through two wooded valleys in a mountainous country as beautiful as anyone need wish to see. It is hospitable and cheery, and should make an excellent centre for a sportsman, for I am told that the surrounding mountains are well supplied with game birds, that there is no lack of wolves and bears, and no difficulty about procuring permission to shoot. I clattered up to the inn, and it received me with characteristic simplicity; its landlady asked if I wanted a place as chambermaid, and was much mystified, for it seems that she had never before seen a lady travelling alone. Laughing over this, I gave my letter of introduction to the master of the establishment and asked him to have it delivered at once. It seemed a simple enough request, and I sat down to some coffee without any anxiety, unaware that he had stowed the letter away carefully behind the rakija bottles in the bar and had sent the potboy to tell the gentleman that his sister had arrived! He turned up in a great hurry, much mystified, as his only sister lived in America and had shown no symptoms of visiting him. The innkeeper then produced the letter and explained that, as the gentleman was a Bohemian and possessed the only pair of blue eyes in the town and I also was a blue-eyed foreigner, it had never occurred to him to doubt our relationship. I had a gay time in Ushitza. The schoolmasters, the head of the police, and other local authorities all came to call on me and devise plans for me, and we drank beer festively by the market-place, for as I was the first Englishwoman in Ushitza, health drinking was necessary.

Ushitza is plucky and enterprising. It not only makes plans, but it carries them out. It is blessed with good men at the head of affairs. For all the world over, in spite of the old saying, the voice of the people is very seldom the voice of a god; it is far more frequently simply a "row," and in most places we find that all good work is due to the brains and energy of a few individuals, and not to the collective wisdom of the mass, except in the sense that the mass has had the wit to know a good man when they see him and to follow his lead.

Ushitza, poked away in a lonely valley in a far corner of Servia, has a very good school, well fitted with modern apparatus, maps and diagrams and plaster casts; is well lighted by electricity, and has started an electric cotton and linen weaving factory, which is the pride and joy of the town. Three years did it take in the making; every bit of the machinery had to be imported from abroad and carried over the mountains on ox-carts, but in spite of all difficulties it is well started and beginning to pay its way, and Ushitza, like Chachak, is trying to find the ways and means for an electric railway.

Ushitza was Ushitza in the glorious days of the Servian Empire, and was the seat of its first arch-bishop, the great St. Sava. Stefan VI. transferred the archbishopric to Ipek (Petch), that lies in Stara Srbija waiting to be redeemed; but Ushitza worked out her own redemption in 1862, and after severe fighting evicted the Turk, and is once more the seat of a bishop. The Djetina, a tributary of the Morava, rushes past the town from a narrow valley, where leaps the fall that works the 150-horse-power electric engines, and high on the opposite hill tower the ruins of the big castle that once guarded the town. Fortified by the Turks, it was taken by the Servians and blown to pieces, and its shattered walls hang perilously on the precipice edge. I was told it was a Turkish building, but I scrambled all over it, and believe it to be a Servian mediæval castle belonging probably to the palmy days of the Empire.

Everything else in Ushitza is new, except the stone bridge over the river, which is mediæval, and the big Roman altar stone found in the neighbourhood that stands in the entrance of the school; but the town, though so new, is very picturesque. I left Ushitza with regret, for it was very good to me. I said good-bye for ever and ever, promised to send picture postcards of London, and was soon again on the road.

Ivanitza was my destination, and my midday halt at Arilje, where I arrived cold and damp in a heavy rainstorm. The police captain and the priest were kindly folk and offered to take me to see the church. According to tradition, it is the oldest church in Servia, and is said to have been built to the memory of one Aril, a Christian priest martyred by heathen Servians early in the ninth century. It is a cruciform building with a central dome, a very flat apse, the usual narthex, and is barrel-vaulted. My guides could tell me nothing at all except that it was "very old." I suggested thirteenth century, which astonished them. That the building itself had anything to say on the subject was a new idea to them. After a little discussion with the priest, the captain said that someone had said it was of the time of King Milutin, and added naively that they did not know when that was. Milutin (Stefan Milutin Urosh) reigned from about 1275 to 1321. This date fits in with its appearance, but not with the tradition that it is the oldest church in Servia. Probably it is a later building on an old site. It is old and dim enough, at any rate, to have seen the Great Servian Empire and the rise and the fall of the Ottoman. Frescoes stiff and Byzantine in style cover its walls. Big saints in long straight white robes with bizarre black patterns stand in a row along the walls, and a king (Milutin himself) in a high crown and a long cloak decorated with large discs of gold. The faces have been scraped out by the Turks, and the whole of the paintings are dim and faded, but they are scarce examples of early art, and appear to have never suffered restoration. I am sorry that I allowed damp, cold, and general discomfort to prevent my staying to draw them.

We pushed on through the storm along a richly wooded defile through which tears the Morava, and arrived chill and stiff in the evening at Ivanitza, where the mere sight of the inn made me feel much worse. As it was not possible to get anything to eat till supper-time, and as the bedroom offered me was uninhabitable, and as both my letters of introduction were to gentlemen who only spoke Servian, I wondered why I had come. It was too wet to go out, so I sat in the doorway and drew the shops over the way, and soon forgot all the surrounding circumstances. I was aroused by the most cheery police officers, in very smart uniforms, who came in answer to my letters of introduction, and who were extraordinarily amused to find me already settled down to draw. They brought the burgomaster, called for drinks, and in the approved fashion each stood me a glass. When the doctor, who spoke German, turned up and tried to stand me one on his own account, I cried off. My Montenegrin sketches here were the topic of the day; for the nearer you get to the frontier the more beloved and admired is Montenegro. Central, Eastern, and Northern Servia seem to dislike it. Everyone here wanted to hear both about the place and the people, and I sat in that little low-ceiled, dark, messy, stone-floored room filled with officers and peasants, and explained things as best I could, the company all helping me out with the language. The rain poured in torrents outside and splashed in at the open door; everyone offered me tobacco, which I declined; and there was a good deal of glass clinking. Helped out by German and the doctor, I told tales of Skodra, which Ivanitza thought was a place perilous. And we talked of the virtues of the Black Mountains and the sins of the Turks. The two oil lamps made the black corners blacker and threw odd shadows of fur-capped peasants on the walls, and as I looked at my surroundings, saw the white kilts, the leathern sandals and the uniforms, and heard the clank of sword and spur, I wondered to which of my ancestors I owed the fact that I felt so very much at home. Presently two men slunk in who were greeted by a roar of laughter. "How are the Turks?" cried everyone. Chaff flew much too thickly for me to see my way through it. When it cleared, I was told that the two had strayed over the frontier, had been caught by the Turks, and, as they had no passports upon them, were promptly put into prison. There they had stayed some days, and they had only just been released. Everyone treated this as a huge joke except the victims, who looked extremely silly. There was more in the episode than met the eye, for in the course of the arrest shots had been exchanged, and two Servians—a shepherd and a border patrol man—killed. My officers told me seriously that I was to keep off the edge. Never having lived on a ruddy frontier, I was much interested. All my life I had heard of the value of our "silver streak," but I had to go to a public-house in South Servia before I realised it.

The fact that I had come so soon after the affair of Miss Stone charmed everyone, as it conclusively proved that England had a high opinion of Servia. I was, as someone naively stated, the most remarkable event since the war. An English officer had ridden through the town three years before, but he had had an interpreter and had carried a revolver. Also two Frenchmen had once passed that way. That was Ivanitza's complete visitors' list for the last twenty years. I was the first who had tackled it alone and unarmed. When a fresh arrival turned up, he was told "She is English; it is not a joke; she really is"; and I was shown to some children as a unique specimen: "Look at her well; perhaps you will never see another." Yet the country is so beautiful that it only requires to be known to attract plenty of strangers.

Having first asked me if I were quite sure I had a room that I could sleep in, they all wished me good-night. I said the room was good enough, and went to find out if I had spoken the truth, through into the stableyard. It was pitch dark and the rain was falling. I called for a light. Something came out of the night, and I followed it up a rickety ladder and on to a wooden gallery. It thrust a tallow candle into my hand, and struck a match. The light revealed a lean, hairy man, bare-legged, bare-chested, and sparsely clad in dirty cotton garments. Clasping the candle, I followed him into a very small room. It was a different one from the one I had been shown on arriving. There was an iron bedstead in it, covered with a wadded coverlet, and there were three nails in the wall. Otherwise, nothing; not even a chair. The gentleman produced an empty bottle, stuck the candle into it, put it on the window sill, wished me good-night, and was going. "The room is not ready," said I firmly. He looked round in a bewildered manner and said it was, and shouted for female assistance. A stout lady panted up the stairs, beaming with good-nature. She apologised for the room. The best one contained four beds and they had quite meant me to have one of them, but unfortunately a family had arrived and taken all of them! It was most unlucky! I assured her that I did not mind having to sleep alone. But this room was not ready. She glanced round, appeared to realise its deficiencies, rushed off, and returned in triumph with a brush and comb. I thanked her, but said that what I wanted was some water to wash in. She seemed surprised at this, but went off again, and came back this time with a small glass decanter and a tumbler. I ended by getting a very small tin basin and a chair to stand it on. The seriousness of my preparations then dawned upon her, and of her own accord she brought me two towels and a little piece of peagreen soap stamped, in English, "Best Brown Windsor." I had met this kind before. It is, I think, made in Austria.