Through the Land of the Serb

by M. E. Durham

The room proved to be quite clean, and I fared much better than I had expected. They were all as kind as possible, and in return I was as Servian as I knew how to be, except that I never patronised the well in the stableyard, which is, I believe, the proper way of getting up in the morning—presuming that you are dirty enough to require washing. The stray officers who rode up without even a saddle-bag and passed the night at the inn were, as far as I could make out, satisfied with waxing their moustachios in the morning and having their boots polished, and the effect was much better than one would have expected. Of course you are washed when you arrive. This is, most likely, the survival of some Eastern reception ceremonial. It is a little surprising at first, but you soon get used to it. A girl or a man—the latter is usually my fate—invades your bedroom, shortly after you have been shown to it, with a little basin, a bottle of water, a towel, and a cake of the "Best Brown Windsor." He holds out the basin solemnly and dribbles water over your outstretched hands, for it is very dirty to wash in standing water. When he thinks your hands are clean, he gives you the towel to dry them. Then you have to hold them out again, and he pours more water on them; this you are supposed to rub on your face. This being accomplished, he retires, taking the apparatus with him. In the old days, it is said that foot-washing was part of the ceremony, but I am glad to say that this has now gone out of fashion. When asking for water, it is always necessary to add "that I may wash," for the Servian invariably imagines that it is for internal application and brings it in a tumbler. These remarks apply, be it said, only to the inns in the villages; in the larger towns the arrangements are quite civilised as a rule, and quite clean.

Ivanitza was so kind to me, and so beautiful, that in spite of its primitive accommodation I stayed on. As long as the food is good, one can stand rough surroundings well enough. The long street of picturesque, tumbledown wooden shops straggles along the valley; the West Morava tears through a wooded deep—cut gorge, and the cloud—capped mountains tower around. It is a lonely and lovely spot, and one that I shall never forget.

On Sunday afternoon there was a little festival, and we sallied forth to a meadow about a mile and a half away. An ox-cart or two brought chairs, tables, beer, bread and cherries—all that Ivanitza required for a happy afternoon. I myself formed no small part of the entertainment, as all who had not yet made my acquaintance had now the chance of doing so.

The priest arrived on horseback with his vestments in his saddle-bags. He made a little altar in the middle of the field with three sticks and a board, spread a cloth on it, and planted a green bush by the side. Then the men stood round close to it, and the women stood behind very much in the background, and the service began. The incense curled thin and pale against the dark background of mountains that ringed us round, and the peasants, in their gayest and best, sang the responses heartily, while the oxen chewed cud alongside. Suddenly down the narrow valley the sky turned dark and red; everything was blotted out by a dense storm-cloud that burst overhead almost immediately. The priest picked up his petticoats and books, and we all fled precipitately to a group of cowsheds a couple of hundred yards away, and crowded into them.

The one I ran into was so dark that we could hardly see one another. I climbed out of the mud into the manger and held a sort of reception. I answered all the usual questions, and then they tried to find out my accomplishments by asking, "Can you do this? can you do that?" etc. I did all my little tricks, and felt like a circus. Finally it was suggested that I should sing—a thing I never do in public at home. The ever-increasing darkness suggested "Abide with me," and I started boldly. When, however, I got as far as the words "and comforts flee," they struck me as being so ridiculously appropriate to the circumstances in which I found myself that I ended abruptly by laughing, which made the audience think that the song was a comic one and beg to hear more of it. But the storm was passing over, and though the rain was still falling and the water standing in pools, the devoted priest hurried out to finish the service; out rushed everybody from the sheds and plashed back to the meadow. By the time I arrived on the scene it was all in full swing, the incense rising and the sun struggling through a cloud-rift. As soon as it was over, music struck up and the kolo dance began, and, regardless of the wet, they frisked and splashed through the deep and sopping grass. Even the doctor thought it was all right. When he told me later that he had a great many patients, because the place was so damp, I was not surprised.

The weather did not seem likely to improve, and the police officer told me with a grin that whenever I said I wanted to go they hoped it would rain; now that I knew everyone I had better stay, and he called upon his friends to describe the horrors of my proposed route. But as I could not stay on indefinitely, I asked him to find me a man and a pony, and decided to risk a wetting. The start had to be made at 5 a.m., too early to see what manner of a day it was likely to be, and it is but a chilly hour at best. A border officer saw me off, and assured me I should find friends wherever I went, which cheered my rather depressed feeling that I was leaving all my friends behind me.

I had come to the end of the road, and the onward track was very much a plunge into the unknown. The mist was thick and clammy as we struck up the mountain path, but was beginning to clear slowly. It was not a bad road at all. A Montenegrin pony would have laughed at it, and a Montenegrin man have done it on foot; but my guide was a Servian and therefore required a mount, and the beasts were fat and sluggish. My baggage consisted of a small hand-bag and a little bundle. These I had carefully made of equal weight, meaning them for either side of my own saddle. Regardless of the fact that I was by far the lighter weight of us two, the Serb insisted on putting them on his own saddle and on tying them both on the same side. Consequently, as the girths were very loose, his saddle kept turning round. This he strove to prevent by sitting crooked! As he obstinately persisted in this plan in spite of all I could do, he was perpetually re-saddling. I broke a switch from a bush, stirred up my pony and rode ahead in hopes of hurrying him; but all in vain, for I came to the end of the path in about half an hour, saw before me an endless succession of wild and apparently trackless valleys and mountains, and had to wait my guides arrival. He appeared at last, crawling along quite happily, and at once hopped off to take another futile pull at the girths. This time I succeeded in getting a better arrangement of the bags, which saved the twisting; but the saddle still slipped towards the beast's head going downhill, and towards its tail going uphill. Moreover, both animals were weak in their hind fetlocks, and we had to dismount pretty often. Luckily I had a pocketful of black bread handy, and as there seemed no prospect of ever arriving at a feeding-place, I gnawed crusts as I rode over that lonely land—land that has an awful magnificence, for it is untouched by the hand of man. Silently we went through huge and dripping beech woods, dim with fog wreaths, where great trees lay and rotted where they had fallen, and silently out over rich grassy uplands where no flocks feed. Deep valleys lay below us, and mountain peaks rose all around. For miles and miles it was absolutely lonely, there was no sign of a living thing and no sound save the squelching of our horses' hoofs in the deep wet leaf-mould. In a dip of the hills we came upon two most primitive villages, collections of wooden wigwams with high pitched roofs of twigs and branches; through their open doors I could see that they were mere unfurnished dens. Wild—looking, ragged people squatted in the doorways, who stared like startled animals as I passed. Nothing more primitive in the way of a village could exist. It seemed the kind of place that the Romans might have come upon when they conquered ancient Illyria, and I drew rein. My guide, however, was so determined that I should neither stop nor dismount that I thought he might be aware that its customs were Illyrian also, and I yielded regretfully to his request, for the first time, to hurry on.

At midday we reached another collection of huts, the village of Mlantza, not quite so primitive as the last one, but all of wood. A man with a revolver and cartridge belt, one of the gendarmerie, was resting here and nursing his rifle. Two very tall and incredibly ragged men came out of a hut, and at my guide's request made us some black coffee and boiled us some eggs. We off-saddled, and our ponies were soon blowing themselves out with grass and water, and there seemed every prospect of the girths fitting better after lunch. My guide said we must rest an hour, and inquired the way from the man with the rifle. I wondered that anyone knew it, for there was no track to be seen anywhere. There are not enough people even to wear a footpath. And folk live and die in these lonely spots, and a grave, quite fresh made, with a gaudily painted gravestone, stood close by. One or two men, black-eyed, barefooted, and in clothes that were torn to ribbons, sauntered up. None of them made an attempt to speak to me, and they scarcely exchanged a word with my guide. They were too far removed from the outer world to take any interest in it. They seemed part of the wild, dumb rocks and forests, and only the cluttering of the hens that came to pick up the crumbs I had dropped broke the heavy silence.

My guide re-saddled the ponies, and we started off again. Downhill most of the way, often very steep, and there was a good deal of dismounting and leading to be done. For some way the rocks were all of green serpentine in wildly contorted strata. A very tiny church stood high on a ledge, far up the mountain side, that looked quite inaccessible from below; one of those built as a retreat by the early kings; a lone wilderness in which some soul had wrestled with temptation, or more probably striven to expiate guilt. And this and the primitive wooden huts of the morning were the only buildings I saw on that long ten hours' ride, until at last, in the valley below, the little white church and the monastery of Studenitza came in sight.

Down past the back of the monastery buildings we joggled, and round to the door of the little inn, where I dismounted thankfully, stiff and somewhat dazed. The kindly peasants who thronged the little bare room made a place for us, and refrained from questioning me till I had eaten a huge meal of rye bread, red wine, onions and kaimak, which was all that the place afforded, and I ate with an appetite that delighted everyone.