_New_ Orsova, one of the few remaining retreats of the Turks in Servia, is built on an island, and with its frail houses of yawning rafters looks very _old_. Old Orsova, opposite which we now arrived, looked quite _new_, and bore the true German type of formal white-washed houses, and high sharp ridged roofs, which called up forthwith the image of a dining-hall, where, punctually as the village-clock strikes the hour of twelve, a fair-haired, fat, red-faced landlord, serves up the soup, the _rindfleisch_, the _zuspeise_, and all the other dishes of the holy Roman empire to the Platz Major, the Haupt-zoll-amt director, the Kanzlei director, the Concepist, the Protocollist, and _hoc genus omne_. After a night passed in the quarantine, I removed to the inn, and punctually as the clock struck half past twelve, the very party my imagination conjured up, assembled to discuss the _mehlspeise_ in the stencilled parlour of the Hirsch. Favoured by the most beautiful weather, I started in a sort of caleche for Dreucova. The excellent new macadamized road was as smooth as a bowling-green, and only a lively companion was wanting to complete the exhilaration of my spirits. My fair fellow-traveller was an enormously stout Wallachian matron, on her way to Vienna, to see her _daughter_, who was then receiving her education at a boarding-school. I spoke no Wallachian, she spoke nothing but Wallachian; so our conversation was carried on by my attempting to make myself understood alternately by the Italian, and the Spanish forms of Latin. "_Una bella Campagna_," said I, as we drove out Orsova. "_Bella, bella_?" said the lady, evidently puzzled. So I said, "_Hermosa_." "_Ah! formosa; formosa prate_," repeated the lady, evidently understanding that I meant a fine country. "_Deunde venut_?" Whence have you come? "Constantinopolis;" and so on we went, supposing that we understood each other, she supplying me with new forms of bastard Latin words, and adding with a smile, _Romani_, or Wallachian, as the language and people of Wallachia are called by themselves. It is worthy of remark, that the Wallachians and a small people in Switzerland, are the only descendants of the Romans, that still designate their language as that of the ancient mistress of the world.