Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family: or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and 1844.Paton, A. A. (Andrew Archibald)
History
Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family: or, A Residence in Belgrade and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands of the Interior, during the years 1843 and 1844.
Paton, A. A. (Andrew Archibald)
Serbia -- Description and travel
The population was diversified. Shabby old Turks were selling fruit;
and boatmen, both Moslem and Christian--the former with turbans, the
latter with short fez's--were waiting for a fare. To the left was a
Turkish guard-house, at a gate leading to the esplanade, with as smart
a row of burnished muskets as one could expect. All within this gate
is under the jurisdiction of the Turkish Pasha of the fortress; all
without the gate in question, is under the government of the Servian
Prefect of Belgrade.
We now turned into a curious old street, built quite in the Turkish
fashion, and composed of rafters knocked carelessly together, and
looking as if the first strong gust of wind would send them smack over
the water into Hungary without the formality of a quarantine; but many
of the shops were smartly garnished with clothes, haberdashery, and
trinkets, mostly from Bohemia and Moravia; and in some I saw large
blocks of rock-salt.
Notwithstanding the rigmarole construction of the quarter on the
water's edge, (save and except at the custom-house,) it is the most
busy quarter in the town: here are the places of business of the
principal merchants in the place. This class is generally of the
Tsinsar nation, as the descendants of the Roman colonists in Macedonia
are called; their language is a corrupt Latin, and resembles the
Wallachian dialect very closely.
We now ascended by a steep street to the upper town. The most
prominent object in the first open space we came to is the cathedral,
a new and large but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt
bell-tower, in the Russian manner; and the walls of the interior are
covered with large paintings of no merit. But one must not be too
critical: a kindling of intellectual energy ever seems, in most
countries, to precede excellence in the imitative arts, which latter,
too often survives the ruins of those ruder and nobler qualities which
assure the vigorous existence of states or provinces.
In the centre of the town is an open square, which forms a sort of
line of demarcation between the crescent and the cross. On the one
side, several large and good houses have been constructed by the
wealthiest senators, in the German manner, with flaring new white
walls and bright green shutter-blinds. On the other side is a mosque,
and dead old garden walls, with walnut trees and Levantine roofs
peeping up behind them. Look on this picture, and you have the type of
all domestic architecture lying between you and the snow-fenced huts
of Lapland; cast your eyes over the way, and imagination wings
lightly to the sweet south with its myrtles, citrons, marbled steeps
and fragrance-bearing gales.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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