"I should be sorry," said I, "if any thing were to happen to this convent. It is a most interesting and beautiful monument of the ancient kingdom of Servia; I hope it will be preserved and honourably kept up to a late period." "_Blagodarim_, (I am obliged to you,)" said the Superior, pleased at the Gordian knot being loosed, and then relapsed into his atrophy, without moving a muscle of his countenance. I now examined the church; the details of the architecture showed that it had suffered severely from the Turks. The curiously twisted pillars of the outer door were sadly chipped, while noseless angels, and fearfully mutilated lions guarded the inner portal. Passing through a vestibule, we saw the remains of the font, which must have been magnificent; and covered with a cupola, the stumps of the white marble columns which support it are still visible; high on the wall is a piece of sculpture, supposed to represent St. George. Entering the church, I saw on the right the tomb of St. Simeon, the sainted king of Servia; beside it hung his banner with the half-moon on it, the insignium of the South Slavonic nation from the dawn of heraldry. Near the altar was the body of his son, St. Stephen, the patron saint of Servia. Those who accompanied us paid little attention to the architecture of the church, but burst into raptures at the sight of the carved wood of the screen, which had been most minutely and elaborately cut by Tsinsars, (as the Macedonian Latins are called to this day). Close to the church is a chapel with the following inscription: "I, Stephen Urosh, servant of God, great grandson of Saint Simeon and son of the great king Urosh, king of all the Servian lands and coasts, built this temple in honour of the holy and just Joachim and Anna, 1314. Whoever destroys this temple of Christ be accursed of God and of me a sinner." Thirty-five churches in this district, mostly in ruins, attest the piety of the Neman dynasty. The convent of Studenitza was built towards the end of the twelfth century, by the first of the dynasty. The old cloister of the convent was burnt down by the Turks. The new cloister was built in 1839. In fact it is a wonder that so fine a monument as the church should have been preserved at all. There is a total want of arable land in this part of Servia, and the pasture is neither good nor abundant; but the Ybar is the most celebrated of all the streams of Servia for large quantities of trout. Next day we continued our route direct South, through scenery of the same rugged and sterile description as that we had passed on the way hither. How different from the velvet verdure and woodland music of the Gutchevo and the Drina! At one place on the bank of the Ybar, there was room for only a led horse, by a passage cut in the rock. This place bears the name of Demir Kapu, or Iron Gate. In the evening we arrived at the frontier quarantine, called Raska, which is situated at two hours' distance from Novibazar.