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
[Footnote 11: Ingenious treaties have been written on the origin of the
Gothic and Saracenic styles of architecture; but it seems to me
impossible to contemplate many Byzantine edifices without feeling
persuaded that this manner is the parent of both. Taking the Lower
Empire for the point of departure, the Christian style spread north to
the Baltic and westwards to the Atlantic. Saint Stephen's in Vienna,
standing half way between Byzantium and Wisby, has a Byzantine facade
and a Gothic tower. The Saracenic style followed the Moslem conquests
round by the southern coasts of the Mediterranean to Morocco and
Andaloss. Thus both the northern and the eastern styles met each
other, first in Sicily and then in Spain, both having started from
Constantinople.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
Cross the Bosniac Frontier.--Gipsy Encampment.--Novibazar
described.--Rough Reception.--Precipitate Departure.--Fanaticism.
Next day we were all afoot at an early hour, in order to pay a visit
to Novibazar. In order to obviate the performance of quarantine on our
return, I took an officer of the establishment, and a couple of men,
with me, who in the Levant are called Guardiani; but here the German
word Ueber-reiter, or over-rider, was adopted.
We continued along the river Raska for about an hour, and then
descried a line of wooden palings going up hill and down dale, at
right angles with the course we were holding. This was the frontier of
the principality of Servia, and here began the direct rule of the
Sultan and the Pashalic of Bosnia. At the guard-house half a dozen
Momkes, with old fashioned Albanian guns, presented arms.
After half an hour's riding, the valley became wider, and we passed
through meadow lands, cultivated by Moslem Bosniacs in their white
turbans; and two hours further, entered a fertile circular plain,
about a mile and a half in diameter, surrounded by low hills, which
had a chalky look, in the midst of which rose the minarets and
bastions of the town and castle of Novibazar. Numerous gipsy tents
covered the plain, and at one of them, a withered old gipsy woman,
with white dishevelled hair hanging down on each side of her burnt
umber face, cried out in a rage, "See how the Royal Servian people
now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback,"
alluding to the ancient custom of Christians not being permitted to
ride on horseback in a town.[12]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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