About half-way between Apatin and the village of Erdöd, with course as straight as a canal, the river Drave pours in a muddy flood, and far up the shining stream the foot-hills of the Tyrolean Alps lie all faint in the distance. Fertile hills now skirt the west bank, and their sunny yellow slopes looked agreeably bright and warm after the heavy greens of the forest and swamp. The river has washed away the hills into perpendicular bluffs, which are of earth almost as hard as sandstone. Rude steps cut along a cleft were lively with girls carrying jars of Danube water to the village above; and once, under a vineyard, where the vines trail over the very edge of the bank, we saw a rude cave dug in the earth, where a long pole with a dangling bush projecting far [Illustration: CURRENT MILLS] beyond the rough bough shelter at the door of the cellar announced to the river men that wine was for sale. Our old friends the current mills still clustered at frequent intervals, where the stream ran the swiftest. Since the first time we saw them--far up the river, above Vienna--they had not changed their general shape or construction; but the owners’ names, painted in large white letters on the sides, had marked with accuracy the limits of the different nationalities we had passed in our journey. Now, before the curious combinations of letters on the mills near the Hungarian shore had ceased to puzzle us, Croatian and Slavonian names in a new and unfamiliar alphabet stared at us from the weather-stained sides of the mills along the opposite bank, and something of the crudity of Oriental taste was seen in the unskilful attempts to decorate the wood-work near the door and window. From the right bank we heard hails in an unknown language, and by the water’s edge saw peasants with fiercer mustaches than even the Magyar boasts, and women of a heavy, unsympathetic type. The costume, too, had undergone a decided change. Both men and women wore clumsy wrappings around the ankles, and uncouth sandals and shoes. The loose trousers of the men were strapped to the calf by the thongs which bound the thick woollen cloths or coarse socks to the ankles, and red sashes took the place of belts. Servia was beginning to show herself to us long before we reached the political frontier. CHAPTER XII