A motor drive on a Serbian road is always an interesting adventure, owing chiefly to the mud, which is, literally, in places feet deep, and of a substance peculiar to the Balkans, owing partially also to the neglect of road-mending during many years of warfare. But the motor will now probably arouse a new conscience about roads. Any road has been good enough for the ox-wagon, and we shall see in the near future whether the ox-wagon is the cause of the continuance of bad roads, or whether the bad roads are the cause of the ox-wagon. Perhaps the Germans will make themselves useful during their temporary visit to Serbia, and will remove the question from the vicious circle in which it now rotates. It is possible that the cloven hoof of the ox has an advantage over horse hoofs and motors by its power of gripping that glutinous and skiddy substance euphemistically termed mud. During our drive to Natalintzi we saw something of the beauty of the Serbian country. Mountains girt with maple, beech, and oak forests; valleys fertile with ripening grain--wheat and oats, and endless fields of the dignified kukurus (Indian corn or maize), its tall, green, large-leaved stalks hugging the half hidden yellow cobs. And orchards, and orchards, and always orchards of purple plums. Maize, vines, and plums are the mainstay of national food and drink. The people make bread, and porridge from the maize, and rakiya, as well as wine, from the grapes. Rakiya--with, of course, a different flavour--is also brewed from plums. The universal plum also provides huge quantities of jam, known as pekmez. We were surprised to find how much land had, in the continued absence of the menfolk, been cultivated by the women. Our route to Natalintzi lay through the village of Topola, the village which fired the first shot in 1804, during the rebellion of the Serbs, under Kara George (Black George), against the tyranny of the Turkish janissaries, three years before the Battle of Ivankovatz, the turning-point in the destiny of Serbia. A sharp curve in the road brought us in view of a surprise range of hills. Upon an isolated kopje, which commanded the whole land, an exquisite church of white marble shone, against a brilliant sky of blue, silver in the sunlight, which was elsewhere clouded. The marble had been quarried partly in Serbia and partly in Italy, and the church, of best Byzantine architecture, had been built by order of King Peter. The King had also built, not far from the church, a fine hospital and a school. He had as yet no palace for himself; he had first built houses for God, for the sick, and for the children; his own house he had left till last. But it will be built some day. He was living meanwhile with the Topola priest, sharing an unpretentious, one-storied house, opposite the church.