But eight hours’ travel in the local train so anæsthetized our desires to continue the journey, on such a train, at least, that the little vine-clad station at Nisch appealed to us most invitingly. We also determined then and there to explore the town behind it. A two-mile drive over even rougher cobbles than Belgrade can boast of, connects the station with the centre of the town, and I might add that it is the longest two miles I have ever driven. As we rattled along, the diminutive one-story dwellings of Nisch seemed to be scattered over an unlimited area. A single small mosque constitutes the only remaining suggestion that the town was at one time in the possession of the Turks. Finally we stopped in front of one of the hotels—poor excuses, all of them, believe me—and commenced to bargain and barter for accommodations, only to discover that all of the rooms were occupied; I doubt if the place could have housed more than half a dozen patrons at one time. We tried another hostelry, with the same result. Then another. The train on which we had arrived, the last one leaving Nisch that day in either direction, had long since departed for Sophia; the hotel people seemed anything but desirous of taking us in, for I am dubious about their houses being so crowded as they were said to be; and we commenced to consider a suitable place in which to leave our luggage, so that we might at least walk the streets that night unencumbered. Our driver, too, was apparently at his wits’ end, but after we had tendered him an extra _dinare_ as a stimulant he _thought_ he knew of just _one more_ hotel where it _might be possible_ to obtain rooms, and, accordingly, we were rattled thither. Here our trials ended, for the proprietor of this place graciously consented to accommodate us during our stay. After first walking through a combination office and general loafing-room, containing at one end a bar, reeking with foul-smelling tobacco-smoke and alive with Servian officers who shuffled over the sanded floor or played billiards at an antequated table or sat about telling the gossip of the garrison, then through a labyrinth of narrow passages, across a court and up two flights of stairs, we came upon our room.