Then we heard wailing and crying and complaining, as they asked the dead man ‘What they had done that he should desert them? Had they in any way failed in showing submission to him or in ministering to his comfort? Why did he leave them to loneliness and misery?’ &c. &c. The religious ceremonies were conducted by priests of the Greek Church. I noticed in the burial-ground a great many wooden figures of stags, fawns, &c., placed on the top of posts or poles. On inquiring the reason, I was informed that the husbands or fathers placed these monuments as memorials of the readiness and care with which the wives and daughters had discharged their domestic duties. On many of the tombs were hanging tresses of hair, which the women and girls had placed there to show their grief for the loss of relations. We heard also that it was the custom in these parts, when the elders had arranged a marriage between a young man and a young woman, for the bridegroom to seize his wife by force and carry her off. According to their ideas, it would be highly indelicate for the girl to be a consenting party to the arrangement. Not far from Jagodin we came to a little stream, which the inhabitants call Nissus. This we kept on our right, skirting its bank until we came to Nissa (Nisch). Some way on, we found on the bank (where the traces of an old Roman road still remained) a little marble pillar with a Latin inscription, but so mutilated as to be undecipherable. Nissa is a small town of some account, to which the people of the country often resort. I must now tell you something as to the inns we make use of, for that is a subject on which you have been some time wanting information. At Nissa I lodged in the public inn, called by the Turks a caravanserai—the most common kind of inn in those parts. It consists of a huge building, the length of which somewhat exceeds the breadth. In the centre is an open space, where the camels and their baggage, as well as the mules and waggons, have to be quartered. This open space is surrounded by a wall about three feet high, and this is bonded into the outer wall surrounding the whole building. The top of the former is level, and about four feet broad. This ledge serves the Turks for bedroom and dining-room, and kitchen as well, for here and there fireplaces are built into the outer wall, which I told you encloses the whole building. So they sleep, eat, and cook on this ledge, three feet high and four feet broad; and this is the only distinction between their quarters and those of the camels, horses, and other beasts of burden.