However, modern science and drainage may probably be trusted to remedy the present unhealthy state of the Siscian atmosphere; and it requires no extraordinary gift of prophecy to be able to foresee for Siszek a glorious future, and to predict that, before many years are passed, she will have done much to regain the splendour of Roman Siscia, whose functions, as we have seen, she still to a certain extent performs. For she has been dowered with a situation destined by nature for a great emporium of commerce, nor are signs wanting that the fulfilment of her destiny is at hand. Already Siszek is fixed as the point at which the railway that is to connect Western Europe directly with Stamboul, and eventually perhaps the furthest Orient, is to meet the lines leading to Vienna and Trieste, and another line is projected, connecting Siszek directly with the Adriatic. Siszek used to be divided by the Kulpa into the civil and military towns, the latter under ‘regimental’ government; but since the new legislation the whole has been placed under the municipal authorities. In neither half is there anything worth seeing except the Roman remains. On the bank of the Kulpa, however, just at the confluence with the Save, about a mile from Siszek, rises the old castle of Caprag, built in a triangular form, with a round conical-roofed tower at each corner. This castle brings home to us the old days when the Empire was engaged in a life and death struggle with the Turk. It was built in the sixteenth century, with the Emperor Ferdinand’s permission, by the bishop and canons of Agram, and in 1592-3 it was gallantly defended against the Pashà of Bosnia by two canons of the cathedral chapter; till, after withstanding two sieges successfully, it yielded to a third attempt, and for a year belonged to the Infidel.[169] As we were exploring the former military quarter of Siszek, whose habitations, tenanted by the ordinary peasants of the Granitza, are for the most part mere huts, as compared with the more stylish houses of the civil town, our ears were saluted by sounds of unearthly revelry proceeding from a neighbouring wine-shop. Entering it, we found ourselves in the midst of a Croat merrymaking: an orchestra of four men strumming on tamburas and tamburitzas as for dear life, and accompanied by such a whisking, and whirling, and stamping as never was! The dance they were engaged in when we went in was known to them as the Kardatz, to the Germans as ‘Kroatisch’—though the Croats say that it was taught them by the Magyars. Properly it was danced by the women alone, but there were often enough male interlopers. It is so pretty that it deserves to be known beyond the limits of Croatia; so I will give the general arrangement of the dance, as far as I could catch it.