Now, whether it was the fact that we took out our sketch-books to immortalise, so far as in us lay, these sooty orifices, or whether in the way in which we eyed them there was something of the insidious invader, certain it is that our motions did not escape the observation of an active and intelligent gendarme, who ‘knew directly,’ as he afterwards expressed it to a Croat who gave us the relation with great glee, ‘that we were Russian spies.’ Acting on which supposition with commendable alacrity, he came up and demanded our pass. Now there is a natural tendency amongst Englishmen to resent such a demand as an antiquated absurdity; but our official was so honeyed in manner, so profuse of ‘_bittes_’ and protestations of ‘_Pflicht_,’ that we could not find it in our hearts to refuse to satisfy the poor fellow’s curiosity. Whereupon our friend looked at the paper and twisted it first to one side and then to another; and as he did not understand one word of it, shook his head very wisely and handed it to his mate, who, not understanding any more, shook his head more sagely still, and handed it us back, professing—sly dog!—that they were satisfied. Those chimneys were ‘the beginnings of evils!’ We, however, had not recognised the first drops of the thunderstorm, and, proceeding tranquilly on our way, strolled down past an old church and monastery to the high bank overlooking the Save. It was a beautiful picture!—a glorious sunset, crimson, golden, opalescent, mirrored on the silvery expanse of quiet waters, broken only by a small green island where stately oak-trees huddled together in mid-flood like the giants of an older world;—far beyond the sky-line, mingling with the mysterious blue of distant mountains; on the Slavonian bank, pale rows of poplars and conical haystacks, in relief against the dark fringe of primeval forest; on the further side, a verandahed guardhouse and the tip of a minaret—a fore-glimpse of another world—and hark! as the sun goes down, the solemn tones of the muezzin are faintly borne by the evening breeze to the shores of that Christendom which once rang with _Allah akbar_!