By the time the carriage and my travelling companions were ready, I had interviewed several other people, and felt quite at home in Ub. It was hot on the road. Both the "commercial" and the driver felt it very much, and stopped at all the wells and drank quantities of cold water, and as a natural consequence perspired a great deal. When they had had seven or eight drinks to my one, they began to get anxious about me, and when they found I had been playing about the streets of Ub instead of going to sleep as they had both done, they were still more astonished, and foretold that by the time I reached Obrenovatz I should be exhausted. We arrived there safely, however, at about 2.30 without my expected collapse. Obrenovatz was fearfully excited by my arrival, and produced a commercial (a Hungarian) who spoke English, in order to extract a full and particular account of me. My fame had flown before me, for he had seen me a few days ago in Shabatz, had gleaned a few facts about me, and Obrenovatz had already learned that there was an Engleskinja loose in the land, though it had not hoped to see me. When I went out for a walk, all Obrenovatz stood at the door to see. Such notoriety was embarrassing. However, I succeeded in concealing my feelings so effectually that in the evening the conversation turned mainly on the cold-bloodedness of the English nation. Nothing surprised them! nothing upset their equanimity! "Fish blood," they said, "fish blood and steel!" And the insurance agent recounted how I had only had one drink on the road and had remained quite cool all the day, though he and the driver felt the heat badly; here he gave an unnecessarily realistic description of the state of his shirt. Obrenovatz is remarkable for nothing but its hot sulphur springs and its well-arranged bath house, where it hopes to work up a rheumatism cure. I returned to Belgrade by boat, nor, save the floating watermills and the timber rafts that drift from the forests of Bosnia and Servia down the Drina to the Save and thence to the Danube, is there much to see upon the river. CHAPTER XII NISH From Belgrade to Nish, down the valley of the Morava, the mark of the Turk is still upon the land, and a minaret tower shoots up from more than one little town by the rail-side. The train rushes into Stalacs, where the two Moravas join, and we are on the track of recent fighting--fighting that we can all remember; we are in the valley which was the scene of poor Milan's unsuccessful attempts, when in 1876 he resolved to take his part in that uprising against the Turks which had already been begun by the Herzegovinians. Near Alexinatz we cross Servia's old frontier, and enter the land that was Turkish twenty-five years ago.