Pirot is the only town in Servia which carries on a beautiful and original local industry, and its rugs and carpets deserve to be far more widely known than they are. They are hand-woven, and the process is incredibly simple. Four roughly hewn tree stems, or big branches, are pegged together into a frame, which either leans against the wall of the house or is supported by struts, and a sufficient number of strings is bound across it. The woman squats on the ground in front of the frame with her shuttles of coloured wools beside her. With the fingers of her left hand she pulls up the requisite number of threads with great swiftness, slips the shuttle beneath them with her right, and, with no pattern to copy from, carries out very complicated designs with astonishing speed and precision. When she has put in some dozen threads, she takes up a heavy wooden mallet with a row of teeth in it and with a few blows drives the threads very tightly together. Thus she works hour after hour for a franc a day. The colours most largely employed are scarlet, indigo, black and white, with sometimes touches of green and yellow in the border; the designs are bold and effective. The weavers, dark women with coins plaited in their hair, were cheery and friendly, and always asked me in to have a look. An ordinary-sized rug takes about a fortnight to make, and many of the big carpets occupy several women for months. I was glad to hear that the Town Council, which looks after the carpet trade, is on the look-out for good old designs for the workers. Also that it had forbidden imported dyes, as these were in many instances found not to be permanent, and the wools used are coloured by local and traditional methods. Pirot is justly proud of a medal won in the Paris Exhibition, and the trade, if carefully looked after, should greatly increase. I made one bad mistake; I suggested that the work was of Turkish origin. My friends would not hear of this, and declared that it was Servian, purely Servian. I felt crushed, but am by no means sure that they were right. There is not entertainment for more than a day in Pirot, and the hotel accommodation is lean. I said good-bye that evening. At the station I met the gendarme who had originally blocked my passage. Now he regretted my departure. He seemed a childlike and simple personage, not at all intended by nature for a policeman. He carried my bag in for me, and beamed with joy when he felt its weight. "May I open it?" he asked. When he found the weight was entirely caused by three dictionaries and an old pair of shoes, he was disappointed. "I thought it was all English gold!" he said.