Through the Land of the SerbDurham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
History
Through the Land of the Serb
Durham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
Montenegro -- Description and travel; Serbia -- Description and travel
walks, they hired my carriages, found my guides and horses, and drove my
bargains. What they were pleased to consider the mad Englishness of my
enterprise appealed forcibly to their sense of humour, and my various
adventures made them shout with laughter. I cannot repay their kindness,
but I certainly amused them.
The Shumadia takes its name from "shuma," a forest; the woods of Servia
were the last shelter of a desperate people and the rallying-point of
the nation. If it be true that "all that is most Servian is in the
Shumadia," it is here that we should look for the type of the race. The
peasant of the Shumadia is tall, fair, and blue-or grey-eyed. He is more
strongly built and more active than his brethren in other districts, and
is more like the fair type of Montenegrin than are the men of any other
part of Servia. The race question in the Balkans is so exceedingly
complicated that I cannot attempt to unravel it, and can only note
marked types where they occur.
So much for the peasant. The country now is no longer a forest, though
well supplied with woods and trees; it is a most fertile district, and
is better cultivated and far more enterprising than any other part of
Servia.
Kragujevatz, Milosh' capital, is a very go-ahead place, and next to
Belgrade is Servia's most important commercial town, busy and
flourishing, with some 14,000 inhabitants. It has a fine gymnasium and a
large girls' school, both handsome and spacious buildings very well
fitted; the girls' school built by private gift. All trace of the Turk
has been wiped out of the town, but the relics of Milosh are carefully
preserved. His konak, a medium-sized whitewashed house, now forms part
of the officers' quarters. The old church stands near, a small plain
whitewashed building with a wooden annexe for the women, who were not
then admitted to worship in the main body of the church--which shows
forcibly how deeply the Turk had set his mark upon the Servian people.
By the church stands the long low whitewashed shed that was Servia's
first parliament house. Milosh, like Karageorge, took care to assemble
his parliament very seldom and to pay little or no attention to it then.
Kragujevatz otherwise is brand-new, and here as elsewhere it is easy to
see that the Servians have done more in fifty years for the improvement
of the place and the conditions of life than the Turk did in four
centuries. Much yet remains to be done, nevertheless a journey from
Servia into Turkey is like stepping off the pavement into the sewer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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