The heat was intense and the streets almost deserted as we paddled away directly after mid-day, and floated down past great bluffs, with hot gullies filled with herds of swine seeking to avoid the heat by frequent baths, and scarcely distinguishable in color from the baked mud on which they slept. Late in the day, having joined company with some lumber rafts we had been passing and repassing for the last day or two, we drew up the canoes on a pleasant park-like meadow, only a foot or two above the water, with great trees and firmer turf than we had seen for a long time. The rafts tied up to the shore just above us, and the smoke of our several camp-fires soon curled up among the trees, and floated away in the clear air of the perfect summer evening. Our first visitor was a Croatian, who, having served in the Austrian army, had learned a little German, and was only too anxious to air his knowledge. He prepared us for the visit of a band of gypsies who were camping in the vicinity, cautioned us to watch all our loose articles, and loudly sang the praises of one of the gypsy women but lately married, [Illustration: VUKOVÁR WATERMELONS] who, he declared, was as beautiful as a queen--probably meaning the Queen of Servia. To be sure, the next morning, shortly after dawn, a motley crowd straggled up to our encampment, among them the gypsy belle, with the bearing [Illustration: A PIG-WALLOW] and gait of a duchess. Tobacco stood in the place of a formal introduction, and even the conscious beauty asked for a cigarette, and puffed away like a veteran smoker. The keen-eyed old rascal who, by virtue of advanced age or superior cunning, was recognized as the chief of the party, took the liveliest interest in our attempts to sketch the beauty, and when the sketch was done, calmly proposed to give us the model to carry away with us. As the offer was made in Roumanian, a language not then familiar to our ears, we did not at first comprehend the generous nature of the gift. “Take her with you,” he said. “You’ll go, won’t you?” “Indeed I will,” replied the dusky beauty, “if they’ll take me to Bucharest.” “But if she goes away with us it will make a scandal, and the husband will have something to say about it,” we timidly suggested. “Not at all,” insisted the old heathen; “he’s away now, and if he finds her gone when he comes back, he’ll easily get another wife.” This morality of the Red Indian order so astonished us that we did not readily offer the excuse that our boats could carry but one person apiece, but we sweetened our refusal of the gift by an abundance of tobacco and a few old clothes, hastily launched our canoes, and retreated down the river.