anean; our home-ports, Venice and Trieste, are
agreeable, and our usual station in the Levant is Smyrna, which is
equally pleasant. The Austrian vessels being generally frigates of
moderate size, the officers live in a more friendly and comfortable
way than if they were of heavier metal. But were I not a surgeon, I
should prefer the wider sphere of distinction which colonial and
trans-oceanic life and incident opens to the British naval officer;
for I, myself, once made a voyage to the Brazils."

We now went to see the handsome new bridge in course of construction
over the Morava. The architect, a certain Baron Cordon, who had been
bred a military engineer, happened to be there at the time, and
obligingly explained the details. At every step I see the immense
advantages which this country derives from its vicinity to Austria in
a material point of view; and yet the Austrian and Servian governments
seem perpetually involved in the most inexplicable squabbles. A gang
of poor fellows who had been compromised in the unsuccessful attempts
of last year by the Obrenovitch party, were working in chains,
macadamizing the road.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: Houses or horses; my notes having been written with
rapidity, the word is indistinct.]

CHAPTER XXII.

Visit to Ravanitza.--Jovial party.--Servian and Austrian
jurisdiction.--Convent described.--Eagles reversed.--Bulgarian
festivities.

The Natchalnik having got up a party, we proceeded in light cars of
the country to Ravanitza, a convent two or three hours off in the
mountains to the eastward. The country was gently undulating,
cultivated, and mostly inclosed, the roads not bad, and the _ensemble_
such as English landscapes were represented to be half a century ago.
When we approached Ravanitza we were again lost in the forest.
Ascending by the side of a mountain-rill, the woods opened, and the
convent rose in an amphitheatre at the foot of an abrupt rocky
mountain; a pleasing spot, but wanting the grandeur and beauty of the
sites on the Bosniac frontier.

[Illustration: Ravanitza.]

The superior was a tall, polite, middle-aged man. "I expected you long
ago," said he; "the Archbishop advised me of your arrival: but we
thought something might have happened, or that you had missed us."

"I prolonged my tour," said I, "beyond the limits of my original
project. The circumstance of this convent having been the burial-place
of Knes Lasar, was a sufficient motive f