"Well, you may convince yourself with your own eyes,
before you leave this blessed town."

The Natchalnik then called a Momke, and gave orders for the child to
be brought next day. At the appointed hour the father and mother came
with the child. It was indeed a baby giantess, higher than its
brother, who was six years of age. Its hands were thick and strong,
the flesh plump, and the mammae most prominently developed. Seeing the
room filled with people, it began to cry, but its attention being
diverted by a nodding mandarin of stucco provided for the purpose, the
nurse enabled us to verify all the president had said. This phenomenon
was born the 29th of June, 1842, old style, and the lunar influences
were in operation on the tenth month after birth. I remarked to the
president, that if the father had more avarice than decency, he might
go to Europe, and return with his weight in gold.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: _Nahie_ is a Turkish word, and meant "_district_." The
original word means "_direction_," and is applied to winds, and the
point of the compass.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

Rich Soil.--Mysterious Waters.--Treaty of Passarovitz.--The Castle of
Semendria--Relics of the Antique.--The Brankovitch
Family.--Pancsova.--Morrison's Pills.

The soil at Posharevatz is remarkably rich, the greasy humus being
from fifteen to twenty-five feet thick, and consequently able to
nourish the noblest forest trees. In the Banat, which is the granary
of the Austrian empire, trees grow well for fifteen, twenty, or
twenty-five years, and then die away. The cause of this is, that the
earth, although rich, is only from three to six feet thick, with sand
or cold clay below; thus as soon as the roots descend to the
substrata, in which they find no nourishment, rottenness appears on
the top branches, and gradually descends.

At Kruahevitza, not very far from Pasharevatz, is a cave, which is, I
am told, entered with difficulty, into the basin of which water
gradually flows at intervals, and then disappears, as the doctor of
the place (a Saxon) told me, with an extraordinary noise resembling
the molar rumble of railway travelling. This spring is called
Potainitza, or the mysterious waters.

Posharevatz, miscalled Passarowitz, is historically remarkable, as the
place where Prince Eugene, in 1718, after his brilliant victories of
the previous year, including the capture of Belgrade, signed, with the
Turks, the treaty which gave back to th