as curiously carved,
painted, and even gilded, as some of those one sees at Dort and
Rotterdam. They have no deck--for a ridge of rafters covers the goods,
and the boatmen move about on ledges at the gunwale.

The fortress of Belgrade, jutting out exactly at the point of
confluence of the rivers, has the town behind it. The Servian, or
principal quarter, slopes down to the Save; the Turkish quarter to
the Danube. I might compare Belgrade to a sea-turtle, the head of
which is represented by the fortress, the back of the neck by the
esplanade or Kalai Meidan, the right flank by the Turkish quarter, the
left by the Servian, and the ridge of the back by the street running
from the esplanade to the gate of Constantinople.

We landed at the left side of our imaginary turtle, or at the quay of
the Servian quarter, which runs along the Save. The sloping bank was
paved with stones; and above was a large edifice with an arcade, one
end of which served as the custom-house, the other as the Austrian
consulate.

The population was diversified. Shabby old Turks were selling fruit;
and boatmen, both Moslem and Christian--the former with turbans, the
latter with short fez's--were waiting for a fare. To the left was a
Turkish guard-house, at a gate leading to the esplanade, with as smart
a row of burnished muskets as one could expect. All within this gate
is under the jurisdiction of the Turkish Pasha of the fortress; all
without the gate in question, is under the government of the Servian
Prefect of Belgrade.

We now turned into a curious old street, built quite in the Turkish
fashion, and composed of rafters knocked carelessly together, and
looking as if the first strong gust of wind would send them smack over
the water into Hungary without the formality of a quarantine; but many
of the shops were smartly garnished with clothes, haberdashery, and
trinkets, mostly from Bohemia and Moravia; and in some I saw large
blocks of rock-salt.

Notwithstanding the rigmarole construction of the quarter on the
water's edge, (save and except at the custom-house,) it is the most
busy quarter in the town: here are the places of business of the
principal merchants in the place. This class is generally of the
Tsinsar nation, as the descendants of the Roman colonists in Macedonia
are called; their language is a corrupt Latin, and resembles the
Wallachian dialect very closely.

We now ascended by a steep street to the upper town. The most
promin