Besides the consumption of the fruit in
its innocent form of prunes, it is made into the spirit called
_slivovitz_, the curse of Hungary and Roumania.
We made a halt at this village, and sent out a man to look up some
horses. He brought in several, but none of them were strong enough for
my purpose. It was then proposed that we should ride on to the next
village. Here we got dinner but no horses. The meal was very simple but
not unpalatable, finishing up with excellent Turkish coffee.
I am writing now of the _status quo ante bellum_, and I must say I was
struck with the well-to-do aspect of the peasants in Servia. By peasants
I mean the class answering to the German _bauer_. It is true they lack
many things that Western civilisation regards as necessaries; but have
they not had the Turks for their masters far into this century? Turning
over Lady Mary Wortley Montague's Letters,[4] there occurs the
following paragraph in her account of a journey through Servia in
1717:--
"We crossed the deserts of Servia, almost quite overgrown with wood,
through a country naturally fertile. The inhabitants are industrious;
but the oppression of the peasants is so great, they are forced to
abandon their houses, and neglect their tillage, all they have being a
prey to janissaries whenever they please to seize upon it. We had a
guard of five hundred of them, and I was almost in fears every day to
see their insolencies in the poor villages through which we passed.
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