When the Eastern Question is
settled a vast number of improvements are to be carried out on the
Danube it is said. The first ought to be the deepening of the channel in
this particular part of the river. There would surely be no great
difficulty in removing the obstructions caused by the rocks. But there
are always political difficulties creeping up in this part of the world
to prevent the carrying out of useful works.
My siesta over, I was off again, soon after three P.M., on my
way to Svenica. I had a splendid view of the river, and stopped my
horse more than once to watch the boatmen at their perilous work of
shooting the rapids. Getting to Svenica soon after six o'clock, I made
inquiries about the distance to Uibanya. No two people agreed, but the
chief spokesman declared it was a couple of hours' walk, and he
volunteered to show me the way. The inn was horribly dirty, as one might
expect from the appearance of the village, which is inhabited entirely
by Serbs, otherwise Rascians. It appears that a vast number of Slavs
from Servia took refuge in Hungary at the end of the seventeenth
century. Some were Roman Catholics, but they were mostly of the Greek
Church. A colony settled at Buda. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, writing
from that town in 1717, says that the Governor of Buda assured her that
the Rascian colony without the walls would furnish him with 12,000
fighting men at any moment.
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