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
prominent object in the first open space we came to is the cathedral,
a new and large but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt
bell-tower, in the Russian manner; and the walls of the interior are
covered with large paintings of no merit.
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