An old man accompanied us, who was returning to his
native place on the frontiers of Bosnia, having gone to welcome Wucics
and Petronievitch. He amused me by asking me "if the king of my
country lived in a strong castle?" I answered, "No, we have a queen,
whose strength is in the love of all her subjects." Indeed, it is
impossible to travel in the interior of Turkey without having the mind
perpetually carried back to the middle ages by a thousand quaint
remarks and circumstances, inseparable from the moral and political
constitution of a half civilized and quasi-federal empire. For, in
nearly all the mountainous parts of Turkey, the power of the
government is almost nominal, and even up to a very recent period the
position of the Dere Beys savoured strongly of feudalism.
We arrived at Palesh, the khan of which looked like a new coffee-shop
in a Turkish bazaar, and I thought that we should have a sorry night's
quarters; but mine host, leading the way with a candle up a ladder,
and though a trap-door, put us into a clean newly-carpeted room, and
in an hour the boy entered with Turkish wash-hand apparatus; and after
ablution the khan keeper produced supper, consisting of soup, which
contained so much lemon juice, that, without a wry face, I could
scarcely eat it--boiled lamb, from which the soup had been made, and
then a stew of the same with Tomata sauce.
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