There flowed the Save in all its peaceful smoothness; looking out of
the window, I perceived that the high rampart, on which the kiosk was
constructed, was built at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the
water, and that the intervening space was covered with boats, hauled
up high and dry, and animated with the process of building and
repairing the barges employed in the river trade. The kiosk, in which
we were sitting, was a species of cafe, and it being Ramadan time, we
were presented with sherbet by a kahwagi, who, to judge by his look,
was a eunuch. I was afterwards told that the Turks remaining in the
fortified town are so poor, that they had not a decent room to show me
into.
A Turk, about fifty years of age, now entered. His habiliments were
somewhere between decent and shabby genteel, and his voice and manners
had that distinguished gentleness which wins--because it feels--its
way. This was the Disdar Aga, the last relic of the wealthy Turks of
the place: for before the Servian revolution Shabatz had its twenty
thousand Osmanlis; and a tract of gardens on the other side of the
_Polje_, was pointed out as having been covered with the villas of the
wealthy, which were subsequently burnt down.
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