Batty.
Ascending rapidly, we were soon lost in the woods, catching only now
and then a view of the golden plain through the dark green oaks and
pines. For full three hours our brilliant little party dashed up hill
and down dale, through the most majestic forests, delightful to the
gaze but unrelieved by a patch of cultivation, and miserably
profitless to the commonwealth, till we came to a height covered with
loose rocks and pasture. "There is Tronosha," said the Natchalnik,
pulling up, and pointing to a tapering white spire and slender column
of blue smoke that rose from a _cul-de-sac_ formed by the opposite
hills, which, like the woods we had traversed, wore such a shaggy and
umbrageous drapery, that with a slight transposition, I could exclaim,
"Si lupus essem, nollem alibi quam in _Servia_ lupus esse!" A steep
descent brought us to some meadows on which cows were grazing by the
side of a rapid stream, and I felt the open apace a relief after the
gloom of the endless forest.
Crossing the stream, we struck into the sylvan _cul-de-sac_, and
arrived in a few minutes at an edifice with strong walls, towers, and
posterns, that looked more like a secluded and fortified manor-house
in the seventeenth century than a convent; for in more troubled times,
such establishments, though tolerated by the old Turkish government,
were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders.
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