After half an hour's riding, the valley became wider, and we passed
through meadow lands, cultivated by Moslem Bosniacs in their white
turbans; and two hours further, entered a fertile circular plain,
about a mile and a half in diameter, surrounded by low hills, which
had a chalky look, in the midst of which rose the minarets and
bastions of the town and castle of Novibazar. Numerous gipsy tents
covered the plain, and at one of them, a withered old gipsy woman,
with white dishevelled hair hanging down on each side of her burnt
umber face, cried out in a rage, "See how the Royal Servian people
now-a-days have the audacity to enter Novibazar on horseback,"
alluding to the ancient custom of Christians not being permitted to
ride on horseback in a town.[12]
On entering, I perceived the houses to be of a most forbidding
aspect, being built of mud, with only a base of bricks, extending
about three feet from the ground. None of the windows were glazed;
this being the first town of this part of Turkey in Europe that I had
seen in such a plight. The over-rider stopped at a large
stable-looking building, which was the khan of the place.
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