Servia lay rolled out at my feet.
There was the field of Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar and
entombed the ancient empire of Servia. I mused an instant on this
great landmark of European history, and following the finger of an old
peasant, who accompanied us, I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad--the
scene of one of the bloodiest fights that preceded the resurrection of
Servia as a principality. The Morava glistened in its wide valley like
a silver thread in a carpet of green, beyond which the dark mountains
of Rudnik rose to the north, while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania,
Macedonia, and Bulgaria walled in the prospect.
"_Nogo Svet_.--This is the whole world," said the peasant, who stood
by me.
I myself thought, that if an artist wished for a landscape as the
scene of Satan taking up our Saviour into a high mountain, he could
find none more appropriate than this. The Kopaunik is not lofty; not
much above six thousand English feet above the level of the sea. But
it is so placed in the Servian basin, that the eye embraces the whole
breadth from Bosnia to Bulgaria, and very nearly the whole length from
Macedonia to Hungary.
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