We were on the watershed between
the Adriatic and the Euxine, and the brooks were tributary to the
Danube through the Tara. The land is an immense upland, rolling
slightly, and the finest grass land I ever saw; it is an immense
prairie, with the horizon unbroken, except by the picturesque peak
of Dormitor at the north, the summit peak of the mountains of upper
Herzegovina, and the centre of the glacial system of the lands between
the Adriatic and the great Rascian valley which divides Servia and the
lower Danube from Montenegro. The flora was entirely new to me. I rode
through a thicket of marguerites so tall that the flowers came up to
my face, while the grass came up to my horse's belly. This is a great
hayfield, and the people come from far to cut and store the hay for
the winter, when they harness the stacks and drag them bodily to their
villages on the snow, which sometimes falls, they told me, to the
depth of fifteen or more feet. To the east stretched the rolling
prairie without a house or a village to the Signavina (desolate land)
Planina, solitary as the Sahara, for no man would build where a
Turkish raid on this disputed land might sweep him and his into one
destruction.
That there had been a great population once on these plains was
evident from ancient cemeteries with elaborate monuments of an early
but unknown people, of whom they are the only remains.
Pages:
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221