162 FIFTEEN DAYS ON THE DANUBE. 



where we could see through the branches another grand view 

 of the distant heights of Servia. 



On the very crest of the hill we were met by the entire 

 staff of keepers belonging to the three monasteries of this 

 district. It consisted of two brigand-looking fellows whom 

 it w T ould certainly have been imprudent to have encountered 

 alone on a dark night. These men are appointed by all the 

 monasteries in common, and, as we were informed by the 

 forester, do not receive any pay whatever; so the poor 

 fellows have to live upon the game, which they kill all the 

 year round, without the slightest respect for any game-laws 

 or close-time, selling some of it and eating the rest. 



They were a couple of big robust men, with dark brown 

 weather-beaten faces, long drooping moustaches, and jet- 

 black ringleted hair, and would have served as fine character- 

 istic models for the South Slavonian type of face. They 

 wore a sort of spencer-like coat, with a thick leather waistcoat 

 under it, and short wide trousers, while a big hunting-knife 

 stuck in a belt, a wretched single-barrelled muzzle-loading 

 rifle, a large ammunition-wallet, leggings, sandals, and finally 

 a large hat and a twisted vine-stick formed the other accou- 

 trements of these two very singular fellows. 



The most striking thing about their attire was that it 

 consisted of nothing but bits of rags which they had picked 

 up and then sewn together; it therefore had a spotted harlequin 

 sort of look, the general tone of the whole being dirty yellow. 



One of the men had a kind of hound, which he led by a 

 cord, a wolfish-looking beast indeed so like a wolf that if one 

 had met it in the dusk, one would undoubtedly have shot it 

 as such. Both of them were very polite and even rather 

 servile, for they at first wanted to kneel down, and they made 

 all sorts of signs of the greatest devotion. Count Chotek's 

 forester detested them and treated them with the greatest 

 brusqueness, for these cloister-keepers are the very worst 



