AN OKNITHOLOGIST ON THE DANUBE. 555 



but the hospitality is there, and it has not yet given place to a 

 thirst for persecution. Animals, and especially birds, remain quite 

 confidently in the neighbourhood of men; they go about their own 

 affairs quite unconcerned as to what men may be doing. The eagle 

 has his eyrie by the roadside, the raven nests among the trees in 

 the field, the black or wood stork is hardly more shy than the 

 sacred house-stork; the deer does not rise from his lair when a 

 carriage passes within rifle-range. Verily, it is like Paradise. 



But we found a state of paradise elsewhere than in the Keskender 

 forest. After we had roamed through the forest in many directions, 

 and had visited more than twenty eyries of buzzards and ospreys 

 and black storks, and had refreshed and strengthened ourselves with 

 an excellent breakfast provided for us, and still more with the 

 delicious wine of the district, we set out on our return journey to 

 the ship, urged to haste by threatening thunder-clouds, but still 

 hunting and collecting as time and opportunity allowed. Our route 

 was difierent from that which we had followed in coming to the 

 forest; it was a good high-road connecting a number of villages. 

 We passed through several of those, and again the road led us 

 between houses. There was nothing remarkable about the buildings, 

 but the people were stranger than my fancy could have pictured. The 

 population of Dalyok consists almost solely of Schokazen or Catholic 

 Servians, who migrated from the Balkan Peninsula, or were brought 

 thither by the Turks, during the period of the Turkish supremacy. 

 They are handsome, slender people these Schokazen, the men tall 

 and strong, the women at least equal to the men, extremely well 

 built and apparently rather pretty. We could form a definite 

 opinion with regard to their figures, but, as far as their faces were 

 concerned, we had to depend to some extent on our own imagination. 

 For the Schokaz women wear a style of dress which will hardly be 

 found elsewhere within the boundaries of Europe at the present 

 day: a dress which our princely patron, happy as usual in his 

 descriptions, called mythological. When I say that head and face 

 were almost entirely enveloped in quaintly yet not unpicturesquely 

 wound and knotted cloths, and that the skirt was replaced by two 

 gaily-coloured apron-like pieces of cloth, not connected with each 



