Kinglake, Alexander William, 1809-1891 / 2008-07-04 00:00:00

EBOOK, EOTHEN ***


Transcribed from the 1898 George Newnes edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk


EOTHEN--A. W. KINGSLAKE


CHAPTER I--OVER THE BORDER

At Semlin I still was encompassed by the scenes and the sounds of
familiar life; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me;
the unveiled faces of women still shone in the light of day. Yet,
whenever I chose to look southward, I saw the Ottoman's fortress--
austere, and darkly impending high over the vale of the Danube--
historic Belgrade. I had come, as it were, to the end of this
wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and
havoc of the East.
The two frontier towns are less than a cannon-shot distant, and yet
their people hold no communion. The Hungarian on the north, and
the Turk and Servian on the southern side of the Save are as much
asunder as though there were fifty broad provinces that lay in the
path between them. Of the men that bustled around me in the
streets of Semlin there was not, perhaps, one who had ever gone
down to look upon the stranger race dwelling under the walls of
that opposite castle. It is the plague, and the dread of the
plague, that divide the one people from the other.
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