Читать книгу The Lands of the Tamed Turk; or, the Balkan States of to-day онлайн

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THE NATIVE SERVIAN HEAD-DRESS.

To the student the Servians are a nation of types; as a race they are gifted by nature with unusual powers of observation, shrewdness and strength of character, but from the fact of their having been so long oppressed has arisen a disposition to concealment and even absolute distrust. They are patriotic and loyal to a marked degree, which may account, in part, for their emotional proclivities. They are absolutely fearless, but this fearlessness assumes at times a tinge of the opera bouffe, as in the late controversy with Austria, which leads us Americans to think of them as a nation of charlatans.

But I digress. It is not my desire to enter into any rehearsals of the political conditions in the pivotal Near East. I exhaled a deep-breathed oath when this volume was commenced to confine my writings herein to the travelling through and brief descriptions of these “Lands of the Tamed Turk,” introducing such history as might seem romantic and interesting and instructive enough to be absorbed by the reader.