1936 On the Continent

tourists, and providing all the little comforts which people in the West have come to consider as necessities. Everything here is rugged, including the people. For South Serbia has slept for five and a half centuries under the Turks, and has only just awakened from its medieval dream to present-day reality. Life has resumed its course exactly where it stopped in 1389, after the Serbian defeat at Kosovo, when the Turks overran the country. Peasants still sleep in mud-plastered huts, beds are a luxury, the wooden plough prevails, and all the customs have the stamp of medieval primitiveness.
    A journey through South Serbia is, therefore, not a tourist ramble from hotel to hotel within a cotton-wool reality. It is an experience. It is bound to bring you into direct contact with primitive life in its simplest forms. No one can pass through the rugged mountain ranges, cross the wild peaks, traverse the virgin forests, enter the fierce shadows of the gorges of South Serbia, and see its hardy, simple people, without being the richer for it in experience of new values. The South Serbians are strong and lithe, with all the bounding energy of mountaineers. Their long oppression has given them a quiet solemnity and a tragic conception of life which is powerfully expressed in their songs, dances and embroideries. The songs and dances of South Serbia have complicated Eastern scales and melodious lines, powerful and varying rhythms which often change from bar to bar into wonderful architectonic patterns, and unexpected harmonies, perhaps weird to the Western ear, but with a haunting, tragic beauty of their own. Similarly, the embroideries, in which black and dark shades predominate, cannot fail to convey the sombre mood of the people.
By Car
    Unless you approach South Serbia by train from Belgrade, there is only one tourist route—by car from Dubrovnik, via Cetinje. It is a route full of unforgettable sights. First, the deep-shaded valley of the Moraa, with weird conical islands rising out of a marshy bed, andlooking like an ancient faded tapestry of creation. Then a stretch of violent contrasts, deep virgin forests, mountain passes so high that they seem to belong rather to the sky than to the earth, the little village of Andrijevica huddled in all this mountain grandeur, the dark and fierce gorge of Rugovo, and at the end of the journey, Pe. Pe(Hotel Korso) is a small, primitive town with cobbled streets with water flowing through it. Here you will see rickety houses, latticed windows, mosques, churches, and the buildings of the old Serbian patriarchy. It is fascinating on a market day, when Serbs, Albanians and Moslems meet. It is a cheap mart for embroideries and copperware.
    Seventeen kilometres from Pe, in the idyllic quiet of a forest of sweet chestnuts, lies the monastery of
Visoki De
ani
. Deani, built in 1335 and one of the finest monasteries of old Serbia, shows the influence of Romance on the Serbo-Byzantine style of architecture. It is rich in precious medieval frescoes and contains tombs of old Serbian rulers. The Abbot of Deani is a cultured monk who speaks several languages, and is always willing to put up visitors for the night. His hospitality is usually acknowledged by a contribution to the monastery-box. The trout at Deani is delicious.
Skoplje
    Via Kosovska Mitrovica we finally reach
Skoplje
(Hotels Bristol, Splendid), the chief town of South Serbia. Although still in the East, or rather of the East, Skoplje belongs to it no more. Skoplje embodies the new vigour of South Serbia struggling after five centuries of slavery towards a richer culture. True, on one side of the Vardar there still sleeps old Uskub, as it was called by the Turks, with narrow, twisting lanes, cobbled streets, ramshackle houses, low wooden shops, open-air bazaars, Moslems and veiled hanumas. But on the other side, overshadowed by the fort of King Dušan, the mightiest ruler of medieval Serbia, rises new Skoplje, with broad streets, fine public buildings, and an officers’ club, the modern café of which is brilliantly illuminated at night.
    In the summer Skoplje swelters in a southern heat. It is therefore at its best in the spring or autumn,especially at twilight, when it appears full of ancient memories and half-forgotten grandeurs. There is the old church of Sveti Spas (St. Saviour), almost half underground, with a cool, mystic feeling, and a fine altar-piece carved in wood by craftsmen from Debar. Among the stories from the Bible,