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CHAPTER XIII
USKUB
Uskub is a Smell on one side of which is built a prim little French town
finished off with conventionally placed poplars in true Latin style; and
on the other side lies a disreputable, rambling Turkish village
culminating in a cone of rock upon which is the old fortress called the
Grad.
The country about Uskub is a great cemetery, and on every hand rise
little rounded hills bristling with gravestones like almonds in a
tipsy-cake. Strange old streets there are in Uskub. One comes suddenly
upon half-buried mosques with grass growing from their dilapidated
domes, a refuge only for chickens; some deserted baths, and in the midst
of all, its outer walls like a prison and with prison windows, the old
caravanserai.
We crept to its gateway and through a crack saw visions of a romantic
courtyard. The gate was locked, and we asked a little shoemaker--
"Who has the key?"
"It is now a leather tannery," he answered, and directed us to a
shoemaker in another street.
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