But Serbia had grown more sophisticated. Her costume of red and gold still followed the old lines; indeed, only a close observer could see any changes in it. But the material was richer than formerly, and she had thrown aside the little veil--symbol, as it seemed to her, of the darkening oppression of the Ottoman. Her people were clamoring around her. They assured her they were not lazy, though perhaps a little slower than some of their neighbors. Their fields yielded abundantly. They discovered that by digging they could get much wealth, not only from the surface but from their rocks far below. They must be able to exchange it--to send it readily where they wished. Why, why, since they were willing to pay for it, could they not have a seaport of their own?
But there was another who was determined to hold Serbia back. She did not know him well; for though he bore the Imperial eagle, he had appropriated a title that belonged to the old house that for a time had held the world in its grasp. She would not call him a parvenu--not wholly a parvenu--yet why should he trouble her? She was not really in his way. Could it be that he was trying to curry favor with the turbaned Turk, and hoped to ingratiate himself the more thoroughly by tormenting her? What had the Turk to give him? Ah! Serbia had now grown so worldly that she suspected motives in every action, even in those sometimes that were really guileless.
Serbia, in the same latitude as France and Italy, has a similar climate, though with greater extremes of heat and cold; and its average of one hundred rainy days yearly prevents its being called a land of sunshine. With an area about equal to that of the State of New York, its population of four millions is much smaller--nearer, indeed, that of Massachusetts. About fifteen thousand of its nearly thirty-four thousand square miles of area is territory added since the Balkan wars. The rivers of Serbia flow toward the north into the Danube. Its boundary rivers, the Danube, Save, Drina, and Timok are navigable, but of those within Serbia, only the Morava is navigable, and that for but sixty miles. Serbia is not only protected by the ranges on her boundaries, but four-fifths of the surface is covered with mountains, a "chaos of mountains," a fact both helping and hindering her progress through the centuries. The general aspect of Serbia is one of beauty, with high and rugged mountains, mysterious forests, and long narrow river valleys as picturesque as fertile. Even the Sumadia, called the rallying point of the Nation, is now well cultivated and enterprising. Many medieval buildings add to the picturesqueness of the country, forts and churches perched on rocky heights or half screened in the woods.