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7 UN DEBAT : LES MENTALITES COLLBCTIYES 597

From Curtea de Argejj, whose aneient churches they unfortunately passed by without a second glance, the party went to Pi test i and Gaiefjti. In the former place they met with great attention on the part of the Ispravnik, who gave them a letter to the Prince of Wallachia, Alexandru Moruzi, in Bucharest. A little way from Pitejti, just after fording the river Arges, they came across another party of Englishmen travelling in the opposite direction. The party consisted of Sir Robert Ainslie, the former British Ambassador at the Porte, and his suitę, who were returning home to England. What should have been a happy reunion of fellow^countrymen turned out rather differently, as Stockdale e\plained :

“It originated in a foolish dispute between the Servants about giving road, when one of ours being strucle produced a Pistol & we seeing tliis & leaping from our Carriage were met by S^r. Rob‘. who had left his. — An Eclaircissement took place & after sonie indifferent conyersation we separated.”²⁹

To have braved the much heralded dangers associated with travelling through the Balkans, only to be shot by the servant of a fellow English-man would have been a cruel fate indeed for the ambassador, whose own brief record of his journey is recorded in an album of prints tak en from the drawings of his artist. Luigi Mayer.²⁰

A night in the open air at Gitiesti plunged the party once morę into gloom over the hardships of travel. Stockdale at least found some consolation the following day, JO Tuly:

“ ... we saw two fine greek Girls at Floresty [Floresti] which is a very poor Village. — We stopped under a Tree to change horses, & found the nymphs willing to come to a conference but sonie men being near were a great check upon our intercourse & we had the pain to see one of them struck by a brutal fellow perhaps her husband.

— Having set out we stopped just without the Village to see a Wallacliian dance not very different from a reel & aceompanied also with Bagpipes. The Fig: [Figurę ] of the dance is little morę than a round with setting & footing. Many of the Party appeared to be Gypsies & they exerted themselyes to please us whilst we stopped’’ ³¹.

Fheir last night before arrival at Bucharest was spent in another boyar’s house at Bolintin. This tinie its owners had quit in a hurry and it had been ransacked during the Austro-Russo-Tuikish war (1787—1791), when the Prince of Saxe-Cobnrg’s troops had their headąuarters close by. It had not been inhabited sińce, except by an old peasant and his wife, who accommodated their unexpected guests as best they could.

²⁹ The MS. Diary of Robert Stockdale. Sir Robert Ainslie's statement regarding his homeward journey is contained in : Notę explanatory of Sir Robert Ainslie's charge for the Ex-penses of his Journey from Constantinople to London, The Public Record Office, Foreign Office Correspondence, Turkey series. FO 7-8/17, fols. 19-^I-22.

. ³⁰ Views in, Turkey in Europę and Asia, comprising Romelia, Bułgaria, Walachia, Syria, and Palcstlne setected from the collection of Sir Robert Ainslie. Drawn by Luigi Mayer and ęngraoed by William Watts (London, 1801).

³¹ The MS. Diary of Robert Stockdale.

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