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Updated: June 19, 2025
Sava and I stopped and tinkered at the old machine for about an hour, changed all the sparking plugs again, after which she went better. We reached Kralievo without incident, where we cast loose the female relation. From Kralievo passed over the Morava, which was pretty floody and had knocked the road about a bit.
Semendria is three hours' ride from Posharevatz; the road crosses the Morava, and everywhere the country is fertile, populous, and well cultivated. Innumerable massive turrets, mellowed by the sun of a clear autumn, and rising from wide rolling waters, announced my approach to the shores of the Danube.
I now rose, and breakfasted on new milk, mingled with brandy and sugar, no bad substitute for better fare, and mounted horse. We now descended the Grashevatzka river to Bruss, with low hills on each side, covered with grass, and partly wooded. Bruss is prettily situated on a rising ground, at the confluence of two tributaries of the Morava.
During the two weeks following the fall of Nish the three commanders of the invading armies began, and continued, a great converging movement on the Kossovo Plain, their object being to completely encircle the main Serbian armies. Kövess was advancing his forces toward Mitrovitza on the north side of the plain from Kralievo up the valley of the Ibar, branching out of the Western Morava.
South of this force came the second group territorial troops numbering three divisions of infantry and one of cavalry, altogether about 80,000 men, and commanded by Marshal Stepanovitch. It was based on Pirot and was especially charged with the defense of the railroad. Lower down, with headquarters in Vranya, was the detachment of the Southern Morava.
I am assured that the Servians have progressed wonderfully since acquiring their full independence; but as one journeys down the beautiful and fertile valley of the Morava, where improvements would naturally be seen, if anywhere, one falls to wondering where they can possibly have come in.
The great immemorial highway from the north-west to the Balkan peninsula crosses the Danube at Belgrade and follows the valley of the Morava to Nish; thence it branches off eastwards, going through Sofia and again crossing all Bulgaria to reach Constantinople, while the route to Salonika follows the Morava southwards from Nish and crosses the watershed into the valley of the Vardar, which flows into the Aegean.
Thence ascending the valley of the Rogaschitza, a small stream tributary to the Drina, and crossing a ridge which parts the waters flowing into the Drina and into the Morava, he descended into the tract watered by the Morava, the national river of Servia; the first town in which was Ushitza, one of the fortresses still garrisoned by the Turks, and the scene of desperate conflicts during the war of independence.
Down the Morava Valley passes the railroad, after which it passes within a few miles of the Bulgarian frontier, near Kustendil; dangerously near the frontier of a possible enemy, but especially perilous in this war in which the Serbians would naturally endeavor to retreat toward her ally, Greece.
All up the Morava Valley the roads continue far better than I have expected to find in Servia, and we wheel merrily along, the Resara Mountains covered with dark pine forests, skirting the valley on the right, sometimes rising into peaks of quite respectable proportions.
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