our reception on the Turkish frontiers.  Mr W——­’s courier, which he sent from Essek, returned this morning, with the bassa’s answer in a purse of scarlet satin, which the interpreter here has translated.  ’Tis to promise him to be honourably received.  I desired him to appoint where he would be met by the Turkish convoy.—­He has dispatched the courier back, naming Betsko, a village in the midway between Peterwaradin and Belgrade.  We shall stay here till we receive his answer.—­Thus, dear sister, I have given you a very particular, and (I am afraid you’ll think) a tedious account of this part of my travels.  It was not an affectation of shewing my reading that has made me tell you some little scraps of the history of the towns I have passed through; I have always avoided any thing of that kind, when I spoke Of places that I believe you knew the story of as well as myself.  But Hungary being a part of the world, which I believe quite new to you, I thought you might read with some pleasure an account of it, which I have been very solicitous to get from the best hands.  However, if you don’t like it, ’tis in your power to forbear reading it.  I am, dear sister, &c.

I AM promised to have this letter carefully sent to Vienna.

LET.  XXIV.

TO MR POPE.

Belgrade, Feb. 12.  O. S. 1717.

I DID verily intend to write you a long letter from Peterwaradin, where I expected to stay three or four days; but the bassa here was in such haste to see us, that he dispatched the courier back (which Mr W——­ had sent to know the time he would send the convoy to meet us) without suffering him to pull off his boots.  My letters were not thought important enough to stop our journey; and we left Peterwaradin the next day, being waited on by the chief officers of the garrison, and a considerable convoy of Germans and Rascians.  The emperor has several regiments of these people; but, to say the truth, they are rather plunderers than soldiers; having no pay, and being obliged to furnish their own arms and horses; they rather look like vagabond gypsies, or stout beggars, than regular troops.  I cannot forbear speaking a word of this race of creatures, who are very numerous all over Hungary.  They have a patriarch of their own at Grand Cairo, and are really of the Greek church; but their extreme ignorance gives their priests occasion to impose several new notions upon them.  These fellows, letting their hair and beard grow inviolate, make exactly the figure of the Indian bramins (sic).  They are heirs-general to all the money of the laity; for which, in return, they give them formal passports signed and sealed for heaven; and the wives and children only inherit the house and cattle.  In most other points they follow the Greek church.—­This little digression has interrupted my telling you we passed over the fields of Carlowitz, where the last