Though the villages of the Wallachian plain are few and far between, and though it is no uncommon thing for a peasant to walk a dozen miles from his home to the fields in which he works, the whole region seemed a-hum with industry.  The Rumanian peasant, like his fellows below the Danube, is, as a rule, a good-natured, easy-going though easily excited, reasonably honest and extremely industrious fellow who labors from dawn to darkness in six days of the week and spends the seventh in harmless village carouses, chiefly characterized by dancing, music and the cheap native wine.  Rumania is one of the few countries in Europe where the peasants still dress like the pictures on the postcards.  The men wear curly-brimmed shovel hats of black felt, like those affected by English curates, and loose shirts of white linen, whose tails, instead of being tucked into the trousers, flap freely about their legs, giving them the appearance of having responded to an alarm of fire without waiting to finish dressing.  On Sundays and holidays men and women alike appear in garments covered with the gorgeous needlework for which Rumania is famous, some of the women’s dresses being so heavily embroidered in gold and silver that from a little distance the wearers look as though they were enveloped in chain mail.  A considerable and undesirable element of Rumania’s population consists of gipsies, whence their name of Romany, or Rumani.  The Rumanian gipsies, who are nomads and vagrants like their kinsmen in the United States, are generally lazy, quarrelsome, dishonest and untrustworthy, supporting themselves by horse-trading and cattle-stealing or by their flocks and herds.  We stopped near one of their picturesque encampments in order to repair a tire and I took a picture of a young woman with a child in her arms, but when I declined to pay her the five lei she demanded for the privilege, she flew at me like an angry cat, screaming curses and maledictions.  But her picture was not worth five lei, as you can see for yourself.

[Illustration:  A PEASANT OF OLD SERBIA

The Serbian peasant is simple, kindly, hospitable, honest, and generous, and, though he could not be described ... as a hard worker, his wife invariably is]

[Illustration:  THE GYPSY WHO DEMANDED FIVE LEI FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF TAKING HER PICTURE]

The Castle of Pelesch is just such a royal residence as Anthony Hope has depicted in The Prisoner of Zenda.  It gives the impression, at first sight, of a confusion of turrets, gables, balconies, terraces, parapets and fountains, but one quickly forgets its architectural shortcomings in the beauty of its surroundings.  It stands amid velvet lawns and wonderful rose gardens in a sort of forest glade, from which the pine-clothed slopes of the Carpathians rise steeply on every side, the beam-and-plaster walls, the red-tiled roofs, and the blazing gardens of the chateau forming a striking contrast to the austerity of the mountains and the solemnity of the encircling forest.