Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/97

 might not have been taken and sold. Here we afterwards spent the night.

On Nov. 23 a courier on horseback again arrived from Herr Petsch. For our night’s lodging we went to the town of Ponte Grando, where there is a stone bridge 787 paces long, with twenty arches, over an arm of the sea.

On Nov. 24 we arrived at the town of Ponte Picolo, or Little Bridge, for there, too, you must go over a bridge. These two arms of the sea are very pleasant, and if they were to be adorned by human aid and labour, and if human intelligence and cleverness were to assist their natural features, I do not know that there would be anything more beautiful under the sun; now, however, left, as it were, forlorn, they give tokens how they bewail and lament their forsaken condition, because, on account of the servitude whereby they are bound to a barbarous lord, people hate them, dislike them, and, finally, take no notice of them. Here we saw fish caught with large nets in the sea: the fishermen caught a large number of very good and well-flavoured fish, and sold us those which we wished, and as many as we wished. At this town Herr Petsch had ordered his steward to welcome us, and furnish us with good provisions.

On Nov. 25 we started at three o’clock, and about ten o’clock saw Doctor Petsch, the resident at Constantinople. He had with him a good many horsemen both from the Turks and from his own suite, and, in particular, about forty chiaouses, or courtiers, of the Turkish emperor had been sent to meet us, who welcomed us, and rode before us into Constantinople. Here, first of all, when my lords the ambassadors saw