The veiled Turkish women of Mostar are world-famous for the style of their headdress, which is as characteristic of this city as the old bridge itself. In addition to being heavily veiled they wear a sort of black hood of stiffened material, which protrudes in front like the upper half of the pointed bill of a bird.
But, aside from the Roman bridge, the veiled women, and an old Turkish graveyard, there is really nothing much of interest in Mostar. At any rate, after a short visit here, you will be a little tired of the sameness of these cities, which the Turk fain would still hold as his own, and you will want to hurry along to the Dalmatian coast towns, as different from those you have recently visited as day is from night; different climates, different peoples having different customs, different architectures; all so different that when you come upon them you will wonder if you haven’t been awakened suddenly, then launched upon another dream-excursion.
THE OLD ROMAN BRIDGE, MOSTAR.
Again, after leaving Mostar, the railroad commences to climb, snake-like, over the mountains toward the coast, for the building of this road has required no small amount of engineering skill. It would be difficult to find in England or America, or in fact in any other country, a railway line more substantially built or kept in better condition. The crushed rock track ballast is evened off at each side of the rails as if with a pair of calipers, the roadbed is smooth and the grades, although long, are not as steep as would be imagined, considering the heights to be climbed. At Ravna the final ascent of the mountains is commenced and from here to the top the road is built on an almost continuous wall of stone masonry.
As you wind around the mountain peaks wonderful views of the valley below, dotted here and there with white specks of human beings busily at work, are before you, now on one side, now on the other. The fields resemble square patches of brown or green plush rubbed both ways, according to the angle of light as it falls upon them. Ahead, the railway line seems to be made up of tunnels, great stone arches that bridge deep ravines and cuts and fills which follow one another in rapid succession. On the distant hills you may see the remains of watch towers once used by lookouts, from which were observed the movements of Turkish invaders in the days when the gates of Vienna were threatened by the depredating Mohammedans.
A little beyond Uskoplje, as suddenly as you would come into the light from the darkness of a tunnel, is displayed before you, as if molded with clay upon a great flat canvas, a most extraordinary panorama of that part of the Dalmatian coast.
Might you have had the uninterrupted view of the engineer you would have seen at first but a narrow defile in the mountains ahead, in the centre of which the rails of the road meet in perspective, like two glossy ribbons, and then seem to shoot out into a blue-vaulted void beyond. By bringing into play a very little imagination you might be willing to believe you were nearing the edge of the earth. But, as you approach, a panorama unfolds itself,—a panorama of that strip of territory which fringes the north-eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, Austria-Hungary’s only coast line. It is a panorama of an historic land of perennial loveliness. It is a panorama of a land of flowers, of sunshine and deep shadows; a land of wonderful walls and bold bastiles; a land of gayety, where Austria-Hungarian aristocracy, all-appreciative of its charms, sits and looks out upon the amethystine waters by day, and strolls languorously along the sea-parades by night; a land of quaint, fortified cities, jealous of their histories; a land of interesting, picturesque, unsophisticated peasant peoples. Withal it is a new, and, as yet, comparatively an unpenetrated land to the English-speaking traveller, scenery-lover or pleasure-seeker, and I have taken the liberty to coin a new name for it—The Balkan Riviera.
From this point in the defile the road twists and turns like a scenic railway, and almost doubles in its tracks as it zig-zags down the precipitous sides of the mountains, the Adriatic ever blending into the gray sky-line in the distance.
Finally, after making in its descent many snake-like coils, the train passes the source of the beautiful Ombla, with its swan-dotted lake, and you will have arrived at Gravosa, the port and railway terminus of Ragusa. In three hours, it seems, you have been hustled from a temperate into a tropical climate.