I was sorry we had such wretched weather at Mostar.
The Source of the Buna, near Mostar.
About seven o’clock next day the sun came out very kindly for our journey to Saràjevo, the capital of Bosnia, and before leaving Mostar we paid another visit to the town, into other streets; but the picturesque ones are all Turkish. The better class women wear a most curious feridjeh, with a bonnet attached to it very like an elongated Quaker’s bonnet; no one can see under it, but they see out of a chink. This domino is generally all black or dark blue. Many of the women wore trousers under their skirts, the latter they tucked up very high to keep them out of the mud.
Going along in the train we saw many curious houses and scenes. The houses have all very deep roofs of wood and often the whole house is wood, there are no proper chimneys, the smoke coming out at four little windows in the roof. Ploughing was in full force, and six oxen are often yoked to a plough driven by a woman in Turkish trousers and sort of shawl over her head; sometimes the trousers were scarlet and the shawl white, and sometimes the whole costume would be yellow. The little girls and boys, looking after the flocks of sheep with beautiful long white wool, were dressed in brown sort of riding breeches, the boy wearing a fez and the girl a kerchief on the head, the only distinction of sex.
A Street in Saràjevo.
Bosnia, the other state claimed by Austria, which is very mountainous, is bounded on the south by Albania and Montenegro, east by Servia, north and west by the Austrian dominions, and has an area of about 24,024 miles. A large proportion is forest land, and valuable as it furnishes timber and fuel. Plums are largely grown and exported as prunes; maize and wheat are the principal crops, but barley, oats, hemp, rice, are grown; cattle, sheep and goats are plentiful, and large droves of pigs are fed in the oak forests. The whole valley of the Bosnia is said to be a coal bed, and copper is worked in several places, also at Inatch is a very valuable cimmabar mine. Marble, too, is found and there are saline springs. The principal exports are timber, fruit, cattle, wool, lamb-skins, furs of wild animals, wax and honey. Nearly all the trading is with Austria. Lately several roads have been made that connect some of the principal towns. The province is divided into seven Sandjaks. The people are Servians, but principally Mahomedans, as is seen in passing many graveyards by the side of the railway, sadly dilapidated spots, the gravestones of which for men are composed of a column, crowned by a carved turban or fez, generally toppling sideways over in a melancholy manner and leaning towards another column. A large part of the south has an Albanian population.