[286] See King’s Gnostics and their Remains, who cites Boccaccio.
[287] For the benefit of any future traveller who may wish to sleep at the Casino, I may mention that a sure preservative against certain fauna of the country is to be found amongst its flora. Our Consul kindly supplied us with some Herzegovinian flea-plant, by scattering which, previously reduced to chaff, about the bed, a magic circle is formed round the body of the sleeper, which is fatal to every noxious insect that attempts to cross it.
[288] See the report of a Foreign Consul in the Times of December 15, 1875, for a more detailed account of the insurrection and its causes. I must refer my readers to this. A personage who was also in a position to obtain authentic information on this subject, has communicated an interesting account of the origin of the insurrection in the Narenta Valley to the Pesther Lloyd; and many details, proving the falsity of these Turkish statements, have been published by the distinguished gentleman who has been acting as the Times’ correspondent in the Herzegovina.
[290] The rayahs in their ‘Appeal’ say of these ‘Giumrukers’:—‘They go in procession from house to house, and from plantation to plantation, and prolong the time as they please, in order to feed gratuitously. But for fear they may have put down too little, the round is repeated twice again, on the pretext of correcting any mistake that may have been made. Then they are in the habit of sending other searchers after the first, on the pretence of finding out any trickery on the part of these, as if they were not all accomplices; and they give themselves airs of patronage, and would make it appear that they are acting with a scrupulous regard for justice and the public welfare. So that the people are ever in the midst of inconceivable injury and abuse of authority.’
The Herzegovinian rayahs have such a good cause that it is a pity that a tone of undignified vituperation should run through the greater part of their appeal to the civilized Powers. Indeed, I should have supposed that the document in question had been drawn up by an old woman, did I not find internal evidence of a monkish pen! The passage quoted above is comparatively moderate.
[291] The Metayer system is mostly in vogue. In general the tiller of the soil has to furnish the implements of agriculture. See on this M. de Sainte Marie (who was for some time French Consul at Mostar), L’Herzégovine, étude géographique, historique et statistique, p. 102, &c.
[292] M. Yriarte, who visited Bosnia and the Herzegovinian frontier shortly after our return, with the object of reporting on the causes and progress of the insurrection, estimates the total number of the insurgents in Bosnia and the Herzegovina at about 15,000 men, of which 2,000 were auxiliaries of kindred race from beyond the frontier. Of these he sets down 1,000 as Montenegrines, who had come in defiance of their own Government, and divides the rest among the Sclaves of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, and the Free Principality of Serbia; to which he adds a few Italians, and an infinitesimal contingent of Poles, Russians and Frenchmen.—Bosnie et Herzégovine, souvenirs de voyage pendant l’insurrection, p. 277. I am indebted to M. Yriarte for an account of the organization of the Čotas in Herzegovina.
[293] Captured shortly after this was written by Austro-Hungarian authorities on Turkish soil, and now (1876) languishing, not in a Turkish, but an Austrian dungeon! Ljubibratić, however, was born in Lower Herzegovina.
[294] Though, since this was written, many of the Roman Catholics have deserted the national cause. According to the consular report quoted, the sole wish of the Franciscan monks all along was to make a display of the extent, and consequent value, of their influence among the Latin population.