Next morning betimes we bade farewell to Siszek, and took a passage on the Save steamer for Brood, from which place we were to begin our foot journey through Bosnia. During the early part of the voyage there was little to see. Mud banks lined with willows, now and then villages of dark timber, where, within the palings of the large house-communities, were clustered together several dwelling-houses of tea-caddy shape and somewhat pagoda-like appearance, due to their having eaves projecting over the ground-floor as well as the upper storey. The Save, as we enter it, takes a muddier hue than the Kulpa, which at Siszek possessed something of the emerald purity of a limestone stream. Opposite the confluence of the Save and Unna was Jassenovac, taken and held for awhile by the Pashà of Bosnia in 1536, after the battle of Mohacz; it is a small town of about 1,100 inhabitants, and, being built on piles, is sometimes called New Amsterdam. It might also recall the Swiss lake-dwellings, to restorations of which many Granitza villages bear a certain family likeness; but I doubt if the boats that float off Jassenovac are not even more primitive than those of the old lake-dwellers, for they are simply great oak-trunks hollowed out in a Crusoe-like fashion. Further on we passed floating mills, paddle-boats of Noah’s Ark-like construction anchored in the current, or left behind us large flat barges which looked like giant cockchafers turned over on their backs.
We are now on the watery boundary-line between Christendom and Islâm, and the contrast between the two shores is one of the most striking that can be imagined, recalling that between the Bulgarian and Wallachian banks of the Lower Danube. On one side Croat men, white tunicked and white breeked, with blue vests, and fringes of homely lace to their trowsers; bare-legged women, with the shortest of apron-skirts, washing their linen in the shallows, coifed in the rosy Rubatz. Now and then a town, white houses and bulbous church-spires, and citizens in the mourning hues of Western civilisation. On the other bank minarets and narrow wooden streets, gorgeous Turkish officials, brilliant maidens and mummied dames, cheerful fezzes and red Bosnian turbans; and it is to be remarked that the men on the Turkish bank, owing to their wearing such comparatively shadeless head-gear, are distinctly more sunburnt than the Slavonians of the Austrian side in their broad, black, felt wideawakes. The one side was cold and dull, if comparatively clean; the other dirty but magnificent.
Various types illustrative of the South Sclavonic world are to be seen on deck: a Syrmian woman of an Oriental cast of feature already spoken of, with dark hair and eyes, and a purple skirt; the grave hadji whose acquaintance we had made at Siszek, who vouchsafes me a majestic nod of recognition; a Dalmatiner—one of those Italianised Sclaves who man the Austrian navy—with blue sailor-blouse and bright red sash, sounds the shallows, when the steamer slackens speed, with a long pole. A Slavonian of that dissipated type which becomes more frequent as we approach Syrmia, the mother-country of the famed plum-brandy—the Syrmian slivovitz—with low eyebrows, a ferocious moustache and an eminently Sclavonic nose, is caught by our artist napping, and pocketed as below.[170] Beyond Gradisca we came to the prettiest part of the river scenery, where the watery mirror reflects the undulations of wooded hills; thence on and on through this magnificent oak forest—some of the finest timber in all Europe—the home of wolves and bears and sovereign eagles, and a few days later to be the refuge of the panic-stricken Christian refugees of Bosnia.
As we neared our destination the question arose whether we should sleep in the Austrian or Turkish town of Brood; but we decided, from a previous slight acquaintance with a Bosnian town, that we were more likely to secure sleep on the Austrian side, where, accordingly, we landed and put up at the comfortable ‘Red House,’ and presently went out to take stock of the place. Slavonian Brood is a large wooden village, more abominably paved, or rather cobbled, than any town I remember. What especially struck us was the chimneys, which are of every kind of shape and material, stone and wooden, capped with canopies arched and peaked; and suggesting in turn huts, towers, haystacks, tunnels, toadstools, and umbrellas!
Now, whether it was the fact that we took out our sketch-books to immortalise, so far as in us lay, these sooty orifices, or whether in the way in which we eyed them there was something of the insidious invader, certain it is that our motions did not escape the observation of an active and intelligent gendarme, who ‘knew directly,’ as he afterwards expressed it to a Croat who gave us the relation with great glee, ‘that we were Russian spies.’ Acting on which supposition with commendable alacrity, he came up and demanded our pass. Now there is a natural tendency amongst Englishmen to resent such a demand as an antiquated absurdity; but our official was so honeyed in manner, so profuse of ‘bittes’ and protestations of ‘Pflicht,’ that we could not find it in our hearts to refuse to satisfy the poor fellow’s curiosity. Whereupon our friend looked at the paper and twisted it first to one side and then to another; and as he did not understand one word of it, shook his head very wisely and handed it to his mate, who, not understanding any more, shook his head more sagely still, and handed it us back, professing—sly dog!—that they were satisfied.
Those chimneys were ‘the beginnings of evils!’
We, however, had not recognised the first drops of the thunderstorm, and, proceeding tranquilly on our way, strolled down past an old church and monastery to the high bank overlooking the Save. It was a beautiful picture!—a glorious sunset, crimson, golden, opalescent, mirrored on the silvery expanse of quiet waters, broken only by a small green island where stately oak-trees huddled together in mid-flood like the giants of an older world;—far beyond the sky-line, mingling with the mysterious blue of distant mountains; on the Slavonian bank, pale rows of poplars and conical haystacks, in relief against the dark fringe of primeval forest; on the further side, a verandahed guardhouse and the tip of a minaret—a fore-glimpse of another world—and hark! as the sun goes down, the solemn tones of the muezzin are faintly borne by the evening breeze to the shores of that Christendom which once rang with Allah akbar!
But we roused ourselves from the reveries which such a scene could not fail to awaken, for the darkness was gathering, and a voice within bade us seek the good cheer of our inn; when we were arrested by the sounds of music and the sight of a booth near the market-place, and, finding that a peep-show was going on, paid our kreutzers and went in. A moonlight view of the Tuileries is hardly what one would go to Brood to see, and we were beginning to think the show a trifle dull, when the serenity of the sightseers was broken in upon by the abrupt entry of two police-officers, and from their evident designs on some person or persons unknown we were congratulating ourselves on the prospect of a more lively spectacle. These expectations were indeed justified by the two officials pouncing upon L⸺ and myself, and ordering us to accompany them immediately to the Commissär of Police.
‘Tell the Commissär of Police that if he wants to see us he had better come himself,’ said I, who acted as our spokesman.