We spent the next forenoon in exploring some of the neighbouring house-communities, a description of which has already been given; and about twelve, after a parting wrangle concerning passports with a sentry on the river bank, took our places in the ferry-boat that was to convey us to the Turkish side of the Save. As the shores of Christendom were receding from our view, we had leisure to reflect on some slightly sensational topics which had lately been forcing themselves on our attention. There could be no doubt that the insurrection in the Herzegovina was at least holding its ground, and that the agitation in the neighbouring Sclavonic lands was increasing in intensity. A revolutionary committee had already been formed in Agram, at Laibach, Spalato, and other Austrian towns. At Agram we came in for a concert in aid of the insurgents; at Siszek there arrived the same night as ourselves thirty Herzegovinians, who had left the employments which they had in Free Serbia, and were hurrying to aid their revolted brothers, while many Croats and Slovenes from Agram, Marburg, Laibach, and other places were—so the Siszekers assured us—also leaving for the seat of war. Vague rumours of insurgent successes were afloat, and Siszek was thrown into a considerable state of excitement by a report that Mostar and Trebinje had both fallen into the hands of the Christians. We were assured from many sides that if the insurrection were to spread a little further, the rayahs of Bosnia would rise also; and fears were entertained for the safety of the Christian minority in Serajevo, the capital of Bosnia, and the head-quarters of Moslem fanaticism.
But what touched us more nearly was a proclamation which had just appeared, signed by Dervish Pashà, the Turkish governor-general of Bosnia, the authorship of which the wily Vali, later on, thought fit to deny, but which for the present had the desired effect. By it the whole of Bosnia was subjected to martial law, as well as the Herzegovina, and its terms were vague and comprehensive enough to legalise any violence. ‘It is my will,’ so ran the manifesto, ‘that every true believer in the Prophet have the right to seize and bring before me anyone suspected of taking part in the revolt, or of giving aid to the enemies of our exalted master the Sultan. And I order that all strangers direct themselves according to the laws of the country during the insurrection, which probably will not long endure, for already doth the sun of the insurgents verge towards its setting. And assuredly’—we were informed in the poetic imagery of the East—‘shall the lightning of the Sultan strike all who order not themselves according to my will.’
‘But as to those who harbour the unruly, by the sword shall they be cut off; and in all God’s houses subject to our jurisdiction shall prayers be offered up for the help of God and the protection of the prophet, on our exalted master the Sultan and his government.’
View on River Save, looking from Slavonian Brood towards the Bosnian Shore.
But for better or worse our Rubicon is passed, and we land on the Turkish shore, among a group of turbaned gentry, from amongst whom emerges a somewhat tattered soldier, who conducts us to the square, verandahed, Karaula or guard-house. Here we are asked by another official, in Italian, if we have anything to declare in our knapsacks, and having satisfied him by a simple ‘Niente,’ we are again beckoned on by our soldier, and follow him into the narrow street of Turkish Brood to show our pass to the Præfect or Mudìr. Our appearance created as great a sensation as was decorous among the big-turbans of the townlet; crowds of Bosnian gamins followed at our heels; and we caught a passing glimpse of a dusky Ethiopian maiden white-toothing us in the most coquettish fashion from behind a door. As the Mudìr was not at home, we had to wait in the front room of his Konak,[171] if indeed a place which possesses neither door nor window, and is completely open to the air on the street side, can be called a room; and taking our seat on the platform or raised floor—which in the other houses of the town, as generally in Turkey, is used as the squatting-place of the shopkeepers, and the counter on which to display their wares—became the gazing-stock of a motley assemblage, who, crowding round in the street, or taking reserved seats in the melon-shop opposite, ‘twigged us’ at their leisure.
We, too, obtained a breathing space in which to realise in what a new world we were. The Bosniacs themselves speak of the other side of the Save as ‘Europe,’ and they are right; for to all intents and purposes a five minutes’ voyage transports you into Asia. Travellers who have seen the Turkish provinces of Syria, Armenia, or Egypt, when they enter Bosnia, are at once surprised at finding the familiar sights of Asia and Africa reproduced in a province of European Turkey. Thrace, Macedonia, the shores of the Ægean, Stamboul itself, have lost or never displayed many Oriental customs and costumes; but Bosnia remains the chosen land of Mahometan Conservatism, the Goshen of the faithful, ennobled by the tombs of martyrs, and known in Turkish annals as the ‘Lion that guards the gates of Stamboul.’ Fanaticism has struck its deepest roots among her renegade population, and reflects itself even in their dress. In no other European province of Turkey is the veiling of women so strictly attended to. It is said that not long ago the fine egg-shaped turbans of the Janissaries might still be found in Bosnia, and the Maulouka, the most precious of all mantles, which had died out elsewhere, long survived among these Bosnian Tories. As to the introduction of fezzes, the Imperial order almost provoked a revolt here; and to this day among Mahometans the fez is almost confined to officials, the rest of the believers going about in the capacious turbans of the East.
The very darkness of the background, the dirty narrow street, the timber houses, the time-stained wooden minaret, acted as a foil to the Oriental brilliance of the dress and merchandise, the scarlet sashes, the gold embroidery, those gorgeous little maidens—doomed most of them by sweet thirteen to take the winding-sheets of Turkish matrimony, and bury their beauty in harems, where by thirty-five they are turned old hags; but now, poor little butterflies! fluttering out their brief child-glimpse of the world—light-smocked, in linen chemises, chevroned with rainbow threads of colour—bagged as to their legs, but beflowered with roses of Shiraz—pranked out with gilt coin-bespangled fezzes, whence fountain-like the separate jets of their tresses trickle forth in a score of silken plaits; Perilets, with sisterly arms round each other’s necks, deigning to smile on the strange Giaours. There, too, are their little brothers, showing more of their slender legs, but gay as their sisters, in bags and tunics, with pates not yet artificially baldened, but long-haired as the little maidens, only in softer cascades, falling down their backs, and fringing their foreheads. Capillati (Copi is still the word for boys among the Roumans of East Europe)—one almost hoped to see a bulla round their necks! and indeed I doubt not that they wore many a potent spell against the Evil Eye.
There was one little lad of about five, with blue eyes and hair of Scandinavian lightness, the cut of which called up some tiny page of Charles the Second’s days, who, with some of his playmates, crowded so near as to shut out the view of the two mysterious Franks from the grave and reverend signiors behind, whereupon a Turk, who happened to hold a small switch in his hand, came forward and flicked these small flies away. The whip just touched our small urchin, who moved out of the way with the others. He did not cry, but more, as it seemed, in sorrow than in anger, fixed on his flagellator a look of such childish dignity and grave surprise as should have annihilated anyone less impassive than a Turk. It said, as plainly as a look can speak, ‘I am not accustomed to such treatment.’ The look of a child may seem a slight matter, but it was eloquent of the tenderness with which the Turks treat children—a tenderness which does them honour. Such an unkind cut was a new experience in the little lad’s life.
When our observers had taken sufficient stock of us, the propriety of showing us into an upper room of the Konak suggested itself to some of them, and we were accordingly led upstairs, and invited to squat in a den belonging to some subordinate official, who, while waiting the Mudìr’s arrival, treated us to coffee. It was a very dirty little room, in which the rags and tatters of an old piece of faded carpet and rotten matting made shift for chairs and sofas; these, with a stove such as has been described already, pigeon-holed with pots, and a broken water-jar, completing the inventory of the furniture. After a tedious delay, during which we supposed the worthy præfect to be at his mid-day prayers, or more probably his siesta, the Mudìr arrived, and we were ushered into his room of state, distinguished from that of his sub. by containing a larger area of dirt, and by displaying a larger piece of carpet with a more capacious patch, but also by possessing a greasy divan on which we were beckoned by the Mudìr to take our seat by his side. Our official had turned out in grey clothes of European cut, and a regulation fez; but as he could only speak Turkish, Arabic, and Bosniac, and as we could none of these, an interpreter had to be found in the shape of an Italian-speaking Dalmatian woman before we could hold much communication. The Mudìr was well satisfied with our Bujuruldu; but when we expressed our determination to walk through the country, he was fairly taken aback. It was evidently a case which had never before come within his official experience. There was no precedent for such conduct. Nobody, he assured us, ever thought of travelling on foot in Bosnia; if we wanted a horse or a waggon, he was ready to oblige—but to walk! We had to explain that walking was a weakness of English people; and at last, as I think the good man began to believe that it was connected with our religion, and that we were pilgrims of some sort, he gave over trying to convert us to the Bosnian way of thinking, and told off a Zaptieh to escort us to our that day’s destination, Dervent. Our attempts to rid ourselves from having this encumbrance failed, as the autograph letter of the Pashà made him responsible for our safety.