We left Turkish Brood, after first mollifying our Zaptieh with a present of tobacco, and for a few miles followed the road along the Save valley, stopping once to purchase at a roadside cottage some sweet milk—slátko miléko. I have come upon some of our Sclavonic cousins who could understand the English word! The homesteads were very like the Croatian and Slavonian in general arrangement. The common yard and paling, the wooden cottage roofed with long shingles, and the various outhouses, were there, but the wickerwork maize-garners were less capacious and more like large clothes-baskets, and the whole was on a smaller scale. We heard that the system of house-communities existed hereabouts to a much less extent than on the Austrian side of the Save, but here and there as many as three or four families are to be found in the same homestead with a common house-father and house-mother. Round each cottage were a number of plum-trees, and in each yard was a small distillery for making Slivovitz. Further on, a Serbian merchant drove up in an Arabà or native waggon, and courteously invited us to take a quarter of an hour’s lift, which we accepted, though it was sad jolty work, and we were not sorry to get out again.
Soon after passing a Turkish graveyard, with the usual turbaned tombstones—some of the turbans of majestic height—we turned off from the Save valley, and, leaving the road, waded across the Ukrina stream, when to our astonishment the Zaptieh, instead of following, stood shivering on the brink; but our surprise was turned to indignation when the fellow shouted to a Christian woman, who was passing along the other bank, to carry him across! We gave vent to such forcible expressions of disapprobation as deterred the poor woman from obeying my lord’s commands; but a rayah man coming up, the Zaptieh, notwithstanding our indignant Jok! jok! (No! no!) succeeded in requisitioning him, and in spite of all our gesticulations the Christian carried over our escort on his back. When the Zaptieh saw that we were very angry, he recompensed his bearer with a handful of tobacco; and it must be owned that the Christian seemed satisfied with the transaction, and that neither the leggings nor the boots of the Zaptieh were adapted for rapid disembarrassment.
Further on we ascended a gentle chain of hills by delicious foot-paths across hayfields, or amidst luxuriant crops of maize—through oak-forests, and, what was stranger, woods of plum-trees laden with small unripe fruit; and now and again along pretty country lanes, where the hedges feasted us with a profusion of blackberries whose size attested the richness of the soil, and whose flavour seemed to combine all that was nicest in blackberry and mulberry. Both fields and hedgerows were varied with a beautiful array of flowers, amongst which I noticed yellow snapdragon, sky-blue flax, a sweet flowering-rush, and a heath of wondrous aroma.
About sunset we stopped at a small shed on the banks of the Ukrina, where, seated among a group of Christian peasants, we regaled ourselves with black coffee which was being dispensed at the rate of about a farthing a small cup. Hard by, fixed over the Ukrina stream, was a water-mill for grinding corn, of the most primitive construction, an idea of which is best given by the accompanying diagram. These turbines are universal throughout Bosnia, and are to be also seen in Croatia.
Plan of Turbine Mill.
The peasants here were mostly Vlachs, that is, they belonged to the Greek Church. The men wore red and black turbans, a flowing white linen tunic like the Croats, with a fringe of that coarse lace which we had noticed in Slavonia. A leathern belt wound several times round the waist served as a pocket for their smoking apparatus; their trousers were worn loose and expansive as the Croatian, sometimes close about the calf; their hair was sometimes plaited together behind, and sometimes hung down in two elf-locks—the crown of the head being shaven, as with the Turks. As to the women, they were dressed in light tunics and aprons, much as Croats and Slavonians, but their hair was often plaited like the men’s into a single pig-tail. On their head was a white kerchief arranged in a fashion peculiar to themselves, with a flower-like tassel at one side; and they usually wore in front of the two necessary aprons a superfluous black one with long fringe. Here is a Greek Christian girl that we saw at a well, and who graciously allowed us to slake our thirst from the bucket she had just drawn up.
Bosnian Girl of the Possávina.
These Greek Church women wore blue embroidery to their dresses, but the Roman Catholics of this part, though dressing otherwise like the Greeks, distinguish themselves from their fellow-Christians by embroidering their clothes with red, while their men protest against a Universal Church by wearing tighter breeches than the Orthodox. It is hardly to be expected after this that they should call the founder of their faith by the same name; and, indeed, the Romanists call Christ ‘Krst,’ and themselves ‘Krisčiani,’ while the Greeks speak of ‘Hrist’ and of themselves as ‘Hrisčiani;’ so that H in Bosnia is a shibboleth. The Greek Bosnians use Cyrillian characters, and call themselves distinctively Serbs or Pravoslaves, that is, ‘the orthodox;’ the others look on the Cyrillian character as a snare of the devil, and, far from trying to claim fellowship with the people of Free Serbia, style themselves Latins—‘Latinski’—for it always seems to be a tendency of Romanists to thrust patriotic interests into the background.