‘No,’ he answered; ‘I have little hopes of them—they are a poor lot!’ but (pointing to the mountains of the south-east) ‘out there, about Dolnja Tuzla, and along the Serbian frontier, there is a finer race of men; they will join their brothers against the Turkish swine! We think that even you English will leave the Turks to their fate this time.’
I said that there were other European nations from whom the Southern Sclaves had more to fear than from England.
‘Yes,’ he continued; ‘we know the ambition of Russia; but we don’t want the Russians to lord it over us any more than the Turks! no, nor the Austrians either.’
While sketching the Starigrad I had another proof of the kindness with which the Bosniac Turks treat children. A small boy of about seven came up in the most fearless manner and stated for my benefit that a plum-tree was called ‘sliva,’ and a house ‘kuca,’ all which and sundry other items of information the little man volunteered without the slightest sign of distrust at my outlandish appearance. As I took a last twilight glimpse at the mournfully historic castle a star was setting beneath its topmost parapet, as if to betoken that the dreams of patriots were vain and the hopes of Christian Bosnia had set for ever.
We passed an unquiet night, owing to swarms of gnats, which droned about our chamber and forced us to cover our faces with nets; and were up, and, with a new Zaptieh who had been assigned to us by the Mudìr, on our way again almost before it was light, bound for Tešanj, the old capital of Ussora. For an hour or so we still followed the valley of the Bosna, which is here very beautiful, the timber finer than any we have yet seen in Bosnia, tall poplars and magnificent oaks crowning the banks or chequering the emerald pools with their shadows. On each side of the valley rose the slopes of the low forest-mountains, usually at a gentle incline, but at one point a sheer cliff of the most brilliant limestone—snow-white as Parian marble—towered above our path. This was just at the point where the Ussora torrent runs into the Bosna, and here we left the main road and turned off towards Tešanj by country lanes, following for some time the right bank of the Ussora. On our way we twice stopped to refresh ourselves at wayside cafés, which are simply rough sheds—four poles supporting a thatch of leafy branches—beneath whose shade sits the coffee-maker with a supply of copper pots, earthenware testjas, and brilliant little cups of about the capacity of an ordinary wine-glass. Round the shed run planks raised about a foot from the ground, which serve the wayfarer as a divan on which to quaff the black powdery thimblefuls, or to demolish huge slices of water-melon. As we walked on we were much struck by the tameness of the magpies, which would settle just before us, and let us approach as near as if they were domesticated pigeons. About two hours from Tešanj we left our valley and gradually ascended a wooded range which rises some 1300 feet above the Bosna, where the beeches became larger—a forest of thick pollard stumps, which gradually gladed out into luxuriant heather-land, deliciously perfumed with ferny incense, from which opened out our first panorama of the mountain-peaks that form the heart of Bosnia. In the blue distance rose the dominating cone of Vlašić, but there were no grim Alpine giants, no glacier seas, no jagged horns of rock. The speciality of the mountains was rather their softness of contour. What was quite strange to us was the aërial clearness, the refined delicacy of the colouring—turquoise, lilac, and faint pervading pink.
As we were preparing to begin our descent from these uplands towards Tešanj, some large white objects amongst the heather on a neighbouring hill caught our eye, which, on investigation, we found to belong to a curious prehistoric monument of the kind popularly known as Druidic. It was an alignment of large oblong blocks along the neck of the hill; but the stones, unlike those of Stonehenge or Carnac, were laid on their faces, and not set upright. The blocks, which were composed of limestone and conglomerate, had in most cases been roughly squared, and the largest measured seven feet by four. The chain extended between two knolls of the hill-top, and on looking along it from the lowest of these (see diagram, p. 112), it presented a wavy and serpentine appearance, which may have been due to the slight inequalities of the soil. At one point near this end rose a small hillock capped by a larger than ordinary block of snow-white limestone, in form hexangular, and with some of the facets deftly hewn (see diagram). Before this on either side were two smaller and flatter slabs of rock, arranged apparently with some special reference to the block between them, and which gave me the impression that it had been meant to serve as an altar; though whether these stones were set here by heathen Sclaves or by one of the earlier races of Illyria, and with what object, it would be hazardous to conjecture. By the peasants about they are known as the Old Stones—Stari Stéona.
The ‘Old Stones,’ near Tešanj.