At last the Kaïmakàm himself appeared, attired this time in a light white suit of most correct cut. He was evidently a Turk of the new school, and showed a most intelligent interest in our map, which he understood perfectly, and pointed out on it the route of the new railway which has just been begun in Bosnia.
He was all politeness; but when we sketched out our projected mountain route to Travnik, and added moreover that we were going on foot, he betrayed such a desire to dissuade us from our purpose as convinced us that he had some misgivings as to our object in visiting the country, and that he more than half suspected us of being insurgent emissaries of some kind. When we expressed our intention of making Comušina, a small Christian village where there is a Franciscan monastery, our that day’s destination, he began to urge all kinds of obstacles to our plan. There was no road—the country was impassable—we should not be able to procure any food, and it was impossible that we should ever find our way to Travnik by this route. Let him persuade us to go round by Zepše, and then follow the high road; he would see that we were provided with a good arabà (a Bosnian waggon)—or would we prefer horses?
We, however, remained firm, and our pass from the Vali being imperative, there was nothing for it but to let us have our way. The game, as he thought, was played out; and further concealment being useless, he dropped his objections with admirable tact, and mentioned incidentally that we should come in for a large Christian gathering at Comušina—‘Ce que peut vous intéresser.’ He evidently believed himself that we knew all about the gathering already, and I do not blame his suspicions; for the moment was far more critical than we had any idea of, and to the mind of even a liberal Turk our design of leaving the road and plunging into the mountains was, on any other hypothesis, sheer insanity—for anything that we might protest about the English passion for scenery and mountaineering. We afterwards discovered that in addition to the Zaptieh whom he forced on us as guide and guard, another was despatched to Comušina with an express commission to observe our movements.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PILGRIMAGE ON THE FOREST-MOUNTAIN.
Through the Forests of the Black-Mountain—The Flower of Illyria—A Mysterious Fly—Enchanted Ground—The Fairy Mountain—Great Christian Pilgrimage—The Shrine on the Mountain-top—Christian Votaries in the Garb of Islâm—The Night-encampment—How the Turks dance—Anacreontic Songs—An Epic Bard, Poetic Genius of Bosniacs—Insolence of Turkish Soldiers and their Ill-treatment of the Rayahs—Types at the Fair—Aspect and Character of Men—Chefs-d’œuvre of Flint-knapping—Christian Graveyard and Monastery—Dismiss our Zaptieh—Night on Forest-mountain of Troghìr—Wrecks by Wind and Lightning—Scene of Forest Fire—Timber Barricades—Summit of Vučia Planina—A Bon-vivant—Steep Descent—Night in a Hole—Almost impassable Gorge—Egyptian Rocks—Repulsed from a Moslem Village—Tombs of the Bogomiles—Arrive at Franciscan Monastery of Gučiagora—Fears of a Massacre—Relations of Roman Catholics with the Turks—Austrian Influence in Bosnia—Aspirations of the Bosnian Monks.
At last we made our escape from the Kaïmakàm, and, escorted by our new Zaptieh, began ascending the Crni Vrch, or Black-Mountain, named, like the Crnagora (Montenegro), not from any blackness of the rock, but from being covered with dark forests, or simply from its savage wildness, ‘black’ being with the Sclaves synonymous with everything harsh and fierce. About an hour and a quarter’s ascent brought us to one of its summits, when we passed a Mahometan woman, who, though veiled, went through the absurd formality—common enough among the Bosniac Mahometans—of squatting against the roadside with her back turned towards us till we had put a sufficiency of road between her and ourselves. Further on we came to a shed such as we had seen in the vale of Ussora, where we regaled ourselves with coffee, and a chubby kind of cucumber, which however our Zaptieh was the only one to fancy.
Beyond here the scenery became wilder and indescribably beautiful. On one side rolled out beneath us the Possávina and the winding vale of Bosna, and far beyond the dim ranges of Slavonia; on the other side rose the peaks and shoulders of Vlašić and Troghìr and a tossing sea of low mountains, the nearer billows green with the fine forest growth, into which we now plunged—and to quit the scorching sun of noon for woodlands still fresh with the dewy coolness of night is indeed to take an aërial bath! The beeches amongst which we now steered our course, by a meandering forest-path, were no longer gnarled and stumpy, but tall and queenly, as those of an English park. Amongst them, here and there, towered isolated oaks, champions as it seemed of a lost fight, tough rugged old barbarians, battling every inch with those civilised victorious beeches—hemmed round but unyielding—heroic, taking every attitude of god-like struggle—here a manly, muscular Laocöon, wrestling with serpentine brambles and underwood, that insinuates itself among the knotted limbs—a mighty Hercules, uplifted arm and club as to fell the hundred-headed Hydra—or there sovereign Jove, the Thunderer himself, hurling—so the jagged branches interpreted themselves—forked lightning at the beechlings round! But in vain. The oaks must be content to reign in plain and valley. On these uplands the beeches camp triumphantly, till higher still the pines repulse them from the mountain citadel, and in the great struggle for existence each tree finds its own level.
But how soft the refrain from this deep bass of nature! Pale, dreamy tufts of male and lady fern, delicately luminous in the forest-depths, Canterbury bells — for English pilgrims, what fitter accompaniment?—vibrating to the zephyrs in the orbs of sunlight; brighter still, the ruby coronals of sweet-williams; and, where it should be, among its native mountains, luxuriant gentian, drooping like Solomon’s seal, weighed down as with elfin vases of lapis lazuli. This is the flower of Illyria, which, as Pliny tells us, took its name from her last king—that Gentius who ruled these lands in the days of Perseus of Macedon, and who first brought into credit the virtues of the herb which now alone preserves his memory.