Aug. 17.—Having executed the needful repairs, we continued our descent before sunrise, and finally found ourselves at the bottom of the gorge—the opposite steep of Mazulia frowning over us as precipitously as that which we had descended, and the whole ravine being so narrow that there was room for nothing but the Jasenica torrent below, over arched by the stupendous beeches which clung to both steeps.
In a dry part of its bed we demolished our last scrap of bread, and reviewed our position, which was not favourable. The gorge in which we found ourselves was from all points so inaccessible that we doubted whether it had ever been trodden by foot of man before. To make our way along the valley seemed well nigh impossible, so vast were the rock and timber barricades with which the torrent had piled its course. On the other hand, to reascend either steep was tantamount to a defeat, and in either case would bring us no forwarder. But it was becoming painfully evident that we must get somewhere, and quickly—as the day before, owing to our ill-judged liberality to our Zaptieh, we had had to stint ourselves of food, and now the last scrap of solid nutriment was gone—there could be no doubt about that! So, all things considered, there was nothing for it but to fight our way down the gorge as best we might, and trust that as the stream got lower its valley would widen. We found that the best way was to plunge bodily through the water, now and then jumping from rock to rock, or slipping into deep pools, and every few yards having to scale dams of trunks and branches, whose hugeness showed the force of the torrent in the rainy season. The want of an axe made a good deal of this work more difficult than it otherwise would have been, so that it sometimes took an hour to make a few score yards of way.
And yet the guerdon of our struggle was rich indeed. An hour or so from our starting-point the sides of our ravine became more rocky, and started up sheerly on either side of the stream, which, dashing between these ‘iron gates,’ leapt from a rocky platform, and plunged some sixty feet below in a magnificent cascade. We were forced to make a tedious détour by climbing up the steep; but the rocky walls, the overhanging beeches, the snow-white foam veiling the abysmal gloom, gave us glimpses of a beautiful picture. The vegetation, too, of our valley was marvellous in its luxuriance. Here, where the rays of the meridian sun scarcely pierce, stately sunflowers would raise their great flaming crowns as if to light up the shades of fell and forest. Drooping gentians—those weeping willows among flowers!—hung lovingly over the stream: methought they were its guardian nymphs, swelling its waters with tributary dew from a myriad azure urns! The dimensions taken by some of the ferns were certainly extraordinary; the lady-fern waved feather-like sprays near five feet in length, the hart’s tongue put forth fronds like small palm-leaves, three feet long and about three inches broad. Even the tree-like moss[187] that cushioned the damp crevices between the rocks rose to an abnormal stature.
Rocky Gorge of the Jasenica.
After many weary hours the valley began to open out a little, and the stream allowed us room for passage on its margin. Further on we came to little patches of meadow land by its side, and even, here and there, to traces of a path, and another sign of man, the ashes of an old camp-fire. Beyond this, again, the mountains grew more rocky, the trees smaller and more scanty, and scenery of a bolder kind broke upon us. First, as if to prepare us for what was to follow, a tall obelisk of rock started up in the middle of the gorge; and having passed, as it were, Cleopatra’s Needle, the rock-architecture took an appropriately Egyptian character, and we found ourselves among what it only required a slight exercise of imagination to transform into the ruins of the Pharaohs. Colossal walls and columns towered on each side of the torrent, and scarcely allowed it a passage; and, looking through these antique portals, the top of a pyramid appeared in the distance—the limestone peak or Vlašić.
We made our way with some difficulty through the precipitous defile, and were rewarded by a cheerful prospect of a maize-covered height beyond, surmounted by wooden huts and the minaret of a mosque. A short climb brought us to the village, called Zagredzi, hanging on the slope of Mt. Mazulia. Here we thought to get something to eat, for we were half famished; but we certainly were not prepared for the inhospitality of the villagers, who apparently were all Mahometans. As we passed along the street every door was slammed. The women scurried away and hid themselves; even the men fled at our approach; and though we succeeded so far as to parley with one, no entreaties or offers of money could induce him to procure us bread or milk. So there was nothing for it but to proceed on our way and shake the dust of this churlish village from our feet. Just outside we passed what we take to have been an old karaula or watch-tower, of rough masonry, square in shape, with barred windows and an old circular arch now half buried in the ground, surmounted by a plain round moulding. Happily, beyond this we came upon an apple-tree, and, as the ground was strewn with apples, considered ourselves justified in anticipating the vagrant swine.
We presently met a party of countrymen, and persuaded one, in return for coin of the realm, to put us into the way to the village of Podove, there to strike the path for the Franciscan monastery of Gučiagora, where we purposed to throw ourselves on monkish hospitality. At Podove we found for the first time some monuments of a kind which we were to meet with again in other parts of Bosnia, and which are scattered over the whole country.
