Just as characteristic of a narrow-minded bourgeoisie is the way in which they set their faces against any attempts to better their education. A few years ago a Serb of Serajevo, who had amassed what for a Bosniac was a fortune, as a merchant at Trieste, left a considerable sum of money to be applied in erecting a good school for the Pravoslave community here, on condition of a certain additional sum being subscribed by the Serajevan merchants. The Pravoslave community at large seem to have received the tidings of this generous bequest with sublime contempt; but one or two individuals, who hoped to profit by it as teachers, took the matter up and sent a circular to the European Consuls in the name of the whole Serb community, stating that that body ‘feeling the want of a good education for their sons, and wishing to carry out the design of their benefactor, solicited the aid and patronage of the representatives of enlightened Christendom.’ This sounded very fine. The Consuls took the matter up. Mr. Holmes represented it to the English Government, and though nothing could be given officially, Lord Clarendon very kindly forwarded 30l. on his own behalf. Then the bubble burst. The Pravoslave community held an indignation meeting, in which they disavowed the circular of these interested enthusiasts for education: protesting that their children were well enough taught at home, and that a new school they did not want, and a new school they would not have!
Two other most prominent classes of Serajevan society call for mention. One is the Board of Health, whose business it is to keep the streets comparatively clean. The members of this sanitary staff exercise their unclean office at night, when they patrol the streets in troops—and the offal which they then pick up is their only food! At this season these scavengers, who are perpetually falling out among themselves, raise such a terrible hubbub as murders sleep to those unused to their rowdiness. Moreover, it is hardly safe to walk across the street after dark, for these gentry will patch up their own quarrels and unite to assault the unwary foot-passenger; and, though they have no other weapons than those wherewith nature has endowed them, such is the ferocity of their onset that I have myself seen a Turkish soldier forced to keep these guardians of the public health at bay with his sword. They do not wear either fez or turban (so far as we were able to observe), and in this they differ from the generality of Turkish officials; but they are uniformed in a coarse hide of a muddy buff-colour, disfigured with mangy patches, usually out at elbows, and tattered by reason of their nocturnal brawls, in which they show themselves so transported with passion as to tear off each other’s ears. By day they are very lazzaroni, and are to be seen in the streets (their only home), lying across the path or roadway on their stomachs—truly a disgusting spectacle. It is a custom not to be transgressed, that both the passers-by, and even waggons, should move out of their way while my lords are taking their repose; and it goes ill with him who should kick, or even, without hostile intent, stumble upon the prostrate sanitary officer, since he and his fellows—a score of whom (you may be sure) are ready at hand—are quick in taking the law into their own hands. Nor can their insulter expect either aid or pity from the bystanders; for the citizens, rightly considering their profession as necessary to the public health, invest their person with a certain sanctity; and, doubtless, were these brutish scavengers expelled by one gate, pestilence would stalk in by the other.
Then there is another class of functionaries with whom the streets of Serajevo, and one in particular, are literally swarming, and who are even more brutal than this precious Sanitary Board. These are the Zaptiehs—call them, if you please, gendarmes, police, enlisting sergeants, soldiers, tax-collectors, executioners—for they are Jacks-of-all-trades. They are the factotums of the Mahometan government—a terrible engine in the hands of tyranny—ready to execute its worst behests. We have seen them as the instruments of the tax-farmer or the bishop, wringing the little hoards of penury from the miserable rayah—or playing the part of apparitors in those Inquisition scenes of torture. These are the hired bravoes who live at free-quarters in the Christian villages; rob, violate—and in many cases murder—whom they will. There are of course exceptions; and their worst offences are nothing to the infamy of the Government which lets loose ignorant fanatics among a population whom their creed teaches them to count as dogs, and which leaves them, without pay sufficient for their bare subsistence, to plunder those whom they nominally protect. When in the presence of Europeans they usually possess tact sufficient to keep on their good behaviour; but from the atrocious scenes of which I myself was a witness at the Christian pilgrimage, their conduct, when freed from any restraint of foreign surveillance, may be faintly imagined. Those who have had most acquaintance with the country described them to us as ‘covering the land like a blight.’ Though there are enough of them in Serajevo in all conscience, we were assured that the number at present here is smaller than usual, since many have been sent out to collect the Redìf or reserve, and many have been hastily draughted into the soldiery. To-day a gang of these commissioned bandits has been scouring the country with orders to seize thirty horses, but they have only been able to lay hands on a couple. The Government exercises the right of seizing horses at need. Nominally it is only a loan, but the peasants rarely see their beasts back, and dare not hope for recompense of any kind; besides which the owner is often impressed himself as kiradjì or driver, without receiving a penny for this corvée. This forced labour and seizure of horses was one of the most crying wrongs of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian rayahs, and one of the many causes of the revolt. How inveterate must be that misgovernment which continues to sow the wind at the very moment that it is reaping the whirlwind!
Here, at least, affairs are becoming hourly more ominous. We hear tidings of a Christian victory near Novipazar, which means that the single road connecting Bosnia with the rest of Turkey is seriously threatened. Isolated tales of bloodshed and massacre form the common topic of conversation. A Serb cuts the throat of a Turkish Mollah near Mostar; the Christian is hanged; his friends surprise a party of Mahometans in an inn, and massacre them to a man; the cry for vengeance is now caught up by the Turks, and so the tragedy developes. Such details are revolting, but they give a true picture of the reign of terror which is setting in. To-day a large number of Austrian women, the wives of artizans beyond the Save, are leaving the town.
This evening, our last in this city, a strange atmospheric phenomenon seemed to shadow forth the uncertainty of all around. In the afternoon it began to pour, and at first the clouds, as they shifted hither and thither, threw the mountains, that frown around the city on every side, into strange and novel reliefs. Then they sank lower, till they hung like a pall above mosque and minaret, and shrouded even the ‘nodding hills’ around in impenetrable gloom—half cloud, half mountain. The city alone stood out with clear and well defined outlines in the livid half-light, but the mist literally lapped its outer walls, and so thickly, that a foe might have approached to the very entrance of the town without possibility of detection. It was, indeed, portentous of the present state of Serajevo; nothing but the present certain; her nearest future overclouded; forebodings of internecine struggles within; the sulphurous vapours of civil and religious war rising around her—doubly awful in the uncertain light of rumour. ‘It is the beginning of the end,’ said a foreign representative to us; ‘do not be surprised if you are surveying the last days of Ottoman rule in the Serai.’
CHAPTER VII.
FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE HERZEGÓVINA.
Talismans and Phylacteries—Connection between the Geology of Illyria and her Cabalistic Science—Roman Gems, and Altar of Jove the Thunderer—Amulets against the Evil Eye—On our Way again—The Gorge of the Želesnica—Pursued by Armed Horseman—Sleep under a Haystack—Chryselephantine Rock-sculpture—Wasting her Sweetness on the Desert Air!—Mt. Trescovica—The Forest Scenery of Mt. Igman—Transformations of the Herb Gentian—Reminiscences of the Karst—No Water!—A Race against Night—Strange Bedfellows—A Bosnian-Herzegovinian House—We encounter Bashi-Bazouks—Cross the Watershed between the Black Sea and Adriatic—First Glimpse of the Herzegovina—Signs of a Southern Sky—Coinica, the Runnymede of the Old Bosnian Kingdom—Great Charter of King Stephen Thomas—Our Host: the Untutored Savage—Absence of Nature’s Gentlemen—Democratic Genius of Bosniacs and Southern Sclaves—The Narenta and its treacherous Waters—Iron Bridge—Entertained by Belgian Engineer—Murder of young Christian by two armed Turks—Trepidation of our Host and Preparations for Flight—Touching Instance of Filial Affection!—A Village of Unveiled Mahometans—Rhododactyls: Darwinianism refuted at last!—The Tragic Lay of the Golden Knife—Magnificent Scenery of the Narenta Valley; Amethystine Cliffs and Emerald Pools—A Land of Wild Figs and Pomegranates.
Aug. 24th.—This being our last morning in Serajevo, we thought it prudent, taking into account the troublousness of the times and the perils that might beset our further pilgrimage, to have recourse to those magic arts, in which the Moslems of this city show themselves so proficient. To this end we have devoted the forenoon to ransacking the shops of the silversmiths, who chiefly traffic in such wares, for amulets, and stones of divers virtues; and, assuredly, if there be aught in ‘mystic cabala and spells,’ we may consider ourselves secure from evil.
When the Turks knew for what we were looking, they brought out strange caskets, and opened many a hidden drawer, that they might set before us gems and talismans of antique form. And many of these turbaned sages who had not such wares to impart for filthy lucre, yet, that they might hold before us, as it were, a beacon wherewith to guide our footsteps in the path of true philosophy, would display to us the rings and periapts that they wore on their person, or would take out potent stones from their wallets for our perusal. By this means we obtained much instruction in the cabalistic science of these true believers. Much virtue lies, it would appear, in the character of the stone itself, and a red carnelian carried about the person, or set in a signet ring, is held as potent an amulet as any. ’Twas a stone like this that the Princess Badoura wore in a purse attached to her girdle. When the curiosity of the luckless Camaralzaman prompted him to open this, he found therein ‘a red carnelian, engraven with unknown figures and characters. “This carnelian,” says the prince to himself, “must have something extraordinary in it, or my princess would not be at the trouble to carry it with her.” And indeed it was Badoura’s talisman or a scheme of her nativity drawn from the constellations of heaven, which the Queen of China had given her daughter as a charm that would keep her from any harm as long as she had it about her.’