We now ascended the pass which here forms the watershed between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, and on our way met a party of Bashi-Bazouks,—according to all accounts the most serious danger that we were liable to meet with. They stopped us; but by great good fortune there happened to be a regular officer with them who understood our pass, and explaining its purport to the others, suffered us to pass on amidst commendatory ejaculations of ‘Dobro! dobro!’—‘Good! good!’ This piece of luck we attributed not only to the amulets on our person, but to the herb amulet, or cyclamen, which bloomed in the crevices of the cliffs, and a few of whose delicious flowers we had plucked, and with great forethought carried with us. The summit of the pass was, according to our observations, 3,080 feet above sea-level. Just here we had another slight adventure, for entering what we took to be a new Han, we discovered on reaching the upper storey that it was a Turkish watch-tower—one of the block-houses hastily run up on the outbreak of the insurrection. The soldiers, however, justly concluding that none but friends would plunge thus boldly into their midst, showed themselves very friendly, and gave us water, which we asked for, to drink. We met some other parties of volunteers, but were not molested.
First Glimpse of the Herzegovina.
As we descended the pass towards the valley of the Narenta, the scenery became grand and beautiful. To the left rose the grey limestone precipices of Bielastica, above the nearer forest-covered heights. The base of the mountain forms a wooded slope; above this succeeds a barren glacis of talus, and above this again tower the perpendicular walls of the mountain-citadel itself (for it looks uncommonly like an ancient fortress), with here and there magnificent bastions and even round-towers of rock, relieving the rugged-level line of the citadel walls. To the right of us rose another nearer wall of rock, along whose surface our roadway had been hewn out, in places not without engineering skill. This cliff was of a schistose formation, stained of the most brilliant varieties of hue—rich browns of every shade, a golden orange and a rose so deep and decided that we invoked the neighbouring cinnabar mines of Creševo in order to account for it. In places, again, the rocky wall was formed of sombre slate, but it too could take exquisite hues of lilac in a favourable light, and as we descended lower into the valley the rocks grew white as chalk. Below us was the deep gorge of a torrent, and on its further side the strata were in places knotted and grained and gnarled, like the roots of an old oak-tree.
View of Coinica.
Now, at a turn of the road, opens our first glimpse of the ancient duchy of St. Sava—or, as it is now more generally known, the Herzegovina—a magnificent vista of rocky mountains rising beyond the yet unseen valley of the Narenta, their dark blue shadows golden-fringed by the setting sun. The trees become more southern in their character; here and there are fine Spanish chestnuts; on a height to the right are the pines of an Italian landscape; wild vine becomes plentiful once more; we pass a Herzegovinian peasant in a peaked cap of Dalmatian character; and finally come in sight of Coinica, the first Herzegovinian town, with mosque and minaret reflected on the silvery waters of the Narenta; and behind, in a glorious amphitheatre, those barren limestone peaks, which, stretching away in unbroken chains to the Black Mountain on the south-east, form the Switzerland of Turkey, and are ringing even now with the battle-cry of freedom.
Across the river, and connecting the few houses on the Bosnian shore, known as Neretva, with Coinica on the other, is stretched a fine stone bridge, the finest we had seen in Bosnia, and indeed the only one that we had seen outside the walls of the capital. This is one of the oldest historic monuments in the country, and is said to have been the work of Hralimir,[268] King of the Serbs, though it has doubtless been restored by the Turks. Thus it is a living witness of the ancient connection between Bosnia and Serbia, in its wider sense, with which the history of Herzegovina, originally under Serbian princes, begins; and it forms a fitting avenue of approach to Coinica itself, which is celebrated in the history of the Bosnian kingdom as the scene of one of the few peaceful events in that unhappy national story that have become memorable. Coinica was in a certain sense the Runnymede of Bosnia. At the ‘Conventus’ or diet of Coinica in 1446, Thomas, last lawful king of this country, set his seal to a charter, which, though rather framed to protect royalty and the feudal régime, was in this sense a popular measure, that it was designed to check violence and abuses in days of anarchy, and that it was presented to the king for signature by an assembly of prelates and barons, who in a certain sense were representative. Its preservation is due to monks of the order of St. Francis, one of whom supplied a Latin copy of it to Farlato, who was thus able to insert it in his ‘Illyricum Sacrum.’[269] As we are on the spot, and as this is an unique constitutional memorial of the old Bosnian kingdom, and illustrates amongst other things the relation in which the two countries on whose borders we now are stood to one another in the days of Christian government, I have ventured to subjoin a translation:—
We, Stephen Thomas, by the grace of God, King of Rascia, Servia, of the Bosnians or Illyrians, of the parts of Primorie of Dalmatia and of Croatia, commit to memory, by the authority of these present, to all whom it may concern as hereinafter ordained.
In an Assembly, holden by us in our land of Coinica,[270] and in our Congregation General,[271] all our faithful vassals, prelates, barons, Voivodes, and elders,[272] and all elected nobles of all the counties of our realm treating of those things which pertain to the peace and well-being of our realm: these foresaid elders, amongst other praiseworthy ordinances, set before us and presented certain articles hereinafter set forth, humbly praying that we would think well to confirm the articles aforesaid:—