The cry is peace, and there is no peace! There is a pathos in these short enactments—the voice of national despair sounding faintly down the avenue of time.
The crops have already been trodden down beneath the troops of Turkish horsemen. The foe is at the gates, and anarchy and treason reign within. The discordant parties and turbulent nobles seem at length to realise that Bosnia must unite or perish. For a moment the bans forget their mutual feuds, and the bishops of both churches agree as brothers. Let the murderer no longer be unpunished; let Holy Church no longer be robbed with impunity; let the great barons of the land cease to disown their fealty to their sovereign; let some restraint be put upon the corruption of family life; let the coinage no longer suffer debasement. The Grand Inquisitor himself sets his seal to an act by which the hated Bogomiles are accorded comparative toleration. But it is all too late. Already the national treason shows symptoms of beginning, and it is found necessary to insert a special enactment against those betrayers of fenced cities. The impending national catastrophe seems to overshadow this High Court of Feudal Bosnia, just as even now in the still evening air the shadows of yonder mountains are creeping over the mosques and minarets of Coinica, and spreading a pall over the tents which the Turkish soldiery have pitched on the Bosnian bank.
One cannot wonder that Coinica was chosen as the meeting-place of the lords spiritual and temporal of Christian Bosnia. The situation on the one pass which connects the heart of Bosnia and her present capital with the duchy, and the magnificent bridge which here spans the Narenta, make it the key to the Herzegovina; and even the Turks have shown themselves so alive to its strategic importance that on the outbreak of the insurrection one of the first cares of the government was to secure the position by posting here a division of troops, whose tents we now descried on a height above the Narenta, as—after a short and satisfactory audience with the Kaïmakàm, whom we interviewed in a house which he was building on the Bosnian shore—we crossed the bridge, and, entering Coinica, find ourselves in the old duchy of St. Sava.
Here, after some difficulty, we have discovered a Han—or rather a loft above a stable—and the attendance is certainly in keeping with the place! We are waited on by a turbaned youth, who is a very good specimen of the untutored savage, as he exists in Bosnia at the present day. He comes into our room and gapes at us while we are eating; he takes up our scrap of wheaten bread—a bonne-bouche which we had brought with us from Serajevo—and fingers it complacently. When we ask for water, this child of nature snatches up the pitcher, and before handing it to us takes a good pull at the spout himself! Since then he has stared at us persistently, with interludes of spitting about the floor. We have hinted in every possible way that he is de trop—but to hints our young barbarian shows himself quite unapproachable—till at last all our respect for the sanctity of a host fairly breaks down, and we rid ourselves of our incubus by the magic word Haiti!
Nature’s gentlemen the Bosniacs certainly are not! There is not here that surviving polish of an older civilization—that inheritance of refinement which one traces amongst the Italian peasants, and which the traveller meets with even among the Rouman shepherds of the Carpathian wilds. The Bosniacs, on the contrary, show themselves grossly familiar when not cowed into bearish reserve; they have not even sufficient tact to perceive when their impertinence or obtrusive curiosity is annoying. They show no delicacy about prying into our effects, and in this respect are far behind the Wallacks and other uncivilized European populations with whom I have come in contact. They never displayed gratitude for any small largess that we bestowed on them, though they grabbed at it with avidity; and their general ingratitude was confirmed by those who have had more experience of the country. Amongst the Mahometan burghers there certainly is a very considerable amount of politeness and a natural dignity, due to the grand Oriental traditions with which their conversion to Islâm has imbued them, to which I willingly pay homage. But among the Christians, even of the highest social strata, the want of politeness and that ungenerous vice of mean spirits—ingratitude—are simply astounding. It has already been mentioned that when the new Serbian cathedral was being built, the Russian government presented the Greek congregation of Serajevo with a magnificent set of icons and other church furniture. This costly gift was sent carriage free as far as Brood; but from this town to Serajevo the cost of transport, amounting to at most a dozen or so ducats, fell on the Christian merchants of Serajevo, who, on their own showing, are the wealthiest part of the population of a large city. Will it be believed?—instead of paying the money at once and with pleasure, they entered a formal protest at the Russian Consulate against defraying this trifling expense! The Russian Consul was profoundly disgusted.
But I should be guilty of passing a very shallow judgment on the sometimes too obtrusive familiarity of these people if I did not point out that it is but an unpleasant phase of what is really one of the most valuable qualities preserved by the Bosnian people in the days of bondage. It is part and parcel of a democratic habit of mind common to the whole Serbian, and indeed the whole South-Sclavonic race. It is the representative in conversation of those primitive social relations which hold throughout all these lands within the common yard of the house-community, and have survived alike the imported feudalism of the Middle Ages, and the Turkish conquest. In these Illyrian lands I have often been addressed as ‘brat,’ or brother, and the Bosniacs are known to call the stranger ‘shija’—neighbour. I, who write this, happen individually not to appreciate this ‘égalitaire’ spirit. I don’t choose to be told by every barbarian I meet that he is a man and a brother. I believe in the existence of inferior races, and would like to see them exterminated. But these are personal mislikings, and it is easy to see how valuable such a spirit of democracy may be amongst a people whose self-respect has been degraded by centuries of oppression, and who in many respects are only too prone to cower beneath the despot’s rod: for one need not be enamoured of liberty coupled with equality and fraternity not to perceive that, when the choice lies between it and tyranny, freedom, even in such companionship, is to be infinitely preferred; and a man must be either blind or a diplomatist not to perceive that in the Sclavonic provinces of Turkey the choice ultimately lies between despotism and a democracy almost socialistic.
Aug. 27th.—There was nothing to see in Coinica except the bridge and a mosque or two, so we were again on our way this morning, following the road along the Narenta valley. The scenery much reminded us of the valley of the Izonzo as you descend southwards across the Julian Alps. The whiter and more barren rocks: the signs of a more southern climate in the ripe grapes and what vegetation there was, as well as in the intense heat of the sun over our heads: the houses, no longer of wood, but of white stone,[280] almost tower-like, with high stone stairs outside—recalled one after the other the metamorphoses which had struck us on a former pilgrimage when emerging on the stifling valleys of Gradisca from the Predil Pass. And assuredly the Narenta flowing beside us was as emerald green in its transparency as ever those Sontian pools which feasted Dante’s eyes when the guest of Pagano della Torre. The Narenta in its upper course is very dangerous to bathe in, since the current is not only very rapid, but has short cuts by underground caverns which form whirlpools not easy to detect in the general turmoil of the surface waters, but which are capable none the less of occasionally sucking down into earth’s bowels some of the enormous trees which are seen to float down this river. We, however, discovered a safe and sheltered pool of this wonderful blue-emerald purity, in which we disported ourselves while the soup of our mid-day meal was brewing on the shore.
Towards evening, still following the road, we began to leave the Narenta valley, and to cut off a great bend of its course by zigzagging over some heights. Here we passed some sick and wounded Turks en route from the scene of war, and other soldiers with them, but our pass again stood us in good stead. The heights above the road looked more desolate than any we had seen, as the brushwood had been set on fire, apparently to prevent the enemy from advancing unperceived and perhaps surprising a convoy, so that, as we passed, volumes of smoke were rising above us from blackened thickets. From the summit of this pass opened out a grand view of naked mountain peaks. Rapidly descending we came once more upon the Narenta at a point where a party of Turks, under the direction of a Belgian engineer, were using their best endeavours to complete an iron bridge across the river.
The Belgian engineer, who had been kindly told by consular agency to look out for us, received us with open arms, and hospitably offered us the shelter of his tent for the night. He told us, as a good illustration of Turkish laisser-aller, that the bridge, which had been brought here at a large expense from England, had lain for two years on the river bank without being set up. At last the outbreak of the insurrection harshly aroused the authorities to a sense of their negligence; and now the work has to be pushed on with the greatest hurry imaginable, as the bridge is becoming every day more indispensable for the transport of cannon and other heavy munitions and supplies into the Herzegovina. The workmen employed are only Mahometans, but there are some booths hard-by for the sale of raki and provisions, kept by a small Christian colony. The Belgian himself lodged at the Mahometan village of Jablanica, a little further down the valley, whither we presently accompanied him to accept of his hospitable shelter.
As we were walking towards this our engineer pointed to a part of a maize-plot on the roadside to the right, where the maize was slightly trodden down. ‘Do you see that?’ he asked; ‘perhaps you would like to know how the maize got trodden down there?’