Peaches with the earliest dewdrops gathered,
Figs of Ocean, and the grapes of Mostar.
We too, as a preparation for our weary pilgrimage across the Karst deserts of the lower Narenta to the Dalmatian frontier, took with us a generous basket of the fruits of Mostar.
The day was terribly hot, and a suffocating miasmatic vapour[312] (such as we had not met with since we left the valley of the Save) brooded over the city, which, according to our Consul, possesses a climate decidedly hotter than that of Constantinople, so that we were naturally desirous of lightening our day’s journey to the frontier by obtaining horses. These, however, it was extremely hard to obtain; but the Pashà, to whom we mentioned our difficulty, generously placed a couple of horses at our disposal, and told us that if we would start this afternoon we should have the advantage of a guard that was to accompany a caravan of Herzegovinians to Metcović, our Dalmatian destination. We being anxious to push on, as we were really afraid of this climate, took advantage of the proposal, and about five in the afternoon started with our cavalcade on the most terrible journey I ever remember.
Our caravan, consisting of sixty horses and men, slowly mustered together, and having defiled out of Mostar over the steep Narenta bridge, we jogged for hours along tedious dusty plains, leaving on our left the ruins of the feudal stronghold of Blagaj, once the treasury, as its name implies, and castle of the Duke of St. Sava. About sunset we heard many muttered prayers, and an ‘Ave Maria’ continually repeated by a rayah who was riding near; then it grew dark, so that my brother and myself, who both of us suffer from night-blindness, could not see an inch; but still the whole caravan jogged on, and though the stars, shining with a reddish, lurid light, looked more like ‘lamps of heaven’ than the pale stars of old acquaintance, they did not aid our purblind vision in the least, and we felt particularly helpless when we perceived by the noise of water running a good way immediately below us that we were riding along the brink of a precipitous steep. However, our beasts followed their leaders, till suddenly there was an universal stampede—my horse rushed down a steep bank, nearly throwing me off, and then plunged into a stream to drink, and after some more stumbling and climbing we found ourselves in a struggling crowd of men and horses, and were told to dismount. Then our steeds disappeared, and we found ourselves together wedged into a trampling throng in what to us was pitch darkness. Happily, a Zaptieh, who had been ordered by the Pashà to attend on us, rescued us from this plight, and we discovered that we had arrived at a Han called Buna, where we obtained coffee and a room to ourselves over a stable, and rested three hours.
This Han was erected here by our old friend Ali Pashà, who was something more than an impaler of rayahs, and did many things to improve the means of communication and the material well-being of his Pashalik. To him Herzegovina owes the introduction of rice culture, and also of silk-worms; and it was here, at Buna, that he planted, with this object, the first mulberry-trees in the country. The Vizier built a favourite summer residence here, of which and its grounds the Mostar historian gives a curious description. The little river Buna, which, issuing from a cavern in the rock below the castle of Blagai, here pours into the Narenta, is, like it, according to our monk, ‘rich in innumerable fish,’ while the Pashà’s grounds abounded in ‘all the fruits of the South.’ ‘Ali Pashà laid down pipes in which he conducted water from the Buna, and he brought hither a dragon’s head of lead which poured forth the water from its throat into a stone basin, wherein rare fishes played. Here the Satrap was wont to tarry for his pleasure; and when his bloodthirsty servants brought him the heads of Christian Serbs, he bade them to be stuck on the poles of a palisade that stood opposite, and in gazing on them had his chiefest delight.’
Aug. 30th.—During our midnight halt at Buna we were not in a position to examine the Vizier’s villa, nor had we long given us even for repose, for at 2.30 we were roused once more by our Zaptieh, and having been guided to our horses in the dark, were again jogging on our way, and ascending a range of high limestone hills by a rough winding road, without the slightest aid from vision. As morning gradually revealed to us our surroundings, we found that we were crossing a rock-strewn table-land almost bereft of trees, except a few olives, and some fine old oaks shading an ancient solitary graveyard The motion was most fatiguing, as our horses were anything but sure-footed; and the saddle was simply excruciating. The saddle of these countries is simply formed of two hurdle-like frames of wood joined together in the middle at an angle of over fifty degrees, and padded underneath, to protect the horse. We had to sit astride on the sharp upper keel, and had nothing but our sleeping-gear to mitigate its hardness. Add to this the perpetual jolting and stumbling, and the fact that the stirrups were simply loops of cord, which twisted our toes under our horses’ bellies, and our discomfort may be imagined. The dust kicked up by our caravan was terrible, so that to avoid it we wished to ride in front; but our horses, who knew their place in the ranks, could not be induced to stir from it till we dismounted and literally dragged them in front. The pace was provokingly slow, and the Herzegovinian drivers were perpetually reminding their beasts of the duty of sloth by shouts of Polacko! polacko![313] My beast didn’t need any reminder of this kind, and nothing on earth would induce him to put on a spurt so as to distance our dusty train, till by some happy inspiration I whistled to him ‘Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green.’ Then, at last, the intelligent animal pricked up its ears and broke into a lively trot!
For many hours we had been riding through a wilderness, but as we approached the southern edge of our plateau a prospect of desolation broke upon us such as those who have not seen it can scarcely imagine. In every direction rose low mountains, mere heaps of disintegrated limestone rock, bare of vegetation as a shingly sea-beach—a cruel southern Karst, aptly compared to a petrified glacier or a moon-landscape, the creation—as the old Bogomiles of these parts would have supposed it—of some Evil Spirit. Yet, like most things in nature, this desert prospect is not without its redeeming specialities of beauty. Where the colours of earth are so faint there is nothing to interfere with the most perfect development of atmospheric effects. Nature has, as it were, provided a white sheet for the grandest of all illuminators, and I have seen these pale rock skeletons tinged by morning and evening suns with more delicate saffron and peach-blossom than the green hills of more fertile lands are susceptible of taking. Even as seen by the light of common day, this barren panorama was well worth an artist’s study. We were among mountain-tops without the climbing; and though the languor of the colours spoke too evidently of the universal waterlessness, their delicacy was novel and not without a subtle fascination. The sky above was of a pale hazy azure; the sterile hill-sides a thin ashy grey, stained here and there with a soupçon of sand colour or faint iron brown; the plain below was the palest and most languid of greens.
Christian Monuments, Tassorić.