Twenty miles farther on we came to Konjica, a picturesque little place with a fine old Turkish bridge spanning the Narenta, where the train halts, affording us time to explore the place and take a photograph or two. Then the ascent is so steep that the puffing little locomotive is fitted with cog-wheels to take us through the Trescanica valley up over the ridge of the wild Ivan Planina, the high watershed between the Black Sea and the Adriatic.
Progress is slow and halts are frequent. In places there have been landslips, and we creep along the edges of dangerous precipices. But the scenery fully compensates for the many tedious hours and for lack of food—for in our ignorance I had omitted to lay in stores, and the only thing I could obtain during the day was half a dozen apples! The Bosnian frontier crossed, the train traverses the saddle of Vilovac, then descends rapidly through beautiful wooded valleys and along the Bosna and Zeljeznica rivers, until, in the darkness, Sarayevo with its many electric lamps is reached—a railway journey even more interesting than the well-known Gothard route.
My fellow-passengers from Mostar were two. One was a Turkish gentleman who removed his slippers and sat cross-legged on the seat fingering his beads until the sundown, when he produced some sandwiches from the tail of his frock-coat, and slowly consumed them after his long fast since four o’clock that morning. The other was a particularly communicative Austrian gentleman, whom I recognised at once to be a spy.
Sarayevo, the Bosnian capital, is very Eastern, and, being so, is full of attraction for the stranger. There is a very fair old-fashioned hotel, the Europa, in the centre of the town, nearly two miles from the station. It is a city of mosques, the minarets of which were all gaily illuminated on the night of my arrival, producing a picturesque effect against the night-sky.
The place is prettily situated—a town of some forty thousand inhabitants, half Serb, half Eastern. Lying in the narrow valley, whence the river Milyacka bursts forth from a gorge just above the town, the dwellers by the riverside are mostly Austrian immigrants, while the natives have their houses and their mosques on the hillside. Every house has its own little garden, as in Servia, and of course the bazaar is the centre of trade, as in every town where the beslippered Turk still remains.
This charshiya, or bazaar, is a great labyrinth of dark, narrow, ill-paved alleys flanked with booths, where every trade, each with its particular quarter, is carried on in open view to the passers-by. The copper ware, silver filigree, and carpets are attractive, but most of the so-called Oriental goods are “fakes.” The place, though there is a variety of costume everywhere, is not half so attractive as Skodra, because of the Austrian bogey that pervades everything.
To buy specimens of Bosnian chiselled metal work it is best to go to the Government School of Industrial Art, where the finest pieces of workmanship may be seen in course of execution, and where the price asked is a fixed one, below that demanded either in the bazaar or in shops. The services for Turkish coffee in chiselled copper-gilt are of chaste and very elegant design, perfect marvels of patience in chiselling, and very appreciable to the Western taste in decorative art.
The chief feature of the bazaar is the Husref Beg Mosque, the finest in the town, to which, though an Infidel, I was granted admission. I of course put on overshoes, and made an interesting tour round with a priest who only spoke Turkish, so that I did not learn very much from him. Built about 1540, it is a fine spacious structure, with dome and high minarets, and in front, in the quiet old courtyard, is a fine old fountain for ablutions shaded by a very ancient lime tree. Before it, sit several Turkish pedlars in turbans selling rosaries, printed texts from the Koran, imitation otto-of-rose manufactured from geranium, European collar-studs, and other trifles.
Another industry peculiar to Bosnia is the inlay of gold and silver into bog-oak, or gun-metal, and many quaint little objects—boxes, bracelets, brooches, and belt-buckles—quite unique in England, may be purchased. The old silver filigree buttons displayed everywhere may also be used with advantage by ladies for hat-pins.
A stroll through the town shows at once the mixed character of the people, for all the names of streets are written up in three languages—Turkish, Croatian, and Serb. The noisy thoroughfares are crowded with Europeans, mixed up with baggy-legged men and veiled women, men in fezes in all stages of disintegration, while the Bosnian ladies wear the queerest head-gear I have ever set eyes upon. The hair is parted in the middle and brushed down straight, while upon it is stuck a tiny pork-pie cap of gaudy-coloured chintz or silk, edged with a thousand gilt sequins sewn closely together, the most ugly and most unbecoming head-dress imaginable. Yet it is evidently the mode, and is worn by European ladies in all other respects attired as one would find them in Vienna or in Budapest.