FROM SARAJEVO TO THE COAST
Jablaniča—Mostar—Across the Mountains—The Balkan Riviera—Ragusa:
The Fairy City of the Adriatic.
From Sarajevo the narrow-gauge railway line makes a gradual ascent of
the mountains, the engineer assuring the safety of himself and his
passengers now and again by applying the rachet attachment, for the
grades are very steep. Finally the divide is crossed a short while
before the train reaches the picturesque little village of Konjiča,
a meagre assortment of red-roofed, white-walled houses, including the
inevitable mosque tower, literally dumped in among the green hills with
pleasing effect.
[Illustration: A GORGE OF THE NARENTA, NEAR JABLANIČA.]
Farther along at Jablaniča—where, although a village of but two
hundred souls, the accommodations of a good hotel beckon to the
traveller to spend some time in this vicinity, should the grandeur
of the surrounding mountain scenery appeal to him as it did to us—a
gorge of the Narenta is crossed and from this point the line follows
the defile of the river as far as Mostar. A military road of stone
foundation, which would tempt the most apprehensive of automobile
tourists, twines itself, like a white thread, along the opposite side
of the river from the railway, now bridging with stone arches the
waterfall of a mountain stream at its debouchment into the river below,
now circling the base of an overhanging cliff, now shooting into a
short tunnel blasted through the solid rock. A wall of stone masonry
borders the outer edge of the road at the dangerous places.
While the adjacent mountains are wild, rugged and severe in their
bleakness, the valleys between them are fertile and productive. Almost
any cereal which thrives in temperate latitudes grows readily. Indeed,
in travelling through Bosnia to-day the farms of prosperous land-owners
so stretch themselves across the undulating sections of country between
the higher mountain ranges that the observer might easily imagine
himself circling a great agricultural section of England or America.
Jablaniča is a much-patronized summer resort for the people of
both Sarajevo and Mostar, and from it as a starting-point climbing
excursions into the mountains may be made in every direction.
Responsible guides will be supplied at the hotel for comparatively
small sums. The air here is delightfully clear and invigorating; even
on the warmest days the cooling shade of the extensive gardens which
surround the hotel is much too enticing to allow one to hurry along to
Mostar. As a quiet, charming place to recuperate, for as long a time
as you will, from the fatigues of travel in the Balkans, I can suggest
a no more convenient, or a no more fascinating spot than right here at
the hotel in this diminutive village of Jablaniča. If you do not
care to climb mountains you may revel in a general rest, for a few
days at least. Even the name of the place requires no special lingual
effort to pronounce, once you become familiar with these Slavonic
combinations; you merely have to say “Yab-lā-nitz-ā”—it just
sort of rolls along your tongue from the palate to the lips, and then
drops.
In Mostar, the capital of the Herzegovina, the sewing-machine
advertisements offer about the only hint that you are living in the
twentieth century, for this city seems to have adhered more closely to
mediæval methods than any in the Balkans.
The Narenta River, which divides the town, is a shallow mountain stream
at times, but after a period of heavy rains it surges down through the
mountain gorges and over the grotesque lavic rocks, ripping away its
banks and necessitating the inhabitants of the town whose homes border
its scaly sides to build their houses upon stilts.
Mostar may boast of, or bemoan, as the case may be, a collection of
thirty mosques, for, of its fourteen thousand population, half are
Mohammedans, and two thousand of the remaining half comprise the troops
of an Austria-Hungarian garrison. The streets of the town are dirty and
narrow, and the sun beats down between the white walls of the houses
as if in the tropics. A bridge of modern steel construction spans the
Narenta just near the hotel of that name, while half a mile farther
down the river one of the most famous bridges in all Europe stretches
its single arch out of the shadows across the sea-blue water of the
Narenta, which gurgles in and out among the volcanic boulders ninety
feet below the key-stone. The age of this bridge is indeterminable.
It is supposed to have been built by the Cæsars at a time when the
Herzegovina was a Roman province. Be that as it may, nothing like
its construction or architecture is to be seen in bridge-building in
Europe, no matter how ancient or how modern, and it is still used by
market-people and the inhabitants of that quarter of the city. One
would almost expect to see a centurion or two, in togas and sandals,
walk out across the old structure any minute.
The veiled Turkish women of Mostar are world-famous for the style of
their headdress, which is as characteristic of this city as the old
bridge itself. In addition to being heavily veiled they wear a sort of
black hood of stiffened material, which protrudes in front like the
upper half of the pointed bill of a bird.
But, aside from the Roman bridge, the veiled women, and an old Turkish
graveyard, there is really nothing much of interest in Mostar. At any
rate, after a short visit here, you will be a little tired of the
sameness of these cities, which the Turk fain would still hold as his
own, and you will want to hurry along to the Dalmatian coast towns,
as different from those you have recently visited as day is from
night; different climates, different peoples having different customs,
different architectures; all so different that when you come upon them
you will wonder if you haven’t been awakened suddenly, then launched
upon another dream-excursion.
[Illustration: THE OLD ROMAN BRIDGE, MOSTAR.]
Again, after leaving Mostar, the railroad commences to climb,
snake-like, over the mountains toward the coast, for the building of
this road has required no small amount of engineering skill. It would
be difficult to find in England or America, or in fact in any other
country, a railway line more substantially built or kept in better
condition. The crushed rock track ballast is evened off at each side
of the rails as if with a pair of calipers, the roadbed is smooth and
the grades, although long, are not as steep as would be imagined,
considering the heights to be climbed. At Ravna the final ascent of the
mountains is commenced and from here to the top the road is built on an
almost continuous wall of stone masonry.
As you wind around the mountain peaks wonderful views of the valley
below, dotted here and there with white specks of human beings busily
at work, are before you, now on one side, now on the other. The fields
resemble square patches of brown or green plush rubbed both ways,
according to the angle of light as it falls upon them. Ahead, the
railway line seems to be made up of tunnels, great stone arches that
bridge deep ravines and cuts and fills which follow one another in
rapid succession. On the distant hills you may see the remains of watch
towers once used by lookouts, from which were observed the movements of
Turkish invaders in the days when the gates of Vienna were threatened
by the depredating Mohammedans.
A little beyond Uskoplje, as suddenly as you would come into the light
from the darkness of a tunnel, is displayed before you, as if molded
with clay upon a great flat canvas, a most extraordinary panorama of
that part of the Dalmatian coast.
Might you have had the uninterrupted view of the engineer you would
have seen at first but a narrow defile in the mountains ahead, in the
centre of which the rails of the road meet in perspective, like two
glossy ribbons, and then seem to shoot out into a blue-vaulted void
beyond. By bringing into play a very little imagination you might be
willing to believe you were nearing the edge of the earth. But, as
you approach, a panorama unfolds itself,—a panorama of that strip of
territory which fringes the north-eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea,
Austria-Hungary’s only coast line. It is a panorama of an historic land
of perennial loveliness. It is a panorama of a land of flowers, of
sunshine and deep shadows; a land of wonderful walls and bold bastiles;
a land of gayety, where Austria-Hungarian aristocracy, all-appreciative
of its charms, sits and looks out upon the amethystine waters by
day, and strolls languorously along the sea-parades by night; a land
of quaint, fortified cities, jealous of their histories; a land of
interesting, picturesque, unsophisticated peasant peoples. Withal
it is a new, and, as yet, comparatively an unpenetrated land to the
English-speaking traveller, scenery-lover or pleasure-seeker, and I
have taken the liberty to coin a new name for it—The Balkan Riviera.
From this point in the defile the road twists and turns like a scenic
railway, and almost doubles in its tracks as it zig-zags down the
precipitous sides of the mountains, the Adriatic ever blending into the
gray sky-line in the distance.
Finally, after making in its descent many snake-like coils, the train
passes the source of the beautiful Ombla, with its swan-dotted lake,
and you will have arrived at Gravosa, the port and railway terminus
of Ragusa. In three hours, it seems, you have been hustled from a
temperate into a tropical climate.
But for those who do not care for travel through Bosnia and the
Herzegovina there is a vastly more convenient route, possibly one that
makes a more perfect pleasure trip, by which to reach this Balkan
Riviera, for Trieste, just across the gulf from Venice, and Fiume, on
the eastern shores of the Istrian Peninsula, are also gateways to this
land of types and flowers.
If you take steamer from either of these towns you will be whisked down
along the Dalmatian coast, through the fjord-like passages between the
thousands of islands which form the tassels to the fringe of country
beyond, and by and by you will come within sight of that little old
town of many vicissitudes—Ragusa.
It seems almost an enchanted spot and you will call it “The Fairy City
of the Adriatic.”