CHAPTER VIII.

MOSTAR AND THE VALE OF NARENTA.

Amulets against Blight—A Hymn in the Wilderness—We arrive

at Mostar—Our Consul—Anglo-Turkish Account of Origin of

the Insurrection in the Herzegovina—The real Facts—The

‘_Giumruk_’—The Begs and Agas and their Serfs—The Demands

of the Men of Nevešinje—Massacre of Sick Rayahs by

Native Mahometans begins the War—Plan of Dervish Pashà’s

Campaign—Interview with the Governor-General, Dervish

Pashà—Roman Characteristics of Mostar and her Roman

Antiquities—Trajan’s Bridge—Ali Pashà, his Death’s-heads and

Tragical End—The Grapes of Mostar—Start with Caravan for

Dalmatian Frontier—A Ride in the Dark—Buna and the Vizier’s

Villa—Bosnian Saddles—A Karst Landscape—Tassorić: Christian

Crosses and interesting Graveyard—Outbreak of Revolt in

Lower Narenta Valley—The Armed Watch against the Begs—A

Burnt Village—On Christian Soil once more—Metcović—Voyage

Down the Narenta Piccola—Ruins of a Roman City—The Illyrian

Narbonne—Metamorphosis of Sclavonic God into Christian

Saint—The old _Pagania_—The Narentines and Venetians—Narentine

Characteristics—A Scotch Type—Subterranean Bellowings near

Fort Opus: the Haunts of a Minotaur!—Adverse Winds—Tremendous

Scene at Mouth of Narenta—_La Fortuna è rotta!_—Our Boat swept

back by the Hurricane—A Celestial Cannonade—Sheltered by a

Family-Community—Dalmatian Fellowship with the English—Stagno—A

romantic Damsel—Gravosa, the Port of Ragusa.

About two hours and a half from Mostar the pass opened, and our way lay

across a broader part of the Narenta valley, overlooked by the mountains

at a more respectful distance. Here, passing a cottage, we noticed the

poles of the fence that surrounded the adjoining maize-field adorned with

an array of equine skulls. I cannot doubt that these were set up for

the same reason as induced the ancients to set up the skulls of cattle

among their corn-fields—namely, as an amulet against blight.[286] The

superstition survived in mediæval Italy, and Boccaccio tells an amusing

story of a lady who, by turning the two asses’ skulls on her garden fence

in a certain direction, telegraphed to her lover that her husband was out.

At a solitary hut called Potoci, about two hours distant from Mostar,

we took leave of our Kiradjì, who would not trust his beast any

further, since any horse that showed itself in the neighbourhood of the

Herzegovinian capital was sure to be requisitioned. Opposite the hovel at

Potoci was a small stone building, which, on enquiry, we found to be a

church. It laid no more claim to architectural elegance than a barn, and,

with its loop-holed windows, and even these hermetically boarded up, and

a door carefully barred, seemed at present more fitted for withstanding

a siege than for the celebration of divine service. Perchance, in these

troubled times, the congregation preferred to seek the high places

of nature for their worship. Indeed, whilst passing through the more

precipitous gorge of the Narenta, we had caught the solemn cadence of

a Christian hymn, chanted, may be, by some shepherd on the mountain

side; but whoever poured forth the ‘plaintive anthem’ was hidden by

distance and intervening rocks from our view; nor were the tones the less

impressive that their rudeness was thus softened, and that the singer was

‘but an invisible thing, a voice, a mystery.’

The minarets of Mostar now rose before us, the city lying on the Narenta

at a point where the mountains on each side again jut forward and

overhang the river. To the south of this the valley expands once more, so

that Mostar owes much of its importance to the fact that it is the key to

the communication between the upper and lower valleys of the Narenta;

or, to take a simile from the insect world, this city lies on the narrow

duct—the wasp’s waist—between the thorax and abdomen of the river-system.

We now made our way to the chief inn, quite an imposing stone edifice,

rejoicing in the title of the Casino, and kept by an Italian Dalmatian

on what he is pleased to suppose European principles. Our room, at all

events, possessed the first beds[287] that we had seen since we quitted

Serajevo, and is further adorned with a picture of the _Imperatore e

Rè_. Here we were presently visited by our Consul, Mr. Holmes, who is

lodging under the same roof, but had been out when we arrived, engaged in

relieving the tedium of diplomacy by practising a still more gentle craft

on the banks of the Narenta, which is a fine trout-stream.

From Mr. Holmes we learnt the official Turkish account of the

Herzegovinian insurrection—or rather the official account as served up to

suit _English_ palates; for, as was discovered by the consular body on

afterwards comparing notes, the wily Governor-General gave a different

version of the story to each of the European Consuls!

According to _our_ version the whole affair was concocted by about

forty agitators, and these not even Herzegovinians for the most part,

but Montenegrines and Dalmatians. Certainly, even the Vali allowed, the

tax-farming was a grievance—and who more laudably desirous of removing

it than he (the Pashà) himself?—but that, so far as the present rising

was concerned, it had not even this ground of justification. That

the misguided beings who answered to the summons of the professional

agitators were what are called Pandours, somewhat corresponding to the

Austrian _Grenzers_, who, in return for frontier defence, are freed from

ordinary taxes, and who, so far from being ruined by the tax-farmers,

are actually in receipt of a small sum annually from the Government.

Well, yes, there certainly have been some complaints of misgovernment,

and the Pashà, always desirous that the meanest of his (the Sultan’s)

subjects should share in the fullest measure the beneficence of his

lieutenant’s rule, had sent two Commissioners, the Mutasarìf of Mostar

and a respectable _Christian_ of Serajevo, Constant Effendi, to inquire

into the alleged grievances. But what did these Commissioners report?

Just complaints they could hear absolutely none. Thread-bare grievances,

often as much as ten years old, were raked up for their benefit, and even

these were retailed, not by the alleged victims or their families, but

by self-constituted grief-mongers! True, it might be objected that if

the insurrection was altogether devoid of just cause, how was its spread

to be accounted for? but, really, the explanation was very simple. These

frontier agitators, not meeting with sympathy from the loyal Christian

subjects of the Sultan, supplied its want by intimidation. That in many

cases the Turkish authorities had received messages from Christian

villages saying ‘We do not wish to join the insurrection, but we fear

that we shall be forced to join.’ And forced to join they were. If a

village refused to throw in its lot with the rebels, they first burnt one

house or one maize-plot, and then another, till the unhappy villagers,

forced to choose between ruin and rebellion, consented to join their

ranks. As to the way in which the insurgents were conducting the war, it

was almost too horrible to be repeated. That they would often shut up

whole families of Moslems in their houses, to which they then set fire.

That, (to take a single instance,) at Ljubinje they spitted two children

and roasted them alive before their parents’ eyes. And while relating

these and other atrocities to our Consul, the tender-hearted Pashà burst

into tears. The tears were, I believe, exclusively reserved for _our_

representative—a distinguished mark of confidence.

Dervish Pashà has a well-earned reputation for _finesse_, but this

account of the outbreak can hardly claim even the qualified merit of

being _ben trovato_! The authentic history, as elicited by the Consular

Commission of the great Powers,[288] shows very few features in common

with this official Turkish explanation. To begin with, however credible

may seem the statement that the Turkish governors of the Herzegovina

are in the habit of paying Christians to defend their frontier, and

whatever sums the Pandours may have been in the habit of receiving from

a government on the verge of bankruptcy, these considerations are beside

the point, for the focus of the whole movement has been the village of

Nevešinje, not on the frontier at all, but, on the contrary, in the

heart of the country, only a few miles from Mostar itself.

As in Bosnia, the main cause of the insurrection was the oppression of

the tithe-farmers. The case of the Herzegovinian rayahs differs, however,

in many respects from that of their Bosnian brothers. This is due to the

difference in the physical conditions of the two countries. In Bosnia

there are many tracts, like the Possávina, of marvellous fertility,

where the most extortionate government cannot so entirely consume the

fatness of the land as not to leave the rayah considerable gleanings.

Far otherwise is the case in the Herzegovina. The greater part of this

country may be briefly described as a limestone desert, and it is the

terrible poverty of the soil which makes the position of its Christian

tiller so unendurable.

Here, too, the chief product of the earth is not maize, but tobacco and

grapes, and the peculiar character of these crops enables the government

to extort a double impost on each. For the tobacco as it stands on the

ground, and for the grapes when carried off as must, the tithe-farmers

exacts his eighth in his usual arbitrary fashion.[289] But now follows

a supplementary extortion. On what remains to the rayah, after paying

these eighths, he has to pay _giumruk_, or excise. This, like the former

tax, is let out to ‘publicans’ as villanous as the other tithe-farmers,

whom they rival in their extortions. They swoop down on an unfortunate

village with their gang of retainers and Zaptiehs, and live at free

quarters on the villagers. Their business is to find out the quantity of

tobacco still growing on the stalk, and the remnant of the wine drawn

from the must which has escaped the collector of ‘the eighth;’ and their

exactions and insolence are among the grievances on which the insurgents

in their appeal to the foreign Consuls lay most stress.[290] These men

hold an inquisition on every hearth, and the right which they exercise

of intruding themselves into the inmost privacy of the rayah gives them

inconceivable opportunities for outrage.

Another of the special evils of the Herzegovina is also in a great

measure due to the physical aspect of the country. This is eminently

a peak-land. The mountains here are higher than in Bosnia, and the

strongholds of the old feudal nobility consequently more impregnable. In

Bosnia the native Agas and Begs have been to a certain extent brought

under the central government. But in the Herzegovina their authority

retains much more of its old vitality. Here the wretched rayah has not

only to satisfy the Kaïmakàms and Mutasarìfs, who represent the needs of

the Osmanlì ruler, but is at the mercy of a haughty aristocratic caste,

who eye their Christian serfs with the contempt of a feudal lord for a

_villain_, and the abhorrence of a fanatical Moslem for a Giaour.

Suffering from this double disability, social and religious, the

Christian ‘_kmet_,’ or tiller of the soil, is worse off than many a serf

in our darkest ages, and lies as completely at the mercy of the Mahometan

owner of the soil as if he were a slave. Legally, indeed, the Aga who

owns all the land is bound to enter into a written agreement with his

‘_kmet_’ as to the dues and labours to be paid him; but as a matter

of fact this petty potentate haughtily refuses to enter into any such

compact; and since the Turkish government knows well enough that its

tenure of the Herzegovina is not worth twenty-four hours’ purchase if it

were seriously to act counter to the native Sclavonic Mahometans, the Beg

or Aga can break the law with impunity. He is thus allowed to treat his

‘_kmet_’ as a mere chattel; ‘he uses a stick and strikes the “_kmet_”

without pity, in a manner that no one else would use a beast.’ Any land

that the rayah may acquire, any house he may have built, any patch of

garden that his industry may have cleared among the rocks, the Aga seizes

at his pleasure. The ordinary dues, as paid by the kmet to the landowner,

as specified in the appeal of the Herzegovinian rayahs, are heavy enough.

He has to pay, according to the custom of the various districts, a third

or a fourth part of the produce of the ground, about Mostar and the

Plain of Popovo as much as half;[291] to present him with one animal

yearly, and a certain quantity of butter and cheese; to carry for him so

many loads of wood; and if the Aga is building a house, to carry the

materials for it; to work for him gratuitously whenever he pleases, and

sometimes the Aga requisitions one of the kmet’s children, who must serve

him for nothing; to make a separate plantation of tobacco, cultivate it,

and finally warehouse the produce in his master’s store; and to plough

and sow so many acres of land, the harvest of which he must also carry

to his master’s barn. Finally, to lodge the Aga in his own house when

required, and to provide for his horses and dogs.

The insurrection in the Herzegovina has been directed more against the

Mahometan landowners and the tax-farmers than against the immediate

representatives of the Sultan. It is mainly an agrarian war.

Add to the extortion of the tax-farmers and landlords, the forced

labour which the government officials exact as well as the Agas, the

impossibility of obtaining justice in the Medjliss, the atrocious

conduct of the brigand-police or Zaptiehs, and, of course, the wolfish

propensities of the shepherd of the herd—the Fanariote bishop of

Mostar—and we have more than enough to account for the outbreak of the

insurrection without going in quest of foreign agitators.

This is not to deny that the insurrection was aided and abetted by

Sclavonic agitators from beyond the border. The solidarity between the

various members of the South-Sclavonic race has, as we heard from the

most well-informed sources, reached a pitch which demands an attention

that it has not received from the statesmen of this country. It was

inevitable that the Sclaves beyond the Turkish border should sympathize

with their oppressed brothers in their struggle for liberty, and should

aid them with supplies and recruits. Thus there are many representatives

of all the South-Sclavonic peoples from Bohemia to Montenegro fighting

in the insurgent ranks,[292] and one of their principal leaders,

Ljubibratić,[293] comes from Free Serbia. But that the insurrection was

brought about by foreign agitators is strongly disproved by the fact

that the outbreak took the Serbian Revolutionary Society—the _Omladina_

itself—by surprise.

But, it will be asked, have the Sclavonic committees and societies,

partly literary partly political, established for years at different

towns along the Dalmatian and Croatian frontiers, effected nothing? It

stands to reason that they have played their part in preparing the rayah

for the present outbreak. To their influence, no doubt, is due the fact

that among the Christians of several parts of the Herzegovina, including

the districts where the revolt first broke out, a defence organization

had already been set on foot. The rayahs of every village, who in case of

extreme oppression were ready to take arms, had divided themselves into

groups of twenty or thirty called _Čotas_, under a leader whose title was

_Načenik_. When, however, we come to enquire what induced the rayahs to

put a halter round their necks by listening to the advice of their free

brothers beyond the border, and organizing such measures of protection;

when we come to enquire what at last induced them to take up arms—then

there is only one ever-recurring answer—it was simply and solely the

tyranny of the agents of the Turkish government and the Mahometan

landlords.

Nothing shows a more hopelessly wrong conception of the whole character

of the rayah mind, than to suppose that the dull, unlettered peasants of

Bosnia and Herzegovina took up arms as the champions of Panslavism or the

‘Cosmopolitan Revolution.’ Jacques Bonhomme, of whatever nationality, is

an emphatically practical being, and a _grande idée_ is entirely beyond

his comprehension. Poor Herzegovinian Hodge did not exchange his spade

for a musket to secure Provincial Autonomy; he simply wanted to obtain a

fair share of what he earned with the sweat of his brow, to gain security

for life and limb and the honour of his wife and children, to be allowed

at least to live. How far, since the date of the first outbreak, foreign

auxiliaries and emissaries may have succeeded in infusing the refinements

of _la haute politique_ into this raw material, is beyond my province

to enquire. All that I wish to point out is that this insurrection—so

pregnant in its consequences—was in its origin Agrarian rather than

Political. It was largely an affair of tenant-right.

The outbreak of the insurrection was certainly favoured by a variety of

accidental circumstances. The visit of the Emperor of Austria to Dalmatia

in the spring could not fail to raise hopes of Austrian intervention,

and Christians of both sects did their best to lay petitions before

his Apostolic Majesty. The dispute between Turkey and Montenegro with

reference to the Podgorica affair, induced the malcontents of the

Herzegovina to look with confidence for allies among their brothers of

the Black Mountain. Another favourable circumstance was the discontent of

the Franciscan fraternities, due to the recent infringement of some of

their privileges and the delay of the Sultan in confirming their firmans,

which made the leaders of the Roman Catholic communion willing to throw

in their cause for the nonce with the Greek heretics. One of the most

curious features of the present insurrection has been the way in which

the two Christian sects have fought side by side.[294]

The scene of the first outbreak was the district of Nevešinje; and the

history of the oppression there may serve to explain the causes of

discontent among the rayah population of Herzegovina generally. The

village of Nevešinje, which gives its name to the surrounding district,

is about twelve miles distant from Mostar, as the crow flies, and lies

on the south-eastern flank of the mountain range that rises above this

city to the east. It is built on the skirts of an extensive plain, raised

1,800 feet above sea level, and once the bed of a large lake, known

as the Nevešinsko Polje, and overlooked on every side by a wilderness

of bare limestone mountains scattered with fragments of rock. In a

rock-fastness like this, little harvest could be expected in the best of

seasons, but in 1874 the harvest proved a failure altogether. Yet, what

there was might not be gathered in till the tax-gatherer had claimed his

eighth, and as he did not make his appearance, it was allowed to rot

on the ground, till the starving peasantry could endure no longer and

cut a portion of it for their needs. Months passed, and it was not till

January 1875 (I am following the consular report) that the tax-farmers

at last made their appearance, resolved to exact the uttermost farthing.

The Publicans on this occasion consisted of one Christian and two members

of the renegade Mahometan aristocracy of the Herzegovina, who here vie

with the Fanariote Greeks for this shameful office. These gentry, as is

their wont, rated the harvest at far higher than its real value, and

when the peasants refused to comply with their exorbitant demands, let

loose their bloodhounds, the Zaptiehs, and robbed, beat, and imprisoned

whom they would. The _Knezes_ or village elders tried to complain to

the Kaïmakàm, but being insulted and threatened with imprisonment, fled

to Montenegro. The rest of the villagers, unable to obtain any redress,

and hourly subjected to the violence of the Zaptiehs, took refuge, with

their cattle, in the neighbouring mountains. Only one old man was left in

the village, and him the Zaptiehs bound and sent to Mostar. Events of a

similar character were occurring in the neighbouring districts.

But meanwhile the news of these events began to be noised abroad.

Unpleasant rumours of sacked villages had reached the ears of the

consular body, and the Nevešinjans had even attempted to tell the

story of their wrongs to the Emperor of Austria, then engaged in his

Dalmatian journey. The Vali of Bosnia began to perceive that it was

high time for him to interfere, or the agitation might reach such

dimensions as to place him himself in a difficult position. The oppressed

rayahs of Nevešinje and the surrounding districts had appealed to the

commiseration of civilized Europe, and something must be done to satisfy

the great Powers and their representatives, and at the same time to allay

the agitation among the rayahs.

The Vali accordingly appointed the precious Commission, already spoken

of, to confer with the Christians on their grievances; and at the same

time gave the refugees in Montenegro a safe-conduct to their homes. By

these means the Vali secured the double object of revenging himself on

the Christian refugees, and throwing dust into the eyes of the consular

body. The refugees, on attempting to return, were, in spite of their

safe-conduct, fired on by Turkish troops; and when at last some of them

succeeded in finding their way to Nevešinje, the Turkish authorities

permitted Mussulmans of the village to murder several without moving

a finger to punish the assassins! The results of the Commission were

so falsified as to make it appear that the whole agitation among the

rayahs was fictitious, and the outrages committed during the last three

months by tax-farmers and Zaptiehs, the sack of whole villages, the

assassination of men, the violation of women, were, forsooth, reduced to

‘antiquated grievances raked up by self-constituted grief-mongers.’

This might do all very well, so the Vali thought, for the consular

body; but he was well aware that other tactics were necessary in order

to allay the dangerous spirit aroused among the rayah population. The

shooting of the refugees was due, he explained, to a ‘misunderstanding.’

The Christians were to be convinced of the reality of the Commission.

The Turkish government even consented to place among its members the

envoy of the Prince of Montenegro. The real information received by the

Commission was very different from that which the Vali vouchsafed to our

Consul. The grievances of the Herzegovinians generally, as against the

government, are well set forth in the seven demands which the people of

Nevešinje laid before the Commission. They form an interesting commentary

on the Turkish rule in the Herzegovina, and savour neither of Panslavism

nor of disloyalty to the Sultan.

The demands of the men of Nevešinje were as follows:—

1. That Christian girls and women should no longer be molested

by the Turks.

2. That their churches should no longer be desecrated, and that

free exercise of their religion should be accorded them.

3. That they should have equal rights with the Turks before the

law.

4. That they should be protected from the violence of the

Zaptiehs.

5. That the tithe-farmers should take no more than they were

legally entitled to, and that they should take it at the proper

time.

6. That every house should pay in all only one ducat a year.

7. That no forced labour, either personal or by horses, should

be demanded by the government; but that labour, when needed,

should be paid for, as was the case all over the world.

The last two demands were added on Dervish Pashà himself appearing at

Nevešinje; the Pashà promised that he would do all in his power to

satisfy their demands, but that they must first lay down their arms.

This, the Christians, who as yet had committed no overt act of hostility,

expressed themselves ready to do, if the Pashà would first find means

to protect them from the armed Mahometan fanatics by whom they saw

themselves surrounded. This the Vali either could not or would not do,

and on his departure the Christians, alarmed by the hostile attitude of

the native Mahometans, fled once more to the mountains.

The weakness of the government now became deplorably evident. The native

Mussulmans, headed by a Beg, a great landowner of the neighbourhood, who

was also one of the tithe-farmers, broke into the government store and

armed themselves with breech-loaders; and on the 1st of July the civil

war in the Herzegovina was begun, not by the Christians, but by Mussulman

fanatics, who butchered all the Christians they could find in Nevešinje—a

few sick rayahs, who, unable to support the hardships of mountain-life,

had returned to their homes.

The Christian refugees now descended from the mountains to retaliate on

the perpetrators of the massacre; whereupon the government, instead of

interfering in an impartial spirit to stop the disturbances and punish

the malefactors, dispatched two battalions of Turkish troops to aid the

Mahometan assassins, and attack the Christians indiscriminately. It was

now that the rayahs of the neighbouring districts, who had been suffering

from the same outrages, answered the urgent appeal of the men of

Nevešinje, and a great part of the Christian population, from the Roman

Catholic districts of the right bank of the Narenta to the orthodox Greek

clans of the Montenegrine border, flew to arms.

Since then a guerilla warfare has been carried on among the mountains

with uncertain results, but with great atrocity on both sides. In such

matters religion counts for little, human nature for everything; and

there seems no good reason _a priori_ for doubting the worst instances

of Christian atrocity that we heard of. But granting that the Christians

were guilty, as our Consul asseverated, of the terrible _auto da fè_ of

Ljubinje, the blame must be laid at the door, not of the poor wretches

who perpetrated these enormities, but of the tyrants who have brutalized

them for centuries; just as the worst horrors of the French Revolution

were but a counter-stroke to the accumulated misdeeds of the despotism

that had preceded it. It is also true that the rayahs have in some

instances forced Christian villages to join their cause by burning the

crops and houses of the recalcitrants; but if desperate men, standing

at bay against overwhelming numbers, have been forced to seek recruits

by this means, it is that long-continued tyranny has enslaved the very

spirit of many Christians. As with the miserable provincials of the Roman

empire, who saw themselves annually pillaged by barbarian invaders, it

was not that injuries were wanting which should have urged freemen to

take up arms, but that the sense of injury itself—the last relic of

self-respect—had been deadened within them:—

Jam nulli flebile damnum!

Sed cursus sollemnis erat, campusque furori

Expositus; sensumque malis detraxerat usus.[295]

_Aug. 29th._—Dervish Pashà, the Vali, or Governor-General, of Bosnia, who

has lately taken command of the troops in Herzegovina in person, returned

here last night from Stolac, where he has been superintending operations

against the insurgents. Our Consul, who visited him this morning, found

him, outwardly at all events, well satisfied with the results of his

campaign. He is certainly the most likely man to succeed against the

insurgents, for not only is he by repute one of the best generals that

Turkey possesses, but he is also well acquainted with the topography

of the Herzegovina, and already, as far back as 1851, distinguished

himself in the guerilla warfare in this country on the occasion of the

last struggle of the native Mahometan aristocracy against the Sultan.

His plan of operations in the present campaign has been to occupy the

valleys with large bodies of regular troops, then, to draw the mountains

with light-armed detachments, and so to drive the game. But to occupy the

valleys and passes efficiently a body of troops is required out of all

proportion to the number of the insurgents; and so, although Bosnia has

been drained of troops for this purpose, and 6,000 regulars have already

been landed at the port of Klek without hindrance from the Austrian

government, the Vali still complains that his force is insufficient,

and that the insurgents are perpetually escaping out of the toils

prepared for them and doubling on their pursuers. He is, however, so well

contented with the result of his operations that he was about to start

for Tašlidzje and Novipazar in Rascia, where the insurrection seemed to

be attaining dangerous dimensions, and where the commander was altogether

incompetent.[296] To-day he sends three divisions of regulars to Stolac,

Ljubinje, and Nevešinje.

The truth of the matter with regard to the insurrection here seems to be

that neither party have gained any substantial advantage. The insurgents

have burnt several block-houses along the Montenegrine frontier, and

seized some stores. On the other hand, the Turkish garrisons have

generally succeeded in making their escape, and the insurgents have never

succeeded in capturing any considerable town, the Mahometan element being

strong among the urban population here as in Bosnia. News, however, of a

substantial success for the Turks arrives from Bosnia. The Vali has just

received a telegram to say that the insurgents in the neighbourhood of

Gradisca have been beaten across the Save, and that the rebellion in the

Possávina has been virtually got under.

This morning our Consul kindly secured us an interview with the Vali, and

deputed his Cavass to guide us to his Excellency’s Konak. We approached

the official residence through a yard in which there were cannons and

other warlike material, and making our way up a flight of rickety wooden

steps, and thence along a carpeted corridor, were finally ushered by a

gorgeous official into the hall of state—an airy chamber, about which

the swallows were darting to and fro—in the extreme corner of which sat

the Pashà, who graciously rose to receive us and shook hands. We were

next treated to the usual coffee, while his Excellency conversed with us

by means of a French interpreter. Our conversation was naturally of a

personal and not a political character, so that I may confine myself to

recording the amusement evinced by the Vali on our praising the scenery

of the Narenta Valley. The beauty of mountain scenery was an aspect of

the outside world which had evidently never even suggested itself to his

mind, and it tickled his fancy immensely. Our conversation was every now

and then interrupted by the appearance of couriers with despatches. The

Pashà glanced at them rapidly, and signified his will about them to an

attendant secretary; but we were much struck with the nice distinctions

of rank observed, the officers who bore the despatches advancing so

many paces from the door according to their official position, and the

officers in attendance on the Pashà being seated, with due reference to

their social espacement, at unequal distances from the arm-chair which

served as his Excellency’s throne. The Pashà, in spite of his gracious

smiles, looked worn and preoccupied, so that we hastened to cut short

our interview, his Excellency rising and shaking hands again in the most

polite way at our departure.

Dervish Pashà is a little man of a shrewd countenance, and though affable

in his demeanour, not without a lurking cunning in his small grey eyes

beneath his affected cheerfulness. It is indeed a melancholy stoicism

that supports Turks like himself of ability and education. The fact is,

that whatever his private opinion as to the issue of the present contest

in the Herzegovina, Dervish Pashà is conscious that he is fighting for a

lost cause. Like many other of the highest Turkish officials, he feels,

and has confessed it to his friends, that whether the crash come to-day

or to-morrow, the Ottoman Empire in Europe is irrevocably doomed. He is

as well aware as any European that among the governing race of Turkey

public honesty is as dead as private morality, that corruption has

closed the door to progress, and that patriotism has almost ceased to

exist; nor is he insensible that the master whom he serves is the source

and seminary of these evils, and that nothing is to be hoped from the

secluded youth and corrupt morals of him whom the Sultan would impose as

his successor. The Vali, in spite of the characteristic indifference of

an Osmanlì to the sufferings of rayahs, has not been without ambition of

improving the material condition of his Vilayet; but he has seen himself

thwarted from above by the corruption of Stamboul, and below by the

impenetrable ignorance of his own officials. ‘What is the use?’ he would

complain to consular sympathizers when desirous of introducing this or

that reform. ‘What is the use of giving such orders to the Mutasarìf or

Kaïmakàm? they cannot understand them, and if they did they could not

carry them out; the people would laugh at their reforms or throw them

off!’

Mostar, as a town, pleased us more than any we had seen in Bosnia. The

houses are almost all built of stone, instead of the customary wood and

plaster. Here, as at Tešanj, we noticed a _Campanile_. There are many

gay kiosques rising over the graves of Moslem saints. The mosques, of

which there are forty, are many of them domed, and the plate tracery of

their windows is curiously Roman or Byzantine: the minarets—which, not

taking their pinnacles into account, look like unfinished Corinthian

columns—struck us as more elegant than those of Serajevo, and even the

Byzantine church was in better taste. The impression which the streets of

Mostar are perpetually forcing on us is that we have come once more on

the fringe of Roman civilization. These stone houses are no longer the

Turkish _Chalet_, but the _Casa_ of Italy or Dalmatia. Some are roofed

with a rough slate, others with tiles, Romanesque if not Roman. Every

now and then an Italian physiognomy strikes us among the citizens; the

auburn locks and blue eyes of the Illyrian interior are giving place to

swarthier hues. The name of the mountain under whose barren steeps we

passed on our way here—Porim—in the Sclavonic tongue means on, or over

against Rome, and seems to indicate that this part of the Narenta valley

remained Roman at a time when the mountain wilderness of the interior had

passed into the hands of the Sclavonic barbarians.[297] Mostar indeed

owes her name, and perhaps her very existence, to Roman enterprise. The

situation of the present city has been identified with that of a Roman

_Castra Stativa_ mentioned in the Itineraries,[298] and certainly there

are abundant traces here of Roman occupation. This morning I looked

through two hundred coins, nearly all of them Roman, found in Mostar and

its immediate vicinity, and from the number of these of Consular date one

may gather that the Roman settlement dated back to the earliest days of

their Illyrian conquest.[299]

[Illustration: Mostar Bridge.]

But the most interesting monument of her early civilization, and that to

which Mostar, even at the present day, owes much of her importance, is

the magnificent bridge over the Narenta. It is a single arch, 95 feet 3

inches in span,[300] and rising 70 feet above the river when the water

is low. According to tradition, this was the work of the Emperor Trajan,

whose engineering triumphs in Eastern Europe have taken a strong hold on

the South-Sclavonic imagination. Others refer its erection to Hadrian,

and the Turks, not wishing to leave the credit of such an architectural

masterpiece to Infidel Emperors, claim the whole for their Sultan,

Suleiman the Magnificent. He and other Turkish rulers have certainly

greatly restored and altered the work, insomuch that Sir Gardner

Wilkinson declares that none of the original Roman masonry has been left

on the exterior, but he was none the less convinced of its Roman origin;

and anyone who has seen it will agree with Sir Gardner that the grandeur

of the work, and the form of the arch, as well as the tradition, attest

its Roman origin. In the gateway-towers at each end we also detected

something Roman, as besides in some ancient archways and masonry on the

river-bank by the side of the bridge. This sketch was taken looking

down the stream from the left side, and indeed the view from this point

needs not the spell of classic associations to fascinate the beholder!

The soaring arch beneath which the emerald Narenta hurries—fuming and

fretting amongst the boulders that strew her course in many a foamy

eddy—as though after eighteen centuries she were still impatient of the

yoke[301] imposed upon her by the monarch of the world; the steep banks

tiered with rocks, contorted, cavernous, festooned with creepers and wild

vines; above, the arcades of Turkish stores, with brilliant Oriental

wares; the peaks and towers and gables of quaint old fortifications;

two slender minarets, and further still a fainter background of barren

mountain, against which the mediæval outlines of the city were relieved

in the chiaroscuro of a Southern sun. The whole scene presented such a

picturesque combination, alike of colours and outlines, as I have not

seen the like of in any other town.

The very name of Mostar signifies in the Sclavonic tongue ‘the old

bridge,’[302] and would be enough to prove that the bridge was already

looked on as an antiquity before the Turkish conquest. Mostar was already

a place of importance under the dukes of St. Sava. The town appears

to have been much augmented in 1440 by Radivoj Gost, _Curopalata_ or

‘mayor of the palace’ to Stephen Cossaccia, the first duke of St.

Sava.[303] It was originally peopled by Latin Christians, and was the

residence of their bishop, who afterwards emigrated to Narona. On the

Turkish conquest, Mostar became the seat of residence of the Viziers of

Herzegovina; and just as before the dukes of St. Sava had exercised an

authority almost independent of their suzerains, the kings of Bosnia,

so now the Viziers of Herzegovina succeeded in defying their Bosnian

superiors, the lieutenants of the Grand Signior at Travnik. One of the

latest and most representative of these Turkish dukes of St. Sava was the

renowned Ali Pashà, who, for the valuable assistance which he rendered

Sultan Mahmoud in his struggle with the Mahometan magnates of Bosnia, was

rewarded with the Vizierate of Herzegovina, which in 1833 was separated

from Bosnia and erected into an independent government for the benefit of

this faithful servant of the Sultan.

Ali Pashà, originally Ali Aga of Stolac, the seat of his hereditary

castle and possessions, was a scion of the renegade nobility of

Herzegovina, and had been enabled to aid the Grand Signior against his

reactionary Mahometan vassals, by resorting to the bold expedient of

arming his rayah retainers. He appears to have been a man endued above

the average with the Turkish aptitude for dissimulation. While the

Christians were useful to him, he was profuse in his promises of reward,

and used to swear to them ‘by the golden cross’ that their taxes would

be abolished with the exception of a hundred paras yearly of _haratch_.

But, once in the Vizierial palace of Mostar, he increased the _haratch_,

levied the tithes with greater rigour, doubled the other taxes, and,

only anxious to conciliate the Moslems of his Pashalik, allowed his

agents to treat the rayahs with greater cruelty than ever. On the

pretence of seizing Christians who, after fleeing to Montenegro, might

presume, with brigandish intent, to revisit the Herzegovina, he used

to send detachments of fanatical officers, who made the circuit of the

Christian villages, and ill-treated or murdered whom they pleased, under

the pretence that they were _Uskoks_, as these refugees were called,

or had sheltered such. A native historian, a monk of Mostar,[304] has

related with a Herodotean simplicity the history of the civil war in the

Herzegovina and the reign of the terrible Vizier; and the picture which

he gives of the sufferings of the rayahs, of the sort of justice which

was meted out to them in the country districts, and the sights with which

the tyrant in the palace of Mostar was wont to feast his eyes, may serve

to open people’s eyes to the character of the government in this part of

the Sultan’s dominions during the years immediately preceding the Crimean

War. We must remember that the writer is a monk, but there is a charming

naïveté about the following narrations.

If the Pashà had a weakness, it was for impaled heads of rayahs, so

that when these _Uskok_ hunters were disappointed of legitimate game,

they used to resort to a rough and ready way of securing the Pashà’s

approbation. Thus in 1849 Ali Pashà sent Ibrahim, his Cavass-Basha, to

collect _Uskoks_. ‘Ibrahim,’ says our native historian, ‘tarried in

Drobniaki till October, but found no work there wherewith to keep his

hands warm. Therefore he betook himself to the village Cerna Gora,[305]

and after he had passed the night there, he gave orders to the villagers

that one out of every house should come forth and accompany him to Piva.

The poor villagers came forth as he bade them; but when they had gone

with him one hour’s distance from their dwellings, their hands were

bound, and here, on the plain near Lysina, the Cavass-Basha Ibrahim

shot them dead one after the other. And thus were slain fifteen men,

Christians all, miserable indeed in their life-time, but guiltless before

the all-high God. And wherefore were they slain? For naught, but that

there should be fewer Vlachs.’[306]...

‘The greatest delight of the Vizier was to look upon Christian heads

impaled. From his palace in Mostar he could not see the fortress walls,

and therefore had he them made higher that he might see them when he

lay at meals; and round about the whole fortress he set up palisades of

pointed oak-staves, which he topped with Christian heads. At these then

looked he from his window, and his heart leapt thereat for joy. If he

would oppress any man, he straightway spake and said, “Wilt thou never

cease to trouble me, till such time as I hew thy head from thy body, and

bid them stick it on the palisades?—then shalt thou give me peace at

last!” Upon this fortress there were 150 staves, and upon each stave was

always fixed a dead man’s head.[307] But when his murderous bands brought

a fresh head, and there was room wanted for it, then Ali Pashà bade them

take one or more of the dried heads down, and throw them into the street,

where the children were wont to kick them about for sport, and no man

durst take them away.’

But Ali Pashà himself fell at last into disfavour with the Porte, and his

intrigues with the Mahometan magnates of Bosnia in their final revolt

against the Sultan in 1850 brought on his head the vengeance of the

second conqueror of Bosnia, Omer Pashà. The catastrophe of our satrap,

like the episodes of his tyranny, was thoroughly Eastern, and as the

closing scene of the drama is laid with poetic fitness on the bridge of

Mostar, I may be allowed once more to have recourse to our Herzegovinian

historian.

‘The old, lame Ali Pashà was forced to limp on foot, with a staff in

his hand, to the bridge over the river Narenta—and there they set him

for mockery on a lean and mangy mule, and in such a plight Omer Pashà

led with him our Ali Pashà, even he who for so many years had ruled the

Herzegovina according to his will, and had done there so many evil deeds;

but Ali Pashà was sore vexed at his abasement, and straightway began to

rail at Omer Pashà, and amongst other things he said: “Why dost thou

torment me thus? Thou art a Vlach[308] and the son of a Vlach! From whom

hast thou authority to drag me thus? Aye, and had I taken arms against

the Sultan himself, it is not to thee belongs the right to treat me

as one taken in battle, wert thou three times Seraskier. Therefore, O

unclean Vlach! send me rather to my Padishah, that he may judge me, and

vex me not in my old age.” But when Omer Pashà heard this, he feared lest

peradventure he himself should suffer damage at Stamboul; for Ali Pashà

had many friends there amongst those in high places, to whom he was wont

to send much money from the Herzegovina. So Omer Pashà, turning these

things over in his mind, in the end perceived that it were better if

Ali Pashà were no longer of this world. And lo! at night, at two of the

clock, was heard the sound as of a shot, and there came tidings to Omer

Pashà that it had so chanced a gun had gone off, and behold the ball had

passed through Ali Pashà’s head. Thus died Ali Pashà, Rizvanbegović, on

the twentieth day of March, 1851.’

Mostar contains about 18,000 inhabitants,[309] and is therefore a

considerable town for this part of the world. For trade, it has long

been the chief staple of Herzegovina, and was renowned of old for its

manufacture of Damascened swords. The wares, however, here are much the

same as those of Serajevo, so that I have little to record of the streets

of Mostar, except that one old Turk—whose principles I respect—swore by

the beard of the Prophet that he would never sell the meanest knife on

his shop-board to a dog of a Giaour; and that one Mostar damsel—about

whose principles I will not enquire, but of whose amiability there can

be no question—deftly dropped her veil as we passed her doorway, and

favoured us with a private view of a not uncomely face.[310] Indeed we

noticed that in the lower valley of the Narenta generally the use of

the veil is not so rigorously enforced as usually in Bosnia, though the

face-covering is absolutely discarded only at Jablanica and the adjoining

district.

There was one very pleasant feature about the streets of Mostar, and that

was the abundance of fruit. The peaches were poor; but melons, figs,

and the grapes at about a halfpenny a pound, even when a Frank was a

purchaser, were delicious. The grapes, of which the Mostar wine famed

throughout all these lands is made, are of magnificent calibre, and are

celebrated in Serbian song. When the bride of Mahmoud Pashà[311] speeds

with the choicest delicacies of earth to comfort princely Mujo, these are

not forgotten in the dainty _menu_. The lady hides beneath her richest

garments:—

Rosy sweets wrapped up in golden vestments,

Yellow honeycomb in silver dishes,

And spring-cherries all preserved in honey;

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.

[Illustration: Christian Monuments, Tassorić.]

About 9 in the morning we stopped at a hamlet called Tassorić, where

the caravan made their next halt; but though we tried here and at other

hovels on the road to obtain some food, we met with one universal

response: ‘Nima chlébba! nima jaje!’—‘We have no bread! we have no eggs!’

And the only refreshment we could obtain in this terrible waste was the

never-failing coffee; so that had it not been for the figs and grapes we

had brought with us from Mostar, we might have fainted by the way. The

Herzegovinian peasants who travelled with us had brought their food with

them.

The seat on which we quaffed our mocha here was supported by two

fragmentary bases of Roman columns; but in a graveyard hard by, which we

had leisure to examine, were modern monuments of still greater interest.

These were the gravestones of the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Tassorić,

which were ornamented with incised crosses and floral devices of an

elegance indeed surprising when it is remembered that these were the work

of rude peasants, unable to write even the names of the departed kinsmen

whom they wished to honour.

[Illustration: Graveyard at Tassorić.]

The whole appearance of this graveyard was indeed one of the most curious

sights that we observed in our Bosnian-Herzegovinian experiences. Here,

in one God’s acre, alike the Infidel and Christian inhabitants of

the hamlet had found their last resting-place, and the crosses of the

departed rayahs were only separated by a narrow, and in places almost

indistinguishable pathway from the turbaned columns of the Moslem. It

was a striking proof that even in this land of bigotry and persecution

both sectaries can live together in peace; and it afforded a melancholy

contrast to the burnt villages whose ruins we descried a few miles

further on the road.

The fact is, that the animosity of the rayahs of the Herzegovina has not

been directed so much against their Moslem fellow-villagers as against

the Begs, the scions of the renegade feudal nobility, who, besides

exacting their own dues with the rigour that I have described, often—in

the Herzegovina especially, where at present they seem to have retained

more of their old power than in Bosnia—farm the government taxes. The

tithe-farmers here are still called by the old ominous name of _Spahi_.

These oppress the Moslem peasant almost as grievously as the rayah,

and there have been instances during the present outbreak in which the

Moslems of the country villages have made common cause with the rayah. It

was primarily against the Begs that the Roman Catholic population of this

part of the Narenta valley[314] took up arms last June.

A little further on we passed the Roman Catholic village of Draševo,

whose inhabitants, with those of another village called Rasno, were the

first to take up arms in this part of the Herzegovina. These assembled

with arms in their hands at a bridge just beyond, where the high road

crosses the little river Kruppa, and which, though the only means of

transit for any stores and cannon that the Turks may land at their

port of Klek on the other side of the hills, we found in a condition

so dilapidated that we had to dismount from our horses and lead them

carefully over the broken woodwork—the whole fabric being so cranky

that it would only bear one man and beast at a time. At this bridge the

assembled rayahs kept watch and ward, allowing travellers, and even

Zaptiehs, to pass (for it was no part of the design of the insurgents at

first to war against the Sultan), but declaring that they were keeping

watch against the Begs alone.

But it was at a mill called Struge, which we left to the right on

the further bank of the Narenta, that the first actual outbreak of

hostilities took place. The miller here was a Mussulman, who, offended

at the spirited attitude taken up by the neighbouring rayah villages,

refused to grind the corn which the Christians, who depended on his

grindstone for this part of their breadmaking, brought him for that

purpose. Thereupon the Christians of the neighbouring village of Gorica

resolved to take vengeance on the unbelieving miller. The miller, on

his part, was aided by a division of Zaptiehs; and here the first shots

were fired. The Turks were victorious, and the Zaptiehs signalized their

victory by entering Gorica the following night, and burning, after first

sacking, the houses of the rayahs, who had themselves escaped. They then

defiled the church, and as a further insult dug up some dead bodies and

left the naked corpses of a man and a child exposed in the churchyard.

The insurgents of the Narenta valley and the country to the right of it

were thus unfortunate from the beginning, so that when the Turks, by the

murder of the prior of the Franciscan monastery at Livno, had terrified

the Roman Catholic hierarchy of this part into submission, the Catholic

Bishop Kraljević found no difficulty in persuading the Latin peasantry to

follow the example of their spiritual governors.

A little way beyond the bridge where the rayahs first set their

armed watch against the Begs, we came to the ruins of the village of

Doliane, burnt, as we heard, by the Turks at a very early period of the

insurrection. It was a miserable sight, the blackened shells of these

little stone hovels—piteous at any time—clinging to the bare hill-side.

The Turks were utilizing the ruins to build a guard-house, and were

pulling down for that purpose the few homestead walls which had still

been left standing. Yet this is but a single sample of the devastation

which extends along the whole Dalmatian and Montenegrine borders of

Herzegovina, over an area embracing many hundreds of square miles.

A mile more of jolting brought us to the Dalmatian frontier, and at

Metcović we found ourselves once more within the limits of Christendom

with whole skins, but quite worn out after (deducting rests) fifteen

hours of excruciation on Bosnian saddles. Of this future emporium of

Narentan trade there is little to record, except the filth of the

inhabitants. The cleanliness of the Turks and Herzegovinians contrasts

most strongly with the South-Italian squalor of the citizens of Metcović,

which culminated in the family circle of the _Bezirkshauptmann_—an

interview with whom was forced on us for the examination of passports.

The _Bezirkshauptmann’s_ table-cloth was so filthy that there was not a

spot of anything approaching whiteness on its whole superficies!

_Aug. 31st._—Next morning, after considerable bargaining, we engaged a

flat beetle-like craft to convey ourselves and our fortunes to Stagno,

_viâ_ the left arm of the Narenta. The landscape now afforded most

startling contrasts of fertility and barrenness. The heights that

overhung the Narenta, or stretched away to environ its broad alluvial

plains, were mere rock heaps, of that lunar desolation already described;

so bare that the mountain goat can scarce glean a pittance on their bony

terraces. But the broad delta below, formed by the double-armed Narenta,

is the richest land in all Dalmatia; the maize by the river-side attains

a gigantic stature; on other places the soil is covered by a luxuriant

network of vines, which, without any training or apparent cultivation,

yield grapes as fine as those of Mostar; and there are mulberry-trees

at Fort Opus fifteen feet in circumference. But how little of this

marvellous rich soil is even culturable now-a-days! To the right of us,

what was once a blooming champaign, covered with tilled fields, and

dowering a city wealthy and refined, is now a stretch of fever-breeding

marshes which it would cost millions to drain. The wretched inhabitants

of the few villages that now remain, are, during the summer months,

never free from intermittent fever, and the stranger who values his life

must not tarry at this season even to explore the interesting relics of

antiquity that we are now passing on our right.

Among the swamps that lie two or three miles to the north of Metcović are

still to be seen the foundations of many of the houses of the Illyrian

Narbonne,[315] further remains of which, including many inscriptions,

are scattered on the hill above, which takes its name from the modern

village of Viddo. Here stood the old Narbona, or as it was called in the

later days of Rome, Narona; a city so ancient that it was already of

renown five centuries before our era, and which lost none of its eminence

when, in B.C. 168, Lucius Annius added it to the possessions of Rome. At

Narbona, now known as Narona, the Romans planted a colony, and among the

many inscriptions that have been discovered, we find ample witness to its

municipal liberties; while from others we learn that temples of Jove,

Diana of the woods, and Father Liber, once graced this spot. Another

inscription on the tomb of a Naronan _lapidary_, to which I shall have

occasion to refer, may, perhaps, bear witness to an art which attained

considerable perfection in the cities of Roman Illyria, and of which many

traces, in the shape of beautifully engraved gems, are still discovered

on this site.

Yet it was not under the Romans that Narona and the rich alluvial plains

of the Narenta, amidst which our boat is meandering, attained that

importance which makes the name of the Narentines familiar to the student

of European history.

In the year 639 A.D. Narona, which till then had remained a flourishing

Roman city, was reduced to ashes by a mingled horde of Avars and Sclaves,

and a few years later the Serbian Sclaves called in by the Emperor

Heraclius took possession of the vacant sites of the lower Narenta. Out

of the ruins of the Roman Narona they built a new town, and here, on the

site of classic temples, reared a fane to a Sclavonic god, whose name,

Viddo,[316] is still perpetuated in that of the modern village. The site

of this Illyrian Narbonne thus became a stronghold of heathendom in these

parts, just as with the Sclavonians of the Baltic shores Paganism found

its last defenders among those staunch Rügen islanders who guarded the

precincts of the sacred city of Arkona. It was not till the year 873 that

Nicetas, the Admiral of the Byzantine Emperor Basil, prevailed on the

Narentines to accept baptism; the temple of their country’s god underwent

a strange conversion, and Viddo lived again in a Christian guise as St.

_Vitus_![317]

In the next century the country of the Narentines is still known

as _Pagania_, the land of the Pagans, by which name Constantine

Porphyrogenitus mentions it in his account of the Serbians; and it was

during the ninth and tenth centuries that these barbarous Sclaves, yet

untamed by a civilized religion, issued forth from the swamps and inlets

of the Narenta, to ravage the coasts of the Adriatic, and to rival their

heathen counterparts and contemporaries, the Sea-kings of the North. As

early as 827 their ‘Archons,’ as the Byzantine Emperor calls the Starosts

of their Republic, refused to pay the customary tribute to Eastern Rome;

and soon after this date we find them in possession of Curzola, Lagosta,

Meleda, Lesina, Brazza, and other islands of the Adriatic. But it is

their rivalry with Venice which exalts the history of the Narentines into

world importance. The rising city of the lagoons saw her commerce cut

off by these hardy corsairs, and was at last actually forced to pay them

an ignominious tribute. It was not till 997 that the Doge Pietro Orseolo

II. succeeded in throwing off the yoke and attacking the pirates in their

Narentan fastnesses. After three centuries of piratic domination, the

Narentines saw all their island empire taken from them, and themselves

not only forced to disgorge their plunder, but to swear allegiance to

their rival. The power of the Pirate State was broken for ever; but the

fate of Venice had trembled in the balance, and for a moment the whole

current of European civilization seemed destined to be perverted from its

channel by the inhabitants of the now obscure valley through which we are

passing. It were perhaps as idle to speculate what might have been the

history of Europe, had the Queen of the Adriatic been smothered in her

cradle, as to discuss the fates of Lerna or Nemea, had infant Heracles

perished in the coils of the serpent which he strangled; but the most

casual student of Venetian annals must perceive that the final triumph

of Venice over the Narentines is the great climacteric in the history of

her rise.

We thought we detected something of the old piratic genius of the race

in the way in which our boatmen plundered the maize and vine fields as

we passed; but there was nothing of Pagan savagery in their demeanour

and conversation, which on the contrary formed a marked contrast to the

rudeness and asperity of the ordinary Bosniac or Herzegovinian. They

spoke indeed a dialect closely akin to the Illyrian of the interior,

but they spoke it with energy, vivacity, elegance; with a softness of

cadence so thoroughly Italian, that when, as all of them did at times,

they changed to that language to address the signori, we hardly detected

the change. Their very form is lither, suppler; of lesser mould, but a

striking contrast to the overgrown ungraceful Bosniac. The eyebrows of

these Narentines are not so arched, the hair is darker; they seemed to

be many of them Sclavonized Italians, descendants perhaps of the Roman

colonists of Narbona. One of our boatmen was a very interesting type of

man. He spoke Dalmatian like the rest, but his face—which, like that of

many other Dalmatian faces that I recall, beamed with all the openness

of a sea-faring people—was typically Scotch; and, oddly enough, he wore

what looked like a Scotch cap, minus the tails. His hair was of a lighter

and more reddish hue than that of the others. One almost fancied that

we had here before us a waif of that early Celtic population of Illyria

already invoked as nomenclators of the Illyrian Narbonne whose ruins we

are passing to our right.

Meanwhile we have been making very slow progress, since a fierce scirocco

has set dead in the teeth of our small craft; and as we arrive at Fort

Opus, an old Venetian station at the apex of the Narentan delta, our

boatmen inform us that our two-master is too lubberly for them to hope

to take us to Stagno in it while the scirocco continues to blow, in

which case the voyage might take two or three days. They professed their

willingness to find a smaller vessel which should be able to cope with

the elements, and to resign half the wages, for which we had agreed upon,

to the new boatmen. ‘You see, Sirs, it is not for want of will—but we

cannot struggle against God!’

At Fort Opus, accordingly, we shifted into another smaller craft, pointed

at both stern and stem, and beetle-like as the other, and were soon on

our way again along a part of the Narenta’s course which might well be

the source of weirdest myth and legend. Just beyond Fort Opus, the hills

on the left—bonier skeletons, if possible, than before—draw nearer to the

river, till they frown over its depths. It is at this point that ever and

anon mysterious boomings and bellowings are heard to proceed as from the

inmost recesses of the mountain. It is, say those who have heard it, as

the bellowing of a bull, sometimes here, sometimes there, and sometimes

everywhere at once. At other times it seems to issue from the darkest

pools of the Narenta itself. I cannot say that we ourselves heard the

‘hideous hum,’ but these noises cannot be set down as the creatures of

superstitious imagination; for a competent observer, Signor Lanza, who

was physician in this district, and to whom is due a scientific account

of this part of the Narenta valley, has himself borne ample witness of

the existence of this phenomenon; nor does it stand alone, for there

are equally authentic accounts of similar subterranean murmurs and

explosions having been heard in Meleda and other islands of the Dalmatian

Littorale. The explanation given by some is that the detonations are

due to the pressure of the tide on the air pent up in the subterranean

caverns which honeycomb the limestone Karst-formation of these Illyrian

coastlands; but Dr. Lanza—who notices that the phenomenon generally takes

place either at sunrise or sundown—confesses that ‘a veil of mystery

hangs over the whole.’ Meanwhile, nothing but the portent is certain; and

fearful as I am of giving publicity to ill-omened words, I cannot refrain

from breathing a suspicion that this unhallowed bellowing may proceed

from some hideous Minotaur, caverned in his labyrinthine den.

This neighbourhood is also much subject to earthquakes, which generally

occur during the winter months; and as our boat toiled heavily past

a succession of rocky headlands, we ourselves experienced a natural

phenomenon scarcely less awful than these subterranean bellowings and

convulsions. The wind rose higher and higher, whistling among the

limestone ‘ruins of the older world’ that frowned above us. Our two

boatmen knit their brows and muttered ‘_la Fortuna!_’ Dame Fortune, the

old goddess of the way by sea and land, still retains some of her old

attributes of wheel and rudder among these Romanized Dalmatian Sclaves;

her name[318] is still used on these coastlands as equivalent to a

tempest; and even in the interior of Bosnia the Sclaves have so far

adopted the idea, that a snow-storm—the kind of storm dreaded most in the

Bosnian mountains—is known to the peasants as ‘_Fortunja_.’

At last, on steering between the two rocky hills, whose barren masses

rise on either side at the mouth of this arm of the Narenta like twin

pillars of Hercules, a tremendous scene burst upon us. Just opposite to

where the river widened into the sea, towered before us—its limestone

crags and boulders up-piled and jumbled in cataclysmic confusion—a small

desolate island, a fit abode for nothing unless it were departed spirits

of the evil. The rays of a pale ominous sunset fell upon these cadaverous

rocks and flooded them with spectral light. On either side of the island

the sea shone with abnormal emerald lustre; but what made the brilliance

of the foreground so unearthly, was the unutterable darkness of all

behind. The rocky island rose like a phantom against a sky as black as

night.

The question for us was whether there would be time to round the nose of

rock to the left of the Narenta mouth, and cross a narrow arm of green

sea to a promontory where we might obtain shelter, before the impending

hurricane came down on us.

The sailors thought it possible, and with set teeth laboured at the oars

as for grim life. But the black pall of clouds that darkened the western

hemisphere drew nearer and nearer; the white sea-mews swept wildly

and more wildly hither and thither against the face of coming night,

shrieking weirdly like the Banshees of coming doom. The wind and thunder

roared louder in our ears, and a thin snowy line of surf stretching

along the emerald horizon, swept like a charge of cavalry across the

intervening fields of sea—but now, so treacherously smooth!—and dashed

down upon our little craft.

The night was already upon us; the brilliant beams of sunset were

suddenly transformed, first into darkness, and then into the lurid

twilight of an eclipse which lit up our men’s faces with a pale ashy

grey, ghastly to look upon. These hardy descendants of corsairs seemed

really cowed, and shouted to us ‘Pray to God, signori! Pray to God! _La

Fortuna è rotta!_’

The storm had burst with a vengeance. The wind rose to a hurricane. The

surf and tempest struck our boat and beat her head round. It was in vain

that the men struggled at the oars; we were borne back, and swept along

helpless as a log in a torrent. We were driven towards the mouth of the

Narenta which we had left, and I thought every moment we should have

been dashed against the rocks; but Dame Fortune was merciful to us, and

notwithstanding that the men lost all command of the vessel, we rounded

the rocky headland, and found ourselves in comparatively sheltered waters

where oars were again available, so that we were presently anchored near

another small Narentan vessel in smoother waters—though even the river

was one sheet of foam. It now began to rain in torrents beyond all our

experience; so we covered ourselves with our macintoshes, and lay down in

the bottom of our boat, resolved not to emerge till the hurricane should

have abated somewhat of its fury. But hardly were we settled, when a

tremendous clap of thunder rent the air, followed by a series of sharp

blows which made us start to our feet, when we found that hailstones

varying in size from a bullet to a walnut, and in shape like Tangerine

oranges,[319] were rattling about our heads. With our helmet hats on,

and under cover of our macintoshes, we avoided being actually bruised,

but the thunder and lightning that accompanied the hail were still more

terrific. The forked lightning literally played around our craft, and it

seemed that it must be struck; the thunder was such as we had neither

of us heard the like of before. For a quarter of an hour we endured the

full brunt of this celestial cannonade, and then the storm passed away

as suddenly as it had come, and rolled on among the more inland ranges

of the Dinaric Alps, which the lightning kept throwing into vivid and

unexpected reliefs behind us; while in front and overhead, sky and rocks

and sea were illumined with the renewed splendour of sunset, and the

surface of the troubled Narenta calmed down into its wonted serenity.

But it was a storm such as one does not meet with twice in a life-time;

it was a fit initiation into this iron-bound coastland, with its

earthquakes and subterranean thunders—the cavernous home of winds and

tempests—the last refuge of piratic races.

We now renewed our voyage, and crossing a narrow arm of sea, landed

in a sheltered cove, where we took refuge in a spacious stone house,

the abode of a Dalmatian Family-community, hoping for the scirocco to

subside, in order to be able to pursue our course up the Stagno. We

were shown into the common eating and cooking room, a spacious chamber

on the ground-floor, where the family gathered round us; and the men,

when they heard that we were English, at once claimed us as brothers,

and entered into a most friendly conversation. ‘We like the English,’

said one; ‘we know your greatness on the sea, and we too are a nation of

seamen; England and Dalmatia!—there are no sailors but in your country

and ours!’ Another of the men had been to London and Plymouth, and he and

the others aired a string of English phrases with a decidedly nautical

flavour, amongst which we detected ‘Or’ right,’ ‘cup o’ tea,’ ‘grog,’

‘haul up,’ ‘ease her;’ and other expressions proving their _entente

cordiale_ with ‘Jack.’ About nine in the evening the woman-kind, the

children, and some of the men, betook themselves to sleeping chambers

above, and we were shown a bed in the spacious hall below, on whose

floor slept our seamen and some of the inmates. But the stuffiness was

so suffocating within, that I preferred the gnats and night air without;

and finding a convenient rock on which to pillow my head, imitated the

example of Jacob.

About midnight the adverse wind fell, and I being, by now, sufficiently

disillusioned of patriarchal repose, hastened to rouse L⸺ and our men,

and we were again on our way before 1 A.M., the wind shifting enough to

enable us every now and then to use our sail. We steered along the Canale

di Stagno piccolo, passing in the dark the inlet in which the Turkish

harbour of Klek is situate. About 8 A.M. we landed at Luka, on the

peninsula of Sabbioncello, and making our way on foot across the isthmus,

entered the old town of Stagno by a gateway through its high machicolated

Venetian walls. It was a small friendly place with clean narrow streets,

and many old stone palaces of the citizen nobility with stone escutcheons

over their doors, quaint rope mouldings and carved corbels under the

windows, some of which were of Venetian-Gothic style. Other houses, whose

owners probably could lay no claim to coats of arms, displayed over

their doorways medallions on which I.H.S. was engraved in a variety of

ornamental forms. In the Piazza just inside the gate by which we entered

lay an old font with many noble shields upon it, and in the city wall

opposite was a Renaissance fountain with a sixteenth-century date upon

it. Stagno was once a port of the Bosnian kings, till sold by one of them

to Ragusa at the end of the fourteenth century.

[Illustration: Women and Child, Stagno.]

The peasants in the Piazza were highly picturesque; the men, like the

inhabitants of the lower Narenta, strongly resembling the Turks in their

attire, except for a yellow sash round their waist, a Dalmatian peaked

fez on their head, and an ear-ring—a plain golden circle—in one ear.

The women, with their kerchiefs crossed about their bosom, showed more

Sclavonic characteristics in their dress, but their straw hats with long

streamers gave them a certain Swiss air.

While sketching the little group above, in the Piazza, I was somewhat

surprised to hear the inspiriting tune of ‘Men of Harlech’ proceeding

from a neighbouring house; but the mystery was cleared up by our shortly

receiving a message to the effect that ‘the daughter of the Judge of

Stagno’ wished to secure an interview with the Englishmen; and then it

was that we found that this amiable young lady, having lived some years

in Wales, and looking back with a tender regret to her sojourn in our

island, had resorted to the innocent device of playing the national

melodies of the Principality in order to attract our attention.... But

alas! the boat is starting for Ragusa—the parting has taken place,—we

have left our romantic damsel to sigh once more for English society, and

stagnate at Stagno.

Our boat—a _Trabaccolo_, I believe it is called—is equipped with an

expansive lateen sail, and as a propitious breeze, the Maestro, has

sprung up, we soon leave Stagno, its olives and oleanders and pretty

flowering shrubs, its siren music and bright eyes, far in our wake,

and scud along between rocky islands to our right, and the bare Karst

mountains of the mainland to our left. The desolate, monotonous hills,

perpetually repeating themselves, were hardly relieved by a stunted

tree—it was the same scenery so well described by Ovid in his Pontic

exile:

Rara, nec hæc felix, in apertis eminet arvis

Arbor, et in terra est altera forma maris!

At one point, indeed, the village of Canosa, there was an oasis of green

in the desert landscape; this was the gigantic group of plane trees,

which are said to rank among the finest in the world. But we are nearing

Ragusa, and after passing a line of jagged _scoglie_ which start up from

the deep like the teeth of a gigantic antediluvian, the sea, hitherto

hardly recovered from its frenzy of yestereen, becomes tranquil once

more, and we glide into the harbour of Gravosa, the port of modern

Ragusa, for depth and capacity reckoned the finest in Dalmatia.