till, having exhorted the faithful and confounded the heathen from his watery pulpit, his spirit ascends and the laws of gravity resume their sway.

In the dark period which followed the barbarian invasions, something of her old secular glory was still reflected in the Siscian Church. After the destruction of Sirmium by the Huns in 441, Siscia transferred her ecclesiastical allegiance to Salona. Her decline was more lingering than that of her rival, for her prosperity had rested on a more solid foundation. Her bishops survive the settlement of the Sclaves hereabouts in the time of Heraclius. In the ninth century we find her the residence of a Sclavonic prince; but she suffered from the Frankish invasion, and in the tenth century was finally razed by the Magyars. Now at last the Siscian episcopate dies out, to live again with renewed splendour at Agram.

The old walls of Siscia are traced in a pear-shaped form on the left bank of the Kulpa between it and the Save. But just outside our inn, on the right bank of the river, we came upon several fragments of old Siscia, some sculptures and inscriptions walled into the foundations of modern houses. In the tympanum of a door are three sculptures, one of which may be meant for Apollo, though only the head and half the body survive, and another for Andromeda; these two of base art; but the third, a griffin, of somewhat better work. Here and there were stumps of columns, and Roman tiles might be seen still in use. On the hill above, still on the right side of the Kulpa, the wooden cottages almost always rested on foundations composed of Roman blocks, amongst which many inscriptions may lie hid, though we discovered none that had not already been conscientiously described by Agram antiquaries. It was strange, however, to observe how the irony of fate had converted to modern utility the pomp of ancient funerals and the furniture of the ‘immortal gods’! A Roman altar, with its face and what inscription there may have been (for we could not get it raised), buried in the dust, had been turned into a seat for Croat wives; a Roman sarcophagus in one of the cottage yards had been converted into a horse-trough, and another had been emended so as to form a serviceable sofa.

On the summit of the heights which here overlook the river is the site of a Roman cemetery, and the owner of the vineyards where most of the remains had been discovered kindly showed us over his domain. Many fine sarcophagi—the best of which are to be seen in the Agram museum—had been dug up here, containing the usual amount of coins, lamps, urns, and ashes, amongst which the skull-bones were most distinguishable. In one place we were shown a Roman conduit, square in shape, and the outside glazed as if by a conflagration. Near the old cemetery might be seen Roman walls, and some cottage foundations consisting entirely of Roman tiles.

The most interesting Roman fragments were, however, on the left side of the Kulpa, where the town walls are traceable, in a garden by the railway-station. There we found an altar with an inscription[168] showing that it was dedicated to Ceres, with a vase and patera engraved on one side, and on the other a jar full of spikes of corn. Close by lay mutilations of what once had been Corinthian capitals, with rich acanthus-leaves decayed by many winters; fragments of a marble frieze with wavy vine-sprays loaded with bunches of grapes fit for the Land of Promise; besides, other marble bits on which were sculptured beakers and telescopic flowers unknown to botanists, and spiral knot-work which seemed almost Byzantine. It was pleasant to believe that they all formed part of a temple of the corn-goddess, though I doubt whether all the fragments could be attributed either to the same building or the same age; and perhaps Father Liber or Isis, whose altars have also been discovered here, may lay as good claim to some of these vinous and floral devices as Mother Ceres.

But whatever view be taken, these remains are interesting as an illustration of the old position of Siscia as centre of a corn and vine-growing district; nor indeed are they inappropriate even to her present state. The present town of Siszek derives what trade she possesses mainly from the transport of cereals. Hither the maize and wheat from the rich alluvial plains of the Banat and the Possávina, as well as from the interior of Bosnia, are conveyed by the Save and its tributaries; for Siszek is the point where the land-carriage to the north and west commences, and she really stands to Trieste and Fiume, with respect to the traffic between the Danubian basin and the Adriatic, in much the same relation as her Roman ancestress stood to Aquileja. Siszek has two really busy seasons in the year—in the spring when the maize crop is gathered, and again the corn harvest in August and September; and at these times her population, normally reckoned at 3,800, rises to twice, or even, it is said, to three times that number. The town, however, like many other sites of Roman cities, is not so healthy as it was in former times, and a curious plague of emerods is epidemic here. This decrease of salubrity is attributed by the Siszekers themselves to the great destruction of forests that has taken place in the neighbourhood; with what reasons, let doctors decide.

However, modern science and drainage may probably be trusted to remedy the present unhealthy state of the Siscian atmosphere; and it requires no extraordinary gift of prophecy to be able to foresee for Siszek a glorious future, and to predict that, before many years are passed, she will have done much to regain the splendour of Roman Siscia, whose functions, as we have seen, she still to a certain extent performs. For she has been dowered with a situation destined by nature for a great emporium of commerce, nor are signs wanting that the fulfilment of her destiny is at hand. Already Siszek is fixed as the point at which the railway that is to connect Western Europe directly with Stamboul, and eventually perhaps the furthest Orient, is to meet the lines leading to Vienna and Trieste, and another line is projected, connecting Siszek directly with the Adriatic.

Siszek used to be divided by the Kulpa into the civil and military towns, the latter under ‘regimental’ government; but since the new legislation the whole has been placed under the municipal authorities. In neither half is there anything worth seeing except the Roman remains.

On the bank of the Kulpa, however, just at the confluence with the Save, about a mile from Siszek, rises the old castle of Caprag, built in a triangular form, with a round conical-roofed tower at each corner. This castle brings home to us the old days when the Empire was engaged in a life and death struggle with the Turk. It was built in the sixteenth century, with the Emperor Ferdinand’s permission, by the bishop and canons of Agram, and in 1592-3 it was gallantly defended against the Pashà of Bosnia by two canons of the cathedral chapter; till, after withstanding two sieges successfully, it yielded to a third attempt, and for a year belonged to the Infidel.[169]

As we were exploring the former military quarter of Siszek, whose habitations, tenanted by the ordinary peasants of the Granitza, are for the most part mere huts, as compared with the more stylish houses of the civil town, our ears were saluted by sounds of unearthly revelry proceeding from a neighbouring wine-shop. Entering it, we found ourselves in the midst of a Croat merrymaking: an orchestra of four men strumming on tamburas and tamburitzas as for dear life, and accompanied by such a whisking, and whirling, and stamping as never was! The dance they were engaged in when we went in was known to them as the Kardatz, to the Germans as ‘Kroatisch’—though the Croats say that it was taught them by the Magyars. Properly it was danced by the women alone, but there were often enough male interlopers. It is so pretty that it deserves to be known beyond the limits of Croatia; so I will give the general arrangement of the dance, as far as I could catch it.

Six Croat maidens—any number divisible by six and two would do as well—sorted themselves into two groups of three, which for awhile seemed to ignore each other’s existence, the sisters of each triad alternately dancing to one another, and then joining hands, like three Graces as they were, and circling round; till of a sudden the rival orbits seemed to feel each other’s influence, a quick rapprochement took place, and all six, interlacing their arms, tripped round in a fairy ring, faces outwards, till a starry disruption once more surprised us, and in a twinkling the revolving orb was split up into a new triad of twin constellations spinning round on their separate axes, till it made one giddy to look at them—ribbons, kerchiefs, and cometic plaits—and, sooth to say, the nebulous envelopes of the statuesque!—flying off centrifugally.

The dance was in parts surprisingly graceful; and the dancers, though mostly homely, were certainly prettier than the average North-German Bauerin. Their hair was inclined to light shades which one hardly expected to see in so southern a clime, and their eyes were generally blue. There was one maiden, however, more comely than the rest, with dark almond eyes and raven hair, of a strange type, that one meets with now and again in South-Sclavonic regions; a waif from the lands of the morning, an Oriental beauty shrouded in no winding-sheet and entombed in no harem, but set off by the light white muslin of Croatia.

Then there were other dances in which the men performed, which were distinguished by stamping, and every now and then interrupted by a comic ‘spoken.’ We heard some songs, too; such as one would imagine might break from a flock of sheep if they were to burst into spontaneous melody—a wearisome succession of baa-baas, varied at intervals by an attempt to see how long they could keep on at one note! The poverty of the instruments seemed to narrow the range of the human voice.

Next morning betimes we bade farewell to Siszek, and took a passage on the Save steamer for Brood, from which place we were to begin our foot journey through Bosnia. During the early part of the voyage there was little to see. Mud banks lined with willows, now and then villages of dark timber, where, within the palings of the large house-communities, were clustered together several dwelling-houses of tea-caddy shape and somewhat pagoda-like appearance, due to their having eaves projecting over the ground-floor as well as the upper storey. The Save, as we enter it, takes a muddier hue than the Kulpa, which at Siszek possessed something of the emerald purity of a limestone stream. Opposite the confluence of the Save and Unna was Jassenovac, taken and held for awhile by the Pashà of Bosnia in 1536, after the battle of Mohacz; it is a small town of about 1,100 inhabitants, and, being built on piles, is sometimes called New Amsterdam. It might also recall the Swiss lake-dwellings, to restorations of which many Granitza villages bear a certain family likeness; but I doubt if the boats that float off Jassenovac are not even more primitive than those of the old lake-dwellers, for they are simply great oak-trunks hollowed out in a Crusoe-like fashion. Further on we passed floating mills, paddle-boats of Noah’s Ark-like construction anchored in the current, or left behind us large flat barges which looked like giant cockchafers turned over on their backs.

We are now on the watery boundary-line between Christendom and Islâm, and the contrast between the two shores is one of the most striking that can be imagined, recalling that between the Bulgarian and Wallachian banks of the Lower Danube. On one side Croat men, white tunicked and white breeked, with blue vests, and fringes of homely lace to their trowsers; bare-legged women, with the shortest of apron-skirts, washing their linen in the shallows, coifed in the rosy Rubatz. Now and then a town, white houses and bulbous church-spires, and citizens in the mourning hues of Western civilisation. On the other bank minarets and narrow wooden streets, gorgeous Turkish officials, brilliant maidens and mummied dames, cheerful fezzes and red Bosnian turbans; and it is to be remarked that the men on the Turkish bank, owing to their wearing such comparatively shadeless head-gear, are distinctly more sunburnt than the Slavonians of the Austrian side in their broad, black, felt wideawakes. The one side was cold and dull, if comparatively clean; the other dirty but magnificent.

Various types illustrative of the South Sclavonic world are to be seen on deck: a Syrmian woman of an Oriental cast of feature already spoken of, with dark hair and eyes, and a purple skirt; the grave hadji whose acquaintance we had made at Siszek, who vouchsafes me a majestic nod of recognition; a Dalmatiner—one of those Italianised Sclaves who man the Austrian navy—with blue sailor-blouse and bright red sash, sounds the shallows, when the steamer slackens speed, with a long pole. A Slavonian of that dissipated type which becomes more frequent as we approach Syrmia, the mother-country of the famed plum-brandy—the Syrmian slivovitz—with low eyebrows, a ferocious moustache and an eminently Sclavonic nose, is caught by our artist napping, and pocketed as below.[170] Beyond Gradisca we came to the prettiest part of the river scenery, where the watery mirror reflects the undulations of wooded hills; thence on and on through this magnificent oak forest—some of the finest timber in all Europe—the home of wolves and bears and sovereign eagles, and a few days later to be the refuge of the panic-stricken Christian refugees of Bosnia.

As we neared our destination the question arose whether we should sleep in the Austrian or Turkish town of Brood; but we decided, from a previous slight acquaintance with a Bosnian town, that we were more likely to secure sleep on the Austrian side, where, accordingly, we landed and put up at the comfortable ‘Red House,’ and presently went out to take stock of the place. Slavonian Brood is a large wooden village, more abominably paved, or rather cobbled, than any town I remember. What especially struck us was the chimneys, which are of every kind of shape and material, stone and wooden, capped with canopies arched and peaked; and suggesting in turn huts, towers, haystacks, tunnels, toadstools, and umbrellas!

Now, whether it was the fact that we took out our sketch-books to immortalise, so far as in us lay, these sooty orifices, or whether in the way in which we eyed them there was something of the insidious invader, certain it is that our motions did not escape the observation of an active and intelligent gendarme, who ‘knew directly,’ as he afterwards expressed it to a Croat who gave us the relation with great glee, ‘that we were Russian spies.’ Acting on which supposition with commendable alacrity, he came up and demanded our pass. Now there is a natural tendency amongst Englishmen to resent such a demand as an antiquated absurdity; but our official was so honeyed in manner, so profuse of ‘bittes’ and protestations of ‘Pflicht,’ that we could not find it in our hearts to refuse to satisfy the poor fellow’s curiosity. Whereupon our friend looked at the paper and twisted it first to one side and then to another; and as he did not understand one word of it, shook his head very wisely and handed it to his mate, who, not understanding any more, shook his head more sagely still, and handed it us back, professing—sly dog!—that they were satisfied.

Those chimneys were ‘the beginnings of evils!’

We, however, had not recognised the first drops of the thunderstorm, and, proceeding tranquilly on our way, strolled down past an old church and monastery to the high bank overlooking the Save. It was a beautiful picture!—a glorious sunset, crimson, golden, opalescent, mirrored on the silvery expanse of quiet waters, broken only by a small green island where stately oak-trees huddled together in mid-flood like the giants of an older world;—far beyond the sky-line, mingling with the mysterious blue of distant mountains; on the Slavonian bank, pale rows of poplars and conical haystacks, in relief against the dark fringe of primeval forest; on the further side, a verandahed guardhouse and the tip of a minaret—a fore-glimpse of another world—and hark! as the sun goes down, the solemn tones of the muezzin are faintly borne by the evening breeze to the shores of that Christendom which once rang with Allah akbar!

But we roused ourselves from the reveries which such a scene could not fail to awaken, for the darkness was gathering, and a voice within bade us seek the good cheer of our inn; when we were arrested by the sounds of music and the sight of a booth near the market-place, and, finding that a peep-show was going on, paid our kreutzers and went in. A moonlight view of the Tuileries is hardly what one would go to Brood to see, and we were beginning to think the show a trifle dull, when the serenity of the sightseers was broken in upon by the abrupt entry of two police-officers, and from their evident designs on some person or persons unknown we were congratulating ourselves on the prospect of a more lively spectacle. These expectations were indeed justified by the two officials pouncing upon L— and myself, and ordering us to accompany them immediately to the Commissär of Police.

‘Tell the Commissär of Police that if he wants to see us he had better come himself,’ said I, who acted as our spokesman.

‘Very sorry, sir,’ said the official addressed, ‘but our orders were to bring you.’

‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘that we are Englishmen, and are not accustomed to be treated in this way!’

Here a Slavonian gentleman intervened. He said that there must be some misunderstanding; that it was a most unfortunate occurrence; but, in fact, these men had orders to arrest us if we did not follow them at once.

Evidently, to avoid a row, there was nothing for it but to take his advice; so we were marched along the streets of Brood with a gendarme on each side of us, to all intents and purposes under arrest; till at last, in no very accommodating humour, we arrived at the official’s house, a long way off in the suburbs. Here we were stumped through a court, and then ushered into a dirty little room, where we found his highness seated at table in his shirt-sleeves, chewing a Coriolanan meal of maize. He did not get up from his chair to receive us, or even offer us a seat; but glancing at us in a way which made us wish to knock him down and conclude the business offhand, asked us in a surly and (we fancied) a slightly husky voice who we were. ‘We are Englishmen,’ replied I, in German. ‘Give me your pass!’ shouted the Commissär in a still rougher tone; ‘what do you mean by entering the town without reporting yourselves to me?’

To which I replied that he ought to know as well as we did that travellers could pass from one town in the monarchy to another without being subjected to such annoying regulations; but that, so far as Brood was concerned, we had as a matter of fact already shown our passes to two gendarmes. What was more, we need scarcely inform him that at the present time Englishmen could pass into Austria, just as Austrians into England, without a passport being demanded. ‘And I think, sir,’ I added, ‘as you wished to see us, it would have been more civil if you had called in person at our hotel.’

A Polizei-Commissär, bearded in his den by tramps and vagabonds like us—it was too much for his petty Majesty! Any strictures on the ceremonial of his state reception which I may have held in reserve, were cut short by his roaring out, in a still more insufferable tone, ‘I tell you I will see your pass!’

‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘just to prove to you that we are Englishmen, and out of pure courtesy, we are willing to show you our pass; but we must nevertheless protest that you have no right whatever to demand it!’

‘No right!’ screamed the P.-C., almost choking with rage, and bouncing from his chair with a spoon in one hand, and a maize-stalk in the other. ‘I no right! We’ll soon see about that. Take them off!’ he cried to his satellites; ‘take them off, I say, to the lock-up. Remove him!’—as I attempted to insert the thin end of a protest, and hurled a few consuls, ambassadors, thrones and dominions, at the official’s head; while the gendarmes, seeing that it was a disgraceful business, hesitated to carry out their chief’s commands—‘Do you hear me? I tell you they shall pass the night in gaol. They shall show me their pass to-morrow. Quick!’ And we left him muttering ‘No right!’

Meanwhile rumours of the successful capture and impending doom of two outrageous disturbers of the peace had spread throughout the length and breadth of Brood, and all Brood was rapidly assembling to see the majesty of the law vindicated on our persons; so that when we were led forth again by the police, we were followed through the streets by a kind of funeral cortége. Presently we turned down another larger court, and, ascending some steps, found ourselves on a raised platform outside the door of our intended prison, from which I seized the opportunity of addressing a kind of scaffold speech to the assembled soldiers and people, which at least had the effect of delaying our incarceration.

I endeavoured to urge on them the seriousness of what was about to take place. Two Englishmen, travelling under the protection of a passport which they were willing to produce, were about to be cast into a dungeon on the mere fiat of a petty magistrate. That for ourselves, gross as was the indignity, we regretted it principally for the sake of the Polizei-Commissär. That it would be but merciful to allow him a short space for repentance; and here I sketched out vaguely some of the tremendous consequences which such conduct might bring down on his head. That they, too, the gendarmes, would do well to think twice before lending a hand in such a business. That Brood itself might rue the day; nor did I neglect this opportunity to call up an apparition of a British fleet on the Save. Finally, I enquired who was the highest authority in Brood, and hearing that it was the Stadthauptmann, or Mayor, despatched a gendarme to beg that functionary’s immediate attendance.

We flatter ourselves that this harangue was not without its effect on our audience, who mostly understood German; but the minions of the law must obey, and the police ushered us into a wretched cell some seven feet by ten, quite dark, with a daïs of bare boards to sleep on. We were allowed neither light, nor straw, nor water; and when we asked for food—for we were very hungry, having tasted nothing since noon, and it being now dusk—that was also refused, till we offered a bribe to the officer, who then saw the matter in quite a different light. He then left the dungeon, the iron bolt grated in the lock, and we prepared to shift for the night as best we might. Outside we heard a voice of weeping, proceeding apparently from a woman and a child, as if touched at our sad fate—though L— preferred to believe that the sobs were due to the prospective annihilation of the Commissär. Had our sympathisers listened, they would have heard a sound of chuckling within, which might have been a considerable relief to their feelings.

Yet, we had not dined.

But our threats had begun to work on the official mind of Brood, and, as it afterwards turned out, they were seconded by no less an advocate than the leader of the National party in the Croatian Diet, Dr. Makanec, who, fired with that enthusiasm for the cause of freedom which shortly after led him to secede with his party from a bureaucratic assembly, made such representations to the Mayor on the outrageous conduct of the Commissär, and its probable consequences, as moved his worship to immediate action.

Thus it was, that we had not been in durance vile half-an-hour when hurried footsteps were heard in the court. The door of our cell was thrown open, and the Stadthauptmann was before us, bowing and scraping, and entreating us with the most profuse apologies to step out. He protested that it was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and as he had not offended us we were the more ready to grant him pardon, and permitted ourselves to be escorted in triumph by his whole posse comitatus down the street, his worship affecting the most polite interest in our tour.

Thus we returned victoriously to our inn, where we were met by our host, who had been expecting us for dinner for some time, with the expressive question ‘Eingesperrt?’ (‘Locked up?’) ‘Eingesperrt!’ said I. ‘So was my waiter a day or two ago,’ continued our host. ‘What for?’ we demanded. ‘Ah! that I cannot tell you.’ ‘The fellow ought to be shot!’ chimed in the aggrieved waiter. It appeared that the Commissär was a petty tyrant in the place, and our successful stand against his insolence created everywhere in Brood the liveliest sensations of delight. But why should the Brooders have left it to stray Englishmen to beard their despot? and which is the viler, the people who knock under to such arbitrary treatment, or the government which delegates to its officials the license to abuse the personal liberties of its subjects? This is not the first time that, for an equally paltry charge, I have seen the inside of an Austro-Hungarian prison. The free life of the great cities of the empire deceives those foreigners whose observations have been confined to the Prater; what ought to be realised is, that while London in a sense extends all over England, Pest and Vienna are bounded by their suburbs. The truth is, that the Metternichian régime has not died out entirely in the country districts. But when, as I believe was the case in this instance, the traditions of the ‘Police-State’ are followed out by Magyar—or at least Magyarizing—officials, there is less excuse for such conduct, and the Hungarians should be warned that, by setting up an alien and oppressive bureaucracy in their Sclavonic Provinces they are not likely to retain the high opinion which their noble stand against similar tyranny has won for them among Englishmen.