The Kaïmakàm attached a new Zaptieh to us, with orders to find us suitable lodgings in the town. What was our dismay when he led us into a dark and filthy stable!—but following him up a ladder we emerged on the landing of what we afterwards learnt by experience to be the typical Bosnian inn, in which the whole ground floor is set apart for horses. Our room was fairly clean, but infested with an ambuscade of carpeting; and our host, who was a Roman Catholic, soon provided us with a meal of which the principal features were hard-boiled eggs, flat cakes of very fair bread, and a curious Asiatic dish of clotted cream called kaimak, which in Bosnia varies according to the local cuisine, from an approach to Devonshire cream to the mere scum of boiled milk, and is sometimes mixed with little lumps of honey or sugar. From here I adjourned to a neighbouring café, discovered by entering another stable and climbing another ladder, leaving L— to the safe keeping of our Zaptieh, who was snoring on the floor of our room. I found myself amidst a bevy of comfortable Turks, who were alternately sipping their mocha and smoking their long chibouks,—for they belonged to the old school, and were robed in flowing dressing-gowns and surmounted with pompous turbans.

In exploring the streets—which are narrow and filthy, though sweeter than those of many a North-German town!—I was struck once more with the extraordinary jumble of wares exhibited in each store. Instead of one shopman reserving his energies for haberdashery, and another for confectionery, and so forth, you would come upon a goodly row of Turks, squatting hopefully on what is equally the floor and counter of their several shops, each of whom set up to supply his customers with turbans, coffee-cups, knives, boots, tobacco, carpets, Turkish delight, gun-flints, water-melons, and amulets against warts; so that it was rather confusing to decide which shop to go to if you wanted to suit yourself with anything, and you could not be certain of getting the best tobacco where you had observed the nattiest sandals! Amongst the wares, wax, which is one of the principal articles of Bosnian export, formed an important item; and besides these miscellaneous stores there were others more exclusive, some of which were set apart for the sale of salt, exposed in massive cubes. But though there are prolific salt-springs not so very far off, at Dolnja Tuzla, towards the Serbian border, it must not be assumed that these were native products, for Bosnia prefers to import her salt from Galicia, Dalmatia, Sicily, and Wallachia. But the shop which most took my fancy was the blacksmith’s; it was quite irresistible to see a grimy old Turk in a majestic head-piece—there is something comically incongruous between a turban and a sledge-hammer!—alternately working the beam of his bellows and hammering away on a primitive anvil, fixed into a rough section of oak trunk.

While trying to make my way to the other side of the valley I found myself hemmed in by a variety of fences, which I was forced to surmount, and run the gauntlet through private orchards, with whose owners I happily avoided an encounter, and finally emerged with a whole skin on the Christian quarter, which lies east of the castle. The inhabitants here belonged to the Latin Church; but though the Roman Catholic priesthood in Bosnia leans towards Croatia, and shrinks from Serbia with more horror than from Stamboul, yet these Latin women of Tešanj betrayed, perhaps unconsciously, their sisterhood with the heretics beyond the Drina. They were not coiffed Croat fashion, in a kerchief, like the peasants we had seen in the Bosnian Possávina, but their hair was plaited round a fez, à la belle Serbe, with flowers stuck in coquettishly on one side, and drooping gracefully about the ear. They displayed, too, the Serbian partiality for purple, and a maiden with a scarf crossed over the bosom recalled the peasant girls about Belgrade. The rest of their dress—the double girdle, the twin aprons, the tunics with expanding sleeves—may be described as South Sclavonic. The men, though surmounted with turbans, differed usually from the Turks in wearing a white tunic in place of the gorgeous vest and jacket, and short flowing white trowsers instead of indigo bags. Those Christian men, however, who were more well to do, and inhabited the mercantile part of the town, were, like our landlord, in complete Turkish costume.

As it was now near sunset a large assemblage of the neighbouring girls and housewives had gathered together at a spring to draw water and gossip. I found them very friendly, except one old woman, between whom and myself a most unfortunate disagreement arose. The cause of our tiff was that I—being, as the reader may have perceived, curious in pots and pans—so far trespassed on the old lady’s forbearance as to attempt to pocket—not indeed that antique and ponderous utensil itself—but a sketch of the water-pot, which, after duly filling at the spring, she had in just confidence laid down, the better to gossip with her coevals. But chancing to turn round, and seeing the outline of her ‘tikvo’—for that was the name by which she knew it—transferred to my paper, the old woman’s fury knew no bounds; and taking the law of copyright into her own hands, she snatched up the outraged vessel and soused a good portion of its contents over my person. She then emptied out what few drops remained—she would have none of your ‘water bewitched’!—and hastily refilling her pot, left in a huff. It appears that she had taken me for a sorcerer, and had been piously desirous of exorcising the devil within me by a baptism of a rough and ready sort. Her motives may therefore have been honourable to her head and heart, though such misconceptions are sometimes unpleasant at the time. Meanwhile, here is the tikvo, and two other vessels which I succeeded in drawing without any enforced lustrations—one of a gourd-like shape, common in Southern Europe; the other a water-jug like a coffee-pot, of the tinned copper which in Bosnia greatly supplants earthenware.

There is a sad side, too, to that episode of the old woman in the intense ignorance and concomitant superstition which it reveals. In other parts of Eastern Europe I have met with just the same repugnance against allowing me to take representations of animate or even inanimate belongings. In Wallachia I once nearly felt a peasant’s whip for attempting to sketch his horse. In other parts of Bosnia I have found natives who refused to allow me to sketch them, even when I offered them money if they would let me do so. I can only refer it to a wide-spread underlying belief in the Black Art, and especially that grim outgrowth of Fetishism which our old friend Thomas Ingoldsby places so vividly before us in the ‘Leech of Folkestone.’ The almost universal use of amulets and talismans, of which more will be said later on, is but symptomatic of the same superstition, and its adoption by the rayahs is chiefly due to the same Oriental influences which are traceable, in more ways than one, in their everyday life.

While returning to our Han from the spring I witnessed a good instance of the way in which Mahometan ideas touching the seclusion of women have taken hold of the rayah mind.

As I was proceeding along a lane between some cottage enclosures, I happened to pass a Christian woman on the other side of the palings, and certainly on the wrong side of forty. So far was I from staring at her that I had hardly noticed her in passing, till she screamed after me, ‘Hai’ ti! Hai’ ti!’ ‘Quick; be off!’ a usual expression of veiled Mahometan women in Bosnia if passed too closely on the road; and on my looking round to see if anything was the matter, she repeated these expressions with increased emphasis, and, rapidly raising her voice to cockatoo pitch, gave vent to the enquiry, which, though couched in not too courteous terms, few visitors to Bosnia remain long unacquainted with—Što glédaš? ‘What are you staring at?’ The view was certainly not very attractive, and as she seemed inclined to follow up her remarks with some more practical demonstration, and I myself was anything but desirous of crossing the path of a second Bosnian virago on the same afternoon, I beat a hasty retreat, venturing, however, to think that it would have been better if she had carried out her Oriental principles to their logical conclusion and veiled herself entirely. The rayah women of some parts of Bosnia—about Pristina, for example—actually go so far as to do this. I found that L— had been faring worse than myself; for in attempting to penetrate along another lane he was received in front and flank with such a volley of stones as repulsed him with loss.

Next morning, hearing that the Kaïmakàm wished to see us before we proceeded on our way, we visited the Konak about seven; but were obliged to waste nearly two hours of a time of day most valuable to pedestrians, waiting for the great man. While we were thus doomed to loaf, a very learned-looking Effendi of the Kaïmakàm’s divan came up and solicited permission to look through our spectacles, exchanging the compliment by lending us his own, which we found to our surprise to be made of plain window-glass, and even that, partly owing to dirt and partly to its inferior quality, was anything but crystalline, and positively obscured the vision. But he probably found them useful in impressing the Kaïmakàm with a due sense of his erudition, and he certainly succeeded in focussing his subordinates with them most effectually. The worthy man’s delight on looking through spectacles that really aided the sight was something childish, but we were not inclined to accept his overtures for a swap.

At last the Kaïmakàm himself appeared, attired this time in a light white suit of most correct cut. He was evidently a Turk of the new school, and showed a most intelligent interest in our map, which he understood perfectly, and pointed out on it the route of the new railway which has just been begun in Bosnia.

He was all politeness; but when we sketched out our projected mountain route to Travnik, and added moreover that we were going on foot, he betrayed such a desire to dissuade us from our purpose as convinced us that he had some misgivings as to our object in visiting the country, and that he more than half suspected us of being insurgent emissaries of some kind. When we expressed our intention of making Comušina, a small Christian village where there is a Franciscan monastery, our that day’s destination, he began to urge all kinds of obstacles to our plan. There was no road—the country was impassable—we should not be able to procure any food, and it was impossible that we should ever find our way to Travnik by this route. Let him persuade us to go round by Zepše, and then follow the high road; he would see that we were provided with a good arabà (a Bosnian waggon)—or would we prefer horses?

We, however, remained firm, and our pass from the Vali being imperative, there was nothing for it but to let us have our way. The game, as he thought, was played out; and further concealment being useless, he dropped his objections with admirable tact, and mentioned incidentally that we should come in for a large Christian gathering at Comušina—‘Ce que peut vous intéresser.’ He evidently believed himself that we knew all about the gathering already, and I do not blame his suspicions; for the moment was far more critical than we had any idea of, and to the mind of even a liberal Turk our design of leaving the road and plunging into the mountains was, on any other hypothesis, sheer insanity—for anything that we might protest about the English passion for scenery and mountaineering. We afterwards discovered that in addition to the Zaptieh whom he forced on us as guide and guard, another was despatched to Comušina with an express commission to observe our movements.