To the left of the group before us will be observed two Jewesses belonging to the wealthiest part of the Serajevan population. There are in this city about 2,000 Jews, descendants of those who, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, took refuge from the persecutions of the Catholic rulers of Spain within the dominions of the more tolerant Grand Signior. But they still look back with a certain regretful longing to the adopted land of their forefathers. Although they can speak Bosniac to outsiders without an accent, they still converse among themselves in a language which was that of Spain in the days of their expulsion; and the pure Castilian of the Knight of La Mancha, antiquated in its mother-country, is still to be heard in the streets of Serajevo![258] They have a pride in those old days, and like to keep fresh their remembrance. Their Chacham-bashi, or head Rabbi, serves his friends with confection made of white of eggs and sugar, called ‘Spanish bread,’ as a kind of memorial feast. But they cling with even warmer zeal to their old Hebrew rites and customs, and are so intolerant of innovation that, not long ago,[259] one of their leading merchants here was excommunicated for letting his wife wear long hair and dress herself in European fashion! She might well have contented herself with the coiffure of her co-religionists; for, if too wanton tresses are curtailed, en revanche they wear a most gorgeous head-dress. We had seen in the bazaar some tasteful discs of embroidered work—flowered with a humming-bird brilliance of design—which we took to be meant for small mats, till we found that they were worn at the back of their heads by Jewish women.

These Jews are the richest people in Serajevo, but alas! this is not simply due to their commercial talents. It is unfortunately too true that a few years ago these astute Israelites made nearly 100,000l. out of Austrian and German houses by a system of fraudulent bankruptcy. They act as treasurers and interpreters to the Turkish authorities in Bosnia, and use the power thus acquired to amass further gains often not less ill-gotten. They are also the chief bankers here, and the only usurers. They are as dirty as their gains, and almost as degraded physically as morally. That they are also undersized may possibly be connected with the fact that they will only marry within their community. On the other hand Miss Irby[260] states that ‘their poor are exceedingly well cared for, and a Jewish beggar is never seen. No Jew is ever accused of murder, theft, or violence, or found in Turkish prisons, except on account of debt.’

The other members of our happy family are the Bosniacs of the Greek Church—the Serbs or Pravoslaves, as they style themselves. Of these there are about 6,000 in Serajevo, and they approach the Serbs of the Free Principality in dress as well as in name. They show, as may be seen, a great variety of head-dress—sometimes the hair plaited round a central fez à la Serbe—sometimes light white muslin drapery—sometimes a fez stuck coquettishly on one side, from which descends what looks like a cascade of black hair flecked with golden spray, and of such a length as to fall about the hips. It needs close inspection to detect that this is really black silk interwoven with gold thread; so that the Serbian maidens of Serajevo may be congratulated on adding a cubit to their tresses! They further embellish their hair with flowery sprays, and, on high days, both fez and bosom with a barbaric superfluity of jewellery—especially coins. They carry their fortune about with them, and a Bosniac girl is admired in proportion to the number of coins that spangle her! Perhaps the same may be seen elsewhere under a civilized disguise, but here it is paraded with all the naïveté of the savage! ‘What a pretty girl!’ enthusiastically exclaimed a Bosniac, in the Russian Hilferding’s hearing; and on his asking with surprise what the Serajevan might find to admire in a flat nose and a decided squint: ‘What? Don’t you see? There are ducats there to last a lifetime!’ But there is one kind of beauty which even the Bosniacs can admire, and that is—fatness! A fat[261] girl is here synonymous with a beauty.

The character of the Christian merchants of Serajevo is, perhaps, sufficiently indicated. They are, in truth, a money-grubbing, unamiable lot, and, it need hardly be added, set their faces against culture in every form. Next to the Jews, they are the richest class in Serajevo—richer than the Turks, for the Mahometan is incapacitated by his fatalistic want of enterprize from taking part in any but small retail trades. The Serbs, on the contrary, hold in their hands most of the external commerce of the country, for which Serajevo is the natural staple, being the meeting-place of the main roads leading to Austria, North of the Save, Dalmatia, and Free Serbia, and being situate on the caravan route to Stamboul. But they do not make use of the wealth thus obtained either to elevate themselves or to aid their oppressed countrymen who lie outside the pale of consular protection. On the contrary, they form themselves into an exclusive caste, not only standing apart from the miserable rayah, but even pooh-poohing his cry of agony when it happens to stand a chance of being heard by Foreign Consuls or the Turkish Governor. Is it likely, indeed, that they should do otherwise, with such a spiritual guide as the Fanar Metropolitan?

Just as characteristic of a narrow-minded bourgeoisie is the way in which they set their faces against any attempts to better their education. A few years ago a Serb of Serajevo, who had amassed what for a Bosniac was a fortune, as a merchant at Trieste, left a considerable sum of money to be applied in erecting a good school for the Pravoslave community here, on condition of a certain additional sum being subscribed by the Serajevan merchants. The Pravoslave community at large seem to have received the tidings of this generous bequest with sublime contempt; but one or two individuals, who hoped to profit by it as teachers, took the matter up and sent a circular to the European Consuls in the name of the whole Serb community, stating that that body ‘feeling the want of a good education for their sons, and wishing to carry out the design of their benefactor, solicited the aid and patronage of the representatives of enlightened Christendom.’ This sounded very fine. The Consuls took the matter up. Mr. Holmes represented it to the English Government, and though nothing could be given officially, Lord Clarendon very kindly forwarded 30l. on his own behalf. Then the bubble burst. The Pravoslave community held an indignation meeting, in which they disavowed the circular of these interested enthusiasts for education: protesting that their children were well enough taught at home, and that a new school they did not want, and a new school they would not have!

Two other most prominent classes of Serajevan society call for mention. One is the Board of Health, whose business it is to keep the streets comparatively clean. The members of this sanitary staff exercise their unclean office at night, when they patrol the streets in troops—and the offal which they then pick up is their only food! At this season these scavengers, who are perpetually falling out among themselves, raise such a terrible hubbub as murders sleep to those unused to their rowdiness. Moreover, it is hardly safe to walk across the street after dark, for these gentry will patch up their own quarrels and unite to assault the unwary foot-passenger; and, though they have no other weapons than those wherewith nature has endowed them, such is the ferocity of their onset that I have myself seen a Turkish soldier forced to keep these guardians of the public health at bay with his sword. They do not wear either fez or turban (so far as we were able to observe), and in this they differ from the generality of Turkish officials; but they are uniformed in a coarse hide of a muddy buff-colour, disfigured with mangy patches, usually out at elbows, and tattered by reason of their nocturnal brawls, in which they show themselves so transported with passion as to tear off each other’s ears. By day they are very lazzaroni, and are to be seen in the streets (their only home), lying across the path or roadway on their stomachs—truly a disgusting spectacle. It is a custom not to be transgressed, that both the passers-by, and even waggons, should move out of their way while my lords are taking their repose; and it goes ill with him who should kick, or even, without hostile intent, stumble upon the prostrate sanitary officer, since he and his fellows—a score of whom (you may be sure) are ready at hand—are quick in taking the law into their own hands. Nor can their insulter expect either aid or pity from the bystanders; for the citizens, rightly considering their profession as necessary to the public health, invest their person with a certain sanctity; and, doubtless, were these brutish scavengers expelled by one gate, pestilence would stalk in by the other.

Then there is another class of functionaries with whom the streets of Serajevo, and one in particular, are literally swarming, and who are even more brutal than this precious Sanitary Board. These are the Zaptiehs—call them, if you please, gendarmes, police, enlisting sergeants, soldiers, tax-collectors, executioners—for they are Jacks-of-all-trades. They are the factotums of the Mahometan government—a terrible engine in the hands of tyranny—ready to execute its worst behests. We have seen them as the instruments of the tax-farmer or the bishop, wringing the little hoards of penury from the miserable rayah—or playing the part of apparitors in those Inquisition scenes of torture. These are the hired bravoes who live at free-quarters in the Christian villages; rob, violate—and in many cases murder—whom they will. There are of course exceptions; and their worst offences are nothing to the infamy of the Government which lets loose ignorant fanatics among a population whom their creed teaches them to count as dogs, and which leaves them, without pay sufficient for their bare subsistence, to plunder those whom they nominally protect. When in the presence of Europeans they usually possess tact sufficient to keep on their good behaviour; but from the atrocious scenes of which I myself was a witness at the Christian pilgrimage, their conduct, when freed from any restraint of foreign surveillance, may be faintly imagined. Those who have had most acquaintance with the country described them to us as ‘covering the land like a blight.’ Though there are enough of them in Serajevo in all conscience, we were assured that the number at present here is smaller than usual, since many have been sent out to collect the Redìf or reserve, and many have been hastily draughted into the soldiery. To-day a gang of these commissioned bandits has been scouring the country with orders to seize thirty horses, but they have only been able to lay hands on a couple. The Government exercises the right of seizing horses at need. Nominally it is only a loan, but the peasants rarely see their beasts back, and dare not hope for recompense of any kind; besides which the owner is often impressed himself as kiradjì or driver, without receiving a penny for this corvée. This forced labour and seizure of horses was one of the most crying wrongs of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian rayahs, and one of the many causes of the revolt. How inveterate must be that misgovernment which continues to sow the wind at the very moment that it is reaping the whirlwind!

Here, at least, affairs are becoming hourly more ominous. We hear tidings of a Christian victory near Novipazar, which means that the single road connecting Bosnia with the rest of Turkey is seriously threatened. Isolated tales of bloodshed and massacre form the common topic of conversation. A Serb cuts the throat of a Turkish Mollah near Mostar; the Christian is hanged; his friends surprise a party of Mahometans in an inn, and massacre them to a man; the cry for vengeance is now caught up by the Turks, and so the tragedy developes. Such details are revolting, but they give a true picture of the reign of terror which is setting in. To-day a large number of Austrian women, the wives of artizans beyond the Save, are leaving the town.

This evening, our last in this city, a strange atmospheric phenomenon seemed to shadow forth the uncertainty of all around. In the afternoon it began to pour, and at first the clouds, as they shifted hither and thither, threw the mountains, that frown around the city on every side, into strange and novel reliefs. Then they sank lower, till they hung like a pall above mosque and minaret, and shrouded even the ‘nodding hills’ around in impenetrable gloom—half cloud, half mountain. The city alone stood out with clear and well defined outlines in the livid half-light, but the mist literally lapped its outer walls, and so thickly, that a foe might have approached to the very entrance of the town without possibility of detection. It was, indeed, portentous of the present state of Serajevo; nothing but the present certain; her nearest future overclouded; forebodings of internecine struggles within; the sulphurous vapours of civil and religious war rising around her—doubly awful in the uncertain light of rumour. ‘It is the beginning of the end,’ said a foreign representative to us; ‘do not be surprised if you are surveying the last days of Ottoman rule in the Serai.’