A knife, in silver hafted,
And adorned with gold.

Thereupon Paul’s young wife resolves to ruin Jélitza. She slays her husband’s black courser and his grey falcon, and accuses her stepsister of the deeds. Jélitza, however, both times succeeds in persuading Paul of her innocence, and Paul’s wife must resort to a yet blacker crime. One fine evening she steals away her stepsister’s knife, and slays with it her own and Paul’s baby. At early dawn she rouses her husband, tearing her cheeks, and shrieking in his ear,

Evil is the love thou bear’st thy sister,
And thy gifts to her are more than wasted:
She has stabbed our infant in the cradle!

Paul rushes to his sister’s chamber ‘like one possessed by madness;’ finds ‘the golden knife beneath her pillow.’ ‘It was damp with blood—’twas red and gory!’ Poor Jélitza, protesting in vain her innocence, is tied by her infuriated brother to the tails of four wild horses.

But where’er a drop of blood fell from her
There a flower sprang up—a fragrant flow’ret—
Where her body fell when dead and mangled,
There a church arose from out the desert.

Meanwhile a curse lay on the murderess—

Little time was spent, ere fatal sickness
Fell upon Paul’s youthful wife—the sickness
Nine long years lay on her—heavy sickness!
’Midst her bones the matted dog-grass sprouted,
And amidst it nestled angry serpents.
Which, though hidden, drank her eye-light’s brightness.

In vain she seeks to shrive herself in her sister’s church. A mysterious voice arrests her at the portal, and warns her from the spot, ‘for this church can neither heal nor save thee.’ In her agony she implores her husband to bind her too ‘to the wild steeds’ tails, and drive them—drive them to th’ immeasurable desert!’ Paul listens to her entreaties, and binding her to the wild steeds’ tails, ‘drove them forth across the mighty desert.’ But—

Wheresoe’er a drop of blood fell from her,
There sprang up the rankest thorns and nettles;
Where her body fell, when dead, the waters
Rushed and formed a lake both still and stagnant.
O’er the lake there swam a small black courser:
By his side a golden cradle floated:
On the cradle sat a young grey falcon:
In the cradle, slumbering, lay an infant:
On its throat the white hand of its mother:
And that hand a golden knife was holding.

The knives, however, of our friendly family were not of such costly material, the crescent-shaped handle being simply of horn studded with brass bosses. Of other ornaments they displayed on their girdle the usual twin circular brooches, and on their hair an array of gilt coins. Their dress in many respects much resembled that of the rayah women, for they wore the two characteristic aprons; their heads were coiffed with the same light kerchiefs; and one woman whom we met on the road had this head-dress arranged with a flowing white tassel gracefully depending at the side, in the same fashion as the Latin Christian maiden of the Possávina, whose portrait has already been given.[283] But further description of our unveiled Mahometans is needless, as their complaisance was such that they allowed me even to sketch them.

But, one naturally asks, how came these Moslem dames and maidens to go about unveiled in this single district of a country where the injunctions of the Koràn in this respect are usually carried out to the letter? I do not think that anyone who surveys the naked rocks that tower above this part of the Narenta valley—who marks the dearth of pasture for cattle, and who realizes how little land there is for cultivation even beside the streams—can be long in doubt as to the true cause of this omission. Here there is a lawgiver more exacting of obedience than the Prophet himself. Amidst this limestone wilderness Nature reigns supreme, and will be obeyed. A voice that cannot be mistaken bids women as well as men go forth to their work and to their labour until the evening. All hands are needed to stave off starvation, and it is essential to the women that they should have the free use of eyes and limbs to aid their brothers, husbands, and fathers. The struggle for existence is too hard to admit of any of the combatants cumbering themselves with the impedimenta of any ceremonial law whatsoever. ’Tis the pitiless clutch of hunger that has dragged even the Moslem women from the seclusion of the harem; and they have cast away their veils and swaddling-clothes that they may glean a bare subsistence in the desert!

Unveiled Mahometan Women at Jablanica.

Perhaps the absence of veils may be partly due to the influence of the surrounding population, which is mainly Christian. In any case it would probably be more accurate to say that the Mahometans of this district were incapacitated by their surroundings from ever taking the veil of Islâm, rather than that they threw it off after assuming it; and to look on their present costume rather as an old Bosnian relic which has survived their renegation of Christianity. But this does not make the assertion less true, that the inexorable code of Nature has here over-ridden the Koràn.

But we are once more on our way, and as we descend the Narenta valley, about an hour from Jablanica, the mountains close in upon us and scenery of the most stupendous character engrosses our attention. The view at this point is recognised as the most magnificent in the whole of Bosnia. The road itself[284] is hewn out along the face of a precipice, and the magnesian-limestone and dolomitic cliffs on either side of the gorge rise in places three thousand feet[285] sheer above the Narenta, which, chafing and foaming, hurries passionately through the narrow mountain portal below. The whole was seen at a time of day when everything looks most fresh and lovely, lit up with the slanting rays of the rising sun, throwing into alto relievo the vast rock-sculptures of Nature, and glorifying her heroic forms. Above, peak after peak of topaz stood out against the pale azure of this cloudless Southern sky; but no intrusive shaft of gold—even from a Phœbean quiver—could penetrate the twilight of the gorge itself. Here all was softened into a pervading lilac, veined with an intenser purple by infinite striations of strata, till the bare mountain-walls—bathed in this floating light—seemed to be hewn out of amethystine agate, and afforded the most exquisite contrasts to the liquid emerald of the river below. The cliffs along whose surface we were now making our way were veiled in darker shadow, snow-white against which expanded a living fan of feathery spray from a stream that gushed forth in full volume, and of glacier coolness, from a cavern in the rock.

We crossed over to the left steep of the river by an iron bridge—another English importation—and for many hours were still threading this wondrous pass. We had indeed passed the Iron Gates of the Narenta, but there was still much to admire in the scenery. The high mountains continued, though they ceased to frown abruptly over the river. Lean naked giants they were: ribbed skeletons, thinly clad with stunted foliage, though in places still yellow with dwarf laburnum shrubs. The rocks were perpetually starting up into castles and towers, sometimes a quaint mediæval castle suggesting a background of Albert Dürer, but oftener more Roman in their architecture; towers, square and round, which from the narrow horizontal laminations of the rocks reproduced with surprising exactness the appearance of ruined masonry, and rugged lines of ancient brickwork that called up visions of the time-scarred walls of Anderida. About these ruins of an older world clustered, in place of ivy, the tender sprays of wild vine laden with unripe beads, or here and there a beautiful bind-weed with capacious chalices of pink, as large as Convolvulus major.

As we descended further down the pass, the rocks assumed a glaring chalky whiteness—rather painful to the eyes—but like most things in nature, not without redeeming effects peculiar to itself. Perhaps, too, it was artistically right that everything around should become barer and plainer, that nothing might distract the eye from enjoying the marvellous beauties of the river. This was always the same liquid emerald, mottled with snow-white foam, and shading off into it, as when the gem, it imitated so well, freezes into its quartzite roots. Now and again the river would plunge into a deep circling pool—forming a dark blue-emerald eye, which paling off among the golden pebbles of the shallows, looked like nothing but some gorgeous peacock’s plume modulating its rainbow colours in the breeze.

Everything around us began to betoken a more Southern climate—the heat was almost tropical, and a lurid haze covered the whole face of the land. On the rocks grew pink cyclamen and a beautiful purple salvia; amongst the trees were Spanish chestnuts and wild figs, and nearer Mostar fine rosy pomegranates, which look like quinces blushing at their monstrosity, and grow on a shrub that reminded us of a homely privet. In the gardens of the few stone cots we saw are delicious ripe grapes and golden figs, and we began to understand why it is that the Herzegovinian contemptuously calls his Bosnian brothers Slivari, ‘munchers of plums!’