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:—

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:—

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]

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:—