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 CONTENTS IN DETAIL

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

PART I: EMBEDDED PROGRAMMING

CHAPTER 1: HELLO WORLD
Installing GCC
Downloading System Workbench for STM32
Our First Program
Compiling the Program
Making Mistakes
Understanding the Program
Adding Comments
Improving the Program and Build Process
The make Program
Compiler Flags
How the Compiler Works Behind the Scenes
The Preprocessor
The Compiler
The Assembler
The Linker
Adding to Your Makefile
Summary
Questions

CHAPTER 2: INTRODUCTION TO THE INTEGRATED

DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT
Using System Workbench for STM32
Starting the IDE
Creating Hello World
Debugging the Program
What the IDE Did for Us
Importing the Book’s Programming Examples
Summary
Programming Problems
Questions

CHAPTER 3: PROGRAMMING THE MICROCONTROLLER

The NUCLEO-F030R8 Development Board
Programming and Debugging the Board
Setting Up the Board
Setting Up an Embedded Project
Your First Embedded Program
Initializing the Hardware
Programming a GPIO Pin
Toggling the LED
Building the Completed Program
Exploring the Build Process
Exploring the Project Files
Debugging the Application
Stepping Through the Program
Summary
Programming Problems
Questions

CHAPTER 4: NUMBERS AND VARIABLES

Working with Integers
Declaring Variables to Hold Integers
Assigning Values to Variables
Initializing Variables
Integer Sizes and Representations
Number Representations
Standard Integers
Unsigned Integer Types
Overflow
Two’s Complement Representation in Signed Integer Types
Shorthand Operators
Controlling Memory-Mapped I/O Registers Using Bit Operations
OR
AND
NOT
Exclusive OR
Shifting
Defining the Meaning of Bits
Setting the Values of Two Bits at Once
Turning Off a Bit
Checking the Values of Bits
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 5: DECISION AND CONTROL STATEMENTS

The if Statement
The if/else Statement
Looping Statements
The while Loop
The for Loop
Using the Button
Initialization
Choosing a Pulldown Circuit
Getting the State of the Button
Running the Program
Loop Control
The break Statement
The continue Statement
Anti-patterns
The Empty while Loop
Assignment in while
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 6: ARRAYS, POINTERS, AND STRINGS

Arrays
Under the Hood: Pointers
Array and Pointer Arithmetic
Array Overflow
Characters and Strings
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 7: LOCAL VARIABLES AND PROCEDURES

Local Variables
Hidden Variables
Procedures
Stack Frames
Recursion
Programming Style
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 8: COMPLEX DATA TYPES

Enums
Preprocessor Tricks and Enums
Structures
Structures in Memory
Accessing Unaligned Data
Structure Initialization
Structure Assignment
Structure Pointers
Structure Naming
Unions
Creating a Custom Type
Structures and Embedded Programming
typedef
Function Pointers and typedef
typedef and struct
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 9: SERIAL OUTPUT ON THE STM

Writing a String One Character at a Time
Defining Our Own putchar
Serial Output
A Brief History of Serial Communications
Serial Hello World!
UART Initialization
Transmitting a Character
Communicating with the Device
Windows
Linux and macOS
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 10: INTERRUPTS

Polling vs. Interrupts
Interrupts for Serial I/O
Interrupt Routines
Writing a String with Interrupts
Program Details
Interrupt Hell
Using a Buffer to Increase Speed
Sending Function
Interrupt Routine
Full Program
The Problem
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 11: THE LINKER

The Linker’s Job
Compilation and Linking Memory Models
The Ideal C Model
Nonstandard Sections
The Linking Process
Symbols Defined by the Linker
Relocation and Linking Object Files
The Linker Map
Advanced Linker Usage
Flash Memory for “Permanent” Storage
Multiple Configuration Items
Field Customization Example
Firmware Upgrade
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 12: THE PREPROCESSOR

Simple Macros
Parameterized Macros
Code Macros
Conditional Compilation
Where Symbols Get Defined
Command Line Symbols
Predefined Symbols
Include Files
Other Preprocessor Directives
Preprocessor Tricks
Summary
Programming Problems

PART II: C FOR BIG MACHINES

CHAPTER 13: DYNAMIC MEMORY
Basic Heap Allocation and Deallocation
Linked Lists
Adding a Node
Printing the Linked List
Deleting a Node
Putting It All Together
Dynamic Memory Problems
Valgrind and the GCC Address Sanitizer
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 14: BUFFERED FILE I/O

The printf Function
Writing the ASCII Table
Writing to Predefined Files
Reading Data
The Evil gets Function
Opening Files
Binary I/O
Copying a File
Buffering and Flushing
Closing Files
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 15: COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS AND RAW I/O

Command Line Arguments
Raw I/O
Using Raw I/O
Using Binary Mode
ioctl
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 16: FLOATING-POINT NUMBERS

What Is a Floating-Point Number?
Floating-Point Types
Automatic Conversions
Problems with Floating-Point Numbers
Rounding Errors
Digits of Precision
Infinity, NaN, and Subnormal Numbers
Implementation
Alternatives
Summary
Programming Problems

CHAPTER 17: MODULAR PROGRAMMING

Simple Modules
Problems with the Simple Module
Making the Module
What Makes Good Modules
Namespaces
Libraries
ranlib and Library Linking
Deterministic vs. Nondeterministic Libraries
Weak Symbols
Summary
Programming Problems

AFTERWORD
Learn How to Write
Learn How to Read
Collaboration and Creative Theft
Useful Open Source Tools
Cppcheck
Doxygen
Valgrind
SQLite
Never Stop Learning

APPENDIX: PROJECT CREATION CHECKLIST

Native C Project
STM32 Workbench Embedded Project

INDEX
 BARE METAL C

Embedded Programming for the Real

World

by Steve Oualline
BARE METAL C. Copyright © 2022 by Stephen Oualline.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
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written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.
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ISBN-13: 978-1-7185-0162-1 (print)
ISBN-13: 978-1-7185-0163-8 (ebook)
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Interior Design: Octopod Studios
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contact No Starch Press, Inc. directly at [email protected] or:
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Oualline, Steve, author.
Title: Bare metal C : embedded programming for the real world / Stephen Oualline.
Description: San Francisco : No Starch Press, [2022] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021049830 (print) | LCCN 2021049831 (ebook) | ISBN
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Subjects: LCSH: C (Computer program language) | Embedded computer systems-
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The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without warranty.
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by the information contained in it.
About the Author
Steve Oualline has been writing reliable, low-bug programs for
embedded systems for over 50 years. He has a master of science
from the University of Southern California and has written many
books for both No Starch Press and O’Reilly. He is currently a
volunteer at the Southern California Railroad Museum, where his
most recent project was debugging the computer controller for their
Acme Traffic signal. (Ants built a nest inside it and had to be
removed.) His website can be found at http://oualline.com.

About the Technical Reviewer

Frank Duignan graduated as an electrical engineer in 1988. Since
then he has worked mostly at the interface between hardware and
software. He is currently lecturing in electrical/electronic engineering
at Technological University Dublin. Frank’s blog can be found at http
s://ioprog.com.
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
On these hearths reposed cylindrical pots with curious lids, and
above the fire great iron caldrons, capable of providing for many
mouths, were hung from the wooden arms of primitive jacks, such
as I remember having seen in Finnish cottages.
The common hall contained little but a long table and two long
benches, recalling, except for its honeycombed stove, the furniture
of an Oxford College hall. It is here that the whole family take their
meals; and in the winter time, when the stoveless summer dwellings
are uninhabitable, it is here that the men take shelter from the blast
to make or mend their rude implements of husbandry, and the
women ply their homely looms. They told us further that this was
the room in which the family met to choose their house-father or
house-mother, and to transact all common business; and, since
dinner is the natural time for all the family to be assembled together,
it is after dinner that these matters of household economy are
mooted, and the house-father, who represents the family in dealings
with the authorities, and the house-mother, who shares with her
consort[161] his patriarchal sway over the rest of the house-
community, are elected. It is here, too, that the domestic
government is thrown out if it does not continue to give satisfaction
to its constituents. In short, this is their little Parliament-House, and
these the earliest germs of Constitutional Government.
But we must leave Slavonia for the present, and transport
ourselves back in some aërial fashion to Karlovac, from which town
we are about to make our way to Siszek by the last strip of railway
we were to see for many a long day. It may be that it was lucky that
such a means of transit was still at our disposal, since, if we had
been obliged to foot it, we must have run the gauntlet of a band of
robbers then infesting the country near Petrinia. As a rule our
Croatian friends were never tired of assuring us that it was beyond
the frontier that these gentry flourished; and the hilly country that
rose to the south-west—the Kraina, as the promontory of Turkish
territory is known, which acts as a thorn in the side of Austria—was
pointed out as a regular asylum for wild characters, and in fact was
long the only part of the frontier where the watch-service was still
needed. At the present moment, however, even the Croats were fain
to admit that Bosnia was free from robbers, while their own country
was insecure; and, indeed, I am afraid that this was not such an
exceptional state of things as they would have had us believe, for
when we arrived two days later in the Slavonian lands of the lower
Save we found the whole country under martial law, owing to the
murderous infestations of brigands in the Syrmian highlands; and
though several had been hanged, the reign of terror was such that
the military government was still continued. Indeed, just after the
Austro-Prussian war, the state of Croatia had become so deplorable
by reason of the increasing brigandage, that ‘Standrecht’ had to be
proclaimed there, and no less than forty robbers were hung. For
some time a gibbet with its ghastly appendages was to be seen from
the train on nearing Agram.
On the whole, then, it was more comfortable to indulge in such
reflections as we shot through the mighty oak-forest in a railway-
carriage bound for Siszek, than to sneak through these mysterious
shadows on foot with the feelings of one of our great-grandfathers,
when doomed to traverse Hampstead Heath on a dark night. These
Croatian highwaymen, however, immediately under notice, had
hitherto conducted the business of the road on the most
gentlemanly principles; and though a kind of ‘commercial’ with
whom we travelled seemed a bit scared, even he could report no
thrilling tales of bloodshed. There were sixteen of these Hajduks,
[162] as the Croats called them, who had taken to outlawry to avoid
the military conscription, which has just superseded the older
organisation of the Granitza. Soldiers have been in pursuit, but
fruitlessly, since not only are the hills about covered with
unfathomable forest and hollowed—so we were told—with caverns,
but the peasants, like those of Greece and Southern Italy, are in
league with the brigands, supplying them with food, and refusing to
reveal their hiding-places. The gendarmes, indeed, express hopes of
seizing their quarry when the leaves have fallen and the snow is on
the ground. Meantime they are at large. Nor let us judge too harshly
of their profession, for in this old world East of Europe the Hajduk is
often a gentleman in his way. ’Tis Robin Hood and his merry men
who still live on, roughly redressing their wrongs in a vicarious
fashion against that society which refuses them legal requital, but
capable none the less of much tenderness to women and children,
and discriminating their friends from the class that oppresses them.
Across the Turkish frontier the cause of national freedom, hopelessly
lost centuries ago on the battlefield, has been championed from
generation to generation by the Hajduks of the forest mountain, in
achievements not unsung by Sclavonic bards; and, likely enough,
these Croatian brothers are striving too for ancient liberties, as they
understand them.
It was late at night by the time we arrived at Siszek, so we were
glad enough to avail ourselves of a car bound for the ‘White Ship’
inn on the Kulpa Quay, in company with a Serbian lady and her child
—she disdaining not either for herself or boy the national costume of
Free Serbia. And verily she had her reward. For what could be more
appropriate than the rich silver embroidery flowered on the purple-
velvet field of her mantle—efflorescent with the poetic yearning of
the race for that gorgeous Orient, a yearning as lively as the
abhorrence from its yoke—an echo from the Serbian lyre—a protest
against your cold foggy West—but subdued withal by a Roman-
matronly coiffure wondrously becoming to the tranquil grace of
Serbian motherhood?
Arrived at our inn, we found ourselves plunged at once into
Turkish society, for many Bosnian corn-merchants from Bihac,
Serajevo, and other towns, betake themselves in the way of trade to
Siszek. Among the group of Turks who, in various awkward and frog-
like postures, were endeavouring to accommodate themselves to
chairs, was an Effendi, a title which implies not only a certain grade
of Turkish gentility, but an education for Bosnia most polite, namely,
the ability to read and write; and, what is by no means ordinary
among the Mussulman Sclaves of Bosnia, an acquaintance with
Osmanlì. Thus it was with a conscious sense of superiority that our
Effendi, learning our intentions in Bosnia, expressed a desire to see
the pass which the Vali Pashà had been good enough to supply us
with. He seemed extremely surprised to see that it was in the Vali’s
own handwriting; but having convinced himself of the fact, he first
read it aloud with pleasing gusto in the original Turkish, and then
translated it into Bosniac for the benefit of the Sclavonic
Mahometans and our Croatian landlord, with many assurances that
with such an ‘open sesamé’ we should have no difficulty in unlocking
the innermost fastnesses of Bosnia or even the Herzegovina, where
the revolt had now broken out.
There was also a venerable Turk of singularly dignified mien, with
patriarchal beard and capacious turban, who sat in mild
contemplation, lulled by the measured purring of his narghilé, lost to
all mundane concerns, sagely superior to the curiosity which our
pass and travelling gear were exciting in less exalted bosoms, and
benignantly indifferent even to the indignity of a chair. Our host told
us that he was a Hadji, or pilgrim, then on his way from Buda,
where he resided as a merchant, to Mecca.
Aug. 8.—Next morning we sallied forth to explore what might
remain of ancient Siscia. For we are now on classic ground. Siszek is
but the corruption of a name great in all ages of imperial Rome, and
greatest in the twilight of her empire. There was a time when Siscia
was one of the sovereign cities of the world. She was a bulwark
against barbarians, an emporium of commerce, a seat of emperors,
a mother of martyrs, a gathering point for Roman-Christian Saga.
And her older name, Segestica, takes us back to times prior to the
Roman conquest itself, when she formed part of that Celtic empire of
race, dim, commercial, reaching from Gades to the swamps of
Nether Rhine; from glacial Ierné to the mouths of Ister. Segestica!
we have no record of her dealings with the Adriatic votaries of
Belenus,[163] nor what Taurisk gold passed current in her streets;
and yet her peasant citizens of to-day plough up an abundance of
bronze-age sickles as if to bear witness of her old Celtic industry and
her very name calls up golden harvests of antiquity ready garnered
into her warehouses from rich Pannonian plains, with a side
suggestion perchance of her

Seges clypeata virorum,

that twice withstood the arms of Rome successfully, till Augustus

reduced her, and made of her a stationary camp for his cohorts.
She is now Siscia, a convenient point d’appui for Dacian
campaigns; the winter quarters for Tiberius in his Pannonian war; by
Septimius Severus made the seat of military government for his
world, and so benefited by him that she took the name of Septimia
Siscia. Probably under Vespasian,[164] a Roman colony had been
already planted here, and Siscia became a Republic with municipal
liberties modelled on those of the parent city. An inscription still
recalls her Duumviri, who, in Rome’s provincial mirrors, reflected the
two Consuls. Later on, Siscia becomes the chief city of Upper
Pannonia; then, when Savia was made a province, the residence of
its Corrector. She was the seat of an imperial treasury, and it was
here that the ‘most splendid Provost of the Ironworkers’ received the
revenue from Noric mines. Here, too, was established the Premier
Mint of the Roman Empire; and Siscia shares with Rome herself the
distinguished honour of first imprinting her name in full on the
imperial currency. What numismatist does not know and covet that
coin of Gallienus? or that choice piece of the Emperor who sprang
from her Savian rival Sirmium (though from this legend one would
think he was really of Siscia), with the proud inscription, ‘Siscia Probi
Aug.’—the Siscia of Probus? On it is to be seen the personification of
the queenly city, holding in her hands the laurel-wreath of empire,
while at her feet her two subject rivers pour bounteously from their
tributary urns.
But this medallic fertility, which has scattered the coins of Siscia
over the fields of remotest Britain, was only the natural result of her
commercial eminence. She was the staple of trade between the
Adriatic and the Danubian basin—old Celtic trade-routes probably
surviving the Roman conquest. ‘Siscia,’ says Strabo, ‘lies at the
confluence of many rivers, all navigable. It is at the foot of the Alps,
whose streams bear to it much merchandise, Italian and other.
These are borne in waggons from Aquileja over Ocra, the lowest
part of the Alps, to Nauportus, and thence by the Corcoras into the
Save,’—and so to Siscia. The wine and oil wafted from more
southern climes into the havens of that Venice of Roman Adria; the
carpets and woollens of Patavium that rumbled into her markets by
the Æmilian Way; the furs and amber that the barbarian dealers
bore her from the cold shores of the Baltic, and Fennic forests;
perhaps, too, her own costly wine stored up in wooden barrels—all
these, we may believe, and more, were piled on the Aquilejan
waggons and dragged up the Alpine steep by oxen, thence to be
floated down the Save to the Siscian wharves. In the markets of
Siscia the Aquilejese merchants might lay in their stock of grain, or
hides, or keen Noric steel, and take their pick of cattle, or tattooed
Illyrian slaves. From the whole of Eastern Europe wares might flow
together here; for not only was Siscia at the confluence of the Save
and Kulpa, but she was at the junction of great roads, which, with
their branches, connected her with the Upper and Lower Danube,
with the interior of Dalmatia as well as her coast-land, and with
Nauportus and Italy, overland.
Not long ago an interesting relic was found in Croatia, which
perhaps speaks more clearly than anything else of the majesty to
which Siscia ultimately attained. It is a cedarn chest, once gilt, on
which are carved, by a late Roman hand, what are meant to be
personifications of the five premier cities of the Roman world. In the
centre—

Prima urbes inter, Divum domus, Aurea Roma,[165]

Rome, with her usual attributes of helmet, spear, and shield, is

enthroned as a goddess. To her right two more female figures,
distinguished by scrolls as Constantinople and Carthage, hold
wreaths in their hands and look towards Rome. On her left, two
other goddess-cities do the same; one is Nicomedia, the other Siscia.
The carving is probably fourth-century work; and certainly, exalted
as is the position claimed on it for Siscia, it is almost borne out by
her coinage of the same period, for the activity of her mint shows
that her commercial splendour was still at its zenith down to at least
the days of Theodosius the Great; while the coins of her rival
Sirmium wax fewer and fewer, and finally cease altogether. For
Sirmium may have been of greater value as a military station,[166]
and perhaps a pleasanter residence for emperors and bishops, and
therefore of greater administrative importance, and of more frequent
mention by historians; but that she was a greater city than Siscia—
as is so confidently assumed by some writers—may reasonably be
doubted, and the very bustle of Siscian markets may have deterred
princes from fixing here their court.
The comparatively high state of Siscian civilisation is also attested
by her coins—those superb medallions of gold and silver—those
gems of the fourth-century monetary art that stand out among the
poorer products of mints Gallic and Britannic. But what distinguishes
the Siscian coins as much as their workmanship is their peculiarly
Christian character. It is here that the first purely Christian type—
that, namely, which alludes to the vision of Constantine, first makes
its appearance—indeed, during the fourth century the sacred
monogram may almost be regarded as a Siscian mint-mark. And we
know from other sources that Christianity had early struck root here;
for not only is its existence attested by two sepulchral inscriptions of
Roman date discovered here, but its vitality is celebrated by a
relation of Jerome and a hymn of Prudentius,[167] recording the
martyrdom of a Siscian citizen and bishop, Quirinus:—

Insignem meriti virum

Quirinum placitum Deo,
Urbis mœnia Sisciæ
Concessum sibi martyrem
Complexu patrio fovent.
It was during the persecution of Diocletian and ‘Duke’ Galerius, as
Prudentius styles him, that Quirinus, bishop of Siscia, refused to
burn incense on the heathen altar at the bidding of the Governor
Maximus, on the plea—countenanced, indeed, by inspired writers,
but which a little philology would have spared him—‘that all the gods
of the Gentiles were demons.’ ‘If you will allow,’ said Maximus, ‘that
the gods which the Roman Empire serves are powerful, you shall be
made priest to the great god Jove, otherwise you shall be sent to
Amantius, præfect of First Pannonia, and receive from him condign
sentence of death.’ The stout-hearted bishop, refusing these terms,
is sent to Sabaria, where he is tried and condemned in the theatre,
and with a millstone round his neck is thrown from the bridge above
into the river; when, lo! despite the weight of rock, the water
miraculously supports him:—

Dejectum placidissimo
Amnis vertice suscipit;
Nec mergi patitur sibi,
Miris vasta natatibus
Saxi pondera sustinens,

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.
Head of Sclavonian.
 CHAPTER III.
THROUGH THE BOSNIAN POSSÁVINA AND
USSORA.

Insurrectionary Agitation among Southern Sclaves—Proclamation of the Pashà of

Bosnia—We land in Turkish Brood—Moslem Children—Interview with the
Mudìr—Behaviour of our Zaptieh—Peasants of Greek Church—How these
Christians love one another—Arrive at Dervent—Interview with Pashà of
Banjaluka—Hajduks’ Graves—Rayah Hovel—Difficulty with our Host—Doboj;
its old Castle and Historical Associations—A South Sclavonic Patriot—First
Mountain Panorama—The ‘Old Stones,’ a prehistoric Monument—Tešanj: its
old Castle and History—‘Une Petite Guerre’—Latin Quarter of Tešanj—Soused
by an old Woman—Influence of Oriental Superstitions on Bosnian Rayahs—
Argument with the Kaïmakàm—Excusable Suspicions.

We spent the next forenoon in exploring some of the neighbouring

house-communities, a description of which has already been given;
and about twelve, after a parting wrangle concerning passports with
a sentry on the river bank, took our places in the ferry-boat that was
to convey us to the Turkish side of the Save. As the shores of
Christendom were receding from our view, we had leisure to reflect
on some slightly sensational topics which had lately been forcing
themselves on our attention. There could be no doubt that the
insurrection in the Herzegovina was at least holding its ground, and
that the agitation in the neighbouring Sclavonic lands was increasing
in intensity. A revolutionary committee had already been formed in
Agram, at Laibach, Spalato, and other Austrian towns. At Agram we
came in for a concert in aid of the insurgents; at Siszek there arrived
the same night as ourselves thirty Herzegovinians, who had left the
employments which they had in Free Serbia, and were hurrying to
aid their revolted brothers, while many Croats and Slovenes from
Agram, Marburg, Laibach, and other places were—so the Siszekers
assured us—also leaving for the seat of war. Vague rumours of
insurgent successes were afloat, and Siszek was thrown into a
considerable state of excitement by a report that Mostar and
Trebinje had both fallen into the hands of the Christians. We were
assured from many sides that if the insurrection were to spread a
little further, the rayahs of Bosnia would rise also; and fears were
entertained for the safety of the Christian minority in Serajevo, the
capital of Bosnia, and the head-quarters of Moslem fanaticism.
But what touched us more nearly was a proclamation which had
just appeared, signed by Dervish Pashà, the Turkish governor-
general of Bosnia, the authorship of which the wily Vali, later on,
thought fit to deny, but which for the present had the desired effect.
By it the whole of Bosnia was subjected to martial law, as well as the
Herzegovina, and its terms were vague and comprehensive enough
to legalise any violence. ‘It is my will,’ so ran the manifesto, ‘that
every true believer in the Prophet have the right to seize and bring
before me anyone suspected of taking part in the revolt, or of giving
aid to the enemies of our exalted master the Sultan. And I order that
all strangers direct themselves according to the laws of the country
during the insurrection, which probably will not long endure, for
already doth the sun of the insurgents verge towards its setting. And
assuredly’—we were informed in the poetic imagery of the East
—‘shall the lightning of the Sultan strike all who order not
themselves according to my will.’
‘But as to those who harbour the unruly, by the sword shall they
be cut off; and in all God’s houses subject to our jurisdiction shall
prayers be offered up for the help of God and the protection of the
prophet, on our exalted master the Sultan and his government.’
 View on River Save, looking from Slavonian Brood towards the Bosnian Shore.

But for better or worse our Rubicon is passed, and we land on the
Turkish shore, among a group of turbaned gentry, from amongst
whom emerges a somewhat tattered soldier, who conducts us to the
square, verandahed, Karaula or guard-house. Here we are asked by
another official, in Italian, if we have anything to declare in our
knapsacks, and having satisfied him by a simple ‘Niente,’ we are
again beckoned on by our soldier, and follow him into the narrow
street of Turkish Brood to show our pass to the Præfect or Mudìr.
Our appearance created as great a sensation as was decorous
among the big-turbans of the townlet; crowds of Bosnian gamins
followed at our heels; and we caught a passing glimpse of a dusky
Ethiopian maiden white-toothing us in the most coquettish fashion
from behind a door. As the Mudìr was not at home, we had to wait in
the front room of his Konak,[171] if indeed a place which possesses
neither door nor window, and is completely open to the air on the
street side, can be called a room; and taking our seat on the
platform or raised floor—which in the other houses of the town, as
generally in Turkey, is used as the squatting-place of the
shopkeepers, and the counter on which to display their wares—
became the gazing-stock of a motley assemblage, who, crowding
round in the street, or taking reserved seats in the melon-shop
opposite, ‘twigged us’ at their leisure.
We, too, obtained a breathing space in which to realise in what a
new world we were. The Bosniacs themselves speak of the other
side of the Save as ‘Europe,’ and they are right; for to all intents and
purposes a five minutes’ voyage transports you into Asia. Travellers
who have seen the Turkish provinces of Syria, Armenia, or Egypt,
when they enter Bosnia, are at once surprised at finding the familiar
sights of Asia and Africa reproduced in a province of European
Turkey. Thrace, Macedonia, the shores of the Ægean, Stamboul
itself, have lost or never displayed many Oriental customs and
costumes; but Bosnia remains the chosen land of Mahometan
Conservatism, the Goshen of the faithful, ennobled by the tombs of
martyrs, and known in Turkish annals as the ‘Lion that guards the
gates of Stamboul.’ Fanaticism has struck its deepest roots among
her renegade population, and reflects itself even in their dress. In no
other European province of Turkey is the veiling of women so strictly
attended to. It is said that not long ago the fine egg-shaped turbans
of the Janissaries might still be found in Bosnia, and the Maulouka,
the most precious of all mantles, which had died out elsewhere, long
survived among these Bosnian Tories. As to the introduction of
fezzes, the Imperial order almost provoked a revolt here; and to this
day among Mahometans the fez is almost confined to officials, the
rest of the believers going about in the capacious turbans of the
East.
The very darkness of the background, the dirty narrow street, the
timber houses, the time-stained wooden minaret, acted as a foil to
the Oriental brilliance of the dress and merchandise, the scarlet
sashes, the gold embroidery, those gorgeous little maidens—doomed
most of them by sweet thirteen to take the winding-sheets of
Turkish matrimony, and bury their beauty in harems, where by
thirty-five they are turned old hags; but now, poor little butterflies!
fluttering out their brief child-glimpse of the world—light-smocked, in
linen chemises, chevroned with rainbow threads of colour—bagged
as to their legs, but beflowered with roses of Shiraz—pranked out
with gilt coin-bespangled fezzes, whence fountain-like the separate
jets of their tresses trickle forth in a score of silken plaits; Perilets,
with sisterly arms round each other’s necks, deigning to smile on the
strange Giaours. There, too, are their little brothers, showing more
of their slender legs, but gay as their sisters, in bags and tunics, with
pates not yet artificially baldened, but long-haired as the little
maidens, only in softer cascades, falling down their backs, and
fringing their foreheads. Capillati (Copi is still the word for boys
among the Roumans of East Europe)—one almost hoped to see a
bulla round their necks! and indeed I doubt not that they wore many
a potent spell against the Evil Eye.
There was one little lad of about five, with blue eyes and hair of
Scandinavian lightness, the cut of which called up some tiny page of
Charles the Second’s days, who, with some of his playmates,
crowded so near as to shut out the view of the two mysterious
Franks from the grave and reverend signiors behind, whereupon a
Turk, who happened to hold a small switch in his hand, came
forward and flicked these small flies away. The whip just touched our
small urchin, who moved out of the way with the others. He did not
cry, but more, as it seemed, in sorrow than in anger, fixed on his
flagellator a look of such childish dignity and grave surprise as
should have annihilated anyone less impassive than a Turk. It said,
as plainly as a look can speak, ‘I am not accustomed to such
treatment.’ The look of a child may seem a slight matter, but it was
eloquent of the tenderness with which the Turks treat children—a
tenderness which does them honour. Such an unkind cut was a new
experience in the little lad’s life.
When our observers had taken sufficient stock of us, the propriety
of showing us into an upper room of the Konak suggested itself to
some of them, and we were accordingly led upstairs, and invited to
squat in a den belonging to some subordinate official, who, while
waiting the Mudìr’s arrival, treated us to coffee. It was a very dirty
little room, in which the rags and tatters of an old piece of faded
carpet and rotten matting made shift for chairs and sofas; these,
with a stove such as has been described already, pigeon-holed with
pots, and a broken water-jar, completing the inventory of the
furniture. After a tedious delay, during which we supposed the
worthy præfect to be at his mid-day prayers, or more probably his
siesta, the Mudìr arrived, and we were ushered into his room of
state, distinguished from that of his sub. by containing a larger area
of dirt, and by displaying a larger piece of carpet with a more
capacious patch, but also by possessing a greasy divan on which we
were beckoned by the Mudìr to take our seat by his side. Our official
had turned out in grey clothes of European cut, and a regulation fez;
but as he could only speak Turkish, Arabic, and Bosniac, and as we
could none of these, an interpreter had to be found in the shape of
an Italian-speaking Dalmatian woman before we could hold much
communication. The Mudìr was well satisfied with our Bujuruldu; but
when we expressed our determination to walk through the country,
he was fairly taken aback. It was evidently a case which had never
before come within his official experience. There was no precedent
for such conduct. Nobody, he assured us, ever thought of travelling
on foot in Bosnia; if we wanted a horse or a waggon, he was ready
to oblige—but to walk! We had to explain that walking was a
weakness of English people; and at last, as I think the good man
began to believe that it was connected with our religion, and that we
were pilgrims of some sort, he gave over trying to convert us to the
Bosnian way of thinking, and told off a Zaptieh to escort us to our
that day’s destination, Dervent. Our attempts to rid ourselves from
having this encumbrance failed, as the autograph letter of the Pashà
made him responsible for our safety.
We left Turkish Brood, after first mollifying our Zaptieh with a
present of tobacco, and for a few miles followed the road along the
Save valley, stopping once to purchase at a roadside cottage some
sweet milk—slátko miléko. I have come upon some of our Sclavonic
cousins who could understand the English word! The homesteads
were very like the Croatian and Slavonian in general arrangement.
The common yard and paling, the wooden cottage roofed with long
shingles, and the various outhouses, were there, but the wickerwork
maize-garners were less capacious and more like large clothes-
baskets, and the whole was on a smaller scale. We heard that the
system of house-communities existed hereabouts to a much less
extent than on the Austrian side of the Save, but here and there as
many as three or four families are to be found in the same
homestead with a common house-father and house-mother. Round
each cottage were a number of plum-trees, and in each yard was a
small distillery for making Slivovitz. Further on, a Serbian merchant
drove up in an Arabà or native waggon, and courteously invited us
to take a quarter of an hour’s lift, which we accepted, though it was
sad jolty work, and we were not sorry to get out again.
Soon after passing a Turkish graveyard, with the usual turbaned
tombstones—some of the turbans of majestic height—we turned off
from the Save valley, and, leaving the road, waded across the Ukrina
stream, when to our astonishment the Zaptieh, instead of following,
stood shivering on the brink; but our surprise was turned to
indignation when the fellow shouted to a Christian woman, who was
passing along the other bank, to carry him across! We gave vent to
such forcible expressions of disapprobation as deterred the poor
woman from obeying my lord’s commands; but a rayah man coming
up, the Zaptieh, notwithstanding our indignant Jok! jok! (No! no!)
succeeded in requisitioning him, and in spite of all our gesticulations
the Christian carried over our escort on his back. When the Zaptieh
saw that we were very angry, he recompensed his bearer with a
handful of tobacco; and it must be owned that the Christian seemed
satisfied with the transaction, and that neither the leggings nor the
boots of the Zaptieh were adapted for rapid disembarrassment.
Further on we ascended a gentle chain of hills by delicious foot-
paths across hayfields, or amidst luxuriant crops of maize—through
oak-forests, and, what was stranger, woods of plum-trees laden with
small unripe fruit; and now and again along pretty country lanes,
where the hedges feasted us with a profusion of blackberries whose
size attested the richness of the soil, and whose flavour seemed to
combine all that was nicest in blackberry and mulberry. Both fields
and hedgerows were varied with a beautiful array of flowers,
amongst which I noticed yellow snapdragon, sky-blue flax, a sweet
flowering-rush, and a heath of wondrous aroma.
About sunset we stopped at a small shed on the banks of the
Ukrina, where, seated among a group of Christian peasants, we
regaled ourselves with black coffee which was being dispensed at
the rate of about a farthing a small cup. Hard by, fixed over the
Ukrina stream, was a water-mill for grinding corn, of the most
primitive construction, an idea of which is best given by the
accompanying diagram. These turbines are universal throughout
Bosnia, and are to be also seen in Croatia.

Plan of Turbine Mill.

 The peasants here were mostly Vlachs, that is, they belonged to
the Greek Church. The men wore red and black turbans, a flowing
white linen tunic like the Croats, with a fringe of that coarse lace
which we had noticed in Slavonia. A leathern belt wound several
times round the waist served as a pocket for their smoking
apparatus; their trousers were worn loose and expansive as the
Croatian, sometimes close about the calf; their hair was sometimes
plaited together behind, and sometimes hung down in two elf-locks
—the crown of the head being shaven, as with the Turks. As to the
women, they were dressed in light tunics and aprons, much as
Croats and Slavonians, but their hair was often plaited like the men’s
into a single pig-tail. On their head was a white kerchief arranged in
a fashion peculiar to themselves, with a flower-like tassel at one
side; and they usually wore in front of the two necessary aprons a
superfluous black one with long fringe. Here is a Greek Christian girl
that we saw at a well, and who graciously allowed us to slake our
thirst from the bucket she had just drawn up.