Travels in the Slavonic provinces of Turkey-in-Europe, / By Sebright, Georgina Mary Muir (Mackenzie),

CHAPTER II.
JOURNEY IN BOSNIA IN AUGUST, 1875.

TOWARDS the end of July, 1875, we left England to return to our school established at Serajevo for the purpose of training female teachers. We intended to make a recruiting expedition through some parts of the country which we had not yet visited, our plan being to induce the Serb communities in different parts of the country to send one or more girls to be educated as schoolmistresses, each for her own native place.

At Vienna we saw General Zach, the adjutant of the Prince of Serbia, who apprised us that the revolt in the Herzegovina was likely to become serious, that it would probably extend into Bosnia northward along the Dalmatian frontier into Turkish Croatia, and would spread simultaneously along the Serbian frontier and throughout the mountainous districts. He added that it would be impossible for the princes of Serbia and Montenegro to restrain their subjects from rushing to the aid of their brethren in race and religion. He urged us not to venture into Bosnia at a time when the desperate rising of the crushed and abject Bosnian Christians would call forth a terrible vengeance from the armed and fanatical Mahommedan population.

On the Save steamer we conversed with a Hungarian doctor in the Turkish service on his way to rejoin the cavalry regiment at Banjaluka. He was of opinion

that the rising would become "schrecklich ernst." The causes were deep and widespread. He knew the country too well to repeat fables about foreign instigation; but he related with the freshness of an eye-witness the ever-recurring facts of the intolerable oppression exercised by the farmers of the taxes, of the bribery, corruption, and extortion, systematic among the Turkish officials.

We visited Turkish Gradishka under the guidance of Vaso Vidević, a native Bosnian merchant, and the leader of the deputation to Vienna in 1873 to entreat protection from the Emperor. We were paddled over the river in one of the long narrow Save canoes, hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, and found ourselves once more amid the Oriental barbarism, the dirt, squalor, and misery which everywhere mark the frontier line of the Asiatic encroachments into Europe. The houses are built almost entirely of wood, here and there varied with plaster, and their condition was ruinous. In the tcharsia, or bazaar, were sitting turbaned Turks, cross-legged, in their shops, before the usual paltry stores of water-melons, Manchester cottons, leather shoes, rice, sugar, clay pipes, and little coffee cups. At last we came to a shop of European aspect, with counters arranged within, and the name Bozo Ljubojevićh, painted in bright colours without. This was the shop of the richest Christian merchant in the place, one of those who had been obliged to flee into Austria two years before. He owned the largest house in the village, a very respectable building surrounded by a garden. Here we sat talking with his wife and family, served with coffee and sweetmeats. In 1873 armed Turks surrounded the house, insisting that ammunition was concealed there, and they made a rude but fruitless search. This house has been now completely sacked and demolished; the whole family are in exile

in Austria, and Ljubojevićh is a ruined man. In the poor little church Vaso showed us with pride a bell, which the brave Christians of Gradishka had dared to hang up in accordance with their rights: the only bell in any Orthodox church in Bosnia which could be heard from the outside. The Mussulmans would not tolerate the sound. But Vaso boasted that their bell could be heard even across the Save. Close to the church was a school, and on a plot of ground belonging to the community they were going to build shops, the rent of which would help them with their girls' school. At that time the town contained 150 Orthodox, 50 Latin, and 500 Turkish houses.

The next day we drove to Banjaluka, four hours distant, across a level plain, surrounded by hills, along the best road I have ever seen in Bosnia. At a short distance from the town we crossed the tramway of that fragment of railway which had been completed between Banjaluka and Novi. It has now been wholly destroyed, the bridges thrown down and rails torn up.

We paid a visit to a Bosnian family to whom we had brought a letter. The father, then absent, was one of the principal merchants in the place. The mother was an Austrian Slāv, a native of New Gradishka; the daughters, who were beautiful girls, had been educated by governesses from Austria, and are now married to Serb merchants, living in Belgrade. It was evident, with all their courtesy and real pleasure at seeing friends, that they were no little troubled at our coming. They told us that any intercourse with strangers rendered them objects of suspicion to the Turks. The father of the family had been seized and imprisoned in 1873, solely because he was on intimate terms with the then Austrian vice-consul, who was known to be friendly to the Christians, and eager to inform himself about their

condition. They said that to avoid persecution they had requested the new Austrian vice-consul not to come to the house; that a Mussulman who had been long in their service had warned them to be exceedingly on their guard, and that they felt their lives and property were not safe. How much worse was it with the poor peasant, fleeced by the Mahommedan landowner, by the tax-gatherer, and by the native priest and Greek bishop, till nothing remains to him but the bare life! His food is the coarsest black bread, boiled beans, and maize; meat he does not taste once a year. In reply to our inquiries, they told us they had known instances of girls being carried off by Mussulmans in the villages in the neighbourhood of Banjaluka, but the cases were not so frequent now; though much that happened in the distant villages no one heard of.

Immediately after we left a zaptié came to the house, to inquire who we were and what we had come for. On our way to the inn we were met by another zaptié, who ordered us immediately to appear before the Turkish authorities. I replied that we were English ladies, and should do no such thing; and, producing our passport, told him to take it to the governor immediately, and to say that we must be supplied with an escort to Travnik the next day. The man said "Peki" (very well), and went off. Just then appeared the Turkish doctor, our friend of the Save steamer, who immediately went to the konak, to secure us a suitable guard for the journey.

Further information, however, as to the detestable condition of the hilly road between Banjaluka and Travnik, reported movements of Turkish redif (landwehr) about the country, together with the intense heat of the weather, decided us to give up the new route, and return to Gradishka, to take the steamer to Brod; much as we regretted the loss of a visit to the lake

scenery of Bosnia, and the old historic fortress and castle of Jaica.

The day after we left Banjaluka, Sunday, 15th August, commenced the rising in North Bosnia, at Kosarać, in the district of Priedor, and in the neighbourhood of Gradishka. We first heard of it on the Monday morning, when at an early hour the two girls of the family we had visited at Banjaluka appeared at the door of our room in the inn at Austrian Gradishka, telling us their mother had sent them away in the middle of the night with all the children and those of a neighbouring family to join their relations in Austria. They reported that "a Christian had killed a Turkish tax-gatherer," and that "Turks and Christians were now killing one another in the fields." Vaso Videvićh had been with us the afternoon of the preceding day, and he knew nothing then of what was taking place. He had told me a few days previously that the rayahs in North Bosnia could do nothing, that they were too weak to join the Herzegovinian example, and that they had no arms and no Montenegro to help them. Now we saw him earnestly consulting with some Bosnians in the garden of the inn. He was going away by the steamer, and he would never return to Turkish Gradishka. We found some months afterwards that he was then taking his whole wealth to purchase guns for the Christians. He conveyed these guns to Gradishka in Save boats, but the landing was ill arranged, and as the boats had lain there two or more days, it being perfectly well known that arms were on board, the officials were obliged to seize them. They were confiscated, and are to this day lying in the Austrian fortress at Gradishka. The same thing happened again and again. We heard that quantities of ammunition were confiscated, notwithstanding the readiness of every Slāv official along the Austrian

frontier to wink at the transmission of arms for the insurgents. On one occasion the poor fellows had contrived to store some powder on an island in the river. It got damp; they spread it out to dry, it caught fire, and several men were killed or badly hurt. Another time they had made a wooden cannon, which they crammed so full of powder that it burst, killing one man and wounding several. What could be expected from peasants who were wholly unaccustomed to the use of firearms, and absolutely illiterate and unskilled ? It is only surprising that the armies of the Porte have not been able long ago to put down the revolt of unarmed and ignorant peasants, but the rising is now stronger than ever,"The capital error in Europe was the not aiding and encouraging the Turkish provinces to rise entirely and simultaneously, and helping them even, if necessary, in their self-liberation, as she has helped the Turks, with arms and means, leaving the discipline of war and military organization to establish the bases of political organization. The process would have been costly, but would have been profitable in the end; for it would have made of these slaves, men, as it has, to a certain extent, done in Herzegovina and Bosnia—would have brought forward their natural chiefs and established a moral authority of the highest importance in the new state of things. War and death are not so dreadful as slavery and corruption; and it remains to be seen if the solution to be adopted will not in the end cost more bloodshed than the natural solution by a general insurrection."—"Herzegovina and the late Uprising." By W. J. STILLMAN. Longmans. 1877. and the Bosnian rayahs, who are apt to learn and keen-witted, now know better how to handle their weapons.

But to return to our own narrative. On board the steamer we found .the Croatian avocat, Dr. Berlić, returning home to Brod. He had come that morning from Sisseg, and he told us that at a short distance from Gradishka, on the Turkish bank of the Save, he had seen from the deck of the steamer women and children hiding in the bushes at the water's edge, and peasants running to and fro with hoes and spades in their hands. Certainly the rising had commenced. Vaso Vidević, pale as death, called us down into the cabin, and

implored us, with tears, not to go to Serajevo; persisting that it was highly dangerous to attempt the journey, and that the Austrian post-cart would very likely be fired at in the night. We told him, encouragingly, it might prove a very good thing for their cause if two English ladies were killed. To which he replied, "Yes; but not you." He was quite right in expecting the disturbances would spread eastward towards Brod. Many women and children were killed a few days afterwards at Kobash, near which place three Christians were impaled

"In the month of October, 1875, after the Turks had been two or three times defeated by the insurgents at Srbać and in the hills of Motaica, returning enraged and infuriated, they cut in pieces four peaceful Christian inhabitants, in the villages of Vlamka and Brusnika, named Simo Vrsoika, Marco Guzoica, Stevan Vrovać, and Jovan Lepir; and three they impaled alive on stakes on the banks of the Save above Kobash, opposite the Austrian churchyard and church of Kloster, namely, Mihail Snegotinac and his brother Aleksa Snegotinać, and Luka Drajevic, all three from the village Kaoć, in Bosnia, above Kobash. To this testify Kuzman Skolnik and Bozo Davidovish, who beheld it with their own eyes, and there are many others who will not give their names.

"(Signed) VASO VIDEVIĆ."

The impalement witnessed by Canon Liddon and Rev. M.. McColl was no solitary instance on the banks of the Save.

two months later. A fierce Beg, named Osman Aga, from Dervend, on the post-road to Serajevo, sallied forth and effectively checked for a time the rising in that neighbourhood by the massacre of many defenceless men, women, and children. Corpses were seen floating down the Save, and were cast on the sand of the island near Brod. The body of a man was brought on shore at Brod, and was found on examination by the town doctor to be terribly burnt across the chest. This poor victim had suffered one of the well-known Turkish tortures, which consists of heaping burning coals on the breast. These horrors took place a day or two after we reached Serajevo. We left Brod in the post-cart August 17th, travelled through the night and the following day in

safety, slept at Kiseljak in the khan (where I remember being awakened at midnight by angry Turkish women flinging charcoal in at our open window), and reached Serajevo August 19th.

Our arrival was unexpected, and never had the aspect of the house, and the garden, and the whole little establishment been so encouraging. The holidays were over, and we found pupils and teachers at work in the school-room, three new girls having been just brought from Nova Varosh, on the Serbian frontier.

Mr. Consul Holmes was absent, having accompanied his friend Dervish Pasha to Mostar, the Turkish headquarters in the Herzegovina. The aspect of affairs was considered very grave by the acting-consul, Mr. Freeman. Our Austrian friends held civil war to be imminent, and the wife of the Austrian consul-general, on the excuse of the illness of her mother, was on the point of starting with her little boy. Scarcely any regular troops were left in the town, every available man having been sent off to the Herzegovina. The Mahommedans of Serajevo are three times as numerous as the Christians, and are many of them exceedingly fanatical. They had sworn that it should go hard with the Christians in the town unless the rising in Bosnia was soon quelled. The defence of the place was almost wholly entrusted to some companies of the redif, composed of native Bosnian Mussulmans. The redif were being called out all over the country, and companies of fierce and wild-looking recruits on their way to the barracks were constantly passing our windows shouting their war-songs. One of the most cruel Bosnian Begs of Serajevo, Cengić Aga,Happily for the Christians, this Cengić Aga was wounded early in the insurrection, and died of his wounds at Mostar. who had large properties in the Herzegovina, had started to form a

troop of Mahommedan volunteers, that is, to collect a band of licensed and fanatical marauders.

The situation was anything but hopeful. We decided to turn these adverse circumstances to the furtherance of our educational plans and to carry off the most promising of the pupils to continue their training at Prague, in Bohemia. The consuls assured us it would be impossible at that moment to obtain for these girls, or for any Turkish subjects, the necessary teskeré, or passport; the authorities were refusing the numerous applications now made, and objected even to women and children leaving the country. Mr. Freeman did, however, obtain the requisite permission, in exchange for a written promise, signed and officially witnessed, that we would bring back these subjects of the Porte to the lands of the Sultan. At the same time we received from the representative of the pasha an earnest request to remain, for our going away would give a bad impression of the inability of the Turks to maintain order. We thought matters too serious to admit of our staying for the sake of keeping up appearances for the Turks, and we therefore effected our departure early on the morning of August 23rd.

We were a party of ten in all, occupying four of the springless carts of the country. Three of our drivers were Mussulmans, the other a most miserable Christian boy in their service, who was always blubbering, and seemed literally terrified out of his wits. On the way we were obliged to take on another cart for the luggage. This was driven by its owner, a Jewish khangee. One of our Mussulman drivers, a black man, who went by the name of "the Arab," got frightfully drunk, and behaved so ill that we appealed to the kaimakam at Shebsche to put him in prison. Notwithstanding the order of the kaimakam, at our next halt the Arab

appeared again, but he had been frightened into behaving himself better, and we had no further trouble with him. Another of the Mussulman drivers, a Turkish boy of sixteen, the son of a Bosnian Aga, owner of the horses, proved entirely beyond control. He stopped wherever he chose to stop, or he tore recklessly along the road, flogging his miserable horses and firing off pistols in the air. This boy was after the worst type of Bosnian Mussulmans. He was lank and small, with colourless eyes; wisps of his sandy hair escaped from the red handkerchief which was tied round a dirty white linen cap; his weazened boy's face was old with an expression of mingled cruelty, rapacity, and cunning. The day before we reached Dervend, the zapties told us the Turks and Christians were fighting there, and that the Turks were cutting the Christians to pieces; but we need not fear, whatever happened, for they had orders to defend us. These rumours referred to the raid of Osman Aga of Dervend, which I have already mentioned, and which had accomplished its cruel work some days previously. When we passed the next day through the Turkish portion of Dervend, which is on the post-road, all was quiet as the grave. Several times the new zaptiés, who seemed to suspect our sympathy with the Christians, volunteered to tell us about the revolt of the rayah; "Nasha rayah" (our rayah) "had actually dared to rebel, but the Sultan would send a great army to Bosnia along the Save."

Before we reached Brod, still expecting some difficulty in getting the Bosnian girls across, we made them put on European costume, which we had prepared for the occasion before leaving Serajevo. It may have been owing to this disguise that their teskeré, or passport, was never asked for, and we were allowed to cross the river with our whole party into Austrian territory, after a few

lazy questions as to the contents of our luggage. A peal of bells from the church in Austrian Brod sounded more cheerily than ever across the water, while we were waiting for the ferry-boat in a golden breadth of evening sunlight. The loveliness of the earth and sky had all along uttered a protest against the odious sights and sounds of human degradation which we witnessed on the way, and the cloudless starlit heavens had invited us to forget the dirt and the disgust of the Turkish shelters. We had spent the nights in a cart, guarded by the zaptiés, and knowing even then but little of the terrible scenes enacted in this beautiful land, to which Humanity is faithless.