I tried to penetrate to the scene of the fighting in Herzegovina, but was on all sides warned that from Grahovo it was impossible; it was necessary to return to Ragusa.  There I learned that a fight had just taken place on the road between Trebinje and Ragusa.  There is a good carriage road between the two cities, and, in company with two colleagues, and under the guidance of a daring carriage driver, we went to Trebinje.  The plain between the frontier and Trebinje is a waste of limestone crags and blocks, scattered as if after a combat of Titans, a miserable stunted vegetation springing between the rocks, capable of hiding thousands of men within a rifle-shot from the road, and, as we found, actually hiding a good many.  But word had been sent before by our friends the patriots, and we only caught a glimpse of one insurgent, and saw one dead Turk, a victim of the last skirmish, whose body the garrison had not dared come out to bury.

We brought the first news the pasha had received in five days.  He gave me, for official information, his version of the late fight, in which old Peko had drawn a convoy of provisions into an ambush and captured it, killing eighty men of the escort, whose heads one of my colleagues had seen stuck up on poles at the insurgent camp, but in which the pasha admitted a loss of only twenty or thirty men.  I had seen many Turkish pashas, but never one of that type,—­amiable, lethargic, and quite indisposed to do any harm to anybody, and he could not understand why the insurgents could not let him alone; he did not want to disturb them.  He complained bitterly that ill-disposed people had been stirring up the population of his province and that, though he had a force of two thousand men, the disorderly Herzegovinians made it very difficult for his men to go about.  It was really pathetic to hear him.  He wished harm to no one; so courteous and civilized-over was he that one could easily imagine that such officials at Constantinople might give the Turcophile color to a corps diplomatique.  Invited to coffee by the Austrian consul, I heard the views of a man whose experiences have been equaled by few, for he had been fourteen years at that post; and he fully confirmed the impressions I had from the refugees at Grahovo.  But, on the other side of the matter, I was really interested in the Turkish troops, so good-natured, so patient, and not in the least concerned at having been several months besieged and blockaded, supplies short, and relief not even hoped for.  I hated the system, but I could not help liking its victims on both sides.

Returning to Ragusa, I found Ljubibratich on the point of returning to the insurgents’ camp at Grebci, just over the Austrian frontier, and only about three hours’ walk, we were told, from Ragusa.  They came with unrestricted freedom from camp into Ragusa, carried away what supplies of any kind they needed, and, when ill, came to the hospital of the city.  Dalmatia and its medley of races are still