Their captain then led the way up the stairs of his house to a chardak, or wooden balcony, on which was a table laid out with flowers.  The elders of the village now came separately, and had some conversation:  the priest on entering laid a melon on the table, a usual method of showing civility in this part of the country.  One of the attendant crowd was a man from Montenegro, who said he was a house-painter.  He related that he was employed by Mahmoud Pasha, of Zwornik, to paint one of the rooms in his house; when he had half accomplished his task, the dispute about the domain of Little Zwornik arose, on which he and his companion, a German, were thrown into prison, being accused of being a Servian captain in disguise.  They were subsequently liberated, but shot at; the ball going through the leg of the narrator.  This is another instance of the intense hatred the Servians and the Bosniac Moslems bear to each other.  It must be remarked, that the Christians, in relating a tale, usually make the most of it.

The last dish of our dinner was a roast lamb, served on a large circular wooden board, the head being split in twain, and laid on the top of the pyramid of dismembered parts.  We had another jovial evening, in which the wine-cup was plied freely, but not to an extravagant excess, and the usual toasts and speeches were drunk and made.  Even in returning to rest, I had not yet done with the pleasing testimonies of welcome.  On entering the bed-chamber, I found many fresh and fragrant flowers inserted in the chinks of the wainscot.

Krupena was originally exclusively a Moslem town, and a part of the old bazaar remains.  The original inhabitants, who escaped the sword, went either to Sokol or into Bosnia.  The hodgia, or Moslem schoolmaster, being on some business at Krupena, came in the morning to see us.  His dress was nearly all in white, and his legs bare from the knee.  He told me that the Vayvode of Sokol had a curious mental malady.  Having lately lost a son, a daughter, and a grandson, he could no longer smoke, for when his servant entered with a pipe, he imagined he saw his children burning in the tobacco.

During the whole day we toiled upwards, through woods and wilds of a character more rocky than that of the previous day, and on attaining the ridge of the Gutchevo range, I looked down with astonishment on Sokol, which, though lying at our feet, was yet perched on a lone fantastic crag, which exactly suited the description of the collector of Shabatz,—­“a city and castle built on the capital of a column of rock.”  Beyond it was a range of mountains further in Bosnia; further on, another outline, and then another, and another.  I at once felt that, as a tourist, I had broken fresh ground, that I was seeing scenes of grandeur unknown to the English public.  It was long since I had sketched.  I instinctively seized my book, but threw it away in despair, and, yielding to the rapture of the moment, allowed my eyes to mount step after step of this enchanted Alpine ladder.