some of these relics of Eastern warfare possessed as pointed and applicable dicta as that of Capua, and had I had sufficient time I should have scraped off the mould and rust of accumulated ages, and have copied some of the inscriptions.  That they could be fired was placed beyond a doubt by the promiscuous medley of explosions which greeted us, and which I purposely abstain from calling a salute, so unlike was it to everything one has been wont to classify under that name.

Omer Pacha passed that night in the house of an opulent Mussulman, while I was billeted upon the principal Christian inhabitant, a Greek[O] shopkeeper.  These men, one of whom is to be found in most of the principal towns and large villages, may be regarded as the Parsees of Turkey.  Their shops are tolerably well supplied with European commodities, and their owners are far in advance of their fellow-townsmen in cleanliness and civilisation.  Yet, in spite of this, some of the modes in which they delight to honour even the passing stranger are far from acceptable.  Among the least objectionable of these is the encouragement of their children to seize and slobber over his hands, the only manner of avoiding which is to keep them thrust deeply into his pockets—­an odious custom elsewhere, but here indispensable.  Before bidding a last farewell to the house of my entertainer, I must pay a grateful tribute to its comfort and cleanliness.  In vain I pressed him to accept some return for his hospitality, and it was at length only in the form of a present to one of the aforesaid children that I could induce this kind-hearted family to take any memento of their grateful guest.

On leaving Stolatz, our route lay in a SE. direction along the bridle-path upon the right bank of the river.  During the first two hours, the rocks on our left were quite bare and devoid of all signs of vegetation.  Afterwards they assumed a far less barren appearance, being covered with good strong brushwood, which grows down close to the water’s edge.  The water is itself clear and shallow, and at one point suddenly disappears—­an instance of that phenomenon so common in these countries, to which allusion has already been made.  Above the point of disappearance, the valley has all the aspect of the dry bed of a river, with its sloping banks and pebbly bottom.

Our force, which on leaving Mostar had consisted only of a small body of cavalry for escort purposes, and some hundreds of irregulars, was augmented at Stolatz by half a battalion of regular infantry.  That the picturesque effect produced by these Bashi Bazouks (conspicuous among whom were the Albanian levies) was heightened by the addition of the regulars, in their soiled garments and woollen great coats, I cannot pretend to say; yet let no one endeavour to depreciate the Turkish infantry who has not seen them plodding gallantly on beneath a broiling sun, and in a country which, by its stony roughness, would tax the energies of the stoutest Highlander.