CHAPTER XII
FROM SARAJEVO TO THE COAST
Jablaniča—Mostar—Across the Mountains—The Balkan Riviera—Ragusa: The Fairy City of the Adriatic.
From Sarajevo the narrow-gauge railway line makes a gradual ascent of the mountains, the engineer assuring the safety of himself and his passengers now and again by applying the rachet attachment, for the grades are very steep. Finally the divide is crossed a short while before the train reaches the picturesque little village of Konjiča, a meagre assortment of red-roofed, white-walled houses, including the inevitable mosque tower, literally dumped in among the green hills with pleasing effect.
Farther along at Jablaniča—where, although a village of but two hundred souls, the accommodations of a good hotel beckon to the traveller to spend some time in this vicinity, should the grandeur of the surrounding mountain scenery appeal to him as it did to us—a gorge of the Narenta is crossed and from this point the line follows the defile of the river as far as Mostar. A military road of stone foundation, which would tempt the most apprehensive of automobile tourists, twines itself, like a white thread, along the opposite side of the river from the railway, now bridging with stone arches the waterfall of a mountain stream at its debouchment into the river below, now circling the base of an overhanging cliff, now shooting into a short tunnel blasted through the solid rock. A wall of stone masonry borders the outer edge of the road at the dangerous places.
While the adjacent mountains are wild, rugged and severe in their bleakness, the valleys between them are fertile and productive. Almost any cereal which thrives in temperate latitudes grows readily. Indeed, in travelling through Bosnia to-day the farms of prosperous land-owners so stretch themselves across the undulating sections of country between the higher mountain ranges that the observer might easily imagine himself circling a great agricultural section of England or America.
Jablaniča is a much-patronized summer resort for the people of both Sarajevo and Mostar, and from it as a starting-point climbing excursions into the mountains may be made in every direction. Responsible guides will be supplied at the hotel for comparatively small sums. The air here is delightfully clear and invigorating; even on the warmest days the cooling shade of the extensive gardens which surround the hotel is much too enticing to allow one to hurry along to Mostar. As a quiet, charming place to recuperate, for as long a time as you will, from the fatigues of travel in the Balkans, I can suggest a no more convenient, or a no more fascinating spot than right here at the hotel in this diminutive village of Jablaniča. If you do not care to climb mountains you may revel in a general rest, for a few days at least. Even the name of the place requires no special lingual effort to pronounce, once you become familiar with these Slavonic combinations; you merely have to say “Yab-lā-nitz-ā”—it just sort of rolls along your tongue from the palate to the lips, and then drops.
In Mostar, the capital of the Herzegovina, the sewing-machine advertisements offer about the only hint that you are living in the twentieth century, for this city seems to have adhered more closely to mediæval methods than any in the Balkans.
The Narenta River, which divides the town, is a shallow mountain stream at times, but after a period of heavy rains it surges down through the mountain gorges and over the grotesque lavic rocks, ripping away its banks and necessitating the inhabitants of the town whose homes border its scaly sides to build their houses upon stilts.
Mostar may boast of, or bemoan, as the case may be, a collection of thirty mosques, for, of its fourteen thousand population, half are Mohammedans, and two thousand of the remaining half comprise the troops of an Austria-Hungarian garrison. The streets of the town are dirty and narrow, and the sun beats down between the white walls of the houses as if in the tropics. A bridge of modern steel construction spans the Narenta just near the hotel of that name, while half a mile farther down the river one of the most famous bridges in all Europe stretches its single arch out of the shadows across the sea-blue water of the Narenta, which gurgles in and out among the volcanic boulders ninety feet below the key-stone. The age of this bridge is indeterminable. It is supposed to have been built by the Cæsars at a time when the Herzegovina was a Roman province. Be that as it may, nothing like its construction or architecture is to be seen in bridge-building in Europe, no matter how ancient or how modern, and it is still used by market-people and the inhabitants of that quarter of the city. One would almost expect to see a centurion or two, in togas and sandals, walk out across the old structure any minute.
The veiled Turkish women of Mostar are world-famous for the style of their headdress, which is as characteristic of this city as the old bridge itself. In addition to being heavily veiled they wear a sort of black hood of stiffened material, which protrudes in front like the upper half of the pointed bill of a bird.
But, aside from the Roman bridge, the veiled women, and an old Turkish graveyard, there is really nothing much of interest in Mostar. At any rate, after a short visit here, you will be a little tired of the sameness of these cities, which the Turk fain would still hold as his own, and you will want to hurry along to the Dalmatian coast towns, as different from those you have recently visited as day is from night; different climates, different peoples having different customs, different architectures; all so different that when you come upon them you will wonder if you haven’t been awakened suddenly, then launched upon another dream-excursion.
Again, after leaving Mostar, the railroad commences to climb, snake-like, over the mountains toward the coast, for the building of this road has required no small amount of engineering skill. It would be difficult to find in England or America, or in fact in any other country, a railway line more substantially built or kept in better condition. The crushed rock track ballast is evened off at each side of the rails as if with a pair of calipers, the roadbed is smooth and the grades, although long, are not as steep as would be imagined, considering the heights to be climbed. At Ravna the final ascent of the mountains is commenced and from here to the top the road is built on an almost continuous wall of stone masonry.
As you wind around the mountain peaks wonderful views of the valley below, dotted here and there with white specks of human beings busily at work, are before you, now on one side, now on the other. The fields resemble square patches of brown or green plush rubbed both ways, according to the angle of light as it falls upon them. Ahead, the railway line seems to be made up of tunnels, great stone arches that bridge deep ravines and cuts and fills which follow one another in rapid succession. On the distant hills you may see the remains of watch towers once used by lookouts, from which were observed the movements of Turkish invaders in the days when the gates of Vienna were threatened by the depredating Mohammedans.
A little beyond Uskoplje, as suddenly as you would come into the light from the darkness of a tunnel, is displayed before you, as if molded with clay upon a great flat canvas, a most extraordinary panorama of that part of the Dalmatian coast.
Might you have had the uninterrupted view of the engineer you would have seen at first but a narrow defile in the mountains ahead, in the centre of which the rails of the road meet in perspective, like two glossy ribbons, and then seem to shoot out into a blue-vaulted void beyond. By bringing into play a very little imagination you might be willing to believe you were nearing the edge of the earth. But, as you approach, a panorama unfolds itself,—a panorama of that strip of territory which fringes the north-eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, Austria-Hungary’s only coast line. It is a panorama of an historic land of perennial loveliness. It is a panorama of a land of flowers, of sunshine and deep shadows; a land of wonderful walls and bold bastiles; a land of gayety, where Austria-Hungarian aristocracy, all-appreciative of its charms, sits and looks out upon the amethystine waters by day, and strolls languorously along the sea-parades by night; a land of quaint, fortified cities, jealous of their histories; a land of interesting, picturesque, unsophisticated peasant peoples. Withal it is a new, and, as yet, comparatively an unpenetrated land to the English-speaking traveller, scenery-lover or pleasure-seeker, and I have taken the liberty to coin a new name for it—The Balkan Riviera.
From this point in the defile the road twists and turns like a scenic railway, and almost doubles in its tracks as it zig-zags down the precipitous sides of the mountains, the Adriatic ever blending into the gray sky-line in the distance.
Finally, after making in its descent many snake-like coils, the train passes the source of the beautiful Ombla, with its swan-dotted lake, and you will have arrived at Gravosa, the port and railway terminus of Ragusa. In three hours, it seems, you have been hustled from a temperate into a tropical climate.
But for those who do not care for travel through Bosnia and the Herzegovina there is a vastly more convenient route, possibly one that makes a more perfect pleasure trip, by which to reach this Balkan Riviera, for Trieste, just across the gulf from Venice, and Fiume, on the eastern shores of the Istrian Peninsula, are also gateways to this land of types and flowers.
If you take steamer from either of these towns you will be whisked down along the Dalmatian coast, through the fjord-like passages between the thousands of islands which form the tassels to the fringe of country beyond, and by and by you will come within sight of that little old town of many vicissitudes—Ragusa.
It seems almost an enchanted spot and you will call it “The Fairy City of the Adriatic.”