A stroll through the town shows at once the mixed character of the people, for all the names of streets are written up in three languages—Turkish, Croatian, and Serb. The noisy thoroughfares are crowded with Europeans, mixed up with baggy-legged men and veiled women, men in fezes in all stages of disintegration, while the Bosnian ladies wear the queerest head-gear I have ever set eyes upon. The hair is parted in the middle and brushed down straight, while upon it is stuck a tiny pork-pie cap of gaudy-coloured chintz or silk, edged with a thousand gilt sequins sewn closely together, the most ugly and most unbecoming head-dress imaginable. Yet it is evidently the _mode_, and is worn by European ladies in all other respects attired as one would find them in Vienna or in Budapest. But this is Bosnia, and assuredly strange things happen here under the unjust rule of Austria. Strangers seldom come to Sarayevo. In the heart of that mountainous region between the Save and the Adriatic, only approached from the south by that rack-and-pinion railway, or from the north by the one train a day from that un-get-at-able station in Slavonia, Bosnche-Brod, it is entirely shut away from European influence—or European eyes, for the matter of that—and quite off the track taken by strangers in the Balkans. Indeed, I would never advise the intending traveller to take that route from Ragusa to Belgrade. Better by far take the steamer right up the Adriatic to Fiume, and thence by rail, as it is quicker, and much less fatiguing. I did not go to Bosnia, however, so much to see its capital as to obtain some idea of the present system of government there, and to hear from the lips of the people themselves the advantages, or disadvantages, of the rule of His Majesty the Emperor Francis Josef. With many well-known men in Sarayevo I talked. I heard both sides. But I am bound to admit that some of the facts proved to me were utterly amazing, showing how ill and unjustly governed is both Bosnia and Herzegovina. I had read André Barre’s recent book, _La Bosnie-Herzegovina_, and had doubted the very serious and direct charges which he brings against the Austrian Administration. Therefore I went to see for myself, to make inquiry, and to thoroughly investigate. The opinion I formed, after analysing the many facts placed before me, is that the present oppressed state of Bosnia is surely a vivid object-lesson to Servia, where day by day Austria is endeavouring, by the most ingenious and unscrupulous forms of intrigue, to obtain a footing. This latter I will explain more fully in my chapters on the future of Servia. Suffice it here to say that poor struggling Bosnia is to-day helpless beneath the talons of the Austrian eagle, and that the administration is a shameful travesty of civilised rule.