Baron Kállay spoke to me first of the Zadrugas, the family communities which existed everywhere in India, as has so well been shown by Sir Henry Maine. “Since you published your book on Primitive Property” (which was, he says, at the time perfectly accurate), “many changes have taken place—the patriarchal family living on its collective and unalienable domain is rapidly disappearing. I regret this quite as much as you can do, but what can be done?” Speaking of Bosnia, “We are blamed,” he says, “for not having yet settled the agrarian question there, but Ireland is sufficient proof of the difficulties to be met with in solving such problems. In Bosnia these are further complicated by the conflict between the Mussulman and our Western laws. One must be on the spot and study these vexed questions there, fully to realize the hindrances to be met with at every step. For instance, the Turkish law constitutes the State the owner of all forests, and I am especially desirous of retaining rights on these for the purpose of preserving them; on the other hand, in accordance with a Slav custom, the villagers claim certain rights on the forests. If they merely cut the wood they needed for household purposes, only slight harm would be done; but they ruthlessly cut down trees, and then turn in their goats to eat and destroy the young shoots, so that there is never any chance of the old trees being replaced. These wretched animals are the plague of the country. Wherever they manage to penetrate, nothing is to be found but brushwood. “As the preservation of these woods is of the first necessity in so mountainous a region we intend to pass a law to this end, but the difficulty will be to enforce it. It would almost necessitate an army of keepers and constant struggles in every direction. What is really lacking in this fine country so favored by Nature is a _gentry_ who would set an example of agricultural progress, as in Hungary. I will give you an example in proof of this. As a boy I remember that a very heavy old-fashioned plough was used on our land. In 1848, compulsory labor was abolished, wages increased, and we had to cultivate ourselves. We at once sent for the most perfected American iron ploughs, and at the present day these alone are employed even by the peasants. Austria has a great mission to fulfil in Bosnia, which will in all probability benefit general Europe even more than ourselves. She must, by civilizing the country, justify her occupation of it.” “For myself,” I replied, “I have always maintained, in opposition to my friends the English Liberals, that the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Dalmatia was a necessity, and I fully explained this at a period when the question was not at all under discussion,[7] but the essential point of all is the making of a railway and roads to connect the interior with the ports on the coast. The Serayevo-Mortar line is absolutely a necessity.”