“Where the rocks finish and the trees appear, there begins Bosnia.” So said the Dalmatians formerly. But many parts of Bosnia have now lost their clothing of verdure. The table-lands of the Herzegovina and Montenegro, no less than Dalmatia, have been despoiled of their forests, but Bosnia proper still remains a country of woods. Nearly one-half its area is covered with forests. In the valleys trees have almost disappeared, for the peasant is allowed to wield his axe {129} without hindrance, but in the virgin forests of the mountains trees still abound. The principal trees of Europe are met with in these magnificent woods: walnut-trees, chestnut-trees, limes, maples, oaks, beeches, ash-trees, birches, pines, firs, and larches. Austrian speculators, unfortunately, avail themselves of the roads which begin to open up the interior of the country to devastate these forests, which ought to be preserved with the greatest care. The song of birds is but rarely heard in these sombre woods, but wild animals abound in them. They shelter bears, wild boars, and deer, and the number of wolves is so large that their skins form one of the most important articles of Bosnian commerce. Taken as a whole, Bosnia ranks among the most fertile countries of Europe, and few regions surpass it in the beauty of its rural scenery. In some parts of the country, and particularly near the Save, large herds of hogs, almost wild, roam through the oak forests. Hence the epithet of “country of hogs” which the Turks have derisively given to Bosnia. With the exception of the Jews, the gipsies, and the few Osmanli officials, soldiers, and merchants in the principal towns, the entire population of the country is of Slav race. The inhabitants of Kraina, near the Austrian frontier, call themselves Croats, but they scarcely differ from the Bosnian Servians and Raitzes of ancient Rascia, now known as the sandjak of Novibazar. On the classical soil of Rascia originated most of those cherished _piesmas_, or popular songs, in which the Southern Slavs have deposited their national traditions. The Herzegovinians, in some respects, differ from their Bosnian kinsmen. They are the descendants of immigrants who came from the banks of the Vistula in the seventh century. Like their neighbours the Montenegrins, they are more voluble in their speech than the Servians proper, and make use of numerous peculiar turns of expression and a few words of Italian which have glided into their language.