It was on this train, too, that we saw the only Americans we had seen or were destined to see for many weeks, two jovial rug-hunters of New York, _en route_ home from a business trip to Constantinople. Also included in the collection of passengers was an immaculate Englishman, with coat tightly buttoned and gloves on, who sat all day in one position for fear of disturbing one molecule of dust, and, owing to his efforts, becoming redder in the face as the train proceeded. CHAPTER XI SARAJEVO—THE SPIRED CITY From Belgrade to Sarajevo—The Turkish Bazaar—A Bosnian Street Sprinkler—Horse-races at Ylidze—A Dervish Dance. It is by no means an uninteresting nor an unpleasant train ride of seven hours and a half across the well-kept, fertile farm lands of Austria-Hungary; from Belgrade, in Servia, southward to the little junction town of Brod. This line continues through Agram to Fiume, Hungary’s solitary seaport, but if you would visit the Austrian provinces of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, nominally Turkish territory, you must change at Brod and take your compartment in one of the miniature cars of the little narrow-gauge train which, later, puffs and snorts its tortuous, labyrinthine way across, between and under the mountains, up grade and down to Sarajevo, Mostar and, finally, Gravosa on the Adriatic Coast. Before Bosnia (including Croatia and the Herzegovina) was placed under the suzerainty of Austria-Hungary by the Treaty of Berlin of 1878—a treaty time-worn and often honoured in the breach—the traveller, in order to cover the one hundred thirty-eight miles between Brod and Sarajevo, was compelled for comfort’s and safety’s sake to resort to the springless mail cart of the Austrian Consulate in Bosnia and spend forty-eight weary hours _en route_. If, on the other hand, he wished to be lavishly independent and hired a native conveyance for the journey, three nights would have to be spent on the road, sleeping in _khans_ and fearful of his very life. Although, in point of geographical position, it was the nearest neighbour of civilized Europe, the social condition of Bosnia was at that time the most barbarous of all the provinces of European Turkey. Not one man in a hundred knew how to read, and there was not a single, solitary bookshop throughout the length and breadth of the province. While the soil teemed with various valuable minerals, its hills thickly wooded with virgin forests, its plains and valleys fertile, well-watered and productive, its commerce was contemptible. Under Turkish rule, _plums_ constituted the most valuable article of trade. [Illustration: THE AUSTRIAN ARMY BARRACKS AT SARAJEVO.]