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.