Arrived at our inn, we found ourselves plunged at once into Turkish society, for many Bosnian corn-merchants from Bihac, Serajevo, and other towns, betake themselves in the way of trade to Siszek. Among the group of Turks who, in various awkward and frog-like postures, were endeavouring to accommodate themselves to chairs, was an Effendi, a title which implies not only a certain grade of Turkish gentility, but an education for Bosnia most polite, namely, the ability to read and write; and, what is by no means ordinary among the Mussulman Sclaves of Bosnia, an acquaintance with Osmanlì. Thus it was with a conscious sense of superiority that our Effendi, learning our intentions in Bosnia, expressed a desire to see the pass which the Vali Pashà had been good enough to supply us with. He seemed extremely surprised to see that it was in the Vali’s own handwriting; but having convinced himself of the fact, he first read it aloud with pleasing gusto in the original Turkish, and then translated it into Bosniac for the benefit of the Sclavonic Mahometans and our Croatian landlord, with many assurances that with such an ‘open sesamé’ we should have no difficulty in unlocking the innermost fastnesses of Bosnia or even the Herzegovina, where the revolt had now broken out. There was also a venerable Turk of singularly dignified mien, with patriarchal beard and capacious turban, who sat in mild contemplation, lulled by the measured purring of his narghilé, lost to all mundane concerns, sagely superior to the curiosity which our pass and travelling gear were exciting in less exalted bosoms, and benignantly indifferent even to the indignity of a chair. Our host told us that he was a Hadji, or pilgrim, then on his way from Buda, where he resided as a merchant, to Mecca. _Aug. 8._—Next morning we sallied forth to explore what might remain of ancient Siscia. For we are now on classic ground. Siszek is but the corruption of a name great in all ages of imperial Rome, and greatest in the twilight of her empire. There was a time when Siscia was one of the sovereign cities of the world. She was a bulwark against barbarians, an emporium of commerce, a seat of emperors, a mother of martyrs, a gathering point for Roman-Christian Saga. And her older name, Segestica, takes us back to times prior to the Roman conquest itself, when she formed part of that Celtic empire of race, dim, commercial, reaching from Gades to the swamps of Nether Rhine; from glacial Ierné to the mouths of Ister. Segestica! we have no record of her dealings with the Adriatic votaries of Belenus,[163] nor what Taurisk gold passed current in her streets; and yet her peasant citizens of to-day plough up an abundance of bronze-age sickles as if to bear witness of her old Celtic industry and her very name calls up golden harvests of antiquity ready garnered into her warehouses from rich Pannonian plains, with a side suggestion perchance of her Seges clypeata virorum,