We passed an unquiet night, owing to swarms of gnats, which droned about our chamber and forced us to cover our faces with nets; and were up, and, with a new Zaptieh who had been assigned to us by the Mudìr, on our way again almost before it was light, bound for Tešanj, the old capital of Ussora. For an hour or so we still followed the valley of the Bosna, which is here very beautiful, the timber finer than any we have yet seen in Bosnia, tall poplars and magnificent oaks crowning the banks or chequering the emerald pools with their shadows. On each side of the valley rose the slopes of the low forest-mountains, usually at a gentle incline, but at one point a sheer cliff of the most brilliant limestone—snow-white as Parian marble—towered above our path. This was just at the point where the Ussora torrent runs into the Bosna, and here we left the main road and turned off towards Tešanj by country lanes, following for some time the right bank of the Ussora. On our way we twice stopped to refresh ourselves at wayside cafés, which are simply rough sheds—four poles supporting a thatch of leafy branches—beneath whose shade sits the coffee-maker with a supply of copper pots, earthenware _testjas_, and brilliant little cups of about the capacity of an ordinary wine-glass. Round the shed run planks raised about a foot from the ground, which serve the wayfarer as a divan on which to quaff the black powdery thimblefuls, or to demolish huge slices of water-melon. As we walked on we were much struck by the tameness of the magpies, which would settle just before us, and let us approach as near as if they were domesticated pigeons. About two hours from Tešanj we left our valley and gradually ascended a wooded range which rises some 1300 feet above the Bosna, where the beeches became larger—a forest of thick pollard stumps, which gradually gladed out into luxuriant heather-land, deliciously perfumed with ferny incense, from which opened out our first panorama of the mountain-peaks that form the heart of Bosnia. In the blue distance rose the dominating cone of Vlašić, but there were no grim Alpine giants, no glacier seas, no jagged horns of rock. The speciality of the mountains was rather their softness of contour. What was quite strange to us was the aërial clearness, the refined delicacy of the colouring—turquoise, lilac, and faint pervading pink.