As we were preparing to begin our descent from these uplands towards Tešanj, some large white objects amongst the heather on a neighbouring hill caught our eye, which, on investigation, we found to belong to a curious prehistoric monument of the kind popularly known as Druidic. It was an alignment of large oblong blocks along the neck of the hill; but the stones, unlike those of Stonehenge or Carnac, were laid on their faces, and not set upright. The blocks, which were composed of limestone and conglomerate, had in most cases been roughly squared, and the largest measured seven feet by four. The chain extended between two knolls of the hill-top, and on looking along it from the lowest of these (see diagram, p. 112), it presented a wavy and serpentine appearance, which may have been due to the slight inequalities of the soil. At one point near this end rose a small hillock capped by a larger than ordinary block of snow-white limestone, in form hexangular, and with some of the facets deftly hewn (see diagram). Before this on either side were two smaller and flatter slabs of rock, arranged apparently with some special reference to the block between them, and which gave me the impression that it had been meant to serve as an altar; though whether these stones were set here by heathen Sclaves or by one of the earlier races of Illyria, and with what object, it would be hazardous to conjecture. By the peasants about they are known as the Old Stones—Stari Stéona. [Illustration: The ‘Old Stones,’ near Tešanj.] Nearing Tešanj we came upon, and partly followed, the remains of an ancient road, roughly paved in such an antique fashion as to remind me of the streets from time to time exhumed on the sites of Roman towns. Perhaps it really in some way represented the continuity of Roman engineering. Certain it is that the wooden bridges, such as the one on which we crossed the Ussora, and others that we were afterwards to meet with, with their beam-work arches and supports and their lattice railings, strangely recalled some of Trajan’s handicraft. The Bosnian waggons—not so unlike, either, in form, the _gementia plaustra_ of antiquity—as they rumble along the old-world roads and bridges, with creaking so loud and stridulous as literally to make woods and rocks re-echo with their wailing, bring before you another feature in the country life of classic times, which in the England of to-day it is hard to realise. With such discord piercing your ears, there seems new point in those exquisite lines of Martial which describe his friend’s garden as not too near the highway—‘ne blando rota sit molesta somno.’[173] Heard from afar the sound is not so unpleasant, and might be mistaken for the plaintive whistling of the wind; but if any one wants to know what it is like at close quarters, he had better tweak a young pig’s tail and listen. [Illustration: Castle of Tešanj.]