At present Tešanj has some importance as a centre of the corn trade, and though containing but 30,000 inhabitants at the outside, is a seat of a Kaïmakàm, a more exalted governor than a Mudìr, to whose sumptuous white Konak we now made our way. As we approached it we found the whole place buzzing with peasants, who were issuing from the Konak in troops, and we were obliged to wait some time in an antechamber, where we were at liberty to exchange a few remarks with a good-natured Italian-speaking official, before we were admitted to the great man’s presence. When we were admitted we found a very civilised being in thin white clothes of European cut, and who but for his fez might have been mistaken for an Italian. He looked dreadfully bored, and not without reason, for he had been reviewing hundreds of peasants all the morning; but he was extremely courteous, and treated us to the usual coffee and cigarettes. Paper cigarettes!—twenty years ago they would have been narghilés, ambery, Oriental, ablaze with gold and jewels, enchantingly barbaric; but their date is fled; the West advances and the East recedes; and now, even in Conservative old Bosnia, the pipe is degenerating into the symbol of a fogy! _Sic transit gloria mundi._ It was to be observed that the Kaïmakàm’s coffee-cup was twice as big as ours; but, as L⸺ remarked, ‘_we_ could not well complain.’ We were able to converse with him, as we found that he could speak French ‘full feteously.’ On our enquiring what the large assemblage of peasants meant, he explained that he was collecting the Redìf or reserve, adding incidentally, for our information, ‘Nous avons une petite guerre dans l’Herzek.’ But why, we asked one another again, were the reserves to be sent to Banjaluka? [Illustration: Turkish Café, Tešanj.]