The Kaïmakàm attached a new Zaptieh to us, with orders to find us suitable lodgings in the town. What was our dismay when he led us into a dark and filthy stable!—but following him up a ladder we emerged on the landing of what we afterwards learnt by experience to be the typical Bosnian inn, in which the whole ground floor is set apart for horses. Our room was fairly clean, but infested with an ambuscade of carpeting; and our host, who was a Roman Catholic, soon provided us with a meal of which the principal features were hard-boiled eggs, flat cakes of very fair bread, and a curious Asiatic dish of clotted cream called _kaimak_, which in Bosnia varies according to the local cuisine, from an approach to Devonshire cream to the mere scum of boiled milk, and is sometimes mixed with little lumps of honey or sugar. From here I adjourned to a neighbouring café, discovered by entering another stable and climbing another ladder, leaving L⸺ to the safe keeping of our Zaptieh, who was snoring on the floor of our room. I found myself amidst a bevy of comfortable Turks, who were alternately sipping their mocha and smoking their long chibouks,—for they belonged to the old school, and were robed in flowing dressing-gowns and surmounted with pompous turbans. In exploring the streets—which are narrow and filthy, though sweeter than those of many a North-German town!—I was struck once more with the extraordinary jumble of wares exhibited in each store. Instead of one shopman reserving his energies for haberdashery, and another for confectionery, and so forth, you would come upon a goodly row of Turks, squatting hopefully on what is equally the floor and counter of their several shops, each of whom set up to supply his customers with turbans, coffee-cups, knives, boots, tobacco, carpets, Turkish delight, gun-flints, water-melons, and amulets against warts; so that it was rather confusing to decide which shop to go to if you wanted to suit yourself with anything, and you could not be certain of getting the best tobacco where you had observed the nattiest sandals! Amongst the wares, wax, which is one of the principal articles of Bosnian export, formed an important item; and besides these miscellaneous stores there were others more exclusive, some of which were set apart for the sale of salt, exposed in massive cubes. But though there are prolific salt-springs not so very far off, at Dolnja Tuzla, towards the Serbian border, it must not be assumed that these were native products, for Bosnia prefers to import her salt from Galicia, Dalmatia, Sicily, and Wallachia. But the shop which most took my fancy was the blacksmith’s; it was quite irresistible to see a grimy old Turk in a majestic head-piece—there is something comically incongruous between a turban and a sledge-hammer!—alternately working the beam of his bellows and hammering away on a primitive anvil, fixed into a rough section of oak trunk.