another and a happier; beneath them the primeval forest; around in every direction an aërial gulf; and beyond, far as the eye could pierce the deepening twilight, range upon range of lonely mountains. Not but what these thrifty Bosniacs had turned the opportunity to account by combining with their religious festival and pilgrimage a large fair—or, as the Germans would say, a year-market—which occupied the other end of the mountain neck. A long lane was formed along which to arrange the wares, but the show was mostly reserved for the _festa_ itself on the morrow. On each side of this lane the peasants were camped in families; and in the festivities of the night and the fair next morning we saw displayed before us, as in some brilliant picture-book, the whole life of the rayah country people from a large tract of Bosnia: their varying costumes, their simple diet, their cheap necessities, their dances and discordant minstrelsy, and over all, the shadow of a Damoclean scimetar. As the night drew on the whole neck of the mountain was lit up by cheery bonfires, round which the peasants clustered in social circles. Our Zaptieh provided us with blazing logs for ourselves, over which we performed our own culinary operations, supplemented by a generous haunch from a sheep, roasted in the usual Bosnian fashion. This is how the peasants cooked their meat—for on this high-day there were some who indulged in such a luxury as mutton. They took a sharp stake about eight feet long, and inserting it in the slaughtered animal’s mouth or neck, skewered it right through the carcase and out at the tail. Two low forks were now driven into the ground, the huge spit with its burden was lodged on them, a large fire was kindled over against it, and the peasants took turn and turn about to make the spit go round. A goodly portion of the assemblage seemed determined to make a night of it, and what with carousing, dancing, singing, and playing, I will not deny that they succeeded. The first dance I saw was of a comic kind, performed by two men, and there were so many varying figures that one fancied they must improvise them as they went on. The accompaniment on a ghuzla, the one-stringed lute of the Serbs, was of the dolefullest, and the dance itself was anything but graceful. The chief object that they apparently had in view was to dislocate every limb in the most comfortable way possible. Now and then they stamped on the ground, and then walked after each other and round each other in a clown-like fashion; and now and then they would pause and tread gingerly with their feet, as if they were trying whether ice would bear, fumbling the while in a stupid way about their noses, as if to see that spectacles were safely fixed on them. The Kolo, however, or round dance of the Sclaves, was more elegant, and chiefly danced by the girls, who formed themselves in a ring and danced round and round, sometimes in a very spirited manner.