The frame of these Bosniac countrymen lacks the elegance and suppleness of the modern Greek, but it is stronger and of larger mould. No stranger who passes through Bosnia can fail to be struck at the exceeding stature of the inhabitants. The fair here is thronged with men six feet high, and over. An English traveller who passed through this country in 1634, and stayed a day or two in ‘Saraih,’ ‘the metropolis of the kingdome of Bosnah,’ says, ‘the most notable things I found was the goodnesse of the water, and vaste, almost _gyant-like_ stature of the men, which with their bordring upon _Germany_, made mee suppose them to be the offspring of those old _Germans_ noted by _Cæsar_ and _Tacitus_ for their huge size, which in other places is now degenerate into the ordinary proportions of men.’[181] Gaunt they may be, lean and overgrown; but they are sons of Anak; and though they may now seem a cowering rabble, the example of their self-liberated brothers in Montenegro and free Serbia should teach the world that in happier circumstances they too might hold up their heads and display the spirit of heroes. Even in their features, in their broad benevolent forehead and aquiline nose, are disguised the lineaments of grandeur and manly beauty. Despite the ill-favour of their expression, there was generally a lurking geniality to be detected in it, and when among themselves I was struck with their kindly manners and good-fellowship; indeed I suspect that it is generally the stranger’s own fault—probably his want of tact in posing before them as the friend of the Turk—if they do not show themselves friendly to him, and relapse into a bearish reserve. And though the Bosniacs are much accused of that common failing of the Southern Sclaves, intoxication, yet it must be said to their credit that in this large gathering—so large that hardly a spot of standing ground was left unoccupied in the whole mountain neck—we did not notice a single case of drunkenness, and this though there were plenty of booths in the fair for the sale of arrack and Slavonian wine. Indeed the general orderliness, the absence of license of any sort, among the Christian part of the assembly, was beyond all praise.