All these facts point to the conclusion that they are, as the Bosniacs express it when they want to indicate a date previous to the Turkish captivity, ‘more than three hundred years old.’ On the other hand, if not Moslem, neither are they like the memorial stone crosses, such as one we were shortly to see at Gučiagora, which are the undoubted work of Christians, and which date back at least to the sixteenth century. There are, however, some modern monuments which we noticed at one place in the Herzegovina which resemble these in outline; these were in a small Jewish graveyard outside Mostar, and had Hebrew inscriptions on them. But the Jews of Bosnia and the Herzegovina are all a Spanish-speaking people, who took refuge from their Christian oppressors within the borders of more tolerant Islâm in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Previous to this settlement there do not seem to have been any Jews in the country, since in early Bosnian history, so occupied with religious struggles, so blood-stained with fanaticism, there is not, so far as I am aware, any mention of them. Even at the present day they are, as regards numbers, an insignificant minority, domiciled almost exclusively in a few of the larger towns.[189] It is hardly conceivable, therefore, that in early times the Hebrews should have occupied the country to such an extent as to have dotted it with these monuments, which are to be found _passim_ throughout Bosnia. On the other hand, the stones that we saw near Mostar were considerably smaller than these ancient examples; and it seems quite possible that the Jews, with their national thriftiness, should have simply used some of these old blocks which they found ready to hand, cutting off the time-worn exterior or exposing a new surface for their inscriptions, but for convenience sake retaining the original form. Whatever the explanation of these Mostar monuments, I feel constrained to give up the hypothesis that these older memorials are of Jewish workmanship. But to whom, then, are these mysterious blocks to be referred? A better key to the solution of their origin and date is to be obtained by comparing them with some monuments of more finished execution and greater fecundity of ornament described by Sir Gardner Wilkinson,[190] as existing near Imoschi and at other places on the Dalmatian frontier. These, although not exactly answering to the ruder handiwork of the Bosnian midlands, are yet so evidently allied, that what is true of them must to a great extent be true of these before us. On the blocks described by Sir Gardner there occur devices such as huntsmen with bows and spears, knight’s holding sword and shield, and even occasionally rude armorial bearings, all which fix the date of their execution between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries.