The monks were unfeignedly astonished at our appearance, and would hardly believe that we had arrived on foot and without escort. They said that to travel in Bosnia at present without Turkish guards was sheer madness; that the state of the country was becoming more critical every moment; and that the insurrection in the Herzegovina had roused Mahometan fanaticism to such a pitch that all the Christians of the neighbourhood were seriously dreading a massacre. The monks themselves certainly seemed to share in the prevailing panic; for the day before, when the Latins of the district were assembled at the monastery to celebrate the feast of the Assumption, the brothers had sent off to the Mutasarìf, the Turkish governor of Travnik, for protection. The Mutasarìf, recognising, apparently, the legitimacy of their fears, had sent them a guard of soldiers, and the Christian congregation had performed their devotions under the tutelage of Turkish bayonets. It may at first sight seem strange that people in fear of Turkish violence should have had recourse to Turkish protection, and perhaps stranger still that such protection should have been accorded them. The explanation, in fact, lies at the root of much that is least intelligible to the outsider in the present state of Bosnia. It has been the policy of the Mahometan conqueror to favour the Roman Church in the province, as a ready counterpoise to the orthodox Serbians, who in numbers far outweigh the Mussulmans,[196] and who, in contradistinction to the Latins, are imbued with national aspirations. On the other hand, the Roman ecclesiastics as a rule entertain a far more wholesome abhorrence of their fellow-Christians than of the infidel, and so the alliance is compacted by mutual benefits. The Turks, from the year 1463, when Sultan Mahomet granted the Franciscan monks their great Charter of Liberties, the ‘Atname,’[197] have been politicly liberal to them, exempting their monasteries and lands from taxation, and freeing the brothers from the capitation tax which weighs on the rayah. In return, the monks have exerted their influence in rendering the Latins submissive to their rulers, and have backed up the Mahometans in their oppression of the Serbs, as the members of the Greek Church are significantly called. When the Latins have been ill used, it has been principally owing to the weakness of the Osmanlì element and the bigotry of the Sclavonic renegades of Bosnia, of whose almost independent rule mention has already been made. When, in 1850, Omer Pashà dealt the death-blow to Mahometan feudalism here, and practically recovered Bosnia for the Sultan, he received support from many of the Latins. At the present moment the danger which the monks were in such dread of, was not from the Turkish authorities, but from the Sclavonic Mussulmans, the representatives of the old provincial Janissarism, the descendants of the Capetans and Begs, who eye the myrmidons of the Stamboul Government