But we must attend to the lords of modern Foinica! A Zaptieh brings a message from the Kaïmakàm to say that he and the Kadi are about to drive to Kisseljak, our own destination, and to offer us a lift in one of their carriages; so, being for many reasons anxious to push on, we declined the pressing invitation of the monks to dine and pass the night with them, and descending once more to the village found an arabà waiting for us outside a Han, where we had ordered some eatables. The arabà—an ordinary country waggon, only provided with a better harness—belonged to the Kadi, but the Kaïmakàm had taken him into his carriage—a more sumptuous equipage—in order to provide room for us. We started therefore under good auspices, these two functionaries acting as our vanguard. Nor did the courtesy of the Turks stop here, for they had given our driver a supply of rosy apples and a sweet red-fleshed melon wherewith to serve us at intervals during the drive. About half-way down the Foinica valley our cortége stopped at a little roadside Han, where the Kaïmakàm motioned us to sit down by him on an open-air divan, canopied by shady branches and overhanging the stream; and while he treated us to coffee and water-melon both he and our Kadi reaped a quiet enjoyment by extending their hospitality to some fishes below. The pebbles in the bed of the stream are stained of a rich brown and orange with the iron ore in which the valley abounds. On the flanks of the mountains, on either side, might here and there be detected huge scars and traces of old excavations. These are the mines of gold and silver worked of old by the Romans, and later on by the Ragusans, but now untouched. We are in the very midst of the mineral treasury of Bosnia. This vale of Foinica contains, besides these precious metals, lead ore, arsenic, quarries (unworked) of slate; and in a tributary gorge which we had seen running south-east, cinnabar, rich in quicksilver.[227] A little lower down, just where the Foinica stream runs into the Lepenica, the valley opened out considerably and formed an alluvial plain. Here and there among the stunted vegetation a column of blue smoke marked out a rude forge, where a little iron, the only metal exploited, is smelted to be converted into shovels, horse-shoes, and sundry tools and weapons for Bosnian home consumption. A few miles further down the Lepenica debouches into the valley of the Bosna, which is described as one vast coal-field.