While we were engaged in quaffing the sparkling draughts of nature under the kiosque, up came a young Hungarian, and asked us whether we had heard the news. On our confessing ignorance, he informed us that a revolution had broken out in Bosnia—or rather several dozens of them; that a rising of rayahs had taken place near Banjaluka, and along the Save; and that this had been followed by a counter-rising in the Mahometan towns and villages—and that especially the district about Dervent, through which we had passed, was plunged in civil war. Vague rumours of other outbreaks at Tašlidzje, Priepolje, and near Novipazar, had just come in; and, from the localities of the risings, both in north and south, this much was certain, that if the insurgents were successful, the only highways connecting Bosnia with the rest of Turkey and the Save provinces of Austria were cut off; while, from the sudden departure of the Pashà of Bosnia for the Herzegovina, it seemed not unlikely that communication with Dalmatia was equally threatened. But for details we had to wait till we reached the capital, though we found the Hungarian’s account trustworthy so far as it went. _Aug. 21._—From the same informant I learnt that in a copse near here were some monuments, locally known as the ‘Roman Stones,’ to the investigation of which I devoted the morning grey before we started for Serajevo. The stones proved to be of the same character as those already described at Podove—of the usual tea-caddy shape—uninscribed, and even more devoid of ornament than those we had seen before. There were several of them scattered among the brushwood on a slight rise of the ground. In the first part of our journey to Serajevo there was little remarkable. As we ascended the pass between the Kobilaglava and Bulalovic ranges, we noticed the forest cut away for a hundred yards or so on either side of the high road; this was done for the safety of travellers, these mountains having formerly been a nest of robbers. The same precaution used to be taken in England in the good old days. In the Statute of Winchester, Edward I. devotes a whole clause to enjoining the ‘abatement’ of the cover by the side of the highways: ‘It is commanded that highways leading from one market town to another shall be enlarged wheresoever bushes, woods, or dykes be, so that there be neither dyke, tree, nor bush whereby a man may lurk to do hurt, within two hundred foot of the one side, and two hundred foot of the other side of the way; so that this statute shall not extend unto oaks nor unto great trees, so that it shall be clear underneath. And if by default of the lord that will not abate the dykes, underwood, or bushes, any robberies be done therein, the lord shall be answerable for the felony; and if murder be done, the lord shall make a fine at the king’s pleasure.’[231] The traveller in Bosnia is still in the Middle Ages!