We now descended into the plain, passing the sources of the Bosna, not far distant, on our left. The river from which this whole country derives its name takes its origin from a number of small streams which, gushing forth from the limestone slope of Mt. Igman, unite almost immediately to form a full-volumed river of crystal purity, some fifty yards in breadth—an Illyrian Timavus. We crossed this new-born river by a wooden bridge of a form, if possible, more Roman than ordinary, and nearing the capital descried several country houses of Turkish dignitaries, embosomed in their shady gardens. Once or twice we met arabàs of state containing Mahometan ladies, screened from the vulgar gaze by a brilliant scarlet canopy supported by four posts; but feminine curiosity prompted them to lift up the corners of the drapery that they might observe the Giaour; and we should have seen more of their faces had they not been veiled as well as curtained! But a turn in the road reveals to us the Damascus of the North—for such is the majestic title by which the Bosniac Turks, who consider it, after Stamboul, the finest city in Turkey-in-Europe, delight to style Serajevo. Seen, indeed, from above, in an atmosphere which the Bosniac historian has not inaptly compared to that of Misr and Sham,[237] it might well call up the pearl and emerald settings of Oriental imagery.[238] The city is a vast garden, from amidst whose foliage swell the domes and cupolas of mosques and baths; loftier still, rises the new Serbian Cathedral; and lancing upwards, as to tourney with the sky, near a hundred minarets. The airy height to the East, sceptred with these slender spires of Islâm and turret-crowned with the Turkish fortress (raised originally by the first Vizier of Bosnia on the site of the older ‘Grad’ of Bosnian princes), commands the rest of the city, and marks the domination of the infidel. Around it clusters the upper-town, populated exclusively by the ruling caste; but the bulk of the city occupies a narrow flat amidst the hills, cut in twain by the little river Miljaška, and united by three stone and four wooden bridges. Around this arena, tier above tier—at first wooded hills, then rugged limestone precipices—rises a splendid amphitheatre of mountains culminating in the peak of Trebović, which frowns over 3,000 feet above the city—herself near 1,800 above sea-level.