Meantime, the Mahometan population of Lower Bosnia has taken the law into its own hands, and the authorities have been forced to look on and see the Mahometan volunteers, the Bashi-Bazouks—not long ago suppressed for conduct too outrageous for even the worst of governments to tolerate—spring once more into existence. Such were the ferocious warriors whose acquaintance we had made at Travnik. To-day they are streaming into Serajevo: we met a party of them defiling through the street, and the leader of the gang, as he passed, glared savagely at the Giaour. They are, from what we hear, mere organised brigands headed by irresponsible partizans, and at present are committing the wildest atrocities—cutting down women, children, and old men who come in their way, and burning the crops and homesteads of the rayah. That the defence of Bosnia should have fallen into the hands of such men is one of the most terrible features of the situation, and nothing can better show the abjectness of her present governors than that they have now consented to accept the services of these bandits—and that even the Turkish authorities are now calling them out as well as the Redìf. There seems, however, to be little authority of any sort left to the government at the seat of the insurrection in Bosnia, for the native Mahometan population, seeing itself left defenceless by its Osmanlì officials, has rudely thrust them aside, and the defensive measures are now being carried out by self-constituted committees of public safety, which have sprung up at Banjaluka, Dervent, and other towns. The artificial bureaucracy of 1851 has collapsed under the shock, and the long-restrained savagery of the old dominant caste has burst forth like a caged lion for the defence of Islâm. The marauding bands now desolating Bosnia are for the most part headed by Begs or Agas, scions of the old Bosnian nobility: the Bashi-Bazouks are simply feudal retainers following their lords. Thus, in Bosnia, the Christian outbreak has been opposed by a counter-revolution of Moslem fanaticism in close alliance with the still vital relics of Bosnian feudalism.