We now ascended the pass which here forms the watershed between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, and on our way met a party of Bashi-Bazouks,—according to all accounts the most serious danger that we were liable to meet with. They stopped us; but by great good fortune there happened to be a regular officer with them who understood our pass, and explaining its purport to the others, suffered us to pass on amidst commendatory ejaculations of ‘_Dobro! dobro!_’—‘Good! good!’ This piece of luck we attributed not only to the amulets on our person, but to the herb _amulet_, or cyclamen, which bloomed in the crevices of the cliffs, and a few of whose delicious flowers we had plucked, and with great forethought carried with us. The summit of the pass was, according to our observations, 3,080 feet above sea-level. Just here we had another slight adventure, for entering what we took to be a new Han, we discovered on reaching the upper storey that it was a Turkish watch-tower—one of the block-houses hastily run up on the outbreak of the insurrection. The soldiers, however, justly concluding that none but friends would plunge thus boldly into their midst, showed themselves very friendly, and gave us water, which we asked for, to drink. We met some other parties of volunteers, but were not molested. [Illustration: First Glimpse of the Herzegovina.] As we descended the pass towards the valley of the Narenta, the scenery became grand and beautiful. To the left rose the grey limestone precipices of Bielastica, above the nearer forest-covered heights. The base of the mountain forms a wooded slope; above this succeeds a barren glacis of talus, and above this again tower the perpendicular walls of the mountain-citadel itself (for it looks uncommonly like an ancient fortress), with here and there magnificent bastions and even round-towers of rock, relieving the rugged-level line of the citadel walls. To the right of us rose another nearer wall of rock, along whose surface our roadway had been hewn out, in places not without engineering skill. This cliff was of a schistose formation, stained of the most brilliant varieties of hue—rich browns of every shade, a golden orange and a rose so deep and decided that we invoked the neighbouring cinnabar mines of Creševo in order to account for it. In places, again, the rocky wall was formed of sombre slate, but it too could take exquisite hues of lilac in a favourable light, and as we descended lower into the valley the rocks grew white as chalk. Below us was the deep gorge of a torrent, and on its further side the strata were in places knotted and grained and gnarled, like the roots of an old oak-tree. [Illustration: View of Coinica.]