the insurrection was altogether devoid of just cause, how was its spread to be accounted for? but, really, the explanation was very simple. These frontier agitators, not meeting with sympathy from the loyal Christian subjects of the Sultan, supplied its want by intimidation. That in many cases the Turkish authorities had received messages from Christian villages saying ‘We do not wish to join the insurrection, but we fear that we shall be forced to join.’ And forced to join they were. If a village refused to throw in its lot with the rebels, they first burnt one house or one maize-plot, and then another, till the unhappy villagers, forced to choose between ruin and rebellion, consented to join their ranks. As to the way in which the insurgents were conducting the war, it was almost too horrible to be repeated. That they would often shut up whole families of Moslems in their houses, to which they then set fire. That, (to take a single instance,) at Ljubinje they spitted two children and roasted them alive before their parents’ eyes. And while relating these and other atrocities to our Consul, the tender-hearted Pashà burst into tears. The tears were, I believe, exclusively reserved for _our_ representative—a distinguished mark of confidence. Dervish Pashà has a well-earned reputation for _finesse_, but this account of the outbreak can hardly claim even the qualified merit of being _ben trovato_! The authentic history, as elicited by the Consular Commission of the great Powers,[288] shows very few features in common with this official Turkish explanation. To begin with, however credible may seem the statement that the Turkish governors of the Herzegovina are in the habit of paying Christians to defend their frontier, and whatever sums the Pandours may have been in the habit of receiving from a government on the verge of bankruptcy, these considerations are beside the point, for the focus of the whole movement has been the village of Nevešinje, not on the frontier at all, but, on the contrary, in the heart of the country, only a few miles from Mostar itself. As in Bosnia, the main cause of the insurrection was the oppression of the tithe-farmers. The case of the Herzegovinian rayahs differs, however, in many respects from that of their Bosnian brothers. This is due to the difference in the physical conditions of the two countries. In Bosnia there are many tracts, like the Possávina, of marvellous fertility, where the most extortionate government cannot so entirely consume the fatness of the land as not to leave the rayah considerable gleanings. Far otherwise is the case in the Herzegovina. The greater part of this country may be briefly described as a limestone desert, and it is the terrible poverty of the soil which makes the position of its Christian tiller so unendurable.