pted to conquer this little
state, which was at that time a republic, but always the Ragusans beat
off the enemy. For the country about is so rocky, so rough, that the
city was easily defended, especially in that time when nearly all
fighting was hand to hand.

The first and foremost word in the Great War--the key word--is Sarajevo.
Here is the scene of the assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria,
which was at least the final cause of the war. As we enter it we find a
population of about forty thousand, half of which are Mohammedans. It is
a large, straggling town, situated in a narrowing valley overtopped by
steep hills on either side, which close in a narrow gorge in the east
and broaden into a plain on the west. It was to the eastward, however,
that we shall find the heavy fighting along the Austro-Serbian frontier.

The armies along the Danube will soon command our attention. As they
follow the river toward Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, it is no longer
the "Blue Danube" of the famous German song. Here, in fact, it is a
broad, mud-colored river, dotted with a number of low islands along its
center. Belgrade, where the first shots of the war were fired, is
located on rather high ground, backed by a semicircle of low hills in
its rear. But opposite all is flat and, in places, marshy. Modern guns
could, of course, keep up an effective fire across the river at this
point, as in fact they did before the actual invasion of Serbia began,
but the conditions for a crossing are not favorable. It was from the
west, from the Bosnian side, that the actual attack was made.

Just below Belgrade the river Save, shallower and narrower, empties into
the Danube, forming the frontier westward, past Shabatz, to Ratcha,
where the Drina, flowing down from the Macedonian highlands northward,
joins it, forming the western frontier between Bosnia and Serbia.

The Drina, where much fighting occurs, is no ordinary waterway, no mere
mountain stream, though it lies in a mountainous country. Before
reaching its junction with the Save it is fed by many important
tributaries. Ever swift, often torrential, it has washed out a bed of
imposing width, and by a constant cutting out of new courses has created
a series of deltas. It was one of the largest of these islands, that of
Kuriachista, between Losnitza and Leschnitza, that the Austrians chose
as a base for their first invasion. From this point up and around to
Shabatz lies the bloody fie