h it had footholds for
chamois. My new friend insisted on following it, as the shortest way
down. When we were on a slippery grass slope so steep I could see
the bottom of the valley a thousand feet below between my own boots,
and the native servant lad refused to further risk his life, I too
struck, and the chase was given up. When we arrived at a gendarmerie
outpost on the night of the second day, and I was nearly dead-beat
after seventeen hours' continuous struggle over many rocks and other
obstacles, he confessed he had had no idea of the way. The stolid
gendarmerie captain was appalled. "But if the Fraulein had died?" he
asked. "Ah, but I knew she was English!" cried the other, "they can
do these things. She will be all right to-morrow." He was delighted
with the exploit, and suggested all kinds of places I should go to.
I told him about my route and my previous experiences. He roared
with laughter. Said it was silly nonsense. Some of the Serajevo
people were too stupid for words. "Have you a passport? And it is in
order. Very well. You are a British subject. They dare not stop you.
Why should they? They ought to be glad to get tourists, and they
won't if they go on like this. Burn all those letters and go where
you please."

He made me a list of places where I should find Bogumil monuments,
tattooed people, Roman remains and so forth. Told me that in his
opinion Austria was wasting time and money in the provinces. The
changes were too quick for the people; they preferred the old
Turkish tracks and pack beasts to carts and the new roads, and that
they suspected everything new. He himself got on with the people
excellently, took me into several houses where they had portraits of
Prince Nikola of Montenegro, and chaffed them about wanting to join
that land. "They are all of them plotting across the border," he
said, laughing. "They would far rather pig along like the
Montenegrins. I've tried hard to persuade them to use iron ploughs.
Our government supplies them at less than cost price. But they
won't. They say, 'No, it is a Schwab thing.' We have spent no end of
money trying to improve the live stock: bulls, stallions, rams,
boars of the finest breeds. We sent a splendid boar last year to a
village in charge of a man who was supposed to be reliable. And when
Christmas came he killed it, roasted it and asked all the village to
a feast. It was worth a lot of money. He only said that there was so
much meat on it, it