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This fellow, a cheery Moslem Bosniak, loaded his rifle and kept a sharp look out. And a second gendarme accompanied us till we were through the pass. And both vowed that a few months ago they wouldn't have come with less than thirty men; Albanians behind every rock and piff paff, a bullet in your living heart before you knew where you were.
The Slav name of Castelnuovo is Erzegnovi, and it was founded in 1373 by the Bosniak king Tvarko I., Kotromanovic. It lies on the slopes of Monti Dobrastica and Radostak, piling up most picturesquely above the little harbour, with great bastions split with wide cracks and deformed by the loss of pieces which have fallen into the sea, but clothed with ivy which hides much of the ruin.
Before the revolution, Shabatz numbered 20,000 Osmanlis, the sites of whose kiosks and gardens are still pointed out on the Polje, or open space between the town and the fortress, at present the only Moslems are the garrison of Bosniak Redif or militia, occupying the dilapidated fortifications.
Was halted at the border blockhouse, which the black gypsy thought unpassable, but the Serbs were rather pleased to be inspected, telephoned through to Uzhitza, and I rode on. An amusing sidelight was the surprise of the gypsy at finding the same language both sides of the border. "But they talk Bosniak!" he cried.
Having done much pack-saddle travel myself, I noted with interest that the Bosniak regiments were the only ones who knew how to "pack-saddle." With most of the others the saddles rolled under at once, or halfway up the road, which is worse. The army marched off early. I then made the acquaintance of a pretty girl, who was engaged to one of the officers, and from her later heard all that happened.
"If she is Croat or Serb or Bosniak I shall be able to make her understand," he promised himself. "If she is Magyar, heaven help me! We shall have to converse entirely by signs." He entered the carriage and made his momentous announcement in the best approach to Croat speech that he could achieve. "The train has broken away and left us!"
Primarily he was a Servian, but his maternal grandmother had been a Bosniak, an earlier ancestress had been in a Turkish harem, there was a strain in his blood of the Hungarian zinganee the gipsy of Eastern Europe, and one could not look at his profile without a suspicion that there was a Jewish element in his pedigree.
The Moslem was equally furious with the equality treatment, for he was no longer top-dog. The most remarkable work of the Austrian Government gave perhaps the most offence. It was the medical. The Bosniak, in appearance, is often a giant. But his appearance is deceptive.
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