From the crossing-place to Trebinje itself our travellers had to trudge as they could along a fearfully rough Turkish path--not rougher though than some Dalmatian and Montenegrin paths--till they reached the town itself, which this delay gave them but little time to examine. The suburbs stretched along the hillside; below, the tents of the Turkish troops were pitched on one side; the Mahometan burial-ground lay on the other. After so much time and pains had been spent in getting to Trebinje, a glimpse of Trebinje itself was all that was to be had. But even a glimpse of Eastern life was something, particularly a glimpse of Eastern life where Eastern life should not be, in a land which once was European. It is the rule of the Turk, it is the effect of his four hundred years of oppression, which makes Trebinje to differ alike from Tzetinje and from Cattaro. The dark, dingy, narrow, streets, the dim arches and vaults, the bazaar, with the Turk--more truly the renegade Slave--squatting in his shop, the gate with its Arabic inscription, the mosques with their minarets contrasting with the church with its disused campanile, all come home to us with a feeling not only of mere strangeness, but of something which is where it ought not to be. It is with a feeling of relief that, after our second trudge, our second voyage, our second meeting with the convoy, we reach the heights, we pass the guard-houses, and find ourselves again in Christendom. Presently Ragusa comes within sight; we are in no mood to discuss the respective merits of the fallen aristocratic commonwealths and of the rule of the Apostolic King. King or Doge or Rector, we may be thankful for the rule of any of them, so as it be not the rule of the Sultan. The difference between four hundred years of civilized government and four hundred years of barbarian tyranny has made the difference between Ragusa and Trebinje.
[I have left this paper, with a few needful corrections, as it was published in March 1876. Since then, it must be remembered, much has changed, especially in the way of boundaries--to say nothing of a carriage-way to Tzetinje. Neither Cattaro nor Budua is any longer either the end of Christendom or the end of the Dalmatian kingdom of the Austrian. That kingdom has been enlarged by the harbour of Spizza, won from the Turk by Montenegrin valour and won from the Montenegrin by Austrian diplomacy. But Christendom must now be looked on as enlarged by the whole Montenegrin sea-coast, a form of words which I could not have used either in 1875 or in 1877. Of this sea-coast I shall have something to say in another paper.]