His dress was nearly all in white, and his legs bare from
the knee. He told me that the Vayvode of Sokol had a curious mental
malady. Having lately lost a son, a daughter, and a grandson, he could
no longer smoke, for when his servant entered with a pipe, he imagined
he saw his children burning in the tobacco.
During the whole day we toiled upwards, through woods and wilds of a
character more rocky than that of the previous day, and on attaining
the ridge of the Gutchevo range, I looked down with astonishment on
Sokol, which, though lying at our feet, was yet perched on a lone
fantastic crag, which exactly suited the description of the collector
of Shabatz,--"a city and castle built on the capital of a column of
rock." Beyond it was a range of mountains further in Bosnia; further
on, another outline, and then another, and another. I at once felt
that, as a tourist, I had broken fresh ground, that I was seeing
scenes of grandeur unknown to the English public. It was long since I
had sketched. I instinctively seized my book, but threw it away in
despair, and, yielding to the rapture of the moment, allowed my eyes
to mount step after step of this enchanted Alpine ladder.
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