IN THE BALKANS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12500, 29 March 1909, Page 4

IN THE BALKANS.

- "A British Officer in the Balkans" is an entertaining account of a journey by Major Percy E. Hendorsonr^m Montenegro, Bosnia, and the adjoining countries. It contains some graphic sketches of life in places, like Mostar,' that have long been subject to Austrian rule. Of Mostar, ' the chief town in Herzegovina, which the author calls "a picture city," he writes: — ' • "The whole place was swarming with Mahommedan women ; for in these hot hours, from two to five, when the men are not about, they take their constitutional. They were all dressed, in the .unique street or walking toilette considered de rigueur by the Mahommedan fair sex in Mostar—surely the' most startling and strange" disguise ever invented by male minds for the concealing of the female form. Figure to yourself a 1 long, very, thick, dark blue, greatcoat, very similar to that worn by M r Thomas Atkins, except that it is furnished with' an enormous _ collar standing up nearly a foot in height. This garment is thrown over the ■wearer, whom it envelopes, head anct Ally •bit& lioolc fastened, noi over *tiie throat, but just below tho nose, leaving the high, stiff collar to project forwards, ajbove and beyond the forehead, a huge beak. The chink left open below this in the shadow of the projecting beak is ,fitted in with a muslin mask that covers the_e3'es of the wearer. The coat is* hooked closely all the way down, with the sleeves pinned back and flapping loosely, rather like embyo wings. Huge black or bright yellow, clumsy, untanned boots complete the costume." The ladies of the harem; when seen, close at hand, have little of the beauty with which they have. been credited in poetry and fiction. They are pallid and seedy, seedy-looking, beaded with-perspiration, plain. Dentists arc sadly wanted in Mostar, for the women had shockingly bad teeth. One young woman appeared to have only two or three teeth left in her head. In Bosnia, Major Henderson tells us : '.'Mahommedan women are allowed to worship at the same .time and place as- the men, going through the same forms of prayer, alternately standing, dropping on their knees, and rising again, a gymnastic performance difficult for a Turkish woman, garbed as she is,. to execute."