October 1, 1900.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



219 



the Holy Land. Stone walls bound the fields, scaixely 

 distinguishable from the baix edges of the strata as 

 they come out. one above another, on the hill. Dull 

 lumpy trees, and forlorn patches of scrub, make dai'k 

 spots upon the slopes, aud gather together a little more 

 closely in the shelter of some waterless ravine. Tlio 

 forlorn hamlet of Doberdo, by its name, should still be 

 a Slavonic village ; but from it wo look down to tlio 

 Adriatic, where the Italiau population clusters along the 

 shore. The delta below is covered with trees, aud still 

 banks us out from open water. As wo drop from this 

 bare dn* summit to Jlonfalcone, we see the hills rising, 

 one beyond another on our left, all of the same charact.er, 

 terraced with limestone edges, and spotted grudgingly 

 with trees. The limestone here is Cretaceous, but tho 

 Eocene sandstones lie along the sea-front from below 

 Nabresina to Trieste. 



The plateau above Trieste, to an e}'c fresh from the 

 riches of Karinthia, is a scene fraught with desolation. 

 About Nabresina, it is fair to say that continuous 

 quarrying has made the country still more stony. Tho 

 Romans built Aquilcia from the Eocene and Upper 

 Cretaceous limestone of these plateaux, J aud lowered 

 the blocks down an incline to the quays below. The 

 great railway-embankment made in 1853 was constructed 

 entirely from the rubbish rejected by the Romans. It 

 is strange that Aquileia, since the assault of Attila, has 

 completely disappeared ; its walls and towers, villas 

 and temples, have merely served to extend the desolate 

 Karst from which it rose. 



Vaanous limestones go to form the plateaux that 

 stretch southward, from the foraminiferal strata of the 

 Eocene down to the Triassic dolomites. The main mass 

 was upheaved by the first important Alpine movements, 

 and the beds following the Eocene were laid down in 

 freshwater basins. § 



The Dinaric Alps are a somewhat early offshoot of 

 the great Alpine system, and the surface now formed 

 by denudation often follows the dip-slope of broad and 

 gentle folds. The feature insisted on by Mojsisovics|| 

 is the occurrence of infilled lake-basins on this limestone 

 surface, many of which date from Miocene times. These 

 may easily be picked out on any detailed map, such as 

 the Austrian staff-map on the scale of 1 : 200,000. The 

 name " polje," or field, is given to them by the peasants, 

 and is applied also to the alluvial stretches along the 

 great rivers of Croatia. The Glamocko Polje north of 

 Livno is a fine example, in a closed basin 300 metres 

 deep, thirty kilometres long, and fairly in the strike of 

 the Triassic and Jurassic limestones. Modern alluvium 

 partly covers the freshwater Tertiary deposits; but no 

 water escapes from the hollows along the surface, and 

 the streamlets that occur disappear here and there 

 into the ground. The northern end is still occupied 

 by a marsh. Mojsisovics ascribes the formation of 

 these basins to the closing of valleys of ei'osion by 

 barriers raised across the courses of the streams. 

 " Almost every larger valley-system in Bosnia," he 

 remarks, " possesses one or more Tertiary lake-basins. 

 The old lakes are hence a common and characteristic 

 feature of the Bosnian valley-systems, and their origin 

 must be due to some cause operating on a wide scale, 

 and affecting the whole region equally. The disturbances 



J Moser, op. eif., p. 10. 



§ A. Bittner.in Grv.ndUnien rler Oeologie ron Sosnien- Hercegoeina 

 (1880), p. 2«. 



i Op. cit., anfl also Grundlinien der Oeologie von Bosnun- 

 Hercegooina. p. 61. 



exhibited by tho Newer Tertiary formations within the 

 basins indicate that the upheaving forces in these dis- 

 tricts were still in full activity, even in the most recent 

 period." 



Similar infilled basins, usually traversed by tho rivers 

 along which they have arisen, occur throughout the 

 wooded region of the Bosnian highlands, on the east side 

 of the typical and barren Karst. Tho plateau-country ex- 

 tends from Trieste through Dalmatia, West Bosnia, tho 

 Hercegovina, and Montenegro, and much is now being 

 done by the Austrians to store up its water and to 

 encom-age the growth of trees. 11 Tho numerous small 

 funnel-shaped depressions, called simply " dolinas," or 

 valle3'S, by the Slavs, show how tho atmospheric waters 

 soak into the surface and enlarge their vertical channels 

 by solution. But for a few artificial wells and cisterns, 

 hundreds of square miles of the Karst-land would bo 

 praeticallv impassable. 



Asboth,'"' whoso admirabk' and unassuming book stands 

 nut amid all that has been written upon Bosnia, gives 

 us some characteristic pictures of the south. Hero is 

 ono from the neighbourhood of Mostar : — "Our eyes 

 rest on nothing but cliffs and boulders, and between 

 the stones venomous snakes and scorpions, long lizards, 

 the carcases of dead animals, and the stumps and roots of 

 fallen trees. The sky is of a transparent pale azure, 

 the rocks ashy-grey, here and there changing into sand 

 colour or i-usty brown, the sparse vegetation being of a 

 melancholy greyish-green. The whole, a Southern soli- 

 tude, almost a desert, inhospitable and bare ; and yet 

 withal beautiful." 



And this picture from Gacko, on the Montenegrin 

 frontier: — " One feels that those who cling to this soil 

 are born for battle. . . . Ashy-grey or glai-ing ochre- 

 coloured stones of all sizes, from entire mountain masses, 

 enormous blocks, and lofty ijointcd pyramids, down to 

 small boulders, which everywhere cover the ground, 

 and especially where there are passes leading across the 

 Saddle. . . . Vegetation is almost entirely lacking, as 

 IS also water. Very seldom does a spring show itself, 

 and then rapidly vanishes again amidst the chinks in 

 the rocks, after having created a small oasis of green." 



On the east flank of the Dinaric Alps, the Cainozoic 

 earth-movements have brought up Palaeozoic rocks along 

 the folds, and a far greater diversity of scenery is the 

 result. But a true Karst-land, formed of Cretaceous and 

 Jurassic limestones, extends between Banjaluka and 

 Jajcc. The old road left the Vrbas valley just above 

 the suburbs of Banjaluka, and struck up to the plateau, 

 coming into more pleasant country as it dropped on to 

 tho long band of Lower Triassic sandstone at Varcar 

 Vakuf. The new read, however, has been now carried 

 up the gorge, which was previously inaccessible, even 

 to pedestrians; its walls provide superb sections in the 

 materials that form the Karst. Though the plateaux 

 throughout Bosnia often coincide with the crests of 

 broad and simple anticlinals, or with the level central 

 portions of denuded synclinals, much subsidiaiy folding 

 may occur within the limestone mass. Great thick- 

 nesses of the pale Jurassic and Cretaceous limestones 

 have been brecciated, apparently by the Miocene earth- 

 pressures, and the constituent blocks, ovoid and squeezed 

 together, form a characteristic feature of the sections. 

 Near Jajce itself, at the close of a series of magnificent 



IT See H. Kenner, Durcli Boxnien und die Sercegovina kreuz und 

 quer, 2te. Auflage (1H97), pp. ;J2.J-.3.")1. 



** " An Ofllcial Tour tlirougli Bosnia and Hoi-zcgoTina," Englisli 

 edition (18'JO), jip. 273 and .■i2.9. 



