} 
281 PARK AND CEMETERY . 
GRAVES AND STONES IN A TURKISH CEMETERY. IN A TRAPPIST CEMETERY IN BOSNIA. 
CURIOUS CEMETERIES OF FOREIGN LANDS 
Inasmuch as the very words “the 
Balkans’’ conjure up, to the most of 
us, visions of murder, massacre, blood- 
shed generally; of weeping and wail- 
ing over the ruins of dynamite and 
the sword, it is almost obvious that 
a tour of Balkan lands should be made 
to include a jaunt to the burying- 
grounds of these little-known princi- 
palities. 
Most interesting of all, probably, is 
the cemetery of the Turk. Bigoted 
as is the Mohammedan, turning six 
times daily to prayer; washing hands, 
feet and face piously whenever the 
muezzein calls, and hastening him to 
the mosque, he cares not what may 
become of the corpse after the soul 
has shuffled off this mortal coil, and, 
consequently, the graveyards of the 
Turkish Empire are the most neg- 
lected imaginable. 
If one will picture to himself a 
field enclosed by a great mortar and 
stone-wall — topped with half-fallen 
terra-cotta shingling — inside which en- 
closure the weeds and the brambles 
have been permitted to grow for cen- 
turies, probably; broken aside only 
when, now and then, in the course of 
months, ?ome one may die and a new 
grave needs be dug, you have a fair 
idea of a Turkish cemetery. Scat- 
tered about in the rank undergrowth 
are little head-stones — mere pillars, 
two or three feet high, and covered 
with Arabic inscriptions, frequently 
tinted in blue and yellow, in the case 
of the women; and with the addition 
of a turban of stone for the men. 
Wind and weather throw these stones 
into all possible positions; and fur- 
there, where, as at Monistir, the packs 
of dogs that are town scavengers in 
Turkish lands, make the cemetery 
their rendezvous, one finds great holes 
in the graves, which these voracious 
animals will make into the mound, 
and many a poor Yorick’s skull lies 
exposed to the passer-by. 
Both at Banjaluka and at Sarajevo, 
in Bosnia, persons fearing to enter 
Turkish lands may see cemeteries of 
this type, given over to neglect and 
decay. 
Strangely in contrast to the Turkish 
cemetery at Banjaluka is the Trappist 
burying-ground on the outskirts of 
that town. The Trappists, it will be 
remembered, do not bury in coffins, 
but simply in the cowl, and it is a 
curious fact that while the mounds 
in the cemetery here are well kept, 
grass does not seem to thrive upon 
the Trappists’ graves. In even rows 
these graves are placed, and at the 
head of each is a cross of wood, with 
a little white sign, “Here rests in God, 
Brother , Professus, died , 
R. I. P.” Ivy rises up from the flower 
beds at the head of each grave to trail 
tenderly about the cross, giving a 
most picturesque effect to the ceme- 
tery. 
Bosnia contains another curiosity, in 
the cemetery line, in the old Jewish 
burying-ground of Sarajevo, the cap- 
ital. On a sun-bathed hillside, with- 
out vestige of leaf or blade of grass, 
without fence or other protective wall, 
hundreds of crude white boulders, the 
one side cut to a smooth face to con- 
tain a Hebraic epitaph, and all of 
them facing toward the same point of 
compass, stand in long, twining rows. 
Taken in a glance, the cemetery re- 
minds one of nothing so much as the 
enchanted hillside in one of the Ara- 
bian Nights, on which every climber 
who looked back was enchanted at 
once to rock. 
On the roads in the Herzegovina, 
as along the roads in Kentucky, one 
sees, here and there, a lone grave, sit- 
uated in some field or woodland, with 
only a stone to mark its presence 
there. In the good old days, before 
the Austro-Hungarians came into Bos- 
nia, the Turks had their family ceme- 
teries — as some still do, far from the 
towns — burying on these, and the cus- 
tom recalls instinctively to the Amer- 
ican passer the old plantation grave- 
yards of Virginia. 
At Plevlje, in the neighboring Sand- 
chak of Plevlje, one of the most dan- 
gerous sections of European Turkey, 
the cemetery is much like that of the 
Mohammedans of Sarajevo, but, in ad- 
dition, there is a stone in one corner 
on which each corpse is lain for some 
little time before burial. 
At Belgrade the cemetery has a 
rather melancholy interest, by reason 
of the graves of monarch and minis- 
ters who went up in dynamite that 
eventful night at the Serb capital. 
Here the tall cemetery rvall is lined 
with tables, on which are solid tin 
boxes, with the top slanting to a point, 
and with a great circular opening cut 
in one side to form a lantern, in 
which candles may be burned. These, 
as well as floral offerings, are placed 
on the various graves quite plentifully 
the year around. As in Hungary, the 
front row contains the better of the 
vast number of monuments. About 
each lot, however, an iron grating, 
painted in white or black, is set. Most 
of the monuments inclose several 
photos of the deceased — a custom of 
which we have examples in some of 
the American cemeteries. Graves 
