ustom. A good deal of blood-vengeance still
went on, but with the knife; firearms were strictly forbidden, and
very few licences for them issued. This was a source of great
discontent, for the carrying of arms to the South Slav peasant means
manhood. The Christian's idea of liberty is to carry arms. And the
fact that the Moslem also was debarred from so doing in no way
consoled him. In one respect the lack of firearms was a real
hardship, for Bosnia swarmed with wild pig which devastated the
crops. When the corn was standing, peasants sat up all night
drumming on petroleum tins around the fields to drive off beasts.
There were enough wolves also to harry the flocks. An Austrian
official killed ten in one night with strychnine during my visit.
But the natives complained bitterly that the Government did not
permit them to shoot wild beasts and did not keep them down itself.

There was, I was told, very little stealing but, in the forest
districts where the woodcutters all carried long handled hatchets, a
blow with which was invariably fatal, there was a good deal of
slaughter, as in a quarrel a man struck with whatever was handy.
Only if the attack proved to be cold-blooded and pre-arranged was
capital punishment inflicted. Otherwise imprisonment up to twelve
years according to the circumstances.

Wages were low. The peasant was very poor. Very high wages were
obtainable in America, and thousands emigrated thither. They
ascribed this to Austrian rule, but the same thing was happening in
Montenegro, where the Government was vainly trying to stop
emigration by refusing passports. It was simply an economic question
of supply and demand. Labour was wanted in America at any price. The
emigration had the same effect in Bosnia as in Montenegro. A large
surplus of women remained behind, and the birth-rate of illegitimate
children rose high and, as is perhaps inevitable with a military
occupation, prostitution was common. This, though, was not the only
cause of immorality in both Montenegro and Bosnia. In old days all
the women of the family were the property of the men of the family,
who had the right to shoot at sight any man tampering with a wife or
daughter of a family group. A blood vengeance so started might mean
twenty lives. The risks were not to be lightly taken. The
emancipation of women and the restriction of firearms produced new
complications.

The Austrians were rather pleased to see emigrants leaving the land,