The tombs were
rudely worked and decorated in prehistoric manner with devices of war
or the chase; one device, which I copied, being of an archer shooting
a wild goat, another of a warrior with a long broadsword and large
square shield. On some tombs were a crescent and star, the emblem of
Constantinople; on a few a cross; but there was no attempt at a letter
or other sign of language. The entire absence of any ruins within the
distance of our journeys (and by the report of the natives there were
none in the country round about) made the presence of these cemeteries
an archaeological problem to which I obtained no clue until some time
later, on the surrender of Niksich. We then discovered that a
large part of the town was formed of houses--huts would be more
correct--constructed on sledges, huge runners of timber, into which
had been driven stakes, forming the frame of the house. The stakes
were filled in with willow branches, and the walls were completed
with mud, the whole being roofed with thatch. The forward end of the
runners was perforated for a bar, to which oxen could be attached, and
the house was evidently to be drawn from place to place, as the herds
and flocks found food. Of this nature had probably been the towns or
villages to which the cemeteries belonged, and their existence still
on the plain of Niksich, where they must have been built without any
possibility of removal beyond the limits of the plain (which is only
about ten miles in its greatest extent, and bounded by abrupt hills),
was a curious evidence of the intensely conservative character of the
population which had established itself there at a remote epoch.
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