136 THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
Bosnia, the castle of the Bani. Below was the town of Podvisoko (Sotto-Visochi in Ragusan documents), on the banks of the river Bosna. Between 1348 and 1430 this was the commercial capital of the country and the seat of important trading communities. From Visoko the route proceeded to Olovo and Borac, near Vlasenica,1 where it branched off into three. One led eastward to Srebrnica, the centre of the silver-mining district,2 and Rudnik ; another went northwards to Soli ; the main route went to Kuclat, well known as a trading station in the fourteenth century, with a large Ragusan colony, to Zvornik, and across the Drina to Sirmia and Belgrad. At Sirmia,3 which was on the ruins of the Roman Syr-mium, the Ragusans had a flourishing settlement protected by the Kings of Hungary, until the town was burnt by the Turks in 1396. Its importance was due to its position as a starting point for the Ragusan traders going to all parts of Hungary.4
  These various routes were called collectively the Via de Bossina in the Ragusan documents. The routes which started from the coast at points south of Ragusa were denominated the Via de Zenta.6 Ragusan vessels sailed down the coast, and either discharged their goods at the towns of Antivari and Dulcigno, or sailed for some
   1	The seat of feudal family of the Pavlovici in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
   2	Srebro—silver in Servian.
   3	Slav. S. Dimitri, Dimitrovica, or Mitrovica.
    4	Jirecek, op. cit., pp. 75-82.
   6	Zenta or Zedda was the name of a district comprising Montenegro and that part of Albania between the lake of Scutari and the Adriatic coast as far as Durazzo. The anonymous writer in Matkovid (Starine x., 1878, of the South-Slavonic Academy) describes the Via de Zenta.