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Through the Land of the Serb

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Title: Through the Land of the Serb

Author: M. E. Durham


        
Release date: November 27, 2012 [eBook #41499]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE LAND OF THE SERB ***
THROUGH THE LANDS OF THE SERB

By

MARY E. DURHAM

LONDON

EDWARD ARNOLD

1904


DEDICATED

TO

MY MOTHER


[Illustration: MONTENEGRIN WOMEN, CETINJE.]



CONTENTS

PART I

MONTENEGRO AND THE WAY THERE

    I. CATTARO--NJEGUSHI--CETINJE
   II. PODGORITZA AND RIJEKA
  III. OSTROG
   IV. NIKSHITJE AND DUKLE
    V. OUR LADY AMONG THE ROCKS
   VI. ANTIVARI
  VII. OF THE NORTH ALBANIAN
 VIII. SKODRA
   IX. SKODRA TO DULCIGNO

PART II

OF SERVIA

    X. BELGRADE
   XI. SMEDEREVO--SHABATZ--VALJEVO--UB--OBRENOVATZ
  XII. NISH
 XIII. PIROT
  XIV. EAST SERVIA
   XV. THE SHUMADIA AND SOUTH-WEST SERVIA
  XVI. KRUSHEVATZ

PART III

MONTENEGRO AND OLD SERVIA

1903

 XVII. KOLASHIN--ANDRIJEVITZA--BERANI--PECH
XVIII. TO DECHANI AND BACK TO PODGORITZA

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

    MONTENEGRIN WOMEN, CETINJE
    CEMETERY NEAR CETINJE
    BAKER'S SHOP, RIJEKA--ALBANIAN AND TWO
    MONTENEGRINS
    BULLOCK CART, PODGORITZA
    UPPER MONASTERY, OSTROG
    RUINS OF ANTIVARI
    MOUNTAIN ALBANIANS IN MARKET, PODGORITZA
    STREET IN BAZAAR, SKODRA
    SKODRA
    MOSQUE, SKODRA
    SHOP IN BAZAAR, SKODRA
    MONTENEGRIN PLOUGH
    SERVIAN PEASANT
    TRAVELLING GIPSIES, RIJEKA, MONTENEGRO
    SOLDIERS' MONUMENTS
    CHURCH, STUDENITZA--WEST DOOR.
    CORONATION CHURCH, KRALJEVO
    TSAR LAZAR'S CASTLE
    CHURCH, KRUSHEVATZ--SIDE WINDOW OF APSE
    THE PATRIARCHIA, IPEK (PECH)
    PODGORITZA
    MAP OF THE LANDS OF THE SERB


    PUBLISHER'S NOTE

          In the spelling of proper names the
          system adopted in the _Times Atlas_ has
          been followed as nearly as possible.
          Owing to the absence of Miss Durham in
          Macedonia, the following pages have not
          had the advantage of her revision in
          going through the press.



PART I

MONTENEGRO AND THE WAY THERE

     "What land is this?"
     "This is Illyria, lady."
                     _Twelfth Night._




THROUGH THE LANDS OF THE SERB


CHAPTER I

CATTARO--NJEGUSHI--CETINJE


I do not know where the East proper begins, nor does it greatly matter,
but it is somewhere on the farther side of the Adriatic, the
island-studded coast which the Venetians once held. At any rate, as soon
as you leave Trieste you touch the bubbling edge of the ever-simmering
Eastern Question, and the unpopularity of the ruling German element is
very obvious. "I--do--not--speak--German," said a young officer
laboriously, "I am Bocchese"; and as we approached the Bocche he
emphasised the fact that he was a Slav returning to a Slav land. Party
politics run high even on the steamboat.

We awoke one morning to find the second-class saloon turned into a
Herzegovinian camp, piled with gay saddle-bags and rugs upon which
squatted, cross-legged, a couple of families in full native costume, and
the air was thick with the highly scented tobacco which the whole party
smoked incessantly. The friendly steward, a Dalmatian Italian,
whispered hastily, "This is a Herzegovinian family, signorin'. Do you
like the Herzegovinese?" Rather taken aback, and not knowing what his
politics were, I replied, stupidly enough, "I find their costume very
interesting," This frivolous remark hurt the steward deeply.
"Signorin'," he said very gravely, "these are some of the bravest men in
the world. Each one of these that you see would fight till he died."
Then in a mysterious undertone, "They cannot live without freedom ...
they are leaving their own land ... it has been taken, as you know, by
the Austrian.... They are going to Montenegro, to a free country. They
have taken with them all their possessions, and they go to find
freedom."

I looked at them with a curious sense of pity. Though they knew it not,
they were the survivors of an old, old world, the old world which still
lingers in out-of-the-way corners, and it was from the twentieth century
quite as much as from the Teuton they were endeavouring to flee. All
these parti-coloured saddle-bags and little bundles tied up in cotton
handkerchiefs represented the worldly goods of three generations, who
had left the land of their forebears and were upon a quest as mystical
as any conceived by mediæval knight--they were seeking the shrine of
Liberty. "Of old sat Freedom on the heights"; let us hope they found her
there! I never saw them again.

On the other hand, in a boat with Austrian sympathies, the tale is very
different. "I am a Viennese, Fräulein. Imagine what it is to me to have
to travel in this dreary place! The people?--they are a rough,
discontented set. Very ignorant. Very bad. No, I should not advise you to
go to Montenegro--a most mischievous race." "And what about Bosnia and
the Herzegovina?" "Oh, you will be quite safe there; _we_ govern that.
They are a bad lot, though! But we don't stand any nonsense."

Thus either party seizes upon the stranger and tries to prevent his
views being "prejudiced." He seldom has need to complain that he has
heard one side only; but there is a Catholic side, an Orthodox side, a
Mohammedan side, there are German, Slav, Italian, Turkish, and Albanian
sides; and when he has heard them all he feels far less capable of
forming an opinion on the Eastern Question than he did before.

Dalmatia has its charms, but tourists swarm there, and the picturesque
corners are being rapidly pulled down to provide suitable accommodation
for them. Let us pass on, then, nor pause till we have wound our way
through that wonderful maze of fiords, the Bocche, and landed on the
quay at Cattaro. Cattaro is a tiny, greatly coveted, much-fought-for
town. The natural port for Montenegro but the property of Austria, it
swelters, breathless, on a strip of shore, with the waters in front of
it, and the great wall of the Black Mountain rising sheer up behind. Its
"heart's in the Highlands," but the enemy holds it as a garrison town;
the Austrian army pervades the neighbourhood, and a big fort, lurking
opposite, commands the one road from mountain to coast. Cattaro, after
all, is only a half-way house to Montenegro, and this is why Austria
lavishes so many troops upon it.

Behind the town starts the rough zigzag track, the celebrated "ladder of
Cattaro," which until 1879 was the only path into Montenegro, and is
the one the peasants still use. The making of the road was for a long
while dreaded by the Montenegrins, who argued that a road that will
serve for a cart will also serve for artillery. A tangible, visible gun
was their idea of the means by which changes are wrought; but the road
that can let in artillery can let in something more subtle,
irresistible, and change-working. The road was made, and there is now no
barrier to prevent the twentieth century creeping up silently and
sweeping over this old-world land almost before its force is recognised.
Whether the hardy mountain race which has successfully withstood the
gory onslaught of the Turk for five hundred years, will come out
unscathed from a bloodless encounter with Western so-called civilisation
Time alone can tell.

The road from Cattaro to Cetinje has been so often written of that it is
idle to describe it once again, nor can any words do it justice. After
some three hours' climbing, we pass the last Austrian black-and-yellow
post, and the driver, if he be a son of the mountain, points to the
ground and says, "Crnagora!" (Tsernagora). Crnagora, gaunt, grey, drear,
a chaos of limestone crags piled one on the other in inextricable
confusion, the bare wind-swept bones of a dead world. The first view of
the land comes as a shock. The horror of desolation, the endless series
of bare mountain tops, the arid wilderness of bare rock majestic in its
rugged loneliness, tell with one blow of the sufferings of centuries.
The next instant fills one with respect and admiration for the people
who have preferred liberty in this wilderness to slavery in fat lands.

Wherever possible, little patches of ground are cultivated, carefully
banked up with stones to save the precious soil from being washed away,
and up on the mountain sides scrubby oaks dwarfed and twisted by the
wind find a foothold among the crags. Most of the men carry revolvers,
and the eye soon becomes so much accustomed to weapons that on a return
to unarmed lands everyone appears, for a few days, to be rather
undressed. The road winds, the red roofs of Njegushi come in sight, and
we make our first halt in a Montenegrin town, and rest our weary horses.

We enter the little inn, and our coachman claims his revolver, which is
hanging with several others behind the bar, for none are allowed to
enter Austria; they are deposited in some house near the frontier and
picked up on the way back. George Stanisich, the big landlord, hurries
up his womenkind to make ready a meal, looks after the drinks, and
converses cheerfully on the topics of the day--preferably on the war, if
there happens to be one. "Junastvo" (that is, heroism--"deeds of
derring-do") is a subject that occupies a large space in the Montenegrin
mind, and no wonder, and every man's ambition is to be considered a
"dobar junak" (valiant warrior) and worthy of his forefathers.

Njegushi cannot fail to make a most vivid impression on the mind, for it
is the entrance to a world that is new and strange. The little
stone-paved room of the inn, hung with portraits of the Prince and the
Tsar and Tsaritsa of Russia; the row of loaded revolvers in the bar; the
blind minstrel who squats by the door and sings his long monotonous
chant while he scrapes upon his one-stringed gusle; and the tall,
dignified men in their picturesque garb, all belong to an unknown
existence, and the world we have always known is left far below at the
foot of the mountain. In Njegushi one feels that one has come a long way
from England. It is, in fact, easy to travel much farther without being
so far off. Yet the Montenegrin love of liberty and fair play and the
Montenegrin sense of honour have made me feel more at home in this far
corner of Europe than in any other foreign land.

Njegushi is the Prince's birthplace. His ancestors were some of a number
of Herzegovinians who, intolerant of the Turk, emigrated in the
fifteenth century. The village they left was called Njegushi, and they
gave the same name to their new home. In connection with this I give
here a curious tale which I have met with more than once. I repeat it as
told; my informants, Servians, believed it firmly, but I can find no
confirmation of it.

When these Herzegovinese migrated to Montenegro, a large body of them
went yet farther afield and settled in the mountains of Abyssinia, among
them a branch of the family of Petrovich of Njegushi, from which is
directly descended Menelik, who preserves the title of Negus and is a
distant cousin of Prince Nikola of Montenegro, and to this large
admixture of Slav blood the Abyssinians owe their fine stature and their
high standard of civilisation, as compared with the neighbouring African
tribes.

The house of the Prince stands on the left of the road as we leave the
town. The road ascends once more; a steep pull up through a bleakness of
grey crags; we reach the top of the pass (3350 feet), and turn a corner.
"Cetinje!" (Tsetinye), says the driver briefly, and there, in the
mountain-locked plain far below, lies the little red-roofed town, a
village city, a kindergarten capital, one of the quaintest sights in
Europe, so tiny, so entirely wanting in the usual stock properties of a
big town and yet so consciously a capital. Two wide streets which run
parallel and are joined by various cross streets make up the greater
part of it, and it has some 3000 inhabitants. As we enter the town the
first building of importance stands up on the left hand, brand-new, a
white stone building with a black roof. To any other capital it would
not be remarkable either for size or beauty; here it looms large and
portentous. It is the biggest building in the town, and it is the Palace
of the Austro-Hungarian Legation. Not to be outdone, Russia has just
erected an equally magnificent building at the other end of the town,
which now lies between representatives of the two rival powers. "Which
things are an allegory." Twenty years ago Cetinje was a collection of
thatched hovels. To-day, modest as they are, the houses are all solidly
built and roofed with tiles. Few more than one storey high, many
consisting only of a ground floor, all of them devoid of any attempt at
architecture; not a moulding, a cornice, or a porch breaks the general
baldness: they are more like a row of toy houses all out of the same box
than anything else. The road is very wide, and very white; a row of
little clipped trees border it on each side, so clipped that they afford
at present about as much shade as telegraph posts, and they all appear
to have come out of the same box too. It is all very clean, very neat;
not a whiff offends the tenderest nostril, not a cabbage stalk lies in
the gutter. It is not merely a toy, but a brand-new one that has not yet
been played with.

Cetinje is poor, but dignified and self-respecting. A French or Italian
village of the same size clatters, shouts, and screams. Cetinje is never
in a hurry, and seldom excited. It contains few important buildings. The
only ones of any historic interest are the monastery, the little tower
on the hill above it where were formerly stuck the heads of slain Turks,
and the old Palace called the Biljardo from the fact that it contained
Montenegro's first billiard-table. It now affords quarters for various
officials and the Court of Justice. There are no lawyers in Montenegro,
and this is said to simplify matters greatly. The Prince is the final
Court of Appeal, and reads and considers the petition of any of his
subjects that are in difficulties. Such faith have folk in his judgment
that Mohammedan subjects of the Sultan have been known to tramp to
Crnagora in order to have a quarrel settled by the Gospodar. That he
possesses a keen insight into these semi-civilised people and a
remarkable power of handling them is evident from the order that is
maintained throughout his lands even among the large Mohammedan Albanian
population, and it would undoubtedly have been much better for the
Balkan peoples had he had larger scope for his administrative powers.

Cetinje's other attractions are the park, the theatre, and the market,
where the stranger will have plenty of opportunity of wrestling with the
language.

The language is one of the amusements of Montenegro. It is not an easy
one. I hunted it about London for months, and it landed me in strange
places. The schools and systems that teach all the languages of Europe,
Asia, Africa, and America know it not. In the course of my chase I
caught a Roumanian, a Hungarian, and an Albanian, but I got no nearer to
it. I pursued it to a Balkan Consulate, which proved to consist entirely
of Englishmen who knew no word of the tongue, but kindly communicated
with a Ministry which consisted, so they said, entirely of very charming
men, with whom I should certainly be pleased. The Ministry was puzzled,
but wished to give me every encouragement. It had never before had such
a run upon its language. It suggested that the most suitable person to
instruct me would be an ex-Minister who had come over to attend the
funeral of Queen Victoria. The ex-Minister was very polite, but wrote
that he was on the point of returning to his native land. He therefore
proposed that a certain gallant and dashing officer, attache to the
Legation, should be instructed to call and converse with me once a week.
"No remuneration, of course," he added, "must be offered to the gallant
captain." "But suppose," I said feebly, "the captain doesn't care about
the job; it seems a little awkward, doesn't it?" "Oh no," said the
Consul, exultant; "when he hears it is by the orders of X., he won't
dare refuse." As I am not a character in one of Mr. Anthony Hope's
novels, but merely live in a London suburb, I thanked everybody and
retired upon a small grammar, dazzled by the fierce light that my
inquiries had shed upon the workings of this Balkan State, and wondering
if all the others were equally ready to loan out Ministers and attaches
to unknown foreigners.

There is a childish simplicity about the conversation of the up-country
peasant folk that is quite charming. They are as pleased with a
stranger who will talk to them as is a child with a kitten that will
run after a string, and, like children, they have no scruples about
asking what in a more "grown-up" state of society would be considered
indiscreet questions, including even the state of one's inside. The
women begin the conversation and retail the details to their lords and
masters, who, burning with curiosity, stand aloof with great dignity for
a little while, and end by crowding out the women altogether. Neither
men nor women have the vaguest idea whence I come nor to what manner of
life I am accustomed. When they learn that I have come in a train and a
steamboat, their amazement is unbounded. That I come from a far countrie
that is full of gold is obvious. "And thou hast come so far to see us?
Bravo!" Much patting on the back, and sometimes an affectionate squeeze
from an enthusiastic lady, who at once informs the men that I am very
thin and very hard. "Bravo! thou art brave. Art married?" "No." Great
excitement and much whispering. "Wait, wait," says a woman, and she
shouts "Milosh! Milosh!" at the top of her voice. Milosh edges his way
through the crowd. He is a tall, sun-tanned thing of about eighteen
years, with the eyes of a startled stag. His mother stands on tiptoe and
whispers in his ear that this is a chance not to be lightly thrown away.
A broad smile spreads over Milosh's face. He looks coy, and twiddles his
fingers. "Ask her! ask her!" say the ladies encouragingly. "Ask her!"
say the men. Milosh plucks up courage, thumps his chest and blurts out,
"Wilt thou have me?" "No, thank you," I say, laughing; and Milosh
retires amid the jeers of his friends, but really much relieved.
"Milosh, thou art not beautiful enough," say the men; and they suggest
one Gavro as being more likely to please. Gavro takes Milosh's place
with great alacrity, and the same ceremony is repeated. The crowd enjoys
itself vastly, and tries to fit me out with a really handsome specimen.
I glance round, and my eye is momentarily caught by a very goodly youth.
"No! no! he's mine, he's mine!" cries a woman, who seizes him by the
arm, and he is hastily withdrawn from competition amid shouts of
laughter. "I have no money," says one youth frankly, "but thou hast
perhaps enough." "And he is good and beautiful," say his friends. For
they are all cheerfully aware that their faces are their only fortunes.
There is a barbaric simplicity and a lack of any attempt at romance
about the proposed arrangements which is exquisitely funny, for they are
far too honest to pretend that I possess any attractions beyond my
supposed wealth. I have often wondered what the crowd would do if I
accepted someone temporarily, but have never dared try. Five offers in
twenty minutes is about my highest record.

But all these are country amusements. Cetinje is far too civilised a
city to indulge in them, and to "see Montenegro" we must wander much
farther afield.

[Illustration: CEMETERY NEAR CETINJE.]




CHAPTER II

PODGORITZA AND RIJEKA


Travelling in Montenegro--in fine weather, be it said--is delightful
from start to finish. And to Shan, my Albanian driver, whose care,
fidelity, and good nature have added greatly to the success of many of
my tours, I owe a passing tribute. He is short and dark, a somewhat
mixed specimen of his race, and hails from near the borders, where folk
are apt to be so mixed that it is hard to tell which is the true type.
Careful of his three little horses, and always ready in an emergency, he
yet preserves the gay, inconsequent nature of a very young child. His
veneer of civilisation causes him to assume for short intervals an
appearance of great stiffness and dignity, but it melts suddenly, and
his natural spirits bubble through. Thus, at an inn door before
foreigners, he is stately, but in the kitchen to which I have been
invited to accompany him, he waves his arms wildly and performs a war
dance, chaffs the ladies, and makes himself highly agreeable. His tastes
are simple and easily satisfied. I have stood him several treats of his
own selection, and they usually cost about fourpence. One was an immense
liver which was toasted for him in hot wood ashes, and which he consumed
along with a whole loaf of bread--whereupon he expressed himself as
feeling much better. His generosity is unfailing; at the top of a pass,
in a heavy storm of sleet, he offered me the greatcoat he was wearing,
and he is always ready to help a distressed wayfarer. One awful evening,
when the rain was falling in torrents and it was rapidly growing dark,
we were hailed, between Rijeka and Cetinje, by a man in distress. A
sheep, his only one, which he was driving up to Cetinje, had fallen, wet
and exhausted, by the roadside, and he knew not what to do. Shan was
greatly concerned. He explained to me that the man was very poor, the
sheep very tired and also that the sheep was a very little one, then he
took it in his arms like a baby and arranged it on the box, where it
cuddled up against him for warmth, and, through wind, rain, and the
blackest night I have ever been out in, he drove three horses abreast,
held up an umbrella, nursed the sheep, and sang songs till we arrived
safely at our journey's end.

Acting on the principle of "Do as you would be done by," when his pouch
is full, he distributes tobacco lavishly along the route with a fine
"Damn-the-expense" air which one cannot but admire, and when not a shred
remains, he begs it, quite shamelessly, of everyone he meets. When I
first made his acquaintance, his appearance puzzled me. Learning that he
was an Albanian, I remarked upon the fact to him; he immediately crossed
himself hastily. "Yes, an Albanian," he admitted, "but Cattolici,
Cattolici," and he added as an extra attraction, "and I came to
Montenegro when I was very little." He persists in regarding me as a
co-religionist; for the fact that I am neither Orthodox nor Mohammedan
is to him quite sufficient proof. His Catholicism is quite original.
Unlike most Catholic Albanians, who display a horror of the Orthodox
Church, he is most pressing in his attentions to the Orthodox priests,
and will never, if he can help it, be left out of a circle of
conversation that includes one. One Easter Day I saw him persist in
kissing, in Orthodox fashion, the village priest, who having more than
enough osculation to go through with his own flock, did his best to
dodge him, but was loudly smacked upon the back of the neck. His views
upon doctrinal points are mixed, but his simple creed has taught him
faith, hope, and charity "which is the greatest of the three."

Withal he is a bit of a buck, and likes to cut a dash in what he
considers large towns. He strolls in when I am having dinner and
converses with the company at large; he makes me a flowery speech--he is
my servant; it is mine to command and his to obey; whatever I order he
will carry out with pleasure. When he learns that I shall not require
him till to-morrow, he beams all over his sun-tanned face. Then he
fidgets and makes pointless remarks. I do not help him. He strolls with
elaborate carelessness behind my chair and whispers hurriedly that towns
are very expensive, and if I would only advance him a florin or two of
his pay--I supply the needful, and later I meet him, a happy man,
playing the duke among a crowd of friends, to all of whom he introduces
me with great style and elegance. But his dissipations are very mild,
though from the swagger he puts on you would think they were bold and
bad. I have never seen him the worse for drink, and he is punctuality
itself and very honest. Child of the race with about the worst
reputation in Europe though he is, I would trust him under most
circumstances.

Leaving Cetinje by its only road, we soon reach the top of the pass, and
a sudden turn reveals the land beyond. We have come across Europe to the
edge of Christianity, and stand on the rocky fortress with the enemy in
sight. The white road serpentines down the mountain side, and far below
lies the green valley and its tiny village, Dobrsko Selo; on all sides
rise the crags wild and majestic; away in the distance gleams the great
silver lake of Skodra. Beyond it the blue Albanian mountains, their
peaks glittering with snow even in June, show fainter and fainter, and
the land of mystery and the unspeakable Turk fades into the sky--a scene
so magnificent and so impressive that it is worth all the journey from
England just to have looked at it.

We cast loose our third horse, and rattle all the way down to Rijeka,
skimming along the mountain side and swinging round the zigzags on a
road that it takes barely two hours to descend and quite three to climb
up again; for Cetinje lies 1900 feet above the sea, and Rijeka not much
more than 200 feet.

Rijeka means a stream, and the town so called is a cluster of most
picturesque, half-wooden houses, facing green trees and a ripple of
running water and backed by the mountain side--as pretty a place as one
need wish to see. The stream's full name is Rijeka Crnoievicheva, the
River of Crnoievich, but for everyday use town and river are simply
Rijeka. But its full name must not be forgotten, for it keeps alive the
fame of Ivan Beg Crnoievich, who ruled in the latter half of the
fifteenth century, in the days when Montenegro's worst troubles were
beginning. Unable to hold the plains of the Zeta against the Turk, Ivan
gathered his men together, burnt his old capital, Zabljak, near the head
of the lake, retired into the mountains, and founded Cetinje in 1484. He
built a castle above Rijeka as a defence to his new frontier, and swore
to hold the Black Mountain against all comers. But he meant his people
to grow as a nation worthily, and not to degenerate into a horde of
barbarians. He founded the monastery at Cetinje, appointed a bishop and
built churches. And--for he was quite abreast of his times--he sent to
Venice for type and started a printing press at Rijeka. In spite of the
difficulties and dangers that beset the Montenegrins, they printed their
first book little more than twenty years later than Caxton printed his
at Westminster. Ivan is not dead, but sleeps on the hill above Rijeka,
and he will one day awake and lead his people to victory. The printing
press was burned by the Turks, and the books which issued from it--fine
specimens of the printer's art--are rare.

The stream Rijeka is a very short one. It rises in some curious caverns
not much farther up the valley, and flows into the lake of Skodra. The
town is built of cranky little houses, half Turkish in style, with open
wooden galleries painted green--gimcrack affairs, that look as though
they might come down with a run any minute, when filled as they
frequently are with a party of heavy men. It has an old-world look, but,
as most of the town was burnt by the Turks in 1862, appearances are
deceptive. A perfect Bond Street of shops faces the river. Here you can
buy at a cheap rate all the necessaries of Montenegrin existence. In the
baker's shop the large round flat loaves of bread, very like those dug
up at Pompeii, are neatly covered with a white cloth to keep off the
flies.

Plenty of tobacco is grown in the neighbourhood. In the autumn the
cottages are festooned with the big leaves drying in the sun, and you
may see Albanians, sitting on their doorsteps, shredding up the fragrant
weed with a sharp knife into long, very fine strips till it looks like a
bunch of hair, shearing through a large pile swiftly, with machine--like
regularity and precision. Tobacco is a cheap luxury, and I am told
Montenegrin tobacco is good. Almost every man in Montenegro smokes from
morning till night, generally rolling up the next cigarette before the
last is finished.

The town possesses a burgomaster, a post-office, a steamboat office, a
Palace, and an inn, which provides a good dinner on market days. It is a
clean, prosperous, friendly, and very simple-minded place--I did not
realise how simple-minded till I spent an afternoon sitting on the wall
by the river, drawing the baker's shop, with some twenty Montenegrins
sitting round in a crimson and blue semicircle. It was in the days when
I knew nothing of the language, and the Boer War was as yet unfinished.
I drew, and my friend talked. A youth in Western garb acted as
interpreter. He ascertained whence we had come, and then remarked
airily, "Now, I come from Hungary, and I am walking to the Transvaal.
This man," pointing out a fine young Montenegrin, "is coming with me!"
Stumbling, voluble and excited, in very broken German, he unfolded their
crazy plan. They were both brave men and exceedingly rich. "I have two
thousand florins, and a hundred more or less makes no difference to
him," kept cropping up like the burden of a song. Their families had
wept and prayed, but had failed to turn them from their purpose. They
were going to walk to the Transvaal. "But you can't," we said. He was
hurt. "Of course not all the way," he knew that. They had meant to walk
across Albania to Salonika, but the Consul at Skodra had put a stop to
this dangerous scheme. Now they were going by sea from Cattaro to
Alexandria, and thence, also by sea, to Lorenzo Marques. After this,
they should "walk to the Transvaal." "Why don't you walk from
Alexandria?" we asked. He answered quite seriously that they had thought
of this, but they had been told there was a tribe of Arabs in the centre
of Africa even more ferocious than the Albanians, so, though they were
of course very brave men, they thought on the whole they preferred the
boat. When they arrived, they meant to fight on whichever side appeared
likely to win, and then they were going to pick up gold. We thought it
our duty to try and dissuade them from their wild-goose chase, but our
efforts were treated with scorn. "What can you do? You speak very little
German, and your friend nothing but Servian." "No, he doesn't," said the
Hungarian indignantly. "He speaks Albanian very well, and I--I know many
languages. I speak Servian and Hungarian." The idea that a place
existed where no one spoke these well-known tongues was to him most
ridiculous, and the Montenegrin, to whom it was imparted, smiled
incredulously. We urged the price of living and the cost of Machinery
required in gold-mining. The first he did not believe; the second he
thought very silly. The gold was there, and he was not such a fool as to
require a machine with which to pick it up.

[Illustration: BAKER'S SHOP, RIJEKA.--AUJAMAN AND TWO MONTENEGRINS.]

The Montenegrin, who had been bursting with a question for the last
quarter of an hour, insisted on its being put. "Could he buy a good
revolver in Johannesburg?" He waited anxiously for a reply. "You see,"
explained the Hungarian, "he must leave his in Montenegro." "But why? It
looks a very good one." The Montenegrin patted his weapon lovingly; he
only wished he could take it, it would be most useful, but ... in order
to reach the boat at Cattaro he must cross Austrian territory, and you
are not allowed to carry firearms in Austria! He shook his head
dolefully when we said that permission could surely be obtained. "No,
this was quite impossible; under no circumstances could it be managed.
You don't know what the Austrians are!" said the Hungarian mysteriously.
The unknown land, the unknown tongues, the British, the Boers, the
rumble-tumble ocean and the perils of the deep were all as nothing
beside the difficulty of crossing the one narrow strip of Austrian land.
We told him revolvers were plentiful in Johannesburg, and the prospect
of finding home comforts cheered him greatly. We parted the best of
friends.

From Rijeka the road rises rapidly again, and strikes over the hills,
winding through wild and very sparsely inhabited country. The mountain
range ends abruptly, and we see the broad plains stretching away below
us, with the white town of Podgoritza in the midst of it. The plain is
very obviously the bed of the now shrunken lake of Skodra, and the
water-worn pebbles are covered with but a thin layer of soil. But both
maize and tobacco seem to do well upon it, and every year more land is
taken into cultivation. The rough land is covered with wiry turf and low
bushes, and swarms with tortoises which graze deliberately by the
roadside. The river Moracha has cut itself a deep chasm in the loose
soil between us and the town, and tears along in blue-green swirls and
eddies. We have to overshoot the town to find the bridge, and we clatter
into Podgoritza six or seven hours after leaving Cetinje, according to
the weather and the state of the road.

Podgoritza is the biggest town in Montenegro, and has between five and
six thousand inhabitants. It is well situated for a trading centre, for
it is midway between Cetinje and Nikshitje, and is joined by a good road
to Plavnitza, on the lake of Scutari, so is in regular steamboat
communication with Skodra and with Antivari _via_ Virbazar. Its position
has always given it some importance. As a Turkish garrison town it was a
convenient centre from which to invade Montenegro; to the Montenegrin it
was part of his birthright--part of the ancient kingdom of Servia--and
as such to be wrested from the enemy. It was the brutal massacre of
twenty Montenegrins in and near the town in time of peace (October 1874)
that decided the Montenegrins to support the Herzegovinian insurrection
and declare war. Podgoritza was besieged and taken in October 1876. The
walls of the old town were blown to pieces with guns taken from the
Turks at Medun, and an entirely new town has since sprung up on the
opposite side of the stream Ribnitza. Podgoritza (= "At the Foot of the
Mountain"), if you have come straight from the West, is as amusing a
place as you need wish to visit. It has not so many show places as
Cetinje even, and its charm is quite undefinable. It consists in its
varied human crowd, its young barbarians all at play, its ideas that
date from the world's well--springs, subtly intermingled with Manchester
cottons, lemonade in glass-ball-stoppered bottles, and other blessings
of an enlightened present. The currents from the East and the West meet
here, the old world and the new; and those to whom the spectacle is of
interest, may sit upon the bridge and watch the old order changing.

The Montenegrin town of Podgoritza is clean and bright. The long wide
main street of white stone, red-roofed shops with their gay wares, and
the large open market square where the weekly bazaar is held, are full
of life. Both street and market-place are planted with little trees,
acacias and white mulberries; and the bright green foliage, the white
road, the red roofs, the green shutters, the variety of costume, make an
attractive scene in the blaze of the Southern sun. Across the gold-brown
plain rise the blue mountains where lies that invisible line the
frontier. The slim minarets of the old Turkish town shoot up and shimmer
white on sky and mountain; the river Ribnitza flows between the old town
and the new, and over the bridge passes an endless stream of strange
folk, the villagers of the plain and the half-wild natives of the
Albanian mountains passing from the world of the Middle Ages to a place
which feels, however faintly, the forces of the twentieth century.
Bullock carts, with two huge wheels and basket-work tops, trail slowly
past, groaning and screeching on their ungreased axles. Look well at the
carts, for our own forefathers used them in the eleventh century, and
they appear in the Harleian MSS.

Everything moves slowly. All day long folk draw water from the
stone-topped well on the open space between the old town and the
new--draw it slowly and laboriously, for there is no windlass or other
labour-saving contrivance, and the water is pulled up in a canvas bag
tied to a string. Three or four bagfuls go to one bucket.

In spite of the fact that Podgoritza is the centre of the
Anglo-Montenegrin Trading Company and deals in Manchester cottons, the
day seems distant when it will lose its other simple habits. I was
walking one day down the "High Street" with a friend, when a young
Albanian went to call on his tailor. He came out presently with a fine
new pair of the tight white trousers that his clan affects. He exhibited
them in the middle of the road to two or three friends, and they were
all evidently much struck with the make and embroidery. If the garments
were so charming "off," what would they be "on"! The whole party hurried
across to the shop door of the happy purchaser, and such an alarming
unbuckling and untying began to take place that we! discreetly went for
a little walk. On our return the transfer had been effected. Two
friends were grasping the garment by the front and back, and the wearer
was being energetically jigged and shaken into it. This was a tough job,
for it was skin-tight. The legs were then hooked-and-eyed up the back,
and presently the youth was strutting down the middle of the road
stiff-kneed and elegant, with the admiring eyes of Podgoritza upon him,
and a ridiculously self-conscious smile.

[Illustration: BULLOCK CART, PODGORITZA.]

Wandering gipsy tribes turn up here, too; mysterious roving gangs, their
scant possessions, tin pots and tent poles, piled on ponies; their
children, often as naked as they were born, perched on top of the load.
They have no abiding place; impelled by a primeval instinct, they pass
on eternally. Extraordinarily handsome savages some of them are, too. I
have seen them on the march--the men in front, three abreast, swinging
along like panthers; half stripped, clad in dirty white breeches and
cartridges; making up with firearms for deficiency in shirts, and
carrying, each man, in addition to his rifle, a long sheath knife and a
pistol in his red sash, their matted coal-black locks falling down to
their beady, glittering black eyes, which watch you like a cat's,
without ever looking you straight in the face. Their white teeth and the
brass cases of the cartridges sparkling against their swarthy skins,
they passed with their heads held high on their sinewy throats with an
air of fierce and sullen independence. Behind follow the boys, women,
and children, with all their worldly goods; golden-brown women with
scarlet lips and dazzling teeth, their hair hanging in a thick black
plait on either side of the face, like that of the ladies of ancient
Egypt; holding themselves like queens, and, unlike their lords and
masters, smiling very good-naturedly. So entirely do they appear to
belong to an unknown, untamed past, that I was astonished when one of
them, a splendid girl in tawny orange and crimson, addressed me in
fluent Italian outside the Podgoritza inn. "I am a gipsy. Are you
Italian?" Italy was her only idea of a foreign land, and England quite
unknown to her. She hazarded a guess that it was far off, and imparted
the information to a little crowd of Albanian and Montenegrin boys who
were hanging around. When the servant of the inn thought the crowd too
large, he came out to scatter it. The boys fled precipitately; the girl
stood her ground firmly, as one conscious of right, and told him what
she thought of him volubly and fiercely, her eyes flashing the while. He
retired discomfited, and she informed us superbly, "I told him the
ladies wished to speak to me!" Unlike the Montenegrins, she understood
at once that we were merely travelling for travelling's sake, and
regarded it as perfectly natural. She retired gracefully when she had
learnt what she wished to know.

The Montenegrin and Albanian gipsies are mostly Mohammedans, and what is
vaguely described as Pagan. They seldom or never, it is said, intermarry
with the people among whom they wander, but keep themselves entirely to
themselves. One day the old quarter of Podgoritza was agog with a
Mohammedan gipsy wedding. From across the river we heard the monotonous
rhythmic pulsation of a tambourine, and at intervals the long-drawn
Oriental yowl that means music. We strolled down to the bridge and
joined the very motley collection of sight-seers. Gay and filthy, they
gathered round us, and enjoyed at once the spectacle of two foreigners
of unknown origin and the festivity which was going on in the back
garden hard by. It could hardly be called a garden, it was the yard of a
squalid little hovel backing on the river, and was filled with women in
gorgeous raiment walking backwards and forwards in rows that met and
swayed apart, singing a long howling chant, while the pom-pom and
metallic jingle of the tambourine sounded over the voices with
mechanical regularity. Presently all fell aside and left a space, into
which leapt a dancing-girl, a mass of white silk gauze with a golden
zouave and belt and a dangling coin head-dress. She wreathed her arms
gracefully over her head and danced a complicated _pas-seul_ with great
aplomb and certainty, her white draperies swirling round her and her
gold embroideries flashing in the sunlight. When she ceased, the party
withdrew into the dirty little hut, and as we were now the whole
attraction to the obviously verminous crowd we withdrew also. The hut
was the headquarters of the bridegroom, and this was a preliminary
entertainment. Next morning, four carriages dashed into the town at
once, bringing the bride and her escort from Skodra in Albania. The
horses' heads were decorated with gaily embroidered muslin
handkerchiefs, and the bride's carriage was closely curtained and
veiled. The amount of men and weapons that poured out of the other
vehicles was astounding. When three carriages had unloaded, the bride's
carriage drove up close to the entrance of the yard in which the hut
stood, and the men made a long tunnel from door to door by holding up
white sheets; down this the bride fled safe and invisible, while
curiosity devoured the spectators on the bridge. Every window in the hut
was already shuttered and barred, and we thought there was no more to be
seen.

But our presence had been already noted. A commotion arose among the men
at the door of the hovel. A young Montenegrin onlooker came up, pulled
together all his foreign vocabulary and stammeringly explained, "They
wish you to go into their house." All the men in the crowd were consumed
with curiosity about the hidden bride, and obviously envied us the
invitation. We hesitated to plunge into the filthy hole. We didn't
hesitate long, though. The bride and her friends meant to show off their
finery to the foreigners; a dark swagger fellow who would take no denial
was sent out to fetch us, and we followed our escort obediently to the
cottage door. We paused a half-second on the doorstep; it looked bad
inside, but it was too late to go back. A passage was cleft for us
immediately, and we found ourselves in a long low room with a mud
floor--a noisome, squalid den in which one would not stable an English
donkey. There was no light except what came through the small door and
the chinks. It was packed with men; their beady, bright eyes and silver
weapons glittered, the only sparks of brightness in the gloom.

As my eyes got accustomed to the subdued light, I saw in the corner a
huge caldron of chunks of most unpleasant-looking boiled mutton, with
floating isles of fat, and my heart sank at the thought that perhaps
our invitation included the wedding breakfast. The men guarding the door
of the inner apartment parted, and we went in. No man, save the
bridegroom, entered here. It was a tiny hole of a room, but its dirty
stone walls were ablaze with glittering golden embroideries and it was
lighted by oil lamps. The floor was covered with women squatting close
together, their brown faces, all unveiled, showing very dark against
their gorgeous barbaric costumes. It was a fierce jostle of
colours--patches of scarlet, orange, purple and white, mellowed and
harmonised by the lavish use of gold over all, coin head-dresses,
necklaces, and girdles in reckless profusion. In the light of common day
it would doubtless resolve itself into copper-gilt and glass jewels, but
by lamplight it was all that could be desired. On a chair, the only one
in the room, with her back to the partition wall, so as to be quite
invisible to the men in the next room, sat the bride, upright,
motionless, rigid like an Eastern idol. Her hands lay in her lap, her
clothes were stiff with gold, and she was covered down to the knees with
a thick purple and gold veil. There she has to sit without moving all
day. She may not even, I am told, feed herself, but what nourishment she
is allowed is given her under the veil by one of the other ladies. At
her feet, cross-legged on the ground, sat the bridegroom, who I believe
had not yet seen her--quite the most decorative bridegroom I ever saw, a
good-looking fellow of about five-and-twenty, whose black and white
Albanian garments, tight-fitting, showed him off effectively, while the
arsenal of fancy weapons in his sash gave him the required touch of
savagery. He gazed fixedly at the purple veil, endeavouring vainly to
penetrate its mysteries, and, considering the trying circumstances in
which he was placed, seemed to be displaying a good deal of fortitude.
The air was heavy with scented pastilles, otherwise the human reek must
have been unbearable.

Everyone began to talk at once, and it was evident from their nods and
smiles that we had done the correct thing in coming. Unfortunately we
couldn't understand a word, but we bowed to everyone, repeated our
thanks, and tried to express our wonder and admiration. Whether we were
intended to stay or not I do not know, but, haunted by a desire to
escape with as small a collection of vermin as possible, and also to
evade the chunks of mutton in the caldron, we backed our way, bowing,
into the outer room after a few minutes, and were politely escorted to
the entrance. Judging by the smiles and bows of everyone, our visit gave
great satisfaction. After we left, the doors were shut, and there was a
long lull, during which the mutton was probably consumed. If so, we
escaped only just in time. In the afternoon the tambourines and
sing-songs started again, and far into the night the long-drawn yowls of
the epithalamium came down the wind.

In spite of the mixed Christian and Mohammedan population, excellent
order is maintained. The more I see of the Montenegrin, the more I am
struck with his power of keeping order. It is a favourite joke against
him that when he asks for a job and is questioned as to his
capabilities, he replies that he is prepared to "superintend," and it
turns out that he is unable to do anything else. But not even our own
policeman can perform the said "superintending" more quietly and
efficiently. To the traveller the Mohammedan is very friendly. The
attempt of a man to draw or photograph a woman is an insult which is not
readily forgiven and may lead to serious consequences, but as long as
one conforms to local customs these people are as kindly as one could
wish, and not by a long way so black as they have often been painted. As
a matter of fact a large proportion of the rows that occur all over the
world between different nationalities arise from someone's indiscreet
attentions to someone else's girl. And this is why a lady travelling
alone almost always has a friendly welcome, for on this point at any
rate she is above suspicion.

The Orthodox Montenegrin is equally anxious to make one feel at home. At
Easter-tide, when the whole town was greeting each other and giving pink
eggs, we were not left out. "Krsti uskrshnio je" ("Christ has risen") is
the greeting, to which one must reply, "Truly He has risen," accepting
the egg. People go from house to house, and eggs stand ready on the
table for the visitors, who kiss the master and mistress of the house
three times in the name of the Trinity. Montenegrin kisses--I speak
merely as an onlooker--are extremely hearty. It is surprising what a
number they get through on such a festival. For four days does the
Easter holiday last.

Montenegrins take their holidays quietly. It used to be said of the
Englishman that he takes his pleasures sadly. But that was before the
evolution of the race culminated in 'Any and 'Arriet. The Montenegrin
has not yet reached this pitch of civilisation. I wonder whether he
inevitably must, and if so, whether what he will gain will at all
compensate for what he must lose. For civilisation, as at present
understood, purchases luxuries at the price of physical deterioration.
High living is by no means always accompanied by high thinking, and ...
the end of it the future must show. When the Montenegrin has learnt what
a number of things he cannot possibly do without, let us hope he will be
in some way the better. It is certain he will be in many ways the worse.

Things Christian lie on one side of the Ribnitza, and things Mohammedan
on the other. The Turkish graveyard lies out beyond the old town,
forlorn and melancholy as they mostly are. The burial-ground of the
Orthodox is on the Montenegrin side of the town. The dead are borne to
the grave in an open coffin, and the waxen face of the corpse is
visible. The coffin-lid is carried next in the procession. I was told
that this curious custom originated in the fact that sham funerals were
used when the Balkan provinces were under Turkish rule as a means of
smuggling arms. But I doubt this tale. For the custom used to prevail in
Italy, and does still, I believe, in Spain. It is, in all probability,
much older than the Turks, and a tradition that dates from the days when
burning and not burial was the usual way of disposing of the dead and
the body was carried to the funeral pyre upon a bier. The open coffin,
the funeral songs, and the commemorative feasts annually held on the
graves by many of the South Slavs, the lights and incense burnt upon
the graves, and the lighted candles carried in the funeral processions
together reproduce, with extraordinary fidelity, the rites and
ceremonies of the Romans. And how much older they may be we know not.




CHAPTER III

OSTROG


I have driven the road many a time since, and I have been again to
Ostrog, but I shall never forget that day three years ago when I went
there for the first time. It was the only part of that journey about
which our advisers said we should find no difficulty; "foreign
languages" were spoken, and there would be no trouble about
accommodation. We started from Podgoritza early and in high spirits.

The valley of the Zeta is green and well cultivated. It narrows as we
ascend it, and an isolated hill crowned with the ruins of a Turkish
fortress stands up commandingly in the middle. This is the "bloody"
Spuzh of the ballads, the stronghold that guarded the former Turkish
frontier. Montenegro at this point was barely fifteen miles across, and
Spuzh and Nikshitje gripped it on either hand. From being a border town
with an exciting existence Spuzh has subsided into an unimportant
village. Danilovgrad, on the other hand, a few miles farther on, a town
founded in memory of the late Prince, is full of life, and though a bit
rudimentary at present, shows signs of soon becoming large and
flourishing. It is possible now to drive right up to the lower
monastery of Ostrog by a fine new road, but this did not yet exist on
my first visit, and we pulled up at Bogatich--a poverty-stricken
collection of huts and a tiny church. A tall, lean, sad-eyed
Montenegrin, with his left arm in a sling, came out of the little "han"
to greet us, bringing with him a strong whiff of carbolic. They were a
melancholy little household. His wife, who brought water for our reeking
horses, had had her right arm taken off an inch or two below the elbow,
and carried the bucket horribly in the crook of the stump. They cheered
up when they heard we wanted a guide to the monastery, and called their
daughter from the shed for the purpose.

She came out, a shy, wild-looking thing of about fifteen, barefooted,
her knitting in her hands, accepted the job at once, tied our two
hand-bags on her back with a bit of cord, and we started up in search of
the unknown, armed with a leg of cold mutton, a loaf of black bread, a
sketch-book, and a flask of brandy.

It was midday, and almost midsummer; the air was heavy with thunder, and
no breath of a breeze stirred as we scrambled up the loose stones. The
girl snorted loudly like a pig, to show us the way we should go, and
took us, in true Montenegrin fashion, straight up from point to point
without heeding the zigzags of the horse-track except where the
steepness of the rock compelled her. The way soon became steeper and
steeper, in fact a mere rock scramble, and it was abominably hot; and
when suddenly our plucky little guide, who had as yet shown no signs of
fatigue, gave out all her breath with a long whistle and pointed to the
nearest patch of shade, we gladly called a halt. The great advantage of
a girl-guide is that she takes you to the right place and you can rest
on the way. Little boys as a general rule are vague and inconsequent;
they pick up crowds of friends _en route_, even in the most desolate and
apparently uninhabited spots, and you don't generally arrive at your
destination. Either they don't know the way, or they conduct you to
another spot, for reasons of their own.

We sat with our girl, and made futile attempts to converse with her. It
was a wild, lonely spot, and save the rough track worn by generations of
pilgrims, as rugged as it was created. Great grey limestone rocks arose
around us, with sturdy young trees sprouting in the crannies; a small
grey snake wound its way over the sunbaked stones, and a tortoise
scrambled about the grass alongside. The valley shimmered in a hot haze
far below, and beyond towered the bare crags of the opposite mountains.
We seemed a very long way from anywhere. Appearances were however
deceptive, as a short scramble brought us to a wall, a gateway, and some
buildings. The girl seemed to think we had now arrived, and we imagined
that we were about to find the guest-house where French, Italian, and
German were spoken. We passed through the gateway on to a long wide
shelf on the mountain side, 1900 feet above the sea. Two or three very
poor cottages stood at the entrance, and at the farther end a tiny
church, crudely painted with a maroon dado of geometrical patterns, and
three small houses all apparently shut up and uninhabited. Not a soul
was to be seen. The girl went into one of the cottages and fetched a
tin pot of cold water, which we all drank greedily, seeing which the
cottage woman came out and supplied us with as much as we required, and
gave us a bench to sit on. She was mildly concerned at our appearance,
for we had sweated all through our shirts, and the girl had left a black
hand-print on my back, but she spoke no word of any other language but
her own, and speedily retired again to her cottage. We sat on the bench
and pondered, feeling very forlorn. If this were Ostrog, as the girl
assured us with vigorous nods, it was not worth the roasting scramble.
We were miserably disappointed, but decided that, as we had come to see
Ostrog, we would see it properly, and that, if there were any
inhabitants, they had not finished the midday siesta. We squeezed into a
patch of shadow and cut up the mutton and black bread with a
pocket-knife; the girl gladly assisted, and ate like a wolf, bolting
large chunks with great appetite. There was quite a cheery lot of brandy
in the flask, and as we carefully packed up the remains of the meal, in
case of a siege, we felt very much better.

Then down the wide white path from the houses came a man, an old, old
man in Western garb. He tottered up, and we hailed him in all our known
languages; French and Italian failed, but he responded to German, and
started at once on his own autobiography. He was an old soldier, he had
fought under Karageorgevich. Now he had retired here to end his days.
"They" had sent him here, and "they" had made him dig his grave. It was
waiting for him on the mountain side. He was very lonely, and had no
one to talk to. As soon as we could stem the torrent of his remarks, we
asked him about quarters for the night. "Had we an introduction from the
Archimandrite at Cetinje?" "No?" Then we had better go back where we had
come from, and we had better start at once, if we meant to get to
Nikshitje that night. We were appalled. He repeated obstinately, "You
must go, and if you take my advice, you will go at once. I can do
nothing for you. They," he admitted mysteriously, "cannot bear me. It is
useless for me to ask them. They can speak nothing but Servian, and you
will not be able to make them understand. They would have to send for
me. Moreover, they are asleep." He pointed to "their" house. We asked
when "they" were likely to wake up again, and he said it would be in
about an hour's time. We doubted his statements, for his air was very
malevolent, so as our little maiden was already coiled up on the ground
fast asleep, we thought it would be just as well to rest until "they"
could be appealed to. The old gentleman "who had no one to talk to" went
off and indulged in an animated conversation with the cottage woman,
while we dozed under a tree. When we aroused ourselves again, not much
rested, we saw the shutters of "their" house were now open, so we
marched up to the front door, knocked, and awaited results tremulously.

Nothing happened; we knocked a second time, and fled down the steps.
Immediately the door flew open, and there was the Archimandrite of
Ostrog himself, in long black gown, crimson sash, and high velvet hat--a
little old man whose thin iron-grey locks flowed on his shoulders. He
came rushing down the steps and shook us by the hands, saying, "Dobar
dan, dobar dan" (good-day), as heartily as though he had been expecting
us and we had come at last. We said, "Dobar dan," also, with enthusiasm,
and then the conversation came to an abrupt conclusion. He showed us
with great ceremony into his sitting-room, and made us sit on the sofa,
while he sat opposite on a chair. We felt acutely uncomfortable--not one
single word of English, French, German, or Italian did the good man
know. We made him understand that we had come from England, which amazed
him, and that we had walked from Bogatich. Then we stuck hopelessly and
helplessly, while he, undaunted, went on in his native language. It
seemed as if our climb to Ostrog had failed, and that flight was all
that was left for us. We got up and said "good-bye" politely. Our
departure he would by no means permit. "Sjedite, sjedite!" he cried,
waving us back to the sofa, and down we sat again, feeling much worse. A
Montenegrin about six feet four inches in height, clad in a huge brown
overcoat, answered his summoning bell, and presently returned with two
glasses of cold water on a brass tray which he offered to us
ceremoniously, towering over us and watching us with lofty toleration,
as a big dog does a little one. He waited patiently until we had drunk
every drop, collected the glasses, and silently retired from the room
backwards.

A horrible silence ensued. We took out our watches and showed them to
each other, in hopes that the Archimandrite would then understand that
our time was really up. But no. A fearful wrestle with the language
followed, and lasted till the Big-Dog Montenegrin reappeared, this time
with two cups of coffee. We obediently began to consume this, and the
Archimandrite, despairing of ever making us understand single-handed,
instructed his servant to fetch the gentleman-who-spoke-German. Through
him we were at once informed that the Archimandrite offered us
hospitality for the night in the house over the way. We were much
amazed, and accepted gratefully. With apologies, he then inquired if we
were married, and hastened to assure us that there was no disgrace
attached to the fact that we were not. We were slightly dismayed when we
were told we now had the Archimandrite's gracious permission to visit
the shrine, and that we were to start at once.

We were put upon the right track and left to our own devices. We had
been up since five, and had only had a scrappy, unhappy doze under the
tree, so we told each other we would go to sleep on the first piece of
ground that was flat enough. Having zigzagged up some way through the
wood, we lay down on a piece of grass, and should have been asleep in a
minute had not two natives appeared, an old man and a handsome lad. They
seemed much interested and concerned. I merely said it was very hot, and
hoped it would be enough for them. Not a bit of it. They started an
argument. I said I didn't speak the language, so they shouted to make it
clearer, and kept pointing up the path. What they meant I did not know.
It was evident, though, that the Handsome Lad did not mean to be trifled
with. He squatted alongside of us and shouted in my ear, while the old
man sat down and showed signs of staying as long as we did. So we
wearily started upwards again, and the Montenegrins, delighted at having
made us understand, went their way much pleased with their own
cleverness. We dared not rest again, and soon reached the upper
monastery of Ostrog, which was so strange and unexpected that the sight
of it did away with all thoughts of fatigue at once.

The path ended on a terrace cut in the rock 2500 feet above the sea. The
small guest-house stood against the mountain side, and a flight of newly
made steps led up through a stone doorway to a series of caverns in the
cliff face, cunningly built in and walled up to form tiny rooms, which
cling to the rock like swallows' nests. The big natural arch of rock
that overshadows them all is grimed with the dead black of smoke, and
two great white crosses painted on the cliff mark the shrine. Straight
above rises the almost perpendicular wall of bare rock, and far below
lies the valley. This is the eagle eyrie that, in 1862, Mirko Petrovich,
the Princes father, and twenty-eight men held for eight days against the
Turkish army of, it is said, ten thousand men. The Turks tried vainly to
shell the tiny stronghold, and even a determined attempt to smoke out
the gallant band failed. Mirko and his men, when they had used all their
ammunition and had rolled down rocks upon the enemy, succeeded in
escaping over the mountains, under cover of night, and reached Rijeka
with the loss of one man only. It is a tale which yet brings the light
of battle to the eyes of the Montenegrin and sends his fingers to
caress the butt of his revolver, and must be heard from Montenegrin lips
to be appreciated. A hundred years before, thirty men held this same
cavern against an army, and wild as these tales sound, the first glance
at the place forces belief. Twice only have the Turks succeeded in
occupying it. Once after Mirko and his men left it, and once in 1877,
when Suleiman Pasha held it, sent the proud message to Constantinople
that he had conquered Montenegro and that it was time to appoint a
Turkish governor--and was soon in hot retreat to Spuzh, losing half his
men on the way. The lower monastery has, on the other hand, been burnt
and rebuilt some ten times.

We sat and stared at the scene of these wild doings. The black,
smoke-grimed cavern told of the fierce struggle, and the great white
cross of the holy man whose body rests within. Sveti Vasili (St. Basil),
a local saint, was, early in the eighteenth century, Metropolitan of the
Herzegovina. In his old age he sought refuge in the mountains from
Turkish persecution, and passed his last days in this remote cavern
cared for and reverenced by the Christian peasants. Shortly after his
death they scooped out the rock and formed and dedicated to him the tiny
chapel where his body still rests. His shrine is held in the profoundest
veneration, and on Trinity Sunday (O.S.) pilgrims flock thither in
thousands, tramping on foot from Bosnia, the Herzegovina, from Albania,
even from the uttermost corners of the Balkan peninsula--a wonderful and
most impressive sight. Not Christians alone but also Mohammedans come to
the shrine of St. Vasili of Ostrog, for "four hundred years of apostasy
have not obliterated among the Bosnian Mussulmans a sort of
superstitious trust in the efficacy of the faith of their fathers," and
they come in hopes of help to the shrine of the man who suffered for it.
And so also do those strange folk, the Mohammedan Albanians. I have
passed the night up there in pilgrimage-time, when the mountain side was
a great camp and the greater part of the pilgrims slept by watch fires
under the stars; but in spite of the mixed nationalities and the
difference of religion, perfect order prevailed, and I saw many acts of
friendliness and consideration between folk from very different parts.

The precious relics have always been removed in times of danger, and
saved from the fate of those of the Servian St. Sava, which were
publicly burned by the Turks. They were, of course, removed during the
last war. The coffin is not a weighty one and the soldiers were strong,
but it became so heavy as they were carrying it down the valley that
they knew not what to do. This they took as a sign from the saint that
they should stop. They awaited the Turks, and triumphantly defeated
them. At the close of the war the relics were restored to the chapel
without any difficulty.

As we sat and looked at the knot of little cliff huts, a figure quite in
keeping with them came through the doorway and slowly approached us. A
magnificent old giant, with a silver beard and long white locks that
flowed upon his shoulders, and showed him to be a priest. A tall black
astrachan cap was on his head, and in spite of the heat he wore a heavy
cloak of dark blue cloth lined with fur, a long blue tunic, and wide
knickerbockers shoved into heavy leather boots at the knee. His high cap
and his big cloak gave him great dignity, and he welcomed us with superb
stateliness. Then, intimating we were to follow him, he conducted us to
his residence. It was a narrow little cave fronted in with planks. Here
we had to sit down while he fumbled at what was apparently a small
cupboard door. He threw it open, and behold--an oil painting of himself,
set in a gorgeous gilt frame that contrasted oddly with its rough
surroundings. It was evidently a presentation portrait, and he sat down
beaming by the side of it, for us to have every opportunity of admiring
the likeness. We spread all our scanty stock of Servian adjectives of
approval about recklessly, and the result was that from some mysterious
corner he produced a black bottle and a small liqueur glass, opaque with
dirt. He held the glass up to the light and looked at it critically;
even he realised that it was unclean; then he put in his thumb, which
was also encrusted with the grime of ages, and he screwed it round and
round. No effect whatever was produced on glass or thumb, for the dirt
in both cases was ingrained. For one awful second he contemplated his
thumb, and I thought he was going to suck it and make a further effort;
but no, he was apparently satisfied, and he filled the glass with a pale
spirit, which we hoped was strong enough to kill the germs. We drank his
health with a show of enthusiasm which seemed to gratify him, for he
patted us both affectionately.

[Illustration: UPPER MONASTERY OSTROG.]

He then showed us up a wooden step ladder to a still tinier cavern, a
dim cabin almost filled up by his bed, whose not over white sheets
betrayed the unpleasing fact that Ostrog was still subject to nocturnal
attacks and much bloodshed. In a glass case on the wall hung his two
medals, one Russian, the other Montenegrin, and, next these, three
signed and sealed documents in Cyrillic characters. He began reading out
place-names in Montenegro, Bosnia, and the Herzegovina, pointing to his
medals, and would gladly have "fought all his battles o'er again," if we
could but have understood him. His great treasure he displayed last, a
large and handsome walking-stick elaborately mounted in gold filigree
set with plates engraved with the said names. His admiration for it was
unbounded, and he handled it respectfully. The rugged old giant, and his
trophies, standing huge in his tiny lair up in the heart of the
mountains, the light from the little window falling on his silver hair
and beard, the glittering filigree, the dim squalid background, his
pride and glee over his treasures, and the royal air with which he
showed them, conjured up a whole life-drama in one swift instant. He
broke the spell himself by putting the stick carefully back into its
case, and, bowing and crossing himself reverently before a little ikon
of Our Lady, led the way out to the chapel.

The entrance was a low, narrow, rough-cut slit; he bowed twice and
crossed himself, saw that we did the same, then stooped down and went
into a small irregular cavern, its rough-hewn walls rudely frescoed with
Byzantine figures. It was very dark; one small window, hacked through
the cliff face, and the narrow doorway alone lighted it. Upon the rough
ikonostasis he pointed out the figure of St. Vasili in bishop's robes.
Then slowly and solemnly he began lighting the candles, striking a light
with flint and steel. It took him a long time, and his age was betrayed
by his tremulous hands and evidently weak sight. When he had finished,
and the cavern was a-twinkle with tiny flames, he approached the shrine.
Removing the covering, he fumbled with the lock, opened it, and then
threw back the lid slowly and respectfully. There lay the embalmed body
of the saint; the slipper-clad feet, the embroidered robes, and the gold
crucifix on the breast, only, showing. Modern science and ancient faith
had combined for perhaps the first and the last time, and the face and
hands of the saint were neatly covered with carbolised cotton-wool. I
was jolted back into the twentieth century with a rough shock. The sense
of smell--perhaps because it is a wild-beast one--brings up its trains
of associations more swiftly than any other, and the life of the old
world and the life of the modern one leapt up in sharp contrast.

To the old man, on the other hand, the scent was the odour of sanctity.
He was filled with awe and reverence, and gazed at the body like one
seeing a wondrous vision for the first time. He bent down slowly and
kissed the slippered feet, the crucifix on the breast, and the
cotton-wool over the face, crossing himself each time. Then, fearful
lest we should omit any part of the ceremony, he seized us each in turn
by the back of the neck, poked our heads into the coffin and held them
down on the right spots. We followed carefully the example he had set,
and completed our pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Vasili. He slowly
closed and locked the coffin, and rearranged the drapery upon it. Then
we debated together as to how an offering was to be made. He, however,
helped us out of the difficulty. He took a small metal bowl from the
window, placed it reverently upon the coffin and counted some very small
coins into it ostentatiously, clink, clink, then turned his back
discreetly and began slowly extinguishing the candles. He allowed just
sufficient time to carry out the approved ritual, and hurried back
eagerly to inspect the bowl. It appeared that we had acted quite
correctly on this occasion also. Coming out through the narrow door into
the open air again, we prepared to go; but the old man stopped us,
pointed upwards, and shouted for someone. The "someone" came, and turned
out to be the Handsome and Haughty Lad who had so cruelly chivied us
down below. He gazed at us with a superior smile, and in obedience to
his orders led us up to a yet higher cavern, where he showed us a spring
of very cold clear water. This is highly prized by the pilgrims to the
shrine, who all bring bottles or gourds to fetch some away in. The Lad,
I think, expected us to do so, and as he had, as he imagined, made us
understand by shouting before, he tried the same system again with great
violence. We hastily remunerated him for his trouble, in hopes of
changing his ideas, and he was sufficiently mollified to shake hands
with us. Whereupon we said good-bye, and left him.

Evening was drawing in when we reached the lower monastery, and service
had just come to an end in the little church. The Archimandrite,
followed by his small congregation, came out as we approached. We were
sleepy, dirty, and hungry, and the prospect of another interview in
Servian before getting food or rest was almost too much for us. To our
dismay, we were again conducted to the Archimandrites sitting-room. Our
relief was great when we heard the words, "Vous parlez français,
mesdemoiselles?" and we were introduced to a tall man in the long black
robes and high cap of the Orthodox ecclesiasts. Singularly beautiful,
his long brown hair flowing on his shoulders, he stood there more like a
magnificent Leonardo da Vinci than a living human being. He spoke gently
and kindly in the oddest broken French, expressing himself in little
rudimentary sentences, begging us to be seated and telling us we were
very welcome; "for we are Christians," he said simply, "and is not
hospitality one of the first of the Christian virtues? I, too, am a
guest here to-night. But you who have come so far to see us, it is the
least we can do for you. From England," he repeated, "alone, all the way
from England to see Montenegro, quelle voyage! véritablement des héros!
In Montenegro you are as safe, vous savez, as in your own homes, but the
journey--all across Europe, that is another thing!" The Archimandrite,
he explained, regretted that our room was so long in being prepared for
us. "It is because we have had a pilgrimage here lately and have had to
accommodate very many people. Therefore there was no place suitably
furnished for you, but they are putting down the carpets, and it will
soon be finished." We were horrified, and begged they would not take so
much trouble; but he would not hear of it. "Oh, it is a great pleasure
to us all to know that in England there is such a good opinion of
Montenegro that two ladies will come all alone into our country and
trust us; that the English should wish to know us!" I felt like an
impostor; it was embarrassing to be given hospitality as the bearer of
good-tidings from Great Britain, but to our innocent-minded entertainer
the idea seemed quite simple and sufficient. He had nothing but good to
say of everyone. For the two small boys who came in with the usual cold
water and coffee, he was filled with admiration--their build, their
muscular limbs, their honest, open faces. "Montenegrin faces," he said,
"ah! but they are beautiful my faithful Montenegrins! It is my life," he
went on, "to help these poor people. I have a church, a little, little
church, away among the rocks. It is there that I live. If I had known,
mesdemoiselles, before, that you were travelling this way, it would have
given me great pleasure to show it to you. But I did not know until
yesterday"; and he added, with a smile at our astonishment, "Oh yes, in
this country, vous savez, one hears of all strangers."

The conversation was broken off by the announcement that our rooms were
ready, and we all went over in a solemn little procession to the house
over the way, the two ecclesiasts, the four servants and ourselves, and
were shown in with many apologies for the poorness of the accommodation.
The dear good people were putting the finishing touches when we entered,
and had arranged two large rooms most comfortably. The Archimandrite
satisfied himself that the water jugs were full, that we had soap, and
that the beds were all right. Then both gentlemen shook hands with us
and wished us good-night, and withdrew. An anxious quarter of an hour
followed, during which we wondered whether we were going to be fed or
not, and regretted that we had bestowed the remains of the bread and
mutton on the girl; for we had been knocking about since five a.m., and
it was now eight p.m. Then there came a most welcome knock at the door,
and we were taken to a large dining-room and a good dinner. It was a
solemn meal. We were waited on by four men, who came in and out
silently, supplied our wants, stood at attention and gazed at us
stolidly. The largest was about six feet four and built to match, but
extremely tame in spite of his weapons and his I size. I don't think he
had the least idea how very small he made us feel.

Early next morning the Archimandrite and our friend were already about,
and came to see us breakfast and to beg that we would write our names in
the visitors' book. We said all that we could in the way of thanks to
our kind entertainer; he murmured a blessing over us, we shook hands,
and were soon wandering down the mountain side.




CHAPTER IV

NIKSHITJE AND DUKLE


Nikshitje is but two hours' drive from the beginning of the Ostrog
track, over a mountain pass and down on to a big plain. Nikshitje, says
the Prince, is to be his new capital, and work is going on there
actively. That it cannot be the capital yet a while seems pretty
certain, for it is a very long way from anywhere, and the foreign
Consuls and Ministers, who at present lament their isolation from the
world and all its joys at Cetinje, would all cry "Jamais, jamais!" in
their best diplomatic French, if called upon to transfer themselves to
the heart of the land. It is certainly very beautifully situated; the
wall of mountains which encircle the big plain is as fine as any in the
country, and it is neither so cold in winter as is Cetinje, nor in
summer so hot and close as the low-lying plain of Podgoritza. But until
there is a road or a railroad that will connect Nikshitje quickly with
the coast, it cannot compete in importance with Cetinje. A line that
would connect Servia with Antivari _via_ Nikshitje, join the two Servian
peoples, and give Servia a port for export, is so much against Austrian
interests, both commercial and political, that Austria will under no
conditions permit it to pass through any territory over which she has
control. There is no speedier way of drawing truthful political
opinions from a mixed company of various nationalities than to design
fancy railroads over tender territories. At present no line exists in
the Balkan peninsula that runs from north-east to south-west. And in the
present disgraceful state of all territory that is under Turkish
"government" no new lines through any of the Sultan's property are
probable. The love of the Montenegrin for Nikshitje is based partly on
sentimental grounds; for the taking of Nikshitje, the biggest Turkish
stronghold on their northern frontier, was one of the chief events of
the last war. Nikshitje fell in 1877, after a four months' siege
conducted by Prince Nikola himself.

That the Prince really intends Nikshitje to be the capital of his
country is evident. We have a forecast of its coming splendour in the
large and really fine church dedicated to St. Vasili, which stands well
placed on a little hill, close by a solid and well-proportioned
building, designed with a stern simplicity well in keeping with the
Montenegrin spirit. Within, it is lofty and spacious, and the bare stone
walls are hung with lists of those who fell in the last war. Russia
found the money, and Montenegro the labour. The mouldings and capitals
are all cut by Montenegrins, and the engineer that built it is a
Montenegrin. Nikshitje has a right to be proud of it. At the foot of the
hill on which the new church stands is a tiny little old church, the
church of the Montenegrins in Turkish times. In those dark days it was
almost completely buried under the earth for safety. Now, with the
addition of a fat new tower, it shows itself in the light of day.

The battered ruins of the great Turkish fort that was once a thorn in
Montenegro's side stand on the long low hill that overlooks the town,
and a stone or two with Turkish inscriptions and a few Turkish guns upon
the grass are all that tell of its former holders. Whatever the future
may have in store for the Montenegrins, let us hope that it will always
be remembered to their credit that they have played an heroic part in
the freeing of Europe from the Ottoman curse. A tumbledown mosque and
some dozen Mohammedan Albanian families are now the only traces left in
Nikshitje of the Asiatic invader.

Beyond the town, the land is well cultivated, and maize, tobacco, rye,
and potatoes flourish, provided there is sufficient rainfall in the
summer. Montenegro at present needs, more than anything, some system of
water storage. A superfluity of rain falls in the wet seasons, and the
melted snow swells the streams to torrents, but this all flows away for
lack of dams or cisterns, and in a spell of hot weather the ground is
parched. In the summer of 1902 no drop of rain fell between the middle
of May and the beginning of September; there was no corn for food, and
no tobacco for export. The people in the mountains, who depend on the
plains for corn, were in terrible straits, were reduced to eating fern,
grass, and beech bark, and were only saved from starvation by buying
foreign maize with the money that had been intended for road-making and
other public works.

While Nikshitje, the capital that is to be, is slowly growing, Dukle
(Dioclea), the capital that was, the birthplace of the line of Nemanja
kings who led Servia to greatness, is slowly mouldering on the plain of
Podgoritza. Long prior to Servian days Dukle was known to the world.
Already in the early years of the Christian era the Romans had conquered
Illyria and organised it as a Roman province, and Dioclea, as it was
then called, has come down to fame as the reputed birthplace of
Diocletian. Some two and a half miles from Podgoritza, where Zeta and
Moracha meet, lies all that is left of the old town. "The parents of
Diocletian," says Gibbon, "had been slaves in the house of Anulinus, a
Roman senator; nor was he himself distinguished by any other name than
that which he derived from a small town in Dalmatia from whence his
mother deduced her origin." Whether Dukle is or is not the "small town
in Dalmatia," I cannot tell. It is, at any rate, known to be among the
first towns taken from the Illyrians by the Romans. It would be
interesting to learn whether it is not to a considerable intermixture of
the aboriginal Illyrian blood that the Montenegrins owe their
superiority to the other Serbs. Some theory is required to account for
it, and as the strength of the Servian empire arose from this particular
corner, and as the Albanians, their next-door neighbours, are believed
to be direct descendants of these same Illyrians, this seems to be the
most workable one. There is a certain indefinable quality best described
as "gameness," and this both Albanians and Montenegrins possess to a
marked degree. It is also the quality of the Herzegovinese, who are
mountain men too, and it was in the mountains, we are told, that the
aboriginal inhabitants lived after the Servian invasion.

Be this as it may, Dukle, by Podgoritza, was a Roman town of some size,
and was afterwards the capital of the early kingdom of Servia. It is a
forlorn, lonesome, "sic transit" spot, inhabited by numbers of tortoises
peering about with their aged, old-world little faces and wrinkled,
leathery necks. Tesseræ work up through the turf, fine cornices and
mouldings lie about among the brambles, and the live green acanthus
flourishes near the stony leaves of big Corinthian capitals. One
slab-paved road remains, all that is left of what appears to have been a
forum, some fifty yards long, with the bases of columns strewn along it
at intervals, and at the farther end of it the remains of a small
building with a round apse. A man lives in a hut hard by and cultivates
a few patches of ground among the ruins, which are so smothered in
vegetation that it is difficult to form any good idea of the plan of the
town. It was explored about ten years ago by some archæologists, but
there is probably a good deal yet to be found, as the peasants still
pick up many coins and odds and ends of bronze work. The remains of a
small basilica church have been dug out, whose broken shafts and bits of
marble chancel rails are strewn on the ground, and tesseræ are plentiful
among the grass. The marble remains of the forum and many of the
cornices and mouldings that are scattered about the ruins are Roman, but
a large proportion of the houses, the foundations of which cover several
acres, are, I believe, of a later date, and may belong to the old
Servian town. A bas-relief of Diana--a mediocre enough specimen of
art--lies among the bushes on a bank, gaining a strange pathos from her
surroundings, as she stares with stony eyes, the only survivor of the
dead capital. All around stand the everlasting hills, keeping majestic
watch over the ruins which have seen the passing of two empires, and the
river tears along through a stony chasm hard by, and the lean rugged
figures of the one or two peasants among the ruins only add to the
loneliness.

But this place was once the centre of such learning and civilisation as
the land possessed, and "the Monk of Dioclea" was one of Servia's
earliest chroniclers. The now almost forgotten town is marked in the map
of Ptolemy (_circa_ 150 A.D.). It is mentioned as a famous town in 1162,
and it was given by King Milutin as the residence for his son in 1317.
After this date little or nothing is heard of it, nor is it known when
finally it ceased to be inhabited and crumbled into decay.




CHAPTER V

OUR LADY AMONG THE ROCKS


     "To drawe folk to Heaven by fairnesse
     By good ensample, this was his busynesse.
     For Christe's lawe and his apostles twelve
     He taught, but first he followed it himself."


A rough jolt over the wide bare plain; a heavy rainstorm blurring the
bleak mountains of the Turkish frontier; no living being in sight save
an Albanian woman with her few sheep cowering under the lee of a bush;
cut off from the rest of the world by the enshrouding mist, we drove
over one of the desolate places of the earth in quest of the little
church among the rocks. Of a sudden the sun burst through, hot and
brilliant; the plain quivered, golden and glittering, through the rising
steam; the clouds parted and rolled back, and revealed the mountains all
around us, fiercely, vividly blue, and as lonely as the day they were
created.

Two small rocky hills rose up out of the plain, and our driver pulled up
suddenly. "You must go on foot," he said; "it is not far," and he
pointed to a stony track round the hillside. Doubtfully we started among
the rocks and wild pomegranates, till turning a corner we struck a
well-marked footpath, and saw the tall black-robed figure of our friend
awaiting us at the top of the ascent. "I saw a carriage across the
plain," he said, as he came forward, "and I knew it must be you." He
welcomed us cordially, and turned towards his little domain. A bare
stone wall built up against the hillside with a big wooden cross at the
top, and a tiny cottage with a patch of cultivated ground close by, were
all that could be seen of it. All around were wild and untouched rock
and bush. "My little church," he said, as he led the way to the
entrance, "was not built by hands. It was made by God. His church among
the rocks." He crossed himself, and we entered.

He lit a taper and held it aloft. We were in a long narrow cavern,
water-worn, with traces of stalactite deposit on the rough walls. At the
farther end the altar candles burned brightly, lighting up the picture
of Our Lady over it, and making the rest of the cave darker by contrast.
"See," he said, "it is veritably a church! Is it not in the form of a
cross?" and he showed us how a smaller cave opened into it on either
side, making a rude nave and transept. The walls at the chancel end were
painted with saints and angels, quaint and stiff, their archaic
Byzantine forms in perfect keeping with the rough surroundings, and
therefore true decoration. "When I have celebrated the Messe here," he
continued, "when I have prayed all alone in the silence, then holy
things come to me, pictures, vous savez, and I paint them here upon the
wall." He held up his taper and threw light upon a great head of Christ.
"This is the last I have made. There is no paint left," he added simply.
"Nor do I know really which is the proper way to use it. I cannot, I
think, take long to learn. My poor attempts, they give pleasure to my
people, and they understand."

He led the way into the tiny transept on the left. "Here, you see, I
have made for them the Holy Sepulchre"; and we saw by the light of the
little taper a bier covered with a black and gold cloth, and a painting
of the dead Christ. "They come to me, the poor wayfarers, for
consolation, so weary, so suffering. I tell them of Him. I bring them in
here and I show them the wounds on His feet. Then they understand. So I
can teach them. To help the afflicted, that is religion. Some days I
write, songs of religion, of the visions that I see; for the light that
is given to us we must employ to show the path toothers." He looked
inspired as he stood there, a majestic black-robed figure, the taper,
like a guiding star, in his hands, the light of the altar candles
falling on his finely cut spiritual features, the solitary sentinel of
this Christian outpost. "The church of God, built by His hands in the
wilderness; to care for it is all my life," he said humbly. He
extinguished the lights, and we stepped out into the sunshine. By the
side of the church he pointed out a second cavern in which rises a clear
spring of water, the same, maybe, which carved the nave and transepts.
It makes the hermitage possible in this otherwise waterless spot, and
flows off underground to hew its way silently through the rock.

We turned to say good-bye to him. "But no!" he cried, "you have come so
far to see me, I beg you will rest for a while in my house. When shall I
again see visitors from England?" He led the way into his cottage;
visitors, not only from England but from the outside world at all, are
scarce with him. I think we called to his mind a whole host of
recollections; for he started at once, and the time flew as he unfolded
the story of his life in little sentences, earnestly and quickly, from
time to time drawing his black gown across his breast with a swift
dramatic action that gave point to his speech. He had been educated in a
Russian university, and thence had gone to Paris. He regretted not
having visited London. "It seemed so far," he said; "now it seems that I
was so near!" But all the time the mountains called to him. "I cannot
live away from the mountains and my poor Montenegrins. In the great
towns, it was here that I wished to be. I intended to come here and to
make a large monastery. But my family did not wish me to lead the
religious life. My grandfather was a rich man--not what in England you
would call rich, but rich in Montenegro. When I became religious, he
gave me none of the money, not any. I have not been able to carry out my
plan. It was God's will. My work is here. It is to help my poor
Montenegrins to keep their faith. Without faith what is a nation? Ah! I
have travelled and I have seen sad things. But in your country,
mademoiselle, they have faith. The Church of England and our Church,
they have differences, that is true, but they are slight. We are all
Christians; there are so many points upon which we can agree. We must
not let those others separate us. Your Church has shown great friendship
to ours. Your Archbishop has sent us a letter not long ago. It has given
great pleasure. Your Church is a Church; you have deacons, bishops; but
in Switzerland--the Protestants--that I cannot understand. It is sad.

"Savez-vous," he went on, "I know what a war is. I was a soldier in our
last war. We are all soldiers here, you see." "Where were you?" I asked.
"It was in the valley of the Zeta--the Turks came down." He stared
wide-eyed at a vision of horror and broke off. "It is too horrible to
speak of--these scenes; it is all horrible in war. I have seen it. Pray
God that we shall have peace. But a day of trial is coming to my poor
Montenegrins. Ah, mademoiselle, you understand them. They are so
uncivilised and so rough, but they are so good, so simple. You, who
travel among them, know how good they are. You will tell them in
England--will you not?--of my poor people. Civilisation brings knowledge
and many, many wonders, but it does not bring happiness. These poor good
people, they have no idea what life is out in the great world, and it is
coming to them. And I know what it means, this civilisation. I have
lived in Paris--in Paris, savez-vous," he said vehemently. "All I can do
is to help them to keep their faith. Till now they have lived with God
and the mountains. Here they come to me, the poor, the afflicted, they
come to me for help. Some nights I give shelter to as many as fifteen
wayfarers. Then they tell me their troubles, and I pray with them. Some
of them," he admitted regretfully, "have not lived quite rightly. In the
morning I celebrate the Messe in my little chapel, and then they go on
their way comforted. On Sundays many people come, and I speak to them,
here before the chapel, the words that are given to me. It is very
little that one needs in this life. We have so short a time here."

A boy, his pupil and his only companion in his hermitage, came in with
coffee, and the giving and the accepting of this simple refreshment
seemed to give our host great pleasure. He questioned us about our
relatives, and told us of his own. "Once," he remarked quite casually,
"I was married," but he did not pursue the subject. He told us of the
days when there were only twenty houses in Cetinje--when the chiefs of
the land used to meet in council with the Prince, all sitting on the
ground in a bare shed where a sheep was roasting for their dinner; how
the Prince used to sit under a tree and try prisoners; how there were no
roads, no towns, only a few collections of thatched huts. All this only
twenty years ago! The poetic, imaginative nature of the Montenegrin. "He
lives with the things he imagines. Even now, you see how he carries his
gun, his revolver, his knife! He likes to think that he is guarding his
house and his land. The weapons are a symbol to him. No Montenegrin
likes to go unarmed. In the evening, when he returns to his little
cottage, his wife meets him. She takes his gun and puts it in the
corner. His weapons are laid aside. It is all peace; he is returned to
his wife and children. That is old life. Now it is even said that a
railway will be made. But who knows? Where can there be money for such
an undertaking?" Truly railway companies and all such things seemed
impossibly remote as we sat in this lonely hermitage listening to the
hopes and fears of the ascetic visionary. When we arose to say good-bye,
he stood over us in the doorway and gave us his blessing.

We stepped out into the world again, and looked over the rough moorland
plain. The Turkish frontier fort shone white upon the mountain side
some three miles away, and there was no other sign of life as we stared
over the lonely land. He read our thoughts at once. "It is a wild spot,
yes, and a rough journey that you have made to see me. Few strangers
have yet been here. One day three of your countrymen came, but you are
the first Englishwomen. It is lonely, and even a little dangerous. You
must not try to cross the plain when it is dark, for there are bad men
who rob and kill. Yonder, that is Albania. It is so easy for them to
come across. Even last night there were armed men; they came up towards
my little house and they threatened me with their guns." "And what did
you do?" we asked eagerly. "I stood here," he said simply, "and I cried
to them, 'The Lord God has said, Thou shalt not kill.' Then they went
away," he added, after a pause, in a matter-of-fact manner.

What a scene! The fearless figure alone under the night sky, and the
gang of human beasts shrinking awestruck down the rocks as they heard
out of the darkness "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." We said
farewell. He stood at the top of the path for a few minutes watching our
descent, and as we turned the corner we saw his tall dark figure turning
towards the little chapel "which is his life."




CHAPTER VI

ANTIVARI


Antivari is not easily reached from Cetinje. You can retreat to Cattaro
and then take the weekly steamer. If, however, you have come to
Montenegro to see Montenegro, it is better to choose the cross-country
route. I have been there more than once, but the first journey thither
will suffice. We were raw to the country and knew nothing of the
language, so everyone tried to persuade us not to go, or at any rate to
take an interpreter. But unless a route is so complicated that a guide
is absolutely necessary, I infinitely prefer worrying it out alone; and
as for languages, everyone knows that one wants food, drink, and sleep.
The only precautions we took were to ascertain that there was an "inn
with three beds" at Prstan, the port for Antivari, and to get the hotel
to telegraph for a couple of horses to meet us at Virbazar, and we
started from Rijeka in the early morning, by steamer. Arrived off
Virbazar, we clambered down into a large canoe, along with sixteen
Montenegrins, to whom we were a deeply interesting sight, and proceeded
very slowly up the river, for the boat was heavily laden with freight
and passengers. Neither Montenegrins nor Albanians have much idea of
paddling their own canoes. They merely stab and prod the water at
irregular intervals with wooden shovels, expending a good deal of energy
with very little result; but they wobble along somehow. We speculated
anxiously as to what we should do if the horses had not turned up, and
were much relieved to see a respectable pair of steeds on the bank.
Virbazar is a tiny village on an island on the river, and has no
particular features save its bridge. This is a singular structure. It is
built of stone, but is so narrow that it is only passable by foot
passengers single file. Even if wide enough, though, vehicles would find
a difficulty in tackling it, for it changes its style of architecture
abruptly in the middle, and, having begun well and loftily, drops
suddenly and proceeds to the farther bank with smaller arches and a
narrower path at a much lower level. Whether rival architects started
from opposite sides, or whether one-half is a "restoration" of the
other, and if so which, I do not know. I think, however, it must have
been evolved by Turks.

We picked our way across it, attended of course by a fair proportion of
the population, and made our way towards the horses. The population
objected strongly to our claiming them, but as we persisted, someone had
the sense to go and fetch the horse-boy. He, a swarthy Albanian--a wiry,
cheerful thing about twenty--produced from the recesses of his garments
our telegram. This was read aloud, everyone was satisfied, our
mysterious appearance was explained, and the "two good horses" were led
up on to the high road. In Montenegro one must always ride astride. Of
course it would be possible to take a side-saddle, but I do not think
it would be any advantage. The horses are not accustomed to it, and the
mountain tracks are very bad. It is much easier to balance on a
scrambling horse when astride; it is possible to dismount in a hurry on
either side, and it is far less tiring for a very long day's ride, both
to horse and rider.

There is a very good carriage road to Antivari, but no carriages to go
on it. The only diligence runs once a week; sometimes it fits the boat,
and sometimes it doesn't. There is a bridle path which is a short cut,
but is so rough that a good deal of it must be done on foot. The road
winds up the Crmnitza valley--green, rich, and fertile, a land of vines,
maize, and tobacco. Higher up, the mountain sides are well wooded. At
the top of the pass the scenery is superb. There is always a strange
fascination about the top of a pass. When once it is reached there seems
to be no limit set to our wanderings; we enter a new land, and plunge
into the beyond--the beyond that is ever a-calling. The top of the
Crmnitza valley is crowned by the ruins of a Turkish fort; twenty-five
years ago this was Turkish territory, and our horse-boy was a son of the
conquered soil. He was a Mohammedan Albanian, and seemed to think he had
got a most amusing job. He made the most violent efforts to talk to us,
roared with laughter when we did not understand, and poured out torrents
of conversation when we did. We plunged down the old bridle track, and
scrambled over rocks and bushes along the mountain side. At one point he
stopped us and treated us to an amusingly realistic pantomime of cutting
off heads and throwing bodies down the rocks. It was a pity we had not
command of his language, for this pathless, rugged hillside, with the
battered remains of another Turkish fortress on the shoulder below us,
was a fine background for a gory tale. Far away below us, beyond the
silver-grey olives on the slopes and the fertile plain, gleamed the blue
Adriatic; a few cottages clustered on the edge of the bay, and the road
led straight to them. "Prstan!" said the boy, and we thought we were
nearly there; but there were weary zigzags before we reined up our tired
beasts in the waning light by the edge of the sea.

A gipsy camp, a post-office, half a dozen dilapidated cottages, a
harbour about the size of a pocket-handkerchief, the Prince's country
house, and a lonely beach where the waves splashed--this was Prstan, and
the farthest and smallest of the cottages was the "inn with the three
beds." The beds are all in the same room, which is also the dining-room,
and there is nothing of the stiff conventionality about the
establishment that one finds in a hotel starred by Bædeker, but all is
clean and the food is excellent, and Maria Bulatovich, the kindly
hostess, speaks Italian.

We started betimes next morning to see Antivari. The local coffee
stall--a packing-case set up on end with an Albanian coiled up inside
it--was doing a roaring trade, and the gipsy camp hard by was getting up
and shaking itself. Antivari lies some three miles inland. You don't see
it till you are nearly arrived, as it is stowed away between two great
mountain spurs. The road twists and twines through magnificent olive
gardens, where huge hoary giants sprawl in a thousand grotesque shapes;
you turn a corner, suddenly Antivari appears, and the first sight of it
is very startling. On a rocky eminence in the midst of the hollow stands
gaunt and grim the dismantled Turkish town--battlements, walls,
roofless houses and shattered churches--just as it was left after the
war, a terrible relic, the grey bones of a city mouldering under the sun
and sky, like a gibbeted felon.

We climbed up the steep street of the modern bazaar, with its cranky
little wooden shops and gay Albanian inhabitants, to the big gateway of
the old town. A sentinel is always on guard here, but in response to the
magic word "Engleske" he smilingly passed us in. It is a dead, creepy,
ghostly city, strangled and throttled with a tangle of vines and
brambles which rend the walls and wreathe door and arch. A forest of fig
trees and cherry plums run riot in room and court, and find root-hole on
the topmost battlements. Grass grows knee-high in streets that, even
now, are thickly strewn with rusty fragments of shells; beautiful pieces
of mouldings and a window or two tell of the old town of the Venetians,
and the remains of fresco still fade and crumble on the church walls.
Man has departed, and nature has stepped in, and is surely and silently
finishing the work of destruction. We wandered for an hour in this
ghostly spot, looking over the battlements, a sheer drop into the valley
below, wrestling with the vegetation, and haunted by a feeling that in
spite of the blue sky and sunshine none of it was real.

[Illustration: RUINS OF ANTIVARI.]

Antivari fell in January 1878, after a long siege. The defenders made a
gallant resistance, and, when forced to surrender, laid a train to
the powder magazine. Prince Nikola had a very narrow escape from the
ensuing explosion, and the already shattered city was ruined beyond the
possibility of repair.

Antivari is marked on the map, but one's first impression of it is that
there is now no such place, so scattered are the houses and so scanty
the population. Yet it speaks three languages--Turkish, Servian, and
Albanian; is divided by three religions--Mohammedan, Orthodox, and Roman
Catholic; and has a Roman Catholic Archbishop all to itself. The
bishopric is a very old one, established originally at Dioclea, but
transferred to Antivari, some say as early as the tenth century.
Antivari was Venetian till 1479, and the flock must then have been a
large one; now it is reduced to some six hundred souls, all Albanian. At
least, so they call themselves. But just as every Mohammedan tells you
he is a "Turk," and every one of the Orthodox that he is a Montenegrin,
so does every Roman Catholic say that he is an Albanian; and three men
who in feature, complexion, and build are as alike as three individuals
can well be, will all swear, and really believe, that they all belong to
different races. It is not improbable that they are a blend of all
three. Most of the inhabitants are Mohammedan. The district is but
thinly populated, and is said to be fever-stricken.

Down below on the plain, among the scattered houses, are the ruins of
the konak of the former Turkish Pasha, Selim Beg, whose tyranny is still
fresh in the minds of the people. The Christians especially were his
victims, and many are the tales of the tortures he inflicted. To one
unfortunate man he gave a thousand blows upon the soles of the feet
When Antivari fell, Selim Beg, who was as cowardly as he was cruel, fled
in terror to hide himself from the victorious Montenegrins. Fate so
ordained that he rushed for shelter to the house of this same tortured
Christian. Terror--stricken, Selim recognised his former victim, and
abjectly begged for mercy, and the man to whom he had shown none threw
himself on his knees before the crucifix and in an ecstasy poured forth
his thanks to the Lord, who had thus permitted him to witness the
humiliation of his enemy. "He hath thrown down the mighty from their
seats, and exalted them of low degree." He spared the life of his
torturer, and Selim Beg, after making a servile attempt to gain the
friendship of Prince Nikola, retired to Corfu, where, according to my
informant, he died "like the beast that he was." This curiously dramatic
tale, the truth of which is, I believe, undisputed, throws a strong
light upon the Albanian and the sanctity of the "guest"--the man who
begs shelter.

We returned to Prstan and Maria's hospitable roof, and all further
explorations in the afternoon were put a stop to by the weather. In
rushed Maria and shut and barred the door, for the wind was hurling the
rain in sheets against the cottage, and we sat in semi-darkness, lit up
now and then by a blaze of lightning. Suddenly there came a loud
knocking at the door. I grappled with the iron bar, dragged it back with
difficulty, and admitted a tall old Montenegrin, whose wet coat,
dripping pony, and travelling-bag showed he had come to stay. His
amazement at seeing us was quite funny. I thought of the third bed and
my heart sank. But Maria transferred herself to the kitchen, and gave up
her room to the new-comer. It was evident from her excitement that she
considered him to be of great importance. He was, in fact, a relative of
the Prince.

We had a gay dinner that night. The little Austrian Vice-Consul, who was
a Hungarian, turned up, and the old Montenegrin was resplendent in his
best clothes, for he was going to the Palace that evening. He was a
tall, thin, handsome man, with a most kindly face and exquisite manners,
and was painfully anxious that we should have the best of everything the
resources of the place could supply. He told us (the Hungarian
translating) that he had met two English ladies once before, in 1865! It
was a very long journey, he wondered how we had dared to come. When once
in Montenegro everyone was safe--but travelling through all the other
countries! The English, he had been told, wanted to see and know
everything; they travelled everywhere. It must be a very expensive
habit! It had perhaps cost us one hundred florins (about £8) to come
this distance. We admitted that it had, and he seemed overcome by the
amount. "And it takes not only money but _time_" said my companion. He
laughed merrily. "Time! What is time? Time is nothing. You live, and
then you die." The idea of reckoning "time" tickled him vastly. "Time,"
said the Hungarian, to show his superior knowledge, "is thought very
much of by the English. I have been told that they have a proverb which
says 'Time is money.'" We corroborated this report--to the astonishment
of both men, for even the Hungarian thought this was going rather far.
The Montenegrin thought it one of the wildest statements he had ever met
with, and shook his puzzled head, but his kindly eyes twinkled with fun.

I think I see him now as he wished us good-night--a resplendent figure
in his green embroidered coat, his crimson and gold waistcoat, his dark
blue knickerbockers, white gaiters and new sandals, bowing himself
backwards through the little door with simple dignity, his tall lean
form slightly bent by age--a splendid type of the Montenegrin of the old
regime. I had a strange feeling of having known him years ago. As he
passed from the room I recognised, with a sudden illuminating flash,
Chaucer's

     "A knyghte there was and that a worthy man
     That from the time that he first began
     To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
     Truth and honoure, freedom and courtesie.
     Full worthie was he in his lordes warre....
     He was a very perfect gentle knyghte," etc.

And had he not too "fought often for his faith" against "a hethen in
Turkeye"? The truth of the mediæval picture charmed me, and the knight
armed with a white cotton umbrella went off in a shandrydan to pay his
respects at the Palace on the beach.

The weather never cleared, so we saw no more of Antivari that time.
Blinding torrential rain and fierce blasts of wind crashed on the
cottage walls. The fat frogs in the pond sat up, and their hoarse
shouts, "brek-kek-kek-kek-koax-koax," resounded in every lull of the
storm. We waited for the only diligence, and returned by it to Virbazar,
and had as travelling companion our old friend of the inn, who, to our
distress, would persist in occupying the small seat back to the horses,
and was miserably uncomfortable in consequence. At last neither of us
dared stir, as the slightest movement on our part brought an apology for
the inconvenience he was sure he was causing us. To make up for this, he
tried to tell us all about the road as we went along, though speaking
Italian was a great labour to him. He had taken part in the siege of
Antivari. "Ah!" he said, "that was terrible. All those weeks. And in the
winter. They are brave men, the Turks." He pointed down the valley
where, through rifts in the mist, we could see the stream. "The Austrian
frontier," he said sadly. "Austrian. And we gave our blood for that
land. It was ours. And they took it from us. They gave it to Austria. I
do not understand it." I do not think that the affairs of the outer
world entered into his head at all. Montenegro and abstract justice were
all he wanted. Russia was a distant Providence who would assist the
right to prevail. But the wheels within wheels and the shuffling of
international politics were a mystery to his primitive, honest soul.

There were many things that puzzled him. We passed a village. "This is
all Mohammedan," he said. "There is a mosque below. We have built them a
school. It is a good school, but they will not go to it. They say they
do not care for education! They are strange people, these Albanians!" He
sighed and shook his head. He looked on the village school as the first
step on the path of sweetness and light. I had a vision of the Board
School child, the "penny dreadful," and the novelette with a paper
pattern of the last new sleeve included. I think he was double my age,
but he made me feel very old. We passed a school; the sun had come out
at last, and the playground was full of sturdy young Montenegrins. He
smiled at them with pleasure, and I was glad to think that he cannot
survive long enough to have his dream of enlightened Montenegro
shattered. He said good-bye to us not long after, and we saw the last of
him as he entered his modest little house on the mountain side.

The remainder of the drive did not take long. We were soon in Virbazar,
and once again a cause of local excitement. By the help of a man who
spoke a little German, we were made to understand that we could go for
nothing in the common boat to the steamer, but that for a florin we
could have a very good one all to ourselves. It would have been too
unkind to disappoint them, and we were such rare birds! We delighted
every one by accepting the offer of a private boat.

When the boat was ready, we did not feel quite so pleased. It was a
canoe with two bent-wood chairs arranged in it as a sort of throne at
one end, and looked remarkably topheavy. The crew, two tall youths and a
boy, were in great glee at having secured such a job, and conducted us
to our seats with much ceremony before a large crowd. Off we pushed, and
made a lordly, if somewhat wobbly progress down stream. All went well
till we were suddenly aroused by the steamers hooter. Then our crew were
seized with a wild and irresistible desire to make a rapid, showy finish
to the voyage. "Really," said my friend, "it requires all my faith in
Montenegrins to feel safe." The words were scarcely out of her mouth
when round swung the canoe in response to a violent stroke of the
paddle, and out she shot, chair and all, as if from a catapult. I hadn't
even time to grab at her. A vision of grey skirts, a splash, and she was
gone! "Well, never mind; she can swim," thought I, as the waters closed
over her. The next instant I had to hurl myself almost over the other
side, to right the boat, as the two men, completely scared, both leaned
out at once, and as nearly as possible capsized the whole thing. The boy
came to my side, the men perceived that the foreign lady was not going
to drown, and the panic passed over. Their idea of helping her in was
remarkable--they grasped large handfuls and tugged. I believe they
pulled her in by one leg. The misery and dismay on their faces when she
at last stood up in the boat dripping and streaming were so unutterably
funny that we both roared with laughter. They were greatly relieved at
this, but most anxious to make her look respectable before going on
board the steamer, and wrung her out with such vigour and muscle that I
thought she would come to pieces. Then having picked up the chair and
hat, they paddled in a subdued and gingerly manner to the steamboat,
were shy about accepting the florin, and thanked for it repeatedly. The
captain, when he learned our plight, laughed as though he would never
stop, and put the one cabin and a bucket at our disposal. We improvised
a costume out of two nightgowns, a waterproof, and a brush-and-comb bag,
poured olive oil into her watch and brandy into her, and although it
rained all the rest of the way back to Cetinje no evil results ensued to
either of them. But the episode has become a legend of the lake, and
two years after I heard an Albanian retailing it to an interested
audience. The point of the story was the extreme cold-bloodedness of the
English, as shown by the heartless way I laughed at my friend's
misfortune!




CHAPTER VII

OF THE NORTH ALBANIAN


          "The wild ass, whose house I have made the
          wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He
          scorneth the multitude of the city, neither
          regardeth he the crying of the driver."


The difficulty of the "Eastern Question," as it is called, lies in the
fact that it is not "a" question at all but a mass of questions, the
answering of any one of which makes all the others harder of solution.
Of all these, the Albanian question is the hardest to solve, and has not
as yet received the attention that it calls for and will shortly compel.
Few people in the West--none, I might almost say, who have not been to
Albania--can realise that to-day in Europe there lives a whole race, a
primeval lot of raw human beings, in a land that is not only almost
entirely without carriageable roads, but in which in many cases the only
tracks are even too bad for riding, the conditions of life are those of
prehistoric barbarism, and the mass of the people have barely even
attained a mediæval stage of civilisation.

When the Albanian arrived in Europe none knows, and authorities differ
as to his possible relationships with other people, but there is no I
manner of doubt that he is the direct descendant of the wild tribes that
were in the Balkan peninsula before the Greeks and before the Romans,
and have been variously described as Thracians, Macedonians, and
Illyrians, according to the part they inhabited. They are described as
having been fierce fighters and very wild, and they furnished Rome with
some of her best soldiers. Nor were they lacking in brain power; men of
barbarian Balkan blood arose who ruled their conquerors and provided the
Roman empire with a list of emperors that includes Diocletian and
Constantine the Great.

Empires have risen and empires have passed away, and the Albanian has
remained the same wild thing. The might of Rome waned; the Servian, the
Venetian, and the Ottoman have followed in turn. "Annexed" but never
subdued, the Albanian merely retired to the fastnesses of the mountains
and followed the devices of his own heart, regardless of his so-called
ruler. The Albanian of to-day is nominally under Turkish rule, but
nominally only.

The Albanian's position with regard to Turkey is a very peculiar one.
The Turk, so his friends tell us, has many admirable qualities, but even
those who love him best do not pretend that he has ever attempted to
civilise, cultivate, or in any way improve the condition of, his subject
races. Under the Turk all development is arrested, and nothing ripens.
The Albanian, for the most part, remains at the point where he had
arrived when the Turk found him, and except that he has adopted the
revolver and breechloading rifle, he has not advanced an inch. He is the
survival of a past that is dead and forgotten in West Europe.

His language has troubled philologists considerably. It is a soft, not
unpleasant-sounding tongue, full of double "shshshes" and queer
consonant sounds; such queer ones that it fits no known alphabet, and he
has never found out how to write it down. Quite recently several
attempts have been made, mostly by foreigners, to tame this wild
language to an alphabet, and three or four different systems have been
evolved, all more or less unsatisfactory, as no alphabet unaided can
cope with its peculiar sounds. One in which Roman letters are used and
plentifully strewn with accents, both above and below, is the most
favoured in North Albania, but the Turk does not allow Albanian as a
school language, the mass of the people speak nothing else, and Albania
remains a land without a literature, without a history, without even a
daily paper. To possess and use an unwritten language in Europe in the
twentieth century is no mean feat It carries one back to remote
prehistoric times, confronts one with blank unwritten days, and suggests
forcibly that the Albanian is probably possessed of raw primeval and
perhaps better-left-unwritten ideas. Our search for the live antique
cannot take us much further. But the Albanians, in spite of their
antiquity, are incredibly young as a people, and blankly ignorant of the
outer world. They are still in the earliest stage of a nation's life
history, and have not yet advanced beyond the tribal form of life.

At an early date--some say as early as the fourth century, but this
seems doubtful--the Albanians became Christian. I have failed to
discover what man or men succeeded in thus powerfully influencing this
very conservative people. It is a remarkable fact that, though all the
other Christians of the Balkans early declared for the Eastern Church
and all the Pope's efforts to reclaim them failed, the Christian
Albanians of the North have remained faithfully Roman Catholic.

The mountains of Albania, like those of Montenegro, are a series of
natural fastnesses, among which a small army of attack is massacred and
a large one starves. Moreover, a large part of the land was not worth
the expense of taking. The tribes were exceedingly ferocious, and would
have taken a great deal of conquering, but as they had no leader under
whom they could combine and make organised attacks, they were not the
danger to the Turks that the Montenegrins were. Moreover, the fact that
they belonged to the Western and not to the Eastern Church prevented
them from making common cause with the other Christian peoples. Once and
once only were they on the point of obtaining recognised national
existence, and this was under the leadership of the great Skender Beg.
But Skender Beg died in 1467, and as yet no one has arisen capable of
welding the semi-independent tribes into a solid whole. The Turks
purchase peace from them by leaving them to do as they please among
their mountains. The Albanians purchase privileges from the Turks by
fighting for them and supplying the Turkish army, as they did formerly
the Roman, with some of its best soldiers. And Albania to-day remains
separated into a number of distinct tribes, which are governed by their
own chieftains according to unwritten laws which have been handed down
orally from a very remote past. The Turkish "Government" has
practically no say in the matter. At any rate, what it says it has not
the power to enforce.

The Albanian is ignorant and untrained, but he is no fool. His one
ruling idea has been to go on being Albanian in the manner of his
fathers. He perceived quickly all the points that would enable him to do
so, and he seized upon them. The mountain people in the more
inaccessible parts retained their Christianity. The Albanians who
swooped upon the plains vacated by the Serbs found it greatly to their
advantage to profess Mohammedanism, and both Mohammedan and Roman
Catholic were ready to make common cause against the Christians of the
Eastern Church. So indispensable have the Albanians made themselves to
the Turkish Government that it has been forced to concede to them every
license, lest it should lose their support. Far from making any attempt
at civilising them, it has never scrupled to make use of their savagery
in warfare, and in warfare the Albanian can be exceedingly savage. Never
from the beginning of time has he been taught anything that the Western
world thinks necessary; never in the majority of cases has the most
rudimentary education come his way. His Mohammedanism and his
Christianity he practises in an original and Albanian manner, and in his
heart he is influenced mainly by traditional beliefs and superstitions
which are probably far older than either. He purchased his freedom by
making himself useful to the Turk, and the Turk has left him in the
lowest depths of barbarism. The only schools that exist in the land are
those of the Italian and Austrian Frati, and such civilisation as the
Albanian possesses he owes to the labours of these devoted men. As for
travelling and means of communication, it seems probable that the roads
to-day are far inferior to what they were in the time of the Romans. And
this is the land of the only one of her subject races with which Turkey
has been "friends." The deplorable state of Albania is an even stronger
indictment against Turkish "government" than that of Macedonia. To-day
the country is practically in a state of anarchy. Little or nothing is
done in the way of cultivation; blood-feuds rage, and men are shot for
quarrels that are family inheritances and originated for long-forgotten
reasons in the dark ages.

Human life is cheap, very cheap. An ordinary Englishman has more
scruples about killing a cat than an Albanian has about shooting a man.
Indeed, the Albanian has many of the physical attributes of a beast of
prey. A lean, wiry thing, all tough sinew and as supple as a panther, he
moves with a long, easy stride, quite silently, for his feet are shod
with pliant leathern sandals with which he grips the rock as he climbs.
He is heavily armed, and as he goes his keen eyes watch ceaselessly for
the foe he is always expecting to meet. There is nothing more
characteristic of the up-country tribesman than those ever-searching
eyes. I have met him many a time in the Montenegrin markets, in the
weekly bazaar in his capital, and on the prowl with his rifle far in the
country. Up hill or down hill, over paths that are more like dry torrent
beds, it is all the same to him; he keeps an even, swift pace, and he
watches all the time. Dressed as he is, in tightly-fitting striped
leg-gear and in a short black cape, his appearance is extraordinarily
mediæval, and he seems to have stepped straight out of a Florentine
fresco. His sash is full of silver-mounted weapons, he twists his
tawny-moustache, and he admires himself exceedingly. He walks with a
long rolling stride, planting his feet quite flat like a camel or an
elephant--a gait which gives him an oddly animal appearance. His boldly
striped garments, with their lines and zigzags of black embroidery,
recall the markings of the tiger, the zebra, and sundry venomous snakes
and insects. He seems to obey the laws that govern the markings of
ferocious beasts; his swift, silent footsteps enhance the resemblance,
and his colouring is protective; he disappears completely into a rocky
background. The black patterns vary according to the tribe he hails
from. If you ask his name, he generally gives you his tribal one as
well, and points over the mountains towards his district. He is
So-and-So, for instance, of the Hotti or the Shoshi. Most men, whether
Christian or Mohammedan, have their heads shaven; sometimes on the
temples only, the rest of the hair standing out in a great bush;
sometimes the entire head, with the exception of one long lock that
dangles down the back. There are two distinct types of Albanians--a dark
type with black hair, brown eyes, and clean-cut features, and a very
fair type, grey or blue-eyed, taller and more powerfully built. To this
class belong almost all the shaven-headed men with the dangling locks, a
row of whom, squatting on their heels, look remarkably like a lot of
half-moulted vultures. According to popular belief, the long lock is to
serve as a handle to carry home the head when severed. A head, it seems,
can be carried only by the ear, or by inserting a finger in the mouth,
and this latter practice the owner of the head, when alive, objects to!

But in spite of his wild-beast appearance and his many obvious faults,
the Albanian is by no means all bad. I will almost say that he possesses
the instincts of a gentleman. At any rate, he "plays fair," according to
his own very peculiar creed. He boasts that he has never betrayed a
friend nor spared a foe. It is true that "not sparing" includes torture
and various and most horrible atrocities, but it is a great mistake in
considering any of the Balkan peoples to make too much capital out of
"atrocities." A century ago every race, including our own, considered
the infliction of hideous suffering the legitimate way of punishing
comparatively small crimes. At the risk of being laughed at, I will say
that I do not believe the Albanian is by nature cruel. The life of the
poor up-country peasant is hard and rough beyond what anyone who has
only lived in a civilised country can realise, and the life of such a
man's beasts is of necessity a hard one also. But though I have met him
with his flocks on the hillsides and have watched him carefully in
street and market, I have never seen the Albanian torturing an animal
for the fun of the thing, as does the Neapolitan, the Provençal, and the
Spaniard. The revolting "jokes" with lame and helpless animals which can
be seen any day in the streets of Naples are not to be met with in the
capital of the bloodthirsty Albanian.

[ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN ALBANIANS IN MARKET, PODGORITZA.]

I have trusted the Albanian somewhat recklessly, I have been told; I
have given him plenty of chances of robbing me, and several of making
away with me altogether; but he has always treated me with a fine
courtesy, and has never taken a mean advantage. He is a brave man, and
he is an intelligent man. When he gets the chance, he learns quickly and
picks up foreign languages speedily. And when he succeeds in leaving his
native land and escaping the awful blight of the Ottoman, he often shows
great business capacity, and a surprising power of adapting himself to
circumstances.

The ordinary Christian Albanian of the town is very different from the
up-country savage, and is a pathetically childish person. He tries very
hard to be civilised, but his ideas on the subject are vague. How far he
is from understanding the prejudices of the twentieth century the
following conversation will show. It is one of many similar. I was
walking up the steep, cobble-stony bazaar-street of Antivari late one
afternoon in the summer of 1902. The shop owners stood at their doors to
see me pass. Presently a man came forward, a tall, fair, grey-eyed
fellow. He spoke very politely in a mishmash of Servian and Italian. "I
have never seen a foreign woman before," he said, "will you come into my
shop and talk to me?" I followed him into his shop. As I was
unmistakably from the West, he gave me a tiny box to sit on, and then
squatted neatly on the ground himself, called for coffee, and started
conversation. He was amazed at my nationality, and showed me some cotton
labelled "Best hard yarn" among his goods. Otherwise "England" conveyed
no idea to him. England, having no designs on Albania, does not count
much as a Power with the ordinary Albanian, but is merely something
distant and harmless that does not matter, whereas an eye is kept on
Austria and on Italy, and Russia is regarded with extreme suspicion.

"And you have come all this journey to see us!" he cried. "It is
wonderful! I am a Christian Albanian. I am Catholic." Here he crossed
himself vigorously to show that he really was, for in these lands your
position in this world and the next depends mainly upon how this is
done. "Ah, but you should see Skodra!" I told him I knew it well, and he
beamed with pleasure. We discussed its charms and the unsurpassed
magnificence of its shops. "And it is in the hands of those devils the
Turks. Ah, the devils! I came here eighteen years ago with my father,
because this is a free land. Here all is safe, but it is a poor country.
When I was a boy I was bad. I went to the school of the Frati, but I
would not learn. Now I know nothing, and I speak Italian, oh, so badly!"
He rocked himself sadly to and fro with his big account-book on his
knees. Son of the race with the worst reputation in Europe and born in
one of Europe's worst governed corners, he lamented (as which of us has
not done?) the lost chances of his youth and his lack of book-learning.
To comfort him, I told him his people in Skodra had been very good to
me. He cheered up. "Why do you come here?" he asked. "Why do you not
travel in my country?" I said that I was told that it was a bad time and
the country very dangerous. He considered the question earnestly, and
looked me all over. Then he said seriously, "No; my people are very good
to women, they will not hurt you. But there is no government, so the bad
people do what they like. There are some bad people; Turks, all Turks.
But there is no fear. Truly they will take all your money, but they will
not hurt you. That," he said simply, "would not be honest. My people are
all honest. You must not shoot a woman, for she cannot shoot you. Now
with a man it is different; you must shoot him, or he will shoot you
first. Also you cannot take his money if you do not shoot him first." To
all of which points I agreed.

"Truly it is a misfortune," he continued, "that there is no government.
If we had only a king!" "Do you think you will have one?" I asked. He
chuckled mysteriously. The air just then was thick with rumours of a
Castriot descendant of the Skender Beg family who at that very moment
was reported to be awaiting an opportunity for landing in Albania.
Reports of his fabulous wealth were arousing much excitement in the
breasts of his prospective subjects, but I fancy a rumour of their
custom of "shooting first" must have reached his ears; for, so far, this
middle-aged gentleman, whose life has been passed in Italian palazzos,
has shown no hurry to take up his inheritance. My friend's ideas were
vague and formless, and he could get no farther than "a king for Albania
and death to those devils the Turks." After a little more talk, I got up
to say good-bye. But he insisted upon my having more coffee first. "It
is true that I am poor," he said, "but I am not too poor to give two
cups of coffee to one who has come so far to see us. Some day in your
country you will see some poor devil from Skodra, and you will be good
to him because his people are your friends." Nothing could exceed the
grace with which he proffered hospitality to a stranger guest, but he
saw no objection to robbery with murder if committed according to rule;
and he prided himself on his Christianity. He shook hands with me very
heartily. "A pleasant journey," he said. "Remember me when you meet a
Skodra-Albanian in London. I shall never see you again--never, never."
The sun was setting rather dismally, and with "nikad, nikad" (never)
ringing in my ears and the gaunt ruins of the dead city before me, I
felt quite as depressed as the Albanian. Truly the Albanian outlook is
not a cheerful one.

In the larger towns, where Turkish troops are quartered and there are
plenty of Mohammedan officials, the Christians are in the minority, and
their cowed manner makes it fairly obvious that they have a poor time.
But the Christians of the mountains very much hold their own. The
Mirdite tribe in the heights between the Drin and the coast is entirely
Christian and one of the most fiercely independent. The town Christian
who has picked up a smattering of education from the foreign Frati, has
had a peep at the outside world and vaguely realises the blessings of
life in a well-ordered land, sighs for some form of civilised
government. Some have even told me that they wish to be "taken" by
somebody--"by Austria, or Italy, or you, or anybody. It could not be
worse than it is now." But the mass of the people resent most fiercely
the idea of any foreign interference, and cling fast to their wild and
traditional manner of life. Whether Christian or Mussulman, the Albanian
is intensely Albanian. A Christian will introduce you to a Mohammedan
and say, "He is a Turk, but not a bad Turk; he is good like me; he is
Albanian." The Christian that the Albanian Mussulman persecutes is, as a
rule, the Christian of another race. Between Christian and Mohammedan
Albanian there is plenty of quarrelling, but then so there is between
Christian and Christian, Mohammedan and Mohammedan. It is of the
blood-feud, intertribal kind, played according to rule; for even in
Albania it is possible, if the rules be not observed, for killing a man
to be murder. When a common enemy threatens, a "bessa" (truce with one
another) is proclaimed, and they unite against him. The chief tribes in
Northernmost Albania are the Hotti along by the Montenegrin frontier and
by the lake; the Shoshi and the men of Shialla and of Skreli in the
mountains above the plain of Skodra; the Mirdites in the mountains
between the Drin and the coast; and the Klementi on the Montenegrin
frontiers by Mokra and Andrijevitza.

The Turks from time to time, when the Albanians have been more than
usually lively, by various means (including treachery) have contrived to
give the chieftains of one and another "appointments" in remote corners
of Asia Minor, but with no results so far, except that the people,
deprived of the only man who had any authority over them, became yet
more unmanageable. Even the mildest of the town Christians takes a
delight in pointing out in the bazaar the tobacco which has paid no duty
and saying, "We pay no tax for tobacco; we are Albanian, and we do not
like to." The Turks have been unable to enforce this tax, and have to
content themselves by searching the baggage that leaves the country and
opening the hand-bags of tourists to prevent tobacco from leaving
untaxed.

The Albanians seldom do anything they "do not like," and they are quick
to object to any interference. Just now they have been objecting to
"reformation" on Austro-Russian lines. The so-called reforms were the
laughing-stock of everybody--Servian, Montenegrin, and Albanian--when I
was out there last summer. For the Albanian's "unreformedness" has
always been his chief attraction in Turkish eyes, and in order to give
him every opportunity to behave in an "unreformed" manner, when the
spirit moved him, the Turk in recognition of his services in the last
war supplied the Albanian lavishly with weapons. Christians throughout
the Turkish dominions have always been forbidden to carry arms. The
Christian Albanian alone has this privilege. Every mountain man has
firearms of some sort, many of them fairly modern rifles. It is one
thing to give a man a gun and quite another to take it away from him.
When the weapons were merely used upon the wretched unarmed Servian
peasants in the plains of Old Servia, not a soul in any part of Europe
save Russia paid the smallest attention; but when Stcherbina, the
Russian Consul, fell a victim, it was a different matter, and the Turks
found themselves in the unpleasant position of having either to offend
Russia or to quarrel with their best allies. They proceeded to "reform"
Albania on truly Turkish lines. They chased the Albanians out of the
territory they had had no business to have swooped upon, and they
arrested a few leaders as a matter of form. The Albanians were
astonished and rather aggrieved, for they had done very little more
than they had always been given to understand they might do. Further
interference might have alienated the Albanians altogether, but as for
the sake of appearances and the "reform scheme" some non-Mohammedan
officials had to be appointed, the Turks sent an Armenian and a Jew,
called respectively Isaac and Jacob, to Skodra. Isaac and Jacob were
shot in the main street in the day-time, and as far as I have heard
their situations are still vacant. The affair caused some little amount
of excitement, nevertheless the Albanians did not wish to resort to
violence so long as the "Government" did not make itself disagreeable.
There is an old tomb in Skodra, the last resting-place of some minor
Mohammedan saint. Shortly after the deaths of Isaac and Jacob some
mysterious writing was found upon the tomb. Though written in very
ordinary charcoal, it was obviously of more or less divine origin, and
the people anxiously waited the deciphering of the message. It proved to
be merely a piece of a verse from the Koran conferring a vague blessing
upon somebody. "Allah be praised!" said an old hodja, greatly relieved,
"it has not told us to go and shoot any more reformers!"

There were a great many more soldiers in Skodra than before. I asked
several people the reason of this, in order to see what they would say.
They one and all said, with a smile, "The Turks want to reform Albania,
but they are obliged to send the soldiers to the towns, because the
people in the country do not like them!" The town swarmed with soldiers.
An officer rushed at my old guide, whom I was employing to interpret for
me in the bazaar, and abused him in a loud voice till I interfered; a
soldier seized and beat very severely a wretched little boy who begged
of me, and my efforts on his behalf were of no avail; and these were all
the results of the reforms that I saw or heard of in Skodra.

But the idea seems gaining ground that the Albanian in the event of a
war may cease to support a dying cause and elect to play a game of his
own. When, as must inevitably be shortly the case, Macedonia is under a
Christian governor, Albania will be yet more separated from the present
seat of government (Constantinople), and the situation will become
acute. I heard a good deal about "the king that is to be." Many Serbs
even expressed their opinion that the Albanians would be a great deal
better if their independence were recognised; saying that at present
they are responsible to no one; the Turk incites them to commit
atrocities, and washes his hands of all they do; and that left to
themselves the Albanians would develop into a fine people. That they
have the makings of a fine people is probably true. That they are now
capable of self-government is quite another thing. Unlike the other
Balkan peoples, they have no past, no former empire. Their history is
all "years that the locusts have eaten." What is to become of the
Albanians? is one of the hardest of all the Eastern questions. Austria
desires to have the answering of it.




CHAPTER VIII

SKODRA


Skodra is the capital of North Albania. In our maps it is usually called
Scutari--a name which causes it to be confused with the other and far
better known Scutari on the Bosporus. In a French paper I once read an
account of "the Prince of Montenegro's palace on the Bosporus" which
described the Princes country place at Podgoritza, near the lake of
Scutari. But the French seldom shine as geographers.

Skodra can be reached from the port of St. Giovanni di Medua, at which a
line of Lloyd steamers calls regularly. From thence a ride of nine
hours, if you can find a horse, will take you by a very bad road to the
town. But even from the Turks, who take a _couleur-de-rose_ view of the
resources of their land, I failed to learn that the route offered any
attractions. It can also be reached by a steamer which, when there is
enough water in the river, ascends the Bojana as far as Obotti, whence a
barge will wobble you up to the town in an hour or thereabouts.

By far the prettiest and pleasantest route is that from Cetinje by the
lake. The _Danitza_, the chief vessel of the Montenegrin squadron
according to the engineer, runs twice a week from Rijeka. It is a
clean, tidy little boat built in Glasgow, and is very fairly punctual as
to time. The sluggish stream meanders slowly in and out the hills; the
channel of deep water serpentines through acres of water-lilies, white
and yellow, whose leaves form a dense mat on the surface and a happy
hunting-ground for the water birds--duck, moorhens, herons, spoonbills,
and pelicans. It is a færie river, with the magic of the hills upon it,
all silent save for the flap of the herons that rise as the boat glides
past. Half choked with reeds and weeds which grow rankly luxuriant and
rot in tangles, it tells of the making of the fertile lands of
Montenegro, for the plains are all ancient lake beds from which the
water has retreated. One hears without surprise that fever haunts the
river in autumn, but, judging by the healthy appearance of the folk of
the neighbourhood, it cannot be of a very virulent type, and at no time
of the year have I met with any mosquitoes.

At the rivers mouth stand wretched shanties of rock and brushwood, the
dwellings of the fisher-folk who reap, in the late autumn, a plenteous
harvest. Vast shoals of small fish called "scoranze" rush up the lake
from the sea, and are netted in such thousands that, dried and salted,
they form one of Montenegro's chief exports.

[ILLUSTRATION: STREET IN BAZAAR SKODRA.]

We pass the island of Vranina and glide out into the great green lake,
leave the heights of Montenegro behind us, and see at the farther end
the "Accursed Mountains" of Albania purple in the distance. The waters
of the lake, according to the Albanians, are endowed with marvellous
curative properties. You must drink of them for a month, and then, no
matter what is your disease, you "throw it all up," or else you die!--a
severe kill--or--cure remedy upon which I have never experimented. We
stop at Plavnitza and at Virbazar to pick up passengers, who come out in
big canoes with long, upturned, pointed prows, and the deck is soon
crowded with gay baggage and its strange owners, all of whom are usually
anxious to make friends. You have only to show an interest in the
women's babies and the men's weapons to secure entertainment for the
rest of the voyage. "Show the lady your new gun," said a tall Albanian
to a youth. He passed over a Russian repeating rifle. A woman who was
standing near hastily got out of the way. The Albanian expressed
contempt. "It might go off," said the woman. "Well, what if it did?"
laughed the Albanian. "Look at me. I've been shot twice. It's nothing.
Once I was hit here," he touched his shoulder; "and the doctor cut out
the ball with a knife," he added with great satisfaction. "My brother
died," said the woman briefly.

So on, in leisurely fashion, till at the end of the lake we see the
Crescent flying from an antiquated warship--the red flag and the dying
moon that we falsely call the "crescent," for it will never wax again. I
confess that I never see it on the borders without a curious thrill. I
was brought up to consider the Turk a virtuous and much injured
individual. Now I never cross his frontier without hoping soon to be
able to witness his departure from Europe.

A shattered fortress frowns on the hill, a row of ramshackle buildings
lines the shore, a filthy crowd fills the custom-house steps.
Scutari--Albanese, Skodra at last. Time rolls back from the invisible
boundary against which the centuries have beaten in vain, and before us
lies the land of a prehistoric people and the life of past ages. Canoes
big and little come paddling out in a scrambling hugger-mugger;
Montenegro becomes, for the time being, a type of all that is most
civilised in West Europe, and we leave it behind us on the steamboat.

The custom-house is a dark den, in which everyone shouts at once and
tumbles over everyone else. Smuggle your dictionary, if you have one, in
an under pocket; there is no knowing, says the Turk, what a book in a
foreign language may contain, so away with them all. There are few
things more deadly. Passports are, or are not, asked for according to
the amount of political tension. I have heard of two individuals who
"rushed" that frontier by the aid of receipted bills, the stamps on
which gave them a pleasingly official air, and have twice myself crossed
the Turkish frontier "when I hadn't ought." Anyone with an ounce of wits
can, I believe. And really there is something to be said for a passport
system that is warranted to exclude no one but the fools. The Persian
who inspects the passports, on this occasion, merely asked for our
names, which were too much for him. We gave him our visiting cards; he
copied our Christian names letter by letter, then, exhausted by the
effort, he added London as sufficient address, and the ceremony was
complete. He is a humble youth, will accept twopence as bakshish, and be
your dog for a florin. Like most Turkish officials, he exists, I
presume, on the pickings of his office. And the nation he loves the
best in all Europe varies according to the nationality of the individual
he is addressing.

One gets used to arriving at Skodra as one does to most other things,
but the first visit is an amazement. It will be some time before I
forget that day when we emerged for the first time from that
custom-house. The captain of the steamer ruthlessly whacked off all the
would-be porters except one small boy, and bade him take us to the
carriage stand. Off sped the boy like a hare, threading the mazes of the
bazaar, dodging round corners and plunging down dark airless passages,
his bare feet gripping the pavement, we following hard on his heels,
dazzled by sun-spots, blinded in the darkness, confused by the unwonted
sights, and slithering on the slippery cobblestones which slope down to
the gutter in the middle where the pack-asses walk and the muck
accumulates. Finally, after a ten minutes' chase, he halted us
breathless on an open space on the farther side of the bazaar, stowed us
into the remains of a peagreen fly, and accepted sixpence with
gratitude. Off we rumbled down a lane that, but for its wayfarers, might
be English, so familiar are its hedges, ditches, bramble and clematis,
and we reached the residential part of the town and a decent hostelry in
about twenty minutes.

Skodra is not merely an interesting spot to visit from Cetinje; it also
belongs rightly and properly to Servian history. From a very early
period (it is said the seventh century) it formed part of the Servian
territories, and it remained unconquered after the fatal battle of
Kosovo. It was the capital of George Balsha, Prince of the Zeta, and was
resigned by him into the hands not of the Turks, but the Venetians,
traces of whose architecture yet remain in the town. Though more than
once attacked, it was not taken by the Turks until 1479, and then only
after a siege of six months. Now the Turk holds Skodra, the Albanian
calls it his, and the Montenegrin has never forgotten that it once
formed part of the great Servian Empire. According to the Albanian, it
is the finest city in Europe, and when he tells you so he is proudly
speaking what he believes to be the literal truth. To him it is an ideal
spot, the model of what a capital should be, and the centre of his
universe.

The Albanian may be caught young, and tamed; he may wander into far
countries; he does a good trade in Rome; he may even live years in
England; but for him a glory always hangs over the capital of his
country. He is rare in London; there are only two or three of him, and
he was hard to find. I tracked him to a far suburb, and when he learnt
whence I had come his enthusiasm was unbounded. The greatness and
magnificence of his country made it not at all surprising that the whole
of Europe coveted it, and he gloried in the fact. "Not that Russia, nor
them Austria, nor nobody," he said, "was going to have it! English mans
silly mans; no understand my people. My people all one week like that";
here he whirled his arms wildly round his head; "next week go back work.
Olright. War with Turks? No, ain't going to be none." "Isn't the Turkish
government a hard one?" I asked. "There ain't no government," said he
gleefully. "What about the taxes?" "Oo pay?" said the Tame Albanian;
"you tell me that." Money, he admitted, had to be raised at intervals,
but you always lived in hope that it would be raised in some other
district, and if you displayed a proper amount of spirit it was. In the
days of his youth he had fought for the Turks. "I Bashi-bazouk," he said
with pride; "reg'lar army all them Mohammedans. I Catholic. I good
Christian. I Bashi-bazouk." To us Bashi-bazoukdom and Christianity are
odd yoke-fellows. To him, quite right and proper.

Head of a flourishing business in London, and clad in a smart overcoat
and a billycock hat, he sat down cross-legged on the floor, and his eyes
sparkled as he thought of the good old Bashi-bazouk days. To London he
came because, as everyone knows, "there is lot of money in London." He
knew no word of English and but little Italian; had scarcely any money;
his entire stock in trade consisted of some native costumes and some
silver filigree work. Failure would seem to have been inevitable, but
the pluck and enterprise of the ex-Bashi-bazouk overcame all
difficulties. "You think my country wild country," said he; "now I tell
you--London; it big bad place. Five million peoples in London. My God,
what a lot of criminals! In my country no man starve. He knock at door.
'What you want?' 'I hungry.' 'Olright, you come in.' He give him bread,
he give him wine. In London you say, 'You git 'long, or I call a
p'leece.'" Wherever a Christian Albanian requires help, he has but to
knock at the door of another Christian Albanian and say so. No payment
is ever thought of. "How should we live," said a man to me, "if we did
not help one another?" Compared with Albania, London, even now in the
eyes of the ex-Bashi-bazouk, is a vast and uncivilised wilderness.
Perhaps he is right. Nevertheless, he has found it an excellent place to
get on in. His wife--"my Albanian missus," as he called her--had, he
confessed, a very poor time. Knowing no language but Albanian, and
sighing always for the sun and the shores of the lake of Skodra, she was
near weeping when she heard that I had just come from the beloved spot.
She wore a red cap with coins round it, and a medal dangled in the
centre of her forehead. She seemed singularly out of place in a London
back-shop. "By God," said her husband casually, "I'm sorry for that pore
fem'le!" And he had a certain sympathy for her, in spite of his cheerful
tone.

"Earth hunger," the fierce desire for a particular plot of ground, a
plot which reason may point out to be barren, arid, lonesome, and in
every way unlovable, but which is the cradle of the race, is and perhaps
will always be one of the most unconquerable of human passions. The Tame
Albanian says he means to end his days in "the finest city in Europe,
Skodra."

It is not a salubrious spot. It is suffocating in summer and flooded in
winter. It suffers from heavy rains, and lies low. Its one virtue is
that it does not possess mosquitoes, but it makes up for this by being
full of tuberculosis. Nevertheless, it grips one's imagination, it
arouses the sleeping spirit of first one and then another long dead
ancestor who lived in the squalid, glittering Middle Ages and before,
and they point the way and they whisper, "Such and such we did, and this
also--_do you not remember_?" and strange things that one has not seen
before seem oddly familiar; three or four hundred years ago, they or
something very like them were part of one's daily life.

In the bazaar down by the river, with its maze of narrow crooked
streets, its crazy wooden booths and its vile pavement, life goes on
much as it did with us ages ago. Each trade has its own quarter, as in
all Eastern bazaars. And narrow ways, called Mercery Street, Butchers'
Row, Goldsmiths' Alley, in many an English town, still tell of the time
when so it was in England, in days when timber was as cheap, streets as
crooked and narrow, and pavement as bad as they are now in Skodra. And
then in England, as now in Skodra, people wore colours--red, blue,
green, yellow--and those that could afford it were brave with
embroideries. Their wants were few, luxuries there were few to be
purchased, and they showed all their worldly goods upon their persons in
a blaze of gold and finery on high days and holidays. Skodra does so
still, and so does every peasant and many a nobleman in the old-world
Balkan peninsula of to-day. Gorgeous garments solidly made they are, for
they will not go out of fashion next season, nor the season after, never
indeed until Albania is "civilised," and when will that be? So the
finery is made to last, and is worn and worn till it descends to
"Petticoat Lane" and is bought by the very poor. And when the stitchery
is all rubbed off by the friction of years, still the garment hangs
together, and is worn until it finally drops off piecemeal in squalid
rags. All these garments, however gorgeous without, are lined with
coarse materials, often pieces that do not match patched together, for
the Albanian ideas of dressmaking are old-world. The modern modiste has
invented cotton and linen costumes lined with silk or satin. Her
ancestress, however, acted on the Albanian plan, and the beautiful silk
and brocade costumes that have come down to us from Elizabeths and
Charles I.'s time are finished within with coarse and unsightly canvas.

Near the entrance of the bazaar are the workshops of the carpenters, who
make and carve great chests to hold the clothes, gaudy things painted
peagreen and picked out with scarlet and gold, degenerate descendants of
the beautifully carved and coloured chests in which all Europe kept its
clothing in Gothic and Renaissance days. The makers of the chests
fashion, too, wonderful cradles, coloured in the same gay manner, and in
them the babies are packed and slung on pack-saddles or on women's
backs. In a land of rough travelling, a strong box in which to pack the
baby is a necessity, and doubtless our ancestors used the solid oak
cradles we know so well in a like manner. Any day in the bazaar is
interesting, for the shopmen nearly all make their own goods. The
gunsmiths fill cartridges all day long, for they are an article much in
demand, repair rifles and revolvers, and fit fine old silver butts,
gorgeous with turquoise or cornelian, on to modern weapons. The
silversmith squats cross-legged on the floor with a tray of burning
charcoal, some tweezers, a roll of silver wire, and a little box full of
silver globules. He works silently, deliberately, with long, nimble
fingers picking up the tiny globules and arranging them, snipping and
twisting the little bits of wire, building up and soldering with great
dexterity the most effective designs--designs with sides that match, but
are never quite symmetrical, like Natures own work, satisfying the eye
in a way that no machine-made article ever will. However rough his
workmanship, his idea is almost always good, and he produces daring
effects with glass rubies and emeralds of the largest size. In work of
this sort the Albanian excels. When he comes to larger constructions,
his trick of working by eye and getting balance by instinct is not so
successful; his rooms are all crooked, his houses out of the square.
Perhaps this is the inevitable out-come of his odd-shaped mind. It is
rumoured that three-sided rooms may be found in Skodra, for the simple
reason that somehow the builders, owing to a nice confusion of angles,
could not squeeze in a fourth wall.

They are an honest, civil lot, these Skodra tradesmen; and though your
money will probably fly from hand to hand and disappear round the
corner, the change always comes back correctly in the end, and you pass
the interval drinking coffee with the shop owner. If your purchases are
many, he will kindly send out to buy a piece of common muslin in which
to wrap them; for Skodra does not supply paper, and when you have bought
a thing, conveying it away is your own affair. We in London are used to
having paper included lavishly with the goods, but an old lady once told
me that in her young days the fashionable drapers of London would lend
linen wrappers to those who bought largely, and the said wrappers had to
be returned next day. In this particular Skodra is not more than eighty
or ninety years behind London.

To see the bazaar in all its glory one must go on a Wednesday; that is
"bazaar day," and all the folk of the surrounding country flock
thither. "Which is bazaar day in London?" I have been asked any number
of times by Serb, Montenegrin, and Albanian. And "Every day is bazaar
day in London" is the one thing that gives them any idea of London's
size. The five million inhabitants, railway trains, electric lights, and
so forth, are all quite beyond their ken; but "bazaar every day" stuns
and dazzles them, and at once calls up a picture of vast crowds and
illimitable wealth. On "bazaar day" Skodra is thronged with strange
types--costumes bizarre, grotesque, wild and wonderful, and the road
from an early hour is crowded with flocks, pack-animals and their
owners. Flocks as strange as their drivers, for the ram of the pattering
drove of sheep is often dyed a bright crimson, and his horns instead of
curling neatly round by the sides of his head are trained to stand up
like those of an antelope with their tight twist pulled out to long
spiral His fashion is an even older one than that of his masters, for we
find the ram with the same head-dress in early Egyptian frescoes. For
some of these people it is three, even four days' tramp down to the
market from their mountain homes, and over the rough tracks the women
carry incredibly heavy burdens; not only the bundles of faggots or hides
that are for sale, but the baby in a big wooden cradle is tied on the
top. The men march in front with their rifles and look after the flocks.
Firearms have to be left outside the bazaar. It is true that a good
number of people are still privileged to carry them, but I have haunted
the bazaar quite alone so often that I have ceased to believe in the
many blood-curdling tales about its murderous possibilities with which
travellers are usually favoured. Nor, when you once know your way, do
I think any guide or kavass necessary. It is very dull with a kavass,
for no one comes to play with you. I tried it once for an hour or so,
and never again. But though you see no murders, you may see cases where
apparently vengeance has been satisfied with mutilation, and meet a man
whose nose has been cut off so lately that a bloodstained rag covers the
vacancy. And the mountain-man swaggers up to the cartridge shop and
fills the many spaces that have occurred in his belt since last he came
to market.

[ILLUSTRATION: SKODRA.]

I have no space to describe the dresses of the various tribes; the women
with stiff, straight, narrow skirts boldly striped with black that
recall forcibly the dresses upon the earliest Greek vases; the great
leathern iron-studded belts; the women with cowries in their hair; the
wild men from the mountains in huge sheepskin coats with the wool
outside; town Christian women blazing in scarlet and white, masses of
gilt coins, silver buttons and embroidery; Mohammedan ladies shapeless
in garments which may be correctly termed "bags," or to be still more
accurate, "undivided trousers," of brilliant flowered material, not only
thickly veiled but with blue and gold cloth cloaks clasped over the head
as well, shrouding the figure and allowing only a tiny peephole through
which to see; poor women, veiled down to the knees in white, looking
like ghosts in the dark entrances; Turks in turbans, long frock-coats
and coloured sashes; little girls their hair dyed a fierce red and their
eyebrows blackened. They all unite in one dazzling and confused mass
which one only disentangles by degrees, and when I plunged for the first
time into that unforgettable picture, saw the blaze of sunlight, the
dark rich shadows, the gorgeousness, the squalor, the glitter, the
filth, the colour, the new-flayed hides sizzling in the sun and
blackened with flies, the thousand and one tawdry twopenny articles for
sale on all hands, I thought with a pang of the poor Albanian "fem'le"
who was passing weary, colourless hours in a grey London suburb, and
understood the sickness of her soul.

Of all the old-world things in the town--older than the neatly cut
flints for the flintlocks that are still in use, older than the tight
mediæval leg-gear--the loose tunic bound round the waist by a sash and
the full drawers tied round the ankle, as worn by the common Mohammedan
men and boys of the town (a very ordinary dress throughout the East) is
the oldest. It is the dress of the men on the early Greek vases; of the
Dacians on Trajan's column; of the captive Gauls in the Louvre; the
dress, in short, of all the "barbarians," the "braccati" of the Romans.
The Romans and the toga and the chlamys are all gone, and here, in the
same old place, the barbarians are cutting their skirts and trousers on
the same old pattern, and are very fairly barbarous still. But they have
learned to shave their heads and to wear a white fez, and with this
modification we at once recognise them as our old friend Pierrot, whose
history points to the fact that he really did come from the Near East.
Venice held all the Dalmatian coast and part of Albania. Venice was the
home of masques and pantomimes, and among the existing prints of the
pantomime characters is one "Zanne" in the familiar "Pierrot" dress.
What more likely than that the fool of the piece should be represented
as a boor from a conquered province? To this day, in so-called civilised
towns, an unhappy foreigner is still apt to be considered a fair butt by
the lower classes. Zanne came to England, and figures among the sketches
for one of Ben Jonson's masques.

Skirts with us are purely feminine garments, but the skirt of the
barbarian has grown in Albania into a vast unwieldy kilt, and the
Mohammedan Bey swaggers about in a cumbrous fustanella which reaches
down to his ankle and sticks out like an old-fashioned ballet-girl's
skirt. He cannot work because he wears the fustanella, and it is said
that he wears the fustanella in order to be unable to work. Forty 1
metres of material go to this colossal and ridiculous garment. The
greater part of the fulness is worn in front, and sways clumsily from
side to side as the wearer walks. The Greeks adopted it in a modified
form, but it must be seen on an Albanian to realise its possibilities.
The Albanians have rarely, as yet, succeeded in doing anything in
moderation. After seeing what the men were capable of in the skirt line,
I was not surprised that the shepherd-folk out on the plains began by
asking my guide with great interest if I were a man or a woman.

But we must leave the bazaar, though many days do not exhaust its
interests; leave the butchers' quarter, a harmony in pinks and
blood-red, where the dogs lap red puddles, the butcher wipes a wet knife
across his thigh, and the people run about with little gobbets of mutton
for dinner, a fiercely picturesque place sicklied with the smell of
blood; leave the "Petticoat Lane" of Skodra, where the cast-off finery
of Albanian ladies and the trappings of beauty are displayed alongside
heaps of the most hopeless rags. Aged crones as antique as their wares
squat upon the ground. The sunlight blazes on the gold stitchery till it
sparkles with its pristine splendour; the hag in charge of it,
Atropos-like, points out its beauties with a large pair of shears, while
Lachesis spins a woollen thread alongside. I vow they are the Fates
themselves selling the garments of their victims.

By the afternoon the crowds of country-folk are already reloading the
pack-animals, decked with blue bead headstalls and amulets to keep off
the evil eye, that await them at the entrance of the bazaar, where the
gipsy smiths and tinkers work, half stripped, a-ripple with tough
muscle, under little shanties made of sticks and flattened-out petroleum
cans. How the land got on before the petroleum can was introduced it is
hard to imagine. In the hands of the gipsies it is the raw material from
which almost everything is made.

The peasants load their beasts--they are adepts at pack-saddling and you
rarely see a sore back--and trail slowly across the plains towards
their mountain homes. The bazaar is shut up, darkness comes on fast, and
belated foot passengers pick their way with lanterns.

Night in Skodra is uncanny. The half-dozen tiny oil lamps do not light
it at all. When there is no moon, the darkness is impenetrable and
absolute, save perhaps for a long streak of light from the door-chink of
the next shop and the lighted windows of the mosque opposite. The black
silhouettes of praying figures rise and fall within them, but the mosque
itself is swallowed up in the surrounding blackness. A spark appears on
the roadway, someone passes with a lantern and disappears. The street is
dead still till a sword clanks and the patrol marches past. The lights
are extinguished in the mosque. The darkness is dense and dead, and
there is no sound. It is only nine o'clock, but all Skodra seems asleep.

Skodra the town, as distinguished from the bazaar, has not a great deal
to show. It is a big town with some 40,000 inhabitants, and as all
houses of any size stand in a large yard or garden, it covers much
space. Here every man's house is his castle, and the high walls are not
only for seclusion but for defence. Skodra, from time to time, receives
a rumour that thousands of armed men are marching upon it. All the shops
are shut, the guards are doubled on the bridges, and folk shut
themselves in their houses. The phantom army does not appear, and in two
or three days things are going on as before. "But it will come some
day," said a man, when I laughed about a reported army of forty thousand
that had never turned up.

The Mohammedan quarter has the air of being far more wealthy and
high-class than the Christian. The houses that one gets a glimpse of
through the gateways are large and solid. But the streets are lonesome
and deserted. Now and then I met a couple of veiled ladies, who, if no
man were in sight, usually strove hard to make my acquaintance, and
partially unveiled for the purpose. But as I know neither Turkish nor
Albanian, we never got farther than the fact that I was "a Frank" and a
deal of smiling and nodding. Two in particular walked a long way with
me, chattering all the time, and for the benefit of the inquisitive, I
must say that they were both very pretty girls. In Skodra not only the
Mohammedan but the town Roman Catholic women go veiled, though the
country-folk do not, and until married are often kept in a seclusion
which to our ideas is little short of imprisonment--facts which throw a
strong light upon the unlovely state of society which has made them
necessary; for the etiquettes of society are usually based upon raw and
unpleasant truths. It is idle folly to ascribe Western and
twentieth-century ideas to these primitive people, but the fact remains
that the life of the average Albanian woman is an exceedingly hard one.
That of the country-folk is a ceaseless round of excessive physical
toil; that of the poorer town woman is, I am told, often spent at the
loom from morning till night--labour that only ends when the Black Fate
snips her thread.

[ILLUSTRATION: MOSQUE, SKODRA.]

Though the Mohammedans far outnumber the Christians in the town, the
mosques are all small plain buildings, only saved from ugliness by the
elegance of their tall slim minarets, nor are there many of them. With
a grotesque lack of a sense of the fitness of things, the Turkish army,
when it has a washing-day, uses the largest graveyard as a
drying-ground, and a shirt or a pair of drawers flaps on each tombstone.
It was not until I saw this sight that I had any idea that the Turkish
soldiers ever had a washing-day. A lean, unkempt, ragged lot of poor
dirty devils with scowling faces, they look more as if returning from a
disastrous campaign than as if quartered in the barracks of the capital.
And the sight of them is enough to make one have no difficulty in
believing the tale that they not unfrequently help themselves to mutton
from across the frontier when the "Government" is discreetly gazing in
another direction. Their powers of endurance in war-time are not
surprising when their life during "peace" is taken into consideration. A
fight in which you may loot all you want must be a pleasant holiday by
comparison.

The Christian quarter of Skodra looks less flourishing, and there are
crosses on some of the doors, otherwise the two quarters are much the
same. The Roman Catholic townsfolk wear a special costume. That of the
men is odd; that of the ladies perhaps the most hideous that has been
ever devised. Their gigantic trouser-petticoats of purple-black
material, in multitudinous pleats, fall in an enormous bag that sticks
out all round the ankles, and impedes the wearer to such an extent that
she often has to hold it up with both hands in front in order to get
along. With her face veiled and the upper part of her body covered with
a scarlet, gold-embroidered cloak with a square flap that serves as a
hood, she forms an unwieldy, pear-shaped lump--grotesque and gorgeous.
The streets here are apt to be flooded in wet weather, and the side
walks are high. Big blocks of stepping-stones, like those at Pompeii,
afford a way over the road, nor do carts seem to find any difficulty in
passing them.

The cathedral of the Roman Catholics is a large brick building, some
fifty years old, with a tall campanile, standing in grounds which are
surrounded by a high wall. Its great blank interior, owing to lack of
funds, has not suffered much from "decoration." At the gateway the women
loosen their veils and go into God's house with uncovered
faces--beautiful faces, with clean-cut, slightly aquiline noses, clear
ivory skins, red lips, and dark eyes with long lashes. There are benches
in the nave, but a large proportion of the congregation, especially the
country-folk who crowd in on feast days, prefer to sit on the floor;
they spread a little rug or handkerchief, kick off their shoes and squat
cross-legged on it as in a mosque; women with their breasts covered with
coins that glitter as they sway to and fro in prayer; mountain-men with
their cartridge belts upon them ready for use against a brother
Albanian. A fine barbaric blaze of colour, scarlet and scarlet and
scarlet again. The service begins; harshly dissonant voices, loud and
piercing, chant the responses; and the deep sonorous voice of the young
Italian at the altar rings out like the voice of civilisation over the
barbaric yowling of the congregation. As he mounts the scarlet and gold
pulpit there is a hush of expectation. The sermon, in Albanian, is a
long one, and the crowd hangs breathless on his words. His delivery and
his action are simple and dignified, and I watch him sway his
congregation with deep interest, though I can understand no word. He is
working up to a climax, and he reaches it suddenly in a sentence that
ends in the only non-Albanian word in the sermon, "Inferno." The word
thunders down the church on a long-rolled "rrrr," and he stands quite
silent, grasping the edge of the pulpit and staring over the heads of
the people. There is a painful hush, that seems like minutes. Then he
suddenly throws himself on his knees in the pulpit and prays. Violently
moved, his flock prostrate themselves in a passion of entreaty, and
those who sit on the ground bend double and touch the floor with their
foreheads.

The barbaric gaudy congregation, the ascetic earnest young teacher, the
raucous wailing voices that rang through the great bare church, made up
a poignantly impressive, quite inexplicable whole. I gazed upon the
praying crowd and wondered vainly what their idea of Christianity may be
and what old-world pre-Christian beliefs are entangled with it. The
Albanian clings to these through everything, and in spite of all their
efforts the Frati have as yet made little or no headway against
blood-feuds. The Albanian has never adapted himself to anything; he has
adapted the thing to himself. He practises the Christianity upon which
he prides himself, with the ferocity with which he does everything else.
He fasts with great rigour, wears a cross as a talisman, and is most
particular to make the sign of the cross after the Latin and not after
the Orthodox manner. But his views are very material. "Have you got the
Holy Ghost in your country?" I have been asked more than once. And an
affirmative answer brought the enthusiastic remark, "Then England is
just like Albania!" The life of Benvenuto Cellini is interesting reading
after a tour in Albania, for it represents with remarkable fidelity the
stage in religious evolution to which the wild Albanian of to-day has
arrived.

Difference of religion is usually given as the reason for the fact that
the Albanian has almost invariably sided with the enemies of the other
Christian peoples of the Balkans. One suspects, however, that it is
rather "the nature of the beast" than the particular form of belief that
he has chosen to profess that has cut him off, his fierce independence
rather than his religious creed, and the more one sees of him the more
probable does this appear.

There are very few Orthodox Albanians in Skodra. Such as there are wear
the same dress as the Mohammedans, but the women are not veiled.

Skodra, except in the way of customs, possesses few antiquities, save
the ruins of the old citadel which crown the hill overlooking the town.
These are said to be of Venetian origin and to have been fairly perfect
till some thirty years ago, when the local Pasha, having heard of
lightning conductors, determined to buy one for the better protection of
the tower, which was used as a powder magazine. To this end he chose a
handsome brass spike, and then found he was expected to pay extra for a
lot of wire. Being economical, he took the spike only, had it fixed to
the topmost tower, and anxiously awaited a storm. It soon came! The
handsome brass spike at once attracted the lightning. Bang went the
powder magazine, and the greater part of the citadel was shattered
before his astonished gaze. The hill now is crowned with a heap of
ruins, but as strangers are strictly forbidden to visit it, I presume
the Turks have constructed something that they consider a fortress among
them.

At the foot of this hill are the ruins of a small church. Big white
crosses are painted upon it, and it is considered a very holy spot.
Every Christian peasant stops as he passes it and crosses himself, and
though all that is left are fragments of the walls, I have been told
that a service is still occasionally held in it. The only other relic of
past days in the neighbourhood is the fine stone bridge with pointed
arches near Messi, about four and a half miles from Skodra across the
plain. This is undoubtedly Venetian work. The stream it spans is a
raging torrent in the wet season, and has wrought much damage in the
town and devastated a large tract of the plain. The rest of this is
covered with short turf and bracken fern, and grazed by flocks of sheep
and goats. The herdsmen, shaggy in sheepskins and armed with rifles, the
strings of country-people and pack-animals slowly tramping to or from
market, and the blue range of rugged mountains make up a strange, wild
scene. Nor, if you take an Albanian with you to do the talking,--for
everyone "wants to know,"--does there appear to me to be any danger in
wandering there.

Skodra is the capital, but it has no decent road to its port. It is
situated on the outlet of the lake, but though a little money and work
would make the Bojana River navigable for small steamers, and all the
shores of the lake would thus be put in direct communication with the
sea, nothing is done, and this, which should be the chief trade route
for North Albania and a large part of Montenegro, is of little use.
Skodras exports are not enough for Skodra to worry about greatly. Hides,
tobacco, some sumach root and bark for dyeing and tanning, some maize
and fruit, and a number of tortoises, which the Albanian finds
ready-made, form the bulk of the exports of the neighbourhood. Skodra is
one of the few capitals which you can leave with the certainty of
finding it exactly the same next year.




CHAPTER IX

SKODRA TO DULCIGNO


I have on one point, at any rate, a fellow-feeling with the Albanian.
Skodra fascinates me. When I am not there--only then, mind you--I am
almost prepared to swear with him that it is the finest city in the
world, and a year after my first visit I found myself again on the
steamer, hastening Skodra-wards, with the intention of riding thence to
Dulcigno. Skodra greeted me warmly as an old friend. That exalted
official the Persian beamed upon me and said that for Mademoiselle a
passport was not necessary, the customs let me straight through, and I
was soon settled comfortably in my old quarters. The Persian, because,
so he said, of our long friendship, but really because he was aching
with curiosity, called upon me at once in the crumpled and unclean white
waistcoat in which he fancies himself, and chatted affably.

He comes, so he tells me, of a most exalted family; were he only in
Tehran, instead of, unfortunately, in Skodra, he would be regarded with
universal respect and veneration. As I have no idea of the standard
required by Tehran, I condoled with him gravely, and accepted his
statement. It was a great joy to Skodra, he informed me, that I should
have come alone. No other lady had ever done so. Only une Anglaise
would; for the English alone understand Turkey--are her dear friends.
Here his enthusiasm was unbounded. Upon Turkish soil every English
person was as safe as in England. This was owing to the excellence of
the government. "There is," he said, "no government like ours." I told
him the latter statement was universally believed, and pleased him
greatly. He soared to higher flights. It was astonishing, he said, and
most annoying, that false accounts of Turkey were published by foreign
papers. He would go so far as saying that they never told the truth. It
was even said that in parts of Turkey there had been considerable
disturbances lately. Parole d'honneur, this was quite untrue. Never had
the land been in a more tranquil or flourishing condition, and as a
proof of his assertion he told me that his information was entirely
derived from official sources.

Now at this time, "according to foreign papers," Russia, aided by
Turkish troops, was vainly trying to force a Consul into Mitrovitza,
encounters between troops and desperate villagers were reported almost
daily from Macedonia, trains on the Salonika line had been more than
once "held up," and the governor of the very district we were in had
been shot at some months before. But he burbled on of the beauty of the
British Government and of the support it always afforded in the hour of
need. Everything desirable, including liberty and equality, flourished
under the Crescent, he said. At this moment a poverty-stricken little
gang of ragged men tramped past, bearing in turns upon their shoulders a
long battered old coffin, from which the paint was almost worn away.

They stopped to shift it nearly opposite us. It was lidless, and the
dead man's white face, his knees, and his great sheepskin stood above
its edge. He lay in his clothes just as he died. The Persian, with
ill-timed merriment, pointed to the corpse. "A dead sheep,
Mademoiselle!" said he contemptuously. He addressed some remark in an
unknown tongue to the mourners. The coffin-bearers passed sullenly. "A
dead Christian," I said to him sharply. "Yes, yes, a Catholic," he
admitted. I stared hard at his shifty eyes; he hastily dropped into
politics again, and I thought about equality.

Not being desirous of emulating Miss Stone, and as the Persian for
imaginativeness rivalled his fellow-countryman, Omar Khayyam, I
collected advice from various quarters. Great as were the joys of
Skodra, Dulcigno was my object; but I did not seem to get any nearer
arriving there. Everybody combined to try to frighten me off the ride.
Having played about Skodra for over a week, however, I persuaded myself
that the Albanian was a friendly and much maligned being, took all the
responsibility upon myself, and decided to carry out my plan. I fixed
the matter up with a rush. Dutsi, the man who was to guide me, turned up
early in the morning with a sturdy pony; I said farewell, and started
through the town on foot. It was no use my mounting, said Dutsi
mournfully, till we had passed the passport place; the Turks were very
bad about passports--_diavoli_, in fact. This with a gentle air of
resignation, as if it were highly possible it would not be worth while
to mount at all. We walked along the banks of the Bojana till we came to
its point of union with the Drin. Over the Drin is a big wooden bridge
with a fantastic arch of wood across it, and on the bridge stood
soldiers in the dirty rags that the Turks call a uniform. "Your
passport," said Dutsi hurriedly. I produced it; but as none of the
authorities could read anything but Turkish, it was useless. Dutsi
looked anxious. "They want your name," he said, and looking at the
passport-case, which is stamped "Mary E. Durham," he read out "Marie"
with triumph. Everyone was satisfied. I entered Skodra as "Edith of
London"; I left it as no less a person than "Mary of England." Great and
obvious are the blessings of the passport system. I gave a twopenny
bakshish, and we passed on to the bridge. Dutsi was a changed being; his
spirits rose as soon as the Turks were left behind. He told me he was
much attached to the English, and that now I might mount.

After an hour or so of enjoyment, the road got worse, and then rapidly
worse still, and fuller and fuller of water. The Bojana was in flood,
and the waters were out. My beast splashed through water almost up to
his belly, and Dutsi took circuits through peoples maize fields. Then it
got so bad that we left the track and laboured fetlock--deep through
ploughed land, and saw ox-carts bogged to the axle in the sea of mud
that was all that was left of the road. And after a little of this, the
track was lost altogether, and we wandered round through tracts of mud
and streams, forced a passage through an osier bed only to come to a
swirling sheet of water, tried back, and finally made for a hovel and
hallooed for help. The owner came out, took us over his own grounds, and
started us again on something like a path, which soon disappeared.
Dutsi, however, now knew the direction, and the pony was extraordinarily
clever at climbing greasy banks, boring his way through the willows on
top, and scrambling over the ditch the other side without even once
"pecking." We came to some low hills, and got on to dry ground at last.
Then Dutsi discovered to his distress that my umbrella, which he had
tied to the back of the saddle, was gone. This was a sad loss, but it
was evidently gone beyond recall. Dutsi in despair laid the blame
entirely on those devils the Turks, who made such devils of roads, and
were such devils to the good Christians that they were unable to improve
the country. "Oh, the devils!" said Dutsi; "they have lost your devil of
an umbrella." This relieved his feelings, and when I pointed out the
inky clouds that were rapidly rising and said we had better hurry, he
remarked piously, that though it looked like rain he believed that, in
consideration of the loss of my umbrella, God would not permit it, for
He does not like the Turks. Thus comforted, we proceeded, over low
ground again, splashing over fields that, properly drained, should be
magnificent water meadows, but were liquid slush in which great yellow
spearwort flourished. At last we came to the river's edge and the
ferryman's hut.

A great barge was dragged alongside the bank and the pony persuaded to
enter it. I sat on the edge and curled up my toes, for the bottom was
covered with water, and we were soon off. The boat was towed some
distance up stream and let loose, and the force of the current combined
with skilful steering swept it across. Dutsi was now happy; we should
have a "buona strada" all the way! He began telling me of a noble and
wealthy Englishman, one X. of the Foreign Office, to whom he had acted
as guide in the spring in a shooting expedition, one of the best and
kindest signors that existed, and we progressed slowly over the "buona
strada," which was like a dry torrent bed, for we were now back among
the limestone rocks again. Presently we arrived at a stream with a plank
across it. "The frontier, the frontier!" cried Dutsi, and, as we set
foot on the other side, he announced that we were in a free and
Christian land, Montenegro! Now, he said, we would rest and eat some
bread. So we sat down under a tree, and I discovered that the
improvident creature had brought nothing more filling with him than a
few cigarettes. As my chances of getting to Dulcigno depended entirely
on him, I supplied him with two of my three eggs and three-quarters of
my loaf, and we were just setting to work when we heard a loud
"tom-tom-tomming." Out of the bushes came a gang of seven very black
gipsies, four muzzled bears, and a loaded ass. Between them they carried
five rifles and seven revolvers, and they certainly looked the "Devils
Own." The pony snorted and stamped at the bears, and would have bolted
had he not been tied fast; we hadn't a weapon between us, and Dutsi
looked so green that I thought "all the fun of the fair" was about to
begin. "Dobar dan," said I, through a mouthful of egg, for it is always
as well to be civil. They made no answer, but scowled upon us and went
surly by, single file, the boy who was in charge of the bears beating
his tambourine rhythmically the while. As soon as the last of them had
disappeared round the corner, Dutsi announced that they were very, very
bad and all Turks (_i.e_. Moslems), and that now we must have a long
rest. He was obviously afraid of catching them up.

Meanwhile the storm clouds were rapidly catching us up. We waited some
ten minutes. I insisted upon starting then, and came upon the gipsies
almost immediately, for they were making the bears dance in the yard of
a lonely cottage on one side of the road. Dutsi caught the pony's head,
led him round silently on the grass and behind some bushes, and we
passed unseen, to his great relief. As he was very tired, I dismounted
and gave him a ride. The free and Christian road was no better than the
heathen one, but we got on very cheerfully for some way. Then the
floodgates of the heavens opened, and, in spite of the loss of my
umbrella, the rain came down in sheets. Dutsi most gallantly offered me
his, but as I had a mackintosh I begged him to keep it for himself, and
remounted and rode through the worst rain I was ever out in. Luckily we
had just arrived at a decent road, and we took shelter under the first
large tree. The whole landscape disappeared behind the grey torrent, and
out of it suddenly rushed the wildest figure I have ever seen--an old,
old woman, tall and lean, clad only in a long pair of cotton drawers
tied under her armpits. Her lank wet hair streamed from her head like
long black snakes, and she stood out in the rain and waved her arms
madly round like mill sails, as she poured out a torrent of Albanian.
"She wants us to go to her house," said Dutsi. "It is over there," as
she pointed into the rain, "half an hour away! I tell her, 'No, thank
you.'" Still the old woman gesticulated and shouted. "Falé miners"
(thank you), repeated Dutsi over and over again in a deep sing-song. She
made a last effort. "One million times in the name of God, she asks us
to come," said Dutsi, with a smile. "She says she can do no more." Nor
could she, apparently, for she disappeared again into the rain as
suddenly as she had come. "It is better to sit here in the dry," said
Dutsi. "How far is it to Dulcigno?" I asked. "Two hours at least," said
Dutsi. I wondered miserably whether the saddle-bags were water-tight,
and thought of my only change of clothes; and as there was no prospect
of food, and I had only had one egg and a little bread since early
morning, I attacked my Brand's beef lozenges and blessed the maker.

When the storm lifted, we started again, and through sun and storm
arrived in a heavy shower in sight of Dulcigno just as that most
melancholy sound, the clink of a loose shoe, caught my ear. I suggested
the best inn to Dutsi. He said dismally, "There is only one," and we
climbed the hill and entered the town,--a row of houses, a forge, a
mosque, and some shops,--and to my dismay pulled up at a tiny Albanian
drink-shop. "Ecco l'albergo," said Dutsi. I jumped off the pony and
hurried in, out of the downpour. I was streaming, Dutsi was streaming,
the pony had cast his shoe, and we had been nearly nine hours instead of
five and a half on the way. It was a case of any port in a storm. The
stripey-legged owner welcomed me effusively in broken Italian, and led
me through into an earth-floored kitchen and up a few wooden steps to a
"molto bella camera" over the shop, talking excitedly. It was a minute
apartment, quite unfurnished, except that a trouser-legged lady was
curled up fast asleep on a heap of mattresses on a sort of divan of
packing-cases. "My wife," said he, giving her a poke, whereupon she
jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, threw her arms round my neck, and
kissed me three times. Dutsi appeared with the saddle-bags. He glanced
round the room appreciatively, for it was the sort of place he felt at
home in, and said it was "dosta dobra" (pretty good), also that the
people were very good and all Christians. Then he very considerately
suggested that I had better change my clothes and would perhaps prefer
to be alone, and they left me. My "change," wrapped in a sheet of
waterproof and in saddle-bags, was quite dry, and my mind relieved on
this point was free to contemplate the possibilities of the
establishment. One window had once had glass in it, the other never.
Except the heap of bedding, there was nothing in the room but a rifle, a
cartridge belt, and a picture of St. George. The rain was falling in
sheets; seeking for other quarters would result in soaking my only dry
clothes; moreover, I was tired. I decided to stay in shelter for the
present, and descended to the "kitchen."

The floor was of earth and sloped up, for the house was built on the
hillside. In one corner Dutsi, my host, and another striped gentleman
were all squatting on their haunches round a splendid wood fire which
blazed on a big slab of stone; Madame was making coffee, and Monsieur
lemonade. A place was made for me at once, and I joined the squatting
circle. They were most anxious about my health, felt me to see if I were
really dry; and Madame, as she was unable to make me understand, kissed
my hands and face. The fire had been lighted expressly for me, said
Monsieur, and now they would all enjoy it. I appealed to Dutsi in an
undertone about the possibility of better accommodation, but he was
positive about this being the only inn. A room in a private house could
be found perhaps by the sea, but that was half an hour away; moreover,
these were most excellent people, and had lent him a coat and a pair of
shoes. Their hearty friendliness filled me with trust from the first;
the extreme primitiveness of the place attracted me. I said to myself,
"You wanted to see the Albanians, and the Lord has delivered you into
their hands. This is a unique opportunity," and I settled in and tried
to behave like one of the family. Dutsi took a tender farewell of me,
and begged me to give his love to X. of the Foreign Office, that
bravest, noblest, and most admirable signor in the whole world, and to
tell him that he (Dutsi) was praying God night and day to protect him
and bring him back to Albania. Then the rest of the company, whose
curiosity had been aroused, were told of the glories of X., and the fact
that I was his compatriot counted greatly in my favour; for in these
out-of-the-way corners the reputation of the Empire depends entirely on
the conduct of the two or three individuals who happen to have
represented it, and the responsibility upon them is heavy indeed.

Dutsi departed, and I felt a bit lonesome; but the company rejoiced over
me like children over a new kitten. They patted and stroked me, and
broke off little pieces of bread for me, and, as I could not understand
Albanian, grunted and burbled over me like friendly guinea-pigs. The
place was thick with pungent wood smoke, which escaped from a window
near the roof. The rafters overhead were black and smoky, the walls
rough stone; there was a heap of logs and brushwood in the farther
corner, and a few pots hung on pegs. Otherwise there was nothing. In
England, even in Anglo-Saxon times, my ancestors had tables and chairs.
I sat cross-legged by the blazing logs with streaming eyes, and wondered
which century I was in. And the firelight danced on the only up-to-date
thing in the room, the barrels of a rifle and revolver and the brass
tops of the cartridges in the belt of the man next me. For living, we
can go on as before with the same old things, but when it comes to
killing we really require something better. From time to time Monsieur
retired to the bar to deal out rakija to customers, and the fame of my
arrival soon spread. If the customers were of lowly standing, they were
invited in to see me; if, on the contrary, they were great men,
Montenegrin captains for instance, Monsieur asked me if I would be so
good as to step out and speak to them. These were all huge, all
courteous, all friendly, and all unable to speak anything but Servian.
Rain still poured, but as everyone who came to see me took a glass of
something, trade was good. One gentleman who spoke Italian was such a
tremendous swell that I asked him if there were any better hotel in the
place. This surprised him, and he replied that there was no other, and
the cooking here was excellent. Having interviewed some half-dozen
captains and a lot of shaven-headed up-country Albanians, I retired to
the kitchen again, and began drying my wet under-garments one by
one--an operation that interested Monsieur so deeply that he insisted
upon helping, and singed them freely. In came, in a dripping overcoat, a
strapping, cheerful, great Montenegrin, who hailed me joyfully in
Italian, sat down, and, smiling gleefully, remarked in English, "a cat,
a dog, a orse, a and, a man," and some dozen other words. Everyone
looked on in admiration. I returned in Servian, to his delight, and he
explained to me that he was kavass to the British and Foreign Bible
Society in Constantinople, and was home for a holiday. His friendliness
was unbounded; he insisted that I was to breakfast with him next
morning, and demanded to know what I was going to have for supper. He
knew all about the English, he said, and I must have roast beef.
Monsieur retired to a corner and came back with the carcase of a lamb
and a caldron. The kavass was greatly opposed to this; Monsieur was much
excited; anything I required he was willing to try! A great debate
ensued. They appealed to me, and I chose the lamb and the pot, for the
mere idea of an Albanian culinary experiment alarmed me. So Madame
fetched a hatchet, and the lamb was chopped in chunks on the hearthstone
and put into the caldron with a sheaf

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