Before leaving Plevlie, Dr. Clemow had presented Jan with a box of Red Cross cigars, and he handed one to the captain. The official received it gratefully.

"Ah!" he said. "Cigars, eh! One does not often see those nowadays."

The cigar was a Trichinopoli. Jan said nothing, but watched. The captain lit the cigar manfully, and for some minutes puffed, looking the apotheosis of aristocracy. Presently his puffing ceased, he looked thoughtful, and then saying that he had forgotten an important paper which he had not signed, he fled. We found the cigars most useful afterwards, as a sort of spiritual disinfector, infallible against bores.

Into the cracks of the ceiling were stuck white and yellow flowers, thyme and other plants, till the roof looked like an inverted flower-bed. We had noticed this custom before, and asked Mike if it had any significance.

"Oh yes," he answered, "all dose tings, dey stuck up dere 'gainst de fleas 'n bugs."

This was translated into Serbian, and the woman boxed his ears.

We supped on meat—three courses—meat, meat, meat, and so tough that our teeth bounced off, and we were compelled to bolt the morsels whole. One course tired us out, weary as we already were with our journey, but Mike, making up for his former abstinence, wolfed all his own share and what remained over from ours.

The night was so cold that we went to bed in our clothes, and even then could not sleep for hours.

We woke with difficulty to a glorious day, and found that what we had thought yesterday to be a plain was in truth a great plateau surrounded by towering grey mountains on which were gulfs and gullies filled with eternal snow. Jabliak is a queer village, fifty or sixty weathered wooden houses—with the high-peaked roof of Northern Serbia—flung down into this wilderness, where the grass and crops fight for existence with the pushing stones, and where the summer is so short that the captain's plum tree—the only one—will not ripen save in exceptional years. Never a wheel comes to Jabliak, and so it is a village without streets. Everything which passes here is horse-or woman-borne, and for hay they use long narrow sledges which slide over the stones and slippery grass as though it were snow.

"Urrgh," said a man, "you should see this in winter. Snow ten and twelve feet deep, and only just the roofs and the tops of the telegraph-poles emerging."

The village escorted us to see the famous Black Lake below the peaks of Dormitor.

The lake is beautiful enough, but too big for mystery, too small to be impressive. One had imagined it twinkling like the wicked pupil of a witch's eye, with cornea of white stones and eye-lashes of pine trees, and we desecrated even its stillness by shooting at wild duck with a rifle.

Jan had been describing to the villagers how well Jo rode; they now think he is a liar. Her horse took an unexpected jump at a small obstacle; the huge hump at the back of the saddle rose suddenly, threw her forward, and before she had realized anything, she was hanging almost upside down about the horse's neck, helpless because of the enormous steeple in front. This horse, as though quite used to similar occurrences, stood quietly contemplative, till Mike had restored her to a perpendicular.

Then on again. At times the tracks grew very muddy, and the horses side-slipped a good deal. At the top of a pass we halted to get coffee from a leafy hut. Before us were the mountains of Voynik, a blue ridge with shadowy, strange crevasses and cliffs; behind us Dormitor was still visible, a faint stain on the sky, as though that great canopy had been dragging edges in the dew.

Four women clambered up towards us. When they had reached the top they flung down their enormous knapsacks and sat down. They were a cheery, pretty set, and we asked them where they were going.

"To the front," they said.

"What for?"

"Those are for our husbands and brothers," answered they, patting the huge coloured knapsacks.

"How far have you to walk?" we asked.

"Four more days."

"And how far have you walked?"

"Four days."

No complaining, no repining, just a statement of fact, these women were cheerfully tramping eight days with bundles weighing from 45 to 50 pounds upon their backs, to take a few luxuries, or necessities, to their fighting kin.

We bade them a jolly farewell, wished them luck, and started downhill.

The track became so steep that we had to descend from our horses and walk, and so we came to Shavnik.

Shavnik is not of wood; it is stone, and as we came into its little square—with the white river-bed on one side—we realized that no welcome attended us. To our indignant dismay the inn was full, and no telegram from the "State" had arrived.



We learned that in Montenegro are two kinds of travellers—royalties and nobodies. Royalties are done for, nobodies do the best they can. We found a not overclean room over a shop—there was nothing better—we had already experienced worse: so we ordered supper, and went off to the telegraph station, to make sure that we arrived as "Royalty" at the next stop.

A man suddenly burst into the office, crying, "Sirdar! Sirdar!"

Jo and Jan made their way through the darkness to the inn, squeezed between sweating horses to the door. We were admitted.

The Sirdar received us kindly, but was dreadfully tired, and looked years older than he had two days before. He had ridden some 150 kilometres in sixteen hours, had left Chainitza at two o'clock in the morning, and had been in the saddle ever since. He is a famous horseman, but is no longer young. Almost all his escort had succumbed to the speed, and he was full of the story of his orderly's horse which had done 300 kilometres in four days, and was the only animal which had come through with him, he having changed mounts at Plevlie. We left him and went straight to bed.

Just as we were comfortably dozing off, a man burst into the room and demanded "Mike," and said something about a horse. Jan dressed hurriedly and clattered downstairs. It was pitch dark. He ran to the stable, felt his way in, and struck a match. There were two horses, one was lying on its side, evidently foundered and dying but Jan felt that they would not have disturbed him for that. By matchlight again he found that his own horses had been turned out by the Sirdar's orderly, and that one was missing. Mike was not to be found, but the missing horse was discovered by a small boy in the dry river-bed apparently in search of water. Jan retired to his bedroom to find that in his absence two more strangers had burst in, to Jo's indignation. He pushed them out and locked the door.

When we awoke the Sirdar had already retaken his whirlwind course—evidently grave news called him to Cettinje—leaving the orderly's gallant horse dead behind him.

"He kills many horses," said a peasant, shaking his head; "he rides fast—always."

We crossed the dry bed of the river and prepared for the hill in front of us. Suddenly Mike's horse plunged into a bog. The poor beast sprawled in the treacherous green up to its stomach, and, thinking its last hour had come, groaned loudly. Mike threw himself from the saddle, and with great effort at last extracted his horse, which emerged trembling and dripping with slime. Mike grinned ruefully.

"I orter remembered," he admitted. "Sirdar, 'e get in dere one day 'imself."

This day's riding was the worst we had yet experienced. Our horses were fagged, the road abominable, great stones everywhere on the degenerated Turkish roads.

The Turkish road is a narrowish path of flat paving-stones laid directly upon mother earth: but that is the first stage. In the second stage the paving-stones have begun to turn and lie like slates on a roof; in the third they have turned completely on edge, like a row of dominoes, and the horses, stepping delicately between the obstacles, pound the exposed earth to deep trenches of semi-liquid mud. In the fourth stage the stones have entirely disappeared, leaving only the trenches which the horses have formed, so that the path is like a sheet of violently corrugated iron. Most of the tracks are now between the third and fourth stages of degeneration. One never knows how far the horse will plunge his legs into the trenches, for sometimes they are very shallow, and sometimes the leg is engulfed to the shoulder.

Jan's horse slipped over one domino, went up to the shoulder into a trench, and off came the rider. Luckily he fell upon a heap of stones, and not into the mud, but he decided for all that to walk for a bit.

Every now and then one came across traces of the construction of a great road—white new stone embankments that started out of nothing, and went to nowhere, and Mike confessed that he had lost the path once more—

"When I come out of dat confounded mod!"

After a hustle across country we found the road, and wished that we had not, for it was a Turkish track in its most belligerent form.

At last we reached the top and rested awhile. Mike showed us his revolver.

"He good revolver," he said. "De las' man I shoot he killin' a vooman. I come. He run away. I tell 'im to stop, but he no stop, so I shoot 'im leg. 'E try to 'it me wi' a gon."

The man got fourteen years.

We pushed on again, and on the road picked up an overcoat, which later we were able to restore to its owner, a Turk, who was going to Nickshitch to buy sugar and salt for Plevlie.

Bits of the big white road appeared and reappeared with insistence. We asked who was responsible for its inception.

"Sirdar," said Mike; "he good boy. Much work."

The country was now like brown velvet spread over heaps of gigantic potatoes.

Our horses grew slower and slower, and the inn which we were seeking seemed ever further and further away. We passed many peasants, and had evidently entered the land of Venus, for each one was more beautiful than the neighbour. Since Jabliak we had not seen an ugly man or woman, and the dignity of their carriage was exceeded only by the nobleness of their features. Ugly women must be valuable in these parts, and probably marry early; humans ever prize the rare above the beautiful.

Mike spoke to many of the girls, asking them their names and of their homes. One had his own name—which we forget—and he said that she must be his cousin, and that if she would wait where she was he would come back later and give her a lift.

At last we came to the wooden inn.

The better-class inns have dining-room and kitchen separate, the second-class both are one, but in each case the fire is made on a heap of earth piled in the centre of the floor; there is no chimney, and the smoke fills the room with a blue haze, smarting in the eyes; it drifts up to the roof, where hams are hung, and finds its way out through the cracks in the wooden roofing slats. This inn was second-class, and along one wall was a deep trough, in which were four huge lumps of a white substance which puzzled us. First we thought it was snow, but that seemed impossible; then we thought it was salt—but why?

It was snow, there being no water fit to drink, so the snow was stored in the winter in huge underground cellars.

We got coffee and kaimak—a sort of cross between sour milk and cream cheese—and as a great honour the lady of the house, a villainously dirty-looking woman, brought us two eggs. Jan's was bad, but he put it aside, saying nothing, for it is impossible to explain to these people what is a "bad" egg—all are alike to them.

We took an affectionate leave of Mike, for here we degenerated to a carriage, which was waiting us, and he rode off, dragging our tired horses behind him.

As we were getting into the carriage the dirty woman ran up and, before Jo could ward it off, planted a loving kiss on either cheek.

We flung our weary limbs upon the rusty cushions. Our driver was a cheery fellow, who only answered "quite" to everything we said. We drove through miles of country so stony that all the world had turned grey as though it had remembered how old it was. The road twisted and curled about the mountains like the flourish of Corporal Trim's stick: below one could see the road, only half a mile off as the crow flies, but a good five miles by the curves. We were blocked by a great hay-cart. Our driver shouted and cursed without effect, so he climbed down from the box, and, running round the hay, slashed the driver of it with his whip. We expected a free fight, but nothing occurred. When the hay had modestly drawn aside, we found "only a girl." Poor thing! she looked rueful enough.

The road was the best we had seen in all the Balkans, white and well-surfaced like an English country highway, and at last we clattered into Nickshitch, the most important town of Northern Montenegro. It was like a fair-sized Cornish village, with little stone houses and stone-walled gardens filled with sunflowers.

A charming old major came to the inn to do us the honour we had telegraphed for, and together we strolled about the streets. There is a pretty Greek church at one end on a formal mound, and behind the town runs a sheer fin of rock topped by an old castle where once had lived another man who "was a gooman all to hisself;" now it is a monastery, and one of the most picturesque in Montenegro.

We dined upon beautiful trout fresh from the river, and large green figs. Undressing, Jan found a louse in his shirt—that came from the dirty bedroom at Shavnik evidently. He went to bed, but his troubles were not yet over; there was another foreign presence, a presence which raised large and itching lumps. He hunted without success for some time, but at last caught and exterminated an enormous bug. After which there was peace.



CHAPTER VII

TO CETTINJE

The rain poured all night. At five o'clock they called us, telling us not to wake up as the motor would come later. At six they knocked again, saying—

"Get up quickly; the carriage is at the door."

No explanations.

We hurried so much that we left our best soap and our mascot, a beautiful little wooden chicken, behind for ever. The major was waiting in the bar room.

We were sorry to say good-bye, he was lonely, and we liked him; but we lost no time, as we were seven hours from Podgoritza and goodness knows how far from Cettinje.

The carriage and coachman were the same as yesterday's, but his expression was so lugubrious in the downpouring rain that he looked another man.

Just outside the village he picked up a friend and put her in the carriage. She was a velvet-coated old lady with a flat white face and two bright birdlike brown eyes which she never took off us. Conversation was impossible, as she had only one tooth, round which her speech whistled unintelligibly, and she hiccuped loudly once in every half-hour. We were most uncomfortable. The hood was up, and a piece of tarpaulin was stretched from it across to the coachman's seat, blocking out the view except for the little we could see through a tiny triangle.

What with three humans, our bags, the old lady's bundle, and an enormous sponge cake, we were very cramped, and whenever we tried to move a stiffened knee her bright eye was on it, and she made some suitable remark to which we always had to answer with "Ne rasumem," "I don't understand," the while beaming at her to show we appreciated her efforts to put us at our ease.

The mist and rain entirely obscured the view. Now and then a tree showed as a thumb-mark on the grey. We little knew that we were passing through some of the most marvellous scenery in Europe.

The carriage settled down with a bump. Something wrong with the harness; string was produced, and it was made usable for the next half-hour. Carriages in Montenegro must have been designed in the days when builders thought more of voluptuous curves than of breaking strains, for we have never been in one of them without many halts, during which the coachman endeavoured to tie the carriage together with string or wire to prevent it from coming in two.

We stopped at wayside inns and politely treated the old lady to coffee at a penny a cup to make up for our inappreciation of her conversational powers.

Women passed carrying the usual enormous bundles. Sometimes they were accompanied by husbands or brothers, who strolled along entirely unladen.

Jo busily sketched everybody she saw.

Passers-by demanded, "What is she doing?" and the onlookers answered—

"She is writing us;" for everything that is done with pencil on paper is to them writing.

One pretty young woman shook her fist, laughing—

"If I could write, I would write you," she said.

We were no longer in the Sanjak. Turkish influence had vanished, and we longed to see the famous Black Mountains of old Montenegro.

At Danilograd we marvelled at the enormous expensive bridge which seemed to lead to nothing but a couple of tiny villages. We missed the picturesque Turkish houses, built indeed only for to-day like their roads, but full of unexpected corners and mysterious balconies. The Montenegrin houses were small and simple, four walls and a roof, like the drawing of a three-year-old child. The only thing lacking was the curly smoke coming from the chimney. Broad streets lined with these houses were unexhilarating in effect, and would have been more depressing except for the bright colours with which they were painted.

When the horses were replete after their midday meal we loaded up, adding to our numbers a taciturn man who sat on the box. We rolled on to Podgoritza, arriving at two o'clock in a steady downpour.

Podgoritza seemed unaware of our arrival. The streets were empty, and the Prefect's offices were tenanted only by the porter, a Turk, who remarked that the Prefect was taking his siesta, and seemed to think that was the end of it.

This was awful, after being Highnesses for a week, to be treated just like ordinary people, and perhaps to lose all chance of reaching Cettinje that night.

"Produce the Prefect," said Jo, stamping her foot, but the Turk only smiled and suggested a visit to the adjutant's office. Back to the carriage we went and drove to a place like a luggage depot. No adjutant, nothing but giggling boys. Our coachman became restive and said his horses were tired of the rain, so we deposited the old lady, substituted a man in American clothes who seemed sympathetic, and drove back to the Prefect's office with him. There we found a sleepy lieutenant who ordered coffee, while our American-speaking friend explained to him that we were very Great People, and that something ought immediately to be done for us. So the officer promised to get the Prefect as soon as possible, and we went to the hotel to drink more coffee with our baggy-trousered friend, who told us that he was one of a huge contingent of Montenegrins who had travelled from America to fight for the little country. "Say, who are your pals?" said a nasal voice, and the owner, a pleasant-looking man in a broad-shouldered mackintosh, took a seat at our table. He was also a Montenegrin, and had been mining in America for some years. More coffees were ordered. We confided to the new American Montenegrin that we did not like Podgoritza, and he tried to find excuses—the hour, the bad weather. The hotel-keeper came up and intimated in awestruck tones that the Prefect had just looked in with some friends.

Our appearance did not seem to impress the Prefect in the least, and small wonder. He owned to having received a telegram about us, but there was no motor-car available for that day, and he departed.

"The Prefect is only more unpleasant than Podgoritza," said Jo to the American in the mackintosh; but he deduced dyspepsia.

The Prefect, having been to his office and having seen the lieutenant, came back in five minutes, rather more suave in manner, and announced impressively that he was going to give us his own carriage.

But the rain, the giggling boys, the smiling Turk, and the sudden drop from royalty to insignificance had been rankling in Jo's mind. She sat back haughtily and remarked—

"But the Sirdar promised us a motor-car."

"I will go and see if it is possible," said the Prefect, and he dashed out into the rain. He returned full of apologies. All the motors were out, but he would send his carriage round immediately. "A delightful carriage," he added.

It arrived—a landau such as one would find at Waddingsgate-super-Mare, so free from scars that every Montenegrin turned to look at it.

The hotel-keepers, our American friends, and the Prefect and his captain stood pointing out its beauties, and we left them standing in the rain.

"I shall always put on side in this country," said Jo as she bit a large mouthful of cheese.

We pounded along, and the day slowly grew darker. We passed an encampment, where the firelight thrown up on to the trees made a weird and jolly sight.

The hours passed by slowly. Suddenly (our coachman was probably dozing) we ran into something. It was a carriage, a square grey thing. Our coachman howled to it, and it started slowly forward up the steep hill. A bright light streamed from the windows and cut a radiant path in the foggy rains. Some one threw away a cigar-end. The wet road shining in the glare of our pink candles, and the lightning flashing intermittently so that the mountain-tops sprang out to disappear again in the darkness; we felt as if we were living in the introduction of a mystery story from the Strand Magazine.

At last in the misty rain we saw the aura of the lights of Cettinje. At last we wound slowly into wet streets, passed our mysterious companion without being able to see who was in it, and so to the hotel. Since the morning we had driven fourteen hours, and we were glad beyond measure to stretch and to find really comfortable beds.

The next day we got up early. There was much to do. We were to see the War Minister about Scutari, to present a letter of introduction to the English minister, and to inspect the town.

Nature has half filled a big crater with silt, and the Montenegrins have half covered it with Cettinje.

It is a polychromatic village of little square houses, cheerfully dreary, and one does not see its uses except to be out of the way. The only building with any architectural beauty is the monastery where the old bishops reigned, and which must have many a queer tale to tell.

Asking for the Count de Salis, the English minister, we were directed to the diplomatic street, a collection of tiny houses grouped respectfully in front of the Palace, which itself was no larger than a Park Lane house laid edgeways, and with the paint peeling from its walls.

Over the front door of each little house a sort of barber's pole stuck outwards, striped with the national colours of the minister living within.

We noticed with pride and relief that the Count de Salis' pole was painted a reticent white. The sympathetic old lady who opened the door directed us to the Legation. There we found him inspecting the damages wreaked by the storm of overnight. The Legation was big and cold, and as the handsome fireplaces sent out by the British Board of Works were for anthracite only (and Montenegro produces only wood), the English minister preferred his warm cottage to the unheated Palace.

He wished us luck in our quest for Scutari, and asked us to tea. We then hurried to an awful building where the governing of Montenegro was done—a concrete erection, presented to Montenegro by the British Government, and an exact imitation of one of our workhouses. Here we found the Minister of War, a gorgeously dressed little man with a pleasant grandfatherly gleam in his eye. He only spoke Serbian, but with him was an unshaven young man whose chest was covered with gold danglers, who immediately began to air his quite passable French. We explained what we had been doing and what we wanted to do. The War Minister had not heard of US from the Sirdar, who had been resting after his terrific ride, but said that they were to see each other that day. The little man beamed upon us, and said they always wished to do anything for the English, but he must first see the Sirdar.

"By the bye," he said, "I forgot to introduce you. This is Prince Peter, commander of the forces on the Adriatic coast." The young man arose and clicked his heels. We too got up. He shook hands with us solemnly, and Jo, unused to addressing Royalty, said, "Dobra Dan" (Good day).

Then we all sat down again, a further rendezvous was arranged for the evening, and we left, carrying away the impression that the War Minister and we had bowed thirty times to each other before we got out of the door.

Out in the streets, as we were sketching, we saw a large smile under a Staff officer's cap bearing down upon us. It was the Sirdar, quite rested and looking twenty years younger. He was going to the War Minister's, and promised to arrange at once for our visit to Scutari. He looked at our cryptic drawings of road scavengers, threw up his hands and ejaculating "Kako"—strode out of our lives.

Tea in the little house with the discreet white pole was a great pleasure. Such tea we had not drunk since leaving England—butter, jam made by the old housekeeper, who pointed this out to us when she brought in a relay of hot water.

She was the daughter of a man who had been exiled from his village because he had taken a prominent part in a blood feud, and the old Gospodar had told him he would be healthier elsewhere. So they had emigrated as far as Serbia, where she had learnt to read and write.

A lady of good family but bad character suddenly decided to leave Montenegro, and fled to the shores of Cattaro, carrying with her a large number of State secrets. The Court was aghast. What was to be done?

A villain was needed. The father was decided upon, and with the help of the lady's brothers she was kidnapped, carried back to Montenegro, and disappeared for ever. For which noble work he was permitted to return to his village.

The old lady had a supreme contempt for the Montenegrins who had not "travelled," but she looked upon the growing pomp of the Court with suspicion.

"Ah," she said, "those were fine days when the king was only the Gospodar, and there were none of these gold embroidered uniforms about, and the Queen and I used to slide down the Palace banisters together."

In those days the Royal family inhabited the top story only, while the ground floor was filled with wood for the winter. Just round the corner was the old pink palace, now used as a riding school. It had been the first place in Montenegro to possess a billiard-table. So, billiard-tables being rarer and more curious than kings—the palace had been called the BILLIADO.

The Queen, whatever agility she may have possessed once when navigating banisters, is now a sedate and domestic person, and doesn't hold with bluestockings, notwithstanding the "Higher Education" of some of her daughters.

The story goes that once when the King was away she inaugurated one of those thorough-paced spring cleanings dear to most women's hearts; ordered the dining-room furniture into the street, and superintended the beating of it. Women hold a poor position in Montenegro, but one of character can carry all before her. A well-known English nurse was managing a hospital in Cettinje during the first Balkan War. One of her patients, though well connected as peasants often are in Montenegro, was a drunken old reprobate, and she told the authorities he must go. They demurred—his relations must not be offended. She insisted. They did nothing. One morning they found him, bed and all, in the middle of the street opposite the King's palace.

The authorities swallowed their lesson.

In the evening we walked over the stony hills with our host, and first had a glimpse of the real character of the country which had for so long kept the Turks at bay. One realized how much the people owed to the land for their boasted independence. Barren rock and scrub oak, no army could live here in sufficient numbers to subdue even a semi-warlike nation. Cettinje has been burned many a time by the Moslem, but starvation eventually drove him back to the fatter plains of the Sanjak, leaving a profitless victory behind him. Napoleon and Moscow over again.

More miners from America passed with their showy machine-woven clothes, accompanied by their wives, who had evidently stayed behind in the old country. Otherwise they would have picked up new-fangled ideas about the rights of women, and would certainly have refused to shoulder the enormous American suit cases while their men ambled carelessly in front.

The next day we had a further interview with the War Minister, who introduced to us a man in corduroys, the only really round-faced person we had met in Montenegro. Part of his name was "Ob," so as we forgot the rest of it we called him Dr. Ob. He was the minister of drains, and such things. As nothing had been previously explained to him about us, he covered his mystification by hailing us jovially, after which he misconstrued everything we said.

He became very excited when we said we had brought 14,000 kilos of stores into Montenegro.

"But we have not got it yet," he ejaculated. We explained that it was for the English hospital, and he subsided, very disappointed.

Scutari was talked over again, and Dr. Ob promised to come and tell us that evening if Cettinje could supply a motor for the next morning.

More bows and smiles, and we left wondering. Montenegrins always promise even when they have no intention of performance—something like the stage Irishman,—and we were surprised when Dr. Ob met us in the evening and said that the motor was arranged for next morning at eight.

We tea'd with the count once more. In the next house lived a gorgeous old gentleman, and we heard that he had been War Minister for forty odd years. After thirty years or so of office it was considered that he could better uphold the dignity of his position were he able to sign his name. So he had to learn.



CHAPTER VIII

THE LAKE OF SCUTARI

Dr. Ob, dressed in thick corduroys and an enormous pith helmet, arrived punctually with the motor, a Montenegrin Government motor. He had two companions, a girl simply dressed with coat and skirt which did not match, and cotton gloves whose burst finger ends were not darned, a Miss Petrovitch, and an officer. The coachwork—if one may dignify it by such a phrase—which was made from packing cases, had a thousand creaks and one abominable squeak, which made conversation impossible. The scenery was all grey rock and little scrubby trees; the road was magnificent and wound and twisted about the mountain side like a whip lash. Driving down these curves was no amateur's game, and we saw immediately that our chauffeur knew his job. We came over a ridge, and in the far distance, gleaming like the sun itself, a corner of the Lake of Scutari showed between two hill crests.

We ran into a fertile valley, passed through Rieka—where was the first Slavonic printing-press—and up into the barren mountains once more. The peasants seem very industrious, every little pocket of earth is here carefully cultivated and banked almost in Arab fashion. The houses, too, were better, and rather Italian with painted balconies, but are built of porous stone and are damp in winter. The Rieka river ran along the road for some way, very green and covered with water-lily pods.

We passed a standing carriage, in which was a large man in Montenegrin clothes, and a little further on passed a man in a grey suit walking. Dr. Ob gesticulated wildly, and pulled up the motor to gather in a Frenchman—somebody in the French legation who was going to Scutari for a week end. He turned suddenly to Jan.

"Ce n'est pas une vie, monsieur," were the first words he uttered. He admired Miss Petrovitch very much, and told us in an undertone that she was a daughter of the governor of Scutari, niece of the King of Montenegro, and one of "les familles le plus chic."

We descended steeply to the Port, ten variously coloured houses and twenty-five variously clothed people. Miss Petrovitch, to our amazement, embraced a rather dirty old peasant, the doctor disappeared to find us luncheon, the Frenchman to wash, and we strolled about.

A voice hailed us, and turning round, we found our mackintoshed American of Pod. We took him to the inn and stood him a drink. Dr. Ob came in and we introduced; but Dr. Ob was snifty and the American shy. His home was near by and he wished us to visit him, but there was no time.

We lunched in a bedroom plastered with pictures. Montenegrins seem to be ashamed of walls, and they adore royalty. In every room one finds portraits of the King of Montenegro, the queen, the princes, the King of Italy, his queen, the Tzar of Russia, the grand dukes and duchesses, the King of Serbia and his princes, and to cap all a sort of comprehensive tableau of all the male crowned heads of Europe—including Turkey—balanced by another commemorating all the queens of Europe—excluding Turkey—the spaces left between these august people are filled with family portraits, framed samplers, picture postcards or a German print showing the seven ages of man over a sort of step-ladder.

After lunch, loaded with grapes which Miss Petrovitch's peasant friend brought us, we trooped down to the steamer, which had been an old Turkish gun monitor and had been captured when the Montenegrins took Scutari.

The boat was crowded, and the Frenchman took refuge in the captain's cabin, which was crammed with red pepper pods, and went to sleep. Jo began sketching at once. There were two full-blooded niggers aboard with us: they were descendants of the Ethiopian slaves of the harems; but the race is dying out, for the climate does not suit them. We steamed out into the lake, down the "kingly" canal, a shallow ditch in the mud. Magnificent mountains rush down on every side to the water, in which stunted willow trees with myriad roots—like mangroves—find an amphibious existence. We passed through their groves, hooting as though we were leaving Liverpool, and out into the eau-de-nil waters of the open lake.

In three hours we reached Plavnitza, a quay on the mud, where more passengers were waiting for our already crowded craft. There were officers, peasants, Turks, and soldiers clad in French firemen's uniforms. These uniforms, by the way, caused a lot of ill-feeling in Montenegro. The French sent them out in a spirit of pure economical charity, and had the Frenchmen not been, on the average, small, and the Montenegrin, contrariwise, large, perhaps the gift would have been received with a better grace; but the sight of these enormous men bursting in all places from their all too tight regimentals, was ludicrous, and the soldiers felt it keenly.

Two women came aboard, attached to officers, and wearing long light blue coats, the ceremonious dress of all classes; one carried a wooden cradle strapped on her back, the woman with no cradle had in her arms a baby of some ten or eleven months, which she fed alternately on grapes and pomegranate seeds. With each was a large family including a beastly little boy who spat all over the decks, and one of the fathers, a stern gold-laced officer, carried a dogwhip with which to rule his offspring.

After a while we caught sight of Tarabosch, the famous mountain, and then the silhouette of the old Venetian fortress. From the water projected the funnels of yet another Turkish ship which had been sunk in the Balkan war, and we steamed into the amphibious trees on the mudflats of Scutari.

A boat with chairs in it came for us and we disembarked. The boat was rather like one of those that children make from paper, called cocked hats, only rather elongated, and the rowers pushed at the oars which hung from twisted osier loops. Governor Petrovitch met us on the quay. He was a fine-featured old man dressed in all the barbaric splendour of a full national costume, pale green long-skirted coat, red gold embroidered waistcoat, and baggy dark blue knee breeches with a huge amount of waste material in the seat. He kissed his daughter and greeted us genially. We clambered into the usual dilapidated cab with the usual dilapidated horses, and off to the hotel.

The women on the roadside were clad in picturesque ever-varying costumes. There were narrow carts with high Indian-like wheels studded with large nails; there were Albanians in costumes of black and white, everything we had hoped or expected.



CHAPTER IX

SCUTARI

After a wash we went into the streets. It was the Orient, just as Eastern as Colombo or Port Said. The little fruit and jewellers' shops with square lanterns, the tailors sitting cross-legged in their windows, the strange medley of costumes—even the long lean dogs looked as if they had been kicked from the doors of a thousand mosques.

We left the shops for further explorations. Scutari has always been described as such a beautiful town. The adjective does not seem picturesque: yes, quaint, strange decidedly. One's second impression after the shops is this:—



Miles and miles of walls with great doors. The main streets branch out into thousands of impasses each ending in a locked door. There are hardly any connecting streets, for somebody's walled garden is between. The Mahommedans hide in seclusion on one side of the town, while their hated enemies the Christians live on the other. Each house, Turk or Christian, has the same air of defiant privacy, the only difference being that the Turk's windows are blocked with painted lattice. The Mahommedan women's faces are covered with several thicknesses of chiffon, generally black, while the Christian peasant women walk about with an eye and a half peering from the shrouding folds of a cotton head shawl which they hold tightly under their noses.

With difficulty we found the English consul's house, as the Albanians speak no Serb and Montenegrins were not to be found at every street corner. At last we found it appropriately enough in the Rue du Consulat d'Angleterre. A gorgeous old butler resembling a wolf ushered us from the blank walled street into a beautiful square garden filled with flowering shrubs and creepers. Not to be outdone by the colours of the flowers, the butler was clad in a red waistcoat, embroidered with gold, a green cloth coat, blue baggy trousers, and a red fez with a tassel nearly a yard long, while a connoisseur's mouth would have watered at the sight of his antique silver watch-chain with its exquisitely worked hanging blobs.

The interior of the house gave an impression of vast roominess. Wide stairs, a huge upper landing like a reception-room, a panelled drawing-room large enough to lose one's self in, ornamented by primitive frescoes on the walls above the panels.

The English consul was an old Albanian gentleman with delightful manners. For a long time he had been suffering from an illness which had started from a wound in the head, received during the siege of Scutari. After the inevitable coffee and cigarettes his son wandered out with us and showed us the interesting parts of the town. Out of a big doorway came two women in gorgeous clothes. They had been paying a morning call, and bade farewell to their hostess. Doubtless they were mother and daughter.

One was faded and beautiful; the younger was of the plump cream and roses variety with modestly downcast eyes. Both wore enormous white lace Mary Queen of Scots' veils, great baggy trousers made of stiff shiny black stuff, which was gathered into hard gold embroidered pipes which encased the ankles and upwards. These pipes were so stiff that they had to walk with straight knees and feet far apart. Their full cavalier coats were thickly covered with many kilometres of black braid sewn on in curly patterns, and the girl wore at least a hundred golden coins hung in semicircles on her chest.

They left the third woman at the door and walked back a few steps down the road, then turned, and laying hand on breast, bowed ceremoniously, first the mother, then the daughter, who never lifted her eyes; another twenty steps and again the same performance; still once more, after which they slowly waddled round the corner. Suma told us they wore the costume of the haute bourgeoisie, and probably the girl had been taken to see her future mother-in-law.

The next vision that met our eyes was the doctor in his best clothes, frock-coat, white spats, gloves, and a minute pork-pie cap perched on the top of his spherical countenance.

"In Scutari it is necessary that I should be en tenue," was his explanation.

Suma parted with us, promising to take us to the bazaar the next day, and we spent the afternoon sketching and avoiding a dumb idiot who tried to amuse us by standing on his head in front of whatever object we chose to sketch, and at intervals thrust into our hands a letter which he thought was a money producing talisman. It said in English, "Kick this chap if he bothers you."

There are other traces of the English soldiery here. Little children with outstretched hands flock round, saying in coaxing tones "Garn," or "Git away you," under the impression that they are saying "please."

At a street corner we saw a professional beggar, a shattered man of drooping misery, his rags vieing with the colour of the road. Jo began to sketch, but he promptly sat up, twirled his long moustaches, and from a worm became a lion. One may be a beggar in Albania, but as long as one has moustaches one is at least a man.

The bazaar next day filled our wildest dreams. Queerly clad peasants of all tribes came down from the mountains bearing rugs, rubbish, white cloths, cheese, honey, poultry, pigs, and they sat on the ground behind their wares in the blazing heat, while all the rest of Northern Albania came to purchase. The little shops set out their pottery, silver-ware and brightly striped veils. Jo lifted up a woman's leather belt covered with silver, thinking how nice it would look on a modern skirt; but she dropped it with a crash, for the leather was a quarter of an inch thick, and the silver equally weighty.

Veiled women bargained and chaffered with the rest, some dressed in white with black chiffon covering their faces, and others still more bizarre, wore flowered chiffon, one large flower perhaps covering the area of one cheek and nose.

More fanatic in religion than their men, they objected to being sketched, crouching to the ground and covering themselves completely with draperies, so we had to desist.

There can be no arguments about beauty in these lands. It goes by "volume."

Put the ladies on the scales, and in case of a tie, measure them round the hips.

Vendors pressed gold-embroidered zouaves, antique arms and filigree silver-ware upon us; but we ever looked elsewhere, and Jo suddenly pounced on a handkerchief, or rather a conglomeration of bits sewn together, each being a remnant of brilliant coloured patterned stuff.

"But that has no value," said Suma, smiling.

"Never mind, I shall wear it as a hat," said Jo; and Suma, somewhat perplexed, lowered his dignity and bargained for it.

We next saw a brilliantly striped rug hanging on the wall behind an old woman, red, green, yellow, black and white, just what we wanted. She consented to take thirteen silver cronen for it, but no Montenegrin paper. She explained she was poor. She had brought up the sheep, spun and dyed the wool, and had woven the beautiful thing, and now she wanted silver because outside Scutari, in which the Montenegrins forced acceptance of their notes by corporal punishment, paper was worth nothing. To get the silver we went into a general store and sold a sovereign.



While we were waiting for the money-changer, two Miridite women came in. They had short hair dyed black, white coarse linen chemises with large sleeves, embroidered zouaves, white skirts with front and back aprons lavishly embroidered, striped trousers, and stockings knitted on great diagonal patterns.

One of them told Suma that their village was in possession of Essad Pacha, that all their husbands had fled, and were still fighting in the hills.

Suma, for a joke, asked her what she thought of Jo. Passing her eyes over Jo's uninflated frame, she hesitated, but was urged to speak the truth.

"I think she is forty," she remarked; and then somehow Jo was not quite pleased.

The midday heat being overwhelming we took a cab and drove back along two kilometres of dusty road. A veiled woman stopped the coachman, asking him to give her tired little girl a lift. Jehu refused, through awe of us; but we insisted on taking her, and begged the woman to come in too. Jo held out her hands, but the woman shrank back horrified, though obviously worn out with the heat.

"That is a pity," laughed Suma. "I hoped she would do it. It would have been a new experience for me."

Jo confided to him her burning desire to enter a harem, but as he had no Mahommedan friends he thought the possibility remote.

Two more bourgeois women passed. Jan photographed them, but not before they hid their faces with umbrellas. Even the Christian men are intensely jealous, and their women have some Turkish ideals. We spent the afternoon sketching outside a barber's shop, coffee being brought to us on a hanging tray with a little fire on it to keep the coffee warm. Opposite was a shop which combined the trades of blacksmith and fishmonger. It seemed the strangest mixture.

We dined with the Frenchman. He was a queer fellow, seeming only interested in economies, his digestion and his old age; and he discussed the possible places where an old man might live in comfort. Egypt, he dismissed: too hot, and an old man does not want to travel. The Greek islands had earthquakes. Corfu, he had heard, was depressing; while in the Canaries there was sometimes a wind and one might catch cold. We suggested "heaven," and he looked hurt. He had been in Scutari in December. He told us that after dark it was impossible to walk down the great main street, which divides Christian from Turk, without carrying a lighted lantern to signal that you were not on nefarious intent, or you might be shot.



Mr. Suma came along the next day in good time and gave Jan a letter for the Count de Salis. We bade him a most cordial farewell, assuring him prophetically that we should revisit Scutari—little did we dream in what circumstances,—and he said we would then see the "Maison Pigit," a show castle which he had, in vain, urged us to visit. Paget was an Englishman who seems to have spent ten or twelve years dreaming away life in Scutari, and collecting ancient weapons. With the outbreak of the South African war he disappeared. He was then heard of fighting for the Turk against the Italian, and later for the Turk against the Balkan alliance. He has never returned.

With Dr. Ob we drove to the quay, on the road passing an old woman staggering along beneath the weight of a complete iron and brass bedstead.

As we got out of our carriage we noticed a rabble of Turks hurrying towards us. In its midst was a brougham with windows tight shut and veiled, from which we guessed that some light of the harem was to be a fellow passenger. The carriage halted, and whatever was within was hustled from the farthest door and in the midst of the dense mob of men hurried down the quay. The side of the steamer was crowded with craft, so we passed beneath the stern to embark on the far side, to find that the Turkish lady and her escort had passed beneath the bows for a similar purpose. We caused a flutter, the beauty was hastily lifted on board like a bale of goods, and we caught a glimpse of magnificent pink brocaded trousers and jewelled shoes beneath her red orange covering. Two women—one a Christian—followed, and when she was seated, bent over her as a sort of screen to hide even her clothes from the gaze of the naughty infidel.

Governor Petrovitch came down to the quay to bid us good-bye. With him came his daughter, who was returning with us. She had nothing interesting to say about Scutari. The Frenchman had brought with him a cook whom he had engaged to look after his digestion.

We found comfortable seats on a long box with a bale as a back rest, and the governor sent two chairs for the ladies. As we steamed away we pondered on the problem of Scutari.

There are in all, say, 300,000 Serbs, a high estimate, in all Montenegro. The population of the Sanjak and its cities, Plevlie, Ipek, Berane, and Jakovitza, are of course largely Mussulman or Albanian, and already the balance of people in the little mountain kingdom is wavering. If Montenegro adds to herself Scutari, a town in which the Serb population is practically "nil," the scales swing over heavily against the ruling classes, and either one will see Montenegro absorb Scutari, to be in turn absorbed by Scutari itself; or we shall see the crimes of Austro-Hungary repeated upon a smaller scale, and Montenegro will be some day condemned before a tribunal of Europe for continued injustice to the people entrusted to her. The Albanians loathe the Serb even more than they hate the Turk, and at present, in spite of the fact that they are on their best manners, the Montenegrin police and soldiery have the appearance of a debt collector in the house of one who has backed a friend's bill.



An Albanian noble said to Jan, "We are quiet now: the Powers have no time to waste upon us, and we are not going to revolt and let ourselves be murdered without redress. But, if after the war things are not righted, monsieur, there will be a revolution every day."

We saw a pelican, and of course some one had to try and kill it; but luckily the criminal was an average shot only. The pelican flew off flapping its broad white wings. The Frenchman told us that the Turkish lady round the corner is a gipsy bride to be. A light dawned upon us. The bed, these boxes we were sitting upon: she was taking her furniture with her. Jan peered round at her. She was sitting on a low stool, and the two screens were standing at duty. They had chosen the most secluded spot in the boat, which was next to the boilers. The day itself was very hot, and the atmosphere within the poor bride's thick coverings must have been awful, though when nobody was looking she was allowed to raise for a second the many thicknesses of black chiffon which shrouded her face, and to gasp a few chestfulls of fresh air.

Dr. Ob suddenly produced a large sheep's head which he dissected with medical knowledge. He gouged out an eye which he offered to Jo; upon her refusing the succulent morsel he gave a sigh of relief and wolfed it himself. One of the men on board had a fiddle, and played us across the lake. Some one said, "Give us the Merry Widow."

He shook his head.

"Come on," said his tempter, "there's no one here. Give it us." At last, looking at Miss Petrovitch and us, the musician timidly started the music, for the "Merry Widow" is "straffed" in Montenegro as one of the characters is a caricature of Prince Danilo, hence everybody plays it with gusto in private.

We came again to Plavnitza. A huge crowd of Turks were waiting for us; one wild befezzed ruffian had a concertina and was capering to his own strains.

We were suddenly disturbed, the box was wrested away, the bundles also, the bed was carried off, also a tin dish too small for a bath, too big for a basin, and a tin watering pot—the bride's trousseau. The bride was seized by two men, her brothers we were told, and carried up the stairs to a waiting brougham, the trousseau was piled upon a bullock cart, and shouting and singing and dancing the cortege moved out of sight.

At Virbazar the steamer could not come to the quay, so the authorities ran a five-inch rounded tree trunk from the boat to the mud. Many dared the perilous crossing, and one nearly fell into the water. Dr. Ob was furious, and at last a plank was substituted. Then we found that the only way off the mud was by clambering round a corner of wall on some shaky stepping stones. Dr. Ob fumed, his little round face grew rounder, his moustache went up and down, he threatened everybody with instant execution, like the Red Queen in "Alice." Then he found that no motor was awaiting us. He rushed to the telephone while we had a belated lunch. No motors; one was out taking the Serbian officers for a joy-ride; Prince Peter had taken the other to Antivari. Montenegro seemed to have no more. We soothed ourselves with "American" grapes. This grape tastes not unlike strawberries and cream, but not having the same sentimental associations, does not come off quite as well. We heard a motor coming. Dr. Ob ran out to intercept it. It was crammed. Then the telephone boy brought a message that Prince Peter's motor would not return till to-morrow.

Miss Petrovitch wrung her hands.

"We cannot stay here the night," she said.

"Are the bugs awful?" we asked.

"It's not the bugs, it's those dreadful women," she answered. "We shall all be murdered in our beds."

Now the women appeared to us most inoffensive.

Dr. Ob was purple with rage. He stamped his foot.

"But I am a minister," he kept repeating crescendo, till he shouted to the villagers, "But I am a minister."

It is impossible to take Montenegro seriously. Situations occur at every corner which remind one irresistibly of "the Rose and the Ring," and we wondered what would happen next. There were other belated passengers who had hoped for conveyance, and the Frenchman's carriage had not turned up. Dr. Ob at last decided to commandeer a cocked hat boat rowed by four women with which to navigate the river to Rieka, and thence by carriage to Cettinje if carriages came. It was six p.m., we might reach Rieka by ten.

We rowed out through the half-sunken trees. At the end of a spit of land was a man gnawing a piece of raw beef. We shouted to him to ask what he was doing; and he answered that he was curing his malaria. The two women in the bow were very pretty, one was a mere child.

There were wisps of sunset cloud in the sky, and soon night came quite down.

As it grew dark all sense of motion disappeared. The boat shrugged uneasily with the movement of the oars, the rowlocks made of loops of twisted osier creaked, but one could not perceive that one was going forwards. The hills lost their solidity, becoming mere holes in the grey blue of the sky, a bright planet made a light smudge on the ruffled water in which the stars could not reflect. As we crept forwards into the river and the mountains closed in, the water became more calm, and the stars came out one by one beneath us, while in the ripple of our wake the image of the planet ran up continuously in strings of little golden balls like a juggling trick.

The Frenchman turned his head and made a noise like the rowlocks. "Il faut chanter quand meme," he explained, "pour encourager les autres." Jo then started "Frere Jacques." Jan and Dr. Ob took it up till the Frenchman burst in with an entirely different time and key. Then one of the oar girls began a queer little melody on four notes only, and all the four women joined, one end of the boat answering the other. They sang through their noses, and high up in the falsetto. By shutting one's eyes one could imagine a great ox waggon drawn uphill by four bullocks and one of the wheels ungreased. Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far away the faint twitter—also recurrent and monotonous—of some nightjar....

The night grew bitterly cold on the water. One of our passengers, a little Russian dressmaker, had malaria and shivered with ague. Jo gave her her cloak. The Frenchman's cook was unsuitably dressed, for she had on but a thin chiffon blouse. We ourselves had summer clothes, and we were all mightily glad to see the glare of Rieka in the sky.

Our luck be praised, there were two old carriages with older horses, and another for the Frenchman. We supped moderately at a restaurant kept by an Austrian, and still shivering scrambled into the carriages. We had no lights, but the road was visible by the stars.

We went up and up, up the same road down which we had come three days before. Below one could see strange planes of different darknesses, but not any shape, and soon one was too aware of physical discomfort to notice the night. Besides, one had had enough of night. Miss Petrovitch told the boy to hurry up the horses; he beat them; she then rebuked him for beating them. After a while the boy grew tired of her contradictory orders, and lying down on the box fell fast asleep. The poor old horses plodded along. To right and left were immense precipices, but nobody seemed to care.

We reached Cettinje about two a.m., found the hotel open, and a room ready for us, and in spite of our frozen limbs were soon asleep.



CHAPTER X

THE HIGHWAY OF MONTENEGRO

We went next day to see the doctor, who was late, so we strolled out to the market. They were selling grapes and figs, fresh walnuts, and lots of little dried fish, strung on to rings of willow, from the lake of Scutari. The scene, with the men in their costumes of red and blue, the women all respectably dressed in long embroidered coats of pale blue or white, and the village idiot, a man prancing about dressed in nothing but a woman's overall, was very gay. We caught the doctor later. He was talking with a Mrs. G——, an Englishwoman, from the hospital at Podgoritza: she was trying to hustle him as one hustles the butcher who has belated the meat. The doctor had let up his efforts since his orgy of respectability in Scutari, and his beard and whiskers were enjoying a half-inch holiday from the razor. With him was a Slav-Hungarian, who recommended us to go home by Gussigne, Plav and Ipek, the best scenery in all Montenegro he said; he himself had just returned from Scutari, whence he had advanced with a Montenegrin army halfway across Albania. At each village the natives had fled, burying their corn and driving off their cattle, leaving the villages deserted, and the army, starving, had at last been forced to retire. Dr. Ob promised us a motor by four, but added that they had no oil and very little benzine. Then growing more confidential, he took us by the buttonholes and asked us to use our best influence with the Count de Salis, and request him to tell the Admiralty to allow petrol to be brought up from Salonika, where the British had laid an embargo upon it. He promised pathetically that all the petrol would be brought up overland.

Intensely amused by the doctor's idea of our importance, we solemnly delivered his message to the Count.

We went to the Serbian Minister, a charming man with a freebooter's face, for our passports, and then back to Dr. Ob. The motor was going off at 6.30 he said. We cheered internally, for we were getting tired of Cettinje, which reminded us of a watchmaker's wife with her best silk dress on. On our way downstairs we called in to thank the Minister of War for our jolly trip; and he wished us "Bon voyage."

We got en route almost up to time, with us was Mrs. G——, who was also going back as far as Podgoritza. She was storekeeper and accountant for the Wounded Allies, and ever had a hard and troublesome task between what she needed and what she could get from the Sanitary Department. She took the front seat with Jo, and inside Jan found a French sailor of the wireless telegraphy, who had had typhoid fever, but was now going back to work. As we rattled down the curves and along the edge of the darkening chasms of the mountain side, he summed up with the brevity of a "rapin."

"Dans la journee ici, vous savez, il y'a de quoi faire des cliches."

We stopped at Rieka for water, and then on once more. In the glare of our headlights, little clumps of soldiers, with donkeys loaded with the new uniforms, loomed suddenly out of the darkness. Once a donkey took fright and bolted back, and the soldier in charge yelled and pointed his rifle at us. If we had moved he would have shot without compunction. Later the men had bivouacked, and all along the rest of the road we passed little fires of fresh brushwood, the sparks pouring up like fountains into the night, round which the soldiers and drivers were sitting and singing their weird songs.

At Podgoritza we found Dr. Lilias Hamilton at supper with her staff. She has had rather a hard time. The hospital was intended for Ipek, but for some reason, although there were wounded in the town, the Montenegrins decided to move it to Podgoritza, where there were none. After a difficult journey across the mountains they settled down, but could never get sufficient transport from the Government to bring their stores over, except in small quantities. They started to work, but as there were few soldiers to treat, Dr. Lilias, being a lady, interested herself in the Turkish female population, a thing which the Montenegrins thought a criminal waste of time, and tried to stop.

We got a bedroom in the hotel, and tired out, tried to sleep; but the occupants of the cafe began a set of howling songs, very unmusical, and kept us awake till past twelve. We have never heard this kind of singing anywhere else.

Next day we crossed the river and explored the quaint and beautiful streets of the Turkish quarter. The people are equally offensive on both sides of the town; however, Podgoritza seems to be the White-chapel of Montenegro—and we finally had to take refuge in the sheds of the French wireless telegraphy. The commandant at the motor depot again treated us rudely, but the Prefect was nice, this time. He promised us a carriage on the morrow if no motor were forthcoming.

After supper the people began the awful howling songs; also there was a wild orchestra which had one clarinet for melody and about ten deep bass trumpets for accompaniment.

Next morning no carriage came, so off to the Prefect. He promised one "odmah," which being translated is "at once," but means really within "eight or nine hours." We waited. Nine a.m. passed. Ten a.m. went by. A small boy sneaked up and tried to sell some contraband tobacco; but Jan had just bought "State." An angry Turkish gentleman came and said that his horses had been requisitioned to take us to Andrievitza, and that we weren't going to get them till one o'clock, because he was using them. We returned to the Prefect, not to complain—oh no—but to ask him to telegraph to Andrievitza that we were coming. He was naturally surprised to see us again, and explanations followed. A very humbled and much better tempered Turk came to the cafe to say that the horses would be with us "odmah."

A drizzle had been falling all the morning; at last the carriage came. Our driver was a wretched half-starved, high-cheeked Moslem in rags, whose trousers were only made draught proof by his sitting on the holes. He tried to squeeze another passenger upon us; but we were wiser, and were just not able to understand what he was saying. Our Turk's method of driving was to tie the reins to the carriage rail, flourishing a whip and shouting with vigour; every ten minutes he glanced uneasily backwards to see that nothing had broken loose or come away.

The valley we entered had been very deep, but at some period had been half filled by a deposit of sand and pebble which had hardened into a crumbling rock. We were driving over the gravelly shelf, above our head rose walls of limestone, and deep below was the river which had eaten the softer agglomerate into a hundred fantastic caverns. All along the road we passed groups of tramping volunteers fresh from America with store clothes and suitcases; the sensible were also festooned with boots. It was pretty cold sitting in the carriage, and it grew colder as we mounted.

At last we halted to rest the horses at a cafe. The influence of "Pod" was heavy still. A group of grumpy people were sitting around a fire built in the middle of the floor; they did not greet us—which is unusual in Montenegro—but continued the favourite Serb recreation of spitting. In the centre of them was an old man on a chair, also expectorating, and by his side one older and scraggier, his waistcoat covered with snuff and medals, palpitated in a state of senile decay, holding in a withered hand a palmfull of snuff which he had forgotten to inhale. There were a lot of women saying nothing and spitting. A sour, hard-faced woman admitted that there was coffee.

Jo, trying to cheer things up a bit, said brightly—

"Is it far to Andrievitza?"

A woman mumbled, "Far, bogami."

Jo again: "It is cold on the road."

A long silence, broken with the sound of spitting, followed. At last a woman in the darkest corner murmured—

"Cold, bogami."

It was like the opening of a Maeterlinckian play, but we gave it up, sipped our coffee, and when we had finished, fled outside into the cold which, after all, was warmer than these people's welcome. Outside we met a young man who spoke German, and as he wanted to show off, he stopped to converse. We were joined by an older man who claimed to be his father. The father was really a jolly old boy. He said his son was a puny weakling, but as for himself he never had had a doctor in his life. So Jan tried his mettle with a cigar. An officer, a filthy old peasant in the remains of a battered uniform, joined the group, but he was not charming; however, Jan offered him a cigarette. The old yokel rushed on his fate. He said—

"Cigarettes are all very well; but I would rather have one of those you gave to the other fellow."

The road wound on and up in the usual way, rain came down at intervals, and it grew colder and colder. At last we extracted all our spare clothes from the knapsack and put them on. We reached the top of the pass and began to rattle down the descent on the further side, and we kept our spirits up, in the growing gloom, by singing choruses: "The old Swanee river" and "Uncle Ned."

We pulled up at dusk at a dismal hovel, on piles, with rickety wooden stairs leading to a dimly lighted balcony over which fell deep wooden eaves.

"Is this Jabooka?" we asked, for we had been told to alight at Jabooka.

"No," said the driver; "we cannot reach Jabooka to-night. But here are fine beds, fine, fine, fine!"

We climbed in. The rooms were whitewashed and looked all right, but there was a funny smell. We shall know what it means a second time. There was a crowd of American Montenegrin volunteers in the kitchen. One gay fellow was in a bright green dressing-gown like overcoat: he said that his wife—a hard-featured woman who looked as if nobody loved her—had brought his saddle horse. We got some hard-boiled eggs and maize bread. Maize bread is always a little gritty, for it has in its substance no binding material, but when it is well cooked and has plenty of crust is quite eatable. French cooking is far away, however, and the bread is usually a sort of soggy, half-baked flabby paste, most unpalatable and most indigestible. Here was the worst bread we yet had found.

They took us down a dark passage, in which huge lumps of raw meat hanging from the walls struck one's hand with a chill, flabby caress as one passed. In our room, four benches were arranged into a pair of widish couches; mattresses were given us and coarse hand-woven rugs. We were then left. But we could not sleep; somehow lice were in one's mind, and at last Jan awoke and lit the tiny oil lamp. He immediately slew a bug; then another; then a whopper; then one escaped; then Jo got one. In desperation we got up, smeared ourselves with paraffin, and lay down again in a dismal distressed doze till morning.

Our driver was a dilatory dog: we had said that we would leave at five a.m., and at six he was washing his teeth in the little stream which acted as the village sewer. As we were waiting our green-coated friend got away on his saddle horse, with his wife walking at its tail; the other Americans climbed into a great three-horse waggon, dragged their suit-cases after them, and off they went. We left nearer seven than six. The air was chilly, and though there were bits of blue in the sky, the hills were floating in mist, and there was a sharp shower. There were more groups of Americans trudging along, and also a fair number of peasants, the women, as usual, dignified and beautiful. Very hungry we at last came to Jabooka. A jolly woman—we were getting away from "Pod"—welcomed us and dragged us into the kitchen. She asked Jo many questions, one being, "What relation is he to you, that man with whom you travel?" The fire on the floor was nearly out, but she rained sticks on to it, blew up the great central log, which is the backbone, into a blaze, and soon the smoke was pouring into our eyes and filtering up amongst the hams in the roof. We were drinking a splendid cafe au lait when an old woman peered in at the door.

"Very beautiful Jabooka," she said.

We agreed heartily.

"Not dear either," she said.

We expressed surprise.

"You can buy cheap," she went on.

We regretted that we did not wish to.

"But you must eat to live," she protested.

We intimated that this was of the nature of a truism, but failed to see the connection.

"But look at them," she expostulated, holding out a large basket of apples; and we suddenly remembered that "Jabooka" means also apples, and realized that she was not a land agent.

Then on once more. In the deep valleys were large modern sawmills, but the houses were ever poor, and the windows grew smaller and smaller and were without glass. At the junction of the Kolashin road, from the north, we picked up a jolly Montenegrin with a big dog. He was a driver by profession, and he hurried our lethargic progress a little. Then the front spring broke. It was mended with wire and a piece of tree; when we started again the reins snapped.

We halted once more at a cafe filled with Americans; some had only left their native land six months agone, yet to the peasant they were all "Americans." Some of them seemed very dissatisfied with the reception which they had received, and we don't wonder. "In Ipek I coulden get my room," said one, "tho' I 'ad wired for 't, 'cause one o' them 'airy popes [Greek priests] 'ad come wid 'is fambly. I 'ad to sleep like a 'og, you fellers, jess like a 'og." We had been under the impression that burning patriotism had called all these men back to their country, but one sturdy fellow disabused us.

"No, you fellers," he said, "there weren't no work for us in 'Murrica. Mos' o' the places 'ad closed down ter a shift or two at the mos' per wik. And fer fellers wats used to livin' purty well there weren't enough ter pay board alone. We gotter come or we'd a starved." Of course this was not true of many.

On again, rain and sun alternating, but still we were cold, feet especially.

These mountains, these continual groups of slouching, slouch-hatted "Americans," these little weathered log cabins, falling streams, and pine trees reminded one of some tale of Bret Harte, and one found one's self expecting the sudden appearance of Broncho Billy or Jack Hamlin mounted upon a fiery mustang. But we cleared the top of the pass without meeting either, and started on our last long downhill to Andrievitza. Cheered by the rapidity of our motion the two ruffians on the box started a howling Podgoritzian kind of melody, exceedingly discordant. The driver, careless that one of our springs was but wired tree, and that wheels in Montenegro are easily decomposed, flogged his horses unmercifully, rattling along the extreme edge of one hundred foot precipices. We stopped at a cafe for the driver to get coffee; rattled on again, stopped to inquire the price of hay; more rattle; stopped for the driver to say, "How de doo" to a pal; more rattle; stopped to ask a man if his dog has had puppies yet.... But we protested.

Andrievitza was the prettiest village we had yet seen in Montenegro, and was full of more "Americans." In the street a small boy urged us to go to "Radoikovitches," but we went to the hotel. The hotel was full, because a Pasha from Scutari had arrived with his three wives, and all their families. So we permitted the little yellow-haired urchin to lead us to "Radoikovitches." A woman received us, without gusto, till she learned that Jo was Jan's wife, when she cheered up. A charming old officer stood rakia all round in our honour. The mayor came in to greet us, and we felt that at last Pod had been pushed behind for ever.

The mayor was a pleasant fellow, speaking French, and he confided in us that he was suffering from a "maladie d'estomac." When we thought we had sympathized enough, we asked him how far it was, and could we have horses to go to Petch. He answered that it was two days, or rather one and a half, and that the horses would await us at twelve on the following day. We went to bed early to make up for last night, but Jan, having felt rather tickly all day, hunted the corners of his shirt and found—dare we mention it—a louse, souvenir de Lieva Rieka.

As we were breakfasting next day our driver, who had been most unpleasant the whole time, sidled up and asked Jan to sign a paper. While Jan was doing so the driver burst into a volley of explanations. We thought that he was asking for a tip, but made out that he had lost (or gambled) the ten kronen which his employer had given to him for expenses. We had intended to give him no tip, for on the yesterday he had refused to carry our bags, but this made us waver. We asked Mr. Rad, etc., what we should do.

"Sign his paper," he answered gruffly, "and kick him out; he's only a dirty Turk anyhow."

The mayor sent our horses round early; but we stuck to our decision to start in the afternoon, and ordered lunch at twelve. There was a huge crowd gathered in front of the inn, and we saw that the Pasha and his harem were off. One wife wore a blue furniture cover over her, one a green, and one a brown, so that he might know them apart from the outside, for they all had heavy black veils before their faces. The Pasha himself seemed rather a decent fellow, and had much of the air of a curate conducting a school feast. Four children were thrust into two baskets which were slung on each side of one small horse, and various furniture, including a small bath (or large basin), was strapped on to others, and the Pasha followed by his wives set off walking, the Pasha occasionally throwing a graceful remark behind him.

The mayor lunched with us, and for a man who has, as he says, anaemia of the stomach, chronic dysentery, and inflammation of the intestines, he ate most freely, and if such is his daily habit, he deserved all he had got.

Our guide was the most picturesque we have yet had. He was an Albanian with a shaven poll save for a tuft by which the angels will one day lift him to heaven, small white cap like a saucer, over which was wound a twisted dirty white scarf, short white coat heavily embroidered with black braid, tight trousers, also heavily embroidered, but the waistband only pulled up to where the buttock begins to slide away—we wondered continuously why they never fell off—and the long space between coat and trousers filled with tightly wound red and orange belt. He called himself Ramases, or some such name. Our saddles were pretty good, the stirrups like shovels, the horses the best (barring at the Front) we had had since Prepolji.

We rode over a creaky bridge, Jan's horse refusing, so he went through the river, and out into the new road which is being made to Ipek. Men and women, almost all in Albanian costumes, were scraping, digging, drilling and blasting; some of the women wore a costume we had not yet seen, very short cotton skirt above the knees, and long, embroidered leggings. We passed this high-road "in posse" and, the little horses stepping along, presently caught up a trail of donkeys, the proprietor of which, a friend of Ramases, had a face like a post-impressionist sculpture.

We passed the donkeys and came to the usual sort of cafe, rough log hut, fire on floor—but one of the women therein gave Jo her only apple—decidedly we were away from Pod.

On again along river valleys. Jan's saddle had a knob in the seat that began to insinuate. On every hill were cut maize patches, the red stubble in the sunset looking like fields of blood.

In the dusk we came to Velika, a wooden witchlike village, where we were to stay the night, and where, as we had expected, the Pasha, ten minutes ahead of us, had commandeered all the accommodation. The captain, however, was very good, and gave us a policeman to find lodgings for us. By this time it was dark. He led us into a pitch black lane where the mud came over our boots, then we clambered up a loose earth cliff and stood looking into a room whose only light was from a small fire, as usual on the floor. Over the fire was a large pot, and a meagre-faced woman was stirring the brew. Behind her a small baby in a red and white striped blanket was pushed up to its armpits through a hole on four legs, where it hung. In a dark corner a small boy was worrying a black cat.

"Can you give these English a bed?" demanded the policeman.

The woman shook her head sadly. "Mozhe," she said, which means "It is possible."

After supper, Bovril and cheese omelette, we went out to seek the cafe. We trudged back through the mud and stumbled into a house full of lattice work, like a Chinese store. Startled we tried another. This time we came into a stable, but there was a ladder leading upwards, and at the top a lighted room, so we decided to explore. We climbed up and came into a large loft in which six long legged, heavily bearded Albanians were squatting about a fire; a gipsy woman with wild tousled hair and hanging breasts was in the corner of the hearth, and was telling some long monotonous tale. An Albanian, who spoke Serb, told us to come in and have coffee. It was like the illustration of some tale from the Arabian Nights. After a while we climbed out again into the night, and went home. Ramases hung about shyly, and the woman explained that he had nowhere to sleep; so we arranged that she should house him also.

Even as we poked our noses out of the door there was a promise of a fine day. Below us we could see the Pasha up and superintending the packing of his family and furniture. We celebrated by opening our last tin of jam, which we had carried carefully all the way, waiting for an occasion. We left the remains of the jam for the small family, and as we were mounting we saw their faces smeared and streaked with "First Quality Damson." We started the climb almost at once. The early morning smoke filtering through the slats made an outer cone, of faint blue, above the black roof of every hut and cottage; here and there were traces of roadmaking, groups of Albanian workmen on stretches of levelled earth which our trail crossed at irregular intervals. Presently we entered the clouds, and were wrapped about with a thin mist faintly smelling of smoke. After a while we climbed above them, and looking down could see the clouds mottling all the landscape, and through holes little patches of sunlit field or wood peering through like the eyes of a Turkish woman through her yashmak.

Our horses panted and sweated up the long and arduous slope for two mortal hours, up and ever up; but all things come to an end, and at last we reached the top. We sat down to rest our weary animals and, lo! by us passed long strings of mules and ponies bearing the very benzine about which so much fuss had been made in Cettinje. Alas for our reputations as miracle workers! Had this blessed stuff only come a week later we should even have passed in Montenegro as first cousins of the king at least; but this was a little too prompt.

There was landscape enough here for any budding Turners, but we two had still eight hours to go and not money enough to loiter. On the higher peaks of the mountains there was already a fresh powdering of snow; in the valleys the clouds had almost cleared away, leaving a thin film of moisture which made shadows of pure ultramarine beneath the trees. Your modern commercial grinder cannot sell you this colour, it needs some of that pure jewel powder which old Swan kept in a bottle for use on his masterpiece, but found never a subject noble enough. Some of that stuff prepared from the receipt of old Cennino Cennini which ends "this is a work, fine and delicate, suitable for the hands of young maidens, but beware of old women." Pure Lapis Lazuli.



But it became difficult even for us to admire landscape, for breakfast had disappeared within us, and lunch seemed far away, so once more recourse to the "compressed luncheon." There are three stages in the taste of the "Tabloid." Stage one, when it smacks of glue; stage two, when it has a flavour of inferior beef tea, say 11.30 a.m.; stage three, when it resembles nothing but the gravy of the most delicious beef steak. That is about 2.30, and your lunch some hours in retard. We had reached stage three, and even Jo succumbed to the charms of the "Tab."

Famished we came to a cafe.

"Eggs?" we gasped to the host.

"Nema" (haven't got any), he replied.

"Milk?"

"Nema."

"Cheese?" crescendo.

"Nema."

"Bread?" fortissimo.

"Nema."

Despairing we swallowed three more luncheon tablets each and whined for tea. Ramases, who seemed to get along on tea alone, promised us a well-stocked cafe in an hour and a half.

The second cafe was purely Albanian. We climbed up some rickety stairs into a room which had—strange to relate—a fireplace. About the room was a sleeping dais where three or four black and white ruffians were couched. There was a little window with a deep seat into which we squeezed and loudly demanded eggs, bread and cheese. An old woman all rags and tatters came in and squeezed up alongside, where she crouched, spinning a long wool thread and staring up into Jo's face. Several cats were lounging about the room, but one came close and began to squirm as though she were "setting" a mouse. Suddenly she pounced, seized the old woman's food bag from her feet, swept it on to the floor, and disappeared with it beneath the dais, where all the rest of the cats followed. The old woman, who had been plying distaff and spindle the while, let out a yell of fury and half disappeared beneath the platform. We all roared with laughter, while beneath us the cats spat and the old woman cursed, beating about with the handle of her distaff till she had rescued her dinner. She backed out with the bag, sat down again and started spinning once more as though nothing had happened.

Beyond this cafe the track became very stony and rough. We passed a typical couple. The man was carrying a light bag full of bottles, while the women had on her back a huge wooden chest, in which things rattled and bumped as she stumped along.

Jo looked at her with pity. "That's heavy," she said.

The woman stared stupidly and answered nothing; but the man smiled and said—

"Yes, heavy. Bogami."

We passed more caravans of that all too soon benzine. Cliffs began to tower up on every side, and precipices to fall away beneath our feet to a greenish roaring torrent; great springs spouted from the rocks and dashed down upon the stones below in shredded foam: one was pink in colour. Here once a general and his lady were riding, and the lady's horse slipped. The general grasped her but lost his own balance, and both fell into the river and were killed. The track wound up and down, often very slippery underfoot, and the horses, shod with the usual flat plates of iron, were slithering and sliding on the edge of the precipices. At last we got off and walked. It was an immense relief: our saddles were intensely hard, stirrups unequal lengths, and with knots which rubbed unmercifully on the shins. We passed a man who was evidently an Englishman, and he stared at us as we passed, but neither stopped. The gorge grew deeper, the stream more rapid. The cliffs towered higher, black and grey in huge perpendicular stripes. We heard sounds of thunder or of blasting which reverberated in the canyon; it was oppressive and gloomy, and one shuddered to think what it would be like if an earthquake occurred. The cliffs ceased abruptly in a huge grass slope on which crowds of people were working on the new road; we crossed the river over a wooden bridge.

We came down into Ipek suddenly, past the old orange towered monastery, which lies, its outer walls half buried, keeping the landslides at bay. Ramases, who had suddenly put on another air, flung his leg over the saddle—he had previously been sitting sideways—and twisted his moustache skywards. Jo wished to canter on, but he sternly forbade her, flipping her horse on the nose and driving it back when she tried to pass; for it would have damned his manly dignity for ever had a woman preceded him.

Our first view of Ipek was of a forest of minarets shooting up from the orchards, not a house was to be seen. Ramases tried to make us lodge in a vague looking building. We asked him if that were the best hotel. He answered nonchalantly, "Nesnam" (don't know); so we hunted for ourselves, discovering in the main square a blue house labelled "Hotel Skodar" in large letters.



CHAPTER XI

IPEK, DECHANI AND A HAREM



We entered the courtyard of the inn. Tiny as it was all Ipek seemed to be plucking poultry in it. An urbane old woman came forward, evidently the owner. She had short arms, and her hair grey at the roots was stained with henna, which matched her eyes. A dog fancier once told us never to buy a dog with light-coloured eyes if we wanted a trustful loving nature, so we wondered if it applied to humans.

She showed us a tiny dungeon-like room entirely filled up by two beds. We were not impressed; but she assured us that we should have a large beautiful room the next day for the same price. So we engaged it and strolled out into the evening.

Buffaloes were sitting in couples round the big square. They chewed the cud with an air of incomparable wisdom so remote from the look of reproachful misery that is generally worn by an ox. Goats came in from the hills with their hair clipped in layers, which gave them the appearance of ladies in five-decker skirts; and children were playing a queer game. They jumped loosely round in circles with bent knees, making a whooping-cough noise followed by a splutter. We saw it often afterwards, and decided that it must be the equivalent to our "Ring o' Roses."

Work was over for the day, the sun set behind the hills which ringed us round, and we went to kill time in a cafe.

While we were exchanging coffees with an "American," who was showing us the excellences of his wooden leg which he had made himself, a breathless man ran in.

He had been searching the town for us. The governor had ordered him to put us up, as his had the notoriety of being a clean house. Having taken a room already with the amiable old lady we feared to disappoint her, so we decided not to move. The man piteously hoped that we were not offended; and we explained at length.

When we reached the hotel again our old hostess bustled up, more sugary than ever.

"We have just thought of a little rearrangement," she said.

"How so?"

"Well, do you understand, the inn is very full to-night, so we thought it best that you should both take the one bed and I and my daughter will take the other."

"Oh," said we, "in that case we had better move altogether, we have anoth—"

"Indeed, no no," said the old lady, horrified. "Stay, stay. There sit down. It is good, keep your beds." She patted us and left us.

We had an uninspired dinner. Greasy soup, tough boiled meat which had produced the soup, minced boiled meat in pepper pods, and two pears which turned out to be bad. The company, composed of officers and nondescripts, pleased us no better than the dinner, so we decided to eat elsewhere on the morrow.

The governor's secretary came in to arrange for an interview with his chief—yet another Petrovitch and brother to the governor of Scutari. By this time we had each imbibed a dozen Turkish coffees during the day, but we slept for all that from nine until nine in the morning.

Marko Petrovitch, whom we saw early, was the best and last Petrovitch we met in Montenegro. Like all the Petrovitches he wore national costume. He was handsome, shy, and kindly, said we must go to Dechani the most famous of Balkan monasteries, and promised us a cart for the journey.

After leaving the governor we plunged into melodrama.

Hearing a noise we discovered crowds of weeping women and children round the steps of a shop. A young man in French fireman's uniform seemed to be very active, and an old trousered woman passively rolled down the steps after receiving a box on the ears.

We thought it was a policeman arresting an elderly thief; but Jo, seeing blood on the lady's face, told him he was a "bad man." He lurched, staring at her stupidly. His companions, more firemen, came forward grinning sheepishly, and we recommended them to lead him away out of mischief. But the next minute a balloon-trousered child rushed up to us and tugged at Jan's coat.

"Quick, the devil man is doing more bad things."

We ran down the road beyond the village and saw him in the distance dancing on an old Turk's bare feet with hobnailed boots, alternating this amusement with cuffs on the face. We sprinted along, and seeing a convenient little river wriggling along by the roadside, Jan caught him by the neck and the seat of his trousers, swung him round, and pitched him in. The man sat for a moment, bewildered, in the water, and then climbed out uttering dreadful oaths; but as he came up Jan knocked him into the water again.

Men in firemen's uniforms appeared from all sides, shouting—

"What are you doing? You mustn't. Who are you?"

"We know the governor," said Jo. The men were making gestures of deference when the reprobate rushed from the river, aiming a whirling blow at Jan which missed.

The men hurled themselves on him, but he grabbed Jan's coat to which he clung, howling in unexpected English—

"Shake 'ands wi' y' ennemi." Suddenly everybody spoke English, and we wondered into what sort of a fairy tale had we fallen.

It was lunch time so we did not stay for explanations, but hurried back to the town with the weeping old Turk, gave him our small change, which seemed to cure the pains in his feet, and hunted for the other hotel.

It was tucked away in a romantic back street. The bar room was tiny, but it was very pleasant to sit round little tables under shady trees in the courtyard.

"What have you for lunch?" we asked a solid-looking waiter boy.

"Nema Ruchak, bogami." We have no lunch. We looked at all the other people absorbing meat and soup.

"Give us what you have."

"We have nothing, bogami."

"Have you soup?"

"Yes, bogami."

"And cheese?"

"Ima, ima, bogami."

"That will do for us."

He thereupon brought macaroni soup, boiled meat, roast meat, fried potatoes, cheese, grapes, and coffee.

We never found out why in Montenegro they should make it a point of honour to say they have nothing. It resembles the Chinese habit of alluding to a "loathsome" wife and a "disgusting" daughter.

After lunch we visited our own hotel and found mine hostess waiting for us with her short arms akimbo. She wanted the "beautiful large bedroom" to which we had moved in the morning, finding it the same size as the one below, but rather lighter. Its former occupant had arrived, and we were to go back to the dungeon.

"That is not good," said Jo, and we flatly refused to go downstairs.

"If we leave this room we go altogether."

She again patted us and begged us to consider the matter closed. We could stick to the room.

Certainly that dog fancier was right.

There was a very old monastery which we had passed as we rode into Ipek.

Although we are more interested in the people of the present than in ruins of the past, these old Serbian monuments leave so strange a memory of a civilization suddenly cut off at its zenith that they have an emotional appeal far apart from that of archaeology. These little oases of culture preserved amongst a wilderness of Turk tempt the traveller with a romance which is now vanishing from Roman and Greek ruins.