CHAPTER II.

HE difficult, dizzy road from Cattaro seems to be a great labour for little fruit when, after four hours

of climbing, you enter the outermost plain of the Crnagora, and find a few arid acres in the midst of a great amphitheatre of grey, glistening rock, the interstices of which hardly give rooting to a chance shrub. Here and there a dwarfed evergreen is to be seen, and only on one side a strip of forest, of starveling, dwarfed, and gnarled beeches, more like a copse than a forest; but with this narrow exception, all round the circle the desolation is like that of a silent volcano, arid as if internal fires had burnt out the juices of the earth. In little patches here and there along the edge of the hills, where the soil has been held by basins of rock, the husbandman has made his opportunity, and the little walled-in fractions of a rood, some of them not larger than 6 feet by 10 feet, make their best, though poor, return of maize, potatoes, wheat, or grass. Where the space to be reclaimed permits it, the earth is terraced and protected from the wash of the torrents. It is a poor, gravelly soil at best, even in the plains, and little of it, at that, in comparison with the expanse of bare rock, and certainly nothing but liberty could make any people fight for it or care to keep it. The Valley of Njegush, the natal place of the Prince of

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Montenegro, is the first halting-place. A score or two of small stone houses, mostly of two rooms each on the ground floor, with two or three of two stories, one of which was the residence of the family of the Prince, compose the tale of Njegush, the village; and the soil around seemed hardly sufficient to support the few people in it. Few men were to be seen; women carrying heavy loads, and children peering round the corners and doors to watch the unwonted stranger, were all that we saw. Το say that the people were poorly dressed is little; the garments of some of them were in tatters already, and in any civilized country they would, most of them, have been better off as beggars. But no one thought himself, or herself, the worse for it, and all saluted us with gravity and respect, but with no trace of servility.

From Njegush to Cettinje the road is still more difficultfrom a defensive point of view, much better; and I could hardly avoid the conviction that bad roads are an article of faith with the Montenegrin; he will hardly see the policy of opening his country to artillery with the other modern improvements until his independence is secured by an European guarantee. The road between Njegush and Cettinje is so bad that there are places where one must dismount to descend safely; but in a walk of four hours from the Austrian frontier we enter the Plain of Cettinje, the central plain of the Crnagora proper.

The residence of the ruler of Montenegro is worthy its Lacedæmonian prototype. There is one straight, wide street, with about forty houses on each side, low, stonebuilt, and covered, some with tiles and some with thatch, and without chimneys; none with more than one floor above the ground, some with only a ground floor, all nearly alike in accommodation and in pretension. In one is the Tele

graph and Post-office, in another the Ministry of Communications; but no external sign indicates any difference between this and the meanest man's home. The end of the street is blocked by a larger house, also of two stories, which was built for an hotel, and which, lately, has been the best I found south of Trieste along the whole Slav country; and a cross street leads down to the Prince's residence—a plain building which it would be courtesy only to call a palace; it is merely the largest house in Cettinje. Opposite is the former residence of the Prince, made later a seminary, and then used for the accommodation of the few strangers who came here, the ground floor for Government offices. At the foot of the hills close by is a monastery, without occupants, except one or two old priests; a few outlying houses, and this is all of Cettinje, except its people. In this, as in the other plains of Montenegro, beside the central village proper, a fringe of occasional houses runs round it built on the hillslopes for economy of tillable land. Around is the same amphitheatre of grey hills, only here the more friable rock permits the clinging of scanty and impoverished trees in their interstices. The productions of the plain are mainly potatoes and maize, a few trees-either willow, poplar, or mulberryand opposite the palace one elm-tree of considerable size, beneath which is a circular raised platform of stone, with two or three stone blocks, which serve as seats, and here the Prince administers justice. His body-guard, in the picturesque costume of the whole people, stand or sit around this tree, according as the Prince is present or not, or pass the time in athletic sports on the sward beside it. On meeting the Prince walking, with his guard following or walking beside him, a stranger finds it not easy to distinguish the ruler from his guard. One sees only a mass of three or four

score Montenegrins in ordinary costume. They all chat together, and I only learnt which was the Prince by his returning the salute.

There is a simplicity and dignity in the Montenegrin which strikes almost all who know Scotland as resembling strongly the Highlander-grave, taciturn, and yet friendly if occasion offers-canny, soldierlike, and singularly reserved in expression of emotion by any outward sign. The moment was one in which the national temper was tried and displayed to the utmost. Servia had promised to enter the field, and the signal of her movement was to be that for the entry of the Montenegrins into Herzegovina to settle old scores with the Turk. Everybody was anxious to fight, but nobody wished it to appear that he was so-the whole of the three to four hundred men in Cettinje were in the streets, and the only sign of agitation one saw was perpetual movement. There was certainly something grand in this attitude of the smallest independent nation in the bounds of civilization chafing in the leash, and only caring to be free to attack, regardless of consequences or war alliances, its old-time enemy. Nobody thought what Europe or Russia would say or do: they only wanted to know if Servia was going to lead the way, and they be free to move. Finally came the day on which the telegram must arrive which would tell the course Servia was to follow, and one could feel the pulse of the whole principality on that main street, and the approaches to the palace.

The population of Cettinje is not, it is true, large enough to be considered numerically as representing the opinion of Montenegro; but it must be remembered that it includes all the highest functionaries, a body guard of picked men from all the principality, and many persons had come here to

await the decision of the Servian Skuptchina, including many chiefs of the insurgents. That afternoon these were all in the streets as if waiting for a proclamation. All along the side of the street which leads to the palace was a solid line of men composed of the elements I have named. The Prince had gone the day before into the mountains-to hunt wolves, it was said—and that afternoon was to return. The rumour was current everywhere that Servia had yielded to diplomatic pressure, and that the rising was to be abandoned. Dejection was on the face of everybody. The voivodes whom I knew, avoided conversation and even contact, and the Prince's aide-de-camp and those about his person, who had been in general communicative, kept away from us. I had, however, information enough to convince me that the Prince at an earlier period had had great pressure brought on him by the chiefs of the people to take up arms independently of Servia. It was believed that with armed neutrality on the part of the Servian Government, and the passes of Novi Bazaar in the hands of Montenegrins, Klek could be made good against any force the Turks could bring against the Christians, and that in this way the few battalions then in Herzegovina and Bosnia could be disposed of before any great force was brought up to effect a diversion unless they were marched through Servia, the neutrality of which would thus serve as a potent aid. Meanwhile the insurgents, mixed and disciplined with Montenegrins and armed, would become in a short time an effective force, increasing the strength of the defence faster than the attacking force would be increased.

This initiative movement was favoured by some of the Prince's advisers, and he himself was known to be desirous of action, so that the temptation to give the word must have