the chapel, the words that are given to me. It is very little that one needs in this life. We have so short a time here."
A boy, his pupil and his only companion in his hermitage, came in with coffee, and the giving and the accepting of this simple refreshment seemed to give our host great pleasure. He questioned us about our relatives, and told us of his own. "Once," he remarked quite casually, "I was married," but he did not pursue the subject. He told us of the days when there were only twenty houses in Cetinje—when the chiefs of the land used to meet in council with the Prince, all sitting on the ground in a bare shed where a sheep was roasting for their dinner; how the Prince used to sit under a tree and try prisoners; how there were no roads, no towns, only a few collections of thatched huts. All this only twenty years ago! The poetic, imaginative nature of the Montenegrin. "He lives with the things he imagines. Even now, you see how he carries his gun, his revolver, his knife! He likes to think that he is guarding his house and his land. The weapons are a symbol to him. No Montenegrin likes to go unarmed. In the evening, when he returns to his little cottage, his wife meets him. She takes his gun and puts it in the corner. His weapons are laid aside. It is all peace; he is returned to his wife and children. That is old life. Now it is even said that a railway will be made. But who knows? Where can there be money for such an undertaking?" Truly railway companies and all such things seemed impossibly remote as we sat in this lonely hermitage listening to the hopes and fears of the ascetic visionary. When we arose to say good-bye, he stood over us in the doorway and gave us his blessing.
We stepped out into the world again, and looked over the rough moorland plain. The Turkish frontier fort shone white upon the mountain side some three miles away, and there was no other sign of life as we stared over the lonely land. He read our thoughts at once. "It is a wild spot, yes, and a rough journey that you have made to see me. Few strangers have yet been here. One day three of your countrymen came, but you are the first Englishwomen. It is lonely, and even a little dangerous. You must not try to cross the plain when it is dark, for there are bad men who rob and kill. Yonder, that is Albania. It is so easy for them to come across. Even last night there were armed men; they came up towards my little house and they threatened me with their guns." "And what did you do?" we asked eagerly. "I stood here," he said simply, "and I cried to them, 'The Lord God has said, Thou shalt not kill.' Then they went away," he added, after a pause, in a matter-of-fact manner.
What a scene! The fearless figure alone under the night sky, and the gang of human beasts shrinking awestruck down the rocks as they heard out of the darkness "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." We said farewell. He stood at the top of the path for a few minutes watching our descent, and as we turned the corner we saw his tall dark figure turning towards the little chapel "which is his life."
CHAPTER VI
ANTIVARI
Antivari is not easily reached from Cetinje. You can retreat to Cattaro and then take the weekly steamer. If, however, you have come to Montenegro to see Montenegro, it is better to choose the cross-country route. I have been there more than once, but the first journey thither will suffice. We were raw to the country and knew nothing of the language, so everyone tried to persuade us not to go, or at any rate to take an interpreter. But unless a route is so complicated that a guide is absolutely necessary, I infinitely prefer worrying it out alone; and as for languages, everyone knows that one wants food, drink, and sleep. The only precautions we took were to ascertain that there was an "inn with three beds" at Prstan, the port for Antivari, and to get the hotel to telegraph for a couple of horses to meet us at Virbazar, and we started from Rijeka in the early morning, by steamer. Arrived off Virbazar, we clambered down into a large canoe, along with sixteen Montenegrins, to whom we were a deeply interesting sight, and proceeded very slowly up the river, for the boat was heavily laden with freight and passengers. Neither Montenegrins nor Albanians have much idea of paddling their own canoes. They merely stab and prod the water at irregular intervals with wooden shovels, expending a good deal of energy with very little result; but they wobble along somehow. We speculated anxiously as to what we should do if the horses had not turned up, and were much relieved to see a respectable pair of steeds on the bank. Virbazar is a tiny village on an island on the river, and has no particular features save its bridge. This is a singular structure. It is built of stone, but is so narrow that it is only passable by foot passengers single file. Even if wide enough, though, vehicles would find a difficulty in tackling it, for it changes its style of architecture abruptly in the middle, and, having begun well and loftily, drops suddenly and proceeds to the farther bank with smaller arches and a narrower path at a much lower level. Whether rival architects started from opposite sides, or whether one-half is a "restoration" of the other, and if so which, I do not know. I think, however, it must have been evolved by Turks.
We picked our way across it, attended of course by a fair proportion of the population, and made our way towards the horses. The population objected strongly to our claiming them, but as we persisted, someone had the sense to go and fetch the horse-boy. He, a swarthy Albanian—a wiry, cheerful thing about twenty—produced from the recesses of his garments our telegram. This was read aloud, everyone was satisfied, our mysterious appearance was explained, and the "two good horses" were led up on to the high road. In Montenegro one must always ride astride. Of course it would be possible to take a side-saddle, but I do not think it would be any advantage. The horses are not accustomed to it, and the mountain tracks are very bad. It is much easier to balance on a scrambling horse when astride; it is possible to dismount in a hurry on either side, and it is far less tiring for a very long day's ride, both to horse and rider.
There is a very good carriage road to Antivari, but no carriages to go on it. The only diligence runs once a week; sometimes it fits the boat, and sometimes it doesn't. There is a bridle path which is a short cut, but is so rough that a good deal of it must be done on foot. The road winds up the Crmnitza valley—green, rich, and fertile, a land of vines, maize, and tobacco. Higher up, the mountain sides are well wooded. At the top of the pass the scenery is superb. There is always a strange fascination about the top of a pass. When once it is reached there seems to be no limit set to our wanderings; we enter a new land, and plunge into the beyond—the beyond that is ever a-calling. The top of the Crmnitza valley is crowned by the ruins of a Turkish fort; twenty-five years ago this was Turkish territory, and our horse-boy was a son of the conquered soil. He was a Mohammedan Albanian, and seemed to think he had got a most amusing job. He made the most violent efforts to talk to us, roared with laughter when we did not understand, and poured out torrents of conversation when we did. We plunged down the old bridle track, and scrambled over rocks and bushes along the mountain side. At one point he stopped us and treated us to an amusingly realistic pantomime of cutting off heads and throwing bodies down the rocks. It was a pity we had not command of his language, for this pathless, rugged hillside, with the battered remains of another Turkish fortress on the shoulder below us, was a fine background for a gory tale. Far away below us, beyond the silver-grey olives on the slopes and the fertile plain, gleamed the blue Adriatic; a few cottages clustered on the edge of the bay, and the road led straight to them. "Prstan!" said the boy, and we thought we were nearly there; but there were weary zigzags before we reined up our tired beasts in the waning light by the edge of the sea.
A gipsy camp, a post-office, half a dozen dilapidated cottages, a harbour about the size of a pocket-handkerchief, the Prince's country house, and a lonely beach where the waves splashed—this was Prstan, and the farthest and smallest of the cottages was the "inn with the three beds." The beds are all in the same room, which is also the dining-room, and there is nothing of the stiff conventionality about the establishment that one finds in a hotel starred by Bædeker, but all is clean and the food is excellent, and Maria Bulatovich, the kindly hostess, speaks Italian.
