MONTENEGRIN TRADERS—LE SCALE DI CATTARO—A GORGEOUSLY-ATTIRED
MONK—OUR CARAVAN—MONTENEGRINS OF THE PRINCE'S
BODY-GUARD—INTERESTING VIEW—ABSENCE OF TREES ON THE DALMATIAN
COAST—A HOME FOR GERMAN EMIGRANTS—TURKISH MISRULE IN EUROPE—A
FUTURE EMPIRE—A MAN FIT TO RULE.
At the earliest peep of day on the morning of the 9th of July, I arose
from the deck of the steamer on which I had slept for so many pleasant
nights, notwithstanding its hardness. Thanks to the kind attention of
Giovanni, the steward, a cup of hot and tolerably good coffee was not
wanting to fortify me against the effects of the morning air. He wanted
me to add a small glass of maraschino unsweetened "_per scacciar l'aria
cattiva_," as he said in his Venetian dialect, but not being addicted
to _pegs_, I contented myself with the coffee and a few biscuits.
The faintest tinge of rose showing in the East over the rocks which hang
over Cattaro, seeming ever to threaten it with instant ruin, barely
enabled me at first to distinguish objects on the mole alongside of
which our steamer was moored; but as the light increased I could make
out, under the shadow of the trees which form the boulevard and public
promenade of the Bocchesi, the stalwart figures of a dozen Montenegrins
who had come down from Cettigne to accompany the Russian Consul on his
way to the festival of St. Peter, and the court of the illustrious Prince
who now so wisely rules those splendid mountain tribes.
Modestly drawn up on one side of them I could see my own portion of the
caravan, consisting of only two horses, one to carry myself, the other
to carry my luggage, all under the direction of the excellent guide
provided for me the day before by the kindness of Signor Jackschich.
Everything was now ready and myself in the saddle, when the Russian
Consul made his appearance, and we finally started just as the dawn was
quickening into day.
Skirting by the bastions which defend Cattaro on the sea side, we crossed
the bridge that spans the little mountain torrent which here empties
itself into the sea, and turning sharply to the right we passed through
the open market-place where the Montenegrins come down to sell their
farm-produce to the Bocchesi; but who, owing to the somewhat evil name
they have unfairly acquired, are never allowed to penetrate into the city
unless they first deliver up their arms at the military post outside,
just as we do at Aden with the Arabs of the surrounding districts.
Having crossed the market-place, we reached in a few minutes the base of
the rocks, and at once commenced ascending that wonderful road zig-zagged
across the face of the mountain, and known by the name of "_Le scale
di Cattaro_." Here we joined an additional party, also journeying to
Cettigne for the festival of St. Peter, and among them was conspicuous
the handsome Montenegrin Chieftain, Pero Pejovich, commandant of the
Grahovo, whose pleasant acquaintance we had made the evening before
under the mulberry trees of Cattaro.
There was also in the same group a monk, a most picturesque looking
individual, but certainly most unclerical-looking. He was dressed in
a costume very much resembling the Montenegrin fashion, only of sombre
colours, and had his jerkin trimmed with furs instead of embroideries. He
wore on his head a sort of black fez, from under which his sable curls
fell hanging on his neck, while his full beard, innocent of trimming,
flowed amply on his chest. His face was handsome and swarthy, and had a
not unkind expression. In figure he was slight, and of medium height.
He came from a monastery in the Herzegovina, a province of Turkey in
Europe lying co-terminous to Montenegro on its Northern border, and
which, strange enough, comes down at one point to the very sea at the
opening of the Fjord of Cattaro, thus thrusting itself into and dividing
the Austrian sea-board of Dalmatia into two.
What was he coming to Montenegro for? Simply to be inducted abbot of
his own monastery, which ceremony by right should have been performed
by the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople; but although Herzegovina is
subject to the Sultan, yet all the Christian mountaineers of that region,
though not Montenegrins by blood, are Montenegrins at heart, and all
look to the Metropolitan at Cettigne as their spiritual head, while to
the Prince they look up as the only sovereign to whom they owe absolute
allegiance.
The abbot elect rode a beautiful, small grey _entero_, wonderfully
quick and sure-footed, caparisoned with gorgeous trappings, consisting
of a large blue saddle-cloth embroidered with gold, over which lay an
immense saddle of crimson velvet studded with large gilt-headed nails.
The bridle was of the same Oriental style, while the bit was something
to be looked at, both as regards size, ornament and power.
The Abbot sat his _entero_, as if riding at the head of a party of
Baschi-Bazouks would be quite as much, if not more to his liking, than
leading the chaunts at matins and vespers in his own monastery. There
was nothing fierce about his countenance, but there was a sort of "stand
and deliver" look about his whole get up, that would have made one feel
somewhat anxious had one chanced to meet him _a quattr'occhi_ in some
lonely pass.
Our caravan consisted in all of about twenty-five persons, as we had been
joined by several parties all bent on the same excursion, to partake
of the rejoicings at Cettigne. First marched four Montenegrins of the
Prince's body-guard, splendid specimens of their race, the shortest over
six feet high, with rich ruddy complexions, deeply bronzed by exposure
in all weathers, with dark grey or blue eyes, dark brown, almost black
hair, cut short, close shaved beard and large moustachios, and fine,
open, manly countenances. They wore the national costume of the country,
namely, loose baggy blue trousers, made very full and confined under the
knee by a strap, below that, their legs were encased in tight-fitting
white woollen gaiters, fastened by a row of close-set small metallic
buttons all along the back, from the heel to below the knee, while
on their feet they wore a peculiar pointed shoe of undressed leather,
the upper of which is contrived of numberless small thongs plaited up
the middle over the instep, which afford wonderful pliancy and power
of grasping to the feet, and are quite characteristic of this region;
a sleeveless crimson jacket, and over all the well-known long surtout
of fine white cloth, without a collar, fastened round the waist by an
enormous silken scarf as much as eighteen feet long, and which supported
in front a perfect armoury of weapons. First a yataghan three feet long
with richly ornamented sheath and handle, then two highly ornamented
Turkish pistols nearly as long, then a poniard, and lastly a special
pair of tongs for lifting fire into their smoking pipes, which, excepting
when on duty, were never out of their mouths. But as if such an armoury
were insufficient, they carried at their sides a formidable-looking,
highly curved Turkish sabre, and over their shoulder a long, rakish,
Albanian-looking, breech-loading gun. This last they were ever shifting
in position, although the favourite mode of carrying it seemed to be
across the shoulders, something like the way young ladies at properly
conducted schools are made to shoulder their backboards, with their
hands hanging over the stock and barrel.
We all followed pell-mell, sometimes in single file, sometimes by twos,
according as the inequality of the path or its width, either prevented
or admitted of it, while the remainder of the guard brought up the rear.
So up we climbed, zigzag after zigzag, some of us above and some of us
below until we reach the top of the _scala_ where Austrian territory
ceases and Montenegro begins.
The sun was now well up above the Eastern horizon, when the sudden
cessation of the road gave us notice of our change of territory, and
looking round towards the Adriatic to which we mostly had been turning
our backs during the ascent, we saw a view that I don't know which would
be most difficult, whether to sketch or to describe.
I think we must have been at least three thousand feet above the sea.
At any rate, owing to the steepness of the rocks on which we stood,
together with the clearness of the atmosphere, the city of Cattaro seemed
perpendicularly beneath us, while the coast of Dalmatia, the entire
canal of Cattaro with all its windings and the many towns scattered on
its coast, the forts at its mouth, and the blue Adriatic beyond, seemed
laid out like a map at our feet.
The path, up which we had been toiling ever since we left the town, lay
in zigzags before us like a white ribbon stretched out upon the face
of the precipice. It reminded me somewhat of the pass of the Gemmi in
Switzerland, but was far more beautiful, while the bird's-eye view of
the town, with its fortress and its fortifications, was most novel and
astonishing. Perched as we were almost perpendicularly over Cattaro, and
thus looking right down over their heads, we could see its inhabitants
only like black specks moving about its miniature squares and streets,
while the old fortress with its crenelated walls and its antiquated
bastions, rising out of the bluish haze which hung over the chasm that
yawns between the rock on which it is built and the one on which we were
standing, made such a picture as Turner would have loved to study.
It was one of the most beautiful and extraordinary sights I ever saw, and
only lacked the presence of foliage to make it perfect. But total absence
of timber is the characteristic of the entire coast of Dalmatia, a fact
much to be regretted not only for the loss it is to the country from a
picturesque point of view, but principally from the economical aspect
of the question—as well-managed forests would be of immense value both
from the timber they would yield, and the increased humidity they would
afford to that arid region, where a sufficient rainfall would increase
the fertility, and consequently the revenue more than a hundredfold.
If some of the millions which are yearly wasted by the Austrian
Government, as well as by others too, in building ironclads and exploding
torpedoes, and in many other equally unreproductive undertakings, were
spent on the coast of Dalmatia in planting olive trees on the side of
those mountains as far up as they could flourish, then walnut trees,
then chestnut trees, and finally oaks and firs, I think I can safely
assert that in thirty years the full cost of the first outlay would be
repaid, while the benefit to the country at large would be incalculable.
It is not in a book like this that the best modes for bringing about the
cultivation of the Dalmatian shores of the Adriatic are to be discussed,
but that it could be done and should be done, is undoubted; and not
in Dalmatia alone, but also to the east of that country, in the lands
beyond the Vellebitch, through Servia, and all that vast tract of country
subject now to the impoverishing influence of Turkish mal-administration.
It always makes me sad when I think of those rich countries lying
fallow for want of hands to cultivate them, and a good government
to encourage industry, and when I see shipload after shipload of
hard-working industrious Germans leaving Hamburg, Bremen, and other
German ports, risking the perils, the inconveniences, and the expenses
of their voluntary exile, traversing thousands of miles of ocean route
to reach at last an unknown country, from which it is doubtful if they
will ever have a chance of returning to their Fatherland; when those
fertile lands of Servia lie at the very threshold of their country, with
no sea to intervene, and only a few days of rail and river to go over.
But the present state of things cannot continue for ever; and even now
promising signs of amendment are not wanting. The monstrous anomaly
of some of the richest lands of Christian Europe being still in this
nineteenth century under the misrule of barbarous Asiatic hordes, whilst
millions of wretched Christian inhabitants are kept in the most abject
servitude, must ere long be done away with; and all those countries,
Servia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Roumelia, and all lying between the Danube
and the Adriatic must before very long be amalgamated under some one
chief. Who the man may be upon whom the noble responsibility may fall
of governing this future empire, it is impossible now to conjecture, for
the several countries which would go to form this new dominion are still
scattered and disorganized; but the great bond of a common language will
soon unite them again, when the time comes, and probably that is not
distant, for now we do in weeks what our forefathers did in centuries.
When that moment shall come, I venture to hope, in the interest of this
new country, that one totally unconnected with the present contending
clans may assume the direction of affairs.
I know the man but I shall not name him. Handsome in person, brave,
courteous, highly educated, and unsullied by any of those Eastern vices
which so frequently shock our Western susceptibilities—equally unconnected
with either the Kara Georgevich or the Obrenovich parties—his elevation
to the throne of Servia would put a stop to that system of hereditary
vendetta which seems for the present too deeply rooted in both those
clans to permit us to hope in its extinction at least for a time, while it
would extend to those countries the benefits of that wise administration
which he has already so ably initiated in his own country. But I must
pull up my hobby-horse sharp; he is already in full gallop, and if he
once gets the bit between his teeth, he will never check his mad career
till he stops at the gates of Stamboul.