THE ROAD TO CETTINJE
The Ascent of the Mountains—Njegushi—The Montenegrin
Capital—Historical Monuments in Cettinje—The Return to Cattaro.
It takes nine hours to drive the twenty-eight miles and a quarter
across the mountains from Cattaro to Cettinje, the miniature capital of
this miniature principality. Because of the time consumed in the drive
it does not follow that the going is rough. On the contrary, the road
is of the best, for, as far as the Montenegrin frontier, it was built
with infinite care by the Austrian government in order to facilitate
the passage of troops and field pieces, should the occasion arise.
The mountain gorges are bridged with stone arches, their foundations
being imbedded in the rocks many feet below the roadway, while along
the outer side of the latter stretches a continuous protecting wall of
cut rock, cemented, of a yard in height. The road itself is smooth and
free from stones, but the white, powdery dust sifts into your hair and
through every stitch of your clothing. If Cattaro, the starting-point
of the trip across the mountains, were not sealed up in such an
out-of-the-way corner of the continent, touring motorists, doubtless,
would be more familiar with the topography of Montenegro. As it is,
there have been up-to-date but two or three automobiles to cross the
face of the mountains on the way to Cettinje, and the distinction of
driving these machines lies at the thresholds of Americans.
Upon leaving Cattaro the road skirts the harbour for a short distance,
winds around toward the hills through avenues of stately poplars,
crosses a little bridge which spans the Gordicchio, makes several
zig-zags, and then sweeps widely toward the south—you really seem to
be driving away from the mountain which you must scale later—in full
view of the Adriatic, while the bay, or Bocche di Cattaro, is lost to
view behind you. At the top of the pass leading to the town of Budua,
the outlook over the broad, fertile plain of Garbalj, with the sea in
the distance, is very impressive. For a short distance the highway, as
it winds around the face of the cliff, literally overhangs the plain
and then turns abruptly toward the Black Mountain. In the distance the
white, zig-zagging road, surmounting the almost perpendicular wall of
rock ahead, looks like a thread on the shoulder of a giant, and
causes you to wonder that it took no more than twenty years to build.
[Illustration: A SECTION OF THE ROAD ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS.]
This being the shortest and easiest route for trade between the outside
world and the Montenegrin capital, quantities of provisions, household
furniture, lumber and other materials for building purposes, and
what not are freighted by four, five and six-horse teams over these
twenty-eight miles of mountains, from Cattaro to Cettinje. There is
also a passenger stage that operates daily between the two towns.
We had passed the little stone half-way house, which is stuck on the
face of the rock at one of the very acute angles of the winding road
overlooking the Bocche, when we came upon one of these freight caravans
plugging laboriously along, with the hope of making Cettinje sometime
the following day. One of the wagons was loaded with kegs of beer, and
it was all too evident that the several treacherous looking drivers
in the party had been indulging their thirst from time to time, to
the appreciable loss to the person to whom the kegs were consigned.
As we approached, our driver stopped his nondescript team and had a
few confiding words with the freighters. Together they succeeded in
puncturing one of the kegs with a long wire nail; then a horse bucket
was cut from its swinging position under one of the wagons. This was
rinsed out with a goodly supply of beer tapped from the punctured
cask, and refilled, to moisten the already well-lubricated throats of
all concerned. How many full casks reached their destination after
several days spent on the road would make a nice problem for a class
in algebra. If the freighters met many drivers as thirsty as ours it
is a question whether or not it would have been best for them to have
appeared in Cettinje at all.
At each successive turn of the road a more wonderful panorama of the
Bocche stretches out before you, and, after more than three hours of
steady climbing, the pass at the top of the mountains is reached, and
you cross the frontier, marked by a single stone post at the side of
the roadway.
[Illustration: THE PASS AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAINS.]
The view of the Montenegrin side of the mountains can only be described
as purely “Montenegrin.” The Bocche is, of course, lost to view and
you have before you nothing but what seems to be a gigantic upheaval
of rocks. Not a tree, not a shrub, not even a dust-covered sprout at
the side of the road, relieves the sameness of this picture of gray
desolation. Perhaps, if you look closely, you will partly be able to
distinguish, less than a hundred yards away, a native mountaineer whose
very garb is of protective colouring, concealing him almost entirely
from your notice against the background of bare stones.
From the top of the mountain the road descends to the village of
Njegushi, the birthplace of His Ferocity, Prince Nikola. But were
it not for the red-tiled roofs there would be, from a distance, no
circumstantial evidence whatever that the town exists, for the houses
are all of stone of the same hue as the surrounding mountains.
While you sup on the stone porch of the little inn at Njegushi,
handsome, well-built members of the male population stroll by
indifferently, smoking and chatting in subdued tones and gazing
dreamily at their beloved mountains. From every girdle protrude the
muzzles of a number of well-oiled, ominous-looking firearms. Groups
of women stumble by; some struggling under their loads of water casks
strapped upon their backs, others driving small herds of goats and
having all manner of difficulty in keeping them together.
Yes, the women are ultra-suffragettes in Montenegro, not by choice
but by custom. They do all the housework, tend the flocks, cultivate
the little patches of corn or wheat and, in addition, bring up the
family. On market-days they go to Cattaro or Cettinje and do their best
to dispose of a meagre assortment of vegetable truck, returning home
late at night, weary and sore. They age early, as might be expected; a
Montenegrin woman of forty looks to be double that age. Not a finger
will a man raise to ease the burden of his wife; for such is the lot of
a woman born in the Land of the Black Mountain.
From the hills above Njegushi you may look down into small, crater-like
pits, each held intact by a low stone wall. These pits constitute
the truck farms of Montenegro, and into them the rain washes all the
vegetable earth from the mountain sides, forming in them an alluvial
stratum.
After leaving Njegushi you ascend to the pass of Kruacko Zdrjelo, and,
at this point, another wonderful view unfolds itself. Away to the
south, the great lake of Scutari is plainly visible; in the west, the
famous Mount Lovčen rears its rocky self, with the little chapel, in
which lies buried the body of Peter II, the last of the Prince-Bishops
and Montenegro’s greatest poet, perched upon its crest.
Doubtless, night will by this time have spread its black mantle over
the hills, leaving the remainder of the drive to be made in the
darkness. Down—down—down—as much down as the Austrian side of the
mountain was up, until finally, you overlook the beautiful valley of
Cettinje, and the blinking kerosene lamps of the capital. In half an
hour you will be driving at a gallop through its deserted streets,
and rein up at last in front of the Grand Hotel, obviously the most
aristocratic and up-to-date hostelry, for it is the only one in the
town. The head-waiter, in dress suit, will welcome you at the door,
inquire whether you have had supper and show you politely to your
rooms, which you will find rather bare but scrupulously clean.
Thirty years ago Cettinje was a mere handful of thatched cottages
scattered over a small space in the valley and approached only by
mountain trails. To-day it has a population of five or six thousand, it
is the seat of the newly constituted Parliament and a diplomatic post
for the ministers of the European Powers.
There are but few historical monuments in Cettinje, and of these the
principal ones are the old palace of the Prince, and the monastery with
its chapel and quaint cloister, the latter built against the base of a
great cliff and shaded by the spreading boughs of shapely trees. The
main street of the town is wide and clean, flanked on either side by a
uniform line of stone dwellings, which is broken only by the postoffice
building and an occasional shop.
As in Njegushi, the men, all heavily armed, strut along the streets
and allow the women-folk to conduct what business may be found in
the stores or in the market. At the rear of the hotel a rather
barren-looking square to deserve the nomenclature of “park” faces the
palace of the Crown Prince. Near the centre of the town stands the
palace of Prince Nikola, a comparatively small and a most unimposing
structure to house the chief executive of a nation. Directly across the
street from it is his former residence, in which is installed the only
billiard table in Montenegro.
The most elaborate example of architecture in the capital is the home
of the Russian diplomatic representatives, probably so built to impress
the Montenegrins with the power of their cousins in the north. In the
centre of the market square the female figure which surmounts the
public fountain, the sole specimen of native sculpture in Cettinje,
balances, at an uncertain angle, upon her head a dilapidated coal-oil
lamp, which seems in imminent danger of being dashed upon the heads of
the thirsty peasants below.
[Illustration: THE MAIN STREET, CETTINJE.]
The body of Peter I reposes peacefully, after his many years of
active leadership, in its sarcophagus in the little chapel of the
monastery, while at the opposite end of the village a small arsenal
contains the sum total of Montenegrin pieces of ordnance. One room is
devoted to the trophies of war taken from the Turks, including swords,
bullet-riddled flags and standards, Turkish field pieces and personal
insignia.
A prolonged stay is not necessary to see all there is to be seen in
the miniature capital, three or four days being quite sufficient. On
the height of the first ascent after leaving the town a glorious view
of the valley below, all divided off into the little stone-encircled
fields, may be had. As you journey on, you may pass a group or two of
gypsies or a hermit-peasant who hobbles out of his thatched hut to beg
a handful of tobacco. At last you break through the pass at the top of
the mountains in full view of the Bocche di Cattaro.
A diminutive white steamer leaving the _molo_ of the town almost
directly under you, moves slowly toward the narrow exit to the
Adriatic, its propellers churning a fan-shaped wake of foam which loses
itself finally in the broad expanse of placid water.
The sunset from the heights, as it illumines the lower mountain ranges
with an old-rose sheen and diffuses its tinted rays across the
Bocche and the broad Adriatic beyond, is gorgeous enough to baffle
description. A painter who could picture truthfully that evening
panorama might well consider it his masterpiece. The silence of the
mountains is unbroken, save for the melancholy pipings of a lone
shepherd boy hidden somewhere among the rocks in the distance. The
silence of the sky and the silence of the rock-walled Bocche “mingle
in an awful spell that falls upon the soul like the lonesomeness of
the grave. There is something of death in life and of life in death
in the grim inevitableness of this silence, so changeless and yet so
vital.” The sunset above and the yawning cañon-like pit below “grip
the soul and draw it to a communion with something strong outside
itself—something that escapes definition and analysis; something that
the ancient people meant when they said that they walked with God.”
For a long time you will stop and drink in eagerly the splendour of the
scene, and then, reluctantly, yet as if influenced by the magnetism of
the abyss, commence to descend the windings, one after another, back to
the quaint little Dalmatian port of Cattaro.
[Illustration: A TURN OF THE ROAD ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS.]