NIKSHITJE AND DUKLE
Nikshitje is but two hours' drive from the beginning of the Ostrog
track, over a mountain pass and down on to a big plain. Nikshitje, says
the Prince, is to be his new capital, and work is going on there
actively. That it cannot be the capital yet a while seems pretty
certain, for it is a very long way from anywhere, and the foreign
Consuls and Ministers, who at present lament their isolation from the
world and all its joys at Cetinje, would all cry "Jamais, jamais!" in
their best diplomatic French, if called upon to transfer themselves to
the heart of the land. It is certainly very beautifully situated; the
wall of mountains which encircle the big plain is as fine as any in the
country, and it is neither so cold in winter as is Cetinje, nor in
summer so hot and close as the low-lying plain of Podgoritza. But until
there is a road or a railroad that will connect Nikshitje quickly with
the coast, it cannot compete in importance with Cetinje. A line that
would connect Servia with Antivari _via_ Nikshitje, join the two Servian
peoples, and give Servia a port for export, is so much against Austrian
interests, both commercial and political, that Austria will under no
conditions permit it to pass through any territory over which she has
control. There is no speedier way of drawing truthful political
opinions from a mixed company of various nationalities than to design
fancy railroads over tender territories. At present no line exists in
the Balkan peninsula that runs from north-east to south-west. And in the
present disgraceful state of all territory that is under Turkish
"government" no new lines through any of the Sultan's property are
probable. The love of the Montenegrin for Nikshitje is based partly on
sentimental grounds; for the taking of Nikshitje, the biggest Turkish
stronghold on their northern frontier, was one of the chief events of
the last war. Nikshitje fell in 1877, after a four months' siege
conducted by Prince Nikola himself.
That the Prince really intends Nikshitje to be the capital of his
country is evident. We have a forecast of its coming splendour in the
large and really fine church dedicated to St. Vasili, which stands well
placed on a little hill, close by a solid and well-proportioned
building, designed with a stern simplicity well in keeping with the
Montenegrin spirit. Within, it is lofty and spacious, and the bare stone
walls are hung with lists of those who fell in the last war. Russia
found the money, and Montenegro the labour. The mouldings and capitals
are all cut by Montenegrins, and the engineer that built it is a
Montenegrin. Nikshitje has a right to be proud of it. At the foot of the
hill on which the new church stands is a tiny little old church, the
church of the Montenegrins in Turkish times. In those dark days it was
almost completely buried under the earth for safety. Now, with the
addition of a fat new tower, it shows itself in the light of day.
The battered ruins of the great Turkish fort that was once a thorn in
Montenegro's side stand on the long low hill that overlooks the town,
and a stone or two with Turkish inscriptions and a few Turkish guns upon
the grass are all that tell of its former holders. Whatever the future
may have in store for the Montenegrins, let us hope that it will always
be remembered to their credit that they have played an heroic part in
the freeing of Europe from the Ottoman curse. A tumbledown mosque and
some dozen Mohammedan Albanian families are now the only traces left in
Nikshitje of the Asiatic invader.
Beyond the town, the land is well cultivated, and maize, tobacco, rye,
and potatoes flourish, provided there is sufficient rainfall in the
summer. Montenegro at present needs, more than anything, some system of
water storage. A superfluity of rain falls in the wet seasons, and the
melted snow swells the streams to torrents, but this all flows away for
lack of dams or cisterns, and in a spell of hot weather the ground is
parched. In the summer of 1902 no drop of rain fell between the middle
of May and the beginning of September; there was no corn for food, and
no tobacco for export. The people in the mountains, who depend on the
plains for corn, were in terrible straits, were reduced to eating fern,
grass, and beech bark, and were only saved from starvation by buying
foreign maize with the money that had been intended for road-making and
other public works.
While Nikshitje, the capital that is to be, is slowly growing, Dukle
(Dioclea), the capital that was, the birthplace of the line of Nemanja
kings who led Servia to greatness, is slowly mouldering on the plain of
Podgoritza. Long prior to Servian days Dukle was known to the world.
Already in the early years of the Christian era the Romans had conquered
Illyria and organised it as a Roman province, and Dioclea, as it was
then called, has come down to fame as the reputed birthplace of
Diocletian. Some two and a half miles from Podgoritza, where Zeta and
Moracha meet, lies all that is left of the old town. "The parents of
Diocletian," says Gibbon, "had been slaves in the house of Anulinus, a
Roman senator; nor was he himself distinguished by any other name than
that which he derived from a small town in Dalmatia from whence his
mother deduced her origin." Whether Dukle is or is not the "small town
in Dalmatia," I cannot tell. It is, at any rate, known to be among the
first towns taken from the Illyrians by the Romans. It would be
interesting to learn whether it is not to a considerable intermixture of
the aboriginal Illyrian blood that the Montenegrins owe their
superiority to the other Serbs. Some theory is required to account for
it, and as the strength of the Servian empire arose from this particular
corner, and as the Albanians, their next-door neighbours, are believed
to be direct descendants of these same Illyrians, this seems to be the
most workable one. There is a certain indefinable quality best described
as "gameness," and this both Albanians and Montenegrins possess to a
marked degree. It is also the quality of the Herzegovinese, who are
mountain men too, and it was in the mountains, we are told, that the
aboriginal inhabitants lived after the Servian invasion.
Be this as it may, Dukle, by Podgoritza, was a Roman town of some size,
and was afterwards the capital of the early kingdom of Servia. It is a
forlorn, lonesome, "sic transit" spot, inhabited by numbers of tortoises
peering about with their aged, old-world little faces and wrinkled,
leathery necks. Tesseræ work up through the turf, fine cornices and
mouldings lie about among the brambles, and the live green acanthus
flourishes near the stony leaves of big Corinthian capitals. One
slab-paved road remains, all that is left of what appears to have been a
forum, some fifty yards long, with the bases of columns strewn along it
at intervals, and at the farther end of it the remains of a small
building with a round apse. A man lives in a hut hard by and cultivates
a few patches of ground among the ruins, which are so smothered in
vegetation that it is difficult to form any good idea of the plan of the
town. It was explored about ten years ago by some archæologists, but
there is probably a good deal yet to be found, as the peasants still
pick up many coins and odds and ends of bronze work. The remains of a
small basilica church have been dug out, whose broken shafts and bits of
marble chancel rails are strewn on the ground, and tesseræ are plentiful
among the grass. The marble remains of the forum and many of the
cornices and mouldings that are scattered about the ruins are Roman, but
a large proportion of the houses, the foundations of which cover several
acres, are, I believe, of a later date, and may belong to the old
Servian town. A bas-relief of Diana--a mediocre enough specimen of
art--lies among the bushes on a bank, gaining a strange pathos from her
surroundings, as she stares with stony eyes, the only survivor of the
dead capital. All around stand the everlasting hills, keeping majestic
watch over the ruins which have seen the passing of two empires, and the
river tears along through a stony chasm hard by, and the lean rugged
figures of the one or two peasants among the ruins only add to the
loneliness.
But this place was once the centre of such learning and civilisation as
the land possessed, and "the Monk of Dioclea" was one of Servia's
earliest chroniclers. The now almost forgotten town is marked in the map
of Ptolemy (_circa_ 150 A.D.). It is mentioned as a famous town in 1162,
and it was given by King Milutin as the residence for his son in 1317.
After this date little or nothing is heard of it, nor is it known when
finally it ceased to be inhabited and crumbled into decay.