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.
We started betimes next morning to see Antivari. The local coffee
stall--a packing-case set up on end with an Albanian coiled up inside
it--was doing a roaring trade, and the gipsy camp hard by was getting up
and shaking itself. Antivari lies some three miles inland. You don't see
it till you are nearly arrived, as it is stowed away between two great
mountain spurs. The road twists and twines through magnificent olive
gardens, where huge hoary giants sprawl in a thousand grotesque shapes;
you turn a corner, suddenly Antivari appears, and the first sight of it
is very startling. On a rocky eminence in the midst of the hollow stands
gaunt and grim the dismantled Turkish town--battlements, walls,
roofless houses and shattered churches--just as it was left after the
war, a terrible relic, the grey bones of a city mouldering under the sun
and sky, like a gibbeted felon.
We climbed up the steep street of the modern bazaar, with its cranky
little wooden shops and gay Albanian inhabitants, to the big gateway of
the old town. A sentinel is always on guard here, but in response to the
magic word "Engleske" he smilingly passed us in. It is a dead, creepy,
ghostly city, strangled and throttled with a tangle of vines and
brambles which rend the walls and wreathe door and arch. A forest of fig
trees and cherry plums run riot in room and court, and find root-hole on
the topmost battlements. Grass grows knee-high in streets that, even
now, are thickly strewn with rusty fragments of shells; beautiful pieces
of mouldings and a window or two tell of the old town of the Venetians,
and the remains of fresco still fade and crumble on the church walls.
Man has departed, and nature has stepped in, and is surely and silently
finishing the work of destruction. We wandered for an hour in this
ghostly spot, looking over the battlements, a sheer drop into the valley
below, wrestling with the vegetation, and haunted by a feeling that in
spite of the blue sky and sunshine none of it was real.
[Illustration: RUINS OF ANTIVARI.]
Antivari fell in January 1878, after a long siege. The defenders made a
gallant resistance, and, when forced to surrender, laid a train to
the powder magazine. Prince Nikola had a very narrow escape from the
ensuing explosion, and the already shattered city was ruined beyond the
possibility of repair.
Antivari is marked on the map, but one's first impression of it is that
there is now no such place, so scattered are the houses and so scanty
the population. Yet it speaks three languages--Turkish, Servian, and
Albanian; is divided by three religions--Mohammedan, Orthodox, and Roman
Catholic; and has a Roman Catholic Archbishop all to itself. The
bishopric is a very old one, established originally at Dioclea, but
transferred to Antivari, some say as early as the tenth century.
Antivari was Venetian till 1479, and the flock must then have been a
large one; now it is reduced to some six hundred souls, all Albanian. At
least, so they call themselves. But just as every Mohammedan tells you
he is a "Turk," and every one of the Orthodox that he is a Montenegrin,
so does every Roman Catholic say that he is an Albanian; and three men
who in feature, complexion, and build are as alike as three individuals
can well be, will all swear, and really believe, that they all belong to
different races. It is not improbable that they are a blend of all
three. Most of the inhabitants are Mohammedan. The district is but
thinly populated, and is said to be fever-stricken.
Down below on the plain, among the scattered houses, are the ruins of
the konak of the former Turkish Pasha, Selim Beg, whose tyranny is still
fresh in the minds of the people. The Christians especially were his
victims, and many are the tales of the tortures he inflicted. To one
unfortunate man he gave a thousand blows upon the soles of the feet
When Antivari fell, Selim Beg, who was as cowardly as he was cruel, fled
in terror to hide himself from the victorious Montenegrins. Fate so
ordained that he rushed for shelter to the house of this same tortured
Christian. Terror--stricken, Selim recognised his former victim, and
abjectly begged for mercy, and the man to whom he had shown none threw
himself on his knees before the crucifix and in an ecstasy poured forth
his thanks to the Lord, who had thus permitted him to witness the
humiliation of his enemy. "He hath thrown down the mighty from their
seats, and exalted them of low degree." He spared the life of his
torturer, and Selim Beg, after making a servile attempt to gain the
friendship of Prince Nikola, retired to Corfu, where, according to my
informant, he died "like the beast that he was." This curiously dramatic
tale, the truth of which is, I believe, undisputed, throws a strong
light upon the Albanian and the sanctity of the "guest"--the man who
begs shelter.
We returned to Prstan and Maria's hospitable roof, and all further
explorations in the afternoon were put a stop to by the weather. In
rushed Maria and shut and barred the door, for the wind was hurling the
rain in sheets against the cottage, and we sat in semi-darkness, lit up
now and then by a blaze of lightning. Suddenly there came a loud
knocking at the door. I grappled with the iron bar, dragged it back with
difficulty, and admitted a tall old Montenegrin, whose wet coat,
dripping pony, and travelling-bag showed he had come to stay. His
amazement at seeing us was quite funny. I thought of the third bed and
my heart sank. But Maria transferred herself to the kitchen, and gave up
her room to the new-comer. It was evident from her excitement that she
considered him to be of great importance. He was, in fact, a relative of
the Prince.
We had a gay dinner that night. The little Austrian Vice-Consul, who was
a Hungarian, turned up, and the old Montenegrin was resplendent in his
best clothes, for he was going to the Palace that evening. He was a
tall, thin, handsome man, with a most kindly face and exquisite manners,
and was painfully anxious that we should have the best of everything the
resources of the place could supply. He told us (the Hungarian
translating) that he had met two English ladies once before, in 1865! It
was a very long journey, he wondered how we had dared to come. When once
in Montenegro everyone was safe--but travelling through all the other
countries! The English, he had been told, wanted to see and know
everything; they travelled everywhere. It must be a very expensive
habit! It had perhaps cost us one hundred florins (about £8) to come
this distance. We admitted that it had, and he seemed overcome by the
amount. "And it takes not only money but _time_" said my companion. He
laughed merrily. "Time! What is time? Time is nothing. You live, and
then you die." The idea of reckoning "time" tickled him vastly. "Time,"
said the Hungarian, to show his superior knowledge, "is thought very
much of by the English. I have been told that they have a proverb which
says 'Time is money.'" We corroborated this report--to the astonishment
of both men, for even the Hungarian thought this was going rather far.
The Montenegrin thought it one of the wildest statements he had ever met
with, and shook his puzzled head, but his kindly eyes twinkled with fun.
I think I see him now as he wished us good-night--a resplendent figure
in his green embroidered coat, his crimson and gold waistcoat, his dark
blue knickerbockers, white gaiters and new sandals, bowing himself
backwards through the little door with simple dignity, his tall lean
form slightly bent by age--a splendid type of the Montenegrin of the old
regime. I had a strange feeling of having known him years ago. As he
passed from the room I recognised, with a sudden illuminating flash,
Chaucer's
"A knyghte there was and that a worthy man
That from the time that he first began
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Truth and honoure, freedom and courtesie.
Full worthie was he in his lordes warre....
He was a very perfect gentle knyghte," etc.
And had he not too "fought often for his faith" against "a hethen in
Turkeye"? The truth of the mediæval picture charmed me, and the knight
armed with a white cotton umbrella went off in a shandrydan to pay his
respects at the Palace on the beach.
The weather never cleared, so we saw no more of Antivari that time.
Blinding torrential rain and fierce blasts of wind crashed on the
cottage walls. The fat frogs in the pond sat up, and their hoarse
shouts, "brek-kek-kek-kek-koax-koax," resounded in every lull of the
storm. We waited for the only diligence, and returned by it to Virbazar,
and had as travelling companion our old friend of the inn, who, to our
distress, would persist in occupying the small seat back to the horses,
and was miserably uncomfortable in consequence. At last neither of us
dared stir, as the slightest movement on our part brought an apology for
the inconvenience he was sure he was causing us. To make up for this, he
tried to tell us all about the road as we went along, though speaking
Italian was a great labour to him. He had taken part in the siege of
Antivari. "Ah!" he said, "that was terrible. All those weeks. And in the
winter. They are brave men, the Turks." He pointed down the valley
where, through rifts in the mist, we could see the stream. "The Austrian
frontier," he said sadly. "Austrian. And we gave our blood for that
land. It was ours. And they took it from us. They gave it to Austria. I
do not understand it." I do not think that the affairs of the outer
world entered into his head at all. Montenegro and abstract justice were
all he wanted. Russia was a distant Providence who would assist the
right to prevail. But the wheels within wheels and the shuffling of
international politics were a mystery to his primitive, honest soul.
There were many things that puzzled him. We passed a village. "This is
all Mohammedan," he said. "There is a mosque below. We have built them a
school. It is a good school, but they will not go to it. They say they
do not care for education! They are strange people, these Albanians!" He
sighed and shook his head. He looked on the village school as the first
step on the path of sweetness and light. I had a vision of the Board
School child, the "penny dreadful," and the novelette with a paper
pattern of the last new sleeve included. I think he was double my age,
but he made me feel very old. We passed a school; the sun had come out
at last, and the playground was full of sturdy young Montenegrins. He
smiled at them with pleasure, and I was glad to think that he cannot
survive long enough to have his dream of enlightened Montenegro
shattered. He said good-bye to us not long after, and we saw the last of
him as he entered his modest little house on the mountain side.
The remainder of the drive did not take long. We were soon in Virbazar,
and once again a cause of local excitement. By the help of a man who
spoke a little German, we were made to understand that we could go for
nothing in the common boat to the steamer, but that for a florin we
could have a very good one all to ourselves. It would have been too
unkind to disappoint them, and we were such rare birds! We delighted
every one by accepting the offer of a private boat.
When the boat was ready, we did not feel quite so pleased. It was a
canoe with two bent-wood chairs arranged in it as a sort of throne at
one end, and looked remarkably topheavy. The crew, two tall youths and a
boy, were in great glee at having secured such a job, and conducted us
to our seats with much ceremony before a large crowd. Off we pushed, and
made a lordly, if somewhat wobbly progress down stream. All went well
till we were suddenly aroused by the steamers hooter. Then our crew were
seized with a wild and irresistible desire to make a rapid, showy finish
to the voyage. "Really," said my friend, "it requires all my faith in
Montenegrins to feel safe." The words were scarcely out of her mouth
when round swung the canoe in response to a violent stroke of the
paddle, and out she shot, chair and all, as if from a catapult. I hadn't
even time to grab at her. A vision of grey skirts, a splash, and she was
gone! "Well, never mind; she can swim," thought I, as the waters closed
over her. The next instant I had to hurl myself almost over the other
side, to right the boat, as the two men, completely scared, both leaned
out at once, and as nearly as possible capsized the whole thing. The boy
came to my side, the men perceived that the foreign lady was not going
to drown, and the panic passed over. Their idea of helping her in was
remarkable--they grasped large handfuls and tugged. I believe they
pulled her in by one leg. The misery and dismay on their faces when she
at last stood up in the boat dripping and streaming were so unutterably
funny that we both roared with laughter. They were greatly relieved at
this, but most anxious to make her look respectable before going on
board the steamer, and wrung her out with such vigour and muscle that I
thought she would come to pieces. Then having picked up the chair and
hat, they paddled in a subdued and gingerly manner to the steamboat,
were shy about accepting the florin, and thanked for it repeatedly. The
captain, when he learned our plight, laughed as though he would never
stop, and put the one cabin and a bucket at our disposal. We improvised
a costume out of two nightgowns, a waterproof, and a brush-and-comb bag,
poured olive oil into her watch and brandy into her, and although it
rained all the rest of the way back to Cetinje no evil results ensued to
either of them. But the episode has become a legend of the lake, and
two years after I heard an Albanian retailing it to an interested
audience. The point of the story was the extreme cold-bloodedness of the
English, as shown by the heartless way I laughed at my friend's
misfortune!