I drove through this beautiful and sunny land much harassed by the pity

of it all. Marko was a cheerful companion, and did his best to amuse me.

He pointed out that there were always at least three women to one man

working in the fields and that the "man" was usually a boy. Men, he

explained, did not like working in fields. Moreover, the women did it so

well that he seemed to think that it would be a pity to dissuade them.

And so long as there was enough to eat, why trouble? For a man it is

much better to be a "pandur" (policeman), especially in a large town.

Then you do nothing in the streets, and are paid for it; also you wear a

revolver and a uniform. Even this delightful career has its drawbacks,

for it means a lot of standing and walking about. Best of all is to be a

"gazda" (head of a large household or family community), then you tell

all the others what to do, and you spend your leisure elegantly in a

kafana. A coachman's lot was very hard and ill-paid. Thus Marko, and his

astonishment was intense and genuine when I walked up all the hills. I

think he ascribed this act of folly to the fact that I was a woman, for

he pointed out that the women in the fields had to tramp long distances

to work. They have a hard time of it, poor things, for they carry their

tools and their babies with them; and babies rolled in shawls and slung

up hammockwise dangle like gigantic chrysalids from the branches of the

trees round the fields where their mothers toil. "Hush-a-bye, baby, on

the tree-top; when the wind blows, the cradle will rock," is true in

Servia. Probably our own nursery rhyme dates from days when field

labour in England was in just such a primitive state.

We made no long pause save at Kniazhevatz (= "Prince's Place"), a little

town that was formerly almost on the frontier, and was burnt to the

ground no less than three times in the nineteenth century by the Turks,

the last time in 1876. It consists mainly of wooden frame houses with

mud walls and big eaves and balconies, and the streets are straggly and

irregular. This makes it quite the most picturesque town on that side of

Servia. What the Serb likes is a perfectly straight street in which all

the houses are as much alike as possible. This is, however, also the

modern Parisian's idea, and some people admire Paris, so perhaps the

Serb is right.

I was supposed to "rest" at Kniazhevatz, but did nothing of the sort. I

had not long swallowed my lunch when I was told that "a gentleman who

spoke German" wished to talk to me. He and his friends had previously

interviewed Marko. He now offered to show me the town. I accepted, and

we started. His idea of "showing the town" turned out to be to walk me

up and down the main street and let loose a perfect torrent of questions

about me and my affairs. I grasped this fact, and ran my eyes over him.

He was youngish, fair, and far too stout for his years. A Teutonic

ancestor somewhere, I thought. I replied cheerfully to his questions,

and walked at a fair pace. When we arrived at the top of the street

again, I did not turn back; I pursued bye streets and side streets, and

walked on the sunny side of the way. I reckoned on his being in very bad

condition, and he was; moreover, he had just dined solidly. The more

personal his questions became, the faster I walked. Till a week or two

ago I had been panting after tireless Montenegrins, now the situation

was reversed; the perspiration stood on his brow, and he had not yet

discovered what I was worth in pounds sterling. He asked if I did not

find the sun too hot, and I replied that I liked it. He kept up

manfully, and inquired the incomes of my father, my brothers, and my

brothers-in-law. Baffled on these points, but still persuaded that I was

a multi-millionaire, he suggested that I should remain permanently in

Servia; this with noble disinterestedness, for he was already another's;

but in the middle of the good old tale of how Someone-avich had married

an English-wife-who-was-extremely-happy, he was forced for lack of

breath to suggest that there was no need to walk fast. "No," said I, "it

is very foolish to walk fast, for then one can see nothing." As there

was rising ground before us and the "going" was very bad, I forced the

pace slightly, his questions died away, and I brought him back uphill to

the hotel a limp and dripping thing, with the great problem still

unsolved. He threw himself into a chair and called for beer. I jumped

into my carriage, which was by this time ready, and drove off without

enlightening him. "That man," said Marko, "wanted to know everything,

but I told him nothing." As Marko knew nothing at all about me, I was

not surprised.

We arrived at Zaichar late at night, after a fourteen hours' drive.

Zaichar had little to detain me. Beyond the motley crowd of Bulgarian

and Roumanian peasants--for this is very much a borderland place--there

is nothing to see. Some villages in the neighbourhood have scarce a

Serb in them. Gold is found not far off at the Maidan Pek, and I was

strongly urged to go and see the diggings. By way of an attraction, I

was told that I should find specimens of every race in Europe there

except English, and as by no means the best specimens of humanity haunt

gold diggings, I thought that a herd of them loose upon the

Servo-Bulgarian frontier might be more than I could grapple with

single-handed. So I contented myself with looking at some small nuggets

in a bottle. The mines, I was told, pay fairly well, and I enough

alluvial gold is also found in the bed of the river Timok by the

peasants to make the search worth while. The Timok forms the frontier

for a considerable distance, and as a river is a clearly marked line

that all can see, the frontier is a quiet one, and no "mistakes" occur

upon it.:

We started for Negotin as a heavy thunderstorm! cleared away and a big

rainbow overarched the sky. "When the old people see that green and red

thing," said Marko, pointing to it, "they say, 'Now we shall have good

wine and maize.' Red for wine and green for maize." It was an uneventful

drive over land that once produced Servia's best wine, and is now but

slowly recovering from the phylloxera. As we approached Negotin, Marko

became more and more uneasy. He told me repeatedly that the people of

Zaichar had asked him all about me and he had told them nothing; merely

that I was English; otherwise nothing at all! This he considered very

meritorious. As he knew nothing more about me, I did not see the extreme

virtue of his reticence. However, as he was dying for information and I

was going to part with him in the evening, so should be no more

bothered, I thought I would gratify him, and told him the number of my

brothers and sisters, etc., all of which crave him infinite

satisfaction. We arrived at Negotin the best of friends.

Negotin stands in a swamp; there are water-meadows and marshes full of

frogs and reeds all round it, but I saw no mosquitoes, and the town did

not look unhealthy. There are about 6000 inhabitants, a new and unlovely

church, and a newly-erected bronze statue to Milosh Obrenovich, but the

chief glory of Negotin is the monument to Hayduk Veljko,--Veljko, the

popular hero, the story of whose career casts a fierce light on the

condition of Servia less than a hundred years ago, and makes one wonder

not that Servia should be, as some folk say, so backward, but that in so

short a time she should have reached such a high point of civilisation.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Servia was resolved no

longer to tolerate Turkish tyranny, the land was overrun with bands of

desperate men, who sheltered in wood and mountain, lived on plunder, and

perpetually harassed the enemy by guerilla warfare. They called

themselves Hayduks (brigands), and they gloried in the name. To-day,

just one hundred years later, the same conditions exist in Macedonia,

and the causes are the same. Dreaded, beloved, and admired, these

Hayduks were the heroes of the peasants, whom they alternately protected

and oppressed; their names and deeds were sung in songs, and they cast a

halo of glory round the profession of brigandage which has only lately

faded from it. The greatest of all was Hayduk Veljko. Associated with

Karageorge at the beginning of the uprising, his extraordinary

lawlessness and ferocity made it impossible for him to work in

co-operation with any plan or person. With a gang of followers, he

carried on war in East Servia on his own account. Insatiable for

plunder, he would risk his life for a few piastres, but what he had he

would give away lavishly. He boasted that he grudged his goods to no

man, and that it was better for no man to grudge his goods in return.

When the Russians reproached him with calling himself "Hayduk," he

answered, "I should be sorry if there were any greater robber in the

world!" Drunk with blood and the lust of battle, he prayed "Give us war

in my time, O Lord!" for though he was kind enough to wish Servia peace

after his death, the joys of the insurrection quite obliterated for him

its object, and any form of government was intolerable to him. He was a

terror to the Turks, whom he was always surprising, and his reputation

was so great that it excited the jealousy of the other Servian leaders.

He and his men held all East Servia, and without further assistance kept

the foe at bay. Negotin was his stronghold. The Turks, enraged by the

heavy losses he repeatedly inflicted upon them, determined to destroy

him, and besieged him with a force of 18,000 men. Undaunted, he made

sallies at night, harassing the enemy, slaughtering many, and retiring

into his fortifications with slight losses. But his garrison gradually

became smaller. When he saw that it was impossible to hold out much

longer, he was forced to humble his pride and send for help to

Karageorge. Alas! Karageorge had no force to spare, and the other

leaders were reluctant to help. Hayduk Veljko had always wished to stand

alone, they said, and he might do so now. The Turks were reinforced by

artillery, and Veljko's fate was sealed. They battered down his towers;

the buildings within the walls were smashed: still the garrison held out

and sheltered in the cellars. Hayduk Veljko grew desperate; every scrap

of metal, spoons, lamps, even coins, were made into bullets, and no help

came. When at length it came by the Danube, in the shape of a ship full

of men and ammunition, it was too late. Veljko was dead. His prayer was

fulfilled, and he did not live to see peace. Making his morning rounds,

he was recognised on the redoubts by a Turkish artilleryman who fired at

him. He fell terribly mangled, and with his dying breath urged his men

to stand firm. They buried his body at night, and tried to conceal his

death from the enemy; but the spirit which had animated them had fled,

and the garrison, which had not before thought of retreat, held out for

a day or two only, and then escaped at night across the marshes. A panic

ensued among the Serbs of the district when they learnt the death of

Veljko, nor do the other Servian leaders seem to have realised what a

power Veljko was till it was too late. The Turkish army pursued the

fugitives, and for the losses that Veljko had inflicted upon them

exacted an awful vengeance at the first place they came to, the little

town of Kladovo, where they impaled the men alive, captured the women,

and immersed the children in boiling water, in derision of baptism.

Such is the story of Hayduk Veljko. His was a strong soul blackened by

the terrible times into which he was born, and in spite of his many

faults he played a great part in the freeing of Servia. His monument, an

obelisk with commemorative lines and the date of his death (1813) on the

four sides of its base, stands in a little flower garden. His portrait,

fierce with black moustachios and a scarlet fez, is carved and painted

on the stone. I spelt slowly through the inscriptions; the old woman,

caretaker of the spot, came out and picked me some roses. "He was a very

good man," she said; "here are some roses from his garden." Poor plucky

barbarian, whose ambition it was to be the greatest robber in the world,

he had come to this--roses and a very good man! I took the flowers and

strolled back; I looked at the older people and reflected that they had

heard these things from the living mouth, for their grand-fathers had

seen them. Yet with these traditions barely a century old the land is

now orderly and peaceful; in this short space of the world's history it

has leapt from savagery to civilisation. It has yet far to go, but it

has done much.

When I returned to the inn, I found the landlord beaming. "You have two

brothers and five sisters," he said. "It is so pleasant to know all

about one's guests!" Marko had lost no time in spreading short

biographies of me, and had done his work effectually. He parted from me

with regret, for with recollections perhaps of Veljko, he had

overcharged me liberally, as I learned when I was older and wiser;

barring this slight defect, he was a most agreeable travelling

companion, and, as he himself pointed out, "gave me Servian lessons for

nothing."

The landlord was all friendliness. He knew all about the English, and he

told me about Someone-avich-who-married-an-English-wife. "She is so

happy," he added rapturously, "and he is now just like an Englishman!"

"What does he do?" I asked.

"Do? He does not do anything. He sits in Idepark like an Englishman."

"She must be an American," I said firmly; "Englishwomen are not rich

enough for that."

Radujevatz, on the Danube, the port for Negotin and the last station

before reaching the Bulgarian frontier, is but a couple of kilometres

away. I returned to Belgrade by boat. All the world and Cook go down the

Danube, so it needs no description. My guardian angel was as kind as

usual, and gave me two most courteous Servian artists as travelling

companions. There is nothing like a "brother brush" for help in need,

and as a general rule my sketch-book is a great passport and finds me

more useful friends than does my Foreign Office one. These two gave me

lessons in the language and told me of their fatherland. That I should

have come so far to see it pleased them greatly, but they were both,

especially the elder man, very sad about it, and told me mournfully that

I could scarcely have come in a worse period of its history. "Our old

patriarchal system is dead, and we have nothing to replace it. Our

people have had thrust upon them too suddenly Western ideas which they

do not understand; we are in the most critical period of a nation's

history, the half-educated period. The nations that criticise us passed

through this period so long ago that they have forgotten it." He talked

of the Great Empire and of Kosovo and of the black years that followed.

"Look at the few old churches that the Turks have left us. In those days

we were not behind the whole of Europe. Our past was heroic; our future

looks black. I am an old man, and I shall die with all my hopes

disappointed. No one in the West knows how we have suffered. I, of

course, remember when the Turks still occupied our forts." They sang me

snatches of Servian ballads--all monotonous wails over the slaying of

someone by the Turks, ending in a cry for vengeance. I commented on

their unrelieved melancholy. "Ah, Fräulein," said the elder, "it is the

suffering of five hundred years, and it is your nation that keeps the

Turk in Europe. The Crimean War was a blow to us, and the Berlin Treaty

was only a shade less bitter. They did not consider us as peoples. They

marked out the Balkan peninsula into _spheres of influence_ awaiting the

pleasure of the great Powers, and we are in the Austrian sphere. England

has never troubled about us. Russia is our only friend; Russia could

save us, but she is too busy in the Far East. The only other land

situated as we are, with no outlet to the sea, is Switzerland. All

Europe takes care of Switzerland. We have no one to help us in the whole

world."

We reached the Iron Gates. The stream was enormously swollen, and we

steered up the middle, a huge wide swirl of water eddying and coiling

with terrible rapidity. The boat began its upward climb, shuddering and

trembling violently; it seemed to be straining every nerve, and the deck

vibrated underfoot. Beyond and above gleamed the line of smooth water,

and the panting vessel struggled into it and regained its breath. As I

stood in the bows and watched the struggle and heard the tale of

Servia's woes, Servia seemed to me like the struggling boat, with the

melancholy difference that there was no strong hand at the helm to save

her from shipwreck.

This was, however, the boat's supreme effort. We lay off Orsova all

night, were more and more behind time next day, and did not lounge up to

the quay at Belgrade till very nearly midnight. Belgrade was fast asleep

when I walked through the silent streets that were entirely deserted

save for the sentinels standing motionless at the street corners with

rifle and revolver. Belgrade, I had been told in West Europe, was a gay,

reckless, dissipated capital. In outward appearance it is about as wild

as Little Peddlington. Appearances may be deceptive. I do not know.

CHAPTER XV

THE SHUMADIA AND SOUTH-WEST SERVIA

Everyone said I must go to the Shumadia, because it is the "heart of

Servia," the centre in which arose her struggle for freedom. So to the

Shumadia I went. Having read in a German book that it was quite

impossible to explore that part of the country without a guide and

letters of introduction, I took only as much luggage as I could carry

easily in one hand and set out by train for Kragujevatz. As the

best-laid plans are apt to go wrong, I left this expedition entirely to

Fate. People like being trusted; often, in fact, serve you much the

better for it. Fate did this time. She put me into the carriage with a

gentleman who most kindly furnished me with an introduction that took me

round all the rest of Servia. That I should have been thrown on the land

quite unassisted distressed him. "You must yourself see," he said, "that

if your Consul and Minister have given you no letter, it looks very bad.

But that is the way your country behaves. If you had been German, for

example, you would have had plenty of letters." This astonished me; my

new friend, on the other hand, seemed still more astonished that I had

got so far letterless. Servia loves letters of introduction and is not

happy without them. From this time forward I made a sort of triumphal

progress, was passed from town to town, and received so much

hospitality and kindness that Servia and the friends that helped me on

my way will ever remain in a warm corner of my memory. I changed my

plans from day to day, and I went wherever the police captains and the

district engineers advised me; nor can I wish anyone better guides than

these gentlemen. They lent me maps, they planned my routes, they took me

walks, they hired my carriages, found my guides and horses, and drove my

bargains. What they were pleased to consider the mad Englishness of my

enterprise appealed forcibly to their sense of humour, and my various

adventures made them shout with laughter. I cannot repay their kindness,

but I certainly amused them.

The Shumadia takes its name from "shuma," a forest; the woods of Servia

were the last shelter of a desperate people and the rallying-point of

the nation. If it be true that "all that is most Servian is in the

Shumadia," it is here that we should look for the type of the race. The

peasant of the Shumadia is tall, fair, and blue-or grey-eyed. He is more

strongly built and more active than his brethren in other districts, and

is more like the fair type of Montenegrin than are the men of any other

part of Servia. The race question in the Balkans is so exceedingly

complicated that I cannot attempt to unravel it, and can only note

marked types where they occur.

So much for the peasant. The country now is no longer a forest, though

well supplied with woods and trees; it is a most fertile district, and

is better cultivated and far more enterprising than any other part of

Servia.

Kragujevatz, Milosh' capital, is a very go-ahead place, and next to

Belgrade is Servia's most important commercial town, busy and

flourishing, with some 14,000 inhabitants. It has a fine gymnasium and a

large girls' school, both handsome and spacious buildings very well

fitted; the girls' school built by private gift. All trace of the Turk

has been wiped out of the town, but the relics of Milosh are carefully

preserved. His konak, a medium-sized whitewashed house, now forms part

of the officers' quarters. The old church stands near, a small plain

whitewashed building with a wooden annexe for the women, who were not

then admitted to worship in the main body of the church--which shows

forcibly how deeply the Turk had set his mark upon the Servian people.

By the church stands the long low whitewashed shed that was Servia's

first parliament house. Milosh, like Karageorge, took care to assemble

his parliament very seldom and to pay little or no attention to it then.

Kragujevatz otherwise is brand-new, and here as elsewhere it is easy to

see that the Servians have done more in fifty years for the improvement

of the place and the conditions of life than the Turk did in four

centuries. Much yet remains to be done, nevertheless a journey from

Servia into Turkey is like stepping off the pavement into the sewer.

On leaving Kragujevatz I left the railway. None exists in West Servia,

which has to rely entirely on ox-carts for the transport of its produce.

Carriage travelling in Servia is, as I have said before, but slow work.

But it gives one excellent opportunities of seeing the country. The

start must be made early. The man usually suggested 4 a.m., but I made

it 5 when possible. The peasant was always on the road or already at

work; for he, like the coachman, likes to take his time about things,

and has to get up very early in order to spread a six or seven hours'

job very thinly over sixteen. This gives him ample leisure to lie under

a beech tree and play upon a wooden pipe (a double pipe it is, too, two

pipes with one mouthpiece), but in spite of the old proverb it has not

yet contributed much either to his wealth or wisdom. He is descended

from a long line of forefathers who lived oppressed by foreign rule in

troublous times, when the accumulation of property would have been

labour in vain and would have but enriched the pocket of Pasha or

Janissary. He sees no object in exerting himself; it is unjust to call

him lazy. He is undeveloped; his wants are so simple that he can satisfy

them easily without working up to his full power, and he has no ideas

beyond. He walks, thinks, and acts in leisurely fashion, and appears to

be slow to wrath and very good-natured. The spare time which remains

upon his hands unfortunately is not always harmlessly employed upon the

penny whistle, for your Servian peasant is a great politician. Slow to

grasp a new idea on this as on all other subjects, and with no

traditions of good government behind him, he is eternally dissatisfied

with the government he happens to be under. For centuries "government"

in Servia meant "the Turk" and was a thing to be resisted or at least

evaded, and the Servian peasant still ascribes every evil to it. So the

corn waited while the reaper sat in the shade and discussed the latest

scandal about Queen Draga. "If our women," said a Serb to me, "took to

politics like yours do, I do not know what would happen. All work would

be at a standstill."

Very early in the day, even before the peasant has begun politics, the

coachman is ready to rest at a "mehana" (inn), and in spite of all my

efforts I became acquainted with the interior of a vast number. The bare

whitewashed room with fly-blown portraits of Milan and Natalie, and new

and gay ones of Alexander represented as about forty, and Draga as, say,

five-and-twenty; the boarded floor; the rush of chickens in at the door

when they heard the refreshments coming; the cavern in the brick wall

where the little copper pots of black coffee are heated in glowing

charcoal; the miniature glass bottles about three inches high, in which

the slivovitz (plum brandy) is served; the white-kilted, sandal-shod men

who sat round on rough benches and consumed it; and the host and hostess

eager both to serve me and to find out all about me, made up a homely

and not unpicturesque scene. And a plateful of white curd cheese covered

with clotted cream (kaimak), a lump of rye bread, some onions, and some

thin red wine, are a breakfast a Prince would not disdain, after driving

for three hours with nothing but a thimbleful of black coffee inside

him. By midday every inn has dinner ready, and supplies food, which is

generally far better than the outside of the den leads one to expect, at

a very cheap rate. The penny wine of the country is good of its kind,

and shows that Servia only requires science to become a first-class

wine-growing country. The untravelled Serb has at present but vague

ideas as to what West Europe considers first-class wine. "Our wine,"

said a Serb to me, after I had tasted a thin red variety, "is not so

well known as it ought to be. We send a great deal of this to Marseilles

and sell it very cheap. The French probably sell it as the best

champagne, at a high price!" which showed he had much to learn as yet

about vintages.

I had long days upon the road, but was never lonely. All the country

life of Servia dawdled past; living pictures of which I never tired. The

school children, who often have to tramp a great distance, are out

early, carrying their books and inkpots. In bad winter weather they are

often unable to return, and are put up at the school for many nights. Or

there will pass a gang of Albanian horse-dealers, their tight striped

leg-gear, their scarlet sashes and shaven heads looking outlandish even

in this out-of-the-way spot. Sitting high on their saddles, they amble

smartly past, driving a herd of ponies in front of them. The Albanian

does not let the grass grow under his feet, and his movements are full

of nervous energy.

Wildest of all in appearance are the gipsies--brown untamed animals,

long, lean, sinewy, and half-clad. As a matter of convenience they adopt

the dress of the country they happen to be in; their individuality they

never change. The Servian looks down on them with contempt; they are the

lowest of the population. "Tsiganin! do this," shouts a Serb to any of

the swarthy young rascals who are hanging about the street corner, and

the boy obeys like a dog. But the gipsy is fiercely proud of his race.

"You are English, but I am a Gipsy!" said an old woman to me, with

indescribable majesty, as she drew up her head; the coins glittered in

her filthy elf-locks, and she fixed me with her eagle eyes. She took the

black pipe from her mouth and waved it round her head till she was

wreathed in blue smoke, and she smote her bare breast dramatically. "I

am a true Gipsy," she repeated. In a piece of a dirty shirt and half a

petticoat, she looked like an empress. Yet the savage who possesses a

hut, even the wild beast with a den, is a more civilised being. Without

any kind of a tent, much less a cart, will they camp; some poles propped

against a bush and covered with an armful of fern are often their only

covering from the weather, and a couple of lean unhappy bears may share

with them the bundle of filthy rags that is their bed, for your gipsy is

a great showman. I once passed a group encircling a caldron, asquat and

eager for the pot to boil; they turned as I drove by to look at me, and

I saw, with something of a shock, that one of the party was a huge

blue-nosed baboon. He wore about as much clothing as the others, and it

was not till I saw his face that he was distinguishable from his

friends. The cavemen and the prehistoric lake-dwellers cannot have lived

less luxuriously than do these strange wild folk now, in Europe in the

twentieth century. When I met them upon the road, they seemed to have

walked out of another age, another world. Untrustworthy and dishonest

are the mildest terms applied to them, and they are said to be

responsible for a large proportion of the crime of the land. More

extraordinary than their filth and their savagery, more wonderful than

their superb vitality, is their marvellous gift--a gift that amounts to

genius--for playing stringed instruments. It is in the blood to such an

extent that there are fiddlers in every gang; it seems as natural for a

gipsy to fiddle as for a fish to swim. I am not speaking of those who

wear civilised garments and perform in the large towns,--many of these

are known to fame,--but of the ragged ruffians who fiddle for their own

amusement on the road, by the camp fire, or sprawled under a tree, and

who display a command of the instrument and a technical facility that

tends to confirm the theory that music is the least civilised of the

arts. I have seen a child, of certainly not more than ten years, perched

on the top of a loaded waggon, executing the wildest runs, turns, and

flourishes upon his fiddle with an ease and certainty that the

industrious student of a conservatoire does not attain to after years of

labour, the ease and certainty of a singing skylark. But he and his

associates were such that it was disgusting to pass on the lee side of

that waggon. How these people have attained this art is an insoluble

mystery; that it belongs pre-eminently to them as a birthright is shown

by the curious fact that most of the world's fiddlers hail from

gipsy-haunted lands.

And these strange wild things, with life running fierce in their veins,

passed in their turn, and I was alone with the dead.

[ILLUSTRATION: TRAVELLING GIPSIES, RIJEKA, MONTENEGRO.]

By every roadside, even by lonely mountain tracks, stand the monuments

of the soldiers who have fallen in war--tall stones, sometimes solitary,

sometimes in groups of two or three, almost all carved in very flat

relief or incised with a rude full-length portrait of the dead man,

painted in bright colours. Some of these stones are small, others five

or six feet high. With a blue coat and black moustachios, with his arms

and fingers straight and stiff by his side and his feet turned out at

right angles, stands the soldier, staring straight in front of him with

round black eyes, and presents arms to the passer-by. Upon the older

stones, he wears a scarlet tarboosh and carries a sword; upon those put

up since the last war, he carries a gun and wears the present uniform.

An inscription tells how he met his death: "For the Glory and Freedom of

his brother Serbs." The monument is usually near his home, but sometimes

on the actual spot where he fell. To the Serbs these stones are an

everyday sight. To me it seemed sometimes that I was the only thing left

alive out of the slaughter and was passing constantly through the ranks

of a phantom army awaiting the trumpet call. Their grotesque and

childish simplicity added a strange pathos. Thus I travelled through a

land green as our own, with oaks and beeches and fern, and everywhere

the print of war was upon it, and through storm and sun and wind and

rain I passed from town to town.

[Illustration]

Chachak, on the Morava, stands on flat land down by the river. I drove

through the ford by moonlight and entered the town with a terrible

clatter, but, having come properly introduced, I met with a very

hospitable reception. I was travelling to see Servia and the Servians;

that was now a recognised fact. Should I like to see something truly

Servian? It was fortunate that I had arrived this night, for I was in

time to see four murderers shot on the spot where they had committed

their crime! I was urged to go, and offered special facilities. Taken

aback, I listened, speechless, while the plan was unfolded. I was to

rise very early and to drive for three hours up the mountains with the

condemned men and the file of soldiers who were to carry out the

sentence. The words called up before me a picture of the grisly little

procession crawling uphill in the grey of the dawning. Adding up the

pros and cons rapidly, I said to myself that it was my duty to see

everything, but searched my brains for a decent way out of it. Then I

recollected that if I went, for the next fifty years it would be said

that all Englishwomen were in the habit of seeing men shot before

breakfast. Gripping thankfully at this idea, I said I had rather not

accept the invitation; I had not come so far to see Servians killed. My

reply caused disappointment, and I was strongly urged to go. The murder

had been a peculiarly atrocious one, so that I need not mind seeing the

punishment; for the murderers, after cutting the throats of their

victims, had gouged out the eyes and otherwise barbarously mutilated the

corpses. Twenty men had been arrested, the last gang of Hayduks on that

side of Servia. Four were to die to-morrow. Moreover, my route lay that

way, and there was nothing at all to be seen in Chachak. My coachman

listened anxiously for my decision, but was doomed to disappointment. I

did not go.

Chachak is proud of being the first town taken from the Turks by

Karageorge. It is a bright and enterprising place, and dreams of

constructing an electric railway that shall connect it with the world.

It boasts a church that was church, then mosque, and is now church

again. At least so I was told, but I believe myself that it was born a

mosque and that the old bells belonging to the former Christian period,

which were found recently when digging the foundations of one of the

public buildings, belonged to an early church long since destroyed and

forgotten. I spun out the resources of Chachak as long as I could, and

my coachman hung about, buoyed up by the hope that we should yet be in

time. I even found the horses harnessed and ready, waiting for me, a

most unusual event in Servia, and he started off at a great pace for the

first and last time in that land. He had a pleasant, smiling face, and

was very civil, and as he looked at his watch every few minutes, I

marvelled that he should crave so ardently to see red blood run in the

sunshine. To have once seen it hurrying down an Italian gutter was

enough for me.

So we drove on through woods that I knew were beautiful, but they gave

me only a sickly feeling of being on the track of death, and the farther

I got, the less I liked it. In starting, I had calculated that I was

late enough, and then began to wonder if there was any limit to the

lateness that a Servian is capable of.

When we arrived at Markovich, the village nearest the top of the pass, I

saw the soldiers stopping outside the inn to cheer themselves with

rakija on their homeward march, and I knew that the deed was done. An

officer rode up, touched his cap and told me politely where I should see

the graves; he expected me to be disappointed, but I was greatly

relieved. We reached the top of the hill, a large grassy plateau, and

there were the four raw heaps of damp mould. A peasant was patting down

the last one, and a stake had been driven in at the head of each. My

coachman pulled up and said regretfully, "We are only three-quarters of

an hour too late!" "Drive on," said I, cutting short the details of how

they had stood in their graves and been shot down into them, and as the

peasant shouldered his spade and turned away too, we left them alone on

the hilltop.

At Pozhega we had to put up the horses for an hour and find food for

ourselves. The landlady--a stout woman with a good-natured face--was

considerably exhausted, having been to the top of the hill to see the

men shot. She had risen very early and had walked all the way, but there

was a great crowd, and much to her annoyance she had not got a good view

of the end. Nor could I make her understand that I had purposely avoided

the sight myself.

From Pozhega it was but a few hours' drive to Ushitza, my next

stopping-place, the prettiest little town that I know in Servia--a place

that no traveller in the country should omit to visit. It sprawls

through two wooded valleys in a mountainous country as beautiful as

anyone need wish to see. It is hospitable and cheery, and should make an

excellent centre for a sportsman, for I am told that the surrounding

mountains are well supplied with game birds, that there is no lack of

wolves and bears, and no difficulty about procuring permission to shoot.

I clattered up to the inn, and it received me with characteristic

simplicity; its landlady asked if I wanted a place as chambermaid, and

was much mystified, for it seems that she had never before seen a lady

travelling alone. Laughing over this, I gave my letter of introduction

to the master of the establishment and asked him to have it delivered at

once. It seemed a simple enough request, and I sat down to some coffee

without any anxiety, unaware that he had stowed the letter away

carefully behind the rakija bottles in the bar and had sent the potboy

to tell the gentleman that his sister had arrived! He turned up in a

great hurry, much mystified, as his only sister lived in America and had

shown no symptoms of visiting him. The innkeeper then produced the

letter and explained that, as the gentleman was a Bohemian and possessed

the only pair of blue eyes in the town and I also was a blue-eyed

foreigner, it had never occurred to him to doubt our relationship. I had

a gay time in Ushitza. The schoolmasters, the head of the police, and

other local authorities all came to call on me and devise plans for me,

and we drank beer festively by the market-place, for as I was the first

Englishwoman in Ushitza, health drinking was necessary.

Ushitza is plucky and enterprising. It not only makes plans, but it

carries them out. It is blessed with good men at the head of affairs.

For all the world over, in spite of the old saying, the voice of the

people is very seldom the voice of a god; it is far more frequently

simply a "row," and in most places we find that all good work is due to

the brains and energy of a few individuals, and not to the collective

wisdom of the mass, except in the sense that the mass has had the wit to

know a good man when they see him and to follow his lead.

Ushitza, poked away in a lonely valley in a far corner of Servia, has a

very good school, well fitted with modern apparatus, maps and diagrams

and plaster casts; is well lighted by electricity, and has started an

electric cotton and linen weaving factory, which is the pride and joy of

the town. Three years did it take in the making; every bit of the

machinery had to be imported from abroad and carried over the mountains

on ox-carts, but in spite of all difficulties it is well started and

beginning to pay its way, and Ushitza, like Chachak, is trying to find

the ways and means for an electric railway.

Ushitza was Ushitza in the glorious days of the Servian Empire, and was

the seat of its first arch-bishop, the great St. Sava. Stefan VI.

transferred the archbishopric to Ipek (Petch), that lies in Stara Srbija

waiting to be redeemed; but Ushitza worked out her own redemption in

1862, and after severe fighting evicted the Turk, and is once more the

seat of a bishop. The Djetina, a tributary of the Morava, rushes past

the town from a narrow valley, where leaps the fall that works the

150-horse-power electric engines, and high on the opposite hill tower

the ruins of the big castle that once guarded the town. Fortified by the

Turks, it was taken by the Servians and blown to pieces, and its

shattered walls hang perilously on the precipice edge. I was told it was

a Turkish building, but I scrambled all over it, and believe it to be a

Servian mediæval castle belonging probably to the palmy days of the

Empire.

Everything else in Ushitza is new, except the stone bridge over the

river, which is mediæval, and the big Roman altar stone found in the

neighbourhood that stands in the entrance of the school; but the town,

though so new, is very picturesque. I left Ushitza with regret, for it

was very good to me. I said good-bye for ever and ever, promised to send

picture postcards of London, and was soon again on the road.

Ivanitza was my destination, and my midday halt at Arilje, where I

arrived cold and damp in a heavy rainstorm. The police captain and the

priest were kindly folk and offered to take me to see the church.

According to tradition, it is the oldest church in Servia, and is said

to have been built to the memory of one Aril, a Christian priest

martyred by heathen Servians early in the ninth century. It is a

cruciform building with a central dome, a very flat apse, the usual

narthex, and is barrel-vaulted. My guides could tell me nothing at all

except that it was "very old." I suggested thirteenth century, which

astonished them. That the building itself had anything to say on the

subject was a new idea to them. After a little discussion with the

priest, the captain said that someone had said it was of the time of

King Milutin, and added naively that they did not know when that was.

Milutin (Stefan Milutin Urosh) reigned from about 1275 to 1321. This

date fits in with its appearance, but not with the tradition that it is

the oldest church in Servia. Probably it is a later building on an old

site. It is old and dim enough, at any rate, to have seen the Great

Servian Empire and the rise and the fall of the Ottoman. Frescoes stiff

and Byzantine in style cover its walls. Big saints in long straight

white robes with bizarre black patterns stand in a row along the walls,

and a king (Milutin himself) in a high crown and a long cloak decorated

with large discs of gold. The faces have been scraped out by the Turks,

and the whole of the paintings are dim and faded, but they are scarce

examples of early art, and appear to have never suffered restoration. I

am sorry that I allowed damp, cold, and general discomfort to prevent my

staying to draw them.

We pushed on through the storm along a richly wooded defile through

which tears the Morava, and arrived chill and stiff in the evening at

Ivanitza, where the mere sight of the inn made me feel much worse. As it

was not possible to get anything to eat till supper-time, and as the

bedroom offered me was uninhabitable, and as both my letters of

introduction were to gentlemen who only spoke Servian, I wondered why I

had come. It was too wet to go out, so I sat in the doorway and drew the

shops over the way, and soon forgot all the surrounding circumstances. I

was aroused by the most cheery police officers, in very smart uniforms,

who came in answer to my letters of introduction, and who were

extraordinarily amused to find me already settled down to draw. They

brought the burgomaster, called for drinks, and in the approved fashion

each stood me a glass. When the doctor, who spoke German, turned up and

tried to stand me one on his own account, I cried off. My Montenegrin

sketches here were the topic of the day; for the nearer you get to the

frontier the more beloved and admired is Montenegro. Central, Eastern,

and Northern Servia seem to dislike it. Everyone here wanted to hear

both about the place and the people, and I sat in that little

low-ceiled, dark, messy, stone-floored room filled with officers and

peasants, and explained things as best I could, the company all helping

me out with the language. The rain poured in torrents outside and

splashed in at the open door; everyone offered me tobacco, which I

declined; and there was a good deal of glass clinking. Helped out by

German and the doctor, I told tales of Skodra, which Ivanitza thought

was a place perilous. And we talked of the virtues of the Black

Mountains and the sins of the Turks. The two oil lamps made the black

corners blacker and threw odd shadows of fur-capped peasants on the

walls, and as I looked at my surroundings, saw the white kilts, the

leathern sandals and the uniforms, and heard the clank of sword and

spur, I wondered to which of my ancestors I owed the fact that I felt so

very much at home. Presently two men slunk in who were greeted by a roar

of laughter. "How are the Turks?" cried everyone. Chaff flew much too

thickly for me to see my way through it. When it cleared, I was told

that the two had strayed over the frontier, had been caught by the

Turks, and, as they had no passports upon them, were promptly put into

prison. There they had stayed some days, and they had only just been

released. Everyone treated this as a huge joke except the victims, who

looked extremely silly. There was more in the episode than met the eye,

for in the course of the arrest shots had been exchanged, and two

Servians--a shepherd and a border patrol man--killed. My officers told

me seriously that I was to keep off the edge. Never having lived on a

ruddy frontier, I was much interested. All my life I had heard of the

value of our "silver streak," but I had to go to a public-house in South

Servia before I realised it.

The fact that I had come so soon after the affair of Miss Stone charmed

everyone, as it conclusively proved that England had a high opinion of

Servia. I was, as someone naively stated, the most remarkable event

since the war. An English officer had ridden through the town three

years before, but he had had an interpreter and had carried a revolver.

Also two Frenchmen had once passed that way. That was Ivanitza's

complete visitors' list for the last twenty years. I was the first who

had tackled it alone and unarmed. When a fresh arrival turned up, he was

told "She is English; it is not a joke; she really is"; and I was shown

to some children as a unique specimen: "Look at her well; perhaps you

will never see another." Yet the country is so beautiful that it only

requires to be known to attract plenty of strangers.

Having first asked me if I were quite sure I had a room that I could

sleep in, they all wished me good-night. I said the room was good

enough, and went to find out if I had spoken the truth, through into

the stableyard. It was pitch dark and the rain was falling. I called for

a light. Something came out of the night, and I followed it up a rickety

ladder and on to a wooden gallery. It thrust a tallow candle into my

hand, and struck a match. The light revealed a lean, hairy man,

bare-legged, bare-chested, and sparsely clad in dirty cotton garments.

Clasping the candle, I followed him into a very small room. It was a

different one from the one I had been shown on arriving. There was an

iron bedstead in it, covered with a wadded coverlet, and there were

three nails in the wall. Otherwise, nothing; not even a chair. The

gentleman produced an empty bottle, stuck the candle into it, put it on

the window sill, wished me good-night, and was going. "The room is not

ready," said I firmly. He looked round in a bewildered manner and said

it was, and shouted for female assistance. A stout lady panted up the

stairs, beaming with good-nature. She apologised for the room. The best

one contained four beds and they had quite meant me to have one of them,

but unfortunately a family had arrived and taken all of them! It was

most unlucky! I assured her that I did not mind having to sleep alone.

But this room was not ready. She glanced round, appeared to realise its

deficiencies, rushed off, and returned in triumph with a brush and comb.

I thanked her, but said that what I wanted was some water to wash in.

She seemed surprised at this, but went off again, and came back this

time with a small glass decanter and a tumbler. I ended by getting a

very small tin basin and a chair to stand it on. The seriousness of my

preparations then dawned upon her, and of her own accord she brought me

two towels and a little piece of peagreen soap stamped, in English,

"Best Brown Windsor." I had met this kind before. It is, I think, made

in Austria.

The room proved to be quite clean, and I fared much better than I had

expected. They were all as kind as possible, and in return I was as

Servian as I knew how to be, except that I never patronised the well in

the stableyard, which is, I believe, the proper way of getting up in the

morning--presuming that you are dirty enough to require washing. The

stray officers who rode up without even a saddle-bag and passed the

night at the inn were, as far as I could make out, satisfied with waxing

their moustachios in the morning and having their boots polished, and

the effect was much better than one would have expected. Of course you

are washed when you arrive. This is, most likely, the survival of some

Eastern reception ceremonial. It is a little surprising at first, but

you soon get used to it. A girl or a man--the latter is usually my

fate--invades your bedroom, shortly after you have been shown to it,

with a little basin, a bottle of water, a towel, and a cake of the "Best

Brown Windsor." He holds out the basin solemnly and dribbles water over

your outstretched hands, for it is very dirty to wash in standing water.

When he thinks your hands are clean, he gives you the towel to dry them.

Then you have to hold them out again, and he pours more water on them;

this you are supposed to rub on your face. This being accomplished, he

retires, taking the apparatus with him. In the old days, it is said that

foot-washing was part of the ceremony, but I am glad to say that this

has now gone out of fashion. When asking for water, it is always

necessary to add "that I may wash," for the Servian invariably imagines

that it is for internal application and brings it in a tumbler. These

remarks apply, be it said, only to the inns in the villages; in the

larger towns the arrangements are quite civilised as a rule, and quite

clean.

Ivanitza was so kind to me, and so beautiful, that in spite of its

primitive accommodation I stayed on. As long as the food is good, one

can stand rough surroundings well enough. The long street of

picturesque, tumbledown wooden shops straggles along the valley; the

West Morava tears through a wooded deep--cut gorge, and the

cloud--capped mountains tower around. It is a lonely and lovely spot,

and one that I shall never forget.

On Sunday afternoon there was a little festival, and we sallied forth to

a meadow about a mile and a half away. An ox-cart or two brought chairs,

tables, beer, bread and cherries--all that Ivanitza required for a happy

afternoon. I myself formed no small part of the entertainment, as all

who had not yet made my acquaintance had now the chance of doing so.

The priest arrived on horseback with his vestments in his saddle-bags.

He made a little altar in the middle of the field with three sticks and

a board, spread a cloth on it, and planted a green bush by the side.

Then the men stood round close to it, and the women stood behind very

much in the background, and the service began. The incense curled thin

and pale against the dark background of mountains that ringed us round,

and the peasants, in their gayest and best, sang the responses

heartily, while the oxen chewed cud alongside. Suddenly down the narrow

valley the sky turned dark and red; everything was blotted out by a

dense storm-cloud that burst overhead almost immediately. The priest

picked up his petticoats and books, and we all fled precipitately to a

group of cowsheds a couple of hundred yards away, and crowded into them.

The one I ran into was so dark that we could hardly see one another. I

climbed out of the mud into the manger and held a sort of reception. I

answered all the usual questions, and then they tried to find out my

accomplishments by asking, "Can you do this? can you do that?" etc. I

did all my little tricks, and felt like a circus. Finally it was

suggested that I should sing--a thing I never do in public at home. The

ever-increasing darkness suggested "Abide with me," and I started

boldly. When, however, I got as far as the words "and comforts flee,"

they struck me as being so ridiculously appropriate to the circumstances

in which I found myself that I ended abruptly by laughing, which made

the audience think that the song was a comic one and beg to hear more of

it. But the storm was passing over, and though the rain was still

falling and the water standing in pools, the devoted priest hurried out

to finish the service; out rushed everybody from the sheds and plashed

back to the meadow. By the time I arrived on the scene it was all in

full swing, the incense rising and the sun struggling through a

cloud-rift. As soon as it was over, music struck up and the kolo dance

began, and, regardless of the wet, they frisked and splashed through the

deep and sopping grass. Even the doctor thought it was all right. When

he told me later that he had a great many patients, because the place

was so damp, I was not surprised.

The weather did not seem likely to improve, and the police officer told

me with a grin that whenever I said I wanted to go they hoped it would

rain; now that I knew everyone I had better stay, and he called upon his

friends to describe the horrors of my proposed route. But as I could not

stay on indefinitely, I asked him to find me a man and a pony, and

decided to risk a wetting. The start had to be made at 5 a.m., too early

to see what manner of a day it was likely to be, and it is but a chilly

hour at best. A border officer saw me off, and assured me I should find

friends wherever I went, which cheered my rather depressed feeling that

I was leaving all my friends behind me.

I had come to the end of the road, and the onward track was very much a

plunge into the unknown. The mist was thick and clammy as we struck up

the mountain path, but was beginning to clear slowly. It was not a bad

road at all. A Montenegrin pony would have laughed at it, and a

Montenegrin man have done it on foot; but my guide was a Servian and

therefore required a mount, and the beasts were fat and sluggish. My

baggage consisted of a small hand-bag and a little bundle. These I had

carefully made of equal weight, meaning them for either side of my own

saddle. Regardless of the fact that I was by far the lighter weight of

us two, the Serb insisted on putting them on his own saddle and on tying

them both on the same side. Consequently, as the girths were very loose,

his saddle kept turning round. This he strove to prevent by sitting

crooked! As he obstinately persisted in this plan in spite of all I

could do, he was perpetually re-saddling. I broke a switch from a bush,

stirred up my pony and rode ahead in hopes of hurrying him; but all in

vain, for I came to the end of the path in about half an hour, saw

before me an endless succession of wild and apparently trackless valleys

and mountains, and had to wait my guides arrival. He appeared at last,

crawling along quite happily, and at once hopped off to take another

futile pull at the girths. This time I succeeded in getting a better

arrangement of the bags, which saved the twisting; but the saddle still

slipped towards the beast's head going downhill, and towards its tail

going uphill. Moreover, both animals were weak in their hind fetlocks,

and we had to dismount pretty often. Luckily I had a pocketful of black

bread handy, and as there seemed no prospect of ever arriving at a

feeding-place, I gnawed crusts as I rode over that lonely land--land

that has an awful magnificence, for it is untouched by the hand of man.

Silently we went through huge and dripping beech woods, dim with fog

wreaths, where great trees lay and rotted where they had fallen, and

silently out over rich grassy uplands where no flocks feed. Deep valleys

lay below us, and mountain peaks rose all around. For miles and miles it

was absolutely lonely, there was no sign of a living thing and no sound

save the squelching of our horses' hoofs in the deep wet leaf-mould. In

a dip of the hills we came upon two most primitive villages, collections

of wooden wigwams with high pitched roofs of twigs and branches; through

their open doors I could see that they were mere unfurnished dens.

Wild--looking, ragged people squatted in the doorways, who stared like

startled animals as I passed. Nothing more primitive in the way of a

village could exist. It seemed the kind of place that the Romans might

have come upon when they conquered ancient Illyria, and I drew rein. My

guide, however, was so determined that I should neither stop nor

dismount that I thought he might be aware that its customs were Illyrian

also, and I yielded regretfully to his request, for the first time, to

hurry on.

At midday we reached another collection of huts, the village of Mlantza,

not quite so primitive as the last one, but all of wood. A man with a

revolver and cartridge belt, one of the gendarmerie, was resting here

and nursing his rifle. Two very tall and incredibly ragged men came out

of a hut, and at my guide's request made us some black coffee and boiled

us some eggs. We off-saddled, and our ponies were soon blowing

themselves out with grass and water, and there seemed every prospect of

the girths fitting better after lunch. My guide said we must rest an

hour, and inquired the way from the man with the rifle. I wondered that

anyone knew it, for there was no track to be seen anywhere. There are

not enough people even to wear a footpath. And folk live and die in

these lonely spots, and a grave, quite fresh made, with a gaudily

painted gravestone, stood close by. One or two men, black-eyed,

barefooted, and in clothes that were torn to ribbons, sauntered up. None

of them made an attempt to speak to me, and they scarcely exchanged a

word with my guide. They were too far removed from the outer world to

take any interest in it. They seemed part of the wild, dumb rocks and

forests, and only the cluttering of the hens that came to pick up the

crumbs I had dropped broke the heavy silence.

My guide re-saddled the ponies, and we started off again. Downhill most

of the way, often very steep, and there was a good deal of dismounting

and leading to be done. For some way the rocks were all of green

serpentine in wildly contorted strata. A very tiny church stood high on

a ledge, far up the mountain side, that looked quite inaccessible from

below; one of those built as a retreat by the early kings; a lone

wilderness in which some soul had wrestled with temptation, or more

probably striven to expiate guilt. And this and the primitive wooden

huts of the morning were the only buildings I saw on that long ten

hours' ride, until at last, in the valley below, the little white church

and the monastery of Studenitza came in sight.

Down past the back of the monastery buildings we joggled, and round to

the door of the little inn, where I dismounted thankfully, stiff and

somewhat dazed. The kindly peasants who thronged the little bare room

made a place for us, and refrained from questioning me till I had eaten

a huge meal of rye bread, red wine, onions and kaimak, which was all

that the place afforded, and I ate with an appetite that delighted

everyone.

Revived and cheered by the food, the wine, and the company, I arose when

the inevitable interview was over and strolled across to the open gate

of the monastery. Within the walls lay smooth green lawns from which

arose the little lily church, its white marble pale gold with age;

beyond were the quaint wood and plaster buildings of the monastery, with

wide wooden balconies and tall bell tower. Little acacias, clipped to

round balls, were ranged stiffly along the paths, the air was heavy with

the scent of lime blossoms, and a stillness so dead that it seemed

supernatural hung over all. I stole quietly round the church, which was

shut, and saw no living creature.

As I was returning I came face to face with an armed youth, a

picturesque figure who, but for his weapons, looked very mediæval in

closely-fitting black leg-gear of the Albanian pattern and a very short

straight jacket. His feet were shod with leathern sandals, into the

straps of which were twisted long spurs; his rifle was slung on his

back; the bright green cord to which his revolver was fastened hung

round his neck, and his cartridge belt was well filled. He stood up

straight, a lithe slim young thing, saluted with great style, and told

me that he was a "pandur" (gendarme), had been sent over from Rashka to

take care of me and to escort me thither when I was ready to go.

Meanwhile he was entirely at my service. His captain had received a

telegram about me from Ivanitza and had sent him at once. He added that

Rashka expected me and wanted to see me. I was greatly astonished. I had

intended going to Kraljevo. The pandur looked grieved. He thought

evidently that he should have failed in his duty to his captain if he

did not produce me at Rashka. Impelled largely, I confess, by a wicked

desire to have such a very good-looking fellow at my beck and call, I

was inquiring the means of arriving at Rashka, when the pandur said

suddenly, in an awestruck whisper, "Gospoditza, here is the

Archimandrite!" and there was the Archimandrite himself advancing slowly

down the path towards us.

A very beautiful old man, with a kindly, benevolent face, tall and

stately in his black robes and high velvet hat. His long grey hair

flowed over his shoulders, and he fingered a string of amber beads as he

came along. The pandur bared his head, dropped on one knee reverently

and kissed the hand extended to him, and I wondered miserably whether it

would be foolish or polite to follow his example. The Archimandrite

relieved me at once by shaking hands with me and welcoming me to

Studenitza. Anyone who had come so far, he said, must be his guest. It

would have been grossly rude to refuse such a kindly-meant invitation,

but I accepted it with fear. To the manners and customs of a Servian inn

I was now accustomed. The primitive building outside the monastery walls

suddenly seemed to me to be a homelike and wholly desirable

resting-place, and the monastery was a strange unknown world. The

pandur, on the other hand, was filled with joy. "This is very, very

good," he whispered to me; "they are very rich here"; and we followed

the Archimandrite over the lawn to the long low guest building on the

other side, up a wooden staircase and along a long blue-and-white

corridor, to a room at the end which he offered me. It was a beautiful

room, luxuriously furnished. I accepted it gratefully, and the pandur

whispered his admiration and enthusiasm. He was sent off at once to

fetch my bag from the inn, and the Archimandrite, who was greatly

overcome at learning that I had come on horseback from Ivanitza, begged

that I would rest myself. To-morrow, he said, I should see all, and was

at liberty to draw what I pleased. At what time would I have supper? He

added with a little smile, "I fear that to-day I cannot feed you well.

We are monks here, and it is one of our great fasts." (It was that of

SS. Peter and Paul.) He knew no word of any language but Servian, and

waited patiently while I looked up words in the dictionary. I told him I

would eat whatever they had. "But no," he said, and he shook his head;

"those of our own Church do not keep these fasts as they should. For us

monks it is our duty; but for you, who are a stranger, it is different."

His words I can give, but not the charm of his manner, nor his simple

dignity and his courtesy. His amber beads clicked as he went.

And when he had gone there was a great silence, and I sat at the window

and stared at the little white church and at the mountain that rose up

just behind it. The world beyond was a vague, far-off recollection; part

of a previous existence. I felt that I had passed all my life in that

lonely hollow among the hills, and then wondered whether I had any right

to be there at all. But I did not wish to ever forget the scene, and in

spite of the old man's recommendation to sleep, I coiled up on the

window-sill and began a drawing.

Time passed like a flash, and the light was rapidly dying, when I became

aware of the clink of spurs and the clicking of the amber beads, and the

Archimandrite followed by a servant and my pandur, bearing lamp and

supper, came in a little procession down the corridor. I had not

realised till then that I was to sup with the Archimandrite himself. He

was distressed that I remained standing, and spoke to the pandur, who

hurried away, and returned with a big and throne-like arm-chair.

Meanwhile Nikola the servant spread two newspapers on the table, put the

lamp in the middle and arranged the plates and dishes. Then he placed a

small cane-bottomed chair and stood attention by it. My pandur drew

himself up by the arm-chair, the Archimandrite motioned me to it

ceremoniously, murmured a blessing, and took his seat. He tucked his

large table napkin under his chin, spread the other end of it on the

table and stood his plate upon it, thus making a bridge from food to

mouth. Foolishly, I did not imitate him, but put mine on my knees. Now

the tablecloth was a product of Western civilisation, of that make

called "tapestry" in Tottenham Court Road. It was black-and-yellow, and

round the border were pyramids, palm trees, camels, Arabs and damsels--a

very secular tablecloth. It was greatly treasured by the old man, and

the centre only was protected by newspaper. He was distressed to see

that I did not know how to use a table napkin, but he was far too polite

to say so. He murmured something to Nikola, and before I had realised

the mistake I had made, Nikola returned with another newspaper, which he

put under my plate. Then the meal began. "Nikola, serve rakija," said

the Archimandrite, and Nikola filled two little glasses with slivovitz

and put them before us. "This," said the Archimandrite, "is from our own

plums," and he raised his glass and bowed gravely; I raised mine; he

clinked with it. "God give you health," he said, and drained his glass.

I drained mine, and restrained a violent desire to gasp as the spirit

went down like a red-hot poker, for it was the fieriest liqueur I had

ever met. "Nikola, serve the rakija," said the Archimandrite again, and

we repeated the ceremony. I left some at the bottom of my glass. He

pointed this out, and waited patiently. I swallowed it. "Nikola, serve

the rakija," said the Archimandrite a third time. "No, thank you," said

I timidly. "Three times is Servian," he said pleasantly. My glass was

filled. "God give you health," said I bravely; we clinked, and the

ceremony was completed.

With a burning gullet, I began dinner. There was no sign of anything

else to drink. Bread, cheese, kaimak, onions and poached eggs were

spread before me, and a dish of haricot beans and a lettuce before him.

"You had better see what I eat," he said, with a funny little smile;

"your friends in England will wish to know how an Archimandrite in

Servia lives."

I had my dictionary and struggled hard to follow his conversation and to

reply, but was sometimes entirely lost, for the strain after the long

day was almost more than I could stand. A very great many English, he

told me, had been to Studenitza. I was surprised. He counted upon his

fingers, and said that since 1865, including myself, there had been

eight. "Yes," he said gaily, "here we know the English very well, and

your Church is not unlike our own," Feeling quite unequal to discussing

theology in Servian, I did not rise to this remark. "At any rate," he

said cheerfully, "we both dislike the Pope." "How old are you?" asked

the Archimandrite. I told him. "And you are not married?" he said. I

agreed. "That, Gospoditza," and he bowed to me, "is very good--it is

the best"; and the pandur smiled a little smile under his moustache.

Nikola removed our plates, and appeared with three small trout on a

dish. Very excellent trout, fresh from the river, which the

Archimandrite shared with me with great relish. But he seemed anxious

and had little private housekeeping whispers with Nikola, and produced

large keys furtively from his flowing garments. The good man was certain

I had not had enough. I assured him I had had plenty; but Nikola

returned presently with a small mutton ham, off which he chipped pieces

which he offered me. Meanwhile my pandur had removed my knife, fork, and

plate. The Archimandrite remedied this by taking his own fork, wiping it

on the newspaper and presenting it to me ceremoniously. I accepted it in

the spirit in which it was offered and ate as many of the little pieces

of meat as I could manage, thereby pleasing my host a good deal more

than myself, and the meal was concluded.

It was a dry meal. We now began to wash it down. "Nikola, serve the

wine," said his master. Nikola appeared with a bottle of red wine and

two small tumblers. The Archimandrite uttered pious wishes for my

welfare, we clinked and drank together. I perceived very shortly that

politeness did not permit him to take more while there was any left in

my glass, and hoped that he was not very thirsty. He, on his part, tried

to encourage me by saying that it was excellent wine and not at all

strong, and the latter part of the remark fortunately was perfectly

true.

When I thought we had nearly done, Nikola again went on a mysterious

errand, and returned with two young monks to whom I was introduced. The

two younger men were more interested in the outer world than the old

one, and I had to work the dictionary hard. Then came more wine,

fortunately not much, for we all four had to clink with each other and

utter polite wishes, and this occupied time and made a little go a long

way. Obedient to the Archimandrite, we raised and emptied our glasses

simultaneously with military precision.

Each day of my life seemed stranger than the last, and I wondered how

much longer this one was to be, for I had begun it at 4 a.m. When at

9.30 they arose and wished me good-night, I was more grateful to them

than for anything they had yet done for me.

Towels, curtains, bed linen, all were pious offerings to the monastery.

Each was embroidered with the donor's name and a motto, and the cushions

were covered with beings who looked painfully like Cupids but were

doubtless Cherubim. But none of these interesting facts did I discover

till the next morning, when the monastery bell clanged loudly at four

o'clock and woke me up. I struggled with a desire to sleep for several

days, but as I had to see the church, draw it, and ride to Rashka, I got

up at five and went out into the corridor. All the land was hidden in a

dense white mist. The moisture clung clammily to tree and wall, and fell

heavily, plap, plap, to the ground, and I shivered in a thin cotton

shirt. Nikola appeared almost immediately with coffee and milk and

bread, and my pandur with my coat, and, by the time I had breakfasted,

the Archimandrite was waiting below to show me the church.

The old man unlocked the door, and he, I, and the pandur went in. We

entered a narthex, a late addition to the church which spoils its

proportions, and saw before us the original west front of the building,

all of pure white marble, and the exquisite doorway--a square-headed

door surmounted by a lunette with the figure of the Virgin between two

angels in high relief, and framed with the most delicate mouldings upon

which the fanciful monsters and arabesques of Byzantine art interlace,

and the invention and execution are alike perfect. A small detached pier

standing upon the back of a grotesque beast, as in the early churches of

the North Italian towns, stood on either side of the door and supported

the projecting upper mouldings; but they have both been sadly mutilated,

for the Turks occupied the Imperial monastery (Tsarska Lavra) and

stabled their horses in its church. To do them justice, however, they

did not treat the building more cruelly than our own countrymen treated

our own cathedrals, and much of the carving is as clean cut as when

Stefan Nemanja raised it, in 1190. The Archimandrite sighed over the

mutilations, but was pleased at my delighted appreciation of his church.

We passed into the old building, through the little old narthex, into

the body of the church. This is entirely frescoed, but the paintings are

all newly restored, except those just inside the door, where great

figures of weird Byzantine ascetics, the hermit saints--Onofrio, Marcus,

Peter Antony, and Alexis--show grimly in the original fresco, and a rude

painting of the Last Supper with fragments of some other subjects still

cling to the walls. The north and south doors have also been beautiful,

but they have suffered more severely than that of the west. Of the

windows, one only is intact; the others have been adequately restored.

The present dome, a recent and very poor attempt in plaster, is to be

shortly replaced. Again the old man bewailed the destruction wrought by

the Turks. "And it is your own country that has helped them," he said

sadly, and shook his head.

He showed me the treasures of the church, the shrine of St. Simeone

(King Stefan Nemanja) and the great silver casket, adorned with reliefs

of scenes from the saints life, presented by Alexander Karageorgevich,

in which to worthily preserve the sacred relics. He called the pandur to

assist him, and together the young soldier and the Archimandrite

unfolded with exceeding care the splendid crimson velvet covering for

it, a gift from the then reigning king (Alexander Obrenovich), destined

to cover the shrine on the saint's day. The Archimandrite looked at it

lovingly, the pandur with awe and amazement, and then they tenderly put

it away again, while I wondered over the much detested king who had

presented it, and the king who had died seven hundred years ago and had

wrought so well for his land that he is yet revered in it as a saint. In

spite of time and the Turks, the Imperial monastery still preserves many

of its old treasures, church vessels and vestments. A magnificent

crimson-and-gold one, the Archimandrite told me, undoubtedly belonged to

St. Sava, and it may have done so; but a gilt censer, also said to be

the saint's, one of the church's precious relics which he looked on with

believing eyes, betrays both by design and workmanship that it is of a

later date. There was a very old reliquary, also the property of St.

Sava, and there were three or four old manuscript books, and all he

handled with a simple pride that was pretty to see. The last cupboard

that he unlocked was perhaps the most interesting of all to me, for it

contained a mass of votive offerings, most of them personal ornaments,

splendid specimens of Turkish, Albanian, Bosnian, and Herzegovinian

work, things barbaric and beautiful, choice examples of the finest

native work, some of it undoubtedly very old. The last of the treasures

was locked up again, and we left the treasury.

[ILLUSTRATION: CHURCH, STUDENITZA, WEST DOOR.]

Then the pandur and the Archimandrite had a little discussion, and the

kind old man told me that the ride to Rashka was a long one, that I had

better stay until to-morrow, then I should have time to draw the church

and to rest. I was his guest, and he begged I would stay. The church

should be left open, and I might draw what I pleased. I accepted the

more gratefully as the sky threatened rain and it was damp and cold. He

instructed the pandur to bring a table and chair into the church, and

then I was left to my own devices. The time flew, and when I heard the

clink of spurs on the marble floor, and the pandur saluting said, "Are

you hungry?" I merely said "No," and went on. When, however, he

reappeared in about twenty minutes and repeated his inquiry with an

anxious face, I looked at my watch, realised I had been working for four

hours, and hastily followed him to the corridor, where the poor

Archimandrite was pacing up and down by the table, evidently wanting his

dinner badly, and much relieved by my appearance. The forms observed

were much the same as on the previous evening, and he talked of the sad

state of "our people" in Macedonia and Old Servia, and lamented that

the quarrels of great nations should cause the suffering of little ones.

"Between your country and Russia we can do nothing. You keep the Turk in

Europe." A portrait of Peter the Great hung on the wall. Here, as

everywhere else in Servia, I found Russia the Serbs' only hope of

salvation.

I spent the afternoon drawing the monastery buildings. It was very

still, and the plash of the tiny fountain and the clink of the pandur's

spurs as he hovered about me were the only sounds. The air was heavy

with lime blossom; now and then a long-haired, black-robed monk glided

silently by, and it was all unreal and dream-like. As evening drew on I

heard the clicking of the amber beads, and the Archimandrite appeared.

"You are always doing something," he said; "you have no rest. They say

all the English are like that"; and he instructed Nikola to bring me a

glass of slivovitz and a plateful of jam.

Nor did his kindness and courtesy ever cease, and his stately black

figure bowing farewell was the last I saw of him as I passed through the

monastery gates in the early morning and rode out into the world again

with my escort.

This time I made good progress, for the pandur was no slug. I followed

him up a torrent bed, over stock and stone, in a pretty straight line to

the top of the mountain ridge, where we struck the high road, and after

resting the horses an hour, rode easily down into and along the valley

of the I bar. The nearer we got to the frontier the more conversational

the youth became. He pointed out the ruins of two churches burnt by the

Turks, and then cried, "See, here they are!" as a cart full of turbaned

men creaked down the road. "Turks!" he said with contempt, "all Turks!"

As a turn in the road revealed a hill at the end of the valley crowned

with a building, "There is the Turkish fortress," he said, "and the

frontier." "That is all Turkish?" I asked, pointing ahead. "It is Old

Servia" (Stara Srbija), he replied firmly. I was on the edge of the

coveted land, and the cartridges in my companion's belt were meant for

those who hold it. Rashka is a tiny village on the very edge. We pulled

up at the inn door, and the pandur went off to report me to the

authorities. They arrived almost at once, the Nachelnik and the police

captain, reinforced by the doctor, who spoke a little French, and a

friendly youth who spoke some German. I was dimly aware of questions in

three languages, blinked at them helplessly, and said that I was going

to sleep. At which they all laughed, wished me good repose, and left me.

By the time I had slept off Studenitza and the ride, the pandur had

reported that I drew, also that I had been in Montenegro. Consequently,

when I reappeared, I had a festive time over my sketch-book with the

authorities. Pictures "done by hand" were quite a new idea.

Rashka, a tiny place, was founded in 1846. It is only the fact that it

is on the very edge that makes it a place at all. It feels itself very

important, and its talk is of Turks, and of Macedonia and of Old Servia.

That I must cross the line and be able to say that I had been in Old

Servia was taken for granted. It was discussed as seriously as though it

was a raid we were about to make. Having the permission of the police

and having reported our proposed expedition to the Nachelnik, who saw

no objection to it, the doctor and the gentleman-who-spoke-German

escorted me through a sentry-guarded gate to a wooden bridge guarded at

one end by a Servian and at the other by a Turkish soldier. We explained

that we had come to see Someone-Effendi, and were allowed to pass. On

this side the river there is nothing but a custom-house, a coffee-shop,

and a cottage or two. From the bridge the track winds to Novibazar,

which is but three hours distant, and, on the hills above, two

fortresses guard it. I could get there and back in a day, and imparted

the notion at once to my companions, who were horrified, and thought

that the chances of returning were extremely remote. The Servian

frontier regards the Turk as hopelessly untrustworthy. It has had, at

any rate, plenty of opportunity of judging.

We waited humbly the appearance of Someone-Effendi, quite on our p's and

q's. The enemy soon appeared, rather grubby, in a tarboosh and a scrubby

European overcoat. My presence was explained. We were all very polite to

one another. I was irresistibly reminded of the meeting of two dogs who

approach each other growling from opposite sides of the road, decide not

to bite, wag stiff tails and pretend to be glad to see one another,

while their bristles stand up on their backs. Chairs were brought, we

were asked to sit down, and the inevitable black coffee appeared. Then I

was told that as I was in Turkey I must see the coffee-shop, and we

adjourned thither.

The owner of it, a burly handsome fellow with a yellow moustache and

eyes as blue as an Anglo-Saxon's, sprawled, picturesque in

black-and-white striped costume, on the bench in the balcony. He was

friendly, and we had more coffee and some sticky sweet stuff, while he

smoked cigarettes in a holder the mouthpiece of which was a fine lump of

amber and the stem black wood and silver filigree. "He is a Turk," said

my companions. "He doesn't look like one," said I; for every Mohammedan

calls himself a "Turk," and this one was like a fair Albanian. They

repeated my remark to him, upon which he laughed and said that he did

not speak Turkish. He wore a very handsome silver chain round his neck,

and that and the cigarette-holder attracted my attention. "Those are

from Skodra," I said. He beamed. "You know Skodra!" And he vowed

gleefully that of all cities in the world Skodra was the finest, and

appealed to me to support him. My companions were incredulous, they had

never been there. The statement that I had been there twice satisfied

him, and he smiled at me frankly, for now we knew that we had the same

tastes. "You have seen the bazaar?" I nodded. "Oh, that is fine, very

fine," he said. The bazaar would indeed have been a suitable background

for him; I could imagine him cheerily filling up the gaps in his

cartridge belt, and even more cheerily fighting on the Turkish side

against all and any who should wish to force Western ideas into that and

other happy hunting grounds.

Drinks differ in all lands, but everywhere it is correct to offer and

accept too much of them; so we drank an inordinate quantity of coffee,

said farewell to the Effendi, and were soon safely off the premises and

in our own territory.

The captain took me a walk along the Servian frontier by the rivers

side, a rich and beautiful land ablaze with a wonderful variety of wild

flowers; only the two Turkish fortresses kept in mind the fact that the

green land across the narrow stream was one of the sorest spots in

Europe. The captain's tale of a boy who had been shot not long before by

the Turks was concluded as we came in sight of the last fort, and we

turned back. I think we went about three miles and took an hour over it;

but the captain was very warm, and all his friends agreed that the

English walked at an alarming pace.

By request, I made a drawing. It was of the frontier, the Turkish

custom-house, and the fort-capped hill. It was supposed that it would

annoy the Turks greatly if they knew, but they didn't. "And where," I

asked, "are your forts? I have only seen Turkish ones." "Oh," was the

cheerful answer, "forts are for defence--we are only going forward!"

Rashka was very hospitable. It gave me coffee; it gave me wine, beer,

jam, water, eggs and bacon; it entertained me to the best of its

ability. I was sorry to leave it, but time pressed. The diligence said

it would start at 5 a.m., but did not do so till 6; I hung about

waiting. It was a perfect morning; the mountains were blue on a pale

lemon sky, and the grass was hoary with dew. "What a beautiful day!" I

said to a man who was standing by the inn door. "No," he said gloomily;

"to-day is Kosovo Day. That was a bad day for us." It was June 15

(O.S.). In the churches throughout the country there were solemn

services in memory of the defeat in 1389, and there in front of us was

Stara Srbija across the river.

The diligence proved to be a springless cart with a basket-work top,

and as the horses were poor and the roads bad, we were eleven and a half

hours upon that road, instead of eight, as I had been promised. It was

dark when at last the crazy vehicle jogged painfully into Kraljevo.

Kraljevo ("The Town of the Kings") did not receive me amiably. I crawled

into the hotel stiff and sore, was awaiting soup, and had just sent off

my letter of introduction, when a severe personage in black arose from a

little table at the other end of the room and made straight for me.

Striking his hand heavily on the table to compel my attention, he said

very loudly, "You have come from Rashka?" He spoke Servian, and did not

even stop to inquire if I understood it. Having a clear conscience and

an introduction to one of the leading men of the town, I returned his

stare and said "Yes." "You will leave here to-morrow morning," he

asserted. "No," said I firmly. We paused for a moment. "Have you a

passport?" he asked. "Yes," said I. "Show it me at once." "It is a very

good passport," I remarked, spreading it on the table; "it is English."

I watched with some amusement his vain and elaborate pretence of

deciphering it. Then he said, "When are you going?" "I don't know," said

I. He chose to imagine that this meant I did not understand, so he

shouted the question at me again very aggressively. As I meant him to

know that it was no use chivying the English, I said, "Perhaps Monday,

perhaps Tuesday, I do not know." "You will leave to-morrow early," he

said. I reflected that if I did not stand to my guns the next British

subject would have a bad time; so I said firmly, "I will not. I am

English, and that passport is good." He looked at it again, reflected

that, if it were good, things might become awkward, threw it down, and

left abruptly. "Good-night," said I, but he did not respond.

Shortly afterwards the two gentlemen to whom I had been recommended came

on the scene. They were so anxious to help me in every way that I did

not betray the fact that I had already had a skirmish. But the landlord

did. Next day I learned that my aggressor was the Nachelnik

(burgomaster) himself, and that my new friends were extremely angry with

him. He was introduced to me and told by whom I was recommended. He

looked at me suspiciously, shook hands in a guarded manner, and spied

furtively at my sketch-book, which was lying open on the table. I

immediately offered it him for inspection, but it did not reassure him

at all. Greatly to my surprise, however, he volunteered to take me for a

drive in the afternoon. As I was quite used to being suspected, I only

thought the episode funny; but my two acquaintances were so much upset

about it that I was sorry they had been told.

Kraljevo still figures on most of the maps as Karanovatz, and has only

recently been re-named. Zhitza, the monastery church where the kings of

the Nemanja line were crowned, is once again Servias coronation-place.

A melancholy monument of former greatness, it stands upon rising ground

about a mile and a half from the town, and a long straight avenue, fit

background for a royal procession, leads up to it. The church itself,

built in 1210 by St. Sava, still stands. Here he crowned his eldest

brother and announced him as Prvovenchani, the "First Crowned." Of

the monastery founded some years later by the said Stefan nothing now

exists but a few rocky masses of wall. The Turks wrecked the royal

building, the richest monastery in Servia, and left the church in ruins.

The church is Byzantine in character, with a large cupola and two

smaller ones (all three restorations), and a round apse. It is

barrel-vaulted, and has two tiny chapels. The walls are still covered

with old frescoes, for fortunately the monastery is too poor to afford

re-decorating. It has been frescoed twice. The upper layer, which shows

strong Italian influence and might indeed be by an Italian hand, dates

from the sixteenth century--an interesting fact, as it shows that though

under Turkish rule, the monastery must then have still been fairly rich.

The lower layer, which is visible where the upper is broken away, I

believe to be contemporaneous with the church, but could get no

information at all about it. Half the building has been restored and

roofed. The other end is entirely in ruins; its tall tower only is well

preserved.

In the side walls of the ruins are blocked-up openings. I was told they

were doors, they looked like windows. Where the blocking stones are

loose, you can see the fresco that clings to the sides and sills--fresco

of the earlier kind, showing that the openings were blocked previous to

the re-painting of the walls. One of these openings was built up at each

coronation, I was told--a curious custom that requires explanation. All

that I could learn was that the "doorways" proved the "fact," and the

"fact" accounted for the "doorways." Six kings of the old days were

crowned here, it is said. The first was Stefan Prvovenchani; who the

others were I have failed to learn. The personages of Servian history

are apt to loom large through a fog of uncertainty and to elude all

attempts at exact information. The tradition of coronation has been

revived, and Alexander Obrenovich was here crowned king. It was just a

week before the day appointed for the coronation of Edward VII. when I

stood in the roofless ruins of the hall of Servia's kings, and I felt

glad that we were at the other end of Europe when the Turks came. In the

archway under the tower are some fairly preserved frescoes, and a

crowned figure, said to be a portrait of Stefan Prvovenchani himself,

stares from the ruins of the building raised to glorify his line. The

likeness, I take it, is a purely fancy one.

These were the last old frescoes I saw in Servia. All of them tell the

same tale, namely, that judging by the architecture, the costume,

furniture, and various articles for domestic use that appear in them,

the Servians of those days were not behind Europe in general

civilisation. My guide, a friendly young monk, knew naught of

architecture, and his ideas of history were but vague.

As we came out of the church, up came a second monk, a young man with a

dark flat face, coal-black hair, and a strange Eastern cast of

countenance that seemed oddly familiar to me. He greeted me at once, and

began a long tale of how he had met me at Ostrog, in Montenegro, the

year before. The other monk and my Servian companion cried, naturally

astounded, "This gentleman says that he knows you!" It turned out that

he was a pupil of the monk at the chapel of Our Lady among the rocks,

by Podgoritza. "You too," said he to me, "know him"; and he spoke of him

with great affection and reverence, and accounted him holy. I was deeply

interested to find that the gentle ascetic of the Albanian frontier was

revered in Central Servia. That I, a Londoner, should be the one to

bring news of him seemed to me not a little strange. But to the black

monk there was nothing strange about it. "He said that God guided your

footsteps," said he, and he added, as an explanation to the others, "She

is the friend of the Montenegrins." After this, I had to go and take jam

and water and coffee with the Archimandrite, and tell how I had been to

the little chapel that very Easter and had received the hermit's Easter

greeting. I said good-bye to the kindly, simple-minded monastery, and I

returned to the worldly suspicions of civic life.

The Nachelnik never appeared in the afternoon, and I determined not to

say anything about it. But when my friend and champion reappeared, he

asked me point-blank as to how the Nachelnik had behaved on the

afternoon's drive, and there was no help for it. He flew off in a rage

to attack the Nachelnik. He came back even more angry. The Nachelnik had

said that he had decided he would not be mixed up with the affair and

had then turned the tables on him and questioned him as to all I had

done in the morning. "What did she do? Where did she go? With whom did

she speak? What did she draw? Did she talk politics, and what did you

tell her?" "I told her," he said furiously, "that the Servians are fools

and that it is a waste of her time to come and see them. And she shall

stay if she wishes, and draw anything she likes!" He begged me not to

think that they were all so ignorant. The Nachelnik of Kraljevo was in

fact the only official in Servia who was unpleasant to me, and even he

succumbed more or less to a British passport.

I left Kraljevo pleasantly enough, for the last person I saw as I

rattled out of the town was the young black monk smiling and waving his

hand.

CHAPTER XVI

KRUSHEVATZ

Upon the eve of the day when Tsar Lazar was to go forth, says the

ballad, his wife, Militza the Empress, spoke to him, saying, "O Tsar

Lazar, thou golden crown of Servia, to-morrow thou goest to Kosovo and

with thee thy chieftains and thy followers. Not one man dost thou leave

behind thee at the castle who may carry news to thee at Kosovo and

return again to me. Thou takest with thee all my nine brethren, the nine

sons of old Yug Bogdan. O Tsar Lazar, I beseech thee, of my nine

brothers leave me one of them."

And Tsar Lazar answered, "O Militza, my lady and my empress, which one

of thy brethren dost thou wish should remain with thee in the white

castle?" And she said, "Leave me Boshko Jugovich." And he answered, "O

my lady Militza, speak thyself to Boshko Jugovich the barjaktar

(standard-bearer), and bid him, with my blessing, yield up his standard

and remain with thee."

[Illustration: TSAR LAZAR'S CASTLE.]

Now when the white dawn broke and the gates of the town were thrown

open, the lady Militza went down, and she stood before the gateway, and

behold, there came the soldiers upon their horses, rank upon rank, and

at their head was Boshko the barjaktar upon a bay steed, and he

glittered with gold, and the golden fringes of the standard hung upon

his shoulders. Then the Empress Militza turned towards him, and she

seized the bay by the bridle; she stayed her brother by the gateway, and

softly she spoke to him, saying, "O my brother Boshko Jugovich! the Tsar

has given thee to me, and he gives thee his blessing. Thou shalt not go

to the fight at Kosovo. Thou shalt yield up thy banner and remain with

me at Krushevatz." But Boshko the barjaktar replied unto her, "Go thou

to the white tower, my sister. Not for all Krushevatz would I return

with thee, nor will I give up my standard, that all men may say 'Boshko

Jugovich is afear'd; he dare not go to Kosovo to shed his blood for the

cross and to die with his fellows,'" And he spurred his horse through

the gates. Then followed old Yug Bogdan and seven sons in battle array

and all in order, and they would not look upon her. Then behold! the

youngest, Vojina Jugovich, and he led the Tsar's grey war-horse, which

was decked and trapped with gold. And he too denied her, and he urged

the steed through the gateway. And when the lady Militza heard his words

she fell down upon the cold stones, and her soul fainted within her.

And lo, there came Tsar Lazar himself, and when he saw the Empress the

tears flowed down his cheeks. He called to his faithful follower,

Goluban, saying, "Goluban, my trusty servant, alight from thy steed,

take my lady by her white hand and lead her to the tower. May God's

blessing be upon thee! Thou comest not with me to the fight at Kosovo,

for thou shalt remain with my lady here in the white castle." And when

Goluban heard these words the tears ran down his face. He alighted from

his horse, he took his lady by her white hand and he led her to the

tower. But he could not withstand the desire which burnt in his heart;

he mounted his horse and he rode to the fight at Kosovo.

When the next day dawned, there came two black ravens from the wide

field of Kosovo, and they settled upon the white tower. And one of them

croaked, and the other cried, "Is this the tower of the mighty Lazar?"

The Empress Militza heard them, and she stepped forth from the white

castle, crying, "God save you, O ye ravens! Have ye seen the meeting of

two mighty armies?" And they answered her, saying, "God save thee, O

Empress. We have flown from Kosovo field. We have seen the meeting of

the mighty armies, and the leader of either is slain. Lo, lady, here

comes thy servant Milutin, and he sways in his saddle from right to

left; for he has seventeen wounds upon him, and his blood streams upon

his steed." And the Empress called to him, "O Milutin, why hast thou

deserted thy Tsar at Kosovo?" But Milutin answered her, "Take me from my

horse, O lady; wash me with cold water; give me red wine, for I am

sorely stricken." And she did as he begged her. And when he had come to

himself a little, she prayed of him, "O Milutin, what has come to pass

upon the field of Kosovo? Where is the glorious Tsar Lazar? Where are

old Yug Bogdan and his nine sons?" Then the serving-man began to speak.

"Lady, they all lie on the field at Kosovo by the cold waters of the

Sitnitza, and where Tsar Lazar fell there are many weapons broken, and

the Serbs lie thick around him. And old Yug Bogdan and his nine sons

fell in the front of the fight: all are dead, lady, and the last that

fell was Boshko Jugovich. Milosh is dead that slew Tsar Murad, and dead

also is Banovich Strahinja that fought knee-deep in blood. All lie dead

on the field at Kosovo; all save Yuk Brankovich, whose name be for ever

accursed. He betrayed the Emperor; upon the field of battle he betrayed

all glorious Lazar!"

* * * * *

On the hill in the midst of Krushevatz there stands one shattered lonely

fragment of the white castle up against the sky--all that is left of

Tsar Lazar's palace. But time has worked its revenges, and the Turkish

mosque that was built of its stones in the town below is now too but a

heap of ruins.

The church, which dates from the days of the Great Tsar Dushan (_circa_

1350), alone has survived the warring of the nations. Used as a powder

magazine by the Turks and all the interior decoration destroyed, the

exquisite details of its tracery still make Krushevatz worth a journey;

its delicate pierced work, round windows laced with stone, strange

monsters and wild Byzantine fancies--in a word, its barbaric

imaginativeness, struck me as more characteristic of its land and times

than anything I met with in Servia.

[ILLUSTRATION: CHURCH, KRUSHEVATZ, SIDE WINDOW OF APSE.]

Here as elsewhere the restorations are not skilful, but Servia should

always be deeply grateful to Alexander Karageorgevich, who with such

means as he could command saved her most interesting monuments from

complete ruin. Better an unsatisfactory roof than no roof at all.

For a brief time, during the first reign of Michael Obrenovich,

Krushevatz was again the capital. Now it is merely an industrious and

flourishing country town, and a most friendly one. No one suspected me,

although I came with no letter of introduction, nor was I

cross-questioned about personal and political matters.

From Krushevatz I drove to Stalacs, and at Stalacs is a railway station.

Ponies, post-waggons, carriages and mountain tracks, and the life of the

old world were all left behind, and I was soon whirled back to Belgrade,

where the pale blue youth in the police bureau welcomed me back, and

forbade the officials in search of town dues to open my bundle. And when

for the goodness--knows--how--manyeth and last time he stamped my

passport, that I might leave Belgrade altogether, he remarked

cheerfully, "And now, Gospoditza, please speak well of us. Tell all your

friends to come to Servia, and come back yourself."

* * * * *

POSTSCRIPT

Recent political events make it necessary to add a few words to the

account of Servia written in 1902. That the King was not popular I was

aware before I went to Servia, but I was unprepared to find things at

such an acute stage. Through all the land I did not hear one good word

spoken of him. That he was more fool than knave was the best said of

him. For him there was nothing but contempt. What was said of Draga by

an exasperated people it is impossible to repeat. The hatred of her was

deep and bitter. As to the truth of the accusations, I have no means of

judging. I can only say that they were believed not only in Servia, but

in Montenegro, and by the Serbs of Old Servia. And everywhere I heard of

Peter Karageorgevich, so that there was no possible doubt as to who

would be the successor. I was even asked by partisans of his to write up

their cause in England. The only English tourist, I was told, who had

lately written about Servia, had done great harm by writing up the

Obrenovich. People were very bitter indeed about this, and begged me to

tell England the true state of things. That the King must go, and that

at no distant date, seemed certain. That his fate would be so terrible,

I had no idea. Nor would it have been so, I believe, but for his

headstrong obstinacy.

His father, in spite of his many and glaring faults, never entirely lost

the affection of the army. He was of the handsome, dashing, jovial type

that wins popularity, but the unfortunate Alexander had none of his

fathers redeeming points. His short and luckless reign, which began

with an act of treachery, was a series of hopeless blunders; he had five

_coups d'état_ and twenty-four Ministries. His fatal entanglement with

Draga Maschin was the beginning of the end. Heedless of the entreaties

of both his parents and blind towards the duty he owed his country, he

paid no attention to the prayers of friends, relatives, or statesmen,

and married her in July 1900. He never saw either his father or his

mother again, and his country never forgave him. To save a revolution, I

was told it was prepared to do so even then, in the eleventh hour, if he

would divorce Draga. The people viewed with growing dismay the elevation

of her relatives, and the rumoured scheme to make her brother heir

provoked the final outburst. The truth about what took place in the

early hours of June 11 will probably never be exactly known. Those who

took part in the tragedy were too drunk with blood and passion to give a

coherent account, and there are at least half a dozen versions. Nor does

it greatly matter. The fact remains that the mass of the Serbs desired

the removal of the King and Queen; it was effected, and many of those

who shuddered at their awful end said, "Since it is done, it is well

done." More than this, very many hailed it as a holy and righteous act,

a cleansing of the temple, a purification, a casting out of

abominations; nor could I make any of those who were of this opinion see

it from any other point of view. The King and Queen, they held, had

sinned against the laws of God and man, and were justly executed. "They

could have been tried," I said. "They could not. One or other of the

Powers would have intervened, to further its own plans." This is

probably true. "They could have been expelled," I said. "We have tried

that too often," was the grim reply; "with an expelled monarch in an

enemy's land, there is no peace. Their guilt was known. Alexander could

have abdicated any time in the last two years. He had his choice, and

preferred to remain on the throne. The Court was no better than a house

of ill-fame, and the Servians who tolerated it were a scandal to

Europe." And this they honestly believed.

In Montenegro I found the view taken of female virtue was curiously Old

Testament. It is the pride of the Montenegrin that a woman may travel by

day or night in his land alone and in perfect safety. But Draga they

considered to have overstepped all right to protection or consideration.

"All such women ought to be shot," said the elder of a large group of

men briefly. The others agreed, and I saw by their eyes that they meant

it. Things look so different from the other end of Europe that I caught

myself reflecting that, after all, two penn'orth of cartridges would

save us many most unsavoury proceedings in the Divorce Court, and settle

matters once for all about as fairly. Only those, and they are few, who

have travelled in West Europe knew how the deed would be regarded there,

and understood the terrible nature of the step. These foretold that the

reign of King Peter would be brief and troublous.

It is idle to speculate about the future. It is equally idle to pretend

that the events which have raised King Peter to the throne of his

grandfather can be regarded in the light of an unmixed blessing to the

nation. The crime of blood-guiltiness always has to be atoned for, and

the Serbs must work out their own salvation. Meanwhile it must not be

forgotten that they cannot fairly be judged by twentieth-century

standards. Servia has had nearly four centuries of Turkish rule. While

West Europe was advancing in humanity, civilisation, and the arts of

peace, the people of the Balkans rotted helpless under a ruler who,

whatever other good qualities he may possess, has never yet done

anything to improve the lot of the peoples under him. And should these

people sin, and sin heavily, those nations who have helped to keep the

Turk in Europe, and so to prolong their degradation and demoralisation,

are not innocent of all share in the causes of their crime, and have no

right to throw stones.

PART III

MONTENEGRO AND OLD SERVIA

1903

"If a man be Gracious and Courteous to Strangers,

it shews he is a Citizen of the World and that his

Heart is no Island cut off from other Lands, but a

Continent that joynes them."

CHAPTER XVII

KOLASHIN--ANDRIJEVITZA--BERANI--PECH

We are apt to speak of the Serbs of Servia as "the" Servians, and to

forget that modern Servia is a recent state mapped out arbitrarily by

the Powers, and that the truest representatives of the Great Servian

Empire are the Montenegrins, who for five centuries have fought "the foe

of their faith and freedom" and have lived for an ideal, the redemption

of the nation. It has been said that every nation gets the government

that it deserves. If so, Montenegro has deserved greatly. Instances, it

is true, have not been wanting of the Serb tendency to split into

parties, which has been so fatal to the Serb people and now threatens to

ruin modern Servia; but in the hour of need Montenegro has always found

a strong man to guide her and has had the sense to trust to his

guidance. She can point with pride to a line of Petrovich princes who,

even in the darkest and most hopeless days, have striven not only to

maintain freedom, but to train their people worthily as a nation. And

herein lies the main difference between Montenegrins and Servians. The

Montenegrins during all these years have been learning to obey, while

the Servians have learnt to oppose all forms of government. The subjects

of Prince Nikola are disciplined and self-respecting; of those of King

Peter it has been not inaptly remarked that where there are four

soldiers there are five generals.

We have seen the Montenegrin in his towns, let us follow him into his

mountains.

Kolashin (with a long "a") can be reached in one day of sixteen hours

from Podgoritza. It is better to make two easy ones of it and to enjoy

the way. With a very dark youth, one Boshko, and a chestnut pony, I left

Podgoritza at five one morning in June. Up we went through the wild,

rugged valley of the Moracha, where the green water hurries between huge

limestone crags, and on up, up, over loose stones, till by midday we

were in an aching wilderness of hot limestone on the crest of the hill

and were following the direction of the Mala Rjeka ("Little River"), a

tributary of the Moracha, which flows in the valley below. One tree with

an ink-black shadow cooled us for an hour. Boshko then began to discuss

our chances of shelter for the night. Ljeva Rjeka, the usual

halting-place, was bad, he said; moreover, he knew no one there. His own

home, on the other hand, was not far. It was not "very good," but

"pretty good." Would I sleep "kod nas"? (_chez nous_). I looked at

Boshko, reflected that "kod nas" would have interesting peculiarities,

and decided to risk it.

We started off again. I had three loaves of rye bread on my saddle, and

milk, boiled and tasting strongly of wood smoke, can be got at every

cottage, so that there was no fear of starvation. Goat, sheep, and cow

milk is the staple food of the mountain people. We fell in with several

caravans, and in company with a long string of men and beasts went down

a green and fertile valley till we came to a point where the telegraph

posts which had hitherto accompanied us and bound us to the outer world

went one way and Boshko indicated another. "Our house is yonder." "Is it

far, thy house?"--"One hour and a half." "And Ljeva Rjeka?"--"One hour."

We left the caravan, the path, and the telegraph posts, forded die

stream and struck into a trackless wilderness--that is to say, that only

a native could have found the way. It was far too bad for the horse to

carry me over. On we scrambled. After an hour of it, I asked, "How far?"

"Yet one hour and a half," said Boshko cheerfully. It grew late and

chilly; there was no sign that any human being had ever been this way

before, and we were over 3000 feet up. We trudged on almost in silence

for another hour. Then again, "How far?" and again, "Josh jedan sahat i

po," said Boshko thoughtfully, looking for landmarks in the waning

light. I bore up as best I could. To the third "How far?" he replied,

"It is now but a little way." We walked another hour, and then made a

rapid descent over loose stones into a forlorn and darksome valley

fenced in by cliffs, the pony floundering badly. A white church gave

promise of habitations. "My village," said Boshko, pointing to some

scattered hovels, "Brskut." He proposed calling on the priest, "the

handsomest popa in Montenegro." I, however, would not then have turned

from my path to see the handsomest man in the world. "Kod nas" proved to

be almost the best house in the valley.

We arrived at 7.30. I was so glad to see anything with a roof on that I

did not even shudder at the sight of it. It was a shanty of loose

stones. The family's room was reached by a wooden ladder, the cattle

shed was below it. "Mother" came out to greet us, and was at first

struck speechless by the sight of me. She reminded Boshko that they had

no beds, to which he replied airily that it was of no consequence. I

went up the ladder into pitch darkness. Someone lit a pine splinter in

the ashes of the fire and dragged up the only chair. This serves as a

sort of throne for the head of the family. It is large with widespread

arms, and has legs not more than three or four inches high, to suit the

comfort of gentlemen used to sitting cross-legged on the ground.

"Mother" most kindly took my boots off and set a huge wooden bowl of

fresh milk on my knees. People came out of dark corners, blew up the

fire, slung the caldron over it, threw on logs, and as many flocked in

to see me as the place would hold. It was a narrow slip of a room, about

twelve feet by six, with the hearthstone at one end of it, and a barrel

that served as larder. The smoke surged round the room. Father, mother,

brother, brothers-in-law, sisters, sisters-in-law, uncles, and friends

all shook hands with me and bade me welcome. They were all bare-legged,

and their clothes were dropping off them in rags. I was vaguely

conscious of a mass of faces haloed in wood smoke; several huge warriors

towered up to the roof; a very courteous and aged veteran, to whom the

chair probably belonged, was smoking his chibouk by my side, then I

nodded forward and should have been asleep in a minute, but they woke me

by laughing. Not only had they the excitement of seeing me, but we had

brought the latest news of the death of the King of Servia, and the

conversation was lively as they supped. Here as elsewhere, they said

the deed was "strashno" (horrible), but that it was a good thing he was

dead. But in most instances the extreme loyalty of the Montenegrins for

their own Prince caused them to express disgust for the officers who

betrayed their King while "still eating his bread."

Supper over, we went into the next room and went to bed. They gave me a

large wooden bench against the wall. I put my cloak under me and my

waterproof over me, and a man took off his strukka, folded it, and put

it under my head. They swept the floor, spread sheets of thick felt,

stripped the children and rolled them in pieces of blanket, took the

cartridges out of their various weapons; I heard a murmured prayer, they

lay down in rows on the floor, and the whole twelve of us were very soon

asleep. I don't think I stirred till I was wakened by the family getting

up, and found the owner of the strukka waiting to take it from under my

head. I woke to a horrified consciousness that I had not wound up my

watch. But it was still ticking, and said 3.30 a.m. I slept sweetly till

six, then washed my hands and face in the stream in Montenegrin style,

and returned to have breakfast with Boshko, who, in elegant

_déshabille_, was loading his revolver on the doorstep. His mother had

captured and washed his only shirt and was now drying it at the fire, so

that the upper part of his person was in a very airy condition. We

breakfasted amicably out of the same bowl, and "Mother" boiled me a

glassful of sugar and milk so sweet that I could hardly swallow it. But

I had to, for it was meant for a great treat. Boshko was so pleased with

his home comforts that he proposed we should stay "kod nas" for several

days, and I had some difficulty in tearing him away.

It was half-past seven before he got into his shirt and saddled the

pony. "Mother" kissed me when I left, and refused at first to take any

payment, as she said I was a friend of Boshko. Poor thing, she had done

all she could for me, and had even given me the last of their precious

sugar. When the money was really in her hand, her joy was great, and she

thanked me over and over again. We started in pouring rain. "You had

better not mount," said Boshko cheerfully, and made straight for what

looked like an inaccessible cliff. The path was the worst I have ever

tried. We crawled up an awful zigzag. It was as much as he could do to

urge the pony up it; twice it was near rolling over, for the streaming

rain made the foothold precarious. Then I slipped over the edge, and

Boshko was badly scared, but when I stuck on a bush and crawled up

again, he proposed that we should add four hours to our journey by going

to see a very beautiful lake which he vaguely said was "over there." I

refused; we scrambled up about 1000 feet, and found ourselves safely on

the top. We were soon over the pass and descending the other side into a

magnificent wooded valley through dripping grass. The pony sat down and

slid, and at the bottom we struck the proper track again. Boshko took

stock of the heavens, foretold speedy sunshine, and suggested taking

shelter meanwhile at the nearest house. He was a casual young thing,

with no idea of either time or distance, and loved exhibiting me.

We were warmly welcomed in a big wooden chalet, and passed an hour with

the most delightful people. The teacher, the captain (a beauty), the

priest, and some dozen friends sat in a ring round the heap of logs that

blazed in the centre. They made room, and insisted on boiling milk for

me and roasting an egg in the wood ashes, because I had come so far to

see them. "Where is King Peter?" was the topic of the day. His election

was not generally expected in Montenegro. Most folk I met thought the

Serbs would proclaim a republic. I never could resist laughing at the

idea of a Servian republic, and was snapped at rather fiercely for doing

so one day. "Why do you laugh? It is not a joke." "I laugh because

everyone in Servia will wish to be President. That will be a joke."

There was a solemn silence. Then someone, with a twinkle in his eye,

said, "There is no doubt she _has_ been in Servia!" But nobody liked the

remark. The Montenegrin is hurt if things Servian are criticised by an

outsider. The Servian, on the other hand, usually tries to glorify

himself at the expense of his relations, and speaks of the Montenegrins

as a savage tribe. In this he errs fatally.

A youth in an exceedingly bad temper came in, sat down and explained his

wrongs--an affair of florins--at the top of a most powerful voice. The

roof rang with his wrath. The company took it most stolidly, blew clouds

of smoke, and let him finish. An elder then argued the matter through to

him. All nodded approval. This annoyed him, and he fairly bellowed.

Someone pointed him out to me with a smile, drew one from me, and cried

out at once, "The Gospoditza is laughing at you!" which had the effect

of stopping him suddenly. Then the girl who was sitting next me gave me

a little poke, and looking up, said with a pleasant smile, "He is my

husband; he is always like that!" and she seemed as much amused as

everyone else. Nor did she display any emotion when he strode out still

bubbling.