MORATSHA
Niksich was full of smallpox and fever, and, as there was a great
abundance of tents captured with the city, I took one, with an extra
baggage-horse and his leader, and started for Moratsha. The wide plain
into which we entered after leaving the hills above Niksich was a
great pasture land, mottled as I never saw land before with mushrooms.
The abundance was extraordinary, but nothing would induce a
Montenegrin to eat one. We halted for our first night on the edge of a
magnificent natural meadow, where a shepherd had built his hut and was
feeding his flocks, and we took advantage of his presence to enjoy
some security against the wolves, pitching our tent in a little grove
close to him and picketing our horses between the tent and his hut. He
and his sons were on guard by turns all night, and the howling of the
tantalized wolves came clearly to us at times with, at long intervals,
the reports of the guns which were fired to keep them at a distance.
They were so near at one time that I got up and fired my fowling-piece
out of the tent, and we kept lights burning all night to prevent them
from attacking our horses. In the course of the night a thunderstorm
came up, and, as we had pitched the tent in a hollow to secure freedom
from stones in our beds, the rain, washed out our tent-pegs, and
the tent came down on us in our sleep. In the morning I sent to the
shepherd for a lamb for breakfast for the men, and he sent us what I
took for a full-grown sheep, so large and fat was it, and I sent it
back, asking for a lamb. He replied that it was a spring lamb, and
the smallest he had. The price of it was about two shillings, and for
another he offered to dress it for us.
From there we sent back the tent, and the following night we slept
at Velje Duboko, at the bottom of one of the ravines which make the
surprises of traveling in that country so great. You proceed along a
rolling plain with no suspicion of the cañon before you, and suddenly
find yourself on the verge of a cliff, looking down into a valley
hundreds of feet deep. Duboko lay by the river's margin fifteen
hundred feet below us, to be reached only by a winding journey of an
hour, though the shepherds carried on conversation from cliff to cliff
above. Here a momentary surprise by the Turkish bands has now and
then been possible, but never an occupation of the country. The
picturesqueness of the valley of the Duboko above the village can be
rarely surpassed by wild landscape, and the whole section, the centre
of which is the stronghold of Moratsha, is of a most interesting
character, utterly unlike the Czernagora proper.
At the convent of Moratsha I found civilization and comfort. The
hegumenos, a Dalmatian by birth, but a patriot of the first quality,
and a very militant Christian, made me most welcome. I had some money
from the English and Russian committees to distribute amongst the
needy wounded and the families of the killed, and the gratitude of the
naïve hearts was touching to a degree I never saw in richer countries.
But what most surprised them was that some of it came from the
English. "Why, English!" exclaimed one old woman, as she started back
when told that I was English; "they are a kind of Turk." All the world
there thought only of the English as the allies of the Turks, but the
hospitality they felt, and could show only in trifles, was unbounded.
I had brought with me a battle-axe I had found in the stores of
Niksich and taken as my part of the booty, but had not noticed that it
had never been sharpened, so that it was useless for cutting. One of
the men at the convent took it, and with a common whetstone (for there
was nothing in the nature of a grindstone in the place) brought it to
razor edge,--a job which a carpenter alone can appreciate; and, when
I tried to give him something for it, he put his hands behind him
and then ran out of sight. A little fellow, not over four years old,
stumbled upstairs to my room to bring me an ear of green maize, the
greatest delicacy they know, and another ran to me in the road to
offer me a huge and fine potato he was nursing with pride. The walnuts
were just then eatable, and one of the men brought me a quantity in
his closed hands so that I should not see what he had, and, emptying
them into my hands, ran away with all speed lest I should give him
something in return. They had been carefully cracked and removed from
the shells, as the most delicate attention he could show me.
The convent is an old-time stronghold, but, dominated on three sides
by hills which look down into its quadrangle, it would be untenable to
rifle fire. It was founded by Stefan Nemanides, son of Bolkan, Prince
of the Zeta (a term which comprised all Montenegro and the Berdas),
and eldest son of Stefan, Emperor of Servia. The Romanesque church,
which occupies the centre of the quadrangle, was built about A.D.
1250, but, having been burnt out by the Turks, it was restored in
1400, the walls being uninjured, and it has never been since damaged;
and the frescoes in the chapel, which are older than those in the
church, are dated 1420. There are some in the church painted later by
a monk from Mount Athos, but decidedly inferior to those in the little
chapel.
I was hardly in shelter at the convent when the rains set in, and for
nearly two weeks I was weather-bound, for in that wild country, with
no roads but the tracks the horses wear in the ground, traveling in
the mud of rainy weather is out of the question. In a lull of actual
downpour we made an excursion to Kolashin, four hours away, passing
through the scene of the defeat of Mehemet Ali Pasha. The hegumenos,
who commanded the half battalion of the monastery, showed me the line
of the fighting, and described the battle, and certainly it was one of
the most extraordinary battles even in the history of this fighting
people.
The Turks came from Kolashin by a road which debouches into the valley
by a steep descent of about five hundred feet, and they had crowned
the heights and planted their battery before the clans could gather,
since these had been scattered along a line of thirty or forty miles,
uncertain what point would be attacked. Voivode Vucovich, hereditary
chief of the Wassoivich, with half a battalion of his own people, was
watching and following the Turks from a distance, and, when he saw
that the movement was intended for the convent, he sent runners
to Peiovich in Drobniak and warned the convent, where was a half
battalion of local forces. The regulars formed on the ridge,
intrenched themselves, and sent the irregulars, Albanians of the tribe
of the Mirdites, down to lead the attack. As soon as these were well
entangled in the intricacies of the valley, seeing only the half
battalion of Moratsha posted in front of them, Vucovich led an attack
down the slope in their rear, getting between them and the regulars,
and the Moratshani made a sortie from the convent, which is inclosed
by a strong wall, and attacked in front. The Albanians fought
desperately for a short time, but, attacked on both sides, though by
forces much inferior in the aggregate to their own, they finally broke
in panic. A large body ran into a ravine, which proved a _cul de sac_,
for the end up which they hoped to escape was so precipitous that few
escaped the infuriated Montenegrins following them, who, when the
fight was over, counted eleven hundred dead. The rest of the Albanians
continued their flight to Kolashin, the panic involving the regulars,
who insisted on returning, and, in spite of all remonstrances of the
officers, went back.
The hegumenos, Mitrofan Banovich, whose name deserves record as well
as any I heard of in this land of heroes, introduced to me the captain
of the Moratsha battalion, who had taken part in the fight. He had
lost his son in it, and of his four hundred men twenty-five had been
killed and forty put _hors de combat_ from wounds which disabled them
from fighting. The Wassoivich had exhausted their ammunition and
the unwounded of the Moratshani were only enough to carry away the
wounded; had the Turkish regulars maintained the attack, there could
have been no further resistance, the way would have been open to take
the Montenegrins about Danilograd in the rear, and Suleiman would have
had a clear course.
The captain told me of one brave Albanian who had fallen wounded from
his horse and taken shelter in a crevice of the rocks, and who had
killed two Montenegrins and wounded a third before he was disposed of
by one of them getting behind him and shooting him through a crevice
in the sheltering rocks. The manner of his death and that of those
of his assailants illustrate the war manners of the Montenegrins so
completely that I was interested in the case more than in other heroic
details of the fight. The Montenegrin makes a question of _amour
propre_ in attacking his enemies face to face and by preference with
the cold steel. Enemies who fall in the general mêlée by rifle-shot
he never considers his "heads;" he claims only those he has killed
in hand-to-hand combat. This Albanian was the standard-bearer of his
clan, i.e. the hereditary chieftain, and to kill him in hand-to-hand
combat was the ambition of the three who attacked him in succession,
the shooting from behind being only a matter of necessity.
I remembered at that moment a correspondence I had had years before
with Virchow, on the Pelasgi, and their probable relation with the
Albanians, whom he regarded as the descendants of the Pelasgi; and,
thinking of his collection of skulls, I asked the captain if he knew
the spot where the body of the Albanian lay, and if the bones were
still there, and when he assured me that they were where he fell, I
offered him two florins to bring me the skull, which he did. It was of
a man in the prime of life, with the sutures scarcely closed, and only
two teeth lacking, and none unsound, and I sent it on to the great
craniologist, who replied with warm thanks. The skull, he said, was
the finest for intellectual development in his collection, and he read
a paper on it before the Imperial German Academy. He was so impressed
by its character that he was disposed to consider it as an exceptional
skull, and wrote to one of the Austrian officers in Montenegro to ask
him to make an effort to send some more, and these, though not,
like that of the standard-bearer, of unquestionably pure Albanian
stock,--for the aristocracy never intermarry with any other blood than
that of their class and race,--all possessed the same intellectual
characteristics, justifying him in placing the Albanian at the head of
the races of Europe for intellectual capacity.
We reconnoitred Kolashin, and found it an almost open fortress, which
was commanded by hills around, and so near that it could be made
untenable by rifle fire, which could have been poured in from both
sides of the river that ran by it, which, though then a swollen
torrent, was under ordinary conditions fordable anywhere. The Turks
seemed indisposed to provoke an exchange of shots, and did not trouble
us, though we went within easy rifle-shot inspecting the works through
my field-glass, and, before leaving, took our luncheon in full sight
of the garrison, who were working on some trenches intended for
protection from a _coup de main_ from the river. I made a sketch
of the fortress, and we withdrew tranquilly. In fact, the Turkish
garrisons, so far as my own experience went, were never disposed to
begin a fight, and if not molested they never annoyed us by firing on
us. The poor fellows only wanted to be left alone. They were, when
prisoners, the most amiable people possible, and at one time I saw
many in Cettinje, prisoners taken in the fights about Podgoritza,
enjoying the freedom of the place and making themselves useful to the
women, bringing wood and water, and as inoffensive as children. Many
of them, probably young men without domestic ties, refused to return
when the treaty of peace was signed, but, with a docility which was as
remarkable as their obedience under the atrocious treatment of their
own government, only asked for their bread and toleration. I have seen
in Cettinje, when the men were all on the frontier fighting, Turkish
prisoners enough to take possession of the place if they had been
disposed to rise and make a fight with sticks and stones. This was one
of the most touching phases of that curious war, a warfare such as the
world will hardly see again.
The day after our trip to Kolashin the rain set in again, and we
passed nearly a fortnight more at the convent before the weather broke
and I was able to set out, taking with me a gang of men to make the
roads passable for my horse, so much had the rains wrought havoc with
the face of the land. The flooded state of the country and unfordable
rivers forbade the trip to Wassoivich, and I was obliged, to my great
regret, to relinquish it and to go back to Cettinje, having lost
nearly three weeks in the rain at Moratsha. Returning by a different
route from that by which I came, I crossed the Duboko at a point much
lower down than that of my first striking it, where it makes the most
magnificent trout stream I have ever seen. The trout from it feed
the Moratsha and the Lake of Scutari. In the Duboko they are caught,
according to the statement of a native of the district, as heavy as
forty pounds; and Mr. Green, the English consul at Scutari, told me
that they were sometimes caught much larger in the lake. There were
plenty in the Zeta at Niksich and at Danilograd, and I saw one
brought to the Prince's tent one day, during the siege, which weighed
twenty-two pounds, shot by one of the men, for they refused all kinds
of bait, and were only taken by shooting or the net; or, horrible to
relate, by dynamite, the ruinous effects of which on the population of
the river the Prince was too easygoing to forbid. I have seen one of
the spring basins, from which the Zeta takes its rise, carpeted by
tiny trout and other fishes, killed by the explosions of dynamite,
which rarely killed, but only stunned, the larger fish, of which few
were retrieved even when stunned or killed. I one day remonstrated
indignantly with the Prince for this barbarous butchery, and told him
that if he permitted his men to carry it on his son would reign in a
fishless country, and he promised to forbid it; but the matter passed
from his memory in a day. The Duboko was a safe nursery for the fry,
for it was such a torrent that dynamite was useless, since it would
have been impossible to retrieve a fish if killed.
Our road lay through the district of Rovtcha, which is considered the
poorest for the agriculturist in all the Berdas. It is very hilly, and
the rock is, where we passed, a rotten slate which the rains and the
torrents cut away rapidly, carrying the alluvium down to the plains
and Lake of Scutari. Digging and bridging, we reached, early in the
afternoon, the village of Gornje-Rovtcha, and were then informed that
it would be impossible to reach another habitation that day, and that
the road passed through an immense forest infested by wolves, in which
we should be compelled to sleep if we held on. This I had no desire to
try, remembering our experience with the shepherds on the first night
out from Niksich. So we passed the hours to the dark in shooting at
a mark, and went to bed early. The house which was selected to be
honored by my repose, the best in the village, was of one room, from
which the animals were excluded, with the usual floor of beaten earth.
A huge bedstead of small fir poles, the only important piece of
furniture in it, was assigned to me, and the family--all women and
children--spread their rugs on the ground. After eating a supper
brought from the convent, and some potatoes, the only provision,
except a little coarse maize bread which the house afforded, we went
to bed. The bedstead was abundantly provided with straw, but nought
beside, and the fleas routed me from my first sleep and compelled me
to evacuate the premises. I took my mattress and went out where my
pony was picketed, and, spreading it in his lee, to break the cold
north wind fresh from the mountain, I tried to sleep.
The poor horse had supped miserably; a little barley from the convent
and some musty hay furnished by the woman of the house, but which even
in his hunger he refused to eat, left him ill-compensated for a hard
day's walk, and he turned his head to me now and then with a coaxing
whinney which was as plain a supplication for something to eat as I
could have made myself, but the only effect of which was to break my
doze as soon as begun, until I lost my patience with him, and gave him
a sound box on the ear, when he turned his head from me, and lay down
again. It made my heart ache to be unkind to him, for he was the
gentlest and most serviceable friend I had in Montenegro, but I could
get nothing to give him if I had paid a guinea the pound for it, and
he would not let me sleep. The intelligent brute felt what language
could not tell him, and ceased his complaint, though the blow I gave
him would hardly have killed a gad-fly on his hair; but it sufficed,
and gave me more discomfort than him, for I did not cease to reproach
myself for the ungrateful return for his fidelity. But I slept no
more, and watched the stars in their courses till the dawn.
A glass of milk and a crust of the bread I had brought from
the convent made my breakfast, and we pushed on to our next
stopping-place, the convent of Piperski Celia. The road lay for the
first hour through a forest of beeches and firs, the former the
finest, as timber, I ever saw--straight trunks, thirty or forty feet
to the first limb; in some places the beech being the exclusive wood,
and in others the fir, but all a luxuriant growth. Properly worked,
this forest would have made a great revenue for the principality.
Before the war it had been leased to a French company, and many trees
were lying in all stages of preparation for rafting down the Moratsha.
This was succeeded by a forest entirely of firs, also splendid trees,
and then we came into a region which was beyond all my experience or
imagination,--a wide and barren waste of rock, gray, glistening in
the now burning sun, and without a trace of vegetation that could be
recognized by the casual vision. There was no soil, and apparently
never had been any, and the silvery-gray of the lichenous limestone
blinded one with its glare in the sunlight. Midway in it we came on an
old Roman road, one of the finest pieces of antique engineering I ever
saw. In some places it was cut out of the solid rock like a dry canal,
the banks being nearly as high as our heads, and the ruts of the
chariot wheels were still there to show that the utter barrenness of
the land had existed the same from ancient time. It was probably the
great road from Dyrrachium to the upper Danube.
We reached the convent too late to get to Danilograd that night,
considering the condition of the roads, and I asked for shelter for
the night. Here, for the first time in my experience with Orthodox
convents, lodgings were refused me by the old hegumenos, and I
instantly ordered the horses to be loaded again, without attempting to
soften his surliness. A few minutes' talk with the captain who was
my escort showed him that I was a person too much in favor with the
Prince to be treated with such derision, and he came to offer me a
place to spread my mattress on a balcony exposed to the south wind and
the rain; then, having begun to relent, he went further, and offered
me a room, which I refused, and finally his own bed; but even that did
not break my inflexible resentment. When he became pathetic in his
repentance, however, I accepted a balcony whence I could look down on
the fortress of Spuz, within easy range of its sleeping batteries; and
then he offered me a supper, which I accepted, and we made peace. In
the morning he had become humanized, and he gave me breakfast and
showed me the body of St. Stephen, which is kept here in great
reverence (not the proto-martyr, but a Montenegrin of the same name).
The saint lay in state in a magnificent coffin, as if embalmed, and in
his hand was an old and time-yellowed embroidered handkerchief which
looked as if it might have been there a century or two. Remembering a
dear friend in the Orthodox church to whom the relics of its saints
were precious, I asked the hegumenos to sell me this handkerchief. He
replied that he dared not take it, but if I had the courage to do so
he would not prevent me, so I took the relic and put a twenty franc
piece in the treasury of the convent, and went my way.
I found the Prince in his villa at Orealuk, contemplating new
movements in a distant future, and, there being evidently nothing to
keep me there, I decided to go back to Cettinje and await what was
evidently the operation in view,--the movement on Antivari. My
poor little pony like myself, only half fed for days, was not in a
condition for rapid travel, and, though we pushed on in the rain,
which began again, as well as we could, when we reached Rieka it was
nearly sunset. Finding no preparation in the little house, our usual
shelter there, for any guest, after giving the horse what small ration
the village afforded, I resumed the journey at sunset. The horse had
come the last few miles very heavily; I had been in the saddle twelve
to fourteen hours each of the last two days, and the food I could get
for him was insufficient even for a Herzegovinian mountain pony, so
that it was hard work to get him to a pace above a slow walk as we
approached Rieka; but when we left the place he seemed to realize that
he had a work of necessity before him, and that the light would not
see him through it, and he showed that he understood the case, for he
needed neither spur nor whip to make his best pace over the very rough
and difficult road. In spite of his best efforts, the darkness fell on
us half way to Cettinje, with rain and a fog which made it impossible
to see the way before me, or even to see the horse's ears.
There was on that road, on the mountain which frames on that side
the plain of Cettinje, a passage of the bridle-path which even the
Montenegrins, used to it, passed always on foot; a sharp ridge, almost
an _arête_ of rock, which carries a path hardly wide enough for two
horses to pass each other on it, and on each side of which the rock
falls away in a steep precipice high enough to leave no hope of
survival from a fall down it. If I had dismounted I could not have
seen the path before me; to stop and pass the night there, drenched
and cold as I was, would have been fatal, for we were in the early
cold of autumn in a high country; there was nothing for it but to
trust to the horse, and I threw the bridle on his neck and left him
to himself. A false step was certain death for us both, but I had no
choice. He picked his way as if he were walking amongst eggs, slowly
but surely, and we descended into the plain of Cettinje at 10 P.M.
without a slip or an attempt on my part to interfere with the
discretion of my pony. If I had possessed even an acre of pasture or
a settled home where I could have turned out that good beast for the
rest of his days, I should never have allowed him to go to another
owner, for I knew that I owed him my life.
Of the following campaign, which resulted in the taking of Antivari
and Dulcigno, I saw nothing. The jealousy of Jonine had been so
excited by my always forestalling him with the news of the war, that
he persuaded the Prince not to advise me of the movement; so, while I
was waiting at Cettinje for the promised summons to join the staff,
the army moved across the country to Rieka secretly, and the first
warning we had of the movement was the firing of guns at Antivari. As
the Prince gave me no further thought, I waited comfortably, "at mine
ease in mine inn," for diplomacy to tie the ends of the well-spun out
controversy. Fighting was practically over and my campaign ended.