Through the Land of the Serb

A sudden and most violent thunderstorm on the hilltop drove us in a hurry to the stinking "Han," and the rain came down in such sheets that I was glad to be under cover, even in such a hole. It was full of Albanians. We waited full three-quarters of an hour and drank coffee. I was anxious to start as soon as the rain slackened, but Yakoub did not mean to get a wetting. He was very happy discoursing in Albanian to a large and admiring circle, to whom he was a great man. He told them, so he explained to me, that in my country the men always waited on the women, which they all agreed was a most extraordinary state of things. They all sat round and gazed at me as though I were possessed of peculiar power, and I returned their unblinking stare. "He and I both serve her," said Yakoub, pointing at Radovan, and Radovan murmured, "They think you are like an officer."

The rain lifted. Radovan went out with my saddle-bag. Yakoub rolled up his overcoat, and went down to strap it on his saddle. His parting words of affection, and the kisses which he lavished on the most casual acquaintances, always took much time; so to hurry matters I picked up the rest of our belongings, followed out on to the balcony, and handed down my waterproof and cape. Yakoub looked up from his saddle-girths. "Give me my Martini and my cartridges," he said. I dangled the belt down to him, tucked the rifle under my arm with my umbrella, and descended. He took his Martini with a beaming smile and a twinkle, most humorous, in his eyes. "Now thou hast served me?" he said; "it is right." He got off his little trick with great neatness, and was vastly pleased with himself. I have no doubt he left the rifle on purpose. He considered it a very fine weapon. It was of American make – Peabody-Martini. All the Turkish gendarmerie are thus armed. It carries only one cartridge, and according to Radovan is very inferior to the repeating rifles of the Montenegrins. The ride over the grassy uplands was splendid; the ground was ablaze with flowers, and the peaks rose violently blue from a black belt of pinewood. Yakoub hopped off his horse and played like a child. The hill sloped away steeply below us in a great incline of grass, down, down for full a thousand feet. His joy was to balance flat rocks on edge, and to send them spinning into the depths. He shouted with laughter as they leapt and span. Even Radovan, the serious, found it amusing, and we wasted some minutes over this pleasing pastime, which people who are inclined to giddiness would not have enjoyed.

It was quite dark when we got into Berani. The landlady rushed out when she heard our horse hoofs, for she was expecting her husband, who had also gone to Pech. Their only daughter, who had married and gone there a year ago, had just had her first child. It was a boy. The happy grandfather, on hearing the news (brought through by a caravan), leapt on his horse and rode over in hot haste. The joy of grand-mamma, aged thirty-one, was boundless. It is a grand thing for a woman to have a son, she said. Then all the men in the place go to her room and sing and dance and drink rakija, for joy that another man is born! Having seen "grandpapa," I was able to report that all was well; and she took us in and fed us on eggs and milk, for nothing else could be got at that time of night. I bakshished Yakoub for the last time, and told him it was "for coffee," which delighted him immensely, and he filled himself up with rakija until Radovan, who was exceedingly temperate, was scandalised. But no amount of liquor seemed to affect the Moslem's hard head.

We left for Andrijevitza early next morning, Radovan once more a happy man in a Montenegrin cap. As we passed the guard-house Yakoub flew out for a final farewell, and discovered, for the first time, that Radovan was a Montenegrin. This he considered a splendid joke; he slapped his thigh and shouted with laughter, and we parted very good friends. Frontier life contains many mysteries which I am unable to unravel. Radovan was much relieved when we had crossed the Montenegrin border, and I too felt that I had come home again. The vague, indescribable, ever-present dread of "something"; the sense of general insecurity that leads people to shut the window before speaking, to glance mechanically round to see who is within earshot; the general sense of oppression hanging like a cloud over all things, rolled away. We were in a land which is wild and rough, if you will, but safe and free.

I have no space to tell of all the fun I had on my return. Andrijevitza was pleased with me, and was lavishly hospitable. Time was flying, and I was due home. The herdsmen had driven their flocks to the summer pasturage, and I arranged that Radovan should pilot me over the mountains on the first fine day. We had a final grand night with the gusle, and then, having kissed the ladies and drunk stirrup-cups with the men, I tore myself away with extreme reluctance, and started up Kom of the Vassoievich shortly after the "white" dawn, with the knowledge that I might wander many leagues over the face of the earth before I met a set of kinder friends than the fighting frontiersmen of Montenegro. Proud, self-respecting, fiercely unyielding by long inheritance of temper, they are outwardly very gentle and courteous, so courteous that it is only on very rare occasions that a certain grim tightening of a strong, square jaw, a gleam of very white teeth, and a sudden leap of lightning to the eye reveal in a flash their possibilities as foes. With an extraordinary lot of strength in their physique, they have very little knowledge how to apply it and hardly any enterprise. This is due mainly to entire ignorance of how to set about things. In the one branch of industry they understand, "junashtvo," they are certainly not deficient in energy. They are very pious, and never say they are going to do anything without adding, "God willing." If you forget to say this, someone generally puts it in for you very seriously. They are very honest, and their standard of morality is high. And they are extraordinarily visionary, and dream dreams of the great Servian empire that is to be, where everyone will be free and happy. Exceedingly poor, they are also exceedingly hospitable, and will share with a friend as long as they have anything to share. It is true that they have the defects of their qualities, but their qualities are such that there are many more civilised places that would be the better for a leavening of them.

Radovan and I started up the slopes of Kom of the Vassoievich, and I was promised a fine day. I owed a good deal to this strong, ragged, level-headed man who had piloted me safely through a somewhat risky enterprise, and was glad of his further company. He had displayed the most extraordinary tact throughout the tour, and, while playing the part of a humble horse-boy who asked for my orders, had managed and arranged everything. Silent and watchful, he was always in the background; he slipped in his pieces of information quietly, told me what to pay, whom to pay, had very definite ideas as to whom I was to speak to or could be left alone with; ascertained, when buying forage for the horse in the town, the state of the country, and passed me the news in three words when he handed me the change. But he never spoke a word unless it was required. On his native hills he was conversational. He had been again to Berani, and told me with a grin that the "ljuta zmija," the Kaimmakam, had asked, "Where is that Englishwoman?" and had been very angry when told, "She has eaten, has fed her horse, and is gone." "It was better so," said Radovan oracularly, and he added, with a laugh, "and Yakoub knew." I was unaware that I had been spirited back across the frontier, and it gave me much food for reflection.

The ascent was easy over steep grass slopes, Radovan pointing out all the landmarks. He told of the Voyvode's prowess. He loved the Voyvode, and showed me down below at the head of the valley the old home of the Voyvode's family. He told me of his own little cottage, his field of corn and his plum trees, and of his wife and three children, one, thank God, a boy.

We had just reached the shoulder of the mountain, and were about 5300 feet up, when a thick fog swept down upon us and driving rain. "We must go to a friends hut," said Radovan; "it is poor but dry." We forged on through the most awful weather; dense mist-wreaths swathed everything, and all the world was blotted out. We came to a collection of tiny hovels, Radovan's friend welcomed us, and we crawled in out of the wet. His hut was a shed made of a few planks; I could only stand upright in the middle. The mud floor was dug out about six inches and a heap of logs blazed in a hole at one end. Near the fire a very young calf was tethered; there was also a half-blind woman, three girls, and two hens. We were warmly greeted; my host spread a straw mat for me to sit on, brought in my saddle-bags, and threw wood on the fire. "This is how we live in the 'katun,'" said he. "We are poor, and it is the best we can give you. You are very welcome." He made me a couch with his greatcoat and my saddle-bags, and started cooking the dinner, for it was midday. He slung a big pot, poured olive oil in it, and stirred in coarse maize flour as it boiled. "My poor wife cannot see well," he said, "and I do all this. We went all the way to Cetinje to the doctor, but he did nothing to the eye that is blind, nothing at all; he only did things to the eye that she can still see a little with." He finished making the porridge, sprinkled some sugar on it, and poured it into a bowl.

"Here we never see bread or meat; we eat milk and maize. It is good food. Up on the mountains it is very healthy, thanks be to God and St. Peter, and the water is good." He insisted on my eating his food and not my own, saying, "You will need that to-morrow." And as it was warm, and I was cold and hungry, I found it not unpalatable, and finished up with a bowl of milk. The rest of the party found it very good, as it was extra sweet on my account.

The youngest girl, a child of fourteen, I had not noticed much before, as she had sat all the time huddled in a heap on the other side of the fire, and the hut was full of smoke. Now she began rocking to and fro, crying, "Oh, my foot, my foot!" Her father explained that a few days before she had upset the caldron of boiling milk over her foot, and that it pained her so that she could not sleep. An old woman from the next hut came in to look at it. The poor girl drew up her skirt and showed the foot swathed in the filthiest handkerchief. I was horrified, jumped up, and hurried round to the wind side of the fire where she lay and there was no smoke and one could see. The people here have enormous faith in the healing power of any stranger, and they were most delighted when I offered to look at the injury. She peeled off the dirty rags. The skin was off the whole instep; it was dressed with mud and grass, and the edges were angry and forming matter. It evidently pained her horribly. She was a plucky little thing, and let me strip off the pudding of mud and matter, clear the place of grass, and dress it with clean handkerchiefs and lanoline. Her skin was very thick and as hard as leather. The fresh dressing relieved her greatly, and as the rain had just lifted I went out to have a look round.

For a few minutes the view was incomparably grand. The huge jagged summit of Kom rose up abruptly from the grass not a quarter of a mile away, and stood all bare and lonely, quite white on an angry purple sky, for the fog had frozen upon it. Down below great snakes of mist clung and crawled, and the distant peaks rose one behind the other, violently and vividly blue. It was extraordinarily majestic and as silent as death. Down swept the storm again with a fusillade of chill hail. Even the hut a few yards away was invisible. We struggled back to it, my host remarking, "You will have to stay the night 'kod nas.' If you try to go farther you will be lost on the mountains."

The little girl with the bad foot was much happier and her father greatly pleased. "Here," he said, "we either get well or we die. There is no help for us. But, thanks be to God and St. Peter, we are very healthy. We have had much trouble. My only son is dead; my poor wife nearly blind. My three brothers are all dead and have left no sons!" He sat down by the injured child and cuddled her. "She is very brave," he said; "I call her my little son." The child smiled with pleasure. They begged me to do something to the woman's eye, but that, of course, was impossible. The rain fell in torrents! We huddled round the fire. At Radovan's request I gave them my sketch-book to look at, and was surprised at the rapidity with which they recognised everything, telling the names of all the people who lived in the houses, and laughing heartily over the Gusinje man and Yakoub. The wind whistled between the planks, the dense smoke eddied round the little hut; they piled on sticks and began preparations for supper. Then a terrible thing happened. The woman threw down a little maize and called the hens. They came, a white and a yellow one. There was a whispered talk, and I heard "the pretty one." The yellow hen was caught and given to the lame child to hold. "Now we shall have no more eggs!" she said sadly. I was horrified, for I grasped at once that the hen was to be sacrificed to me. I begged for its life. "Thou must eat meat," said my host. I pleaded vainly that I had eggs and cheese in my bag. "Thou hast given," he said, pointing to the child's foot, "and we must give. This night thou shalt eat meat." The child caressed the hen. I cannot tell how unhappy I felt. Two cows, a little flock of sheep, and these two hens were all they had in the world. Last year they had had to eat ferns, and they were braver and better and in all ways more deserving than I. "He that hath, to him shall be given," is a bitter thing. My prayers shook the man's resolution for a moment, but so anxious was he to do what he believed to be his duty, that without more ado, and before he should alter his mind, he suddenly whipped out a big knife and sliced off the hen's head with one swift stroke. The neck twitched convulsively. We sat round and watched the blood drip, dripping in silence. Everyone felt it was a rather serious event. He tore the bird to pieces with his fingers with great dexterity, and put it to boil in a tin basin. As it had no lid, he went out and picked dock leaves to cover the pot with and replaced them as fast as they were burnt. Meanwhile he gave me the liver, warmed through in the wood ashes, as a snack. In due time I was seated before the fowl's remains spread on a piece of board, and the family sat round to see me enjoy it. Alas! the muscular bird, swiftly boiled, was like the hardest indiarubber, and I knew not what to do. Eat of it I must somehow. With the little blade of my pen-knife I minced it fine, and said that the English did so. Then I swallowed pellets of it, and everyone was much pleased. I handed round bread, which was a rare luxury, and they polished off the rest of the fowl in a jiffey, drank up the broth, and were quite lively after their meal.

I dressed the bad foot again, and was pleased to find that the rest of the dirt came off with the dressing and the place looked healthy. The child lay down and went to sleep at once. Outside all was blackness and wet, and I began to feel that the rest of my life was going to be spent storm-bound on Kom of the Vassoievich. They pitched wood on the fire. The man said it would be a cold night. We lay down with our feet towards the blaze. I wrapped my head in my waterproof to keep off the bitter blast that whistled through the wide crannies. Radovan went to the next hut. There was not room for us all on the floor. My host took off his coat and spread it over me, wrapped himself in his greatcoat, and lay down by my side. "So thou shalt sleep warm," he said. His wife and daughters cuddled up on the other side of him, and in five minutes they were all asleep. I lay and listened to the drip of the rain outside and the steady grind of the calf chewing cud in the corner. The surviving hen roosted on a peg and muttered softly to herself, and I slept, and slept soundly. We woke in the chill grey dawn, and they kindled the fire. The lame child had slept the whole night through. I dressed the wound a third time, gave them the lanoline and most of my handkerchiefs, and told them to keep the place clean and it would soon be well. Their gratitude was painful, and they thanked God and St. Peter who had sent me. The death of the hen lay heavy on my soul, and I succeeded in making the woman accept a little money. She refused at first, but when she found I really meant it, the tears came to her eyes and they all kissed my hands and dress. I rode away feeling much overcome. The sun had not struggled out, and we tracked through dripping beech woods dim with mist, out on to lone slopes and into solemn valleys, where we were the only living things, till in the evening I saw once more the little shingled houses of Kolashin, and drew rein at the inn door.

There is little more for me to tell. On my return journey I was deeply touched by the reception we met everywhere, and filled with amazement. Now at last, people said, England would know what life was in Stara Srbija. Many of them considered I had risked my life for the cause, and could not thank me enough. They even sent their greetings to the mother who had let me come to help them. I felt very humble, and had to accept hospitality that was undeserved, for I knew that I had done very little and the results would be still less.

After Stara Srbija the route seemed absurdly easy. I avoided Brskut and went by way of Morachki Monastir. It is the oldest monastery in Montenegro, and was founded by Vuk, governor of the Zeta, brother of Stefan Prvovenchani and St. Sava, which makes it six hundred years old. It stands in a lonesome valley, sheltered and fertile but quite cut off from all the rest of the world, and has successfully resisted the Turks, who have more than once attacked it furiously. Like all the other monasteries that have had to struggle for existence, it is surrounded by a high wall. It was the eve of St. Peter's day, and the courtyard was filled with mountain men, who had come to take the communion on the morrow. The Archimandrite, a man of splendid stature and military bearing, and courteous as they all are, came out and welcomed us right royally. He was vividly interested in our journey, gave Radovan the praise he so well deserved, and filled him with joy. For the Archimandrite is a "veliki junak," and praise from his lips was very sweet. I rejoiced that Radovan was getting his due.

This monastery church is of very great interest to the archæologist, as it has never fallen into Turkish hands and is in perfect preservation. The inner doors of black wood inlaid with ivory are very beautiful and the frescoes which cover the walls are in excellent condition. The church is whitewashed without and roofed with wooden shingles. The outer wall is boldly frescoed on either side the main door, St. George slays the dragon decoratively from a white steed, and a large picture of the Last Judgment shows souls struggling to ascend the ladder to heaven, aided by angels above and torn at by devils below. The doorway and whole group of paintings are protected by a big wooden porch. Service on St. Peter's day was very solemn, and the crowd of communicants made it last for several hours. I came out from it, more deeply than ever impressed with the fact that it is largely her loyalty to her church that has, so far, saved Montenegro.

I dined at midday with the Archimandrite, who was most hospitable and jovial, and gave me a massive, solid meal, to tackle which required a good deal more heroism than a trip to Stara Srbija.

He saw me off next morning with a stirrup-cup of rakija so potent that neither Radovan nor I could manage the Trinity in it, and we made our way back to Podgoritza. Podgoritza was a surprise to me. I came to it out of the wilderness, and was astonished at its size, luxury, and magnificence. Then I understood the point of view of the man who had asked me a quantity of questions about London, its population, whether it were really true that there were a hundred trains a day, bazaar every day, electric light, etc., and ended by saying, "And do the potatoes grow well there?" "London is a large town," I said, "all houses, houses." "I know that," he replied; "I asked, do the potatoes grow well in London?" "Do potatoes grow in London? What extraordinary ignorance! One can scarcely believe it possible," said an Englishman in a London suburb when he heard this tale. He is "culchawed," and devotes time and labour to improving the minds of "our parish." "And what were the theatres like in these out-of-the-way places?" he asked. We were talking of Stara Srbija.

Now I sat under the white mulberry trees at the door of the inn and admired Podgoritza. For a few weeks I had looked at civilisation across a gap of centuries from the "back of beyond," and things look very different from that point of view, more different than anyone who has lived at one end of Europe only can ever realise. And, still in the grip of the wilderness, I parted from Radovan with regret and many promises to return next year for a tour so wild and extensive that it is to resemble a young campaign.

It was the end of July; Podgoritza was sizzling and sweltering in the summer sun. It received me warmly in every sense of the word. But the change from the chilly heights of Kom to the baking plain was too trying to induce a long stay. Besides, as everyone said, "you are coming back next year." I made a pilgrimage one morning to the grave of Marko Drekalovich, the "dobar junak" to whose wild valour, military skill, and indomitable spirit this corner of Montenegro largely owes its freedom, and who now sleeps on the rugged heights of Medun that he tore from the Turks, and I returned to Cetinje. A carriage and a road were a strange enough experience, and as for Montenegro's joy, the only motor car, I admired it almost as much as do the Montenegrins. Once at Cetinje the spell was broken, and from Cetinje to London one whirls in a few days in the lap of luxury, second class.

I left the Balkan peninsula not with "good-bye" but with "do vidjenja" (au revoir). The story of its peoples is tragic, their future looks black, and they have few friends. It is the fashion just now to make a great deal of capital out of the fact that these Christian peoples do not love one another as, of course, all Christians should, and to say that each one is so jealous of the other that it is impossible to help them. This is rather idle talk, and not unlike that of the pot that called the kettle black. Race instinct, one of the strongest of the human passions, has as yet shown no tendency to die out anywhere. It seems, therefore, a little unreasonable to expect the Balkan peoples to be the ones to set an example to the rest of the world by dropping all international jealousies and national aspirations. After all, they do but love one another as France does Germany. International jealousy is certainly at the root of the present grievous condition of affairs in the Balkans, but it is the jealousy not only of the Balkan peoples but that of other nations which are supposed to be older and wiser and whose quarrels are of even longer standing.

I have no patent medicine to offer for the present trouble. It has got beyond pillules and homoeopathic doses, and nothing but the extirpation of the centre of disease can have any lasting effect. As long as the Turk is permitted to "govern" Christian peoples, so long will there be trouble in the Balkans. That the Balkan Slavs are not as black as they have often been painted I have tried to show by telling how they have treated me. If they do not possess all the virtues of civilisation they are free from many of its vices. I have found them kindly, generous, and honest, and I wish them very well.

SERVIA

1

Kukavichiti = to lament, to cry like the cuckoo; for in Servia the cuckoo is not the depraved bird that it is with us, but is a bereaved woman who wails ceaselessly for the dead.