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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



every one. They that embraced the cross were 

 taken as brothers before the Vladika. Gathered 

 in Cettinje, the people hailed with songs of joy 

 the reddening dawn of the Christmas-morning ; 

 all Tsernagora now was free ! " > 



The war had been a standing rather than an 

 intermittent war, and each party to it was alter- 

 nately aggressor and defender. The Turk sought 

 to establish his supremacy by exacting the pay- 

 ment of the haradsch, the poll or military ser- 

 vice tax, paid in kind, which sometimes, in the 

 more open parts, as we may suppose, of the ter- 

 ritory, he succeeded in obtaining. Once the col- 

 lector complained that the measure used was too 

 small. The tax-payer smashed his skull with it, 

 and said, " That is Tsernagora measure." 2 But 

 the Montenegrins were aggressive as well as the 

 Turks. Of the fair plains they had been com- 

 pelled to deliver to the barbarian, they still held 

 themselves the rightful owners ; and in carrying 

 on against him a predatory warfare, they did no 

 more than take back, as they deemed, a portion 

 of their own. This predatory warfare, which had 

 a far better justification than any of the Highland 

 or border raids that we have learned to judge so 

 leniently, has been effectually checked by the 

 efforts of the admirable Vladikas and princes of 

 the last hundred years ; for, as long as it sub- 

 sisted, the people could not discharge effectually 

 the taint of savagery. It even tended to gener- 

 ate habits of rapine. But the claim to the lands 

 is another matter ; there is no lapse of title by 

 user here ; the bloody suit has been prosecuted 

 many times in the course of each of twelve gen- 

 erations of men. That claim to the lands they 

 have never given up, and never will. 



From 1710 onward, at intervals, the sover- 

 eigns of Russia and Austria have used the Mon- 

 tenegrins for their own convenience when at war 

 with Turkey, and during the war of the French 

 Revolution the English did the like, and, by their 

 cooperation and that of the inhabitants, effected 

 the conquest of the Bocche di Cattaro. To Eng- 

 land they owe no gratitude ; to Austria, on the 

 whole, less than none, for, to satisfy her, the dis- 

 trict she did not win was handed over to her with 

 our concurrence. She has rigidly excluded the 

 little state from access to the sea, and has at 

 times even prevented it from receiving any sup- 

 plies of arms. Russia, however, from the time 

 of Peter the Great, though using them for her 

 own purposes, has not always forgotten their in- 

 terests, and has commonly aided the Vladikas 

 with a small annual subvention, raised, through 

 J G., p. 9. 2 Ibid. 



the liberality of the czar now reigning, to some 

 £3,000 a year, 1 the salary of one of our railway 

 commissioners. Nor should it be forgotten that 

 Louis Napoleon, seemingly under a generous im- 

 pulse, took an interest in their fortunes, and 

 made a further addition to the revenues of the 

 prince, which raised them in all to an amount 

 such as would equip a well-to-do English country 

 gentleman, provided that he did not bet, or as- 

 pire to a deer-forest, or purchase Sevres or even 

 Chelsea porcelain. 



The most romantic and stirring passages of 

 other histories may be said to grow pale, if not 

 by the side of the ordinary life of Tsernagora, at 

 least when brought into comparison with that life 

 at the critical emergencies, which were of very 

 constant recurrence. What was the numerical 

 strength of the bishop-led community, which held 

 fast its oasis of Christianity and freedom amid 

 the dry and boundless desert of Ottoman domi- 

 nation ? The fullest details I have seen on this 

 subject are those given by Frilley and Wlahoviti. 

 The present form of the territory exhibits the 

 figure which would be produced if two roughly- 

 drawn equilateral triangles, with their apices 

 slightly truncated, had these apices brought to- 

 gether, so that the two principal masses should 

 be severed by a narrow neck or waste of terri- 

 tory. The extreme length of the principality 

 from the border above Cattaro on the west to 

 Mount Kom, the farthest point eastward of Berda, 

 is about seventy miles ; the greatest breadth from 

 north to south is a good deal less ; but the line 

 at the narrow point from Spuz on the south to 

 Niksich on the north, both of them on ground 

 still Turkish, does not exceed twenty miles. The 

 reader will now easily understand the tenacity 

 with which a controversy seemingly small has 

 just been carried on at Constantinople between 

 the delegates of Prince Nicholas and the Porte ; 

 with andirivieni almost as many as marked the 

 abortive conference of December and January, 

 or the gestation of the recent protocol. At these 

 points, the plain makes dangerous incisions into 

 the group of mountains ; J and from them the 

 Turk has been wont to operate. The population 

 of his empire is 40,000,000 ; and I believe his 

 claims for military service extend over the whole, 

 except the 5,000,000 (in round numbers) of free 

 people who inhabit the Servian and Roumanian 

 principalities. Let us now see what were the 

 material means of resistance on the other side. 

 About a. d. 1600 there are said to have been 



1 Stated by Goptchevitch as high as £4,000 a year. 



2 F. and W., pp. S9-91. 



