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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



a vast army of Ottomans penetrated to Cettinje 

 and burned the monastery, it perished in the 

 flames. The act of carrying it there demonstrat- 

 ed the habits, and implied the hopes, of a true 

 civilization. But those habits and those hopes 

 could not survive the cruel, inexorable incidents 

 of the position. Barbarous himself in origin, and 

 rendered far more barbarous by the habitual 

 tyranny incident of necessity to his peculiar po- 

 sition in these provinces, the Turk has barbar- 

 ized every tribe about him, except those whom 

 he unmanned. The race of Tsernagora, with their 

 lives ever in their hand, have inhabited not a ter- 

 ritory, but a camp ; and camp-life, bad at the 

 best, is terrible in its operation when it becomes 

 continuous for twelve generations of men. It 

 was only a fraction of the brutality and cruelty 

 of Turks that in course of time was learned by 

 the mountaineers. But even that fraction was 

 enough to stir a thrill of horror. Of the expos- 

 ure of the heads of the slain I cannot speak so 

 strongly as some, who appear to forget that we 

 did the same thing in the middle of the last cen- 

 tury which Montenegro carried on into this one; 

 and that a Jacobite, fighting for his ancient line 

 of kings, may fairly bear comparison with a race 

 which had claimed a commission not only to con- 

 quer all the earth, but to blast and blight all 

 they conquered. On both sides this was a coarse, 

 harsh practice, and it was nothing more. The 

 same cannot be said of the mutilation of prison- 

 ers. There was an undoubted case of this kind 

 during the late war, when a batch of Turks had 

 their noses or upper lips, or both, cut away. 

 This is certainly very far less bad than burning, 

 flaying, impaling, and the deeds worse even than 

 these in Bulgaria, for which rewards and decora- 

 tions have been given by the Porte. But it was 

 a vile act ; and we have to regret that no meas- 

 ures have been taken by the British agency which 

 published it to trace it home, so that we might 

 know the particulars of time, place, and circum- 

 stance, and learn whether it was done by Mon- 

 tenegrins or by their allies, who have not under- 

 gone the civilizing influence of the last four reigns 

 in Tsernagora. The unnaturally severe condi- 

 tions which have been normal in Montenegrin 

 existence will be best of all understood by the 

 ideas and usages which have prevailed among 

 themselves toward one another : 1. We are told 

 that death in battle came to be regarded as natu- 

 ural death, death in bed as something apart from 

 Nature ; 2. Agriculture, and, still more, all trad- 

 ing industry, fell into disrepute among these in- 

 veterate warriors, and the first was left to the 



women, while they depended upon foreign lands 

 to supply the handicrafts ; 3. When a comrade 

 was wounded in battle so as to be helpless, the 

 first duty was to remove him ; but, if this were 

 impossible from the presence of the enemy, then 

 to cut off his head, so as to save him from the 

 shame or torture which he was certain to incur if 

 taken alive by the Turks. Not only was this an act 

 of friendship, but a special act of special friendship. 

 There grew up among the mountaineers a custom 

 of establishing a conventional relationship, which 

 they called bond-brotherhood ; and it was a par- 

 ticular duty of the bond-brother to perform this 

 fearful office for his mate. In fact, the idea of 

 it became for the Montenegrin simple and ele- 

 mentary, as we may learn from an anecdote, with 

 a comic turn, given by Sir Gardner Wilkinson. 



When the Austrians and Montenegrins were 

 fighting against the Turks, allies of the French, 

 on a certain occasion a handful of men had to 

 fly for their lives. Two Austrians were among 

 them, of whom one had the misfortune to be 

 what is called stout. When the party had run 

 some way, he showed signs of extreme distress, 

 and said he would throw himself on the ground, 

 and take his chance. "Very well," said a fel- 

 low-fugitive, "make haste, say your prayers, 

 make the sign of the cross, and I will then cut 

 off your head for you." As might be expected, 

 this was not at all the view of the Austrian in 

 his proposal, and the friendly offer had such an 

 effect upon him, that he resumed the race, and 

 reached a place of safety. Under the steady re- 

 forming influences which have now been at work 

 for nearly a hundred years, few vestiges of this 

 state of things probably remain. 



But I will dedicate the chief part of my re- 

 maining space to the application of that crite- 

 rion which is of all others the sharpest and surest 

 test of the condition of a country — namely, the 

 idea it has embraced of woman, and the position 

 it assigns to her. 



This is both the weak, the very weak, and 

 also the strong point of Montenegro. The wom- 

 en till the fields, and may almost be said to make 

 them ; for Lady Strangford testifies that she saw 

 various patches of ground in cultivation which 

 were less than three feet square, and it seems 

 that handfuls of soil are put together even where 

 a single root will grow. More than this, over the 

 great ladder-road between Cettinje and Cattaro, 

 the women carry such parcels, bound together, 

 as, being over ten pounds in weight, are too 

 heavy for the post ; and Goptchevitch records 

 the seemingly easy performance of her task by a 



