7° A RECENT VISIT TO THE DALMATIAN COAST. 
shaliower from their mouths inwards, and the soundings of the 
submarine valleys appear in all cases to deepen westward towards 
the Adriatic.* 
At Cattaro, and in fact upon any part of the shores of the 
Bocche, we realise that we are at last truly in Eastern Europe. 
At this point the narrow fringe of half Italian population border- 
ing the eastern shores of the Adriatic dies away, allowing the 
Slavonic nationalities to come down to the seaboard. The 
Bocchesi, although under Austrian rule, are essentially Slavonic, 
and closely allied by kinship and sympathies with the indomitable 
Montenegrins of the neighbouring mountains. With this change 
of nationality comes also a change of religion, and we find in the 
town of Cattaro itself the Eastern Church almost in a majority, 
whilst without the walls the Orthodox really outnumber the 
Catholics. 
Until 1878 Montenegro had no port of its own, but it was then 
accorded by the Treaty of Berlin, in a very half-hearted manner, 
a share in the port of Antivari. Still more recently, mainly by 
the exertions of Mr. Gladstone, who has always championed this 
chivalric little nation in its endeavours to maintain its indepen- 
dence, the port of Dulcigno was also accorded to it, free from all 
Austrian control. Notwithstanding this, Cattaro still continues, I 
believe, to be the main port of Montenegro, for which it is well 
fitted by its natural position. 
It is here at Cattaro, especially on days when the peaceful 
occupation of marketing has brought down the Montenegrins with 
their flocks and herds from their mountain fastnesses, that one has 
the best opportunity of studying the appearance and manners of 
this wonderful nation, in which every man is a born soldier, 
prepared at any moment to do battle for his country—a country 
of bleak mountains and waterless ravines, so desolate and barren 
that one cannot but wonder why it should arouse the earth-hunger 
of any of the adjoining nations. Yet the whole history of 
* The soundings at the mouth of the Bocche di Cattaro are from twenty-six 
to twenty-eight fathoms, and those of the Spalato Channel twenty-nine to 
thirty fathoms. 
