The Days of a Man 1913 



The dive Finding a peasant engaged in picking ripe olives, 

 I put a question to him in Italian, to be answered in 

 good English. Like many of his fellows he had made 

 his modest fortune in America, and returned to pass 

 his later years among familiarly rugged scenes. In- 

 cidentally I learned why Europe preserves only green 

 olives, never the ripe ones as in California. It seems 

 that all about the Mediterranean the grubs of the 

 olive fly, a pest akin to the Mediterranean fly so 

 destructive in Hawaii and elsewhere, are found in 

 the ripening fruit and thus discourage its table use 

 though they may add flavor to olive oil, for which 

 those I examined were destined ! 



The next day we took the boat for Cattaro, tucked 

 away at the head of a long, winding, singularly 

 beautiful fjord, and backed by a huge mountain wall 

 of bare limestone which culminates in the fortified 

 peak of Mt. Lovcen, Montenegro's sole fortress, at 

 that time apparently impregnable. But during the 

 war it proved not to be beyond the range of great 

 guns from the Austrian fort of San Giovanni flanking 

 it on the south. 



After a couple of hours in Cattaro, the others 

 started back for Ragusa while I with my Italian 

 driver, Nicola, slowly ascended the great rampart 

 over the well-built highway which rises in sixty zig- 

 zags to the Montenegrin border. Not far beyond in a 

 sheltered angle cowers the frontier village of Njegus, 

 with its modest Grand Hotel and an equally modest 

 summer royal palace. In a neighboring cavern, I 

 was told, Ivan Cernojevich, the Barbarossa of 

 the land, lies sleeping, not to awake until the Turks 

 are chased from Europe. 



C 526 3 



