96 MONTENEGRO 



Far better and safer camping-ground may be found 

 higher up the river, between the Zeta and the 

 Moratza ; and he must be hard to please who is 

 not satisfied with the scenery, with the noble 

 range of the Albanian mountains to the east, and 

 the myriad crests of Montenegro to the north and 

 west. 



The flora of Montenegro seems to have been very 

 imperfectly examined hitherto, and would probably 

 repay a patient explorer. Want of tents prevented our 

 visiting the forest region to the north arid north-east 

 of the province. Elsewhere the all-devouring goats 

 gobble up everything except the purple sage, the 

 poisonous spurges, and intensely prickly Paliurus, 

 which do their best to deck the stony wastes. In 

 nooks and on ledges, where goats and other browsing 

 creatures cannot come, there are fragments of an in- 

 teresting and varied flora ; but rocks which defy access 

 by goats offer serious obstacles to botanists. Dog- 

 tooth violets, cyclamens, and blue Apennine anemones 

 deck the copses ; Chionodosca, and two or three kinds 

 of grape-hyacinths, some crocuses which were past 

 bloom and colchicum which had not come to it, 

 campanulas of several sorts, and an Eryngo of beauti- 

 ful foliage were among the plants which I persuaded 

 the post officials (with much hesitation) to transmit as 

 parcels. Of loftier growths, the most conspicuous 

 were the prickly Dalmatian genista, the yellow Coro- 

 nilla, so common in English green-houses, and the 

 asphodels, yellow and white. But the chief ornament 

 of the woods in April is the flowering ash (Fraxinus 



