The Land of the Black Mountain Part 24

"How are thy crops?"

"G.o.d will give me a good harvest."

"How are thy horses?" "Thy sheep?" "Thy goats?" "Thy cows?" "Thy pigs?" "Thy bees?"

It must be clearly understood, to appreciate the humour of the scene, that the formula has been shortened to avoid vain repet.i.tion. Every question is asked in full, and answered with a pious "Dobro, hfala Bogu" ("Well, thank G.o.d"). Not a word is omitted. The concluding question is put, after a few moments' thought that really no item has been left out, and this covers any lapse of memory.

"And, in short, How art thou?"

"Dobro, hfala Bogu" ("Well, thank G.o.d").

"Hfala Bogu" ("Thank G.o.d").

Now it is the other's turn, and precisely the same questions are asked, varied perhaps with an inquiry as to the state of health of the district "standard bearer" or "mayor." Then a few minutes' general conversation are indulged in as to the direct cause of the other's visit to Cetinje, and each satisfied that he has gained every particle of information, they clasp hands, kiss, and part with a measured "S'Bogom," signifying that they commend each other to the Almighty's keeping.

The simplest and most inoffensive query is answered thus:--

"Hast thou any milk?" says the thirsty wayfarer, pausing at a hut.

"I have none, by G.o.d," and the stranger proceeds wearily on his way.

Our visit to the hospital was decidedly interesting. The senior doctor of Montenegro was an ex-Austrian military surgeon. He was very pressing in his invitation, so one day we wended our steps thither at eleven o'clock. We were met by a smart-looking nurse, who told us that the doctor was at present engaged in an operation, and would be with us shortly. He soon appeared, and, apologising for the simplicity of the building, started taking us round. First he led us into the accident-room, where the injured are first treated. There were the usual operating-tables and cases of instruments. "We treat wounds that are suppurating here," he said pleasantly. "Our real operating-room is in the other house, and is much better fitted up. This being the only hospital in the country I have all the operations to perform, generally one a day."

Then we went into the Rontgen room. The X rays, the doctor informed us, was very useful in locating bullets. In the men's ward a young man was pointed out to us who had been shot twice during a kolo dance in the arm and leg.

"The Montenegrins," said the doctor, "are very careless when they fire their revolvers during a dance, and I get a good many patients that way." Afterwards we visited some other wards, and we were finally taken to the other operating-room, or theatre. But it was only a reproduction of the other on a large scale. "The Prince is very generous," said the doctor, "and gives me a free hand. We have every modern appliance, and I have trained my a.s.sistants to such an extent that I can absolutely rely on them. The hospital costs a lot of money, for we only charge a krone (about a franc) a day, and then they pet.i.tion that they cannot pay."

After inscribing our names in a book we went back to our midday meal.

The hospital, from a medical and surgical standpoint, is extremely up to date, and at its head is a doctor who may be counted as one of the finest operators in Europe; at his own request his name has not been mentioned. It is another instance of Prince Nicolas' benevolence to his people, another of the progressive movements which he is ever introducing into the country. Every district has a doctor, all of whom are under the head doctor at Cetinje, who directs all treatment in the case of an epidemic. Serious cases are sent to Cetinje and treated there, but these are largely surgical. The fame of the doctor at Cetinje has reached the furthermost village; men who have suffered for years now troop joyfully to the capital, and the number of operations increases yearly.

May the hospital and its capable chief flourish and continue to bring the blessings of science to the worthy sons of the Black Mountain!

CHAPTER XXI

The Law Court in Cetinje--The Prince as patriarch--A typical lawsuit--Pleasant hours with murderers--Our hostel--A Babel of tongues--Our sojourn draws to a close--The farewell cup of coffee and apostrophe.

The Law Court in Cetinje is distinctly quaint. All civil cases are conducted in public, and the method of procedure is simplicity itself.[9] Firstly there are no lawyers and no costs, the rival parties conducting their case in person--that is to say, they are present, and are examined and cross-examined by the judge and his six a.s.sistants. All the preliminaries have been committed to writing and are read out by the clerk of the court, the only other official present. In a small inclosure sit the plaintiff and defendant and their witnesses; behind a railing, stand and sit the audience of admiring friends and relations.

[Footnote 9: This is all altered now since the end of 1902, when a new code and system was introduced, more up to date.]

The room is long and low. At the further end on a raised dais sits the judge, behind whom is a lifesize reproduction of the Prince's photograph. At a horseshoe-shaped table sit the other judges, three on each side, and in the middle is another table holding the Bible, crucifix, and two candles. The candles are lit when a witness takes the oath.

In the intervening s.p.a.ce is a large and comfortable easy-chair, or perhaps it would be more correct and dignified to call it a throne. It is occupied by Prince Nicolas whenever he comes in, as he often does, for an hour or so, for he takes a keen interest in the law cases of his subjects. When he is present the proceedings are in no way altered, but the Prince himself puts now and then a pertinent question to the witnesses. Furthermore, it is here that the Prince every Sat.u.r.day, when he is in residence in Cetinje, holds public audience and receives pet.i.tions and complaints from his lowliest subjects.

Every pet.i.tion must be committed to writing, and in the appointed order each man or woman steps forward while the doc.u.ment is read aloud by the clerk. The Prince puts a question or two to the pet.i.tioner and then gives his answer to the request, which is duly noted, and the next person called.

It is all so simple and quick that it is hard to realise the importance of this commendable inst.i.tution. In the olden days the Prince dispensed justice and favours, seated under the shade of an enormous tree, which has now, however, been destroyed. But in the height of summer, a shady spot in the open air is still found.

We listened to one case, that of a woman who had ama.s.sed a large sum of money--for Montenegro--by fetching water from a distance at so much a gallon. Cetinje is almost waterless in summer, and water-carriers can earn small fortunes, particularly if equipped with a donkey or two, as was this woman. Having saved a few hundred guldens, she proceeded to lend it to needy friends--people are foolish in this respect, even in Montenegro. It would have been all right if she had not neglected the simple precaution of insisting on an I.O.U. for each loan. Her money gone, she not unnaturally asked that some of it should be returned, for she had fallen on evil days. But all knowledge of such loans was denied by the ungrateful borrowers.

It was a knotty point to decide. Should the judges believe the woman's word, or the emphatic denials of the debtors that they had ever received a kreutzer? The seven looked hopelessly at each other, and then wisely retired to the seclusion of a private room, awaiting divine inspiration.

As of yore, the little prison, or rather house of detention, had a great attraction for us. Many afternoons we wended our way thither to while away an hour in the genial company of the prisoners and their warders. The handsome young director of prisons usually accompanied us, ostensibly but to bear us company, though doubtless he was acting on higher orders, and had instructions to see that our eccentricities did not go too far.

We organised sports on some occasions, chiefly consisting of putting the weight, _i.e._ a large stone, but they _would_ swindle and invariably overstepped the limit line, declaring that they hadn't afterwards.

But it was their stories that we loved to listen to. They were mostly harmless quarrellers, for we shunned the debased thieving criminal; a man who could steal was vigorously excluded from our circle. There was one exception, however, and he was a Hungarian, a deserter from his regiment. That in itself is not a punishable crime, but he had eased the regimental cash-box of a thousand kronen at the time of his departure, and was awaiting the result of investigations. He maintained that the money was his, and was quite indignant when it was hinted that he must have stolen it; but unluckily he destroyed any belief in his honesty by invariably contradicting himself as to how he came by it. But he was such a good-natured, pleasant-spoken man that we let him sit by our side and prevaricate, till we bade him cease from further blackening his soul.

We gleaned a lot more information from the young director of the prison, and amongst it the method of recapturing escaped prisoners. In the central prison at Podgorica, if a prisoner escapes, the rest of the criminals are sent out to catch him. Very often they find him, and never has a prisoner abused this privilege, all punctually returning by a given date.

We stayed at Reinwein's inn, an unpretentious building, both as regards the exterior and interior, but as Reinwein himself is a Viennese, and has been for twelve years in the service of the Prince, acting often as cook, it is quite safe to say that at his house the best cooking in the whole of Montenegro is to be found. Coming into the country this would not be so noticeable, but after months in other Montenegrin towns the cooking is most appreciable. We spent very happy evenings in his bare little dining-room, with a decidedly cosmopolitan gathering. The most noticeable feature was the number of languages in use. Even Dalmatia, Bosnia, and the Hercegovina, where a three-languaged man is the rule, paled into insignificance. There was a Turkish official staying at Reinwein's, transacting business for his Government, and every evening men came to see him; that man was to be heard--he was a Neapolitan by birth--conversing fluently in Turkish, Albanian, Serb, Greek, Italian, and French, alternately. One evening I was trying to follow the conversation, which began in Italian, then he wandered off into other tongues, explaining, evidently, a letter written in Turkish. I got interested and went over to his table, and, afterwards, he told me which languages he had been using. Besides this little list, Reinwein spoke Russian with another man, German largely with us, and P. and I pa.s.sed remarks to each other in English, which was the only unknown language. One evening two Hungarian tourists arrived, and then we fled from that Babel, fearing for our reason.

An affable old Turk, seedy in appearance, but extremely entertaining, owned to six languages, not counting others of which he had only a smattering. Serb he didn't count as he said he could only talk on easy subjects in that tongue. It is very humiliating, that sort of thing, it is liable to lower the opinion of one's own intelligence. We kept late hours, too, at Reinwein's, we couldn't help it.

But all good things must come to an end, and at last the day of our departure arrived. Cetinje itself was quite a different place to us than when we knew it formerly. Representative of the land in a certain sense it rightly is, but then a fairly full knowledge of the country must be acquired first to understand in what respects it represents the life and customs of the people beyond. To the stranger who extends his visit for only a week, it is sure to give manifold false impressions, for though Montenegro is quiet and peaceable enough, the appearance of Cetinje is rather too a.s.suring. For here there is little trace of vendetta and quarrelling, which, however, under the powerful hand of the present Prince Nicolas, are surely dying out through all the land. When the fact is taken into consideration that the Montenegro of forty years ago was a rough and dangerous country, inhabited by a people who knew nothing of the outside world, and lived simply for themselves in their own land, it will be seen what miraculous progress has been made in the path of civilisation during the present reign. Peace and order have been established to a wonderful degree, and the State reorganised and set on a surer basis.

With a powerful hand and not too much external help the Prince has carried through his reforms, and, like David in his final exhortation to Solomon, leaves the way ready for still greater progress to be made in the future. And the comparison holds good in more respects than one.

We drank our last little cup of coffee, oddly enough, in the historical monastery of Ivan Beg in the company of the Vladika, to whom we were paying our farewell respects, and half an hour later were whirling down to Bajice under the shadow of the mighty Lovcen.

As the grand Bocche di Cattaro again burst on our view and the first black and yellow sign-post of Austria was pa.s.sed, we turned again for a last look at those seemingly forbidding and inhospitable mountains; but only forbidding and inhospitable to the enemy of the brave little race beyond. To the stranger, fresh from the comforts and improvements of civilisation, it is a revelation of how men live, knowing nothing of the luxuries of the outer world, and keep themselves untarnished in honour; honest and G.o.d-fearing where a man is judged by his deeds and not by his words. Where men do not steal or lie, and where the humble peasant looks his Prince in the face and says--

"Lord, I am a man like thyself."

They have their faults and failings, many of their customs seem barbaric to our eyes: but may they long be preserved from the evils of civilisation!

Later, as the s.h.i.+p ploughed her way through the waves, and the mountains of Crnagora became ever more and more faint and indistinct, we thought of Tennyson's words:--

"They rose to where their sov'ran eagle sails, They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height, Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and night Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales Their headlong pa.s.ses, but his footstep fails, And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight Before their dauntless hundreds in p.r.o.ne flight By thousands down the crags and through the vales.

O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years, Great Crnagora! never since thine own Black ridges drew the cloud and broke the storm Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers."

THE END

Leaders of Religion

Edited by H.C. BEECHING, M.A., Canon of Westminster. _With Portraits._

A series of short biographies of the most prominent leaders of religious life and thought of all ages and countries.