While you sup on the stone porch of the little inn at Njegushi, handsome, well-built members of the male population stroll by indifferently, smoking and chatting in subdued tones and gazing dreamily at their beloved mountains. From every girdle protrude the muzzles of a number of well-oiled, ominous-looking firearms. Groups of women stumble by; some struggling under their loads of water casks strapped upon their backs, others driving small herds of goats and having all manner of difficulty in keeping them together.
Yes, the women are ultra-suffragettes in Montenegro, not by choice but by custom. They do all the housework, tend the flocks, cultivate the little patches of corn or wheat and, in addition, bring up the family. On market-days they go to Cattaro or Cettinje and do their best to dispose of a meagre assortment of vegetable truck, returning home late at night, weary and sore. They age early, as might be expected; a Montenegrin woman of forty looks to be double that age. Not a finger will a man raise to ease the burden of his wife; for such is the lot of a woman born in the Land of the Black Mountain.
From the hills above Njegushi you may look down into small, crater-like pits, each held intact by a low stone wall. These pits constitute the truck farms of Montenegro, and into them the rain washes all the vegetable earth from the mountain sides, forming in them an alluvial stratum.
After leaving Njegushi you ascend to the pass of Kruacko Zdrjelo, and, at this point, another wonderful view unfolds itself. Away to the south, the great lake of Scutari is plainly visible; in the west, the famous Mount Lovčen rears its rocky self, with the little chapel, in which lies buried the body of Peter II, the last of the Prince-Bishops and Montenegro’s greatest poet, perched upon its crest.
Doubtless, night will by this time have spread its black mantle over the hills, leaving the remainder of the drive to be made in the darkness. Down—down—down—as much down as the Austrian side of the mountain was up, until finally, you overlook the beautiful valley of Cettinje, and the blinking kerosene lamps of the capital. In half an hour you will be driving at a gallop through its deserted streets, and rein up at last in front of the Grand Hotel, obviously the most aristocratic and up-to-date hostelry, for it is the only one in the town. The head-waiter, in dress suit, will welcome you at the door, inquire whether you have had supper and show you politely to your rooms, which you will find rather bare but scrupulously clean.
Thirty years ago Cettinje was a mere handful of thatched cottages scattered over a small space in the valley and approached only by mountain trails. To-day it has a population of five or six thousand, it is the seat of the newly constituted Parliament and a diplomatic post for the ministers of the European Powers.
There are but few historical monuments in Cettinje, and of these the principal ones are the old palace of the Prince, and the monastery with its chapel and quaint cloister, the latter built against the base of a great cliff and shaded by the spreading boughs of shapely trees. The main street of the town is wide and clean, flanked on either side by a uniform line of stone dwellings, which is broken only by the postoffice building and an occasional shop.
As in Njegushi, the men, all heavily armed, strut along the streets and allow the women-folk to conduct what business may be found in the stores or in the market. At the rear of the hotel a rather barren-looking square to deserve the nomenclature of “park” faces the palace of the Crown Prince. Near the centre of the town stands the palace of Prince Nikola, a comparatively small and a most unimposing structure to house the chief executive of a nation. Directly across the street from it is his former residence, in which is installed the only billiard table in Montenegro.
The most elaborate example of architecture in the capital is the home of the Russian diplomatic representatives, probably so built to impress the Montenegrins with the power of their cousins in the north. In the centre of the market square the female figure which surmounts the public fountain, the sole specimen of native sculpture in Cettinje, balances, at an uncertain angle, upon her head a dilapidated coal-oil lamp, which seems in imminent danger of being dashed upon the heads of the thirsty peasants below.
