The regular troops which garrison the fortresses of Dalmatia had been recalled to Italy, in order to defend the neutrality of Venice during the wars which then prevailed among her neighbours. In these circumstances the Senate commissioned our Provveditore Generale to levy new forces from the subject tribes, not only for maintaining the military establishment of Dalmatia, but also for drafting a large number of Morlacchi[121] into Italy. It was a matter of no difficulty to enrol garrisons for the Illyrian fortresses; but the exportation of the Morlacchi cost his Excellency the greatest trouble. These ruffianly wild beasts, wholly destitute of education, are aware that they are subjects of Venice; yet their firm resolve is to indulge lawless instincts for robbery and murder as they list, refusing obedience in all things which do not suit their inclinations. To reason with them is the same as talking in a whisper to the deaf. They simply resisted the command to form themselves into a troop and leave their lairs for Italy.
Their chiefs, who were educated men, brave and loyal to their prince, strained every nerve to carry out these orders. It was found needful to recall the bandits, who swarm throughout those regions, outlawed for every sort of crime—robberies, homicides, arson, and such-like acts of heroism. Bribes too were offered of bounties and advanced pay, in order to induce the wild and stubborn peasants to cross the seas. I was present at the review of these Anthropophagi; for indeed they hardly merited a more civilised title. It took place on the beach of Zara under the eyes of the Provveditore, with ships under sail, ready for the embarkation of the conscripts. Pair by pair, they came up and received their stipend; upon which they expressed their joy by howling out some barbarous chant, and dancing off together with uncouth gambols to the transport ships. I revered God's handiwork in these savages while deploring their bad education, and felt a passing wish to explore the Eden of eternal beatitude in which the Morlacchi dwell.
It is certain that the Italian cities under our benign government were more disturbed than guarded by these brutal creatures. At Verona, in particular, they indulged their appetite for thieving, murdering, brawling, and defying discipline, without the least regard for orders. At the close of a few months, they had to be sent back to their caves, in order to deliver the Veneto from an unbearable incubus. Even at the outset, their spirit of insubordination let itself be felt. Scarcely had the transports sailed, when the sight of the Illyrian mountains made them burn to leap on shore. The seamen did their best to restrain the unruly crew; but finding that they ran a risk of being cut in pieces, they finally unbarred the pens before this indomitable flock of rams.
What I am now writing may seem to have little to do with the narrative of my own life, and may look as though I wished to calumniate the natives of Dalmatia. The rulers of those territories will, however, bear me out in the following remarks. I have visited all the fortresses, many districts, and many villages of the two provinces. In some of the cities I found well-educated people, trustworthy, cordial, and liberal in sentiment. In places far removed from the Provveditore Generale's Court the manners of the population are incredibly rough. All the peasants may be described as cruel, superstitious, and irrational wild beasts. In their marriages, their funerals, their games, they preserve the customs of pagan antiquity. Reading Homer and Virgil gives a perfect conception of the Morlacchi. They hire a troop of women to lament over their dead. These professional mourners shriek by turns, relieving one another when voice and throat have been exhausted by dismal wailings tuned to a music which inspires terror. One of their pastimes is to balance a heavy piece of marble on the lifted palm of the right hand, and hurl it after taking a running jump. The fellow who projects this missile in a straight line to the greatest distance, wins. One is reminded of the enormous boulders hurled by Diomede and Turnus.
In their mountain homes the Morlacchi are fine fellows, useful to the State of Venice on occasions of war with the Turks, their neighbours, whom they cordially detest. The inhabitants of the coast make bold seamen, apt for fighting on the waters. Toward Montenegro the tribes become even more like savages. Families, who have been accustomed for some generations to die peaceably in their beds or kennels, and cannot boast of a fair number of murdered ancestors, are looked down upon by the rest. On the beach outside the city walls of Budua, for which these men and brothers leave their hills in summer-time to taste the coolness of sea-breezes, I have witnessed their exploits with the musket and have seen three corpses stretched upon the sands. A member of one of the pacific families I have described, being taunted by some comrade, burned to wipe out the shame of his kindred, and opened a glorious chapter in their annals by slaughtering and being slaughtered. Fierce battles and armed encounters between village and village are frequent enough in those parts. The men of one village who kill a man of the next village, have no peace unless they pay a hundred sequins or discharge their debt by the death of one of their own folk. Such is the current tariff, fixed without consulting their sovereign, among these people, who regard brutality as justice. I learned much about these traits of human nature from a village priest of Montenegro, who conversed with me nearly every day upon the beach at Budua. He talked a strange Italian jargon, narrated the homicides of his flock with complacency, and let it be understood that a gun was better suited to his handling than the vessels of the sanctuary.
The thirst for vengeance is never slaked there. It passes from heir to heir like an estate in tail. Among the Morlacchi, who are less bloodthirsty than the Montenegrins, I once saw a woman of some fifty years fling herself at the feet of the Provveditore Generale, extract a mummied head from a game-bag, and cast it on the ground before him, weeping as though her heart would burst, and calling aloud for pity and justice. For thirty years she had preserved this skull, the skull of her mother, who had been murdered. The assassins had long ago been brought to justice, but their punishment was insufficient to lay the demon of ferocity in this affectionate daughter. Accordingly, she presented herself indefatigably through a course of thirty years before each of the successive Provveditori Generali, with the same maternal skull in her game-bag, with the same shrieks and tears and cries for justice.
I liked seeing the Montenegrin women. They clothe themselves in black woollen stuffs after a fashion which was certainly not invented by coquetry. Their hair is parted, and falls over their cheeks on either shoulder, thickly plastered with butter, so as to form a kind of large shiny bonnet. They bear the burden of the hard work of the field and household. The wives are little better than slaves of the men. They kneel and kiss the men's hands whenever they meet; and yet they seem to be contented with their lot. Perhaps it would not be amiss if some Montenegrins came to Italy and changed our fashions with regard to women; for ours are somewhat too marked in the contrary direction.
Climate renders both the men and women of those provinces extremely prone to sensuality. Legislators, recognising the impossibility of controlling lawless lust here, have fixed the fine for seduction of a girl with violence at a trifle above the sum which a libertine in Venice bestows on the purveyor of his venal pleasures. At the period of my residence in Dalmatia, the cities retained something of antique austerity. This did not, however, prevent the fair sex from conducting intrigues by stealth. It is possible that, since those days, enlightened and philosophical Italians, composing the courts of successive Provveditori Generali, may have removed the last obstacles of prejudice which gave a spice of danger to love-making.
In Dalmatia the women are handsome, inclining for the most part toward a masculine robustness; among the Morlacchi of the villages, a Pygmalion who chose to expend some bushels of sand in polishing the fair sex up, would obtain fine breathing statues for his pains. These women of Illyria are less constant in their love than those of Italy; but merit less blame for their infidelity than the latter. The Illyrian is blinded and constrained by her fervent temperament, by the climate, by poverty and credulity; the Italian errs through ambition, avarice, and caprice. I consider myself qualified for speaking with decision on these points, as will appear from the chapter I intend to write upon the love-adventures of my youth.
The land of those provinces is in great measure mountainous, stony, and barren. There are, however, large districts of plain which might be extremely fertile. Neither the sterile nor the fertile regions are under cultivation, but remain for the most part fallow and unfruitful. Onions and garlic constitute the favourite delicacies of the Morlacchi. The annual consumption of these vegetables is enormous; and it would not be difficult to raise a large supply of both at home. They insist, however, on importing them from Romagna; and when one takes the peasants to task for this sluggish indifference to their own interests, they reply that their ancestors never planted onions, and that they have no mind to change their customs. I often questioned educated inhabitants of those regions upon the indolence and sloth which prevail in rural Dalmatia. The answer I received was that nobody, without exposing his life to peril, could make the Morlacchi do more than they chose to do, or introduce the least reform into their agriculture. I observed that the proprietors might always import Italian labour and turn those fertile plains into a second Apulia. This remark was met with bursts of laughter; and when I asked the reason, my informants told me that many Dalmatian gentlemen had brought Italian peasants over, but that a few days after their arrival, they were found murdered in the fields, without the assassins having ever been detected. I perceived that my project was impracticable. Yet I wondered at my friends laughing rather than shedding tears, when they gave me these convincing answers.