"Not ordered it," we would say.
"That man has," answers the boy, and points at a smiling Montenegrin on the other side of the room. Sometimes, and very often too, other guests follow suit, and the result is trying. We gave up visits to cafés afterwards, except when we were on pleasure bent and had an hour to spare. Hospitable, reckless, poverty-stricken Montenegrins—one can travel far before another such a race can be found.
The last two hours of the drive are uninteresting, chiefly because eight hours in a carriage is trying. Podgorica comes in sight long before it is reached, in the form of a cluster of trees on a grassy but dead-level plain, out of which two minarets show their graceful spires. The background is imposing, lowering Albanian mountains rise abruptly to their lofty heights from the level of the plain.
For an hour we drove along the plain, and passed a solitary building situated on a slight eminence. It was Kruševac, one of the Prince's country palaces, or, to be more correct, Prince Mirko's palace, as "Voivoda" or Duke of the Zeta, which ancient and historical title is his. Then for some distance we skirted the Morača, driving in an opposite direction to Podgorica till we came to the "Vizier" bridge, over which we crossed and retraced our way to the town.
The River Morača is a large mountain torrent, into which the Zeta flows only a short distance away from the town. It rushes over great boulders, forming here and there formidable rapids, between two deep banks, which, without any warning, break off suddenly from the flat and form precipitous sides fully two hundred feet deep. Two or three hundred yards away, no gap or break in the plain is observable. Sometimes the river swells almost to the top of its banks, and then the effect must be terrible. There is a ford near Podgorica, which the peasants use to avoid the long détour by the bridge, but woe to the man who makes a false step. Three women, carrying loads of wood, lost their footing during our stay, and were drowned. In its waters we swam every evening, and even in midsummer, when the river is low, the strength of the current required an expert and powerful swimmer to breast it, and it was invariably very cold.
THE VIZIER BRIDGE
The bridge, built by an old Turkish Vizier many, many years ago, is most picturesque, and completely in keeping with the rocky banks and the foam-flecked, emerald-green waters rushing beneath. From this bridge a man once sprang into the depths below, to show that he was not intoxicated. As a matter of fact he was, but he emerged dripping a hundred yards lower down, unhurt and at least in his right mind.
There used to be a deep indentation in a stone of the bridge parapet—during our stay in the country it has been plastered up—which credulous Montenegrins relate to be the cut of a Turkish horseman pursuing a fleeing Montenegrin. The story goes that the Turk severed the Montenegrin's head from his body, and so violent was the stroke that he cut into the stone wall as well.