An Observer in the Near East

by William Le Queux

Hardly had I entered my room when there came a loud knock at my door, and a tall, scarlet-coated Montenegrin warrior, armed to the teeth, entered and saluted. For a moment I looked up at him aghast, but the mystery was solved when, next second, he handed me with great ceremony a telegram from a dear friend in England wishing me Godspeed. I had taken him to be, at least, one of the Prince’s bodyguard, and he was only a plain telegraph messenger!

This was but one of many surprises in store for me in Montenegro. Next morning I went out to look round the clean little capital, when, on passing the Prince’s palace, I saw a number of soldiers drawn up, and as I went by, the band suddenly struck up the British National Anthem! I raised my hat, halted, and stood puzzled. Surely they were not honouring me! Another moment, however, and I recognised the reason. In a carriage, accompanied by the Grand Marechal of the Court, there drove up my friend Mr. Charles des Graz, the newly-appointed British Chargé d’Affaires to Montenegro, who was about to present his credentials to His Royal Highness the Prince.

Montenegro is perhaps the most interesting country in all the Balkans. Cettinje, a small, clean town of broad streets and one-storeyed, whitewashed houses, is a little city in the sky, lying as it does in a cup-shaped depression at the summit of a high, bare mountain. Its long, straight, main street reminds one very much of a small country town in England, if it were not that everyone is, by law, compelled to wear the national dress, and every man has in his belt his big, long-barrelled revolver, without which he must never go out of doors.

The men, sturdy mountaineers, are of fine physique—handsome fellows, all of them. Their dress consists of dark blue baggy trousers, white woollen gaiters, raw-hide shoes, a scarlet jacket heavily braided with gold, and a small round cap, with black silk around the edge and the crown of the same colour as the jacket, bearing the Prince’s initials in Servian letters, “H.I.” The women, who are particularly good-looking, wear dark skirts, beautifully hand-embroidered blouses, and a kind of long coat, with open sleeves of soft, dove-grey cloth. Forbidden to wear European hats, they are compelled to adopt an exactly similar cap to the men, except that the crown is embroidered instead of bearing the royal initials.

Nowhere have I seen such glorification of the male as in Montenegro. To the men, born fighters as they are, work is undignified; therefore the women toil while the opposite sex look on. I saw women employed in building operations and performing work which, in other countries, is left to day-labourers.

Cettinje is quaint in the extreme. The only houses of foreigners are the various Legations, and the only foreigners are diplomats with their wives and families. The first thing that strikes the stranger is the number of petroleum tins. Opposite the hotel I saw a great ring of empty tins, numbering some hundreds, ranged around a fountain. A few women were squatting gossiping, and an armed policeman lounged against the water-source. On inquiry, I found that there was a water famine, and the tins had been placed there at dawn to await the moment when the authorities thought fit to allow the people to get their daily supply. The women had gone away to work, and would return later. The Montenegrins a short time ago constructed a reservoir, but there was a crack in it, so the water ran away. Hence the famine.

The petroleum tin is never out of sight for a single moment in Cettinje. At any hour, and in any street, you see women and children carrying them. They are used for everything, from milk-pails to flower-pots.

In Cettinje one comes for the first time up against the dark-faced, scowling Albanian in his tightly fitting trousers of white wool striped with black, his dirty white fez, and the swagger of superiority in his gait. He is well armed, and for a good reason. The Montenegrin hates the Albanian, because of the constant border feuds over at Podgoritza, where blood is constantly spilt, and where I have seen a Montenegrin in the market squatting over a basket of apples with a loaded rifle.

That morning I was chatting to a man in Montenegrin dress, of whom I had bought some excellent cigarettes, manufactured by the Montenegro Tobacco Monopoly—an Italian syndicate, by the way—and happened to mention that I was on my way to Albania.

“Ah, gospodin!” he exclaimed, holding up both his hands, and glancing at the revolver in my belt. “Take my advice. Don’t go into Albania or Macedonia. You are not safe there from one moment to the other. For half a word they’ll shoot you dead as easily as they drink a glass of wine. No man’s life is worth a moment’s purchase there. I’m Albanian myself—from Kroja—and I know.”