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Title: The Lands of the Tamed Turks or the Balkan States of today
Author: Jaekel, Blair
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Lands of the Tamed Turks or the Balkan States of today" ***
Transcriber’s Notes.
Page 59 — immediatetly changed to immediately.
Page 137 — every changed to ever.
Page 207 — changed Mount Lovcen to Mount Lovčen.
The advertisements at the beginning of the book have been placed
at the end after the index.
Other changes made are noted at the end of the book.
Footnotes have been numbered in one continuous sequence.
THE LANDS OF THE
TAMED TURK
[Illustration: THE LATE QUEEN DRAGA OF SERVIA.]
[Illustration]
_Copyright, 1910_,
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, September, 1910
_Electrotyped and Printed by
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A._
TO
E. McC. J.
FOREWORD
Because of their pivotal positions, politically and geographically;
because of their tempting adaptation to colonization; because of
their vast proven and hidden resources; because of their divers other
advantages, too numerous to mention, the Balkan States have been, are
and will continue to be, as once a certain writer so aptly put it, the
“Powder Box of Europe.”
Constant conflict, however, has stunted their progress, and it has only
been within the past few years that these lands—conspicuously lacking
in the arts of peace, but overcrowded with types and replete with
wonderful scenery, their histories sated with war and romance—have
begun to be disclosed to the travelling world. Only within the past few
years their outlying districts have been connected with their business
centres by telegraphic communication; only within the past few years
railroads have been constructed, steamship lines inaugurated and hotel
accommodations perfected. Yesterday their peoples were almost barbaric;
to-day they are more highly civilized and more finely cultured than
perhaps we are inclined to admit; to-morrow they may be famous. They
have been makers of history for our forebears and us; they will be
makers of history for posterity and its children.
It is to assist the reader to frame a more just opinion of that
southeastern corner of Europe, “The Lands of the Tamed Turk,” and
those who people it, that this volume of personal observations and
experiences of travel, interspersed with brief bits of history, is
offered.
The author begs to tender his appreciation to Mr. Nox McCain for the
use of several unusual photographs published herewith; also to the
editors of _The Metropolitan Magazine_, New York, _Travel Magazine_,
New York, and _The National Geographic Magazine_, Washington, with
whose kind permission are herein reprinted, _verbatim_, certain parts
of special articles on the Balkan States by the author, and some of
the illustrations accompanying them, which appeared in the periodicals
mentioned above.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
WHY THE BALKANS?
The Rundreise Ticket—Why the Balkans?—When and
Where English is Heard—Why Not the Balkans? 1
CHAPTER II
BUDA-PESTH AND BELGRADE
Buda-Pesth and Its Language—From Buda-Pesth to
Belgrade—The Servian Passport System—First
Impressions of Belgrade—Garden Spots in and
about the Servian Metropolis 12
CHAPTER III
TWENTIETH CENTURY SERVIA
The Servians—The Rise of the Nation—The Army—The
Race-meets—The Market in Belgrade—National
Customs—The National Dance 24
CHAPTER IV
THE SERVIAN DYNASTIES
Karageorge—Milosh Obrenovitch—Murder of Karageorge—Turkey
Grants the Title of Prince—Milosh
Abdicates—Abdication of Prince Michael—Alexander
Abdicates—Prince Milosh Re-installed, His
Death and the Re-election of Prince Michael—Murder
of Michael—Prince Milan’s Marriage, Abdication
and Death—Alexander Elected 43
CHAPTER V
ALEXANDER AND DRAGA
Alexander—Draga—The Meeting—Draga’s Return to
Belgrade—Russia’s Intrigues—Marriage of Alexander
and Draga—Origin of the Plot to Murder 53
CHAPTER VI
THE CAPITAL OF CRIME
Plans of Procedure—Meeting of the Regicides—The
First Move—The Murder of the King and Queen—The
Assassination of Others—The Royal Burial—The
Murder of the Brothers Novakovics in 1907 61
CHAPTER VII
PREDICTIONS OF SERVIAN TRAGEDIES
Prediction of the Assassination of Prince Michael—Natalie’s
Visit to the Parisian Fortune-teller—The
Prediction in London of the Murder of Draga and
Alexander 78
CHAPTER VIII
NISCH AND SOPHIA
From Belgrade to Nisch—Nisch—Provincial Hotel
Accommodations—The Monument of Skulls—Tzaribrod—Sophia—Value
Received for $1.25 per Diem—Dragoleftsky 94
CHAPTER IX
BULGARIA AND HER PAST
Progress of Bulgaria—Origin of her Peoples—The
Bulgari—First Russian Invasion of Bulgaria—The
Assenide Dynasty—Turkish Tyrannies—Emancipation
of Bulgaria—Russia’s Intrigues against Prince
Alexander—The Late Balkan Disturbances 111
CHAPTER X
A BULGARIAN MARKET
Bulgaria’s Busy Day—The Orient Express 130
CHAPTER XI
SARAJEVO—THE SPIRED CITY
From Belgrade to Sarajevo—The Turkish Bazaar—A
Bosnian Street Sprinkler—Horse-races at Ylidze—A
Dervish Dance 145
CHAPTER XII
FROM SARAJEVO TO THE COAST
Jablaniča—Mostar—Across the Mountains—The Balkan
Riviera—Ragusa: The Fairy City of the Adriatic 166
CHAPTER XIII
RAGUSA
As She Is—The First Colony—The Fire of 1292—The
Black Death—Hungary Acquires the Place—Ragusa
Establishes her Independence—Plague—Earthquake—Napoleon
Takes Ragusa—The City
Ceded to Austria 179
CHAPTER XIV
THE BOCCHE DI CATTARO
Steamer-day at Gravosa—Ragusa from the Sea—The
Bocche di Cattaro—Castelnuovo—Cattaro and
Her Mountain Background 199
CHAPTER XV
MONTENEGRO
The Gibraltar of the Balkan Peninsula—The Settling of
Montenegro—Peter I—The Family of Petrovich—Prince
Nikola—The Montenegrin Costume—Incidents
of War—The Montenegro of To-day 211
CHAPTER XVI
THE ROAD TO CETTINJE
The Ascent of the Mountains—Njegushi—The Montenegrin
Capital—Historical Monuments in Cettinje—The
Return to Cattaro 229
CHAPTER XVII
SPALATO AND SALONA
Westward Along the Coast—First Glimpse of Spalato—The
Campanile—Diocletian’s Palace—Salona and
Her Ruins 247
CHAPTER XVIII
ZARA
From Spalato to Zara—Chief Objects of Interest in the
Capital of Dalmatia—The Story of St. Simeon—The
Five Fountains—Fragments of Roman Occupation 269
CHAPTER XIX
THE GULF OF QUARNERO
The Home of the Bora—Fiume—Abbazia—The Home
of the Torpedo—Descendants of the Uscocs 282
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE LATE QUEEN DRAGA OF SERVIA _Frontispiece_
MAP viii
“A CROWD OF STARY-EYED, OPEN-MOUTHED, INQUISITIVE
NATIVES” 5
THE HOTEL PROPRIETOR, SOPHIA 9
THE FISCHER RAMPARTS, PESTH 13
THE ELIZABETH BRIDGE,—BUDA IN THE BACKGROUND 17
THE NATIVE SERVIAN HEAD-DRESS 25
DRINKING A FRIENDLY GLASS OF _SLIVIVITZ_ 31
A “BOZE” PEDDLER, BELGRADE 35
THE PRISHTINA COSTUME, WORN BY SERVIAN WOMEN ON
FEAST DAYS 39
THE LATE KING ALEXANDER OF SERVIA 51
A SIDEWALK CAFÉ, BELGRADE 63
KING PETER KARAGEORGEVITCH OF SERVIA 69
THE BALL-ROOM OF THE NEW PALACE, BELGRADE 73
FRUIT VENDERS, NISCH 95
A STREET SCENE, SOPHIA 103
A BULGARIAN VILLAGE CHURCH 109
THE SAINT CRAL CATHEDRAL, SOPHIA 115
THE RUINED CHURCH OF SAINT SOPHIA, SOPHIA 119
MONUMENT TO THE “TZAR LIBERATOR,” SOPHIA 123
“A HAWKING, BANTERING MULTITUDE ... IN GALA
DRESS” 131
BULGARIANS IN GALA ATTIRE 135
A GROUP POSED FOR THE CAMERA AT THE FRIDAY MARKET,
SOPHIA 139
THE AUSTRIAN ARMY BARRACKS AT SARAJEVO 147
SOME TURKISH HOMES IN SARAJEVO 153
DOUBLE-DECKED STORES IN THE TURKISH BAZAAR,
SARAJEVO 157
“THE REAL DEVOTEES OF THE RACES” 161
A GORGE OF THE NARENTA, NEAR JABLANIČA 167
THE OLD ROMAN BRIDGE, MOSTAR 173
THE HARBOUR OF GRAVOSA 181
RAGUSA,—MOUNT SERGIUS IN THE BACKGROUND 185
THE WALLS OF RAGUSA 189
THE SEA FORTS OF RAGUSA 197
A GENERAL VIEW OF CASTELNUOVO 205
THE FAMOUS “LADDER” ACROSS THE FACE OF MOUNT
LOVČEN 209
A GROUP OF MONTENEGRINS 213
A TYPICAL MONTENEGRIN GIRL 219
A STONE MASON OF CETTINJE AND HIS CART 225
A SECTION OF THE ROAD ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 231
THE PASS AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAINS 235
THE MAIN STREET, CETTINJE 241
A TURN OF THE ROAD ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS 245
SPALATO FROM THE CAMPANILE 253
A FOUNTAIN ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF SPALATO 259
THE RUINS OF THE BASILICA, SALONA 263
ROMAN SARCOPHAGI, SALONA 267
THE WATER FRONT, ZARA 273
THE FIVE FOUNTAINS, ZARA 279
VIA ANDRASSY, FIUME 285
The Lands of the Tamed Turk
CHAPTER I
WHY THE BALKANS?
The Rundreise Ticket—Why the Balkans?—When and Where English is
Heard—Why Not the Balkans?
For a week we had remained in London, trying furiously to make up
our minds which part of the Continent would interest us most. In the
evenings at dinner we laid bare our ideas collected during the day,
and endeavoured to formulate plans, but those countries which one
favoured to visit seemed in no wise to appeal to the other. By the end
of the week we had about completed our inventory of the tourable parts
of Europe without one of us being inoculated with a special desire to
revisit any of them. Then some one suggested, “Why not the Balkans?”
That seemingly insignificant little interrogation cut short our
evening convocations in London as abruptly as one would snuff the wick
of a candle, for inside of forty-eight hours we had purchased our
“Rundreise” and “Hapag” tickets and were speeding Vienna-ward.
To the seasoned traveller the following brief explanation may seem a
trifle superfluous but, at the same time, it may be the means of saving
a world of bother and inconvenience, no small item of expense and an
incalculable loss of temper to the uninitiated—especially in countries
where an English-speaking individual is regarded with no little
curiosity.
The “Rundreise,” or “Round-trip-ticket,” is an institution in itself.
On it you may travel, for example, from London to Constantinople and
return to London by way of any route or in any direction. You may go
to Paris, to Cologne, and up the Rhine to Frankfort; thence to Vienna,
Buda-Pesth, Constantinople, and return by way of the Levant and the
Riviera. There are a hundred different routes by which to go and come,
a hundred interesting parts of countries to pass through, a hundred
beautiful cities to visit. You may travel by rail or by boat, first,
second or third class—according to the price paid—but you must
return to the starting-point, or, at all events, you will have paid for
that privilege, and it concerns but you if you do not care to avail
yourself of it.
The one serious proviso of the “Rundreise ticket,” and one that will be
at once a drawback to some and a boon to others, is that no luggage may
be checked on it. But the less luggage and the smaller the assortment
of clothes taken for travel in the Balkans the better—providing, of
course, your mission does not necessitate your being dined and wined by
the nobility and diplomats.
The “Hapag ticket” is, in the language of the Magyar, of the same
general specie as the “Rundreise.”
And in contemplating such a trip through the Southeast of Europe, two
important questions naturally arise: Why? and why not the Balkans?
To the first there are many convincing replies. The Balkan States have
been, for two thousand years, the “Powder Box” of Europe. The Greeks,
and, after them, the Romans, came and saw and conquered; the Venetians,
for a time, swept all before them along the coast of the Adriatic;
for five hundred years the Turks, thirsting for the blood of the
Christians, have attacked, have been repulsed and have attacked again,
shocking the entire world with their atrocious massacres. One need not
hunger for history in travelling through the Balkans. In addition, its
peoples are primitive, their customs are curious and their methods
mediæval. They are backward and unsophisticated in everything but
war—and that word “war” has been the slogan in the “Near East” for
centuries.
Furthermore, the territory has been left uninvaded by the frantic
tourist,—in fact, an American is regarded as a wonder to look upon,
and his harmless little camera, aimed promiscuously, is as apt to
conjure up a crowd of stary-eyed, open-mouthed, inquisitive natives as
the perpetration of a political tragedy.
And woe is he who cannot speak German, or at least enough of that
language to ask the questions necessary to travel, for the days of
“personally conducted” tours through the Balkans have yet to come. He
may speak French fluently but, exclusive of the diplomatic circles,
it would be as much to his advantage to adhere to American slang. The
exceptions, however, invariably prove the rule, and it is when English
is least expected to be heard that its utterance is the most heartily
appreciated.
[Illustration: “A CROWD OF STARY-EYED, OPEN-MOUTHED, INQUISITIVE
NATIVES.”]
The head-waiter of the hotel in Belgrade had been a deck steward on
a trans-Atlantic liner and of course surprised us upon our arrival with
a generous speech in English.
The hotel proprietor in Sophia spoke nine languages with great fluency
and, in addition, had been studying English from newspapers. He had
so far advanced in the mastery of the grammar as to have been able to
read Dickens (whether he understood it or not is another matter), but
I had the honour of being the first English-speaking person upon whom
he had had the opportunity of airing his pronunciation. Considering the
fact that he had never before indulged his English in conversation he
butchered it to a remarkably small degree, and was understood without
an excessive amount of difficulty.
As another example of this clandestine knowledge of the English
language throughout the Balkan Peninsula, I was standing one evening
on the _molo_ at Ragusa, watching two fishermen load their small boats
with nets and other implements of the catch. At the stern of their
craft was displayed a large and cumbersome lantern having a powerful
reflector. I questioned the rower in German, such as it was, as to
the use of this paraphernalia, and, as I had not heard a word of my
mother-tongue in the town—in fact, all along the Dalmatian coast—my
auricular nerves suffered a profound but agreeable shock when the man
replied, “The sardines follow the light while we lead ’em into the
nets.” He had been a sailor and had visited almost every port in the
United States as well as in England.
And, why _not_ the Balkans?
In place of the mountain-trails and muddy cart-roads of a few years
ago there are now railway lines that form a network through the most
interesting sections, and travel is facilitated proportionately. The
scenery is as picturesque as any in Europe, while the touch of colour,
in the garb of the peasants mingling with the variegated uniforms of
the always conspicuous army, adds an unalloyed charm seldom enjoyed
along the time-honoured travel routes of the Continent. Good hotels,
at which the food is excellent and well prepared, may be found in
the cities, and the accommodations, if not luxurious, cleanly and
comfortable.
[Illustration: THE HOTEL PROPRIETOR, SOPHIA.]
As late as 1853-54 not a single telegraphic line existed beyond the
Austrian frontier. Along the highway from Belgrade to Constantinople,
through Nisch and Sophia, messages from the Western courts to the
Sublime Porte were carried by dare-devil riders at a speed which
sacrificed horse-flesh regardlessly. A notable achievement was the
ride along this route of one Colonel Townley, who covered eight hundred
miles in the incredibly short time of five days and ten hours. To-day
the “Orient Express” eats its tortuous way tri-weekly from Calais to
Constantinople, crossing Europe from edge to edge, in a fraction over
four days.
Hardships of travel through the near East have vanished, although, in
countries so backward and so seldom visited by the sightseer, it would
be highly improbable that inconveniences would not be encountered.
But these inconveniences are doubly cancelled by the pleasures and
sensations of vibrating between the beauty-spots of pugnacious little
principalities, whose histories have been written so indelibly with
blood upon the pages of the world’s progress.
CHAPTER II
BUDA-PESTH AND BELGRADE
Buda-Pesth and Its Language—From Buda-Pesth to Belgrade—The Servian
Passport System—First Impressions of Belgrade—Garden Spots in and
about the Servian Metropolis.
Buda-Pesth, with its imposing buildings, its kaleidoscopic market
scenes and its impossible language, seems to be the Eastern jumping-off
place, so to speak, of Continental travel. It is the suburb of Europe;
but what a fascinating suburb it is, to be sure! Its architectural
beauty is unsurpassed; its situation unrivalled, with the Danube
coursing between the old city, Buda, and the new city, Pesth; its parks
are veritable bowers of refreshing green; its cafés are interesting and
its military music delightful. It is the Mecca of Magyar aristocracy
and, if one can infer aught from natural proof, it has been well
adopted.
But the language! The atrocious combinations of vowels and consonants
fairly numb your powers of pronunciation. In order that your attempts
to even read the signs may be made all the more tantalizing, our own,
the Roman, alphabet is used to muddle the brain of the foreign
visitor. When we see the writings of the Chinese or the Greeks, for
instance, we are not inclined to regard these tongues as altogether
unmasterable, but to behold the letters of _our_ alphabet so
haphazardly jumbled together and capped with many accents, grave and
acute, seems bitter indeed. Taking it all in all the Hungarian tongue
seems analogous to a waste of talent.
[Illustration: THE FISCHER RAMPARTS, PESTH.]
One delightful evening I summoned my courage and ventured into a
trolley-car, hoping that it might eventually take me near the Casino
of the principal park. It did, _mirabile dictu_, and I alighted.
But a week in Buda-Pesth had not passed without many and varied
experiences. In order to be doubly cautious and not mistake my car
to return to the hotel—for, luckily, this one made the park its
terminus and returned by the same route—I unsheathed my note book
and copied then and there the name of the route from a sign on the
side of the car. Fortified with this valuable data I was prepared to
enjoy the evening with reckless abandon, mingling with the crowds,
listening to the music and concerning myself not at all as to the way
to get home, for I had only to wait until a car came along marked
“Városlíget-Eskü-Tér-Podmaniczy-Utcka,” whatever that means, and I
would be among friends.
If you do not stop to look at the signs—for what is a city of this era
without a host of glaring, gilded advertisements—Buda-Pesth is just as
enticing, but on a somewhat smaller scale, as Vienna, and at the end of
a fortnight we were loth to leave. As the next slip of our Rundreise
book read “Belgrade,” we jammed ourselves into one of the dusty
compartments of a crowded railway train bound for the Servian frontier.
Among our fellow-passengers was an aged, rheumatic Jewish woman,
travelling from Vienna to Constantinople, who became very sociable,
despite her affliction, and lighted one cigarette from the stub of the
other as she unveiled to us her past history in broken German.
The railway line from Buda-Pesth to Belgrade, traversing the great
Hungarian steppes, is devoid of attractive scenery and the journey
of seven hours becomes somewhat tiresome, especially if the season
is summer with its accompanying heat and the train is uncomfortably
crowded. Agriculture along the route seems to be very much on the wane,
but enormous herds of long-horned cattle, flocks of sheep and tens of
thousands of pigs tell succinctly of the product of that portion of
Hungary. Now and again you may see a native driver in heavy leather
boots, white petticoat, or smock, to his knees, and a derby hat (not a
very dignified-appearing combination of apparel), tending a large flock
of unusually huge geese, tapping the laggards deftly with his long
willow switch.
[Illustration: THE ELIZABETH BRIDGE,—BUDA IN THE BACKGROUND.]
The minute you cross the Danube at the Servian frontier you begin
to feel the influence, although a waning one, of a nation that has
been struggling desperately for hundreds of years to regain her lost
provinces—the Turks. It is not so noticeable in Servia as in Bulgaria,
not so noticeable in Bulgaria as in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, but it
is there, nevertheless; the sullen, silent suffering of a nation of
stoics, whose forefathers were defeated in their murderous attempts to
Mohammedanize Europe only at the very gates of Vienna itself.
The fact that Servia entertains exaggerated fears for her own is
brought to the notice of the traveller—and forcibly, too—at Zemlin,
on the Austrian side of the Danube River, opposite Belgrade. At this
point one of King Peter’s ominous-looking arms of the law, resplendent
in epaulets and gold cord, boards each and every train from the west.
Although his trailing sword appears to be no little hindrance to his
ease in getting about, his temper remains unruffled and he examines
with polite suspicion the passports of all who expect to leave the
train at the Servian capital. The name of the owner of the passport is
jotted down on a piece of paper which, later, in the depot, is handed
surreptitiously to a pair of warlike individuals who guard the exit to
the street, while the customs officials are demanding excuses for the
contents of your grips. Between these two warriors you must pass out
from the depot and give them your name, which is forthwith checked off
the list previously furnished by the portly train inspector.
But this is not all.
Upon arrival at the hotel you are handed an information blank, which
must be filled in with your name, address, occupation, religion, where
you came from, how long you expect to remain in the city, your ultimate
destination and such data as would facilitate the authorities in
bringing you to earth in case you attempted to cut short the life of
the King or incited the natives to revolt.
One of these blanks, for you must fill in two, is kept at the hotel;
the other is sent to police headquarters. No matter how insignificant
you may imagine you are when in your mother-country, you are under
the eagle eye of the government continuously in Servia. Your every
move is watched and made a note of. It matters not even if you change
to another hotel; the police are immediately notified to that effect.
You are branded as a suspicious character and will remain so until you
prove it or leave the country, vindicated.
Your first impressions of the metropolis of Servia are apt to be a bit
disappointing, and especially so if you arrive at night, for Belgrade
is anything but an imposing city, even in the daytime. You are driven
rather recklessly through streets of very uneven cobbles, miserably
lighted and apparently abandoned by human beings. The business, and,
at the same time, residential part of the city, in which your hotel
is located, looks down from the crest of a hill upon the squalid, old
Turkish quarter on one side, from which emanates a veritable vapour of
highly seasoned cookery, and the poor Servian district and warehouses
on the other. To the west, on a cliff overlooking the junction of the
Danube and the Save, are the Kalemagden Park and the old fortress, the
guns of the latter having been long since silenced by the Treaty of
Berlin of 1878, which forbade Servia fortifying her Austrian frontier.
“The cheerful boulevards of Belgrade,” as one author earnestly puts it,
may have been in existence at the time the phrase was coined, but I
very much doubt it, because of the dearth of evidence of these alleged
“boulevards” ever having deserved such flattery.
This Kalemagden Park, however, is one of the few beauty spots of the
Servian capital. Another is in the vicinity of the _konak_, or palace,
of King Peter, in the eastern portion of the city. The street borders
one end of the _konak_ and continues past the garden and lawn which the
building faces: if it were not for the gates being guarded constantly
by soldiers one would hardly imagine the edifice to be the residence
of a royal household. The mutinous murder of King Alexander and Queen
Draga in 1903 occurred in the old _konak_, later demolished by order of
the present ruler, which stood in front of the new palace but facing
the gardens and the street.
Three miles to the east of the city is located Topchidere Park, the
beautiful country-seat of the ill-fated Prince Alexander, who was but
one victim of the many infamously successful plots of the Servian
regicides. His chalet stands on the opposite side of the roadway from
the little chapel, and in the garden his stone tea-table is still
preserved. Above it spread the branches of a monstrous tree of some
three hundred years of age, famous from the fact that from its massive
limbs the invading Turks were wont to hang their Christian victims.
Near by is the country estate of the present Crown Prince, with stables
and kennels containing his favourite horses and dogs.
Topchidere is the improvised country club of the Belgraders, and many
are the social functions given in its casino—if I may apologize for
the use of the word “casino” in describing the ramshackle frame house
of carousal in the Park. But the gardens are really beautiful, and are
kept in excellent condition by state prisoners detailed to work in
them.
CHAPTER III
TWENTIETH CENTURY SERVIA
The Servians—The Rise of the Nation—The Army—The Race-meets—The
Market in Belgrade—National Customs—The National Dance.
To the seeker of health and of pleasure, to the lover of the beautiful
in art and in nature, to the reveller in gayety and luxurious living,
Servia as a travel territory is null and void. It is a country of
interest to the public only so long as it continues to bask in the
limelight as a disturber of Balkan peace. It is the tool of Russia, the
enemy of Austria, the contempt of Bulgaria and the hatred of Turkey.
Indeed its only true friend may be said to be its relative—miniature
Montenegro. If the Balkan Peninsula is the “Powder Box” of Europe,
Servia certainly deserves to be called the “Percussion Cap” of the
Balkan Peninsula.
[Illustration: THE NATIVE SERVIAN HEAD-DRESS.]
To the student the Servians are a nation of types; as a race they
are gifted by nature with unusual powers of observation, shrewdness
and strength of character, but from the fact of their having been
so long oppressed has arisen a disposition to concealment and even
absolute distrust. They are patriotic and loyal to a marked degree,
which may account, in part, for their emotional proclivities. They are
absolutely fearless, but this fearlessness assumes at times a tinge
of the _opera bouffe_, as in the late controversy with Austria, which
leads us Americans to think of them as a nation of charlatans.
But I digress. It is not my desire to enter into any rehearsals
of the political conditions in the pivotal Near East. I exhaled a
deep-breathed oath when this volume was commenced to confine my
writings herein to the travelling through and brief descriptions of
these “Lands of the Tamed Turk,” introducing such history as might seem
romantic and interesting and instructive enough to be absorbed by the
reader.
Only since the final suppression of the Turks have the Servians “found
themselves,” so to speak, and the rapid rise of the nation has been
remarkable. In the early years of the nineteenth century, before its
revolt under the leadership of George Petrovitch—Kara, or Black
George, as he was called by the Turks—Servia could not boast of a
single schoolhouse; there was not even a wagon road in the whole
country, except what remained of the ancient Roman highway between
Belgrade and Nisch; because the Turks forbade the building or even
repairing of houses of Christian worship, the churches were, for the
most part, in miserable ruin; the entire population at that time was
scarcely larger than that of the single city of Detroit to-day. Then
Servia was merely a province of Turkey, governed by a Vizir sent from
Constantinople. The country was not only the seat of internal friction,
but tribes, in rebellion against the Sultan, exploited the land as a
private estate.
But listen to the changes of a hundred years.
As I write, Servia maintains eight hundred and sixty elementary
schools for boys and a hundred and fifty for girls; fourteen middle
grade schools with, and twelve without, classical departments; six
high-schools for girls; two technical academies; two schools for
teachers; one commercial college; a school of agriculture; a military
academy; and an university. Public instruction is free and compulsory.
Of the twelve hundred and seventy-eight towns and villages throughout
the country the important ones are connected by rail, and telegraphic
communication exists between most of the others.
The contemptible pig still constitutes the chief article of export,
but the raising of swine, instead of the cultivation of the soil,
although the latter is by no means unprolific, has been handed down
from generation to generation as an ingenious method of the Servians
for saving the products of their country from the destructive raids
of the Turks.[1] In some districts, however, fruits and cereals are
cultivated and exported in abundance. Many thousands of cases of plums
find their way to France annually, whence they are re-exported to
America, and sold under the label of French products. From this fruit
is pressed the national drink of Servia, _slivivitz_, a sort of plum
brandy, which, when imbibed freely, produces most grotesque effects—so
I am told.
[1] To those of the Mohammedan faith pork is a forbidden delicacy.
Although the whole kingdom covers little more than twice the area of
the state of New Jersey, the regular army consists of some twenty
thousand men. The organization of it, however, is based upon a law
enacted in 1893 which, if executed, would place in the field three
hundred and thirty-five thousand men, but financial stringencies have
curbed the application of this statute. For every Servian between the
ages of twenty and thirty, military duty for two years in the regular
army is compulsory; and during the remaining years of his middle life
he is classed in the first, second or third divisions of the reserves,
according to his age.
Belgrade itself, the capital of the country, has a population of
eighty thousand, being about the size of Hartford, Connecticut, and it
is a singular fact, as well as an amusing one, that no less than two
thousand of this number are policemen. These guardians of the peace,
who are at the same time units of the army, are well-drilled and are
housed in military barracks.
[Illustration: DRINKING A FRIENDLY GLASS OF _SLIVIVITZ_.]
Naturally, the army is the phase of Servian life most often met with in
the capital. You will see it on every hand, at all hours and clothed
in every conceivable colour of uniform. It throngs the parks and
takes complete and indisputable possession of the cafés; in which the
prices of beverages advance simultaneously with the tuning-up of the
gypsy orchestras. Should you drive out to one of the rather ridiculous
race-meets you will notice that the army-officers’ race is the most
important event on the programme. Like as not, upon such an excursion,
the King will drive past you, bowing graciously; although the races are
comparatively crude affairs, he and the other members of the royal
household are ardent devotees of the sport.
At the race course the army lines the fence bordering the track,
while half a dozen heavily equipped peasants in black alpaca caps vie
with each other as to the speed of their respective mounts. At one
meet which I attended, a rider was thrown within a short distance
from the tape, which his horse was about to cross ahead of the other
contestants by two hundred yards. But his mind was set upon winning
the race by fair means or foul and, picking himself out of the dust,
he bravely endeavoured to cross the line on foot in advance of the
fast-approaching cloud of rivals. Upon his failure to do so a heated
discussion immediately arose as to whether the horse won the race or
the rider lost it.
For a Balkan city Belgrade is exceptionally apt in acquiring the ways
and “means” of the Westerner. As the traveller is about to leave the
hotel to take a train a hall bell is rung, followed by a general
mustering of all hands, from the head clerk to the cook’s helper, each
of whom expects to receive some token of appreciation for services
rendered. I suppose I had helped at least sixteen to establish
themselves in business, and was just about to make a second start for
the depot when one of the confederates came running breathlessly
towards me. Would I be good enough to wait just _one_ moment because
the _zimmer mädchen_ (and Heaven knows I tipped _her_ munificently each
time she brought me warm water for shaving or lined the marble bathtub
with a sheet—and in Belgrade a bath costs seventy-five cents, anyway)
was on her way downstairs? But time was precious with me and as I drove
away I heard, faintly, the tardy and disappointed _zimmer mädchen_
clattering along the flagstone hall.
I even saw an automobile, of uncertain vintage and questionable
parentage, in Belgrade, honking its noisy way through the crowds of
gaping peasants near the market.
And in the word “market” I have unconsciously mentioned one of the most
interesting sights to be had during a visit to a Slavonic city. Every
day is “market-day” in Belgrade, but on Sunday mornings the bizarre
scene is augmented by peasants in holiday garb from all the surrounding
country-side, while Turkish “boze”-sellers (this word “boze” is not
to be conflicted with the American slang expression which signifies
intoxicating liquors) peddle about the contents of their buckets,
shrieking the avowed virtues of their stock in trade. This “boze,” a
sort of sweetened oatmeal water, is freely consumed in Servia by
shopkeepers, artisans and peasants.
[Illustration: A “BOZE” PEDDLER, BELGRADE.]
But I must withhold the description of a typical market scene in the
Balkans, and devote a certain amount of space to it in connection with
the Bulgar capital of Sophia where one of the most interesting markets
in the world is held on Friday of each week.
Of the customs of the country there are many which are quaint and
singular, especially among the peasant population, but only a few of
the more common ones will bear description.
In the Servian orthodox church there are a hundred and eighty feast
days in the year, the continued observance of which places business in
a state of chaos. Divorce is easily obtained, and for the slightest
cause, through the ecclesiastical tribunals, and it carries with it
no social disgrace; but to wed a cousin, no matter how distant, is
attended with absolute ostracism.
Instead of bride’s-maids at a wedding the Servians employ two _kums_,
or godfathers, each of whom is compelled by custom to give the bride
a dress-length of silk. A particularly significant honour is bestowed
upon the _dever_, who acts in the capacity of the best man at the
marriage ceremony. He carries a bouquet, wears a white sash and other
ludicrous regalia, and for no reason whatever must he leave the bride
for an instant throughout the day of the wedding.
As a general rule the wife is older than the husband and the
bridegroom’s relatives have preference over those of the bride. The
bride herself is regarded as little more than a household slave.
Each regiment of the army, like each Servian family, revels in the
protection of a patron saint, and the celebration of the _slava_, or
patron saint’s day, of a regiment is the only occasion of the year
upon which all ranks of the army are considered socially equal. In the
family the _slava_ usually takes place upon the anniversary of that
family’s conversion to Christianity, and on that day it is the custom
to call upon one’s friends whose _slava_ it is.
[Illustration: THE PRISHTINA COSTUME, WORN BY SERVIAN WOMEN ON FEAST
DAYS.]
Characteristic of every Slavonic nation is its national dance, and the
Servians, not to be outdone in this respect by their cousins, boast
of what they call the “Kola,” an extremely picturesque variety of the
terpsichorean art, partly adapted from the Russian and partly invented
by themselves. This “Kola” is danced upon the least provocation,
and at every function. It matters little where they may be; in the
streets of Belgrade or tending their flocks in the fields, if a
group of Servians feel a “Kola” coming on they must give vent to their
enthusiasm. It is danced upon the field of battle by the soldiers,
and the King leads it at every state ball. At first sight it seems
ridiculous, almost childish, and especially so when danced at one of
the royal functions where gray-whiskered diplomats of all nations,
high officials of state in uniform and be-jewelled leaders of Servian
society trail like a kaleidoscopic serpent in the wake of the King,
as he twists and turns up and down the polished floor of the great
ball-room in the palace. But it seems to wax more and more fascinating
and impressive the more often one sees it danced.
I was returning by carriage one warm, humid afternoon, from the cool
environs of Topchidere Park, when I noticed a regiment of Servian
soldiery drilling on the parade ground near one of the barracks.
Suddenly the order to stack arms was given. Two of the privates rushed
with all possible speed to the barracks and returned with a couple of
violins. As they commenced the typical Slavonic music of the “Kola”
the nine hundred and more officers and men linked arms and, forming
one long line of white coats and caps, blue breeches and black boots,
went through the mystic mazes of the national Servian dance with much
precision, no little amount of gusto and a great deal of effervescent
enthusiasm. As I witnessed this “Kola” it was nothing if not an
inspiring sight.
CHAPTER IV
THE SERVIAN DYNASTIES
Karageorge—Milosh Obrenovitch—Murder of Karageorge—Turkey
Grants the Title of Prince—Milosh Abdicates—Abdication of Prince
Michael—Alexander Abdicates—Prince Milosh Re-installed, His Death
and the Re-election of Prince Michael—Murder of Michael—Prince
Milan’s Marriage, Abdication and Death—Alexander Elected.
The very early history of Servia and her peoples has been daubed so
freely with myth and fable that it would be confusing and tedious to
enter into it. Instead, I shall confine myself to the brief narration
of the two later dynasties, explanatory of the world-renowned friction
between them.
Of all the capitals of the world none deserves more unquestionably the
sobriquet of “The Capital of Crime,” as I have named a later chapter,
than that of Servia. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century four
reigning monarchs have been ruthlessly murdered in or near Belgrade,
and four others have been forced to abdicate. What would have been
the fate of these latter had they not foreseen it can readily be
imagined. King-killing is chronic with the Servians and there are
to-day twenty-nine men incarcerated in the prison at Belgrade, charged
with plotting against the life of the present ruler, King Peter
Karageorgevitch.
The history of these national tragedies, the latest of which, in 1903,
shocked the civilized world, begins with the histories of the two royal
families of Servia, and takes us back a hundred years, to a time when
the country was suffering the most from the perennial invasions of the
bloodthirsty Mohammedans.
“The end of the year 1801 saw Servia a prey to systematized vandalism.
It was a reign of unexampled tyranny and cruelty. The bloodthirstiness
of the Sultan’s janizaries increased like the strength of a torrent.
The Dahis, in obedience to the Sultan’s firmans, commissioned murderers
to proceed through Servia and kill all the mayors of towns and
villages, chiefs of cantons, priests and monks. A wave of terror swept
over the land, spreading panic in every direction. Mothers hugged
their children to their breasts and men in hushed whispers spoke of
self-destruction as a less miserable fate than falling into the hands
of the Turks. Every male over seven years of age was to be destroyed.
But something in the Servians which had hitherto lain dormant, a spirit
of manhood which had not been manifested before, arose under the whip
of the gigantic thraldom; seemingly the crushed and oppressed drew
breath, the instinct of self-preservation kindled in their hearts, and
the embers burst out into a new flame of patriotism.”
Such, then, happened to be the deplorable conditions in Servia when
George Petrovich, or Kara-George, a poverty-stricken peasant of a fiery
temperament, but a man of dominating energy, morose and taciturn,
imbued with this patriotic flame, descended from the little village
of Topola where he made his home. By means of his character and
personal magnetism he rallied his countrymen and posted the now-famed
proclamation, which called upon the whole of Servia to rise against the
Turks. The latter were driven from the country after a siege of eight
days, and for nine years Karageorge ruled in Servia and kept at bay the
subjects of the Sultan.
But in 1813, the Turks, encouraged by the jealousy which had been
impregnated in the hearts of the military chiefs on account of the
pre-eminence of Karageorge, proclaimed a holy war. In vain did the
peasant leader appeal to his people to withstand the attacks of the
Mohammedans and, in the end, he fled disgusted to his mountain home.
It was at this time that the Servians found a new champion in Milosh
Obrenovitch, General of Rudneek under Karageorge, and, after a
successful campaign against the Turks, he was proclaimed a hero.
Karageorge, off among the hills, was loth to see this Milosh taking his
place in the hearts of his people, so, in 1817, disregarding utterly
the orders of the Vizir and the advices of Milosh himself, he decided
to return to his subjects. He stopped for the night at the house of
Semendria Vouitza, who, oblivious to the old ties of friendship and his
duties as a host, murdered his guest as he slept, and who knows but at
the instigation of Milosh Obrenovitch?
This, then, was the first of the Servian royal tragedies, and the
beginning of the deep and terrible feud between the families of
Karageorge and Obrenovitch, the latest victims of which were the
unfortunate and weakly King Alexander, the last Obrenovitch, and his
queen, Draga, in 1903.
In 1830 Turkey permitted Milosh to assume the title of “Prince Milosh
Obrenovitch I.” By this action she yielded to Servia’s demands, for
Turkey had suffered defeat in the hands of the Russians in 1829, and
Russia was literally the sponsor of Servia. But in 1839 the broil
between the old adherents of Karageorge and the followers of his
successor, far worse than mere family jealousies, because it divided
a nation, caused the abdication of Prince Milosh in favour of his
elder son, Prince Milan, who held the reins of government but a few
short weeks when he died and his brother, Prince Michael, assumed the
leadership of the Servians.
Only three years later Prince Michael was compelled to resign and
Alexander, son of Karageorge, was elected in his stead. The year 1859
witnessed the enforced resignation of Alexander and the re-instalment
of old Prince Milosh Obrenovitch, who had answered the fickle summons
to return to his people. He died the following year, and Prince Michael
was, for the second time, made the reigning head of Servia.
The fact that Michael’s wife, who was Princess Julia, a descendant of
a royal Hungarian family and maid of honour to the Empress of Austria,
was childless gave rise to the dastardly Karageorgevitch plot to put an
end to the Obrenovitch dynasty by the murder of her husband. Milosh
Obrenovitch, junior, so to speak, a grand-nephew of Prince Michael, was
the only heir to the Servian throne and the would-be regicides were
confident that a new constitution might be proclaimed in favour of
Peter Karageorgevitch, the present ruler and a grandson of the peasant,
Black George. The sooner this should be attempted the better, for was
not Prince Michael even then contemplating the divorce of his wife, in
order that he might marry Katrine Constantinovitch, his cousin, and so
insure an heir to the throne in the birth of a son?
June 10, 1868, was the day set for the tragedy.
Taking advantage of the Prince’s custom of driving unattended by
military escort through the deer park at Topchidere, four men, all
criminals with notorious careers, met him along the road as he drove in
his carriage with Katrine Constantinovitch and two other relatives. As
the Prince’s carriage advanced, these four men stepped to one side and
bared their heads in recognition of his Royal Highness. Hardly had he
passed when they fired simultaneously upon the royal party, killing the
Prince almost instantly and mortally wounding Mlle. Constantinovitch.
Owing to a mishap to the carriage of the conniving news-bearer the true
tale of the tragedy reached Belgrade before him and it was only through
the masterful diplomacy of M. Petrovitch Blasnavatz, the Minister
of War, that the throne of Servia was saved for the young Milan
Obrenovitch.
In 1872 Prince Milan reached his majority and three years later, in
Vienna, fell in love with the beautiful, charming Roumanian princess,
Natalie, who was destined to play such a prominent role in the future
of the Servian nation. To their union was born a son, Prince Alexander,
“Little Sasha,” as the Servians lovingly called him. Natalie was
popular with her subjects, and in many ways their love for her was made
manifest. On one occasion, when she lay confined in her apartments
before the birth of Alexander, the people walked along the street in
front of the palace on tiptoe and spoke only in whispers, so fearful
were they of disturbing her quiet.
But Milan, although a devoted parent and an unimpeachable patriot and
ruler, proved himself nothing less than a Machiavellian roué. The
persistent outcries against his dual life gained Natalie a divorce,
which was subsequently revoked on account of her refusal to leave the
country. Then, because of the continued murmurs of the Karageorgevitch
faction against him, Milan abdicated and bade farewell to the “Little
Sasha” on March 6, 1889. He died later in Vienna financially,
physically and morally bankrupt.
[Illustration: THE LATE KING ALEXANDER OF SERVIA.]
CHAPTER V
ALEXANDER AND DRAGA
Alexander—Draga—The Meeting—Draga’s Return to Belgrade—Russia’s
Intrigues—Marriage of Alexander and Draga—Origin of the Plot to
Murder.
After the abdication of Milan, Natalie took up her home in Biarritz in
a chateau which she had previously purchased; while back in Belgrade,
Alexander, under the guidance of regents, had taken upon himself the
burdens of a nominal ruler of Servia. It was not long, however, before
the want of the devoted affection and the healthful moral influence
of his mother began to produce their effects. In many ways Alexander
endeavoured to emulate his father. Although headstrong in the extreme,
even to stubbornness, he became pitiably vulnerable, under the tutelage
of less scrupulous associates, to influences not altogether conducive
to his popularity as a king.
It was to his indiscretion and contumacious perversity that was
accredited one of the most horrible royal tragedies in the history of
the world. In fact, it was on one of Alexander’s imprudent escapades
that he met Draga Maschine, then lady-in-waiting to his mother and the
adventuresome widow of an engineer in the Servian army. An illicit
union with this woman kindled the spark of love between them, which
ignited, as time wore on and the number of their meetings increased,
into the burning flame of passionate devotion.
Of the women of Belgrade, Draga Maschine, at the time of her
ascendency, was an acknowledged star in point of beauty of face and
figure. She was tall and graceful in bearing; her eyes were dark and
lustrous; her hair was said to have been black like the hue of a
raven; the curves of her mouth were bewitching; the type of her chin
was indicative of determined character. Beyond these attributes she
was vivacious and alluring. While yet a mere girl of seventeen she
had been married to a young army engineer, but even at that tender
age she had had the reputation of being a maid of uncertain morals,
and her marriage failed to act as a curb to her perverted desires
and inclinations. She had been wedded barely a year when her husband
took his own life because of her alleged disregard for the holy bonds
of matrimony. It was then that Colonel Maschine, her brother-in-law
and her enemy from the first, plotter against the King and the man
destined to act the role of arch-murderer in the final scene of the
greatest of Servian tragedies, swore he would have retribution for her
conduct, which, he said, had been the cause of his brother’s suicide.
In due course of time Draga became fired with the hope of future social
distinction. She had been dragged through the mire of ill-repute and
was now determined to attain the coveted recognition of society, not as
an adventuress, but as a lady of wealth and rank. To this end she even
sought the influence in her behalf of a minister of the Servian court,
and through him the unsophisticated Natalie resolved to help her,
pensioned her, and finally made Draga one of her ladies-in-waiting at
Biarritz.
In 1898 the young King Alexander, upon a visit to his mother at
Biarritz, met Draga, his future queen and for whom he felt no little
affection from the first.
Natalie, during this visit of her son, laid before him her plans for
his marriage to Princess Lilly Mirko of Montenegro, his cousin, an
Obrenovitch descendant and one of the most beautiful women in all
Europe. But the King, already having been subjected by the subtle
charms of Draga (who, by her beauty and manners, had established
herself as the most fascinating of Natalie’s attendants), disappointed
his mother by taking no thought of her proposal.
On the other hand, Draga Maschine left not a single stone unturned
to win the love of the young King. Their secret meetings were the
gossip of the community. Finally, Natalie became alarmed at the
mutual infatuation of her son and her superlatively captivating
lady-in-waiting and dismissed the latter from her _entourage_. But this
action seemed only to weld more securely the relations of the pair, for
Draga returned triumphantly to Belgrade and the scenes of her early
degradation as none other than the mistress of the King himself.
This marks the date when the power of Draga over Alexander was brought
to bear in earnest. It was at her instigation that the King, upon
attaining his majority, locked his regents in a room of the palace
after having invited them to dinner, drew his revolver, boastingly
declared himself the all-powerful King of the Serbs and issued an order
that his father, Prince Milan, then living humbly in Vienna, should be
shot the moment he might attempt to cross the Servian frontier.
Then Russia, always partial to the Karageorgevitch dynasty, and
prime promoter of the political intrigues of Servia for her
own aggrandizement, foresaw a possible end of the Obrenovitch
dynasty and, by the leverage of the King’s love for his mistress,
proceeded forthwith with skill and subterfuge to pave the way for a
Karageorgevitch ruler.
Anticipating the final outcome of the possible marriage of Alexander
and Draga, Russia commissioned the wife of a Cossack colonel as an
agent to use her influence to bring about such a union. Accordingly,
this woman became a personal friend of Draga; she interested herself
in Draga’s love affair and, at an opportune moment, broached to her
the subject of marriage with the King. Draga protested on the ground
that they loved each other and were already very happy, but the exalted
position of a Queen of Servia was so incessantly brought to her mind
that she finally acquiesced to the suggestions of her supposedly
friendly adviser. The King was assured that Russia would recognize the
marriage, for the Great White Czar himself consented to act as best
man, and the day for the wedding was set.
What must have been the thoughts of Alexander as he drove that day
through the decorated streets of Belgrade? Was he so wrapt up in his
love for the aspiring Draga that he had failed to discover the plots
against him? Or, aware of the deep-rooted intrigue to further the ends
of a selfish monarchy, did he stubbornly face disaster and ultimate
death in his loyalty to his Queen?
As the royal couple returned to the _konak_ from the cathedral, after
the marriage ceremony, the streets were thronged with a staring,
phlegmatic crowd, which looked upon its new Queen in silence and
wonder. Not a cheer was raised; not a trumpet sounded. All marvelled,
and stood aghast at the thought that so strange and incongruous a union
had received the sanction of the church.
Because of the marriage of Draga to the King the ire of her enemies had
been expanded to the highest power. The net of conspiracy continued to
be woven more tightly about her and her faithful but foolish husband.
When she learned that it was a physical impossibility for her to become
a mother she schemed to pass off an alien child as a legitimate heir
to the throne; but the Czar of Russia, who had been asked to act as
god-father to the child, and who, at the same time, seriously doubted
the motherhood of Draga, sent his court physician to Belgrade to
investigate. So frantic became the new Queen’s desire to give birth to
a son that, in her dilemma, she made use of her irresistible power to
induce Alexander to proclaim her own brother, Nikodim Lunyevitza, as
heir apparent; this Alexander did, disregarding utterly the entreaties
and expostulations of the Ministry.
His action galled the Servians beyond endurance, and immediately plans
were set on foot to dispose of the Queen, and the King also, should he
persist in the validity of his proclamation. It is said that a woman
was sent to Geneva to propose to Peter Karageorgevitch that he come to
Belgrade and be proclaimed King by the army, it being understood that
he accept the liberal constitution previously annulled by Alexander.
Everything now pointed to the murder of the King and Queen, but the
former, although warned by word and by letter many times, seemed
oblivious to all danger. He went so far as to augment the bitter
feeling by issuing an order transferring a number of officers, who were
known to have conspired against him, to garrisons in the interior of
the country. All Servia was aware that a royal tragedy was pending.
Even Draga realized it for, on the very day before her assassination,
she wrote pathetically in a letter to a friend: “I am haunted by a
dreadful presentiment, and often at night I seem to see a terrifying
picture of Michael[2] in his death agony, stretching his blood-stained
hand toward his murderers and crying, ‘Stop! My brothers! It is
enough!’”
[2] Undoubtedly Prince Michael is meant, Alexander’s great-grand-uncle,
an account of whose murder in Topchidere Park in 1868 has been given in
a previous chapter.
CHAPTER VI
THE CAPITAL OF CRIME
Plans of Procedure—Meeting of the Regicides—The First Move—The
Murder of the King and Queen—The Assassination of Others—The Royal
Burial—The Murder of the Brothers Novakovics in 1907.
Swiftly and silently had been fomented the plot of wholesale slaughter,
of which the Queen was marked as the first and chief victim. If the
King could be induced to sign a form of abdication he was to be given
a chance for his life; his refusal meant death. The murderers—and of
these there were almost a hundred who cut and slashed at the lifeless
bodies of their sovereign—would then descend upon the house of the
Queen’s relatives and kill all in cold blood. This was to be followed
by the assassination of the King’s adherents, including General Zinzar
Markowitz, the Prime Minister; General Pawlowitch, the Minister of War;
M. Todorowitch, Minister of the Interior; and many officers of the army
who had refused to join, or who had expressed themselves as being
opposed to the plot to kill the royal couple.
The red glow of the setting sun had scarcely faded from the sky behind
the walls and turrets of the old fortress on Wednesday evening, June
10, 1903, when the regicides gathered at the “Crown Café” to discuss
and perfect their plans for the invasion of the palace that night.
They sat about smoking and laughing and drinking until many were in a
state of intoxication. The scene was one common in Belgrade. You will
see just such a company of officers grouped about the tables along
the street in front of any restaurant in the Servian capital of a
summer evening. Perhaps, if you will notice, some of these men wear
upon the breast, amid an array of other medals, a small, white Maltese
cross. You may be sure that the proud possessors of these crosses were
implicated in the terrible plot of that June evening—mayhap, some whom
you will see are the very ones who, frenzied by the sting of liquor,
broke open the door to the royal bedchamber and fired mercilessly upon
the helpless occupants. The white crosses are decorations pinned on the
breasts of those who helped to do away with Alexander and Draga by King
Peter himself, in apparent grateful recognition of their services.
[Illustration: A SIDEWALK CAFÉ, BELGRADE.]
During this preliminary meeting of the regicides at the café it
was announced that everything had been arranged satisfactorily:
the co-operation of the servants and soldiers, within the palace
and without, was assured by none other than Colonel Maschine, the
brother-in-law of the Queen, who personally had made arrangements to
thus afford the least possible difficulty in entering the _konak_; the
doors of the palace would even be left unlocked; a regiment of soldiers
had been commissioned to cover the rear of the conspirators and repel
any attack.
By midnight all details had been completed, and the truculent corps
of more or less intoxicated officers moved stealthily toward the
palace gates. After overwhelming a suspiciously weak and pitiful
resistance on the part of the guards they tramped across the garden and
lawn, burst through the unlocked doors of the _konak_ and scrambled
pell-mell up the broad stairs in search of the royal apartments. An
officer encountered in the hallway was killed instantly, and a private
who offered some slight resistance suffered a like fate. General
Petrowitch, loaded revolver in hand, was the next victim, although he
endeavoured to conceal the exact whereabouts of the royal couple by
leading the crowd to another part of the palace.
Needless to say, the King and Queen were awakened by the shots on
the stairs and the loud curses of the frantic criminals. How they
endeavoured to conceal themselves in their helplessness must have been
pathetic indeed. Hurrying from their bed, and still clothed in night
attire, they secreted themselves in an adjoining closet which was
used as a wardrobe-room by Queen Draga. Here they crouched together,
trembling in prayer, while their conspirators raged through room after
room, demolishing _bric-à-brac_, overturning tables and chairs, tearing
pictures from the walls and looting the palace from top to bottom.
Through a window in this closet the luckless King and Queen saw, by
the dim, flickering light of the street lamps, a great crowd collect
outside the palace gates. They were unable to comprehend why this crowd
stood motionless and silent—why they did not rise up, like the devoted
and loyal subjects they were supposed to be, and offer assistance.
At seven minutes past two a stick of dynamite was applied to the door
of the bedchamber, the explosion of which burst the barrier to atoms
and stopped a clock which stood upon a mantel in the room. One report
has it that the Queen, thinking the officers had departed, owing to a
sudden lull in the noise in the bedchamber, foolishly raised the window
in the closet and cried to the crowd outside in the street, “You will
save your King and Queen.”
This action is said to have disclosed to the men the hiding-place of
their victims. At all events the latter were discovered cowering in a
corner of the closet, praying and pleading for mercy. The Queen was
fired upon and killed instantly, and the King, in trying to shield
her, fell a victim to the volley of shots hardly a moment later. Not
to shrink from fulfilling an oath previously taken by many of the
officers, that each would bury the point of his sword in the corpse of
the Queen, they mutilated and hacked the bodies beyond recognition.
It was found later that the body of Queen Draga bore no less than
fifty-seven sword wounds.
And then, as a fitting sequel to their ghastly proceedings, the
regicides tossed the bodies from the window of the closet where the
King and Queen had stood but a few moments before and looked out upon
the crowd. They fell with a thud into the garden below, where they
remained until ten o’clock the following day, all the while being
viewed apathetically by the passing and repassing throng of people. At
that late hour, Russia, whose embassy was directly across the street
from the _konak_, to cover as much as possible the part she had played
in the tragedy, in the person of her minister demanded that the bodies
be removed.
Leaving the palace and the carnage they had wrought there, the
regicides, led by Colonel Maschine, sought the home of the Queen’s
family and succeeded in killing her two brothers, Nikola and Nikodim.
The Minister of War suffered the same fate in his home and the Minister
of the Interior was severely wounded.[3]
[3] A certain author claims that the Prime Minister was also killed,
but I have the best of authority for contesting that point. He was
thrown into prison and has only lately been released. At his home
Alexander and Draga indulged in the most of their courtship.
[Illustration: KING PETER KARAGEORGEVITCH OF SERVIA.]
About this time Colonel Nikolics, the commandant of the Danube Division
of the army, who, with a regiment of infantry, was in quarters outside
the city, heard of what was going on in Belgrade. In a heroic attempt
to bring his troops to the palace gates, with the hope of saving his
sovereigns, he was met at the edge of the town by a revolutionary
regiment under the command of Colonel Gagowitch. Both officers were
killed in the hand-to-hand encounter which followed.
The bloody labour of this night was at last terminated by the murder of
many officers of the army, who had been branded by the revolutionaries
with the hot iron of revenge for being in league with the King.
The morning of June eleventh dawned gray and dismal. The very heavens
seemed mortified at the awful butchery of the night before. Rain
descended in torrents, while crowds of indifferent Servians paced
to and fro in front of the palace. The city was in the hands of the
revolutionaries.
There is no need to go into political details of the aftermath: suffice
it to say that Peter Karageorgevitch was elected King by the Parliament
and notified to leave Geneva for Belgrade at once. The family
feud of a hundred years had been brought to an awful termination,
since Alexander, having no heir, was the last descendant of Milosh
Obrenovitch.
Under cover of the blackness of the night of Friday, June twelfth, two
roughly hewn coffins were carried into the _konak_, and in them were
placed the mutilated remains of Alexander and Draga. No care whatever
was even taken to clothe the bodies properly. While the people of
Belgrade still slept and dreamed of the events of to-morrow the hearse
was driven, slowly, out through the rear gate of the palace grounds,
over the cobbled streets, up to the weather-beaten door of the little
chapel of the Obrenovitch family, which stands in the old cemetery of
St. Mark, back of the city. Graves had been prepared hurriedly under
the board floor of the chapel and, after chanted benedictions had been
uttered by two priests—the only mourners—the bodies of the chief
victims of the bloodiest national tragedy of modern times were lowered
reverently to their final resting-place.
Story has it that the rambler roses, which cover thickly the fence in
front of the palace grounds, had bloomed white until the summer of
1903, but that the spilled blood of the royal couple had changed their
hue to red. Of course this is a consoling little piece of fiction,
circulated by the friends of the Obrenovitch dynasty; but one thing is
agreed upon by all, that the roses never bloomed in such profusion or
with such gorgeous colouring as they did that year.
[Illustration: THE BALL-ROOM OF THE NEW PALACE, BELGRADE.]
While strolling by the palace grounds to-day you would scarcely believe
that only a few years ago the _konak_ of Alexander and Draga stood upon
the very spot where now a bandstand, festooned with electric bulbs,
shelters the musicians as they play for the royal family, while the
street in front hums with the chatter of gay promenaders. You will see
the same red rambler roses, forming a brilliant screen to the beautiful
garden in the background. Perhaps you can, through the eye of your
imagination, see the very spot upon which fell the distorted remains of
royalty on that memorable tenth of June.
* * * * *
Notwithstanding the fact that the untimely death of the last
Obrenovitch put an end to the family contentions, a number of dastardly
crimes are perpetrated each year in Belgrade by the constituents of the
two rival houses. The latest Servian outrage to be hawked before the
world was the murder in prison of the brothers Novakovics on September
28, 1907, because of their too zealous efforts to bring to the bar of
Justice the real murderers of King Alexander.
Captain Novakovics, a short time after the murder of the late King
and Queen, was the instigator of a wide-spread scheme to bring the
regicides to trial. This scheme was betrayed, Novakovics was tried by
court martial and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, during which
period two unsuccessful attempts to poison him were made. Upon his
release, although his health was permanently shaken, he started a daily
paper called “Za Otadjbinu,” in the columns of which he attacked the
present ruling dynasty and, in more or less open language, accused
King Peter, unflinchingly, of being the prime mover of the plot to
do away with Alexander. His printing presses were seized and he was
arrested the second time, the absurd charge having been brought against
him that he had stolen three screws from his own machine which, a few
hours before, had been sold at auction by the police. Twenty-five days
of incarceration in an under-ground dungeon with many of the worst
criminals in the land failed to break his spirit, and he—with his
brother, who had also been arrested and sent to prison—was transferred
to a cell which overlooked the street. Again bribes and threats failed
to insure his future silence.
Finally, the two brothers, unable longer to withstand the assaults made
upon them by the prison-keepers, decided to call public attention to
their case. Having secured, during a moment of relaxation on the part
of the guards, rifles from a near-by room, they barricaded the door to
their cell quickly and commenced firing toward the ceiling. The police,
failing in courage to burst open the door, resorted to a heinous
method of overpowering the prisoners, which was invented on the moment
by a reinstated detective agent. A solution of saltpetre was inserted
through the window of the cell. Gradually the rifle-firing ceased, the
door was broken open and, although the prisoners lay senseless upon the
floor, the enraged jailers riddled their bodies with bullets.
People, who had gathered outside attracted by the shots of the
prisoners, cried, “Asphyxiates were forbidden at The Hague!” “Down
with the police!” “Enough of regicide rule!” But the prison was soon
surrounded with cavalry troops and the crowd dispersed.
Captain Novakovics was a scion of one of the best Servian families, and
had been married but four months before his assassination. His body was
not only forbidden to be placed in the family vault, but his relatives
were not even allowed to attend his funeral.
CHAPTER VII
PREDICTIONS OF SERVIAN TRAGEDIES
Prediction of the Assassination of Prince Michael—Natalie’s Visit to
the Parisian Fortune-teller—The Prediction in London of the Murder of
Draga and Alexander.
Strange and mysterious as it may seem, the occult, the supernatural,
has played no small part in the destiny of Servian affairs. Personally,
I am not of clairvoyant proclivities, I know nothing whatever of the
goings-on at spiritualistic _seances_, neither am I even slightly
versed in anything that pertains to psychical research, but in this
chapter I am compelled to give credence to the cabalistic power
displayed by three persons, two women and one man, in their wonderful
predictions of three separate and distinct turning points in the life
of the Servian nation.
The first of these was the prognostication of the fate of Prince
Michael, the second was that of the social ascendency of Draga, and the
third, that of the horrible death of Queen Draga and her husband—this
latter foretold in a foreign city, almost three months before the
tragedy really occurred, by one who had neither seen nor had had any
connection whatever with the King and Queen of Servia.
On the morning of the very day of the assassination of Prince Michael
Obrenovitch in Topchidere Park, a poor peasant of Cremna, of local
distinction because of his occult powers of divination but unknown
outside of his immediate community, tore through the mountains like a
madman, beating his breasts with his fists and crying, “Our Prince is
dead! They have murdered our Prince!”
The cry was taken up by all with whom he came in contact, repeated
broadcast and, in an incredibly short space of time, it was upon the
lips of every one in Belgrade.
The peasant of Cremna was seized and thrown into prison, charged with
being a fanatical disturber, but hardly before the verification of the
tragedy had reached the capital.
The facts of this case are now preserved in the minutes of the national
assembly.
The second instance of occultism occurred in 1897 while Draga was
in the service of Queen Natalie, the year before she met her future
husband.
Natalie had laughingly suggested to Draga and Mademoiselle Tzanka,
another member of the Queen’s coterie, that they accompany her on
a visit to a certain mind-reader and spiritualistic medium of wide
reputation in Paris. The trio called upon this supernaturally-endowed
person, Madame de Thebes by name, and Natalie requested that the future
be read for her son, the young Alexander, and for her friends. To her
the Parisian fortune-teller replied, “Madame, you nourish in your bosom
a viper which will turn and sting you”; evidently meaning Draga. She
continued that the marriage of the young King would determine the whole
future of Servia.
Some inept futurity was predicted for Mademoiselle Tzanka, but to Draga
the woman said: “You, Madame, will rise to a higher position than you
even imagined. One day you will even reign a queen; but when that day
dawns your life will be in danger, and you will drag your lover and
your husband to his ruin and his death.”
This story was published eventually in the newspapers and, three
years after Draga’s ascent to the throne was prophesied, she denied
vehemently that such had ever been predicted, but in the same breath
she denounced Mademoiselle Tzanka scurrilously for having dared to
repeat what had taken place in Paris.
In describing the _seance_ at which the prediction was made of
the murder of Alexander and Draga I can do no better than to take,
verbatim, in part or as a whole, the statements of Mr. William Stead,
editor of the _Review of Reviews_, who was the host on that occasion,
and of his Excellency, M. Mijatovich, at that time Servian Minister
at the Court of St. James and a distinguished diplomat. These signed
statements were made to the press by Mr. Stead and others who were
present, and relate what actually took place at the _seance_.
_Mr. Stead’s Statement_
“I had invited a numerous company, including M. Mijatovich, Earl Grey,
Mr. L——, Mr. Gilbert Elliot, etc., to come on Friday, March 20th,
1903, to witness an experiment in psychometry by Mrs. Burchell at our
weekly ‘at home’ in Mowbray House.
“The ‘at home’ at Mowbray House began at four in the afternoon. The
psychometric experiment began an hour later, in the presence of
seventy or eighty persons. In about half an hour it was seen that
the conditions were adverse, and Mrs. Burchell went upstairs to give
private sittings, where she succeeded much better, while the company
remained below and discussed psychometry. This went on till after
seven.... About eight we went to the restaurant of Gatti and Rodesano,
Strand ... I sat at the head of the table, with Mrs. Burchell on my
right and Mrs. Manks on my left. Mr. L—— sat at the opposite end of
the table, next to my private secretary, on the other side of Mrs.
Burchell....
“During the dinner the conversation was general. We talked at my end
of the table about many things, and as Mr. L—— was present, I talked
about him and about Servia. But as far as I can remember the name of
the King was never mentioned, nor was anything said that directly
or indirectly could suggest the idea of his assassination. No such
thought was present to my mind. As for Mrs. Burchell, she is a plain
North Country woman, who dispenses medicine of her own making, who has
had a family of ten children and who did not seem to me a person who
had either interest in, or knowledge of, the Balkan Peninsula. She
has since, in the _St. James Gazette_, written: ‘As to my knowledge
of Servian affairs, I was then completely ignorant, and did not know
either the King’s name or the Queen’s antecedents or name, or anything
in connection with them in any way.’ She was tired and silent at
dinner, depressed by the consciousness of the afternoon failure at
psychometry, and I addressed most of my remarks to Mrs. Manks.
“After the dinner there were several descriptions given by Mrs.
Burchell of the impressions which she had received in connection with
various members of the company. It was in her descriptions of the
impressions she had received from Mr. L—— that he nodded from time to
time; an indiscretion which led to a protest from my private secretary.
This, however, had nothing to do with the vision of the assassination.
When the prediction was made Mrs. Burchell had her eyes closed. I had
no idea, while she was speaking, whether she was describing a tragedy
that had taken place long ago or was predicting what would happen. I
did not know what was in the envelope which she placed to her brow
until after all was over. When the paper was taken out of the envelope,
not being able to decipher the Cyrillic characters, I asked Mr.
L—— whose name it was. He replied, ‘The King.’ He then entered into
conversation with Mrs. Burchell, but I did not hear what she said.
“The other two clairvoyants present, Mrs. Brenchley and Mrs. Manks,
declared that they saw the same scene when it was in progress, and Mrs.
Brenchley was only one degree less excited than Mrs. Burchell. It was
she who added the detail about the Russian uniforms.”
_The Statement of M. Mijatovich_
“I, Chedomille Mijatovich, now residing at 51, Palace Gardens Terrace,
Kensington, make this statement, as being, to the best of my knowledge
and belief, a full and exact narrative of what I know of this
remarkable affair.
“I have long taken a deep interest in psychical research, and this
brought me, five or six years ago, to make the acquaintance of Mr.
Stead, the editor of _Borderland_ and _The Review of Reviews_. Knowing
my interest in these subjects, Mr. Stead invited me to be present at
a meeting in his office in Mowbray House, Norfolk Street, London, on
Friday afternoon, March 20, 1903, when a psychometrist of some repute
was to give a demonstration of her capacity to receive impressions from
articles held in her hand, of the origin and nature of which she had no
information. The following is an extract from Mr. Stead’s letter:
“‘On Friday next at our “at home” we shall have a very good clairvoyant
at Mowbray House. She has undertaken to do from twelve to twenty tests.
That is to say, ten or twenty articles will be submitted to her at
random, of all of which she will know nothing, and she will state what
she sees in connection with each. I hope that you will be able to come
and to bring with you one or two articles, the clairvoyant reading of
which might be of interest or value....’
“I accepted the invitation. The rooms at Mowbray House were crowded.
The lady, whose name I was told was Mrs. Burchell, complained that the
conditions were bad, and the experiment was a failure.
“Among the articles brought to Mowbray House for submission to the
psychometrist was the signature of King Alexander. The name was signed
in Cyrillic characters on a sheet of paper which was enclosed in an
envelope. It was prepared in order to see whether the psychometrist,
from handling the envelope, could ‘sense’ and describe the person of
the King. That was the sole object of the experiment. Nothing more was
claimed or expected.
“Owing to the number of articles offered for experiment, and owing also
to the abrupt termination of the trials, the envelope with the King’s
signature was not produced.... While I was present nothing was said as
to its existence.
“When I quitted Mowbray House the King’s signature was left with one
of the company, Mr. L——, who remained behind to dine with Mr. Stead,
Mrs. Burchell and some others. I was unable to stay to dinner as I had
to go to the Court at Buckingham Palace that evening. I returned home
feeling that the experiment had been a failure.
“On the following morning ... I was surprised to receive a visit at
my house ... from Mr. L——. He said that after the dinner in the
restaurant a _seance_ had been held, at which he had submitted the
envelope, containing the King’s signature, to Mrs. Burchell. He told
me that on receiving the envelope she had been thrown into a state of
violent agitation. She had then described the assassination of the
King and the attempted assassination of the Queen in the interior of
the palace. He gave me many details which had convinced him that Mrs.
Burchell had actually seen in clairvoyant vision the assassination of
my Sovereign in the interior of his palace.
“On the following Tuesday, March 24th, I made it my business to call at
Mowbray House in order to ascertain from Mr. Stead his version of what
had happened.... On returning home I made an entry in my journal, of
which the following is an exact copy:
“‘LONDON (51, PALACE GARDENS TERRACE),
“‘March 24, 1903.
“‘This afternoon I went to Mowbray House, Norfolk Street, Victoria
Embankment, to see Mr. William Stead (the editor of _Review of
Reviews_), and to ask him what it was that his clairvoyant of last
Friday (March 20th) said of King Alexander. Mr. Stead told me.
“‘Mr. L—— gave her into her hand a small paper. She held it for
a moment and then said: “This is the signature of a young man in a
very high position! Yes, it is the signature of a King!” (She then
proceeded to describe King Alexander’s appearance). “He has his Queen
at his side; she is a brunette, older than he. But, O God! What do
I see? Oh, it is too terrible....” And then, Mr. Stead said, she
suddenly fell on her knees, clasping excitedly her hands, and with
closed eyes and uplifted head she prayed to the Great Spirit to—save
them, if possible! “I see them both, the King and Queen; and there
is a dark man with the dagger in hand. He tries to kill them; it
is a terrible struggle; the Queen escapes unhurt, but the King is
assassinated!” Stead said Mrs. Bourcher (sic), the clairvoyant, was
terribly agitated. She described what she saw in the presence of
several ladies and gentlemen, who were deeply impressed with it.’
“Four days later, on March 28th, I wrote a letter to King Alexander,
in the course of which I felt it my duty to warn him as to impending
danger. I did not keep a copy of my letter, but I perfectly well
remember the passage in question.... I wrote as follows:
“‘I know your Majesty will laugh, as you usually laughed when I
spoke to you about clairvoyance, so I am not going to give you all
particulars about the latest experience which I have had, but I implore
your Majesty to take all possible measures for your personal safety,
not only when you drive about or when you go to the church or the
theatre or to the park, but when in your palace especially, because I
have reason to believe that an attempt will be made to assassinate you
in your own palace.’
“My wife read my letter before it was sent off and she confirms the
accuracy of this account of its contents. I may say that I had often
talked to King Alexander about psychic experiences, but he always
mocked me and would not take them seriously. I never before sent him
any warning as to an attempt on his person.
“I was myself so deeply impressed by the importance of the
clairvoyant’s vision that I half expected that the King, despite his
skepticism, would summon me to Belgrade in order to hear more details.
This expectation was not realized. He neither sent for me nor took any
notice of my warning.
“When the news arrived of his tragic end, my thoughts instantly
recurred to the warning which I had sent him, and I stated to several
representatives of the press the fact, which was duly published in the
London evening newspapers of June 11th.”
_What Actually Took Place at the Seance_
“It was after ten o’clock at the restaurant when Mr. L—— thrust an
envelope into Mr. Stead’s hand, saying, ‘Try her with that!’ Mr. Stead
took the envelope, not knowing what it contained, and waited till the
good lady had finished a description to the last of the sitters. She
was getting tired and wished to go home. Mr. Stead put the envelope
in her hands and asked her to try once more and see if she could get
anything with it.
“Mrs. Burchell took the envelope in her two hands and sat for a moment,
still. She turned the envelope round and round once or twice and then
said, in a loud, clear voice, ‘Royalty! An important person—a King!’
“The announcement riveted attention and we listened eagerly for what
was to follow. Mrs. Burchell spoke with extreme rapidity and in
breathless excitement. There was nothing to indicate that the medium
was in a trance. She had been talking quite normally just before Mr.
Stead gave her the envelope. Her eyes were closed, but this might have
been done to aid in abstracting her from her surroundings. She spoke
exactly as if she were looking through a window into an interior and
describing what she saw to us who were beside her. Near to her were two
other clairvoyants, Mrs. Brenchley and Mrs. Manks.
“Mrs. Burchell began by saying, ‘Royalty! An important person—a King!
He is standing in a room in his palace. He is dark; stout body and long
neck. With him is a lady, the Queen—brunette. And there,’ pointing to
a corner of the room, ‘I see a child.’ Then, becoming very excited, the
medium exclaimed, ‘Terrible! Terrible! It is all bloody. I cannot bear
to look. Oh, it is terrible! I cannot bear it. I see a very dark man
rushing into the chamber. He tries to kill the King. The lady implores
them to spare him. Oh—’and with a cry of horror Mrs. Burchell
suddenly flung herself upon her knees in such a way that Mr. Stead
thought she would fall and stretched out his hand to save her. She did
not fall, however, but with clasped hands the medium continued in a
voice of agonized entreaty:
“‘They are killing him. Oh, save him, save him! The Queen falls on her
knees and implores them to save her life—they will not listen. Oh,
what tumult! what bloodshed! How terrible—they kill him; she pleads
in vain. Now they fling her on one side and stab her with a dagger,
and—Oh, oh!’—and then Mrs. Burchell, exhausted with emotion, was
falling over on her side on the floor when Mr. Stead got her up and put
her on her seat.
“When Mrs. Burchell fell on her knees, Mrs. Brenchley sprang up,
saying, ‘Yes, yes, I get it in the air. They are killing him; I see it.’
“‘And I also,’ said Mrs. Manks clasping hands with Mrs. Brenchley, and
both following her (probably Mrs. Burchell’s) distracted cries and
utterances with cries of, ‘Yes, yes! We see it; she is quite right.’
“Mrs. Burchell, in her agitation, dropped the envelope on the floor.
Mrs. Brenchley picked it up and, holding it, continued to describe
the scene in an agitation only a little less than Mrs. Burchell’s,
exclaiming, ‘Oh, the blood—how horrible! Look, how dark it becomes;
see—the soldiers are coming upon us—shooting down all they meet—’
“‘What are they like?’ asked someone.
“‘They seem to me like Russian uniforms; but it is dark and I cannot
see clearly....’
“‘Now the King is dead!’ she (Mrs. Brenchley) cried. ‘But, oh, what
confusion! What bloodshed!’
“All these ejaculatory comments were rapidly uttered as Mrs. Burchell
was being helped to her seat and not much notice was taken of them
at the time. Mrs. Brenchley, however, declares that she has a lively
recollection of what she saw and what she said.
“Mr. Stead turned an inquiring gaze to Mr. L——, who had given him the
envelope....
“‘What was in the envelope?’ Mr. Stead asked.
“‘Look!’said Mr. L——. Opening the envelope he took out a sheet of
note-paper on which was the signature, ‘Alexander.’
“‘It is the King,’ he exclaimed.
“‘But,’ said Mr. Stead, ‘her description—was it correct?’
“‘It was exact,’ replied Mr. L——. ‘The palace, the King, the Queen.
Her description is exact.’
“And then the medium, who had been silent as if recovering from the
emotion through which she had just passed, said:
“‘Depend upon it, it will all happen as I have seen it, if nothing is
done to prevent it, and that ere long!’
“Mrs. Burchell’s own version is that she added, ‘Even then,
although they may postpone it, it will certainly come to pass.’”
CHAPTER VIII
NISCH AND SOPHIA
From Belgrade to Nisch—Nisch—Provincial Hotel Accommodations—The
Monument of Skulls—Tzaribrod—Sophia—Value Received for $1.25 per
Diem—Dragoleftsky.
For a long time the words “Brigands” and “Bulgarians” seemed to me
synonomous, for it was not so very long ago, I thought, that to be
kidnapped and behold the tragic story of your life subsequently
illuminating the pages of every journal, you had only to go to
Bulgaria; and these thoughts were not devoid of some prestige. But
since the days of Pat Crowe and Raisuli the Bulgarian man-stealers seem
to have forgotten their lines and faded ignominiously into the wings of
the stage of publicity. In fact, I discovered later, that you might be
just as safe in your room at the “Grand Royal Hotel” in Sophia as it
would be possible to be in your apartments in any fashionable hotel in
America—and safer, because at the “Grand Royal” in Sophia you are not
in the predatorial power of a gang of domesticated yeggmen disguised
as waiters, porters, bellboys and what not. So we decided to tempt our
fate on a certain June morning by shaking the dust of Belgrade for that
of the Servian frontier.
[Illustration: FRUIT VENDERS, NISCH.]
But eight hours’ travel in the local train so anæsthetized our desires
to continue the journey, on such a train, at least, that the little
vine-clad station at Nisch appealed to us most invitingly. We also
determined then and there to explore the town behind it.
A two-mile drive over even rougher cobbles than Belgrade can boast of,
connects the station with the centre of the town, and I might add that
it is the longest two miles I have ever driven.
As we rattled along, the diminutive one-story dwellings of Nisch
seemed to be scattered over an unlimited area. A single small mosque
constitutes the only remaining suggestion that the town was at one time
in the possession of the Turks.
Finally we stopped in front of one of the hotels—poor excuses,
all of them, believe me—and commenced to bargain and barter for
accommodations, only to discover that all of the rooms were occupied;
I doubt if the place could have housed more than half a dozen patrons
at one time. We tried another hostelry, with the same result. Then
another. The train on which we had arrived, the last one leaving Nisch
that day in either direction, had long since departed for Sophia;
the hotel people seemed anything but desirous of taking us in, for I
am dubious about their houses being so crowded as they were said to
be; and we commenced to consider a suitable place in which to leave
our luggage, so that we might at least walk the streets that night
unencumbered. Our driver, too, was apparently at his wits’ end, but
after we had tendered him an extra _dinare_ as a stimulant he _thought_
he knew of just _one more_ hotel where it _might be possible_ to
obtain rooms, and, accordingly, we were rattled thither. Here our
trials ended, for the proprietor of this place graciously consented to
accommodate us during our stay.
After first walking through a combination office and general
loafing-room, containing at one end a bar, reeking with foul-smelling
tobacco-smoke and alive with Servian officers who shuffled over the
sanded floor or played billiards at an antequated table or sat about
telling the gossip of the garrison, then through a labyrinth of narrow
passages, across a court and up two flights of stairs, we came upon our
room.
I think we paid about fifty cents a day each for this room, but in
the Balkans you get a great deal more for your money at the hotels
than you would dare to expect in America. The floor was scrupulously
polished; clean bed-clothes were on the beds; fresh water had been
brought up for both drinking and toilet purposes; spotless white
candles projected from each candlestick; hair-combs and brushes
(for your application if you cared not to doubt the cleanliness of
the previous user) adorned the bureau; and a gaudy pair of bed-room
slippers reposed beneath each bed, awaiting only the insertion of your
tired toes. Our meals we ate on the pavement in front of the hotel,
“without restraint or finger bowls,” surrounded by the army, sniffed at
by the dogs and stared at by the multitude, while a pet sheep nibbled
playfully at our coat buttons.
In Nisch the soldier element ever predominates over the civilian, for
here is located a Servian garrison of some 2,500 men. Evidently they
consider themselves proficient in military tactics, for they are always
on the streets, and the pavements in front of the hotels are constantly
crowded with officers, smoking and drinking. And every soldier wears
a different uniform. There are blue coats with white trimmings, white
coats with blue trimmings; there are black trousers with green stripes
and green trousers with black stripes, not to mention the brown
trousers with red stripes; there are gray caps with black visors and
black caps without visors. Every private stops on the street to salute
his officer and every officer stops to salute his superior officer; the
place reminds one of a health resort for the treatment of St. Vitus’
dance.
The moment you unlimber your camera, the peasants and townspeople,
who are none too familiar with the habits, customs or pastimes of
English-speaking visitors, crowd around in veritable droves, until you
have to give up in disgust and resign yourself to the good luck you
may hope to have with your snapshots. Only a week after we left Nisch
an Englishman was arrested for taking photographs in and about the
city, and he had a very great deal of trouble in finally convincing the
authorities that his object in making pictures was entirely inoffensive
and _not_ with a view of better explaining to his home War Department
the position of the Servian fort. As it was, he was held in Nisch for
some days until the British Minister to Servia demanded his release.
To say the least, the people of Nisch are primitive and their looks
belie not their methods. Here, for the first time, I saw put into
practice a process which was in vogue centuries ago; the proprietor of
the hotel, after making out his bill, _sanded_ the wet ink instead of
using a blotter.
There is but one object of absorbing interest to be seen in Nisch,
and that is what once was a tower of human skulls, erected by the
Turks. This ghastly monument commemorates the Turkish victory over
the Servians near Nisch in 1809, and it is said to have been composed
originally of twelve hundred of the enemies’ skulls. Now but one
remains, too deeply imbedded in the mud-cement for easy extraction, and
for that reason left undisturbed by the relic-hunter. When Nisch became
Servian all the skulls which could be found, except this one, were
buried reverently.
Because the time of arrival and departure of trains in the Balkan
States appears to be a matter of mere conjecture and of little
consequence, it is the custom for travellers to be at the depot at
least an hour before train time. On the day set for our departure
from Nisch we were awakened at four in the morning, so that we might
have plenty of time to take coffee, be jolted the two miles over the
cobblestones and wait for the train for Sophia, _due to arrive_ at
Nisch at six o’clock.
The route from the Servian frontier to the capital of Bulgaria is
rich in wild and picturesque scenery, for almost immediately after
leaving Nisch steep grades are encountered and continue until the
divide is reached at Dragoman. From there the line descends none too
gradually and Tzaribrod is the next stop. At this point the Servian
crew surrenders the train to the care of the Bulgarians, a perfunctory
customs examination is made of your baggage and you turn the hands of
your watch an hour faster to “East European Time.” Beautiful mountain
scenery marks the remainder of the journey, and in exactly six hours
after leaving Nisch (including the hour change of time) you are in
Sophia.
When you alight from the train don’t think you have made a mistake and
wax discouraged because you did not locate Sophia immediately, for
almost all of these Balkan towns have an unhandy habit of springing up
some two or three miles inland from their respective railway stations.
You have only to jump into one of the numerous open cabs which meet all
trains, each of a different and distinct Renaissance design, and make
signs that you wish to be driven to the Hotel So-and-So.
[Illustration: A STREET SCENE, SOPHIA.]
During the ensuing voyage, your driver, in red fez and baggy,
ill-fitting Turkish bloomers, will, by deft manipulation of the reins,
graze more lamp-posts and curb-stones without regard to speed
limits or to the possible scattering of his fares _en route_ than any
fire-engine driver it has ever been your misfortune to come in contact
with. Yelling with the full power of his leather lungs, sometimes at
his animals and sometimes at the foolhardy Bulgarians who may get in
his way, he will jolt you diagonally across trolley tracks and swing
you dangerously around corners, now on the port tack and now on the
starboard, like an ambulance driver on a hurry call.
Finally, and suddenly, his horses stop literally on a ten-cent piece
in front of the hotel; you feel around to ascertain if your frame is
intact and the tempo of your heart-beats once more assumes a natural
rhythm. Bowing peasants with bared heads (the reason for the ceremony
is known only to themselves, but I have a suspicion that they all hope
to receive from you some gratuity for living) line the sidewalk, while
the hotel proprietor graciously assists you to alight and escorts you
to your rooms, at the same time making profuse apologies for the style
and period of their appointments.
For the Bulgarian equivalent of one dollar and a quarter a day each,
you may lodge and feast at this hotel. You will find the food of great
variety and the cooking excellent; the Turkish coffee, which is always
to be had in these Eastern provinces, and to learn the making of which
you must attempt an excursion into the culinary department, is the best
you have ever tasted; and delicious wine or refreshing beer, the latter
served temptingly in tall, thin, frosted glasses, is included in the
price paid.
Perhaps your apartments consist of a suit of rooms on the second floor,
overlooking a thickly wooded park, which occupies the whole of the
block opposite. The floors are hard wood parquetry and the sitting-room
is furnished like a throne chamber with plush-covered, handsomely
carved, high-backed chairs and divans. In one corner stands an immense
tile stove, a replica of those to be seen in Vienna, resembling more a
sarcophagus than a heater. The bed-room contains two beautifully-carved
beds, burdened with thick, soft feather comforters, while at the side
of each is placed a small stand bearing an attractive electric reading
lamp. The only complaint I had to make was that the thousands of
jackdaws, which held daily conclave in the park during the early hours
of the morning, kept up such an incessant squawking and screeching
that, had our sleeping apartment not been the more remote from the
street, I should have begged the proprietor to give us a back room.
As it was, we were compelled to bury our heads, ostrich-like, under
the feather comforters to deaden the racket, although the season was
mid-summer.
Your comfort during your stay having been assured, you will hurry to
the street to mingle with the people of Bulgaria and to get acquainted
with their capital, this noisy little city of Sophia, situated snugly
at the foot of the snow-capped Balkans, the majestic Mount Vitosch to
the south.
The streets of the new town, each named after some local celebrity of
the era of liberation, radiate like the spokes of a wheel from the
royal palace as a hub. They are well-paved, wide and well-lighted
with electricity, but within the precincts of the old town, now fast
disappearing, you may still find many narrow cross streets and courts,
lined on either side with picturesque Turkish bazaars which continually
invite your patronage.
During our stay in Sophia the trial was being conducted of the
twenty-year-old assassin who murdered the Prime Minister a few months
previously. The opposite side of the street from the law courts was
daily thronged with inquisitive townspeople, hoping to obtain a glimpse
of the boy-murderer, as he was being taken to and from the prison. He
was found guilty and executed.
A wonderful panoramic view of the city and of the surrounding country,
a view that will amply repay you for the almost hazardous carriage ride
over worse than miserable roads, may be had from the foot-hills beyond
the little village of Dragoleftsky, some eight miles to the eastward.
Here you may also get a glimpse, at short range, of how the Bulgarian
peasant lives and has his being. You will see the women washing clothes
in a crude tub, hewn out of the trunk of a tree, a tub that looks not
unlike some kind of “dugout” canoe; while an _olla podrida_ of geese,
chickens, pigs and children swarm on the bare floor of the farmhouse.
Should you proceed farther into the mountains, on foot, of course, you
will come upon one of the enormous monasteries which were the heart and
soul of the movement for Bulgarian liberation, and around which most of
the fighting against the Turks took place.
[Illustration: A BULGARIAN VILLAGE CHURCH.]
CHAPTER IX
BULGARIA AND HER PAST
Progress of Bulgaria—Origin of her Peoples—The Bulgari—First
Russian Invasion of Bulgaria—The Assenide Dynasty—Turkish
Tyrannies—Emancipation of Bulgaria—Russia’s Intrigues against Prince
Alexander—The Late Balkan Disturbances.
But now, for a moment, let us look at the serious side of this little
warlike principality which has only recently wiggled from under
the vassalage of Turkey, at the same time proclaiming her absolute
independence, and which, to my mind, is the Bulwark of the Balkans.
Although having enjoyed but a short thirty-one years of partial
independent existence, for it is the youngest of the Balkan States, the
progress of Bulgaria during that thirty-one years has been little short
of remarkable. A visitor to the country is at once impressed with the
look of indomitable determination that characterizes the features of
the Bulgars. That indomitable determination has convinced the outside
world of their worthiness of the freedom as a state conferred upon
them in 1877; it will continue in the future to convince the outside
world of their worthiness of the indefinite prolongation of this
freedom.
It is impossible to recognize in the proud, full-blown kingdom of
to-day the down-trodden province of Turkey of three decades ago. In
thirty years Bulgaria has built more than four thousand three hundred
primary schools; she has established, and maintains, a standing army of
one hundred and twenty thousand men and is capable of putting in the
field in time of emergency two hundred and fifty thousand more; the
value of her annual exports has reached the figure of $250,000,000;
seventy per cent. of her total area has been rendered susceptible to
the highest degree of cultivation; the agricultural and stock-raising
adaptability of her peoples has opened the eyes of all Europe; while
her ottar of rose industry, down in the little valley of Toundja, “The
Rose Valley,” has become world-renowned.
But to fully appreciate and feel this miraculous development we must
delve, briefly, into Bulgaria’s past.
The ancient Roman name of Thrace was the one generally applied to
the entire territory lying between the Macedonian frontier and the
Danube River, while the territory to the north of the Balkans was
then called Moesia. Savage tribes, known as the Thraco-Dacians, the
Thraco-Illyrians and the Thraco-Macedonians, held sway over the whole
of the Balkan Peninsula until, historians tell us, Philip and his
successor, Alexander, came upon and took the country. The date of the
beginning of Roman conquests in Thrace is indefinite, but it remains an
undisputed fact that Vespasian annexed the country and proclaimed it a
Roman province in A. D. 75.
The Slavs, moving westward from their confines in Asia, and having
waged successful warfare upon the Huns and the Goths, populated
Bulgaria between the third and the seventh centuries. They introduced
their customs and language throughout a large part of eastern and
southeastern Europe, and their descendants, influenced, of course, by
the later dominant races, constitute the present population of Bulgaria.
At this point of history we hear for the first time of the Bulgari, “a
horde of Asiatics of Turkish strain,” who were also destined to be a
prime factor in the general make-up of the present-day Bulgarians. They
swarmed over the country in the seventh century and founded the first
Bulgarian empire, which attained its height between the years 893
and 927 A. D. under the Tzar Simeon, only to fall ignominiously under
Byzantine rule hardly a century later.
In the year 965, Greece endeavoured to subject Bulgaria to her power,
and the Emperor Nikephoros Phakos sought aid in his undertakings from
a tribe of Northmen (and we have every reason to believe that this
tribe was composed of the antecedents of the Russians of to-day) under
a leader named Sviatoslav. Sviatoslav condescended to become an ally
of the Greeks, but the latter became so jealous of his many successful
conquests in their behalf that they grew afraid of him and finally made
a treaty with the Bulgarian Tzar, Boris II.
Upon the death of Nikephoros, Sviatoslav decided to make war on
Bulgaria for his own aggrandizement, and in 969 he captured Boris,
carrying him as far east as Philippopolis. Here the Greek Emperor,
Zinisces, the successor of Nikephoros, with the help of the defeated
Bulgarians themselves, drove the Northmen back. Sviatoslav was
compelled to seek refuge in Silistria, where he sustained a siege of
three months. After his final capture he was liberated and allowed to
return to his native land, but, while on the march, he and his few
surviving adherents were ruthlessly slain by a marauding band of
hostile tribesmen.
[Illustration: THE SAINT CRAL CATHEDRAL, SOPHIA.]
This may be said to have been the first Russian invasion of Bulgaria,
the direct result of which was the fusion of the Northern and the
Southern Slavs. Bulgarian history proper begins, however, with the
nation’s conversion to Christianity under the Tzar Boris, late in the
ninth century. About the same time the Cyrillic alphabet—now adopted
by all Slav peoples, including the Russians—was introduced by the
great apostles, Cyril and Methodius.
Under Assen, Bulgaria, then belonging to Greece, revolted, conquered,
and Assen I, the founder of the Assenide dynasty, was chosen Tzar. This
dynasty reached its height under Assen II (1218-1241) and a century
later the country fell under Servian rule; to its advantage, however,
for King Dushan of Servia proved himself a wise and jealous protector.
After the death of King Dushan, the Northern provinces of the Balkan
Peninsula commenced to feel the effects of Turkish invasions. For
some years the Bulgarians defended their lives and their property
heroically; but, finally, Tzar Shishman III, having been deserted by
his allies, surrendered and acknowledged himself a subject of Sultan
Murad I. Not, however, until after the bloody battle of Kossovo in
1389 was Bulgaria brought completely under Ottoman rule.
For the following five hundred years the Turks pillaged and sacked the
country and outraged its inhabitants. Europe remained in ignorance of
the atrocities, for her mind was distracted by her own sanguinary wars.
The Ottoman domination and tyranny was social as well as political; it
was felt keenly, not only in manners and morals, but in social liberty
also. Nevertheless, it is a singular fact that no determined attempt to
assimilate Bulgaria, as a whole, to Turkish customs and Mohammedanism
was made during all these years. The only instances of religious
coercion were prevalent in the cases of young Bulgarian girls who had
been snatched from their very doorsteps and placed in the harem of some
bigoted Pasha.
Even the Crimean War of 1854-56, which resulted in the liberation of
Roumania from Ottoman rule, brought no relief to oppressed Bulgaria.
The Turks seemed to persecute the Christians more terribly after it
than before. In 1876 Gladstone’s vitriolic speeches, in the exposure
of Turkish atrocities and demanding the emancipation of Bulgaria, were
heeded, and the successful defence of Shipka Pass was not in vain.
Bulgaria became a principality under Alexander; but, after a successful
war with Servia as the aggressor, Russia instigated a conspiracy
against him which led to his ultimate abdication.
[Illustration: THE RUINED CHURCH OF SAINT SOPHIA, SOPHIA.]
With glowing promises of promotion, Russia’s agents, Bendereff and
Greuff by name, were bribed to influence Bulgarian officers to turn
traitors to the Prince. Parts of two regiments and the cadets of the
military college at Sophia, all more or less under the influence
of liquor, invaded the palace on the night of August 21st, 1886,
and ordered Alexander, at the point of drawn revolvers, to sign an
illegible document which he was told was his abdication paper. He was
forthwith carried aboard his own private yacht, taken down the river
and delivered to the Russian authorities at Reni, where, for a time, he
was held prisoner.
Then Europe, indignant, lent a hand and secured his liberation.
Re-entering Sophia on September 3, he assumed triumphant control, for
his people, incensed beyond measure at such intrigue, awaited anxiously
his home-coming. Bendereff and Greuff were tried and convicted by
court-martial, but Russia, Germany and Austria demanded that they
should be released.
Upon the final abdication of Alexander, the Bulgarian Sobranje, or
Parliament, elected unanimously Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the
present ruling “Tzar of the Bulgars,” as his newly acquired title reads.
As a part of the history of present-day Bulgaria, principally, and of
the Near East, generally, it would be unwise to exclude from these
pages a brief rehearsal of the late eruptions in that part of Europe,
which have proven the futility of international treaties and, at the
outset of the troubles, tended to shatter the pacific exertions of the
Old World.
This time Bulgaria exploded the percussion-cap, and the primary cause
of the resulting imbroglio was a strike of the employees of the Orient
Railway, which threads its way through the country from west to east,
but which is really Turkish property, for it is operated under a
concession from the Porte that does not expire until January 1, 1958,
although it thrives under the protection of Austria, and is capitalized
largely by Germany.
Bulgarian troops occupied the railway line provisionally during the
strike but, when an agreement was effected, refused to relinquish the
road to the officers of the Oriental Railways Company.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO THE “TZAR LIBERATOR,” SOPHIA.]
While Bulgaria’s answer to a formal request by Turkey to surrender
the railway still hung fire her people were aroused to fever heat
by an untoward incident that took place in Constantinople: Their
representative at the Porte failed to find his name included in the
list of guests invited to be present at an international diplomatic
banquet. Turkey’s apology for this slight came too late, for the then
Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria had already repaired to the ancient
capital, Tirnova, probably out of pure sentiment, and was solemnly
crowned “Tzar of the Bulgars” on Monday, October 5th, 1908.
Thus did Bulgaria bring into play a lame excuse to break faith with the
Powers of Europe, which, in a clause of the Treaty of Berlin, signed
by them in 1878 (but not signed by Bulgaria, and therefore it can
hardly be said that Bulgaria _broke_ the treaty), compelled Bulgaria to
pay a yearly tribute to Turkey for certain concessions of territory,
including the province of Eastern Roumelia.
Three days after Bulgaria’s proclamation, Austria, in direct violation
of this same Treaty of Berlin, declared her intention (and later
fulfilled the same) of usurping for her own the one-time Servian
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, over which she had been appointed
guardian. This move provoked the Servians to clamour for war with
Austria while Montenegro swore her allegiance to Servia. It looked for
a time as if King Peter of Servia would be forced to abdicate in favour
of his son George, the Crown Prince, or fulfil the demands of his
super-patriotic subjects; and even king-killing is not a lost art in
Belgrade.
To further the dismemberment of Turkey in Europe, the Island of Crete
declared itself Grecian territory, and Albania, also inoculated with
the serum of liberty, commenced to howl for independence and courted
the sponsorship of Italy.
For several obvious reasons the convention of the original signatories
of the Berlin Treaty for the promulgation of European peace was at
that time impossible. Great Britain would not consent to such a
convention unless all agreed that the original treaty should not be
changed, but that the present issues alone should be discussed; Russia
would not consent to such a convention unless the clause which barred
the Dardanelles to the passage of Russian war vessels was struck in
advance from the original treaty; Austria refused to be a part of
such a convention unless her annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was
acknowledged in advance by the other Powers.
At a conference held in the interests of permanent peace, France,
Russia and Great Britain submitted tentative plans, which were promptly
adopted, for the re-distribution of authority in the Balkan provinces,
the most important decision being that Bosnia and Herzegovina go
permanently to Austria. The original stipulations of the Treaty of
Berlin did not even have a hearing. France, of course, blamed Germany
for instigating the troubles in order to humiliate Great Britain
and force the “Young Turks’ Party,” which compelled the Sultan to
acknowledge a new constitution and later dethroned him, to re-adopt the
old régime, under which Germany is alleged to have benefited greatly by
trade with Turkey. Germany, in turn, felt slighted at not having been
invited to join Great Britain, France and Russia in the drawing up of
their proposals. For a time the guy-ropes of the European peace-tent
were stretched mighty taut. Had just one of them parted there would
have been the liveliest scramble among the Powers for Balkan territory
that Europe had seen in many a day.
Although Bulgaria complied with the demand of Turkey that the Roumelia
tribute be capitalized, Turkey was loth—and is yet, for that
matter—to acknowledge the independence of Bulgaria or the annexation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria; Antivari, Montenegro’s only
seaport, enjoyed for a time a splendid view of an Austrian war fleet;
Montenegro claimed, but failed to collect, indemnity from Austria
for the detention by officials on Austrian territory of a special
Montenegrin envoy to Servia; and the strained relations between Austria
and Servia took on a ridiculous aspect by Austria’s refusal to allow
war materials to be imported into Servia through her domain ... about
the only way Servia would be able to obtain such materials.
Bulgaria said she had been preparing for a possible war with Turkey
for ten years, and it is a known fact that, although barely one-fifth
the size, in population, of the Ottoman Empire, she could have placed
in the field fully as many men, some three hundred and seventy-five
thousand, vastly better drilled and better versed in the tactics of
war. The expenses of keeping the reserve forces with the colours during
the recent disturbances and the “compensations” which she had to pay
because of her prince’s assumption to the title of “Tzar” were met by
increased taxes upon her peasantry, and upon the apathy or enthusiasm
of this peasantry would have depended the defeat or victory of
Bulgarian arms in a war with Turkey. In advent of hostilities, however,
it is safe to say that the pugnacious Bulgarians, with Austria nagging
them on, would have bade fair to sweep the Turk from the map of Europe.
Had the unsatisfied Servians, on the other hand, been foolish enough
to force themselves into war with Austria, the continuance of Servia
as a nation would have been doubtful indeed. It would be difficult to
imagine an alliance between the Servians, including the Montenegrins,
and the Turks, their life-long enemies, but under the conditions at
that time such a thing was not out of the question.
CHAPTER X
A BULGARIAN MARKET
Bulgaria’s Busy Day—The Orient Express.
Returning to the people of the Bulgaria of to-day, the most
advantageous place and time to study them is in the market square of
Sophia of a Friday morning. This scene is alone worth the trip to the
Bulgarian capital, for I doubt very much if its equal, in the number
and variety of types, or in the kaleidoscopic effects of its constantly
vibrating patches of colour, can even be approached in any other
European city.
From seven in the morning until one in the afternoon the entire town
wears a circus-day air. The square surrounding the principal mosque
swarms with a hawking, bantering multitude of Greeks, Jews, Russians,
Turks, Roumanians, Serbs and Bulgarian peasants, all in gala dress; and
as for tongues you might well imagine yourself living in the good old
times in the immediate vicinity of the Tower of Babel. Here, as I have
said, you may observe the characteristics of the natives to the best
possible advantage, for one of the chief sources of interest in this
little-travelled principality or, in truth, throughout the whole of the
Balkan Peninsula, is its simple-minded, unsophisticated country people;
unsophisticated, except in occasional brigandage in the sparsely
settled districts.
[Illustration: “A HAWKING, BANTERING MULTITUDE ... IN GALA DRESS.”]
The market is opened officially at seven o’clock, but long before
that hour the peasants, representing many square miles of surrounding
territory, begin to arrive on foot, on horseback and in bullock
carts. That time-worn adage about the early bird holds true even in
Bulgaria, for those who dispose of their produce the quickest and who,
consequently, return home with the greatest number of shekels jingling
in their leathern money pouches, are the ones who obtain the most
desirable stands along the curb, by appearing early upon the scene.
By the time the Muezzin pops out to chant his doleful “Allah el Allah”
from the narrow balcony at the top of the mosque pinnacle, the square
below is already well-filled and from all directions the tardy ones
continue to pour in. The unpacking and arrangement of produce and the
chatter and gossip among the peasants themselves occupy the early
morning hours before the official opening of the market, for soon the
wholesale merchants and townspeople will be dodging in and out, bent on
obtaining the lowest quotations, and then there will be no time to talk
over the happenings of the intervening week since the last market.
Over there on the curb a swarthy, fur-coated individual has just halted
his puny pack-animals, whose dust-covered flanks tell that they have
tottered many miles under the bulging loads of wood. It is no wonder
that their master perspires as he tugs at the ropes to relieve the
little beasts, for, if you examine his clothing, you will wonder how
he came to get mixed in the seasons. Although the glare of the sun
is nothing if not calorific, this fellow’s legs are bundled closely
in thick, woollen stockings tied with thongs, while on his back and
reaching clear to his knees he wears a heavy sheepskin coat turned
wrong side out. But the particular style in which he wears this coat
proves beyond an atom of doubt that he knows as well as you the time of
year, for in winter he turns the wool on the outside.
[Illustration: BULGARIANS IN GALA ATTIRE.]
Now look, if you please, at this group of Bulgarian belles from the
mountains—symphonies in lavender. The ribbons in their hair are
lavender, the embroidery on their jackets is lavender, their long
underskirts and aprons are lavender, the linings of their sunshades
are lavender. How conscious they are of the tawdry effect of their fine
raiment, as they strut about through the dust in the middle of the
street! At their heels stalk, jealously, three Bulgarian beaux, also
gorgeously attired for the occasion in their Sunday-go-to-meetings.
On the other side of the street two women, each of whom looks to be
little less than a hundred years of age, are spreading aprons on
the dust-covered sidewalk and arranging thereon their baskets and
bundles. They will sell you the finest, most delicious cherries you
have ever closed your teeth upon for forty _centimes_ a litre; and
strawberries!—well, you just can’t wait to buy a basket of such
strawberries at the same price as the cherries. They are large and
luscious but a litre really does not weigh enough to get a great number
of fruit, for each one is worth at least two bites. I am not stretching
the tape a hair’s breadth when I say that I have measured Bulgarian
strawberries four and one-half inches in circumference.
Down the street now comes a parade of bullock carts, laden with wool.
The clumsy animals lumber lazily along, while the drivers, one of whom
walks in front of each team, tap deftly with their long poles first one
beast and then the other between the horns, to remind them to stay
awake until they arrive at the market. The carts are heavy affairs and
look for all the world like some sort of ancient chariots. And I may
state here that the bullock, a prototype of the water-buffalo of the
Far East, is a domestic animal commonly found in Bulgaria, and for what
reason it was originally imported to the country I have often wondered.
Nevertheless, it seems thoroughly acclimated, and is used as a beast of
burden by the peasants and farmers, not only on the plains but in the
mountains as well, where, you might imagine, its awkwardness and weight
would be to its disadvantage in negotiating the rocky roads.
In the slender shadow of the mosque tower another heavily-clothed
peasant and his wife are engaged in selling live stock. The woman
fondles a suckling pig under her left arm, while, with her free hand,
she holds another, head downward, by the hind feet. Each of these pigs
may be purchased for two _francs_, and for three, a live lamb from the
husband. A pair of spring chickens brings the same ridiculous price as
a suckling pig.
[Illustration: A GROUP POSED FOR THE CAMERA AT THE FRIDAY MARKET,
SOPHIA.]
In wedging your way through the crowd, which by this time surges
over the entire square and overflows into the adjacent streets,
you stumble over an old Turkish woman, in baggy, yellow bloomers
and curved-toed slippers, who has deliberately spread her array of
embroideries in the very centre of the sidewalk.
At the noon hour, when the Muezzin again calls the faithful to prayer,
the market is at its height. From a distance, the monotonous drone of
the street-cries sounds like the hum of a myriad insects, the swelling
cadenzas of which, as they float out upon the soporific atmosphere, may
be heard in any part of the city.
At last the peasants, after a profitable holiday in town, prepare
to start on their homeward journey. By the middle of the afternoon
the last solitary vender has departed with his pack-animals or his
bullock cart, his fur coat and his woollen stockings. Then the street
cleaners and street sprinklers take the square in hand. They sprinkle
the dust and scrub the pavement and in half an hour you would not have
believed that that same square was the place from which emanated, but
a short time before, the Babelonic hum-drum of hundreds of perspiring
market-people.
* * * * *
It may be the fashion, but it is altogether exasperating, to be called
at five-thirty in the morning, in order to take a train which leaves
at eight-fifteen. “But when in Rome—” at all events, we arrived at
the depot exactly one hour before the time set for the departure of
the “Orient Express,” which was to carry us back to Belgrade. But we
felt in no wise lonesome, for many others who wished to take the same
train had come to the depot even before us. The proprietor himself
accompanied us from the hotel and consumed the time taken to drive
the distance by asking us repeatedly to “make a recommend” in America
for his hostelry, and which we gladly consented to do. When the train
arrived he bade us good-bye with tears in his eyes, and graciously
kissed the hands of the ladies of the party.
According to our ideas, the word “Limited” as applied to the “Orient
Express” was a misnomer; in fact the only “limited” qualifications of
the train which we were able to discover were its limited speed and
its limited number of up-to-date conveniences. And there is one thing
peculiar about travelling through these countries: no matter upon which
side of the train you may take your seat, whether the train goes east
or west, north or south, whether it be morning or afternoon, your side
will be the sunny side. I believe if we had crawled under the seats
on some of the trains the sun would have shone up through the bottom
of the car. Perhaps we were clothed too heavily, or, perhaps, we only
travelled when the sun was exceptionally hot, but, whichever the cause,
we sweltered and perspired through almost every railway trip we ever
took in the Balkans.
Notwithstanding the “limited” features of the “Orient Express” we
were always glad to have a chance to travel on it, if for no other
reason than to enjoy our fellow-passengers and amuse ourselves by
the humour of the signs, which are tacked up in conspicuous places
in every compartment, to be heeded by the traveller. “Gentlemen must
not go to bed with their boots on,” read one of these placards, and
if the railway must needs have signs to warn its passengers against
such a breach of travel etiquette, we thought what a delicate piece
of business it must be for the porter or the conductor to enforce the
rule; for travellers are apt to act in a manner just contrary to the
notices of warning they see posted.
Another sign informed the passenger that “the conductor would shine
gentlemen’s boots upon request.” Evidently the railway company had not
anticipated the patronage of ladies, but, if they had, they hardly
presumed that ladies would require a “shine” or that they would retire
with “their boots on.”
It was on this train, too, that we saw the only Americans we had seen
or were destined to see for many weeks, two jovial rug-hunters of New
York, _en route_ home from a business trip to Constantinople. Also
included in the collection of passengers was an immaculate Englishman,
with coat tightly buttoned and gloves on, who sat all day in one
position for fear of disturbing one molecule of dust, and, owing to his
efforts, becoming redder in the face as the train proceeded.
CHAPTER XI
SARAJEVO—THE SPIRED CITY
From Belgrade to Sarajevo—The Turkish Bazaar—A Bosnian Street
Sprinkler—Horse-races at Ylidze—A Dervish Dance.
It is by no means an uninteresting nor an unpleasant train ride of
seven hours and a half across the well-kept, fertile farm lands of
Austria-Hungary; from Belgrade, in Servia, southward to the little
junction town of Brod. This line continues through Agram to Fiume,
Hungary’s solitary seaport, but if you would visit the Austrian
provinces of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, nominally Turkish territory,
you must change at Brod and take your compartment in one of the
miniature cars of the little narrow-gauge train which, later, puffs and
snorts its tortuous, labyrinthine way across, between and under the
mountains, up grade and down to Sarajevo, Mostar and, finally, Gravosa
on the Adriatic Coast.
Before Bosnia (including Croatia and the Herzegovina) was placed under
the suzerainty of Austria-Hungary by the Treaty of Berlin of 1878—a
treaty time-worn and often honoured in the breach—the traveller, in
order to cover the one hundred thirty-eight miles between Brod and
Sarajevo, was compelled for comfort’s and safety’s sake to resort to
the springless mail cart of the Austrian Consulate in Bosnia and spend
forty-eight weary hours _en route_. If, on the other hand, he wished to
be lavishly independent and hired a native conveyance for the journey,
three nights would have to be spent on the road, sleeping in _khans_
and fearful of his very life.
Although, in point of geographical position, it was the nearest
neighbour of civilized Europe, the social condition of Bosnia was at
that time the most barbarous of all the provinces of European Turkey.
Not one man in a hundred knew how to read, and there was not a single,
solitary bookshop throughout the length and breadth of the province.
While the soil teemed with various valuable minerals, its hills
thickly wooded with virgin forests, its plains and valleys fertile,
well-watered and productive, its commerce was contemptible. Under
Turkish rule, _plums_ constituted the most valuable article of trade.
[Illustration: THE AUSTRIAN ARMY BARRACKS AT SARAJEVO.]
To-day all this is changed. The fields are cultivated; mines have
been prospected and developed; public schools are everywhere and
education is compulsory; the Austrian army has put an end to the
maraudings of the Mohammedans and polices the country, having its
headquarters in great garrisons in Mostar and Sarajevo. An admirably
operated railway line eats its way throughout the entire length of the
province, the proposed extension of this railway through the Turkish
vilayet of Novi-Bazaar having been one of the bones of contention
between the Sublime Porte and the Austrian Government but a short while
ago.
As fate will have it, the express train leaves Brod at midnight, and,
consequently, some of the most picturesque mountain scenery along the
route is lost to the traveller, but as he does not reach Sarajevo, the
capital of Bosnia, until ten o’clock the following morning, an early
awakening will be rewarded with wild mountain scenes and interesting
types galore.
The mere mention of a narrow-gauge train seems to convey to the average
American the unpleasant idea of discomfort, if not hardship, of travel,
but this train will prove itself clean and comfortable far in excess of
your expectations.
Each section of the railway carriage comprises two single seats, facing
each other as in our own sleeping cars, and there are _no_ upper
berths. Furthermore, you may draw the curtains of your section and,
although it is not possible to retire in the true sense of the word,
you will enjoy being screened, during the night at least, from the
stares of your over-curious fellow-passengers.
For some unknown reason I had neglected to draw the curtains of my
compartment after I had prepared myself for the night. Across the
aisle a Bosnian occupied somewhat more than his allotted space, and
when he learned, by quizzing me surreptitiously in German as to my
nationality, that I was from America, he launched a volume of questions
in my direction, the answers to some of which, I confess, rendered me
nonplussed for the moment and sleep impossible.
Was it a long journey from America to Bosnia?
How long?
Did I come in a steamboat?
Were there many black men in America?
How many?
These queries, and a host of others of the same stamp, gave me just
cause to wonder if the man had not mistaken me for a travelling
Baedeker. Had he been as tired as I was he would have enjoyed a night’s
rest just as much as I. Finally, I became desperate and jerked the
curtains together—a rude procedure, no doubt—and went to sleep with a
volley of interrogations raging about me. If my Bosnian friend wished
to know during the night aught of the history, topography or population
of the United States, I fail to remember, having conveniently lost
consciousness, but he was ready with a fresh volume of questions when I
awakened in the morning.
At seven we stopped long enough to take coffee on the vine-arboured
station-porch of a little village; a short twenty minutes later the
station-master rang his bell, the train conductor blew his horn and
the engineer tooted his whistle, all of which seem to be absolutely
necessary to start a train in the Balkans, and we were off again,
whisking over the wonderfully well-kept roadbed, past the water tanks
and the switch towers in their immaculate coats of fresh, white paint,
through tunnels, across gorges, and in three more hours we arrived at
Sarajevo.
One might as well be precipitated from the clouds into Turkey itself as
to come suddenly upon Sarajevo from the country in the North. In this
little city it isn’t one Turk here and one Turk there, as in Belgrade
or Sophia, but more than half the population is Ottoman. Here the
Mohammedan element occupies a most interesting bazaar that covers in
area several city blocks; on every hand the pencil-like pinnacles of
the forty-odd mosques rear themselves skyward; the streets are alive
with red-fezzed Mohammedans in spacious knee breeches, Turkish women in
bloomers and veiled goddesses of the Harem. At the noon hour the air
reverberates with the cries of the Muezzins, in response to which the
faithful spread themselves devoutly upon their knees in the courtyards
and on the steps of their houses of worship.
Sarajevo lies on both sides of the Miljača River, the banks of
which are protected from the ravages of flood by well-built and not
inartistic stone walls. Mountains surround the town on all sides. The
streets are narrow as becomes a Turkish city, but under the Austrian
régime they are kept clean as new pins. The buildings, especially the
government ones, are large and well-proportioned, the shops are good
and the hotels excellent.
[Illustration: SOME TURKISH HOMES IN SARAJEVO.]
Of course the principal attraction in Sarajevo is the bazaar, a sort
of perennial market where the Turk and his art may be studied to
advantage. This bazaar is a permanent affair, divided into streets
or lanes which tangle and twine themselves around a small square
centered by a public fountain. Wednesday is characterized by a
“grangers’ meeting” and the streets overflow with Turkish and Bosnian
truck-farmers bartering their produce. This is the day to rub elbows
with the sullen, lazy Mohammedans. They squat about the fountain,
presumably caring little whether they sell their fruits and vegetables
or not; immense four-legged loads of hay or wood, which cover the
little pack-animals from nose to tail, wobble up and down through
the narrow thoroughfares, compelling you to seek the shelter of a
convenient doorway to allow them to pass; veiled women, with even
their hands shielded by cotton gloves from the admiring gazes of the
men-folk, amble silently by, ghost-like, while the _kafanas_, or coffee
houses, buzz with the gossip of outstretched Turks who sip their coffee
and smoke cigarettes until the place smells like the hybrid of a
tobacco factory and a coffee-packing establishment.
Almost any day of the week, however, the pound and tinker of sandalled
artisans are to be heard in the workshops which border the streets of
the bazaar. The coppersmith hammers out his Turkish coffee sets and his
brass trays, many of which he etches with a sharp-edged tool in ornate
designs and figures; the shoe and harness-maker sits cross-legged as he
plies the needle back and forth, a cigarette between his lips and a
cup of thick, black coffee ever at his elbow; the gold and silversmith
deftly inlays his gun metal cigarette cases with threads of precious
metals, first scoring with a tool the design to be worked upon the
object, much as a dentist might prepare a cavity in a tooth for a gold
filling. You might readily imagine yourself in Damascus, instead of in
the capital of a province of Austria-Hungary.
Objects of considerable interest to me in this Bosnian city were the
home-made street sprinklers which tend to serve the purpose of the
municipal government, although they never would be regarded by us as
labour savers. A huge hogshead is mounted on four wheels, filled with
water and hauled through the streets by a horse driven by a native. In
that much the contrivance somewhat resembles our own variety, except
for the native. But here lies its salient feature: it requires two men
to operate it, for how on earth would it be possible for one man to
drive the horse and sprinkle the street at one and the same time, in
Bosnia?
[Illustration: DOUBLE-DECKED STORES IN THE TURKISH BAZAAR, SARAJEVO.]
From the rear of the hogshead protrudes a long hose terminating in a
sprinkler, like the nozzle of a watering pot. One end of a rope is
fastened to this sprinkler, and the other is attached to a second
native, whose duty it is to walk behind the cart and swing the hose
from side to side by means of the rope, the while sprinkling himself as
well as the roadway. Wet feet invariably result from this crude method,
but the “man behind the street sprinkler” should be deemed above his
fellows in point of cleanliness, if such a condition meets with any
commendation whatever in Bosnia, for the labourers in Sarajevo, as a
rule, look as though they had never been on intimate terms with soap
and water in all their lives.
In the afternoons horse-races usually take place at the quaint little
summer resort of Ylidze, at the foot of the mountains, to be reached
either by train or by a rather dusty drive of eight miles. These races
furnish about the only excuse the fashion and _élite_ of Sarajevo have
to display their dresses and uniforms. The grandstand and paddock
are packed with Worth gowns and three-foot hats, (mind you!) and
the bookmaker does a land-office business with the be-medalled and
gold-braided Austrian army. But the real devotees of the races are the
Turks and peasants who drive for miles and miles to attend them, and
whose Oriental costumes outline in gayest of colours both sides of
the course. In the late afternoon, at the conclusion of the race-meet,
Bosnian society repairs _en masse_ to the beautiful and fashionable
Villa Bosna, where, in the cool of the evening, in the casino or under
the great trees, it sups and dines and chatters, until it is time for
the last of the evening trains to leave for Sarajevo.
Like the Turks of any Eastern city those of Sarajevo comprise many
different sects, and it was on the day before I took my departure that
a Bosnian porter, whose patron I had been repeatedly during my stay
in the city, and who took seriously to heart the alleged fabulous
wealth of _all_ English-speaking people, came to my hotel to ask if I
might care to witness a Dervish dance that evening. These calisthenic
devotions, held by this most fanatical sect of Mohammedans in their
mosque upon the night of each full moon, constitute a weird religious
ceremony, not excelled as a spectacle even by the famous Antelope
and Snake Dances of the Hopi Indians, and I promptly accepted the
invitation to attend.
[Illustration: “THE REAL DEVOTEES OF THE RACES.”]
Shortly after nine o’clock, my guide, the pronunciation of whose real
name sounded so much like “Jim” that I shall hereafter allude to him as
such, called for me, and together we started off for the darkened
Turkish quarter. With Jim in the lead, carrying in his hand a ponderous
Turkish lantern, which resembled more an oil can than anything I can
think of, we stumbled over the cobbles, through the narrow streets,
past the latticed windows of the low-roofed Turkish houses and, after
three-quarters of an hour (during which time I am safe in saying we
climbed every hill in the town) we arrived at the door of the Dervish
mosque.
In the courtyard the bodies of several of the departed lay in state,
as is the Mohammedan custom before burial. After proceeding through
several rooms and negotiating as best we could as many flights of dark,
precipitous stairs, we finally found ourselves in a balcony overlooking
the room in which the “dance” was to take place. On the opposite side
of the balcony from us, behind closely-woven lattice-work, was seated a
group of female admirers of the dancers. On the floor below, at one end
of the room, stood a shrine, on each side of which a Dervish apostle
sat cross-legged. The pungent odour of burning incense and candles
filled the atmosphere.
Presently the worshippers, all men, arrived, removed their slippers
and squatted on the floor facing the altar, forming a semi-circle.
When all were seated, probably thirty in number, one of the patriarchs
near the shrine commenced a low, dismal chant. After many repetitions
this was memorized by the worshippers, who then chanted it together,
emphasizing the first beat of a common time rhythm, their bodies
swaying in unison from side to side. The tempo of the song and the
movement of the bodies accelerated gradually. At the end of ten or
fifteen minutes this particular chant was stopped abruptly and another
was commenced, which continued for an equal length of time.
But to worship in a sitting posture did not seem to produce the desired
effect and the men, at the beginning of the succeeding wail, arose
to their knees to continue the services. Swinging and grunting in
this position tended to heighten their emotions to a greater extent,
and some of the worshippers became so accustomed to and numbed by
the swaying movement that they hopped about the floor in a state of
semi-consciousness, their faces engraven with an almost unearthly look,
like that of sufferers from delirium tremens. At the end of each chant
several required being led back by their fellows to their original
positions in the semi-circle.
Still they were not satisfied with the result, and, after an hour of
howling in sitting and kneeling positions, they stood up to put a more
emotional finishing touch to their devout proceedings. By this time the
floor was littered with fallen turbans and the rugs used to kneel upon
were scattered about the room. After several more exhaustive efforts
to work off their superfluous religious ardour had been resorted to
without apparent avail, the men snatched drums and cymbals from hooks
upon the wall and commenced beating them furiously, in rhythm to
the wails of the priests. The din produced on these instruments was
almost deafening and the antics and shouts of the chanting fanatics
transformed the place, literally, into the interior of a madhouse.
During the final scene all were shouting at once, each trying to outdo
the other, as if to receive some recognition for his religious ability
from the high priests. From time to time a Dervish would fall upon the
floor, completely enervated but trying, unconsciously, to continue his
part. On the whole it constituted one of the most repulsive sights of
infidel worship.
At half-past eleven the “dance” was over and I was quite willing to
take up my position behind Jim and be guided through the narrow streets
back to civilization.
CHAPTER XII
FROM SARAJEVO TO THE COAST
Jablaniča—Mostar—Across the Mountains—The Balkan Riviera—Ragusa:
The Fairy City of the Adriatic.
From Sarajevo the narrow-gauge railway line makes a gradual ascent of
the mountains, the engineer assuring the safety of himself and his
passengers now and again by applying the rachet attachment, for the
grades are very steep. Finally the divide is crossed a short while
before the train reaches the picturesque little village of Konjiča,
a meagre assortment of red-roofed, white-walled houses, including the
inevitable mosque tower, literally dumped in among the green hills with
pleasing effect.
[Illustration: A GORGE OF THE NARENTA, NEAR JABLANIČA.]
Farther along at Jablaniča—where, although a village of but two
hundred souls, the accommodations of a good hotel beckon to the
traveller to spend some time in this vicinity, should the grandeur
of the surrounding mountain scenery appeal to him as it did to us—a
gorge of the Narenta is crossed and from this point the line follows
the defile of the river as far as Mostar. A military road of stone
foundation, which would tempt the most apprehensive of automobile
tourists, twines itself, like a white thread, along the opposite side
of the river from the railway, now bridging with stone arches the
waterfall of a mountain stream at its debouchment into the river below,
now circling the base of an overhanging cliff, now shooting into a
short tunnel blasted through the solid rock. A wall of stone masonry
borders the outer edge of the road at the dangerous places.
While the adjacent mountains are wild, rugged and severe in their
bleakness, the valleys between them are fertile and productive. Almost
any cereal which thrives in temperate latitudes grows readily. Indeed,
in travelling through Bosnia to-day the farms of prosperous land-owners
so stretch themselves across the undulating sections of country between
the higher mountain ranges that the observer might easily imagine
himself circling a great agricultural section of England or America.
Jablaniča is a much-patronized summer resort for the people of
both Sarajevo and Mostar, and from it as a starting-point climbing
excursions into the mountains may be made in every direction.
Responsible guides will be supplied at the hotel for comparatively
small sums. The air here is delightfully clear and invigorating; even
on the warmest days the cooling shade of the extensive gardens which
surround the hotel is much too enticing to allow one to hurry along to
Mostar. As a quiet, charming place to recuperate, for as long a time
as you will, from the fatigues of travel in the Balkans, I can suggest
a no more convenient, or a no more fascinating spot than right here at
the hotel in this diminutive village of Jablaniča. If you do not
care to climb mountains you may revel in a general rest, for a few
days at least. Even the name of the place requires no special lingual
effort to pronounce, once you become familiar with these Slavonic
combinations; you merely have to say “Yab-lā-nitz-ā”—it just
sort of rolls along your tongue from the palate to the lips, and then
drops.
In Mostar, the capital of the Herzegovina, the sewing-machine
advertisements offer about the only hint that you are living in the
twentieth century, for this city seems to have adhered more closely to
mediæval methods than any in the Balkans.
The Narenta River, which divides the town, is a shallow mountain stream
at times, but after a period of heavy rains it surges down through the
mountain gorges and over the grotesque lavic rocks, ripping away its
banks and necessitating the inhabitants of the town whose homes border
its scaly sides to build their houses upon stilts.
Mostar may boast of, or bemoan, as the case may be, a collection of
thirty mosques, for, of its fourteen thousand population, half are
Mohammedans, and two thousand of the remaining half comprise the troops
of an Austria-Hungarian garrison. The streets of the town are dirty and
narrow, and the sun beats down between the white walls of the houses
as if in the tropics. A bridge of modern steel construction spans the
Narenta just near the hotel of that name, while half a mile farther
down the river one of the most famous bridges in all Europe stretches
its single arch out of the shadows across the sea-blue water of the
Narenta, which gurgles in and out among the volcanic boulders ninety
feet below the key-stone. The age of this bridge is indeterminable.
It is supposed to have been built by the Cæsars at a time when the
Herzegovina was a Roman province. Be that as it may, nothing like
its construction or architecture is to be seen in bridge-building in
Europe, no matter how ancient or how modern, and it is still used by
market-people and the inhabitants of that quarter of the city. One
would almost expect to see a centurion or two, in togas and sandals,
walk out across the old structure any minute.
The veiled Turkish women of Mostar are world-famous for the style of
their headdress, which is as characteristic of this city as the old
bridge itself. In addition to being heavily veiled they wear a sort of
black hood of stiffened material, which protrudes in front like the
upper half of the pointed bill of a bird.
But, aside from the Roman bridge, the veiled women, and an old Turkish
graveyard, there is really nothing much of interest in Mostar. At any
rate, after a short visit here, you will be a little tired of the
sameness of these cities, which the Turk fain would still hold as his
own, and you will want to hurry along to the Dalmatian coast towns,
as different from those you have recently visited as day is from
night; different climates, different peoples having different customs,
different architectures; all so different that when you come upon them
you will wonder if you haven’t been awakened suddenly, then launched
upon another dream-excursion.
[Illustration: THE OLD ROMAN BRIDGE, MOSTAR.]
Again, after leaving Mostar, the railroad commences to climb,
snake-like, over the mountains toward the coast, for the building of
this road has required no small amount of engineering skill. It would
be difficult to find in England or America, or in fact in any other
country, a railway line more substantially built or kept in better
condition. The crushed rock track ballast is evened off at each side
of the rails as if with a pair of calipers, the roadbed is smooth and
the grades, although long, are not as steep as would be imagined,
considering the heights to be climbed. At Ravna the final ascent of the
mountains is commenced and from here to the top the road is built on an
almost continuous wall of stone masonry.
As you wind around the mountain peaks wonderful views of the valley
below, dotted here and there with white specks of human beings busily
at work, are before you, now on one side, now on the other. The fields
resemble square patches of brown or green plush rubbed both ways,
according to the angle of light as it falls upon them. Ahead, the
railway line seems to be made up of tunnels, great stone arches that
bridge deep ravines and cuts and fills which follow one another in
rapid succession. On the distant hills you may see the remains of watch
towers once used by lookouts, from which were observed the movements of
Turkish invaders in the days when the gates of Vienna were threatened
by the depredating Mohammedans.
A little beyond Uskoplje, as suddenly as you would come into the light
from the darkness of a tunnel, is displayed before you, as if molded
with clay upon a great flat canvas, a most extraordinary panorama of
that part of the Dalmatian coast.
Might you have had the uninterrupted view of the engineer you would
have seen at first but a narrow defile in the mountains ahead, in the
centre of which the rails of the road meet in perspective, like two
glossy ribbons, and then seem to shoot out into a blue-vaulted void
beyond. By bringing into play a very little imagination you might be
willing to believe you were nearing the edge of the earth. But, as
you approach, a panorama unfolds itself,—a panorama of that strip of
territory which fringes the north-eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea,
Austria-Hungary’s only coast line. It is a panorama of an historic land
of perennial loveliness. It is a panorama of a land of flowers, of
sunshine and deep shadows; a land of wonderful walls and bold bastiles;
a land of gayety, where Austria-Hungarian aristocracy, all-appreciative
of its charms, sits and looks out upon the amethystine waters by
day, and strolls languorously along the sea-parades by night; a land
of quaint, fortified cities, jealous of their histories; a land of
interesting, picturesque, unsophisticated peasant peoples. Withal
it is a new, and, as yet, comparatively an unpenetrated land to the
English-speaking traveller, scenery-lover or pleasure-seeker, and I
have taken the liberty to coin a new name for it—The Balkan Riviera.
From this point in the defile the road twists and turns like a scenic
railway, and almost doubles in its tracks as it zig-zags down the
precipitous sides of the mountains, the Adriatic ever blending into the
gray sky-line in the distance.
Finally, after making in its descent many snake-like coils, the train
passes the source of the beautiful Ombla, with its swan-dotted lake,
and you will have arrived at Gravosa, the port and railway terminus
of Ragusa. In three hours, it seems, you have been hustled from a
temperate into a tropical climate.
But for those who do not care for travel through Bosnia and the
Herzegovina there is a vastly more convenient route, possibly one that
makes a more perfect pleasure trip, by which to reach this Balkan
Riviera, for Trieste, just across the gulf from Venice, and Fiume, on
the eastern shores of the Istrian Peninsula, are also gateways to this
land of types and flowers.
If you take steamer from either of these towns you will be whisked down
along the Dalmatian coast, through the fjord-like passages between the
thousands of islands which form the tassels to the fringe of country
beyond, and by and by you will come within sight of that little old
town of many vicissitudes—Ragusa.
It seems almost an enchanted spot and you will call it “The Fairy City
of the Adriatic.”
CHAPTER XIII
RAGUSA
As She Is—The First Colony—The Fire of 1292—The Black
Death—Hungary Acquires the Place—Ragusa Establishes Her
Independence—Plague—Earthquake—Napoleon Takes Ragusa—The City
Ceded to Austria.
As does Venice in the north, so Ragusa in the south surpasses in lustre
all of those pearl-cities which dot the Dalmatian shores.
But you must be content, if you come by steamer, with merely a
long-distance glimpse of your “Enchanted City” for the time being,
because the steamer will put into Gravosa, a short two knots to the
north, where the waters of its magnificent harbour are of sufficient
depth for safe navigation, and where the docking facilities are of a
more recent vintage. The noisy little freighters of light draft which
ply up and down this Adriatic coast still make Ragusa a port of call,
however, and the _molo_ there is by no means a scene of inactivity.
The larger passenger steamers, however, after leaving Gravosa, do not
deign even to hesitate at Ragusa, but puff by indifferently as if such
a city never occupied space on the map, bound for Corfu and the Levant.
So here, at Gravosa, you will take a carriage and drive out through the
time-honoured sea-gate of the town, the blue Adriatic murmuring below
you on one side, and a continuous arbour of beauty bowing a floral
welcome to you on the other, the short distance to this dream-city of
Ragusa. Immense cacti grow in luxuriance from out the very walls of
stone that border the road; fig and olive trees clothe the neighbouring
hills in blankets of green velvet; rows of palmettos rear their scaly
trunks by the roadside and curl their broad leaves to hold the moisture
of the fallen dew.
On approaching nearer to Ragusa a greater profusion of semi-tropical
verdure lends a charming background to the numerous white-walled,
red-roofed villas which top the rocky shore line, while a modern hotel,
up to date in all its appointments, looks out from behind its gardens
over the battlements and fortresses of the old city. In the evening a
military band plays near the wall, which skirts the edge of one of the
cliffs just outside the city gates; crowds of care-free visitors occupy
seats at the near-by tables, listening to the music, drinking and
gazing out over the brilliant reflection of the moon upon the water,
while at their backs the splendid towers of the old fortifications
frown down upon the happy throng, as if in silent pleading for just a
little while in which to tell of the changes they have seen.
[Illustration: THE HARBOUR OF GRAVOSA.]
The ancient moat surrounding the walls, now magically transformed into
a garden filled with flowers of every conceivable shape and colour, is
the haven of artists; it is bridged by a permanent stone arch which
leads by winding passageways through the principal gate of the city,
the Porta Pille, into the Corso beyond. Above this massive gateway, in
a niche, is placed a small carved statue of the patron saint of Ragusa,
San Biagio. The Corso, within, is probably two hundred yards long, wide
and paved with stone. On either side it is bounded by shops, while at
the east and the west ends respectively stand the Custom House, through
which is the exit to the docks, and the Porta Pille. Just inside the
Porta Pille stands a magnificent fountain of huge proportions, built in
1435 by the famous Neapolitan architect, Onofrio di la Cava, who also,
in the same year, perfected the system still in use for conducting
fresh water to the city from the Gionchetto, eight miles distant, and
re-erected the palace which had been burnt down in 1432.
Opposite this fountain is the Franciscan church of Mala Brača, the
doorway of which, from the point of view of the architect, is worthy of
some study.
Behind the town to the north the barren slopes of Mount Sergius
interrupt the view inland. It may be interesting for our own
conservationists to note that at one time this mountain was so thickly
wooded that Ragusa was given the Illyric sobriquet of “Dubrovnik,” or
“The Woody,” but now not a tree nor a shrub can be seen upon its entire
sterile surface.
Off to the south lies the beautiful islet of La Croma. Tradition
says that Richard Cœur de Lion, while returning from the Crusades,
was threatened with shipwreck just off this island. While the storm
was raging at its height, in an attempt to court Divine Providence,
he declared he would build a church upon the spot where his caravel
happened to be beached if he and his crew be saved from the fury of
the elements. Scarcely had he finished his prayer when the ship thrust
its prow into the wooded shores of La Croma and here, to fulfil his
promise, he built a chapel.
The history of Ragusa reads like the romance it is, for it is doubtful
if any other city of Europe has been so tightly and tragically wound
around the finger of Fate.
[Illustration: RAGUSA,—MOUNT SERGIUS IN THE BACKGROUND.]
Many conflicting accounts of its founding have been published, but
the real history of Ragusa begins at the time of the victory of the
Venetians over the Narentines in the struggle for the supremacy of the
Adriatic. Policy compelled its citizens, descendants of the refugees
from the fallen Illyrian capitals who have been accredited with the
founding of Ragusa, to favour the Narentines, and with their fall
Ragusa came under the yoke of the Venetians.
The original city corresponded to the southern portion or modern
Ragusa, but later, the Romans absorbed a rival colony and included the
whole within the walls which stood, approximately, on the line of the
present fortifications.
In the year 1292 a series of periodical disasters commenced in Ragusa,
the blighting results of which no city of to-day could possibly sustain.
On August 16th of that year, while the little territory was being
pillaged by the Servians in alliance with the people of Cattaro, but a
few miles down the coast, a fire broke out and destroyed a greater part
of the city; at that time all the houses were built of wood gathered
from the forests of Mount Sergius, all except the Rector’s castle and
the churches. Fire was followed by famine and epidemic. Those of
the heart-sick population who survived were finally persuaded not to
abandon the city, public subscriptions were raised for the destitute
and a new town was built on the same site.
When the great plague, or “Black Death,” swept across Europe in 1348
eleven thousand souls were said to have perished within the walls of
Ragusa.
Exactly ten years later Ragusa, then included in the Dalmatian
territory belonging to Venice, was ceded to Hungary and the payments
of all tributes hitherto given to Venice were transferred with the
country. In return, Lewis of Hungary pledged himself to protect Ragusa
and to allow her to govern herself, as had Venice before him.
Under Hungarian protection Ragusa felt herself develop an extensive
power. In this she was abetted by Lewis himself, who interceded for
her with the Pope for permission to trade with the Turks. He even
allowed her to elect her own Count and tended her many other unheard of
privileges.
[Illustration: THE WALLS OF RAGUSA.]
In 1418 Dalmatia again passed into the hands of Venice. Then it
was that Ragusa revolted, and, three years later, she established
successfully an independence, which she enjoyed for almost four
hundred years. A steady commercial progress marked this period of
her history, and it only reached its climax after the fall of Venice
in 1797. As early as 1417 slave-dealing was forbidden in Ragusa and
adjudged by the assembly as “base, wicked and abominable.” A foundling
hospital was established in 1432, and in 1435 teachers were invited
from Italy to instruct in the public schools.
The little principality became the haven of many wealthy and noble
families from the Slavonic kingdoms in the interior, who had been
driven from their lands by the marauding Turks. But Ragusa, on the
other hand, made friends with the deceitful Mohammedans, traded with
them, and, at the same time, cannily strengthened her fortifications
against them. Ragusa made treaties of commerce with Spain in 1494, with
France in 1508 and with Egypt in 1510, which latter treaty smoothed the
sea for her along the course to the East Indies. Her “argosies” (the
word “argosy” means literally “a vessel of Ragusa”) were to be found
in every commercial port, and, at the time of the fall of Venice, her
mercantile marine had risen rapidly to more than four hundred sail.
But during this period of trade-building the misfortunes of Ragusa were
many.
Only by the loyalty and indomitable pluck of her sons was she able
to rise so many times from her dust and ashes, while the whole world
marvelled at such determination to outlive the destruction wrought by
nature and the elements.
In 1462 plague broke out among the inhabitants of the town and two
thousand people succumbed to its ravages. The same year a disastrous
fire destroyed the Rector’s palace and the arsenal.
May 17, 1520, was the date on which commenced a series of earthquake
shocks, which continued intermittently for twenty months. Many houses
were demolished and it became the custom of the people to place the
passover mark, I. H. S., above their doors as a devout entreaty for
Divine protection. Finally, the earthquakes ceased, but six years
later the germs of the plague were carried to Ragusa in the stuffs of
a trader from Ancona. The unfortunate merchant was dragged through the
streets and tortured by the infuriated, panic-stricken citizens, the
Senate fled to Gravosa, and only a small guard remained to quiet and to
ease the sufferings of the terrified inhabitants. For six long months
the pestilence raged within the walls and no less than twenty thousand
souls fell victims to its terrible havoc.
Then Turkey in the east, and Venice in the west, took advantage of
Ragusa’s weakness and preyed upon her, the Turks especially making the
most of her misfortunes for their own aggrandizement.
The plague re-appeared from time to time, and in 1580 and 1639 the town
was again visited by earthquakes.
But the historical bench-mark of Ragusa was the great seismic
disturbance of 1667. With this as the basis, the dates of all
subsequent or previous events of importance were calculated; even
to-day the people of the town will tell you that the church of San
Biagio was destroyed by fire “thirty-nine years after _the_ earthquake.”
Early in the morning of April 6th, 1667, this great disaster descended
without any warning upon the people of Ragusa. The earth seemed to roll
and vibrate under the internal pressure; immense fissures were cleft in
the surface and almost every house in the city was razed to the ground;
five thousand citizens, the Rector of the Republic included among them,
perished. The ruins took fire and the town was looted by hordes of
plunderers; even the treasures of the churches were carried away.
Because the Ragusans had made some armed resistance against the Turks,
many of whom were among the chief looters, the Sublime Porte demanded
an explanation. Nicola Bona and Marino Gozze were chosen as peace
commissioners to Turkey, but both were thrown into prison at Silistria.
Two others that followed suffered the same fate.
Although deluged with misfortunes Ragusa prospered, but her continued
prosperity was not watched without some jealousy on the part of the
powers of Europe. At the height of her ascendency, Russia and France
both grew hungry for her, and Russia, aided by the Montenegrins,
bombarded and sacked the city. In 1806 Napoleon took Ragusa, and eight
years later the combined efforts of England and Austria caused the
haughty, supercilious little principality to be annexed to Austria.
You will find such an exaggerated air of independence among the
Ragusans of to-day that you will little wonder that they held
themselves for four hundred years against the nations of Europe and
outlived the effects of their calamities.
I was talking with a native on the Corso one day and happened to ask
him, casually, what was the nature of the reception the people of
Ragusa tendered the Austrian Emperor upon the occasion of his visit a
short time before. He seemed offended that I even intimated that they
had given the Emperor a reception, and assured me that the Ragusans had
taken the matter of his visit as an occasion of no importance whatever.
But he hastened to tell me in detail of the demonstration planned for
the Crown Prince of Montenegro, who was expected soon to make a short
stay in the city.
Ragusa, as I have said, is the much favoured winter resort of the
Austrian and Hungarian aristocracy, and it would be difficult to
imagine a more delightful one. The climate is ideal. Although the
atmosphere is free from humidity the sun of a summer’s day is quite
hot—so hot, in fact, that you will be tempted to indulge in a
three-dollar white duck suit at one of the little shops along the Corso.
The evenings, however, are always agreeably cool. Then the band plays
in the “piazza,” on the top of the cliff, and the town awakens from
its apparent lethargy. From the docks the sardine fishermen, after
overhauling their tiny craft, put out to sea in the evening twilight,
to make their nightly catch among the bays and inlets of the rock-bound
coast. Beyond the bastiles and sea-fortresses the afterglow of the
brilliant sunset tinges La Croma in hues of purple and gold.
At night the soft breezes, redolent of the perfume of the garden below,
are wafted through the latticed windows; the band seems to play the
last number on the program with irresistible rhythm; the tuneful songs
of Austrian sailors, as they return to their ships in the harbour of
Gravosa after an evening of revelry, swell out upon the night air and
die away—and before you realize it the morning sunlight is streaming
through the Venetian window-shades, forming bars of gold that stretch
across the polished floor, while the sea glitters and dashes musically
against the bases of the cliffs just a little beyond your window.
Truly, Ragusa is the fairy city of the Adriatic.
[Illustration: THE SEA FORTS OF RAGUSA.]
CHAPTER XIV
THE BOCCHE DI CATTARO
Steamer-day at Gravosa—Ragusa from the Sea—The Bocche di
Cattaro—Castelnuovo—Cattaro and Her Mountain Background.
I can assure you that it will be a hard matter to tear yourself away
from Ragusa. You will want to stroll through her narrow streets, or
watch the market-people in the public square, or play long sets of
tennis on the excellent courts in the shadows of the turreted town
walls, or sip “citronade” indefinitely under the awnings of the street
cafés near the Corso. There is a weird, delightful charm about Ragusa
that is well-nigh irresistible.
But just in the midst of ecstatic enjoyment there always looms up that
infallible something, which will, sooner or later, put an unwelcome end
to all good things; and we finally found ourselves facing our luggage
on the drive back, along the flower-skirted road to Gravosa to take the
steamer for Cattaro.
As we wound around an overhanging cliff we caught sight of the
beautiful bay, and were able for the first time to appreciate its
advantages. Its waters were smooth as a dancing floor; here and there
a smart little launch with striped awnings darted up and down; across
the harbour the gardens of handsome villas extended down to the water’s
edge, while out in the roadstead the gray hulls of a squadron of
Austrian sea-fighters silhouetted themselves against the sky-line.
The _molo_ itself was a scene of animation. It was crowded with people,
peasants, sailors and tradesmen, for the steamer _Codolo_ from up the
coast had just been made fast, and the arrival of any passenger steamer
is an event of no little import at Gravosa.
But what of unusual interest did the _Codolo_ have in store to occasion
such wholesale manifestation of inquisitiveness among the natives of
the town? Even our driver confessed he had never seen such a gathering
on the _molo_. The arrival of an official of high rank, probably. But
no, there seemed to be an absolute dearth of uniformed soldiery, and
no state official could possibly arrive without the attending pomp and
circumstance.
We drove through the old sea-gate at a gallop and descended pell-mell
upon the _molo_, our driver walloping his horses through the crowd
with reckless abandon and utter disregard for human life or limb, for
_he_ was curious, too.
As we came to a jerky halt at the foot of the gangway we saw that on
the steamer’s deck stood a great, mud-coloured object, which somewhat
resembled in size and contour the broadside of an elephant. This
mastodon, whatever it might be, was swathed in tarpaulins.
Tackle and planks were being rigged rapidly, and, at last, the puzzling
what-was-it was skidded to the _molo_ from the deck of the steamer. The
gaping crowd stood breathless with anticipation while the tarpaulins
were raised, and behold! a motor-omnibus for use on the road between
the steamer piers at Gravosa and the fashionable hotel in Ragusa.
Wonder of Wonders! The first automobile to denature with the fumes of
gasoline the virgin atmosphere of lower Dalmatia.
This marvellous machine was the most cumbersome parcel of freight
consigned to Gravosa and soon the reversed twin screws of the steamer
were churning the placid waters of the harbour into filmy patches
of white froth. We backed away from the _molo_ and its burden of
inquisitive onlookers, turned about and headed speedily for the narrow
harbour exit, through which we caught glimpses of the blue of the
Adriatic beyond.
The four hour sea trip from Gravosa to Cattaro is one replete with
scenic surprises, and the first of these is a magnificent panorama of
Ragusa and her stately fortresses as we round the rocky promontory just
to the north of the town. Ragusa is inviting enough from land, but when
viewed from the sea it is fascinating beyond description.
For a distance after passing Ragusa the coast line is unprotected
from the winds and storms of the Adriatic but, except in early spring
or late fall, little fear of the sudden rising of a “Bora” or a
“Scirocco,” the winds most dreaded along the Dalmatian coast, need be
felt. On account of the depth of water the course taken by the steamers
is always within easy sight of the shore, and the mountains seem to
rise directly from the red-tiled roofs of the village houses.
After the steamer rounds Punta d’Ostro, with her mediæval castle and
modern fortifications which keep watch for Austria over this part
of her territory, an hour’s ride through some of the most beautiful
scenery is in store for the traveller, for this promontory marks the
entrance of the famous Bocche di Cattaro, the most wonderful and best
naturally protected harbour in the world. I should not say that at
this point is the “entrance” to the Bocche, for the word “Bocche”
itself is the plural of “Boca” and means, literally, “entrances” or
“mouths,” but the term “Bocche di Cattaro” has been so generally
applied to the basins themselves which, together, make up the harbour,
that it enjoys almost universal usage.
Of these basins there are three which are of considerable expanse,
resembling small inland seas: the basins of Castelnuovo, Teodo and
Cattaro. The remaining two, for there are five in all, are not so
extensive and might be considered as bays leading off from the larger
bodies of water. These latter are joined by narrow straits or channels,
which is not the case with the smaller bays, like that of Risano.
The narrowest Boca is at the entrance of the sea of Perasto and is
familiarly known as “La Catene,” because of the fact that at the time
when Lewis of Hungary was defending Cattaro against the Venetians he
sealed up the entrance to this particular body of water by stretching
a “chain” across the mouth so that it would be impossible for the
caravels of the enemy to enter.
Lofty, barren peaks rise on every side from the very shore line,
while the water of the harbour is peacefully calm, translucent
and, in colour, a deep blue, rendered deeper by the dark shadows of
the overhanging mountains. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the ancient
historian of the country, probably stretched the time limit an hour or
two when he said that the sun never penetrated the Bocche di Cattaro
except in summer, but, nevertheless, it has been proven a fact that in
the course of a winter’s day Cattaro enjoys but five hours of sunlight,
so hemmed in is it between the tall mountain peaks and ranges.
The picturesque little town of Castelnuovo lies directly across the
bay from the Punto d’Ostro. In front of the town the steamer stops
long enough for a few fussy Dalmatian women to climb down the ship’s
accommodation ladder to the boats, which have put out from shore
to take off any passengers or freight the steamer may be carrying
consigned to Castelnuovo.
[Illustration: A GENERAL VIEW OF CASTELNUOVO.]
Steaming onward toward Cattaro we pass two small islets, each of which
seems barely large enough to keep the little churches and gardens which
they hold on their surfaces from sliding into the bay. Upon one of them
stands the monastery of San Giorgio, strikingly diminutive and quaint,
but complete from bell-tower to cloister; on the other island is the
chapel of Santa Maria della Scarpello, containing a portrait of the
Madonna said to have been painted by none other than St. Luke.
As we enter the bay of Cattaro, after turning abruptly around the foot
of a cliff, the view is one of beauty beyond adequate description.
Ahead, at the farther end of the bay, the town of Cattaro clings like
a vegetable parasite to the steep base of the majestic mountain.
Above it the famous “Ladder,” the trail used by the Montenegrins for
five hundred years to descend from their mountain homes to Cattaro on
market-days, scales the face of Mount Lovčen (pronounced Lovtchen);
higher up, and a little to the right, may be seen the white zig-zags
of the wonderful wagon road to Cettinje, the smallest and most
inaccessible capital in Europe.
But distance lends enchantment to Cattaro, and the most favourable
impressions of the town may be had from the deck of the steamer. Once
having set foot on the stone quay the place seems to have lost its
individuality, and reminds one of any other town which has huddled
itself together under the dominating influences of the Venetians. You
might think that the houses had been thrown upon each other in a heap,
and when someone wished to move about the town he dug a path between
them as he needed it. The streets, if such they may be called, are
little more than passageways between the walls of the houses. The
hotels are dirty and offer the poorest excuses for accommodations to be
found in the Balkans.
On Saturdays the Montenegrins from the mountains climb down the
“Ladder” to the market in Cattaro, first being compelled to leave their
weapons in the custody of an Austrian official outside the city gates.
In the evening they climb wearily back to their homes, with nothing to
look forward to but the market on the following Saturday.
Notwithstanding the unattractiveness of the town, there are two very
patent reasons for visiting Cattaro. One is, that the delightfulness
of the boat trip through the Bocche, with its magnificent scenery,
far excels anything of the sort to be had south of Norway or north
of the Straits of Magellan, and the other, that the drive over the
Black Mountains to Cettinje unveils to the traveller some of the most
wonderful views to be had in Europe. Indeed, it is said that the
panorama of the Bocche and the Adriatic from the cloud-encircled summit
of the mountain cannot be surpassed in the whole world.
[Illustration: THE FAMOUS “LADDER” ACROSS THE FACE OF MOUNT LOVČEN.]
CHAPTER XV
MONTENEGRO
The Gibraltar of the Balkan Peninsula—The Settling of
Montenegro—Peter I—The Family of Petrovich—Prince Nikola—The
Montenegrin Costume—Incidents of War—The Montenegro of To-day.
A mere niche in the mountain wall of south-eastern Europe, with the
blue rollers of the Adriatic pounding relentlessly against its meagre
coast line and hemmed in on the remaining three sides by nominal
provinces of hostile Turkey, lies Montenegro, the Gibraltar of the
Balkan Peninsula. Notwithstanding the fact that it is the smallest of
the free Balkan states, its total area covering but three thousand
five hundred square miles, half the size of Wales and but three times
as large as the state of Rhode Island, with an estimated population
less than that of the single city of Buffalo, Montenegro remains as
yet unconquered. For five hundred years its handful of patriots have
withstood successfully the onslaughts of the hordes of Turks, fighting
for every inch of rocky territory that was finally ceded to them by
the Powers of Europe in 1878.
The history of Montenegro begins at the time of the Turkish victory
over the Servians at Kossovo, June 28, 1389. It is a history of nothing
but war because, on account of their surroundings, the Montenegrins
have had nothing to do with commerce and the arts of peace. Indeed, it
was, and is yet, except in a few fertile valleys, almost a geographical
impossibility for them to cultivate the soil, and the Turks, in their
ferocious attempts to subjugate the eastern half of Europe, harassed
the Montenegrins so continually on all sides that there was little else
to think of but war.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF MONTENEGRINS.]
To delve briefly into the beginning of things, this Land of the Black
Mountain was settled by a dauntless band of Servian refugees who, after
the battle of Kossovo, when Tzar Lazar, Emperor of Servia, was defeated
by the Turks, preferred liberty in some wild country of their own at
any price, rather than live under the domination of the Mohammedans.
They fled, accordingly, into the Black Mountains and there commenced
the story of the Montenegrins and their strenuous existence. This story
has been written in the blood of the Ottoman, but never once during the
five hundred years of almost continuous war that followed did Turkey
gain a permanent foothold in Montenegro.
Strange to say, even at the present writing, Montenegro does not
maintain what would be called in military vernacular a “standing
army.” The “regulars” comprise two companies of thirty-two men each,
each company taking its turn in guarding the palace and acting in the
capacity of secret service sleuths for the Prince. But the spirit of
patriotism within the breast of every Montenegrin demands that he stand
ready to defend his country to-day, as he has done in the past. Except
for those of the guards who peer out from the open doorways of the
little peppermint sentry-boxes outside the Prince’s palace, a military
uniform is a rare sight in Cettinje, the miniature capital.
In a country like Montenegro, guerilla warfare is the best possible
method of defence, and to it the Montenegrins are particularly well
adapted. To the mountainous nature of their land is partly due the many
decisive victories which they have gained over the Turks, who have sent
army after army of from forty thousand to two hundred thousand men
against the stubborn little band of fighters. Another point in their
favour is the rapidity with which their forces may be mobilized. On one
occasion, in 1887, six thousand men were assembled on the Austrian
frontier, between eight o’clock in the evening and four the following
morning. Doubtless, even to-day, the whole available Montenegrin
military force of more than forty-two thousand men might be strung
along the frontier within four or five days at the most.
It seems stretching it a point or two to say that eight thousand men
would be able under any circumstances to put to flight an army of sixty
thousand, but such was the case in 1604 when a comparatively small
band of Montenegrins defeated almost seven and one-half times their
number of Turks. In 1796, under Peter I, at Kroussa, the Turks received
their most crushing defeat. Thirty thousand of them were slain and the
Montenegrin leader himself killed Kara Mahmoud, the Turkish general,
and spitted his head on his sword. This mountain warrior was of a
family which has ruled in the land for two hundred years and was an
antecedent of the reigning Prince.
In those days the leader was called a “Vladika,” or Prince-Bishop, who
combined both spiritual and temporal power. This Bishop being celibate
the office passed from uncle to nephew until 1852 when an absolute
principality was established, to be ruled over by hereditary Princes
with unconditional autocratic power.
Prince Nikola, the present ruler, the seventh of the family of
Petrovich of Njegushi who has governed Montenegro, succeeded to the
title in 1860, after the assassination of his unpopular uncle, Danilo
II. Nikola is now almost seventy years of age, but tall, erect and
deep-chested, and carries his years as becomes the fighter and leader
he has been. He received his education in Paris and in Trieste, and
is gifted with no ordinary literary talents, having written many
poems commemorating the victories of the Montenegrins over the Turks,
in addition to two plays, “The Empress of the Balkans” and “Prince
Arbanit,” which still enjoy occasional runs behind the kerosene
footlights on the exiguous stage of the little theatre in Cettinje.
His civil list amounts to but $25,000, and it means a strain on his
revenues to supply his two elder sons with $6,000 a year each.
Her Majesty, Queen Helena of Italy, who so endeared herself to the
hearts of her subjects at the scenes of the recent earthquake in
Sicily, is the most illustrious of Prince Nikola’s nine children.
She was born in the palace at Cettinje in 1872 and was brought up in
the strictest economy, according to the traditions of the family of
Petrovich. She was a girl of “God’s out-of-doors,” and the episodes of
her early life taught her the trails of the Black Mountain and whither
they led. It is said she could handle a rifle as well as any of her
three brothers. She was also a favourite of her relative, Alexander
of Russia, and through his liberality was taken to St. Petersburg and
educated. The heir to the throne of Italy met her later in Venice, fell
ardently in love with her and they were married on October 4, 1896.
When at home the Prince wears his national dress consisting of a small,
round cap (_kapitza_) embroidered in gold on the top with the letters
“N. I.”; a long white, or light blue, cloak of broadcloth (_dolama_ or
_gunj_), circled at the waist by a fancy girdle, in the front of which
nestles a formidable array of cumbersome firearms; a red waist-coat
(_jalek_); a short, richly embroidered Zouave jacket (_jamada_); loose,
blue knickerbockers (_shalwar_); sandals (_opanka_); and carries across
his shoulder a dark-coloured plaid shawl with heavy fringe (_struka_).
That he makes himself popular goes without question, for it is said
that he knows personally every citizen in Cettinje and will call each
by name when the occasion arises.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL MONTENEGRIN GIRL.]
In 1861-62 Nikola meted out to the invading Turks a noteworthy
defeat. Again in 1877-78 he defeated ninety thousand Turks, with a
much inferior number of Montenegrins, and drove them from the country,
killing and wounding twelve thousand.
Many interesting anecdotes are told of the daring and bravery of the
Montenegrins in their struggles to save their country from the covetous
grasp of the Mohammedans. Only a band of men driven to desperation
in almost inaccessible mountain regions could possibly withstand so
many attacks of such overwhelming odds as were hurled against them.
In one famous battle at Kristatz a small band of two thousand engaged
thirty thousand Turks under Suleiman Pasha, inflicting a loss of three
thousand five hundred upon the enemy, while the number of their own
dead totalled but seven hundred. On another occasion at Jezero the
Montenegrins killed four hundred and eighty Turks, sustaining a loss of
but thirty-six killed and wounded.
During this latter engagement a powerful mountaineer of the clan of
Paperi, having distinguished himself at the battle of Vucidol by
capturing Osman Pasha, the Turkish general, and carrying him to Prince
Nikola, being presented with five hundred ducats for his captive, was
jokingly bade by the Prince to fetch him another Turk. The hero,
however, took the matter seriously and, at an opportune moment, rushed
into the Turkish lines, snatched a devout Mohammedan around the waist,
disarmed him and started to carry him off toward the rear, where Prince
Nikola was watching the fight. In order to arrive at the side of his
sovereign he was compelled to make a détour, and before he had covered
half the distance he was brought down with a bullet in his thigh.
Naturally, he dropped his Ottoman captive, and the latter immediately
sprang at his throat. With almost superhuman efforts, in spite of the
excruciating pain of his wound, he held off the vengeful Turk with one
hand and, aiming his pistol with the other, ordered his adversary to
lift him on his back and _carry him_ to the Prince. To disobey meant
instant death, for the cold, circular muzzle of a huge weapon was even
then so close to his fez that he could plainly see the rifling in the
barrel. Stumbling and groaning under the weight of his Montenegrin
rider the Turk approached the Prince, while the hills resounded with
the cheers of the men of the clan of Paperi. Upon delivering his steed
to his leader the soldier fell to the ground senseless from exhaustion
and loss of blood.
While this same battle was at its height the Prince approached
a mountaineer of more than eighty years of age, who was bravely
endeavouring to keep his place among his fellows but with evident
difficulty, and suggested to him sympathetically that he was too old
to follow the flag and had better withdraw. The veteran, being thus
considered by his military idol as unable longer to fight for his
country, forthwith drew his pistol and committed suicide.
It was at the siege of Nikshitch that the valorous warrior-priest of
the Montenegrins, Pope Milo, challenged any Turk to personal combat
between the lines with broadswords. Both armies ceased the fight while
the battle-royal was in progress. The Turk, however, proved the better
swordsman and killed his antagonist, severing the head from the body.
Upon the resumption of hostilities an infuriated Montenegrin revenged
the death of Pope Milo by dealing with the same Turk in a similar
manner.
Prince Nikola himself was in command at the siege of Nikshitch, in
which the Montenegrin women were little less active than the men, for
they carried ammunition and food across the mountains and otherwise
assisted in the Montenegrin victory. The Prince, reclining upon a rock,
over which he had first spread his _struka_, received the surrender of
Scanderbeg and invited the Turkish commander to take coffee with him.
Coffee over, he wrote a poem of the siege and forwarded it by messenger
to his wife in Cettinje. She read it aloud to the citizens gathered
together in the public square.
But fighting as one nation against another has not been the only
form of warfare indulged in by the Montenegrins. During the brief
intervals of Turkish lethargy blood-feuds between the families of the
mountaineers afforded the male members plenty of diversion. They had no
cause to complain of monotonous inactivity. A boy might grow to manhood
in blissful ignorance that it would be his duty sooner or later to
take the life of another, thus avenging the untimely death of one of
the members of his own family. Upon the successful accomplishment of
his mission, as was usually the case, he, in turn, would be thereafter
considered as a target for the weapon of some member of the rival
family. Thus the feuds were continuous, imperishable heirlooms handed
down from father to son, even unto the third and fourth generation.
[Illustration: A STONE MASON OF CETTINJE AND HIS CART.]
By the Treaty of Berlin, Montenegro acquired twenty-five miles
of seacoast adjoining Albania; the bulk of her trade, however,
continues to come and go through the Dalmatian port of Cattaro, a
port upon which these people of the mountains have ever cast a covetous
glance, but from which they are shut out by the great rocky barriers of
the Dinaric Alps.
Railway building in Montenegro is very difficult, and as yet the
principality is without means of transportation other than by wagon
train and a few small steamers which ply on the Lake of Scutari. The
project is now on foot to build a railway from Antivari, on the coast,
to Virbazaar, a short distance inland.
Podgoritza, situated in a part of the territory acquired in 1878, is a
town of eleven thousand inhabitants, the largest in Montenegro, and is
the centre of trade. Hard by are the ruins of the Roman city of Docle,
the birthplace of Diocletian. Excellent tobacco, for which the district
is famous, is grown in the vicinity of the great Lake of Scutari, half
of which stretches over into Albania. The annual imports of the country
are valued at about $1,375,000, while the exports, consisting mainly of
tobacco, dried meats, hides and fish, are valued at $1,040,000.
A few years ago the Montenegrins shouted from hill to hill the news
of the country, and in these regions the human voice is said to carry
exceptionally long distances. The news of the defeat of the Russians
at the Alma was “holloed” by the shepherds from mountain to mountain
across the Balkan Peninsula, and in a marvellously short time the
tidings reached the Dalmatian coast. To-day, telegraph wires are
stretched across the Black Mountains, connecting almost all of the
towns; the seaport of Antivari boasting even of a Marconi wireless
station, which places Montenegro in direct communication with the coast
of Italy.
CHAPTER XVI
THE ROAD TO CETTINJE
The Ascent of the Mountains—Njegushi—The Montenegrin
Capital—Historical Monuments in Cettinje—The Return to Cattaro.
It takes nine hours to drive the twenty-eight miles and a quarter
across the mountains from Cattaro to Cettinje, the miniature capital of
this miniature principality. Because of the time consumed in the drive
it does not follow that the going is rough. On the contrary, the road
is of the best, for, as far as the Montenegrin frontier, it was built
with infinite care by the Austrian government in order to facilitate
the passage of troops and field pieces, should the occasion arise.
The mountain gorges are bridged with stone arches, their foundations
being imbedded in the rocks many feet below the roadway, while along
the outer side of the latter stretches a continuous protecting wall of
cut rock, cemented, of a yard in height. The road itself is smooth and
free from stones, but the white, powdery dust sifts into your hair and
through every stitch of your clothing. If Cattaro, the starting-point
of the trip across the mountains, were not sealed up in such an
out-of-the-way corner of the continent, touring motorists, doubtless,
would be more familiar with the topography of Montenegro. As it is,
there have been up-to-date but two or three automobiles to cross the
face of the mountains on the way to Cettinje, and the distinction of
driving these machines lies at the thresholds of Americans.
Upon leaving Cattaro the road skirts the harbour for a short distance,
winds around toward the hills through avenues of stately poplars,
crosses a little bridge which spans the Gordicchio, makes several
zig-zags, and then sweeps widely toward the south—you really seem to
be driving away from the mountain which you must scale later—in full
view of the Adriatic, while the bay, or Bocche di Cattaro, is lost to
view behind you. At the top of the pass leading to the town of Budua,
the outlook over the broad, fertile plain of Garbalj, with the sea in
the distance, is very impressive. For a short distance the highway, as
it winds around the face of the cliff, literally overhangs the plain
and then turns abruptly toward the Black Mountain. In the distance the
white, zig-zagging road, surmounting the almost perpendicular wall of
rock ahead, looks like a thread on the shoulder of a giant, and
causes you to wonder that it took no more than twenty years to build.
[Illustration: A SECTION OF THE ROAD ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS.]
This being the shortest and easiest route for trade between the outside
world and the Montenegrin capital, quantities of provisions, household
furniture, lumber and other materials for building purposes, and
what not are freighted by four, five and six-horse teams over these
twenty-eight miles of mountains, from Cattaro to Cettinje. There is
also a passenger stage that operates daily between the two towns.
We had passed the little stone half-way house, which is stuck on the
face of the rock at one of the very acute angles of the winding road
overlooking the Bocche, when we came upon one of these freight caravans
plugging laboriously along, with the hope of making Cettinje sometime
the following day. One of the wagons was loaded with kegs of beer, and
it was all too evident that the several treacherous looking drivers
in the party had been indulging their thirst from time to time, to
the appreciable loss to the person to whom the kegs were consigned.
As we approached, our driver stopped his nondescript team and had a
few confiding words with the freighters. Together they succeeded in
puncturing one of the kegs with a long wire nail; then a horse bucket
was cut from its swinging position under one of the wagons. This was
rinsed out with a goodly supply of beer tapped from the punctured
cask, and refilled, to moisten the already well-lubricated throats of
all concerned. How many full casks reached their destination after
several days spent on the road would make a nice problem for a class
in algebra. If the freighters met many drivers as thirsty as ours it
is a question whether or not it would have been best for them to have
appeared in Cettinje at all.
At each successive turn of the road a more wonderful panorama of the
Bocche stretches out before you, and, after more than three hours of
steady climbing, the pass at the top of the mountains is reached, and
you cross the frontier, marked by a single stone post at the side of
the roadway.
[Illustration: THE PASS AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAINS.]
The view of the Montenegrin side of the mountains can only be described
as purely “Montenegrin.” The Bocche is, of course, lost to view and
you have before you nothing but what seems to be a gigantic upheaval
of rocks. Not a tree, not a shrub, not even a dust-covered sprout at
the side of the road, relieves the sameness of this picture of gray
desolation. Perhaps, if you look closely, you will partly be able to
distinguish, less than a hundred yards away, a native mountaineer whose
very garb is of protective colouring, concealing him almost entirely
from your notice against the background of bare stones.
From the top of the mountain the road descends to the village of
Njegushi, the birthplace of His Ferocity, Prince Nikola. But were
it not for the red-tiled roofs there would be, from a distance, no
circumstantial evidence whatever that the town exists, for the houses
are all of stone of the same hue as the surrounding mountains.
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.
[Illustration: THE MAIN STREET, CETTINJE.]
The body of Peter I reposes peacefully, after his many years of
active leadership, in its sarcophagus in the little chapel of the
monastery, while at the opposite end of the village a small arsenal
contains the sum total of Montenegrin pieces of ordnance. One room is
devoted to the trophies of war taken from the Turks, including swords,
bullet-riddled flags and standards, Turkish field pieces and personal
insignia.
A prolonged stay is not necessary to see all there is to be seen in
the miniature capital, three or four days being quite sufficient. On
the height of the first ascent after leaving the town a glorious view
of the valley below, all divided off into the little stone-encircled
fields, may be had. As you journey on, you may pass a group or two of
gypsies or a hermit-peasant who hobbles out of his thatched hut to beg
a handful of tobacco. At last you break through the pass at the top of
the mountains in full view of the Bocche di Cattaro.
A diminutive white steamer leaving the _molo_ of the town almost
directly under you, moves slowly toward the narrow exit to the
Adriatic, its propellers churning a fan-shaped wake of foam which loses
itself finally in the broad expanse of placid water.
The sunset from the heights, as it illumines the lower mountain ranges
with an old-rose sheen and diffuses its tinted rays across the
Bocche and the broad Adriatic beyond, is gorgeous enough to baffle
description. A painter who could picture truthfully that evening
panorama might well consider it his masterpiece. The silence of the
mountains is unbroken, save for the melancholy pipings of a lone
shepherd boy hidden somewhere among the rocks in the distance. The
silence of the sky and the silence of the rock-walled Bocche “mingle
in an awful spell that falls upon the soul like the lonesomeness of
the grave. There is something of death in life and of life in death
in the grim inevitableness of this silence, so changeless and yet so
vital.” The sunset above and the yawning cañon-like pit below “grip
the soul and draw it to a communion with something strong outside
itself—something that escapes definition and analysis; something that
the ancient people meant when they said that they walked with God.”
For a long time you will stop and drink in eagerly the splendour of the
scene, and then, reluctantly, yet as if influenced by the magnetism of
the abyss, commence to descend the windings, one after another, back to
the quaint little Dalmatian port of Cattaro.
[Illustration: A TURN OF THE ROAD ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS.]
CHAPTER XVII
SPALATO AND SALONA
Westward Along the Coast—First Glimpse of Spalato—The
Campanile—Diocletian’s Palace—Salona and Her Ruins.
The full glow of the morning sunlight gleamed and danced upon the
brass-work of the little steamer _Petka_ as the stevedores finished
their loading of her freight from the dock at Cattaro and the last
assortment of passengers had wobbled noisily up the gangway.
It was exactly ten o’clock when the lines were cast off and the ship
steamed slowly ahead, turning on her course to gain the Adriatic. She
circled about almost at the very edge of the shore line, for there is
no semblance of a beach and the deep water extends to the bases of the
mighty cliffs that surround the harbour, until Cattaro in the distance
put one in mind of a collection of Noah’s Ark houses. The waters were
calm and smooth as the surface of a mirror, and held quiescent and in
perfect outline the reflections of the rugged mountains.
Once the _Petka_ had negotiated the many consecutive mouths of the
Bocche and had finally passed the grim walls of the fortresses on Punta
d’Ostro, close on the starboard, she set her course almost due west
with her ultimate destination Fiume, her home port; but she was due to
call _en voyage_ at almost all of the towns along the coast.
Her main deck was an odd and interesting sight. It was crowded, so
crowded that one could see scarcely one square inch of planking, with a
rare galaxy of Montenegrins, Cattarines, Albanians, Greeks and Austrian
soldiers, each garbed in some bit of costume that made his or her
nationality unmistakable. All sprawled about in the sun, smoking or
sleeping, their heads and shoulders entwined about their luggage and
their legs aimed across the deck like the tails of so many comets.
Above the upper deck, reserved for first-class passengers, white
awnings had been stretched, and under these we followed the examples
of the natives on board, to a certain extent, to enjoy the beauties of
the land-locked passage, through which the ship set her course after
leaving Gravosa.
Here on deck, lunch was served at noon and dinner in the evening, each
meal an elaborate affair with wine, and composed of some of the most
palatable dishes to be had anywhere in Europe. Seven constitutes the
usual number of courses served at dinner on board any of these Adriatic
coasters, and lunch is hardly less voluminous: _hors-d’œuvres_, of
course; soup; fish; a sort of cold fish salad with mayonnaise; spring
lamb and delicious vegetables; game of some description; salad; and
dessert.
And just to offer one more probative demonstration of how puny the
world really is, the chief officer of the _Petka_ had been for many
years in the service of a trans-Pacific steamship company, and, during
that time, had lived in Santa Clara, California. There his three
children had been born, and their father assisted in their education by
teaching each one to speak five languages in addition to English.
Almost the entire distance from Gravosa to Fiume the course of the
steamers lies along an inland passage protected from the sea-swells of
the Adriatic by hundreds of islands, some large and some small, but
all of a considerable height, while, from the shores of the mainland,
the mountains rise with such apparent verticality that it would seem
a simple matter to stand at any point along the top and drop a plumb
line to the water below. No matter what moment you might gaze up
or down the coast or seaward you would be able to see from five to
thirty-five islands, without half trying. The water is all of such
great depth, even to the edge of the coast, that it is said a vessel
might pass safely between two protruding rocks situated so close
together as to barely admit of the ship’s passage. The conspicuous
absence of lights to warn the mariner at night makes navigation seem
difficult and dangerous, but the pilots know the channels as they know
their rosaries. Neither are the ships supplied with searchlights to
facilitate the picking out of the few buoys that mark the channels
farther along. One or two of the particularly narrow places of the
course, however, are marked by miniature light-houses, not more than
ten feet in height, which stick up from the water to indicate the base
of a wall of rock as it juts out into the blackness of the night.
About fifty miles from Ragusa, in the narrow channel which divides the
Sabbioncello Peninsula from the island of Curzola, a famous sea battle
between the Venetians and the Genoese took place. This affray was won
by the latter, who captured the distinguished Venetian navigator, Marco
Polo, he having just returned from a cruise in the China Seas. Polo
was taken to Genoa and placed in a dungeon, where he laboured over
the manuscript of his widely read book of travels. Doge Dandolo, the
Venetian ruler and the admiral of the fleet, was also captured and
borne away a prisoner of war by the Genoese, but while _en route_ he
dashed out his brains against the bulwarks of the galley upon which he
was confined.
Just south of Spalato, twenty hours’ ride from Cattaro by this slow
steamer, you will pass the island of Solta, where is gathered the
honey, world-famed for its excellence, sucked from the blooms of the
rosemary and the cistus rose.
The object that will first attract your attention upon entering the
harbour of Spalato is the tall campanile, always in repair, and around
which the hideous scaffolding has been allowed to remain since 1882,
and it will probably remain for some time to come; for the repairs
to the tower are so slow in progressing that as soon as one job is
finished another presents itself. The building of this campanile was
begun by Maria of Hungary about 1300, but her death in 1323 caused
an interruption to the work. It was not again taken up until 1360,
when Elizabeth the Elder, sent by her son Lewis of Hungary to govern
Dalmatia, ordered that the work be carried out under the supervision
of the Spalatine architect, Nicolas Tverdoj. The tower was completed in
1416, but it was not so substantially built as it might have been—for
we are told that the subtle art of “graft” had made itself felt in
Dalmatia even at that date—and as early as 1472 an architect, Nicolo
Fiorentino, commenced the repairs which have continued to this day and
which, from all appearances, promise to continue until the campanile is
a ruin.
From the top of the scaffold, after a somewhat tiresome climb, one can
obtain a comprehensive and beautiful panoramic view of Spalato, where
lived and died the composer Von Suppe, and also of the harbour.
Aside from the quaintly dressed Dalmatian fisher folk, who patch and
re-patch the variegated sails of their tiny craft along the stone quay,
the town is interesting from the fact that it contains the best example
of Roman domestic architecture to be found anywhere in the world, not
excepting the magnificent ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
[Illustration: SPALATO FROM THE CAMPANILE.]
The subject of this rather broad, but nevertheless true, statement
is the old palace built by Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth
century, and in which the Roman ex-Emperor took up his abode after
his abdication and where he lived until his death in 313, A. D.
Its building marked the date of a new departure in architecture; a
departure which ended in the development of the Byzantine and the
Romanesque art of modern Europe, they having been inaugurated by
modifying the rules of the ancients.
To this favoured spot on the coast near the then powerful Illyrian
metropolis of Salona came Diocletian, and here he built his imperial
villa, where he hoped to live peacefully for the remainder of his days.
And what a wonderful villa it must have been!
Its walls were from five hundred and seventy to seven hundred feet
in length, fifty feet in height, and encompassed nine and one-half
acres of ground. The eminent English architect, Adam, who, in 1757,
accomplished the difficult and arduous task of plotting the first plans
of the ruined palace on paper with no previous mathematical data to
guide him, said that it was “a climax in architecture.” So much of its
original splendour did it retain that the imperial Roman historian
avowed that “it surpassed even in its ruin all powers of description;”
and that was more than six centuries after Diocletian’s death.
On the south side, facing the sea, the walls were seventy feet in
height, because of the sloping of the land. The outline of this
stone-work was broken by a grand total of sixteen towers, only four
of which, those on the corners, were higher—and that only by a few
feet—than the walls themselves. There were four entrance gates to the
palace and three of these can still be distinguished.
If you could have entered the north gate of the palace at a time when
its builder and owner was ripening in years within its precincts, you
would have looked down on a street thirty-six feet in width. On either
side, graceful stone arcades dwindled into the perspective and at the
farther end of the street the view was interrupted by the massive
portico and dome of the vestibule to the imperial residence. At a point
three hundred feet south of this gate, where you would have stood,
the lines of arcades were exchanged for the beautiful columns of a
peristyle, on either side of which were enclosed courts, that to the
right containing the temple of Æsculapius and that to the left, the
temple of Jupiter.
Near the peristyle, a street, also fringed with arcades, crossed from
west to east, having its termini at the Porta Ferrea and the Porta Ænea
respectively. To the south of the vestibule the nave of the palace,
ninety-eight feet long and forty-five feet wide, lined with rows of
columns and an aisle fourteen feet in width on either side, extended
from west to east. Mosaics and multi-coloured marbles made up the
decorations of the interior of the apartments, and the beauty of the
courts was enhanced by the flowers and plants of this latitude.
From the peristyle, the columns of which were of Cipallino and
rose-coloured granite, flights of steps led to the temples at the
sides. The Temple of Jupiter, which originally stood apart in a
walled court having the peristyle as a screen in front, was built by
Diocletian as a prospective tomb in which he intended his body to
be placed after death, but now the building serves as the Duomo of
Spalato. Originally it had a projecting portico of its own in front,
but this has been replaced by the campanile of the Duomo. The other of
the two temples, that of Æsculapius, does duty to-day as the city’s
baptistry.
Much of the walls of the palace remain to-day, and shut in the old
town of Spalato built within the enclosure by the refugees from
Salona. Outside of these moss-grown, inarticulate historians of Roman
occupation you will find modern European dwellings, school-houses
and shady little parks, and at places even on the top of the walls
some sacrilegious Spalatines have built their more humble abodes. The
peristyle of the famous palace now forms the town square.
After you have made many conjectures as to what a residence the palace
of Diocletian must have been, and what scenes were pictured there in
the days when its builder made it his home, you will walk outside the
walls of the old city, which you must do in order to find a carriage,
for horses are not permitted within the gates on account of the
narrowness of the streets, and bargain with a _cocher_ to take you to
Salona.
On the way you will pass a wonderful ruined aqueduct, which Diocletian
built to supply his palace with water from the hills, and which has now
been restored to the same use by the modern Spalatines. The road first
rises to the top of a ridge and then stretches across the valley of the
Riviera dei Castelli which extends from Salona to Traü, the ancient
Tragurium of the Romans, famed for its marble, and colonized originally
in 380, B.C., by Syracusan Greeks from the island of Lissa. The road
is so dusty that the vegetation growing along the side is completely
covered with the fine white powder; but the drive is not long and your
visit to Salona will be sure to repay you fully for any slight
discomforts endured on the way.
[Illustration: A FOUNTAIN ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF SPALATO.]
Salona is situated among the foot-hills of the Cabani Mountains on
the shores of an inland sea which is shut off from the Adriatic by
the island of Bua. That information-breathing emperor and historian,
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, said that Salona was at one time half as
large as Constantinople. But no matter whether it were large or small
it is worthy of a brief description for, if I may make use of a rather
inelegant expression in order to better convey to the reader some idea
of its antiquity, “Salona was Salona when Spalato was a pup.”
Founded by Illyrian fugitives from the capital, Delminium, after the
latter’s destruction by the Romans during the second Dalmatian war,
Salona was taken in 117 B. C. by Cæcilius Metellus and made a Roman
colony. The city was long and narrow and divided into halves by a
sort of diaphragm wall, in the middle point of which was an arched
portal called Cæsar’s Gate. Through the central arch of this gate the
Roman chariots passed and, although the arches themselves have tumbled
you may, as in Pompeii, still see the grooves and ruts in the stone
pavement worn deep by the passage of many wheels. A smaller arch on
either side allowed for the accommodation of pedestrians. The large
Christian basilica, partly excavated in 1880, was demolished in 639
during the final destruction of the city by the Avars. A circular
baptistry, with its columned portico facing the south and which marked
the entrance, stood within the walls in the eastern part of the city.
In the centre of this building, under the dome and sunk in the floor,
was a marble fount for baptism by immersion, and from its level arose a
complete circle of marble steps; at the top, an aisle with columns on
either side passed around the interior of the building.
[Illustration: THE RUINS OF THE BASILICA, SALONA.]
At the western end of the city can be seen the ruins of the large
amphitheatre, and it is probable that this was the only building
which survived the devastating fire of the Avars. At different points
along the circuit of the walls, which had been battered down time and
again and repaired as often, stood no less than eighty-eight towers,
having been constructed to reinforce the stone-work. The remains of
forty-three of these towers are plainly visible. By scraping away the
dust with the toe of your shoe, ornate examples of mosaic decorations
can still be distinguished on the floors over which the buildings
stood, and some of the Roman sweat-baths have been preserved almost
intact; the ancient methods of producing their heated vapours may be
solved easily. At one point within the walls was discovered a trench
holding fourteen sarcophagi lying end to end in a long row. Of these
several have been transferred to the museums. When found, all had been
opened and it was impossible to distinguish to whom they belonged,
because only two bore inscriptions, one Christian and one Pagan.
On a slight hill back of the ruined city stands the little stone house
of the care-taker, embellished with cut-stone work from the buildings
of old Salona. In the garden, at the rear, a Roman pergola has been
restored in its entirety and over it climbs a rose-vine covered with
blooming red ramblers—an attractive modern adaptation of an ancient
Roman decorative feature.
Immediately after the fall of Salona in 639 the inhabitants sought
refuge on some of the neighbouring islands; then, under the leadership
of Severus, they descended upon Spalato and encamped within the walls
of Diocletian’s palace, finally erecting buildings and more substantial
dwellings, which accounts for the material change of the interior
aspect of the palace. For the very good reason that nine and one-half
acres was rather a small area to accommodate any great number of
people, the town of Spalato soon spread outside of its original walls.
It was visited by the great Venetian expedition under Pietro Orseola
II in 998, and was compelled to take the oath of allegiance. Internal
religious controversies occurred from this time on, until the murderous
Tartars, in pursuit of King Bela in 1241, sacked the town and put to
death all whom they found in their path. But Spalato arose bravely from
the blight of her misfortunes, and in 1327 revolted against Venice,
was absorbed by Hungary and, thirty years later, revolted against the
latter.
Notwithstanding the changes it has undergone, Diocletian’s palace
has been handed down to us, and still holds its place as the most
magnificent specimen of the domestic architecture of the Romans. And,
strangely enough, its Temple of Jupiter has, for fourteen centuries,
served as the Spalatine house of worship of the Christian religion,
that religion which the builder of this same temple tried so hard to
obliterate.
[Illustration: ROMAN SARCOPHAGI, SALONA.]
CHAPTER XVIII
ZARA
From Spalato to Zara—Chief Objects of Interest in the Capital of
Dalmatia—The Story of St. Simeon—The Five Fountains—Fragments of
Roman Occupation.
It was twelve o’clock of a soft summer night when the sharp, hooded
prow of the _Graf Wurmbrand_ backed away from the _molo_ at Spalato,
swung around in the darkness and headed out into the black beyond, on
her five hour run along the coast to Zara. Her cabins and after decks
were ablaze with electric bulbs, but forward of the bridge all was
inky darkness, for the pilot of this, the fastest boat of the Adriatic
coast service, took the matter more seriously than the passengers and
allowed no glare to dim the sharpness of his vision while his charge
sped northward between the islands, responding gracefully to the twirl
of the wheel.
When our eyes had become accustomed to peering out into the darkness,
for it is almost as beautiful to ride at night through these channels
as it is in the daytime and for that reason we eschewed our berths,
those of us who had remained on deck could distinguish, as we passed,
the silhouette of the island of Kraglievaz, or King’s Seat, upon which
Bela IV secluded himself from the pursuit of the Tartars. Then we
plowed through a veritable shoal of islands and passed an isolated
rock, formerly crowned by the Benedictine monastery of St. Arcangelo.
Farther along, near the famous headland of La Planca (the Promontorium
Diomedis of the Romans), we passed a little chapel, built by a thankful
mariner who, while sailing up the coast with a cargo of Malvasia wine,
suffered shipwreck on the rocks and made ingenious use of his cargo to
mix the mortar with which to bind the stones of this little monument of
appreciation of his rescue.
At this point we also crossed an arm of the open sea, and then sped
on between the island of Zlarin and the mainland. Beyond Zlarin lies
the town of Sebenico, founded by pirates who, from their caves in the
surrounding mountains, scanned the sea for ships. Waxing in boldness
they founded a colony on the shore, which they surrounded with a
fortification or palisade. From the Croatian name for “palisade”
(“Sibne”) is derived the name of the town, Sebenico.
At daybreak, had there been in the distance a few scattered palm trees
and a stretch of sandy beach, we might easily have imagined ourselves
in equatorial latitudes. The rays of the sun tinted the mainland and
the islands in hues of saffron; there was scarcely a ripple on the deep
turquoise-coloured water. We steamed up through the Canal di Zara, a
channel three miles in width, between the mainland and the mountainous
island of Ugliano, and at five in the morning the lines of the _Graf
Wurmbrand_ were made fast to the _molo_ at Zara.
This old town was the ancient Jadera, even then in allegiance with
Rome, where a Roman colony was established in 78 B. C. Many years later
it was brought under the powerful yoke of the Venetians and numerous
fragments of both periods still remain. The Zara of to-day is world
famous for being the home of the maraschino industry, the delicious
cordial distilled from the juice of the wild cherries which grow in
abundance on the slopes of the neighbouring limestone hills, and you
have never tasted _real_ maraschino if you haven’t tapped the till in
Zara.
In the evenings, the esplanade along the stone quay, which skirts the
harbour, is alive with promenading Dalmatians of all classes, while
one of the best military bands to be heard in a week’s travel plays
inimitable music at the shore end of the _molo_. Except for the dearth
of tourists and the absence of the incessantly gliding gondolas the
water front at Zara almost resembles a scene along the Grand Canal in
Venice.
The chief objects of interest in Zara seemed to be ourselves, and
I do not remember ever having been stared at more than here in the
capital of Dalmatia and barely off the beaten track of English-speaking
travellers. The townspeople ran into each other, not to mention
lamp-posts and stone walls, in their attempts to satisfy their
curiosity. While we ate in the pretty little open-air café of the hotel
the waiters stood around with their mouths open, their eyes as large as
billiard balls, and the groups of Austrian army officers allowed their
food to grow cold and their beer to become flat as they watched, none
too furtively, our every move.
[Illustration: THE WATER FRONT, ZARA.]
But there are many things to see in Zara, of which the natives seem
to take little account when there happens to be a stranger in town.
One of these objects worthy of inspection is the body of St. Simeon,
the patron saint of the town, and the story of how he came into office
(shall I say?) is interesting, and rather unique.
Sometime during the thirteenth century, the exact date is unknown, a
caravel put into the port of Zara after a helpless battle with wind
and wave on the Adriatic. On board was a nobleman returning from the
Crusades, who asked that he might deposit in the cemetery the body of
his brother which he had hoped to convey to his home for burial. While
his ship was undergoing repairs the nobleman himself fell ill and died.
Upon examining his documents it was discovered that the body of the
alleged “brother” was that of none other than St. Simeon, the prophet
who had held the infant Christ in his arms. The people of Zara, having
come unexpectedly into the possession of so precious a relic, exhibited
the body in the collegiate church of St. Maria, where it proved its
sanctity by working miracles, and its fame quickly spread throughout
the country.
For some years the body was allowed to remain in the church for the
want of an appropriate shrine in which it might be preserved. In 1371
Lewis of Hungary, accompanied by his mother and Elizabeth, his wife,
came on a visit to Zara. After viewing the saintly body of Simeon,
Elizabeth, desiring to take with her some memento of the wonder-worker,
broke a finger from one of the hands and hid it in her bosom. For
this sacrilege St. Simeon punished her by striking her blind on the
spot, caused her hand, the one with which she had taken the finger, to
wither, and caused her breast, where she had hid the relic, to mortify.
Frantic with the sudden loss of her sight, Elizabeth tried to flee from
the church but was unable to find the door. She groped her way back to
the casket, fell upon her knees and replaced the stolen finger, which
immediately united itself to the proper hand, the Queen’s sight being
restored the same moment. Again Elizabeth implored the forgiveness of
the Saint and promised to present him with a silver casket in which
his body might repose more comfortably than she thought it did in its
wooden resting place. The story goes that this promise so reconciled
the prophet that Elizabeth’s breast was healed forthwith and her
withered hand was made whole.
When the Queen returned to her home she communicated with certain
nobles in Zara with regard to the casket, and in 1377 her agents
commissioned one Francesco d’Antonio di Milano, a goldsmith, to proceed
with the work. By the time he had completed his task, three years
later, he had used nearly a thousand pounds of silver metal, and he
received twenty-eight thousand ducats as pay from Elizabeth.
Nearly two hundred years passed before any attempt was made to
raise funds for the erection of a suitable temple in which to place
permanently the silver sarcophagus containing the body of so famous a
saint; money was slow in coming in, and in 1600, after the façade of
the building was half finished, the work was abandoned.
In 1543 the old church of St. Maria was demolished to make room for
new fortifications. The silver casket was then given to the nuns for
safe-keeping, while the body of the Saint had been transferred to its
original ark of cypress wood and left in a little chapel near by.
At length Archbishop Garzadori proposed that the body be replaced in
the silver casket and taken to the church of St. Stefano which stood
in the immediate vicinity. About this time an outbreak of the plague
tended to remind the superstitious of their neglect of the body of
St. Simeon and a new chancel was hurriedly placed in the church, the
silver ark, which had been found stained and tarnished in the nunnery,
was repaired by a goldsmith of the name of Benedetto Libani, and on
May 16th, 1632, the translation of the body took place amid public
rejoicing. Since that date St. Simeon has reigned as the patron saint
of Zara.
Among the historical landmarks in the town of Zara, the Cinque Pozzi,
or Five Fountains, constitute one of the most prominent. They stand in
a row in front of a broad flight of stone steps, which lead up to a
shady park overlooking the docks and part of the city. These fountains
are more like cisterns and from them the poorer inhabitants still draw
their water, carrying it away in great jars upon their heads. They were
designed by Sammichieli, an architect of Verona, and built in 1574.
To them the water is conducted from sources outside the city, first
passing through a rather elaborate system of subterranean filtration.
An architect living in Zara has in his possession a copy of a plan of
these filters as designed by Sammichieli himself.
[Illustration: THE FIVE FOUNTAINS, ZARA.]
Included in the manifestations of the Roman occupancy of Zara are the
fragments of an ancient temple dedicated to Juno Augusta, the consort
of Emperor Augustus. These fragments had been built into the old church
of St. Donato, erected in the ninth century.
And you will be loth to leave Zara, for at every turn you discover
something that seems to be more interesting than that which you saw
before. The streets are clean and although the rays of the sun are
uncomfortably hot, the narrow thoroughfares are always shady and
invite you to wander aimlessly up and down, lingering here and there
before the shop windows. In the evening, while the band plays, the
scene along the quay is one of gayety, and you will be inspired to make
the resolution, that, if ever again you happen along the eastern coast
of the Adriatic, Zara will be sure to receive from you a more lengthy
visit.
CHAPTER XIX
THE GULF OF QUARNERO
The Home of the Bora—Fiume—Abbazia—The Home of the
Torpedo—Descendants of the Uscocs.
In summer or fall it is a pleasant boat trip of six hours from Zara to
Fiume, which is prettily situated at the north-eastern end of the Gulf
of Quarnero. But in the winter and early spring, at which seasons the
“Bora,” or north-east wind, is prevalent, keep an eye on the barometer!
It is at this north-eastern end of the Gulf, in the mountains back
of Fiume, that this dreaded wind is born. Accumulating velocity with
every blast, it sweeps down upon the sea with relentless fury, carrying
everything before it, overturning carts, upsetting horses in the
streets and putting a quietus, for the time being, on all navigation
within range.
The western channels and the western slopes of the islands are better
protected from the destructive gusts of the “Bora,” but the channels
nearest to the Croatian coast are swept by its full fury. Along the
eastern shores of these channels the soil is rendered as sterile
as the sands of the desert, for the wind cuts the spray from the
surface of the water and carries it inland in great clouds, completely
obscuring the shore line from the sea, and destroying the tender
sprouts of early cereals by depositing upon them the injurious salty
sediment. In 1873, while a train was rounding one of the many curves on
the line from Agram to Fiume, the “Bora” came up suddenly and blew it
from the rails.
The little town of Segna seems to suffer the most from this wind; at
any rate many of the stories of the extraordinary violence with which
it blows originated there. Some historians tell us that in Segna during
the raging of a “Bora” it is unsafe to venture out-of-doors; that it
lifts weak or aged adults and little children from the ground and
dashes them against the walls of the houses; that those who are obliged
to go to the basin where the ships lie must crawl snake-like on the
ground to avoid being picked off their feet and hurled into the sea.
It is a common occurrence for horses heavily loaded to be thrown down
in the market-place of Segna, and although the roofs of all houses are
weighted with stones they are often lifted and carried away.
“But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good” and, therefore, the
“Bora” was hardly considered wholly unwelcome by the pirates, the
Uscocs, who once infested the islands of the bay, finding their safety
in the dangers of navigation thereabouts which deterred better ships
but less able seamen from hunting them down and sinking their puny
craft.
Strangely incongruous with its soporific atmosphere is the bustle and
business of Fiume. Finally united to Hungary in 1870, Fiume has grown
from a mere seaport town to a thriving manufacturing and shipping city
of thirty-nine thousand inhabitants. To-day it is in the class with
the Austrian city of Trieste, on the opposite side of the Istrian
Peninsula; one of the most cosmopolitan ports in the world. The scene
along the docks is interesting, for Fiume is the home port of fleets of
coasters which ply up and down the Adriatic, of great steel cargo and
passenger ships making scheduled sailings to the Levant, to the coasts
of Africa, to the Straits Settlements and the Far East, to North and
South America.
[Illustration: VIA ANDRASSY, FIUME.]
A few miles to the west of Fiume, nestling snugly on the edge of the
bay at the foot of massive Mount Maggiore, lies a fashionable little
sea-side resort, patronized by the upper crust of Austrian aristocracy,
Abbazia. Here, under the trees or on the porch of the Casino, the
élite of the land sips its liquor and smokes its slender cigarettes
while the military band interprets the latest Viennese musical success.
And almost within an arm’s reach of Abbazia, just a few yards off in
the bay, is one end of the target range of an ever-busy manufacturing
plant, whose product has tended more to evolutionize warfare than any
device ever invented, the Whitehead torpedo factory. On this range
the great fish-like instruments of destruction are tested thoroughly,
their parts adjusted and tested again, to assure their deadliness,
before shipment to the arsenals of the powers supplied. At one end of
the range is the firing station, and in a long line, stretching away
toward Abbazia, are the several floating targets, each manned by a
signalman with a red flag, under the centres of which the torpedoes
must eventually be made to dart before they are ready for delivery.
Industrious little power boats shoot up and down the bay collecting the
“dead” torpedoes, which, having spent their energy, turn finally from
their course and splash about on the surface of the water like wounded
porpoises, to tow them back to the launching station for an adjustment
of their parts.
What if a torpedo would come to the surface prematurely and hit one of
the targets? Some do, and rip great holes in the wooden decks, causing
the signalmen to execute some nimble acrobatics, but there is never any
danger from explosion, because the “war-heads” of the torpedoes have
not yet been put in place; all they carry are the steering-gears and
the little compressed air engine. Once in a while, owing to a serious
defect in the steering-gear, one will run amuck a few seconds after it
has been discharged. Then is the time for the launches to be on the
_qui vive_, for there is no telling what direction the torpedo will
take. One of them once made a bee-line for the stone wall which skirts
the bay in front of the factory. Like a leaping salmon it mounted
this at one bound, bounced along the top for a few yards, demolishing
stone-work and making the wall appear as if it had been struck by a
thirteen-inch shell, and then plunged into the bay, tearing around this
way and that until it made its final death-leap and lay peacefully upon
the surface of the water. Then, like a naughty but remorseful boy, it
was towed back and given a good spanking in the form of an overhauling
of its parts.
In the city of Fiume there are many types—Croatians, Austrian army
and navy officers, Italians, Dalmatians, Germans, Englishmen—and
all work hard accumulating fortunes, large or small as the case may
be; but those who seem to be amassing the largest private estates in
proportion to their labours, if one may judge from their daily net
receipts, are the piratical porters of the town, who swoop down from
all points of the compass upon the unsuspecting traveller. It is safe
to say that these are the lineal descendants of the Uscocs of old,
having only adopted more modern methods of piracy than those employed
by their ancestors,—for from whom else might they have inherited their
predatory proclivities? These _must_ have been handed down from father
to son, for they are too well developed to admit of mere accidental
discovery. Every time one of these porters looks at your luggage he
commits petty larceny, in thought, if not in deed. The charge for
carrying a small grip from the dock to the hotel, a distance of a
hundred feet, may be any amount from the equivalent of twenty-five
cents up, and the wise traveller is gulled but once. Some one tried to
explain to me why the Fiume porters were allowed to charge any amount
they pleased, but it seemed a very unsatisfactory excuse. Suffice it to
say that the price demanded for carrying one grip is one _krone_, with
one, two or three _kronen_ added, according to the nationality of the
patron. For example: to carry one grip for an Austrian, one _krone_;
for a German, two _kronen_; for an Englishman, three _kronen_; for
an American, four _kronen_. It seems that the farther away one lives
the more it costs one to have one’s baggage transferred in Fiume. A
Chinaman with two grips would go bankrupt in this town in no time.
With a farewell salute to Fiume and her activity, manufacturing,
shipping and piratical, we sailed out across the waters of the harbour
of this, the western sea-gate to the Balkan Peninsula, homeward bound.
After having wandered over this virgin touring territory, a territory
with a future as well as with an eventful past, a territory of big
things in war and in peace; after having revelled in its type-pictures
and its remarkable scenery, mingled with its unsophisticated peoples
and marvelled at its history and its struggles for mere existence,
we were struck with thoughts, as we came suddenly from the land of
simplicity upon the preying porters of Fiume, at once akin to and
conflicting with those of a certain author, who, in an early book of
travel, concludes the narration of an experience as follows:
“After having walked eleven hours without having traced the print of a
human foot, to my great comfort and delight, I saw a man hanging upon a
gibbet; my pleasure at the cheering prospect was inexpressible, for it
convinced me that I was in a civilized country.”
THE END.
INDEX
Abbazia, 284.
Alexander, King. _See_ Obrenovitch.
Alexander, Prince, of Bulgaria, 121.
Alexander, the successor of Philip, 113.
Assen I, 117.
Assen II, 117.
Assenide Dynasty, The, 117.
Belgrade, 21.
Belgrade, Market Day in, 34.
Black Death, The, 188.
Bocche di Cattaro, The, 202.
Bora, The, 282.
Boris, Tzar, 117.
Bosnia, Comparison of conditions in, 145.
Bosnia, Railway travel in, 149.
Brod, 145.
Buda-Pesth, 12.
Bulgari, The, 113.
Bulgaria, Conversion of, to Christianity, 117.
Bulgaria, Emancipation of, 118.
Bulgaria, History of, 111.
Bulgaria, Progress of, 112.
Bulgaria, Turkish atrocities in, 118.
Bulgarian, The, uprising of 1908;
its cause and effect, 122.
Castelnuovo, 204.
Cattaro, Description of, 207.
Cattaro to Cettinje, Road from, 229.
Cettinje, Description of, 239.
Christianity, Bulgaria’s conversion to, 117.
Constantinovitch, Katrine, 48.
Conveniences of travel through the Balkans, 8.
Curzola, The sea battle near the island of, 250.
Cyril, 117.
Dalmatia, Routes of travel to, 177.
Danilo II of Montenegro, 217.
Dervish dance, Description of a, 160.
Diocletian, Palace of, at Spalato, 252.
Draga, Queen, of Servia. _See_ Maschine.
Dragoleftsky, 108.
Dushan, King, of Servia, 117.
English language, Frequency of the, through the Balkans, 7.
Ferdinand, Prince, of Bulgaria, 122.
Ferdinand, Tzar, of Bulgaria, 125.
Fiume, Description of, 284.
German language, The, 4.
Gravosa, 179.
Greek efforts to conquer Bulgaria, 114.
Hapag ticket, 3.
Helena, Queen, of Italy, 217.
Hungarian language, The, 12.
Jablaniča, 169.
Jezero, The battle of, 221.
Kara George, and his assassination, 45.
Karageorgevitch, Peter, Accession to the throne of, 71.
Kara Mahmoud, 216.
Konjiča, 166.
Kossovo, Battle of, 118.
Kraglievaz, Island of, 270.
Kristatz, Battle of, 221.
La Croma, The Island of, 184.
Lazar, Tzar, Emperor of Servia, 212.
Maschine, Draga, 54.
Maschine, Draga, Burial of, and Alexander, 71.
Maschine, Draga, Marriage of, and Alexander, 57.
Maschine, Draga, Meeting of, and Alexander, 55.
Maschine, Draga, Murder of, and Alexander, 61.
Maschine, Draga, Prediction of the assassination of, 81.
Maschine, Draga, Prediction of the social ascendency of, 80.
Maschine, Nikola and Nikodim, Murder of, 68.
Methodius, 117.
Michael, Prince. _See_ Obrenovitch.
Milan, Prince. _See_ Obrenovitch.
Milo, Pope, of Montenegro, 223.
Milosh, Prince. _See_ Obrenovitch.
Montenegrin, The, Army, 215.
Montenegrin bravery, Anecdotes of, 221.
Montenegrin, The, national costume, 218.
Montenegrins, The, 212.
Montenegro, History of, 212.
Montenegro, Modern, 227.
Mostar, Description of, 170.
Murad I, Sultan, 117.
Natalie, Queen, of Servia, 49.
Nikephoros Phakos, Emperor, 114.
Nikola, Prince, of Montenegro, 217.
Nikshitch, Siege of, 223.
Nisch, Hotels in, 97.
Nisch, Tower of skulls in, 101.
Njegushi, 237.
Novakovics, Murder of the brothers, 75.
Novi-Bazaar, 149.
Obrenovitch, Alexander, 49.
Obrenovitch, Alexander, Burial of, and Draga, 71.
Obrenovitch, Alexander, Marriage of, and Draga, 57.
Obrenovitch, Alexander, Meeting of, and Draga, 55.
Obrenovitch, Alexander, Murder of, and Draga, 61.
Obrenovitch, Alexander, Prediction of the assassination of, 81.
Obrenovitch, Michael, 47.
Obrenovitch, Michael, Prediction of the murder of, 79.
Obrenovitch, Milan, the First, 47.
Obrenovitch, Milan, the Second, 49.
Obrenovitch, Milosh, the First, 46.
Obrenovitch, Milosh, the Second, 48.
Orient Express, The, 142.
Passports, 19.
Pawlowitch, General, Murder of, 68.
Peter I, of Montenegro, 216.
Peter II, of Montenegro, 238.
Petrovich, George (Kara-George), 45.
Philip, 113.
Podgoritza, 227.
Prince-Bishops of Montenegro, 216.
Promontorium Diomedis, 270.
Ragusa, Description of, 180.
Ragusa, The Great Earthquake of, 193.
Ragusa, History of, 187.
Ravna, 175.
Registration, The Servian method of, 20.
Rundreise ticket, The, 2.
Russian intrigue in Bulgaria, 121.
Russian invasion of Bulgaria, The first, 117.
Saint Simeon, Story of, 272.
Salona, Description of, 261.
Sarajevo, Description of, 151.
Sebenico, 270.
Segna, 283.
Servian, The, army, 29.
Servian customs, 37.
Servian exports, 29.
Servian nation, Rapid rise of the, 27.
Servian national dance, 38.
Servian national drink, 29.
Servian race-meets, 30.
Servians, The, 24.
Shishman III, Tzar, 117.
Simeon, Tzar, 114.
Slavs, Population of Bulgaria by the, 113.
Sophia, Description of, 107.
Sophia, Hotels in, 106.
Sophia, Market day in, 130.
Sviatoslav, 114.
Thraco-Dacians, 113.
Thraco-Illyrians, 113.
Thraco-Macedonians, 113.
Tzaribrod, 102.
Uscocs, The, 284.
Uskoplje, 175.
Vespasian, Annexation of Bulgaria by, 113.
Vladika, or Prince-Bishops, 216.
Ylidze, 159.
Zara, Description of, 271.
Zinisces, Emperor, 114.
Zlarin, Island of, 270.
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Transcriber’s Notes
In the Index:—
Uskoplje — page 174 has been changed to 175. (Page 74 is a
blank page in the original.)
Montenegro, Modern — page 226 has been changed to 227. (Page 226
is a blank page in the original.)
Montenegrin, The, Army — page 213 has been changed to 215. (Page 213
shows an illustration.)
Hyphenation has been standardised.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Lands of the Tamed Turks or the Balkan States of today" ***
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