Our Albanian captain preferred the climate of Cettinje to that of Podgoritza, and there I made his acquaintance.  He had not received a penny of his pay for forty months, and was in rags and shoeless in the depth of winter, when I knew him.  I bought him some shoes and second-hand clothes, and interested the Prince in his case, so that finally he was given a place on the staff and regular pay.  The gratitude of the poor fellow was embarrassing.  He begged me to take him as a body servant, declaring himself ready to go with me to the world’s end, and I could hardly make him understand that a servant would be a burden to me which I could not afford.  He said to one of the Montenegrin officers, “When I say my prayers for myself I always ask God to be good to that English gentleman.”  As with most of the men of his race whom I have made the acquaintance of, his native faculties were of a high order.  The Albanians are quick, ingenious, and industrious, and are the best workmen in the finer industrial arts of the Balkans, gold and silver workers of remarkable skill, dividing the blacksmithing with the gypsy, but the best and indeed the only armorers of that world.  We had a number of them in the camp at Niksich, refugees from the tribes on our frontier, and I found them most interesting companions, generally speaking Italian and Serb as well as their own dialects.  Their conservatism is something almost inexplicable.  A friend who had campaigned with them told me that when they sacked a village their first quest was always for old iron, which they valued more than gold and silver, an estimation which can only be the heredity of an age when iron was the article of the highest utility, for now it is easy of acquisition everywhere about their country.  They reckon their ancestry from the mother, and when my Cretan cavass, Hadji Houssein, spoke of his home, it was always as his “mother’s house.”

Niksich settled under Montenegrin rule, and order established, the Prince moved his headquarters to Bilek, a fortress which commanded the roads from Ragusa to the interior of Herzegovina, and whence he could dominate all the southern sections of that province, protecting his frontier.  There was, as usual, no road for wheels, only a rough bridle-path, and the mobility of the Montenegrins under those conditions was remarkable.  They carried the thirty-two-pound breech-loaders on fir poles run through the guns and supported on the men’s shoulders, faster than our horses could walk, and the artillery rapidly distanced the staff and corps diplomatique, not even a rear guard remaining with us.  In company with one of the aides I rode on under the impression that headquarters were behind us, until we got lost in the labyrinth of paths running about the forest, and we lay down under a tree to rest and wait for the staff to overtake us.  Here one of the perianiks found us and brought us to the Prince, who had gone ahead on a blind road, with half a dozen perianiks, two or three sirdars, and the diplomats.  He had tried to show his knowledge of the country and lost his way; so, coming to a pretty dell which took his fancy, he ordered a halt and preparations to pass the night, and there we found him.