The steady rain in which we had traveled for eight hours then became a violent thunder-storm; all the brooks and ditches by the way were over their banks, and our horses could hardly flounder under their loads through the heavy going; while we, in the darkness, could not see the road, even where it could he followed, save when the lightning flashes showed it, and so, not being able to walk, rode perforce.  My horse refused a ditch a foot wide, and when we came to one I had to get off and drag by the bridle, while the horse-boy pushed from behind, till he yielded to the persuasion and ventured over.  The two hours’ ride became four, and the way got heavier as we went on, woodland alternating with flooded plain, in the former of which only the experience of the guide could keep the road; while in the latter we could follow it only by the telegraph wires cutting against the sky.  We finally saw a light and came to a cabin, where we deposited the poor mute, with all the impedimenta, to follow by daylight; but for us there was no place to sleep, and we gave the reins to the horses, and let them flounder their way into Danilograd, where we arrived at 10 P.M., drenched to the skin and hungry.

There was a light still burning in the house of the village doctor, on whom we had an order from the Prince, and who found us a sleeping-place in the loft of a neighbor, where we got a supper of trout and maize bread, and a bundle of straw to lie on in our wet clothes.  The doctor was a German, and, though he was an official, the instinct of hospitality which rules the Montenegrin did not exist in him, so he offered us the house of his neighbor.  The day broke fine for our journey to the convent of Ostrog, the only bit of good weather we had until our return to Cettinje, ten days later.

Ostrog is one of the three sanctuaries of Montenegro, the others being Moratcha, on the old Servian frontier, and Piperski Celia, above the fortress of Spuz, where the valley of the Zeta then entered into the Turkish dominions.  The convent is on a site of singular beauty and salubrity, on a fertile plateau several hundred feet above the valley of the Zeta, at the foot of a precipice, in the face of which is a cave enlarged into a chapel, where lies the body of St. Basil, a Herzegovinian bishop of the early days of the Turkish conquest, who did his Christian duty by the scattered Orthodox Christians in Herzegovina and Montenegro, visiting stealthily and at the constant risk of his life the little groups of the faithful over a territory vast for the supervision of one man.  He died in this refuge, and was buried at the foot of the cliff; but on an attempt being made to remove the body some years later, it was found to be uncorrupted, upon which he was canonized, and the body was placed in a fine coffin and removed to the little chapel, which has a single window also rock-cut and is only to be approached by a narrow stairway of the same structure.  Outside, at the foot of the cliff,