land, it will be seen what miraculous progress has been made in the path of civilisation during the present reign.  Peace and order have been established to a wonderful degree, and the State reorganised and set on a surer basis.  With a powerful hand and not too much external help the Prince has carried through his reforms, and, like David in his final exhortation to Solomon, leaves the way ready for still greater progress to be made in the future.  And the comparison holds good in more respects than one.

We drank our last little cup of coffee, oddly enough, in the historical monastery of Ivan Beg in the company of the Vladika, to whom we were paying our farewell respects, and half an hour later were whirling down to Bajice under the shadow of the mighty Lovcen.

As the grand Bocche di Cattaro again burst on our view and the first black and yellow sign-post of Austria was passed, we turned again for a last look at those seemingly forbidding and inhospitable mountains; but only forbidding and inhospitable to the enemy of the brave little race beyond.  To the stranger, fresh from the comforts and improvements of civilisation, it is a revelation of how men live, knowing nothing of the luxuries of the outer world, and keep themselves untarnished in honour; honest and God-fearing where a man is judged by his deeds and not by his words.  Where men do not steal or lie, and where the humble peasant looks his Prince in the face and says—­

“Lord, I am a man like thyself.”

They have their faults and failings, many of their customs seem barbaric to our eyes:  but may they long be preserved from the evils of civilisation!

Later, as the ship ploughed her way through the waves, and the mountains of Crnagora became ever more and more faint and indistinct, we thought of Tennyson’s words:—­

    “They rose to where their sov’ran eagle sails,
    They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,
    Chaste, frugal, savage, armed by day and night
    Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales
    Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails,
    And red with blood the Crescent reels from fight
    Before their dauntless hundreds in prone flight
    By thousands down the crags and through the vales.

* * * * *

    O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne
    Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm
    Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
    Great Crnagora! never since thine own
    Black ridges drew the cloud and broke the storm
    Has breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.”

THE END

INDEX

Alarm, 87, 187
Albanian costume, 139
  " custom house, 133
  " mass, 231
Andrijevica, 65, 183
Antivari, 113, 270
Army, 26, 27, 46
Austria, 8, 13, 137