How odd it looked at first to see an Albanian with perhaps a shilling’s-worth of field produce spread out before him, and at his side a rifle loaded and cocked; or, again, a Montenegrin boy of perhaps fourteen, with his rifle across his knee!  To keep order in this formidably armed crowd of men, many animated with the fiercest racial and religious hatred of each other, are some dozen Montenegrin gendarmes, armed, as is every Montenegrin, with but a heavy revolver.

Deadly enemies meet on the market-place, men standing in blood feud with one another, and speak, often expressing a fervent prayer soon to be able to put a bullet into the other at the first opportunity, but—­outside the town.  Podgorica is mutually held as neutral territory, and is very rarely violated.  This is strange where men fear not death.

But, outside, perhaps but half an hour from the outskirts of the town, these men will meet and shoot and kill; for murder, or sudden death, to use their euphemistic way of looking at matters, is by no means uncommon.

There is a great tract of land about an hour’s ride from Podgorica characteristically called the “Crna Zemlja” or Black Earth.  It is neutral, lying between Montenegro and Albania, and the man who sets his foot on it carries his life in his hands.  Men who know, say that every inch is soaked in blood.  It is overlooked by some small hills from Albania, and is covered with long pampas grass, affording good cover for a man, and they shoot there for love of killing.

But to return to Eastertide.

It is a good time to visit Montenegro for first impressions.  The Montenegrin outdoes himself in open-handed hospitality; every house is open, and everyone visits his neighbour.  The best chamber in the house, as often as not the only living-room among the poorer classes, is set out with all the good things the owner possesses.  On the table stand meat, eggs, bread, wine, and spirits; and it is a grievous insult to leave that room without tasting, and tasting liberally, of all.  This lasts three days, and it is more than enough.

And we were particularly honoured, being Englishmen and strangers:  one might say we were painfully honoured.  What quantities we were forced to eat and drink!  At one house, that of a poor man, who lived with his wife in a tiny room, we were presented with a bottle of Munich beer, his greatest treasure, given him once by a friend who had travelled.  He doubtless considered it a luxury of a priceless kind, and it cut us to the heart to drink that man’s beer.  But we had to; he took no denial, barely tasting it himself.

We might have stood it fairly well were it not for those eggs, hard-boiled Easter eggs, the shells coloured red or blue.  This institution is a positive torture to the unfortunate digestion, which suffers untold torments at Eastertide.

There is a game played with these hard-boiled eggs which reminds one forcibly of schooldays.  Two men each select an egg, and one, holding his egg firmly, allows the other to endeavour to crack it, only the pointed ends being used.