Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; Eastern question (Balkan)
At the summit a glorious view, one more wonderful, perhaps, than any in
the whole of the Balkans. On the one side in the far blue distance the
Accursed Mountains of Albania, where dwelt my friend Vatt Marashi and
his fearless men, and on the other, away down in the rolling mists, lay
what looked like a series of lakes, but which in reality was the
wandering arm of the Adriatic, the magnificent fjord called the Mouths
of Cattaro—the Bocche di Cattaro.
Here we struck the single telegraph-wire which places remote Cettinje in
connection with the rest of the civilised world, and then the pace of
our rough mountain horses showed that we were descending. Far below were
a number of scattered houses, the little town of Nyegush, the chief
edifice of which is the unpretentious palace of the Prince, and for a
full hour and a half we wound down and down ere we reached its main
street and pulled up at the inn for half an hour to get some coffee and
to rest the horses.
Cramped and half-frozen as I was, the big steaming bowl of coffee was
indeed welcome. Then, after scribbling some postcards to friends in
England, I went for a brisk walk, took a photograph or two, and
returned, just as the horses were being reharnessed.
Down again, ever down, past a great dark cavern, and on until we came to
the row of stone slabs set in the road that marks the frontier between
gallant little Montenegro and her enemy Austria. And then, what a view!
Surely the most superb in all Europe!
Our old familiar tourist-Switzerland, the toy-Tyrol, the Norwegian
fjords, the trumpery-Apennines, and the high Balkans are full of
magnificent scenery, but for a picturesque combination of blue sea and
sheer bare mountain nothing that I have ever seen—and I have knocked
about Europe, I believe, as much as most men—equals that view from the
Montenegrin road.
[Illustration: Bunaquelle: Bosnia.]
[Illustration: Jajace: Bosnia.]
All is beautiful—all save that frowning fortress which the Austrians
have lately constructed to command the road, and which it is strictly
forbidden to photograph under pain of imprisonment as a spy. I, however,
risked it, and took another picture, which turned out rather well.
In Cattaro, being the bearer of despatches for His Britannic Majesty’s
Foreign Office in London, and being therefore armed with a
_laisser-passer_, my baggage was not examined, and at one o’clock I
again boarded the same steamer which had brought me from Trieste, the
_Graf Wurmbrand_, bound for Gravosa—which is the port for Ragusa, in
Dalmatia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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