We cannot wonder that the effect on their minds of these astonishing successes, should be an unbounded confidence in their superiority over the Turks. Sir Gardner Wilkinson found them impressed with the idea, that bread and arms were the only needful requisites to enable them to drive the Turks out of Albania and Herzegovina. It seems certain that, in their rencontres With these enemies, they dismiss all ordinary considerations of prudence. The spirit of their feeling with regard to the Turks is thus portrayed:-- "It is not the courage, but the cruelty of the Turks which inspires him (the Montenegrin) with hatred; and the sufferings inflicted upon his country by their inroads makes him look upon them with feelings of ferocious vengeance. "These savage sentiments are kept alive by the barbarous custom, adopted by both parties, of cutting off the heads of the wounded and the dead; the consequences of which are destructive of all the conditions of fair warfare, and preclude the possibility of peace. The bitter remembrance of the past is constantly revived by the horrors of the present; and the love of revenge, which strongly marks the character of the Montenegrin, makes him insensible to reason or justice, and places the Turks, in his opinion, out of the pale of human beings. He dreams only of vengeance; he cares little for the means employed, and the man who should make any excuse for not persecuting those enemies of his country and his faith, would be treated with ignominy and contempt. Even the sanctity of a truce is not always sufficient to restrain him; and the hatred of the Turk is paramount to all ordinary considerations of honour or humanity." This cutting off of heads is not peculiar to the Montenegrins. The Turks are, in this respect, just as bad, and Sir Gardner found, on the occasion of his visit to Mostar, that, in point of this barbarism, there is not a pin to choose between them. The Turks, however, exceed in cruelty. It appears, on the evidence of the letter of the Vladika, given in the second volume, that they (the Turks) impale men alive; whereas the Montenegrins are chargeable with no wanton cruelty. Indeed, they do not restrict the performance of this operation to the case of enemies; but, as an act of friendship, decapitate any comrade who may so be wounded in action as to have no other means of avoiding capture by the enemy. "You are very brave," said a well-meaning Montenegrin to a portly Russian officer, who was unable to keep up with his detachment in its retreat,--"you are very brave, _and must wish that I should cut off your head_: say a prayer, and make the sign of the cross."