The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume IIStillman, William James
History
The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II
Stillman, William James
Journalists -- Biography; Stillman, William James, 1828-1901
The object of my excursion was the ancient convent of Dobrilovina,
then the advanced post towards Kolashin, the Turkish station in Old
Servia, and the point from which all invasions from the east entered
Montenegro; and the ride was by far the most interesting of all that I
made in the two principalities. From the valley of Zupa we rose on a
plateau known as the Lola Planina, on which the watershed is to
the north and east and into the Danube. We rode through Drobniak a
province the right to which was still theoretically disputed between
Turk and Christian, the fruition of peace belonging to the latter;
that of war to the former, for it always fights with Montenegro, and
is periodically ravaged by the Turks. We were on the watershed between
the Adriatic and the Euxine, and the brooks were tributary to the
Danube through the Tara. The land is an immense upland, rolling
slightly, and the finest grass land I ever saw; it is an immense
prairie, with the horizon unbroken, except by the picturesque peak
of Dormitor at the north, the summit peak of the mountains of upper
Herzegovina, and the centre of the glacial system of the lands between
the Adriatic and the great Rascian valley which divides Servia and the
lower Danube from Montenegro. The flora was entirely new to me. I rode
through a thicket of marguerites so tall that the flowers came up to
my face, while the grass came up to my horse's belly. This is a great
hayfield, and the people come from far to cut and store the hay for
the winter, when they harness the stacks and drag them bodily to their
villages on the snow, which sometimes falls, they told me, to the
depth of fifteen or more feet. To the east stretched the rolling
prairie without a house or a village to the Signavina (desolate land)
Planina, solitary as the Sahara, for no man would build where a
Turkish raid on this disputed land might sweep him and his into one
destruction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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