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
disposed to rise and make a fight with sticks and stones. This was one
of the most touching phases of that curious war, a warfare such as the
world will hardly see again.
The day after our trip to Kolashin the rain set in again, and we
passed nearly a fortnight more at the convent before the weather broke
and I was able to set out, taking with me a gang of men to make the
roads passable for my horse, so much had the rains wrought havoc with
the face of the land. The flooded state of the country and unfordable
rivers forbade the trip to Wassoivich, and I was obliged, to my great
regret, to relinquish it and to go back to Cettinje, having lost
nearly three weeks in the rain at Moratsha. Returning by a different
route from that by which I came, I crossed the Duboko at a point much
lower down than that of my first striking it, where it makes the most
magnificent trout stream I have ever seen. The trout from it feed
the Moratsha and the Lake of Scutari. In the Duboko they are caught,
according to the statement of a native of the district, as heavy as
forty pounds; and Mr. Green, the English consul at Scutari, told me
that they were sometimes caught much larger in the lake. There were
plenty in the Zeta at Niksich and at Danilograd, and I saw one
brought to the Prince's tent one day, during the siege, which weighed
twenty-two pounds, shot by one of the men, for they refused all kinds
of bait, and were only taken by shooting or the net; or, horrible to
relate, by dynamite, the ruinous effects of which on the population of
the river the Prince was too easygoing to forbid. I have seen one of
the spring basins, from which the Zeta takes its rise, carpeted by
tiny trout and other fishes, killed by the explosions of dynamite,
which rarely killed, but only stunned, the larger fish, of which few
were retrieved even when stunned or killed. I one day remonstrated
indignantly with the Prince for this barbarous butchery, and told him
that if he permitted his men to carry it on his son would reign in a
fishless country, and he promised to forbid it; but the matter passed
from his memory in a day. The Duboko was a safe nursery for the fry,
for it was such a torrent that dynamite was useless, since it would
have been impossible to retrieve a fish if killed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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