And yet so poor and so contented were they that the life of the primitive man could not have been much simpler. I have seen, in the cold end of September, in the high mountain districts, a whole family of little children, whose united rags would not have made a comfortable garment for one of them, playing with glee in the fields. On one occasion, when I had been caught by the heavy autumn rains in remote Moratcha, roads washed away and riding a mile impossible, I had to take with me two or three men, beside my guide and horse boy, to make a road where I had to travel, and we were obliged to halt for the night at one of the poorest villages I ever saw in Montenegro. The best house in it was offered me, with such fare as they had, to supplement bread which I had brought from the convent. The house had but one room, with a large bedstead built in it of small trees in the rough, and the beaten ground for floor. The bed was given up to me, and the family lay on the ground with a layer of straw, which was all that the bedstead had in the way of bedding. When we left in the morning I was asked for no compensation, nor did it seem to be expected; but, as my silver had been expended, I gave the woman of the house (the husband being at the war) a gold ten-franc piece. She took it shamefacedly, turned it over and over, looked at it curiously, and then asked my guide, "What is this?" It was the first time in her life that she had seen a gold coin, and the guide had to explain to her that it could be changed into many of the zwanzigers or beshliks which were the only coins she knew. And with all this poverty they seemed most happy when they could extend their poor hospitality to a stranger, and always reluctant to receive any compensation, though the Prince was obliged to furnish to the general population about half the breadstuffs they used in the year. Seven senators were always on duty near the Prince; they received about $250 a year each when on duty, at other times nothing. The entire civil list of the Prince amounted to about $250,000 a year, from which all the expenses of the government, civil, military, and diplomatic, had to be paid. But for the subsidies of Russia and Austria-Hungary the entire people must have migrated long ago, and I have several times heard Montenegrins say, when asked why they did not build more substantial houses, that "they were not going to stay there long, but meant to get a better country." And yet, like most mountaineers, they were so attached to this rugged and infertile country of theirs that there was no punishment so hard as exile.