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
Returning to Ragusa, I found Ljubibratich on the point of returning to
the insurgents' camp at Grebci, just over the Austrian frontier, and
only about three hours' walk, we were told, from Ragusa. They came
with unrestricted freedom from camp into Ragusa, carried away what
supplies of any kind they needed, and, when ill, came to the hospital
of the city. Dalmatia and its medley of races are still in the Eastern
state of activity, in which time is of no account; and, instead of
getting off in the early morning to return before night, as arranged,
we left Ragusa at 2 P.M. We were in October, and the shortening days
did not favor long journeys, and the road was even worse than those
in Montenegro. On the way across the frontier the going was simply
climbing a Cyclopean stairway, and we reached the camp only at dusk.
Grebci was an abandoned village of the Herzegovinian population,
robbed and maltreated even here within a rifle-shot of the Austrian
territory, and the entire population had taken refuge across the
frontier. There was a reunion of all the bands, amounting to about 900
men, of whom 250 were Montenegrins under old Peko Pavlovich, a wiry,
wily, Slavonic Ulysses, who had been in more than ninety battles
with the Turks, and who knew and used every stratagem of this border
warfare. There was Melentie, the fighting Archimandrite of the convent
of Duzi; Luka Petcovich, a Herzegovinian of the Montenegrin frontier,
a tried Turk fighter; and the fighting popes of three villages of
Orthodox Christians, Bogdan Simonich, Minje, and Milo. There was a
small band of Italians, with one Frenchman, Barbieux,--one of the
bravest of the brave and an ex-Zouave officer,--ten Russians, and a
few Servians. We were in for a night, and had brought no provender,
while all the food in camp was the half of an old goat and some flinty
ship's biscuit. The goat was roasted before the camp-fire, laid on a
timber platform, which served for bed by night and table by day, and
hacked to pieces by the yataghans which had come from the battle two
days before. The meat was tough beyond exaggeration, and the biscuit
had to be broken with a stone into small pieces; but we had wine, for
this abounded across the frontier and was indispensable. We heard the
story of the fight at Utovu, where the insurgents had been taken in
a trap by treachery of the weak chiefs of a Catholic village, and
escaped with the loss of only four killed, owing to the precautions
of the wily Peko, who, like an experienced fox, never went into a
possible trap without seeing the way out of it; but they brought away
the visible proofs of their fight in the noses of fifty-eight Turkish
soldiers killed. In the custom of the country the nose of an enemy
stands as the logarithm of his head, which is inconvenient of
transportation in number; and, though the Prince had forbidden the
mutilation of the dead, it was impossible to enforce the prohibition
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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