When last I passed through it, there stood before every one of the wretched stone huts a giant-like figure, attired in his native costume, which, according to Montenegrin standards, was worth a fortune, and did indeed represent its wearer's wealth. Ancient and costly weapons protruded from his belt, generously wound around his portly body. Thus armed, he paraded up and down the rocky streets of Nyegusi, or lounged in the village inn, smoking cigarettes and drinking his _raki_, if he had the wherewithal. At the time of which I write, the streets were deserted, save for the women, who bent beneath their heavy burdens of wood which they bring down from the ravines in the Lovczin mountain. Old men sat wearily on the stone walls which surrounded their small fields, and every one told of a son who had gone "to Amerikee." One toothless woman could tell her age only approximately, by the number of sons she had borne; and there were eighteen. Ten of them were in America; the others had been killed in border warfare. In this same town I met a mother of twenty-two sons, twenty of whom had lost their lives in battle. The two survivors were the innkeepers of Nyegusi. The inn itself was the same as when first I saw it, with its beaten earth floor, and walls bare, except for the _icon_, a splendid bit of Byzantine workmanship; but since I drank the excellent coffee there, ten years ago, more than 5,000 braves have been under its roof, bound for my own country or returning from it. Now the room is full of them, all homeward bound, spending money far too freely in drinking and gambling; two vices which, although taken with them from their mountains, they bring back in exaggerated form. I must confess to a sense of disappointment when I saw them beside the Montenegrin who had remained at home. The sombre dress of our civilization was a poor exchange for the brilliant, native costume. The hard labour the men performed in America had robbed them of their erect and elastic forms, and they looked like the menials of their brothers who had been keeping watch against the "Schwab," in the shadow of the Lovczin. The change was not unlike that which has taken place in the American Indian who left the war-path to repair the steel path of the railroad. The men in the inn, nearly thirty of them, belonged to all parts of the little realm, from Niksic in the North and Grahova on the Herzegovinian border, to Cetinje and Podgoricza, its centre. They had gone out in neighbourhood groups, members of one tribe; but, returning, had become badly mixed. Some in the original group had failed, while others had succeeded; some decided to remain in America, others were glad to come home. Most of those in the inn had been West, and knew only the rigorous side of our industrial life, and to no European people could the experience have been so trying; while none could have adjusted itself less easily to it.