The Gibraltar of the Balkan Peninsula—The Settling of Montenegro—Peter I—The Family of Petrovich—Prince Nikola—The Montenegrin Costume—Incidents of War—The Montenegro of To-day. A mere niche in the mountain wall of south-eastern Europe, with the blue rollers of the Adriatic pounding relentlessly against its meagre coast line and hemmed in on the remaining three sides by nominal provinces of hostile Turkey, lies Montenegro, the Gibraltar of the Balkan Peninsula. Notwithstanding the fact that it is the smallest of the free Balkan states, its total area covering but three thousand five hundred square miles, half the size of Wales and but three times as large as the state of Rhode Island, with an estimated population less than that of the single city of Buffalo, Montenegro remains as yet unconquered. For five hundred years its handful of patriots have withstood successfully the onslaughts of the hordes of Turks, fighting for every inch of rocky territory that was finally ceded to them by the Powers of Europe in 1878. The history of Montenegro begins at the time of the Turkish victory over the Servians at Kossovo, June 28, 1389. It is a history of nothing but war because, on account of their surroundings, the Montenegrins have had nothing to do with commerce and the arts of peace. Indeed, it was, and is yet, except in a few fertile valleys, almost a geographical impossibility for them to cultivate the soil, and the Turks, in their ferocious attempts to subjugate the eastern half of Europe, harassed the Montenegrins so continually on all sides that there was little else to think of but war. [Illustration: A GROUP OF MONTENEGRINS.] To delve briefly into the beginning of things, this Land of the Black Mountain was settled by a dauntless band of Servian refugees who, after the battle of Kossovo, when Tzar Lazar, Emperor of Servia, was defeated by the Turks, preferred liberty in some wild country of their own at any price, rather than live under the domination of the Mohammedans. They fled, accordingly, into the Black Mountains and there commenced the story of the Montenegrins and their strenuous existence. This story has been written in the blood of the Ottoman, but never once during the five hundred years of almost continuous war that followed did Turkey gain a permanent foothold in Montenegro.