It was at the siege of Nikshitch that the valorous warrior-priest of the Montenegrins, Pope Milo, challenged any Turk to personal combat between the lines with broadswords. Both armies ceased the fight while the battle-royal was in progress. The Turk, however, proved the better swordsman and killed his antagonist, severing the head from the body. Upon the resumption of hostilities an infuriated Montenegrin revenged the death of Pope Milo by dealing with the same Turk in a similar manner. Prince Nikola himself was in command at the siege of Nikshitch, in which the Montenegrin women were little less active than the men, for they carried ammunition and food across the mountains and otherwise assisted in the Montenegrin victory. The Prince, reclining upon a rock, over which he had first spread his _struka_, received the surrender of Scanderbeg and invited the Turkish commander to take coffee with him. Coffee over, he wrote a poem of the siege and forwarded it by messenger to his wife in Cettinje. She read it aloud to the citizens gathered together in the public square. But fighting as one nation against another has not been the only form of warfare indulged in by the Montenegrins. During the brief intervals of Turkish lethargy blood-feuds between the families of the mountaineers afforded the male members plenty of diversion. They had no cause to complain of monotonous inactivity. A boy might grow to manhood in blissful ignorance that it would be his duty sooner or later to take the life of another, thus avenging the untimely death of one of the members of his own family. Upon the successful accomplishment of his mission, as was usually the case, he, in turn, would be thereafter considered as a target for the weapon of some member of the rival family. Thus the feuds were continuous, imperishable heirlooms handed down from father to son, even unto the third and fourth generation. [Illustration: A STONE MASON OF CETTINJE AND HIS CART.] By the Treaty of Berlin, Montenegro acquired twenty-five miles of seacoast adjoining Albania; the bulk of her trade, however, continues to come and go through the Dalmatian port of Cattaro, a port upon which these people of the mountains have ever cast a covetous glance, but from which they are shut out by the great rocky barriers of the Dinaric Alps. Railway building in Montenegro is very difficult, and as yet the principality is without means of transportation other than by wagon train and a few small steamers which ply on the Lake of Scutari. The project is now on foot to build a railway from Antivari, on the coast, to Virbazaar, a short distance inland.