At each successive turn of the road a more wonderful panorama of the Bocche stretches out before you, and, after more than three hours of steady climbing, the pass at the top of the mountains is reached, and you cross the frontier, marked by a single stone post at the side of the roadway. [Illustration: THE PASS AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAINS.] The view of the Montenegrin side of the mountains can only be described as purely “Montenegrin.” The Bocche is, of course, lost to view and you have before you nothing but what seems to be a gigantic upheaval of rocks. Not a tree, not a shrub, not even a dust-covered sprout at the side of the road, relieves the sameness of this picture of gray desolation. Perhaps, if you look closely, you will partly be able to distinguish, less than a hundred yards away, a native mountaineer whose very garb is of protective colouring, concealing him almost entirely from your notice against the background of bare stones. From the top of the mountain the road descends to the village of Njegushi, the birthplace of His Ferocity, Prince Nikola. But were it not for the red-tiled roofs there would be, from a distance, no circumstantial evidence whatever that the town exists, for the houses are all of stone of the same hue as the surrounding mountains. While you sup on the stone porch of the little inn at Njegushi, handsome, well-built members of the male population stroll by indifferently, smoking and chatting in subdued tones and gazing dreamily at their beloved mountains. From every girdle protrude the muzzles of a number of well-oiled, ominous-looking firearms. Groups of women stumble by; some struggling under their loads of water casks strapped upon their backs, others driving small herds of goats and having all manner of difficulty in keeping them together. Yes, the women are ultra-suffragettes in Montenegro, not by choice but by custom. They do all the housework, tend the flocks, cultivate the little patches of corn or wheat and, in addition, bring up the family. On market-days they go to Cattaro or Cettinje and do their best to dispose of a meagre assortment of vegetable truck, returning home late at night, weary and sore. They age early, as might be expected; a Montenegrin woman of forty looks to be double that age. Not a finger will a man raise to ease the burden of his wife; for such is the lot of a woman born in the Land of the Black Mountain. From the hills above Njegushi you may look down into small, crater-like pits, each held intact by a low stone wall. These pits constitute the truck farms of Montenegro, and into them the rain washes all the vegetable earth from the mountain sides, forming in them an alluvial stratum.