We also visited the prison at Podgoritza, a large town some forty miles from Cetinje. Here we found a strange collection of men and women. There was a saintly-looking pope, who had appropriated the funds of his church. He was dressed in priest’s robes and did the honours of the place. We saw several convicts who were being kept in solitary confinement, and pushed cigarettes to them between the bars. They seemed to feel the boredom most; otherwise they have an easy time. They do little work in summer and still less in winter, and a great part, of the day is spent in sleep. The cells looked far more comfortable than barrack-rooms, and prisoners in Montenegro evidently have little to complain of. There were ten or twelve women there. These were nearly all guilty of infanticide. When I came into their quarters they rushed at me, seized my hands and kissed them, and tried to make me sit down and talk to them. But, as I could not understand a word they said, and one of them looked very mad, I made my escape as soon as possible. It will be long before I forget that strange trial, which for spectacular effect might have taken place in Venice in the magnificent Middle Ages. The splendid figures of the judges rivalled the signori in all their glory, and the gigantic soldiery in gay and glowing colour made one almost forget the prisoners, until their primitive, almost savage, behaviour reminded one of their existence and of the fact that even nowadays in Europe things happen that eclipse the achievements of mediæval criminals. CROSSING THE RIVER. BY J. T. NEWNHAM-WILLIAMS, OF SALISBURY, MASHONALAND. A trader’s story of the appalling catastrophe which, almost in the twinkling of an eye, wiped out the fruits of a lengthy and arduous expedition and cost him the lives of two faithful “boys.” It was about the end of October, 1902, when I was returning from a trading and hunting expedition which had taken me into the wild bush-country lying to the north-west of the Limpopo valley, that the following incident occurred--an incident which neither myself nor any of the “boys” who accompanied me are ever likely to forget. I had started out from Pietersburg, in the Transvaal, about five months before, taking with me a good “salted” horse, a wagon and sixteen oxen, and half-a-dozen boys. I had loaded up with a good deal of the usual trading gear, and had made a very successful trip. It was always my rule, on returning from these expeditions, to shoot the whole of my way back, and I arranged my departure from civilization so that I could get through with my trading in good time and have the game season well in hand on the home trek.