It was still drizzling when I left Berani early for the monastery, which is but a little way outside the town. The church is celebrated as being the oldest in the Balkan peninsula. It was built by Stefan Nemanja, the first of that line of Nemanja kings who led Servia to glory. He ruled from the middle of the twelfth century, abdicated a few years before his death (which took place in 1195?), and retired to Mount Athos. He was canonised, and as St. Simeone is still greatly revered. The old monastery was burnt by the Turks, but the church, wrecked of all decoration and robbed of its treasure, still stands. It is a long, barrel-vaulted building, with an apse at one end and a narthex at the other. The masonry is rough, coarse, and irregular. A Roman gravestone is built into the wall upside down near the side door. Inside no trace of wall painting remains, but one piece of an inscription in which Stefan's name appears. All is forlorn and melancholy. A large assembly of folk were there to welcome me, and we had to retire to the monastery and partake of rakija. The most interesting figures were the head of the monastery and a wild-eyed priest, whose long grey locks were twisted up under his cap. He wore striped Albanian leg-gear and had a revolver thrust in his sash, though Christians are forbidden to carry weapons in Turkey. He rode off on a pony, and had presumably leaked in over the frontier and evaded the authorities; but I thought it would be useless to ask questions on such a delicate subject. We returned to Andrijevitza by another road, thus avoiding Berani and the guard at its entrance, which seemed to me a very unnecessary precaution, but pleased my guides extremely. At Andrijevitza I found the Czech of whom I had heard at Berani, a Professor of botany who was making a detailed study of the flora of Montenegro, a good-natured, jolly man, who was a good friend to me, and to whom I am indebted for several interesting pieces of information. Commenting on the number of vipers which are to be met with on the hillsides, he told me that the people all still believe in the existence of serpents of enormous size, fabulous dragons in fact. A man once told him that he had seen one, 20 metres long, and swore "By God, I saw it with these eyes." Nothing would convince him that his eyes had deceived him, and his comrades firmly believed the tale. They have many medicinal herbs, the secret of which they jealously guard. One plant in particular they consider an infallible cure for snake-bite, but he never succeeded in inducing them to show it him. It would lose its power, they said, if they told. Cats all know it, and go off and eat it if bitten.