er extent
Ragusa served the same purpose.

The Montenegrins are born fighters and die fighters. From one end to the
other Montenegro is one wilderness of mountain crags and towering
precipices, traversed only by foot trails. Here and there a shelf of
level soil may be found, just enough to enable people to grow their own
necessities. The capital of this rocky domain, high up among the crags
and overlooking the Adriatic, is Cettinje, which was to be stormed and
conquered by the Teutons. The main street, about 150 yards long,
comprising two-thirds of the town, is so broad that three or four
carriages may be driven abreast down the length of it. It is composed
entirely of one and two story cottages. A few short streets branch off
at right angles, and in these is all of Cettinje that is not comprised
in the main street. The king inhabited a modest-looking, brown edifice
with a small garden attached. Overlooking the capital is Mt. Lovcen, on
top of which the Montenegrins planted guns to defend any attack that
might be made against them.

South of Montenegro and north of Greece lies another country of
instinctive fighters. It is similar in physical aspect, but very
different in its population. This is the land of the Albanians, whom the
Turks conquered by force of arms, like all the rest of the Balkan
peninsula. They are a distinct race by themselves; it is supposed that
they are the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, those wild tribes of
whom the ancient Greeks wrote. Nor is this unlikely, for in such a
country as theirs the inhabitants are most likely to remain pure from
generation to generation.

Returning for a few moments to Belgrade, we now may resume our course
down the ancient highway toward Saloniki. Down the Morava Valley passes
the railroad, after which it passes within a few miles of the Bulgarian
frontier, near Kustendil; dangerously near the frontier of a possible
enemy, but especially perilous in this war in which the Serbians would
naturally endeavor to retreat toward her ally, Greece.

Just below Vranya the railroad enters what was, before the two Balkan
Wars, the Turkish territory of Macedonia. This region down to within
sixty miles of Saloniki was reconquered from the Turks by the Serbs,
having been Serb inhabited since early in the Christian era as shown by
historical record. As early as 950 Constantin Porphyrogenitus writes of
its inhabitants as Serbs, from whom, he says, the town of Serbia on the