the statistics had been destroyed. On account of the rigorous taxation
a great many of the people were forced to migrate to America, from
where they sent almost everything they earned to their unhappy
relatives; these were compelled to pay up to 100 per cent. interest on
the loans which they had been obliged to negotiate, so that they could
not meet the taxes. And there would have been some consolation had
those taxes been productive; but by far the larger part of them, as of
the loans raised in Vienna (with the Boden Credit and the Laender Bank)
and at Constantinople were devoted to the Court and its favourites,
for rewards, journeys, decorations--every thing in fact, save the
needs of the people. It suited Nikita very well to keep his people in
dire poverty and ignorance. Such has been the poverty of the
Montenegrins that it was no uncommon sight to see them cultivating so
minute a _polje_ that the wheat which it produced would give no more
than half a loaf. And meanwhile they were not allowed to exploit the
wealth of the forests. Figs, olives, grapes and plums could all have
been cultivated with profit, and in the lower regions oranges and
lemons and tobacco. But there was the deliberate policy to keep the
population from enriching themselves. Occasionally their native wit
gained for them a surreptitious triumph. Thus it happened that a poor
peasant's son went up into the higher lands to tend the flocks of one
who was more prosperous. By some means the boy discovered that the
mountain torrent of his new abode dived underneath the rocks and
subsequently reappeared and was the stream which ran past his old
home. He turned this knowledge to effect by killing a lamb and
throwing it into the water. His parents, down below, retrieved the
lamb. Various other animals went the same journey, until the farmer
ascertained what the boy was doing; and then the day arrived when the
poor peasant, watching by the stream, saw the body of his son being
carried down towards him.

Very few schools were opened; for example the Vasojevi['c], who are
the most numerous tribe not only of Montenegro but of all the Serbian
lands, had to content themselves with one school, built in 1882. In
1869 there was established a seminary with three classes, that was
afterwards converted into a high-school of four classes; but both of
these were frequently closed, the true reason being that the Russian
subsidies given for the school were spent on the var