them. We steamed out
into the lake, down the "kingly" canal, a shallow ditch in the mud.
Magnificent mountains rush down on every side to the water, in which
stunted willow trees with myriad roots--like mangroves--find an
amphibious existence. We passed through their groves, hooting as though
we were leaving Liverpool, and out into the eau-de-nil waters of the
open lake.

In three hours we reached Plavnitza, a quay on the mud, where more
passengers were waiting for our already crowded craft. There were
officers, peasants, Turks, and soldiers clad in French firemen's
uniforms. These uniforms, by the way, caused a lot of ill-feeling in
Montenegro. The French sent them out in a spirit of pure economical
charity, and had the Frenchmen not been, on the average, small, and the
Montenegrin, contrariwise, large, perhaps the gift would have been
received with a better grace; but the sight of these enormous men
bursting in all places from their all too tight regimentals, was
ludicrous, and the soldiers felt it keenly.

Two women came aboard, attached to officers, and wearing long light
blue coats, the ceremonious dress of all classes; one carried a wooden
cradle strapped on her back, the woman with no cradle had in her arms a
baby of some ten or eleven months, which she fed alternately on grapes
and pomegranate seeds. With each was a large family including a beastly
little boy who spat all over the decks, and one of the fathers, a stern
gold-laced officer, carried a dogwhip with which to rule his offspring.

After a while we caught sight of Tarabosch, the famous mountain, and
then the silhouette of the old Venetian fortress. From the water
projected the funnels of yet another Turkish ship which had been sunk in
the Balkan war, and we steamed into the amphibious trees on the mudflats
of Scutari.

A boat with chairs in it came for us and we disembarked. The boat was
rather like one of those that children make from paper, called cocked
hats, only rather elongated, and the rowers pushed at the oars which
hung from twisted osier loops. Governor Petrovitch met us on the quay.
He was a fine-featured old man dressed in all the barbaric splendour of
a full national costume, pale green long-skirted coat, red gold
embroidered waistcoat, and baggy dark blue knee breeches with a huge
amount of waste material in the seat. He kissed his daughter and greeted
us genially. We clambered into the usual dilapidated cab with the usual
dilapidated