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Updated: May 22, 2025
The simplest way of entering the Land of the Black Mountain is viâ Cattaro in Dalmatia. The sea-trip from Trieste, which takes a little over twenty-four hours, is a revelation of beauty, for the Dalmatian coast is sadly unknown to the traveller. The journey can also be made from Fiume, whence the "Ungaro-Croata" send a good and very frequent service of steamers.
The city of Cattaro itself is small, standing on a narrow ledge between the gulf and the base of the mountain. It carries the features of the Dalmatian cities to what any one who has not seen Traü will call their extreme point.
And, as under Byzantine rule it was taken by Saracens, so under Venetian rule it was more than once besieged by Turks. In the intermediate stages we get the usual alternations of independence and of subjection to all the neighboring powers in turn, till in 1419 Cattaro finally became Venetian. At the fall of the republic it became part of the Austrian share of the spoil.
There is not much for the tourist to see in Cetinje; a day is quite sufficient to do the sights, such as they are. Unfortunately for the country, the tourist usually contents himself with a look round the little capital and returns the way he came to Cattaro, only a few prolonging the tour viâ Rijeka to Scutari. Thus a very erroneous impression is gained of Montenegro and its people.
There was a long contest for its possession between Cattaro and Perasto, ending in the assassination of the abbot by the Perastines, who took the property by force. Venice gave the commune of Cattaro an annual subvention as solatium. The abbey, destroyed in 1571, was rebuilt in 1624, and in 1654 was plundered by the Turks, and then almost ruined by earthquake in 1667.
The French erected a battery upon it, which was abandoned some thirty years ago. The church-was restored for service on October 27, 1878. As soon as it runs dry the cave from which it issued can be entered for several hundred yards. The flow commences after heavy rains, and at the same times a well, or spring, at Cattaro spirts up with such force as to throw out stones of several pounds' weight.
At Cattaro we took the fishing boat which had carried me yesterday; and I think the sailor-men realized, when they saw what I had brought back, that I wasn't a madman after all. Then the spin from Castelnuovo to Ragusa that I had taken in such a different mood fifteen hours before. And at Ragusa, Beechy, still pale and shaken, springing up from her sofa to meet Maida and me as we opened the door.
A study of the territory in which the first fighting of the war occurred will explain the foregoing calculations. It will be observed that Austrian territory runs down past the eastward turn in the Danube, along the frontier of Montenegro, until it narrows gradually into a tip at Cattaro, just below Cettinje, the Montenegrin capital.
A few of certain religious books, indeed, were sent us, as a present, by the Emperor, but with an absolute prohibition to receive works of any other kind adapted for literary occupation. This imperial gift of ascetic productions arrived in 1825 by a Dalmatian Confessor, Father Stefano Paulowich, afterwards Bishop of Cattaro, who was purposely sent from Vienna.
In considering the Near East of to-day it should never be forgotten that but a century ago much of the population was as wild as the Red Indians of the same date. The French held the Bocche di Cattaro some years during which the Vladika, as Russia's ally, flatly refused to come to terms with them.
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