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Updated: June 6, 2025
I little thought 'that in a few years time the place would be the scene of a hideous massacre by the Montenegrins modelled on the Moslem-slaying of Vladika Danilo. We reached Ipek after some sixteen hours of very severe travel and knocked at the gates of the Patriarchia long after nightfall the very place whose Bishop had led the retreating Serb population into Austria over two centuries before.
Leaders of units appeared from all sides, and a hurried conference was held. Mr. Berry called a meeting at two. Jan got to work on the map, and decided that the best route out would be one to Novi Bazar, and thence by tracks to Berane. There were villages marked in the mountains which did not seem so high as those by Ipek, also the road, if there were one, would be at least two days shorter.
Each village knew of my ride to Ipek, and received me with enthusiasm. Each told the same tale. The rising planned to take place throughout the Balkans in 1904 had been stopped by the misfortunes of the Russo-Japanese War. Montenegro was aghast at the duration of the war, and her faith in Russia as a God Almighty was badly shaken.
They met no robbers, though an excited little English Levantine in Scutari had assured them they would do so and told a vivid story of a ride to Ipek, a delay on the road due to a sudden inexplicable lameness of his horse after a halt for refreshment, a political discussion that delayed him, his hurry through the still twilight to make up for lost time, the coming on of night and the sudden silent apparition out of the darkness of the woods about the road of a dozen armed men each protruding a gun barrel.
The hospital was intended for Ipek, but for some reason, although there were wounded in the town, the Montenegrins decided to move it to Podgoritza, where there were none. After a difficult journey across the mountains they settled down, but could never get sufficient transport from the Government to bring their stores over, except in small quantities.
Then we had to leave the road and face mud slush, climbing for hours. We had picked up various friends a courtly old peasant who was very worried to hear that Kragujevatz had fallen, and feared for the invasion of Montenegro; two barefoot girls, who asked Jo all the usual questions, and an American-speaking Serbian man who had trudged from Ipek, the first refugee on that road from Serbia.
And soon we were in the outskirts of Novi Bazar, the most ordinary town of the Sanjak, combining the dull parts of Plevlie with the dull parts of Ipek. There was a stream down the middle of the road, in which some of the inhabitants were washing, while one sat on his haunches holding up a small looking-glass with one hand and shaving himself. We bustled off to the mayor's office.
The driver promised us a better road further on; but the better road never came, and we hung on waiting for something to break and give us relief. There were hints, it is true, unfinished hints: some day men will be able to travel in comfort from Mitrovitza to Ipek, but the day is not yet.
The land has one Metropolitan, the Vladika, in whose eparchy are included Ipek, Kroja and Dalmatia spiritually, for the consecration of priests, he being, since the removal of the Patriarch of Ipek, the next Archbishop. But the foreign priests obey him in no respect save for consecration. His functions consist in the consecration of priests and churches.
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