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Updated: May 11, 2025
We stopped to pass the night at Shawnik, a village in one of the most picturesque ravines I ever saw. There runs the Bukovitza, a tributary of the Drina, a wild and bold trout stream, abounding also in grayling, the trout being unaccustomed to the fly, as they are in most of the streams hereabout.
The day had broken fine, and after stopping long enough to make a sketch of the house where I had passed the night, destined like all others in the open country to be burned in the course of the day, I pushed on to the fastness of Shawnik.
Shawnik lies in the gate to the open country, the gateposts being two huge bastions of rock from which a few riflemen could defy an army until they found a way around through the rough country of Voinik, the chain which lay between us and Niksich.
"Ride hard," said the voivode, "and keep ahead of the Albanians, for when it comes to fighting we shall probably have to disperse and every man provide for himself, and you do not know the country. Tell the Prince to hurry up reinforcements." I lunched in the schoolhouse of Aluga, and pushed on for Bukowitza and Shawnik, where the invasion would be stopped with certainty.
What with the insects and the chance of being aroused at dawn by an attack of the raiding Albanians, I did not sleep again, and was up at dawn preparing to continue the journey to Shawnik, where alone we could count on being safe from the swarms of bashi-bazouks, whose movements we could already follow in the air by the smoke ascending from house and haystack over the plains we had traversed the day before.
The night at Shawnik had proved as sleepless from fleas as that of Bukowitza from bugs, and, what with the fatigue of the race against time and the lack of any sleep for forty-eight hours, the next day found me laboring under an attack of illness which left me absolutely helpless, with a raging headache and cholera morbus.
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