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I carried an order for shelter and such fare as was obtainable at Rieka, in the little house of the Prince at that village, and we passed a comfortable night, but found the succeeding day the opening of one of the spells of rainy weather of which only one who has lived in the principality much can know the inconvenience.
That passage between Cettinje and Rieka, on the Lake of Scutari, was one of the worst I have ever found in the principality. The lower part, nearing Rieka, was simply a Cyclopean stairway, with rocky steps so high that the horses had to jump down from one to another.
My cavalcade consisted of a Montenegrin soldier for guide, a Montenegrin student, and the horse-boy, necessary to lead the horses when, as was the case for a large part of the way, we could not ride them; and halfway down to Rieka we were overtaken by a deaf-mute porter, sent as a kind afterthought by the Prince, with a samovar and a provision of tea, sugar, etc., in view of the dearth of comforts beyond.
None too soon! for at Liéva Riéka we had picked up lice. We compared notes on this part afterwards. "Happy hunting?" we inquired like Mowgli's friends. It was good to sit by the big kitchen stove holding bits of dripping clothing to the blaze; the downfall at Cettinje the evening before having completely drenched our damp things again.
Driving down these curves was no amateur's game, and we saw immediately that our chauffeur knew his job. We came over a ridge, and in the far distance, gleaming like the sun itself, a corner of the Lake of Scutari showed between two hill crests. We ran into a fertile valley, passed through Rieka where was the first Slavonic printing-press and up into the barren mountains once more.
Whatmough stood in the water, remarking, "I'm wet and I'll get no wetter," and helped people across. Again after dark we arrived at Liéva Riéka, to find our dirty old inn again; but it had a real iron stove which gave out a glorious heat, and we crowded around in the ill-lit room, clouds of steam arising from us.
My poor little pony like myself, only half fed for days, was not in a condition for rapid travel, and, though we pushed on in the rain, which began again, as well as we could, when we reached Rieka it was nearly sunset. Finding no preparation in the little house, our usual shelter there, for any guest, after giving the horse what small ration the village afforded, I resumed the journey at sunset.
Here are the wharfs, the harbor works, the rail-head, the municipal buildings, the hotels, and the business districts. But cross the Rieka by the single wooden bridge which connects Fiume with Sussak and you find yourself in a wholly different atmosphere. In a hundred paces you pass from a city which is three-quarters Italian to a town which is overwhelmingly Slav.
The horse had come the last few miles very heavily; I had been in the saddle twelve to fourteen hours each of the last two days, and the food I could get for him was insufficient even for a Herzegovinian mountain pony, so that it was hard work to get him to a pace above a slow walk as we approached Rieka; but when we left the place he seemed to realize that he had a work of necessity before him, and that the light would not see him through it, and he showed that he understood the case, for he needed neither spur nor whip to make his best pace over the very rough and difficult road.
A small river, the Rieka, no wider than the Erie Canal, divides the city into two parts, one Latin the other Slav, very much as the Rio Grande separates the American city of El Paso from the Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez. On the left or west bank of the river is Fiume, with approximately 40,000 inhabitants, of whom very nearly three-fourths are Italian.
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