capital. These chapels are attended by men of various sections of the Protestant Church-Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational; and the clergymen who minister in them are most catholic in their sentiments, liberal in their government, and faithful in their ministrations. As the British residents, including children, in and around St Petersburgh, amount to about 5000 souls, there is work to do more than sufficient to occupy the labours of all the clergy.

XII.

A VISIT TO MONTENEGRO.

F war has its drawbacks, and revolutionary move

IF

ments have their dangers, they at least have the advantage of instructing great masses of spectators in geography. During recent years the British public has become wonderfully well informed with reference to certain portions of the globe, which would, under ordinary circumstances, have attracted but little of their notice. Sabastopol and Takoo, the Volturno and the Chickahominy, are now household words; and although probably few have been able to follow those intricate operations upon places with unpronounceable names, which the Turks have lately been carrying on against the Montenegrins, there is a general impression that the scene of warfare is on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, and that Cettinye, the capital of the country, which it was rumoured some months since had been taken by the Turks, after its ruler had set fire to "the public buildings," is a city of some importance. But this is just the point where a

little information fuller than a map, and more correct than a telegram, can give us, may be of use. That Cettinye is the capital of Montenegro is true, but nothing short of a visit to it can convey an idea of its public buildings. It was a wild stormy morning, when, hanging on by the tail of a ragged pony, I allowed him to drag me up the almost impracticable rock-cut steps which ascend from the lovely Bocca di Cattaro, along the rugged face of "the Black Mountain." Below was the sea winding in a narrow channel fifteen miles long, between frowning precipices, their sides furrowed with watercourses, down which in places dashed white lines of foam; above were black pine-forests and granite peaks. Where there is room for cultivation between the mountain base and the sea, vines and olives clothe its margin, and white villas reflect themselves in the clear water, but Cattaro itself has scarcely room to stand, and seems to flourish on as little soil as the fir-trees that cling to the rocks above it. We know at once when we have exchanged Austrian for Montenegrin territory by the state of the roads, or rather steps. These are no longer constructed with the view of facilitating the progress of the traveller, but rather of increasing the difficulties of the ascent. Now the path leads along a narrow ledge with the most uncomfortablelooking ravine on one side, and crags which project as if expressly designed to push you into it, on the other." Here a rock in the middle of the road would suggest an insurmountable difficulty to any animal but one accustomed to traverse it; further on it is used as a convenient channel by an unceremonious stream which tumbles into it in a picturesque waterfall, and during a storm tumbles

out of it again with a violence that the traveller finds it difficult to resist. Occasionally we meet strings of lightfooted Montenegrins hopping rapidly from crag to crag, followed by no less sure-footed ponies with panniers, who monopolise the middle of the path, and expect us to pass on the outside, and not feel giddy; ragged-looking women, carrying bundles of wood on their backs, follow painfully; bare-footed and squalid, they contrast strongly in appearance with their liege lords, whose picturesque costume, manly forms, and independent bearing, do not leave us in doubt as to which is "the better half." The Montenegrins being a warlike race, often do things like the Americans, "for a strategic purpose," and their object in rendering all access to their country as impracticable as possible, it is easy to divine. It is the excessive difficulty of communication, no less than the bravery of these mountaineers, which has enabled them to protract over so long a period hostilities with the Turks.

In three hours we have clambered up 5000 feet, and find ourselves on a high rocky plateau, with gigantic blocks of granite rising in grotesque masses on each side of the rugged path. The scene is barn and wild in the extreme; except here and there a weather-beaten pine or a stunted juniper, there is nothing to relieve the monotony of grey crags. We surmount these serrated ridges only to find bigger rocks piled on each other beyond, and walls as regular as though built by some race of giants, hemming us in on both sides. Now and then we come upon a little isolated plot of potatoes or corn squeezed in among the rocks, but we may traverse miles without

seeing as much soil as would suffice for a respectable kitchen garden.

After a little more scrambling we become curious to know where the habitations are, more especially as sufficient time has elapsed since our departure from Cattaro to give us an appetite, and ultimately rest, with grateful feelings, at a small cottage not unlike a Highland bothy, while a gaunt female, in tattered garments, ministers to our wants by supplying us with eggs, and a substance more like pressed curds than cheese. Her husband, an athletic man bristling with swords and pistols, regards us with a sort of suspicious apathy, and seems by no means disposed to satisfy that thirst for information, for which, as conscientious travellers, we are distinguished. Three or four of his countrymen who have followed our little cortège out of curiosity, now collect round us, and lighting their long pipes, smoke and stare in silence. We can scarcely realise, as we gaze on this uncouth-looking group, that a few hours ago we left a civilised town, where a band was playing in public gardens to fashionable ladies sweeping the walks with their crinolines, or eating ices at little round tables with officers resplendent in the gaudy uniforms of the Austrian service. The rocks we had traversed did indeed interpose as mighty a barrier as though an ocean rolled between our night's quarters and our launching place; and our curiosity to reach the capital was not lessened by our first experience of Montenegro.

At last we crossed a summit from which a magnificent view spread itself before us, until it was lost in the hazy distance, and we were told that the whole territory of Montenegro was comprised in the intervening space, and