Does not the foregoing read like a chapter in "Waverley," or in "Rob Roy?" but though it is now a good many years since M. Broniewski wrote the foregoing, the Montenegrin is still much the same, with the exception of cutting off the heads of those killed in battle, which he has given up, principally, I believe, because he has had no fighting of late. But at the period of the last attempted invasion of Montenegro on the Grahovo side, by the Turks in, I think, 1862, heads were cut off as freely as ever, and were liberally paid for by the chieftains; the only difference was that instead of taking them to Cettigne to hang in festoons upon the round tower at the back of the monastery, they were allowed to rot on the battle-field among the rocks of the Grahovo where scores of them are to be seen lying about to this day.
BATTLE BETWEEN TURKS AND MONTENEGRINS—ADDRESS OF PRINCE MIRKO—HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER—THE PROJECTS OF PRINCE DANIELO—PRINCE NICHOLAS I.—SPORT IN MONTENEGRO—INTERVIEW WITH THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS—NATIONAL COSTUME—SPLENDID ILLUMINATION.
I regret more than I can express having lost some interesting notes of several conversations I had with the Commandant Pedro Pejovich on the subject of the campaign of 1864(?); all the more as they were most graphically told me by him, who had been in the thick of the fight, and carried in his body, in the shape of severe wounds, proofs of the active part he had borne in that campaign. One only I partially remember still, sufficiently well to venture to retail.
The Turks, apparently, were attacking the Montenegrins from the Herzegovina in the north of Montenegro. They numbered about twelve thousand men, together with a good force of Artillery; while the Montenegrins collected to oppose them were not more than two thousand; but whilst the Turks were in the plain fully exposed in sight of the Montenegrins, these sturdy mountaineers, finding covert behind each rock and bramble bush, were able to pick off the Turks with considerable effect. Still the disparity of force was too great, and at the end of the second day's fighting, although the Turks had not been able to make any impression on the position held by the Montenegrins, still the number of those killed and wounded bore a very large proportion to their numbers. At sunset the fight being over for the time, and sentries having been posted by the mountaineers as far forward as practicable to watch the Ottoman camp, Prince Mirko, father of the present Prince of Montenegro, then in command of the Montenegrins, summoned all the chiefs to a brief council of war, and spoke thus: