The second _Via de Zenta_ started from the three harbours of Antivari _via_ the Sutorman Pass, Budua by the bridle path to Cetinje (still in use), and Cattaro by the road to Cetinje. A little further east the three branches met, and the route proceeded over well-wooded mountains, now, alas, bare and desolate, past the ruins of Doclea to Podgorica (a day and a half from Cattaro); then to the Plava lake, one of the fairest spots in Albania, but now also one of the most dangerous, on the shores of which, according to Professor Stojan Novaković, stood the well-known Servian trading centre of Brskovo. Professor Jireček, however, who has had access to further materials, places it in the upper Lim valley. Brskovo (Brescoa or Brescoua in Venetian and Ragusan documents) was the chief commercial city of Servia, and is mentioned as early as the days of King Stephen the First-Crowned (1196-1228). It was principally frequented by the people of Ragusa and Cattaro, and to a lesser extent by the Venetians. The various products of the districts were collected here for export to the coast, while the caravans from the coast brought foreign goods for distribution throughout Servia. The customs, which were usually farmed out to Ragusans, were a source of considerable revenue to the Servian kings. Here, as in some other mining towns, was also a mint, where the _grossi di Brescova_ were coined.[243] The Ragusan colony was numerous and influential, containing members of some of the noblest families.[244] Beyond Brskovo came Peč (Ipek in Turkish), an archiepiscopal, and later patriarchal, see (until 1766). Peč, too, enjoyed considerable traffic, and had a Ragusan colony in the fourteenth century.
The post from Venice to Constantinople went by this route in the sixteenth century. As soon as the ship arrived the despatches were handed to the messengers (they were always natives from two Montenegrin villages), who rode off with them _via_ Plava, Peč, Novoselo, Priština, Samokov, and Philippopolis, reaching the Bosporus in eighteen days.[245]
Throughout Servia, Bosnia, Hlum, the Zeta, and Bulgaria there were thus numerous Ragusan colonies. As a rule mining was the chief industry, and it was in the mining districts that the commercial settlements were to be found. In Roman times the mines of Illyria were well known; they were abandoned at the time of the barbarian inroads, and it was not until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at the time of the rise of the Serb States, that the industry revived. Wonderful tales were told by mediæval travellers of the richness of the Balkan mines. As late as 1453 the Greek Critobulus asserted that gold and silver sprang from the earth like water, and that wherever you dug you found large deposits of the precious metals, in greater quantities than in the Indies.[246] King Stephen Uroš II. Milutin (1282-1320) was the first to summon in German miners, called Sasi (_i.e._ Saxons), so as to benefit by their superior skill, but the Ragusans were also numerous. Many of the technical terms relating to mining still used in Bosnia are of German origin: _orat_ = _Ort_; _hutman_ = _Hüttenmann_; _karan_ = _Karren_. The ore was extracted from galleries and shafts, many of which are still in existence. The refining of the metal was executed at Ragusa or Venice.