Through the lands of the Serb,

NIKSHITJE AND DUKLE 5I The battered ruins of the great Turkish fort that was once a thorn in Montenegro's side stand on the long low hill that overlooks the town, and a stone or two with Turkish inscriptions and a few Turkish guns upon the grass are all that tell of its former holders. Whatever the future may have in store for the Montenegrins, let us hope that it will always be remembered to their credit that they have played an heroic part in the freeing of Europe from the Ottoman curse. A tumbledown mosque and some dozen Mohammedan Albanian families are now the only traces left in Nikshitje of the Asiatic invader. Beyond the town, the land is well cultivated, and maize, tobacco, rye, and potatoes flourish, provided there is sufficient rainfall in the summer. Montenegro at present needs, more than anything, some system of water storage. A superfluity of rain falls in the wet seasons, and the melted snow swells the streams to torrents, but this all flows away for lack of dams or cisterns, and in a spell of hot weather the ground is parched. In the summer of I902 no drop of rain fell between the middle of May and the beginning of September; there was no corn for food, and no tobacco for export. The people in the mountains, who depend on the plains for corn, were in terrible straits, were reduced to eating fern, grass, and beech bark, and were only saved from starvation by buying foreign maize with the money that had been intended for road-making and other public works. While Nikshitje, the capital that is to be, is slowly growing, Dukle (Dioclea), the capital that was, the birthplace of the line of Nemanja kings who led Servia to greatness, is slowly mouldering on the

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Title: Through the lands of the Serb,
Author: Durham, Mary E.
Canvas: Page 51
Publication: London,: E. Arnold,; 1904.
Subject terms: Montenegro -- Description and travel; Serbia -- Description and travel.

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Collection: Travels in Southeastern Europe
Link to this Item: https://name.umdl.umich.edu/afg3925.0001.001
Link to this scan: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bosnia/afg3925.0001.001/79

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Full citation: "Through the lands of the Serb,." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/afg3925.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 28, 2025.

Through the lands of the Serb,

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