THE MONTENEGRIN PEASANT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4611, 31 December 1875, Page 3

THE MONTENEGRIN PEASANT.

(Viscountess Strangford, “Eastern Shores of the Adriatic.”) There is no peasant in Montenegro who has not some portion of land of his own —everyone possesses something, however small, and if this his little crop should fail, or misfortune overtake him, he at once comes to the Prince, who gives him all he can spare. When all is well, he pays the Prince a part of his produce. In fact, very much of their laws continually reminded me of the customs of the Bedouins, the truth being that both are entirely patriarchal and primitive. They have another virtue besides this simplicity of life—this is their perfect honesty. I happened to mention that I had dropped a gold bracelet in Albania. “ Had you dropped it here, even in the remotest corner of the Black Mountain, it would have been brought to me in three days,” said the Prince. lam sure this was not mere talk, for I heard it confirmed by enemies as well as friends of the Montenegrins. I was frequently told of a traveller who left his tent, with the door open, on a Montenegrin hill-side, and returned after three years’ absence to find every single thing as be had left it. It is the old story of the devotion of a simpleminded people, and the just administration of a Homeric cheiftain —all the more easily carried out in such a country as the Tserna Corn, because the Prince can be acquainted with bis people as individuals, and can set them a personal example, eagerly caught up by each of his loving subjects. People tell, however, a different tale of the honesty of the Montenegrins in Turkey, where they used to migrate annually for field-work, like Irishmen to England, or lonians to Greece. The Prince informed me that he had lately reckoned up his people, and that he believed there were now 200,000 souls in Montenegro and the Berda. He was more certain that he had 20,000 fighting men under his command. I enquired about the finances of the country, and the Prince told me his income amounted to £IO,OOO (depending much, of’course, upon the state of the harvest), besides an annual gift of £4700, bestowed by Russia in gratitude for assistance rendered by Peter I. in 1806 to the Russians, during their joint campaign against the French invaders of Dalmatia, and as an indemnity for their losses.