The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1877-07-12
THE ORIGIN OF MONTENEGRO.
Early History of the Brave serbs who C
volted from the Turks and Carried n
Printing Press Into the Mountains with

Early History of the Brave serbs who Re.
volted from the Turks and Carried n
Printing Press Into the Mountains with
Them.
It is sometimes said in relation to in
dividuals that the world does not know
its greatest men. 1t might at least as
safely be averred, in speaking of large
numbers, that Christendom does not
know its most extraordinary people.
The name of Montenegro until the last
two years was, perhaps, less familiar to
the European public than that of Mexi-
co, and little more than that of San
Marino. And yet it would long ere this
have risen to worldwide fame had there
been a Scott to tell the marvels of it's
history or Byron to spend and be spent
on its behalf. For want of the yates
sdcer it has remsined in the mute, in
glorious condition Of Agamemnons pre-
decessors. I hope that an interpreter
between Montenegro and the world has
at length been found in the person of
my friend Nh. Tennyson, and I gladly
accept the honor of having been invited
to supply commentary to his text. In
attempting it am sensible of this disad-
vantage-that it is impossible to set out
the plain facts of the history of Monte
negro (or Tsernagora in its own Sclav-
onic tongue) without begetting in the
mind of any reader strange-and nearly
all are strange to the subject-a restless
suspicion.of exaggeration or of fable.
The vast cyclone of Ottoman conquest,
the most formidable that the world has
ever seen, having crossed the narrow sea
from Asia in the fourteenth century,
made rapid advances westward and blast
ed, by its successive acquisitions, the
fortunes of countries the chief part of
which were then among the most civil
lized, Italy alone being excepted, of all
Europe. shall not here deal with the
Hellenic lands. 1t is enough to say that
Bulgaria, Serbia (as now known), Bos-
mia, Herzegovina, Albania gradually
gave way.
Among the Serbian lands was the
fourishing principality of Zeta. 1t took
its name from the stream that flows
southwark from the mountain citadel
toward the lake of Scutari. 1t comprised
the territory know as Montenegro or
Tsernagora, together with the seaward
frontier, of which a niggardly and I'M
worthy jealousy had not then deprived it,
and with the rich and fair plains encir-
cling tine irregular outline of the inhos.
pitable mountain. Land after land had
given way; but Zeta ever stood firm
under the Baiculd family. At last, in
1478, Scutari was taken on the south,
and in 1883 the ancestors of the still
brave population of Herzegovina on the
north submitted to the Ottomans.s Ivan
Tchernoiveitch, The Montenegrin hero of
the day, hard pressed on all sides, ap-
piled to the Venetians for the aid he had
often given, and he was refused. There
upon he, and his people with him, quit
ted, in 14S4, the sunny tracts in which
they had basked for some seven hundred
years, and sought, on the rocks and
amidst the precipices, surety for the two
gifts, by far the most precious to man
kind-their faith and their freedom. To
them, as to the pomaks of BulgF ria and
the Bosnian Begs, it was open to prlr.
chase by conformity a debasing peace.
Before them, as before others, lay the
trinOda necessitas-the alternatives Of
not to die, for they had work to do
To the Koran or to slavery they pre-.
ferred life of cold, want, hardship and
perpetual peril. Such is their MagnG
Charta; and, without reproach to others
it is, as far as I know, the noblest in the
world.
To become center for his mountain
home Ivan had built monastery al
Cittinje, and declared the place to be the
metropolis of Zeta. What is most of al
remarkable in the whole transaction is
that he carried with him into the hills 6
printing press. This was in 1884, in {
petty principality; they were men worst
ed in war and flying for their lives
| Again, it was only seven years after the
earliest volume had been printed by
Caxton in the rich and populous metro
polls of England, and when there was nC
printing press in Oxford or in Cam
bridge or in Edinburgh. 1t was only
sixteen years after the first printing
press had been established (1468) il
Rome, the capital of Christendom; only
twenty-eight years after the appearance
(1456) of the earliest printed book, the
first born of the great discovery.
Then and there they voted unani
mously their fundamental law, that il
time of war against the Turk no son O.
Tsernagora could quit the field withou
the order of his chief; that runaway
should be forever disgraced and ban
ished from his people; that he should bt
| dressed in woman's clothes and pre-
sented with distaff; and that the women
striking INN with their distaffs, should
hunt the coward away from the sanctuary
of freedom.-Mr. Gladstone, in til,
London Nineteenth Century.
The Flag.