Scattered houses dotted
the plain of Aluga, and the children came to stare, and brought us,
with the shyness of wild deer, little baskets of strawberries, which
in some places in the fir forests almost reddened the ground, and,
having pushed the offerings in at the door, ran like wild creatures,
as if to escape being noticed. Huge haystacks dotted the plain, and
the population seemed prosperous. We pushed on to the frontier post at
Dobrilovina through glades of fir-trees with pasture intervening, as
the soil was rocky or fertile, and reached the margin of the Tara late
in the afternoon, a good day's ride from Aluga.
The Tara has cut itself a ca?on like those of the Yellowstone, and
on a little space of alluvial land at the bottom lies the convent,
a building of the Servian Empire, curiously spared by the Turkish
invasions. We descended 2500 feet, measured by my aneroid, to the
flat, where the monks made us most welcome. We walked along the river,
a rapid and shallow stream filled with trout, which refused to take
any lure I could show them,--and the monks said that they ate only the
crayfish which abounded in the river.
We went to sleep, to be awakened at midnight by the scouts who came
in to tell us that the Turks were out from Kolashin, and that some
thousands of Albanians of the Rascian country were raiding in advance,
and had already thrown their left far beyond us.
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