Hard at work, cultivating the soil, I saw not only women but plenty of sturdy mountaineers. At Niegosh I observed one of the Petrovichs, the handsome young fellow who entertained me on my way to Cettigne, superintending himself a number of men who were working in a field near his house; and the only difference I could observe between them and our own labourers was that they were all fully armed, although employed at the peaceful occupation of agriculture. They have not yet turned their yataghans into spades and reaping hooks, but they have done the next best thing by keeping the first at ease while energetically plying the others.
I have seen the Montenegrins in their own valleys and mountain fastnesses, and I utterly deny the charges brought against them. They are not lazy—leaving all the hard work to their women—that is utterly false, and the best proof I perhaps can give, lies in the self-asserting fact of the toiling colony of three thousand Montenegrin Facchini at Constantinople, well known as about the most hard-working and honest labouring men in that capital. It is true that they allow the women to do much of the heavy agricultural work, and carry heavy loads up and down the mountains; but it must be remembered that for years past the Montenegrins, like the proscribed clans of Scotland in the last century, have been treated by their neighbours, the Turks, very little better than wild beasts. They would long ago have been exterminated, but for their indomitable courage and constant fighting, during which period, of necessity, the agricultural duties fell entirely on the decrepit old men and the women, as all men who were at all able to carry arms were engaged in fighting—and many of the women too! It must also be remembered that in all mountainous countries the women toil more heavily than in the plains, and even in civilized Italy hear what a distinguished Italian, Massimo d'Azeglio, writes:
"For example, if a faggot of wood and a bunch of chickens have to be carried down to the shore from one of the villages half way up the mountain, the labour is thus distributed in the family. The wife loads herself with the faggot of wood which weighs half a hundredweight, and the husband will take the chickens which weigh a mere nothing." The Montenegrins are not, therefore, singularly and atrociously barbarous in this respect.