Bocche di Cattaro

“Montenegro forms no part of Dalmatia, but is an indipendent Republic, of the fiercest mountaineers, who have always succeeded in defying the power of the Porte from the impregnable position of their country, overlooking the Bocca di Cattaro and the Lake of Scutari. The harvest of 1846 in Montenegro had been a frightful failure; the people were dying of starvation; the Vladika, or Archbishop, whose authority was usually paramount in the maintenance of order, was absent in Vienna, to get funds to buy corn; and, in spite of the exertions of his deputy, bands of a hundred and fifty armed men were nightly making incursions in to the Austrian territory, and sacking the villas of retired wealthy Bocchese ship-masters. Every steamer carried detachments of riflemen, to scour the frontier; and I was strongly advised to let Montenegro alone until more tranquil times; but as I might never be so near it again, and personal experience of the Ottoman empire having shewn me that the danger of visiting disturbed districts turned out almost always illusory, I resolved to start.

It was on a bright sunlit afternoon, in the first days of December, that the steamer entered the Bocca, every inch of the deck being covered with riflemen. At the sight of this gulf, so celebrated for its natural beauty, the wish of many a long revolving year was fulfilled. Casotti, in his own quiet way, on arrival at Cattaro, breaks out with enthusiasm […]. And well might he give it the preference over every other scene of natural beauty in this province. The Bocca di Cattaro has all the appearance of an Italian lake embosomed in Alps, with the difference that the lake on a level and communicating with the sea, so as to form not only a secure harbour of an extent to contain all the navies of Europe, and a depth to admit of three-deckers lying close to its shores, but possessing a beauty worthy to be compared to that of Lebanon rising from the waters of Djouni, or Naples herself, with all her enchantments. From Castel Nuovo at the entrance, to Cattaro at the extremity, the whole of the gulf is lined with villages and isolated villas arising out of the water’s edge. Rich vine, citron, and olive-grounds slope rapidily upwards to a considerable distance; and above the line of vegetation, tremendous bare rocks tower suddenly and precipitously up to an Alpine height, till they are crowned on the landward side by the peaks of Montenegro.

In a climate that looks across the Adriatic to the temperate coasts if Apulia, the fall of the year had laid her impress lightly on the brows of the surrounding mountains: a yellow tone on the hanging woods began to mingle with the deep-green olives; the Bocca was no longer in the hey-day of verdure, but, like a well-preserved beauty, in all the pleasantness of early autumn. […]. Half way to Cattaro (for the passage is long and winding) the lake grows narrow, to little more than the space between the iron gates on the Danube; and we cleave the rended precipices again to enter another wide inland basin. As the steamer swiftly advanced up the smooth, land-girt waters, every soul was on deck to catch a new turn in the magic panorama. Ever and anon a shot, fired from a point of land or fishing-hamlet, signalised a party of sharpshooters on piquet; and some sad air of Bellini, played by the band, floated across the waters in sweet responses to the distant challenge (pp. 51-54)”.