known as _fustanellas_ and _comitadjis_ with cartridge-filled bandoliers
slung across their chests and their sashes bristling with assorted
weapons, priests of the Orthodox Church with uncut hair and beards,
wearing hats that look like inverted stovepipes, hook-nosed,
white-bearded, patriarchal-looking Turks in flowing robes and snowy
turbans, fierce-faced, keen-eyed mountain herdsmen in fur caps and coats
of sheepskin--all these combined to make me feel that I had intruded
upon the stage of a theater during a musical comedy performance, and
that I must find the exit and escape before I was discovered by the
stage-manager. If David Belasco ever visits Antivari he will probably
try to buy the place bodily and transport it to East Forty-fourth Street
and write a play around it.

There were two gentlemen in Antivari whose actions gave me unalloyed
delight. One of them, so I was told, was the head of the local
anti-Serbian faction; the other, a human arsenal with weapons sprouting
from his person like leaves from an artichoke, was the chief of a
notorious band of _comitadjis_, as the Balkan guerrillas are called.
They walked up and down the main street of Antivari, arms over each
other's shoulders, heads close together, lost in conversation, but
glancing quickly over their shoulders every now and then to see if they
were in danger of being overheard, exactly like the plotters in a
motion-picture play. From the earnestness of their conversation, the
obvious awe in which they were held by the townspeople, and the
suspicious looks cast in their direction by the Serbian gendarmes, I
gathered that in the near future things were going to happen in that
region. Approaching them, I haltingly explained, in the few words of
Serbian at my command, that I was an American and that I wished to
photograph them. Upon comprehending my request they debated the question
for some moments, then shook their heads decisively. It was evident