More than a hundred years ago it was bombarded by the British fleet
and taken. It was then supposed to be impregnable. It lies at the head
of a loch some fifteen miles long, and in some parts but a few hundred
yards wide, in a trough between mountains. From Cattaro, at the
head of the loch, a zig-zag road leads up the mountain side over the
frontier into Montenegro.

When the British ships endeavoured to attack from the seaward,
the channel was closed by chains and booms put across it. But the
defenders had reckoned without the resourcefulness of the British
"handyman," and a few days later, to the utter astonishment of the
garrison, guns began to bombard them from the top of a neighbouring
mountain!

The British captain had landed his guns on the Adriatic shore, and by
means of timber slides rigged up on the mountain side he had hauled
his guns bodily up the rocky steeps to the very summit of the
mountain.

He fixed up his batteries, and was eventually able to bombard the town
with such effect that it had to surrender.

It was perhaps characteristic of us that we only took the town because
it was held by our enemies. We did not want it, and when we had got
it we did not know what to do with it. We therefore handed it over to
the Montenegrins, and thus gave them a seaport of their own. For this
feat the Montenegrins have always had a feeling of admiration and of
gratitude to the British, and, though by terms of ulterior treaties
it was eventually handed over to Dalmatia, the Montenegrins have never