glances toward Constantinople in case the Porte turned out to be the next power on the Adriatic.

NAPOLEON GIVES RAGUSA THE
COUP DE GRÂCE

And her international tactics succeeded down to the opening of the 19th century, when, unfortunately for Ragusa, Napoleon determined on setting up the "New Illyrian Provinces" as a base for future conquest. In 1808 his military representative in Dalmatia convened the Ragusan Senate. "The Republic of Ragusa has ceased to exist." So ran the decree, pronounced to a heartbroken senate, which snuffed out the famous little city state after her 1,200 years of independence. And to-day her epitaph may be read at Paris, where "Raguse" appears on the roll of Napoleonic victories that adorns the Arc de Triomphe.

We covered the Ragusa-to-Montenegro stage of our journey by motor car. The Dinaric Alps' foothills resolved themselves into a series of fjord-forming promontories, as we turned inland for a fivehour drive past olive plantations, with distant glimpses of the gradually uplifting crags which encircle the Boka Kotorska.

Few waterscapes, in whatever land, can rival these famous "Mouths of Cattaro" in their somber magnificence. Ringed about by rocky walls rising sheer from the water's edge into dizzy heights that completely cut off the outer world, the "mouths" consist of three ramified, straitconnected basins over which vessels lay a zigzag course to and from the Adriatic.

The still, lakelike waters of intense blue scarcely soften one's dread of those encircling crags-mammoth, gnarled sterile-which stir one with a sense of earth's primitive convulsions. You feel as if lost in some vast lake-swallowing crater. You think of Thor and Prometheus, of Wagnerian epic and northern saga-such is the grim, dædal nudity of this vast amphitheater, fit setting for the dramas of mythical demigods.

CLIMBING TO THE TOP OF MONTENEGRO

I had just learned that one of the surrounding peaks rose to almost 6,000 feet when I overheard some one on the back

seat of our car asking rather peevishly, "But when do the mountains begin?"

Up and over 125 hairpin turns which score the mountain side, our car climbed toward loftily remote Montenegro. From the summit of the pass, at an altitude of almost one and one-eighth miles over the sheer drop, at the bottom of which lay a diminutive streak marking the town of Kotor, we beheld, as a birdman from his plane, the big, blue, tri-tongued stretch of the Boka Kotorska. It was so far beneath us as to appear inert, lifeless, and the Adriatic seemed merely a hazy blueness without contour, almost suggesting vacuity.

We were on the top of Montenegro. Its only visible cultivation consisted of small cups of farmland-"cups," I say, because they were each ranged about by sheer crags. Its habitations were stone hovels. Apparently its only denizens were ragged women, hoeing potatoes, and flocks of skinny goats.

To eastward and to southward there lay revealed, with scarcely a shrub or thorn bush to break its terrible monotony, a gray, billowing mass of stone-I had almost said a petrified sea-which stretched away toward snow-clad chains along the Albanian border.

As our car skirted this grim scene, I overheard the man on the back seat reiterate, more peevishly than before, "When do the real mountains begin?"

At lunch time, in Cetinje, the mystery of his disappointment was explained. It turned out that he lived on the top of Switzerland and had toyed with Mount Blanc and the Matterhorn ever since he was a child. Truly, be it ever so glacial, there's no place like home!

A PISTOL PICNIC IN MONTENEGRO

At Cetinje, too, the mystery of an apparently manless Montenegro was solved for us. Indeed, though we had seen no men in the fields, Montenegro turned out to be very much of a two-gun, he-man's country. I was introduced to this fact by a gorgeous individual who wore a crim son, gold-embroidered waistcoat, scarlet shako, bolero jacket, glossy kneeboots, and a purple sash which enfolded an armament of pistols and knives. He sat among a circle of wine-sipping Montene

M

AN'S interest in birds began in those far-distant primitive days when an intimate knowledge of all the wild life about him was often his only safeguard against starvation.

Long before the dawn of history the mystery in the great northerly and southerly movements each spring and autumn of vast numbers of birds of many kinds keenly interested him and stimulated his imagination. Fantastic theories were built up to account for them and entered into myths and folklore, where some still survive, even in civilized countries.

For a long period the flights of birds. were considered serious portents in the affairs of men and even of nations, and priests and soothsayers used them to awe the multitude and to read the future. Literature abounds in references to bird migrations, and the poets of the sagas as well as those of more recent times have felt the mystery of these movements and have repeatedly woven them into their writings.

It has long been known that some of the smaller birds that breed in the north appear in middle latitudes on their return in July. The number of these little voyagers increases in August and the movement is in full tide in September. The hosts of wild fowl linger mainly until October and November, when the frosts of approaching winter in the north send them southward.

The multitude of Warblers that went northward in spring so gaily bedecked in all the bravery of their nuptial colors come trooping back with their young, all clad in sober hues more fitting their present prosaic task of making a living off the

country, and laying in a goodly supply of fat to help meet any privations winter may hold in store in the warm southern lands they seek.

ESKIMOS WELCOME THE COMING OF
THE BIRDS

In far northern lands, where untold millions of Ducks and Geese and other wild fowl go to rear their young, the advent, during the last of April or early in May, of the first of these birds is the cause of exultant joy to the people. Contentment fills their hearts, for the coming of the birds marks the end of the long, cold period of scarcity and the beginning of that part of the year in which food is again plentiful.

In the old days fur traders in Canada and Alaska rewarded with tobacco the Indian or Eskimo who saw the first Goose winging its way overhead in spring. White men joined with the natives in the jubilant welcome to the newcomer. four consecutive seasons the writer witnessed such arrivals among the Eskimos on the icebound shore of Bering Sea.

In

The first comer was always a single Goose. He circled high overhead, surveying the snow-mantled region where he and his kind would later rear their young. Each time this "scout" appeared to be as excited at seeing his breeding ground as the people were to see him, and the bird would fill the air with a continuous series of loud, clanging notes, sometimes heard long before he could be seen.

After viewing the snowy landscape the scout always turned back and disappeared toward the Yukon without alighting and

his kind appeared no more until spots of bare ground became visible.

MILLIONS MIGRATE AS SEASONS CHANGE

The bird life of the United States is believed to total more than four billion individuals. This means that many hundred millions of migrants move north and south with the changing seasons. Though many go by day and may be seen by all who take the trouble to observe, vast numbers also pass by night.

During the height of the spring migration, those whose ears are attuned to Nature's voices may hear mysterious notes overhead, many of which may be recognized. They mark the course of winged travelers exulting in springtime vigor and approaching nuptials in the haunts which they seek toward the top of the world. Telescopes held on the moon at that time often reveal their silhouettes as they cross its face.

In autumn the throng moves southward over a longer period, and the travelers wear the soberer garb of everyday life.

Though it has been plain that migrating species, in general, move north and

south-the movements of some covering nearly or quite the entire length of the continent-yet only vague information on the subject has been available, since it was impossible to determine the movements of individuals. Through bird banding a method is now developed that will not only tell us where individual birds wander, but will enable us to trace their routes and determine the exact areas where they go in the north to rear their young or in the south to winter.

We may also learn something concerning the strange, sporadic occurrence of birds in parts of the world far distant from their homes.

Such wandering individuals are probably much more numerous than we suspect. This is indicated by the repeated occurrences of Robins, Bobolinks, and other American birds in England, and even on Helgoland, that insignificant islet in the North Sea where so many visitors from distant regions have been found. St. Paul Island, the largest of the small Pribilof Islands, in Bering Sea, appears to be another landing place for lost birds, judging from the number of stragglers from