The terrible passes of the Duga offered ideal positions for a defense by such a force as the Montenegrin,--brave, good shots, and absolutely obedient to orders; and the best military advice on our side pronounced them impregnable if properly defended.
So the Prince went to Ostrog, and the northern army took position on the plain of Niksich, the advance posts being connected with headquarters at Ostrog by telegraph, and I took up my quarters with the Prince in the convent.

With great ability, Suleiman out-manoeuvred Vucotich in the Duga, and debouched in the plain near Niksich before the Montenegrin army could reach Plamnitza, where the valley of the Zeta and our position at Ostrog were to be defended, and if Suleiman had pushed on without stopping to recruit he might have taken us all in our quarters.

The mendacious dispatches of victory from the Montenegrin commander gave us to believe that the Turks were kept at bay, until we found that they were actually in Niksich, and there was not a single battalion to serve as bodyguard to the Prince at Ostrog.
Simultaneously with the attack on Duga, the army of Ali Saib attacked on the south; but, defeated most disastrously two days in succession, was obliged to relinquish the effort to meet Suleiman in Danilograd, where, if united, they would have held the principality by the throat.
The reports of the fight from Bozo sent me down to get the details of the victory, of which he had given me by telegraph a summary account, and I arrived at his headquarters at Plana, overlooking the Turkish movements, late that afternoon, accepting an invitation to pass the night and see the operations of the next day.

Until I arrived at his camp Bozo had received no information of the passage of the Duga, nor of the relief of Niksich; but I had not been with him two hours before we saw the smoke arising from the villages on the northern slopes of the heights that commanded the head of the valley of the Zeta, which connects the plains of Niksich and Podgoritza and divides Montenegro into two provinces, anciently two principalities,--the Berdas and the Czernagora or Black Mountain.

This conflagration showed that Suleiman had crowned the heights, and would have no more difficulty in descending through the valley to Danilograd.