• In Albania with The Ghegs
• Montenegro As We Saw It

IN ALBANIA WITH THE GHEGS

MAYHEW, Athol
Scribners Monthly
Volume 21, Issue 3
January 1881

TOMB OF SKANDERBEG AT ALESSIO

On the eastern shores of the Adriatic, at the southern extremity of the olive-clad coast of Dalmatia, a short distance beyond Cattaro, the Austrian rule over the Slav ceases, and the Turkish province of Albania begins. Geographically, the position of the country is described as “conterminous with the ancient Epirus and with the southern provinces of ancient Illyria,” and as including part of the classic soil of Macedonia and Chaonia. The serrated coast of Albania is washed in the north by the waters of the Adriatic, and bv the Gulf of Arta in the south. On the east it is separated from Servia and the Turkish province of Rumili by the rocky barrier of the Pindus and Scardus Mountains; Greece lies upon its southern frontier, and to the north it is bounded by Montenegro and Bosnia. From north to south Albania is barely three hundred miles in length, or a trifle shorter than Ireland; from the sea eastward to the Pindus and Scardus chain it nowhere extends inland beyond one hundred miles at its northern or broadest extremity, and this narrows down to thirty on the southern border. Ethnologically, Albania is broadly divided by the two great tribes or clans of Ngege, Ghegides, or Ghegs, who inhabit northern or Illyrian Albania, and the Toskides, or Tosks, who people the southern or Epirotic portion of the country. Colonel Leake and Johann George von Hahn, the only reliable authorities on the subject of Albania, mention a third clan called the Liape, a poor and predatory race who live in the mountains between the Toke and Delvius. The principal Gheg towns are Dulcigno, Scutari, and Durazzo, and the chief Tosk cities are Berat and Elbassan. The Albanians themselves, however, know no such scientific distinctions as Gheg or Tosk. In their own language, which recent research has pronounced to be an independent branch of the Indo-European family and, according to Humboldt, “the floating plank of a vessel that has been sunk in the ocean of time and lost for ages,” they call themselves Scipetaar, or “highlanders.” The Turks in a like manner ignore all tribe distinctions, and term them broadly Arnauds.

ALBANIAN HORSE WITH WOODEN PACK-SADDLE

The common belief is that Albania is thinly peopled. Square mile for square mile, no country on the borders of Albania possesses more populous centers. Scutari alone, the capital of the north, has a population of almost 27,000, and Joannina, the metropolis of the south, has quite as many inhabitants; Ochrida, Prisrend, Elbassan, and Berat are all considerable cities; nor are the minor towns of Dulcigno, Alessio, Durazzo, Croya, Jakova, and Ipek by any means thinly peopled. Hardly more exact is Dr. Arnold’s oft-quoted saying that Albania “is one of those ill-fated portions of the earth which, though placed in immediate contact with civilization, has remained perpetually barbarian.” Disguised in one form or another, this opinion has given color to English encyclopedias, until Albania has come to be regarded as a “very Botany Bay in moral geography”—a black, barbaric spot in Europe surrounded by a perfect halo of Slav civilization. That its people are, as yet, very far from the acme of civilization, all who know them will readily admit; but that they are so wofully behind the social advancement of their Slav neighbors is easy enough to disprove.

In the first place, the Albanians are not only industrious and skilled in various handicrafts, but the country has several representative manufactures which would not disgrace the art productions of our Western capitals. Can this be said of the Montenegrins, the Bosnians, or the Servians ? In the towns of Ipek and Jakova, gold and silver filigrees are made, far superior to Maltese work, both in the artistic feeling exhibited in the design, and the marvelous intricacy and delicacy of the finish of the workmanship. This glittering, lace-like Jakova work is eagerly sought for in every bazaar, and the costliest

as mentioned by Byron in “Don Juan,” and which are generally placed under the tiny Turkish coffee-cups,—are always of Albanian manufacture. Prisrend is famous for its carpets, but more particularly for the production of the magnificent silver-mounted pistols and chased and jewel-hilted yataghans, which lend such splendor to every opulent Albanian’s girdle; while Scutari is celebrated for the skill of its cloth-workers, and the dexterity of its gold embroiderers. Have the Slavs on the northern and eastern borders any industries such as these?

A MIRIDITE BY THE LAKE OF SCUTARI

Much has been said and more written of late concerning the turbulent spirit of the Albanians. But it must be remembered that the country is most exceptionally constituted, composed as it is of three opposing religious bodies, governed by a foreign power. The southern, or Tosk, Albanians belong, for the most part, to the Greek church; central Albania is chiefly Mahommedan; and northern, or Gheg, Albania is principally Roman Catholic. Add to this the fact that nearly all the Mahommedan Albanians are descended from Bektashes, or renegades from the Christian faith, and that, bitterly as these tripartite factions hate one another, they detest the Porte still more, and the only wonder left us is that internal strife and rebellion have not long ago decimated the population. Yet the Albanians are not so constantly at loggerheads with each other or their rulers as one might suppose. The existing troubles, for instance, cannot be traced to these sources. They have been brought about solely by the re-adjustment of the Albanian frontier under the decrees of the Berlin Treaty. By these stipulations a very considerable portion of the country has been awarded to the Arnauds’ hereditary foes, and Montenegro, Servia,and Greece each claim a portion of the Albanian border. Now, the Albanians are as distinct in race and language from their borderers, the Greeks and Slavs, as from their Moslem rulers. Even the most pronounced Slavophiles are compelled to regard the Scipetaars not merely as a tribe, but a nation. Moreover, their antiquity is as high as any of their neighbors’. Long before the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, Albania had its independence under a number of petty princes. The people are wont to boast of themselves as the only northern race who, in the fifteenth century, successfully checked the conquering arms of Mahomet the Great. This they did for twenty-four years under the leadership of the deathless George Castriot, or Skanderbeg, as the Turks called him. Such is the veneration of the Ghegs for his memory that his chivalrous deeds are the constant theme of their songs, whilst to this day—more than four hundred years after his death—the Christian mountaineers wear a short black mourning jacket or jurdin over their white woolen dress, in memory of him whom they love to style the champion of Albanian liberty. Thus, as the Montenegrins carry the kappa, so the Ghegs wear the jurdin—as a memento of their long struggle for liberty in days gone by, and as a symbol of the freedom which they believe is yet to come. It would be strange, indeed, then, if a nation with such a history, and with these aspirations, should tamely submit to see their country parceled out and divided among those who cannot claim to have beaten them in war.

A CHRISTIAN LADY OF ALBANIA

Much has been said and more written of late about the predatory habits and ferocious nature of the Albanian race. According to popular notions, the lowlanders are cutthroats and the highlanders brigands. The nearer the traveler gets to Albania, the louder and more positive become the dismal predictions concerning his fate on entering the country; and it was with many misgivings that Dick and I stepped from the loudra which had brought us across the Lake of Scutari from Montenegro, and set our feet on Albanian soil preparatory to entering the ancient town of Scutari or Skodra. We had our rifles and our revolvers with us, loaded against any emergency.

But our first experience of Albania dispelled the dark stain which ignorance had placed upon the people’s character. And after wandering in some of the wildest districts of the north,—among the Miridite mountaineers when we visited the tomb of Skanderbeg at Alessio, and through the heart of the Clementi tribes when we tried to get into Gusinje,—I can say that the only instance of brigandage which came to our knowledge was practiced by the lake boatmen, when they charged us a quadruple fare for rowing us from Karadagh to Scutari, and that the Albanians’ regard for the sanctity of our personal effects was such that we never had our saddle-bags stolen, as we did in “honest” Montenegro. The closing portion of this article will show that in our expedition to Gusinje we ran some risk of losing our heads, but the reader will also learn that the men who wanted to kill us were Bosniac Mahommedans, and that we were saved by the stanch fidelity of the Albanian Ghegs.

Candor compels me to mention an ugly blemish in the national character which, although little known to the outer world, is none the less observable in the race. I allude to the prevalence of blood-feuds amongst the various clans and religious factions in the country. If it were my object to palliate this savage custom, I might show that the vendetta has been time out of mind a rude form of retributive justice peculiar to most primitive highland races, and that, in maintaining this cowardly code of retaliation, the Albanians are neither better nor worse than were until within recent years the natives of the Basque provinces, the Corsicans, or even the Montenegrins. With these people, however, it was a barbarism of the past; with the Arnauds it is an all-prevailing practice of the present. Under these blood-feud laws, the most cowardly and cold-blooded murders—one can call them by no milder name—are of daily occurrence. The entire population is armed to the teeth against this ceaseless vendetta, and the burial-places are crowded with its victims; yet there is no authority in the country powerful enough to suppress it. So the barbarous custom prevails from one extremity of the country to the other,—alike in the crowded bazaars I and on the lonely hill-side, wherever the avenger and the victim meet,—and the Porte is powerless to punish because it is not strong enough to rule. The blood-feud, however, is confined by the people to the settlement of their own private quarrels, so that, unless a stranger is injudicious enough to intermeddle, he need have no alarm about his own safety in the country.

It would be difficult to point to a country within nine days’ traveling distance from Paris so picturesquely quaint as Albania. It is a land above all others for the artist— a country locked within itself—a little stationary world within our vast whirligig outer one, where mediaevalism is preserved in the most delicious freshness. It is the land of Iskander as when Iskander himself ruled over it. The billowy landscapes of the mountainous north are far more changeful than the people, for nature under the thin highland air is as various as the chameleon—now iridescent with the rainbow lights of dawn, next gleaming white and azure under the fierce midday sun, and anon wrapped in the violet mantle of the night. But time may come and go, and show the mountains and the lakes under a thousand different aspects, and yet the people have only one—that of their forefathers.

The splendid costume of Albania is brought vividly before the untraveled mind by Byron’s memorable description of

Decked in this white and red and golden magnificence, he is to-day as picturesquely prominent in every Albanian bazaar as when the poet saw him in the south at the commencement of the century. But accurate as is this picture of a Tosk Albanian,—for Byron never traveled north,—it cannot be applied to the Christian Gheg. Curiously enough, the snowy kilt or festan is affected only by the lowland Mohammedans in the north. From the days of Iskander the mountain tribes have worn their own peculiar white woolen garments, and by these the clans are distinguishable at a glance.

THE FRONTIER GUARD

In my article on Montenegro, I ended by saying that the peace which the Prince looked forward to so hopefully was hourly threatened, at the time of our sojourn in the country, by the troubles on the Albanian border, arising from the annexation of territory at Gusinje by the Montenegrins. On our arrival in Scutari, we found the people in a patriotic ferment, and the outbreak of a war with the Slavs—for which we had waited some time in Podgoritza—appeared to be imminent. This warlike demonstration against the Montenegrins appeared to be a purely popular one, for which the Turkish authorities were in no degree answerable. The little border rebellion, we were told, had been entirely organized by a patriotic secret association styling itself the Albanian League. While I was in Scutari, I made it my business to interview several chiefs of this League, so as to become acquainted with the governing principles of a secret society which is at the present moment sufficiently strong not only to openly defy the Turkish Government, but to number among its members some of the foremost officials of the Porte in Albania. In my opinion, the Albanian League is the forerunner of a general rebellion against Ottoman rule. In its infancy, the League was, no doubt, encouraged by the Turks as a convenient “cat’s-paw,” wherewith to tease the irritable Slav. But now the Government stands aghast and almost paralyzed at the hot-blooded ferocity of the very creatures they helped to create. The anarchy and lawlessness existing lately at Prisrend, where the European consuls were imprisoned by the mob in their consulates, and where the Russian representative was shot at through his own door, are but slight illustrations of the utter inability of the existing authorities to cope with the present disorder and anarchy; while the unavenged murder of Mehemet Ali at Jakova shows too plainly how powerless is all justice in the land.

A FRONTIER GUARD ON DUTY

The following are the guiding principles of the Albanian League, as given to me by one of the most influential chiefs of that body in Scutari:

The Albanian League is a purely patriotic association, composed of all grades of Albanians, having for its object the determined resistance of any annexation of territory by foreign powers. Thus Montenegro, Servia, and Greece—countries which have all received portions of Albania, under the conditions of the Berlin Treaty—are, each, in turn, to be vigorously opposed in any effort to occupy the land awarded them. The head-quarters of the League, my informant said, were at Prisrend; but the leader of the fraternity, Ali Pasha, was then at Gusinje, organizing the revolt against the Montenegrin occupation of that district. Money, I was told, had been subscribed for the purpose at Scutari and other Albanian towns; and in the event of the League succeeding against Montenegro, it was their determination to fight Servia or Greece, as soon as either country endeavored to take an acre of Albanian ground. Further, I learned, in the event of this programme proving successful, it was the intention of the Albanians to declare their independence. Turkey, according to the notions of the League, was not capable of governing its own affairs, and Albania was the most flagrant example of the maladministration of its provinces, for here the officials of the Porte not only robbed and plundered the people, but left them without soldiers or gensdarmes to protect their lives and property. For these reasons the Albanians were determined to cast off the Ottoman yoke, and at all hazards to try and establish their country once more as an independent principality. In the event of the aspirations of the League proving successful, they had decided to offer the rulership of Albania to Midhat Pasha, the only man, my informant said,—but it must be borne in mind that he was a Mahommedan,—who had proved himself a thoroughly honest and capable statesman.¹

A SCENE IN A BAZAAR

As we had by this time become very much interested in the ultimate conclusion of the Gusinje question, we determined, if possible, to visit the place, and judge for ourselves as to the probable success of the Albanian cause. No sooner, however, were our intentions mentioned at the Hotel Toschli, than the utmost powers of the Scutarine Christians who frequented the cafe were exerted to dissuade us from our contemplated journey. Toschli himself was tearfully supplicative on the subject. Were we mad?—he asked. Did we not know that a Christian’s life in Gusinje would be as brief as an infidel’s days in Mecca? Were we aware that Their Excellencies the Frontier Commissioners had been stoned and pelted with mud by the Mahommedans when they tried to enter even the neighborhood of Ali Pasha’s head-quarters? And, above all, had we no regard for our honored heads? Finding, at last, that we were determined upon our projects, our friends ceased from troubling, and confined themselves to looking at us with that melancholy cast of countenance peculiar to those who gaze upon the condemned.

The shortest route from Scutari to Gusinje was by the mountain passes cleaving through the heart of the districts of Kastrati and Clementi. The reported ferocity of the northern mountaineers, however, rendered our journey impossible without a safe-conduct, and the method of procedure in order to obtain one is sufficiently peculiar to warrant a few words upon the subject. As the Ghegs of the highlands are all Roman Catholics, it is necessary for them to appoint at the Pashalik of Scutari a Mahommedan representative, who acts in their behalf much in the same manner as a consul represents his nation in a foreign capital. This worthy is called the Boluk-Bashi of the tribe, and among the various duties of his office it is his province to grant safe-transit passes to all persons who may have business within his district. Armed with a passport from a Boluk-Bashi, escorts are unnecessary, and the traveler may wander unharmed through the wildest mountain passes, with much more security than he has in the streets of Scutari. A safe-conduct pass, however, is by no means easy to procure, as the Boluk-Bashi will only grant them to such persons as he can prudently permit within his territory. Foreigners, too, are looked upon with considerable suspicion by the mountaineers, and a recommendation from an official of the Porte to a Boluk-Bashi is more likely to prejudice him than to allay his suspicion. The existing relationship, indeed, between the mountaineers and the Turkish Government is none of the most cordial kind. The Ghegs of the hills and the Mahommedans of the plains have neither race nor religion in common, so that it requires considerable diplomatic tact and delicate manipulation on the part of the Pasha to prevent the Arnauds breaking out in open hostility to the Porte. As it is, no Turkish official will trust himself without a strong escort in the neighborhood of the mountains, while soldiers seldom venture, except in companies, through the northern passes. Indeed, at this moment it is the invariable custom of the Arnauds to pounce upon all military stragglers, and ease them of their Peabody-Martini rifle,—a weapon which the Government would not allow them to carry, preferring, as a precautionary measure, to serve out the inferior Snider to them when the tribes were armed by the Porte against Montenegro in the last war. The number of Martinis which must have been “lifted” from the Government in this unceremonious manner may be computed when I state that, during my journey north, I passed through a territory occupied by 5000 hill men, and that every mountaineer on the rocks, every plowman at his plow, every shepherd tending his flock, and every driver with his team of pack-horses, carried the Government Martini upon his shoulder. But the mountaineers are too proud a race to steal, preferring exchange to robbery, so it is their invariable custom, whenever a luckless soldier comes in their way, to make a point of presenting him with their obsolete Sniders in consideration of the more approved Martini.

A BANQUET IN THE MOUNTAINS

The independence of the mountaineers being a natural outcome from the security of their position, fortified as they are in the hills among ramparts of rock and citadels of stone, considerable circumspection is necessary before the stranger trusts himself within the reach of a race trained almost from infancy to the use of arms, and rendered ferocious by almost ceaseless border wars. It was, therefore, with a fixed determination to remain in Scutari should our efforts fail, that we set to work to procure a safe-conduct pass from the Boluk-Bashi of the Clementi tribe. The moment, however, that our nationality was mentioned to the consul of the Clementi highlanders, we were promised not only free entrance and safety among the northern hills, but a hearty welcome from every mountaineer in the Boluk-Bashi’s district. But, despite this protection, our attempt to get into Gusinje was considered sufficiently desperate among the Scutarines to preclude all chance of our hiring a dragoman to accompany us on the journey. In vain we tried the force of argument and the weight of Turkish gold— usually a most alluring bait in Albania, where the currency looks remarkably like tin-plate. So at sunrise on a November Sunday of 1879 we went dragomanless to the house of our Boluk-Bashi, with about ten words of Albanese and as many Bosniac verbs in our vocabulary, bound on a three-days’ ride through the Clementi Mountains to learn the true state of affairs in Gusinje.

It was flattering to find, on our arrival at the house, the Boluk-Bashi himself mounted and equipped, and ready to escort us to Selza, the principal village of Clementi. His presence with us was intended to make security doubly secure. Adem-Agar, as he was named, had discarded his town dress, with its voluminous white kilt and innumerable red embroidered waistcoats, and sat in the saddle, clad in the handsome white-woolen, black-braided, tight-fitting hose and waistcoat of the Arnaud mountaineer. The low Albanian fez, with its ponderous blue-silk tassel, was no longer on his head, but in its place he wore the white felt skull-cap, with its picturesque Arab-like turban—the traditional head-gear of the immortal Skanderbeg. Thus we found him in the inclosed court-yard of his house, sitting erect upon a small white half-bred Arabian mare—a handsome, well-knit figure, and armed at all points, with a couple of silver-hilted pistols and a formidable yataghan at his waist, three or four silver-gilt cartridge-boxes around his middle, and a Peabody-Martini rifle slung by its strap from his shoulder.

ADEM-AGAR, THE BOLUK-BASHI

Our route to Selza lay north along the flat, marshy ground of the eastern or Turkish shore of the lake of Scutari—a tolerable road for an Albanian highway, over which we could even occasionally indulge in short canters, checked, ever and anon, by small lakes of mud, through which our horses waded fetlock deep. Adem-Agar, we soon discovered, was well known on the road. The purport of our journey was put to him interrogatively by every peasant we passed; but the word “Gusinje” invariably met with a dubious shake of the head, most unpleasantly significant of the perils awaiting us at our journey’s end. At Koplik we made a brief halt at a way-side khan for a hurried meal of maize bread and sour goat’s-cheese and coffee, taken a la ‘Tnrque, squatting on the mud-floor around a blazing log-fire, for afready the weather was none of the warmest, and then, after an inspiriting pull at the raki-flask, we took saddle for the village of Kastrati, where we were to pass the night. An hour’s ride from Koplik the easy character of the road began to change, and our ascent commenced up the bleak northern mountains. As we advanced, the track gradually narrowed down from a road broad enough to take a country cart, into a thin, ribbon-like course, suggestive, from its rugged rockiness, of the channel of a mountain stream. It is astonishing how unerringly the sure-footed Albanian horses pick out from among a labyrinth of stone the crevices and fissures of the track, which generally winds and twists over bowlders worn smooth as polished marble, or plunges down through loose angular crags as sharp as spear-heads. And this is the more wonderful, perhaps, when we notice the manner in which the horses are shod. Both in Montenegro and Albania the horseshoes are made in the shape of plates, with a small central hole, which completely cover the hoof and frog. These shoes are attached by strong arrow-head nails, bent over the plate in such a manner as to allow the horse to obtain a grip with their angular edges. They seem to answer their purpose admirably, although apparently opposed to our notions of scientific farriery. Slipping and stumbling over rocks and down ravines, now dismounting to ease our weary horses when the track was easy, and mounting again when our untrained feet could no longer find secure foot-hold, we reached at night-fall the village of Kastrati.

A WAY-SIDE KHAN

The hospitality of the house that gave us shelter was unbounded. Small trees were heaped upon the fire in the center of the floor, and scarcely were we seated by the ruddy glow which centered around a circle of smiling faces, than there was a sound without as of the strangulation of a hen. Presently some men entered bearing a newly slaughtered sheep, still warm and dressed entire, with a huge wooden spit running through the steaming carcass from head to tail. We smiled approvingly, and, for lack of language, bowed our acknowledgments and ejaculated “Mir! mir!” (good! good!) with great heartiness; for in Albania the mish ipikitaun, or sheep roasted whole, is the greatest mark of consideration and friendship a mountaineer can offer his guests. Who could describe the orgies which followed upon the dismemberment of the mish? We took our food after the primitive custom of the country, sitting on the floor and using one hand for a plate and our fingers for knives and forks. We swallowed lumps of tepid mutton-fat, and washed them down with draughts of a peculiar home-brew which tasted like rancid mead. Then we had a course of hot lard and honey-cakes, followed by an entree of sheep’s kidneys. Next a big gourd full of raki was put into circulation, and once again we returned to our mutton. But it was fearfully trying work, and after an hour or so of persistent muttonizing I tried to feign sleep as the only possible escape from apoplexy. Scarcely had I closed my eyes, however, when our host pressed a warm sheep’s-trotter into my reluctant hand, with a reproachful gesture which said too plainly, revenons a nos moutons! During all this feasting the women-folk sat apart in a corner of the cabin, twirling yarn from their distaffs, and ever and anon casting anxious glances at the rapidly disappearing meat. Late in the night, when the mish ipikitaun was almost exhausted, and we had coiled ourselves up like satiated boa-constrictors under our several blankets, they were permitted to sup upon our broken victuals; for not even in the mountains in Albania are the women permitted to join their lords in the pleasures of the table. For want of any other accommodation we slept that night where we had supped—upon the floor, with our toes toasting at the embers of the fire, and our heads pillowed on our saddle-bags. But before I was wafted into the land of Nod I saw one of the mountaineers still picking at a blade-bone of mutton, and when it was perfectly clean he held it up to the light of the fire, and, according to the invariable custom of the country, began to explain aloud to a group of eager listeners the prophetic pictures which every mountaineer believes are to be traced in the transparent portions of the bone.

NIKLEKA, CHIEF OF THE CLEMENTIS

In northern Albania, the hours of travel are limited by the nature of the mountain tracks to daylight. It is fearfully slow work, too, scaling ladders of stone and stumbling down giant staircases of smoothly worn bowlders; so that three miles an hour on horseback, and about three and a half on foot, may be reckoned as a fair average of speed in the highlands. The second day of our journey toward Gusinje lay through some of the most magnificent scenery in Albania; along elevated plateaux covered with the red-berried arbutus, up purple-hued, snowcapped mountains seamed with a thousand cascades of snow-water, through forests of beech aglow with autumn tints, and resounding with the shepherds’ guns as they drove their flocks by firing blank cartridges at them ; by the rugged plain of Arapshia, and thence over the towering summit of the wooded Velikci, from whence our descent commenced by a perilous zig-zag path—a veritable via mala, where we dismounted, and, following the Boluk-Bashi’s example, hung on to our horses’ tails at each angle of the track to prevent them plunging headforemost into the abyss beneath—into the ravine where, at the bottom, the rushing Zem marks the boundary between the leafy heights of Albania and the gray ramparts of Montenegro. At the head of this defile, bounded on the north by the mountains of Triepsci and on the south by those of Nikci, we crossed the little bridge of Tamar, at the point where the river makes a fork and is joined from above by the waters of the Vukoli. Three hours’ riding up the valley of the Zem brought night-fall upon us; but soon the welcome sound of baying dogs told us we were nearing a village, and, sure enough, ten minutes later the yelping curs of Selza were snapping and snarling at our horses’ heels as we entered the yard in front of the cottage of Nikleka, cru or chief of the tribe of the dementis. Here the mission of our Boluk-Bashi ended. From this point Nikleka was to put his highland wits to work to try and smuggle us safely into Gusinje. We soon learned, however, that Nikleka was not at home, being at the time of our arrival in Selza, in the stronghold of Ali Pasha. But his brother, who welcomed us to the cottage in the chief’s absence, at once volunteered to take our letter of recommendation to Nikleka in Gusinje. He was on the point of arming himself before setting out for this purpose, when a cheery-looking Franciscan monk came bustling into the cottage and saluted us in Italian. The sound of something approaching to an intelligible tongue was most welcome to our ears, for hitherto our powers of conversation in the Albanian language had been limited to inquiries respecting such necessaries of life as coffee, bread, cheese, and mutton; so that the more elaborate efforts of sociability or conviviality had always to be conveyed by us through the primitive signs of pantomime and facial contortion. In the Franciscan padre, however, we found, at length, and where we least expected it, a pleasant and a courteous dragoman, with whom we conversed in a marvelous jargon of French, Latin, and Italian, and which we were astonished to find he comprehended sufficiently to translate into Albanese. Padre Gabrielle, as the monk was called, was overcome with astonishment on hearing that we were en route for Gusinje, and abandoned himself to many pious ejaculations of despair on finding that we were not to be shaken from our purpose by the picture he drew for us of a town in which anarchy and lawlessness reign supreme, and where six thousand of the Mahommedan rabble of Ipek, Jakova, and Prisrend were being incited to bloodshed by fanatical Mollahs and the ferocious instigators of the murder of Mehemet Ali. One thing, however, we were surprised to learn from the Franciscan, which was that the Christian Arnauds were holding sternly aloof from the machinations of the Albanian League. His statement we subsequently discovered to be true, and, from inquiry among all classes of mountaineers, it became evident to us that the League was a purely Mahommedan institution, and that the rebels in Gusinje had neither the sympathy nor the aid of the surrounding Albanian Christians. Nikleka being absent in Gusinje, where he held house property about which he was anxious on account of its proximity to the cannon of the Montenegrin captain, Marko Milano, it was suggested by Padre Gabrielle that the only safe method of insuring our heads in the rebel town was to get written permission from Ali Pasha to visit him. Accordingly, a letter asking for an interview with the rebel chief was written on our behalf by the monk and dispatched forthwith by Nikleka’s brother. It was also arranged that we were to await an answer at a khan at a place called Groppa, some three hours’ march from Gusinje. At noon on the following day, after a night’s most hospitable entertainment at the little Franciscan mission-house, we started for a four-hour’s ride through the ice and snow of the lofty northern peaks to await Ali Pasha’s answer at the Groppa khan. The kindly monks had stored our saddle-bags before we left them with bread and mutton and a goat’s-skin full of wine ; nor was their thoughtfulness unappreciated when we discovered, on our arrival at Groppa, that the khan was the only habitation which gave a name to the locality, and that it was destitute of every necessary of life save coffee. In this wretched and gloomy little shanty, bare of either windows or chimney, and blackened by the tar of wood-smoke to such a degree of shiny pitchiness that the rough-hewn walls look as though they were built out of coal, we whiled away the day squatting around a log-fire and listening to the dismal drone of the gusla, while the son of the landlord beguiled the hours with an interminable chant laudatory of the deeds of the great Skanderbeg. At dusk we huddled together under our blankets by the embers—the landlord, with his wife and family, retiring to a little pen in the corner of the cabin which served them for a common sleeping-chamber, while the fowls roosted on the charred rafters immediately over our heads. In the depth of the night our sleep was broken by the baying of dogs, and Nikleka, the Clementi chief, entered the khan, the bearer of a letter to us from Ali Pasha. We could make nothing of it, however, as it was written in Albanian, and as neither Nikleka nor the landlord could read writing, there was no help for it but for the chief to go on to Selza and get it translated by Padre Gabrielle.

ENTRANCE TO A FISHING-VILLAGE OF ALBANIA

It was a bitterly cold morning, with a biting bora blowing up the snow-clad valley of Groppa, when the Franciscan father came to us at the khan. We could tell at once, from the serious expression on his generally jovial face, that Ali Pasha’s reply to our letter was unfavorable. His answer ran as follows: “I salute the reverend father. I have read, I have understood, and also have assembled the chiefs, who will go to the khan Budoch. We cannot suspend operations. If these persons will guarantee that the Slavs will retire, let them come. Not being sureties, they need not come, as they cannot protect us.” Read between the lines, this letter said, as plainly as a Turk can write: “If you come to us, and the Montenegrins do not withdraw immediately from the heights commanding Gusinje, you will answer for it with your heads.” Moreover, Nikleka told us that at the council of the chiefs, assembled by Ali Pasha to discuss our letter, most of them insisted upon our being Russian diplomatic agents, sent to spy into the strength of their position. In the face of Ali Pasha’s letter, and Nikleka’s statement, therefore, we saw no other way of keeping our heads safely on our shoulders than by giving up our enterprise, and clearing out of the neighborhood as quickly as possible. Indeed, our safety at the khan was extremely hazardous, owing to its proximity to Gusinje—as it appeared from what Nikleka further told us, that immediately on the dissolution of the council of chiefs in Gusinje a party of thirty soldiers had resolved to set out in the night with the object of surrounding our hut and firing upon us in our sleep. It was fortunate for us that their scheme came to the ears of Ali Pasha, and that his authority, in a place given up to the wildest anarchy, was strong enough to prevent them putting their murderous plans into execution. While we were still discussing the bloodthirsty fanaticism of the Gusinjean rebels, and Nikleka was telling us that he himself had fled the town, for no Christian was safe within its walls since the Mollahs had armed themselves and were inciting the mob, there entered, suddenly, at the door of our cabin two armed Turks, who seated themselves unceremoniously by our side at the fire. The face of the Franciscan blanched, as he whispered in our ears in Latin, “Milites Gusiniani.” There was a sudden pause in our conversation, succeeded, on our part, by an involuntary motion toward the wall of the hut, where our revolvers hung. But as the Gusinjean soldiers remained calmly smoking their cigarettes, squatting by the fire, and looking, outwardly, at least, “the mildest-mannered men that ever cut a throat,” we prudently left our weapons where they were, and awaited the speaking of our unwelcome guests. The men were both Bosniac Mahommedans, one of them wearing a patched and threadbare Turkish artillery uniform, and the other merely a pink striped shirt and red embroidered waistcoat, and the regulation Turkish trovv-sers. Both were fully armed with pistols, cartridge-belts, yataghans, and breech-loading rifles, which they retained in defiance of the custom of the country, which obliges every friendly traveler to hang his arms upon the wall on entering a khan in the mountains. It was obvious, from the upshot of Padre Gabrielle’s conversation with these fellows on our behalf, that the object of their coming was to try and decoy us from the khan, and nearer to Gusinje, under the pretext of a parley with some chiefs of the League at the Budoch khan, in order either to murder us there, away from the protection of the mountaineers, or, failing this, to take us prisoners into Gusinje, where, as we were by this time aware, the sight of us would be sufficient to excite the Mussulmans into a fury from which it would be impossible even for Ali Pasha to save us. Finding that we were firm in our determination to remain where we were, one of them calmly and dispassionately asked the mountaineers assembled in the hut to aid them in killing us where we stood. The proposition was made in the Bosniac tongue, by the Mahommedan in the ragged artillery uniform, at the very moment when the villain was sipping some coffee we had given him. But the fierce answer which seemed literally to flash from Nikleka, as mouthpiece of his tribe, was evidently of such an unexpected kind, that both the rascals jumped to their feet, and hurried out of the khan with the utmost precipitation. Whereupon, the mountaineers posted a guard up in the rocks to prevent a surprise in numbers, and we rode rapidly back to Selza, where, in the sanctuary of the Franciscan mission-house, we could more safely congratulate ourselves upon our narrow escape, and thank Nikleka for delivering us from the cut-throats of Gusinje. The bitter Albanian winter had already set in with some severity when we left the worthy Franciscan brothers of Clementi, and journeyed back over the ice and snow to the northern capital. Our attempt to get into Gusinje had proved a failure; yet our disappointment was moderated by the knowledge that, in traveling to the Groppa khan, we had penetrated farther than had any foreigner before into the fastnesses of the northern highlands.

Nikleka himself escorted us to Scutari, and we made much of him at the Hotel Toschli. We had no mish ipikitaun to offer the Clementi chieftain, but the Greek cook gave our valiant highlander such a novel succession of gastronomic surprises, that Nikleka declared to us he would banquet on the recollection of them for many a day.

On our part, we shall long remember the unflinching friendship and hospitality that was shown us when we sojourned with the Ghegs in Albania.

1) Even as I write these lines, five months after my interview with the chief of the League, the following proclamation has been issued by that patriotic body to their fellow-countrymen:

“Albanians: Europe has created a principality for the Bulgarians, has delivered Bosnia and the Herzegovina to Austria, has endowed Servia and Montenegro with territorial aggrandizement and independence, has given Roumelia autonomy; but what have we received? Absolutely nothing. We Albanians, who are not immigrants, but natives of the soil of this country, who obtained our independence centuries ago, must claim the right to create a State for ourselves. Thessaly, Epirus and Albania proper are the fatherland of the three million Albanians, and this our fatherland must be free and independent, and governed by a prince. We will obtain that or die in the attempt.”

From this it is evident that the League has now cast aside all secrecy, and that open revolt to the Ottoman rule is an accomplished fact.