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2n/Lºlo (-ºi -, - (-4-4-
THE
EASTERN SHORES OF THE
ADRIATIC IN 1863.
} { .. -/
__. ------ ~~~
WITH A VISIT TO MONTEN E G R.O.
BY THE
VISCOUNTESS STRANGFORD,
A U THOR OR ‘R GYPTIAN SEPU L CHRES AND SYRIAN S IIT IN ES.”
LONDON :
RICHARD BENT LEY,
12 U. BLISHER IN OR DIN ARY TO II E R M A JESTY.
1 S (; 4.

I, ONDON
P R IN TE D BY SPOTTI S W O OD E AN ID CO,
NEW-STREET SQUARE
Q
3.
º,
PREFA CE.
—H-
HIS brief narrative of a summer's journey is not
offered to the public as containing any very
new or important information. The ground, how-
ever, is not as yet hackneyed, and some account of
it may interest the general reader.
Those who seek for something better and more
solid, I gladly refer to the three chapters added by
my husband.
CO N T E N T S.
— — —
CHAP. FAGE
I. SouTHERN ALBANIA e e ſº & ... 1
II. A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS . * . 66
III. RAGUSA . tº * e e ſº tº. . 92
IV. MoNTENEGRO . & * * e . 131
V. A FEW WORDS ON NorthERN ALBANIA . 200
VI. DALMATIA . * * * º . . 215
VII. Chaos . . . . . . . . 295
ILLUSTRATIONS.
— -º-–—
Frontispiece
to face page 41
27
3 *
3 y
LIST OF
VIEW OF IoANNINA
VIEW OF SULI
VIEW OF TSETINJE .
PORTRAIT OF MIRKO
VIEW OF ALMISSA
141
149
250
THE
EASTERN SHORES OF THE ADRIATIC.
—e-->e-
CHAPTER I.
SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
Wº had arrived in Corfu early in May 1863,
hoping to find a fresh and breezy spring still
smiling there; but a precocious summer had been
beforehand with us. Corfu boasts a more rainy
climate than the general average of Greece, and,
when everything in Attica is burnt up, sun-baked,
and buried in clouds of dust, the more fortunate
Ionian island retains its lovely spring verdure till
almost the middle of June. But this year both the
earlier and the latter rains had entirely failed, not
only in the islands, but throughout Hungary and
the Roumelian countries as far as Constantinople.
The people were already prophesying drought and
famine, and their anxieties on that account occu-
pied them far more than their hopes and doubts
arising out of the prospect of the annexation. For
B
2 | SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
several days we were deluded by the sight of a low
black band of clouds rising in beneficent menace
over the Albanian mountains, and stretching along
the dull metallic sky towards the island. This
took place regularly in the early part of the
afternoon; but each time we were doomed to the
disappointment of hearing the faintly-rumbling
thunder lose itself in the far distance, and watching
the thin curtain of rain fade away in mid-chan-
nel without a drop reaching the island; and the
unfortunate town continued as close, sultry, and
airless as ever. It was too hot and dusty to walk,
drive, eat, or sleep ; and consequently the only
alternative was to leave it. I had taken a longing
for cool breezes and green glades, and so I gladly
made up a party of friends, while my husband was
in Constantinople, for a fortnight's picnic in the
mountains. We started on June 1, intending to
make Ioãnnina, the capital of Southern Albania,
our farthest point.
Our expedition was of the rough-and-ready
kind: some of us were old campaigners at tent-life
and horseback-travelling, and some of us were too
young and gay and new to everything not to take
each désagrément as an additional pleasure. We
were three ladies and three gentlemen; and we had
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 3
provided ourselves with two tents, a cook, and two
men-servants, whose only fault was that they were
as incapable of accomplishing any part of their duty
as the cook was innocent of all cooking. The
gentlemen, therefore, not only pitched the tents, but
they also superintended the saucepans, while the
servants looked on, talked, and drank up the wine
and brandy in our stores.
The “Petrel,' the little yacht of the Lord High
Commissioner, carried us gallantly, before a fresh
sirocco, across the channel to the bay of Santa
Quaranta,”—a dreary spot, hemmed in by steep grey
cliffs, with the warning masts of sunken brigs
sticking up in the unquiet waters. The house of
the unfortunate British consular agent, who has to
pass his time in this cheerful place, is the only
habitation visible. It stands near the ruins of a
very large Venetian castle, which once guarded this
shore, but of which there are now no remains worth
inspecting.
As the horses and guides we had engaged to
meet us at 5 P.M. had not yet arrived, we were
glad to have the yacht to sleep in ; and, considering
the way punctuality is understood east of the
* No doubt it is bad Italian, thus to turn forty saints into one
woman, but everybody at Corfu does so.
B 2
4 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
Adriatic, we thought ourselves fortunate in seeing
the desired troop of quadrupeds arrive at the
shore between 5 and 6 A.M. of the following day.
I say quadrupeds, not as a fine way of saying
horses in three syllables, but because they were
a set of nondescript screws, which even a horse-
dealer or a naturalist might hesitate before pro-
nouncing horse, ass, or mule. After one look at the
animals, and one attempt at saddling them, we sent
our half-dozen English saddles on board again, and
consigned ourselves to the common Samária, or pack-
saddles of the country. I counsel every traveller,
but more especially all ladies, to follow our example.
These saddles are square, with a large wooden
cross-piece at each end, against which one can lean
in ascending or descending a steep mountain; a
shawl or pillow tightly tied on makes them perfectly
comfortable; they are easily mounted at either
side, and they do not fret the beast who carries
them, as any contrivance to which he is not ac-
customed would do—a consideration of some value
where the paths are steep and laborious, and the
footing insecure.
The first start of a newly-combined party is
always an affair of difficulty, and a trial of patience;
the first day's march is sure to be one of no small
irregularity. We formed no exception to the rule:
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 5
ere any of us had mounted, one lively mule had,
regardless of his load, playfully gambolled up and
down the steep hill-side, scattering blankets, boxes,
and bags among the rocks, and converting us un-
animously to his own opinion that there was no use
in engaging him to be of our party.
After an immensity of screaming, talking, bustl-
ing, and coaxing, we at last started up a winding
path over the hills, which were thickly covered with
thorns “ and flowers, and which gave us from the
summit a beautiful view of the wide plain between
us and the Delvino mountains. This plain is
covered with green meadows and luxuriant hedges
of agnus castus, with streams winding over it in all
directions : almost all of them are branches of the
Pavla, a river that runs into the lake of Butrinto.
We descended a rough rocky path, along which the
whole party succeeded in missing and losing each
other, and, fording or picking our way over at least
twenty of these channels, we came at last to the
commencement of the village of Delvino, an un-
usually pretty place. The houses are scattered
over a dozen steep-sided hills, and hidden between
* Paliurus aculeatus. The whole of Albania and most of
Dalmatia is covered over with this shrub, in hedges and
bushes. It is pretty and gay to look at, but its thorns are
dreadful.
6 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
the thick woods and gardens that clothe them.
Here and there two or three houses cluster round
an old mosque or a ruined tower, but they are
mostly dotted about singly: and the distances are
so great that from one end to the other would take
at least two hours' walking. The ruined palace of
Selim Bey stands commandingly on the summit of
a lofty hill. º
As we had divided upon the plain into three or
four different paths, the first thing to be done when
we had reached Delvino was to find each other; but
this was not accomplished until we had wandered
far and wide, loudly shouting, and enquiring from
every man, woman, and child we could see. We
were decidedly in difficulties, for it was the hour of
the mid-day sleep, and our enquiries were made in
Greek, while the seeming answers were given in
Albanian—neither party in the least understanding
the other. At last, after three hours of this work,
we were all transferred into the Mudir's or Bey's
house, while the servants were sent to unload the
mules in a neighbouring olive garden. The Bey
welcomed us with some hospitality, and entered
into an animated conversation with Capt. S. in
Greek; meantime we received visits from several
small gentlemen in crimson uniforms, of which the
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 7
Bey informed us, with modest pride and a certain
grave chuckle of satisfaction, his house contained
‘immense quantities!' Whereupon we agreed to
take leave as quickly as possible. It was now late
in the afternoon, and, as the Bey mounted his
horse to accompany us, we observed a crowd of
people, most brilliantly dressed, collecting round a
house close by, from which strains of music were
proceeding. I have reason to believe that this was
the ‘inevitable marriage ceremony” that reviewers
declare makes its appearance sooner or later in every
traveller's pages. I cannot, therefore, venture to
say more than that it sounded very gay and pretty,
although it lasted to a much later hour than was at
all convenient to the wearied ones of our party,
three of whom had walked fifteen miles that day,
—a tolerable feat for the first attempt of a girl of
sixteen.
It is worth remarking that the dew this night
was quite Oriental; being enough, in fact, nearly to
saturate the tent. No traveller in Albania should
omit taking a good blanket or two, or, what is
better, a Zante quilt (a double counterpane, wadded
with cotton wool), and certainly some kind of mat-
tress to sleep on.
We rose betimes on the morrow, and before the
8 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
Sun was up we had chosen a fresh set of horses in
place of the odd lot of animals we had had pre-
viously. These we engaged to go to Ioannina.
The owners accompanied them, and each saddle-
horse had a man to lead it; this was an improve-
ment upon yesterday's march, which was embel-
lished by divers old women tugging vainly at the
beasts, and by no means cheerful over the long
walk. The morning was moist and cool, and as we
wound up hill after hill we all agreed nothing could
be prettier than Delvino, with its thick woods and
many gardens, backed by long stretches of the
sea, and San Salvadore of Corfu joining in like a
promontory of the mainland. For three hours the
road continued equally pretty; and we rode gaily
on through woods and flowers, fresh views of the
sea meeting us at every turn, until, at an almost
still prettier village, called Marzina, we lost it alto-
gether. Here we suddenly turned into a horrid
valley of desolation, all stones and bare rock, up
which the wind came blowing chill and damp ; the
sun went in, and we were treated to a long and
heavy shower, from which our hastily-pitched tent
was not a very sufficient defence. We were much
afraid of having to stop here all night, but the rain
went off, and at 3 P.M. we started again, and
SOUTHERW ALBANIA. 9
descended the valley by a very bad rough path,
where it was safer to walk than to ride. At the
bottom we came to the village of Garbitzi, where
there seemed to be extensive ruins: it was once a
considerable town. The sun shone out to brighten
up the pleasant vale we were crossing, at the
northern end of which we saw the hills of Arghyro-
Kastro, at three hours' distance. The two sides of
this valley were steep and wooded, and their slopes
prettily studded with villages; it is watered by the
Drymo. We crossed it at a long slope, and im-
mediately began the stiffish ascent of a low pass,
stony, wild, and dreary. It was late and nearly
dark ere we reached the summit level, whence
half an hour took us down to a pleasant meadow,
close to the khan of Xerovalto, in itself a miserable
building. The wind was very cold and high, while
we three ladies sat huddled up together, waiting for
the tents to be pitched; but in an hour or two we
were warm and comfortable, and better off than an
unhappy little snake, who was in the morning
found to have been crushed or suffocated under our
ponderous weight, while we had been happily un-
conscious of its vicinity.
Our progress hitherto had been slow, owing to the
rain and to our own idleness: else we ought to have
10 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
slept that night at Delvinaki. We pushed on early,
therefore, after a scanty breakfast, over charming
hills and dales, covered with oak woods, bramble-
roses, and clematis, and after crossing many half.
dry streams we came to a pretty upland valley.
Here we were told to our disgust that we had
already passed Delvinaki, and we were fain to dis-
mount and rest in a few inches of mid-day shade
under a juvenile oak. An hour farther brought
us to a little round lake, blue as a turquoise, called
Lake Kalo, silent and shadeless, though bosomed
in green and pretty hills; but the water, contrary
to its name, is brackish and unwholesome. Near
this we met a score of Turkish soldiers carrying
ammunition to Butrinto, where the Turks were
then collecting a force; they were ill-looking and
dirty savages, but, such as they were, they proved
to be nearly the only signs of life on this road.
Nothing struck me more forcibly in my Southern
Albanian ride than the almost totally uninhabited
appearance of the country. Scarcely a village is to
be seen within three or four hours of each other;
even the khans are many hours apart; and more
than half the land—I should say quite three-
quarters—lies utterly waste and uncultivated. Very
many of the khans are but miserable ruins, and
SOUTHERW ALBANIA. 11
half of the few villages there are deserted and
roofless. Many a time I thought of the bright
mountains of the Lebanon, and the beautiful hills
of Syria, speckled over with yellow-brown villages,
and smiling with mulberry gardens and vineyards
—proofs of untiring industry under a burning Sun.
I longed to hear the shrill, screaming song of the
Druze or the Maronite; and I felt, in the silence
of this depopulated land, how much one's travels
are thus deprived of one of their principal pleasures
—the studying of mankind and womankind, and all
their various manners and customs and appearances
in other countries than our own. We scarcely met
anyone between Delvino and Ioannina, beyond a
stray muleteer, a sheep-driver, or a ragged la-
bourer in the field; and really the dogs appeared
to be almost the chief occupants of the country,
as they are certainly the most noisy ones.
It is the fashion, among people determined to
make much of their classics, to call these dogs the
Molossian breed, though there is every reason to
believe the true old Molossian race to be as extinct
as the old Irish greyhound, which it seems to have
resembled in stateliness and fighting power. These
off-hand classical analogies are too easily made and
accepted among us. A similar case is that of the
12 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
Well-known Sirto or Romaika dance, which is in:
variably identified with the ancient Pyrrhic dance,
apparently for no better reason than that both
dances belong to the same country. The one, as
far as we know it, was the lightest and quickest of
steps, always a pas seul, the dancer being armed;
the other, a heavy humdrum tramp of a circle or
string of men. This is the kolo, or wheel-dance of
the Sclavonians, and, as it is universal in Sclavonic
countries far removed from Greek influence, it has
doubtless originated with that race. But to return
from this digression to the dogs: they are bold,
showy animals when at their best, according to the
most competent authorities at Corfu, where Alba-
nian dogs, woodcock and beaters, form one of the
staples of conversation—at least among sensible
people and free people, who are not officially
obliged to take an interest in the narrow, howling
politics of the place.
We met a gentleman in Corfu who had just been
laid up for some weeks by the furious bites he had
received, while out shooting, from half a dozen of
them. It is easy to keep them off with sticks and
stones while standing, but this gentleman slipped
his foot and fell, and they flew at him at once. To
an erect and bold enemy they are not much more
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 13
formidable than common street dogs, usually slink-
ing away the moment one stoops for a stone; and
one well-hitting stone will disperse two or three
together. They are not usually handsome beasts,
or very large: always of a light dun colour, with
curly bushy tails and long hair; but, for my own
part, I only saw one dog in Albania that was at all
worth looking at. Of course they are mostly seen
in the villages, but the labourers in the fields are
generally accompanied by one or two, and the
shepherds always have some in attendance on the
flocks, and on guard at the mandriá or sheepfolds.
The same type of dog seems to prevail over the
whole of European Turkey and Greece, but there
has been little accurate observation of his special
points, and a good specimen or two would be most
useful contributions to our dog-shows, which are
becoming mere repetitions of each other.
We pitched our tents this evening in a beautiful
meadow, directly under the convent of Pogoghiani,
which is perched half-way up a wooded hill; I could
hear nothing about the convent, and it was too far
off to visit. Close to us there was a thick bosquet
of fine plane trees, under which I discovered a
great many little snakes, two of whom, evidently at
play together, were kind enough to afford me much
14 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
amusement early the next morning: they were
twisting and twining each other in the funniest
manner, until, probably catching sight of me, they
both darted away under the shrubs. We had
passed, near these trees, three very large snakes, all
of them dead: one of them had been flung across a
tree some weeks before, and now nothing was left of
him but his nearly dry skin, glazed, semi-transparent,
and beautiful in its delicate reticulations. This snake
had been six or seven inches in circumference, and
was about four feet or more long; it was of the same
colour and appearance as many I saw in Greece at
the foot of Mount Helicon. We passed a great
many tortoises this day.
The shower we had had on the preceding day
was the only rain we saw during our stay in
Southern Albania, unhappily for the country; for
the want of water was in many places terrible. All
the small streams were dry, and most of the rivers
were reduced to mere rivulets. Yet on the next
morning (Friday), after two hours' march, we found
ourselves riding along the bank of a really good
river, deep and clear, which soon after tumbled
itself in a very picturesque manner over some rocks,
not many feet high, but with a breadth of water, a
thicket of trees, and a picturesque entourage that
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 15
made a charming view. As our guides had not the
slightest intention of going out of the road to the
famous Falls of the Kalamá (the way to which it
was afterwards quite evident none of them knew),
they assured us that this was the identical waterfall,
and we were led to believe them at the moment,
although the place did not at all answer the descrip-
tion of the Falls. However, we looked duly at the
beautiful foam, listened to the roar, and passed on.
We afterwards discovered that the river really was
the Kalamá, but that these Falls are only at a short
distance below the source: the real Falls, ‘the
volumed cataract’ of Byron, are considerably lower
down.
We now left the oak-wooded valleys, and turned
up a bare hill-side, at the summit of which a grassy
circular hill appeared, crowned by clumps of noble
trees. ‘That must be the Monastery of Zitza?” said
I. The guides first replied," No;' then said there was
no monastery anywhere; then that we had passed
Zitza; and finally, that there was nothing but trees
on that hill, and that where we wanted to go was
straight on ; and they ended by begging us to
‘move on.’ The fact was, we had made the im-
portant mistake of trusting to our baggage horse-
men to be our guides; while they, being only
16 s'OUTHERN ALBANIA.
carriers of goods from place to place, are un-
acquainted with any but the high roads (such as
they are). They usually know the names of the
khans, but not always that much ; of everything else
they are entirely ignorant, seldom even knowing
the names of the springs or rivers. Our baggage
was, as usual, far behind us, and only a couple of
men were with us, one of whom had loudly professed
to know the way well.
So we did as we were bid, and, leaving the green
upland, descended into a narrow winding ravine of
loose broken rock, without a trace of vegetation
of any kind, and frightfully hot. Down this we
weariedly picked our way for an hour and a half,
and were too glad to find it open at the bottom into
a perfectly level narrow plain. The lake of Lapsista”
appeared at a short distance, and a single khan
stood at half an hour's distance from us, with a
few fine trees near it. Under one of these we
dismounted, and commenced examining our guide.
‘How far is Zitza?’ ‘Three hours,’ was the reply.
‘In which direction?’ ‘Back there,' said the man,
coolly pointing out the way we had come. Re-
membering the useful Arabic proverb, that ‘the stick
* In winter and in wet seasons this lake joins the Lake of
Ioannina, and they become one.
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 17
descended from heaven, a blessing from God,' I
recommended an immediate application of the
heavenly blessing; the man got a blow or two, which
I fear only made him laugh in his sleeve at the
gentleness of our champion. And then we waited
till the baggage came up, when the man swore Zitza
and its monastery was in every direction we pointed
to, and finally in none, while the whole set of them
loudly declared they must and would stop at the
khan where we stood or go on to Ioannina. We
informed them that to Zitza we would go, and off
we all started, except Captain S., who stopped to
impress the man a little more powerfully than before
with heavenly blessings. Of course the pack-saddle
immediately turned round under him and deposited
him on the ground; but this we were all used to, as
it happened twenty times a day, and upon any un-
usual movement, “I’m off l’ ‘Oh, and I too!’ used
to be heard on all sides.
Up the long, winding, stony, baking valley we
now retraced our steps, feeling considerably hotter,
very much hungrier, and not a little disgusted, as
we saw that by this long delay we should not get
to Ioannina that evening; moreover, the muti-
nous voices of the men did not sound comfortable.
Turning at right angles from the very middle of
C
18 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
the green upland towards the identical circular
hill we had seen before, we found ourselves among
pleasant vineyards, with hedges of privet and pome-
granate all in blossom, fragrant and refreshing
after the heat of the stony ravine. Rounding
the hill we came out on the village of Zitza, with
its pond and little gardens, and then began to
climb a rather steep ascent to the monastery of
S. Elias, which stands on the summit, entirely
hidden in magnificent oak trees and lofty elms.
This is
‘Monastic Zitza e e
Thou Small, but favoured spot of holy ground !’
made so famous by Lord Byron, in stanzas that
are rather too good for the occasion, although I
am presumptuous enough to think them written
by no means in his best style of faithful and vivid
description. The monastery itself has been almost
entirely rebuilt quite lately; it is now comforta-
ble, but uninteresting and unremarkable, except as
consecrated by Lord Byron. The best thing there
is a well of excellent water; the four or five monks
who inhabit it are civil and inoffensive; while the
women who attend upon them lavished very good
bread and wine, fowls and eggs, upon us, and did
not intrude more than enough. It would not be
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 19
by any means respectable if the good monks
allowed their lay sisters to be pretty as well as
useful; but the faces of these women must certainly
have encouraged the virtues of their monastic
masters, for an uglier trio of good-humoured, jolly
women I never saw.
The view from the hill of Zitza is a very exten-
sive one and full of variety, but it is by no means to
be compared in actual beauty to some of the spots
about Delvino, or the glorious view above Rouma-
nates. Yet, as showing the general character of
Southern Albania, it is probably one of the best
to be found. To me there was always a some-
thing wanting in Southern Albanian views. I do
not think it was only the want of those brilliant
hues of the East and South, which nothing can
dim in the eyes of my memory; but it seemed as
if there was always a certain hardness not to be
pointed out so much as felt,--a something which
took away the richness from the green, even in
the valleys, and destroyed the coloured veil which
hangs over and beautifies still more arid countries
in a hotter clime. Least of all was there any of that
lovely tenderness of colour and form, so charac-
teristic of Greece, and which I had fondly hoped
to have seen again in Southern Albania and Corfu.
C 2
20 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
I found something more nearly approaching it in
Northern Albania.
We now came to a pitched battle with our men.
Having succeeded in getting them to Zitza, they
declared we must mount again and go on to
Ioannina; that they always went there in three
days from Delvino, and they would do the same
now; furthermore, that they had no food for the
horses, or bread for themselves, &c. We in-
formed them that we should go on to Ioannina
when we liked, that they were punished for de-
ceiving us, that the road we took was no concern
of theirs, and that it was very kind of us to stop
them at a good village like Zitza, where they
could buy all they wanted. They declared there
was no bread in Zitza, and that they should at
Once go on to Ioannina, leaving us to take care of
ourselves and get horses where we could; and
each took his horses and departed—unpaid, of
course—to our no small amusement. All of them,
except, be it well remarked, the one man who had
been thrashed, and whose conduct had immediately
become exemplary; he begged to be allowed to
help the servants, and made himself most obliging
and busy in fetching water &c., only occasionally
requesting Captain S. not to fulfil his promise
*- SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 21
of putting him into gaol as soon as we arrived
at Ioannina. The tents were soon pitched on
a little grassy slope, the thick and lofty trees
screening us from a very high wind, which was
refreshing enough after the heat and fatigues of the
day.
We had all the end of the long summer day to
admire the view, and learn the names of the
various parts of it. Hence we first saw some of
the heights of the Pindus range, which were still
streaked with snow, while various ranges of moun-
tains to the south and west glistened behind each
other in gentle quiet colours, and everywhere
and in all directions one saw wood and water and
abundant verdure. We could now trace the wind-
ings of the Kalama, and make out with some
distinctness whereabouts were the famous Falls—in
quite another direction from the road we had taken
—and as they are three hours' distance from Zitza,
it was impossible for us to go to them without
sacrificing a whole day. The evening was lovely,
and we strolled about the hills till quite late,
discovering new prettinesses at each turning. The
village is picturesquely situated and cheerful-look-
ing, boasting 360 houses, several church towers.
and a noble school-house, lately built, airy, and
22 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
well filled with benches &c. The village has always
been Christian.
Zitza may be included in the short route from
Corfu to Ioannina, viz. the route by Sayada and
Philates, which is usually accomplished in three
days; but we had chosen our route from the very
superior beauty of Delvino and Delvinaki, and be-
cause we had it in our power, had we journeyed a
little more quickly, to take Arghyro-Kastro in ex-
tra. I regretted the omission of the latter, as,
besides being, according to Mr. Lear, remarkably
picturesque, this town forms a point of historic
interest in tracing the course of Ali Pasha's an-
nexations.
Early on Saturday morning all our horses and
men were in their places as usual, having, doubt-
less, spent a pleasant evening among the good folk
of Zitza, and we were in the saddle by a little
after 8 o'clock. Avoiding the long ravine of which
we had had double allowance yesterday, we now
mounted a low grass-covered hill to the east, and
picked our way down another descent considerably
worse than the former; while the sun, reflected
from the bare stones, completed the changes of our
complexions to lobster hues. We arrived in the
SOUTHERW A LBA WIA. 23
verdant plain a mile or so beyond the shallow lake
of Lapsista, which we had seen yesterday, and, in
our impatience to get on to the city, we all com-
menced trotting: the series of tumbles that ensued
out of the pack-saddles diversified our progress to
such a ludicrous extent, and we got so dreadfully
hot with laughing at each other under the burning
Sun, that we at last proclaimed a halt beneath a
fine walnut tree, and endeavoured to cool our
roasted faces with the fresh leaves; here, too, we
waited for the baggage, that we might enter the
city together.
I found the plain a little tedious, as I had
hoped to have seen Ioannina from a long distance,
but it was not until we had jogged three full hours
over the undulating ground that the city suddenly
appeared on a much lower level. The view at last,
however, was not at all disappointing. The city,
which is very white and (at a distance) marble-
looking, is well shaped—a graceful bow advancing
into the lake, and imbedded in the most brilliant
verdure of meadows and rich gardens; the lake
bends gently round it, while from the other side of
the water the Mitzikeli mountains rise up proudly,
until they are checked, as it were, and overtopped
24 - SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
by three groups of the snowy Pindus heights.” The
forms are good, but throughout the summer the
view is spoiled by the colours of the nearer moun-
tains—a dirty dull brown, with very little appear-
ance of rock breaking through the uncrisp slopes.
In the early spring and late autumn these moun-
tains acquire a verdant tint, and throughout the
winter they are almost wholly covered with snow.
In either case, the view must be a very lovely one.
These Mitzikèli mountains are about 2,500 feet in
height, while the lake is here, from the projection
of the city into it, only about three-quarters of a
mile wide. Opposite the city stands the island on
which Ali Pasha was murdered, and dotted about
among the houses appear scores of mosques and
minarets.
The lake is about seven miles long, and three
miles wide at its broadest; as few torrents and no
river flow into it, it is of course principally sup-
plied by subterranean sources. At each end there
is a cavity or passage, into which the water empties
itself: one of these flows into the Kalama; it is
deep, but the fish in it are worthless.
* Mounts Tzikurela, Kakardista, and Tzumerka. It is said
that Mitzikeli, though now so entirely bare, was, till not very
long ago, covered with trees, which have been cut down for fire-
wood.
SOUTHERW ALBANIA. 25
Along the latter part of the road there had been
a good deal of life, men and horses and laden
donkeys passing along; and as we, now advanced
among the cafés and outer streets, we became un-
comfortably reminded that we were all very dirty,
and some of us not a little ragged; our appearance .
was, in fact, sufficiently disreputable to have shocked
anyone less hospitable than the excellent Consul,
who represents H. B. M. in Ioannina. We were
not permitted to make a home of our tents while
staying there, and we fully enjoyed the comforts
and luxuries of the Consulate after our five days of
roughing—added to which, that the house itself is
a very remarkable specimen of the best style of
Turkish wood-carving in domestic architecture.
The city washerwomen being soon put into requi-
sition, we proceeded to inspect the capital of
Southern Albania.
There is no building of any remarkable beauty in
Ioannina, nor one that possesses much other his-
torical interest than that which appertains to the
famous Albanian despot and tyrant, Ali Pasha.
The citadel is placed on the square piece of land
which forms a promontory in the lake; in this is
the Serai, a large and by no means handsome
building on the inner side of a wide place. On the
26 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
eastern side, the chief mosque of the city is placed
on the edge of a rocky cliff, washed by the waters
of the lake. Here, enclosed in a common iron
railing, are the tombs containing the headless
trunk of Ali Pasha, and the body of Emine,
his first wife, whom he shot with his own hand in
an access of fury, because she dared to plead for
the Suliotes. There is nothing remarkable about
his tomb: it has only the turban-topped head-stone
and the common flowers placed upon almost every
Turkish grave. At the northern end of the pro-
montory is the mosque in which Ali usually paid
his devotions: it is poor enough in style and in
ornaments, but it is, even so, the only pretty build-
ing to be found there. A few marble columns,
some coarse inlay and gaudy paint, and a pretty
flower-painted terrace commanding a beautiful view
up and down the lake, is all that can be said about
the place.
A drawbridge leads from the citadel immediately
into the bazaar, and the rest of the city. The good
houses are all on the western side of the town,
standing each in its own garden: this intermixture
of trees with the white buildings is one of the
beauties of Ioannina. Passing across the town to
its western extremity, one arrives at the foot
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 27
of the hill of St. George; * here are the principal
burying-grounds, unenclosed, barren, and desolate.
Here also the awkward squads of recruits are
drilled morning and evening, and here the veiled
ladies disport themselves in groups among the
tombstones. The view from this hill is by far the
best of the city and the lake, and very lovely it is.
The bazaars are very poor, though somewhat
extensive: they appeared to me to be fully stocked,
but with the commonest materials—cheap cottons
and cloths, miserable glass and clumsy pottery,
were the chief articles, although in the few shops
that contained gold embroidery there were speci-
mens of a very superior class, at certainly a third
less than the prices of Constantinople or Damascus:
indeed, I never saw better embroidery anywhere.
Both the town and the inhabitants are in a state of
such decadence and poverty that even the Turks
make no display, since there is no one worth im-
pressing by luxuries or wealth ; and for the pur-
chase of common clothing, it is said that the
peasants now chiefly go to Avlona. From the
* It was on this hill that Bohemond, son of Robert Guiscard
the Norman, intrenched his army, in the year 1082, when he
took the then Greek city, and defeated the Emperor Alexius
Comnenus under its walls.
28 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
vicinity of snowy mountains, the usual form of
Turkish ice-cream abounded, and there were plenty
of sweet shops; but I saw no coffee and very little
water or sherbet hawked about. No gaily-trapped
donkeys or horses came pushing through; and, in
fact, the bazaars of Ioannina are very inanimate
and mesquin in comparison to towns of the same
importance farther east. One missed the stirring
sights and sounds that harmonised so well with the
darkened booths, atrocious pavements, and gaudy
colours of a really Oriental bazaar.
Among private dealers, Jews especially, there
are occasionally very beautiful specimens of antique
silver work to be picked up; these are chiefly the
waist-clasps worn by the Albanian women, some
of which I have seen a good twelve inches long
and seven or eight in depth : some of the old ones
are very beautifully chased and carved. Then
there are three or four different kinds of large
hanging buttons, mostly very clumsy; quantities
of square cases for scraps of sacred writing, like
the Mooslim hexab, covered with rude Christian
figures of Saints and emblems ; and a variety of small
silver dishes or plates, some of which bear patterns
of exceeding beauty and perfect execution. The
best work is repoussé, but some are carved; while
SOUTHERN A LBANIA. 29
at rare intervals articles that have been brought
from the real East may be seen — specimens of
exquisite damascening, or of still more beautiful
enamelling. I hope it may some day be proved
whether these latter are Persian or old Turkish, or
in what country they were made. They are cloi-
Sonnée, and of most delicate colours, with granulated
metal-work. I saw a beautiful inkstand in metal,
richly damascened; it was 700 years old. Pro-
bably the best specimens in Ioannina have been
already sold: for the citizens are now so poor that
it is unlikely there is much left that is worth
seeking.
One other curiosity, however, must be mentioned
as really valuable. The cathedral is a building in
no way remarkable for itself, but it contains an
altar-screen * of great beauty. This screen, ac-
cording to the Greek custom, stretches from wall
* An English gentleman who lately visited Ioannina was very
anxious to purchase this screen, and offered an almost unlimited
sum of money for it. Doubtless the ill-fed, ill-paid ecclesiastics
would have sold the screen, or anything in the church, for a
quarter of the money, but the scrimmage that would have ensued
among the Consuls of the other powers would have been some-
thing appalling. It is amusing to think of the telegrams that
would have shot over France, Austria, and Russia, had such a
terrible instance of “English interference, bribery, intrigue,
audacity, aggression, &c.'—been permitted to take place
30 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
to Wall, between the nave and chancel, and is
about 40 feet long and 18 feet high. It is of
Walnut wood, carved au jour, in exquisite design
and execution; each panel contains figures of saints,
with borders and bouquets of delicately-cut fruit
and flowers, with cherubs and angels half hidden
beneath the foliage. There is a beautiful pulpit
done by the same hand. I had seen a splendid spe-
cimen of the same thing in Mitylene, and I was
told there are many others in the Greek islands.
The city itself is, in fact, of less interest than
the island of Nisi, opposite to the citadel. Thither
One evening, when the heat of the day was over,
we rowed. Pulling round the northern end, and
pushing our way through the tall slushy canes, we
landed under a clump of splendid plane trees, and
found ourselves among a group of small monas-
teries. There are seven on the island, but no
monks; the buildings were all used for prisons in
Ali Pasha's time. We entered that of Pande-
lečmon (the All-merciful), and here, up a dozen
broken steps, were two small dark rooms, in one
of which the floor was pierced with perhaps a
dozen round holes; here the cruel old Pasha was
taken and killed.
The true history of the event is as follows:
,SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 31
On January 29, 1822, being assured that a fir-
man of plenary forgiveness had arrived for him
from Constantinople, Ali Pasha was induced to
leave the citadel and to cross over to this mo-
nastery. He settled himself in this same small
room, the one next it being occupied by his fa-
vourite wife Vassiliki. On February 5, he was
informed that Mehemet Pasha was about to
visit him with a message from Khurshid Pasha,
who was then in command of the Sultan's forces in
Epirus. He prepared as best he could, and Me-
hemet came, firing a pistol at Ali as he entered
his apartment. The shot missed, and Ali fired
in return, but also without effect, while at the
same instant he was wounded in the hand by a shot
from an aide-de-camp of Mehemet Pasha. The old
tiger sprang forward to follow up the fight, when
the others retreated down the steps, and he shut
himself in with Vassiliki and an attendant, who
proceeded to bind up the bleeding hand. While
they were thus engaged, a firing commenced from
the room below through the floor; one of the shots
inflicted a mortal wound upon the old man, and
he died almost immediately. Mehemet and his
men then broke into the room, cut off Ali's head,
and sent it, together with Vassiliki, across the
32 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
lake to Khurshid Pasha, by whom both were at
once despatched to Constantinople. After living
there for two years under surveillance, Vassiliki
was allowed to pass into Greece; she settled at
Patras, where she died in extreme want and misery
in 1855. The Turkish Government still goes on
seeking for his treasures, which were believed to
be enormous. Many portions have been found
buried in different hiding-places, some of which
were known to Vassiliki, and some were confessed
by others; so that, although he was extremely
rich, it is improbable that much or any more
remains to be discovered.
In these island monasteries, some of which are
rude castles, hundreds of the unfortunate Suliotes
were confined; they were usually starved to death,
but very many were despatched in a much quicker
fashion.
Re-embarking in our clumsy boat, we pushed
again through thickets of water-lilies and of reeds,
which are a kind of papyri, and which yield a very
respectable thickness of pith, and rowed to the foot
of Mitzikeli, in order to see a very copious clear
fountain bursting out from under the rock. It
is called Krionero, from the great coldness of the
water, which is also very good.
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 33
Tired of Ali Pasha and his iniquities, I turned
with interest to two of the churches attached to
these monasteries, and regretted that my examina-
tion of them could only be a hasty one. The
principal church belonging to the Monastery of
St. John was basilica-shaped, every inch of Wall
covered with frescoes of the most brilliant colours,
chiefly in compartments, without any attempt at
symmetry of size or shape; the figures are fresh
and vigorous, with a great deal of beauty in many
of them. The other church, that of Pandeleēmon, is
a simple square, the roof supported by arches on
two columns. It is very dark; but there is light
enough to see that the walls are covered with
frescoes of a much earlier date, reminding me
strongly of the very ancient Georgian frescoes in
the Convent of the Holy Cross, near Jerusalem.
Many of the figures were painted on golden back-
grounds, with the very dark colouring, attenuated
limbs, and endless beards of the earliest periods
of fresco painting. Names of the saints so depicted,
and one or two inscriptions, appear to have been
added in later years: these might easily be spelled
out by anyone accustomed to Greek Church inscrip-
tions, and they might throw some light upon the
building itself.
I)
34 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
In this same church there is a painting of the
Blessed Virgin asleep, which is said to have been
found among the ruins of Dodona, a bishopric of
the early Byzantine church. The painting is one
of considerable merit.
I would gladly have stayed for some weeks of
sketching in Ioannina, but we had no more time to
spare, according to our plans, and on the morning
of the 9th we were all ready to continue our
journeyings, and to mount the collection of sorry
beasts which now filled the courtyard of the
Consulate; certainly the hack-horses to be purchased
for about 4!. in Syria are very superior to the
horses supplied to the traveller in Albania or
Greece, as far as my experience goes. Our horses
were a poorer lot than those we had had from
Delvino to Ioannina, but in all other respects we
were immensely better off, for we had taken the
advice of our Consul, and engaged a zaptieh (a
mounted policeman) to attend us for the rest of our
journey. No traveller should omit this almost
indispensable precaution. Our previous journey
would have been shortened by One day at least, our
dinners would have been better, and all the other
vexations and annoyances which tried our tempers
would have been avoided, had we requested the
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 35
Consul to send us one to Santa Quaranta. It is the
business of the Zaptieh to find the horses, to engage
guides, if he cannot act as such himself, and to
force the peasants to provide all that one requires
in the way of food and forage at proper prices; so
that, in fact, double the usual pay given to him is
saved by his presence. Moreover, he prevents
travellers from getting into the rows and disputes
with the peasants, which have afterwards to be
referred to the Consul, and which frequently
produce much more important and annoying
results than they were originally worth—about
which results so many travellers are supremely
indifferent.
Our Zaptieh was a delightful person—a specimen
of the best kind of Albanian Mussulman. He
was erect and spare, with the angular features,
small bright eye, and high forehead of the Albanian,
and withal the modest, unservile, but deferen-
tial good-breeding of the Oriental. Firm and
resolute in his dealings with the peasant—to us
he was all that was obliging and attentive; and
while we rejoiced in better food and less trouble in
the management of our people, he likewise con-
tributed to our amusement by Songs of endless
duration, sung in a hard but musical voice—songs
D 2
36 SOUTHERN A LBANIA.
of half-western melody sung in a half-eastern
manner. He spoke Turkish and Greek as well as
his own Albanian—a language more than usually
difficult to learn from its being unwritten.
The Albanians are a peculiar people—not a mere
tribe, but a nation of themselves. Under the
generic name of Skipetar, they are divided north
and south into Gheghs and Tosks. The greater
number of them became Mooslims in the fifteenth
century, but, to use the words of Finlay, ‘their
morality . . . was not such that they were likely
to become more wicked by becoming Mussulman.
The Albanian Mussulmans were detested by the
Osmanlees and hated by the Greeks . . . they
were less bigoted than the Turks, and less super-
stitious than the Greeks . . . their avarice is
insatiable.’ I believe that the same description
answers precisely at the present day, with the ad-
dition that they are equally remarkable for laziness
and ignorance. Like all very ignorant persons, they
think themselves the finest people in the world, and
boast of their quarrelsomeness as the best proof of
their heroism. In appearance they are tall and
muscular, bony and lean ; their countenances are
seldom pleasing : to me they seemed equally
divided into two classes—namely, the doltishly
sC) UTHERN ALPANIA. 37
stupid, and the mean sensual cunning. I speak
here of the peasantry. Among the better class,
such as the zaptiehs and a few shopkeepers, one
sometimes sees a free open intelligent face, with
the sharp regular features and half-graceful Greek-
formed limbs, which is the Albanian type; but, as a
people, I never saw any that pleased me less at
first sight.
After bidding adieu to our kind and hospitable
friends, we quitted Ioannina at 8.30 A.M., and,
despite the heat of the sun baking over the wide
and burnt-up plain, we continually looked back to
enjoy the views of the lake and its surrounding
mountains. These increased in beauty as we
ascended the opposite hills, while at the top we
found occasional shade under the trees which
crowned the slopes; then, descending through
stony paths winding among stone walls and ruined
gardens into a narrow vale, we mounted a steep
ascent through the straggling village of modern
Dhramisiús, shaded in lofty walnut, oak, and plane
trees. Here we rested for some time, looking back
upon the amphitheatre of ancient Dhramisiús, which
we had missed in the confusion of the paths in
passing it; but from this height we could dis-
tinguish it well. Up and down pretty slopes
38 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
covered with trees or flowering brushwood, we
continued our way for two or three hours, till
finding, at 6.30, a pretty little grassy plain, called
Plessia, with a stream running through it, we de-
cided to camp there. Some labourers were at work
on the spot, and the zaptieh demanded wood for our
fires: they said they had none, but upon the
Zaptieh quietly answering, “In the name of the
Sultan I command you to bring wood,' the wood
was instantly forthcoming, as well as milk and
forage. We wanted nothing else, for our kitchen
canteen had been abundantly supplied in Ioannina,
and in this latter half of our journey we had
considerably better meals than in the first half.
There is always abundance of lamb or mutton to
be had in Southern Albania, though it is not very
good meat; and poultry, milk of sheep, goats, and,
on rare occasions, of cows, are to be had in the
villages; we had also very tolerable bread every-
where.
It would be tedious to give the details of each
day's march, few though they were. I will only
say of the next day's ride that it led us through
the prettiest country possible; up and down and
round breezy hills, and across fresh sweet valleys,
with continual and unexpected changes of view at
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 39
every five minutes, while the whole way from end
to end was one long forest of Oak, elm, lime, &c.
Some of them were very noble lofty trees, that
would have made any prospect pretty; and then the
brushwood and thorn trees were tangled over with
sweet clematis and dog-roses, and the greensward
in the valleys was brightened with streamlets. The
paths were quite good, and the only inconveniences
of the day arose from the luxuriance of the trees
Overhanging the paths, continually making Ab-
saloms of the party, to the great detriment of hats
and heads; while it not seldom happened that some
one who was looking out carelessly got swept off
his saddle and deposited probably in a thorn-bush.
Towards evening we reached a most romantic-
looking cascade of snowy foaming water, tearing
down under a group of lofty plane trees with a
deafening roar; I believe it is called Dervidjaná.
Following the stream we went on into a wide
green meadow, too low to camp in, and we there-
fore struggled up the steep side of the mountain to
a straggling village called Roumanates, where we
with much difficulty found a few feet of ground
flat enough to pitch the tents.
Next morning we continued the same path up
to the top of the mountain-side, the view becoming
40 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
wider and grander at every turn, until near the
summit we could look back on the lofty groups
of the Pindus we had seen before, added to the
mountains between us and Ioannina. After some.
what more than an hour's mounting up a very
steep but perfectly good path, we reached the sum-
mit, and immediately over it a magnificent view
opened out before us. Including these same and
more of the Pindus heights, with the mountains
of Acarnania, our view now swept round over
the heads of the Suli mountains to the deep,
green, thickly-wooded gorges of the Acheron, at
our feet; beyond all which the river was seen
winding out across the plain to the blue sea, in
which appeared Paxo and Anti-Paxo to our right,
and Santa Maura in the far distance straight
before us.
We looked and looked again at this noble and
beautiful view, until we began to descend a steep
and rough and occasionally slightly giddy descent
into the narrow Suli valley below us. Here we
found the ruined roofless villages of the unfortu-
nate Suliotes dotted along the valley, and mostly
reduced to heaps of stones; not a stone had been
replaced since 1803, for who is there left to do
it 2 A few roofless walls still standing in Kako-
| +1， …………！ 11
| T. n S -- O S N I º L N n O IN E H. L.

SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 41
Suli were occupied by a number of Turkish
soldiers, the officers living in three green tents
pitched on the mountain-side. They received our
Zaptieh with respect, and some of us being on this
day ill and fatigued, we decided to remain here,
although it was then only midday, and there was
little shade to be found. The path which was
good for us had been severe for the loaded mules,
and one poor beast, too weak for his burden, had
gone over the edge and rolled a considerable way
down the hill-side ; he was dreadfully cut and
bleeding when they arrived at Kako-Suli. The
valley was full of sheep and goats, and we fared
sumptuously in the way of milk.
This little valley is closed at either end by
a very beautiful group of mountains: that to the
north is a group standing over Paramythia and
Margarita; that to the south is the famous group
of the Suli mountains, divided into perpendicular
cliffs by the Acheron, which has apparently cut
them down from their neighbours, and which now
runs at the bottom of the magnificent chasm.
Three of these cliffs run up into singularly pointed
peaks, called Trypa ; it was from them that the
Suliote women threw themselves down into the
abyss below in suicidal despair, rather than fall
into the hands of Ali Pasha. The peak to the
42 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
right is called the Hill of Thunderbolts, because
whatever is built on it is immediately knocked
down by lightning: that in the centre is called
Kiaſa; on this Ali Pasha built a large castle. The
peak to the left is also fortified. Right opposite,
On the western side of Kako-Suli, are two other
abrupt peaks; one bears the castle of Kughni, the
other that of S. Donato. -
The sufferings of the unfortunate Suliotes have
been made the subject of a hundred romances in
prose and poetry; yet a few words of their real
history " may not be unacceptable while we stand,
as it were, facing their dark and rugged rocks.
The Suliotes were originally a simple family or
clan of the Tosks (Southern Albanians), but they
were particularly favoured by the Sultan's govern-
ment as a check on the lawless independence of
the native Mussulmans of that part of Albania. The
Suliotes had so often and so gallantly repulsed
* From Finlay and Leake. It is a strangely common thing to
find persons talking of the Suliotes as if they had been true
Greeks; they were Albanians pure and simple, and had nothing
to do with the Greek nation beyond communion with the Greek
church, and the use of Greek as the language of writing, of edu-
cation as far as it existed, and of the church. But these causes
tended to Hellenise them more and more during all their
career. Some few from other Christian clans had joined the
Suliotes, but they were all Tchamides, or Southern Albanians.
,SOUTHERW ALBANIA. 43
their attacks that they acquired a great reputation,
and became, in fact, a military caste, who despised
all labour as much as the proudest Mussulman,
and therefore left their land to be cultivated by
Greek peasants. Their mountains are, indeed, too
precipitous to be generally cultivated, but many
of them are thickly covered with natural woods,
and a little industry would have clothed many
more with trees and pasture. They were divided
into pharas or families, who were frequently em-
broiled with one another, and at the end of last
century they began to collect all the followers they
could from other tribes or Greeks; the money to
pay this increased number was found by making
forays on the lands of their neighbours. These
depredations were called wars, and were considered
the only honourable occupations of a Suliote.
Ali Pasha, whose policy was to centralise all
power in his own hands, resolved to destroy all
independent communities in his Pashalik, whether
Mussulman or Christian ; and, seeing how un-
popular the depredations of the Suliotes had made
them, he conceived he should find the task of sub-
duing them easy. But the moment he began to
threaten them, their neighbours forgot all the
injuries received at their hands, and made common
44 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
cause with them; while the Venetian governors of
Parga and Prevysa hastened to support them with
arms and ammunition. The Suliotes had thus
become in 1792 a sort of little republic ; sixty
villages beyond their immediate territory paid
tribute to them, and they themselves were a strong
body of upwards of 1,500 fighting men. It may
well be surmised that Ali Pasha would not have
been able to destroy them had he not had recourse
to surer weapons than those of arms; he took ad-
vantage of the disunion among their families, he
filled them with suspicions of each other, he
tempted their greedy avarice, he made secret pro-
mises separately among them, and thus prepared
the way for that wholesale destruction which
famine completed. w
The whole plain of Phanari at this time belonged
to Suli, with many of the surrounding mountains;
but Suli Proper consisted of four villages, viz.
Kako-Suli, Kiapha, Avariko, and Samoniva; it was
a bishop's see, the cathedral church of which,
Glyky, stood at the entrance of the gorge of the
Acheron.
Ali Pasha first attacked the Suliotes in 1788,
but he was repulsed and withdrew at once. Four
years later he gained temporary possession of
,SOUTHERW ALBANIA. 45
Kako-Suli by assault, but in three weeks he re-
turned to Ioannina, having failed completely either
to hold it or to advance another step. In 1799
one Suliote, George Bötzaris, with his whole phara,
had entered into his service, but he died, it is said,
of grief soon after his first battle against his own
clansmen. Ali then surrounded them with strongly
fortified places, gradually shutting them up into
narrower and narrower limits; in consequence of
which hunger began to try them as early as 1801,
for, the plain and port of Phanari being taken from
them, they could no longer obtain supplies, except
occasionally by some ingenious stratagem. Then
the Pasha demanded peace, and the Suliotes sent
him twenty-four hostages; but, as soon as he re-
ceived them, he broke the treaty and put them in
prison, having forced a priest to disarm them as
they entered a church. They were subsequently all
starved to death. -
In September 1803 Ali's troops gained posses.
sion of Kako-Suli and Avariko, through the trea.
chery of two Suliotes, Gusi and Palaska ; another,
Kutzonika, also deserted his brethren. Kughni” and
* So written by Leake and Finlay, but in the curious Suliote
ballad given by Leake in his earlier researches called Kiunghi,
f
Ktovy)"t.
46 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
Kiapha were now the only strongholds left to them.
The hero of Suli, the priest Samuel, occupied
Kughni, the rock being defended by three hundred
families, whose women were as active as the men,
and of whom a very large number were killed in
battle. Their position had now become perfectly
hopeless, and in December they signed a capitula-
tion, by which the little band was to be allowed to
retire to Parga. Ali sent an ambuscade to waylay
them on the road, but they received timely warn-
ing of it, and, taking another path, reached Parga
in Safety and passed over to Corfu. They had no
sooner quitted the hill of Kughni than the hero
Samuel retired into the magazine with a lighted
match, and perished in the ruins of the castle. His
example was followed by the women of Dhimula,
a Suliote village at some little distance, who, on the
arrival of Ali's troops, shut themselves up in an old
tower full of gunpowder and set it on fire, destroy-
ing every woman of the place.
The rest of the Suliotes, deceived by the promises
of Ali, were collected on the summit of IXiafa, but
the moment they reached it he sent a body of troops
to attack them by surprise. About 150 were
seized and afterwards made into slaves; the re-
o, and the women threw
maining men died fighting,
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 47
their children over the rock, and then flung them-
selves down into the abyss. The cruelty of Ali
was insatiable: as so many had escaped him, he
ordered whole families, living dispersed in different
places, to be murdered, until every Suliote in his
power had been destroyed. There were still a few
more fugitives from Suli itself and from the neigh-
bouring mountains, and some who had escaped in
the various engagements. These all collected
gradually on a rocky height, on the summit of
which is a monastery, called Seltzo, and beneath
which the Achelous flowed in a deep abyss, as the
Acheron at Suli. This rock was surrounded by
7,000 of Ali's troops in January 1804, but it was
not till April 20 that the monastery was attacked
and taken. The men were now nearly all killed,
but the enemy were still resisted by the women,
armed with stones, sticks, and knives. A few of
these were taken, but 160 of them threw themselves
with their children into the Achelous, and one
escaped with a few men to Parga.
The survivors, who reached the Ionian Islands,
are believed to have now entirely died out.” Some
* They were settled on the hill of the Ascension, close to the
town of Corfu, overhanging the present country house or casino
48 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
took arms in the great War of Independence, and
those who outlived that war became absorbed in
the population of Greece. A very few returned to
Epirus, and settled at Lakka, near Suli. Of these,
one aged man, bent and feeble, came to see us in
our camp ; he was said to be the only Suliote who
had remained in his native mountains, where he
will soon have finished his cheerless and saddened
existence. I would gladly have listened to his
recitals of those horrible. years if I could have
understood him, but we had no sufficient inter-
preter with us.
The castle of Kiapha is now occupied by a
Turkish garrison, and we started early on the
following morning to ride up to it. The path is
steep but not bad, and it takes but an hour from
Kako-Suli; it is very beautiful and grand on all
of the ‘Lord High.' Ali's wish, as put into verse by his Mus-
sulman poetical biographer, was thus literally fulfilled—that
they might gaze on their native country, and that their hearts
might burn at the thought of turning back the wild mountain
deer at their cold drinking pools:—
Na 6Aétrovve Töv Tóiro Tovc, va katerat i kapóvá rove
T' & 'ypipita wa yupičovye ’ara kpta rā vēpá Tovc.
What has become of Col. Leake's manuscript of this interesting
poem It would surely be well worth while to recover and
edit it.
SOUTHERW ALBANIA. 49
sides. The latter part is carefully zigzagged up to
the summit of the sharp peak on which the castle
stands; this had to be levelled in order to build the
fortress, for the natural crest of the rock is scarcely
wider than the path. This and another peak rise up
sheer from the very heart of the deep chasm of the
Acheron; bare as aiguilles, they form a striking con-
trast to the rich wood and varied foliage all around,
and especially in the ravine at one's feet. The wild
mountains shut out the Phanari plains from the
castle view, but from the eastern end of the rock a
new and most lovely view is opened. Here, be-
yond mountains of every shape, clothed with
every shade of green, from the dark pine to the
fresh vine shoots, crossing each other along the
winding valley, one perceives the blue waters of
the Gulf of Arta and the still bluer mountains of
Acarnania.
From this very beautiful scene we reluctantly
turned away to perform the necessary civilities to
the Turkish Commandant—not a very highly-bred
functionary, nor one whose coffee was of the best ;
moreover, he had only four zarfs and five finjans
wherein to hand it to the company, and these were
of the same seedy appearance as himself and his
soldiers. He only spoke Turkish, but the zaptieh
E
50 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
interpreted in Greek, the conversation not being of
a remarkably intellectual character. We soon went
back to our camp, and enjoyed a long day in the
wild and silent valley.
We had to be up very early on the following
morning, as we were anxious to get over the
Phanari or Glyky plain before the sun was very
hot, as it is unhealthy with miasma, and there
was the Kleisura gorge to get through first. We
did not know how long this was to take after the
awful accounts of the path given in Leake and
Lear
“a path that none but the foot of a goat or
a Suliote can tread,’ &c. — but, in answer to our
surprise at its excellence, we learned from the
Zaptieh that the path we trod was a new one,
which had only been constructed a few years.
It is to be hoped that the Turks will continue it,
for the descent into the plain below is simply
execrable, not to say dangerous. It is impossible
to describe the beauty of this gorge, as you follow
the path winding down and then up over the nearly
perpendicular mountain-sides: these are clothed
with the densest foliage, through which the eye
catches at intervals the foaming green Acheron,
rushing over the rocks of the torrent bed at bottom.
The latter half of the ravine is, however, still finer
SOUTHERW AD/3A WIA. 51
than the first half, as, on ascending the closing
mountain of the gorge, and looking back, a splendid
view of the three peaks of Suli and their crowning
castles is added to the ravine itself. They appear
still more grandly when the Phanari plain is
reached. I have seldom seen anything more mag-
nificent in its way; but it is essentially a morning
view : by 9 A.M. the sun gets round so as to bring
out all the barrenness of the mountain-tops, de-
priving them of their colours, and so spoiling the
scene. It is a great pity that Suli and the ravine
of Kleisura should not be better known, for there
are few spots in Greece or Albania to equal it,
and it can be easily reached. An hour's run in
favourable weather from Paxo (where the weekly
steamer calls) will land the traveller at Phanari,
whence four hours, foot pace, will take him to
the foot of the gorge, and I believe the plain is
cantering ground all the way: thence it takes
three hours to either the castle or Rako-Suli.
Seven hours is about the maximum from Phanari,
and probably eight from Parga, but in fast riding
it should be done in very much less time. I
should strongly advise all artist lovers of the
picturesque to leave Phanari not later than 3 A.M.
F 2
52 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
or P.M., so as to see the old plain and gorge in
the very early morning or late evening light; and a
traveller pressed for time could return to the coast
the same evening, after resting four or five hours
at either the castle or in the valley of Kako-Suli.
But who will go to Paxo now 2 It will gradually
fall into oblivion, and be as unknown and unvisited
as Nicaria or Samothrace.
The plain, though perfectly flat and of soft dry
ground, is yet not quite the place for a canter in
the dark : it is laid out in rice and corn fields,
each divided by a wide ditch or streamlet of water.
It is fresh, green, and pleasant, but of very bad cha-
racter from miasma; and we were much cautioned
to stop nowhere but at a Turkish village a little
way up the entirely barren arid slope of one of the
boundary hills, called Turkopaxo. Here they said
there was no miasma, and certainly the women
and children looked healthy enough, and pretty
too. They had probably never seen lady-travellers
before, and their curiosity was highly excited.
We had sent on our cook (who rejoiced in the
extraordinary name of Ouā) very early in the
morning to have breakfast ready for us, and on
arriving at the village we found he had requested
a holiday for the school-children, taken possession
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 53
of the school-house, wisely washed and swept
it out, and cooked our tea and eggs in the yard.
The school-house consisted of a single room, the
roof supported on open arches and pillars all round,
so that the breeze blew through in the most re-
freshing manner, and made it a charming mid-
day resting-place.
We rode on, after a couple of hours' rest, over
endless hills and vales covered thickly with thorns,
and without any trace of a path, so that of course
we lost our way again and again. At last,
emerging from the woods on the edge of the cliff,
we found the sea at our feet, and a beautiful view
afforded us over many gracefully-curved little bays.
Then, turning suddenly to the north, we threaded
one olive grove after another until we found our-
selves at the outskirt of Parga, a well-placed
and picturesque city, crowning a fine promontory
with abrupt sides. The rocks, broken up in the
bay and along the coasts, afford positions for a
variety of little castles; and, together with the
yellow sand, blue water, and very rich olive groves,
they form a beautiful picture. The olives of Parga
are said to be the best in the Adriatic and Archi-
pelago. .
Here we reluctantly descended for the last time
54 ASOUTHERN A LBANIA.
from our saddles, but an unpleasant disappoint-
ment awaited us. We had expected to go on board
our yacht at once and feast luxuriously on beef.
steak pies, good wine, and newspapers; instead of
which we had the pleasure of learning that the
yacht was at Phanari, not Parga, and that the wind
was too strong to allow her to obey our hasty
messenger to come to us. So there was nothing
for it but to pitch our tents once more, and send
into the town to buy dinner. Meanwhile we
seized upon a charming cafedjee, who had lit a fire
in the stump of a big tree, and who thence brought
forth delicious little finjans of the refreshing stuff.
The coffee-shop, however, was not for us only : we
soon found that this olive grove was the Kensing-
ton Gardens of Parga, and in a short time the
whole town had turned out to inspect us. Then
came the Turkish Bey, the Commandant of the
place, with a suite of thirty persons, adding a
most picturesque group to the innumerable spots
of bright colour planted everywhere all round us.
The Pargans wore by far the brightest, gayest, and
best costumes we had seen anywhere.
All night the wind continued so strong that we
had no hope of seeing the yacht; but as it lessened
at breakfast time, she was enabled to work her
,8OUTHERW AJ, BANIA. 55
way round and to appear in the bay at midday,
when we struck our tents and went on board.
“All ready now, sir.’ ‘Where to?” said the
captain.
‘To Corfu, to be sure.”
With the most aggravating chuckle the man
replied, “Why, it would take a steam frigate to tow
us there in this wind ' '
I cried out, ‘Then let us run before the wind
and catch the Santa Maura steamer.’
“She's just gone by ten minutes ago, ma'am,'
was the answer, so that would not do; and there
was nothing for it but to wait the change of wind.
We had little consolation, for the beefsteak pies
were stale and the wine had not come; but we
managed pretty comfortably after a good morning's
shopping among the butchers and bakers and sweet
shops of Parga. We went ashore for the day, and
returned to the mercies of the cockroaches at
night. Nothing could equal the attentions of these
beasts, racing over one's face and gambolling
about one's person till we were nearly wild.
Doubtless Britannia is mistress of the seas in the
Adriatic as well as elsewhere ; but she certainly
manages to give her Lord High Commissioner a
most seedy little craft for proclaiming her as
56 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
such; and it is to, be hoped that this broken-
winged, rotten, dirty old Petrel will not be offered
to King George I. as another ‘English gift.’ I am
afraid we were so little mindful of the routine
duties of tourists in Ionian waters, and so oppressed
and selfish with the realities of our own case,
that we neither quoted nor even thought of the
Odyssey, however much we were able to sym-
pathise with the Odyssean wanderings. His craft,
while it lasted, was at least seaworthy, which the
‘Petrel' is not, and I think Homer never mentions
cockroaches; so he had the advantage of us in
these points.
We had a dead calm at night and all the morn-
ing till past 6 o'clock, when it freshened into
half a gale right in our teeth; but as we were now
a mile or two from shore, we endeavoured to
proceed, the unfortunate boat straining and writh-
ing her degenerate timbers, until Ominous looks
were being interchanged between the little crew
and the gentlemen. I need not say in what an
unenviable condition we ladies were: the waves
swept freely over us, and we were pleasantly
warned that the masts would probably leave us to
take care of ourselves. So when Captain S. said
to me, after we had been insane enough to follow
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 57
the same game for eight mortal hours, “the men
propose we should give up Corfu and run for
Paxo,' I only answered, ‘For heaven's sake, go
anywhere!’ and in just an hour's time we were,
thank goodness! safely lying in the inner harbour
of Paxo, where neither wind nor wave could
reach us.
The doors of the comfortable Residency were
immediately opened to us, and a blessed night of
repose was enjoyed under that hospitable roof
after our night and day of unrest and misery.
We spent the next wind-bound day in laborious
idleness, as there is no earthly thing to see or do at
Paxo, and it was too hot, till late in the evening,
even to walk along the unaccountably numerous
stone paths of the island. Paxo, in fact, may be
briefly described as a construction of stone walls,
stone paths, and olive trees; no other green thing
is visible, and scarcely one single clod of earth.
Seen from the sea on the western side, or in a
bird’s-eye view, it looks absolutely rich and green;
while, in the eyes of a pedestrian on the island,
nothing is visible but the roads intersecting the
whole place like a network, and the poor thin
olive stems which seem to spring from the stones
themselves.
58 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
Anti-Paxo is a mile or two off, connected with
Paxo by a low causeway. Both islands are ex-
ceedingly healthy; but the natives say that Anti-
Paxo is so preeminently so, that you must leave
it in order to die. There is a great scarcity of
water in Paxo, while into Anti-Paxo every drop of
water used by the inhabitants is carried by hand.
I know of no interest in them but the sweet old
legend of its being on Paxo that Thammuz the
fisherman one evening heard the wailing voice cry
to him that Pan was dead. .
Our next day's history was too unendurably
tedious to be related. Becalmed the whole mortal
day and night, we made an unpleasantly intimate
acquaintance with the coast outline of Corfu-as
many another must have done in this shut-in
windless channel. “Due ore adesso,” was the oft-
repeated promise of the helmsman as to our arrival;
and so we bore the sun and watched our no-pro-
gress till day gave place to night, and we slept
with ‘Due ore di più, due ore ancora’ in our half-
closed ears. Disconsolately waking up with the
daylight we sought comfort in breakfast; when the
sleepy cook coolly remarked, ‘There's no bread
left, sir, and the water is used up, and I’ve only
some dry coffee in the boat.” Whereupon we all
SOUTHERN ALBANIA. 59
grew desperate, seized upon the little boat, and
rowed a heavy pull of some two or three hours to
shore, presenting ourselves at 8 o'clock at the
Sanità, sleepy, dirty, and famishing.
To our astonishment we found the whole town
and people apparently gone mad: we had come
back on the day when the islanders were holding
high revelry on receiving the news of the contem-
plated cession of the Islands to Greece, and the
enthusiastic Archbishop was even then leading the
multitude in succession to the cathedral, in order to
sing a Te Deum for an act which, I suspect, many of
the Corfiotes were already celebrating in the inner
temple of their minds by a Commination Service.
Certainly they made noise enough about the happi-
ness so unexpectedly thrust upon them, and hid their
misgivings under flowers, and wreaths, and blue
flags, and blue ribbons, and bouquets, and what not.
It was very amusing to watch all the proceedings;
and not the least so, the not over-joyful faces of the
few Ionians I knew.
The day passed off well enough, but the evening
brought me into a disagreeable dilemma. The
darkness had no sooner closed in than a very
tolerable illumination was to be seen arising on
the Greek churches and On all the Greek houses.
(30 SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
Presently the landlord of my hotel knocked at the
door. “Please, miladi, won't you illuminate?’
‘No, thank you,' said I; ‘I am not glad in the
least; I don't care one way or the other about the
cession: besides, it would be rude to the Ionians to
show joy at parting with them.”
‘Oh, miladil’ said the poor man, ‘I not glad no
more; I lose my hotel, nobody come, de shops all
going away, Corfu go dead; but if I not illuminate
dey break all my windows!’
As this was a catastrophe to be avoided, for my
own sake as well as his I submitted to the horrid
smell of some dozens of flaring tallow candles,
stuck in the eight windows of my rooms. A little
after midnight a few rockets went up, and I said
to myself, ‘Well, now they have had their illumina-
tion—of no very dazzling brightness, it is true—
under the British Government, and their final
blaze to wind up with ; and now they may do the
best they can with the bad smell and the candle-
ends that remain.’
I admit that these sentiments were not amiable;
but—I wanted to go to sleep, and the illumination
would not let me.
SOUTHERN ALBAN/A. 6 l
NOTE.
As Albania is particularly easy of access, and will well
repay examination, I subjoin a few memoranda in hopes
of assisting future tourists, who may have learned from
these pages with how little trouble or precaution travelling
may be pleasantly accomplished in that country.
1. Time your journey to be over by the end of May.
June is too hot for any travellers coming fresh from
Bngland.
2. Do not attempt to travel, especially with ladies,
without tents. The khans are filthy and abominable;
and even with ample provision in the way of Levinge's
beds, they are quite too horrible for ladies, and few
gentlemen could endure them. Bell-tents can of course
be easily borrowed in Corfu at present; but after the
English have left it, it may be necessary to send for them
to Malta. One bell-tent accommodates three men com-
fortably.
3. Portable bedsteads are indispensable for ladies and
advisable for gentlemen. There are snakes &c. and
plenty of damp in Albania, which should be avoided by
something better than a waterproof sheet or a cork
mattress.
4. Take plenty of warm clothing for the mountains,
and thick shady hats, as in any other hot country:
Albania must be treated as if it was really a hot or
eastern country. Be provided with medicine in case of
fever or diarrhoea, as accidental exposure to an evening
dew on an empty stomach may bring on either or both.
5. Never travel anywhere, for however few days, with-
out a zaptieh. He protects you in person and purse, and
62 |SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
clears the way wonderfully under all circumstances. His
pay is usually 28. 6d. a day, but if well conducted he is
cheap at 58. The British Consul at Ioannina will always
send one to meet travellers.
6. Our expenses were altogether about three dollars
(128.) a day each ; but, with good management and a
zaptieh the whole time, they ought not to exceed one and
a half. For example, in going to Ioannina, we paid at
one place two dollars for wood and water only ; after we
had our zaptieh we paid one day two dollars and a half
for wood, water, milk, eggs, six fowls, and two sheep !
I believe a dollar is about the fair price for a sheep, and
fourpence for a fowl; eggs sixpence a dozen. It matters
little in what form you take money. Napoleons or
sovereigns are the most convenient to carry, but they
cannot be changed in the villages. The following list
may be found convenient:—
ll. Sterling = 110 piasters
17. Turkish (Lira) = 100 3 y
1 Napoleon = 88 } }
1 pillar dollar = 24 j } This is liable to fluctuate
in the Exchange.
1 shilling = 5 5 3
7. Greek is spoken almost everywhere in Southern
Albania, but it is better to have one servant who speaks
Albanian if possible.
8. Horses can be obtained in sufficient numbers through
the British Consuls or native consular agents. It is
cheapest and best to engage them for a long journey.
The proper price for horses, whether for baggage or
saddle-horses, is ten or twelve piasters a day; the day is
reckoned about seven hours. On the coast they ask rather
more, as they have to send into the interior for the
animals. Their feed is paid by their owners, and it is as
SOUTHERN A LBA WIA. 63
well to insist upon there being a driver to attend each
horse, as the loading and unloading becomes else a very
tedious operation.
9. The only food to be obtained on the road is lamb or
mutton, which is very tolerably good; in the villages
poultry is almost always to be had, with eggs, butter,
milk, and cheese, and often very good bread. In the
larger towns you may find fruit and vegetables, and
country wine, which will also answer for vinegar. But
a comfortable canteen, supplied with preserved meats,
soups, good wines, &c. &c., will be a necessary acquisi-
tion to all travellers who are not capable of roughing
it, internally as well as externally.
I subjoin a few notes on the subject of Game in
Southern Albania, for the information in which I have to
thank an experienced friend in Corfu :—
SEASONS.
Quail: August to October and March to April. It is
very plentiful at times.
Snipe: is in perfection and plenty from October to
March, but very wild towards the latter month.
Cock: come in with the first moon in October, and in
greatest numbers with a N. or NW. wind. They remain
till February.
Partridge: are scarce. They are said to abound in
the Pindus.
Bustard: come in during the winter; their stay is
uncertain. They are magnificent birds; I have shot one
weighing thirty-eight pounds.
Wild Boar and Deer : are only to be looked for towards
the end of the cock season, when the leaves are fairly off
the trees. They are driven, not stalked.
64. SOUTHERN ALBANIA.
DOGS.
A little bustling retrieving spaniel is invaluable for
cock; and a good hardy retriever best for snipe and wild-
fowl. For large game, any active snapping cur that will
work in thick cover and give tongue at pig or deer with-
out coming to close quarters is good. Highly broken
dogs are quite useless.
Otter-hounds would afford good sport, as there are
plenty of otters along the coasts.
English dog-medicines are most valuable.
BATTERY.
A strong 12-bore breech-loader for either wildfowl
or large game—unless a rifle is preferred. An ordinary
7-pound gun for Snipe and cock; breech-loaders are best
in thick covers. A 20-inch barrelled cock gun is also
useful. •
A yachtsman should bring out plenty of ammunition
with him; and his dinner will be improved if he is pro-
vided with fishing-nets of his own.
Beaters who know the ground are necessary; some
good ones are to be found in Corfu ; their pay is a dollar
a day and their food, or less by the month.
POSITIONS OF GAME.
Avlona: capital snipe-ground, a few small cock-covers,
and plenty of big game—pig, deer, wolves, jackals, &c.
Very good anchorage for a yacht.
Santa Quaranta : here there is little sport immedi-
ately on the coast, but in an hour's walk there is a fine
swamp full of snipe, and admirable cock-ground another
,8OUTHERN ALBANIA. - 65
hour farther, beside snipe, duck, &c. This is perhaps
the centre of the best ground in Southern Albania. In
the plains below Delvino there are generally large flocks
of bustard, but they are very wary. Bad anchorage
here.
Tre Scoglie: capital big-game cover, but bad an-
chorage.
Butrinto : extensive marsh full of snipe; good cock-
covers. By getting an order in Corfu to pass through
the fisheries, which obstruct the river, into the lake,
duck and wild goose are found in large quantities.
Ftelia : a beautiful land-locked harbour, and the best
big-game cover on the coast.
Rataito: a good snipe-marsh and pleasant cock-ground,
as they are found along the hedgerows on the plains.
Bad anchorage.
Pagagini: good cock and big-game cover. Fine
anchorage.
Sayada : good snipe-ground. In the Bacchante flats,
near the mouth of the Kalama river, are myriads of wild-
fowl, from swans down to teal ; but a punt and a duck-
gun are almost indispensable to a good bag. Fair
anchorage at Livadakia, whence a few miles inland there
is a capital snipe-marsh and a few small cock-covers.
Gomenizza : capital big game covers; cock-ground a
little inland.
Plataria: plenty of cock in the abandoned vineyards.
Good anchorage.
Murto: famous for its pig-covers. Coasting on towards
Parga; there is some fair cock and snipe ground.
(36
CHAPTER II.
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
| SUPPOSE it is not easy for an Englishman to
disguise his satisfaction at the termination of our
thankless and unprofitable trust, however unpolite,
not to say impolitic, it may be to express it. At any
rate we have not cared to disguise it. Our press at
home has spoken out from the fulness of its heart,
and rated the Ionians in good round terms for a set
of fractious and impracticable creatures, who will
neither govern themselves nor let others govern
them, and of whom it will be well to be rid once and
for ever. Such opinions, carefully pointed and edged
with incisive wit, as is the manner of periodical writ-
ing, have been the cause of much natural offence
among the Ionians. If they are fractious and im-
practicable, it is just as well for us to remember that
we have done absolutely nothing to make them other-
wise; on the contrary, we set the finishing stroke to
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 67
the previous operation of natural and historical causes
in making them what they are by the unfortunate
constitution of 1848. It is impossible to add a
word or soften an expression in the forcible denun-
ciation of Ionian timidity and want of moral courage
made by Mr. Gladstone before the House of Com-
mons when giving an account of his mission in
1858–9; but it is surely equally certain that some
want of moral courage must also be attributed to us,
for not having at once and decisively reversed an ill-
judged and unsuccessful measure the moment the
dead-lock of affairs became clear, even at the risk of
having to face an outcry at home about illiberality
and oppression. Ionians are naturally at their wit’s-
end to account for our policy, and have recourse to
strange shifts in so doing.
Hear the words of one of themselves: * “In this
muddled state of our affairs has the Protectorate
any share? Is it guilty in any way? Who can
say? . . . Our impression is that the English
find their interest in letting us expose ourselves
before Europe as corrupt and unfit to take care
of ourselves. Otherwise how are we to explain
that the English have now been so long tolerating
* Andrea Lascarato.
F 2
(38 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
conduct in the Assembly which they would not
stand, even in their Liston, in a play.'
Again: “In 1848, when our mob was fretting
and agitated by the turmoil which it was hearing in
Europe, and was restlessly pulling at the reins, the
Protectorate chose that moment of all others to give
it a free press and universal suffrage, when we just
then were seeking for nothing of the kind—we who
so anxiously desired it in quieter times, and who
always met with a refusal. It is worthy of notice
that there then appeared among us journalists who
were owners of printing-offices, and who were abso-
lutely without capital. Yet these men were able
to set up their printing-presses, maintain them and
meet the contingent expenses, without any profit:
indeed to support themselves with perfect ease,
though leaving all other work and keeping to this
alone. It is worthy of notice that, when these
journalists were hounding on our villagers to the
downfall of the Protectorate itself, working them
up and urging them to revolt, the Protectorate took
no steps to prevent the agitation, though the
agitators were tight within its grasp. When the
revolution thus created by the journalists broke
out at last, when the gallows and the lash were at
work throughout the island, and terror was curdling
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 69
the blood of even the most innocent, the first
causes of the revolt not only remained on the spot,
but were never frightened for a moment, even with
the gallows staring them in the face, and went on
with their work in the most perfect serenity. It is
worthy of notice how afterwards, when the elections
had to take place, the Protectorate seemed to do its
best to let these newspaper writers stand before the
mob as martyrs in the cause of freedom, and con-
sequently it had to enjoy their presence as deputies
of the betrayed masses. Now what is the object of
England in all this? What is she driving at in
the policy she adopts in the islands? Has she any
ulterior object? Is she driving at anything at all?
Or is she, after all, merely anxious to kill time for
the fun of the thing, as in the case of James I.,
when they remonstrated with him on the imprudence
of giving a Parliament to Ireland, and he replied,
“Oh, but I want it to amuse myself with !”
I cannot answer for the correctness of the details
of Ionian politics as above given, any more than for
the historical anecdote. But it is curious to see
the way in which the Ionian Cuvier or Owen seeks
to reconstruct a complete pervading motive, or a
structure of real political design, out of a mere
bone-heap of inconsecutive actions determined by
70 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
accident, surprise, or the pressure of immediate
necessity. Our long easy-going routine of making
the best of an indifferent constitution was broken
by the spasms of a scared Liberalism; and the im-
mediate fruit of mischievous concession was a bloody
rebellion, half agrarian, half political. This subsided
into a state of order where professional agitation
was suffered to take the place of quiet subservience
as the recognised means of emolument and power,
and, indeed, of daily bread. It is hardly to be
wondered at that people whose evil fortune is over-
cleverness, and too great a power of seeing into
millstones, should insinuate that we were moved
by the artful design of indulging and fooling the
Ionians to the top of their bent, in order to appear
justified in erasing the constitution with the strong
hand in the fulness of time. It is strange that the
writer should not have seen, or cared to say, that
the outburst of disaffected newspapers carried on
at a loss was simply caused by Athenian court pro-
pagandism, working for the purpose of mere random
'unsettlement, and with no definite view of ultimate
annexation.
It must be remembered that, at that time and
long afterwards, the Athenian court and govern-
ment was more Greek than the Greeks themselves.
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 71
It was seeking to manage them by their vices and
weaknesses, not by their virtues; and they were
perfectly willing dupes to this arrangement. Yet
the overflow of ‘great ideas” was simulated merely
in order to blind the eyes and blunt the sense
of right of the Greek people, while the constitution
of 1843 was being stifled by means of jobbing fac-
tions, controlled by palikar bravoes and highway
robbers. It is cheap and easy to abuse King Otho
now that he is down, and we are all glad to see the
royal scapegoat wander forth into the wilderness,
laden with the burden of everybody's sins besides
his own. But we must not forget that the Court
found a defender during all that period in almost
every Greek; it had the support of all who believe
everything to be liberal that wears a liberal mask
and cries a liberal cry; and it calculated with
certainty on that of the wise class who call them-
selves lovers of the Greeks, and are allowed to pass
unchallenged as their friends because they pet and
spoil their darling by accepting for truth everything
it tells them.
While on the subject of Ionian politics, I am glad
to have the opportunity of giving a further extract
or two from the writings of Andrea Lascarato.
These are exactly what the English public wants,
72 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU Politics.
for it has never yet had access to the opinion of
impartial Ionians unconnected with any faction or
party in the islands. This writer is impartial, and
very much more; for he is urged by a divine wrath,
and a fiery, passionate sense of justice, in everything
he writes, and fiercely smites on all sides in his
eagerness to reform and to improve. Every man in
the islands is his open enemy, yet he has made his
place in every man's conscience, and many Ionians
will admit this—so long as no other Ionian is
within hearing. ‘It is all excellent and it strikes
home,' said one, “but I had much rather my neigh-
bour had written it than myself.’ A man of this
kind is utterly impracticable for official purposes in
a community where a few foreigners have to get on
as they best can among a mob of place-hunters and
intriguers. But as an extra-official advocate of the
truly English idea of orderly reform, and an an-
tidote to the seditious, howling trash of the
mass of the newspapers, he would have been in-
valuable; he deserved, in fact, a better fate than to
be ignored and thrown away, instead of being used
as a trump card. Fancy what the free press of
England would be if the voice of the outsiders were
exclusively pitched in the key of Mr. Mitchell's
: Irish Felon,' and the insiders opposed them by
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 73
nothing better than the ‘London Gazette’ on
Monday and Friday nights! Yet this is what has
taken place in Corfu. A man who is excommuni-
cated for an atheist because he denounces Church
abuses, and who tries to breathe some spiritual life
into the dry bones of Greek ritualism—who, when
imprisoned at the suit of a demagogue, turns to
and tries to show up and reform prison abuses—
must have the real stuff in him, and would be sure
of the sympathy of Englishmen if they could only
get at a knowledge of him.*
‘Assuming that the Protecting Power neither
desires nor excites disorder in our country, we must
say that the means of remedy are in her hands, and
are easy. When she pleases, she has but to say the
word, and our wounds are healed. Let her banish
the misleaders of the people for life. Those men
deserve worse punishment as the corrupters and
betrayers of their country. Let the freedom of the
press cease, for up to this day it has been nothing
but the instrument of falsehood and deceit. Let
universal suffrage cease, for it is unsuited to a
people ignorant of its own duties. These two
* The only place where I have come across any notice of
Andrea Lascarato is in a very able article in the Westminster
Review of January 1857.
74. A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
honoured privileges will return to us the moment
we are fitted to receive them.
‘What are we complaining of ? Is it as in
Turkey, where the governor sends and fetches away
our daughters ? Is it as in Greece, where the
government cannot control the excesses of the mob,
and where you cannot walk safely on the high-
roads? Is it as in England, where you pay for the
light of day which comes in at your windows?—or
as in Italy, where the poor man has to pay for the
meat he brings out at the town-gates and for the
eggs that he carries in for sale? Are we walled
in as in Russia, unable to go forth and seek fortune
abroad? Are we free, as in France, to cut one
another's throats each time we change our master 2
Nothing of all this. The English hold our islands
for the position of those islands; but they are so
entirely indifferent to us that they do not bestow a
thought upon us, either to do us good or harm.
The good and the evil that is in us, therefore, is our
own work; if we suffer calamities, we ourselves are
the cause of them ; if we cnjoy prosperity, we
alone are the labourers worthy of the harvest of
SUICCGSS.
‘I fully believe that our intellectual and moral
development is not in the least opposed to the
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
7
5
interests of England. I believe more especially
that England is thoroughly well disposed to our
benefit, and would feel a pleasure in acceding to
every effort of ours tending to our genuine im-
provement. Yet, with all this, how can we ever
hope for becoming improvement in our community
as long as the government of the Protectorate is
here? This rule is essentially provisional. It is
handed over at intervals for a few years to a Lord
High Commissioner, who comes to our islands
leaving his heart and his interests at home behind
him, and who brings with him nothing but in-
difference, if not contempt, towards the community
at large, with the hope of a speedy return. Such
a Governor of a day cannot see further than the
wants of a day. It is not such a man's work to
provide for future improvement, by sowing the
seeds of true regeneration, which may only bear
fruit after many years. But can we not hope for
such regeneration from the efforts of the Ionians in
the government, profiting by the very indifference
of the English chiefs? No; because for this you
must have men of intelligence, of knowledge, of
strong feelings; men ready to sacrifice all their
own interests to those of the public; to sacrifice
their self-love, their ambition, even their reputa-
76 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
tion. Yes, their reputation; for the statesman has
frequently to choose between indulging the people
to their own destruction, or incurring their dis-
pleasure, and perishing in their good opinion to
secure their salvation. Who is going to sacrifice
his reputation, now-a-days, to benefit the public
here? Neither those who toady and cringe to the
English, nor those who toady and cringe to the
mob, ever tell the truth, save when the truth is not
offensive to the interests of the one or the follies of
the other; when the vagaries of the mob or the
displeasure of the Commissioner have to be en-
countered, they keep aloof in silence and fear. Call
these men Rizospasts, call them Infernals,” call
them by what name you like, they are all birds of
one feather; their different names serve only to
denote the difference of the objects which they
fawn upon and corrupt.’
The repressive system of the old King Tom
period had its faults, but it was thoroughly con-
sistent, and so far better than the complete absence
of all system which followed it. Perhaps it was
unavoidable in the face of the excitement caused
by the Greek revolution. Yet we never lost the
affection of the Ionians on that account, for We
* i.e. Oligarchs, or back-stairs intriguers.
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 77
never had it to lose, nor cared a rush about having
it. What we had was the respect due to a rider
who knows his own mind, and has a firm seat and
a steady hand. But the one fact of his being a
rider with the intention of riding on to the end of
time, for aught that appeared to the contrary, was
never unfelt nor out of mind. The one word
which can be said with truth against our adminis-
tration of the islands is this, that it was satisfied
with going on from hand to mouth as it best could,
without making the slightest provision for a final
day of departure, or fostering the moral growth of
the people, so as to make such a departure the
natural and painless result of their political ma-
turity. Had we adopted some such fixed policy,
we might have afforded to laugh at declamation,
and, if we had learnt Greek and taken kindly to its
literature, we might have enjoyed such poetry as
Though each isle lies bound and captive,
Quelled and chained by artful hand,
Though the line traced on each forehead
Is but spurious Freedom's brand; *
* From Salamós's Hymn to Liberty:—
M’ 6\ov Tow 'vaº & Avaowpºra
Tô kað’ £va Texytkä,
Kai ord piérwto Ypappuéva
"Exovy pet ſpa 'Aévôspiá.
78 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
quite as much as we enjoy the bard of Young
Ireland's defiant shout, ‘Who fears to sing of
Ninety-eight?”
For all this, the material improvement of the
country under the old system of public works, the
almost total disappearance of crime under an
efficient police, and the example of manliness and
high qualities unconsciously shown by most of our
superior officers, would have gone some way to
produce political maturity in the long run, if
they had only been left undisturbed by officious
liberalism and Philhellenism at home, or if the
whole world had stood still till they bore their
fruits. Long years of lethargic, alien rule, broken
by two violent fits of mistimed and mismanaged
fuss, must he considered enough to injure the
self-governing *apacity of any untrained people.
On the first of these disturbing influences I have
allowed the most vigorous and impartial of modern
Greek writers to speak at length. He, I am sure,
will not be angry if I adapt one of his illustrations
of another subject to the present case, and say that
the gift of universal suffrage in the islands is put-
ting a razor into the hands of a monkey, and telling
it to go and shave itself. The second has been too
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 79
recently the subject of debate and comment to need
much further remark. But one cannot help being
sorry for the unfair distribution of the blame and
ridicule with which the whole affair at last was ge-
nerally viewed at home. Everybody had a bad word
or a joke for poor Mr. Gladstone, but hardly any for
those that sent him there. Mr. Gladstone did his
best, against the grain, to treat the whole question
as a statesman, and not as a Philhellenic dreamer.”
* Mr. Gladstone, however, did not begin very prudently.
People at Corfu are never tired of telling the old tale of his
kissing the Greek archbishop's hand—a hand not the most loyal
nor the least intriguing in the world. Of course it is no matter of
blame that an eminent scholar and Christian gentleman should
privately entertain feelings of sympathy and reverence towards
the ancient Eastern Church. But these should not have allowed
the statesman to deviate from official practice in the face of great
public excitement. After all, Mr. Gladstone did not discover
the Greek Church. Other English gentlemen besides himself
had been in communication, for scores of years, not only with its
subordinates, but with its head. The Greek patriarch at Con-
stantinople would have been astonished rather than pleased if any
enthusiastic ambassador or attaché were to have broken through
the practice of their usual intercourse with him, expressed their
deepest reverence and kissed his hand. IIavaywórare, or à
TIavaywórmc orac, on the one hand, Tékvov, my son, on the other,
are there the usual and natural forms. It is enough to make an
Englishman shudder to think that such a kiss might have been
imprinted on the fingers of the Archbishop of Samakov, of the
late patriarch, Joachim of Cyzicus, or of him of Heraclea, the
Friar Tuck of the Eastern Church.
80 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
He had to learn the lesson, at all risks of shock to
his sentiment and imagination, that Greeks were
neither ancient Hellenes, nor angels, nor devils—but
Were human beings, to be dealt with as other men;
and he honestly set to work at the distasteful task.
The best proof of this may be found in his excellent
speech to the mob of annexationists at Zante, which
naturally rallied round him like a flag or symbol of
Hellenism. But what are we to think of those who
sent him there evidently believing, in good faith,
that a Philhellene acting after his kind was the best
man for guiding and controlling an unruly Greek
populace, which is not so very Greek after all?
Does it show knowledge of human nature to sup-
pose that the factitious cry of annexationism, and
the paid profession of demagogues, would yield to
the presence of a Commissioner actually recom-
mended on account of prejudices and sympathies
which would dispose him to judge them as genuine
at first sight? Does it show knowledge of the dis-
tinctive nature of Greeks to flatter them openly with
fine words about “illustrious Homeric scholars?”
In real life, they don't care an obolus about Homer;
but they do care a great deal about business in hand,
and a maladroit compliment or appeal to their do-
mestic Buncombe in a stranger's official paper only
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 81
serves to rouse into activity their sleepless suspi-
cion of interested motives lying at the root of every
business. Homer and every other ancient Worthy
is naturally but vaguely valued, by Greeks, as a
great name of the Past, with which they stand in
national connection. But he is also valued, in-
telligently and with precision, for the sake of his
weight and influence as a living power in the senti-
ment of educated Europe. The degeneration of
this feeling of ours into mere sentimentality, its
untimely intrusion into councils of state, its misuse,
its tendency to substitute declamatory platitudes
and loose opinions for real knowledge of facts, have
done more harm to the political steadiness and
straight growth of the Greek people than their
well-meaning admirers can possibly conceive or will
admit. The average Greek—and no Greek is above
or below the average—is one of the vainest of men,
and has a nature as hard and bright and cutting as
the diamond. He is eager to be understood and
valued for his own sake, not for Homer's; and, in
his heart of hearts, he resents and despises the weak
sentimentality, and the ignorance or dislike of facts
which accompanies it, however much he may
speculate in it and trade upon it as an advantageous
political investment.
G
82 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
The time chosen for Mr. Gladstone's mission is
a much more serious matter to reflect upon. This
was the close of the year 1858, and that year was
the one which bore the fruits of the Franco-
Russian alliance, or mutual understanding, which
was plainly confessed to us the other day without
any disguise. The whole Eastern world was in fer-
mentation during that year, for men then saw that
Russia was, after all, victorious in the war of
1854-5. She had broken up the Western alliance,
detached France from England so far as Turkey is
concerned, and made a zealous convert of her in
her Eastern policy. A common line of advocacy
on a disputed frontier, and on the question of
Rouman union, a revolution in Servia, a broken
truce and predatory inroad by Montenegro under
foreign instigation, a consular intrigue in Crete,
ending in an insurrectionary movement to get rid of
a reforming governor, and an active fomentation of
discontent with the Porte among both Christians
and ultra-fanatic non-Turkish Mussulmans — all
these events were the fruits of 1858. Together
with this, we now know as a matter of history how
the storm burst on Austria in 1859; and we may
infer how it must have been brewing in the pre-
vious autumn. We see how France had established
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 83
her preponderating influence in the Sclavonic and
Danubian provinces, in order to hold in her hand
the means of taking Austria in the rear, should
such have been necessary during the changes and
chances of a prolonged war. Yet this of all others
was the time fixed upon to hoist a Philhellenic flag
in the islands ; and, instead of insulating local
difficulties and handling them as purely domestic
questions, openly to connect them with agitation
prevailing on the mainland. It has become an
open question, which I am content to leave to
wiser heads and longer tongues than my own,
whether it be right or wrong for France and
Russia to pick Austria and Turkey to pieces, in
the name of nationality and Christianity. But it
is surely hurtful to England that this ill-considered
mission, like a random card at whist, must have
shown both our partners and our adversaries that
We acted as if we had no power of combination—
or, at best, ran all this risk of setting the Levant
in a blaze merely to gain over or conciliate a Par-
liamentary antagonist.
I am not merely wasting words on an old-world
story, already dead and done with. It is still the
proper conventional treatment of modern Greek
affairs by our writers to call forth the mighty
G 2
84 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
shade of Homer on all occasions, and cast its ob-
scurity over our imperfect lights. Philhellenism,
or, in other words, wilful advocacy, doing duty for
living knowledge and experience, is still an actual
evil among us to warp our judgment. It is based
On a sentiment most creditable to entertain, but
most imprudent to avow or parade. It is now a
real misfortune to the Greeks, whose self-reliance
it is impairing, and who are by it led to believe
that willing ears will always be found to listen
to any excuse, good or bad, for not doing their
work, and that it is easier to call on Europe
to their aid like a friendly Hercules than to set
their own shoulders manfully to the wheel. Many
Greeks know how sweet it is in the mouth, and
how bitter afterwards. But it is not for them
openly to repudiate or renounce it : the honest
ones are tongue-tied by the bonds of gratitude;
the dishonest want nothing better than partisans
at any price. As for the modern Philhellene him-
self, only let him buy a Greek grammar, let him
study the living speech, and let him overhear what
Greeks say of him and his kind. No shock short
of that will bring back his common sense.
Again, it would seem that want of combination
and fitfulness of policy at home never had a more
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 85
striking example than now, in the question of the
fortifications. If we had ceded the Islands and
blown up the works with a high hand, as a matter
of course, we should still have been respected,
however unpopular. If we had ceded the Islands,
and, while about it, handed over the works un-
touched and with a good grace, we should have
been equally respected, and, if there is a soft place
in the Greek heart, we should have found our
way to it, for the time being at least. It is hard
to see how, after all, the possession of the fortifi-
cations by a responsible king, who does not mean
mischief, would not be a gain rather than a loss to
the cause which all Englishmen have at heart—the
orderly government and steady political improve-
ment of a free people. It would assuredly be such
a gain if we could only make up our minds to deal
shortly and summarily with any conversion of the
fortress to filibustering purposes in time of peace;
and the Greeks would think all the better of us for
so doing. But to stand undecided and haggling
is exposing us to the natural imputation of having
committed ourselves to so important a step as
the cession without having seriously reflected on
the one point specially affecting our own military
and naval interests. At our character of oppressors
86 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
and tyrants we can afford to laugh; that of being
unconscious repressors of national energy we ought
to meet and investigate in detail; but what we
cannot afford is the character of weakness and in-
decision. I am not speaking at random when I Say
that this last has become a matter of universal
belief, and a principle of action in south-eastern
Europe. There all the minor nationalities are cla-
morously hustling or joining one another to pour
their one-sided views into the untaught ears of the
British public, seeking, or told to seek, thereby
how they may best determine or embarrass the
action of the British Government.
The cession itself had to come sooner or later, and
the only remark to make on it is that it came with-
out preparation and without warning. Everybody
of any position or property was taken aback at the
news, not for love of the English connection, but
for fear of suffering in his interests by an uncertain
future. All current business arrangements were
undertaken on the faith of repeated assurances that
that connection would not be broken. Much na-
tural uneasiness ensued, which would have found
a freer vent in public had it not been for the
universal mistrust and fear of denunciation by
their neighbour prevailing among Ionians, and the
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 87
dread of being arraigned as traitors to their country
before the impalpable, unreal, Mumbo-jumbo-like
tribunal of nationalism. It would have been better
to have made the cession a conditional reward to
Greece after having fairly undertaken the task of
self-improvement, rather than a preliminary and,
as it may turn out, a premature bribe. We might
in the interval have set our own house in order,
have cleared the Ionian national sentiment from
its rubbish, and made use of the genuine residue
to rouse and quicken a sense of political integrity
and desire for rational progress. The cry for an-
nexing the Islands never came from Athens with
any real force, in the same way as the cry for
annexing Thessaly and Crete. The independent
Athenian always knew that the Ionian was not as
yet a Greek without a difference like the Thes-
salian, or with a moderate difference like the
Cretan. He knew that the Venetian rule of many
centuries had impressed a marked stamp on the
islander, and had bequeathed him a numerous
population of Italian name and descent, still speak-
ing Italian in their families, converts of yesterday
from Roman Catholicism, whose new-blown Hel-
lenism he had no care to engraft at once on his
own, however well it might serve as a flower of
88 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
rhetoric to adorn his invective against England
in a speech or leading article when out of humour
with her. The hardy and enterprising sailors and
industrious agriculturists of the Southern Islands,
much more genuine Greeks than his Albanian self,
might form in time a desirable addition to his little
kingdom ; but demagogues and mob-servers were
not so rare at Athens as to make him over eager
for a gift which would encumber his assembly with
the half-alien Dandolos and Pretenderis and Re-
publicas. It is a further argument against sudden
change, as well as an indication that change of some
kind would soon have forced itself into notice
as an ultimate necessity, that our people in the
Islands, always on most cordial social terms with
the Ionians as far as the intercourse went, had of
late years paid some attention to the study of
modern Greek. The Ionian gentlemen, as yet
imperfectly Grecised, were becoming gradually
more and more Greek; while the English, acquiring
more and more knowledge of that language, were
gaining the power of directly influencing the people
for their good, and of discriminating between the
wheat and the chaff of their nationalism. The
past generation of English residents may be par-
doned for not having perceived that the country-
A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS. 89
men and contemporaries of Ugo Foscolo were other
than Italian, or in any essential way Greek, or
for having lost sight of the fact that modern Greek
literary cultivation owes everything to the Cor-
fiotes, Theotokis and Bülgaris. But now, during
my own visit, I found two English judges, a
Government secretary and his wife, and two aides-
de-camp familiar with colloquial Greek, and in two
cases masters of it. This is a different state of
things from the old days when nobody knew it, or
more recent and dangerous days when it was Sup-
posed to be the monopoly of one man. Some
knowledge acquired in this manner would have
found its way to the home public, and would have
enabled it to support the Government in repressing
the demagogues, instead of flying like a blind bat
in its face, and becoming the echo of factious votes
and clamour. It is strange to think on the hundreds
upon hundreds of worthy English lads who have
been relieving one another in the English garrison
since our first occupation without ever bestowing
a thought upon the Greek language — gallant lads
fresh from Eton and Harrow, fresh from years
of groaning and smarting over their grammar
and their Liddell and Scott, whom a fortnight's
coaching by a skilled hand would have put in a
90 A FEW WORDS ON CORFU POLITICS.
fair way of communicating at first hand with the
natives—of saying what they had to say, and
hearing what they had to hear. For want of indi-
cation on the part of authority, all this energy
and power was let to drift into athletics and rat-
hunting. In these later days of examination
run wild, a young lad entering the army may
have been set to grind Shakspeare into worth-
less dead Greek iambics, when it would at least
have served some practical purpose to have made
him turn the ‘Captain Bold of Halifax who lived
in country quarters’ into modern Greek ‘political
verses.' But this part of the subject is ‘what no
lady can be expected to understand, so I willingly
let it alone.
As it is, I fear we shall leave the Islands just a
moment too soon, without leaving behind us any
solid marks of beneficent power. We cannot claim
credit for our roads and our public works. These
were constructed by our fathers, who fought at
Marathon and Salamis—the men of Trafalgar and
Waterloo. It is our modern generation which has
handed their charge over to corrupt and jobbing
municipalities which allow them to fall into decay,
over which we dare not tighten our grasp for fear
of the cry. All the results of our direct and
A FEW WORDS OW CORFU POLITICS. 91
intentional teaching will fade away; the art of
beating thick cover for woodcock will decline like
that of enamelling blue tiles; the handling of
yachts in the teeth of a stiff breeze will cease, or
be misapplied to piratical purposes; and it is
enough to break an honest heart to think that
some day the noisy games of cricket, which the little
brown street boys of Corfu may be seen and heard
playing on the esplanade any fine spring evening,
will perish from the face of the land, and leave no
trace behind them but the barbaric shouts of TIxoi,
"A007, and Aëyx predºdo oilſ.cst, for the puzzlement
of future generations of German philologists.
92
CHAPTER III.
RAGUSA.
IT had been decided that I should employ the
next two months in seeing as much as I could
of Dalmatia, and on my return to Corfu I deter.
mined to take the next ‘Dalmato-Albanese ’
steamer northwards. The summer months were
certainly not the best for the purpose, if it could
have been avoided, as the heat forced one to
confine one's travelling almost entirely to the
coast; and although Dalmatia is the narrowest
country in the world, I should have been glad to
go more inland than I ultimately found possible.
Thinking, however, that ‘half a loaf was better
than no bread,” I resolved to see all that was
feasible; and I was very glad to take advantage of
a kind offer made to me by the Lord High Com-
missioner, of arranging that his aide-de-camp,
Captain Strahan, should accompany me in the
early part of my journey.
STRAITS OF OTRANTO. * 93
Our lot fell upon a tolerably dirty old-fashioned
vessel, the “Arciduca Ludovico; ' but I must avail
myself of this opportunity of saying that, as far as
necessary comforts are required, the vessels on this
line are perfectly good and are really comfortable.
If they were much crowded they might prove
small and close; but I am told that this is very
rarely the case; the decks might be kept a little
better and whiter, but the beds are quite clean and
free from vermin; the food is plentiful, the cookery
is German, but good, and I have never met with
anything but the most perfect civility and atten-
tion from the officers and attendants. The ‘Bos-
foro’ is the best of the three vessels on this line,
and her cabins for ladies are the most commo-
dious.
We started at 8.30 on the evening of June 23,
in tolerably rough weather, and we lost in the
darkness of night any glimpse that we might have
had of the coast of Italy in passing through the
Straits of Otranto. The following morning found
us lying at our ease from 6 to 8 o'clock in the
pretty little harbour of Avlona (or Valona) of
which not much was visible from the sea; the
variety of foliage, however, made it look green
after the burnt-up grass and sad-coloured olives of
94 . DURAZZO.
Corfu. There was nothing remarkable in the
coast along this day's sailing, though it is varied
in outline and pretty. At 5 P.M. we arrived at
Durazzo, where we landed for an evening walk.
Durazzo was once no mean city: Dyrrhachium.”
Was the spot chosen by Cicero as his place of exile,
and on the little plain behind it Pompey fought
two battles with Caesar. Robert Guiscard the
Norman landed here after conquering Apulia, and
defeated Alexius Comnenus on the same plain.
After being by turns Norman, Sicilian, Hungarian,
Neapolitan, &c., Durazzo fell into the hands of the
* Twice at least St. Paul the Apostle must have landed here.
Dyrrhachium, a ‘free city,’ was the landing-place of the great
Via Egnatia, whence the road was carried direct to Thessalonica
having been joined at the station of Clodiana by the branch from
Apollonia. After being “driven up and down in Adria,’ St. Paul
arrived in Rome, suffered two years' imprisonment in that city,
and was at last set free in the early spring of A.D. 63. He
then went into Macedonia, and of course took the shortest sea-
voyage possible. He might have crossed to Apollonia, but
Dyrrhachium was the shortest and the most used. It was four years
later, when he had gone to winter at Nicopolis (close to Prevysa),
[Titus iii. 12], that he was there arrested by order of Nero, and
sent to Rome as quickly as possible,_by this route, Dyrrhachium
and Brundusium. This was his last journey of all. Titus had
previously left him at Nicopolis and gone to preach in Dalmatia
(2 Tim. iv. 10), and only St. Luke accompanied him to the
trial which resulted in his death, five or six months later.—
Conybeare and Howson's Life of St. Paul.
JD URAZZO. 95
Turks in 1501. The town is now in the last
degree wretched and miserable; it contains but a
few narrow streets with open shops, scarce worthy
of the name of bazaars, but quite good enough
for the horrid-looking Turkish soldiers, who are
the chief inhabitants of the town. Although I had
seen an extra bad set in the towns of Syria just
previous to the massacres of 1860, even I was un-
prepared for the brutal appearance of these men,
and my military companion was very much im-
pressed with the besotted and wicked expression
of their faces. I learned afterwards from a pasha
that the corps here was considered one of their
lowest.
At the end of the principal street there stood a
half-ruined square tower with a broken-down wall
in flank; this gate opened on the country, and was
filled with guards. They stopped us with insolent
roughness as we attempted to pass through, and
on being remonstrated with by one of the ship's
officers who accompanied us, they said we could
not walk under it lest we should ‘take a plan' of
this wretched shapeless mass of broken stones!
We walked quietly through, however, while some of
the men scowled, as only ruffianly Turks can do,
and muttered opprobrious terms which we fortu-
96 ANTIVARI.
mately did not understand, but in which ‘giaour'
was, of course, conspicuous. Every army has its
best and worst, and I was glad to remember some
of the intelligent faces and soldierly bearings I had
seen in Turkey while I looked at these, so much
the reverse. -
We encountered another set when we landed at
6 o'clock the next morning at Antivari; a stream
here winds along the middle of the little plain, on
the banks of which and in which we saw some
forty or fifty soldiers making their breakfasts and
washing their clothes. They were a jolly good-
humoured looking set, very dirty and not much
disciplined, and one wondered what on earth they
did with themselves in such a place. The Turkish
Government has lately been accumulating troops on
this coast, and the plain of Antivari was completely
covered with their greentents, as if they were taking
sea-air for the benefit of their health. The plain is,
however, very unhealthy from miasma of a severe
kind, and the houses standing on it are but three
or four at most. The town itself is at three miles'
distance, lifted upon a picturesque rock and niched
into a ravine; its chief interest now is in its con-
taining the palace of the Archbishop of Antivari,
who is also called Primate of Servia and Prince
ANTIVARI. 97
of Croatia—grand old titles which have now no
meaning. It is also the residence of a mudir
or bey, the governor of the district.
Antivari was once a splendid place, famous alike
for the beauty of her edifices, her nobles, her
riches, and her commerce; a bishop was seated
here in the middle of the ninth century, and later
on she formed an independent republic. She con-
tinued to flourish under the Venetians, but, falling
into the hands of the Turks in 1571, her cathedral
became a mosque, and the towers of her fine castle
crumbled into ruins. Now, the city consists of
some 250 houses, on many of which the arms
of Venetian patricians may still be seen sculp-
tured. The population is about 4,000, one-third
Christian and two-thirds Albanian Mussulman.
It is one of the loveliest places on the whole
coast; the plain is green and smiling, enclosed
by lofty mountains sweeping round the deep bay,
whose sides are covered with extensive woods of
rich and varied foliage, through which and over
which rise abrupt, precipitous bluffs of fine dark
coloured rock, underneath serrated and picturesque
outlines. The whole of this coast up to Budua
was famous for the goodness of its olives and fruit,
and the inhabitants of it were very wealthy;
IH
98 SPITZA.
but many troubles have fallen upon the dis-
trict in consequence of its containing the much-
contested frontier of Austria, Montenegro, and
Turkey; and it has been thus despoiled of all its
richness. º
We returned to the ship laden with branches of
clematis, and in a couple of hours we were passing
a fine fortress lifted up on a lofty ridge, called
Castel Lastua; this is just over the boundary line
of the Turks, and is the first fortress of the
Austrians. Immediately south of this fortress the
coast is slightly indented into an open bay, along
which is the little district of Spitza, of so poor a
soil that grain cannot be cultivated in it. It is
here that the Montenegrines so ardently desire to
be allowed to make a small port, as an outlet for
their few exports; it is a wretched little place, and
would require some outlay to make it available for
even small craft ; but, such as it is, it is very
natural they should be most anxious to obtain it.
Nor would the danger of the gift, it seems to me,
be very great, since the little port contains but a
few yards, so to say, of coast, and is completely
domineered over, on one side by the Austrians and
on the other by the Turks; there could be no
possibility here of taking an ell when given an
PUD UA. 99
inch. The Spizzans are altogether Christian, half-
Greek, half-Latin, and have never suffered a single
Mussulman to dwell among them. The ruins of
several ancient castles are to be seen here, within
one of which there are two churches, Greek and
Latin, to which Albanians, Dalmatians, Montene-
grines, &c., setting all mutual hatreds in abey-
ance for the time being, make an annual pilgrimage
together in the month of August.
We had now entered Dalmatia, and, in another
hour or two, we had passed through the wild barren
islets which form the very picturesque entrance to
Büdia, and were in the little harbour, looking up
at the fine craggy and lofty cliffs that surround it.
It was exceedingly hot, as we lay at mid-day
beside the glaring fortress, but we could not resist
the invitation of the very civil Commandant, who
came to breakfast on board the steamer, to inspect
the town and fortress with him. The town is
clean, and appeared thriving and cheerful after the
deadness and tatterdemalion look of the Turkish
towns, but it is a very small place, and in reality
scarcely larger than the barracks and fortifications.
We went through the dormitories, bakehouses, &c.
&c., of the barracks, finding it all remarkably clean
and well arranged, and as airy as could well be
H 2
100 BUDUA.
managed in such a climate, and my companions
were much pleased with the arms shown to them
belonging to each soldier. The men answered all
the questions put to them with much readiness and
intelligence; they seemed pleased at the interest
we took in these details. Within the precincts of
the fortress a Greek church and a Catholic church
stood peaceably side by side, for the use of the
soldiers of each rite. Many of the Dalmatian
troops belong to the Greek Church.
The Austrians permit no markets to be held
within any of these Dalmatian towns: the peasants,
therefore, congregate outside one or other of the
town gates, where they and their wares form pic-
turesque groups. We passed through the northern
gate of Büdüa, and found ourselves all at once
in a little crowd of Dalmatians and Montenegrines
in their country costumes; they had not much to
sell, but the piled-up baskets of figs, apricots, and
a few other vegetables, looked fresh and pretty.
There was no meat, only a few fish, and nearly
all of that was salt. Some girls had handfuls of
very poor silk cocoons to sell, and half a dozen
pairs of gay-coloured knitted stockings were to be
seen. There were but few silver buttons or
ornaments; and the only handsome thing we saw
ROCCHE DI CATTARO. 101
was a waistband on a Morlach woman, about four
inches wide, formed of very large slices of red
carnelians set in gold. The want of costume
among the peasant women was, however, quite
made up for by the astounding would-be-Parisian
toilettes that came on board in a bevy of ladies
making an excursion to Cattaro; ludicrously ex-
travagant, of course, as to fashion.
Two hours' quiet run along a very pretty coast
brought us into the jaws of three huge fortresses,
Santa Rosa and Punto d’Ostro on each side,
Rondone on an islet, with distant glimpses of
others close at hand; this is the entrance to the
famous Bocche di Cattaro. The shape of this
winding fiord is that of a two-headed 2: it is 24
miles in length, and takes about four hours and
a half to pass through in the steamer. We ran
straight across to the centre of the first bend, in
which lies a pretty place bowered in trees, called
Castel Nuovo, and stopped a little farther on at the
bright-looking village of Megline, lying off which
we dined. Megline and Castel Nuovo are entirely
inhabited by the families of merchant captains and
other officers and sailors on service, and so com-
pletely are these towns, especially Castel Nuovo,
thus occupied, that there is said to be scarcely a
102 BOCCHE DI CATTARO.
man in the place; family after family, high and
low, rich and poor, consisting only of women whose
husbands, fathers, or brothers are absent mariners.
It is about two hours hence to Cattaro, along a
winding fiord of great beauty: the sudden changes
from lake-like width of waters to narrow passages of
nearly-meeting shores, gives a vast variety of views
which compensate for some monotony of form and
colour. To so narrow a space have the waters in
one place become contracted, that the wire of the
telegraph is flung from side to side, and very
pretty it is to see the gossamer thread hanging,
apparently, in the sky, as the steamer glides under-
neath it. Close to the water's edge are cottages
and villas, coloured white, pink, yellow, and some-
times sky-blue, each in its garden and bosquet of
citron trees, flowers, and fruit; above these rise the
vineyards and mulberry terraces, which break the
tediousness of the continual olive groves. There
are also Judas trees, and a few plane trees, which all
contrast very beautifully with the abrupt walls of
hard, whitish-grey rocks, rising directly above them,
and frowning loftily down upon the otherwise
lovely fiord. The Bocche di Cattaro are more
cheerful and gay-looking than the longer and less
winding gulf of Smyrna; but I cannot help
PERA.S.T.O. 103
thinking that the utterly barren whiteness of these
much loftier mountains makes this strait far less
lovely. Of the villages on the shores, perhaps
Perasto is the prettiest, or rather was so: for, on
account of some inexplicable freak of fashion,
Perasto has dropped out of favour with the
Cattarese, and scarcely anyone will live there, even
if paid to do so by the absent owners of the houses;
one half of them consequently are already roofless
and falling into ruin. The town clings upon
steps cut up the nearly perpendicular sides of the
stern barren mountain: Venetian castles appear
above and below, and in the midst of all is a most
beautiful lofty campanile, of light and elegant
design. Many fast-decaying bits of Venetian
architecture are readily discerned even from the
Water.
Perasto stands in the centre of the eastern end of
the fiord, between the two arms of which the largest
runs southwards to Cattaro, and the other bends
round to Monte Cassone and Risano, famous for the
costumes and fine arms of the men. To the left of
Perasto are two very picturesque rocky islets, each
holding a convent: in one of these is the portrait
of the Blessed Virgin painted by St. Luke, the
object of hundreds of pilgrimages. All along the
104. CATTARO.
eastern coast from Perasto to Cattaro is one long
straggling village, called Dobrota, like every village
here occupied by mariners; in fact, one seldom
enquires the birthplace of any officer on board an
Austrian steamer, that he does not mention one
or other of these villages, whereto he intends to
retire for the end of his days. They are just
the pretty, homely, happy-looking and peculiarly-
situated spots that one can imagine would secure
the passionate affections of their natives. As
we turned away from Perasto a heavy black storm
was gathering over Cattaro: it veiled the grey
whiteness of the mountains, added much to their
frowning sternness, threw the narrow waters at
the bottom into inky blackness, and altogether in.
creased the beauty of the place very much. For
ourselves, we revelled in the freshness and novelty
(to us) of the rain, and we went on shore to enjoy
the shower more thoroughly.
Cattaro itself is certainly a very remarkable and
curious place; more picturesque than lovely, and
yet possessed of a grand wild beauty which is not
easily to be forgotten. The walls of this deep nar-
row trough appear to rise nearly perpendicularly
from the darkened waters at the bottom. Just un-
der the semicircular head of the fiord (the extreme
CATTARO. 105
south), the foreground slopes into a few meadows,
while a little to the left of this is the town of
Cattaro, so tucked in under the frowning mountain
over its head, that nobody could possibly imagine
from the sea that the town was deeper than the
boulevard and the one row of buildings that are
immediately visible. But, on landing, one is
astonished to find, not only innumerable little
narrow streets, but ever so many Small piazzas,
many-shaped and many-sided, and even little tiny
gardens, covered up between walls, and filled with
splendid oleanders and lemon trees, which seem
actually growing out of the utterly barren moun-
tain; so completely does the rock lean over and
mingle itself in with every atom of the town.
And these streets are charming, you can scarcely
pass a dozen yards of any one of them without
lighting on some delicious little morceau of Byzan-
time architecture—a light, elegant balustrade—an
exquisitely-floriated capital—a rich moulding—
graceful ironwork—delicately-carved mullions and
architraves—all speaking eloquently of the 377
years, when Cattaro was enrolled under the banner
of St. Mark. The Venetian lion's ugly face still stares
out everywhere from the walls, and although the
Austrians have added a little to the fortifications
106 CATTARO.
which bristle all round the little city, yet they
everywhere bear the indelible stamp of the Republic.
Angle after angle seems scrambling up the mountain
side and almost hanging in the air, with a confusion
of regularity most puzzling to an unmilitary eye.
A grand ravine abruptly closes in the left extremity
of the town; while above all are the upper zigzags
of the famous scala—the road to Montenegro.
The bright red roofs of the houses below soften
the contrast between the lofty crags above and the
pleasant flower-planted boulevard on the quay,
poplars lining the old city wall, and acacias hiding
the barracks on each side of the handsome Venetian-
built Sea-gate. Scores or hundreds of bright-
coloured boats with awnings and flags, and timber-
laden brigs, line the quays of the Gate, while on the
other is the esplanade and café and billiard-rooms,
where an Austrian band performs every evening.
Such crowds of Austrian officers and gaily-dressed
ladies come out to hear it, that one marvels how the
little town can possibly hold so many.
Just within the Sea-gate is a picturesque circular
tower, such as we were afterwards to see in every
town in Dalmatia that had been subject to Venice:
and some way farther on is the Catholic cathedral,
a small but interesting building, with a good façade,
CATTAIPO. 107
consisting of two quaint towers and a handsome
porch, above which is an open gallery, from which
the bishop gives his blessing to the people assembled
in the little piazza below. Over this is a beautiful
rose window of sixteen trefoiled lights. The soffit
of the great entrance-arch and the border round
it is very richly sculptured. I was examining its
details, when the door opened, and the venerable
bishop, whose silvery beard swept down to his waist,
came slowly out dressed in black and crimson silk
robes, and went into a well-built old palace close by.
He did not seem to keep much state, for he was quite
unattended; and I saw him take the key of the door
from his gold-embroidered pocket, let himself in,
and at the passage window stop and light a tallow
candle, to enable him to find the door of his inner
room. I heard afterwards that he was a very well-
informed and agreeable old man; and very obliging
in giving or finding lodgings for travellers. Right
opposite the palace and in the same piazza is the
Greek church, an early Romanesque structure, once
the Greek cathedral; but since the commencement
of this century, the patriarch or Greek bishop of
Dalmatia has resided, like his Latin brother-
dignitary, chiefly at Zara.
The steamer left Cattaro at six the next morning
L08 RAG USA.
after twelve hours' stay, and I thought the Bocche
still prettier than on the previous evening, from the
hardness of the ugly-coloured mountains being veiled
in the blue mists of morning. From the entrance
of the Bocche to Ragusa the coast is rocky and rude,
but in no way pretty until the point of the bay,
called the Val di Breno, has been passed, and one
looks back at the hamlet of Ragusa Vecchia on the
spot where stood the city of Epidaurus. This city,
founded by the Greeks and occupied by the Romans,
was destroyed by the Croats in A.D. 656, and a
large proportion of the marble columns and pieces
of more ancient sculpture now seen in Ragusa are
said to have been brought from it.
The coast of the Val di Breno is very pretty,
and its olives are of the richest: a good road has
lately been made along the edge of the sloping
mountains nearly to Ragusa Vecchia. The steamer
passes the little bay of St. Hilary, where the saint,
following the footsteps of St. Paul and Titus, landed
to preach the Gospel in Dalmatia: and next the
islet of La Chroma—the landing-place on his re-
turn from the same Holy Land, of a very different
person, namely, our own popular hero, Coeur de
Lion.
Ragusa has no harbour for any vessel but the
RAG USA. 109
small native craft of the coast: the whole of the
picturesque and brightly-coloured city, sparkling
with domes and campaniles, is therefore passed in
review as the steamer goes on beyond it to double
the entrance of the Val d'Ombla, within which is
the bay of Gravosa. Threading a number of large
and small islands, each bearing a fort, the port of
Gravosa opens finely to view as the steamer leaves
the mouth of the much-praised Val d’Ombla to the
left, and turns due south to the landing-place;
whence a twenty minutes' drive brings the traveller
to Ragusa. The road, originally made by the
French but improved by the Austrians, carries one
beside a heap of ruined villas and small palaces,
which were destroyed by the Montenegrines under
the Russians in 1806: but they have never been
repaired.
A proud and noble city is that of Ragusa; and
truly she has a right to glory in her history,
though alas! it is now all gone into the past.
Founded in the middle of the seventh century, that
is, about two centuries later than the foundation of
Venice, Ragusa steadily resisted all the stratagems
and blandishments of her elder rival, both in war
and art, and was never subjugated to her yoke.
She is the only city in Dalmatia where no Lion of
110 RAG USA.
St. Mark is to be seen, and to this day it is im-
possible to converse with any Ragusan for half an
hour, without his reminding you of that proud fact.
In 1050 the King of Dalmatia bestowed on the city
twenty-two miles of coast as a gift, and at the same
period the Ragusans instituted a nobility of their
OWn, Very many of whose descendants are still ex-
isting. Independent, although physically weak, Ra-
gusa in 1370 requested the Turks to accept 500
sequins a year for their nominal protection, and from
that time forth her prosperity annually increased till
1667, when an earthquake swallowed up nearly the
whole of the city and a great part of the population.
Rapidly recovering from this fearful visitation, she
continued steadily independent, until, in 1806,
threatened at Once by France, England, and Russia,
she endeavoured to save herself by opening her
gates to the French. On this the Russians and
Montenegrines harassed her to the best of their
ability, until, after two years of polite speeches,
the French commander coolly announced to the
assembled senators that the Republic of Ragusa had
ceased to exist. Seven years later the Congress of
Vienna delivered Dalmatia to the Austrians.”
* See the history of Ragusa &c. in Paton's charming book,
The Highlands and Islands of the Adriatic. -
RAG USA. 111
The principal street, called the Stradone, of Ra-
gusa debouches at each end into a double fortress
with a bridge over a deep ditch: the southern fort-
ress or gate is called the Porta Plocce, the northern
Porta Pille. Outside the latter is a large café and
a gravelled place called ‘il Boschetto,' shaded by a
group of the magnificent Paulonia imperialis of
‘short but sweet' duration. Here is the sole hotel
of Ragusa; a tolerably well-built house, looking from
two sides on the sea-washed rocks, and seemingly
embedded between the fortresses of Pille and San
Lorenzo. Under the management of a landlord
who abhorred vermin and incoherent accounts, the
hotel would be very comfortable; as it was, we
found it airy, and the cuisine good, and, by dint of
daily beholding with our own eyes the washing out
of our apartments, and paying for every meal as
soon as swallowed, we got on very well. Ragusa
is a place comme il y en a peu for the lovers of art
and history, and its charming climate and beautiful
scenery would make it a delightful residence for
many months at a time, both summer and winter:
but it needs a little more of English enterprise and
capital before it can become, as it well deserves to
be, a favourite abiding-place for the invalid or the
tourist. It is hot in the summer, but the sea breezes
112 RAGUSA.
sweep so refreshingly through it that it is never
close or stuffy: while in the winter its western
aspect prevents its ever being really very cold; and
the city is said to be remarkably healthy. I can
well believe it, for I never saw a cleaner town in
this part of the world. The streets are all paved
with large flat flags, and most of them have a gutter
of running water. Like every walled town, with
no exception, on this coast, carriages cannot enter
within the city: the gates are small and narrow;
but besides this impediment, the flat flag pavement
renders them unfit for traffic of this kind. And in
most cities the streets are too narrow to admit of
carriage or cart. On one side of the Stradone are
the large houses, public buildings, and churches of
Ragusa to the edge of the coast: on the other the
streets run up the mountain in narrow lanes of
staircases, so steep that one really wonders the
houses do not topple over. Underneath the hori-
zontal of the highest is an aqueduct which brings
in water for the whole town from the Val d’Ombla :
there is an opening at the head of each lane, and
the groups that are to be seen at each, morning and
evening, form one of the many picturesque interests
of Ragusa.
The two most beautiful buildings in Ragusa are
JèA G USA. 113
the Dogana or Custom House, and the Palace of
the Rector of the late Republic, now the Govern-
ment House or Town Hall. The former is just a
Venetian” palace, with the addition of a colonnade
upon the street, supporting a balcony and loggia
windows encased in spiral mouldings. The Town
Hall is a magnificent building, bearing a strong
resemblance to the Ducal Palace at Venice—the
seven large rich capitals and arch mouldings of the
colonnade being as varied and interesting as those
of that world-famous building. One of them repre-
sents the god Esculapius reading in his studio, sur-
rounded with bottles and instruments of the healing
art: as Esculapius was the chief object of venera-
tion by the colony of Epidaurus, this capital has
been imagined to have been brought from the ruins
* In using the term Venetian, the reader will of course under-
stand that I mean to describe that Romanesque or Byzantine style
of architecture of which St. Mark's is the best example, and
which was probably employed in Dalmatia, either by native
artists educated in Venice, or by Venetians sent along with the
scarlet cloth and armed galley which the Republic annually
exchanged with Ragusa for two white horses and three barrels of
wine. In the same way I use the term Lombardic to describe
the same style, but now stamped with that Italian influence which
resulted in the Duomo of Pisa—an influence easily imparted to
the architecture of a country that carried on such constant inter-
course with Italy as Dalmatia must ever have done.
I
114 IPA G USA.
of that city, but the form and style are thoroughly
Byzantine. This palace was built immediately after
the year of the earthquake. Inside there is a beau-
tiful stone staircase and much fine floriated iron-
Work, of which a curious example is seen in the
Torre dell' Orologio close by, where two bronze
Warriors strike the hour with iron maces upon the
bell. Beneath them is sculptured a fine colossal
head of Orlando, the hero of Italian and Dalmatian
romance; he is represented in plate armour. Pub-
lic edicts used to be proclaimed in a little space
railed off at his feet, and close by is a square pillar
of masonry which supported till lately the standard
of the Republic, hoisted on a tall flagstaff, as they
are in the Piazza in Venice. Then there are bronze
well covers that remind one of Venice, and sculp-
tured marble fountains with more than a touch of
the East upon them—a touch which tells of that
close trade with the court of Adrianople for which
the strict Catholics of Ragusa had to get a special
permission from the Synod of Basle in 1433.
The cathedral, a few paces further, is a miserable
specimen of heartless Renaissance, all paint and
floriation, standing in painful contrast to the rude
vigour of the pure and noble Byzantine. But it
contains within its walls some inestimable trea-
PAG USA. 115
sures. Behind the altar is a Titian—an Assump-
tion of the Virgin: it is a good deal rubbed, but
much of it is still beautiful. Then came the
reliques, which were shown to us with ready kind-
ness by one of the abbots.
Firstly, there was the skull of the patron saint
of Ragusa, San Biagio (Blaise), in a tightly-fitting
gold case, covered with medallion portraits of
saints, the spaces between inlaid with pearls and
filled up with flowers, all done in the finest ena-
mels cloisonné: it is impossible to find anything
more exquisite of the kind. This relique is said
by the historian Cerva to have been brought from
Armenia to Ragusa in 1026: the enamel is of the
finest Byzantine.
A hand of St. John the Baptist came next, given
in its beautiful case by Queen Margaret of Hun-
gary; this also has enamel portraits of Saints on
it of a peculiar character—the robe of the saint
being each of one unshaded colour, overlaid by
delicate gold lines, or rather by one gold line
carried round and round the space in the style
of an early Irish illumination. A leg of the patron
saint was interesting from its gold case being of
the style peculiar to Ragusa, and such as is made
still at the present day—beaten gold with gold
I 2
116 RAG USA.
spiral wires laid on in patterns: it is probably
the origin of the paltry though pretty glass beads
covered with gold-leaf made still at Murano.
Every Ragusan woman wears a set of these beauti-
ful gold beads round her throat, with ear-rings of the
same fine work, perfectly originale; she has almost
invariably also a pair of ear-rings formed of drop
pearls, connected with foliated curves and cloisons
of delicate enamel of various colours, some of them
translucent: they are of the same kind as the ena-
mels, and something of the same pattern as those
On the case of San Biagio's head. These ear-rings
are much prized: they are seldom unbroken, but
are still beautiful. A score of them, fastened to-
gether into a huge stomacher, have been offered
up to one of the figures of the Madonna in this
church. I was told that many of these ear-rings
could be authenticated as having been in certain
families for six hundred years.
A vast number of other things in gold and silver,
brought here for safety from old monasteries in
Bosnia and the Herzegovina, might be mentioned,
but I confine myself to the description of a gold
vase and dish executed by a Ragusan * goldsmith,
* We have so much yet to learn about the gold work of Hun-
gary and all the Sclave countries, that it is difficult to give an
JºAG USA. 117
it is said, for Matthias Corvinus of Hungary
(1458–1490). The shape of the vase is very
graceful, tall, and slender; the handle is formed
of two nymphs, springing from a stag's leg, beau-
tifully moulded: the band round the body of the
vase is worked in low-relief, with a huntsman
blowing a horn and following a stag with dogs;
the whole work is of the most beautiful chiselled
repoussé. The vase stands in a large round dish,
thickly covered over with tortoises, serpents, fish,
&c., which appear to be walking over it, all carved
independently of it; they are full of spirit, well
shaped, and of beautiful finish. The animals are
made in silver, purposely discoloured with some
dark lacquer.
The chapel which contains these reliques and
very many others is closed by a handsome
marble balustrade in Florentine work, entered by
a bronze gate of Ragusan work; it is small, but of
such exquisite grace and execution that it appeared
to me quite as valuable as even the splendid and
precious treasures it guarded so worthily.
Ragusa is a very strictly Catholic city: there are
opinion upon any work of art found in them at present. My own
impression is that this specimen is Hungarian, notwithstanding
the Italian idea in the handle.
118 JºA G USA.
only three Greek priests in the whole place. It
contains a very large Jesuit seminary and in-
numerable monks, Franciscans, Dominicans, &c.
It is also the largest garrison town in Dalmatia,
about 3,000 Austrian soldiers bein
and the common saying appeared to me most prac-
g quartered here,
tically true, that every third man you meet in the
streets is a soldier, and every second man a priest.
The population is about 52,000. *
Behind the Stradone there is a small place called
the Piazza dell' Erbe, where the vegetable market
is held every morning. We generally found our
way there between 6 and 7 A.M. each day, in
order to see the country costumes of the Morlachs.
The women are perhaps more comely than hand-
some, but they are a fine-looking set, not mas-
culine though very robust. Their dress resembles
the Albanian, but is much handsomer and gayer:
it has the briskness of an Italian costume united
to the barbaric richness of an Oriental dress.
The country women arrange a white cloth in
a simple Syrian fashion over the red fez, which
has a few coins sewed to it. They generally
have white bodices, and sometimes a jacket of
* This number was given me by the Civil Governor of the
city, and confirmed by II. B. M.'s Consul.
RAG USA. 119
cloth, with blue or red tight skirts of coarse
and very thick woollen stuff, and striped aprons
of the same material ; stockings of every con-
ceivable hue that can be knitted together appear
underneath. The townswomen are dressed en-
tirely in cotton, invariably of scarlet and yellow
mixed, trimmed with yellow braid, with a pink
apron and neckerchief; another kerchief of the
same colours is bound on the head. All the
women from town or country have necklaces of
the gold beads peculiar to Ragusa, and one, two,
three, even four pair of gold or pearl and enamel
ear-rings worn in their ears at once; and scarcely
a woman but has one or two massive gold rings
on every finger. But the chief peculiarity of the
Morlach costume, as belonging to Ragusa, is the
gold sword, about six inches long, which every
woman sticks into her hair as soon as she is en-
gaged to her lover: two curious gold bows are
hung upon the hilt of this sword on the day of
marriage. In Albania and the west of Dalmatia
all the women's ornaments are of silver; in Ragusa
all is gold or silver gilt.
Outside the Porta Plocce is the meat market;
and beyond this a semi-Oriental, stony slope, where
beasts are sold and caravans from the interior of
120 JRAG USA.
the country unloaded. Here you see men from
the Herzegovina, from Montenegro, and occasion-
ally Bosniacs and Turks from Bosnia; but the
view of the coast looking South, and of the
town looking north, is so charming that one
scarcely thinks of anything else. This view
gives nearly all the many forts and fortified
walls that surround the city; all of which look
so perfectly new, bright, and unworn, that I
half fancied they must have been built in late
years, till I found that the stone used in the build-
ings of Ragusa is of so fine a grain, almost like
marble, that it resists all wearing, and adds much
to the appearance of the town.
Opposite this Val di Breno road is the little
island of La Chroma, which has been taken by the
Archduke Maximilian * for a winter residence.
There some of our kind friends took us one even-
ing to a pleasant little fête champêtre. Most of
the island is covered with a beautiful pine-wood,
filled up underneath with aromatic shrubs—agnus
castus, myrtle, box, &c.—except where the old
monastery walls are still standing; these have been
partly built in to form the Archduke's house, a
* Now Emperor of Mexico.
RAGUSA. 121
palace of the very smallest description. It consists
only of one long gallery, with bed-rooms and
sitting-rooms opening out of it on each side, the
very best rooms being no bigger than cells. The
furniture was altogether of carpets, cushions,
curiosities, &c., gathered in the Archduke's ex-
tensive travels; and the whitewashed walls were
completely hidden by the innumerable pictures of
places he had visited, and of portraits of all the
royal personages in Europe. The garden is really
interesting as a collection of plants from every part
of the world successfully acclimatised together,
and in a few years it will be beautiful. A number
of monkeys likewise adorn the grounds.
We wandered till after the moon was up among
the woodland paths, delighting in the sweet per-
fumes all round us, and in the charming views
of Ragusa and the pretty rocky bay. Passing
through the town on our way home, we were
amused to see the gatherings of loungers and gos-
sipers and newspaper readers at the chemists'
shops; but I found it the Dalmatian custom to
eschew the barbers, bakers, or sweet-shops, so
much frequented in other countries, for the more
wholesome precincts of the apothecary.
The next day the Civil Governor, the General or
122 PAG USA.
Military Governor, Monsignore Zubranich, the vene-
rable and charming bishop of Ragusa and Trebigné,
and many others, called upon us or returned our
visits. Of some of these I should have liked to have
said a few words, and to have expressed my thanks
for their kindness, but my hand is doubly restrained
by an almost ludicrous occurrence. It seems that
two years ago a lady, to whose name the amplest
publicity should be given—Ida von Durrenberg–
visited Ragusa. She brought letters to some one
or two families, and was received with much kind-
ness by the whole society of Ragusa, being shown
by them the utmost hospitality in their power
throughout a winter. I must be forgiven for
adding my testimony that the Ragusans are very
hospitable to strangers, warm-hearted and cordial
in manner. Madame Ida von Durrenberg entered
into every house, carefully gathered up every bit
of gossip she heard, added every little word of
scandalous innuendo, such as people will amuse
themselves in joking about in every place, and, on
leaving it, wrote and published an account of the
society of Ragusa, detailing every petty on dit as a
serious fact, not merely of ‘M or N,' but with all
their names at full length !
It is needless to picture the indignant disgust of
RAGUSA. 123
the good Ragusans; nor was it very unnatural that
they wreaked a kind of left-handed vengeance on
two ladies who went there last year, and whom
they refused to visit save in the most formal
manner : and I myself found an icy current steal-
ing between us after a friend had thoughtlessly
informed them I had once been guilty of writing a
book 1 I can, consequently, only allow myself to
say that I found the ladies of Ragusa more lively,
agreeable, and graceful in mind and manners than
almost any society with which I am acquainted, and
their beauty is remarkable. The gentlemen of Ra-
gusa quite keep up, I believe, the character for talent
and energy that mainly preserved the independence
of Ragusa for eleven hundred years, although she
has not been able to retain her place among the
science and literature of the world as the “Slavic
Athens' she was named in the seventeenth
century.
The traveller in this country must never forget
that Dalmatia has three capital cities. Zara is the
judicial capital, the seat of Government and of the
Archiepiscopal throne; Spälato is the commercial
capital, through which nearly all the merchandise of
the whole country flows; and Ragusa is the home
of all the ancient families and real nobility of
124 PAG USA.
Dalmatia. And these latter have truly something to
be proud of in this nobility; many of them have
left an unbroken pedigree and undispersed estates
since the earliest ages of the patrician order—an
order founded by a citizen named Gozze in 930: *
and though some are exceedingly poor, they still
look down with jealous contempt on the modern
nobility whose patents are dated since the earth-
quake in 1667, when the Rector of the Republic
and so many of the Senators had been swallowed
up, that others were obliged to be created at once,
in order to keep up the requisite numbers of the
Grand Council. Of course, at the present day,
every Ragusan Salon is half filled by the Austrian
military officers and their families quartered there,
and the Ragusans speak German as readily as
nearly all the Austrians speak Italian; but the
native nobility invariably slip into Sclave when
speaking to each other, and they only contract
marriages with the Austrians reluctantly. Nor
can one fail to sympathise with their unwilling-
ness to lose such names of old historic interest
as those of Caboga, Bona, Ghetaldi, Gozze, Giorgi,
* The origin of the Gozzes is lost in obscurity : but they were
a family of repute before 900.
JPAGUSA. 125
Gondola, Boscovich, &c., as meet one at every step
in the society of Ragusa.
One anecdote more, and I have done with all
personalities among a society I shall always re-
member with pleasure. Of all the foreign Consuls
in the city, only one, the Prussian Consul, Baron
de L., omitted to call on me. I could not help
noticing the omission, and I naturally enquired the
reason. The Baron must have had small expe-
rience of Englishwomen, and but a mean opinion of
the fascinations of Ragusa, as I was told that he said
it was perfectly impossible I could have come to
see the country for my pleasure only, and that he
had made up his mind I had received a commission
from the Cabinet of St. James's to collect informa-
tion respecting the political relations of Dalmatia
and its neighbourhood; that he heard I was going
to Montenegro to pursue these enquiries, with the
special object of taking Servia in the rear, and
finding out from the Montenegrines, if possible,
what crooked political scheme had taken the
Princess of Servia to England, &c., and that he
did not wish to be reported upon And so as
long as I stayed there the excellent but over-careful
Baron never joined the élite of the world under the
126 IPA G USA.
Boschetto at the café, and cruelly deprived me of
his acquaintance!
Very pleasant is this little meeting under the
trees; the Austrian band performs here every
evening from 6 to 10 o'clock, while the listeners
chat and eat ices. On Thursdays the Civil Go-
vernor leaves his chair and his cigarette at 8
o'clock, and walks back into the city, followed by
all the invités of his circle, to his house in the
Piazza dell' Erbe, the band accompanying them
and stationing itself in the Piazza below; the com-
pany then dance without any further formality in
their morning dresses, till the 10 o'clock gun
sends everybody home to his own house.
One morning, starting very early, we took a
pleasant drive of two hours to see the great trees
of Cannosa, objects of much admiration to the
Ragusans. Passing through Gravosa, we crossed
the mouth of the Val d’Ombla in a boat, and then
drove along the coast to Cannosa. The road fol-
lows all the indentations of the sea, making a lovely
drive, for the coast is so much broken and the
islands approach it so closely that the sea seems a
succession of lakes, while the varieties of wood and
rock are most charming, and compensate much for
that aridity and tameness of the mountain summits
RAGUSA. 127
which prevent the country from being either really
grand or really lovely, although it is sometimes
very nearly being both. The heat was very great,
but the sea-breeze was fresh, and we were well
repaid by the sight of the famous trees. They are
both plane trees, very magnificent in height and in
the symmetry of their growth. We saw one of them
measured at about eight or nine feet from the
ground: six men could only just touch each
other's fingers with their arms extended round the
trunk; the other tree is about the same size. A
pretty mountain torrent dashes down between
them to the sea.
Our next expedition was made with a large
party of friends to explore the Val d’Ombla. We
stopped at a little distance down the fiord at the
best villa in the country—a very handsome house
with a marble-paved hall and pretty balconies,
standing in a charming garden. In this garden a
part of the old family house was still standing; it
contained one large room, in which there were still
exquisite little bits of Byzantine carving—column-
ettes, friezes, capitals, &c. This room had been
used for balls, and it was explained to us that the
large gallery built up at one end of the room was for
the unmarried girls ; here they sat to watch their
128 RAG USA.
mammas enjoying the dance which it was contrary
to custom for them to join. Even now very few
young ladies dance until they are married.
The Val d'Ombla is not as pretty or nearly as
fine as the Bocche di Cattaro; but it is in the same
style of masses of lofty and quite arid stone walls.
At the bottom, however, woods, villages, villas,
gardens, and olive-groves border the water, and
here and there it is very pretty. At the inner end
is the curiosity of the place: a large round basin is
seen at the very foot of the perpendicular rocky
wall—perhaps 60 or 70 feet wide; in the middle of
this bubbles up a full-grown ready-made river,
which rushes over the edge of the basin, and with
its plentiful tide keeps the water of the fiord fresh
fully a quarter of the way to the sea. This spring
is supposed to be the river that disappears about
twenty miles from this spot, near Trebigné; the
river goes down into a hole and vanishes, but the
distance is so great that its identity has not been
satisfactorily traced as yet. Wherever it may
come from, the size and abundance of this source
is very remarkable. We returned to Gravosa by
moonlight, the two or three hours of rowing being
enlivened by the sweet voices of the Ragusan ladies,
singing wild Styrian and Bohemian melodies.
RAG USA. 129
I think a few facts given to me by a friend on
the authority of the old historian Cerva, concern-
ing the Ragusan nobility, may be interesting to
many people.
‘The Gozzes claim a pedigree from the fourth
century; this is of course uncertain, but what is
authentic is their patriciate in Ragusa in 930.
‘The patriciates of Pazza and Giorgi are of the
same date. Gondola is also of 930.
‘The patriciate of the Bonas is of 940: they
came from Westa, a place in Apulia, where they
were considered an ancient German family (antiqua
stirpe Allemana); this is the case with many
Italian families whose ancestors came in with the
Gothic irruptions at the fall of the Roman Empire.
‘The patriciate of Caboga is of 940: they are of
Italian origin. That of Ghetaldi of the same date:
they came from Taranto. Grudi's patriciate dates
from 1116, that of Sarraca from 1172, Zamagna
from the same year. The oldest extant entail or
title deed is that of a Sarraca. Sorgo dates from
1292; but the ducal branch is extinct.
‘Of the families subsequently ennobled, the Bas-
dari, who belonged to the Cittadinanza (non-patri-
cian citizens), were made patricians in 1666, and
the Natali, who were also of the Cittadinanza,
R
130 JRAG USA.
Were raised in 1667. These last nobles are called
“aggregati" or “additional.”
‘The number of extinct patrician families amounts
to 227.
‘Four families of the Cittadinanza remain; some
of these families are old. The entails of the
Farenda family, just extinct, date back nearly four
centuries.
‘The Bonas are Polish marquises as well.
Giorgi and Bonda have been made Austrian counts.
Gondola and Ghetaldi have been made Austrian
barons.”
131
CHAPTER IV.
MONTENEGRO.
E had been fortunate enough to make acquain-
tance with M. Leopold Moreau, the acting *
French Consul at Skodra, f while he was making a
hasty visit to Ragusa; and we were glad to avail
ourselves of the opportunity for gaining practical
advice with respect to our journey into Montenegro.
M. Moreau not only gave us every sort of informa-
tion, but most kindly undertook the whole manage-
ment of our journey, in connection with another
friend whose acquaintance we had also happily
made in the same manner. This was Mahmoud
* After the sudden death of M. Wiet, the late Consul.
f Scutari, the Italian name of Skodra, is the one used on our
maps, and received by the Foreign Office, but since the Crimean
war and the establishment of the hospital at Scutari, the name
of that suburb of Constantinople has become so well known in
England, that it would avoid the risk of confusion to call the
Albanian capital by the original name it bears both in that
language and in Turkish—a name, too, as old as Livy.
K 2
132 MONTE NEGRO.
Pasha, the military Pasha of Skodra, just then
appointed to the Pashalik of Mostar, from which
place he was temporarily returning to Skodra.
Nothing could exceed the thoughtful kindness of
both these gentlemen from first to last.
Taking but a small part of our luggage with us,
we went on board the ‘Bosforo” at midday on
June 30, having added to our party a man- -
servant whom I had hired in Ragusa, thinking we
should require an interpreter. He was a Bohemian,
and he spoke that language, with German, Illyrian,
and some Italian, and he was not particularly dis-
obliging. I believe, however, I may safely add
that he was totally useless to us in every way, both
in Montenegro and in Dalmatia.
The Pasha's flag was hoisted the moment we
went on board—and a very dirty “bandeyra’ it
was: but the steamer had been coaling, and the
decks were still dirtier. Seeing the black streaks
which soon appeared on my white dress, the Pasha
immediately gave orders for washing the deck.
The results were very agreeable, but the execution
was far from pleasant; and I felt most undignified,
perched up on a chair, with all my skirts gathered
round me.
We arrived at Cattaro in less than six hours, and
MONTE NEGRO. 133
employed the last two hours of daylight in walking
along the excellent road on the west side of the
canal, whence the Rock of Cattaro appears, with
singular picturesqueness and beauty, in its true
proportion to the mountain wall behind it; this
wall is so perpendicular that from inside the town
the rock appears to reach to the very summit. We
rejoined our companions at the café after dark,
M. Moreau having been employed in hiring horses,
&c., for us, and in sending messengers to precede us
into Montenegro. The Pasha had been taking a
Turkish bath—Cattaro being sufficiently south to
afford that luxury. Ragusa does not choose to
admit one. We slept on board the steamer, which
ought to have departed at 4 A.M., but the all-
powerful Pasha detained it for an hour to suit
our convenience, to the intense disgust of the
captain.
We found our horses, with three Montenegrines,
awaiting us outside the city gate, where the
mountainers hold their market. The scene was
very picturesque. The gate is a double one, with
a ditch between, beyond which are a few trees and
open buildings for the shelter of the cattle and
goods. Austrian soldiers are seen standing about
the towers and walls that bristle upon every height;
134 MONTE NEGRO.
While, over all, the mountain, split into a deep chasm,
rears a double set of peaks and crags and rock, which
seem to hang almost tremblingly above one's head,
as if just about to fall down the stony precipice
below. Right up this mountain face winds the
famous Scala, of which only the upper zigzags
can be seen from the water. Our horses had
been hastily engaged, and were bad enough.
A European side-saddle had been borrowed for
me, but, on looking up at the crags, I sent it
away, knowing by experience that, in any case
of steep ascent, the pack saddle is infinitely less
fatiguing and far more comfortable. We were soon
settled and started, the baggage being all tied
on one horse.
The Scala Proper consists of seventy-three zig-
Zags, perfectly well made, smooth, tolerably wide,
and guarded at all the angles by a parapet. It is
as safe as Rotten Row; but it is certainly one of the
most remarkable roads ever made, and an immense
credit to Austria. Other zigzagged roads may have
been made on almost equally severe mountain sides,
but probably the Scala of Cattaro exceeds them all,
not merely in the steepness or perpendicular nature
of the mountains, but chiefly in the narrowness of
the plane on which it rises, which gives it a claim
MONTE NEGRO. 135
far beyond any other to the name of ladder.” For
example, the zigzags on the Italian side of the St.
Gothard Pass, descending for a considerable space
with one zigzag almost directly above the other,
will in some measure explain this, when contrasted
with those on the same side of the Splügen Pass,
which wind over a large space of rock, and can be
seen from the highest of all, more like the windings
of ribbon than the rungs of a ladder. Such is the
appearance of the Ladder of Cattaro. Passing as it
does behind the fortress, the traveller is enabled to
see the almost entire separation of the Cattaro rock
from the mountain cliff, for he rides in between
them. And, by the time he is nearly at the top of
the Scala, he is, actually and literally, looking
down, not only into the fortress, but into the
very streets of Cattaro at his feet, in which the
passengers appear like the tiniest black dots or
specks. In fact, it has quite the feeling of as-
cending the loftiest tower in the world, and look-
ing out from the top into the perpendicular depths
below.
* The road from Karlstadt to Zara descends the lofty range of
the Wellebich, upon the town of Obrovazzo, by a zigzag or scala
of magnificent engineering. I heard that it was superior to any
of the roads in the Swiss mountains; but as I did not see it I
cannot speak from my own experience.
136 MONTE NEGRO.
There were several people on the road, but most
of them were women, who are invariably engaged
in carrying all burdens great and small into and
out of Montenegro. On the precipitous and broken
rock between the zigzags, little girls were scram-
bling about while watching their goats feeding on
the plentiful bushes. Near the top we passed a
picturesque group. A sick and wounded Monte-
negrine chief was being carried down to consult
the physicians of Cattaro. The sick man, in his
splendid costume, was lying on the rock to rest,
while beside him stood two women and some of
his servants, holding the gaily caparisoned horses.
The scene was quite Eastern, but, however pic-
turesque, his suffering face made it pitiful.
We had ridden up the Scala proper in an hour
and a half. The road now went winding among
the crags in the manner of a pass, and was rough
enough, though in no way really bad: we were
nearly an hour before we had reached the summit.
From all this upper part the views are magnificent
in the variety they give, although there is too
much of barren, absolutely naked rock in the
scene to be as lovely as it is grand. Every
winding of the Bocche lies at one's feet, and the
whole outline of the outer coast, with the wide
AſONTE NEGRO. 1 :
3
7
sweep of the horizon of the sea beyond, is taken in
at once; the mountain behind Budua seems close
at hand, and several fortresses are seen crowning
the heights. The pass itself is craggy and fine:
in the middle of it there is a spring where we
stopped to drink the first waters of Montenegro.
Arrived at the summit, we entered a plain, the
stony ground of which was most carefully culti-
vated: here we found a small village called Nié-
gush.* We stopped at a roadside khan, built, as
all the cottages in Tsernagora are, of stone, and
dismounted to rest, while the hostess refreshed us
with excellent café au lait, and pressed new milk
and rum, &c., upon us. We paid her a small sum
on leaving, when she complained bitterly of our
having paid too much, and begged us to take some
of it back: and really, she looked so honest and so
amiable, I began to think the Montenegrines were
the most charming people in the world. A priest
had joined us on the road, and stopped when we
* The district or country of Niégush is the chief head district
of the country. Its inhabitants are descended from one great
family who emigrated en masse from the Herzegovina, and soon
became the most powerful tribe in the Black Mountains. The
Vladika, or Prince-Patriarch, was chosen from them, and the pre-
sent prince still bears the name, as Prince Nicholas Petrovich of
Niégush.
138 MONTENEGRO.
did for breakfast, of which he partook unsparingly,
and then departed, leaving us to pay for him as
one of our party. I do not think he meant any
dishonesty; it was rather the way of the world in
Montenegro, in the half Eastern idea that the more
people you feed the more you exalt your own con-
sequence and augment your faithful followers.
But our guides were immensely indignant, and
scolded us roundly for having paid the money.
We told them we were glad to pay for the honour
of the Church—an idea that seemed to tickle their
fancy much, for they laughed long and loud again
and again. The priests here wear no particular
dress, and the lower grades cultivate their land
with their own hands, thus making themselves
labourers in two fields at once.
On leaving Niégush, we had about an hour's
ride up stony mountains and along stony valleys.
They bore some wood, but little water in them,
and they were cultivated in a manner that speaks
most highly for the ingenious and untiring in-
dustry of the Montenegrines. On a ledge of rock
—in a little depression between two rocks—in a
niche—in a mere crevice—in short everywhere
within possibilities, a little field has been made:
the stones picked off, the rocks torn out, and
MONTE NEGRO. 139
perhaps earth added artificially, and behold, a
patch of potatoes” or of maize; nothing else seems
grown here, but I declare that I saw many flou-
rishing little crops not a yard square. And all
this is done by the women, the men never assist
in the simply agricultural work.
All along this road, and in all that I saw of
Montenegro, the mountains are of that bluish grey
which darkens so curiously in the afternoons and
in winter into rich purples and absolute blacks,
while in the bright daylight it is only cold grey
and at midday almost whitish. But seeing this
rock covered with the dark-leaved dwarf oak and
other brushwood which grows out of every crevice
in black masses, the traveller recognises at once the
meaning of the name so dear to its inhabitants—
the Tserna-Gora, or Black Mountain. f
* Potatoes are now cultivated all over Montenegro, but they
are the introduction of the last few years; in all Albania there is
not a single potato grown, it is said, except at Bielopoglie, a
small place on the borders of Bosnia. They are but very little
cultivated in any part of Dalmatia; potatoes, like many other
things eaten in Dalmatia, are brought from Italy.
i Tserna-Gora, written as one or as two words, is the name of
the country; Tsernogoretz or -ratz, plural Tsernogortsi, of the in-
habitants. This last word is written Tsernogorki in a very un-
critical and injudicious article which appeared on the subject of
Montenegro in the year 1858—the last time in the world to have
140 MONTENEGRO.
From the heights, which are well wooded, at
about half way between Niégush and Tsetinje,
there are grand views of the Lake of Skodra and
the surrounding mountains. In another hour we
had descended to the level of Tsetinje, and found
ourselves in a perfectly flat oval plain of very
poor soil, about twelve miles long. As we passed
through a village on the mountain slope, one of our
guides mistook a cat crouching on a wall for a
hare : picking up a stone, and without stopping
one second in his walk, he aimed at her a distance
of at least 100 yards, and killed her dead upon
the spot! º
We had advanced but a few yards in the plain
when we saw a splendidly-attired horseman coming
to meet us mounted upon a pretty little black
horse, whose bridle and other harness was made
entirely of silver chain worked in an elaborate
chosen for indiscriminate panegyric—in the Edinburgh Review.
As far as this name means anything at all, it means ‘Black and
Bitter’—a good name for the article itself. The writer probably
copied it from a rifaccimento of M. Cypriem Robert's writings,
appended to the translation of Ranke's Servia, in one of Bohn's
Series, where the same mistake is made, and where historical,
or rather legendary, reasons are given for the Montenegrines being
called Black-Mountaineers. The Prince himself pointed out to
me the blackness of the rocks I have described above as the
I’03 SOI).
B ft N 1 L B S 1

MONTENEGRO. 141
pattern. This was Gospody Vlakhovitch, the
Prince's first aide-de-camp. He came to meet us
in haste, as the messengers had only just arrived
at Tsetinje to announce our coming. I was con-
ducted by him to the door of the palace, where I
found the Prince waiting to receive me. He led
me to a small suite of rooms prepared for me,
where I was glad enough to rest after my ride, for
the sun had been hot, although our journey had
lasted less than five hours.
The little palace of Tsetinje is built in the shape
of a reversed J. : it was erected thirty years ago by
the last Vladika, Peter II. the giant, whose archi-
tectural ideas had not gone beyond the usual form
of a monastery. It consists of two stories in the
shape of one long narrow passage, with fourteen
rooms opening from it on One side only, and three
or four more at right-angles; a small staircase is in
the centre, and the ground-floor is occupied by the
servants. A narrow terrace forming the foot of
the J leads to a little circular kiosk, where the
Prince reads and studies in private. The oppo-
site angle at the head of the J is a billiard room.
The house is substantially built, slated and white-
washed, and rather handsomely furnished, but
there is nothing in the least palatial about it. At
142 MONTENEGRO.
the back the windows look into a garden; in front,
across a pleasant meadow to the further extremity
of the plain. Close by is the old monastery, till
now the palace, on the one hand, and the prin-
cipal street of the primitive city is seen on the
other.
And now let me say a few words on the inhabi-
tants of this palace; first glancing back for a
moment upon the great Vladika (or Archbishop
Prince), Peter I., because none of the Montene-
grines can speak of their rulers for five minutes
without alluding to this blessed object of their vene-
ration. He had governed his people with so much
wisdom and skill, and displayed such pious virtue,
that when, in 1830, death closed his long reign of
fifty-three years, the Black Mountaineers could
only assuage their grief by declaring him a Saint.
Some years after his death his body was removed
from Tsetinje to the summit of the highest moun-
tain in Montenegro, under the poetical idea that
his people, who can see this peak from every part
of the country, would thus evermore remain under
the protecting guardianship of their beloved chief.
That any drop of his blood is still flowing in the
veins of his descendants will be quite sufficient
to ensure the affections of the Mountaineers.
MONTE NEGRO. 143
He was succeeded by his nephew, Peter II., the
famous giant in size and strength, whose wonderful
agility and skill as a marksman, whose remarkable
prowess in war, and a certain astute shrewdness in
politics, combined to make him a hero in the eyes
of his people, and produced a marked effect in the
improvement of his country. In fact, we may
fairly say that it is owing entirely to the influence
of these two Vladikas that the Montenegrines have
been raised from the level of mere savage defiant
barbarism to the first stage of progressive civilisa-
tion. This civilisation is as yet in its infancy;
but, from all I saw and heard, I venture to assert
that the Montenegrines have all, from the prince
down to the poorest, awakened to a genuine desire
for improvement.
Peter II. was succeeded in 1850 by his nephew
Danilo I., who, with the support of Austria, Russia,
and France, succeeded in obtaining the separation
of the secular and spiritual government of the
country; for, until this time, the ruler had been
obliged to become also the Archbishop or Vladika.
Having thus freed himself from the old law,
Danilo I. married a Triestine lady, and hoped to
have founded a lineal line of princes, but his reign
was cut short in less than eight years. A French
l 44 MONTE NEGRO.
gentleman who was with him at the moment told
me the horrid story.
The prince and princess were spending a few
weeks in August 1858 at Perzagno for sea-bathing,
but they came every evening to walk on the espla-
made at Cattaro. One day they were returning to
Perzagno when the dusk had given way to the
coming darkness of night; the prince, with one
foot in the boat, was giving his hand to the prin-
cess, when a Montenegrine came close up behind
him and shot him in the back with a pistol loaded
with slugs. He fell over the princess, covering
her with his blood, and died in her arms three or
four hours after. The esplanade was covered with
ladies and children at the evening promenade, but
the Montenegrines, maddened with grief and fury,
went rushing about, firing anywhere and every-
where; in the confusion the assassin escaped, but
he was afterwards taken and hanged. The newly
widowed Princess Darinka behaved like a heroine;
without giving way for a moment, she had the
prince's body carried in the course of the night
to Tsetinje, she herself accompanying it. The crisis
was an urgent one, but by her presence of mind and
firmness she prevented all dispute or confusion.
She took everything for the moment into her own
MONTE NEGRO. 145
hands, and, passing over her own little daughter of
four years old, on the very next day proclaimed
the late Prince's nephew ruler of the land, the
present Nicholas I. It is said that the assassin
revenged himself for the seduction of his wife—the
deepest-dyed crime possible in the eyes of a Mon-
tenegrine; but, except in this one instance, the
late Prince was very much loved and feared by his
people. -
The Prince Nicholas was then only eighteen
years old; he had been betrothed from infancy to
the daughter of one of the principal landowners in
Montenegro, and he was married to her two years
later, when she had attained the age of fourteen.
He is an extraordinarily handsome man, looking
much older than his real age, very tall and well-
made. His forehead is wide and open, his hair
and eyes nearly black, and the naturally soft,
somewhat sad expression of his Southern face is
animated by a very sweet and frequent smile. All
the Montenegrines that I have seen, with but one
or two exceptions, are tall, with well-built limbs,
very dark hair and eyes, ruddy, not olive, com-
plexion, and most of them have beautiful teeth.
Their beards are all closely shaven, but they wear
large moustaches.
146 MONTENEGRO.
The Montenegro costume is the handsomest and
most graceful I have seen in any country. The
Prince wore dark-blue cloth pantaloons, cut in the
Syrian style, very full and wide, gathered in at the
knees with scarlet garters; a Damascus silk scarf
round the loins, and at his waist a huge crimson
leathern band, in which the arms are placed; the
Prince, however, is the only man who carries none
at home. The scarlet waistcoat, embroidered and
buttoned with gold, is half concealed by a closely
fitting tunic of white cloth, also richly embroidered
in gold; the full court dress is the same, only that
the tunic is then worn of green. Sometimes fur
edgings are added, and all the gentlemen about the
court had rows of large silver buttons sewn so
thickly on the fronts of the tunic as quite to
conceal the cloth, and to give the appearance of
armour; while some had curious shoulder pieces of
solid silver covered with bosses, completely covering
the neck and shoulders. The cap is of fur, with a
panache of white cloth, embroidered and tasselled,
hanging down at one side; this is in war, or in
travelling, or in winter; in summer or at home
the Montenegrine wears a peculiar pork-pie cap
with a black silk border and a scarlet centre. All
the Montenegrines wear embroidered leggings; the
JIONTENEGRO. 147
Prince alone wears high leather boots. He wore
gloves, as did every one at court, constantly.
The dress of the peasants is made more or less in
the same form, of commoner materials; all of them
add, for cold and rainy weather, a thick cloak called
the strookah, which is made of undyed wool, coarsely
spun in long pile, so as closely to resemble an un-
tanned sheepskin.
I had but just changed my riding-dress when the
Prince was announced, and I went with him to the
reception-room, where we found the Princess Milèna
(Milèna, means “dear'), the famous Mirko and his
wife, father and mother of the Prince, and the little
Court. The Princess is a very sweet-looking, gentle
young creature, slenderly made and of dark com-
plexion; she is much out of health, and has a delicate
and almost sad face. She was dressed in a white
Turkish gauze chemise, with wide, open sleeves, em-
broidered in colours, in the Eastern fashion. The
moment I saw these sleeves, I understood the con-
stantly-repeated image used in Servian poetry in
describing a female beauty—the flashing of her
long white arms; for at nearly every movement the
sleeve falls back, and displays the arm nearly to the
shoulder. Her French silk skirt (without crinoline)
was half-covered by a narrow tunic of white cloth
L 2
148 MONTENEGRO.
down to the knees. This outer dress entirely con-
ceals the figure, and is ungraceful, but it is worn
by every Montenegrine woman. She wore also a
splendid antique belt of solid silver, eight or nine
inches wide, which forms a pocket, and she had
bracelets and other ornaments—wedding presents
from the Empress of Austria on her marriage. The
ugly part of the costume is a common dark silk hand-
kerchief, pinned on with coarse dressing pins, and
hanging down so as entirely to conceal the head and
neck. Mirko's wife wore exactly the same costume,
less richly ornamented.
The Princess was led into dinner by Mirko, of
whom I must say a few words. The Princess
Darinka, by proclaiming Nicholas the Prince, took
a bold step in passing over the brother of the late
Danilo; but, notwithstanding the youth of the new
Prince, she acted for the good of the little country;
for Mirko was notoriously at the head of the war
party, and a perfect firebrand in the Senate. He
himself was so well aware that his succession to the
chair of state would be displeasing to the neigh-
bouring Powers, that he generously acquiesced in
the omission, and was the first to do homage to his
son, who at once made him Veliki Voyvod, Gene-
ralissimo and Grand President of the Senate. It is
London Published by R. Bentley New Burlington St 1864.


MONTE NEGRO. 149
said that the Prince would be glad if his father
would retire even from this, as he is much afraid of
his warlike inclinations; but he still leaves much of
the minor cases of the administration of justice to
him—a work to which he brings all the stern
promptness of the warrior. In person he is a
remarkable-looking man: very small for a Monte-
negrine, thin and spare in figure, every line in the
closely-shaven face expressing decision, and the
small restless eye lighting up in conversation with
such a fierce eagle's glance, that one can fancy how
wild and fiery it must be in war. His voice is
peculiarly high-pitched and thin, unlike that of his
countrymen in general, but when excited in the
Senate he managed to give it a hoarse roar that
astounded one's ears. His wife appears to be quite
a mother among this primitive people, and we
often saw her going out visiting among them, a
servant following with a basket of provisions or
comforts on his arm. I spoke of her once to the
Prince as ‘Madame la Princesse Mère.’ He looked
much astonished, and answered, “My wife is Princess,
my mother is only “Gospodja Anastasia; ” and I
learned afterwards that as her son in his infancy
lisped her name into Näni, the whole of the people,
to her great pleasure, call her Näni, as he did. I
150 MONTENEGRO.
do not know what can be much more simple or
primitive than this.
The dinner was well served, and cooked in the
French style, with all due accompaniments of foreign
wines; but the best on the table was a red wine,
grown and made in the Black Mountain, of the
excellence of which the Prince is naturally very
proud. It would doubtless meet with a ready mar-
ket if the Prince had the means of exporting it, but
the Austrian dues, before it reached the sea, would
make its price too costly to be remunerative. The
servants who waited at dinner were, with the ex-
ception of the French butler, the stalwart guards of
the Prince. They wore their arms, as usual, in
the full costume. Once or twice, when guests dined
at the Prince's table, they were brothers or other
very near relations of the men who served. It was
patriarchal enough, and a little queer to our ears to
hear, ‘Serve me, oh my father, with salt,' or ‘Bring
me the wine, oh my brother l'
After dinner the little Court was introduced to
me. Only three were present—Vlakhovich, the
first aide-de-camp, and Zēga, the second. The latter
is a very handsome native of the Banat, with highly
polished manners, speaking German, as well as
Italian. They both wore the same beautiful dress
MONTE NEGRO. 151
as the Prince, but, like Mirko, the quantity of arms
they had contrived to fasten upon their persons was
quite remarkable. A dozen pistols and daggers
were stuck in their wide leathern belts, and swords
and powder-boxes, and what-not, seemed to my
woman's eyes to be tied on or looped up all over
them. The third was the Prince's doctor, a Corsican,
named Pancrazzi, who is said to have some in-
fluence over the Prince. The reception-room was
ornamented with life-size portraits of the Emperor
and Empress of Russia, presented by them to Prince
Danilo, and those of the Emperor and Empress of
the French, given to Prince Nicholas during his
stay in Paris. There were also portraits of the late
Prince and his wife.
Opposite the gate of the palace there is a very
fine plane tree, from which the whole of the prin-
cipal street of the little town can be seen. At one
side of this the Prince is building a pretty little
house for his beloved aunt, the Princess Darinka.
While I rested under this tree late in the afternoon,
I saw the Senate, sitting in full conclave in the
open air at the further end of the street; and no
sooner had I appeared than the whole assembly, of
about thirty men, rose up and came to greet me
and bid me welcome to the Black Mountain. They
152 - MONTE NEGRO.
stood round me in a half-circle of splendid dresses
and fierce faces, whilst, making Mirko their spokes-
man, they eagerly dictated speeches to me, ex-
pressing their pleasure at seeing an English lady
among them, and their hopes of my health and
happiness in Montenegro and out of it. All this
Gospody Zēga, the aide-de-camp, translated into
Italian for our benefit, for Mirko will not trust
himself to speak Italian to a stranger, though he
understands it pretty well. And after I had as-
sured them of my interest in Montenegro and her
people, they proceeded in the most amusing way
to implore me to beg England would request Aus-
tria, Russia, and Turkey to let them grow rich and
happy; and then they asked me pathetically if I
did not think they ought to have a port on the sea-
coast, and so be enabled to let all the world know
what good wine and wood and skins the Black
Mountaineers could sell.
The Prince now appeared, and was sitting chat-
ting beside me, when a poor Mussulman (a Bos-
nian, I believe) came rushing up, and seizing his
hand began covering it with kisses. It seemed
that this Mussulman had been taken prisoner in
last year's war, and had on that day been kindly
set free by the Prince, who at the same time gave
MONTENEGRO. 153
him some money to feed him on the way home.
The Prince talked familiarly with him, and joked
him about the hardships of his imprisonment; but
the man would have none of his jokes—he was
overflowing with gratitude, not only for the boon
of liberty, but for the kindness with which he had
been treated in prison, and for the real benevolence
of assisting him on the road home.
We had another and a sadder evidence of the
late war when, in the evening after supper, we were
all sitting in the meadow. An elderly man, one of
the Prince's most trusted friends and warriors,
came slowly and painfully towards us, his limbs
and head bound up, leaning on crutches. The
Princess went hastily to meet him, for it was the
first time he had come out since many months of
suffering, and he kissed her little hand gratefully,
for she is loved by all for her beauty and gentle-
ness. The name of this old soldier was Petro
Stephano: and the Prince told me he had attacked
a position held by 3,000 Turks with 1,000 Mon-
tenegrines; and, having taken the place, he con-
tinued to hold it in spite of his severe wounds, and
kept it till relieved. And the tears stood in the
eyes of the Prince as he said to me he had never
known so bitter a moment as when he saw this old
154 MONTENEGRO.
man and some others that he loved carried to the
rear in pain and suffering. He has a kind and
affectionate heart, and so lively, almost boyish a
manner, that I could not help thinking what a pity
it was his succession to the thorns and cares of
government had not been delayed another ten
years. -
We had been joined in the meadow by a good
many of the Senators, and were now quite a large
party, all of whom, except the Prince, Princess,
and myself, were seated on the grass. I asked to
hear the gusle,” and the Prince sent for one, and
played a variety of tunes on it himself. The gusle
is a kind of rude violin, with only one string drawn
over the bridge: it is played on with a bow and
also by pressing the string with the left hand: it is
capable of a wonderful number of notes, and the
Prince varied the sound and expression of the
notes most artistically. But of course it is on the
whole somewhat monotonous. A few songs were
* So called from the long goose-like neck of the fiddle. Gus
is identical in sense and sound with our own word in almost all
the Sclavonic languages. In one slight variant, Bohemian, it be-
comes the name of John Huss, the reformer ; in the other, Polish,
which contains a more archaic form, Mr. Crawfurd, who has
been recently writing about the names of geese in the Ethno-
logical Journal, will find something to his disadvantage.
MONTE NEGRO. 155
sung, but the guests were in a merrier mood than
for music: a skipping-rope was produced, and one
after another of these grave and martial men took
energetically to this innocent amusement! The
Prince was awkward, and could make nothing of it;
some of them succeeded better; and one robust and
well-grown man taking some running with it when,
in the darkness of the night, it was impossible to
see the rope itself, looked so utterly absurd that one
could only think of a broken-legged ostrich. They
were glad to learn that our famous Laureate,
Gospody Tennyevich, was not above singing the
praises of the skipping-rope in his Pésme. After
much laughing we returned to the palace, where I
enjoyed a cleaner, fresher room and a more delightful
bed than I had done ever since I left England.
The Princess Milena paid me a visit in my room
on the following morning; but our conversation
was not very lively, as she only speaks Sclave and
understands but a few words of French. The
Prince, however, soon joined us in high spirits at
the clouds that were gathering in the sky. Like
all the shores of the Adriatic, this year the drought
has been very severe in Montenegro, and great fears
were entertained for the crops and vines, as the
arid soil requires all the rain it can get. Only
156 MONTENEGRO.
two or three showers fell during our stay, but some
of the gentlemen, and the Prince among them,
danced for joy when the drops began to fall.
I spent most of my day in sketching, though I
was continually tempted away for the amusement
of watching the sittings of the Senate. They
appeared to sit, at intervals, throughout the day:
they are judges as well as lawgivers, and it was
most patriarchal and primitive to see them sitting
in the open street, or under the tree, or in the
meadow with the peasant or peasants, whose cases
they were trying, standing in the midst of them,
telling their tale. Then came the discussion,
sometimes a very noisy one, usually followed by a
decision from Mirko, given occasionally in a voice
of thunder, and, in One instance, by an instanta-
neous and summary infliction of punishment. This
was in the case of a woman who objected to live
peaceably with her husband, ‘because he was so
ugly and wore such bad clothes!' I asked the
Prince what would be done to a woman who was
unfaithful to her husband: he looked surprised and
said simply, ‘They never are; if they had been, in
former days they would have been put to death:
I should imprison them for life.’
Unquestionably, in Montenegro, woman is the
MONTE NEGRO. 157
chief beast of burden and the hardest worker of
the two sexes: she is in fact the slave of the man;
but though humble, she is not humiliated: she is
respected in and from her chastity. For this
reason, and because of her being of the weaker sex,
and therefore never attacked by the stronger, a
woman is always given to the traveller as a guide:
woe be to the stranger who should attempt to take
advantage of her weakness. We have seen that
even the life of the Prince will be taken should the
honour of a Montenegrine woman be outraged:
and I believe that most of the Montenegrines have
the same feeling as that of the true Bedouin, that
no woman who is not of their blood and birthplace
is good enough to become his wife. Like the
Bedouin, the husband walks or rides first; the
woman follows, carrying the goods and chattels of
the family, or the burden of the traveller: she
labours in the field while he roams over the moun-
tain, or cleans his arms at home. Naturally, from
this mode of life, the women of Tserna Gora are not
remarkable for beauty: they are bony and robust,
and they look old at a very early age: their com-
plexions are dark and muddy.
Every peasant in the land, however poor, has a
right to come to the Prince himself for judgment;
158 JIONTENEGRO.
and such is their affection for him that no one
would dream of questioning his justice. If the
sentence appears unjust, they say “he has a reason
for it,' and acquiesce quietly. They are satisfied
with the decisions of the Senate only as believing
them to come from the Prince himself: and he
assured me, so strong is the personal feeling to
himself as Prince, that if he were taken away no
Senate or other ruler could keep them together—
they would follow him, if alive, or live each one for
himself in his mountain. For there is no peasant
in Montenegro who has not some portion of land of
his own: everyone possesses something, however
small, and if this his little crop should fail, or mis-
fortune overtake him, he at once comes to the
Prince, who gives him all he can spare. When all
is well, he pays the Prince a part of his produce.
In fact, very much of their laws continually re-
minded me of the customs of the Bedouins: the
truth being that both are entirely patriarchal and
primitive.
They have another virtue besides this simplicity
of life, this is their perfect honesty. I happened
to mention that I had dropped a gold bracelet in
Albania. “Had you dropped it here, even in the
remotest corner of the Black Mountain, it would
MONTE NEGRO. 159
have been brought to me in three days,’ said the
Prince. I am sure this was not mere talk, for I
heard it confirmed by enemies as well as friends of
the Montenegrines. I was frequently told of a
traveller who left his tent, with the door open, on a
Montenegrine hillside, and returned after three years'
absence to find every single thing as he had left
it: it is the old story of the devotion of a simple-
minded people, and the just administration of a
Homeric chieftain,_all the more easily carried out
in such a country as the Tserna Gora, because the
Prince can be acquainted with his people as indivi-
duals, and can set them a personal example, eagerly
caught up by each of his loving subjects. People
tell, however, a different tale of the honesty of
Montenegrines in Turkey, where they used to mi-
grate annually for field-work, like Irishmen to
England, or Ionians to Greece.
The Prince informed me that he had lately rec-
koned up his people, and that he believed there were
now 200,000 souls in Montenegro and the Berda.”
He was more certain that he had 20,000 fighting
* The Berda (plural of Berdo, a mountain) are seven moun-
tains, which border the Black-Mountain proper. Peter I., the
sainted Vladika, took them from the Pashalik of Skodra in 1777,
and they have been retained ever since in the principality.
160 MONTE NEGRO.
men under his command. I enquired about the
finances of the country, and the Prince told me his
income amounted to 10,000l. (depending much, of
course, upon the state of the harvest), besides an
annual gift of 4,700l. bestowed by Russia in
gratitude for assistance rendered by Peter I. in
1806 to the Russians during their joint campaign
against the French invaders of Dalmatia, and as an
indemnity for their losses.
The Prince regretted extremely that I had not
time to visit the richer and lovelier portions of his
dominions, to see for myself not only the beauties.
of his country, but those natural products for the
power of exporting which he so ardently longs.
Large forests of excellent timber extend over many
of his mountains, while the valleys are rich with
vineyards, olive-groves, and fig-gardens. The rivers
also are abundantly stocked with trout, which, when
smoked and dried, forms a large item in the food
of the Montenegrine. One little mountain lake of
remarkable depth, near Žabljak, is filled with trout
of an extraordinary size and very fine flavour. The
possession of this lake is a source of continued feud
between the Montenegrine and the Mussulman.
Immense shoals of a peculiar kind of small mullet
descend the rivers in the autumn for the Lake of
..]/ONTE NEGRO. 161
Skodra. They are of the most delicious flavour,
and contain a very fat roe, which is made into an
excellent kind of botargo.” This dainty is in suf-
ficient plenty to be a good article of export, and
many a gourmand would, if he once tasted the
savoury morsel, keenly appreciate the natural
anxiety of the Prince for a few yards of coast,
whereby he might escape the very heavy customs
and long quarantine imposed by the Austrians on
all mountain goods.
Prince Nicholas, in his intense desire to improve
the condition of his people, most bitterly regrets his
own exceeding poverty. He is very anxious to
build houses, and above all to make roads through-
out the country; but he has not a shilling wherewith
to accomplish any of these things. “Had I a port
from which to ship them,' he said to me again and
again, ‘I have rivers to bring down my timber, my
wine, and my fish, by the sale of which I could
pay for my roads and build my schools. I have
built ten already, but as yet I can do but a mere
nothing for the real improvement or encouragement
of my people. My neighbours complain that my
* The botargo is a great resource to the Greeks during the
severer fasts, when only a bloodless fish diet is allowed. —
JZeake.
M
162 MONTE NEGRO.
mountaineers do nothing but fight. They have
nothing else to do. If they could gain anything
by their flocks and crops, they would work hard
enough to do so.”
The Prince took me one afternoon into the old
monastery close to the Palace. It is the residence
of the Archbishop, who, to my great regret, was at
that moment gone to St. Petersburg to be conse-
crated. Preparations were then commencing for a
national féte to celebrate his return. I made ac-
quaintance with the young Archimandrite, who also
lives there, and who is a very great favourite of the
Prince's. He is a poet, and writes war songs, many
of which the Prince sang to us. He wore a black
silk dress, edged with crimson, and his tall figure
and dark costume was often conspicuous in the
sittings of the Senate. As he generally had a paper
in his hand, I suspect he often attended to read out
the documents which the old Warriors of the moun-
tains could not read for themselves.
This state of ignorance is one of the many things
that the Prince is anxious to improve. A large part
of this monastery is devoted to a school, where we
saw some 50 or 60 boys learning to read, write, and
sum. They had a good large stock of books, and
well printed alphabets. Among them was a Greek
MONTE NEGRO. 163
boy from Patras, poring over his Sclave spelling-
book. The Prince goes into the school frequently,
to inspect the progress of the scholars.
The outside of the old monastery is picturesque.
It has three stories of circular-headed arches, Sup-
ported on thick short piers; two square towers, one
above the other, have been used as fortifications,
although one is the tower of the church, of which the
round apse appears below. Above all is a circular
watch-tower, now half-ruined. Beyond the monas-
tery is a newer building, containing the schoolrooms
and the residence of the Igumen, with an olive-
grove in front of the windows; while on the other
side, as a lesson of industry, I suppose, to the juve-
nile scholars, are several rows of bee-hives. These
have taken the place of the poles on which, previous
to the rule of the brave Peter II., were placed the
heads of Turks slain in battle. In a room above
the church is the armoury, a rich and interesting
collection of every conceivable kind of weapon used
in the last three or four centuries in Eastern Europe.
Most of them are hacked and battered and stained.
Inside the church is the tomb of the murdered
Danilo, for whom the building was placed in mourn-
ing upwards of two years. The Prince was therefore
married at a little parish church we had passed on
M 2
164 MONTE NEGRO,
the road entering the plain—an humble little
church, surrounded with flat tombstones. The
Prince and Princess attend the monastery chapel On
all Sundays and holy days.
I was sketching the old building when the Prince
came out and amused himself with shooting at a
mark on an old tower upon the rock above the
monastery. The distance could not have been less
than 300 yards, but he never missed the tiny spot.
This old tower was the one on which the skulls of
vanquished enemies were exposed; but this practice
was done away with on the accession of Danilo I.
The skulls were removed a year or two after, I
believe. Probably all my readers will remember
how Eöthen passed the pillar of skulls on the high
road from Belgrade to Constantinople one dark
night, and how he thus escaped having to admire
the classic beauty of the architect’s design. This
was of Turkish construction, dating, I think, from
the old Servian war of independence. Persia is the
true native country and home of the Kelleh Mīnār,
though, I believe, even there it is fast dying out, if
it is not already quite extinct as a current practice.
We afterwards went out in a riding party, the
Princess and some other ladies joining it in un-
changed costumes. The Prince rides well and
MONTE NEGRO. 165
gracefully, though with a very Oriental seat, depend-
ing much on his stirrups. He was breaking a half-
bred Arab, for which he was too heavy; twice the
girths gave way, and he came to the ground, to the
horror of the Court, who, headed by his mother,
abused him in no gentle voice for thus risking his
precious neck. The sight was a pretty One, for
some of the gentlemen rode very well, and their
rich and light-coloured costumes made the scene
doubly animated, as they went caracoling about,
breaking into short rapid gallops, abruptly pulled
up, after the manner of Arabs and all other
Easterns. The plain was by this time in shade, the
mountains nearly black, and against the pretty rose-
coloured sky the lofty peak of Lovćen stood out
with very picturesque boldness, commanding all
the others. This is the mountain, now called the
Vladika's mountain, where the venerated Peter I.
is interred.
I should have been very glad to have remained
a much longer time in Montenegro; but, as circum-
stances obliged me to hasten on, I reluctantly
requested the Prince to order preparations to be
made for our journey. We were all sorry to part
with each other ; but there was nothing for it but
to make the best of our last evening together, after
166 MONTENEGRO.
the three delightful days we had spent in Tsetinje.
Just before supper, I was told that Mirko had
been hovering about my door, wanting to show me
something. I went out at once, and he said, ‘You
must not leave our mountain without seeing our
best and most interesting possession.” So he led
me to the end of the corridor, where a glass-case
was arranged, protecting two or three hundred
medals of gold and silver, taken from the breasts
of the Turks in last year's war. Scores of them
were English and French Crimean medals. A
dozen soiled and battered Turkish banners stood
beside them, and along the wall hung a very large
number of Scymetars, daggers, &c., taken at the
same time. It was natural that Mirko should show
me these—not the Prince : Mirko glories in the
war—the Prince sorrows for it. A Turkish Pasha
had come to Tsetinje to settle some business with
the Prince a week or two before my visit; but
when I alluded to the medals, &c., the Prince said,
eagerly, “Oh I would not be guilty of such a
tudeness as that I carried them all away before
he came, and shut them up in my own bedroom.’
It was amusing, as well as interesting, to see
Mirko's fierce pride over the trophies, and his
pleasure in the war songs with which we beguiled
MONTE NEGRO. 167
he evening. Several of the Prince's suite have
voices as fine as his own, and they sang in parts of
five or six voices with the most delicious harmony.
I have heard the national music and street sing-
ing of a good many countries, and I say heartily
that the voices and harmony of the Sclavonians,
both in Montenegro and in Dalmatia, exceed in
beauty all I have heard elsewhere. The airs, too,
are wild and sweet, fierce and grand in the war-
songs, while some of the love-songs were graceful
and expressive as the most persuasive melodies of
Italy and Germany.
I could have listened to the singing for ever;
but it grew late, and we had to take leave of the
Princess and of the little Court. I took an affec-
tionate farewell of the gentle creature, while my
companion was more roughly handled by the gen-
tlemen; the stout Vlakhovitch, the fierce Mirko,
and the powerful Mattanovitch, kissed him vio-
lently on both cheeks, hugging him like bears,
until he was quite glad to escape from the circle.
One or two of them then begged to be shown the
wonders of a portable indiarubber bath I had with
me, and were delighted at the promise that one
should be sent to Tsetinje. I do not think it will
be over much used there, as, on the day after our
168 MONTENEGRO.
arrival, one of the Gospodys, overhearing Captain
S. call for water for his ablutions, remarked,
“Ah ! I look on you now as an enemy to mankind!
Water was given to us by the good God to drink
inside, not to waste upon our skins !’ After all,
there was a great deal to be said from his point of
view in a year of drought, and with the divinity of
the tub as unrevealed to him as to our grand-
fathers.
It was half-past two A.M. when the sentries
called gently under my windows, ‘Gospodjo!
Gospodjo' and on my going down stairs, I found
our horses and guides waiting for us outside the
palace gate. We were soon mounted, and, in
company with Watslik, the Prince's agent, who
was returning to Skodra, and had been commis-
sioned by him to take charge of us on our journey,
we turned our backs very regretfully on Tsetinje.
We had a splendid moon to light us on the road
and very good horses for ourselves; Our luggage
was distributed on the backs of five women, who
walked in front of us the whole way. I had
objected to this arrangement and begged for a bag-
gage horse, but they said they were used to much
heavier burdens, and that going with us would be
a pastime and a pleasure to them, and they cer-
MONTE NEGRO. 169
tainly did appear to enjoy the napoleon we gave
among them at parting. To me the journey was
most amusing. The road was one of the most
execrable I have ever been on in my life, equal
to almost anything I remember to have met with
in Syria; but, from being a pass, it was not dan-
gerous in the way of precipices, only of falls to
both man and beast. The Prince had himself
given me in charge to the two men appointed to
take care of me; they were told that I was his
friend, and valuable, and that their heads would
answer for it if any harm befell me. So they
stuck themselves at each side of me and my horse,
and one seized tight hold of my elbow and the
other of my knee, and at each jolt my shoulders
or waist were gripped tight between them, or their
hands were rapidly spread out before my chest in
case I should fall forwards; and the more I tried
to get loose and take care of myself, the more
tightly they seized me, until I found myself a mere
doll in their hands. And the absurdest part of it
all was that, at every new jolt, both looked up into
my face with a sort of proud grunt, as much as to
say, ‘Now didn't we do that well ?”
I had by this time learned half a dozen words of
Sclave, which I produced on all occasions, to the
170 MONTENEGRO.
great delight of the Montenegrines; but it was
most amusing how every one we came near had
learned the fact that our affirmative ‘yes’ was very
nearly the same as their own affirmative ‘yest.”
Every person who spoke to me asked me to say it
twenty times over, and whenever on this journey
I used the word to my friend Captain S., every
one of our attendants joined in with a great shout,
‘Yest yest! do you hear the English, bless them,
say yest l’
The daylight came after an hour and a half of
this mountain road, and I was thankful for it, for
the country was becoming beautiful, and my rough
companions kept on appealing to me to admire it.
From the moment that we had surmounted the
crest of the pass, the country opened out in a
lovely ravine before us, and very soon after we had
the full extent of the Lake of Skodra spread out
beyond it with all its beautiful mountains. As I
groaned over the roughness of the way, I under-
stood the significant grins of our guides, which
seemed to say the path from Rjéka to Tsetinje was
* Literally “it is;’ the word being the same as the Latin
est, &c., common to all the Aryan languages: the idiom that of
an Irishman's reply, “it is,' in all cases where an English-
man would say ‘yes.” “Ne' is also their English-Sounding
negative.
MONTENEGRO. I71
no road for artillery nor a very favourable one
for troops. As the moon went down behind the
mountain and the sunbeams shot across the valley,
we distinguished pretty villages nestled in the nooks
of the ravine in rich gardens and little fields, and
we were soon among large and fragrant meadows
enclosed in hedges of dog-roses covered with
clematis and trailing sweet-scented creepers. The
fruit-trees were heavily laden, and troops of cows
were feeding all around. We were passing through
One of the gardens of Montenegro.
In two hours and a half from the palace gate we
had descended into the plain of Rjeka, and found
ourselves in face of a lofty, perfectly smooth, per-
pendicular wall of rock. At the foot of this the
Tsernoyevitch was seen escaping from the over-
hanging crags, and winding along to the meadows;
this spot is grand, and beautiful, and very Swiss.
In a few minutes we had reached Rjeka, a most
picturesquely-situated town or large village. A
market is held here every week, and is the most
frequented one for very many miles round; as
we rode through them we discerned even Turk-
ish costumes among the many varieties assembled
there. A resting-place had been prepared for us in
the house of the principal inhabitant, and we
172 MONTE NEGRO.
dismounted there, my two attendants insisting on
supporting and half-carrying me up the staircase,
as if I was the most fragile of wax dolls.
Here it was that the hardest struggle of the war
last year took place; and Rjeka itself was, in fact,
only just become habitable again—so horrible was
the stench arising from the hundreds of bodies left
dead on the mountains and in the valley. Much
of the ruin was still apparent. We rested here for
an hour, and in twenty minutes more were upon
the banks of the wide smoothly flowing river,
among crowds of gaily dressed women at a rural
market. Here we dismounted and took leave of
our Montenegrine guides. They pressed round to
kiss the Gospodja's hand, and I thanked them,
and made them teach me to say in their own
language, ‘In the name of God, good bye!' which
I think really pleased them more than even the
presents we made them. The Montenegrine is
either the most pious or the most irreverent of
speakers—I will not venture to say which ; for he
cannot utter a single sentence on any subject
without beginning as well as ending it with ‘Bog’
(God) in some one of the seven Sclavonic cases.
It is the one chief, almost ceaseless Sound of the
language; and nothing impressed me more than
MONTE NEGRO. 173
when I asked for water at dinner, the gentleman
next me would reply, “By God, I will give it you
for God's sake; or, when some one said the cook
had not boiled the vegetables enough, he was
answered, ‘In the name of God, he has not.’
We then mounted into a huge long clumsy
boat, with very high sides and no seats in it of any
kind, while the bottom was filled with puddles of
water. We climbed up on a tiny poop, about as large
as a good-sized desk, on which two of us could only
just squeeze, and tried to shelter ourselves from
the then burning sun (it was now 7.30 A.M.) under
an umbrella covered with my shawl. Fortunately
our eight rowers carried us down the river in
less than three hours, but they seemed very
long hours, for nothing could be much more
disagreeable. The change from the exhilarating
fresh mountain air to the stifling heat of the low
level to which we had now sunk, was very great
and trying; it had been hotter in the last few
days in Montenegro than had been known for very
many years; but it was cool on the plain of
Tsetinje to the heat of the Tsernoyevitch. The
scenery, however, was most lovely; the wide,
clear, smooth river went winding between bright
meadows and richly wooded mountains, while in a
174. MONTE NEGRO.
thick border along each bank were thousands of
white and yellow water-lilies, basking in the sun.
Gospody Watslik pointed out at every turn the
still remaining breastworks which had been thrown
up on the mountain slopes, and explained the
various movements of the opposing forces in each
place. Ruined cottages, broken down fences and
gardens, were frequently to be seen as he said,
“There so and so fell !’ or ‘There we killed so
many l’ At 10 o'clock we were at the mouth of
the river, and alongside of a finely placed Turkish
fortress, mounted on a conical hill at the very head
of the lake—the Castle of Lesendria (Alexandria).
Two other small islands, Vranina and Monastir, are
close by, and just above the mouth of the Zetta is
the strong fortress of Žabljak. Here was the
boundary of Montenegro, and sadly I looked back
at its receding mountains. The Turkish steamer
was waiting for us under the walls of the castle,
and we sorrowfully stepped out from among our
faithful Montenegrines. May they walk in the
paths of peace, and become every day better and
nobler
Very warm and cordial was our welcome on
board the Turkish steamer. My old friend Mah-
moud Pasha, the military governor of Skodra, had
JIONTE NEGRO. 175
come himself to meet us, and, while a salute was
being fired from the fortress, he made me an
amusing apology for not having a British ‘ban-
deyra' to hoist in my honour. He had arrived at
Skodra only on the day before, but he had worked
miracles to accomplish the preparations necessary
for us. The coal for the steamer had all been used
up; but wood was immediately felled and fetched
to bring her across for us: the saloon cabin
was most comfortably arranged, divans were laid
On the clean decks, and an excellent breakfast
awaited us, consisting ‘of every delicacy of the
season,’ including deliciously cool melons and figs.
Our three hours' run across the lake * was per-
fectly charming, for the Lake of Skodra is very
beautiful, and there is only one other view of it
which is finer. On the east side, at the northern
end, there is a fertile plain of five or six miles
wide, and a sudden arm of the lake runs out like a
thumb from the palm of a hand; when this is
passed, the jagged serrated outline of the moun-
tains on the eastern side becomes remarkably good;
both sides are lofty, with plenty of variety as to
bare crags and wooded slopes; the colouring also
* The lake is about eighteen miles long by six in width.
176 MONTE NEGRO.
is the best I have seen in Albania. I fancy that
there must be much wild and picturesque scenery
in the neighbourhood of Podgoritza, the position of
which is seen from the lake. The district is famous
for its fertility—wasted for want of labourers—and
for the excellence of its honey and wax, which are
sent all over Roumelia. The scenery of the lake
itself heightens in grandeur and beauty on ap-
proaching the southern end. The lake is formed
by the waters of the Zetta, the Zem, and the
Tsernoyevitch, and is drained by the short, but
wide Boyana. The legend is that an earthquake one
day caused such an accession of waters that a plain
covered with villages and gardens was instantly
submerged; the natives believe they can still see
the houses at the bottom of the lake. At the
south-west corner where the Boyana runs out
towards the sea, a rich and verdant plain stretches
back for several miles, till it meets an amphitheatre
of fine mountains, while between the lake and the
river there rises, with abrupt steepness from the
plain, an isolated oval-shaped rock. Upon this
noble rock stands the old fortress of Skodra,
famous for many a bloody history both in peace
and war. It is from this fortress that the city
takes its name, for Skodra in Albanian is said to
MONTE NEGRO. 177
signify upon the hill; the Turks have retained
this name, and the Venetians called it Scutari
during the few years of their possession. If this
derivation be really correct, it is curious and
valuable, for it shows that modern Albanian is
capable of interpreting a name that dates back as
far as the days of the Roman Republic, at all
events in one instance.* No fortress could be
more finely situated; it looks up the whole lake
and commands all the windings of the river for a
considerable distance, while the town lies at its
feet, so richly embedded in gardens and groves
as hardly to be distinguished from the woods
beyond it.
We landed under the shade of a clump of lofty
plane trees, and sat for some time admiring the
scene before us. Then came a heap of cawasses
and saises and gaily caparisoned horses; I was
mounted upon a pretty milk-white steed with a
side-saddle; Captain S. rode upon scarlet velvet
embroidered with gold—the whole horse covered
* But this is nothing by the side of the antiquity which gives
the Swift-footed Achilles himself an Albanian name. Plutarch
says that ‘swift-footed ' was 'Agrére in the language of Epirus.
Tchpéte in the south, shpéte in the north, is said to be modern *
Albanian for ‘swift,'—Fallmerayer, Das Alban. Element in
Griechenland.
N
178 MONTE NEGRO.
With a network of gold thread, to keep off
the flies, I presume—and the Pasha bestrode a
gallant prancing grey, upon which he looked, as
all Turks do in our eyes, fat and uncomfortable.
And so, in a gay procession, we entered Skodra.
Skodra, which boasts of 4,500 houses, is very
peculiar; you never seem to come to any town at
all. Innumerable and rather wide roads cross each
other in all directions, flanked by high hedges and
overhanging trees, between which you may occa-
sionally see a roof or a blank wall, or maybe a
gate; rarely a wall with a window. Here and
there is a mosque, and a few needle-shaped mina-
rets, like those of Constantinople, rise up from
among the trees; but, in fine, though you some-
times get at a house, large or small, and though at
a long distance from the town there is a bazaar,
you never do get at the town itself. The unfortu-
nate place is mostly under water throughout the
winter and spring, during which time the inhabi-
tants retire to the upper stories of their houses—
which, by the bye, are frequently washed away
altogether—and, when the water is deep enough,
they communicate with each other in punts. But
as this depth is only occasional, and does not last
long, the Skodrans have another and curious-look-
MONTENEGRO. 179
ing plan. Every road and lane has, at only a
few yards' distance, a row of square stone blocks
across it, at a foot's width apart—wide enough for
a horse's legs to pass through. And thus, when
there are but two feet or so depth of water over
the town, they can walk about in tolerable dryness
and safety. But, to a stranger arriving there when
they were all crying out in anguish of soul and
body for water, the meaning of these unbuilded, un-
arched bridges did not explain itself, and did look
exceedingly odd.
Entering one of the many gates of these shady
lanes, we found ourselves in the precincts of the
French Consulate, which our kind friend Monsieur
Moreau had taken a world of pains to prepare for
us. Not having been in bed at all the previous
night, and having been on the road or lake from
3 A.M. till 2 P.M., his shady house appeared a sort
of paradise to us; and the ice with which he re-
galed us was the most refreshing luxury possible,
for the heat of Skodra is quite indescribable.
Crouched down into a very low plain as it is, sur-
rounded with lofty mountains, every house doubly
sheltered and shaded by its own thickly-planted
trees and high walls, Skodra is absolutely airless
and breathless as an oven; and this, added to the
N 2
180 - MONTENEGRO. º
outlying waters for so many months of the year,
combines to make the place a deadly hot-bed of
fever and malaria. The heat was now, as I have
said, in all this part of Europe, extraordinary; and
in Skodra it was very severe. In all the pretty
Consulate garden, on which M. Moreau had laboured
with skill and anxiety, and notwithstanding as
much constant watering as could be afforded, not
a flower remained; shrivelled geraniums, scare-
crows of roses, and faded jasmines were all that re-
mained; and, all over the place, the figs hung dried
up on the trees. This is not equal to the heat that
roasted the apples on the trees in America this
summer, but it has the advantage of being more
literally true. The grapes, too, could not come to
maturity: they were only unripened, sour raisins.
M. Watslik, however, brought me news the next
day of a good rain having taken place in the upper
part of Montenegro, which they hoped would save
the best of the vines.
In order to escape the severe heats of Skodra in
the summer, most of the inhabitants have country
houses at Dristi, a little place on the northern slope
of Mount Zuccali, at about six or seven miles dis-
tance. Dristi being well watered, the villagers
have turned the whole of it into fruit and vege-
MONTENEGRO. 181
table gardens, whence the capital is abundantly
Supplied.
There is not much sight-seeing in Skodra. Al-
though it has a population of 12,000 Catholics, and
is the seat of a bishop, they have no church : every
church they have had has been converted into a
mosque or destroyed; and the Catholics now wor-
ship in a field, under a roof of coarse cloth. Long
ago, there was a church at the foot of the fortress,
containing an image of the blessed Virgin; but,
just as the Turks were about to lay their sacri-
legious hands on it, the same convenient angels
who carried the holy house from Tersatto were
again put into requisition, and the image may now
be seen at Rome, whither their angelic hands trans-
ported it. The Catholics have lately commenced
building a very large church near the fortress; but
they have no money to finish it, nor are they likely
to get much more. Skodra is in the arch-episcopate
of Antivari. The Greeks have a small church and
a school. There are a great number of mosques,
but none of them are remarkable.
The military Pasha occasionally lives in the
fortress; but he is very often away at Podgoritza,
which is becoming the place of most military
importance, and contains the largest number of
182 MONTE NEGRO.
soldiers. Podgoritza is a district of great fertility:
the people are industrious: all the best Albanian car-
touch boxes, and other much-ornamented military
trappings, are made there, and very pretty they are.
On the morning after my arrival in Skodra the
Civil Governor of the city, Abdoul Aziz, a Pasha
of high rank, sent to ask if he might call on me.
As I was provided with a double set of interpreters
in the Military Pasha and the French Consul, I
said I should be glad to see him. He came with
his secretary, pipe-bearer, &c., and proved a
thorough Turk in appearance : very large, fat,
and dark, with the hoarse rough voice which so
many Turks have. To me he was extremely po-
lite, and softened his voice to speak to me, besides
trying a grim little smile which only once or twice
broke into a laugh at my answers. His rough
brusque manner and frowning face was a great con-
trast to the soft gentle voice and placid smiling face
of Mahmoud Pasha his colleague; but “men are
deceivers ever!’ Mahmoud, I was told, is exces-
sively strict and severe, a man who seldom pardons,
and whose punishments are heavy, while his fierce-
ness in battle is remarkable. Abdoul Aziz, on the
contrary—‘our lamb,” as they called him—is a
man of peace, ready to forgive, anxious to smoothe
MONTENEGRO. 183
matters everywhere, and ever striving to keep
things quiet. And as to his being fierce in battle,
my opinion is that he would need one of Pickford's
cart horses—of which the like is not to be had
in Albania—to carry him with any vigour into
the field.
We had a long chatting talk, of which the only
thing I remember was his saying he had never seen
Montenegro, except as far as Rjeka; to which I
replied I thought that was quite far enough. He
smiled, and said he heard Tsetinje was curious and
pretty, and I answered him that it was both, but
that I earnestly hoped his Excellency would never
be able to judge for himself, since I concluded
that seeing would be next door to taking; at which
hope of mine he laughed very heartily, and then
said, gravely enough, he did not in the least wish
ever to see it in that sense.
I am sure that this is the real feeling of all
respectable and trustworthy Turks above the
common fanatical herd who have ever bestowed a
thought upon political matters, as well as of all,
whether corrupt or honest, who know anything of
official responsibility. They have already chas-
tised Montenegro to their own satisfaction, and
more severely than is generally known; they hold
184 MONTENEGRO.
all the surrounding country under military control,
and they can easily crush any incursions on a
larger scale than those of mere marauding routine,
which they are fairly ready to leave alone,—always
assuming such incursions to be unconnected with
any general movement elsewhere, and unsupported
by any European powers. They do not want to
take and possess Montenegro, for it would do them
no possible good; it would cost them an infinity of
men to accomplish it, and when taken would be
quite worthless, either in the way of fair profit or
of unlawful pickings. So that if the Montenegrine
Government will let them alone, the Porte will let
the mountaineers alone too. The Prince knows
this, and has common sense enough to feel its
truth, and perhaps some of the wiser of his com-
panions feel it too. But the Prince is young and
ardent, and may readily be made into a cat's-paw by
others, for whom it is easy to work upon the old
memories of past injuries, hereditary vengeance,
and present ambition or vanity. Left to himself,
and with no selfish intermeddlers to egg him on,
the Prince is well aware that his independence is a
fact; while the Turks, though they will never
acknowledge it by a formal instrument, are quite
MONTE NEGRO. 185
willing to let it alone,” and he is anxious to turn
it to good account. He wants to be valued at a
higher rate than as a mere thorn in the side of
Turkey, to be driven in as suits the purpose of
other powers. This lesson has come home to him
since the war. Turkey would, indeed, be most
stupid and unjust to herself, if she failed to take
the point off the thorn the moment she feels it
Smart.
I think the Prince is at last bringing himself to
perceive that when the mass of his people and their
fierce leaders clamour for war at all price, and
show themselves ready to break a truce or an
obligation on the slightest pretext when made with
Mussulmans, even fancying that such a course is
sanctioned by their religion, they stand on pre-
cisely the same low moral level as their barbarous
and fanatic Mussulman neighbours of Albania. I
cannot pretend to say how far his present excellent
dispositions may be proof against the impulses of
ambition and passion — against temptation from
without, or the pressure of the war party and its
* It should not be forgotten that the Porte has never acknow-
ledged the separation of Algiers, or the British occupation of
Aden.
186 MONTE NEGRO.
leader, the fiery Paladin Mirko, from within. That
they do exist and are capable of bearing good fruit
I am thoroughly convinced; but I am sure that
their permanence must depend in a great measure
on active sympathy and encouragement held out
to him from the right quarter. There was a time
when he may have deserved nothing better than
an elementary lesson of morality conveyed in a
curt snubbing letter; but the time for snubbing is
past. The war has cleared the air; there is no
bad blood just at present between him and the
Turks, and there is a strong desire on his part to
join and identify his little state with the general
body of progressive Europe, and, if there is any
faith in words, to put away from him the old
bigotry and the old barbarism. There is nothing
more satisfactory than this, unless it be the rising
mistrust, if not aversion, with which I know that
he occasionally turns away from the fantastic re-
action-breeding advocacy of speakers and writers
who take an idealist's view of his country. He
looks to England for the bread of common sense,
but he has hitherto got nothing but unfriendly
apathy, or the glittering stone of that barren anti-
Turkish sentimentalism which has replaced yester-
day's ignorant philo-Turkism as the fashion of
e * * * * *
º º º
AſONTE NEGRO. 187
to-day. As a matter of likelihood, I do not think
he will meet with the needful support and sym-
pathy; because, in order to afford it properly, it
would be necessary to have some knowledge of the
language. Justification of past negligence, or the
concealment of linge sale at home, must after all be
a stronger instinct with us than sympathy with a
wild unmanageable chieftain ; and we have got to
dissemble as we best can the disagreeable fact that
neither in the official nor the outer world—neither
in Downing Street nor in Printing-House Square—
have we a single born Englishman who has any
adequate knowledge of Illyrian, if indeed any
knowledge at all, nor does there seem to be the
slightest care to supply this deficiency even in the
face of the strong pervading fermentation of which
the mere existence and alleged uniformity of this
language under many names is the vital principle.
The petty feuds and mutual cattle-lifting incur-
sions of the tchetas, or predatory bands of Christian
Montenegrine and Mussulman Albanian borderers,
are quite different from full-blown warfare between
the Montenegrine and Turkish nations. And it is
probable that these will go on for some time to
come. The possession of a port by Montenegro,
and the consequent relief of that country from the
188 MONTE NEGRO.
pressure of much hardship and poverty, might
tend, in some measure, to stop them; for they are
occasioned by poverty and sheer habitual wildness,
rather than by any rooted incurable ill-will. A
Montenegrine artlessly confessed as much to my
companion, saying, “If it were not for the Turks,
I don't know how we should live.' There is no
great evil in them, except the habits of cruelty on
both sides; nor is there any occasion for the fas-
tidious nineteenth century to turn away in indig-
nation from what, barring the religious element,
must be the exact counterpart of our own fore-
fathers' border-life during the sixteenth century,
and later still. The Montenegrine is the most
frequent offender, for he is the poorest, the bravest,
and the most fanatical. But I was told by the
Pasha of Skodra himself that the Mussulman and
the Catholic are also in their turn frequently the
aggressors. The same is probably the case on the
little known north-eastern frontier, by Bielopoglie,
and in the direction of Novi-Bazar, where a fierce
Mussulman population in a strong country inter-
poses as a block between Montenegro and Servia.
The Porte dislikes these feuds very much; for it
gains nothing by them, and it dreads the possibility
of a mere spark at any moment being made to
MONTENEGRO. 189
kindle the flames of a full-grown war with the
whole Montenegrine nation. In the old days,
before the diplomatic existence of Montenegro, they
led to nothing, and did not matter. The moun-
taineer used to wander all over the low country as
a gardener or field-labourer, even as far as Con-
stantinople, or stay at home and fight his border
enemies, with equal indifference, and with nobody
by to settle whether this was peace or war, ac-
cording to Wattel and Puffendorf, or to invent
and pile up the airy, glowing romance of his
being a sort of successful Christian Leonidas, tri-
umphantly holding his Thermopylae for hundreds
of years against the whole force of Turkey. Nor
did they care a straw at Constantinople whether
the unruly and unprofitable Albanian, or the un-
tamable infidel, did or suffered the most in the
way of cutting throats. But at present, the Mon-
tenegrine is not encouraged, by one side or the
other, to leave his country, for the defence of which
-lately every Montenegrine was wanted, for tem-
porary field-labour in Turkey. He does not care
to gain his bread that way, and his poverty is
pressing very hard upon him. The Turks are dis-
inclined to give him the port which he wants, for
they have no confidence in his good intentions and
190 MONTENEGRO.
good faith; and they believe, rightly or wrongly,
that he will make a bad use of it, and turn it into
a mere transit depôt of arms and stores for revolu-
tionary purposes. Moreover, the harbour of Spitza
immediately abuts on the Austrian frontier, and
that power would certainly claim the right of being
heard on the subject, under the natural impression
that for one bad word the South Sclavonic Hetairía
utters against Turkey, it means two against Aus-
tria. Considering that the question is a difficult
one, and may some day assume serious proportions,
I cannot help thinking that the Montenegrines
may fairly be supported in their claim for a port, as
soon as it is really proved on satisfactory evidence
that such a port is a vital necessity to them. As
regards the exportation of Montenegrine produce,
the formation of such a port would be a great
benefit to all parties. But, under all circum-
stances, and whatever may be the course adopted
by us, I sincerely hope and trust that we shall soon
hold more cordial communication with them, and
infuse some real life into our policy towards them,
both in the conservative and the liberal direction.
To return to Skodra. In the afternoon, I went
to pay a visit to the harem of Mahmoud Pasha, and
spent an hour chatting with his wife. Although a
MONTE NEGRO. 191
Hungarian by birth, everything was a la Turque;
and I rejoiced in being once more in the land of fin-
jans and zarfs, with coffee and sweetmeats. Every
servant and slave in the harem came in one by One
—the servants to kiss my hand, the slaves to kiss the
hem of my dress: none of them had ever seen an
English lady before, and they took the opportunity
of staring most vigorously at her.
Then we went out for a ride, and having skirted
the town, we found ourselves on a dusty but good
road, with thick, high hedges, which crossed a wide
plain. The panorama of mountains opened out
grandly. Right before us was a sugar-loaf, called
Haimal, at the foot of which is a collection of
villages, whose revenues, like those of Chios in
former times, formed a sultana's privy-purse, under
the title of “slipper-money.’ They were therefore
protected and favoured until these privileges were
taken from them under the new system, and taxes
laid on as in other places; thereupon, most of them
abandoned their villages in disgust.
On the other side of this plain we came to the
banks of the wide river Drin, and its still wider
dry beds. This river, the main branch of which
comes from the Lake of Ochrida, is the finest in all
Albania. It is joined close to Skodra by the Chiri,
192 MONTE NEGRO.
which is crossed by a most extraordinary bridge, of
such high pointed arches, stuck upon such slender
piers, that it has much the appearance of a spider
bent across from bank to bank. I never saw such
a ludicrous-looking bridge; but it is too grotesque
to be picturesque. It was built in 1768 by, and at
the expense of, Ahmed Pasha: but he is said to
have built a really beautiful bridge at Podgoritza.
Over the Boyana there is nothing but a miserable
broken wooden thing, over which it is almost
dangerous to pass.
Riding round the noble rock of the fortress, which
is grand on every side, we came to the bazaars.
They are sufficiently poor for a town of so much
importance as Skodra. No traveller, however, would
stop to think of the bazaars, even were they much
handsomer. The beauty of the surrounding moun-
tains is more than enough to fill one's eyes and
thoughts. For myself, I know few places lovelier
or so lovely as Skodra. Its beauty must, of course,
be much enhanced when the winter snows clothe the
mountain summits. They are not seen later than
May, although snow is to be found throughout the
summer on many of the heights. Although in Skodra
the heat of summer is very severe, the climate of
the pashalik is a very fine one, and the soil most
MONTE NEGRO. 193
fertile. Forests of elm, oak, beech, pine, and walnut
abound, and the olive oil of Dulcigno and Antivari
is much esteemed in Dalmatia. Corn of all kinds,
wheat, maize, oats, barley, with rice, beans, flax, and
tobacco, are readily grown, and the grapes would
be of the finest, if they were properly cared for.
Dulcigno is a port six miles south of Antivari. It
is quite Mussulman. The harbour has been altered
by earthquakes, and is now very small, but the Dul-
cignotes possess some 200 ships of their own build-
ing, and the number is constantly increasing. The
Dulcignote pirates used to be the terror of Italy
and the Adriatic; her seamen were much sought
by the Porte, and more than one became Capitan-
pasha. Their men have always been as famous
for their turbulence as their women for beauty and
grace. Antivari—Anti-Bari—was the usual crossing
place to Bari in Italy; but Dulcigno was also much
used.
We were at breakfast on Sunday morning when
startling news was brought to us. The English
Consul, an invalid, who had long been entirely
incapacitated from attending to any business, had
left Skodra on the day of our arrival there to go to
Dulcigno for sea-bathing. In passing through the
little town to the house prepared for him on the
O
194 MONTENEGRO.
sea-shore, one of his cavasses pushed a Turkish child
on one side. The push was a really gentle one:
the child was not hurt, nor did he fall; but the
act was seized upon as an opportunity for giving
expression to the bad feeling of the place—a bad
feeling fostered, if not originating, in a handful of
Turkish soldiers quartered there. The next morn-
ing, whilst the Consul was taking his bath in the
sea, attended by the other cavass, several of the
townspeople and soldiers surrounded the house, and
one of the latter shot the unfortunate cavass dead,
hacking the body to pieces. I learned that these
soldiers were of the same regiment as the horrid-
looking set we had seen at Durazzo. The quiet
Mahmoud Pasha bounded from his seat as the news
was given to us, and rushed off to the serai,
exclaiming, ‘The whole set shall be hanged I'll
see them hanged myself!” I do not know how it
ended, or whether the culprit escaped, but the Civil
Governor's own cavass (an Italian), who had been
sent to tell us the news, said that really hanging
was much too mild a punishment for the regiment
they had then on the coast, and that the Pasha said
he was at his wit’s end what to do with them. I was
told that they have had no pay for two years; but
I could not learn if this was strictly true, and I
MONTE NEGRO. 195
know this is a sort of statement in which exag-
geration or equivocation is particularly easy, as they
are sometimes paid in kind instead of in money.
Albanian is the language spoken in Skodra. It
differs materially from that spoken in Southern
Albania. Both Sclave and Albanian are spoken in
the mountain districts, according to the Latin or
Greek rite of the speaker. Very few even of the
Mussulmans speak Turkish. Italian is very much
spoken in the towns; not at all in the country.
The Venetians introduced it, and it was kept up by
the Latin clergy; but they have now so few village
Schools, that the language is confined to commercial
dealings.
The costumes of Skodra are particularly gay.
The men wear quantities of crimson sashes, and
heavy crimson cords, with large tassels, about them;
but it is only the Mussulman townspeople who wear
the fustamella, like the Southern Albanians.
I ventured one day on an innocent remark that
the inhabitants of Skodra had very little amusement,
but I was immediately answered, ‘Oh, but we have
our goose-battles in October 1’
* Goose-battles—what can they be?”
And then I was told that geese in Skodra are
bred and educated as game-cocks used to be in
O 2
196 MONTENEGRO.
England, to do battle with each other; and that
very fierce, obstinate, and bloody is the sport.
They fight by pecking and biting, but chiefly by
winding their long necks round each other, trying
each to break off the other's neck, something in the
style of a boa winding round a man's body to cut
him in two. It must be a curious sight; and, for
those that like it, what is called ‘fine sport,' the
geese being, I was told, more fierce and gamey than
cocks.
We were now obliged to leave Skodra. To my
great regret I left much unseen; but any further
exertions, or any kind of excursion, had been found
to be utter impossibilities from the tremendous heat
of the weather. One had neither strength of body
or mind left for anything; and though I longed to
be able to make many sketches, I found any attempt
at drawing, or even going out before sunset, quite
hopeless. As in this heat the nine hours necessary
for reaching Antivari would have proved too long
a ride all at once by daylight, the Pasha insisted on
our breaking it half-way, and he despatched some
soldiers with tents, a few guards, and the cook of
the French Consul with provisions for dinner and
breakfast. Both our friends accompanied us out
of the town, and only bade adieu to us on the
MONTE NEGRO. 197
banks of the Boyana, after lavishing every imagin-
able kindness upon us.
It was 6 P.M. when we turned away from Skodra
and our kind friends. I was glad that we had
chosen to ride rather than be rowed down the river,
as the Pasha had offered; for our road was higher
and the views much more extensive, and I would
not for anything have missed the remaining two
hours of daylight, and the exquisite beauty of that
road. On our right (north) we were riding under
pretty richly-wooded hills, rising abruptly from
our level; to the left (south), beautiful peaked and
lofty mountains stretched away into the distance:
while behind us, the serrated and pointed moun-
tains of the lake crossed each other in ever-vary-
ing beauty and grandeur. The sum went down all
too soon, though as he sank he covered the whole
scene with brilliant hues that for once made me
fancy myself in Greece.
Our road was excellent, soft and smooth the
whole way, and passing generally through flowery
meadows enclosed in sweet-smelling hedges, and
ornamented with noble trees—beech, oak, plane,
&c. We had plenty of amusement, watching the
glowworms and fireflies and listening to the songs
of our soldiers; but riding after dark through
198 MONTENEGRO.
tolerably thick woods is tiresome work, and I was
very thankful when at 10 P.M. we saw the fire
burning brightly beside our green military tents,
wherein our supper was awaiting us. It was blowing
a heavy gale, but we slept soundly for a few hours,
and were in the saddle again at 4:30; a lovely
morning, although the wind had not gone down
very much. As we looked back, we could still see
some of the more lofty forms of the Skodra moun-
tains, while at each step onwards the country im-
mediately around us became richer and lovelier,
and the hills more craggy and abrupt. The
mountains, on our right, were covered with thick
woods, containing, we were told, magnificent oaks;
but, for want of roads and carts, only the small
ones reach the shore. All these villages are now
Mussulman; but having been originally Christian,
the villages continue to keep the feasts of Christmas
and of St. Nicholas precisely in the same manner
as the Christians do. I scarcely remember a
prettier ride than this. The vales were full of
hamlets, which seemed rich in cattle and flocks;
while fruit trees hung bending over the road, laden
with apples, pears, pomegranates, Walnuts, &c.
And the fruit reminded me, as we came in sight
of the sea, that this was the Pashtrovich district,
MONTENEGRO, 199
which, till only a very few years ago, belonged to
the Vladika of Montenegro.
As we turned, after five hours' riding, through a
low pass into the lovely little plain of Antivari,
with its beautiful abrupt mountains, I regretted
much that I could not ride over to the quaint pic-
turesquely-placed town: but a trading steamer had
been requested to wait for me, and we hastened down
to the beach and stopped at the miserable Agenzia
of the Austrian Lloyd's Company. I had here to
say good-bye to my pleasant companion Captain
Strahan, as, his leave having expired, he was to re-
turn to Corfu in a passenger steamer in the evening,
while I went on with my servants to Ragusa in a
dirty luggage-boat. The Captain's astonishment at
having a passenger, and that passenger a lady, was
quite inexhaustible. The voyage, which should
have been five hours, lasted, owing to a heavy head-
wind, nearly nine; but when we reached Gravosa
he was still sitting staring at me with his mouth
wide open, and an unsmoked cigar in his hand.
Once or twice the man at the wheel spoke to him,
but he only gurgled an indistinct answer and went
on staring.
And so ended my delightful tour in Montenegro
and Northern Albania.
200
CHAPTER W.
A FEW WORDS ON NORTHERN ALBANIA.
HE interior and mountainous districts of
Northern Albania are an unknown land to Eng-
lish tourists, and are almost unvisited even by real
travellers and explorers. At all events, they have
hitherto found no place in any English record of
genuine travel. The only account known to me
which contains any fulness of geographical detail
is a contribution of the Austrian Count Karaczay
to the proceedings of the Royal Geographical So-
ciety. This however is based, not on personal
travel, but on information supplied by the Roman
Catholic clergy of the country, many of whom,
Dalmatians or Italians, are Austrian subjects. I
believe I may even go the length of limiting the
number of tolerably recent English travellers
among these wild mountains to two persons—Mr.
Hughes and Mr. Dunn Gardner. The former, now
Oriental Secretary at Constantinople, and son to
NORTHERW ALBANIA. 201
the late well-known traveller in Southern Albania,
has travelled on the line of the White Drin as far
as Ipek, Jacova, and the curious old Servian Mo-
nastery of Dechan. The latter, I understand, has
been everywhere, even into the fastnesses of the
almost independent Mirdites. But no account of
either of these journeys has been published. On
the other hand, an account of travels which never
took place, and which there is no occasion further
to specify, does exist.
The French have been beforehand with us in
this field, and have gone a long way to supply our
wants. M. Hecquard, formerly French Consul at
Skodra, published at the end of 1858 a volume of
great interest and importance, replete with geo-
graphical, statistical, and miscellaneous information
on Upper Albania, the fruit of many years' most
active political employment in that country, and of
a thorough knowledge of its languages. I think
that much of this work, even though very dry,
would well repay translation by a competent
person. It was, and has as yet been, wholly un-
noticed by the English press, not having even been
boiled down into stock for ordinary magazine con-
sumption. I wish that my limited scope and space
would allow me to make large extracts from his
202 A FEW WORDS ON
valuable work for the benefit of English readers,
and introduce them to the Hotti and the Clementi,
to Shalla, and Pouka, and the subjects of Prince
Bib—tribes of good Catholics who are more un-
known to us than the Waganda and the Wagogo
of Equatorial Africa.
For general information on Albania as a whole,
and particularly on its central and southern parts,
I cannot do better than refer my readers to the
great work published not many years ago by Von
Hahn, for a long time Austrian Consul at Ioan-
nina. This is a vast storehouse of facts of every
conceivable description, with archaeology and phi-
lology predominating, as is natural in the work of
a German, learned or otherwise. Everything is
there treated, from the earliest origin of the people
in the old pre-Homeric period down to their mo-
dern nursery stories, and to the question whether
there really are or are not Albanians born with
tails. It is an Augean stable of disorderly eru-
dition, which strongly needs the clear and methodic
mind of some French or English Hercules to re-
duce to order for the use of the general reader.
Writers on Albania usually adopt the tribual
or genealogical method in defining and classifying
the divisions of that country, and are generally apt
AWORTHERN ALBANIA. 203
to tread in one another's footsteps without much
inquiry how far the extent or value of such divisions.
may not have been overstated. Thus, M. Cyprien
Robert writes of “Les quatre Albanies,' meaning
the districts of the Gheghs, Tosks, Ljaps and
Tchams, the last two, though affiliated with the
second, being considered now to stand by them-
selves as separate divisions. I do not think my
readers will thank me or be much the wiser if I
fire off into their faces a mere repetition of these
uncomfortable, snappish monosyllables, that fail to
convey any idea of practical value which is not
much better expressed in another way. Besides,
such a division leaves out a great deal : ten dis-
tricts are enumerated by Colonel Leake in his
earliest and now rare work (“Researches in
Northern Greece and Albania’) which do not belong
to any of these main branches. The true and in-
telligible division is that of religious denomination.
This has the advantage of coinciding broadly with
a natural geographical demarcation, and it also
serves to indicate the past history as well as the
present condition and future prospects of Albanian
civilisation in its three forms—Catholic, Greek, and
Mussulman. The true and typical region of the
Mussulmans is in the centre; that of the Latins in
204 A FEW WORDS ON
the northern district, of which Skodra is the chief
town; and that of the Albanians in communion with
the Greek church, corresponding with fair accuracy
to the limits of Epirus, is in the south, with Ioan-
nina for its capital. In the centre, the Christian
population of the towns, such as Berat, Elbassan,
&c., is almost entirely of the Eastern Church, and
with the Greek language actually or prospectively
for its speech. In the north, on the other hand,
there are no Greeks, except those so called by the
ordinary misuse of the term—that is to say, Scla-
vonians of the Eastern Church, who are found in
the border districts next Montenegro. As a whole,
the Christians of the north are Roman Catholics,
devotedly attached to their church. The Mussul-
mans are everywhere, north, centre, and south ;
but it is only in the centre that they preponderate
so as almost exclusively to form the population.
The germs of civilisation were implanted and
nurtured in the north by Italian influence, by the
Church of Rome, and the Republic of Venice; in
the south, by the Patriarchate of Constantinople
and the Byzantine Empire, or its offshoot, the
Despotate of Epirus. The rising tide of Ottoman
conquest either overwhelmed or buried the whole
country. It destroyed the political power of the
NORTHERN ALBANIA. 205
Greek empire in the south, and further deadened
the low vitality of the Patriarchate by turning it
into a mere instrument of control for its own pur-
poses. In the north Skanderbeg was crushed; and
Venice, driven one by one from the towns she held,
was forced to capitulate honourably after the great
siege of Skodra. The mass of the Catholic popu-
lation were, however, able to maintain their religion
and a certain amount of independence unmolested,
and had no oppression to complain of. But the
growth of their civilisation was checked; they were
cut off from Europe and buried from the sight of
the world. This lasted during the palmy days of
Ottoman statesmanship and military prowess; but
as weakness and want of controlling power set in
at the centre, persecution and oppression, and the
long train of evils which always accompany weak-
ness in a Mahometan state, became rife at the
extremities. A large portion of the Catholic popu-
lation was then fain to embrace Islam in order to
avoid calamity, as well as, doubtless, to obtain a
career of advancement, or to escape the imputation,
and possibly the reality, of being the allies and
tools of hostile Christian states. From the reports
of Venetian ambassadors, we know that this con-
version must have been taking place during the
206 A FEW WORDS ON
last half of the seventeenth century.* The de-
scendants of these Albanians have retained a great
many vestiges of Christianity, not to say of actual
ceremonies. This, of course, refers to the moun-
taineers and country people, not to the townspeople.
Thus, for instance, the Mussulmans of Retchi cele-
brate the feasts of Christmas, Easter, St. Nicholas,
and St. George ; and in illness or distress they are
sure to send for a Catholic priest to pray for them.
The tribe of Skreli derives its name from St. Charles
— Shen Kerli — to whom it was anciently dedi-
cated ; they pay tithes to the Catholic priest and
join in the church festivals, although professing
Islamism. Things have so changed, that at this
day the Christian mountaineer has infinitely the
advantage over the Mussulman, as he escapes the
conscription by avowing his religion.
In 1846 an attempt was made to levy the con-
* From a work which must be of great curiosity, published at
Palermo in 1648, under the title of Anatomia dell'Impero Otto-
mano, and referred to by Col. Leake (Researches, &c. p. 250), it
appears that the Albanians were still mainly Christians at that
time. Their insurrection is reckoned upon, in common with that
of the other Christians of the empire, as a means of overthrowing
the Turkish rule from within, to be supported by a European league
from without. This is a curious anticipation of what is supposed
to be the great discovery of anti-Turkish diplomacy since 1856,
internal dislocation substituted for external aggression.
§
NORTHERN ALBANIA. 207
scription on one of the true Catholic tribes under
the pretext of its being avowedly Mussulman, and
was carried out with great atrocity and cruelty
towards the victims and their families. Sir Strat-
ford Canning was the first to become acquainted
with the circumstances; he interfered promptly
and peremptorily: the offending Pashas, Salih of
Salonica being the worst,-were punished, and the
poor Albanians settled at Philadar, a mountain
village near Brusa.
At the present moment all the world is forced to
hold some opinion or another, whether fairly come
by or not, on the subject of nationality. It may,
therefore, be instructive to examine that of Al-
bania, and consider how far it is capable of standing
by itself, and what value it may assume in any
political combination. There is no doubt that the
Albanians have a distinctive, physical, and mental
character strongly marked—a character in a greater
or less degree common to all. They think of them-
selves and magnify themselves in common as
Albanians, in contrast to their neighbours; they
all speak one language, or rather one group of
unwritten dialects full of foreign importations,
and in its extreme forms, north and south, shading
off into all but mutual unintelligibility. Money,
208 g A FEW WORDS ON
force, or dexterous intrigue can unite any or all of
them against any part of themselves or any of their
neighbours for the purpose of mere depredation,
war for war's sake, or pulling down a government.
But for want of a common language of cultivation
and literature, and not having any religious de-
nomination in common, they are without the two
main elements which help to construct and hold to-
gether the fabric of a true nation. Having thus no
consciousness of political unity, they have in them-
selves no power of political construction ; and there-
fore, to the eye of the statesman, their nationality
is but negative, however much the ethnologist may
be justified in treating it as positive and strongly
marked. The moment an Albanian enters a
church or mosque door, or takes an alphabet in
hand and begins his education, he enters upon the
first process of his incorporation with the body
politic of his neighbours or rulers. The south
affords the most striking example of this. Whe.
ther the land be held by a Turkish or by a Greek
government, the Christian Albanian of the south
will ultimately become a Greek to the same extent
and through the same causes that the Albanian
sailor of Hydra or the Albanian peasant of Attica
are and have been slowly changing into Greeks.
NORTHERN ALBANIA. 209
Nor is it difficult to see how easily and quietly,
under these circumstances, with the conscription
and the land-tax gradually wearing away the Mus-
Sulman population, the country must, in the long
process of time, drop off from Turkey and on to
Greece, if this impatient generation would but
allow time to do its own work. Whether the
people will be better off or Greece the better
governed is another question. They will at all
events, under the strong and special influence of
the Greek educational system, have learned to feel
that foreign domination is the worst of evils, and
to the first generation of freemen freedom will be
the one paramount blessing which will atone for
any misgovernment.
The Mussulman population of the central and
northern districts seem destined in the same way
to mingle and embody themselves in the general
mass of Turkish Mahometans in Europe. Under
the rebellious or half-independent rule of their
countrymen, the old feudal Beys or Pashas, they
were able to preserve their Albanian individuality
untouched. But the entire modern history of
Turkey, from the Egyptian settlement in 1841 to
the Russian war in 1854, lies in the re-conquest of
its disaffected and rebellious Mussulman provinces,
P
210 A FEW WORDS ON
and the enforced application to them of the new
central system of administration. The Albanian,
after two rebellions, was re-conquered, and reduced,
like the Koord, the Bosnian, and the Laz of north-
eastern Asia Minor. His old antagonism to the
Porte, though still capable of being turned into an
efficient instrument for the work of demolition, is,
so far as it was national, in a fair way of being
mitigated under the influence of centralisation.
Besides this, the Porte holds in its hands as a trump
card the power of uniting all the people of Islam by
an inflammatory appeal to fanaticism : and though
such statesmen as Fuad Pasha would be strongly
disinclined to play such a card, they may be forced
to do so by the constant menaces of filibusters,
by the fanaticism of Christians, or of Progressists
using Christian watchwords, or by the persistent
want of fair play from Europe in standing by
the spirit of treaties. And such a course would
at once convert him into a reckless and active ally.
At present, if the greedy and corrupt bureaucracy
of Constantinople forces him to become its deadly
enemy, the cause will be the same that will also
alienate every provincial Turk in the land from
rulers of his own race, namely, the heavy burdens
of exclusive conscription and mismanaged taxation.
NORTHERN ALBANIA. 211
It is unsafe to hazard a positive speculation as
to the ultimate future of Northern Catholic Al-
bania. The formative spirit and training power of
its old mistress and teacher, the great Republic of
Venice, has now ceased to act. Italy has enough
to do in holding her own against open foe and
uncertain friend for her to influence the eastern
coasts of the Adriatic as yet, though the influence
of Venice in the Levant is her natural inheritance,
and assuredly will be hers some day. It will be
well indeed if she refrains from premature propa-
gandism for other than Italian purposes, and from
doing the dirty work of other powers in Turkey
under the impulse of blind hostility to Austria
anyhow and anywhere. The spiritual and moral
superintendence of the Latin Albanians has passed
from Venetian to Austrian hands; and, in quiet
times, is likely to remain there, without being
either used as an engine of political annexation or
developed into an organised system of education
and improvement. Austria is among the Latin
Albanians what France is among the Maronites;
and, for the matter of that, what she would like to
be among the Latin Albanians too. But these
powers use their position differently, according to the
difference of their policy in Turkey. The Turkish
P 2
212 A FEW WORDS ON
government, the rulers of the land, are content
to let both well and ill alone in these matters. The
Albanians have no cultivated language by which
to educate themselves, and easy-going Austria,
though an Italian power, so to speak, in the
Adriatic, cannot put her heart in the work of
Italianising these people, which is the only way of
training and educating them to become a European
community. Nor, from common interests, and a
now active sense of having to stand or fall with
Turkey, to say nothing of good faith and respect
for treaties, has she any wish to annex in this
direction and assume direct rule herself.
It is the misfortune of these Northern Christians
that, unlike their Southern brethren, who are con-
fronted by Greek influence whichever way they
turn, whether to Greece proper, Thessaly, or the
sea, they have no Italian or Italo-Sclave frontagers
of their own religion, and of a master-language.
Between them and their co-religionists lies Monte-
negro, firmly knit together, aggressive and ardently
anti-Catholic. The idea of their annexation, to-
gether with all Central Albania into the bargain, to
the Montenegrines, a people as wild and Savage as
themselves and, collectively, less numerous, is the
opprobrium of the political ethnology of the Palais
NORTHERN ALBANIA. 213
Royal, such as we find it on the famous and useful
* Nouvelle Carte de l'Europe’ of 1860. When the
Pope sent forth his edict enjoining all Catholics of
the East to make common cause with the Monte-
negrines against the infidel in 1862, it was at these
Latin Albanians that he was made to speak, in
order to detach them from the Turks. For many
generations they had not heard such language from
Rome, and, had it been persevered in, it might
have gone some way to make them Protestants, or
even Turks, rather than allies of their bitterest
enemy. We may be sure that it was not Austrian
influence that sought to convert the Pope into the
schismatic's friend on Albanian ground. These
tribes are practically, and all but nominally, inde-
pendent of Turkey; as regards her, they are simply
in the position of so many loyal, well-affected
Montenegros; and they will always remain her
faithful allies, so long as those privileges are
respected which they know well how to defend
with arms in their hands. The experiment of de-
taching these tribes from Turkey, undermining
their allegiance, and substituting the restless in-
fluence of another and greater Catholic power
for the inoffensive, inert supremacy of Austria, in
order to make use of them in any prospective
214 MORTHERN ALBANIA.
combination, has been tried before this, and per-
haps is still trying. It is a difficult game, and
has failed as yet for want of sufficient leverage;
but who knows how soon the master-hand of the
very able consular artificer who is said to have in-
vented Montenegro as a diplomatic reality, may be
recalled to the work of setting up and pulling down
in Northern Albania? I hope I may be able one
day to believe that some English department is
able to understand and control these matters of
detail both centrally and locally.
2
1
5
CHAPTER WI.
DALMATIA.
FTER resting a day or two in Ragusa, Istarted
again on my journey, going on board the
steamer ‘Bosforo,' on her return voyage, on a
fine warm j uly evening. I was sorry that the
darkness of the night prevented my having more
than an indistinct and vague glimpse of the island
of Meleda, along which we coasted, after leav-
ing the cluster of islands at the mouth of the Val
d'Ombla. It is this island that the Dalmatians
claim as having been the Melita on which St. Paul
was shipwrecked, and I had just been reading Mr.
Neale's vigorous argument in its favour. I will
not venture to discuss any of his ‘seven facts,'
although not even the expression of ‘Adria' as the
sea in which they drove up and down, seems to
my unlearned mind an argument of any weight;
but I cannot refrain from venturing to remark
three things. Firstly, it appears to me impossible
216 DALMATIA.
to imagine for an instant that the ship could have
passed up the narrow way between the coast of
Otranto and the Akro-Ceraunian mountains with-
out seeing land, or that any vicinity to the latter
coast, so much dreaded by ancient and modern
navigators, should have been passed over in silence.
Secondly, what should “a ship of Alexandria' have
been doing at Meleda, or so far up the Adriatic
sea—a sea which in those days led to nothing?
And, thirdly, is it not impossible to account for the
entire silence that ensues upon so long a voyage
as the subsequent one between this island and
Rhegium, in which so many various coasts and
islands would have been passed?”
* If St. Paul himself ever was in Dalmatia, it must have been
in the summer and autumn of 57, when, having left Troas, he
passed into Macedonia, and from Philippi wrote to the Corinth-
ians that he would come to them (2 Cor. xiii. 1). It was
from Corinth that he wrote his epistle to the Romans, in which
he says he had ‘fully preached the gospel of Christ round about
unto Illyricum.’ The term Illyricum is too vague to define the
limits of the Apostle's journeys with any accuracy. At this
time, the word is believed to have included Dalmatia, Pannonia,
and Moesia. It is possible that he not only penetrated into the
mountains of the interior, but that he pushed beyond them even
to the shores of the Adriatic. Thence he may have taken ship
from Epidaurus or any of the Dalmatian ports, and came down
to Corinth by sea rather than by land. However this may be,
it must be remembered that the preposition ‘unto’ does not
DALMATIA, 217
We were leaving Sabioncello behind and passing
between Lésina and Torcola when I went on deck
at five o'clock the next morning ; and in another
hour we had run into the harbour of Lésina. A
very picturesque quaint little place it is, with a
fine fortress on the summit behind the town. The
hills are prettily grouped together round the little
bay, but the slopes are so barren that the few olive
trees scattered on them seem put there merely to
show how little will grow on the rocky soil; and
the bright little town itself, which was built by
Charles W., is more worthy of notice. On the
quay, a beautiful Loggia, the work of San Michele,
carries one's mind back to the best days of Venice:
these Loggie were erected for the meetings of the
Municipal Councils, and they are still, more or less
handsomely built, to be seen in nearly all the
islands. The Loggia at Lésina is, however, the
handsomest of all. The town is full of fine spe-
cimens of Venetian architecture, and there is a
piazza in the centre of it, unusually handsome for
so small a place. My attention, however, was
denote more than that he reached the frontiers of Illyricum.
And it is certain that the Church of Dalmatia was founded, if
not by St. Paul himself, certainly during his lifetime, by Titus.--
Life of St. Paul, by Conybeare and Howson.
218 DAJCMA TIA.
riveted on the two lovely campanile towers, of the
same lightness and elegance as that of Perasto, and
it was a pleasure to think I should meet the same
beautiful objects all along the Dalmatian coast and
islands. The church itself may be plain enough,
but, in the Dalmatian expression of Byzantine
forms, the campanile is almost always lovely.
Lésina is a bishopric, and includes those of Brazza
and Cürzola, which were suppressed in 1830.
At the left of the town and rather beyond it is
a curious stone seat or sofa, carved round into a
half circle, and hedged in with aloes; I had not
time to examine it, but, from a distance, it had a
very Greek and quaint effect. I heard that the
island is thickly planted with aloes, and that much
cordage and cloth is made from its fibre: but I have
reason to believe this is an exaggeration. When I
came to enquire narrowly about the cultivation of
the aloe, I never could find any place where it was
really carried on, though very many people told
me it was ‘not here, but farther on;' and I imagine
that, if it ever was cultivated and made into any-
thing tolerably good, the manufacture has now
died out.
Passing rapidly by the little crowd of the Spal-
madore islets which guard the entrance to Lésina,
DALMATIA. 219
we danced on over the blue and not particularly
calm sea to the famous Lissa—an island which was,
from the battle of Austerlitz to the end of the war,
in the possession of the English, and was made a
depôt for naval and military stores, in the same
manner as Corfu has been used of late years. It
was also the nucleus of a considerable commerce,
supplying the Adriatic with British goods. Off this
island was fought the famous action between Hoste
and Dubourdieu, in 1811, with the proud details of
which my readers are doubtless familiar. The
island is not pretty, and the English forts have
been, I believe, rebuilt by the Austrians.
Then we danced back again to the Spalmadores,
and past Lésina, and so on to Milnā, the capital of
the island of Brazza: it seemed to me nearly as
ugly and barren as Paxo, but it is an important
island from its size and population, and the views
from it are very pretty. The moment we left
Milnā, we began to see all the coast of the main-
land, with the Wellebich mountains rising behind
the shore and towering over the islands; and in
a short time the city of Spålato became visible.
We arrived alongside of the fine new landing pier
at three o'clock. Immediately after, the Podestà
Bajamonte sent the excellent Doctor Illich on
220 DALMATIA.
board to conduct me to the lodgings prepared for
me; and I am glad to have the power of thanking
him here for his unwearied kindness and attention
throughout my stay in Spálato. There is no hotel
at present of any kind in Spålato, but one has
been built on the grand quay, and in a few months
now it will be opened for travellers. I occupied a
couple of rooms over the reading salon, and took
my meals at the restaurants and cafés in the
to Wn.
We must now proceed to examine the many
beauties of Spålato.
Everybody knows that, towards the middle of the
third century, Diocletian the Great was born in
Salona,” the then capital of Dalmatia. His parents
were poor and humble, but, even when clothed in
the imperial purple, the Emperor retained the sim-
plicity of heart which kept him a faithful friend to
his hearth and home. Revisiting Salona in A.D. 286,
he laid the foundation-stone of this palace and for-
tress combined, for the future home of his mother,
and to it he himself retired in 305, after his abdica-
tion of the throne. Three hundred and thirty years
later the old Salona was destroyed by the Avars,
* Salóna, not Sālona, as in Northern Greece.
DALMATIA. 221
and the fugitives from the city fled to the huge
palace, finding plenty of space in the nine acres and
more within its walls. These have since, till quite
lately, contained the whole of the town, ancient and
modern—the city receiving very naturally the
name, with but little change, of a palatio.” The
horrible persecutions and massacres enacted at
Salona, for which the reign of Diocletian has ac-
quired lasting infamy, continued under varied forms
of barbarity until A.D. 832, when Dalmatia was tho-
roughly Christianised. From this time till 1420,
when Spálato became finally Venetian, it was the
object of ceaseless wars between the Venetians and
Hungarians; and so it happened that almost every
relic remaining in her of imperial Rome is built
up, overlaid, or altered, by one or other of her two
OWIOleI’S.
* I never could learn when or why an r had been inserted in
the last syllable of Spålato, without any discoverable meaning;
but it was curious to observe how completely it was supposed to
be a piece of fashionable refinement. On the coast of Dalmatia,
or farther south, or in the place itself, no peasant ever said any-
thing but Spålato; there one or two of the best educated, or of
those who wished to próner the fact that they had travelled out
of their own country, had adopted the r ; and farther north it
amused me to hear such people hastily correct themselves in
conversation to the pronunciation they thought most pleasing to
my foreign ears.
222 DALMATIA.
The ground plan of the palace is a parallelogram,
of which the long side is next the sea, and close
upon it; but it no longer strikes the eye as anything
imposing or palatial. Nearly the whole of this lofty
Wall was once one long grand gallery of open arches.
This was the great feature of the exterior of the
palace, and must have been, like the flat face of our
own palace at Westminster, imposing merely from
its monotonous extent. Doubtless it was made,
like our own palace-front, interesting and varied
enough in detail and ornament, but the want of any
One striking feature in the coup d'oeil is unusual in
ancient buildings, and scarcely successful. The sea-
front of Diocletian's palace should therefore be con-
sidered the back. The real front looked towards
the mountains, and, if Salona had not been concealed
by the rising ground between, would have been
naturally so selected. The centre of the wall on
the
handsomest of the four gates, and very elegant in
this side was pierced by the Porta Aurea
detail, but by no means a fine feature in such a
mass of wall. The small opening has a curious
Saracenic lintel under an arch, over which is a row
of seven circular-headed blind arches, there being
alternately niches for statues. A small square tower
stood on each side of the four gates, and a larger
JDALMATIA. 223
square tower at each angle of the exterior walls.
Four straight streets crossed each other in the very
centre of the whole building, and here was the great
court, or Peristylium, between which and the western
wall all the principal buildings extended. At each
side of this court was a small Temple—on the south-
ern that of Jupiter (now the cathedral), on the
northern that of Esculapius (now the baptistery).
At the farther end of the court was the Porticus,
through which one passed to the round and domed
Vestibulum; and then to the Atrium, a square hall
which led into the sea-facing gallery or Crypto-
Porticus.
This was in the past. What now remains to be
seen is soon told. The four great towers at the
corners are all still standing intact as the noble old
walls. The gates are battered and defaced nearly
into obliteration—the Porta Aurea the least so.
The façade of the great portico and the noble arcade
of columns round the central court still stand nearly
in perfection, but so built in and disfigured that
it is long, very long, before the eye can search it
all out, and keep it in a separated whole, distinct
from the modern walls, balconies, green-shuttered
windows and doors, with which it has been overlaid
and spoiled. The circular vestibule and the fine
224 y DALMATIA.
quadrangular hall are still visible, but in ruins, while
the noble open gallery has almost entirely disap-
peared; the arches are filled up, most of the columns
have been taken away (probably by the Venetians,
when they robbed the Porta Aurea of hers), modern
windows and doors are pierced at every few feet,
and numbers of houses are built up in front of it.
Still, in spite of all this disfigurement, there is much
left that is very interesting, and the two temples
are undoubtedly very beautiful, especially that of
Jupiter. This latter is astonishingly dirty, having
become so black that it resembles a London church
in colour more than a Southern cathedral. It is
chiefly built of a fine freestone, but the twenty-one
steps approaching it are of excellent marble, and all
the columns are either of granite (these were brought
from Salona, it is said) or of red porphyry from
Assouan. A black marble sphinx, of the time of
Amunoph III., was probably brought over at the
same time as these columns. Its calm dignified
repose contrasts curiously with the two lively,
snapping, snarling Lions of St. Mark, which lie close
to their ancient and venerable cousin.
The arcade of the great court is composed of
circular-headed arches, resting on very beautiful
Corinthian capitals. Its peculiarity is, that in the
DALMATIA. 225
Portico at the end the columns are united by a very
bold and handsome cornice, stilted up in the centre
into an arch. This is strange; but, used as it is, it
has a fine effect.
And now for the beautiful Cathedral. The ori-
ginal building, which was single and isolated, seemed
to me to be almost identically the same as the ex-
quisite little Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek, though
less richly ornamented. Like that, the cella was
octagonal, and had an open peristyle all round it.
The proportions are beautiful, and the execution of
the capitals, friezes, and under ornamentation of the
roof is very good. Inside, the walls have been
pierced for light, which serves to show some ugly
coarse sculptures of Cupids and wild beasts, and the
more interesting construction of the dome, which is
curious. It is a succession of small arches, over-
lapping each other, like scales, until the edges are
near enough to be concluded in circles.
The building must have had a portico; but this
has been removed to make room for the campanile
tower, added at the end of the fourteenth century
—an incongruous addition truly to the heathen
temple; but in itself it is so beautiful, that one can-
not wish it away, and it is, besides, difficult to say
how picturesquely the more solemn and venerable
Q
226 DALMATIA.
Roman work has lent itself to the late and florid
Romanesque addition. This tower was the gift of
Queen Elizabeth of Hungary, and was finished in
1360, but it is said to have been executed by a
native of Spålato. Its first story is supported on
pointed arches, resting on a bold cornice, above
alternate round and square columns, with richly-
carved capitals; above these are three stories of
open arches and slender columns, of the most lovely
lightness and richness; and before the two upper
stories (there were five) were blown down and re-
placed by a heavy circular story and extinguisher cap,
the whole tower must have been exquisitely beautiful.
The inside of the church is much concealed by
modern galleries, carved angels, and other trum-
pery; but a white marble pulpit, in the best
style of Venice, is worth looking at. Under the
peristyle are two tablets of curious coarse sculp-
ture; the figures are of the birth and baptism of
Christ, with St. Peter and some others—all much
deformed, but very expressive.
On the other side of the great court is the
Temple of Esculapius—a small building, with a
tunnel-shaped roof in squares of carved marble,
neatly joined together; a rich frieze runs round the
wall, carved with Cupids and grapes, lions and
DAJCMA TIA. 227
panthers, like the famous doorway at Baalbek. The
baptistery itself is formed of slabs of marble, carved
with geometrically-interlaced lines of the earlier
days of Byzantine ornament—interesting only for
their close resemblance to the ornaments on early
Christian shrines in the East. But, apart from
architecture and ornament, one's mind naturally
turns to remember how many a fervent convert
may have been baptised in this once-heathen
temple in those succeeding centuries when baptism
was usually sealed by martyrdom in the neighbour-
ing theatres.
Two sculptured sarcophagi outside the temple
are interesting : one of them represents a boar-
hunt in a very spirited manner. They were
brought from Salona, the ruins of which contain
many very curious late Roman and early Christian
sarcophagi and tombs, but none of them are as
beautiful or as interesting as two bas-reliefs I was
shown in Spålato. One of these is fixed in the
interior wall of a private house belonging to the
A'coutais family, who are said to be the oldest and
noblest blood in Dalmatia; they account themselves
to be patricians of imperial Rome. The bas-relief
represented a fight of Centaurs and Lapithae, and
is said to have been brought from Salona, where it
Q 2
228 J) ALMA TIA.
was dug up two or three hundred years ago. The
other slab is of very pure white marble, and is in
perfect preservation, having been concealed and
built in for many hundred years, at the back of
an altar; it has been discovered but a few months,
and is supposed by the Spalatians to be the pass-
age of the Israelites over the Red Sea. I do not
venture to give my humble opinion of the age or
merits of these two bassi-relievi, but I am quite
sure that they richly merit the attention of anti-
quarians.
I had enquired, upon seeing the black sphinx
beside the cathedral, for another, which I affirmed
to be in the city. My friend, Dr. Illich, assured me
so positively that there was no other, that I was
much amused when, on the next morning, he told
me he had found it, and also that he had lived close
to it all his life without ever observing it. It lies
in the courtyard of a private house, broken in
many pieces and its beauty gone. This sphinx is of
white stone; it bears the name of Amunoph III.,
and came from Thebes.
Before we turn to the mediaeval or more modern
interests of Spålato, let us pay a visit to Salona,
remembering how inseparably the palace of Dio-
cletian is connected with her still more ancient
JDALMATIA, 229
ruins. Spálato stands on a long and wide pro-
montory of rising ground, which forms one side of
the deep gulf within which Salona was placed ; the
carriage-road crossing this promontory comes down
upon the bank of the ancient river Iader (now
Jadera), very near its mouth. The views, from the
moment one has attained the low heights behind
Spálato, are charming ; Salona lies in the vale
below; the gulf is enclosed in smiling woods and
meadows round to Traii, and sealed by the long
low island of Bua ; while to the east the Wellebich
range gives a noble background of wild-looking
mountains, in an opening of which an almost
isolated sugar-loaf is crowned by the splendid
fortress of Klissa.
Salona was placed on gently-rising slopes facing
the south and west; it was a very large and splen-
did city, and its ruins cover a vast extent of
ground: the greater part of them have been un-
covered by order of the Emperor Francis of
Austria. Miserable vines are grown in the once-
stately palace-yards, and struggle over the broken
walls, and in the area of the too-famous amphi-
theatre corn is now peacefully growing. Here a
few arches and some broken seats are all the re-
mains that strike the eye; but I puzzled over a
230 DALMATIA.
number of small wedge-shaped spaces, divided by
very massive walls, and wondered what they could
be, till, observing their proximity to the area, I
saw clearly that they had been the cells for the
wild beasts and the prisoners. My thoughts went
back to the gloomy caverns of the Bethlehem hills,
where St. Jerome passed the latter years of his
life; and I could not help fancying the terrible
enthusiasm and passionate indignation with which
the mind of the historian-saint must have brooded
over the bloody massacres, done in the Salona of
his native land, of the humble followers of the
meek Babe of Bethlehem.
There are also remains of baths, with coarse
mosaic floors, a great many marble columns, some
of them fluted, marble-lined baths, and apartments
for bathers. The fountain is choked up, but the
spot is picturesque. The walls surrounding the
city, the gates, and some of the paved streets (the
latter marked with wheel-ruts) have been laid bare.
But perhaps the most interesting object among these
lesser remains is the fine aqueduct which brought
water from the mountains to Salona, and was after-
wards continued to Spálato. Unfortunately it has
long been in ruins.
This aqueduct leads me to the present history of
DAJCMA TIA. 23I
Spálato, as the want of fresh water is the one mis-
fortune of the city—a misfortune to be very soon, I
hope, forgotten by the citizens, or to be remembered
by them only in their gratitude to their present
excellent Podestà, Signor Antonio Bajamonte. Of
this remarkable man I must say a few words. His
family, always natives of Spålato, were not of noble
origin nor of much wealth, but his father acquired
a very considerable fortune in medical practice.
This he left to his son, who had received the inva-
riable and only education of the young Dalmatian
gentry, two or three years at the university of
Padua, where he took an M.D. degree. Farther
than this he did not travel, so that his modern and
active ideas are doubly creditable to him.
Signor Bajamonte had no sooner come into pos-
session of his large fortune and been made Podestà,
than he proceeded to dispense it for the good of his
native city. First he fronted the town with a mag-
nificent quay, with two landing-piers, and a short
row of lofty well-built houses. At the end of this is
a large and handsome newly-built house, in which
he resides. Then he laid gas in the streets, chiefly
at his own expense, and added much to the cleansing
of the town. Besides this, after having cleared away
much of the débris, and many of the tumble-down
232 JDALMATIA,
streets outside the southern end of the old city,
and freed the noble old walls and towers of the
huts and hovels clinging to them, he built a variety
of very solid meat houses, adding to them a well-
built church. He is rightly anxious to get the
crowded population out of the narrow, dirty, cooped-
up lanes they now inhabit within the old palace
walls; after which he hopes the Austrian Govern-
ment will aid him with a grant of money for clearing
the cathedral and other venerable buildings of the
miserable houses in which they are now buried.
For this, and for money to build a breakwater for
the completion of the harbour, he has already peti-
tioned—as yet in vain; but we may hope he will
ultimately succeed.
Signor Bajamonte's next gift was a theatre.
It is small, but handsome and well-proportioned,
and, although over-ornamented, it is pretty and
conveniently arranged. In the same block of build-
ings there is a handsome reading-room, and a
library is being formed in connection with it; whilst
some of the official residences will be soon com-
pleted under the same roof. These buildings form
the inner end of a fine large Place, planted
with trees, and opening down upon the quay at
the northern end of the city. One side of this
DALMATIA. 233
Place is occupied by a splendid building, with a
lofty arcade in front of it, now advanced to its
second story. This is to be the Palazzo di Giustizia
and the University. Bajamonte has already built a
large school for the sons of the Spalatian gentry
some way out of the town, and another is being com-
menced for their daughters. These will be, if well
carried out, an infinite gain not only to Spälato but
to all Dalmatia; for the instruction given to Dal-
matian boys is of the meanest kind, and the unfor-
tunate girls get nothing beyond the commonest
rudiments of education, unless their parents send
them to Lubiana (Laybach)* or Venice. A very
few are sent to Vienna; but of the education given
them there and at Laybach I heard the same
complaint from all the parents—that it was too
conventual to be of any use to them in the world.
Padua, as I have said, is the only real education
given to their sons, unless they are sent to the
military college at Vienna.
At the end of the Marina, close to his own
* When in Dalmatia, I was very much puzzled by constant
reference to Lubiana as an important place, and I was much
ashamed of myself for never having heard of it or not knowing
where it was. It took me some time before I found out that it
was merely the Italian for Laybach. A full dictionary of such
duplicate names would be a great boon,
234 JDALMA TIA.
house, Signor Bajamonte is rebuilding the church of
an old monastery, of which the pretty and curious
Byzantine cloisters are still standing. Farther
down the Marina is the new hotel. At the back of
the town, behind the palace, is the nice-looking
Civil Hospital, in a pleasant garden adjoining a
spacious new public garden, enclosed and planted
by the same benevolent hand. Near to this are
two large pits or reservoirs, lined with stone, which
are intended to receive the waters of the aqueduct
of Salona, whenever Signor Bajamonte can manage,
with the help of the citizens or of the Government,
to complete the missing miles of this erection. It
is to be hoped that this noble work will soon be
accomplished ; but Signor Bajamonte, from being
a very wealthy man, has impoverished himself to a
great extent, and he will probably not be able to
add much to his many munificent gifts. The
arches of the aqueduct are seen crossing the plain
at intervals, but it will require a good deal of
money to render it fit for use. Meantime, as all
the water in Spálato is more or less brackish, the
military quartered there are employed in fetching
water from the Jadera at Salona, and the road
is covered all day with artillery tumbrils, carrying
huge barrels, drawn by sleek and well-conditioned
horses.
JDA Lºſ A TIA. 235
Everybody agrees in saying that Spälato is a
remarkably healthy place : the doctor told me
there was very little illness at any time, and if
an epidemic ever visited them, it took leave almost
immediately. The people certainly look remark-
ably healthy: they are very tall and bony, but not,
I think, handsome. I was a bad judge of their
appearance, however, after coming so recently from
Montenegro—the singularly ungraceful costume of
the Morlachi naturally spoiling them much to my
eyes after those of the mountaineers. The men of
Spálato wear trousers that seemed to me as tight
as those of a harlequin, from waist to ankle, and
the shortest jackets possible; they have very long
hair plaited into a pigtail, with a number of black
cords, tassels, and beads, hanging down much
below the waist; and sometimes they wear very
handsome earrings. The gold and silver work,
done here in the old forms, is the very best and
most solid on the coast of Dalmatia: but the people
are also beginning to buy a great deal of the
cheap imitation ornaments from Birmingham and
Switzerland, and you cannot pick up in Spålato any
of the real antique specimens of gold and enamel
work that abound in Ragusa,
Signor Bajamonte is trying to establish a line of
steamers to run between Spálato and Pescara, on
236 DALMA TIA.
the opposite Italian shore—a passage of eight hours
only, which he hopes may be effected now that the
Ancona railway is opened so far. But the grand
scheme, dearest of all to his heart, is that of a
railway from Spälato to Belgrade—a line which,
. I am told, is naturally very easy, with no heavy
gradients in the Bosnian mountains or other ex-
pensive obstacles to be overcome, and which would
be of incalculable advantage to the whole of that
country. This railway would not only open up
the whole of Bosnia and give the rich produce of
a perfectly virgin soil to Europe by the sea coast,
but it might pave the way to a more real connection
of Bosnia with Dalmatia. It would be but sorry
work for either the Austrian or the Turkish
Government to thwart this scheme out of mere
political jealousy or dread of South-Sclavism, when-
ever it may be laid before them as a substantial
proposition. Bosnia and Dalmatia are each the
natural complement of the other ; religion and
sect apart, their people are identical in every way;
and it is infinitely better that they should be
allowed to grow slowly and naturally into union
by the strong bonds of intercourse and community
of interest, than that they should be kept always
estranged and apart, to end perhaps in a precipi-
DALMATIA. 237
tate union under a barren impulse of sentiment, or
be patched together, when yet unprepared for it, by
some dexterous political charlatan. Both nations
are industrious, quick, and healthy-minded; both,
as regards the Christians at least, are anxious to
improve; and while the Dalmatians, although very
poor, are immeasurably superior to the Bosnians in
civilisation and refinement, they would draw the
latter towards them in the double bonds of interest
and affection. But Dalmatia has no money, and
Austria spends but very little upon her, and she is
scarcely likely to accomplish any part of this rail-
way without English capital. We may hope that
this latter may be forthcoming some day, for the
line, as described to me, is one from which much
success may confidently be anticipated.
I must not omit to mention another object in the
general view of the city from the Marina, or quay,
and this is the large, round, sturdy-looking tower
placed on the sea-side of the palace, just within its
walls.” The tower is in the Venetian style, low,
* When the Dalmatians invited Ladislaus, King of Naples, to
take possession of their country, the King of Bosnia sent a force
of Bosnians, under the valiant Harvoje, to assist his conquest.
Ladislaus was crowned in Zara in 1403 King of Hungary and
Dalmatia, and he created Harvoje Duke of Spålato. The new
Duke built this castle, which is still called by his name.
238 DALMATIA.
with a deep machicolation all round the top, and in
its quaint massiveness forms a singular contrast to
the light, elegant cathedral tower rising up close
to it. These Venetian towers are dotted all along
the Dalmatian coast. Spálato itself is filled with
Venetian remains, but not a few Roman bits crop
out from among the mediaeval and the modern.
There are some tolerably handsome private houses
within the palace walls, each conspicuous from its
mouldings or cornices, broken capitals, little clusters
of slender columns, stone balustrades, and the in-
variable well with its carved stone mouth. The
churches also have pretty bits in them, and gene-
rally attempt a small campanile tower, but there
is nothing very remarkable about any of them.
The bishopric of Spålato is the second in Dal-
matia; that of Macarska was incorporated into it
about thirty years ago. Spálato, of course, in-
herited the very ancient bishopric of Salona, and
soon after the fall of that city it became an arch-
bishopric, and so continued till 1827, when it was
changed into a bishopric, and Zara remained the
sole archbishopric. A great fair is annually held
at Salona on the 8th of September, in honour of
the Nativity of the Virgin.
I walked out one evening to the cemetery to see
DALMATIA. 239
the lovely view thence of Spálato and the moun-
tains. The long promontory shelves round in
front of the city, and on this narrow tongue of
barren rock, washed on both sides by the sounding
sea, and in sight of their old houses, are gathered
all the dead of the old and new city. Very lonely
and triste is the place, but the view is very lovely.
The city stands white and clear across the water,
with its wide quay and handsome houses, its busy
shipping and store buildings, its old fortifications,
and the beautiful cathedral tower, closely backed
by gently-rising hills. Behind these is the splendid
range of Caprarius, snowy until June, with Klissa
lifted up on high, looking proud and defiant as ever,
though now half-ruined; and behind all, the noble
head of Prolog, a mountain in Bosnia, towers up
in the blue sky. This mountain is never quite
without snow.
At this spot I saw clearly of how much im-
portance the mole so anxiously desired by the
Spalatians is: the outer islands of Brazza and Solta
are too far off, and too low to break the SW.
gales; and as Spälato is and must be the Liverpool
of Dalmatia, she needs absolutely a large and safe
harbour. Behind her, it is true, is the Canal of
Bua, more properly called the Gulf of Salona—a
240 - JDAJAMIATIA.
deep, safe, land-locked harbour, capable of con-
taining a whole navy and more; it has a safe
opening at either end, but it is too far inland to
be of much use to Spálato save as a store-port.
The time may come, however, when the store-
houses and factories of Spålato may gather round
the whole of the gulf.
I do not think this day would be despairingly
far off were some changes made in the government
of Dalmatia. I heard the same cry everywhere,
from high and low, master and peasant. The
Dalmatian is poor, miserably poor, because he has
no encouragement to improve his condition, no
profit by which to benefit himself. The customs
and the dues are so heavy, that they absorb more
than could be earned from the products of his
mountain soil. Even now, without any railway,
Spålato is the port of Serayevo and Travnik, and
Bosnia takes all her imports through Spälato—a
trade which has made Sign the half-way stopping-
place, a thriving and prosperous town in compa-
rison with other towns. It is impossible for me to
detail the numbers of articles which would be sent
from Bosnia and the Herzegovina if they could
be profitably shipped at Spálato; but with these
countries so bountifully endowed by nature behind
DALMATIA. 241
her, and with her own fine harbours and her im:
mense power of producing wine, oil, almonds, silk,
brandies, anchovies, corals, &c. &c. &c., she has
but to acquire an improved system of trade from
her now complaining and shortsighted government,
to become a truly rich and flourishing country.
Upon the shore of this pretty Gulf of Salona, at
a mile-and-a-half's distance from Spalato, there is
an old Franciscan monastery, called the Convent of
the Paludi. One evening I called there with my kind
friend Dr. Illich, and after examining the inter-
esting little church with its fine sculptured pave-
ment, the monks took me to the library to show
me two huge mass books, most gorgeously illumi-
mated, of which they were very proud; they were
works of great labour, and of the worst possible
taste of the seventeenth century, but numbers of
people crowded in to see them, and they appeared
to be very highly admired by the Spalatians. I
was better pleased to sit quietly in the garden,
famous for its fruit and wine and fresh water, and
to please my eyes with the moonbeams on the old
building, which was half pulled down by the
Turks, in spite of a tower added by the Venetians
to the church as a fortification. The old monks,
of whom there are now only four, sat and talked to
R
242 DAJLMATIA.
me of the wants and ways of the peasantry, and of
the terrible misfortunes caused by the grape
disease. I had heard at Ragusa that every plant
of the Malvoisie grape, for which that city was so
famous, was destroyed by the disease: and they
have now to seek for grafts from some other place
to which plants had been carried years ago, in
order to get back their own spécialité. The disease
attacked all the white grape vines everywhere in
Dalmatia, and besides destroying the Malvoisie, it
also destroyed all the vugava vines of the island of
Brazza (the wine from which was like Frontignac,
and was very celebrated), and the maraschina
vines about Sebenico. This latter is an excellent
wine or liqueur: it must not be confounded with
the maraschino, for which Zara is so famous, which
is made from black cherries. Miles and miles of
vineyards along the coast have not, for some three
or four years, yielded a grape; and they were then
anxiously examining the vines to forecast the pro-
bable reappearance or not of the disease. As yet it
had only been seen in the convent garden. There
are also some very good red wines made in Dal-
matia; the manufacture is rude, and they want a
better class of cellar for the ripening of the wine,
but some of it is full bodied and well flavoured.
DALMATIA. 243
A good deal is sent to Venice, in order to correct
the light wines made there.
I learned that the peasants are beginning to con-
sent tolerably freely to improved modes of agricul-
ture, and to make use of better implements than the
rude articles to which they have been accustomed.
They would gladly earn money by the sale of their
own products was exportation made possible by
encouragement. It is curious that the Dalmatians
will not be persuaded to take kindly to the culture
of the silk-worm. Whether it is that the close and
unremitting attention necessary during the feeding
months does not suit the taste of the Morlach peasant,
or some dim recollection of the prohibition on silk-
culture in the old days of the Venetian Republic—
whatever it is, they have not as yet been induced
to undertake it freely, and, in some cases, have been
turbulent and obstimate on the subject. It is a
pity, as the climate and soil all along the coast are
particularly adapted to the mulberry, and the
success of the worm would be unquestionable were
proper care taken to ensure it. I heard the same
all along the coast, and also in Southern Albania;
but there the people are so lazy and so poor, and the
population so scanty, that one cannot wonder at their
undertaking nothing new or more difficult than the
R 2
244 DALMA TIA.
old tracks of their forefathers. I believe that silk,
in a very moderate way, has succeeded better in
Northern Albania.
Spalato contains 13,000 inhabitants. There are
only two families of the Greek rite, but they are
building a handsome church for themselves. There
is a very large number of Jews, who are now tole-
rated with as much freedom as in other parts of
Austria; but only thirty years ago their condition
was little better than that of slaves, and so strictly
watched that they were almost prisoners.
The climate of Dalmatia is by no means a cool
one, and in this unusually warm summer I found
the days considerably too hot for any kind of exer-
cise. I therefore rose at four o'clock each morning,
and had generally returned from my drives before
the sun had become unendurable. One morning I
started, after a good breakfast at the café, at 5.30,
on my way to Trail. The drive takes just three
hours, along a wide, smooth road, as admirably
made as all the roads I saw in Dalmatia—they are
certainly, in every respect, excellent. After crossing
the Jadera, the road lay all round the Gulf of
Salona, the coast of which is called the Riviera dei
Castelli, from the land having been granted in the
fifteenth century to certain nobles on condition that
they should build seven castles along the shore, in
DALMATIA. 245
which the peasants could take refuge from the
Turks, when these latter ravaged the country. The
castles are now all ruined; but a village has sprung
up round each, with its little church and campanile,
and its comfortable-looking houses—spoiled, in my
eyes, by the fashion of white-washing the roof-tiles.
The land is very rich and fertile, and the fruit and
almond gardens are crowded together below the
corn fields, which are in their turn succeeded by
the mulberry” and olive groves which climb up the
slopes as far as the barren rocky soil of the moun-
tains will allow them to grow.
The town of Trail stands, one-half on an island
which it completely covers, and the other half on
the island of Bua. It is connected on each side by
bridges, but that between Bua and Trail opens for
the passage of ships. Trail is old and picturesque,
and it boasts a church more interesting, architec-
turally, than any other in Dalmatia, and quite as
beautiful in its own peculiarity. It was commenced
in 1213, and is a perfect specimen of Lombardic
Romanesque. The exterior is solid, heavy, and
lofty, but sufficiently ornamented for the style.
The three round apses at the eastern end are rather
* The mulberry is cultivated for the leaves throughout the
countries bordering the Adriatic, in Syria, &c. as food for the sheep
and cows: as most people have seen in Italian Switzerland.
246 DALMATIA.
low and small, but at the western there is a magni-
ficent porch or arcade, extending the whole width
of the building, and from this rises a campanile
tower, which, though only two stories in height, is
of exceeding beauty. It is less light than that of
Spalato, but it has a curiously Oriental idea thrown
over it, which reminded me of many beautiful mor-
ceaua in Spain. The flat surfaces are pierced into
open-work quatrefoils, which are more Moorish than
Italian. The entrance at the west end is mag-
nificently sculptured; very rich borders surround
the arch of the door, and at the sides the flat
surfaces of the shafts are covered with the closest
sculpture. Beneath them, Turks, crouched in the
attitude of slaves, are placed as a sort of caryatides;
while the backs of huge lions of St. Mark support
statues of Adam and Eve, whose history is sculp-
tured round the door. The vaultings of the porch
are all of rope mouldings, springing from spiral
columns.
At the end of this porch is the baptistery, an
interesting building, vaulted like the Temple of
Esculapius at Spalato, with a frieze of fat Cupids,
and a curious carving of the temptations of St.
Jerome.
The inside of the church is very good: some fine
DALMATIA. 247
alabaster columns and good figures, a beautiful
white marble pulpit, and very well-carved black oak
stalls, attract one's notice. William, the son of Bald-
win, Latin Emperor of Constantinople, was buried
in 1241, under a plain stone in front of the altar
—over which, by the bye, is a curious old baldachin.
This William was betrothed to his cousin Marga-
ret, the daughter of Bela IV., King of Hungary;
she died at Klissa a few months after the death of
her lover. Her tomb is to be seen over the door of
the cathedral of Spalato.” But the most singular
part of the whole is the north transept—a chapel
that I beg to believe was intended for a temple of
Hymen. The walls are divided into seventeen com-
partments, shaped like cupboards, from each of
which a fat life-sized Cupid bursts out torch in
hand! The roof is covered with a diaper of Cupids'
heads, with the figure of the Almighty (or Jupiter?)
in a medallion in the centre. Every arch springs
* Bela IV. sent his wife (who was daughter of the Emperor
Lascaris) and daughter to Klissa when the Mongol Tartars in
1240 overran Hungary, massacring every woman and child they
met with. The Tartars followed him and attacked both Klissa
and Traù, but failing in the sieges, they withdrew into Bosnia.
Both William and Margaret are said to have died of the hard-
ships they had suffered during their flight from Hungary.—
Wilkinson.
248 DALMATIA,
from a corpulent Cupid, and every capital is saddled
by another; while, mounted mid-air over the rere-
dos, an alabaster Bishop, large as life and in full
robes, lies on his side, staring with glassy eyes at the
surrounding Loves. Altogether it is about the
oddest place imaginable. -
A small chapel close by belongs, I was told, to
an English family, anciently resident in Trail, but
I could find no name or coat of arms in its pre-
cincts, and I do not believe the story. The sacristy
contains some good intarsiatura work, a damaged
Palma Giovine, and some ancient embroidered robes
worth looking at. I heard afterwards that the
church possesses some splendid gold and jewel
work, but unfortunately I did not see them.
The episcopal chair of Trail is said to have been
founded by the first Archbishop of Spalato. A
prelate named Giovanni Orsini was elected in
1062; he was canonised some hundred years
after his death, and is venerated as the patron
saint of the whole district. He is buried by the
altar in the cathedral; but the Venetians carried
away one of his arms as a relic. The bishopric
was suppressed in 1822, and incorporated into that
of Spalato.
Opposite to the cathedral is a Loggia, built
DALMATIA. 249
during the Hungarian régime, while on one side is
a fine old bit of Roman work, and on the other of
Venetian; the very narrow lanes of Trail are full
of such morceaua. Through these streets I was
then conducted to the very picturesque old castle,
called Camerlengo, erected by the Venetians in 1420,
on a spit of land running out towards the open sea;
here one line of the coast steamers touch every
week. A very small temple, or templet, has been
erected here, of white marble; it looks like a sugar
thing for the top of a cake, and forms a strange
contrast with the venerable and solemn old castle
close to it.
I was sorry not to be able to visit Bua, but the
heat rendered any further exertion impossible; so I
consoled myself with visiting the other churches of
Traù, after which the gentleman who had kindly
guided me over the town took me to see a collection
of specimens of marble he had just made from Bua.
and the mountains immediately about Traù ; there
were certainly not less than fifty specimens, of every
imaginable colour, mostly of a fine grain, and taking
a good polish. I regretted, with him, that they had
not been exhibited in London in 1862.
The next expedition I made was to Almissa, a
place at about the same distance as Traù from
250 DALMATIA.
Spalato, but to the south. The road was equally
excellent, but the scenery was infinitely more attrac-
tive, and I enjoyed beyond everything the early
morning lights upon the thickly-wooded, lofty
mountains and bold cliffs, as the road wound round
headland after headland at the foot of Caprarius.
On the right hand the island of Brazza seemed to
come nearer and nearer, as every half-mile brought
a change in the delightful views, to which the lofty
mountain behind Macarska, Bicoglio, the loftiest
in Dalmatia proper, lends an additional charm. At
last we turned suddenly into a deep, wide creek,
and Almissa stood before us. I was quite enchanted
with the scene. The grey rocky cliffs, which are
here very lofty and bold, have been, as it were,
suddenly rent in twain with a perpendicular rift,
through which flows out the most extraordinarily
brilliant copper-green river I ever saw, in Switzer-
land or anywhere else; while between the two walls
of the chasm one gets a lovely glimpse of richly-
wooded mountains, folding back inland. On the
sea-coast beneath the southern cliff a castle, called
Mirabella, is perched up on a needle and shoulder
of rock, like a bit of Cattaro, and the prettiest of
little towns is crowded in at its feet.
Almissa was famous for its pirates throughout
·
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DALMATIA. 251
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; they drove a
thriving trade in pillaging the pilgrims and mer-
chants who went to and came from the Holy Land.
The Venetians were most anxious to reduce the
place, as the Almissians were a constant and costly
annoyance to their commerce; but the natural
features of the creek formed an almost impregnable
defence to them, and they had increased that
security by building a hidden wall across its mouth,
the passage through which no one knew but them-
selves. It must, indeed, have been most aggra-
vating to the feelings of any honest trader in chase,
to see the Almissa pirate-boat run in at the open
mouth of the river, and whisk in one moment
round the sharp angle of the rift, disappearing
almost like magic from the disappointed eyes of the
Venetian skippers. In time, however, Venice had
her will, and the winged lion on the wall of the
town bears token of her reduction. The castles are
all in ruins, and the inhabitants are few in number.
We left the carriage on the river bank, and
crossed the water in a ferry; the Pretore or Gover-
nor of the district immediately joined me, and took
me through the little town. He seemed to be
energetically doing all that the poverty of the
place could allow, and even emulating Signor
252 r JDAJMA TIA.
Bajamonte in his actual and contemplated im-
provements. A port was being constructed at the
southern side—public gardens and an esplanade
had been laid out, and the first road ever made
to connect Almissa with the interior has been
commenced; hitherto, every thing and person has
been passed through the opening by the river only.
Now a road is being cut out from the cliff, but the
rock is extremely hard, and the work necessarily
slow; perhaps all the more, as the men have no pay
for their labour, and the Pretore said he could not
expect them to do anything in this unusual heat.
Then, joined by the Podesta, we got into a boat,
and proceeded up the river, passing through the
narrow rift, and under the overhanging rocks into
the wide full flowing river beyond. The view was
beautiful—rich woods up to the very summits of
the hills and mountains, villages, vineyards, and
gardens crowded together, and the river winding
through all. This is the Cettina river which rises
in Mount Dinara, on the borders of Bosnia, and
after a long course southwards, makes a sudden
bend back again, and comes out at Almissa. At
about half an hour's distance, we passed a fine
cascade on the inland side, closely resembling the
Bayerbach Fall on the Lake of Wallenstadt. I
JDA LMA TIA. 253
should have liked to have followed the river much
farther, but the sun was so hot, that we were forced
to turn back, and I found that, though only 10:30,
the townspeople were already retiring to their
houses to sleep till 3 or 4 o'clock. At midday,
when nearly everyone was asleep, the trains laid
for blasting the rocks were lighted, and for half an
hour we had a succession of really beautiful spec-
tacles, as masses of rock were detached from the
overhanging cliffs, and, after apparently leaping up
into the air, fell with thundering echoes into the
water below. I never saw a more wonderful set
of contrasts of colour than the sudden torrents of
red flames bursting out, and the cascades of snowy
foam thrown up after the falling rocks had met the
brilliant green water that closed over them. I
spent my afternoon in sketching, and drove home
late in the day, after having refreshed myself with
some excellent wine, sent to me by the Podesta.
The wine of Almissa is said to be one of the very
best that is made on the Dalmatian coast. It is
called vino di rosa.
I had intended to have left Spalato on the fol-
lowing morning for a little tour in the interior of
the country, which I was particularly anxious to
see; and I had made, as I thought, all the arrange-
254 DALMATIA.
ments necessary for the journey. But on returning
to my apartments, I found the man who has a
monopoly of all the horses and carriages of Spalato,
Waiting to see me, and he informed me that, on
consideration, he would not take me in this weather.
I had agreed to his own prices and hours, but I was
not prepared to agree to the only condition on
which he would take me, viz. that I would occupy
sia days for a two-and-a-half days’ journey, and
only use the carriage between the hours of 5 and
8 A. M. I had not time enough for this, even if
there had been sleeping-places on the road for me;
and so I was obliged reluctantly to give it up, and
to pay a high price for his taking me by the short
road to Sebenico. Signor Bajamonte had provided
me with letters to all the places in the country
that I wished to see, but he said the heat was so
extraordinary, that he was not at all surprised at
the man's refusing to travel in it. Nor could he
be persuaded even to take me in one day to
Sebenico—a common nine hours' journey; he in-
sisted on my sleeping at Trail, and leaving only
six hours for the following day, which I promised
should commence at six A. M. I was exceedingly
disappointed, but I could not help myself; and
therefore I drove over to Traù late in the evening,
DALMATIA. 255
and endeavoured to sleep, after a very good din-
ner, in the filthiest of little dark holes, called by
courtesy, an Albergo. All through Dalmatia,
except when I staid in the houses of kind and
hospitable friends, I found a Levinge's bag indis-
pensable for a night's rest, as even if the house or
country inns are clean, the musquitoes are in-
tolerably troublesome.
I was rewarded for my fatigues and troubles by
the splendour of the view, after we had mounted the
new road from Trail for an hour and twenty minutes.
It is, on the whole, the finest view in Dalmatia,
without excepting that from over Gravosa; and I
was fortunate in having a gentleman of Trail with
me who could name the immense numbers of islands
and mountains in sight. My road had mounted
nearly the whole of the very steep slope immediately
behind Trail. A fertile country of wood and mea-
dow lay at my feet, beyond which Trail stood out
in the sea, with its pretty church towers and
bridges; then came the islands of Bua, Zirone
great and small, Solta, Lissa, Lésina, and scores
of others; while, more directly to the south, be-
yond the Riviera, Salona, and Spalato, mountain
after mountain appeared in range behind range,
extending beyond Macarska to Lésina, Curzola, and
256 DALMATIA.
Sabioncello. Whatever aridity there was on these
mountains to spoil the view was veiled in the early
morning mists, and the scene was gloriously beau-
tiful. We turned away at last, and entered into
about the ugliest district I ever saw in my life—a
dreary upland of treeless, herbless, villageless deso-
lation. The five hours in the scorching heat we
spent over it seemed to me intolerable, and I was
very thankful when the carriage stopped at the gate
of Sebenico. I have said before that no carriage
can enter any of the Dalmatian cities.
Sebenico, in the days of the Venetian warfare with
the Turks, was a place of the utmost importance.
It was considered quite impregnable, and it has still
a remarkably imposing appearance. Three fortresses
or castles are mounted one above the other on the
steep side of the mountain cliff, while the dome of
the cathedral and plenty of church towers diversify
the crowded houses. The city appears placed on
the shore of a winding lake, but a narrow opening
or channel directly opposite the town leads out into
the open sea. This strait is deep and safe, but so
narrow that the Austrian Lloyds' will not enter it
but by daylight. The canal or fiord runs up from
Sebenico, the distance of some miles, to Scardona
and the mouth of the river Kerka. Sebenico itself
DALMATIA. 257
is a curious collection of narrow streets, containing
many small piazzas and some good houses. In the
principal place there is a fine large Loggia, and the
beautiful cathedral—far larger, more important, and
grander than that of Traù, but not half as curious
and interesting.
Commenced in 1415, it was not finished till 1555.
The style is Lombardic-Romanesque and Cinque-
cento. The western façade is very handsome and
rich, though many of the statues which once adorned
it have been taken away. In the upper part there is
a very beautiful rose-window of twenty-four leaves;
below, one of twelve. The interior is very grand.
The nave is lofty, with a curious semi-cylindrical
vault; below this is a beautiful gallery, all round,
of square white marble triple columns, with very
elegant flower-mouldings. Over the choir, and in
the centre of the church, like the glorious cathedral
of Burgos, a circular story rises, pierced with cinque-
cento windows. From this springs a lofty dome.
The choir is reached by a flight of white marble
steps, inclosed, as is every chapel and recess, by
galleries of small white marble columns. Perched
on the tops of them are frequent repetitions of the
Venetian Lion, sitting in the pertest attitudes. The
stalls are sculptured in white marble. The baptistery
S
258 DALMATIA.
is very curious and interesting. It is of two stories,
as it were—a circle upon a square, with classical
shells richly sculptured in each space. The font is
sculptured with fat boys. The diocese of Sebenico
is the fourth in Dalmatia. It has, since 1830,
included both those of Knin and Scardona in its
own. There are here about 1,000 followers of the
Greek rite.
As the miserable little Albergo in Sebenico was
quite full, I was very thankful when the excellent
Pretore, Signor Piperata, brought me an invitation
to the house of Signor Vincenzo Rossetti, the richest
gentleman in the city, and a most agreeable and
kind friend. The house was newly built and
superbly furnished, and I was received in it with
the very utmost hospitality. My obliging host and
the Pretore arranged an expedition for me on the
following day to see the falls of the Kerka, and, in
spite of a disagreeable maestral, we started, after
lemonade and coffee,” in a close carriage, at 6 A.M.
The road, which is very good, and newly made, lay
over the same sort of dreary uplands as I had passed
over on the previous day, and I could not help ex-
* The Dalmatian gentry begin the morning with large glasses
of lemonade or orangeade; when they have been up about an
hour or so, they take café au lait and Sweet cakes.
DALMATIA. 259
pressing my horror of its hideous barrenness, with
a regret that efforts were not made to plant and
reclaim it. The Pretore shook his head, and said
it made him most unhappy to see the waste of what
could be turned into good olive-groves and vineyards,
but that such are the present laws of Dalmatia, that
no one can touch it. The land belongs to the
commune, and no individual can purchase, hire, or
make use of it. In the last district wherein he had
been governor, many people cut the natural woods,
planted the spaces, and inclosed bits of the waste
lands for themselves. This is contrary to the laws,
and is in fact stealing; but he always shut his eyes,
and secretly helped them, and he hoped that the
same thing would take place in his present district.
The government of Dalmatia is entirely a military
one, and therefore not in the least adapted to the
wants of the country. At this moment there is
a just and upright man as governor; but it is a
military appointment, given only to a good soldier,
and neither the governor nor the military laws
of the government have any comprehension of the
needs of a country that can only devote itself to
agriculture and commerce. The Pretore said his
great object in the present state of things was to
make roads and to encourage agriculture; but the
S 2
260 DALMATIA,
district is so poor that he could not pay the road
makers, and the poor creatures themselves can gain
no profits on their agricultural labours. There are
6,000 souls in Sebenico, 25,000 in the district, and,
he added, he was thankful to say, so small a garri-
son that eight or ten was the largest number of
officers ever in the place.
I never found any active feeling against Austria
or the Austrians in any part of Dalmatia, from high
or low; but I did find at every step the same earnest
complaint, that, in her system of centralisation, she
forced upon them a government which, however good
in One country, was fatal in another, and that the
carrying out of her one general system of laws forbade
any chance of improvement to Dalmatia in particular.
The Pretore had commenced making a road direct
to the falls of the Kerka, and had hoped to have had
it nearly finished this summer; but, from the intense
heat and the failure of water everywhere, the people
could not raise even the most miserable crops, and
were in consequence so poor that he could not expect
them to do any public or unpaid work, and he looked
forward with the utmost anxiety to the winter. He
had last year made an esplanade for the good people
of Sebenico, and improved the quays, and was doing
his best to encourage the little society of the place
DALMATIA. 261
to unite in efforts for their own improvement; but
he sighed bitterly for Englishmen or anyone to come
and erect fabriques of any kind at Sebenico as at
Fiume, and so to bring some movement into the
place. There is very good coal close to Sebenico,
and quantities of iron in all the country round. The
port is one of the best and largest in the world, but
such is the want of all energy or capital there, that
it was cheaper to import all their coal from England
rather than cut or carry it to their own doors. I
was glad to learn, however, that a company of six
gentlemen had been formed to build a small theatre
at the gate of the town. It is to cost 3,000l., and
was to be commenced in a few days; and it is to be
hoped that other works will follow this beginning of
combined interests.
Our drive across this uncultivated tableland had
lasted two hours, when we found ourselves standing
at the mouth of the Kerka, where it falls into the
Gulf of Sebenico. On the other side of the gulf
an unhealthy place on the borders
was Scardona
of a marsh, which, however, could be easily drained
and freed from malaria. We got into a rough
country boat, and were rowed up the river for nearly
an hour. The water here is very deep, and runs
between barren stony cliffs, which reflected a very
262 DALMATIA.
burning sun most unpleasantly upon us. We landed
under the shade of fine walnut trees, and in full
view of the falls. They are beautiful—not so much
from their height as from the wide crescent-shaped
expanse of cascade, tumbling over rocks which are
so crowded with trees and vegetation that the snowy
foaming water seems bursting through the foliage.
They are remarkably picturesque: and their beauty
lies entirely in themselves, for they owe nothing
to the surrounding scenery. I was very sorry not
to go higher and see the lake and the various
convents on the borders of the river, but the heat
was far too great to think of it. The maestral or
west wind chose to rise for the last three weeks
each day at noon, and it made the afternoons in-
tolerable with its heavy, hot, sudden blasts.
The next morning the Pretore took me to see a
beautiful picture of the Madonna and Child by
Andrea Schiavone, who was a native of Sebenico;
and a very fine group by Tintoret, the canvas of
which had been torn in two by the soldiers in some
unhappy siege of the city. The old noble in whose
house they were showed me a splendid dagger which
had belonged to Matthias Corvinus. The handle
and sheath were of carved silver, inlaid with gold,
in cinque-cento and Oriental patterns.
DALMATIA. 263
Accompanied by all the kind friends I had made
in Sebenico, I went on board the Arciduca Ludovico
at eleven, and had plenty of time to admire the
picturesque city before we started. Passing through
the channel of San Nicolo, we steamed close under
the Venetian fortress erected by San Micheli to
guard the entrance to Sebenico. Those who are
learned in such matters say this is his masterpiece
in fortification. The maestral had gone, and a plea-
Sant south wind was blowing in its place; the day
was serene, and the sky blue ; the steamer was
excessively crowded with gay and noisy pleasure
parties enjoying a Sunday trip, when,-with a sud-
denness that is quite indescribable, the ship staggered
as if she had been struck with a blow, masses of
clouds went skurrying across the sky, and a violent
wind began to blow. “The Bora! the Bora!' re-
sounded on all sides, in tones of terror and dismay.
The decks were immediately cleared, the captain
ordering all passengers below at once, and everyone
began to heap on cloaks and shawls, and worry the
steward for blankets. Very cold, rough, and dis-
agreeable it was; and we were none of us sorry
when we steamed into the harbour of Zara at six
o'clock. An Austrian three-decker was there, and
she at once sent a boat-load of Sailors to assist in
264 JDALMAT/A.
mooring the steamer with double and triple chains,
in case the much-dreaded Bora should increase.
Happily it ceased to blow at midnight; but the cap-
tain of a steamer I sailed in from Fiume a few days
afterwards told me he had made his passage that
afternoon across this Quarnero Gulf in imminent
danger. It is a very rare occurrence for the Bora
to blow in this manner in the middle of summer;
but, for several months of the year, a collect is added
to the daily litany in all the churches of Istria and
Dalmatia for deliverance from this dreadful wind.
Zara, the seat of the Diet, the bureaucratic
capital, and the archiepiscopal throne of Dalmatia,
is a very small city, standing on an island com-
pletely inclosed in high ramparts. These have
been lined with grassy banks, and thickly planted
with trees; so that Zara is pleasantly inclosed
within leafy as well as stone walls. In the centre
of her sea-front is a gate, Venetian on One side,
Roman on the other; it leads into the principal
street of the city, which is a quaint little place,
clean and bright-looking, with very narrow streets
and several piazzas. On the other side of the city,
the connection with the mainland is guarded by a
very handsome Doric gate, the Porta di Terrafirma
—a work of San Micheli in 1543; as also a simple
DALMATIA. 265
but rather handsome Loggia, built a few years later
in the Piazza dei Signori. Close to this is a solitary
Corinthian column, said to be the sole remaining
fragment of a Roman temple. Another, not far
off, was erected for exposing malefactors to public
view before execution; the chains for this purpose
are still hanging to the column.
I came in for an enormous procession of all the
noble and pious occupants of Zara, who were engaged
in carrying a figure of the Madonna from church to
church in hopes of obtaining rain. It was Sunday
evening, and the crowds of people thronging the
streets and the bastions were dressed in the fullest
Viennese or Morlach fashion, according to their
station; and the merest glance told me at once the
difference in the gentry between the proud, old-
fashioned, grave aristocracy of Ragusa, the busy,
commercial man of Spalato, where few ladies join
the promenades, and the bustling, important, autho-
ritative look of both sexes in Zara; added to which,
I think I did not meet a dozen gentlemen in plain
clothes throughout the evening: all were either in
military or civil uniforms.
The churches, in order to give effect to the
prayers of the processionists, were brilliantly illumi-
nated; the cathedral alone was deserted. This is a
266 DALMATIA.
fine picturesque old building in the Lombard style,
erected in the thirteenth century by the French and
Venetian crusaders.” A campanile was added in
the fifteenth century, but it is too low for the size
of the building. The west façade is very fine and
good; it is covered with arcade-work, with two
beautiful rose-windows, and three deeply-recessed
doors. The capitals of the nave are some of them
of the simplest Lombardic, and some of rich Co-
rinthian. A beautiful white marble triforium, like
that of Sebenico, runs round the nave, and balus-
trades of rich yellow marble inclose the chapels
below. The very handsome stalls are each sur-
mounted by a little gilt figure holding a scroll,
containing the name of the stall. The crypt is very
handsome and curious.
I will spare the reader any more churches,
although some of them are very interesting, and
contain some splendid gifts of Saint Elizabeth of
Hungary. I will only mention that in one of them
is a huge picture, painted by a native living artist
* The Venetians, after the arrival of the French for the
Crusade of 1202, insisted on their joining in an attack upon
Zara, which they besieged and took; the Pope was extremely
enraged at the delay, and to appease him, the Venetians and
French united in the erection of this cathedral upon the site of a
Roman Temple.—Paton.
JDALMATIA. 267
of no mean merit, who is also the best rosoglio
merchant in the place. I was then taken to see a
large addition, just completed, to an ancient Bene-
dictine monastery; it was a long, flat, ugly wall,
pierced with narrow, pointed windows of the com-
monest village meeting-house description.
‘Ebbene ! che ne dice?’ exclaimed the Zara
gentleman who was lionising me. “Don’t you
recognise it?’
‘Recognise what?’
“Eh! sicuro ! il suo Palazzo di Westminster |
They say this is a close copy of it!”
We then went to see the outside of the handsome
Bibliotheca, of which the Zaratines are justly proud;
it was the gift of a Zara gentleman, and it is, as
yet, the only public library in Dalmatia. After this,
having exhausted the lions of Zara, and the evening
having closed in, I sat at the café, eating ices, and
watching a number of Montenegrines, who looked
strange enough in their beautiful dresses. Some of
these men are exiled from the Black Mountain on
account of old blood-feuds, which they would not
consent to give up, and some because they belong
to a family who think they have as much right to
rule Montenegro as the Petrovich family of Nié-
gush, who have now ruled for one hundred and
268 JDALMATIA.
sixty-seven years. These men have caused so many
dissensions in the little principality, that it has been
found necessary to exile them; and they have, I
believe, been joined by all the family of Radovich,
One of whom, named Kadich, was the murderer of
Prince Danilo.
Few of the richer gentry live within the confined
precincts of Zara; they all have villas on the main-
land, whence of course every vegetable and fruit
that is eaten in the city is sent; in fact, the inclosed
space is so small, that only one house in the whole
city stands in a garden or has the smallest court,
and not even a washerwoman is allowed to have a
yard in it. Zara, though actually the capital, and
for many centuries the key of Dalmatia, was never
really Dalmatian, or rather Sclavic. She is said to
have been founded ten centuries before Christ, but,
without venturing upon that legend, we may say
that she was a flourishing Roman colony called
Jadera, and in the Lower Empire Diodora. The
large number of fine Roman remains still existing
prove her to have been an important provincial city,
containing several fine temples. She was Hungarian
from 1105 to 1499, when the Venetians succeeded
in keeping possession of her after years of fighting.
The Turks also, from 1461 till the battle of Lepanto,
DALMA TIA. 269
were continually trying to capture her, but they
never achieved the conquest.
During the French occupation of Dalmatia, the
head-quarters of the general were fixed at Spalato;
but all the Dalmatians (with the sole exception, of
course, of the Zaratines) now greatly desire the
removal of the capital to Spalato. Zara is at the
very extreme end of the country; it is inconveni-
ently small, and although the Venetian fortifications
are good in themselves, the city would be indefen-
sible, it is said, if attacked both by sea and land.
It is but little nearer to Vienna and Trieste than
Spalato, and now that the whole coast is furnished
with telegraphs, this is of no consequence; and as
I trust we may look forward to seeing a railway
made from Spalato to the Danube, it is but natural
to expect and hope that that place will in time
become the real capital, as well as the chief com-
mercial city and port of Dalmatia.
Zara is now the factory of the best liqueurs in
the world; maraschino (made from black cherries
which are grown chiefly at Almissa and Macarska),
rosoglio of several sorts, portogallo from Oranges,
garofalo from cloves. I was told that more are
exported to England than to any other country.
Zara is also famous for its tunny, sturgeon,
270 DALMATIA,
anchovies, and other fish; but I was told that Se-
benico has the most numerous and choicest variety
on the Dalmatian coast. They boast much of the
dentaglie incoronate—a very delicious fish, which is
Said to be only found at Sebenico and Constantino-
ple ; it has a sort of crest on its head. Just outside
Sebenico also is the chief coral fishery; I saw none
of very delicate colour, but it seemed to be very
plentiful. -
The coast from Sebenico to Zara was very ugly
and barren; there are plenty of fine mountains
inland, but we passed too near the low shore to see
them. It was the same thing when I went on deck
at three A.M. after leaving Zara; though there was
a fine serrated outline looming in the distance after
seven o'clock when we had landed a few passengers
on the most wretched-looking of all dreary spots—
the island of Pago. There was not even a hut to be
seen, but I was told there was a small fort on the
inland side. It was chiefly interesting to me as the
first land we touched after leaving Dalmatia: a
country from which I could not part without
regret, and one of which I shall always bear an
affectionate memory.
Then we ran across to the two islands of Lussin
Grande and Piccolo, and stopped at the latter—a
DALMATIA. 271
very pretty little place; and after five minutes'
detention there, we ran past the southern end of
Cherso, and reached Arbe, where I longed to stay,
so pretty and picturesque was the combination of
castles and fortifications, churches and houses,
woods and gardens, with the barren mountains
behind the island and all in front smiling and gay.
There was one beautiful church tower of four
stories which charmed me, and several very solid-
looking convents. The Arbiotes are very proud of
their island, and they have divers songs and
distiches which celebrate its beauty as the ‘capo
del mondo,” and the “next place to Rome,’ &c.
Each place seemed to improve in beauty as we
went on, and every part of the scenery became now
really beautiful. After rounding the whole island
of Arbe, with Cherso on our left, we stopped at
Besca nuova, the most charming little green nook
with crowded houses and a little plain behind it,
at the southern end of the island of Veglia. A
pretty little river dashed down through the gorge,
woods climbed up on every side, and bold rocky
islands with rough cliffs dotted the sea. On leaving
this, the Croatian coast became really splendid;
Plissivitza in the far distance rose up behind the
last of the Wellebich peaks, Marzuran looked lofty
272 DALMATIA.
4.
and grand, and, farther on the north, a monster
rose up, which they told me was Mount Klek.
We stopped half an hour at Zengg, where I saw
several handsome houses, an old ruined Venetian
castle, and a quay that looked busy and thriving;
it is a bad port, but from being free, it has a good
deal of trade. Zengg never formed a part of
Venetian Dalmatia, and there is nothing Venetian
about it. It is the seat of a bishop, in whose
diocese Fiume is included. The mountain slopes
were thickly covered with walled gardens, terraces
of apple, almond, cherry, and other fruit trees and
vineyards. They were all sheltered as best they
could from the terrible Bora, and it was curious
to observe how every atom of mountain that was
turned to the north was utterly bare, even of a tuft
of herbage; the very rock is blown into wind and
weather-worn rifts and roughnesses. But it is said
that all the mountains behind and about Zengg
were covered till not very long ago with thick
forests.
After leaving Zengg, the scenery of the narrow
strait was still prettier. The Kapella mountains
come down close to the water's edge, the slopes
covered with sparkling white villages and smiling
gardens, while Veglia on the other side is ever
DALMATIA. 273
picturesque and pretty. At six o'clock, we went
through a strait so narrow, that three steamers
could not have passed each other in it; here the sea
winds round the islands like the arms of a lake,
and every turn brings a new surprise; then steam-
ing away from under the broken walls of the old
castle that once guarded the passage, the Quarnero
Gulf opened to my delighted eyes. Another charm-
ing gulf, or rather winding bay, containing the
white town of Porto Re, opened on the right hand
at the foot of the Kapella range, behind which
Klek towered up more grandly than ever; the
Julian Alps with their peaked serrated outline bent
round the head of the gulf, and turning southward
into Istria, the beautiful Monte Maggiore stood out
in deep purple shadow from the sinking sun.
Porto Re, whose beauty has passed into a local
proverb, became an important town under the
Emperor Charles VI., but, on account of the pre-
valence of the Bora, it has been lately abandoned
for Pola. Buccari, an equally pretty place at the
other end of the graceful little gulf, is nicknamed
‘the home of the Bora; it is here that the aston-
ishing and almost incredible stories of its effects
are literally verified, and here that the denuded
appearance of the northward slopes is in the
T
274 DALMATIA.
most striking contrast with the woods and gardens
that are sheltered from its blasts. Standing on a
rock in front of the pretty port is one of the three
famous castles belonging to the Frangipani family;
two other castles belonging to them still bear their
name—one at Tersatto, by Fiume, the other at
Osaly, near Karlstadt. This Castle of Tersatto is the
most prominent object as one approaches beautiful
Fiume; but I confess to having soon forgotten it,
and everything else, in the pleasure of finding my-
self once more in a first-rate hotel, with spacious
airy rooms, modern furniture, and a good cuisine.
The Hôtel de l'Europe is situated on the quay, one
side facing the sea, the other opposite to the new
Casino and the Piazza Grande.
Fiume is itself very pretty, and all the views
from it are still more so; it is a healthy, pleasant
residence, and very cheap. Steamers from Dal-
matia arrive once a week, from Trieste three times
a week. The town is not in the least crowded, but,
on the contrary, the streets are wide and airy; and
the modern aspect of the place, with its bustling
commercial sounds and sights, formed a striking
contrast to the old-fashioned, walled-in cities I had
so lately seen. There was but little Italian to be
heard, but much more German, and all the rest
DALMATIA. 275
Sclavonic or Hungarian, Fiume being the only sea-
port of any importance belonging to Hungary.
The port is a good one, and admirably situated, as
far as the sea is concerned; its disadvantage lies in
being closely surrounded by high mountains, and in
the inevitable consequence of steep and laborious
roads. To obviate this the Austrian Government,
in 1802, constructed a superb road, winding up the
valley of the Fiumara—a very narrow ravine
leading into the vale which separates the Julian
Alps from the Kapella mountains; this road is con-
tinued to Karlstadt. The expense of making it
was, however, so great, and it is so finely kept up,
with parapet walls and double corners, that it has
never paid more than one or one and a half per
cent., and not always that. The tolls are of course
heavy; they amount, for a vehicle with two horses,
to about six shillings between Fiume and Karl-
stadt.
The west end of the town is occupied by some
very large and handsome factories, the chief Piazza,
two hotels, Government House, and a very splendid
Casino, containing reading-rooms, billiard-rooms,
libraries, concert-rooms, and a beautiful ball-room.
The quays are fronted with blocks of excel-
lent houses, among them a very pretty theatre
T 2
276 DALMATIA.
or opera-house, which is kept up for six months of
the year. There are several bathing establishments,
and a fine swimming-school of large dimensions.
One of the handsomest of the quays was crowded
with ships bringing quantities of material from
Santorin for making compost; this the Fiumans
work so well, that a commission from our Royal
Engineers had just been there to study their
method.
All this, and a number of good shops, form the
west end of the town. At the eastern end the old
town straggles partly up a steep hill at the mouth
of the Fiumara, and a forest of shipping gathers
round the old quays. In the midst of this part,
where some quaint and grotesquely-ornamented old
houses attract the eye, a very pretty public garden
has been made, running up the gorge, and follow-
ing the windings of the little river. This gorge is
naturally lovely; its nearly perpendicular rocky
sides seem but just rent apart one from the other,
and if the mountain stream dashed down in free-
dom it would leave nothing to be desired in its
way. But the ravine is filled up with large paper-
mills and factories, whose smoke-funnels (which are
not as lofty as the sides of the chasm) render the
air thick and filthy; and very curious it was to see
DAJMA TIA. 277
the gay colours of the men's dresses, the bright
greens of the foliage, and the brilliant southern sky,
all dimmed and darkened into a sort of miniature
Manchester or Bristol. The stream is pent up into
little channels or wooden troughs, and it is only
alongside of the gardens that its then dirty waters
are allowed to flow in their own channel.
Above all this, perched on the eastern summit of
the chasm, is the Castle of Tersatto, or Tarsat, as it
is mostly called in Fiume—one of those belong-
ing to the old family of F rangipani. It was bought
by Count Nugent, the late Field-Marshal, some years
ago, and it was there that he died last September.
The situation is good, and almost any kind of build-
ing would have looked well in such a position, with
the advantage of commanding such a view. But,
as it is, it is impossible to imagine such an utter
Castle Rackrent as the whole place is, or such a
jumble. The late count used to build three or four
yards of wall in one place, and years after he would -
go on in another, leaving the first bit to form a pic-
turesque ruin, and wasting sums of money in what
never formed a single room. The only thing he
ever finished is a foolish-looking Grecian temple over
the mouth of a subterranean vault, which had once
been a dungeon. This he opened at great expense,
278 DALMATIA.
through the rock lower..down, and has made it his
own sepulchre. The cottage he lived in is at a
stone's throw from these sepulchral rooms—half-a-
dozen miserable rooms huddled together. A variety
of sheds contain innumerable relics and bits of anti-
quity; fragments of really good sculpture, patched
and repaired by the village mason, with new heads,
fresh noses, improved legs and arms, &c.; and out-
side the temple are trophies from the battle-field of
Marengo.
Fiume, with Veglia, and many others of the beau-
tiful islands at the head of the Adriatic, were in the
independent possession of this powerful family for
several centuries. They claimed descent from a
patrician of Rome, and enjoyed almost royal prero-
gatives. Veglia, and some other portions of their
property, was ceded by them to Venice at the end of
the fifteenth century; but they still maintained a
magnificent position till 1671, when the head of the
house was executed for treason at Vienna, and the
family is now, I believe, extinct. A ruined wall,
the angle of a small tower, with a window from
whence you can peer down into the very bottom of
the chasm below, is still shown as the chamber of
the count's wife; but the hall has disappeared,
where, concealed in a niche that was shaded over
DALMATIA. 279
by a curtain, the lady stood and listened while her
husband and his two brothers discussed their plot
against the Emperor. The countess immediately
sent off a courier to the Empress, whose dame
d'honneur she was, and the three brothers were in
a few days arrested and carried off to Wiener Neu-
stadt. Ere he reached the city, the count despatched
a trusty servant back to Tersatto with a letter for
his wife, bidding the messenger be careful to deliver
it in this room ‘between the day and the evening.
She will draw near the window to decipher my letter
in the failing light.' He added: “Then take her by
the waist and fling her unto the Fiumara.' *
The famous Church of Tersatto commands, like the
castle, the magnificent view of the whole Quarnero,
with its glorious coasts. In the church itself there is
* Some persons say that this tragedy took place at the other
castle of the Frangipani's at Ozaly in Hungary, and that the
countess was thrown into the Kulpa. She is also said to have
been the sister-in-law, not the wife, of the beheaded conspirator.
The Count Francis Frangipani had conspired with Count Zriny,
the Ban of Croatia, Count Nadasdy of Hungary, and Count Tat-
tenbach of Styria, to free themselves from the yoke of Leopold I.;
and, by the aid of a body of Turks and Transylvanians, to make
their possessions independent. Count Zriny and Count Frangi-
pani were executed at Wiener Neustadt on April 30, 1671,
after first losing their right hands; the stone erected to their
memory is still to be seen with the inscription describing their
crimes.
280 DALMATIA.
nothing to see but the thousands of thankofferings
given to the holy shrine, chiefly by home-returned
sailors. Many of them are dreadfully ludicrous.
As is well known, it was here that the holy house
was transported, according to the legend, from
Nazareth; but the sins of the people were so great
that after three years it was removed to Loretto.
The holy house arrived in 1291, bringing with it a
portrait of the Blessed Virgin, said to be painted by
St. Luke. The church is about eight times as large
as that of Nazareth. -- Q,
In spite of the severe blow—almost a death-blow—
dealt to Fiume in the opening of the railway from
Vienna to Trieste, it is by no means a stagnant city;
on the contrary, it is gay and thriving, and hopeful
of becoming a very important place. Unlike Dal-
matia, with the excellent ports that border her
narrow strip of barren territory—‘a face without a
head behind it’—Fiume has the command of inex-
haustible commerce, if only it can bring its abund-
ance to the ships that would then crowd its harbour.
A short line has been already commenced to unite
Fiume with St. Peter's on the Trieste railroad; but
another line has been contracted for, and will shortly
be commenced, by an English, French, and Belgian
company, from Fiume to Agram. Probably it
DALMATIA. 281
would ultimately be carried farther, as the naviga-
tion of the Save is uncertain, both in summer and
winter. This one is likely to be very useful in throw-
ing open the grain districts of Southern Hungary
and that part of Sclavonia bordering on the Save;
but the new line now open from Pesth to Trieste
will always carry off the chief products of Northern
Hungary. It is possible that the Austrian Govern-
ment may, as they sometimes talk of doing, change
the bad port of Trieste for the good one of Fiume,
as far as commerce is concerned, and in that case the
St. Peter's branch would pay well; but as Fiume
stands now, there are two chief objects in the con-
templated Agram line. The first object is to form
a road for the produce of Eastern Hungary and all
the Sclavonian countries north of the Danube, with-
out touching Turkey anywhere, and without going
round by the Black Sea. The Banat, Transylvania,
Hungary, &c., would empty themselves at Semlin,
and pass up the Save to Sissek or Agram. The
second object is to open up the wood trade of Croa-
tia, an almost inexhaustible commodity. The oak
of Croatia is famous; but, unfortunately, when our
Government made a contract here, some years ago,
for timber, it fell into the hands of a few dishonest
men, who cleared their lands of dead timber, and
282 DALMATIA.
Fiume wood naturally came into disrepute. As it
is, and in spite of the heavy tolls on the road, scores
of Waggons pass down to the port all day laden with
thin beech boards, which are carried to Italy for
orange-boxes; while stacks upon stacks of felled
timber are seen piled up everywhere. The ship-
building is rapidly increasing, and the Fiumans hope
soon to get beyond what they were before the .
Crimean war paralysed them. Labour is very cheap,
and the ship-workmen of Fiume are remarkable for
their excellence, especially as caulkers. Meantime
some things are very dear: salt is fifteen shillings a
basket, while meat is less than fourpence a pound, and
fruit and vegetables are at prices so low as to make
an Englishman stare. Corn is also excessively cheap.
The Fiumans are greatly in hopes that, with the
contemplated railway, they will quickly outdo
Trieste as a commercial port; and I believe this
hope is well founded. I learned from commercial
men that the opening of the line from Vienna had
had a curiously slight effect upon the trade of Trieste.
The great steamers from Liverpool, &c., go in and
out occasionally, and pay their dues; but the usual
shipping-dues have scarcely increased by a florin
a-year. This is natural, as there is nothing to ex-
port from Styria, and it is not till last autumn that
JDALMATIA. 283
the new line, branching off to Buda, has opened the
corn-growing districts of Hungary.
The Austrian Lloyds have a large settlement
here; a steam-engine and anchor foundries, and
several other factories belonging to government
and to various companies and private individuals,
among whom are several Englishmen. Many of
the Trieste passenger steamers are brought here
for repairs. A Government Military Academy in
a noble building stands a little out of the town: it
is very large, and the boys in it are some of them
as young as eight years old. There are also some
large cigar factories, served by women. And I
must not forget to mention some marble found in
this neighbourhood, which is very common and
cheap; it takes a high polish, and is of a beautiful
nut-brown colour that I never saw equalled for
dark richness. It would be quite worth bringing
to England as a new coloured variety. There is
also plenty of good yellow marble.
It was a great pleasure to drive in the early
morning along the Karlstadt road — the Maria-
Louisa road as it is called; as the Fiumara ravine
winds farther inland, its beauty becomes more
varied with woods, and two or three other little
ravines break into it. In each of these are mills
284 DALMATIA,
and bridges and pretty little settlements of houses
and gardens, though they are each so narrow and
deep, that one wonders how people can find breath-
ing-room. After driving on about two hours, the
ravine ends in a rich open valley running from
east to west; on the other side of the hills which
border it, and which are dotted with villages, is
the oval plain of Grobnik, till comparatively lately
the bed of an upland lake. It is said that the
mountain between it and the sea was opened by an
earthquake and drained off the water suddenly;
certainly nothing remains but the dry shingle,
which the peasants believe were rained down upon
some sinful pagan. It is to be hoped that some
day they will try to plant it, for, though very poor
land, some kinds of trees would grow there. The
mountains round the little plain of Grobnik are
very pretty and varied, but the Julian Alps of
Carniola, which tower over them, and to which
one is coming nearer at every step, are most
beautiful and noble. All this time in looking back
there are the loveliest views of the Quarnero and
the graceful Monte Maggiore mountains of Istria,
with the islands of Cherso and Veglia.
The people of Fiume are ceaseless and bitter in
their regrets for the old Hungarian times. ‘Then
DALMATIA. 285
we were all happy,” is their constant exclamation.
Now there is nothing but jealousy and suspicion,
each man of his neighbour and the government of
all. The best men are displaced, and good work-
men deprived of work on the slightest suspicion,
frequently unfounded, of an inclination to Hunga-
rian or Italian sentiments. Of course, where every
family, poor and rich, are alike proud of any con-
nection in the old times with the Hungarian king-
dom, this suspicion is constantly arising. And
the consequences of these frequent displacements
are fatal to any progress or prosperity in either the
people or the government. The constant changes,
too, in the ideas of the latter are very irksome and
injurious to the people. It is the same despotic
and vexatious system of centralisation of which
I met complaints at every step in Dalmatia. For
instance—the lessons of the schools long ago were
learned in the Hungarian language: then in Italian :
lately they were changed to German; while now, this
year, they are suddenly all changed again, every
child is forbidden to speak a syllable of German,
and everything must be learned in Sclave. This is
a language wholly useless for commercial purposes,
when going to school has for its object to enable
the pupils to do business, and no business of any
286 DALMATIA.
kind or sort is ever done in Sclave. The great
thing to quicken progress in both Croatia and
Dalmatia is, so long as their dialects remain im-
perfectly cultivated, the power of commanding a
language of the West–German or Italian. Italian is
the language for real practical use and instruction
along the coast; it is unfortunately the last lan-
guage now that Austria wishes them to learn. It
is no wonder that the good people of Fiume should
be rather out of patience with these unreasonable
changes; nor that they should love to repeat old
stories of past happiness and pleasure in the Hun-
garian connection, such as that when their Hunga-
rian governor had been absent for a short time,
they used to come out in forty or fifty carriages to
greet him with acclamations on the plain of Grobnik,
and to share with him omelettes of 100 eggs each,
washed down with good Istrian or Veglian wine.
This little Grobnik is endeared to the Croatians
by historical association. It was here that the great
southern wing or section of Batu Khan's Mongol
hordes were finally defeated, who had made such a
successful irruption into Russia, Poland, Hungary,
Bosnia, and Dalmatia—before whom Bela IV. fled
to Spalato (see page 247). Not only was their
further progress into Europe checked, but the whole
DALMATIA. 287
body of the horde were destroyed and annihilated
by the united Croatians and Dalmatians on May
25, 1262. Last year, on the 600th anniversary of
that day, the Fiumans assembled on the famous
spot for the consecration of a new flag; the cere-
mony was described to me as most striking. The
plain and the surrounding villages belong to Count
Batthyany, whose castle is seen close by.
There is little amusement now in Fiume: I used
to listen to the Austrian band playing in the
evening, in the illuminated place in front of the
Casino; but my chief pleasure was watching the
fishermen spearing the leaping fish by torchlight
on the calm sea, with the moon's golden crescent
shining over the lovely form of the Monte Maggiore.
I was loth to leave so pretty and pleasant a
place; but the beauty of the onward voyage partly
consoled me. The voyage to Trieste lasts about
twenty-two hours. The vessels that go round
Istria are of the same size and character as the
Dalmato-Albanese line, and very superior to those
that ply between Zara and Trieste. I found the
captain of the Istria, Giuseppe Bernatich by name,
as obliging and courteous as these worthy Dalma-
tians almost invariably are. He spoke nothing but
Italian and Sclave, but he made the most of my
288 DALMATIA.
slender stock of the former language, and consti-
tuted himself my guide and protector. We started
One lovely evening at five o'clock, and nothing
could be more charming than our slow course down
to Malinski, the chief port of Veglia, through
shoals of dolphins playing in the calm sea, and
leaping high into the air. Then we turned up
north again, and passed into the shadow of Monte
Maggiore as we rounded the northern end of
Cherso.
The good captain explained to me at supper
that he intended to show me Pola himself, and
would stay there an extra hour for that purpose, if
I could be ready at four A.M. I should have been
equally ready an hour or two earlier, for the ship
was crowded, and the ladies' cabin so stifling, that
I preferred the floor to a berth, and I was glad
enough to leave it at any hour. So in the pale
early light, I found myself walking past the splendid
new palace of the Governor of Pola, to the old am-
phitheatre. The ruin gains little or nothing from its
position, though from far out at sea it appears to
be well placed; it does not even stand on the sea-
shore as one fancies it does when seen from a
distance; and the land close round it is so low and
flat, that the monstrous building seems built upon
DALMATIA. 289
nothing, although there are pretty hills in the
distance. But on approaching it, one finds a large
town, a still larger harbour, bastions, towers, and
defences, and beyond all a wild, low hillock, on
which the magnificent ruin is placed. I thought of
Verona as a little circus while I stood there—Pola
is so grand, so enormous. And it is perfect all
round externally; within, the seats of the specta-
tors have vanished, and have been carried away,
I imagine, so little débris remain in the centre,
while happily the three tiers of arches remain un-
hidden and unburied. The theatre was an oval,
with one larger arch at each end, forming the gates
—the one leading to the Palace of Augustus, the
other for the beasts and gladiators. The pecu-
liarity of Pola is, I believe, in the four shallow
towers which contained the staircases, but they are
hardly important enough to form any features in
the whole. Nor is there any attempt at archi-
tectural ornaments, scarcely even a frieze. The
masonry is beautiful, and the stones, which are of
splendid size, were joined without mortar. A huge
pit is now open from end to end: this was a bricked
passage closed over, into which the bodies of men
and beasts were thrown, and the blood washed
down by a little stream which now trickles over
U
290 . DALMATIA.
the hillocks of peacefully growing grass. My visit
was on a sirocco day, so that there was no blue sky
to see through the many arches; but I could quite
fancy the truth of Sir Humphry Davy's description
of its splendour in the light of the setting sun, for
the stone of which it is built is a good white,
though coarse, marble, and the old walls have
much of the dorata of a southern clime upon them.
Then we went to the Porta Ercole and the
Porta Aurea — the latter a handsome triumphal
arch—and to the Temple of Rome and Augustus.
This building is nearly perfect, and is very graceful
in its proportions; it is much the best of the
three, but I cannot say that I admired any of them
much—the architecture is of so debased a style,
the execution so careless, and the ornaments so
slovenly. It is now a museum. I thought the
old Franciscan Convent much better worth seeing,
but it is now a military bakehouse, and I could
only examine the pretty cloisters and a small part
of the church; it has Byzantine windows, with
‘columnettes’ of Istrian marble, of the very best
style.
Pola is now the largest naval establishment of
the Austrian government: more ships are built here
than at Trieste—iron steamers and wooden Sailing
DALMATIA. 291
vessels. I wandered up and down the quays while
the good captain expatiated upon the merits of
One ship after another with much pride, continually
adding his praise and envy of the English ships he
had seen in the Crimea. But he puzzled me very
much by the repetition of his admiration for one of
our steamers ‘ called after a big fish.' I suggested
leviathans and monsters without end, till at last
something made me think he meant the “Hima-
laya,’ and I said so. ‘Ah yes, that is it,” he said;
“it is one of the great fish in your Tamigi, is it
not?’
The steamer usually stops only a few minutes at
Parenzo, where we found ourselves at mid-day; but
my good friend said he should certainly stay to
take me on shore, as the cathedral of Parenzo is a
‘maraviglia.’ I was too happy, when I saw it, that
his kindness had enabled me to see such an interest-
ing sight.
Parenzo was finished in the year 526, and is,
therefore, almost exactly the same date as Santa
Sophia at Constantinople, and 450 years older
than St. Mark's at Venice. It is also older than
the church of Torcello, the original bishopric of
Venice. Parenzo is a basilica with atrium, a two-
aisled nave, and One chapel; modern transepts have
U 2
292 DAJMA TIA.
been added, and some other chapels in an inferior
style. At the east end is a round apse, as glorious
in its mosaics as St. Mark's or Santa Sophia. Every
part of the wall and rounded roof is covered with
mosaic—a group of nine Saints and angels sur-
rounding the blessed Virgin and Child, on a golden
background, exquisitely done. Heads of Saints
adorn the arches, &c.; all are beautiful. Below
these, to about ten feet high, the walls are inlaid
with whole shells of mother-of-pearl, let into a dark
brown stone; it looks just like a piece of Damascus
furniture, and, though rude, it is effective and
beautiful. The flooring of the whole church is of
coarse mosaic, in Byzantine patterns, the same as
in Murano and in St. Mark's: but one can scarcely
look at anything, after the wall mosaics, save the
capitals of the columns. The pillars themselves are
of a fine brown marble; the capitals are identically
the same as those in Santa Sophia, one more exqui-
sitely undercut than the other, into lace-work of
leaves, flowers, birds, &c.; they are, perhaps, a little
bolder than those of Santa Sophia, but full of life and
spirit—not a line wasted nor a thought thrown away.
I longed to sketch them, but I could only hope they
may One day be photographed ; Jerusalem and
Constantinople alone can rival them.
DALJ1A TIA. 293
The baldachin is exceedingly curious and fine,
as are the very ancient altar hangings. There is a
splendid altar front, of solid silver gilt, of the Re-
naissance date. The interest appertaining to this is,
that it is placed at the back of the altar for high
mass, facing the bishop, who is seated behind the
altar, as at Torcello: this is an ancient, and, I be-
lieve, unique privilege. The chapel of St. Andrew,
at the north-east corner of the church, is very in-
teresting and curious. There has been a porch or
cloister outside at the west entrance, but only two
or three columns remain of it. I venture to think
this church is well worth a special journey from
England to see. I could think of nothing else
through the rest of the day, although our onward
voyage was full of beauty.
Pirano is lovely enough to make anyone wish to
stop there, and I know few prettier views than that
on leaving it, as the bay of Capo d'Istria opens
out, and Trieste, with her white houses, wind-blown
rocks, and her surrounding mountain wall, becomes
more and more distinct on a summer evening.
How sorry I felt as our steamer pushed her way in
among the crowds of ships at the quay, and I knew
that my beautiful journey was over ! Even Venice
2.94. DALMATIA.
—long-loved and long-pitied—could not console
me for having to plunge into the mass of routine
travellers, and allow myself to drift on till I reached
the surging ocean of Summer Alpine tourists.
CHAPTER WI.
CHAOS.
Sed sinec laudis nec honesti pulchritudo animos torpentes inflam-
mavit; certe utilitas, cujus hodie prima ratio ducitur, movere potuit,
ut loca tam praeclara, tantisque commoditatibus et opportunitatibus
plena, barbaris erepta, a nobis potius, quam ab aliis vellemus pos-
sideri.—Busbequivs, 1560.
C'est un terrible privilége de s'appeler Chrétien, quand on veut
s'agrandir.—Revue des deua, Mondes, 1860.
OST of my readers, in these days of universal
travel, will have been in the Austrian em-
pire at some time of their lives. They will perhaps
remember, that on their first entrance even the
smooth but inexorable routine of the ordeal by
passports yielded in importance to the necessity of
having to procure and understand a new currency.
At all the frontiers—Bodenbach or Orsova, Salz-
burg or Trieste, everywhere except Peschiera,
against which the very currency cries out as an
unfit frontier—the traveller bound for the interior
of the Kaiser's broad lands has to exchange his good
metal for unmanageable bundles of frail, and not
often clean, bank-notes. These are for amounts
296 CHAOS.
Varying from a pound down to two pence; so that all
the small circulation of the country, the work of our
shillings and sixpences, is done by twopenny bank-
notes. The Englishman who has to invest his
money in great sheets of these, arranged like sheets
of postage stamps, or still more resembling in shape
and arrangement the slab-like compartments of
stamped gingerbread which formed his childhood's
delight, indulges his humour, and falls into a vein
of joking both obvious and inevitable. Yet there
is more in a ten-kreuzer note than the suggestion
of finance in difficulties, or the chaff of having a
bank-note for twopence. On taking it up, you
may see it traversed in all directions by groups of
extraordinary words, which at first seem as though
the people at the Vienna Mint had been trying to
spell the word crackjaw in as many different ways
as they could, and had perfectly succeeded. It
then comes home as a living reality to the mind
how thoroughly the Austrian empire is a composite
body, formed of twenty nations and more, each
having to be addressed in one of twenty languages,
and all standing towards one another in every con-
ceivable variety of mutual attraction and repulsion,
accord or discord. There are enough of them to
allow even a certain amount of philological art and
CHAOS. 297
tastefulness of grouping, with a couple of Romanic
forms on one side, and a couple of Sclavonic on the
other; while in the central place of honour the old-
fashioned letters of the German ruler stand solitary
and dominant over all,
Every one of these words, uncouth and strange
as they seem to English eyes, is the symbol of an
idea living and working in the hearts of millions of
men. The political struggles of ages, the victories
and defeats of their past history, the absorption or
obliteration of old races and the development of
new ones, the fusion or separation of varied nation-
alities, the hopes and the fears, the aspirations and
the designs of a score of half-cemented fragments
of the great human unity, are all here traced in
clear and distinct characters to the eyes, of those
capable of perceiving and understanding them. Is
there any one among us who is capable of so
understanding them, and who can reduce into an
orderly whole the mutual bearings of the entire
conflicting mass 2 I cannot undertake to answer
this question. Some separate parts of it are clear
enough, and lie patent on the surface. We want
no one to tell us what the words ‘dieci soldi” mean
on an Austrian bank-note: we know how they got
there, and all true Englishmen are anxious to
298 CHAOS.
know how they can be most easily struck out
Without a European convulsion: those who have
resided in Venice can hardly refrain from saying
even with one. We have not much trouble in
guessing that the words “Zece cruceri' suggest a
speech and a nation which would be Italian if it
could. We regret that it cannot, and we naturally
lament the hundreds of miles which separate the
people of the lower Danube from their nearest
kinsmen over the head of the Adriatic. Then,
perhaps, by its very solitude and utter want of
connection with any of its neighbours, we can
determine where to assign the group, “Tiz ezüst
kraiczár; the utterance of a great people, perhaps
the noblest race of eastern Europe, standing apart,
defiant and determined. But who on earth is to
stretch a guiding hand and help the plain English-
man through the dreadful labyrinth of ‘Deset
krajcarjew,’ and ‘Deset krajcarū,’ and ‘Deset
kraicari,’ and ‘Deset krajcarah,” and so on, ringing
the changes on the genitive plural through a score
of Sclavonic dialects, each representing its own
sectional ideas and its own party statement P Why,
of character alone there are four varieties. There
is modern Roman type, and there is old Gothic
type; there is modern Cyrillic writing, and there is
CHAOS. 299
a weird mysterious group of letters, which are to
modern Cyrillic what old Gothic black letter is to
Roman, and which probably is a financial way of
letting everybody know that the Ruthenian peasant,
in the eye of the Austrian Government, must not
have the same written language as his Polish lord.
Perhaps one form may be recognised out of all
these by the sheer unsightliness of its spelling—
“Dziesigó kraicarów'—with its strange hook, de-
noting the archaic nasal sound now lost in all the
other dialects, and so precious in the eyes of the
comparative philologist. Let us turn quickly away
from this: it is no more possible to look a Polish
word than a Polish man in the face: nothing but
disquiet and anxiety can come out of thinking on a
nation of patriots so gallant and so doubly deluded
and abandoned.
No ; I doubt greatly whether we have anybody
who can see his way clearly through the whole of
this complication of Sclavonic words and Sclavonic
ideas, assigning each word at sight to its rightful
owner, and accurately estimating the amount of
truth and falsehood, of value or worthlessness, con-
tained in the account each section endeavours to
render of itself and of its neighbours. The
Gordian knot must not be cut—it must be fairly
300 CHAOS.
untied; and if we cannot do so, we must prepare
or create somebody who can. As for trying to cut
it by the repetition of a mere formula, such as a
generality about Panslavonic brotherhood, Pan-
slavism, the love or fear of Russia, Sclavonic
Piedmonts, or the like, is either a parrot repeating
a learnt lesson by rote, a dupe, or a tool. The
English reporter has long begun his work in
Sclavonic countries : it is time for the English
critic and judge to follow in his footsteps.
As regards the north-eastern Sclavonians, it is
our great good fortune that we have at our com-
mand a store of full and exact knowledge, organised
by the most singularly perfect and impartial criti-
cism. It is with them that the storm of controversy
is at its height, and it is something astounding to
listen to the hubbub of assertion and counter-
assertion, of lying and giving the lie, of doctored
ethnology, doctored history, doctored politics and
geography, and universal one-sided uproar, raging
for some time past among Poles, and Lithuanians,
and Russians of all colours and all shades of honesty.
Each province, claiming to ground its own case on
some fact in history or ethnology, views it by the
coloured light of its interests and passions, and
almost in spite of itself it is always manufacturing
CHAOS. 301
the facts to suit its views. The English traveller,
unsustained by any elementary knowledge, brings
back and repeats one-sided opinions, and the facts
on which they are made to rest, according to his
predilections or the accidents of his social inter-
course. Readers at home, unsuspicious or off their
guard, are apt to receive these as the result of
genuine enquiry, or else to be wholly puzzled and
bewildered by the conflicting statements.
Such a traveller is not safe from betraying him-
self, and may ‘draw a dogskin over his face' as the
Persians say. It is not long ago that one of them,
half unconsciously becoming the mouthpiece of a
Russo-Scandinavian theory of history, talked with
an odd air of spontaneous contempt of ‘that mush-
room nation the Lithuanians.’ This is like talking
of ‘those parvenu families the Courtenays and the
Derings;" and it is a singularly unfortunate hit,
because every other word of the Lithuanian's speech
happens to be a genuine and remarkable voucher of
the very hoariest Aryan antiquity, sometimes pre-
Homeric, and even pre-Vedic. One is almost
tempted to wish the writer up to his neck in a
Lithuanian swamp, banished to the Lithuanian back-
woods to keep company with the last living verb in
—mi, the last old-world bison, and perhaps the
302 CHAOS.
last patriot. Yet on this ground all we have to do
is to turn to the masterly writings of Mr. Suther-
land Edwards: he can lay his finger at once and
with precision on the exact falsification, exag-
geration, or suppression made use of by each party
in its history and ethnology. He can explain with
certainty all the surface talk, and lay bare the secret
motives, the rights and wrongs of all these Poles
and White Russians and Red Russians and Black
Russians, and the rest of them, so as to put each in
its proper pigeon-hole with perfect trustworthiness.
Mr. Edwards has given us the great boon of a
practical check on the talk of echoes, parrots, and
mouthpieces, and I wish to take him as the text of
the long sermon which I am now preaching.
Now what I want to ask is, whom have we got
to be as Mr. Edwards to us in Southern Sclavonia,
in the border-lands and the interior of European
Turkey 2 There the complication is at least as
great and as manifold as in the North-East; yet,
with the exception of Mr. Paton, we have nobody
upon whom to rely for accurate accounts and sound
judgment, if even for elementary criticism ; and
then Mr. Paton is far from covering all the
ground, or coming up to the present time. It is
possible that our Government has fully, or at least
CHAOS. 303
adequately, mastered the whole state of political
opinion, and its historical and ethnological ground-
work, in Dalmatia, and Bosnia, and Servia, and
the Principalities, and the whole heaving Austro-
Turkish frontier. But it is impossible to read
the comments and enquiries of those outside the
Government, which occur from time to time, with-
out perceiving that, even if the Government be
only one-eyed, its critics are absolutely blind.
They seem to have nothing better to do, when
wanting to express their uneasiness and dissatis-
faction with things as they are, than to declaim
generalities, which are not always so safe as they
appear, to indulge in the luxury of wild indig-
nation against infamous Austria and Turkey, or
to utter vague wild hopes about the future of noble
and suffering nationalities. The hopes and indig-
nation are all well enough ; but when any attempt
is made to sustain them by facts, it is these latter
which too often vanish into thin air. Even the
treatment of current events is untrustworthy; for
in practice they become always adjusted to some
comprehensive ‘platform,” or general set of opinions
on one side or the other, either upholding the pre-
servation, or preaching the destruction, of Austria
or Turkey. Such generalities will almost always
304 CHAOS.
be found to rest on some prodigious blunder in
the elements of geography or ethnology; and thus
the whole statement is no stronger, and too often
no homester, than its weakest and most dishonest
point. All this is preeminently the case in Turkey;
in Austria, what with the Vienna statesmen, the
Hungarian constitutionalists, and Mr. Paton's
useful works, so far as they go, much can be made
out in the way of check and counter-check. But
in Turkey, after all the enormous mass of talk and
writing, we know upon these points just as little as
when we began, and, what is worse, we do not
seem to possess the art how to know, how and
where to learn, to unlearn, and to relearn.
Up to a very recent period this mattered very
little, for we were all pretty well united in our
principles or watchwords: we either had perfect
confidence in our government, or controlled it by
an orderly and organised cross-examination, or
opposition. We saw, moreover, that they knew
well enough all that it then concerned them to
know. The modern political history of Turkey,
the nature of its administration and dominant in-
stitutions, the produce and resources of the soil, its
foreign commerce and internal trade, its military
and naval capabilities, and all the details of its
CHAOS. 305
diplomatic relations, have been given to the public
in countless blue and other coloured books, and
are all more or less sufficiently known and re-
membered. This would seem to include every-
thing, but it is very far from doing so. To take
the smallest but most obvious point first, the
geography of the country, for One thing, is very
little known, as regards much of European Turkey.
The thick darkness which hangs over most of that
land affords a striking contrast to the bright light,
by the help of which we are gradually knowing
everything about parts further east, such as Syria,
which are less accessible, and much more lawless.
The best example of this may be found in the
great work of the historian of ancient Greece.
Probably Mr. Grote, before he came to examine
the subject, was as little aware as his neighbours
how little we really knew of European Turkey;
but having to work out the early northern
campaigns of Alexander, and to investigate the
geography of Macedonia in detail, he found himself
absolutely without materials to help him in his
task. He records in a footnote that Mount Rhodope,
and the upper valleys of the Strymon and Nestus,
remained an unknown land, until the recent visit
of M. Viquesnel, a traveller sent for the special
X
306 CHAOS.
purpose of geographical discovery by the French
Government. Geography, however, is an abstract
matter, which can well be left to take care of itself
now-a-days, thanks to Sir Roderick and his men.
The various, and as yet, ill-defined ideas expressed
by the word nationality are of far greater and
more immediate importance. The possession of a
common nationality—by whatever rule that may
be determined—is now held to have a distinct
value of its own in politics; nationality is taking
its place as a new power among us, with an organic
vital growth, which may hold the same moral force
as a treaty engagement, and may supersede it
when they come into collision. We have already
recognised publicly the right of a people to choose
its own rulers, and many among us consider that
when they have once said the words ‘suffering
nationality,” or turned a rhetorical phrase about
‘groans of anguish,' or ‘tears and blood,' they
have settled the question, and have no need further
to look for details. But it becomes necessary to
look gift nationalities in the mouth, after all; if
the principle be fairly established, an imperfect
knowledge, or distorted comprehension of the
various elements in detail, which go to make up
the aggregate of a nationality, may surely become
CHAOS. 307
a pressing evil. Everything is not a nationality
which calls itself one. Every community which
groans does not necessarily suffer ; very much
that is said in the name of a nationality may be
only the cry of an ambitious clique, which is
foreign to it; and it may be completely at variance
not only with its true interests, but even with its
actual wishes.
Perhaps we shall end by having to appoint
ethnological attachés and secretaries at Vienna and
Constantinople some of these days, like the naval
and military, the Oriental, or the Chinese ones, and
to send colporteurs with bundles of Dr. Latham's
books for distribution among all our political Con-
sulates. At any rate, it is important that we at
home should have the means and the wish of
examining and sifting details, before grounding
any conclusive opinion upon them. Yet this is
just what we seem unable to do, even if willing ;
and so we go on shutting our eyes and opening
our mouth to receive everything which may be
dropped into it from South-Eastern Europe. A
statement of this kind must not be made without
being supported by a sufficient number of ex-
amples; and, though it may be thought invidious
and carping to bring them forward, it would not
x 2
308 CHAOS.
be right to shrink from censure, when censure is
felt to be a duty, merely for fear of being deemed
censorious.
Who of my readers is not familiar with the
wearisome enumeration of the various peoples under
the Sultan's rule 2 Yet what speaker or writer
has ever given their statistics without uttering
many fallacies and errors, without displaying his
own ignorance of the subject, or without insi-
nuating, or being made to insinuate, the small end
of a wedge of deceit * The predetermined friend
of the Turks, using that word in a comprehensive
sense, as equivalent to Mussulman, greatly swells
the amount of the true Turks in Europe. The
Christian advocate, who has made up his mind to
wage war to the knife against the Turk, inveighing
against the sin, absurdity, and ‘anachronism,’ of a
Turkish minority, directly ruling over I don't
know how many millions of Christian subjects,
exaggerates the disproportion, and enforces his
rhetoric, by adding to them the indirectly ruled
and semi-detached provinces; even those where, as
in Roumania, Turks are by treaty forbidden to
reside. What between the facts given by the ad-
vocates of the different denominations, and those
given by the ‘friends' of the different races, of the
CHAOS. 309
Greeks, the Sclavs, and the rest of them, you can
get the cards shuffled into any variety of statistical
combination ; you can find facts to justify any
opinion to the benefit or detriment of any class or
community, and there is nobody of English blood
to say nay, or to drive his criticism, like O'Connell's
coach-and-six, through the entanglement of fallacy
and error. My conviction is, that in these matters
we cannot do better than rub off the tablet of
our minds everything thereon inscribed regarding
nationalities in Turkey, start fair, and begin to
learn all over again correctly. Have we quite un-
learnt the fallacy of our old friends, the twelve
millions of Greeks, who used to be an article of
faith before the Russian war 7 I am not sure to
what extent it has been driven out by the im-
pression now establishing itself, that they are twelve
millions of Sclavs, after all. I read lately in a first-
class periodical, of a something called Yugoslavić,
or South Sclavonia, purporting to be a real national
entity, composed of some such number of millions.
The word has such a fine varnish of local colour,
that it ought to have some meaning, and denote
some corresponding reality, and not turn out a
delusion and a snare. It claims to be the name of
a genuine aggregate body, made up of various
310 CHA O.S.
communities, connected with one another in the
same way, and differing from one another in the
same way; all speaking the same language, and all,
eaceptis earcipiendis, animated by the same desire,
and invested with the same right, of political
union, in virtue of the principle that nations have
a right to choose their own rulers. What is it
which constitutes such a body ? The bond of
union is not formed by common subjection to
Turkey, for South-Sclavonia includes the Dal-
matians, the Croatians, and the Rascians or Hun-
garian Serbs, all subjects of Austria. Common
religion is not the bond of union, for the term
includes the Catholic, the orthodox Eastern, and,
prospectively, the Mussulman as one. Common
language is not, unless we consider the common
possession by all Christians of the old dead eccle-
siastical Sclavonic, as the language of their rituals,
to be a sufficient bond, for the term is stated as
including the Bulgarians; and this last point
happens to be the keystone of the arch, the pivot
upon which the whole question turns. In two
words, the real meaning of the term is simply this:
The Servians, or certain parties in Servia, believe,
and wish us to believe, that they have both the
power and the moral right to annex to their own
RUSSIA.
(FROM OUR BERLIN CORRESPONDENT.)
BERLIN, JAN. 18.
General Ignatieff, the Russian Ambassador at
Constantinople, who has been recently called home
to report progress, is endeavouring to convince his
Sovereign of the necessity of adopting a more ener-
getic course in the East. According to his advice,
the agitation among the Sclavonic subjects of the
Sultan should be zealously carried on and developed
till it exercise a direct and forcible influence upon
the Ottoman Government. In other words, he
wants to create some Continental Cretes. But he
has an influential antagonist. Prince Gortscha-
koff deems this course of procedure too venture-
some, apprehending that, if matters are pre-
maturely brought to a crisis, France and Austria.
will make this a pretext for remodelling
Turkey after a pattern of their own. It is certainly
notorious that the Sclavonic Rayah are only waiting
for an opportunity to enter into a profitable con-
nexion with the Westerm Powers, so as not to be
exclusively dependent upon the doubtful protection
of Russia. The Prince of Servia more especially has
long adopted a rather reserved attitude towards his
obtrusive patrons on the Neva, and although,
by the force of the national movement, tem-
porarily obliged to swim with the stream,
would be happy to revert to his old tactics,
and be on equally good terms with Bonaparte as
with Romanoff. Prince Gortschakoff is therefore of
opinion that the safest course for his Sovereign will
be, by diplomatic pressure, to extort one concession
after the other from the Porte, thus binding the
Rayah to himself, yet giving other Powers no op-
portunity for active interference. Operating in this
anner slowly but securely, Russia, as he thinks,
would be employing her time advantageously, until,
n the turmoil of some Continental conflict, she
ight reap the fruits of her forbearance by striking
an effectual blow. In these views the Prince is sup-
orted by Baron Budberg, the Russian Ambassador
at Paris, and the German and aristocratic fractions
at Court. General Ignatieff, on the other hand,
elies upon the assistance of M. Milutine, the Minis-
er of War, and the national party, whose influence
as preponderated in the Government since the last
ubjugation and attempted extermination of Poland.
he papers of this party, all semi-official or in-
pired organs, assume a bolder front every day, and
n so many words assert, L
“That the day has come when all Sclavonic tribes must
e placed under the patronage of the Russian sceptre. Suc-
ss would be certain were the matter once taken in hand.
xceptibg the Poles, too feeble to be taken into account, all
clavonians are longing for connexion with the great and
ictorious empire of their race. As to the Powers, they
ould hesitate to offer resistance, seeing they run the





















In 18Ts, NC -
t, then, if there was not much confidence
ced in Kassa, there was still less to be
the scouts, who appear to find in a lie, as
its own reward. So the British authori-
promised the difficulty by having extra
osted, and ordering up the second course.
lid not come, and is pººl, a deeply-
man. It is anything but his interest
al with the British, and he is not at all
come here as an enemy, unless, indeed,
it into his head that he can get possession
Marett's Mountain Train, which, with its
little carriage equipments and pigmy mor-
of them carried on one mule, and each
; a 12lb. shell with precision 800 yards,
m delightfully mischievous and charming
he eyes of an Abyssinian chief. All the
iefs are more or less mad about firearms of
d, each measuring the other's strength
y the number of guns he possesses. And a
nized mountain train, specially adapted
fare in such a country as their own,
3 a joy for ever, a pearl beyond price,
possession of , which a good deal ought
ed in this world, and perhaps a little in
If any attack were made it would pro-
} about 4 o'clock in the morning. The
ams delight in sudden surprises, and being
make an attack in the middle of the night
should find themselves unexpectedly en-
h an army of hobgoblins, against whom
atch-locks would be of no avail, their
time for an onset is about 4, when
ucted spirits are supposed to be thinking
ut they would discover, to their cost, that
the hour at which the early risers of an
ian camp are thinking of getting up.
nobody here expects any fighting at pre-
ugh I am told that at the depôts along the
e Pass and down at Zoulla there are end-
urs of wars, so private letters will probably
gland and Bombay announcing that the
Brigade is on the verge of an engagement.
misunderstanding which occurred at a
arade yesterday will probably furnish fur-
rial for sensational reports. The officer in
told the troops that he was going to “Sup-
at he had just received information that
;he enemy were near a neighbouring hill,
7, in order at once to dislodge them, he
:ertain manoeuvres performed. The im-
ord “suppose” was somehow not heard,
brother officers—though considerably
d at being thus brought out to fight,
re, in the strictest confidence, under pre-
parade, while Colonels Merewether and
were taking tea in their tents close by—
that the enemy were really at hand, one or
he more imaginative speedily discovering
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| THE * PROSECUTIONS.—It may be remem-
bered by our readers that after the rebellion in Jamaica in
1865 certain resolutions were passed in the then existing
House of Assembly regarding the conduct of the British
officers who had taken part in the suppression of the revolt.
The public will readily recollect that Brigadier-General
Abercromby Nelson was among these officers, and occupied |
conspicuous position both as regarded the progress and
he events of the rebellion. On the 23d of November, 1865,
he House of Assembly in Jamaica passed a vote, from
'hich the following is an extract :—“That this House
eing desirous of conferring a special mark of its approba-
ion on Brigadier-General Abercromby Nelson for the
sum of 200 guineas be granted to Her Majesty for the pur:
ose of procuring a suitable testimonial to be presented
him with the grateful thanks of this Płouse.” In accord-
ce with this resolution the money was voted and the exe-
ution of the testimonial was forth with intrusted to Messrs.
. and E. Emanuel, of Burlington-gardens. It is now
mpleted, and consists of a silver epergne and candela-
um. At each of the angles of the tripod base of the
Yergne is stationed a figure in relief of a crocodile, and be-
een these figures the arms of Brigadier-General Nelson,
e arms of Jamaica, and an inscription of the extract from
e votes of the House of Assembly, given above, are en-
aved on three shields. From the base rise several sugar-
nes in blossom, and between these stand two figures repre-
ting the aborigines of the island, each supporting a
ield. These figures, with the representations of the cro-
ile at the base, are, it may be added, illustrative of the
maica arms. Above the sugar-canes rise six branches for
ts, surmounted by a crocodile couched in the midst of
m leaves, and supporting a bowl for flowers or fruit. The
timonial will be immediately forwarded to General Nel-
, who is at present on duty in Ireland.

On the
& door.
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been
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front
among
put an
, which
hanged
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rs. Mul-
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ecently
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ºr. Gif-
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CTOSS-
tion in
EIGT&T;o-g: u, a LIuuTT Lytarre. TIFUU
the men were all right if they had good officers
witness said the prisoner had been drinking, but
what he was about. The other soldier, howeve
the prisoner was quite drunk. Anderson corrob
Cordner’s account of the conversation, so far as th
ment of the 17,000 and the breechloaders; but the p
did not ask him to join the Brotherhood. The priso
dressed him in Irish, and told him he belonged to th
of Ireland, but had been across the Atlantic, and hi
been living in Dover. The prisoner had previously
landlord that he was “for the green flag ; ” that
come from “the green banks,” and was “green to th
bone.” The policeman, who had remained in th
apprehended the prisoner on the charge. He said,
to the magistrates, that he knew the prisoner wher
working in Dover, and always believed him to be a
able man. The prisoner said he was entirely innoce;
complicity with Fenianism. He came to Dover on S
and had been drinking more or less ever since. H
recollection of what was now alleged to have transp
if he had said what was attributed to him he had
under the influence of drink. The police-officer, in
the magistrates, said that the prisoner, though he
drinking, knew what he was about. Superintende
having replied for a remand, the Mayor said the
was charged with a serious offence, and the circ
were sufficiently suspicious to induce them to re
for further inquiry. The prisoner was then rem
Friday.
DEVON.
Within the past few days letters have been re
the authorities at Barnstaple stating that it is i
blow up the police-station, the prison, and the
There is a large force of special constables in the
a strict watch is being kept. Outside the town o
a lad was stopped on Thursday night and
minutely ºl ishman as to the local Volun

CHAOS. 311
rule some, if not all, of the country inhabited by
Bulgarians; they are sparing no effort to work on
the Bulgarians, and induce them to see the fitness
of things in the way they do themselves; it is
possible, nor is it undesirable, that with time and
trouble they may succeed in so assimilating them ;
but, in the meanwhile, they seek to represent the
relationship of the Bulgarians with themselves as a
g, and amount-
ready-made kinship already existin
ing to virtual identity. The Bulgarian is not akin
to the various fragments of the Illyrian, Servian, or
true South-Sclavonic family, in the same degree
that they are connected with one another. In
origin and descent he is different from them ;
though on this no stress need be laid, so long as
the ethnologists know nothing of his first fore-
fathers, and, even if they did, are all conjecture
and no fact as regards the precise nature and value
of hereditary transmitted aptitudes. In condition,
habits, and character, he is widely different; and
he is hardly less so in language. He speaks a
Sclavonic dialect, it is true, which, according to
modern German criticism, is one of the two sole
living descendants of the old Cyrillian tongue.
But it is not the Servian's Sclavonic dialect; it
stands apart from it; it has lost its declensions; it
312 CHAOS.
has a different phonetic character, partly by cor-
ruption, partly by archaic retention ; it uses a
definite article, and postfixes it to its noun; and
its structure is more analytic than the synthetic
structure which made Niebuhr call the Servian
the ‘honestest language in all Europe.' In fact,
his language differs from the Servian in nature as
well as in analogy—though hardly so much in
amount—exactly as the Danish differs from German.
As Denmark and Germany are within the pale of
our knowledge and common sense, we have been
spared from having a rigmarole about their original
Teutonism thrust into the history of their dif-
ferences. The ethnological case is as though we
were to have the Fleming, and the Hollander, and
the Frisian, and the Sleswicker, all joined together
under some such name as Netherdutchland, or
Nordo-Germania, with the Dane or Swede kneaded
up with the mass; the whole being then paraded
before the acquiescent eyes of some remote part of
Europe, as a real bond fide nationality, for the
purpose of producing a certain effect on the opinion
of that country. -
The union of the true members of the South-
Sclavonic family is another matter. This may come
to pass some day in spite of the conflict of religious
CHAOS. 313
denominations and of interests, and it will be a
natural union when it does so. Yet, for reasons
which I have no space here to give at length, I am
induced to think that they will most probably and
most advantageously grow into two main divisions,
under the respective influences of Italian and of
German or Austro-Hungarian civilisation—the
Western and maritime, the eastern and inland.
Montenegro has a natural, though limited, line of
probable annexation on her north-western frontier,
in the border Christian districts of the Herzego-
vina, towards Niksich and Trebinje; she is not in
the least likely to surrender her independence to
any power, whether foreign or of her own race; she
can stand alone, and I exclude her from the above
speculation. United with Servia—an impossible
contingency for some time to come—the Montene-
grins would float on the Servians like oil on water,
and would probably end by becoming a dominant
military caste of Palikars, passionately attached to
their own ruling family, and the reverse of sub-
Servient to any local interest or ambition. Servia
has been called a Sclavonic Piedmont; and the adroit
comparison, true enough if limited to her aggres-
sive disposition, is not thrown away if it has led
people to believe that she is also the most civilised,
314 CHAOS.
free, and progressive of South-Sclavic communities.
I believe the mot to be no more true than that she
is the South-Sclavic Sicily or Calabria. Dalmatia
is incomparably the most civilised and the worthiest
of these communities; she is their Tuscany as
well as the nearest approach to their Piedmont;
and she owes this to Italy and to the sea. From
her all their true civilisation and progress must
arise which is to be home-grown and born out of
order—not out of chaos.
The entire mass of the rural and non-Mussul-
man population of Turkey in Europe, with the
exception of Bosnia, Thessaly, Albania, the Chal-
cidic peninsula, and a very narrow belt of sea-
board, consists, not of Greeks and Sclavs, but of
Bulgarians. They are not true Sclavs, nor do they
as yet think of themselves as such, whatever they
may end by doing under strong influences; but we
are never safe from having them passed off upon us
as an identical part and parcel of the South-
Sclavonians. The fallacy may recur anywhere and
at any moment when wanted. During the Mon-
tenegrin war, at the time when, as we now know,
secret preparations were being made for Garibaldi's
descent on the Albanian coast, the correspondent of
a morning paper, who knew perfectly well what he
CHAOS. - 315
was saying and why he was saying it, told us that
‘ all the inhabitants of Servia, Bosnia, Montenegro,
the Herzegovina, and Bulgaria, speak dialects of
the same language.’ This is equivalent to saying
that all the people of Dorsetshire, Yorkshire,
Massachusetts, and the Tyrol, speak dialects of the
same language. So they do; but it is one thing to
be cousins descended from a common grand parent,
and another to be sisters born from a commonparent.
‘ Once for all,' I recently read it somewhat dog-
matically stated in the same flesh-tinted magazine
to which I have before referred—an able and
thoughtful one, which usually looks before it
leaps—‘the Christian subject will not tolerate a
Mussulman Rajah.” Now, I cannot waste time in
making game of the confusion caused in the
writer's mind by the German spelling of ‘Rayah,’
which has apparently suggested and jumbled the
ideas of a Hindoo prince and of eastern tyranny;
though it is certainly very queer. What is neces-
sary to be known is, firstly, whether the alleged
fact be true; and, secondly, whether it and similar
facts come to our knowledge in a legitimate way.
We should clearly understand what and where is
the point of contact, or the link of connection,
between the Rayah speaker and the English
316 CHAOS.
reporter. Putting aside the vociferous minority
of Greeks, whose words, womanlike, do not always
accurately express that which their inner selves
wish or expect to be believed and acted upon, the
vast and homogeneous majority of the Christian
population in European Turkey, as I have said,
consists of Bulgarians; neither Greek, nor even
Servian, has any right or authority to set him-
self up and be trusted as their spokesman; and they
themselves have said nothing whatever upon
the subject. It needs no inference from analogy,
nor even the little direct evidence which we possess,
to tell us that they are discontented with the details
of the Turkish administration under which they
live. But that they are disaffected and ripe for
rebellion, or that they have yet risen to the concep-
tion of liberty at all, is not only unproved, but it is
exceedingly unlikely; and the direct contrary is
stated by Mr. Paton, who can at least talk to them
for himself in Turkish. This writer very acutely
and truly says, in his recent history of modern
Egypt, that all attempts at internal combination
against Turkey in past times have failed, because
the Bulgarians, that is, the mass of the Christians,
have never stirred. Their active disaffection is
unlikely, because they conceive themselves to have
CHAOS. 317
been deceived and abandoned, not only by the
Russian invaders whose part they took during the
war of 1829, but also by those who instigated the
local risings of 1841 and 1850; they were put
down in these last cases, with ease and with much
cruelty of retribution, and, under ordinary cir-
cumstances, they are not likely to listen to the
voice of the tempter henceforward. But what
they feel and think is unknown to us in its real
nature, its breadth and depth, because actually no
Englishman exists who is possessed of the only
qualifications which can fit him to pronounce an
authoritative opinion; who combines experience
with long personal intercourse, and a knowledge of
their language. Turkish is sufficient only up to
a certain point, yet not more than a very few real
Englishmen even know that. Bulgarian itself is
known to none. A very slight grammatical sketch
of a dozen pages in a pink Wrapper, and an Anglo-
Bulgarian dictionary, form the only recognition in
English of the Bulgarian language; and these are
not the work of Englishmen, but of American
missionaries, a class of men who have more active
sympathy and more enterprise than we of the
mother country.
Yet the incipient literary cultivation and educa-
318 g CHAOS.
tional use of this Bulgarian language, and the
roused consciousness of distinctive nationality
among the Bulgarian people, simply form the most
important events in the modern history of Turkey;
events at least as important as the series of decrees
and guarantees and treaties written on water or on
waste paper. To the eye of the Turk and the con-
servative diplomatist, who stand on antique ways,
to the tourist and the trader, the Bulgarian is
merely a Greek Christian like another, only with a
vernacular patois of his own; he is one of the
‘Rum Milleti’ or “Greek nation 'spiritually and
intra-nationally administered by the Patriarchate,
and nothing more. Yet it is antipathy to that
Greek spiritual administration which has called his
sense of nationality into existence, and which is as
the very breath of its life. He insists on having
bishops and clergy of his own race and speech; he
will not tolerate an alien priesthood, who are too
often both the originators and the instruments of
oppression and tyranny; he seeks to obtain the
established use of his language as an instrument of
prayer and education; and, rather than be deprived
of this, he will go over to the Church of Rome.
He has his own newspaper, the Tsarigradski
Vestnik, at Constantinople, advocating his own
CHAOS. 319
views; and both the capital and the great towns
south of the Balkans, such as Adrianople and Phi-
lippopoli, where the Christian population is partly
Greek, partly Bulgarian, have been set in ferment
by a war of pamphlets and leading articles waging
between him and the Greeks. Information about
him coming from the Fanar is worth as much as
information from a Pole about Russia, or from a
Russian about Poland. The Christians inhabiting
the villages near the capital, though of Bulgarian
origin, have become assimilated to Greeks, and do
not now differ from other Greeks; but the process
of assimilation is stopped in our time by roused
national consciousness on the Bulgarian's part.
The internal empire within the Turkish empire
which the Greek used to wield is thus being
reduced to its barest spiritual elements; and the
cherished dream of independent empire and revived
dominion in the imperial city, which is the all-
devouring master-passion of his life, can now never
be more than a baseless fabric, even if the Turks
were to be plunged to-morrow neck and crop into
the Lake Balkash. The Turks are some way off the
Lake Balkash yet, however: the Bulgarian's Anti-
Greek feeling, if they are not too dull and routine-
loving to turn it to account, or too dexterously
320 CHAOS.
blinded by intrigue, may be made to tell for them
in future just as his apathy told for them in past
times. Russia once sought to annex from without
by force of arms; she now seeks to dislocate from
within by force of sentiment. Greece has no love
for Russia; but Russia can afford to do without it,
so long as Greece turns to, as she may do any day,
and resumes the work of dislocation in the name of
freedom and nationality, though in the real hope of
clutching at an empire which she, as yet, is very
unfit to wield. But Bulgaria—by which I mean a
great deal more than the mapmaker's misleading
conventionality of the country north of the Balkan
so called—though she very properly makes use of
the cognate Russian language as a means and a
standard whereby to cultivate her own, refrains
from Russian political work, and dances but slug-
gishly to the piping of Panslavists and Yugoslavists
and Danubianists—the last new thing in politico-
ethnological nouveautés turned out this spring from
the atelier de confection in which they are made up,
wherever that may be.
The irony of treating nationality as a fixed and
defined principle never was better shown than in
a recent double re-migration. A large Bulgarian
colony, transplanted and settled in Russia, of its
CHAOS. 321
own free-will, goes back again and puts its neck
under the yoke of the hateful Turk; while the first
instalment of Nogai Tartars, brothers in speech and
religion with the Osmanli, who had rushed violently
across the Black Sea in the frenzy of a semi-religious
stampede, repent at leisure, and go quietly back
again with Russian passports in their pockets. As
for the Bulgarians, whether they remain yet awhile
under Turkish rule, or free themselves from it in
our own time, as they must ultimately do sooner
or later, it is in them alone that one can See any
really hopeful prospect, on taking a broad general
view of the probable future of these countries.
This is afforded by their numerical preponderance;
their utter primitiveness, which has learnt nothing,
and has nothing to unlearn; their industry and
thrift, their obstimacy, and their sobriety of cha-
racter. It is a conviction of their paramount
importance, in all consideration of the European
portion of that wonderful complex of smaller ques-
tions called by us collectively the Eastern Question,
as well as a regret for our past blindness or neglect,
hitherto content to range them either as rogues or
martyrs, like any or all of other Christians in Tur-
key, which lead me to speak at greater length and
Y
322 CHAOS.
With more discursiveness on this subject than I had
at first intended.
Here is my last and crowning quotation of con-
fusion worse confounded, which I give, not for its
importance, but because it comes from a book out
of which all people help themselves when they wish
to write about Montenegro and Bosnia.” “Whose
freedom (i. e. the Montenegrins) in their mountains,
under a Christian ruler, appears insufferable to the
Osmanlis. How often have these brave peasants
had to fight with Ali Pasha of Janina 2 The elder
Scodra Pasha, father of Mustapha, fell in battle with
him. No sooner was Jelaluddin become the ruler
of Bosnia than he attacked them.’ I defy anybody
to untie this knot. This is not the place specially
to go cruising after great leviathans, wallowing and
floating many a rood on the ocean of their reputa-
tion as Eastern authorities; else it might not be un-
desirable to send a harpoon into one or two, lash him
alongside, cut him up, and scoop out of his brain-
case gallonsful of this sort of thing—pure oil ofbosh,
with which to nourish the flame of criticism. But
I think the time has come when it would be useful,
if not most necessary, to write the history of public
opinion in England respecting Turkey, as displayed
* History of Servia, p. 348. Bohn.
CHAOS. 323
in our fluctuations of sentiment towards the domi-
nant race and the most prominent and typical of its
subject-peoples. I can do no more than suggest
the subject, and run rapidly over its main heads.
At the first outset of the war of independence, up
went the Greek, perched at his end of our mental
see-saw, into the seventh heaven of idealisation, and
down went the Turk into the abyss of loathing and
contempt. The shock given to our supposed in-
terests by the glorious and untoward victory of
Navarino roused us up to the discovery that the
Greek was no hero, but a villain; one who would
not pay his way, insolvent and repudiant; or, at best,
a worthless imp, chattering in attendance on the
great Northern grandfather of all devils; so down
sank the Greek, and up rose the Turk. Admiration
for the attitude of Mahmud standing alone at bay
against Russia and all her forces, reforming with
one hand and fighting with the other; a vague
feeling of enmity to Russia, and a sense of great
interests being at stake in Turkey; able works of
travel of a new stamp, marked by knowledge, many-
sided sympathy, and judgment, like those of Lieu-
tenant Slade; the perfervidingenuity and Highland
second sight, only just short of prophetic, of the
remarkable Gael who invented Circassia; all these
Y 2
324 CHAOS.
things combined not only to lift up the Turk, but
to keep him aloft at a high pressure. This was not
impaired by the succeeding period of dilettantism;
of light touristic books of travel in the East, then
newly opened and newly made safe to Europeans;
of kindly Western poets trying to catch a spark of
divine fire from the Eastern imagination; even of
idealising peculiar institutions like polygamy and
the hareem, as we used to call it, under the impres-
sion that what was right for Egypt would be right
for Turkey too. Then came the climax of glorifi-
cation, when the Turks were seen by all Europe
not only to have shown sagacity, self-respect, and
self-control worthy of her best statesmen in the
Cabinet, but actually single-handed to have out-
generalled and outfought their mighty antagonist
in the field during the whole winter campaign of
1853. Slowly but surely they dilated into heroic
dimensions before our astonished eyes.
But the contest lingered. An exasperated public
clamoured for a real Russian war on a grand scale,
waged everywhere, and with all weapons. Instead
of this, the exigencies of our alliance, and the
necessities of diplomacy, forced it to put up with a
Crimean siege, and all other objects were made
subordinate to this one. We, as one Power among
CHAOS. 325
others, had to prosecute a joint war, in order to
punish so great an outrage on international usage
as the occupation of a province, in material
guarantee of the execution of a treaty by its
owner ; and the relief of Turkey from military
pressure, or other forms of aggression, was not
meant to be the primary object so much as an
incidental consequence of this war. The opinions
and wants of Turks went for nothing in its pro-
secution, and were set aside, or not deemed worthy
of being consulted, in the face of the major neces-
sity. We grumbled at the peace, but we were fain
to accept it, rather than carry on an exclusively
English war, no man exactly knew how, and drift
into an unknown sea, in pursuit of undefined
English or Anglo-Turkish objects; so, in our dis-
satisfaction, we naturally vented much of our ill-
humour upon those Turks whom the touch of an
hour's actual contact had made to shrink and col-
lapse into nothing, from the absurd stature of ideal
heroes and patriots to which our imaginations
had elevated them. The whole administration of
Turkey, especially the military branches, which
came chiefly before our eyes, was teeming with
venality and corruption. Their army had dis-
graced itself in Asia, in 1854. It had failed to
320 CHAOS.
satisfy military etiquette by going through the
form of holding an untenable redoubt in the
Crimea, and mighty was the tempest of wrath
which then howled against it. Its greatest achieve-
ment, the memorable repulse of the Russian assault
on Kars, came to be seen here as an English, not
as a Turkish triumph, for the Turkish rank and
file were without a sacred bard. The people were
disdainful, apathetic, and thoroughly vicious; they
repelled sympathy, and resented patronage; nor
did any common medium of speech exist by which
to overthrow the barriers of exclusiveness which
separated them from ourselves. The officers of the
Turkish contingent, mostly men of Indian training
and experience, were disbanded at the peace, before
they had time to take root in the country, to learn
its language, or bring their unprejudiced judgment
to bear in full on its manifold thoughts and Ways.
So that when the peace came—and with it came
back the original devil, bringing with him seven
devils worse than himself, into a house by no means
swept and garnished—we were, and have since been,
in a constantly increasing measure, quite predis-
posed and ready to believe that every form of sin
and wickedness which comes to light in Turkey is
the result of a distinctive Turkish nature of evil.
CHAOS. 327
Any foreign power, actuated towards Turkey by
low motives of aggressive selfishness, such as even
prevail among Christian Cabinets, is now armed
with an instrument by which the precepts and
morality of the Ten Commandments have been
invested in spirit, if not actually in letter, with the
force of a treaty engagement binding the Turk
fully to observe them and carry them out. Every
untouched iniquity of his former exclusive system
and class-legislation, all the evil which arises from
the rule of any dominant race, and all that which
is inseparable from the institutions of Islam, all
the myriad sins and crimes which Turks commit,
and which all men commit, have thus come to be
indiscriminately treated in an official way, as
breaches of a pledge morally given to all Europé.
Such leverage as this is not likely to be thrown
away by those who wish ill to Turkey, and who, by
giving the dog a bad name, betray their anxiety to
hang him. The idea of his being now, and from
the beginning, reprobate, outcast, and incurable, is
therefore sedulously fostered by his old adversary,
who has even thought it worth while specially to
establish a newspaper for that purpose in the West,
and who probably does not allow that newspaper
to suffer when prosecuted and cast in damages
328 CHAOS.
for uttering malicious libels against Turkish pashas,
as it has been before now. The dynastic ambition
and the desire of territorial annexation which in-
fluence the present or the expelled rulers of most
of the tributary provinces or adjoining kingdoms,
as well as the natural aspiration of some of these
last towards union with provinces which still form
a part of Turkey, as in the case of Greece and
Thessaly; and the natural fidget and restlessness
alleged to be felt by others under a false position,
as in that of the Servians towards the Turkish
garrisons; all tend to the encouragement of this
idea in order to effect special purposes. The
agents of these parties know well enough how to
represent and to misrepresent their various cases,
and how to turn to their own account the ambition
and the vanity, the credulity and the vindictive-
ness, of those whom they consider the fittest instru-
ments for their work. To them any dry stick will
do for a lever, whether it be an honest fanatic, or
a dashing cavalier who likes to appear as the
Pobratim or adopted brother of the fairy Vila.
This idea has also fallen into the hands of the
Ultra-Liberal “party of action,’ who have no spite
against Turkey for herself, but who simply wish to
pull her down, in the hope of pulling down Austria
CIIA O.S. 320
in the general crash. This they will do, even at the
risk of only doing Russian work in the process, and
surrounding that empire with a ring fence or out-
work of petty masked despotisms of the Othonic
type, yielding her moral allegiance. If such action
comes with a bad grace from those who ate Turkish
bread at Kutaya, and were sheltered by Turkey
from the united vengeance of Austria and Russia
in 1849, it is not from ingratitude, but from the
consuming fire of patriotism, which burns up and
withers any tenderer sentiment. In this way the
rising wave of public sentiment, fed from unseen
and unfelt sources, is dashing itself in foam over
the rock of Downing Street, or saturating and
undermining the shifting sands of unsettled national
purpose, on which that rock is presumed to be
fixed. The Government sits calmly by, and makes
no effort to regulate or control the rising tide; it
rests and is thankful, or it murmurs: “After us,
the Deluge.”
It would be wrong to omit recent books of travel
from a summary of the elements which are causing
the present deflection or change of public opinion
towards Turkey. Most of these are records of
journeys in Syria, the most utterly confused and
disorganised of all Turkish provinces. The un-
330 CHAOS.
doubted complicity of some Turkish subordinates,
and the participation of Turkish soldiers in the
horrible massacres which occurred there, have been
by far the most just and natural cause of our indig-
nation and discontent. But Syria has a special
character, and must be treated specially. The most
undiluvian of our wars passed over Turkey in
general without leaving in the country a single
English student of native languages and character;
hardly a single traveller; and we have had no books
of travel during and since that period other than
the slightest and most trifling. The impartial or
slightly biassed works of Thornton and Slade, full
of sound information, and the more strongly biassed
work of Macfarlane, have not been followed up by
other works of corresponding, or in any way of
approaching, value. Mr. Senior's compilation, con-
scientious and, to him who knows how to under-
stand it, valuable as it is, forms no exception. It
consists of a mass of evidence relating to Turkey,
good, bad, and indifferent, often utterly contra-
dictory in matters of fact, set before the public in
the form of a diary, without being accompanied
with any test or means of criticism and discrimi-
nation. There is more that is valuable, and more
that is worthless, in this book than in any I know
CHAOS. 331
of the same size and method: but previous know-
ledge, and the power of cross-examining the per-
sons who are placed in the witness-box, can alone
determine which is which. The evidence against
Turkish slander and calumny may be given by a
man on the brink of dismissal from his country's
service for calumniously traducing a functionary of
his country, with the slander hot in his mouth: the
evidence against Turkish roguery and corruption
may be given by a future convicted felon: the
precious concentrated thoughts of the ablest public
servant in the East may be commented on and
pawed over by illiterate Levantines, no more able
to understand them than a kitten to understand
chess; what we hear may be the invective of Clodius
against lady-killers, and of Catiline against Cethegus;
and all this is passed off upon the public as of equal
value with the evidence of scholars, historians, and
statesmen; of Slade and Alison, of Wyse and Finlay.
The book is like a bagful of jewellery turned out
in a heap before our eyes; it contains precious
diamonds, glass, and paste; but to distinguish one
from the other is impossible, except for those who
happen to be jewellers already.
I have only space for indicating, by one final
instance, the method adopted in discrediting and
332 O
CHAOS.
damaging the Turks in our opinion, for an in-
terested purpose. At the time of the Montenegrin
War of 1862, a correspondent of the ‘Times’ wrote
as follows from Scutari, in Albania, under date of
* August 29:- During the whole war the Turks
have not taken a single prisoner; and it is only
quite lately that some Albanian Irregulars have
been preserved from the usual fate which attended
them if they fell into the hands of the Turks,
namely, mutilation of the most horrible kind and
death.' Now, it is quite possible that the word
“Turks,’ in the second clause, may have been mis-
printed or miswritten for the word ‘Montenegrins,’
the hereditary enemies of Albanian Irregulars; and
the apparent intention of antithesis between the
two clauses may help to bear out this view. Nor,
on the other hand, should I feel justified in ventur-
ing on so sweeping and absolutely negative a state-
ment as that no Albanians had been bullied or
bribed, or cajoled into deserting the Turks and
making common cause with the Montenegrins, see-
ing that no efforts, spiritual or temporal, had been
spared for the purpose of making them do so. All
I can say is that I never heard of any Albanians
actually so cooperating ; and I have been told, in
answer to a special enquiry, by a gentleman of
CHAOS. 333
the highest possible authority on these subjects,
thoroughly acquainted with the Servian language,
and for many years resident in Bosnia and North
Albania, that no such cooperation ever occurred.
This counter-statement I do not give as absolutely
true, but only to be taken for what it is worth
against the statement of one who has not resided in
these provinces and who does not know their lan-
guage. But, as the sentence stands, and so long
as no explanation is given of the appearance of the
Albanians on the other side, the Turks are repre-
sented as having intended to massacre their own
side. Anyhow, whether the tangle in the sentence
be an artificial snare, or a natural entanglement 8,S
regards the one point, it is our concern to look and
see who are the great rams, the bell-wethers, and
the weaklings of our literary flock who have been
caught in the thicket, and who have ardently
embraced the doctrine sought to be established, at
all events by insinuation, that the Turk showed
himself different in kind from the Montenegrin;
that, being irredeemably vile and bad, he has
placed himself out of the pale of humanity, and is
only to be treated as a wild beast. Three writers
at least have taken this sentence as the ground-
work of their conclusion to that effect: Mr. Gold-
334 CHAOS.
win Smith, a writer in the ‘Saturday Review,’ and
a writer in the ‘Illustrated Times.”
Two of these do not require a special comment.
The third is one of the most brilliant public writers,
and, what is a better thing, the most independent
thinkers of the day, not to say one of the hardest
hitters. I fear I may come in for some of the hard
hitting, but I cannot help regretting that he should
not have enquired into the truth of his premisses
before deducing his conclusion, and enforcing it
with all the fervour and glow of rhetoric. Putting
on one side the queer hitch about the Albanians,
which, if truly stated, is at least a striking his-
torical novelty, it might have been enquired
whether the Montenegrine, of whose practices no-
thing is even hinted in this letter, was not as bad
as the Turk. As for the latter, the Pasha of
Scodra himself declared that the Irregulars, and
even the Turkish Regulars, were exasperated and
reckless, and did not spare their prisoners. He
said nothing about torture, nor do I know any-
thing about it. The above is the only direct
evidence I know on the subject, and it suffices to
bring the charge of cruelty home to the Turks.
Now for the Montenegrines. We have the direct
evidence of Englishmen who saw Turkish soldiers
CHAOS. 335
on board ship at Corfu, on their way round to
Constantinople; men who had passed through the
hands of the Montenegrines with noses and ears cut
off, and otherwise ill-treated and mutilated. The
lowest estimate of their number which I heard
was from an avowed “Philo-Montenegrine,’ and it
put them at eight; but I only give this as a
minimum; and the number at the actual seat of
war must of course have been greater. Details on
the matter were given in a letter inserted in the
“Morning Post' of that time, bearing, I think, inter-
nal evidence of having been written by the Corfu
harbour-master. There is no doubt that Sir
Henry Storks's despatches have told the same tale.
These men were fortunate to have escaped with
their lives. It has always been the practice of the
fierce mountaineers to put their prisoners to death,
and themselves to die fighting rather than fall into
the enemies' hands alive. This alone would account
for few or no prisoners being taken from them.
The story is well-known and often repeated, though
it is perhaps mythic, of their having offered to cut
off the head of a wounded Russian officer, their
comrade during their joint campaign against the
French, to save him from being taken captive. It
is not as a reproach that I seem to throw this in the
336 CHAOS.
teeth of the Montenegrines, for I am convinced that
they have repented of the practice, and are most
unlikely to repeat it; but there is no alternative so
long as their past cruelty is suppressed for the
purpose of deliberately blackening the Turks. It is
not interest, nor fear of Russia, nor depravity of
sentiment, nor even, as it is now said, senility
which breeds our fits of reaction in favour of the
Turks—it is the foul play and virulence of those
who write them down.
As for what is said about the Turks’ “usual
practice of horrible mutilation,’ it must be either
true or false. If true—and it is stated as unre-
servedly true, true now and at all times, with-
out improvement or palliation—it is utterly dis-
graceful that any English officer should hold, or
have ever held, a Turkish commission, or wear a
Turkish order; and I have no doubt Sir Adolphus
Slade will at once break his sword across his knees
when satisfied of its truth. If false, it must be
the result of ignorance or of calumny; and the
context may determine whether these are or are
not malignant as well. The statement is given
broadly and without limitation; and it is no more
use to justify it by appealing to all the horrors of
Scio and Damascus, than in recriminating with the
CHAOS. 337
horrors of Tripolitza and Athens and the sickening
tale of Cerigo. It is not for us to cast the first
stone at the retaliatory vindictiveness or the cruelty
of proud or patriotic races. Nor is it for us to
unlearn the lesson so lately taught us, that detailed
narratives of horrors are, as often as not, mainly
fictitious, the outburst of myth-creating power and
of credulity on the part of a heated and panic-
stricken imagination.
It is instructive to contrast the wise moderation
and the precision, born of special knowledge, with
which we habitually discuss practical Turkish mat-
ters connected with trade, finance, or other current
business, such as railway and telegraph projects, or
the Suez canal scheme, with the hazy sentimen-
tality, masking ignorance of detail, and the cre-
dulous acceptance of unsifted statements, usually
brought to bear on purely political or ‘nationalistic’
questions. The less such questions are insulated
and treated on their own merits, the more they can
be stretched or cut down to fit a Procrusteam bed
of prejudiced generalisation, the better and more
practical do we seem to think our work. Dissipate
the haze, unmask the ignorance, and trace the
generalisations down to particulars; you will get
nothing but a jumble of contradictions, and a be-
Z
338 CHAOS.
Wildering dazzle of cross-lights, or a mere pile of
‘sensation 'metaphors, original and traditional, of
old and new mots from the last clever traveller, and
of sayings “combining moral truth with phrases sich
as strikes.' The Turk is, as we all know, a sick
man; he will always be called so; and Nicholas
never achieved a greater triumph than when Sir
Hamilton failed to cap the imperial mot with some
ready rejoinder of his own. The Turk is encamped
in Europe. The Turk boasts that no grass will
grow under his horse's hoofs. The Turk not only
has no business in Europe, but himself believes that
he has none, and that he is doomed to go to Asia,
which fully accounts for the cypress trees in the
Scutari burial-ground; also, according to the cele-
brated Dr. Cumming, for the bazar caiques, or
water-omnibuses, taking passengers across the
Bosphorus. The effrontery with which traveller
after traveller goes on repeating this pure fiction,
for all the world as though he had heard it himself
and knew all about it, is something wonderful. The
Turk is an irredeemable scoundrel, who has lost the
‘grand but dangerous’ virtues which he had before
Lepanto. At best, like the Pickwickian green-
grocer who waited at the Bath swarry, he is an
‘inattentive reskel’ and a “low thief,' if not an
, unreclaimable blaygaird.’ The Turk is naturally
CHAOS. 339
a reforming animal on the whole, prone to improve-
ment, and one who has reformed during the past
generation more than any other European state—as
indeed he might do, and yet leave a pretty wide un-
reformed margin. The Turk is an ‘Asiatic.” The
country from which he came was considered by the
ancient world, which gave us the term ‘Asia,’ and
by the Asiatic world itself, to be thoroughly un-
Asiatic and opposed to Asiatic, under the respective
names of Scythia and Turan. The European Turk
‘ desolates the fairest regions of the earth.” The
south of European Turkey, under the name of Thrace,
was once a byword for inhospitable bleakness of
climate and ready-made desolation; as Eothen may
have remembered when he rode from Adrianople in
the icy wind, and as those did not remember who
sent the first detachment of troops to shiver in
light summer clothes under a blinding snowstorm
of four and twenty hours, when the Himalaya first
appeared in the Bosphorus in the middle of April
1854. The Turk is to be ‘driven to his original
seats in Asia.’ It has not yet been ruled which are
his original seats—whether Mecca and Medina, by
right of his religion, or Mr. Atkinson's country in
the parts beyond Balkash, or nothing more than
Asia Minor, where he is to have it out of the Ar-
7, 2
340 CHAOS.
menians in return for letting go of the Greeks. He
has less brains than we have, and his forehead re-
cedes at an acute angle; and I am very much afraid
that the worthy man who said this of him had
himself an intellect which receded at too acute an
angle when he sharpened his wits against the consul
at Sycopolis, and got dismissed for his pains. Six
millions of Daco-Thracians, and six more millions
of Thraco-Dacians, the noblest races of the world,
groan under the yoke of a vile Asiatic horde of only
600,000. After reading this, or something like it,
as I once did in a Greek newspaper of Trieste,
One is apt to think what devils of fellows the horde
must be, and to go off on the tack not intended by
the writer. There is less crime in Turkey than
anywhere. There is more crime in Turkey than
anywhere. And so on without end.
The Greek is degenerate. He is regenerate. He
is neither one nor the other, but the same as ever.
He is both at once, being utterly corrupt and de-
graded by Turkish rule, and at the same time as fit
for self-government as a New Englander: this being
the happy country where you can eat your cake and
have it. He is so bad and shocking, because he has
not a drop of ancient Greek blood in his veins. He is
“la même canaille qui éxistait aux jours de Thémis-
CHAOS. 341
tocle,' and that is why he is so bad. These are also
the reasons which make him so good, so full of pro-
mise and performance all at once, and Sofit to ‘carry
the torch of liberty and Christian progress to en-
lighten the enslaved and benighted races of the East.’
The Wallachian is the bravest warrior in the world,
because he is descended from the Romans, to say
nothing of the Dacians. So says Madame Dora
d'Istria. The Wallachians and the Neapolitans are
the two races in Europe who are so utterly unwar-
like and spiritless, that you can make nothing of
them as soldiers; they are hopeless, for it is not in
them. So said an Austrian officer to Mr. Paget in
Hungary. The Servian, who knows the value of
sacred bards, and is uppermost over here just at
present, is an eager fiery warrior of the Cross, athirst
for civilisation, and anxious to help the Greek in
carrying the torch of liberty, or, indeed, to snatch
it from his hands if he does not move on fast enough.
The Servian is an honest sluggish peaceful yeoman,
wishing to live and to let live, who does not in the
least want to follow to the field any warlike lord,
but whose only care is to increase his store, and
keep himself at home to feed pigs for the great
three-decked floating stye-castles of the Danube.
He is devoted to his Prince and his Prince's
342 CHAOS.
dynasty. He does not care about him, if indeed,
he does not actively dislike him, because of over-
taxation, espionage, and the fret caused by a petty
bureaucracy: so that he has an inner domestic
‘groan 'over and above his ‘groan' as a victim of
barbarous Turkish suzerainty. The Turks got up
the quarrel at Belgrade in order to kill off the
Christians. The Servians got it up themselves.
The Turks bombarded the town in a panic. They
bombarded it because they had orders from Con-
stantinople. They bombarded it because it's their
nature to. The Mussulmans of Servian race in
Bosnia, a million of men more or less, are the
haughtiest and most fanatical of European Moslems.
They are to be the soonest converted to Chris-
tianity; and this will be done off the reel by means
and for the sake of the ‘idea of nationality’so soon
as the Turks are “driven to Asia,’ which, to be
sure, will give you a very good kind of Christianity
to begin with. The borderer of Servian race in
another country, under the name and aspect of
“South Sclavonian,’ is the actual incarnation of
every military and civic virtue; he is to cry for all
he wants, and what he cries for he is to get. The
same man, under the name of Croat, is a bravo, a
bully, an Austrian Bashi-Bozuk, the hateful minion
CHAOS. 343
of a vile despot. All these countries, great and
small, have in their time been ‘bulwarks of Chris-
tianity against the infidel;" all of them are now,
or are going to be, ‘Piedmonts,’ except, indeed,
the Turkish part of Turkey itself, which is slow at
analogies, and does not see what a case can be
made by calling itself a Piedmont, with a mission
towards Persia and Bokhara. When any of these
races has produced a Cavour, it will be time enough
to call itself a Piedmont. As for the ‘bulwark’
view, which even Wallachia has taken to herself,
the only real “bulwarks’ were the kingdoms of
Hungary and Poland, and, infinitely more than all,
the Republic of Venice : and much good it has
done any of them with the rest of Christendom.
Last of all comes our old forgotten flame, Circassia.
The Circassian, too, is a hopeless and foredoomed
Asiatic reprobate; besides being a slave-dealing
ruffian, which last is a capital stone for flinging
at his head just now. But, by way of funeral
obsequies, and as a parting salvo over the grave of
his ‘nationality,’ we have adopted the name of
Caucasian into our science, in order to represent
everything that is most purely and typically
European, not to say Jewish at the same time:
and he himself has gone off to destroy European
344 CHAOS.
patriots, and do all other behests of his new master
assigned him as a task, on the principle of an honest
man being set to catch an honest man.
A nice mess it is, certainly, and a fine muddle.
What I have given as a sample is, after all, but a
few bricks from the house, a few potsherds from the
heap. I cannot undertake to sift the heap in this
place. Much of it is mere error, wilful or uninten-
tional; some of it is fair and natural divergence,
which can be reconciled without difficulty; very
little of it is the result of actual contact and direct
intercourse between the Englishman and the
stranger. The two main and seemingly divergent
currents of such English opinion about Turkey, as
really springs from genuine intercourse with that
country, appear more at variance with each other
than they actually are. The diplomatist resides
entirely at the capital; the provinces are to him a
mere abstraction, except in recent and rare instances;
and in the Ordinary exercise of his profession he
sees nothing but Turkey as a victim; Turkey
bullied, encroached upon, and brow-beaten; Tur-
key with short measure and false weights dealt out
to her in the first moral principles of Christianity
by those whose lips are always wet with the watch-
words of Christianity. Interest apart, his feelings
thus come naturally to be enlisted in favour of
CHAOS. 345
Turkey, and many travellers and writers are found
to reflect his lights for the public at home. The
Englishman who holds no office, the merchant, the
railway or telegraph superintendent, the man set in
authority over Turks, the lawyer, and many other
classes, see nothing of the diplomatic encroachments
and foul play themselves; but they are face to
face with venality and rascality every day of their
lives; in the provinces they see countless instances
of unequal justice, and unfair, often contumelious
or oppressive, treatment towards the subject races;
by profession, interest, or antipathy, they are often
actively opposed to Turks, and their mind becomes
tinged, at least on the surface, with the colour of
vehement hostility. This, in Turkey, is rarely
accompanied with any corresponding feelings of
active sympathy towards the said subject races,
whose qualities are not such as to endear them to
Englishmen on the spot and away from home.
The consuls, living wholly in the ill-governed pro-
vinces, are politicians one day, and merchants,
advocates, or judges the next; they come under
both of these influences, and their fluctuations of
opinion may easily be traced in their reports. Yet
no diplomatist would wish to support Turkish rule
otherwise than as a provisional rule, and on any
other condition than that of progressive reform of
346 CHAOS.
abuses, which, if Turks do not undertake it, must
be enforced on them—without wounding their self.
respect if possible—but still enforced. The gist of
our diplomacy in Turkey is contained in the motto
Over Westminster School, which should be written
over the Sublime Porte, and perhaps, indeed, over
Government House at Calcutta, or the palaces of
any dominant race: Aut disce aut discede, manet
Sors tertia, Caedi; though in our case in India it is
Doce ut discedas.” Nor, on the other hand, do I
know of any non-official Englishman in Turkey,
honest, and qualified by character and experience
to form an opinion, whose hatred of Turkish abuses
blinds his judgment to the fact that those abuses are
diminishing, even though not so fast as he would
wish, and that our imperial policy towards Turkey
is both expedient for all parties and right in itself.
He would like to stand with a lash over both the
Turk and the ambassador at their work, to bring it
down on their shoulders if they failed to ‘toe the
mark,' and to keep them up to the standard, so lofty
in idea, yet so perfectly practical, laid down in the
despatches of our great diplomatist. All English-
* The last words may be of my application, but the idea is that
of an illustrious statesman lately deceased—Mountstuart Elphin-
stone—clarum et venerabile momen.
CHAOS. 34.7
men who have a real knowledge of Turkey, when
thoroughly cross-examined, will be found to stand
upon the ground of one common principle. With-
out such cross-examination, any opinion or any
fact may be extracted from their words which any-
body may wish to find. I pass over altogether the
words of those who seem to be emptying the vials
of honest wrath over the Turks, but are mere vitriol
throwers after all.
The mots and metaphors about Turkey are out
of all proportion in excess of real facts or of opinions
founded on real facts. They are thus apt to become
dangerous, besides being often in themselves worth-
less; for they serve to stay the stomach of inquiry,
and make us content with a mere otiose habit of
taking things for granted. The Turk, for instance,
besides being a sick man, is a dying man. He is
dying rapidly; or sometimes, in unmetaphorical
phrase, the Turkish population is dying out rapidly.
But this happens to be exactly the point on which
we require statistics, and not similes. Having our
imagination pleased and satisfied with the figure of
speech which compares him to a dying man, we do
not think it worth while to enquire whether his race
is declining at the rate of one per cent, a year or of
ninety per cent. a year; and there is not one man
348 CHAOS.
in England, or out of it, who is able to give a
conclusive, or even an approximative, answer, to
this all-important question. I am not talking of -
fools willing to rush in, nor of angels—who have
nothing to do with Turkey—fearing to tread; I
only say that no one, as yet, is competent to answer
this question as a whole, or to do more than contri-
bute a possible quota of detached local information.
We may pay very dearly for sensation metaphors,
and have done so before now. How much did we
Once pay for the sensation metaphor of calling
Herat the key of India—the key of an open outer
gateway, hundreds of miles wide, in which no gate
had ever been built, let alone the lock on the gate?
Perhaps we may pay equally dearly some day for
the torch of liberty; or the Cross on St. Sophia,
before we have decided which Cross; or the absurd
romance of the Turks all going over to be buried in
Asia. I must stop to say a word or two on this
last point. At certain periods of their history,
especially after great reverses, the Turks have un-
doubtedly had superstitious misgivings as to the
impending downfall of their empire in general.
I believe Prince Cantemir is the first to have noticed
this, and he is a good, though not an unimpeachable,
authority. Dr. Russell, the author of the work on
CHAOS. 349
Aleppo, a thoroughly trustworthy man, himself
heard such a superstition from the mouth of a Turk
of Konia. But all this has reference to their rule
as an imperial race, as the successors and inheritors
by conquest of the Caesars of Rome and their
dominions. This belief of an imperial inheritance,
combined with devoted loyalty to his own ruling
family, is deeply rooted in the breast of every
Ottoman, and distinguishes him from all other
Orientals. He knows nothing and cares nothing
about this continent and that continent, and the
European words which denote them; his whole
heart is in the imperial city, which, however much
the arch of conquest may be a tottering one, is still
the keystone of the arch, and in which it is his care
to bury the remains of his sovereigns and great men
with something of Superstitious persistence and
veneration. I never myself met with any Turk
who either entertained or reported this fancy about
burying in Scutari, nor do I know of anybody else
who has; but I have met persons who know more
about Turks and their ways, and who have lived
more with them than have any Europeans, to my
knowledge; and these utterly deny the existence of
any idea of the kind. I shall believe it when I
believe that the mouveaua riches of Belgravia send
350 CHAOS.
their dead bodies to be buried in Kensal Green
cemetery, because they consider themselves only
encamped in the favoured regions south of the
Knightsbridge Road, and superstitiously look for-
ward to a time when they will be driven to their
original seats in the farther Tyburnia. The largest
cemetery near a great city is generally the best
place for burying its dead, and anybody wanting
further information had better get it from the
undertakers, and not from the poets.
I cannot leave this part of the subject without a
word or two about the “torch of liberty and pro-
gress’ which the Greeks are predestined to carry,
as being the most ‘advanced and intelligent' race
in these countries. This is a view which appeals
most strongly to the imagination, and I believe it
has much weight and influence among the ablest of
our statesmen and our public writers. It has, of
course, the voice of every Greek in its favour, but
that will not go for much with the class—still a
numerous one—which looks on a Greek as moved
by the same impulses and prepossessions as any
other human being. But the limits of the Greek
race—however they might have extended them-
selves thirty years ago—are now defined and fixed
by that uprising of the Bulgarian nationality in an
CHAOS. 351
anti-Greek sense, which I have already mentioned
in some detail. Time may prevail over any oppo-
sition offered by this; the Greek cannot do so at
present, for he cannot overcome the Bulgarian, nor
lead him, nor incorporate him. He is of a less nu-
merous and not of a superior race; his mind is more
keen but less solid; roughly speaking, he is to the
Bulgarian as the clever Calcutta Baboo to the raw
material of the English non-commissioned officer;
his admixture with the Bulgarian would give each
race a share of qualities now wanting to it; but
such admixture on a large scale would only swamp
the less numerous race. Far more powerful than
this as evidence to disprove the correctness of the
above view must be considered the actual Greek
character itself. One of its mainsprings, perhaps
its most important one, is the strength of its an-
tipathy. This is the result of his own Imperial
dominion, of his degradation under the Turks, and
of his imperial sway within the Turkish rule, as a
slave and a despot at once. He has lost the faculty
of sympathy, and has paid this price for the pre-
servation of his national life. His bitter spirit of
antipathy has preserved to him an indestructible
and iron-bound nationality, which may be diluted by
commixture, but can never be crushed by force. He
352 CHAOS.
is no more foredoomed to one character and repro-
bate from the beginning than the Turk: the rigidity
of his antipathy must gradually relax and be thawed
into sympathy with his neighbours who are different
from himself; but time alone can effect this, and
when this is effected, he will be other than what he is
now. His forefathers had no sympathy with aliens,
but they had a thirst for abstract knowledge and a
strong spirit of enquiry; he himself has neither one
nor the other, except so far as conducive to his
merest material interests and every-day business;
and without these he cannot hope to influence or
rise superior to Armenians, Bulgarians, or Turkish
peasants. His church was and still chiefly is the
symbol and the mainstay of his nationality; its
ritual and doctrines cannot be transgressed or ques-
tioned for a moment without the utterance of trea-
son against that nationality; and, if either living
spirituality, or freedom of thought in religious
matters, be better than dead ritualism, there actually
seems more likelihood of their being found among
the countrymen of Omar Effendi, preaching some-
thing like open Protestantism in the streets of Brusa,
than among those who hound on the public against
and prosecute Lascarato and Kairi.
I have only treated of one or two out of the
CHAOS. 353
number of clever sayings and fallacies which form
our current talk about Turkey, and even to do this
has largely encroached on my space. These do not
matter very much, after all, so long as we confine
them to our own current literature, and consume
our own smoke at home; but honour as well as
interest urge us to keep contradictions, elementary
ignorance in matters of fact, a priori views, or the
evolution of noble Turks and noble Rayahs out of
the mere operations of inner consciousness, as far
as possible away from the debates of our great
national assembly. A debate respecting Turkey,
conducted without an object, without knowledge,
and, by some at least, without any definite princi-
ples of attack or defence, took place last year in the
House of Commons. I was in Turkey at the time
it occurred; and I wish to bear distinct testimony
to the fact that the character of our country was
not improved by that debate in the opinion of
leading men in Turkey, whether Turkish or other
than Turkish. This debate certainly did much
good in one way, but I do not think that was in
the way for which it was originated. Everybody
was startled into a show of activity, if not the
reality. The ambassador began to instruct the
consuls, and the consuls began to reprove the
A. A
354 CHAOS.
Pashas, and the pashas began to imprison the tax-
gatherers, and the taxgatherers began to refund
their squeezings to the peasants—just as the water
began to quench the fire. and the fire began to burn
the stick, and the stick began to beat the dog; and
it needed a column full of gossip in the ‘Illustrated
News' to poke fun at all the superhuman debaters
before people found out that after all it did not
matter so very much. In other respects it did
greater harm. Not so much—though that was
something—by the exceeding animosity and bad
blood shown on the subject, most demoralising
to the weaker heads of those classes whose pre-
sumed causes were advocated; nor yet by the
amateur and debating-society tone of the whole
proceeding, only paralleled by the way in which
we make such friends of the Italians every year by
holding public disputation on the non-execution of
their Hatti-Humayun and on the wrongs of those
oppressed Christians the Bourbons: but by the
open display to friend and foe of the sad nonsense
which some of us greedily swallow, and others of
us allow to pass current uncontradicted and un-
challenged. One man tells you he knows that
there are six millions of Greeks, and hurls his fact
as a triumphant rejoinder at the head of a previous
CHAOS.
3
5
5
speaker who had talked of three millions—itself
probably an over-statement, though a very slight
one, and with Finlay's great authority on its side.
Another dilates with much dogmatism on the most
incredible muddle in the way of statistics I ever
read, given on the authority of ‘two clever men’—
one clever man, indeed, could hardly have invented
them—and he winds up with the convincing state-
ment that there are ‘only ten thousand Turks in
Samos.' Ten thousand, indeed; why there are not
ten score! But the whole world may see, and
profit by the sight, that nobody knew or cared to
say that Samos has been for thirty years past a
semi-detached province in the same category as
Moldavia and Wallachia, with its own prince and
its own constitutional assembly; that, during the
period between 1851 and 1858, after attention
had been called to it by a revolt consequent on
the delinquencies of a Fanariote absentee prince,
it was wisely and excellently governed by a
Wallachian—must I say the one Wallachian 2
of integrity and patriotism, M. John Ghika; and
that under this gentleman's rule it rose to a height
of prosperity which, for aught I know to the con-
trary, it may have retained since his return, at the
higher call of patriotism, to his own country when
A A 2
356 CHAOS.
united with Moldavia: having been, in fact, a model
of what these tributary principalities can be and
ought to be under good management, and let alone
by foreign intrigue. And so on throughout the
debate. All this stuff being thrust into a legiti-
mate discussion of a question which may fairly be
considered an open one, how far the Turkish
governor's conduct at Belgrade in 1862 was or
was not censurable, and whether the continued
Turkish occupation of that and other forts in
Servia is expedient, if morally right. What do
speakers of this kind imagine that native Christians
who have seen the world think and say of their
advocacy? What is thought of a country when
its government is likely to be moved by this sort
of thing? We could afford the discussion on the
English country-house at Therapia which followed
it—that was good fun enough in its way. What
with the man who had been there and thought it
was three miles from Pera, and the wary veteran,
tongue in cheek, rejoining that it was six, with or
without knowledge that it was twelve, and the man
who said that the town-house at Pera had a view
of the entrance of the Black Sea, twenty-five miles
off, the English residents in Turkey got as much
fun for their money as if they had gone home to
see Lord Dundreary. But in higher and political
CHAOS. 357
matters we cannot afford to talk on what we do
not understand.
The stress of unfavourable opinion against the
Turks, however unjust and wrong in many of the
details by which it is sustained, has a wholesome
bracing effect and even a welcome rigour with
Turkish statesmen of the reforming school. But,
as an odious insular egotist, I had almost rather no
Turk should reform and no Greek grow to freedom
than that we should lower our character and weaken
our influence by talking nonsense. Here is the
best part of the East, so far as I know it; the best
Greek, the best Turk, the best Montenegrine—I do
not venture to add the best Servian, because I have
no knowledge to authorise my doing so—all joining
in the cry of ‘Save me from my friends.” Among
Turks, statesmen like Fuad and Ahmed Veſyk,
though certainly not without a healthy human
appetite for public praise, have had enough of
flattery in Western papers about ‘les intentions
bienveillantes de notre auguste maitre ; and they
gladly turn to their English newspaper for opinions
and criticism which they know to be generally im-
partial, according to its lights. As for abuse, they
have a fine humour, a thick skin, and a most
creditable career; and they have therefore been
able fully to enjoy being called ‘infamous ruffians
358 CHAOS.
from the Haymarket.’ It is the Greek and the
Servian who are exposed to more risk of being
relaxed by the enervating breath of feckless
sympathy, or demoralised by finding that men who
have the power of making and unmaking the
government of a great country can become the
ready instruments of their pettiest intrigues or
their wildest dreams. Men like Ahmed Vefyk do
not believe that everything is always going on for
the best in the best of all possible Ottoman empires:
nor are men who stand at the head of their nation,
like the Rallis, unaware that what Greece wants
is the naturalization of a greater idea than the
great idea of aggrandisement. There was a deeper
feeling among the Greeks in the autumn of 1862
than exultant dexterity at the dodge of slamming
King Otho's own door in his face. It was an
active uprising of the nation's conscience in revolt
against intrigue and corruption and dynastic am-
bition working under the cloak of a vague but
ardent popular aspiration, and thus seething the
Greek kid in its mother's milk. It was a most
emphatic declaration in favour of the righteousness
of our policy towards the Greek race. It was not
Philhellenic, nor rhapsodical, nor doctrinary Eng-
land that touched their conscience and roused their
enthusiasm. It was cold, dry, unsympathising,
*.. CHAOS. 359
diplomatic England; England believing that en-
gagements imposed on her by treaty are equally
binding, whether made with church-goers or
mosque-goers: England not as a gay green young
sapling, but a stiff jointed old oak, indisposed to
follow the first Greek that comes in the guise of
Orpheus for the mere tuning of his lyre: England
that preserves Turkish rule not for the sake of
Turkish rule, but for the sake of sheltering the
immature growth of future free nations against the
destroying blight of despotisms far more dangerous,
if not worse, than Turkey. It is not for us to
assign this reason officially and publicly as the
cause of our support of Turkey, nor to refer
to the philosophy of history as proving that all
dominant races must either absorb, be absorbed,
or perish; having only a life interest in the country
which they hold from generation to generation.
We cannot say this to Turks, nor take direct action
upon it, any more than they can say it to us; but the
ablest and most honest men among the tributary
races are well aware of it, and, taken in conjunction
with the utter absence of anything like territorial
ambition or low forms of selfishness in us, it be-
comes the great and increasing source of our power
with all classes, and of their most anxious desire
to obtain the sympathy and countenance of our
360 CHAOS.
Government, as well as the intelligent appreciation,
not the echoing platitudes, of our people. The
Greek had rather be reproved in Greek by a man
who understands him all through, than praised in
English by a man who has only worked his idea
of him out of his inner consciousness. How far our
position has been impaired by the premature cession
of Corfu, and subsequent haggling, I do not
know; but then I do not know to what extent the
making haste to cede and the repentance at leisure
shown in the haggling may not themselves have
been the result of a compromise in eacelsis between
our own Greeks fighting triumphantly for an idea
and our Trojans fighting for terms. Be this as it
may, our general policy in Turkey does meet with
the distinct approbation of the better and honester
class of natives of all persuasions; and, when these
are dissatisfied with that policy, it is because that is
occasionally ill administered, untrue to itself, and
carried out in a half-hearted way. Contrary opi-
nions have often been given of late, to which I shall
attach credence when I see that they come from
Englishmen capable of holding intercourse in its
own language with any Christian community in
Turkey, understanding its real and its ideal life,
and both able and willing to tell the truth and
distinguish truth from falsehood—but not till then.
CHAOS. 361
We have lent our ears too long to opinions which
are mere chaff and brass, or echoes of the wild
frenzies of young Athens, young Bucharest, or
young Belgrade. Those, indeed, are wofully mis-
taken who view the youth of these places by the
light of their experience of our own young Liberal
Oxford and Cambridge, or even of young France
or young Italy. I do not despair of seeing a whole-
some mistrust of unsupported facts about Turkey
coming from these sources arise among ourselves;
even when such facts bear official attestations which
are worth as much as would be the Official attesta-
tions of the Mayor of Gotham, Archbishop Hughes,
and General Corcoran, upon details of Saxon mis-
rule and tyranny if New York State were to find
itself three thousand miles nearer to Ireland. Nor do
I despair of young Athens actually studying ancient
Greek history some of these days, instead of merely
telling Europe that it does so; and of its showing
to the world that a Demosthenes and a Chares may
yet be found keen-sighted and patriotic enough to
perceive that the true danger to Greece cannot
come from the Great King, but from the European
despot.
I am not going at length into the particulars of
this policy, nor does it want more to justify it than
the unanimous voice of the Greek nation, such as I
362 CHAOS.
have above referred to, or than the forcible re-
marks of Continental Liberals such as M. Forcade,
which anybody who cares may find in one of
the autumn numbers of the ‘Revue des Deux
Mondes’ for 1862. Whether those whose official
routine and duty it is to defend and inculcate that
policy understand fully what constant vigilance and
exertion it requires, and with what anxiety the fore-
most men among Christian communities in Turkey
look to its efficient maintenance in all points, and
to the independence and integrity of English opi-
nion, I know not. But I know that when that
policy does not succeed, or seems to break down in
detail, it is because it does not work at full power
under a full head of steam; because the vessel is
often ill-equipped, ill-manned, or half-manned.
The diplomatic aggressions and the revolutions of
tributary provinces by which Turkey has been
assailed in the last fifteen years always occurred at
these periods of impaired efficiency with us. Thus
the Leiningen mission of 1852, when Austria was
made to render homage and service to Russia in ex-
change for the reconquest of Hungary, the famous
Menshikoff” mission which followed it, and the
* Will Mr. Kinglake allow me to correct his spelling’ The
Prince's name is written Menchikoff, according to his own signa-
CHAOS. 363
Belgrade revolution of 1858, were all timed to coin-
cide with a Conservative Ministry in Downing Street
and a Chargé d'Affaires at Constantinople—the
Conservative ministry not being inefficient because
Conservative, but because weak and known to exist
on sufferance. In the former instances it was no
wonder that the assault was so timed, for Our great
diplomatist had just bidden a solemn farewell to the
East before an assemblage of fellow-countrymen,
his hosts; he had shaken off the dust of his shoes
on a country of which he despaired, and turned his
face away for ever from a stiff-necked and unre-
penting generation that would not amend their
ways. Which things may help to convince people
that politics in Turkey are an active game of attack
and defence, and are not to be decided off-hand by
hopes, generous sentiments, and phrases about the
growth of Wallachia. So far as the cry for the
reversal of our Eastern policy is more than mere
baying at the moon, it means much the same thing
ture, after the French sounds of Roman letters; Menschikoff in
the German way; Menshikoff in our way. The three-pronged
Russian letter of the original is our sh. Any of these three will
do ; but not Mentohikoff, nor Mentschikoff, which give the
palatal sound of our ch, and are as bad as the ‘Times's' way of
always spelling Reshid Pasha Redschid Pasha—which should, for
very consistency, have been Padscha too.
364 CHAOS,
as the policy itself has always meant, only laying
exclusive stress on that part of it which consists
in compelling Turks to reform all their abuses,
render absolutely equal justice everywhere, and
make all vice and crime to disappear from their
portion of the earth. The seed of Turkish reform
has been already cast into the ground. It must
grow up into a tree, perfect and without blemish;
and grow up, too, in one night, like Jack's bean-
stalk. If not, Europe has been outraged, and the
Hatti-Humayun violated. Europe, armed and in-
dignant, will offer Turkey at the sword's point a
choice between the Code Napoléon, which will be
called Christianity to save appearances, helotry, or
the Lake Balkash; and the Russians, whose business
it will be to transport them to their original seats,
will probably be glad to give them return tickets.
These words may sound like irony, and are certainly
not written without irony; yet for all that they
are almost literally true. The Turk has got to
reform three steps for his Christian subjects' one
step. The chances are against him in so doing,
because he has to reform against the grain of his
religion, and does so with difficulty: while they, if
not reforming by reason of the ritual and dogmas
of their religion, imperfectly connected as these are
CHAOS. 365
in their minds with the morality which is its
essence, are at least thereby placed in direct unison
with the progress and civilisation of Western
Europe. The danger with us is lest, in over-zeal
for the name of Christianity, we play fast and loose
with the morality of Christianity, and view a treaty
with a Turk as less binding, or otherwise binding,
than one with a Christian. We must not be always
shouting ‘Ecrasez l'infäme’ in the Sultan's face,
or flying off at a tangent about the cross on St.
Sophia; we must learn to think straight on these
subjects, and examine for ourselves how far our
highest obligations as Christians affect our dealings
with unbelievers: if not from duty, at least from
interest. Those who are fond of working the Italian
analogy in favour of Turkish Christians often com-
pare the Sultan's power, as Caliph, to that of the
Pope; though the Sultan has not fallen to the Pope's
temporal weakness, he has got much of his spiritual
power; and a sovereign who can release a silk
merchant at Bokhara on the one hand, and arbitrate
among thousands of our Mussulman fellow-subjects
at Cape Town on the other, cannot be outraged
with impunity because his religious persuasion is
not ours. At any rate, whether we exchange our
old lamps for new lights; whether we follow mere
366 CHAOS.
will o' the wisps, as many of us are doing; whether
We are to be always going on seeing how far we can
sketch the Ottoman “formula,' fit the new European
‘fact,' or do something desperate for doing's sake, and
plunge bodily into chaos and black night, it behoves
us now and at all times to see whom we have got
to do our nation's work for us. Laissez-faire or
chaos, we want the most efficient of action and the
best of information. We want our country to be
served in Turkey, as everywhere else, by the most
perfect and highest type of English manhood; but
we want it there far more than anywhere else, for
our work is of a very special nature. We require
the best ambassadors, the best attachés, the best
interpreters, the best consuls, the best railway and
telegraph men, or ‘Anglo-Saxon’ pioneers, such as
those who have transferred the bustle and enterprise
of an American back settlement to the dreary wastes
by the Black Sea, untrodden by European foot since
Ovid. But we have not got these uniformly, and
we are very lucky when we can be said to have
them generally. The most remarkable fact in
Turkey, as I have said before, is the awakening of
subject nationalities, the rising cultivation of their
languages, and the utter untrustworthiness of their
talk about themselves when not properly controlled.
CHAOS. 367
But we have no Englishman who knows anything
whatever about Servian, about Bulgarian, or, be-
yond a moderate point, about Wallachian; very
few who know Turkish; fewer still who know mo-
dern Greek comprehensively, under all its various
aspects: yet the language of each nationality—
Turkish hardly excepted—is its life-blood. I say
nothing of the Arabian countries, and have all along
kept them separate from Turkey. In Arabic we
are very much better off. We have one English-
man in the Constantinople embassy, born and bred
in England, who is versed in both Turkish and
Greek, to whom the wickedness of the Eastern
world is as print—and but one alone. Though we
have among our public servants men of experience,
common sense, and extended intercourse with some
of these peoples; men possessed of the rare gift,
granted to so few, yet so indispensable in the men-
dacious East, the instinct of separating false from
true in a nation's statement; yet we have not got
that knowledge of their languages which gives us
sympathy with their ideal aspirations, as well as
insight into their real condition, and which alone
leads to the highest and most fruitful kind of action.
Those who revile our policy and our public servants
have usually neither the one nor the other. The
368 CHAOS.
consuls, the main supply of information to the nation
itself, through their reports presented to Parliament,
are, upon the whole, a meritorious body of men;
but this arises, not from uniformity of merit, but
from the average struck between great merits and
great defects. The merits are more conspicuous in
Turkey in Europe than elsewhere, because the con-
sulates there are more political and less trading in
their nature, and are therefore more generally filled
by Englishmen of a higher stamp than the once
common run of bankrupt merchants. Moreover,
by far the greater part of them have only been
established within a very few years, in consequence
of the pressure of political events: only it is greatly
to be regretted that their creation has always fol-
lowed, instead of preceding, such events, and that
the stable-door should never have been shut until
after the steed had been stolen. But among the
whole body we find comparatively few Englishmen
of full English blood and rearing; and even among
those born and reared in the Levant there are very
few who have a true fundamental knowledge of its
leading languages, and next to none of its subordi-
nate ones. Those who have such knowledge deserve
the greatest credit, for they have acquired it under
great difficulties. It is a great, though a common
CHAOS. 369
fallacy, to suppose that those who have only a mere
colloquial knowledge are thereby fitted for high
employment in the public service. They are, on
the contrary, unfitted for it; for they speak with
an accent and idiom identifying them, in the minds
of the ruling or educated classes, with the illiterate
or despised part of the community. Frenchmen
who study our literature are esteemed among us,
even though they discuss Hallam and Macaulay
with a strong foreign accent; but we should not
think much of one brought up in the Minories, for
all his fluent converse with us on its local topics
in its local accent and idiom. We want, throughout
Turkey, the multiplication of direct points of con-
tact between the Englishman of the best type and
the native leaders of the peoples and races—such
an Englishman as Colonel Leake, when on his pro-
motion at Ioannina, may best be held to represent;
such as our country is always able to produce with-
out stint when roused to the necessity of work.
There is no fear of Levantines ceasing to find
employment of some kind so long as a means of
easy transition and communication is required be.
tween the higher morality of England and the lower
morality of Turkey. We ourselves are obliged to
find some such means in India, where the standard
R B
370 CHAOS.
of morality, so far as I may speak on what I do not
know personally, seems far lower than in Turkey.
Such a connecting link between the two moralities,
for our outer public, may sometimes be found among
those who are loudest in vilifying Turkey.
How are we to get our Colonel Leake on his
promotion? A year ago, I should have pointed to
the Corfu garrison as a sufficient answer. If that
island had been in the hands of France, or of the
much-abused East India Company, it would at once
have been considered as a moral tete-du-pont of
Europe, thrown across the Adriatic ; the study of
the races and languages of the adjacent parts of the
mainland would have been officially and actively
encouraged, without any necessary after-thought of
future aggrandisement, but rather with a distinct
view to the benefit of the public service; and their
inhabitants would have been looked upon as actual
human beings, with living and growing Souls,
instead of mere bipeds, born to beat cover for
woodcock. This is not a sarcasm on the sportsmen,
be it understood, but on the authorities, who let
them live by sport alone. Could not the island
have been spared to us at the eleventh hour, if only
for one more hour in which to prepare an officer
or two for useful públic employment in Turkey *
CHAOS. 371
Even as it is, we have several who have acquired
some knowledge of that country within the last
year or two, by dint of walking tours in Albania,
undertaken in parties of three or four, and carried
out all over the country with as much safety as if
it had been Switzerland. But that was for the
sake of walking, and not for the sake of knowing
Turkey. I wonder how they would have succeeded
south of the Greek frontier, and it is quite fair to
express such a wonder. But the English occupation
of Corfu is now a thing of the past. The Embassy
at Constantinople, and perhaps those at Vienna and
St. Petersburgh ; the Legation at Athens, the Con-
sulates-General at Bucharest and Belgrade, all
seem likely, more or less, to afford favourable
training ground for future public servants of the
first class, in those countries where conflicts of
languages and nationalities may be expected to
arise. Some sort of experiment of this kind has
already been tried at Constantinople, and it is not
considered by the highest authority in these matters
to have been altogether, if at all, successful. But
its object, that of replacing Levantine dragomans
by Englishmen, for the purpose of official communi-
cation between the Embassy and the Porte, was not
exactly the same as that which I am now ad-
B B 2
372 CHAOS.
Vocating; the chief part of the original scheme, the
encouragement of travel in Turkey, was neglected
in some cases, and impossible in others; the rest
of it was only carried out in a very careless
and perfunctory way, and, as circumstances then
stood, could not have been otherwise carried out
Without unpleasantness to all parties. The scheme,
moreover, was deprived of its main hope and prop,
by the premature death, in Persia, of a young
gentleman of the greatest talent, and most unusual,
nay, special linguistic capacity and acquirements,
Mr. Almeric Wood. A man had rather work with
an old kind of tool which he knows, than with new
ones which he does not know ; and all the more so,
when the new tools are imperfect, and he has to
depend on the work itself to fashion and complete
them. A thoroughly efficient dragoman could not
be thrown away, perhaps in face of a political crisis,
for an unformed attaché. But now and hence-
forward, communication with the Porte, where
French is largely spoken, and where official notes
are often written in French, is of minor importance;
travel in Turkey, intercourse with the people, and
comprehension of the rising nationalities, especially
of the Bulgarians, are of paramount importance. It
is on the necessities of these points, the last in
CHAOS. 373
particular, that I rest my present case. But the
weight of a recognised authority is chiefly necessary
in this country, before a thing can be done, even
for its benefit. Such authority, I am convinced,
will not be wanting, if proof or guarantee be given
by any one, who may bring forward or comment
upon this subject, that his remarks will be abso-
lutely devoid of retrospective censure or criticism ;
and I am equally sure that those gentlemen, who
were selected to carry out the first and only partially
successful experiment, will gladly take the blame
on their own shoulders, and ascribe its want of
success to their own deficiencies, provided they can
secure that or any other authority, to advocate and
insist on the commencement of a new and far more
necessary work. It is not for me to presume to
point out how to choose men to enter this service.
Perhaps it cannot be done otherwise than by com-
petitive examination ; yet this may burden you
with a short-sighted invalid, who can no more sit
a horse than Coleridge when he enlisted in the
dragoons, merely for being the best hand at
answering questions like, ‘What did Mr. Kemble
mean, when he called English a dead language 2'
Not but that competitive examination is the best,
or the least bad, system to apply to a vast branch
374 CHAOS.
of the public service like the Indian Civil Service,
where you must have a system of some sort; but
in Turkey you want no system, and are better
without one. All I can do is, to call notice to the
type of man who should be selected, and who is as
often the product of the hunting-field as of the
study. More than one such man is wanted, and in
more than one place; for many different subjects
have to be learnt, and checks must be established
against possible one-sidedness, or enthusiasm. Time
is wanted; for every Englishman in Turkey who
is worth anything, or is likely to become so, has
to go through the stages of learning, unlearning,
and finally relearning, with a consciousness of his
own ignorance and a respect for the limits of his
knowledge: he has to pass through the Philhellenic
fever, or the Turkish fever, which is apt to become
the chief of its sequela, or the Servian or Montene-
grine fever, before his judgment becomes properly
hardened, and inured to the work of digesting the
information he receives. Money is wanted; only a
very little, it is true; but it is not usual with us to
apply even a very little in a new direction, and
without any immediate return. Still, penny wise
though we may be, I trust a penny or two may not
be considered thrown away in this matter. We, at
CHAOS. 375
all events, are not pound foolish—not like those
ridiculous and benighted Turks, who have actually
bestowed an annual subsidy of a sum equal to
seventy thousand English pounds on an incon-
venient and impracticable port in Thessaly for the
purpose of carrying the Greek and Thessalian
mails between that province and Athens: the
money is thrown into the AEgean, and all the
Rayahs eagerly rush over to the shores of free
Greece: yet the great despotic Ottoman organ, the
‘Asharru 'l Hanábigh' (the maker easy of things to
the conscience), cynically justifies a measure it can-
not prevent, because it serves to stop a Rayah cry.
Such a measure as that which I recommend may
probably be passed over on the ground that we have
already many young men belonging to the families
of our Consuls in the Levant who ‘know the lan-
guages,' and upon whom such appointments would
be most properly conferred. To this I altogether
demur; for, on the one hand, they do not ‘know
the languages,' as they should be known, unless
properly trained; and, on the other, they are not
Englishmen, but Levantines; and it is only English-
men that we want. Their parents, unless they have
enriched themselves by trade or otherwise, are
mostly men of small means, and often very inade-
376 CHAOS.
quately paid: they are rarely able to send their
sons home to England for education during the
most precious years of boyhood, and are thus often
compelled to see their children losing the English
nature day by day, and visibly acquiring the
uniform low Levantine moral type. It is not for
us to laugh at them for Levantines, or to bear too
hard on their short-comings, their narrowness of
mind, their follies, even their crimes. It is for us
to reclaim them and to make Englishmen of them;
and surely our Government is not so poor as to be
unable to come to the assistance of its consuls in
the Levant, and help them to some extent in ob-
taining an English education for their children.
Considering all the circumstances, I think we are
almost bound to do this. We must have English-
men in our public service in Turkey: if we do
not send out Englishmen, we must Anglicise our
Levantines, and for my part I think we can afford
to do both.
Upon the whole question of the appointment of
consuls, dragomans, and the like, I care not to enter
just at present. But I am afraid one bad consul
may do harm which two good ones can hardly
remedy; and good consuls in Turkey do not as yet
stand to bad ones in the proportion of two to one.
CHAOS. - 377
There is, perhaps, no use in advocating any system
in this point: things have improved much of late,
and may fairly be left alone as likely still further to
improve. Administrative Reform Associations will
not insure you against bad and worthless consuls,
for you cannot insure the associations holding
together; and the reformed popular rake who comes
out of them may often make the steadiest, not to
say the most unprogressive and somnolent, husband
for a public office. Competitive examination will
not so insure you. Parliamentary committees will
not; for the big fish break through the meshes of
their net, and the middling and little fish are not
worth having. The Roving Englishman, viewed as
a permanent institution like the Lama of Thibet,
might do a great deal of good; but then you must
keep up a permanent succession of them; and as
each attains Nirwāna and is absorbed into the
essence of the Deity through his goodness and the
practice of virtue, you must be sure to replace him,
hot and hot, with another scourge of consular and
diplomatic malefactors. District visiting, ajudicious
use of tracts, and appeals to conscience, among our
great London job-masters and job-mistresses who
have the right of selecting and rejecting, have as
yet been untried, and perhaps may have some
378 CHAOS.
effect in keeping the garden of consular employ-
ment free of weeds. My words are nearer to
earnest than to jest, for a consul in Turkey has
powers which he does not profess elsewhere: and
the light word or careless recommendations of a
fine lady may ‘desolate the fairest regions of the
earth’ as much as the tyranny of a pasha. The
weeds must be rooted out and cast into the fire
when they spread and are noxious. The day may
come when it will be felt as great a matter in
London as in Asia Minor that horror and desolation
should be spread over a whole province by a man
wearing British uniform: we cannot afford to
employ in Turkey the last new-converted Capuchin
friar or the last new deposit of the Syrian Orontes
in the Thames, merely to gratify the anile or the
clerical habit of patronage: it must surely seem
far better to Englishmen that the energy of parlia-
mentary enquiry should find vent in this direction,
even at the risk of disclosing details of the dis-
missal of consuls and the investigation of consular
delinquencies, rather than in talking nonsense about
Turks and Wallachians and illustrious Servians.
There are other sick things in Turkey besides the
sick man, though they are not half such good
subjects for declamation.
CHAOS. 379
Liberavi animam meam. I have gradually
worked my way round from ten-kreuzer notes
and Yugo-slavian wire-pulling to the state of our
public establishments in Turkey, the necessity for
improving or invigorating them, and the means
which I venture to think are the best for that
purpose. In so doing, I have addressed myself to
readers whose first regard is the efficient state of
their own country's service, and not to those whose
care is devoted, in the first instance or exclusively,
to redressing the real or imaginary wrongs of
Rayahs. Our policy in that country, violently
assailed, and now seldom adequately or clearly
explained to the outside public, does not seem to
satisfy our real wants, so far as we believe our-
selves to understand them, or to meet with a
defence which is at all capable of withstanding
the strength, the animosity, and the unity of pur-
pose shown in the attack. That policy, though
not likely to be reversed, is very likely to be held
in check and neutralised, or to dwindle into apathy
and feebleness, into laissez-faire without laissez-
Savoir. I sincerely hope I may never see
such a result; for my own part I believe that
policy might and ought to be quickened with a
new life, knowing as I do that all classes
380 CHAOS.
in Turkey look forward with hopefulness to such a
prospect, and with anxiety and dread to anything
which may weaken or impair it. That policy is
dual, for it is the expression of English dualism;
it is Liberal in one sense and direction, Conser-
vative in another: and its value lies in the honesty
of purpose and practical nature which are seen to be
at the root of this double tendency. As regards
the mere work of counteracting Russian aggressive
policy, that can be done cheaply and easily enough,
by simply paying for the annual subscription of all
the restless Voivodes and Hospodars and Princes
to the Kolokol, which will teach them that there is
a far different and grander Russia in the future
than the old intriguing and annexing Russia, with-
out an idea beyond the double spread-eagle of
intrigue and territory. We can save our pence in
this way. But we must also look to see that, after
putting the sick man in his coffin when much
breath is still in his body, we may have something
better to take his place than a nursery full of
fractious and rickety children. Seriously, one
branch must keep pace in its growth with the
other branch; if Turkish dominion is to be upheld,
the subject races of Turkey must be understood,
and must receive intelligent and disciplined sym-
CHAOS. 381
pathy from us. If not, and the country falls to
pieces, or is shattered to pieces, we must call
persons into existence to explain to us the dis-
order and the chaos which will arise, for few or
none such now exist. I speak for the public as well
as for the government; the public does not know
which way to turn in Turkish matters even in quiet
times, this way and that way dividing its not very
swift mind, or drifting with the words of the latest
clever man from the clubs and drawing-rooms,
fresh from Siluria and Pisidia. But to whom is
it to turn for guidance in the turmoil of a chaos,
in the agony of a struggle for life among all the
various races of Turkey, the destruction of the old
and less favoured forms of national life, and the de-
velopment of new ones under the process of natural
selection? Whatever the issue may be, active work
or passive observation, influence will be wanted
in one case, knowledge in the other; and, under
either contingency, real knowledge and influence
can only be obtained by the increased employment
of Englishmen. With a body of English gentle-
men of the true kind in the public service, ambas-
sadors and consuls dare not play juggling tricks in
their despatches, or suppress truth to order, as they
are rightly or wrongly alleged to do; nor, in the
face of their official reports, would mere declamation
382 CHAOS.
for declamation's sake dare to sustain itself for an
instant. Before men of this kind, we should have
our theorists and doctrinaires more respectful of
special knowledge and more cautious than they are
now; and they would perhaps abstain from seeking
to tear open the Turkish chrysalis with their un-
trained hands in order to fledge the Christian
butterflies. And from such men, whose insight
will be directed to the ideal as well as to the
material life of a nation, it is possible that the
Greek and the Armenian and the Bulgarian may
learn that there is a voice and a power in our
nineteenth century England which all the City
Articles and Mark Lane Expresses in the world
cannot explain to him. He will learn that there
is a greater idea in the world than imperial power,
for power's sake; and he will hear that even that
power is only to be obtained by those qualities of
self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self-control which
he has not got. And it is from our precepts as
well as our example that I trust all will rise equal
to the great fortune which is in store for them with
patience and opportunity, and that the future page
of their history will be inscribed with no records
but those of
Freedom, broadening slowly down
From precedent to precedent.
N O TE S.
—4–
I.
It may be interesting to add the subsequent history of
the Suliotes, gathered chiefly from the pages of Finlay.
Ali Pasha, from the very beginning of his career, had
been incessantly labouring to make himself an independ-
ent prince. He mistook the profound sagacity and
silent prudence of the Sultan Mahmoud II. for weakness,
and quietly defied him. The Sultan, however, became
alarmed at the power of Ali, and disgusted with his
cruelties, and in 1820 he deprived him of the Pashalik
of Ioannina, sending an army under the command of
Ismael Pasha, to enforce his degradation. The Ottoman
troops penetrated all the surrounding passes, and besieged
Ioannina, but their difficulties in such a country were so
great that they were compelled to look out for allies.
The Suliotes had now been seventeen years exiles in
Corfu, fed by Russia, France, and England, as each
became master of the Ionian Islands. By the Sultan’s
command they were invited to re-enter Albania, and to
attack Kiapha, the fortress built by Ali, and garrisoned
by his Mussulman Albanians. Ismael, however, forgot
to send them any rations, and the Suliotes, to prevent
themselves from starving, naturally levied provisions
from the peasantry of the Pashalik, who had been tribu-
384 NOTES.
tary to them in former times. Ismael was a bigot, and not
inclined to favour any Christian tribe; he resented these
depredations, and ordered the Suliotes to join his army
before Ioannina. Starving as they were, they were
compelled to obey; but, once there, they found them-
selves treated with scorn, exposed in all the most difficult
positions, ill-supported by the Ottoman troops, half-
starved and unpaid. º
Ali soon came to a knowledge of their grievances, and
was a witness of their excellent fighting, which indeed he
had proved greatly to his cost before. He opened
negociations with them, and in a short time they had
concluded an alliance with their once bitterest enemy.
In December 1820, the Suliotes quitted the Seraskier's
camp in the dead of the night, and were put into possession
of Kiapha, which contained vast stores of arms and
provisions. They soon re-took all the Christian villages
and mountain positions of their former territory, which
were occupied by the Ottoman troops. Immediately
after this was accomplished they formed a junction with a
corps of 1,500 Mussulman Albanians devoted to Ali.
Two months later, the Greek revolution broke out in the
Morea.
The peasantry, who had been serfs under the Suliote
confederacy, found their condition improved under Ali
Pasha during the exile of their mountain masters: they
therefore returned to their former allegiance with un-
willingness. The Suliote warriors were so reduced in
number that they were forced to seek recruits among
other Christian tribes; they were obliged to form a new
constitution among themselves, and, in fact, to organise
the confederacy anew. They found the Albanian
peasantry much influenced by Greek ideas; and they
NOTES. 385
were themselves almost unconsciously drawn into the
vortex of the Greek revolution. Once engaged in the
cause, embarked in it with vehemence and enthusiasm,
subsequently sacrificing even their beloved Suli to join
the modern Greeks. Their army now consisted of 700
men, but they had no tactics or science of war. They
refused to learn any. Every Suliote was independent
and self-important: he paid but a limited obedience to
the chief of the phara, and the chiefs of the pharas paid
as little to the commander-in-chief. For the defence of
their own mountains, their system was admirable ; any-
where else there was nothing but their bravery to depend
upon or to give them success.
The agents of the Greeks strongly urged the Suliotes
to give up the cause of Ali; but they refused to break
faith with the Mussulman Albanians who had so lately
assisted them. These latter, however, finding it im-
possible to cooperate with the Greeks in any way, se-
parated themselves in 1821 from the Suliotes, who
retired into their own mountains. After the death of
Ali and the suppression of the revolution caused by him,
the Greeks became most anxious to support the Suliotes,
and thus retain a force on the flank of the Turkish
army. But their position was now desperate: they had
wasted the stores shut up in the castle of Kiapha, and
they were reduced to starvation. Fortunately for them,
Omer Vrioni, the new pasha of Ioannina, was very
anxious to get rid of such dangerous neighbours, and he
offered them most favourable terms of capitulation. On
September 16, 1822, they bade adieu to their native
mountains, and, after receiving from the Turks the sum
of 200,000 piasters, they retired with their families to the
Ionian Islands. -
C C
386 - NOTES.
A year later 300 Suliotes enrolled themselves under
Lord Byron : the only result of which was, that they
thoroughly disgusted their new master by their rapacity,
pretension, and falsehood. His death followed a few
months after, and from this time it is impossible to trace
the Suliotes; they became absorbed among the Greeks in
their general struggle, and were so entirely dispersed that
the Suliote name has never reappeared anywhere but as
belonging to an individual.
II.
Since Chapter IV. was printed I have received a
detailed account of the goose-fights that took place this
last season at Skodra; and also of fights of another kind,
—those of ducks. My informant had witnessed several
sanguinary and long-contested battles between pairs of
the latter birds; and he considers that the ducks are more
plucky than the geese, while the larger birds are more
furious and fierce.
Ducks are bred in great numbers on the Lake of
Skodra, and preserved with care. At the end of the
summer they are collected, and the skins of their lovely
dark green heads are made into linings of cloaks for the
richest men and pashas of Skodra. The sewing together
is executed with extreme neatness; and nothing can be
more beautiful than the effect of the rich and glistening
hues of these linings, which are also excessively costly.
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