Shkodra

“ For five days running I had that very same pork served twice a day, until I sent Palok into the bazaar to buy me other supplies. A narrow camp bed, an iron washstand with tin fittings, a pail and a deal table, comprised my furniture, the best accommodation that Skodra could afford.
Yet the town is perhaps one of the most interesting in all the Balkans, and its people the most strangely mixed and wearing a greater variety of Eastern costume than even in Constantinople itself. ”

“ He spoke with an air of conviction, and, judging from my observations while I was guest of his tribe, I believe that when war between Turkey and Bulgaria comes—as it must come one day before long—these wild people will sweep down upon the Turks and play frightful havoc with them.
Skodra is often alarmed, and the people retire into their houses and bar their doors because the tribes are believed to be coming. One day they will come, and when they do those open drains in the streets will run with blood. The sign of the cross upon the Christian houses is in preparation for the day of vengeance. ”

“ In Skodra not only the Mohammedan but the town Roman Catholic women go veiled, though the country-folk do not, and until married are often kept in a seclusion which to our ideas is little short of imprisonment—facts which throw a strong light upon the unlovely state of society which has made them necessary; for the etiquettes of society are usually based upon raw and unpleasant truths. It is idle folly to ascribe Western and twentieth-century ideas to these primitive people, but the fact remains that the life of the average Albanian woman is an exceedingly hard one. ”

“ The destruction of Scodra's power was a great feather in the cap of the Grand Vizier, who now lost no time in undermining the authority of Hussein. In this he was assisted by the imprudence of the latter, who committed the error of admitting Ali Aga of Stolatz into his confidence, a man who had always adhered to the Sultan, and was distrusted accordingly by his compatriots. Universal as was the partisan warfare inPg 116 Bosnia and Herzegovina, there was no chieftain who had supported the brunt of so many onslaughts as Ali Aga. ”

“ Men, fierce mountaineers who, in some cases, bore across their countenances marks of sword or gun-shot wounds, told me their stories—exciting narratives of love, war, and the blood-feud. All were Albanians, and believed Skodra to be the finest capital in the world. England, because it carried on no political intrigue among them, like Austria and Italy, they did not regard as a Power. ”

“ Their wants were few, luxuries there were few to be purchased, and they showed all their worldly goods upon their persons in a blaze of gold and finery on high days and holidays. Skodra does so still, and so does every peasant and many a nobleman in the old-world Balkan peninsula of to-day. Gorgeous garments solidly made they are, for they will not go out of fashion next season, nor the season after, never indeed until Albania is "civilised," and when will that be? So the finery is made to last, and is worn and worn till it descends to "Petticoat Lane" and is bought by the very poor. ”

“ Poor old Zohrab! He listened with much the same feelings that Ulysses might have had when the island princes, over-bold, were feasting on his substance and the steam of the roasting beef (which the poet avers is dear to the gods) rose up in his lordly halls.
Recollections of Osman Pasha's ball at Widdin came back to me when I met at Smyrna Zara Dilber Effendi, the skilful entertainer who arranged all the details of that never to be forgotten function. He and I spent the afternoon together, and had much to tell each other. ”

“ Now I never cross his frontier without hoping soon to be able to witness his departure from Europe.
A shattered fortress frowns on the hill, a row of ramshackle buildings lines the shore, a filthy crowd fills the custom-house steps. Scutari—Albanese, Skodra at last. Time rolls back from the invisible boundary against which the centuries have beaten in vain, and before us lies the land of a prehistoric people and the life of past ages. Canoes big and little come paddling out in a scrambling hugger-mugger ”

“ And the sight of them is enough to make one have no difficulty in believing the tale that they not unfrequently help themselves to mutton from across the frontier when the "Government" is discreetly gazing in another direction. Their powers of endurance in war-time are not surprising when their life during "peace" is taken into consideration. A fight in which you may loot all you want must be a pleasant holiday by comparison.
The Christian quarter of Skodra looks less flourishing, and there are crosses on some of the doors, otherwise the two quarters are much the same. ”

“ While I was deep in these awkward meditations, uppermost in which lay the necessity of an immediate departure, a low and quiet footfall sounded in the garden. Zoraka with her head upon my bosom heard nothing, but I, looking up, saw to my horror the burly form of Hassan approaching in the dim light. We stood in thick shadow, and he did not remark us, nor, indeed, do I think he was in any condition to do so. For he walked solemnly and slowly, as a man bent with sorrow, and mounted upon the little wall overlooking the bay without a glance upon either side. ”

“ The white road serpentines down the mountain side, and far below lies the green valley and its tiny village, Dobrsko Selo; on all sides rise the crags wild and majestic; away in the distance gleams the great silver lake of Skodra. Beyond it the blue Albanian mountains, their peaks glittering with snow even in June, show fainter and fainter, and the land of mystery and the unspeakable Turk fades into the sky—a scene so magnificent and so impressive that it is worth all the journey from England just to have looked at it. ”

“ But as suddenly Hassan paused and withheld the knife from the stroke.
"No," said he, with a malign contortion of his features, "she shall be sprinkled first with the blood of her lovers. Bring the dogs forward."
We were hustled forward by our guards and brought within a pace or two of the ruffian, and Zoraka; once more she shot a glance at me, and once more I met it with a thrill of pity. The black took the scimitar from his master and drew near my companion. ”

“ To the inflow of pilgrims, among whom were numbered the devout and venerable Mullá Ṣádiq-i-Khurásání and the father of Badí, both survivors of the struggle of Tabarsí, he offered scarcely any opposition, though the text of the imperial farmán forbade their admission into the city. Muṣṭafá Díyá Páshá, who became governor a few years later, had even gone so far as to intimate that his Prisoner was free to pass through its gates whenever He pleased, a suggestion which Bahá’u’lláh declined. ”

“ We, with the Kastrati, the Hoti, the Klementi, the Pulati, and the Shiala, are masters here. We have held the land always, and shall hold it still. We acknowledge no law except our own, and pay no taxes to anybody. The Turks, when they conquered Northern Albania, thought they could crush us. They tried to, but soon discovered their mistake. So ever since that they have left us severely alone, and retired into Skodra. They know full well that when we unite with our brothers, the Miriditi, in the south, then Skodra will be at our mercy. ”

“ Compared with the tribesmen, the Albanian Christian of Skodra is a puny person. The mountaineers are a barbaric, 71lawless people, without any education save the schools established by Italian and Austrian monks as part of the political propaganda; for, truth to tell, both countries have recently conceived the idea of turning Northern Albania to account for their own purposes on the day of the downfall of the Turk. Therefore both Powers are frantically exerting every effort to curry favour with the people, a fact which is glaringly apparent even to the rough, uneducated tribesmen themselves. ”

“ The town of Shogr is miserable and poor; yet its situation, commanding the bridge of communication across the Orontes and the great caravan road from Aleppo and Hamah to the coast, makes it a place of considerable importance. It is a dependency of the pashalik of Aleppo: but Topal Ali, an officer of the Deláti, appointed [242] to the government of it, having turned rebel, set himself up as a petty chieftain, and had contrived to become master of a considerable tract of the mountains, with so much of the plain as lies between the river and Tel-Kelyeen. ”

“ Difference of religion is usually given as the reason for the fact that the Albanian has almost invariably sided with the enemies of the other Christian peoples of the Balkans. One suspects, however, that it is rather "the nature of the beast" than the particular form of belief that he has chosen to profess that has cut him off, his fierce independence rather than his religious creed, and the more one sees of him the more probable does this appear.
There are very few Orthodox Albanians in Skodra. Such as there are wear the same dress as the Mohammedans, but the women are not veiled. ”

“ Zoraka insensibly faded from my imagination; the hunt for her seemed supremely foolish with no clue to direct me. And I had now the oppression of my own fresh peril upon me. It was upon these reflections that I came at length into a large chamber, which sounded bare and vacant to my tread. Fingering on the wall I moved carefully round it, in search of the further doorway, for the apartments in these houses invariably communicated with one another. ”

“ That they have the makings of a fine people is probably true. That they are now capable of self-government is quite another thing. Unlike the other Balkan peoples, they have no past, no former empire. Their history is all "years that the locusts have eaten." What is to become of the Albanians? is one of the hardest of all the Eastern questions. Austria desires to have the answering of it.
CHAPTER VIII SKODRA
Skodra is the capital of North Albania. In our maps it is usually called Scutari—a name which causes it to be confused with the other and far better known Scutari on the Bosporus. ”

“ It rises in some curious caverns not much farther up the valley, and flows into the lake of Skodra. The town is built of cranky little houses, half Turkish in style, with open wooden galleries painted green—gimcrack affairs, that look as though they might come down with a run any minute, when filled as they frequently are with a party of heavy men. It has an old-world look, but, as most of the town was burnt by the Turks in 1862, appearances are deceptive. A perfect Bond Street of shops faces the river. Here you can buy at a cheap rate all the necessaries of Montenegrin existence. ”

“ The Cabinet Ministers of Albania go walking in a row, sedately, their hands behind their backs, and in the middle walks Ahmet Zogu, elected by Parliament Prime Minister of Albania. Six even paces behind them marches their escort, a single row of soldiers.
The eastern mountains are catching the last light of the sun and making magic with it. Plum purple, orange gold, mauve and violet and blue, the colors shift and change, and the air is faintly golden over the green plains where the mountain men are gathering as they used to gather in the evenings long before Athens was built. ”

“ Poor Zóra was utterly helpless. The gag which had been stuffed into her mouth nearly choked her; the cloth by which she had been swathed up to her throat prevented her moving her hands. She remembered when the slaves of Osman Beg took her up at Juldroog they had done it gently, and she could at least breathe freely and scream for help; but this attack on her had been more savage, more determined—was this also her enemy's contrivance? She could not but think so; and his emissaries must have followed her even from Kukeyra. ”

“ Skodra fascinates one. There is no European influence here: not a soul is in European dress. It is the unchanging East—the same life that has existed here for centuries. The Turks are, however, fanatics, and Palok will not allow me to smoke a cigarette in the street in the daytime, for in the fast of Ramadan the Mohammedans abstain from all food, drink, and tobacco from four in the morning till the gun fires on the fortress at sunset. ”

“ In work of this sort the Albanian excels. When he comes to larger constructions, his trick of working by eye and getting balance by instinct is not so successful; his rooms are all crooked, his houses out of the square. Perhaps this is the inevitable out-come of his odd-shaped mind. It is rumoured that three-sided rooms may be found in Skodra, for the simple reason that somehow the builders, owing to a nice confusion of angles, could not squeeze in a fourth wall. ”

“ About three days' march from Scutari, across the great Klementi mountains, there is a long and beautiful valley, which penetrates deeply into the central range of the Mount Scardus. Down this valley flows the White Drin, a stream of considerable importance, that flows into the Adriatic, near Alessio. In this valley are Ipek, Jakova, and Priserin, three of the most interesting cities of Albania, inhabited by a population very skilled in the working of metals. The most beautiful saddlery, filigree work, gold-hilted and jewelled yataghans and pistols, are here worked by an industrious people. ”

“ My husband therefore began parleying about sailing-boats and had sent Ammar from Adahan, and the sultan had sent his captain up to meet us.
Dr. Schweinfurth sees in the present name of Sokotra a Hindoo origin, and the survival of the Hindoo name Diu Sukutura, which the Greeks, after their easy-going fashion, changed into Dioscorides. This is very ingenious and most likely correct. When the Portuguese reached the island in 1538, they found the Arab sheikh dwelling at the capital called Zoko, now in ruins, and still called Suk, a survival doubtless of the original name. ”