Our Lady of Scutari--A miracle--The fete--A funeral--A drunken
Arnaut--Our escort--Two more Britons--Warm discussion--War--Marco.
The morrow (October 18th) was the great holiday of North Albania, the
day of Our Lady of Scutari.
Long ago all this country was Christian. In this city there then stood
a beautiful wooden image of the Virgin Mary. Thousands of the faithful
were wont to flock hither year by year to offer their devotions at her
feet, and to be healed of their infirmities; for no sick man that had
faith was ever known to kiss the white feet of the image and not depart
whole.
But it came to pass that a certain priest made himself very unpopular
among the people. I do not quite know for what cause, but at any rate a
large multitude came to the church one day, and declared that unless
something that they desired was granted to them they would then and
there abjure the religion of Christ and embrace Mohammedanism. Rightly
or wrongly, the priest would not give in; whereupon the people tore
their rosaries from their necks, and marched off to the nearest
Mohammedan village, that the mollahs might receive the renegades into
the fold of the Prophet; whereupon Our Lady of Scutari, sorrowful and
angry at the desertion of those for whom she had wrought so many good
things for so many years, left her shrine in this ungrateful land.
That night the wooden image disappeared. It was not heard of for
months--when tidings came that on the very same night that this event
happened, an image of the Virgin miraculously entered a church in a
remote village of Italy, and there took up its abode. A loud voice was
also heard, crying out over Scutari, that not till the last Turki
(Mohammedan) had left Albania would Our Lady of Scodra be appeased and
forgive her children: then, and not till then, would she return to her
old shrine.
This day was the anniversary of the miraculous departure of the image,
long ago; and an impressive service was held in the great ugly square
church of the Christians in this city.
The interior of this building is almost entirely devoid of any ornament
whatever, and bears no resemblance to any church elsewhere.
The priests that minister to the spiritual wants of the Albanians are
Franciscans and Jesuits, all of whom are Italians. The Franciscan monks
have a convent and schools. The Jesuits have tried their best to
monopolize the education of the people, but are not much liked.
It was difficult, standing in this bleak building, in the midst of so
wild and outlandish though very devout a congregation, to imagine
oneself attending a Christian service.
The fierce-eyed shaven-headed Arnaut mountaineer jostled with the
mild-looking Scutarine Christian and kilted Mussulman; for those of the
other faith, curiously enough, offer their devotions on this day to the
mother of the Christ whom they despise. Indeed though one half the
Albanians call themselves Christians, and the other half profess to be
Mohammedans, there is really little distinction between them. The
Mohammedans worship the Virgin Mary; the Christians make pilgrimages to
the sepulchres of Mussulman saints, and mingle all sorts of grotesque
alien superstitions with their Christianity, which the priesthood in
vain strive to eradicate.
I was told that even some relics of the old Greek paganism linger in
these mountains.
I myself have seen the Arnauts attempt to read the future from the
entrails of a sheep which they had slain for a feast.
Before the service we had an opportunity of witnessing a Christian
funeral. The coffin was borne on the shoulders of men, while the women
followed at a distance, crying and wailing, as is and has been the
custom, in all the East, for all time:--
"He was strong in the chase, he was handsome, he was lovable, he was
brave. Alas! no more will he be loved, no more will his swift feet
carry him to the hunt. His enemies will rejoice, and throw away their
fear. Alas! alas! he has gone from us! he will be hidden in the cold
earth."
In the evening a band played outside the church, and the jolly
Franciscan monks tucked up their gowns, and proceeded to amuse the
crowd with several balloons, which they filled with hot air and
liberated, to the great delight of all.
It was a good-humoured though savage-looking mob, and would set a good
example to many a gathering of Western civilization. The streets were
gaily lit with many-coloured Chinese lanterns. As we walked home after
the termination of the proceedings, I noticed that there were one or
two cases of drunkenness.
There was one man, an Arnaut, pretty far gone. As I consider the
different effects of alcohol on the brains of different races to be a
very interesting and curious study, I stood and watched the mountaineer
for some time, at a safe distance; for he bristled with arms of course;
and if a drunken man, carrying with him two loaded pistols, a gun, and
yataghan, should run amuck, or conceive a sudden dislike to the English
foreigners, the consequences might be unpleasant. However, he did
nothing of the kind. The sole effect of the raki was to make him
exceedingly devotional. He knelt down, raised his hands, and prayed in
a loud voice, and with a most intense and passionate earnestness. He
swung backwards and forwards--wrung his hands, as he worked himself
into a phrenzy of religious excitement. Then he kissed the muddy ground
over and over again with fervour, under the impression perhaps that he
was still at the foot of the empty shrine of the Madonna.
Lastly, he fell prone, face down in the mud, dead drunk, when his
friends raised him and carried him off, with looks of shame on their
faces, for drunkenness is considered to be a beastly and degrading vice
in this uncivilized country.
While we were breakfasting on the following morning, our friend the
gendarme appeared, with a very downcast and despondent visage.
"The beasts!" he said. "O, these Turks! I cannot go with you, friends.
I had obtained leave, as you know, to accompany you on your journey
through Albania. Well, late last night I was sent for, and told that I
must stay at Scutari. They had seen me often in your company, and, as
is their custom, became jealous and suspicious; so they have got up
some idle excuse to prevent my going with you. This is the way they
treat us. They give us no pay; and when we do get a chance of making a
little money, do their best to get in our way."
Our poor friend was very cut up, and naturally so, for to be guard of a
party of Inglezi was a rare windfall for him, and very acceptable in
these hard times.
The authorities sent us a passport, and a very strange-looking being,
who was to be our escort on the morrow, one man being deemed a
sufficient protection, for the first stage at any rate. He was a tall,
miserable-looking zaptieh, in very ragged uniform. His face was of
extraordinary length, and lantern-jawed. He was almost skeleton-like in
his extreme thinness. He had evidently not known what a good meal meant
for a very long time.
We discovered him to be an intensely stupid and unintelligent being.
This did not promise well. Here we were, two Englishmen, utterly
ignorant of Turkish or Albanian, about to ride right across the country
in the company of a man who would not be of the slightest use to us in
any way.
We gave him a good feed, in hopes that this might develop some traces
of intelligence in his dense skull. All in vain. The only effect was,
that after having thoroughly gorged himself, he closed his eyes, gave
vent to a sort of choking sound, and fell fast asleep.
Everything was ready; we had bid adieu to our Scutarine friends, left
orders that our horses should be brought round early on the
morrow--then we retired to our beds among the sausages.
It was scarce dawn. There was a loud knock at our door--a rather
violent knock. The door opened; we expected to see the smiling face of
Toshli, who had come to announce the arrival of our ghostly zaptieh and
our brave steeds; but to our astonishment there entered, boisterously,
two bronzed and travel-stained Britons--in short, the long-lost Jones
and Robinson, whom we had given up long ago.
They stood laughing before us; but Brown and myself considered it
incumbent upon us to receive them in a slightly distant and dignified
manner as we sat up in our beds. We asked them to give an explanation
of their great dilatoriness in catching us up.
We found that they had started from England a fortnight after us, but
had been delayed at Cattaro and other ports, in consequence of some
extremely ingenious arrangement Robinson, the inventor, had made for
receiving money at different places on the route.
They had followed in our footsteps exactly--had taken boat from Trieste
to Cattaro, and thence walked, via Cettinje, to Rieka, where they had
taken a londra for Scutari. We inquired where the white elephant and
other Robinsoniana were.
They had left them at Cettinje, they said, and were going to return for
them. This further delay was by no means pleasing to Brown and myself.
We laid our programme before them, and expected that they would fall in
with it at once. A very warm discussion ensued, very nearly resulting
in a re-separation of our forces.
They had been very well received, it seems, by the Montenegrins, and
had promised some of the chieftains at Cettinje that they would return
to that capital as soon as they had seen Scutari.
The war between the principality and the Albanians, so long talked of,
was, they said, now but a question of a few days. They had been invited
to accompany the army of Prince Nikita, which was on the point of
advancing on Gussinje, as the honoured guests of the general in
command.
There are certainly two sides to every question. From the little we had
seen of the two countries, Brown and myself had formed a decided
preference for the Albanians over the Montenegrins; but we found that
our two friends were full of praises of the Black Mountaineers, and
abuse of the Skipitars. The Montenegrins have rather a knack of
wheedling over strangers to their own views of the question. Jones and
Robinson, however, to a great extent modified their opinions later on,
when we had seen a little more of both sides.
The discussion progressed with considerable warmth. Our recently found
friends insisted on returning to Montenegro. Brown and myself were very
loth to give up our projected ride across the little-known countries of
North Albania. We often wandered from the point into hot dispute as to
the virtues or the reverse of the respective races. Ultimately a
compromise was effected. We decided to convert Rosso and Effendi into
baggage animals, and walk from Scutari to Podgoritza, an important
town, acquired by Montenegro from Turkey during the late war, and which
was but two days' march from Gussinje. Here the Montenegrin forces were
to concentrate, before advancing against the enemy. If we found that
war was really intended, we agreed to carry out the programme of our
friends. If we found that it was being indefinitely delayed, we would
return to Scutari, and march to Previso by the route Brown and myself
had decided on.
Brown and myself gave in with great reluctance, feeling that our
friends, after delaying us so long, were now about to take us on a wild
goose chase after a phantom war. I do not think either of us recovered
that sweetness of temper which distinguishes us until after the dinner
we partook of that evening at the hospitable board of the British
Consulate.
During the above discussion our ghostly zaptieh was announced. With the
aid of our landlord we tried to explain to him that his services were
no longer needed by us. This man, as I have said, was the incarnation
of stupidity; as a Turkish soldier, he was also a model of obedience to
those who were put in authority over him.
He had been ordered to conduct us to Priserin--so much had got into his
head; and conduct us to Priserin he would, notwithstanding our
insistence that we had now altered our intentions. "The Pasha told me
to take you to Priserin," was all we could get out of him. He would
have attempted to take us there by force, I believe, had we not quieted
him with another full meal, which had the same soporific effect as that
of the previous day.
When we told Mr. Green of our altered plans, in the evening, he
remarked that at any rate our throats would be safe in Montenegro,
which is more than they would be in this country. "But," he added, "if
you visit Podgoritza you will not be able to return here and visit
Priserin. They will have heard of your friendship with the Montenegrin
general, and will inevitably take you as spies, and treat you as such
in a very summary manner. If you return here and wish to travel to
Janina, you must do so by the other route, which takes you through the
cities of Tirana, Elbessan, and Berat."
The next day we made preparations for our journey.
As it was a doubtful question whether we should find food on the road
to Podgoritza, an unfrequented track, with rather a bad reputation for
Arnauts, we purchased a horse-hair saddle-bag, and laid up a good stock
of rice bread, mutton, raki, and other necessaries. Robinson had
brought his cooking apparatus with him to Scutari, and was very anxious
to bring it into use on the earliest occasion.
The evening before our start we very luckily came across a man who had
served as groom to Captain Sale, of the late frontier commission. He
seemed to understand a word or two of English and Italian, and had a
very good character from the Consulate. So we hired him for a month. A
very useful fellow he turned out to be. He was dressed in full Arnaut
costume, which never left his back during the whole of his stay with
us--five weeks, and yet, in some mysterious manner, it ever appeared
snowy and new, indeed, his appearance did us credit. He was a young
fellow of pleasing countenance, the chief characteristic of which was a
perpetual grin. Like all I met of his race, he was faithful and honest,
and soon became attached to his masters. His preparations for the
journey did not require much time, for his luggage consisted simply of
a large gingham umbrella.