ALI PASHA--PSALLIDA--EUPHROSYNE--MUKHTAR--STARTS FOR A TRIP TO
SULI--CASSIOPEIA--UNABLE TO FORD RIVER--TURNS BACK TO JANINA--LEAVES TO
RETURN TO ATHENS--CROSSES THE PINDUS THROUGH THE SNOW--MALAKASH--A
ROBBER--METEORA--TURKISH RULE--THE MONASTERY--BY TRIKHALA, PHERSALA,
ZITUNI, THERMOPYLÆ AND LIVADIA TO ATHENS.
"Next day, as the vizier wished to see us, and we of course to see him,
Foresti took us to the palace he was living in for the moment. He has no
less than eight in the town. This one is handsome, but the plan is as
usual ill-contrived, and there was much less magnificence than I had
expected.
We were first led into the upper apartments to await his leisure, and
found there a number of fine youths, not very splendidly dressed. After
half an hour of waiting we were led into a low room, in the corner of
which sat this extraordinary man. He welcomed us politely and said he
hoped we had had a good journey and would like Janina, and desired that
if there was anything we lacked we would mention it, for that he
regarded us as his children, and his house and family were at our
disposal. He next asked if any of us spoke Greek; and hearing that I
did, asked me when I had learnt it, and how long I had remained in
Athens. Then, observing that Hughes was near the fire, he ordered in a
screen in the shape of a large vessel of water, saying that young men
did not require fire, only old men; and in saying this he laughed with
so much _bonhomie_, his manner was so mild and paternal and so charming
in its air of kindness and perfect openness, that I, remembering the
blood-curdling stories told of him, could hardly believe my eyes.
Finally, he said he hoped to improve our acquaintance, and begged us to
stay on. We, however, bowed ourselves out.
The number and richness of the shops is surprising, and the bustle of
business is such as I have not seen since leaving Constantinople. We
understood that when the vizier first settled at Janina in '87--that is,
twenty-seven years ago--there were but five or six shops in the place:
now there are more than 2,000. The city has immensely increased, and we
passed through several quarters of the town which are entirely new.
The fortresses on the promontory into the lake are of the vizier's
building. He has always an establishment of 3,000 soldiers, 100 Tartars
(the Sultan himself has but 200), a park of artillery presented him by
the English, and German and other French artillerymen. We seem to have
supplied him also with arms and ammunition in his wars with Suli and
other parts of Epirus. Perhaps it is not much to our honour to have
assisted a tyrant in dispossessing or exterminating the lawful owners of
the soil, who only fought for their own liberty; but one must remember
that, picturesque as they were and desperately as they fought, they were
nothing but robbers and freebooters and the scourge of the country.
We passed the 6th of January with Psallida, who is master of a school in
Janina. He is, for this country, a learned man. Besides Greek, he speaks
Latin and very bad Italian, but as far as manners go he is a mere
barbarian. From him I had an account of the Gardiki massacre.[44] I
occupied a wet three days in drawing an interior view of a kiosk of the
vizier's at the Beshkey Gardens at the north end of the town. Then I got
a costume and drew the figures in. Psallida dined with us one day and
entertained us with an account of the fair and frail Euphrosyne, who was
a celebrity here. Her fate was made the subject of a ballad preserved in
Leslie. The story is certainly an awful tragedy. She was of good family
and married to a respectable man. Without possessing more education than
is usual with Greek ladies she had, besides her great beauty, a natural
wit which, with a good deal of love of admiration, soon attracted round
her a host of admirers, and she became a reigning beauty. Mukhtar, the
son of Ali, who is a dissolute fellow, was attracted by her, and,
cutting out his competitors, became her acknowledged lover. His wife,
whom he entirely neglected for his new passion, was a daughter of the
Vizier of Berat, whose friendship Ali was at that time particularly
anxious to cultivate; and when she complained to her father-in-law of
his son's conduct, he (Ali) determined to put a stop to it. At the head
of his guard he burst at midnight into the room of Euphrosyne, and after
calling her the seducer of his son and other names, he forced her to
give up whatever presents he had made her, and had her led off to prison
with her maid. Next day, in order to make a terrifying example to check
the immorality of the town in general and his son in especial, he had
nine other women of known bad character arrested, and they and
Euphrosyne were led to the brink of the precipice over the lake on which
the fortress stands. Her faithful maid refused to desert her, and she
and Euphrosyne, linked in each other's arms, leapt together down the
fatal rock, as did all the others.
Mukhtar has never forgotten his attachment or forgiven his father, or
even seen his wife again, and from having been a gay and frank youth he
has become gloomy and ferocious without being less dissolute than
before. The court he keeps is a sad blackguard affair, a great contrast
to the austere sobriety of his father's.
We called in the evening (January 14) to take leave of Ali Pasha. He was
on that day in the Palace of the Fortress at the extremity of the rock
over the lake. We passed through the long gallery described by Byron,
and into a low anteroom, from which we entered a very handsome
apartment, very warm with a large fire in it, and with crimson sofas
trimmed with gold lace. There was Ali, to-day a truly Oriental figure.
He had a velvet cap, a prodigious fine cloak; he was smoking a long
Persian pipe, and held a book in his hand. Foresti says he did this on
purpose to show us he could read. Hanging beside him was a small gun
magnificently set with diamonds, and a powder-horn; on his right hand
also was a feather fan. To his left was a window looking into the
courtyard, in which they were playing at the djerid, and in which nine
horses stood tethered in their saddles and bridles, as though ready for
instant use. I am told this is a piece of form or etiquette.
At first his reception seemed less cordial than before, whether by
design or no, and he took very little notice of us. He showed us some
leaden pieces of money, and a Spanish coin just found by some country
people, and asked us what they were. Then he said he wished he had a
coat of beaver such as he had seen on the Danube. He asked Parker
whether he had a mother and brothers, and when he heard he was the only
son he said it was a sin that he should leave his mother. Why did not he
stay at home?
On January 15 we went to call on Mukhtar Pasha. We found him rough,
open, and goodhumoured, without any of the inimitable grace of his
father, which makes everything Ali says agreeable, however trivial the
subject may be. Mukhtar's talk was flat. He was very fond of sport--were
we? It was very hot in summer at Trikhala. He had killed so and so many
birds; there were loose women at Dramishush; it was a small place, but
he would send a man to see that we were properly accommodated; and so
on--very civil and rather dull. He smoked a Persian pipe brought him by
a beautiful boy very richly dressed, with his hair carefully combed, and
another brought him coffee; while coffee and pipes were brought to us by
particularly ugly ones. On the sofa beside him were laid out a number of
snuff-boxes, mechanical singing birds, and things of that sort. The
serai itself was handsome in point of expense, but in the miserable
taste now in vogue in Constantinople. The decoration represented painted
battle-pieces, sieges, fights between Turks and Cossacks, wild men, and
abominations of that sort; while in the centre of the pediment is a
pasha surrounded by his guard, and in front of them a couple of Greeks
just hanged, as a suitable ornament for the palace of a despot.
On the 16th we set out early for an excursion to Cassiopeia and Suli,
across the fine open field behind Janina, past the village of Kapshisda,
over a low chain of hills south-west of Janina. Then, after a climb of
over an hour, we entered a pass, and presently saw Dramishush in front,
on the side of a high mountain.
Cassiopeia is on a gentle height in the middle of a valley. The
situation is beautiful, and the theatre the largest and best preserved I
have seen in Greece.
Next morning we dismissed Mukhtar Pasha's man who had escorted us so
far, and went on south-westwards along the edge of the valley of
Cassiopeia. As it grew narrower we climbed a ridge which overhung an
awful depth, went over a high mountain, and reached Bareatis, a small
village in a pass with a serai of Ali Pasha's, in which he lived for a
length of time during the war of Suli. Three and a half hours further on
we came to Terbisena, the first village of Suli. It had been pouring all
day, and we were not only wet and cold when we arrived but the hovel we
got as a lodging let in the water everywhere, and here, huddled in the
driest corner we could find, we had to sleep and spend the next day.
On the 19th the weather was fine again, and we went on hoping to find
the river fordable, but when we got to the bank we found it rapid and
deep. One of our Turks, after a good deal of boasting, plunged in, and
in an instant sank, and the torrent was carrying him and his horse
floundering away. Another of his brother Turks, seeing him carried down,
called loudly on Allah, and stroked his beard in great tribulation, but
without stirring a stump. In another minute the man would have been
drowned, but our servant Antonetti, who was but a Christian, very
pluckily ran in and clawed him out. The poor boaster was already
senseless when we got him to land. We took him back to Dervishina, and
gradually brought him round, when instead of thanking his stars for his
narrow escape, or Antonetti for the plucky part he had played, he did
nothing but lament the loss of his gun, 'Tofeki,' which he had himself
won, he said, and of his shawl which had cost him 50 piastres. We
promised to make the latter good, and left him to rest.
The whole incident was in all senses a damper to our ardour. When we
considered that to pass this river we must wait one day at least, and
probably four days to get across the one near Suli, the expenditure of
time seemed to us all, at least so I thought, greater than we cared to
devote to the expedition. So the long and short of it was that we turned
back and slept at Bareatis. Next day we got back to Janina. I made up my
mind now that I was wasting time over this trip, and wished to get back
to Athens. But before leaving I thought it my duty to call once more on
Ali Pasha. A most agreeable old man he is. I was more than ever struck
with the easy familiarity and perfect good humour of his manners. We
found him in a low apartment with a fire in the middle, generally used
for his Albanians and known as laapoda. Then we went to see
Pouqueville,[45] the French resident. We found him with his brother,
both of them the worst type of Frenchmen--vulgar, bragging, genuine
children of the Revolution. Nothing worth remembering was said, but I
did gather this from his tone--that the Empire in France is not likely
to last.
On the 26th my friends, for a wonder, got up early, and we all set out
in a boat for a small village where we were to find my horses. There we
bid farewell and I mounted. It came on to rain, and I arrived, wet
through, at the Three Khans to sleep.
Next day the rain became snow, but I set out nevertheless for Mezzovo.
We had to ford the river several times, and for the last hour to Mezzovo
were up to our middles in snow. The scenery was magnificent, and the
country is well cultivated. Mezzovo is a Vlaki or Wallachian village;
the people speak a sort of mixed Greek. They are exceedingly industrious
and well-to-do.
Artistically I do not know that I have gained much, but I do not regret
the time I have spent in Albania. The climate is more bracing than that
of the rest of Greece, and has set me up after my illness. The scenery,
though it cannot be at its best in winter, is most beautiful, and the
inhabitants are a fine race--not handsome, but hardy and energetic. An
Albanian has very few wants. A little bread of calambochi or Indian
corn, an onion, and cheese is abundant fare to him. If he changes his
linen five times in the year, that is the outside. A knife and a pistol
in his girdle and his gun by his side, he sleeps quite well in the open
air with his head on a stone and the lappel of his jacket over his face.
In summer and winter he wears a fez. His boots are only goatskin
sandals, which he makes himself. His activity in them over rocks is
surprising.
As for Ali Pasha's government, one has to remember what a chaotic state
the country was in before he made himself master of it. The accounts one
gets from the elders make it clear what misery there was. No stranger
could travel in it, nor could the inhabitants themselves get about.
Every valley was at war with its neighbour, and all were professional
brigands. All this Ali has reduced to order. There is law--for everyone
admits his impartiality as compared with that of rulers in other parts
of Turkey--and there is commerce. He has made roads, fortified the
borders, put down brigandage, and raised Albania into a power of some
importance in Europe.
That in arriving at this end he has often used means which civilised
nations disapprove is no doubt true, but there has been in the first
place gross exaggeration as to the crimes attributed to him: for
instance, that he sees fifteen or twenty heads cut off every day before
breakfast, whereas in point of fact there has not been such a thing as a
public execution in the past year; and then, in the second, one must
make allowance for the ferocious manners amongst which he was brought
up.
On the 29th of January, as the weather seemed favourable, we set out
eagerly to cross Pindus. The snow was deep in places, but for the first
hour and a half we had no great difficulty. It was the last half-hour
before getting to the top that was worst. The road is desperately steep
up a precipice, and the snow was above the horses' girths. Our
chamalides, however, waded through it, often up to their middles, and,
carrying the loads on their own shoulders, lifted the horses by their
tails and heads alternately, I hardly know how. Although I constantly
slipped down on the steep incline, I was so eager to see the view that I
was the first at the top. Towards the interior it was glorious: the feet
of Pindus rooting themselves far into the country, which, although
mountainous, was free from snow; conspicuous was Elymbo (Olympus), the
top capped with snow, but the form of it is not beautiful. To the north
were other snow-capped mountains. Behind us westward the air was so
thick one could see nothing. The west side of the hills is covered with
fir, while the east seems to have nothing but oak and birch--quantities
of it, but all small trees. As we went down we noticed on the trunks of
them the marks of the snow of the year before last, which must have been
ten or twelve feet deep. Three and a half hours from our start we got to
a khan, where we made a good fire and congratulated ourselves on having
got over the hills so well and escaped the fatana--the wind the
mountaineers dread.
Our next stage was to Malakash, a Vlaki town. It was astonishing the way
our chamalides bore the fatigue of forcing our way through the snow,
which was still five or six feet deep in places. They cut a way for the
horses, which were constantly falling down and half smothering
themselves in the drifts.
From there we followed the course of the river for six hours, and
crossed it fifty times at least. On the way we passed a dervish, an
Albanian. He was seated on a sort of balcony, very high up, and had a
gun in his hand, which he pointed at me and called on me to stop and
pay. The sight of the Tartar, however, brought him to reason. Without
one a traveller is exposed to great insult from such ruffians. As it
was, a poor wretch who tried to pass himself off as one of our party was
forced to stop and pay his quota.
In the afternoon we arrived at Meteora, the strange rocks of which we
had seen from some distance up the river. We were given quarters in the
house of a Cypriote Greek, from whom I learnt a good deal of the
terrible exactions of Veli Pasha, in whose dominions we now were. Our
host and his two sons, poor wretches with hardly a fez to their heads
and mere sandals bound with a thong to their feet, came to welcome us.
After the first compliments they fell into the tale of their woes. Their
taxes were so heavy that unless the new year were abundantly fruitful
the village must be bankrupt and become 'chiflik' or forfeit. When a
village is unable to pay its taxes, the vizier, as universal mortgagee,
forecloses and the land becomes his private property and the villagers
his slaves. This is becoming 'chiflik.'
While we were sitting and talking of these troubles a great noise was
heard below. Two Albanians, being refused conachi, had broken in the
door of a house and entered by force, and the soubashi was gone out to
quell the riot. He very properly refused them any kind of reception and
drove them out to the khan.
My hosts had roasted me a fowl, but my heart was so full I could
scarcely eat. How long will it please God to afflict these wretched
people with such monstrous tyranny? Besides the exactions of the
Government, scoundrels such as these Albanians infest the villages,
force their way in houses and eat and drink immoderately and pay
nothing. To ease my mind, when the daughter of my host brought me some
raisins to eat with my wine I gave her a dollar. She seemed hardly to
believe her eyes at first, then took it and kissed my hand.
Next morning, January 31st, I ascended to the principal monastery of
Meteora. After a tiring walk of half an hour, winding among the crags of
this strange place, we came to the foot of the rock on which it is
perched, and found that the ladder commonly used, which is made in
joints five or six feet long, had been drawn up. We called to the
papades who were aloft to let down the rope and net. After some
hallooing, down it came, a circular net with the meshes round the
circumference gathered on a hook. Michael and myself, with my drawing
materials, got in and were drawn up by a windlass. To swing in mid-air
trusting to a rope not so thick as my wrist and 124 feet long (I
measured it) is anything but pleasant. I shall not forget my sensations
as I looked out through the meshes of the net as we were spinning round
in the ascent. There was a horrible void below--sheer precipices on each
side, and then the slipping of the rope as it crossed on the windlass.
Once up, we were pulled in at the entrance, the hook drawn out, and we
were set at liberty. The company that received us were some wretched
papades, as ignorant as possible. They could tell me next to nothing
about their monastery, except that on the occasion of an invasion of the
Turks, a bey of Trikhala, one Joseph Ducas, had retired hither and
established it and seventeen others. The buildings of ten of them still
exist, but only two or three are still inhabited. The church here is a
very good one, and there is a chapel of Constantine. The view is
magnificent. I gave a dollar to the young priest who took me round,
desiring him to use it for any purpose of the church; but I found, from
what my peasant guide told me when we had got down, that the scamp had
pocketed it for his own use, for that the chief papa had asked him as we
were about to leave, if the stranger would not leave some parahs for the
church. It was a lovely day, and beneath me, from the village, passed a
procession of a bridegroom going to a neighbouring village to fetch his
bride. His mother was on one side of his horse, another relative on the
other; before him a male relation carried a flag, and behind came all
his friends and family in their best dresses with guns on their
shoulders, making a gallant show. It was a pretty sight.
We left Kalabaki by Meteora, and reached Trikhala about sunset. The
solitude of the town and the vastness of the cemeteries gave one the
creeps; and hearing that the plague was in the town at that moment, I
mounted again, and rode four hours further to a khan and slept there.
Next day we rode to Phersala (twelve hours); but the plague being there
also, we proceeded a further four hours to a khan under Thaumaco
(sixteen hours' riding). From Meteora to Phersala is one uninterrupted
plain which I thought would never end. I saw many villages, but much
misery--especially in Trikhala and Phersala.
Next day we got to Zituni (six hours) about noon. I did not venture to
stay on account of the plague, and passed on to Molo, at which we
arrived in the evening, passing through the Straits of Thermopylæ.
Molo is a village of only 200 houses, and yet forty persons had died of
the plague in it in the last three days. The terrified inhabitants had
fled to the mountains, and we found only two hangees (men attached to
the han) to receive us. We meant to have slept here, but the cats and
dogs howled so terribly (always a symptom of the plague) that I could
not sleep in comfort; so as the moon shone bright, we mounted and rode
six hours further to a village opposite Parnassus, passing in safety the
fountain famous for robbers who are almost always stationed there. The
scenery here is very fine and romantic. In six hours more, after
crossing two little plains besides that of Chæronæa, we arrived at
Livadia (February 3rd). What between the cold, the horror of the plague,
and the fatigue, it had been an appalling journey."
FOOTNOTES:
[44] The Gardiki massacre took place about 1799. In Ali's youth, his
tower had been stormed by the people of Gardiki and his mother and
sister outraged--at least, so he said. He nursed his revenge for forty
years, and then gratified it by massacring the whole population of the
village.
[45] Author of a valuable account of Greece at this time.