Education and early habits of the Albanians described.
The foundations both of friendship and still tender attachments, were
here laid very early, by an institution which I always thought had been
peculiar to Albany, till I found in Dr. Moore’s View of Society on the
Continent an account of a similar custom subsisting in Geneva. The
children of the town were all divided into companies, as they called
them, from five or six years of age, till they became marriageable. How
those companies first originated, or what were their exact regulations,
I cannot say; though I, belonging to none, occasionally mixed with
several, yet always as a stranger, though I spoke their current language
fluently. Every company contained as many boys as girls. But I do not
know that there was any limited number; only this I recollect, that a
boy and a girl of each company, who were older, cleverer, or had some
other pre-eminence above the rest, were called heads of the company,
and, as such, obeyed by the others. Whether they were voted in, or
attained their pre-eminence by a tacit acknowledgment of their
superiority, I knew not; but however it was attained it was never
disputed. The companies of little children had also their heads. All the
children of the same age were not in one company; there were at least
three or four of equal ages, who had a strong rivalry with each other;
and children of different ages, in the same family, belonged to
different companies. Wherever there is human nature there will be a
degree of emulation, strife, and a desire to lessen others, that we may
exalt ourselves. Dispassionate as my friends comparatively were, and
bred up in the highest attainable candour and innocence, they regarded
the company most in competition with their own with a degree of jealous
animosity. Each company, at a certain time of the year, went in a body
to the hills, to gather a particular kind of berries. It was a sort of
annual festival, attended with religious punctuality. Every company had
an uniform for this purpose; that is to say, very pretty light baskets
made by the Indians, with lids and handles, which hung over the arm, and
were adorned with various colours. One company would never allow the
least degree of taste to the other in this instance; and was sure to
vent its whole stock of spleen in decrying the rival baskets. Nor would
they ever admit that the rival company gathered near so much fruit on
these excursions as they did. The parents of these children seemed very
much to encourage this manner of marshalling and dividing themselves.
Every child was permitted to entertain the whole company on its
birth-day, and once besides, during winter and spring. The master and
mistress of the family always were bound to go from home on these
occasions, while some old domestic was left to attend and watch over
them, with an ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried
fruits, nuts, and cakes of various kinds, to which was added cider or a
syllabub, for these young friends met at four, and did not part till
nine or ten, and amused themselves with the utmost gaiety and freedom in
any way their fancy dictated. I speak from hearsay; for no to these
meetings: other children or young people visit occasionally, and are
civilly treated, but they admit of no person that does not belong to the
company is ever admitted intimacies beyond their company. The
consequence of these exclusive and early intimacies was, that, grown up,
it was reckoned a sort of apostasy to marry out of one’s company, and
indeed, it did not often happen. The girls, from the example of their
mothers, rather than any compulsion, became very early notable and
industrious, being constantly employed in knitting stockings, and making
clothes for the family and slaves: they even made all the boys’ clothes.
This was the more necessary, as all articles of clothing were extremely
dear. Though all the necessaries of life, and some luxuries, abounded,
money, as yet, was a scarce commodity. This industry was the more to be
admired, as children were here indulged to a degree that, in our
vitiated state of society, would have rendered them good for nothing.
But there, where ambition, vanity, and the more turbulent passions were
scarce awakened; where pride, founded on birth, or any external
pre-eminence, was hardly known; and where the affections flourished fair
and vigorous, unchecked by the thorns and thistles with which our minds
are cursed in a more advanced state of refinement; affection restrained
parents from keeping their children at a distance, and inflicting harsh
punishments. But then they did not treat them like apes or parrots, by
teaching them to talk with borrowed words and ideas, and afterwards
gratifying their own vanity by exhibiting these premature wonders to
company, or repeating their sayings. They were tenderly cherished, and
early taught that they owed all their enjoyments to the divine source of
beneficence, to whom they were finally accountable for their actions;
for the rest they were very much left to nature, and permitted to range
about at full liberty in their earliest years, covered in summer with
some slight and cheap garb, which merely kept the sun from them, and in
winter with some warm habit, in which convenience only was consulted.
Their dress of ceremony was never put on but when their company were
assembled. They were extremely fond of their children; but, luckily for
the latter, never dreamed of being vain of their immature wit and parts,
which accounts, in some measure, for the great scarcity of coxcombs
among them. The children returned the fondness of their parents with
such tender affection, that they feared giving them pain as much as ours
do punishment, and very rarely wounded their feelings by neglect or rude
answers. Yet the boys were often wilful and giddy at a certain age, the
girls being sooner tamed and domesticated.
These youths were apt, whenever they could carry a gun, (which they did
at a very early period,) to follow some favourite negro to the woods,
and, while he was employed in felling trees, range the whole day in
search of game, to the neglect of all intellectual improvement, and
contract a love of savage liberty, which might, and in some instances
did, degenerate into licentious and idle habits. Indeed, there were
three stated periods in the year, when, for a few days, young and old,
masters and slaves, were abandoned to unruly enjoyment, and neglected
every serious occupation for pursuits of this nature.
We, who occupy countries fully inhabited, can form no idea of the
multitude of birds and animals that nature provides to consume her waste
fertility, in those regions unexplored by man. In the interior of the
province, the winter is much colder than might be supposed, from the
latitude in which it lies, which is only 42 deg. 36 min. and from the
keen north winds which blow constantly for four or five months over vast
frozen lakes and snowy tracts, in the direction of Canada. The snow too
lies very deep; but when once they are visited by the south wind in
March, its literally warm approach dissolves the snow like magic, and
one never sees another wintry day till the season of cold returns. These
southern winds seem to flow in a rapid current, uninterrupted by
mountains or other obstacles, from the burning sands of the Floridas,
Georgia, and the Carolinas, and bring with them a degree of warmth, that
appears no more the natural result of the situation, than the intense
cold of winter does in that season.
Along the sea banks, in all these southern provinces, are low, sandy
lands, that never were or will be inhabited, covered with the
berry-bearing myrtle, from which wax is extracted fit for candles.
Behind these banks are woods and unwholesome swamps of great extent. The
myrtle groves, formerly mentioned, afford shelter and food to countless
multitudes of pigeons in winter, when their fruit is in season; while
wild geese and ducks, in numbers nearly as great, pass the winter in the
impenetrable swamps behind. Some time in the month of April, a general
emigration takes place to the northward, first of the geese and ducks,
and then of the pigeons; they keep the direction of the sea-coast till
they come to the mouths of the great rivers, and then follow their
course till they reach the great lakes in the interior, where nature has
provided for them with the same liberality as in their winter haunts. On
the banks of these lakes, there are large tracts of ground, covered with
a plant taller and more luxuriant than the wild carrot, but something
resembling it, on the seeds of which the pigeons feed all the summer,
while they are breeding and rearing their young. When they pass in
spring, which they always do in the same track, they go in great
numbers, and are very fat. Their progression northward and southward,
begins always about the vernal and autumnal equinoxes-and it is this
that renders the carnage so great when they pass over inhabited
districts. They begin to fly in the dawn, and are never seen after nine
or ten o’clock in the morning, possibly feeding and resting in the woods
all the rest of the day. If the morning be dry and windy, all the
fowlers, (that is every body,) are disappointed, for then they fly so
high that no shot can reach them; but in a cloudy morning, the carnage
is incredible; and it is singular that their removal falls out at the
times of the year that the weather, (even in this serene climate,) is
generally cloudy. This migration, as it passed by, occasioned, as I said
before, a total relaxation from all employments, and a kind of drunken
gaiety, though it was rather slaughter than sport; and, for above a
fortnight, pigeons in pies and soups, and every way they could be
dressed, were the food of the inhabitants. These were immediately
succeeded by wild geese and ducks, which concluded the carnival for that
season, to be renewed in September. About six weeks after the passage of
these birds, sturgeon of a large size, and in great quantities, made
their appearance in the river. Now the same ardour seemed to pervade all
ages in pursuit of this new object. Every family had a canoe—and on this
occasion all were launched; and these persevering fishers traced the
course of the sturgeon up the river, followed them by torchlight, and
often continued two nights upon the water, never returning till they had
loaded their canoes with this valuable fish, and many other, very
excellent in their kinds, that come up the river at the same time. The
sturgeon not only furnished them with good part of their food in the
summer months, but was pickled or dried for future use or exportation.
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