Col. William Leake, Travels in Northern Greece (v. 1-4)

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§ p5 PREFACE. ALTHOUGH the Four Journeys in Northern Greece which form the subject of these Volumes, are not strictly consecutive, in order of time, to the two Journeys, which constituted my “Travels in the Morea,” the present Work is in all other respects a continuation of the former, on the same plan; and the Preface of those volumes will equally apply to these. If the diurnal record of the traveller be not always the form of narrative most agreeable to the reader, it is, or ought to be, more faithful than any other, and consequently more useful to those who visit the countries described, especially when those countries have been little explored. That form, therefore, has been continued in these volumes, though the length of time which has elapsed since the Journeys were undertaken has justified the omission of many observations, which would now
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§ p6 appear trifling, and may have given to those which are left no more interesting character than that of a memoir in aid of history, serving also to exemplify manners and language, in which little or no change has yet been effected by the new political state of a part of Greece. Ancient history and geography having been the Author’s chief objects, their illustration occupies a large portion of the work; and, in consequence of its form, the remarks upon them are introduced, I must confess, with little observance of order or connexion. The only remedy for this inevitable defect was a copious Index. The opinions on those subjects were generally formed upon the spot, on a careful examination of the ancient testimonies, by means of portable editions of the works which more particularly treat of Greece, or by extracts from others, made previously to the several journeys. It has indeed happened occasionally, that a new light has been thrown upon such questions by authorities of less frequent occurrence, to which I had no access when in Greece; but in these cases I have not thought it necessary to refer to the circumstance when citing the author, as it has no effect upon the conclusion, and cannot be of any interest to the reader.
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§ p7 The general map appended to these Volumes has been constructed like that which accompanied my “Travels in the Morea,” from the measurement of a great number of angles with the sextant or theodolite from every eligible station, which was accessible to me, no opportunity having been omitted of obtaining a complete triangle, when circumstances admitted of it. In applying these geometrical observations, I have had the benefit of some valuable information from John Hawkins, Esquire, of Bignor Park, in Sussex, who has had the kindness to communicate to me some important angles measured by him from the summits of the mountains Ossa and Pelium, and from two other stations in the eastern part of Thessaly. The coast-line has throughout been copied or corrected from the Admiralty surveys, executed under the direction of Captains Smyth and Copeland, of the Royal Navy, of which those made under the orders of the latter officer are still unpublished. For this assistance I am indebted to His Majesty’s Hydrographer, Captain Beaufort.
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§ p8 In the interior country, the Journal will sufficiently distinguish the parts examined by me, from those in which the defects of distant or partial observations could be supplied only by such oral information as can be gathered from an ignorant and uneducated people. It is scarcely necessary to add, that in these parts the map is to be considered only as a first approximation. Many circumstances of no public interest have retarded the appearance of these volumes, far beyond my wish and intention. The delay, however, has afforded me the means of marking on the map the boundary-line, which, for the present, forms the continental frontier of liberated Greece. LONDON, December, 1835.
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§ 1.001 FIRST JOURNEY. CHAPTER I. EPIRUS. DEC. 9, 1804.—Aulon, which preserves its ancient name in the usual Romaic form of Avlona, converted by the Italians into Valona, is about a mile and a half distant from the sea-beach, and has eight or ten minarets. On the sea side there is a tolerable wharf, with an apology for a fort, in the shape of a square inclosure of ruinous walls, with towers and a few cannon.
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§ 1.002 The town occupies a hollow thickly grown with olive trees, among which are some gardens of herbs mixed with cypresses, poplars, and fruit trees. Beyond, are rugged hills entirely covered with olives, and to the northward a woody plain extending for a considerable distance, and forming a low shore except just at the northern entrance of the gulf, opposite to the island Sazona, where are some white cliffs of small elevation separated from the plain by a lagoon, containing salt works and a fishery. Two miles southward of the town rises a steep hill, on the summit of which is the ruinous castle of Kanina, and on a ridge branching from it to the southward the scattered houses of a Turkish village of the same name overtopped by two small minarets. Kanina is a name which occurs in the Byzantine history. It was built upon a Hellenic site, as appears by some remains of masonry of that age among the walls. Not far to the southward of the height of Kanina, begins a range of steep mountains separated only by a narrow valley from the Acroceraunia, which mountain presents the same forbidding aspect on this side as towards the sea, and forms a narrow steep ridge, woody, rocky, and terminating in a sharp summit which closes the valley about ten miles from the extremity of the gulf. This valley is a part of the district of Khimara, and contains a large village named Dukai, in Greek Dukadhes, below which at the southern extremity of the gulf is the harbour named Pashaliman by the natives, and Porto Raguseo by the Italians, near the mouth of a river which flows from the peak of the Acroceraunia through the valley of Dukadhes.
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§ 1.003 Eastward of the mouth of the river is a succession of lagoons, in the midst of which are the ruins of Oricum, on a desert site now called Erikho--the last syllable accented as in the ancient word, and E substituted for O, which was not an uncommon dialectic change among the ancients. The river of Dukadhes would seem from Ptolemy to have been the Celydnus, although its position does not exactly agree with his order of names, which places the Celydnus between Aulon and Oricum. Porto Raguseo I take to be the Panormus which Strabo describes as the port of Oricum. The gulf of Avlona being surrounded, for the most part, by high mountains, is subject to sudden and violent squalls. When the wind blows strong from the westward, the road of Avlona is not considered safe, and the usual anchorage is under Sazona, the ancient Sason, notorious among the Romans as a station of pirates. This island is most conveniently placed to shelter this great bay just at the mouth of the Adriatic, and affords a safe entrance on either side into the bay; for the cliffs in front of the lagoons of Avlona, the island itself, and the cape which forms the extreme point of the Acroceraunian ridge, are all equally bold.
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§ 1.004 The latter remarkable promontory is now called Glossa (perhaps its ancient name), and by the Italians Linguetta. The depth of the gulf between Sazona and Avlona is from 10 to 15 fathoms, and towards the southern extremity much greater, except near Oricum, where, as well as near Avlona, the depth is from 2 to 4 fathoms. Every where the bottom is a tough mud, deposited from the surrounding mountains. Among a few ships now lying in the road of Avlona, is a Ragusan vessel loading fossil pitch from the mine mentioned by Strabo. The mountain, at the foot of which this mineral is found, is about three hours to the eastward of Avlona, and being conspicuous from off the coast, is marked in the Italian charts under the name of Montagna della Pegola. Its real name is Kudhesi. Another ship is from Constantinople, bound to Palermo with corn; a third, which has been three months from Venice, is of the species of Adriatic vessels called a Pielago, which differs not much from the Manzera and Trabaccolo. It has a main-mast of a single stick from Fiume, almost as large as the main-mast of our ships, and twice as long. These vessels make quick passages with a fair wind, but are very unfit to contend with the Etesian breezes of summer, and still less with the equally obstinate and much more violent southerly gales in the autumn and winter. In the month of October, 1802, I made a passage of ten days in one of these vessels, from Corfu to Trieste, through the Dalmatian islands, touching at several of them in the way. In the present season it is not uncommon for them to be four months in making the passage in the opposite direction between the two ports. During the Etesian winds in summer, instances often occur of these vessels putting into the Rhizonic Gulf, or Bocche di Cattaro, with a contrary wind, when the masters proceed to Venice by land, make an agreement for the disposal of their cargo, and return to the Bocche before the ship has sailed. In the winter the Bocchesi seldom pass their gulf, but leaving a man and boy aboard, join their families on shore, and there remain till the spring.
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§ 1.005 Dec. 10.—Having sailed out of the gulf in the night with a light breeze at north, we speak a vessel from Alexandria bound direct to Tunis, with pilgrims returning from Mecca. Dec. 11.—At noon at the foot of the Acroceraunian peak, on the slope below which stands the village Palasa, a name resembling that of the place where, according to Lucan, Caesar landed from Brundusium previously to his operations against Pompey in Illyria, but which Caesar names Pharsalus. There can be little doubt that, in this instance, the poet is more correct than the great captain, who was so negligent of geography, (in Greece at least), that he has not named the place in Thessaly, where he gained the greatest of all his victories: so that this is the only passage in the commentaries where the word Pharsalus occurs. Caesar’s chief consideration in selecting his place of debarkation on this coast, was to avoid the harbours likely to be in the hands of the enemy, and to make himself master of Oricum, Apollonia, and Dyrrhachium, before Pompey could arrive from Macedonia. Trusting, therefore, to his protecting fortune to carry him through the perils both of the enemy and the season, he embarked seven legions and six hundred cavalry at Brundusium, in ships of burthen, for want of any others, arrived on the day after his departure at the Ceraunia, where he found a quiet station for the ships in the midst of rocks and dangerous places; and having immediately landed his troops, sent back the ships to Italy the same night. By this promptitude, Pompey arrived from Candavia in time only to save Dyrrhachium. Appian, though he does not specify in what part of the Ceraunian mountains the landing was made, shows that it was very near to Oricum, for he agrees with Caesar in representing Oricum to have been taken within a day from the time of the landing: he adds that Caesar marched by night; that on account of the rugged and difficult country, he divided his forces into several bodies, which were reunited at daybreak, and that the Oricii having declared their unwillingness to resist the Roman Consul, the commander of the garrison delivered up the keys to Caesar.
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§ 1.007 The distance of the site of Oricum from the shore below Palasa, seems perfectly to agree with these circumstances; and there is in fact a small harbour below Palasa, though it seems rather diminutive for the force which Caesar disembarked. The Strada Bianca, so called in the Italian charts, and known to the Greeks by the synonym Aspri Ruga, is a broad torrent-bed very conspicuous at sea, which, originating in the summit of the mountain of Palasa, descends directly to the sea to the northward of that village. To the southward of Palasa is a succession of villages on the side of the mountain, as far as the entrance of the Channel of Corfu, all formerly belonging to the Khimariote league; but these, from Port Palerimo southward, are now in the hands of Aly Pasha. Khimara, which now gives name to the Acroceraunian range, is a town, a little to the northward of Port Palerimo, the ancient Panormus, described by Strabo as a harbour in the midst of the Ceraunian mountains. The great summit at the northern end of Corfu, named Pandokratora, and by the Italians Salvator, is now a conspicuous object to the south by east, and a little to the eastward of it the northern Cape of Corfu, named St. Catherine. Maslera and Salmastraki are in a line off the north west Cape of Corfu, and farther eastward Όθωνούς (Ital. Fanu), forming an equilateral triangle with the two former. Othonus, or Othronus, is an ancient name, and appears from Procopius to have been applied in the plural number to all the three islands.
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§ 1.008 DEC. 13th to 20th.—In quarantine at Corfu, in consequence of the fever at Gibraltar. The quarantine ground is a small level space on the shore below the gate of the city, which still bears the French inscription Porte d’Epire, but by the Greeks is called the gate of St. Nicolas, from a small church which, with an adjoining apartment, is the only building on the ground. St. Nicolas is the patron of sailors, and his churches are often found near the shore. His feast-day being on the 18th, the priest and his deacons were employed for two or three days previously in weaving garlands of myrtle to adorn the pictures, and in preparing branches of bay and myrtle to stick about the walls of the church.
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§ 1.009 Dec. 20.—From the quarantine at eleven a.m. I cross over to the Forty Saints, a harbour on the Epirote coast, in an open boat, which carries a cargo of oranges and lemons; these fruits, with figs, rice, and oil, form the export trade of Corfu with the Skala of the Forty Saints, from whence are brought in return, grain, fish, botargo, cattle, and wood. We row over in six hours, against a light adverse air. Kyr G. Z., to whom I have a letter of recommendation from our minister, is collector of the customs of the Forty Saints, which is the chief port of Delvino and its district. Having a share also in the fishery of Buthrotum, he sells fish, both fresh and salted, and retails wine and other commodities imported from Corfu. All these affairs are transacted in a small stone building: three-fourths of the space within the walls are destined to the shop and store which are on the bare ground, the remaining fourth, in which he dwells, is separated from the rest by a floor half way up the wall, and a wooden partition in front, having two windows looking down into the store. Around the apartment are ranged trunks and shelves containing the collector's property and domestic utensils. Among them are some boxes full of salted κεφαλοί, or grey mullets, making a powerful addition to the various odours, none of them very agreeable, which are diffused through the apartment. At one end is a hearth, but no chimney, the smoke serving, as it effects its escape through the tiles, to cure the botargo, or roes of the mullet, which, enclosed in the natural membrane as extracted from the fish, are suspended to the rafters, and after the smoking will be dipped in melted wax. The kefalos is produced in abundance in all the lagoons and lakes of Greece, which like that of Buthrotum have a communication with the sea; and the botargo is a great resource to the Greeks during the severer fasts, when only a bloodless fish diet is allowed.
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§ 1.010 Dec. 21.—On the north-western side of the harbour of the Forty Saints are some extensive ruins, situated on a gentle slope by the sea side, at the foot of the bare rocky hills of which all this part of the Epirote coast consists. The ruins are those of a town of the better times of the Lower Empire. The walls forming an exact semicircle, the diameter of which is the sea beach, are flanked by about twenty towers; and contain within them the remains of churches, cisterns, and houses. At present the inclosure serves as a fold for the flocks of some Albanians, who have left their native mountains, now covered with snow, in search of pasture, and who are accompanied by their families; some living in tents, others in καλύβια or huts of light materials. This is the common practice of the mountaineers of northern Greece, the far larger proportion of whom are Christians, either of Albanian or Vlakhiote race, but the present party are Musulman Liape, from the mountains near Tepeleni. Between the walls of the ancient town and the modern houses of the Limeni, Skala, or Skaloma are the remains of a suburb of the ruined town, and close to the houses of the Skala those of a large church, which has long been in ruins, but still retains the name of its saint, St. Basil. On its southern side are the ruins of a smaller church of the same date, sacred to St. Nicolas.
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§ 1.011 The summit of the hill which rises at the back of the Skala is crowned by the ruins of the church of the Forty Saints; which gives to this place the name of στους Αγιους Σαράντα, A village on a height, separated only from that of the church by a hollow, through which leads the road to Delvino, bears the same name, as well as a small square white-washed fort to which there is a paved zig-zag path leading up the mountain from the Skala. The village was built three years ago by Aly Pasha, and is peopled by the cultivators and pastors of the neighbouring plain, from the former of whom, Aly having lately made the land his own, receives a third of its produce. The fortress was added this summer: it has two round towers at two of the opposite angles, and within the walls a dwelling for the bulu-bashi. The church of the Forty Saints is said to have been part of a monastery, but nothing more remains at present than the ruined church, of the annexed form, which was covered with three domes and seven semi-domes. It was evidently coeval with the town below; though part of the materials of the church, particularly in the round arches of the windows, are Roman tiles, derived probably from some town of an earlier age, which stood on the site of the existing ruins on the shore of the harbour.
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§ 1.012 At Kassopo in Corfu, nearly opposite to the Forty Saints, are similar ruins of a town not so large as that of the Forty Saints, with those of a castle, irregular in shape, and haying no ruined buildings within its inclosure, and which stands on the summit of a hill rising from the shore of the harbour of Kassopo. The heights of the Forty Saints are rugged, sharp, honey-combed rocks of brown marble, with a little soil in the intervals, which bear squills and other plants usual on similar sites in Greece. At the Skala, a rough mole incloses a little cothon or basin sufficient for the use of the small boats which alone frequent the harbour, though it would be both secure and convenient for large vessels, were the commerce of this part of Epirus sufficient to require them, as the bay has good anchorage and is well protected both from south-easterly and northwesterly gales; in the latter direction, by a remarkable cape called Kefali. which with Cape St. Catherine, or the northern extremity of Corfu, forms the entrance of the channel from the northward; in the opposite direction the harbour is protected by the projecting coasts both of the continent and island. Today, though it blows a gale of wind from the southward, there is no sea in the port.
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§ 1.013 As there is nothing between the Forty Saints and Port Palerimo deserving the name of a harbour, though there are creeks under the villages of Nivitza, Lukovo and Pikernes, where small vessels take shelter and are drawn up on the beach, the Forty Saints can alone correspond to the ancient Port Onchesmus, which was the next to the southward of Panormus, according to Ptolemy as well as Strabo. It would seem from Cicero that Onchesmus, in his time, was a place of some importance, and that it was the ordinary point of departure from Epirus to Italy, the south-easterly breeze which was favourable for making the passage, having been called an Onchesmites. Under the Constantinopolitan emperors the name Onchesmus assumed the form of Anchiasmus, which probably obtained the preference over Onchesmus in consequence of a tradition noticed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that the town was named after Anchises, father of Aeneias. Anchiasmus was a city of the government of Old Epirus, together with Phoenice and Buthrotum; the signature of the bishops of Anchiasmus is found to the acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon in the fifth century. The other bishops of Epirus whose names are annexed to the acts are those of Dodona, Nicopolis, Eurhoea, Phoenice, Hadrianopolis and Corcyra.
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§ 1.014 Dec. 22.—A Scirocco, which detained me yesterday, still continues, but though the gale has abated and the rain ceased, the Agoiates, (Italice vetturini,) are unwilling to go, and my host will not take upon himself to oblige them, until some person arrives from Delvino, who will report the rivers practicable. The consequence is, that I am not only detained this day, but the 23d Dec. likewise; for although some horsemen arrived yesterday, about 3 p.m., who had crossed the river, it was then too late to depart, and at night the rain set in again in torrents with thunder and lightning, penetrating the bare tiles of the collector’s roof, and pouring down all night a black stream from the smoky tiles. The tempest continues the greater part of the day, but the wind having come to the north promises a change of weather. The feasts, the fasts, and the fears of the Greeks, are a great impediment to the traveller. During their feasts they will not work; the fasts, when prolonged and rigidly observed, render them unequal to any great exertion, while timidity is the necessary consequence of the Turkish yoke following long ages of the debasing tyranny and superstition of the Byzantine empire. But through this unamiable covering the ancient national character continually breaks forth; to which, in this mountainous part of the country, is added a considerable portion of the industry and activity of a northern race. Every traveller will occasionally be disgusted with the meanness, lying, and cowardice of the people, in the towns and in the parts of the country most frequented by travellers; but it should be remembered that their vices arise from their condition, that deceit is the only defence which their tyrants have left them, and that such defects are greater in proportion to that natural genius which is indisputably inherent in the race. They have a proverb, that the sweetest wine makes the sourest vinegar, which is well exemplified in their own character by means of a most corrupt despotic government acting upon a fine natural genius.
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§ 1.015 Dec. 24.—At 10, a.m., we set out in the rain from the Limeni, cross the hollow between the monastery and the village of the Forty Saints, and at the end of three quarters of an hour ford a small stream descending from Nivitza into the Pavla, which is the principal river of the plain of Delvino. The passage of this tributary is so difficult in consequence of the rain, that there seems little chance of the main stream being passable. Our conductors, moreover, are ignorant of the πέραμα, or proper ford of the latter river; we are obliged therefore to follow its bank upwards, until immediately below Nivitza we meet a party of horsemen, who have been making an attempt to cross without success. We retire, therefore, for the night to Nivitza. The mountain on the mid-slope of which this village stands, is separated on either side by a valley from the rest of the maritime range, and is fortified to the eastward as well by the steepness of the mountain as by the rapid river at the foot of it. So rugged is the ascent, and so bad our cattle, that we are two hours in reaching the village from the river, the mules having fallen several times under their loads.
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§ 1.016 The Vezir’s Bulu-bashi, a rough Albanian Musulman, receives us kindly as the friends of his master, and we take up our lodging at the best Greek house in the place. Many of the soldiers and inhabitants speak Italian; one of them is son of a major in the Reali Cacciatori Albanesi of Naples, in which corps he himself served many years. Nivitza was once a large and flourishing town, and the most important of the independent Christian communities, which then extended along the whole coast from Buthrotum to Avlon. By means of the strength of its position it resisted all the attempts of Aly Pasha to reduce it, until the year 1798, when he persuaded the French to connive at his conveying a body of Albanians in his own vessels through the Straits; an operation which had constantly been interdicted, by the Venetians on the strength of their treaties with the Porte, but which was conceded on this occasion by the French, as they were then anxious to conciliate Aly with a view to their designs upon Turkey, and little suspected perhaps the use which he intended to make of their permission. He landed his troops at the Skales of Nivitza and the Forty Saints; and the better to ensure success, made choice of the morning of Easter Sunday for the time of attack, when the inhabitants were all disarmed and engaged in prayers. He thus made an easy conquest, not only of Nivitza, but of two other villages to the northward, the possession of which has now given him all the coast as far as the town of Khimara. Nivitza and the two villages are now little better than ruins; their lands, divided into portions, are numbered among the Pasha's tjiftliks; and it is for the use of those who cultivate them that the Pasha has built the new village of the Forty Saints, while many of the inhabitants of Nivitza have been sent to labour on his farms near Trikkala in Thessaly.
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§ 1.017 Dec. 25.—A mile to the northward of Nivitza, on the same mountain, stands Aio Vasili, one of the villages which shared the fate of Nivitza: a little below it a ridge which connects the mountain with the range to the northward, is occupied by a small square fortress, similar to that of the Forty Saints, and which was erected by the Pasha soon after he had obtained possession of Nivitza. About a mile below this castle is the Skala of Nivitza and St. Basil, called Spilia. The rugged hills below Nivitza, to the eastward, are planted with olives and vines: the plain produces Mesiri (maize), kalambokki (Guinea corn), fasulia (kidney-beans), rizi (rice), wheat, barley, and tobacco. Having descended the mountain, we cross the river at the extremity of the plain, near the opening where it issues from the mountains:
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§ 1.018 it is not very deep, but extremely rapid, and the stony bed is such an insecure footing for the horses, that they tremble in crossing it. Both horse and rider must trust to the guide who walks on foot beside them, supports both, and repeats his recommendation to the rider to look at the bank, and not at the water, which causes giddiness. I did not experience that effect, but the illusion of appearing to remain stationary, while really moving, was perfect. The sources of this river are in the mountains eastward of Khimara, and its course, for the most part, is through a narrow valley, in which is situated Kaliasa. Half an hour beyond the river, we cross the torrent of Delvino, and at noon enter the pass of Delvino, from which the torrent flows. Kyr Khristo Kanaki, to whom I had letters, happens to be in the country, superintending his vineyards, but I am received in his house, and he returns home in the evening. Dhelvino, or Delvino, is situated in an opening of the lower ridges of a high range of mountains which have a S.S.E. direction. The town is chiefly inhabited by Musulman Albanians, who have eight or ten small mosques. Of Greeks who occupy only the eastern suburb called Laka, there are about thirty families, ten of which bear the same surname as Kyr Khristo. The Bishop and K. are the chief men; the former, who is now absent, styles himself Bishop of Khimara and Delvino, and is a suffragan of the Metropolitan of Ioannina. The Turkish houses occupy the sides of the hills on either side of the torrent, for a distance of two miles, being situated as usual in Albanian towns, at great distances from one another, with a view to the frequent quarrels and wars among the φαραις, or family alliances, into which all Albanian communities are divided. The effects of these, and of a war between the Pashas Aly and Mustafa, which lasted seven years, have left many of the houses in ruins. The war ended by putting Aly in possession of Delvino, and sending Mustafa to take shelter in Tjamuria, where he now resides at Vakalates, a small town two or three hours eastward of Buthrotum. At the entrance of Delvino, on a conspicuous height, stands the deserted serai of Selim Bey Koka, a connection of Aly Pasha, but who, having taken part with Mustafa, has not thought himself safe here, and has retired to Konispoli, where, however, he still enjoys the revenue of his landed property in the district of Delvino. A little within the opening of the hills, a conical rock, projecting over the ravine, is crowned with a small castle in bad repair. The ground on either side of the ravine abounds in springs and streamlets falling down to the torrent, and although the most uneven imaginable, bears olives and other fruit trees. The Pasha’s palace is a heap of ruins, but there still remain in the same quarter, on the northern side of the town, some good houses, pleasantly situated among gardens, in which are orange-trees, cypresses, and poplars.
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§ 1.020 The Christians of Delvino make wine, and comb and spin some imported hemp into yarn, from which they manufacture shoes. Swords too, such as the Albanians wear, are made here, and every part of their muskets except the barrels. Below the castle there is a miserable bazar. On account of the difficulty of passing the river, I had no opportunity of examining a Paleo-kastro at Finiki (Φοινίκη), of which I received information. The name, however, is sufficient to show it to be the Phoenice of Strabo and Polybius, which the former describes as being near Buthrotum, and which the itineraries place exactly in this position between the Acroceraunia and Buthrotum: it stood on an insulated hill, in the middle of the plain between the river of Kaliasa, and another, named Vistritza, which flows from the northeast, and beyond Finiki pursues a course nearly parallel to the former river, as far as the lake, into which they separately fall. My host complains to me, in the usual style, of the hardships which his nation suffers from the Turks, and asks why the great powers of Europe, but particularly the English, will not assist in liberating their fellow-Christians. It is not a very agreeable task to explain, that nations seldom act but from self-interest, that we have a cruel war on our hands, and that our present policy is to support the Turkish empire. The poor Greeks have not much more to hope for at present from any other nation. If either French or Russians, in their military occupation of the country, were obliged to derive their resources from it, the Greeks might find the necessities of a French or Russian general not less fatal to their liberty and property than those of Aly, whose officers are kept in the best possible order, however relentless his own extortion may be. The sentiments of the Greeks, as well in this as in other parts of Greece which I have visited, show that the conduct of the Russians in the Greek expeditions of Catherine, as well as in the administration of the Septinsular Republic, has left a very unfavorable impression: so far from desiring the presence of these brethren of their church, as might have been supposed, they much more commonly bestow upon them the appellations of Κλέφτες and Ζώα. On the other hand, they seem quite ready to hail the arrival of the French, though they are cautious of giving utterance to these sentiments, not so much from any fear of their own government, for at this moment they have perhaps more liberty of speech upon such subjects than any people on the continent of Europe; but from doubts lest they should give offence to European governments or their agents, whose influence with the Turks might be fatal to an offending individual. My host admits, that were any pretended deliverers to land, there would hardly be the Greek who would venture to furnish them provisions, much less to join them, so much do they dread the Turkish sabre, and so little energy have they to act in their own behalf.
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§ 1.022 Dec. 26.—At half past eight this morning we begin to ascend the mountain at the back of Delvino. Its sides are covered with extensive vineyards, yielding a light pleasant wine, but which generally turns sour before the summer. The pass leads between rugged and barren hills, two of the highest summits of the range, until, at half past ten, we arrive at the little village of Kardhikaki, where are the sources of one of the streams which contribute to form the Vistritza. Here we fall in with some Musulman Albanians, hunting hares with greyhounds of a large breed. The peasants are ploughing the ground, with a light plough drawn by two oxen; they afterwards break the clods with a hoe. At 11.10 a hollow country is on our right, four or five miles in diameter, surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains, and watered by several streams, which unite to form the Vistritza. The slopes, although intersected and broken by the torrents in the most rugged, and wildest manner, are well clothed with vineyards and olive-trees. Having skirted the edge of this basin as far as the village of Morzena, we there join the road from Vutzindro, which is hardly passable at this time on account of the rivers. A little beyond Morzena is a Derveni, or guard-house, in a spot where the road begins to descend into the plain of Arghyrokastro through a narrow opening between two very steep and lofty summits.
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§ 1.023 The descent is long and rugged; and it is not until 2 p.m. that we arrive in the plain at the Derveni of Garbitzi, or Grabitza, so called from a small neighbouring village. Here the opening is no more than a torrent-bed between lofty rocks. The wretched mules which we took from the Forty Saints move so slowly that the horizontal distance from Delvino to this place is probably not more than 9 geographical miles. Nothing can be less inviting or picturesque than the present appearance of the valley of Arghyrokastro, though undoubtedly it presents a very different appearance in spring, as its numerous villages and extensive cultivation show that it is one of the most flourishing districts in Albania. Those parts which are now little better than a marsh in consequence of the perfect level, are in summer richly covered with corn, maize, and tobacco. Opposite to Garbitzi the plain is about five miles broad, bounded by two parallel mountains of varied surface, woody, and studded with villages in the lower parts, and rising above to steep ridges of calcareous rock, the summits of which are now covered with snow, and the bare sides furrowed with white charadrae, or beds of winter torrents: along the middle of the valley flows a river in a direction from south to north. Our road on emerging from the pass, changes from an eastern to a north-western direction, along the foot of the mountain; and at the end of three miles we halt for the night, at the little village of Theriakhates. The Papas, in whose house I lodge, is a cultivator of land, holding it of the Musulman lord of the village, who supplies seed and cattle, and takes half the produce. He asserts that in summer, not only the plain is quite dry, but the river also, and that the air is not unhealthy. This perhaps is chiefly owing to the situation of the villages on the sides of the hills. They are for the most part surrounded with vineyards and a few olives. Opposite to Theriakhates is the town of Libokhovo, situated, like Delvino, in an opening through which appears a parallel range still higher than that which borders the plain, and with a greater quantity of snow upon it. This high ridge is called Nemertzika. The pass of Libokhovo leads to Permeti, or Premedi, which stands on the eastern foot of Mount Nemertzika, in the vale of the Viosa. In the hollow country between the two ranges behind Libokhovo, and extending from thence along the mountains towards Tepeleni, is the Albanian district of Lientjas, in Greek Λιουντζαριά, the country of the Λιούντζιδες. These people are noted for their skill in the irrigation of land, and the management of aqueducts, and in that capacity obtain employment at Constantinople, and in other distant parts of the Turkish empire. To the south of the Lmntzidhes is the district called Pogoniani, or Pogoyani, of which Dhelvinaki is the chief place; and to the north-east ward, that of Zagoria. The Zagoriani inhabit the banks of a stream, which joins the Viosa between Klisura and Tepeleni.
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§ 1.025 Below Libokhovo, on the skirts of the plain, are seen some buildings where the snuff is made for which this valley is celebrated; and in the mid plain, which is here about four miles across, the Papas points out to me a mound near the left bank of the river, which by the description seems to be a small theatre. It is now inaccessible, the plain being a marsh quite up to the rocks of Theriakhates. The whole valley is called by the Greeks Deropoli, which the Albanians pronounce Deropugl: the river is named Dhryno, or Dryno, or Druno, or river of Deropoli. Arghyrokastro, the chief town, contains about 2000 Musulman families; Libokhovo half that number; in each are about 100 Christian houses. The road to Ioannina from the derveni of Grabitza follows up the plain of Deropoli to the southward. At a quarter of an hour it crosses a branch of the Dryno, half an hour further another branch; and a quarter of an hour beyond, the main stream of the river. The road soon afterwards ascends the eastern hills, from which many torrents descend into the river, after having turned some more snuffmills. It then enters Pogoyani, leaves Dhelvinaki on the left, crosses again to the left bank of the Dryno, which originates in the mountains around Dhelvinaki, passes through the valleys of Xerovalto and Tzerovina, crosses the Kalama near its sources, and from thence proceeds into the plain of Ioannina.
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§ 1.026 Dec. 27.—At half-past seven this morning we continue to skirt the foot of the mountain in a northerly direction, advancing very slowly through rocky ground, or along the edge of the marshy plain, and leaving several small villages on the heights above us, until ten, when we arrive at the point of a low projecting ridge, where the river, wide, deep, and rapid, approaches so near to the heights as to leave only a passage for the road. On the point stands the village of Kuloritza, and on a similar projection, two miles further, the town of Arghyrokastro. Not thinking it right to visit this place, as Aly Pasha and the Kastrites, or rather a powerful party in the town, are at present in a state of mutual obversation, we leave it on the left, and crossing a high narrow bridge of four arches below the town, halt a little beyond it for twenty minutes at a fountain. The plain here is not more than a mile and a half in breadth, and is all in pasture. Arghyrokastro occupies a large space of ground, being divided into separate clusters of houses, which are defended from one another by deep ravines. The mountain on which it stands is bare and deficient in water, and it is difficult to imagine a more disadvantageous situation, except with a view to the interminable disputes among the Albanian fares, for here the hostile families, separated from each other by rocks and ravines, may cherish their quarrels for years together without any effectual result. In the plain between Libokhovo and Arghyrokastro, the Dryno is joined by the Sukha, which rises in Mount Nemertzika, and after watering the fertile valley of the Liuntzidhes, to the eastward of Libokhovo, enters the plain through a narrow opening on the northern side of that town. Having reached a projection of the eastern hills, we coast them for two or three miles, strike again across a part of the plain, and at 1:15 arrive at a Khan called Valare, or in the Albanian pronunciation, Valiare, situated on the right bank of a torrent which descends obliquely from the mountain into the Dryno. The Khan is reckoned five hours from Tepeleni; the road thither lying along the foot of the mountain, and over some low heights which project from it. Finding it impossible, with such cattle as we have, to reach Tepeleni to-night, we follow the torrent at the foot of the eastern mountain, which here projects considerably into the valley, and forms a variety of lower heights.
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§ 1.028 Instead of stopping at Gariani, which is at the entrance of these hills, we are induced, in search of better accommodation, to proceed to Labovo, which is asserted to be only half an hour higher on the mountain. We ascend accordingly by a winding path, which is not the better for being paved, as half the stones have been displaced by the torrents, but see nothing of Labovo for two hours, nor until we had entered the clouds, which have settled upon the hills with a southerly wind, and brought on rain. Λάμποβος, vulgarly pronounced Liabovo, according to the guttural sound of the L in Albanian, is situated not far below one of the highest summits of the range, but in a situation where a more gradual slope than that which we ascended admits of space for the scattered houses of the village, and for some vineyards and fields of kalambokki. It is entirely Christian, and there are eight or ten churches, besides those in the detached quarters, for, like the larger Albanian villages in general, Labovo consists of several detached makhalas. They suffered last year from a deficient harvest, and derive no advantage from being near Tepeleni, as the Vezir Aly, when he visits his native place, calls upon Labovo among other neighbouring places to furnish him with provision for his household, particularly eggs, poultry, and wood. On the summit of the ridge above Labovo stands Tjaiube, in a situation so exposed to storms, that it is necessary to pile stones and earth upon the roofs to prevent them from being blown away, although composed of heavy masses of stone. From a peak of this ridge, called Strakavetzi, the monastery of Aghio Naum, near Bitolia, is said to be visible.
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§ 1.029 Dec. 28.—Very soon after quitting Labovo, (at half-past eight,) the town of Kardhiki, or Gardhiki, appears over the northern extremity of the range of Arghyrokastro, on a height surrounded by a valley through which the Belitza river takes its course to join the Dryno. The junction of these two streams occurs a little below the Khan Valiare, between it and a bridge over the united river. The slopes of the mountain of Labovo, as far as the river Viosa, are well cultivated, and contain many villages. One of the largest of these, named Khormovo, resisted for a long time the growing power of Aly Pasha, when at length, about nine years ago, he took it, murdered the male inhabitants, and burned alive the Prift, who commanded the village, in revenge for the ill-treatment which Aly’s mother and sister had suffered from this man and others, when they were made prisoners, by the allied forces of Khormovo and Gardhiki, soon after the death of Aly’s father. In something less than two hours we arrive at the foot of the mountain, on the right bank of the Dryno, which, between the bridge of Arghyrokastro, where we crossed it, and this place, has received, besides the Belitza and torrent of Valare, a contribution much larger than either from a source at the foot of the mountain about midway between Arghyrokastro and the Belitza, so that here the river is almost twice as large as at the bridge of Arghyrokastro. The great source just mentioned is said to be the only portion of the river permanent in very dry seasons. The stream now enters a narrow vale between two mountains; that to the west is united with ridges which inclose on every side the valley of Gardhiki; the eastern, on which stands Khormovo, is a westerly projection of the mountain of Labovo. We cross the river by the bridge of the Subashi, so named; which has three arches resting upon piers, with arched openings in them. The middle arch, which is much the largest, is pointed at the top, and its height is equal to about two thirds of the span. The roadway is so narrow and roughly paved, and the structure so high, that it is scarcely ever passed but on foot. From the bridge to Tepeleni, the distance is about six miles—two thirds along the Dryno, and the remainder on the bank of the Viosa, after it has received the Dryno. The road has been paved, but as the mountain rises immediately above it, the torrent has carried away the pavement in many parts, and left a track just passable. The fortress and serai of the Vezir, standing on a tabular projection, surrounded by cliffs towards the river, have an imposing appearance at a distance, and are quite in harmony with the sublime scenery around. The village of Tepeleni, indeed, which consists of not more than eighty or ninety Musulman families, with a small detached suburb of Christians, is no great embellishment to the scene; but upon the whole, the palace is one of the most romantic and delightful country-houses that can be imagined.
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§ 1.031 The height is the termination of one of the counterforts of a snowy range of mountains, bordering the vale of the Viosa to the west, and is defended on the northern side by the ravine of a stream called Bantja. which, though sometimes dry in summer, now pours a large supply into the Viosa. The village is surrounded by vineyards which produce a poor red wine; beyond which, wheat and barley are the produce of the higher lands around; and kalambokki that of the low level on the banks of the river. Immediately above Tepeleni, the piers of a ruined bridge stretch across the Viosa, the arches of which were carried away three years ago by an inundation, and are now supplied by a temporary wooden communication. From the opposite bank of the river rises a steep and lofty mountain, named Trebushin; on the side of which are a Tekieh, or convent of dervises, and a village named Petzisti. Mount Trebushin is separated only from the similar mountain of Khormovo by the Viosa, which at two miles above Tepeleni emerges from a boghazi, or narrow gorge, between the two mountains, and joining the Dryno, spreads over a space of near half a mile; where the river is divided by sand-banks into several streams now deep and broad, but some of which have no existence in summer.
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§ 1.032 Mount Trebushin sends forth a branch to the northward, which extends to the Illyrian plains, between Berat and Avlona, bounding the vale of the Viosa, below Tepeleni, on the eastern side, opposite to the parallel ridge before mentioned, of which the highest summit (not seen from Tepeleni), is named in Albanian Griva (grey), from its being constantly covered with snow, except for a short time in the middle of summer. The southerly and westerly winds, which have now prevailed for a fortnight, have melted the snow on the western side of all the mountains, but have left it in considerable quantity on the opposite face of them. The narrow ravine between Trebushin and the mountain of Khormovo, from which the Viosa emerges, is called τά Στενά της Βιώσας, or the Straits of the Viosa. It extends four hours to the eastward, throughout which distance the river flows between two high mountains, every where steep, and in some places perpendicular. The Stena terminate at the village of Klisura, above which the valley widens, and from thence continues to be nearly of the same breadth for a considerable distance beyond Premedi. At Klisura Aly has built a fortress, in a lofty situation, above the right bank of the river, and is thus master of both ends of this important defile. There can be little doubt that this pass is the celebrated Fauces Antigonenses, or Aoi Stena, near Antigoneia, in which Philip, son of Demetrius, attempted in vain to arrest the progress of the Roman consul, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, through Epirus.
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§ 1.033 Dec. 31.—The road from Tepeleni to Nivitza leads along the river Bantza (in Albanian Benja), through a hollow in the range of Griva, from which that river descends. This pass conducts to Pregonati, situated at the head of the valley of the Sutzista, which descends to Nivitza, and joins the Viosa in the plain of Apollonia. Thus Tepeleni, in all the four quarters, is approached by a narrow valley; from the east and north by that of the Viosa, from the south by the valley of the Dryno, and from the west by that of the Bantza. On the left bank of the Bantza, three or four miles above Tepeleni, is a ruined castle, bearing the same name as the river. It occupies the summit of a height, and incloses about two acres. Nothing is left but the foundations, except at the upper end, where are some remains of a round tower, of very thick and regular courses of masonry, cemented with a great quantity of mortar. The shape and position of the castle, and its citadel at the round tower, incline me to think that the fortress is ancient, although no part of the masonry resembles the massy and beautiful constructions of the southern Greeks. On the opposite bank of the river, not a mile above the ruins, is the small village Bantza, which is said to have been built about thirty years ago by one of the fares, or family alliances of Pregonati, which, in consequence of the internal disputes of that town, and the superiority acquired by their opponents, had been obliged to leave it.
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§ 1.034 Several other small villages were founded at that time in the country around Pregonati from the same cause. It may be thought, perhaps, that Bantza is a corruption of Amantia, and that it proves that ancient city to have stood either at Bantza or at Tepeleni, but Amantia was certainly much nearer to Aulon, and Bantza may, perhaps, be the ancient name, with scarcely any change. Below Tepeleni the Viosa continues to flow for twelve hours between the two ranges of mountains already mentioned, as far as Gradista, sometimes closely confined between rocky banks, at others leaving small plains, or cultivated open heights, on either side, and thus the country is divided by nature into districts, each of which contains several villages, generally small. The first of the plains below Tepeleni is that of Lopesi, pronounced Liopesi by the Albanians, of which the chief village is named Dukai, in Greek Dukadhes. Here is a ruin on the left bank of the river, similar to that of Bantza. Opposite to Lopesi, a quarter of an hour from the right bank of the river, stands Vasari, or Vashari, according to the usual Albanian and vulgar Greek pronunciation of the sigma. On the opposite side, one hour from Dukai, is Sarali, distant half an hour from the left bank of the river, from whence there is a road across Mount Griva to Nivitza, by a ravine called Grobate Pliakes, or the vale of the old woman, so called because a woman was once frozen to death in passing. Continuing from Sarali on the way to Avlona, occurs, at the end of an hour and a half, Dhumbliani, containing three hundred houses, and situated at the same distance from the Viosa as Sarali; three hours beyond it is Kudhesi, of five hundred houses, the chief town of a district containing several villages, and situated on the mountain, which commands the fork of the rivers Viosa and Sutzista. On the river side, below Lopesi, is the district of Kalutzi, separated from that of Lopesi by a rocky shore, on which stands another ruined fortress, near the village of Lunji, which is about half way between Tepeleni and Gradista. Another rocky shore terminates Kalutzi on the left bank, beyond which the country begins to open towards the plain; then occurs Karvundri, a town of Kudhesi, then Gradista, on the right bank, and Selenitza on the left, where are the mines of fossil pitch described by Strabo; and then the junction of the Viosa with the Sutzista, or river of Nivitza.
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§ 1.036 From all I can learn, the most considerable Hellenic cities in this part of the country were at Gradista and Nivitza. If the latter was Amantia, as I can hardly doubt from the strong testimony of the ancient authors, the former was probably Byllis, or Bullis, for Byllis, Amantia and Apollonia were the three principal cities in the vicinity of the Gulf of Aulon. This evening the Dervises mount to the top of Mount Trebushin; and on their return declare the new moon visible, though the sky is so clouded that the sun could not have been seen, had it been above the horizon. Several guns are then fired at intervals of five minutes, and the rioting of the Bairam begins. Knowing how little the Musulman Albanians care for the ceremonies or the doctrines of their religion, I was surprised to find them, on my arrival, keeping the Ramazan so correctly. Not a pipe was to be seen till the muezzin had called the evening prayer from the minaret of the Pasha’s mosque.
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§ 1.137 But the Vezir, though he generally drinks wine openly at table, seems to think it right to set a good Musulman example to the wild Toskidhes and Liapidhes of his native mountains, whose ancestors probably adopted the fast the more readily from its resembling one of the observances of the church from which they apostatized, without being so severe a penance as the Christian Lent. In fact, the Ramazan is no mortification at all in winter, when the short days leave the Musulmans at liberty to feast as early as five in the evening. Aly’s sons, Mukhtar and Vely, were born by a daughter of Kaplan Pasha, of Delvino. His third son, Salih, who is only three or four years old, was by a slave. It does not appear that the sons have been educated in such a manner as can adapt them for preserving the power which the father has founded, or that he himself looks much farther in this respect than other Turks. Indeed, a Turk, or Musulman Albanian, not short-sighted, avaricious, or intent upon momentary advantages, would be a rarissima avis. Aly is his own Kehaya and Hasnadar, trusts not even his own sons, and transacts every thing himself, except where writing is required, when he dictates to a Turkish or Greek secretary. His own writing is execrably bad, and his Greek orthography worse; the little that he learnt when a boy having been almost lost by that want of practice caused by the custom common in every part of the east among the great, of always employing a secretary.
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§ 1.138 Turkish he can read, but never attempts to write, though it formed a part of his education: in fact it is not much wanted, except for some formal letters to the Porte, or to some of the Pashas of Rumili; his communications with the government being chiefly carried on in Greek by means of his Kapi-Tjokhadar, or acknowledged agent, residing at Constantinople. With the Albanians his written correspondence is in Greek, except perhaps in a few rare cases where he wishes his missive to be publicly read in Albanian, in which case it is written in that language with Greek characters. The person of most importance under the Vezir is Suliman, the Seliktar Aga, now absent. It is said that his influence in southern Albania is such, that in the event of the Pasha’s death, he might place himself at the head of a party at least equal to those of Mukhtar or Vely, for little doubt seems to be entertained that the two brothers will be opposed to each other. Already the symptoms of this future civil war are apparent. Mukhtar, knowing that by money he can always command the affections of the Albanians, is a thesaurizer, while his brother, who is a mere sensualist, but with much more talent than Mukhtar, is much less provident. Another person in whom the Vezir places great confidence, is Yusuf Aga Arapi, nominally His Highness's Hasnadar, in whose house, now occupied by his son, Bekir Aga, I am lodged. He has always been employed by the Vezir in the management of the Dervenia, and hence is thoroughly acquainted with the country, from the frontiers of Dalmatia to the isthmus of Corinth. He is described as a man of talent and activity, extremely attached to his master, brave, ferocious, active, and cruel. Two other officers, whom the Vezir generally keeps near him, are Tatza Bulubashi, a Musulman, and Athanasi Vaia, a Christian, the ready instruments of many an atrocious act of cruelty. All these persons, including the Pasha's sons, are usually dressed in the Albanian fashion, with a coat or jacket covered with gold lace, and a shirt falling down in folds over the drawers, resembling the drapery of the Roman statues. When new and clean it is a beautiful costume; but a clean shirt is not a weekly luxury even with all the higher classes; and among the soldiers it is sometimes worn out without ever being washed, though occasionally taken off, and held over the fire, that the animals contained in it, intoxicated by the smoke, may fall into the fire, when a crackling announces the success of the operation. Sometimes during the first two or three weeks of a new shirt or waistcoat, or when particularly desirous of making a favourable appearance, they wear a collar of cotton, impregnated with oxyde of mercury, which forms a barrier to the more aspiring natives, and keeps them out of sight. The same want of cleanliness pervades every class in proportion, in all their domestic arrangements.
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§ 1.040 Aly himself has been so accustomed to the rudest Albanian life in his youth, that the dirtiness of his people gives him little disgust, and as policy obliges him to receive the lowest Albanian with familiarity and apparent confidence, to allow them to approach him, to kiss the hem of his garment, to touch his hand, and to stand near him while they converse with him, his dress is often covered with vermin, and there is no small danger of acquiring these companions by sitting on his sofa, where they are often seen crawling amidst embroidered velvet and cloth of gold. A Divan Effendi and a Turkish Secretary, both πολίταις, or natives of Constantinople, form a part also of Aly’s court. They preserve the Turkish costume, and look upon the Albanians with that mixture of fear and contempt, which is the general feeling of the Turks towards this nation. Through the medium of the Constantinopolitans residing with him, and that of his own resident at the Porte, Aly manages the good understanding, which he has the policy to keep up with the supreme government. He makes frequent presents to the Valide Sultana, and her powerful Kehaya Yusuf. He has augmented his dominions as much by the intermarriages of his family with the chieftains around him, as by his military or political skill. Arghyrokastro and Libokhovo have been brought under his influence chiefly by the marriage of his sister, Khainitza, with Suliman, of Arghyrokastro, sometime Pasha of Trikkala, whose son, Adem Bey, now resides with his mother, as Governor of Libokhovo, under the orders of the Vezir, having succeeded in this post to his brother, Elmas Bey, who died not long since at Ioannina.
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§ 1.041 Aly has no other relatives except his grandchildren. His sister, before she married Suliman of Arghyrokastro, was the wife of Suliman’s brother, Aly, by whom she had a daughter married to Vely, Bey of Klisura. It is said that Aly, of Arghyrokastro, was murdered by his brother, in concert with Aly of Tepeleni, and his sister: it is certain, at least, that Suliman, very soon after his brother's death, married the widow. Eight years ago Aly obtained possession of Klisura, by murdering his nephew-in-law, the Bey, together with his younger brother, whom he had enticed to Ioannina, to assist at the nuptials of his son Vely with the daughter of Ibrahim Pasha, by which alliance the peace between the two Vezirs was ratified. Aly pretended to have discovered that not only the Bey, but his brother, who had accompanied him, had been engaged in a plot against the Vezir. By this act Aly cleared away all the claimants to Klisura: a most important point, which secures Tepeleni and Premedi, and opens the road to Berat. At Arghyrokastro, as in other independent towns of Albania, the power was formerly divided among several leagues, whose chieftains were continually at war. At present, Morteza Bey, brother of Suliman Pasha, chiefly by his alliance with Aly, is at the head of the strongest party.
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§ 1.042 Mutja Hushuf (Albanian for Musa Yusuf, or Moses Joseph) was the name of Aly’s great grandfather, from whom the family are called in Greek οι Μουτζαχουσσάτες. My host, Bekir Aga, asserts, that Hushuf conquered all Albania with his sabre, which, though a mere amplification, shows that his power was considerable. His son, Mukhtar, accompanied the expedition of Kara Mustafa, the Seraskier of Sultan Hamid III., in union with the fleet of the Kapitan Pasha Djanum Khodja against Corfu, in the year 1716, when the island was defended by Marshal Schulemberg, whose statue still remains in the Citadel, erected by the Venetian republic, in gratitude for this defence of the island. Mukhtar was killed in the siege, having fallen in the assault of the fortress; and it is believed in Albania that his sword is still kept at Corfu, among the trophies of that expedition. Vely, the father of Aly, was the youngest of three brothers, or half-brothers, but having succeeded in destroying the two elder, became the head of the house. He died at an early, age, leaving Aly a child in the care of his mother Khanko, daughter of a Bey of Konitza, who was of the same family as Kurt Pasha of Berat, at that time the most powerful chieftain in Albania. Aly has now been a Vezir for about four years, and is not a little proud of the third tail, which the Porte has generally been very unwilling to confer upon Albanians. Having bestowed it upon Aly, they gave it also to the two Ibrahims, in order to keep the balance of power even.
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§ 1.043 Aly disgusts all the Franks who come to seek their fortune in his service, by his parsimony. He scarcely ever gives them any fixed pay, whatever he may have promised, but confines himself to making them presents in clothes and money, when they perform any particular service. If they are not married, he is always anxious to provide them with wives, that he may have hostages to prevent their leaving the place. Those who have to provide for the different departments of his household, are said to be the only persons who enrich themselves in his service. The Franks at present in the Vezir’s service are a Milanese, who had previously been employed by the Pashas of Berat and Skodra, and who has undertaken to complete a foundry at Ioannina: there are also a French engineer, a carpenter, who makes gun carriages, a Dalmatian watchmaker, and an Italian smith. These people, though really able men in their professions, will soon be forced to leave his service from the want of encouragement. Plutarch informs us, that Pyrrhus was an assiduous courtier, and studious when young of acquiring the friendship of powerful persons. This is generally the Albanian character. They are anxious to secure the favour of their superiors, and faithful to them while regularly paid. Their revolts which so often occur, are generally caused by the ill-faith of the employers, who often begin an enterprize without sufficient pecuniary means, trusting to success for an augmentation of them.
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§ 1.044 The Albanians, being generally poorer than the Turks, are more moderate in their expectations, more patient and persevering, more familiar with hardships from their infancy, but equally greedy of money, and much more saving. The Albanian soldier will either plunder or live on the hardest fare, as circumstances may require, to save his pay; his prime object being to return home with a well-filled girdle; for the zone, as among the Romans, is the treasury of the Albanian. Their military qualities are rather shown in the οδόν ελθέμεναι, than in the ανδρασιν ιφι μάχεσθαι, and their wars consist entirely in stratagem, rapine, and ambuscade, though few of them are deficient in personal courage, when the occasion calls for it. One of the advantages of the Albanians is their independence of other countries for the greater part of the manufactures of that rude kind with which they are content. Their arms are all made in Albania, with the exception of the gun-barrels, the greater part of which are from the north of Italy, though an inferior kind both of musquet and pistol-barrels are made at Skodra, Prisrend, Kalkandere, Pristina, and Grevena: gun locks are made both in Greece and Albania; some I have seen from Karpenisi, in Aetolia, which have a polish (if that be any merit) equal to those of England. The kind of musquet, however, which the Albanians use is very inconvenient, and is adapted only to their own irregular discipline, being long and heavy, without any balance of weight in the stock, which is particularly thin and light, and the piece is thus incapable of an aim without resting.
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§ 1.045 The coarse woollen cloth used for the outer garments of the Albanians is chiefly made at Skodra. It is a thick white coarse cloth, which wears well, and when adorned with a broad lace, forms one of the handsomest national costumes in Europe. It is much superior in quality to that of the black kapa, or outer cloak, made in all the mountains of Northern Greece, and which is very generally worn by the shepherds, peasants, and lower orders both of Greece and Albania, as well as by the mariners of the Greek and Adriatic seas. The Pasha asserts, that in the country, of which Tepeleni gives him the command, there are not less than 16000 men armed with musquets, who are considered among the best soldiers in Albania. However correct this numeration may be, it is certain, at least, that Albania is better peopled than any equal portion of European Turkey, that notwithstanding the great number of the soldiery employed abroad, it maintains its population, and that every male, from his infancy, is familiar with the use of arms. The Vezir describes Albania as 200 hours in length; in one half of which his own influence predominates, while the remainder is about equally divided between Ibrahim Pasha of Berat, and Ibrahim Pasha of Skodra. He admits, however, that there are still some chieftains who do not acknowledge the authority of the three. Nor is it likely that the country will ever quietly submit to a single hand, although this is evidently the object of all the Vezir’s actions. The quarrels of the chieftains are the delight of the inferior classes, and a constant source of profit to them. As the former are of every degree of power, the minor agree with the more powerful for the hire of their service, and that of their followers. When the hostile parties are persons of great authority, one of their first considerations is the employment of skilful agents to treat for the services of the inferior chieftains, or to make any other bargains useful to the cause. It often happens in the course of a campaign, between two contending powers, that a village, a single house, a tabia, a meteris, or an occupied position, is bought from the possessors by the opposite party, and though the villages on the hostile frontier generally suffer, yet, as Albanian houses are quickly constructed, such injuries are often unworthy of consideration compared with the advantage which the inhabitants derive from their purchase by the contending parties. Sometimes the head of a family, who is known to be able to command a certain number of tufeks, privately meets the emissary of the chief who wishes to engage his services; he endeavours to raise the lufe, or daily pay, of each man as high as possible; next requires so many lufes for those whom he is to engage to take care of his house in his absence;
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§ 1.047 then a farther acknowledgment, perhaps, to enable him to raise a meteris in some important spot for the defence of the house, or any other pretext of the same kind. When the bargain is finally made, he ties round his waist all the money paid in advance, makes the best provision he can for the care of his family, and comes into the field with half, or at most two thirds, of the men whom he is paid for, and remains, perhaps, only until he can make a new bargain with the opponents. Such treachery, however, although not uncommon among the poorest tribes of Albania, is not held in estimation, unless upon a very large scale, and for some great object. It may easily be conceived, that with such customs the Albanians have a particular objection to a muster. I have seen a Grand Vezir attempt it, when, instead of effecting his object, he had the upper part of his tent perforated in a hundred places with musquet-shot. The operations of Albanian warfare in the field being chiefly confined to dodging behind trees and firing at long distances from cover, and few but the chiefs being in earnest, their campaigns are tardy and expensive, and their wars seldom of any great duration, or productive of decisive results. Ultimate success, of course, is sure to attend the treasury which is the best provided. The Albanians are fond of the chase, and almost every man of landed property keeps greyhounds for coursing the hare, which is their favourite sport. The Vezir has an establishment here, and a few days ago brought home six hares and a fox. He sent me his horses and dogs one day, with an order to Bekir Aga to accompany me, but the weather prevented us from going.
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§ 1.048 There is no want of red-legged partridges on the hills, but netting is the only mode by which they are taken. The greater number of Aly’s subjects being Christians, he is very watchful over the bishops, often employs them as instruments of extortion, and is careful that every act of theirs shall tend to the stability and extension of his own power. He often requires their attendance at Ioannina, or wherever he may happen to be, and shows them favour, so far as to support their authority over the Christians, and sometimes to assist them with a little military force if it should be necessary for the collection of their dues, which consist chiefly in a fixed contribution from every Christian house. They are not exempt, however, from those occasional calls upon their purses, from which no man within his reach is free whom he considers capable of paying. The most important of his ecclesiastical ministers is the metropolitan bishop of Ioannina, a Naxiote by birth, whose diocese comprehends the greater part of Epirus. I overtook him at the bridge of the Subashi, on his way to court. His επαρχία, or province, contains four subordinate sees; namely, 1. Vela, Βελας; 2. Dhrynopoli, Δρύινοιόλεως; 3. Delvino and Khimara, Δελφίνον και Χίΐμάρας; 4. Vuthroto and Glyky, Βουθρωτοΰ και Γλυκίως. Of these, Delvino and Khimara only remain, the two others being traceable only by their ruins; of the first the residence is Konitza; of the second, Arghyrokastro; of the fourth, Paythia. The northern limit of the bishopric of Drynopolis, or Arghyrokastro, is the bridge of Tepeleni. To the eastward it comprehends Zagoria, and borders upon the province of Κορυτζα, a town situated a day’s journey from Premedi, to the north-eastward. In the episcopal province of Ioannina the number of Musulmans bears a small proportion to that of the Christians, but in that of Korytza there are many villages entirely Mahometan; in some, Mahometans are married to Greek women, the sons are educated as Turks, and the daughters as Christians; and pork and mutton are eaten at the same table. The province of Beligrad, or Berat, borders on that of Korytza to the westward; its metropolitan is styled bishop of Velagrada, the form which the Greeks have given to the Sclavonic word Beligrad. In the provinces of Korytza and Velagrada, as well as further north, the Musulman faith is supposed by the bishop of Ioannina to be rapidly increasing. Instances have occurred of the apostasy of whole villages at a time. This happened in particular among the Karamuratates, who inhabit Mount Nemertzika, and the neighbouring valley of the Viosa. Such examples, with the advantages, which a nation of mercenary soldiers cannot but find in belonging to the dominant religion, instead of one which renders them objects of contempt and ill treatment to those in power, are powerful motives to a rapid increase of apostasy. Meantime, the Christians who are employed in a larger proportion than the Musulmans, in pursuits of agriculture or trade, have a tendency to retreat from the oppression of their countrymen of the adverse faith, or to occupy lands in Greece or elsewhere, where labour is wanted;
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§ 1.050 and thus there is every prospect of Albania, once a Christian country, becoming, at no distant period of time, almost entirely Mahometan. Apostasy has had similar effects among the Sclavonic nations of European Turkey, extending from Greece to the Danube, but by no means in the same proportion, unless it be in Bosnia. The bishop relates to me that the Khormovites were notorious robbers before they were reduced by the Vezir. Their favourite place of action was the Pass of Tepeleni, where one of their priests used to enter a hollow tree which stands between Tepeleni and the bridge, while others lay in wait by the side of the road, and stopped the passengers until this Dodonaean Oracle was consulted. If the passenger was a Mahometan, the oracular voice generally ordered him to be stripped and hung upon the tree; if he was a Christian, belonging to a hostile village, he was perhaps dragged through the river. In other cases the Oracle was generally satisfied with sending the unlucky wight forward on foot, after his horse or ass had been taken from him.
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§ 1.051 Jan. 2, 1805. —In consequence of a violent rain last night, the Bantza and Viosa have swelled to a great height, so that the former occupies the whole of its bed, which at the mouth is three or four hundred yards across, and the Viosa, which is nearly half a mile broad below the junction, pours even above it such a flood of water against the bridge of Tepeleni, that it has almost over-topped the old piers, and threatens with ruin some masses of masonry which the Pasha has erected on the piers to support the wooden planks, now serving instead of the four arches which were carried away. Passengers still continue to cross from either bank, but the Vezir, fearful not so much for their safety perhaps as for that of the bridge, sits all the afternoon in a kiosk at one corner of his harem, looking towards it with anxiety. A Dervish observing him, goes out and dances upon the bridge, harangues the trees brought down by the stream as they pass through it, and at last makes a kurban, or sacrifice, of a black lamb and two white ones, pouring the blood upon one of the piers. After this ceremony the populace seems satisfied that the safety of the bridge is insured, and in fact no accident occurs. Both the ruined work and the temporary repair were erected by a Greek engineer who is building, with better success, a massy tower at the Serai. The piers have openings, with pointed arches and large spurs opposed to the current, but the whole work is obviously deficient in solidity, and the Aous will probably continue to be indignant of a bridge, until it has a master more liberal of expence, and who will employ an architect better acquainted with modern improvements in this branch of his art. The Albanians endeavour to supply the place of solidity by making the arches of their bridges of an excessive height, which method they allege is subject only to the inconvenience of obliging the traveller to dismount, while it admits of a great economy of materials, the breadth of a bridge being of little moment in a country where there are no wheel carriages.
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§ 1.052 The Vezir expresses great disappointment at the failure of his attempts to establish a bridge at Tepeleni, as it causes a detour by that of the Dryno, and by another in the Stena, in order to reach the opposite bank when the river is not fordable; and, moreover, obliges his Highness on these occasions to enter the Pass of Klisura, where, if the stout Toskidhes of the neighbouring villages should prove rebellious, he might find himself in danger. Adjoining to a mosque which he built near his palace some years since, is a garden, which was then laid out for him by a Frenchman. On the wall which bounds it towards the river three guns are mounted, and two small kiosks are built. The garden is now in a neglected state, serving only to include the poultry which the Pasha obliges the villages around to supply. There are now between five and six hundred fowls in the garden, forty or fifty of which die every day in consequence of exposure to the rain, and want of food; not because there is any deficiency of barley or kalambokki, but because the purveyor sells it, laying the fault upon the weather and want of shelter, and knowing that as fast as the fowls die, the deficiency will be supplied by the villages. It is said, that Tepeleni once formed an alliance with two other villages; namely, Damesi, two hours to the north-east, on the direct road to Berat, over Mount Trebushin; and Dragoti, which stands a little within the Pass of the Viosa above its right bank, and that at the head of the league was a woman named Helen. May not Tepeleni be τάφος Ελένης? The Turks call it Tepedellen; the Albanians, Tebelen. There is a superstitious belief, that the houses in the village can never exceed one hundred. The Greek suburb, at the western extremity of the promontory on the edge of the hill over the Bantza, had lately so increased as to approach the Turkish quarter, and to give hopes that the spell would be broken; but last year a plague, which swept off whole families, put a stop to the increase of houses, and has left its marks in numerous recent graves, some of which have been opened by the late heavy rains. Jan. 4.—Many Albanian chiefs have arrived here within these few days to pay their homage to Aly; among others Abdulla Pasha of Elbassan. They all come attended with followers armed to the teeth, in numbers proportioned to the power and rank of the chiefs. Their array in approaching, and their introduction to the Vezir, afford some fine pictures of feudal life, which carry one back in imagination to Europe in the tenth century; for the Turkish conquest of Albania has not merely prevented this country from partaking in the improvement of the rest of Europe, but has carried it in manners some centuries further back than it was at the time of the conquest, and, with the extension of the Mahometan religion, will render it every day more savage, and less capable of improvement.
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§ 1.054 Among other persons who have arrived, is Mehmet Effendi, Aly’s secretary for foreign affairs. This Mehmet is a Roman, whose name was Marco Quirini. He was a member of the inquisition at Rome, lived six years at Aleppo as a missionary of the Society de Propaganda Fide, and would have succeeded, so he says, to the bishopric of Bombay, had he not, in a fit of ennui, left Aleppo a year before the term of his residence expired. Happening to be at Malta at the time of the arrival of the French expedition to Egypt, he was appointed by Buonaparte, in consequence of the knowledge of Arabic which he had acquired at Aleppo, his secretary-interpreter, but becoming tired of his situation at the end of three months, he sailed for Europe, was taken by a Dulciniote cruizer near Cape Stylo, and brought prisoner to Ioannina. Here, in despair of acquiring his liberty, and having persuaded himself that the Turkish religion would suit him, or at least recommend him to the Pasha, whose service he was tempted to enter, he renounced the errors of his youth, became a true believer, and now argues, with much Italian eloquence, that the Islam is the only reasonable faith existing. At Aleppo he acquired a little English, together with his Arabic. He is a man of acuteness, sense, and learning, and assuredly will most bitterly deplore the impatience of temper which has caused him to exchange such inconsiderable privations as he met with at Aleppo, or in Egypt, for the hard service of an Albanian master, among comrades with whom he can scarcely exchange an idea. The Pasha has, according to his usual policy, already persuaded him to take a wife, and now that he has him in his power, scarcely gives him the means of existence.
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§ 1.056 CHAPTER II. EPIRUS. JAN. 6.— This afternoon I return from Tepeleni, by the same road as far as the bridge of the Subashi. The village of Dragoti being only hid from Tepeleni by a projection of Mount Trebushin, soon becomes visible, and opposite to it Kotra, on a height above the junction of the Viosa and Dryno; then farther southward, on the western face of the same mountain, Lekhli; and then Khormovo. Opposite to Lekhli we pass under the village of Lizati, of two hundred houses, and meet Aidin Aga of Kaliasa with a long suite of palikaria on foot, on their way to court. A little short of the bridge of the Subashi is the hollow plane-tree where the robbers of Khormovo formerly lay in wait for travellers. Here, on both sides of the river, the space is very narrow at the foot of the mountain, and on both sides there is a road; that which proceeds from the bridge along the foot of the mountain of Khormovo and Lekhli enters the Stena, and follows the left bank of the Viosa as far as the vale of Kieperi, which is watered by a tributary of the river. The bridge over the Dryno was formerly below Khormovo, but having been swept away by the river, it was replaced higher up by that of the Subashi, which has now resisted the floods for several years. Leaving the bridge to our left, we proceed in the direction of Arghyrokastro. On the face of its mountain, nearly opposite to Kariani, is seen Maskoluri, a large village, and above it the monastery of Trypi, just below the summit, which terminates the mountain at the opening of the valley of Kardhiki. A small village called Tzepo stands more to the northward in the middle region of this mountain, and below it is Khumelitza opposite to Stepezi, which latter stands on the northern side of the opening leading from the valley of Deropugl into that of Kardhiki. The Belitza, which waters the vale of Kardhiki, flows in a ravine through the opening, and joins the Dryno in the plain as already stated. At Stepezi we halt for the night. At first the people were not willing to receive us; and when the Bulu-bashi who accompanies me threatened them, “We are poor,” they replied, “and have nothing; we can but lose our lives;” but soon change their tone on learning, that contrary to the remonstrances of the Bulu-bashi, I had given directions to pay for every thing, and declare that if the King of England wants soldiers, the whole village, to the number of three hundred, is ready to enter into his service. “It would be easier,” observes one of them, “to maintain fifty Albanian soldiers than one English.” My konak is a hut which, like most of the houses in the Albanian villages, has no chimney, the fire being in the middle, and the smoke, after circulating for a while about the hut, finding its way out through the crevices of a roof covered with rude unformed tablets of calcareous stone, called πλάκες, anglice flakes. These being large and thick, are for the most part held in place by their own weight alone, but sometimes great stones are laid upon them. The rafters within are generally hung with the store of maize, here called mesiri, in the state in which it is brought from the field. Above Stepezi, near the top of the mountain, is seen the small village of Petzari; besides which, there are two or three others on the mountain not visible, so wretched as to be described in terms of compassion even by the Stepeziotes. Below in the plain, about half-way between Stepezi and the Khan Valiare, I perceive the ruins called Dhrynopoli, written in Greek Δρνϊνούπολις, which appears to have been a fortress, or small fortified town of the time of the lower empire. It stands nearly opposite to the junction of the Belitza with the Dryno, and close by a ruined bridge over the torrent, which descends from the mountain of Labovo.
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§ 1.059 Jan. 7.—I had intended to proceed from Stepezi by land to Palerimo, halting this evening at Kaliasa, but the weather obliges us to alter our route. Soon after setting out, at 8.40, a distant movement in the plain towards Libokhovo announces the approach of Vely Pasha, who is coming to visit his father at Tepeleni. We cross over the heights forming the lower part of the mountain of Stepezi: the land is little cultivated, but we pass some large flocks of sheep and goats, the shepherds bear staves headed with hooks of copper. Woods of oak diversify the scene, but there are no trees of any great size. At the end of three hours we arrive on the Belitza, in the valley of Kardhiki, which is inclosed on every side by steep and lofty mountains. Kardhiki, or Gardhiki. is situated on the side and summit of a steep hill, on the right bank of the Belitza, at the junction of a torrent flowing from the south-west through a ravine which forms a precipice on that side of the town. The situation of the place is one of the wildest that can be conceived, and its appearance is rendered more so by the season of the year. We are no sooner arrived, than a heavy fall of snow puts an end to our day’s journey, and makes me well satisfied with a lodging in the house of Demir Aga till the morrow. Demir, commonly called Demir Dost, enjoys a degree of power such as few Albanian chiefs possess, and Kardhiki has the consequent advantage of internal tranquillity;
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§ 1.060 for in general power is so nearly balanced between the leading parties in Albanian towns, that no one chief has sufficient influence to establish order. The unlimited power of Demir over the district of Kardhiki is at present chiefly owing to his good understanding with Aly Pasha. His government, he tells me, contains twenty villages, of which there are only three or four Greek. One of these is Khumelitza, famous for its tobacco, from which a snuff is made at Kardhiki, much esteemed by the Albanians, who, among other points in which they resemble the Highlanders of Scotland, are great snuff-takers. There are eight hundred Musulman families in Kardhiki, and twenty or thirty Greek houses on the opposite side of the ravine. The mountains to the westward and northward of the district, as far as Khimara, Demir describes as inhabited by half-naked wretches living in villages, one of the hardiest and poorest races in existence: he calls them Gulimidhes, they form a subdivision of the great tribe named Liape, in Greek Liapidhes, a colony perhaps of the Lapithae of Thessaly. One of the villages of the Gulimidhes, called Poliona, and exactly resembling Petzari, is in sight from Kardhiki to the north-west, near the summit of the mountain. The Musulmans of Kardhiki are not less anxious to serve the king of England, than the Christians of Stepezi; they observe that the use of the musket is their only art and their only property. The care of their fields and flocks they leave to the Christians.
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§ 1.061 Demir gives me a very particular and undoubtedly accurate account of the general topography of Albania, and of the divisions of its tribes; of which the following is the substance: Rejecting the political chorography which has arisen since the Turkish conquest, the only important divisions of the Albanians are four: the Ngeghe, Toshke, Liape and Tjame, in Greek Γκεγκεδες, Τόσκιδες, Λάπιδες, or Λιάμπιδες, and Τζάμιδες: their respective countries are in Greek written Γκεγκεριά, Τοσκεριά, Λιαμπουριά, and Τζαμουριά. The Ngeghe possess the districts of Skodra, Kavaya, Kroya, Tyrana, Duras (in Italian Durazzo), Pekin, a part of the district of Elbasan, the two Dibras, and Djura on the Drin, Kurtzova, Kalkandere, and Pristina. There is a large proportion of Latin Christians of this tribe, called Merdhites, in the district of Skodra, who pay sixty paras a house to the Pasha of Skodra. They are considered as good soldiers as any of the Ngeghe. The Toshke extend northward from the frontier of Delvino to that of Pekin and Elbasan, bordering to the west upon the Liape, and possessing Gardhiki, Arghyrokastro, Libokhovo, Premedi, Dangli, Kolonia, Skrapari, Berat, Malakastra, Mizakia, Avlona. The Liape inhabit the entire maritime country to the southward and westward of the boundaries of the Toshke, and as far south as Delvino, where begin the Tjame, who occupy all the maritime country, as far as Suli inclusive, and inland to the Greek districts of Pogoniani and Ioannina. Thus it appears that Tepeleni is in Liaburia, and Aly Pasha a Liape; but as the whole of this tribe is in disrepute among the other Albanians for their poverty and predatory habits, he thinks proper to consider Tepeleni a part of Toskeria, and who dares dispute his geography? Demir Aga has a khodja in his house, as preceptor to his family, who has learned Arabic at Cairo, Turkish at Constantinople, and Greek at Agrafa. Demir takes no pains to conceal his dislike and suspicions of Aly, though he has always been on good terms with the Pasha, made war in conjunction with him against Khormovo, and is still nominally his ally. By these means he maintains his authority at home, and hopes to save his country from falling entirely into the hands of the Vezir. Aly, he says, has a Jew now in prison at Ioannina, from whom he has already extracted one hundred and forty purses, by threatening him with the loss of his head. But this mode of refreshing a treasury is no novelty in any part of the east; and I well remember the noseless and one-eyed victims of Djezzar to be seen in the streets of Acre. The Pasha never loses an opportunity of gratifying his resentment against those who took part against him in the war of Khormovo. Only two days ago, on the representation of some person that a certain Labovite had been active against him on that occasion, he sent for the man and his son and put them both to death. The son received the order after the imprisonment of his father, and obeyed it, though he might easily have escaped, and was fully persuaded of the Vezir’s intention.
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§ 1.063 At Kardhiki are some ruins of a castle, said to have been built by Sultan Bayazid, when he conquered this country, but which is probably more ancient. There can be little or no doubt of its having been an Hellenic site, though I cannot find any remains of those times. The heights around the town are, for the most part, clothed with vineyards, producing a pleasant light wine, almost colourless, and which the Musulmans of the place have no scruple in drinking. Some wheat and barley are grown on the lower heights; the bottom of the vale produces scarcely any thing but kalambokki, the soil being poor and stony, and subject to be overflowed by the river. Such situations are well adapted to that kind of grain which requires much moisture to feed its large succulent stems, and succeeds best therefore in levels which are either inundated by nature in the winter, or capable of artificial irrigation in summer; the abundant return of the grain also is very acceptable to a poor and numerous population like that of Albania. It is to the culture of maize and tobacco that some of the Albanians chiefly owe that skill in the conducting of water, for which they are noted in other parts of Turkey, and by means of which, as I have before remarked, the Liuntzidhes in particular obtain employment at Constantinople and other places.
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§ 1.064 Jan. 8.—At 8.30 we move from Kardhiki in the direction of an opening in the mountains to the south-west, called the Pass of Skarfitza; and at 9.45 arrive on the bank of the Belitza, here flowing to the north, but which, after making the half tour of the hill of Kardhiki, has an eastern course through the opening of the valley between Khumelitza and Stepezi. Zulati, which stands on the left bank of the river, on the lowest heights of the mountain, is on the road from Kardhiki to Bordji, a castle and village on the sea-coast between Nivitza of Delvino and Khimara. In approaching the pass of Skarfitza, we have a summit on the left, which lies between Arghyrokastro and Delvino, and near which is the village of Sopoti. A torrent descends from thence through a woody valley called Skotini (dark), which is the resort of numerous flocks in summer. Having crossed two streams which join the Belitza to our right, we begin soon after ten, the snow falling very thick, to ascend the mountain called Pilo-vuni, which bounds to the east the vale of Kaliasa. The mountain is clothed with oaks, beeches, and planes, and many paths are seen, made by the shepherds and the cutters of timber and fire-wood: the oaks are not large. The pass of Skarfitza separates the summit called Pilo-vuni from the mountain of Sopoti, the name Skarfitza is specifically applied to a Turkish fountain on the summit of the ridge, where the road begins to descend towards the plain of Delvino. At 10.45, not far from that fountain, we join the road from Khimara by Zulati to Delvino, and then descend by a very difficult passage over rocks covered with snow, and along torrents bor, until we arrive in sight of Nivitza, and soon afterwards of Kaliasa, in a vale to the right. The river Pavla, which enters the plain of Finiki below Nivitza, leaves Kaliasa on its right bank above the opening.
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§ 1.065 At 1 p.m. we come suddenly upon Senitza, a Greek village on the side of the mountain of Sopoti, divided only by a ravine from the Turkish village Vergo, and looking down upon the plain of Delvino. The lower parts of the hills under these two places, though worn into the most rugged forms by the torrents, are richly covered with vineyards, mixed with poplars, olives, and cypresses. In the descent, Paleavli (old court), a Turkish village, remains to the left, and above it the ruins of Kamenitza, which has been in the same state beyond the memory of the present race. Then turning still more to the eastward we arrive, at 4.15, at Delvino, where I reoccupy my lodging in the Greek quarter, sending the Albanian soldiers and suridjis (postillions), with their horses, to find a konak, according to the tenor of the Vezir’s letter. Jan. 9.—When preparing to set out this morning for the Forty Saints, the Bishop of Delvino comes to express his regret at my not having made his house my lodging, but was not sorry probably to escape the inconvenience attending the Turk and the horses. The bishop is of opinion, that in the district of Delvino, as in most other parts of Albania, the Musulmans are nearly equal in number to the Christians.
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§ 1.066 Sending forward the baggage to the Forty Saints, I proceed to Finiki, which lies to the left of the direct road, about seven miles from Delvino, and do not arrive at the Skala until 4 in the afternoon. The entire hill of Finiki was surrounded by Hellenic walls. At the south-eastern extremity was the citadel, 200 yards in length, some of the walls of which are still extant, from twelve to twenty feet in height. The masonry is of the third kind, that is to say, it is laid in courses, but which are not very regular or equal, nor are the stones all quadrangular, although fitted to one another with the same nicety as in the second, or polygonal, and in the fourth, or most regular kind of Hellenic masonry. A stone in one of the fragments of wall is eight feet by six on the outside, and appears to be nearly as solid. In no part are there more than four or five courses remaining. The modern village of Finiki, consisting of a few huts, lies directly under the citadel to the south-west. About the middle of the height is the emplacement of a very large theatre, the only remains of which are a small piece of rough wall, which encircled the back of the upper seats: at the bottom in the place of the scene is a small circular foundation, apparently that of a tower, of a later date. The theatre looked directly towards the village of the Forty Saints and Corfu. Between it and the north-western end of the citadel are the remains of a Roman construction, built in courses of tiles, alternating with a masonry formed of rough stones, mixed with a great quantity of mortar, and faced with square stones laid regularly in the mortar, but with the angles instead of the sides uppermost:
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§ 1.067 this mode of building was not uncommon in the decline of the Roman empire, and the beginning of that of Constantinople. There are some ruins of houses also of a still more modern construction, showing that Phoenice continued to flourish to a late period, when the chief part of the town appears to have been towards the river Vistritza, which defended this height to the eastward, as the Pavla, or river of Kaliasa did to the west. In agreement with these appearances we find Phoenice to have been one of the cities of the government of old Epirus, under the successors of Constantine. It was among the places of this province, repaired by Justinian, who, as it had suffered inconvenience from the lowness of the situation, placed the new constructions on a neighbouring height. On the hill of the acropolis I find accordingly some remains of columns in situ, of that polygonal, instead of circular shape, which exactly marks the taste of the age of Justinian. About the time when the Romans first gained a footing in Greece, Phoenice was the strongest, most powerful, and richest city in Epirus; notwithstanding which, it was taken without a blow by the Illyrians, in the year B.C. 230. The ships of Agron having gained a victory over the Aetolians on the coast of Acarnania, and brought back a rich booty to Illyria, the king, in the height of his exultation, indulged to such an excess in pleasures of the table, that his death was the consequence. His widow, Teuta, who to the inheritance of his authority added a feminine disregard of consequences, ordered her officers to plunder all the ships which they should meet, and thus commissioned them to make war on all the world. Their first object was a descent on Elis and Messenia; but the fleet having previously anchored on the coast, near Phoenice, for the purpose of obtaining a supply of provisions, the commanders there entered into a conference with some Gallic mercenaries, who, to the number of 800, were employed by the Epirotes to garrison Phoenice, and by their assistance made themselves masters of the city. The Epirotes seem to have been quite prepared to receive the Roman yoke; for their imprudence in trusting an important charge to a people notorious for perfidy, was not more remarkable than their defective discipline in some of the transactions which followed, though their first operation was well judged. Having collected their forces, and taken up a position on the bank of the river which flowed by Phoenice, they removed the planks of a bridge which communicated with the city, with the view of securing their camp against the Illyrians within the walls, and then sent a reinforcement to Antigoneia for the defence of the passes of the Aous against Scerdilaidas,
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§ 1.069 a prince of the royal family of Illyria, of whose approach with 5000 men they had received information. Too well satisfied with these precautions, they neglected all further vigilance, and indulged without caution in the plenty which the rich district of Phoenice afforded. The Illyrians in the city soon took advantage of their fault: issuing at night from the town, they replaced the planks of the bridge, drove the Epirotes from their position, and the next morning beating them in the field, killed and captured many, and forced the remainder to retreat into Atintania. Soon afterwards Scerdilaidas arrived at Phoenice, apparently without having encountered the enemy’s forces at the pass of Antigoneia. The Epirotes meantime obtained succour from the Aetolians and Achaians, and again marched toward Phoenice. The opposing forces met at a place named Helicranum, but no action ensued, partly in consequence of the difficulty of the ground, and partly because Teuta, alarmed by a defection of a part of the Illyrians to the Dardani, had sent orders to recall her forces from Epirus. Scerdilaidas, therefore, retraced his steps through the pass of Antigoneia, after having made a treaty by which Phoenice, together with the free prisoners, were restored to the Epirotes, and the slaves and plunder were embarked in the Illyrian ships.
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§ 1.070 So great was the booty, and such the encouragement which it gave to Teuta, that she thought of nothing but plunderiug the cities of Greece, while the ungrateful Epirotes soon afterwards joined the Acarnanes in an alliance with Illyria against their benefactors of Achaia and Aetolia. It is probable that the route of Scerdilaidas, both in coming and returning, was by the way of Gardhiki and the pass of Skarfitza, and that the Epirotes retreated as well as returned by the pass of Morzena or Delvino, that having been the route from Phoenice towards Atintania. Helicranum I take to have been the modern Delvino, for the castle hill at the entrance of a very important pass is such a position as could hardly have been left unoccupied by the ancients; and the rugged ground about it accords exactly with the words of the historian. The ascertaining of the position of Phoenice is extremely useful in illustrating the topography of all the adjacent part of Chaonia, and greatly assists in forming an opinion on the difficult question of the site of Antigoneia. How it happened that Scerdilaidas met with no opposition at the Antigoneian passes, the historian has not stated, but he expressly asserts that the prince took this road both in going and in returning. As Scodra was the royal residence, we cannot doubt that, after crossing the open maritime country of Illyria, he entered the mountains of Epirus near Bullis, now Gradista, and followed the valley of the Aous to Tepeleni. The only other road he could have taken was by the modern Berat to Klisura, which was not only more circuitous, but more dangerous, since it would have obliged him to traverse the defile of the Viosa in its whole length, and afterwards that of its tributary the Dryno, above the junction, or in other words, the passes both of Klisura and of Tepeleni. In the other case he not only avoided the pass of Klisura, but followed a shorter road. It can hardly be questioned, therefore, that the Stena of Antigoneia intended by Polybius, was the pass to the southward of Tepeleni which leads from that town along the left bank of the Dryno towards Arghyrokastro. But this could not have been the same pass where Philip, son of Demetrius, was defeated by the Romans under Quinctius, though Livy describes it as being at Antigoneia, and applies to it the same Greek word Stena, which Polybius employs on the former occasion; for Philip was not defending the approach to Illyria, but that which led from the western coast of Epirus through the interior of this province into Upper Macedonia and Upper Thessaly, whither the Romans proceeded in pursuit of the enemy after having forced the Stena. It is evident, therefore, upon examining the places themselves, that there were two passes, or rather a pass with two branches, one of which communicated from the maritime parts of Epirus in a northerly direction to the maritime plains of Illyria, the other leading eastward from the same country towards Upper Macedonia and Thessaly.
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§ 1.072 The first is that which I have called the pass of Tepeleni; the latter is the Stena itself, as the defile is still called, which conducts along the Viosa from Tepeleni by Dragoti and Klisura into the valley of Premedi. Antigoneia having given name to both passes, can only be sought for near their junction, where Tepeleni is the only place which has the appearance of an ancient site. We can arrive therefore at no other conclusion than that here stood Antigoneia. It may be admitted that in this case Antigoneia was too distant from the entrance of the Stena effectually to command that pass, but it entirely obstructs the other, and standing on a commanding height at the junction of a tributary, with the Aous, just at the point where the straits expand into a more open and fertile valley, it has all the requisites for the situation of a town of that importance which, from the ancient authorities, we may presume Antigoneia to have been. The next question in the comparative geography of this part of Epirus is the situation of Phanote. In the winter of the year 170—169 B.C., Appius Claudius, anxious to repair the effects of his defeat in Illyria, marched from thence into Epirus, and laid siege to Phanote. But hearing soon afterwards that Perseus had entered Aetolia, and attacked Stratus, which was then defended by Popilius and his Aetolian allies, he raised the siege of Phanote, and began his retreat towards the plain of Elaeon.
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§ 1.073 Clevas, the officer of Perseus, who with a strong garrison defended Phanote, followed the Romans, and, attacking them on a difficult road, by which they were obliged to pass along the foot of the mountains, killed 1000 and took 200 prisoners. Glevas, concerting operations with Philostratus, one of the Epirotes, who had endeavoured to betray Hostilius into the hands of Perseus in the preceding year, then crossed into the district of Antigoneia, and began to plunder the country, with a view to draw the garrison of Antigoneia into a valley, where Philostratus was placed in readiness to fall upon them. The stratagem completely succeeded, and the garrison of Antigoneia sustained a loss almost as great as that of Claudius. Clevas then moved towards the camp of Claudius in the plain of Elaeon; but the latter had no inclination to engage, and finding that nothing was to be gained in Epirus, he dismissed his Epirote allies, and returned with the Italians into Illyricum. Every circumstance in these transactions tends to show that Gardhiki was the site of Phanote. The strength and remarkable situation of that town, in the midst of a valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains, through which there are only two narrow passes, are a sufficient presumption that it was the site of one of the principal fortresses of Chaonia, and the position midway between the channel of Corcyra and the Antigoneian passes would render it particularly important to the Romans advancing from Illyria; and naturally the first object of Claudius, Antigoneia being already in the hands of the Romans or their allies. The name of Phanote again occurs in a transaction which took place a few months earlier, and from which we learn that the most important military point on the Aous, in the line of communication between Macedonia and Epirus, was a bridge across that river, which, as Antigoneia is not mentioned on this occasion, would seem not to have been at that place or commanded by it. The consul, A. Hostilius Mancinus, proceeding to assume the command of the Roman armies in Thessaly, had arrived from Italy at Phanote, when the Epirote faction, adverse to the Romans, thought the time and place favorable to a design which they conceived of betraying Hostilius to Perseus, whom they urged by letters to hasten his march towards Epirus. But the Molossi, who were well disposed to the Romans, seized the bridge of the Aous, with the determination of preventing the Macedonians from crossing the river. Meantime the conspiracy was discovered, and revealed to Hostilius by his host, Nestor, of Oropus, upon which he returned to the sea-coast, embarked from thence for Anticyra, in the Corinthiac Gulf, and by that route proceeded into Thessaly.
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§ 1.075 Applying this narrative to the country along the banks of the Viosa, and to the general geography of Northern Greece, there can scarcely be a doubt that the bridge alluded to by Livy was in the Stena, about midway between Klisura and Tepeleni, where the communication is now carried on by means of two bridges. The route from Kardhiki towards Arghyrokastro, along the foot of the mountain, by Khumelitza, corresponds exactly to that in which Claudius was attacked by Clevas, if we suppose the plain Elaeon to have been that between Arghyrokastro and Libokhovo, and Claudius to have pitched his camp about midway between those two towns. The name of the plain Elaeon seems to show that a city Elaeus, which Ptolemy classes with Phoenice and Antigoneia among the interior cities of Chaonia, occupied a position in this valley; and the name is the more remarkable, as we may suppose it to have been originally derived from the abundance of olive-trees in the district, in which respect it is well adapted to this valley of the Dryno; for although surrounded by lofty mountains covered with snow during a great part of the year, and one of the coldest parts of Epirus, the valley itself is one of the few situations in Greece or Albania, distant from the sea, where olive-trees are now found. The town of Elaeus was probably situated on the heights, opposite to Arghyrokastro, where it is said that some remains of Hellenic walls still exist. The small theatre, and other ancient vestiges in the plain below Libokhovo, being of Roman construction, could not have existed at the time of the transactions related by Livy.
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§ 1.076 They mark probably the position of a city which was founded by Hadrian and repaired by Justinian; and thence named first Hadrianopolis, and afterwards, but probably for a short time, Justinianopolis. Mention of Hadrianopolis occurs only in some authorities of the Byzantine empire of the sixth and seventh centuries, at which time it was one of the cities of the government of Old Epirus, as well as the see of a bishopric. The only authority which gives any indication of its exact situation is the Tabular Itinerary. In this document there are two roads from Apollonia to Nicopolis: one (noticed also in the Antonine) which led near the sea-coast by the Acroceraunia, Phoenice, and Buthrotum; the other by Amantia and Hadrianopolis, which last is placed about midway between the two extremities of the road. One route, therefore, passed through the plain of Delvino; the other, if Amantia was at Nivitza, ascended the vale of the Sutzista to that position, and from the head of the valley crossed by Pregonati, into the plain of Arghyrokastro, which it followed in its entire length. It would, therefore, have passed exactly by the theatre, which stands not very far from the middle distance between Apollonia and Nicopolis. No great accuracy is to be expected on this point, as several of the distances in both the Itineraries are obviously erroneous.
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§ 1.077 The only objection to this position of Hadrianopolis is, that ten or twelve miles lower down the river are the ruins called Drynopolis, which name may easily be taken for a corruption of Hadrianopolis. These remains, however, and the theatre, are productions of two very different periods of time. The latter is a work of the Pagans during the Roman empire. Drynopolis was a fortress or small town of the Byzantine empire; the probability, therefore, is, that when Hadrianopolis fell to ruin, Drynopolis was built upon a different site, and became the see of the bishopric, first named from Hadrianopolis, then from Drynopolis, and which, after the ruin of the latter, was transferred to Arghyrokastro. Nor is Drynopolis a corruption of Hadrianopolis, but taken from the river on which it is situated, still called Dhryno, or Drino, or Druno, which may possibly be the ancient name still preserved of this branch of the Aous, and derived either from δρυς or from some native word which has given name also to another large river of Albania, the Drin, which flows from the lake of Akhridha into the Adriatic. As to Deropoli, or Deropugl, although this appellation is sometimes applied to the river, it belongs properly to the whole valley, and may perhaps be a corruption of Hadrianopolis, to which all this extensive plain probably belonged when the city was in its most flourishing condition.Although Arghyrokastro has no very marked appearance of an ancient site, the name may possibly be derived from that of the Argyrini, whom Lycophron, and two Greek authors cited by Stephanus, show to have been an Epirote people, and whom Lycophron leads us to look for in the northern part of Epirus, as he couples them with the Acro Ceraunii: in fact the word'Αργυρινος is still sometimes applied to a native of Arghyrokastro.
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§ 1.078 Jan. 10.—The scirocco has been constant at the Forty Saints since my departure, and the boat in which I crossed the channel was not able to return to Corfu till four days ago. Having prevailed upon the crew of another Corfiote boat, which had just arrived in the harbour with a lading of vallonea for Corfu, to defer their passage thither until they have taken me to Palerimo and back, we sail for that port at 9.30 a.m., and arrive there at 2. The distance is about eighteen miles; the wind was a gentle Onchesmite, like that which carried over Cicero to Brundusium. Between the Limeni of the Forty Saints and Spilia, or the Skala of Nivitza, there are several small creeks where boats may find shelter. Spilia is a creek at the mouth of a glen, where stands the ruin of a magazine which was destroyed by Aly Pasha when at war with Nivitza. Beyond it is Lukovo, a small village on the side of the mountain, surrounded with terraces of vines and corn; two or three miles beyond which is Pikernes, somewhat larger; and two miles further Sopoto. Below Lukovo and Pikernes are sandy beaches, where boats anchor, and may be stranded in bad weather. Sopoto stands in a glen, and has a castle named Bordji, on the top of a steep rock commanded by Hadji Beddo Aga, a partizan of the Vezir. Here are the only Turkish families on this coast. Behind Sopoto a river descends in a very deep and rocky ravine. A little farther north is Kiepero, on the edge of a steep precipice, below which are a few fields, terminating in a beach which is separated from Port Palerimo only by the point which shelters that harbour to the southward and eastward. Palerimo, the ancient Panormus, which Strabo describes as a great harbour in the midst of the Ceraunian mountains, and thus clearly distinguishes from the Panormus of Oricum, is divided into two bays by a rocky peninsula, projecting into the middle of it, on the summit of which stands the kastro, or fortress. This castle is nothing more than a small square enclosure containing a house, a church, and two four-pounders. Having brought a letter to the Bulu-bashi, or commandant, I land as soon as we arrive, and take shelter from the rain in his small apartment, which is the only one in the place having a chimney. On the side of the hills bordering the southern division of the port are a few cornfields and vineyards, which, together with some sheep on the hills, are tended by the ten soldiers who garrison the fort. Five of these are Musulmans, including the Bulu-bashi and his son; the others are Greeks. At the extremity of the northern harbour the hills are well cultivated, but these form part of the territory of the town of Khimara, which possesses the exclusive right of fishery in that division of the bay. A gale accompanied with rain, which comes on at night from the south-east, brings a ship of Dultjuni, in Italian, Dulcigno, into the harbour, bound to that place from Alexandria. As the Dulciniotes have the reputation of being inclined to piracy, the garrison is alarmed, and prepares for defence. Indeed they had already been put upon the alert by our arrival, for our boat being from Corfu, the governor suspected some Russian treachery, and before my cot was conveyed into the castle, it was searched, lest it should contain concealed arms.Last summer a French pirate boat, which was afterwards destroyed at Fanu by one of the British ships of war on this station, put into Palerimo, after having plundered some Maltese vessels under English colours; the Khimariotes formed a design of attacking it, on the plea of its being a pirate, but probably with a view of plunder; not agreeing however among themselves, the project failed.
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§ 1.081 Jan. 11.—The wind shifts to the westward, and the weather clears up at noon. At 1, accompanied by a servant, and preceded by one of the Corfiote boatmen and a guard from the castle, I proceed on foot to Khimara, no beasts of burthen being procurable, and the road scarcely admitting of their being employed. The captain of the Dulciniote, a bearded Turk, about seventy years of age, had offered to land me in the Bay of Khimara, and thus to save the detour along the side of the mountain; but when we came alongside his ship, his authority proved insufficient to obtain a party to row the boat. It appears that they are afraid of the Khimariotes. After crossing the ridge at the extremity of the northern bay, and climbing along the side of the hills which overhang the sea beyond it, we arrive at the end of an hour’s walk from the castle, upon a little valley and beach where are some flocks. To the right, the sides of the mountains are grown with velanidhies, or oaks, which produce the vallonea; they still preserve their last year’s leaves, but can hardly be called evergreens. We meet some shepherds to whom the sailor, with a few words of greeting, presents his snuff-box, common compliment in Albania, and in these independent districts a necessary propitiation. In return the shepherds call off their dogs, which had made a general charge upon us.
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§ 1.082 We soon arrive in sight of Khimara, situated on the top of a pointed hill, and enter upon the cultivated land which surrounds it, consisting of extensive vineyards, some fields of wheat just springing up, and others of barley, which the peasants are ploughing, and will sow as soon as they can catch a short interval of fair weather. On a high summit under the mountains on the right is a monastery of the Panaghia, on the left the port of Khimara, near the shore of which are some water-mills, turned by a rivulet from the mountain. The harbour is exposed to the west, but affords good shelter to small vessels from any other wind, and has a fine beach. There is another more open spiaggia, two miles farther to the north, immediately below the town, where boats are hauled up on the beach. Here is a small plain which, with the side of the hill between this plain and the village, is the best cultivated part of the territory of Khimara. Immediately below the village are some gardens, containing vines, olives, cypresses, and fruit-trees.
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§ 1.083 At half-past three we arrive at the house of Capt. Zakharias, the son of George, vulgarly called Zakho-Ghiorghi, for whom I have a letter of introduction from Z. the collector, my host of the Forty Saints. Ther house is as humble a dwelling as any captain’s in Albania. In the inner room a fire in the middle of the floor, and a mattrass spread by the side of it, are the luxuries speedily arranged for me. Capt. George, who has attained the ordinary bounds of life, and has never been absent from his native village except three years passed in the Neapolitan service, expresses his delight at seeing an Englishman here for the first time. Two Germans some years ago, calling themselves Englishmen, left a certificate with Capt Constantine Andrutzi, which proves the imposture. Capt. Z.’s family consists of a son, the widow of another son killed in the service of the King of Naples, and two or three of his children. All are employed in preparing supper, but principally the widow. The dishes are baked, and a dingy towel spread close to the cinders, serves both for table and tablecloth. The Captain, and the sailor from the boat, who is honoured as a guest, are the only persons who join the table. After supper all the heads of houses friendly to Zakho-Ghiorghi come in and seat themselves crosslegged around the fire. They relate their adventures in the Neapolitan or other services, for most of the Khimariotes seek a livelihood as soldiers abroad. One states that he was in the war of Italy with Buonaparte, who made many inquiries of him concerning this part of Albania, and told him at Trieste, that he meant to send 40,000 men to Corfu, and as many more to Avlona. They all speak with pride of their liberty, meaning their exemption from Turkish oppression, at the same time that they lament their own internal anarchy and dissensions, and agree that they should be happy to receive the blessing of good government from the hands of any sovereign in Europe except the Turk, whom they are always determined to resist.
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§ 1.084 They neither pay the kharatj nor any other tax, except a contribution of thirty paras a head per annum to Ibrahim Pasha of Berat, for the liberty of trading to his ports. The right of pasturage on the lands of the town of Khimara, that of gathering velanidhi on the mountains, and that of fishing in the northern bay of Palerimo are enjoyed in common by all the inhabitants. Maize is grown in the plain adjacent to the northern beach, where the two torrents, which embrace the town, overflow in the winter, and prepare the land for receiving that grain. Wheat is produced within the territory, more than sufficient for the annual consumption of the place in favorable seasons; but for two or three years past they have hardly reaped enough for six months. Velanidhi, a small quantity of wheat in good years, and sometimes a little wine, which is of a dry kind and without flavour, are the only exports. The mountain behind Khimara is said to abound in firs suited for masts, which might be brought down at a small expense, and would be a profitable undertaking, if poverty and dissension admitted of it.
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§ 1.085 The village, or city as the natives are pleased to qualify it, of Khimara, more commonly pronounced according to the Italian κακοφωνίa Tjimara, contains 300 families: divided into five principal alliances called parentie in Italian, and in Greek φρατρίαις, a classical word which I hardly expected to find in Albania. With one or other of these, all the inferior families are in alliance. The fratries are, 1. The Lyganates, consisting of sixty or seventy houses, at the head of which is Alexodhemo, son of Alexi; 2. The Tzakanates, of which my host Zakho-Ghiorghi is the πρώτος: it has upwards of eighty houses; 3. The Koykadhes, of which Zakharias Andrutzu is the chief: of these there are about forty-five houses; 4. The Mazates, of whom John Tragynus is the chief; and, 5. the Κοκουρτάδες, of whom Andrew Polus is the head. The first and second are the only families, at present, who are not on speaking terms, but last August there was a scuffle with sabres between Constantine, the brother of the chief of the third family, and Alexodhemo, the head of the first, in which some wounds were received before the quarrel was adjusted, and the contending parties restored to an exchange of words. Another brother of the Andrutzi is now lieutenant-colonel of one of the regiments of Cacciatori Albanesi in the Neapolitan service. His major is a native of the town of Vuno. Constantine Andrutzi informs me that he was twenty-eight years in the Neapolitan service, that he deserted to the French when they took Naples, but that not obtaining any employment or encouragement from them, he returned to his native country. When General Villettes was raising a corps of Albanians for the British service, C. Andrutzi was sent for to Corfu to agree upon the terms on the part of the Khimariotes. He speaks and reads Italian and French, is tolerably informed on the history and antiquities of this country, wishes much to enter the English service, and asserts that we may easily raise a body of 800 Khimariotes from the free villages of Khimara, and, with the permission of the Turks, twice that number in the neighbouring districts. There are about 100 pensioners of the King of Naples in the town, officers included, who are paid by Capt. Zakho, for which purpose he visits Corfu every year to receive the pay from the Neapolitan consul, whose agent he is. He receives a pension of twelve ducats a month for his own military services, four more for the consolato or agency, and eight ducats for the widow of a son who fell in the service. So handsome a provision after a short personal service can only be considered as intended to secure an influential agent in the place, for Zakho-Ghiorghi is looked up to as the chief man in Khimara by all except those who side with the Lyganates, and who, of course, consider Alexodhemo the chief. The feud between the two parties is of long standing; the most remarkable contest occurred ten or twelve years ago, when many lives are said to have been lost. The heads of the fratries are those who possess the largest proportion of vineyards, cornfields, and flocks; and they form the council of the family league. Between friendly fratries disputes are easily made up, though even among them the foundation and last resource of the law is the lex talionis.
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§ 1.087 As in Arabia, a murder may be acquitted for money. At Khimara 2000 Turkish piastres are the usual price of blood; at the next village of Vuno it is 1000. Until this be paid the retaliation goes on. The power of the heads of families, Capt. Zakho observes, is merely the influence of property and character, and is neither asserted nor acknowledged. “That man,” pointing to an attendant, “though he receives his pay from me, will do nothing I order unless he pleases.” He shows, however, at the same time, that he can desire the man to bring his kapa and lay it on his shoulders. There are several soldiers here on leave of absence, during which they receive their pay. One has a twelvemonth’s leave. The pay of a private is 28 grani per diem; that of a serjeant-major 34; of a captain 80 ducats a month; of a lieutenant-colonel 110; but they find their own arms and clothes. A Neapolitan soldier has not half as much. There are three or four Khimariote captains now recruiting here for their corps at Naples. The Khimariotes often intermarry with the people of Vuno, the territory of which is separated only from that of Khimara by the crest of the ridge to the north-westward, which looks down upon Vuno. But notwithstanding these alliances, the two towns are generally on terms of suspicion, and often in open hostility. This, indeed, is the ordinary condition of two neighbouring towns in Albania, and, by a natural consequence, those which are separated from one another by a third territory are generally in alliance, which in fact is not uncommon on a larger scale in other parts of the world.
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§ 1.088 The name of Khimara is generally applied to the whole of the ancient Acroceraunian ridge, from Cape Kefali to Cape Glossa, including the valley of Oricum. The towns are in the following order from south to north: Nivitza, Lukovo, Pikernes, Sopoto, Kiepero, Khimara, Vuuo, Dhrymadhes, Palasa, and Dukadhes. All these places stand on the western slope, of the Acroceraunia, except Dukadhes, which looks to the Gulf of Aulon. There are also a few smaller villages in Khimara, one of which, named Piliuri, is in sight from the town of Khimara to the eastward, towards the summit of the mountain, in a pass leading to the Turkish village of Kutzi. At Corfu I met a certain Count Gika, of Dhrymadhes, who described that place as very picturesque, with a river running through it; and added, that near Dukadhes are forests of fine oaks and pines, furnishing timber which might easily be brought down the hills into the lagoon of Erikho. All the towns have nearly the same semi-barbarous manners and customs. The Greek language is spoken by almost all the men, and the Italian by those who have lived abroad; but the women in general know little of any language but the Albanian. Khimara being situated on a steep rocky height, protected on either side by the ravine of a torrent, and having all its exterior houses prepared for defence, has by its strength hitherto served as a barrier to all the northern part of the district against the arms of Aly Pasha. Three or four years ago, the Khimariotes fought with his troops on the hill above Palerimo. More recently, on visiting the latter place, he proposed to purchase a piece of land from the Khimariotes, for the purpose of building a castle, which they wisely refused. He has often recommended this harbour to the use of British ships; his principal object in which, as he confessed to me, is that by this appearance of support from us, he may find it more easy to bring the Khimariotes under his yoke. It was in a manner somewhat similar that he obtained Nivitza and Aio Vasili; and thus it is that he always endeavours, in his transactions with the powers of Europe, to convert them into instruments of his own aggrandizement. From Khimara to Tepeleni is reckoned a four days’ journey in this season, though the direct distance is not more than 20 G. miles: the first day is to Kutzi, the third to Nivitza on the Sutzista, which, like the other streams of this country, is difficult to pass in seasons of rain. Nivitza is inhabited by Musulman Liape, and is described as situated on a peaked rock, surrounded by deep ravines and torrents, where considerable remains of ancient walls are preserved, and in the castle particularly an entire door. It is agreed by all who have seen these walls, that they exactly resemble some pieces of Hellenic work, which now serve as foundations to several of the modern houses of Khimara. The masonry approaches to a regular kind not any of the blocks of stone having more than five sides. These relics, together with the name, leave no question that Khimara stands upon the exact site of the ancient Chimara, which I believe is noticed only by Pliny. I was informed of an inscription in a private house, but as it belonged to one of the adverse faction, I could not obtain permission to see it.
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§ 1.090 Jan. 12.—As neither the season, nor the engagements of the boat in which I came to Palerimo, nor the doubtful politics and civilization of the Ceraunians, will admit of my exploring Khimara any farther, still less of being able by this route to examine the topography of Amantia, Oricum, Bullis, or Apollonia, I am under the necessity of returning to Palerimo and Corfu. The people of Dukadhes, who possess the valley above Oricum, are the principal difficulty, having a reputation something like that of the Kakovuliotes of Mani. Though the wind is favorable this morning for returning by sea to the Forty Saints, and the weather delightful, Captain Zakharias, pushing the laws of hospitality to a semi-barbarous extent, will not allow me to walk back to Palerimo, until a lamb, which he sends for from the hills, has been baked and served up on the floor. After this Homeric breakfast we descend to Palerimo, accompanied for two miles by Captain Constantine Andrutzi: two guards, formerly Neapolitan soldiers, armed with musquets, walk with us as far as the boundary of the territory, between the northern Bay of Palerimo and the isthmus of the castle. Here, having received a present, they fire off their musquets and return.
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§ 1.091 We embark at 2 p.m. with a light northerly breeze, which soon' falls to a calm; and, rowing all the way, arrive at half-past nine at the Forty Saints by a fine moonlight. In all this part of Albania it is a prevailing idea, not uncommon also in many parts of Greece, that the country formerly belonged to the Spaniards, and that all the ruins are the work of that people; those at the Forty Saints, the castle of Delvino, the ruins in the plain of Deropugl, the remains of an old Turkish castle at Tepeleni, and even the Hellenic walls of Phoenice are supposed to be of Spanish construction. It is difficult to understand how this opinion originated, for the Catalans, the only Spaniards who made any permanent settlements in Greece, were not in this quarter, nor can any one of the ruins in Epirus with any probability be ascribed to them. I had made an agreement with the Corfiotes to proceed to Vutzindro, and Parga, and from thence to Corfu, but this being the Greek new year’s day, and feast of St. Basil, the sailors get drunk and insolent, and the bargain breaks off.
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§ 1.092 Jan. 14.—Having found another vessel, we sail along the coast to the Bay of Buthrotum, passing between the two rocks off Kassopo, which are such a dangerous impediment to the safe navigation of this channel. They lie midway between the castle of Kassopo and a wide bay on the shore of Epirus, which is separated only from the lake of Vutzindro by a long ridge of land, not broader in some parts than a mile. The bay is called Examili, in allusion to the isthmus, that name being often attached by the modern Greeks to an isthmus, whatever may be its breadth. It is thus applied to the Isthmus of Corinth, and to that of the Thracian Chersonese, near Cardia. The Bay of Examili is open and exposed to the west, but the southern part is well sheltered by four islets, which have given to the anchorage within them the name of Tetranisa. Beyond this there is a rugged coast, parallel to the eastern extremity of Corfu, and forming with it the narrowest part of the channel. The most projecting point on the continent is probably the Cape Posidium of Ptolemy and Strabo. Between Onchesmus and Posidium, Ptolemy places a Cassiope, which he clearly distinguishes from the Cassiope of Corcyra, by describing the former as a harbour, the latter as a town and promontory. Cassiope of Epirus, therefore, if Ptolemy is correct, would seem to have stood in the harbour of Tetranisa. It is on the strength of this evidence of Ptolemy, that Strabo has been supposed to allude to a Cassiope on the coast of Epirus, in stating that the distance from port Cassiope to Brundusium was 1700 stades. I have little doubt, however, that he intended the harbour of Cassiope in Corcyra, from whence it is more probable that vessels should begin their passage to Italy, than from any port on the Epirote coast to the southward of Onchesmus. If Strabo did not intend a place in Corcyra, why should he have described Phalacrum, (which we know from Ptolemy and Stephanus to have been a promontory of that island), as lying to the southward of Cassiope; or why should he have returned to Onchesmus before he described the ports of Posidium and Buthrotum? This seems clearly to show that all which occurs between his first mention of Onchesmus, and his return to it, relates to Corcyra only; that his Cassiope was the modern Kassapo, and his Phalacrum the north-western point of Corfu. It is true that this cape is nearly due west of Kassopo, instead of being to the south; but errors of bearing are among the most common of ancient inaccuracies. Strabo’s distance of 1700 stades cannot assist in deciding the question, because the difference of distance from Brindisi to Kassopo in Corfu, or from Brindisi to any point on the Epirote coast, is too small on so long a line to lead to any certainty, especially in reference to so incorrect an authority or text as those of Strabo.
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§ 1.094 His imperfect knowledge of the general form of these coasts is shown, not only by his mistaken bearing of Phalacrum from Cassiope, but by his statement also that the distance from Phalacrum to Tarentum is equal to that from Cassiope to Brundusium, there being a great excess in the former line whether the latter be measured from the coast of Corcyra, or from that of Epirus. As to the mention supposed to have been made by other authors beside Ptolemy, of a Cassiope in Epirus, it is clear that they all, without exception, intended the Cassope, of which the territory bordered on the Ambracic Gulf. If Phalacrum was the north-western cape of Corfu, the southern extremity, or Cavo Bianco, was probably the Amphipagus of Ptolemy; for although the words Leucimne and Bianco have a similar import, the modern name Alefkimo is a much stronger proof of the identity of the ancient Leucimne with the low cape advancing into the channel of Corfu, eight miles to the northward of Cape Bianco. The name Amphipagus corresponds to such an abrupt and rocky height as Cavo Bianco, and with the more propriety, as it is a contrast to the low sandy promontory of Alefkimo. It is observable also, that the placing of Amphipagus at Cavo Bianco agrees with the order of names in Ptolemy, which is as follows:
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§ 1.095 Cassiope (Kassopo); Ptychia (Vido); Corcyra (Corfu); Leucimne (Alefkimo); Amphipagus (Cavo Bianco); Phalacrum (Cape Drasti, or the N.W. Cape). The only remarkable promontory in Corcyra, which seems here omitted, is that at the southern entrance of the Channel of Kassopo. As we approach Vutzindro, the water becomes muddy, and in the bay is almost fresh. This bay is very shallow on the northern side, and the bar at the mouth of the river will even now, when the water is at the highest, but just admit of the entrance of καΐκια or small coasting vessels. We row three or four miles up the river, through a plain once perhaps the property of Atticus, the friend of Cicero, and now peopled with horses from the neighbouring villages. We then arrive at the Vivari, or more vulgarly Livari; that is to say, the principal fishery, which is on the left side of the river, at its exit from the lake, nearly opposite to the peninsula which was anciently occupied by Buthrotum. The only buildings at the Livari are a ruined house of Venetian construction, and near it an old triangular castle, occupied by a dirty bilibash of the Vezir, and fifteen or twenty soldiers. The place is called Βουτζιντρόν, vulgarly pronounced Vutjindro: the territory comprehends all the lake, and a part of the surrounding hills. In the house live the superintendent of the fishery and fourteen Greeks, who are employed by him. The fish are caught by means of a strong permanent dam, made of large beams, crowned with a palisading of reeds. At intervals are small chambers in the dam, where the fish are taken in passing out of the lake. A man who is on the watch, gives a signal for shutting the door as soon as the chamber is full. There is a second dam above the first, for the purpose of breaking the force of the water, but the late violent rains have carried away great part of it, and injured the fishery for the remainder of the season, which usually lasts from September to March. The yearly average quantity of fish caught is 350,000 litres, or Greek pounds, which are the same as the Venetian. This year, though the season is only half over, they have caught 400,000. The fishery is farmed from the Vezir for fifty-five purses by N. Y. of Kalarytes, the bishop of Ioannina, and G. Z. of the Forty Saints. In the same farm is included the fishery of a smaller lake named Riza, to the south-eastward of the great lake; that of a lagoon called Armyro on the northern side of the mouth of the river, the pasturage of the marshy land near the river and lake, and the privilege of cutting wood (but not construction timber) in the forests and marshes of the territory of Vutzindro, as it was defined by treaty between Venice and the Turks. Beyond that line the wood-cutters pay for the privilege to Konispoli, which possesses all the south-eastern part of the fine plain, extending from the southern extremity of the lake to the foot of the hills which border the Channel of Corfu in face of the city. The right of fishing with nets in the lakes, lagoons, and river, is underlet by the farmers to Corfiotes, who employ many boats in this manner.
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§ 1.097 The fish are salted on the spot, and the greater part sent to Corfu, which depends upon Vutzindro and the Gulf of Arta for its supply of fish during the long fasts of the Greek church; the rest are sold in the villages around for a great distance. From hence also Corfu is chiefly furnished with firewood, and with staves to make casks for its oil and wine. These circumstances explain the importance which Venice always attached to the possession of Bucintro. The wood is chiefly procured on a mountain rising steeply from the eastern side of the lake and plain, and called Milia-vuni, from a little village near the summit, which is in sight from Corfu. The French are said to have formerly procured from thence some good timber for shipbuilding. Under its south-eastern extremity, between it and another mountain, is the lake Riza, which is three or four miles long, and sends forth a stream which enters the lake of Vutzindro, nearly opposite to the ruins of Buthrotum. Along the eastern side of the lake Riza passes the direct road from Delvino to Mursia, a village at the southern extremity of the plain, from whence it continues to Konispoli and Filiates. The road from the Livari to Delvino follows the western side of the same lake, and joins the former road at the upper or northern extremity of the lake, near a source of salt water. On some low eminences rising from the southern bank of the lake Riza are the villages Zara and Zaropulo, which are comprehended in the district of Vutzindro. The fishery of this lake, as I before remarked, forms a part of the farm of the great livari, but is subject to the payment of one hundred and eighty okes of fish to Selim Bey Koka, who owns the neighbouring land.
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§ 1.098 Konispoli is a scattered town of four or five hundred Albanian families, conspicuous from Corfu by its situation on the summit of the maritime ridge, which stretches from the plain at the mouth of the Kalama, as far as the bay of Vutzindro. Inland the plain extends southward from Vutzindro behind this ridge, for a distance of about five miles, and a river flows through it into the lake. The southern part of the plain belonged to a Hellenic city, of which remains are found on the edge of the plain, to the northward of Konispoli; the other end was obviously a part of the territory of Buthrotum. About twenty days ago there was a battle at Konispoli, between the two parties which divide the town; at the head of one is Mahmud Daliani, whose niece was married to Mukhtar Pasha some time ago, but divorced by him and then married to Selim Bey, of Delvino, who now resides at Konispoli. The other chief is Ismail Aga, a friend of the Vezir, whose assistance he demanded; but before it could arrive Ismail had made up matters with his adversary. The Vezir’s party at Konispoli and Filiates are called Jacobins by their opponents, in imitation of the party appellations of the Corfiotes. Aly was displeased with Ismail for not allowing time for his interference; but still hopes, by his means, to obtain possession of Konispoli, which would be a great step towards his object of subjugating the whole of Tzamuria.
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§ 1.099 Wild swine are very numerous among the thickets along the edge of the lake, particularly in the peninsula of Buthrotum; and the place is infested with jackals, which at night make as hideous a noise as those in the plains of Palestine. Woodcocks are very numerous, and the lake is now covered with ducks. A Greek of Ioannina, who is employed at the Livari, had established, at the expence of six hundred piastres, a small shop and wine-store, which was totally carried away by the late inundations. Of the two years he has dwelt here, he has been ill the greater part of the last. In summer the air is extremely unhealthy; and there is no drinking water, but that of the river, which in winter is extremely turbid. As one of the states of Epirus, Buthrotum has not received any more notice from history than the cities of this province in general. It was occupied by Caesar soon after he had taken Oricum, and before the time of Strabo had become a Roman colony. Virgil had a most imperfect idea of the place, when he applied to it the epithet of lofty; and its resemblance to Troy is very like that of Monmouth to Macedon. It would be difficult even to find the dry torrent to which the followers of Helenus had given the name of Xanthus.
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§ 1.100 The words which the Latin poet applies to the Phaeacian citadel are better chosen, and exactly describe the two rocky summits or κορυφαί, which have given its modern name to Corcyra. Strabo was so far acquainted with the site of Buthrotum, as to know that it stood on a chersonese; but in placing it at the mouth of the harbour Pelodes, he was either greatly misinformed, or the word λιμένος has been improperly substituted in his text for λίμνης, and the name Pelodes belonged to the lake as well as the harbour; for Ptolemy, Plutarch, and the word itself, sufficiently identify Pelodes with the muddy bay of Vutzindro. Ptolemy, indeed, distinguishes between the Bουθρωτοΰ κόλπος and the Πηλωδης λιμην; placing the former next to Cape Posidium: possibly port Pelodes was the modern Armyro, which may have been converted in process of time by the deposit of the river, from a well-sheltered harbour into a lagoon on the northern side of the river’s mouth.
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§ 1.101 The ruins of Buthrotum occupy a peninsula which is bounded on the western side by a small bay in the lake, and is surrounded from the north to the south-east by the windings of the river just above its issue. The walls of the Roman colony still exist in the whole circumference, which is about a mile, and are mixed with remains both of later and of Hellenic work, showing that the city always occupied the same site. Within the inclosure are the ruins of a large church, of two or three small ones, and of some cisterns, baths, and houses. There are also some fragments of granite columns and of other marbles. The towers which flank the walls were built with a salient angle, and some of them were of this form. The citadel was towards the bay of the lake, where the side of the peninsula is the highest and steepest. Of the Hellenic remains there is a very perfect piece of wall on the south-eastern side, which, as it consists of regular courses, is probably not much older than the time of Pyrrhus. There is also a fine remnant on the western side, of which the courses are nearly equal and parallel, and appear entirely so at a distance; but on a nearer inspection, few of the stones are found to be quadrangular, nor the courses regular. Immediately opposite to the house of the fishery are some other ruins which appear to be Venetian; among them is a tower resembling those on the coast of Malta. There is a similar one in the pass behind the Limeni of the Forty Saints.
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§ 1.102 Jan. 15.—A rocky summit on the western side of the ruins commands a fine view of the Epirote coast, from the cape near Palasa to the islands of Syvota, as well as of all the eastern side of Corfu. The plain of Delvino is seen beyond the lake, together with the surrounding mountains. On the narrow ridge which separates the lake from the bay of Examili, stands the monastery of St. George, surrounded with gardens, olive-grounds, and vineyards; it is now occupied by Aly as a military post. A little beyond the southern point of the bay of Vutzindro is a small port called Glyfa, a little within Cape Stilo: then occurs the harbour of Ftelia, or Aftelia, which is well sheltered, and though small is a good anchorage for ships of commerce; then Kataito, a little open port, then Bagania, a good harbour for merchant ships. Beyond Bagania, the villages, Konispoli, Liopesi, and Saiadha, crown the hills which border the coast. Under Saiadha is a sandy shallow bay, exposed to the north-west, in which is a skala called Kerasia, which is the ordinary landing-place from Corfu on the way to Filiates and Ioannina, and from whence the island is usually supplied with cattle, sheep, hogs, and other provision.
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§ 1.103 At the mouth of the river Kalama, the ancient Thyamis, there is an island or peninsula affording good shelter, immediately beyond which is the bay of Gomenitza, a fine harbour for ships of any size and number; the entrance is narrowed by the shoals formed by the Kalama, which extend from Kerasia all the way round to the bay of Gomenitza. Close to the mouth of the river, on the north, is the insulated mountain called Mavronoro, which seems once to have been an island, as all around it are low sandy points. It seems to be the projection which Ptolemy entitules the promontory or promontories of Thyamis; the low promontories around it would justify the plural number. Five or six miles to the southward of Gomenitza are the islands Sybota, which still bear the ancient name. They shelter a small bay, where on the shore of the main land stands a village of Musulman Albanians named Vrakhana or Murto. Strabo has not noticed any place between Buthrotum and Sybota: an unfortunate omission, as there must have been anciently some important towns in the rich districts near the mouth of the Thyamis, concerning which no author has left us any precise information. Torone would seem from Ptolemy to have stood in one of the bays between the mouth of the Kalama and Syvota.
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§ 1.104 The country which lies to the southward of the districts of Vutzindro and Delvino, as far as the Kalama, is called Parakalamo. Φιλάτες, pronounced Filiates by the Albanians, is the principal town of Parakalamo. With the exception of a few Christian artisans and shopkeepers, it is entirely inhabited by Musulman Albanians, contains several handsome mosques, and about 2000 houses, which, as in the generality of Albanian towns, are dispersed over a great space; the ground is hilly, and the place is situated at a distance of some miles from the plain of the Kalama. Ibrahim Demis and Ibrahim Stambulis are the two principal chieftains, and can bring two or three thousand armed Musulmans into the field. Plessaritza is a large Greek village on a rocky hill to the northward of Filiates, and situated above the western side of a valley which forms the natural communication between the vale of the Kalama and that of Delvino. Beyond Plessaritza, towards Delvino, are Kotzika and Verva, in the narrowest part of the valley abovementioned: this pass, and that of Neokhori, in the mountains which separate the valley of the lower Kalama from the districts of Paramythia and Margariti, are the only two entrances into that valley on the land side, except the difficult route which leads into it along the river from the north-eastward. Hence Parakalamo, Daghi, to the south of the Kalama, Magariti, and Paramythia, have hitherto remained independent of Aly Pasha.
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§ 1.105 Jan. 16.—Return this morning to Corfu, in a boat of that island with a gentle scirocco. At two thirds of the distance down the river stands a house built by a Corfiote, who owns also part of the plain; but his speculation having failed, the house is now in ruins. Aly Pasha having already made so much progress in gaining possession of the Ex-Venetian places, is desirous of purchasing this property from the Corfiote.
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§ 1.106 CHAPTER III SECOND JOURNEY. AETOLIA. June 12, 1805.—At 11 p.m. I embarked with two servants and a Tatar courier in a boat of Kefalonia from the Skala of Patra for the opposite coast; but a light breeze, blowing directly against us from the lagoon of Mesolonghi, and our boat being furnished only with two oars, it was not until the morning of June 13, at 8.30, that I landed at the ruin of a tower of Venetian, or lower Greek construction, at the foot of Mount Varassova, as that immense pile of rock is here called which closes the plain of the Evenus to the eastward,
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§ 1.107 but which is more commonly known at Patra by the name of Mount Galata, from a village of that name. The other steep mountain or promontory towards Epakto, which at Patra is generally called Paleo-vuni, is here better known by the name of Kaki-skala. The landing-place of Varassova is in an angle, where the level coast at the mouth of the Evenus terminates, under the cliffs of the mountain, which rise almost perpendicularly to the summit. Several copious streams of the purest water issue from the foot of the mountain, and form a pond and marsh near the beach, from which a stream flows into the sea. Most of these fountains are within fifty yards of the beach; and there is one which rises in the sea itself ten or twelve feet from the shore, forcing its way to the surface, and making the water all around it fresh. From these sources the place receives the name of Krio-nero. Some return mules, which have brought hither plank from the interior mountains to be transported to Zakytho, afford the means of forwarding my baggage to Galata. At noon I leave the sea-beach on foot, but soon meet some horses, sent from the village by order of Osman Bey, a Turk of'Epakto, who owns Galata. The plain is very marshy near the sea, but farther inland is fertile; and near Galata and Bokhori produces maize, corn, oil, wine, silk, and rice. Of the latter grain a great quantity might be grown, as there are large uncultivated tracts in the plain well adapted to it.
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§ 1.108 Two or three miles to the northward of Galata and Bokhori, the valley of the Evenus, now called Fidhari, branches from the maritime plain. It is inclosed by hills clothed with oaks, and has a rich and beautiful appearance. Galata is a Turkish village of thirty houses, distant 2 ½ miles north, 60 west, from Krio-nero; it is situated in the midst of olive plantations and cornfields, and though surrounded also by rice marshes, is said to be not unhealthy. The peasants are now employed in reaping barley. The Turk who brought the horses conducts me to his cottage, provides a dinner, and accompanies me in the afternoon to Mesolonghi. We are prevented from setting out till 4.53, by a heavy rain, accompanied with thunder, an occurrence almost daily in the mountainous parts of Greece in the early summer. The clouds begin to collect on, the mountains about 9 o’clock, and the storm is generally over by 3 or 4 p.m., but sometimes it is later. Though it happened every day during the fortnight I remained at Patra, the rain never reached that place. While travelling in the Morea, I remarked that these meridian storms were more constant in the mountains of Rumili than in the Peninsula. At 5.15 we cross the Fidhari about the same place where the centaur Nessus, of old, transported passengers across the river in his arms, and where he suffered from the arrows of Hercules for his rudeness to Deianira, for hereabouts is naturally the most convenient passage. Nessus would seem to have been no more than a mortal horseman, who gained a few pence by his employment.
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§ 1.109 The river well illustrates the story, as it requires a guide for the ford even in this season, the water reaching to the stirrups. The water is clear and rapid, running over a wide gravelly bed, which in winter is often entirely covered. The river separates the district of Epakto from that of Zygos. Having reached the right bank, we pass through Bokhori, a Greek village situated amidst plane trees, cornfields, fruit-gardens, and plantations of the same productions which grow near Galata. Derivations from the Evenus here turn several mills. At the hamlet of Kurt-aga, near the point where the last slope of the mountain on the north-western side of the vale of the Evenus advances into the plain of Bokhori, are foundations of the walls of a large Hellenic polis, not far from the right bank of the river. The position corresponds so exactly to that of Calydon, as indicated by Pliny, that one can hardly doubt of the identity. Without this testimony, there might have been some doubts on the question. Strabo, by his citation of two conflicting authorities, without deciding between them, clearly shows that he never was here; but though his text, as it now stands, is unintelligible, it requires only the transposition of two of the paragraphs,
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§ 1.110 and the addition of the single word ουκ (not), to be made perfectly applicable. The passage occurs in a description of the maritime places in their proper order from Leucas to Antirrhium. With the proposed alteration his remarks will be as follows: “Next to the lake Cynia, which has a communication with the sea, is Pleuron, then the town Licyrna, above which, thirty stades inland is Calydon, and near it the temple of Apollo Laphraeus; then the Evenus, to which, from Actium, there is a distance of 670 stades, and beyond it the mountain Chalcis, which Artemidorus calls Chalcia; then the mountain Taphiassus; then the city Macynia; then Molycreia, and near it Antirrhium, the boundary of Aetolia and Locris, to which, from the Evenus, there is a distance of 120 stades. Artemidorus, however, differs respecting the mountain Chalcis, or Chalcia, placing it between the Achelous and Pleuron. Apollodorus, on the other hand, places both Chalcis and Taphiassus, as I before stated, above Molycreia, and Calydon between Pleuron and Chalcis, unless, indeed, we suppose that Mount Chalcia near Pleuron was different from Chalcis near Molycreia.”
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§ 1.111 As it cannot be doubted that the Chalcis and Taphiassus here named were the two great mountains situated between the river Fidhari and the Castle of Rumili, or ancient Antirrhium, it follows that Chalcis was Varassova, or the western mountain, and Taphiassus the eastern, now called Kaki-skala. And as there is no appearance of an ancient site between the river and Mount Varassova, we may infer that Chalcis or Hypochalcis, the Χαλκις αγχίαλος of Homer, and the Chalceia of Polybius, stood in the valley between the two mountains, where is now a harbour called Gavrolimni. It would seem also, that the site of Macynia was between Taphiassus and Molycreia, which last, as I have already remarked, was on the first rise of the hills behind the castle of Rumili. I was informed at Patra, from whence the whole of this coast is well seen, that there are still some remains of a Hellenic fortress, now called Ovrio-kastro, between the mountains, and some vestiges also on the eastern side of Kaki-skala both of them confirming the preceding conjecture, the former being the remains of Chalcis, the latter of Macynia. Ptolemy places Molycreia in Locris, but Strabo makes Antirrhium the boundary, and ascribes Molycreia to Aetolia.
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§ 1.112 The modern name Μποχώρι is obviously a corruption of Υποχώριον in allusion to its position, that is to say, an outlying quarter of Calydon below the city. In some vineyards near Kurtaga a sepulchral stele has lately been found and brought to Bokhori. It has that common form which is an imitation of the end of a sarcophagus, and is inscribed with the names Philumena, Antimachus, where the precedence of the lady’s name without anything to indicate the relationship between the two is uncommon. The evening is unfortunately too near its close to allow me to examine the ruins of Calydon. Proceeding therefore from Bokhori we pass through fields of oats, barley, grinia [wheat of a middle hardness and generaly with a black beard and fine full grain; in the Morea it is chiefly produced on the banks of the Alpheius ], guinea corn, and maize,
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§ 1.113 and at 6.20 leave on the left a village which has recently been built in the level near the sea, on the edge of the eastern extremity of the Lagoon of Mesolonghi, and hence called Neokhori. The mountains on the right are well cultivated at the foot, and above are covered with trees. Having descended upon the lowest level at something more than a mile from the edge of the lagoon, we proceed over a desert space inundated by the late rains; at 7.10 enter a suburb of Mesolonghi consisting of thatched huts, and at 7.25 arrive at the house of a merchant on the seaside. Mesolonghi was evidently so named from its situation in the midst of the λόγγος, or wilderness of woods and marshes, which, under the Romans, gradually enveloped all the ruined cities of maritime Aetolia, until the position, like that of Venice, was chosen for its security during the middle ages, to which period of Greek literature the name belongs. The town contains about 1000 families, residing in houses which indicate a great variety of conditions, and occupy a large space, as well along the shore of the lagoon as in the adjacent marshy level. The lagoon is separated from the sea by a narrow ράμμα, as it is called, or thread of low land, and is divided into two nearly equal parts by, a projection from the marshy level, which advances to within a short distance of the ramma. In the eastern division of the lagoon, and in the middle of a bay at its northern extremity, is the town of Anatoliko, entirely covering a small island.
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§ 1.114 The entrance from the roadsted of Mesolonghi into the lagoon is at a distance of four miles from the town, where is a small island called Vasiladhi, and upon it a fort and custom-house. Large boats cannot approach within a mile of the houses, nor can they advance so far unless when empty: all the remaining navigation of the lagoon, therefore, is carried on by shallow monoxyla, or canoes, which are made of hollow trunks of oaks from the neighbouring mountains. In the town, salt water rises every where on digging to the depth of three or four feet; but so near as the gardens which surround the town, wells of a greater depth furnish an abundance of fresh water which maintains the gardens in perpetual verdure. The water for drinking is brought by an aqueduct from Mount Zygos between the foot of which and the gardens there is a plain covered with currant plantations, vineyards, and fields of corn, but which do not supply the place with more than a four months’ consumption of bread. I was surprised to hear that the air of Mesolonghi is not considered unhealthy, and to observe that the appearance of the people, who are a handsome race, corresponds to this opinion. It is admitted, however, that the back part of the town is not so healthy as the seaside, where the best houses are situated. The fishery of the lagoon, and the commerce of this the only emporium in Aetolia, are the productive labors of the Mesolonghites.
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§ 1.115 The fish are taken in a variety of modes, but in the greatest numbers by means of a palisading near the stomata or mouths of the lagoon, of which there are several communicating with the sea. Here, after breeding in the shallows, they are intercepted on their return to the sea, in passages or in chambers into which the passages conduct. Each kind of fish has a different season during the summer and autumn for going out. Besides the quantity consumed in the town, or in the villages around, either fresh, half salted, or thoroughly salted, 200,000 litres are exported every year. The other exports of Mesolonghi are 5000 barrels of oil every two years, 1500 barrels of wine, 300,000 litres of currants, 1000 okes of silk, and all the surplus corn of the southern parts of Karlili. The merchant, in whose house I am lodged, carried last year a cargo of maize to Tunis. The currants, shipped here, are partly produced in the plain of Vrakhori [Agrinio], and as they form part of the cargoes of the British ships trading to Patra, a consul or agent has been appointed at Mesolonghi, who is the son of a Kefalonite merchant residing here, and who acts also for the Septinsular Republic. June 14.—A ride of a little more than one hour from Mesolonghi conducts me to some ruins in a lofty situation on Mount Zygos, just as the usual postmeridian storm of rain and thunder is coming on. Fortunately it lasts only half an hour. The remains which are now known by the name of TO Καστpov της Κυρίας Ειρηνης, ΟΓ the Castle of Lady Irene, are those of the entire circuit of the ruined walls of a small polis, about a mile in circumference, enclosing the western face of a very steep and rugged height, the summit of which formed an acropolis.
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§ 1.116 The masonry is generally of the third order. The lower courses of the principal gate exist, on one side of which is a stone measuring seven feet by four. It seems to have been a common practice among the Greeks to place the largest masses near the principal entrance, to excite respect in a stranger for the fortifications. In the centre of the wall, which defended the lower side of the town, is a square tower, and at one extremity of the same wall another tower, having very long flanks. The most remarkable remains within the enclosure are a theatre about 100 feet in diameter, and above it, on the side of the hill, a cistern, 100 feet long, 70 broad, and 14 deep, excavated on three sides in the rock, and on the fourth constructed of masonry. The excavation is on a slope, and between the excavated side at the upper end, and a wall which closes the lower, there are four other parallel, though not equidistant walls reaching from the one side of the excavation to the other, and consisting of courses of regular masonry, of a single stone in thickness, and which have openings at the bottom in the form of a triangle, very acute at the upper angle. The intention of these walls and openings in such an excavation it is not very easy to explain. Close to a small side-gate on the north are the foundations of a building, and to the eastward the remains of two parallel walls, enclosing a terrace twenty-four yards long and eleven wide; near the great gate are those of a small quadrangular building, like the cell of a temple, the stones square and accurately cut, but without any appearance of a peristyle or any fragments of columns.
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§ 1.117 In the acropolis are some remains of Doric shafts of white marble, about three feet in diameter; they belonged, perhaps, to the identical temple of Minerva at Pleuron, noticed by Dicaearchus, for I have little doubt that these are the ruins of Pleuron. Strabo remarks, that the more ancient Pleuron was destroyed by Demetrius II. son of Antigonus Gonatas; that it stood in the plain towards Calydon, and that the Pleuronii afterwards built a new town on Mount Aracynthus. From his description also of the Evenus, though he was mistaken in supposing the course of that river above Calydon to have been easterly, it is evident that the territory of Pleuron bordered upon the Calydonias.
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§ 1.118 Dicaearchus, in naming Pleuron between the Achelous and Calydon, agrees with Apollodorus, who places Calydon between Pleuron and Chalcis. If the situations therefore which I have assigned to Calydon and Chalcis be correct, there can be no question that Pleuron was near Mesolonghi. In farther admitting the transposition which I have proposed in the text of Strabo, we may add to the preceding testimonies that of Artemidorus. Nor is the concurrence of Thucydides wanting, who, in describing the march of Eurylochus the Spartan from Locris into Aetolia, in the sixth autumn of the Peloponnesian war, relates, that he moved from Molycrium to Calydon, Pleuron, and Proschium, in which places he remained until he proceeded against Amphilochia. There is every reason to believe that Mount Zygos, upon a part of which the castle of Irene stands, is the ancient Aracynthus, and the ruins accord with those of the later Pleuron, inasmuch as they have no appearance of remote antiquity, and are exactly those of such a small town as we may suppose New Pleuron to have been from the circumstances of the people at the time of its foundation. I remarked, moreover, some pieces of Hellenic wall at the foot of the mountain on the edge of the plain of Mesolonghi, as well as on a small height in that plain now called Ghyfto-kastro, situated precisely where the words of Strabo would lead one to look for Old Pleuron. The name Ghyfto-kastro allows the conjecture, that greater remains once existed there, and that the materials have been removed for the use of modern constructions at Mesolonghi.
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§ 1.119 Proschium, from a comparison of Strabo with Thucydides, in the places just referred to, seems to have occupied the western part of the ridge of Zygos. and to have possessed the plain, at its foot, now belonging to Anatoliko. The high situation in which Proschium was founded when the low position of the Homeric Pylene was abandoned seems to accord with that of the monastery of St. George in Mount Zygos, between Anatoliko and Anghelokastro, where considerable remains of a Hellenic city are said to exist. Pylene may have received its name from the remarkable cleft called the Klisura, which extends through the whole breadth of Mount Zygos, and which was exactly such a place as the ancient Greeks called a πύλη or gate. In this case it is probable that Pylene was situated at the maritime end of the Klisura, over against Anatoliko. Apokuro, a sub-district of the Turkish kaza of Karpenisi, to the north-eastward of Zygos, seems evidently to have derived its name from Mount Curium and the Curetes; for it comprehends nearly the same country in which Homer places that people, as well as Strabo, who says that Pleuron was situated below the mountain Curium, whence it seems that Curium and Aracynthus were the same, or different parts of the same, mountain.
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§ 1.120 Having descended the hill of Kyria Irini on foot, through the rocks and shrubs with which it is entirely covered, we regain, in half an hour, the direct road from Mesolonghi to Khierasovo, at a distance of three quarters of an hour from the former; and soon after having entered the mountain, and lost sight of the maritime country, leave on the right, at 5.20, a tumulus, covered with stones, situated in a little valley, along which a torrent flows; on its opposite bank is a Hellenic foundation. These are possibly the sepulchre and shrine of one of the ancient heroes of Aetolia. After ascending for an hour over a rugged road, we arrive on the side of a stream shaded by large plane-trees: follow a path still worse than before along the side of the same torrent through a forest of planes, oaks, and pirnaria, as far as a hollow between two summits of Mount Zygos; and at the end of another hour reach a height which commands a view of the lakes of Vrakhori, and of the great mountain to the north-east of that town, called Kyria Evghenia (Lady Eugenia), or vulgarly Mount Viena. Descending from hence, through a forest for three quarters of an hour, we arrive, at 8.30, at the village of Khierasovo, beautifully dispersed among vineyards and gardens on the slope of the mountain, in the midst of a forest of chestnuts. The gathering of the nuts and the carrying of them to Anatoliko and Mesolonghi, from whence most of them are transported to Zakytho or the other islands, together with the tending of their sheep and goats on the mountain, form the principal employments of the people of Khierasovo.

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