Next morning we dismissed Mukhtar Pasha's man who had escorted us so far, and went on south-westwards along the edge of the valley of Cassiopeia. As it grew narrower we climbed a ridge which overhung an awful depth, went over a high mountain, and reached Bareatis, a small village in a pass with a serai of Ali Pasha's, in which he lived for a length of time during the war of Suli. Three and a half hours further on we came to Terbisena, the first village of Suli. It had been pouring all day, and we were not only wet and cold when we arrived but the hovel we got as a lodging let in the water everywhere, and here, huddled in the driest corner we could find, we had to sleep and spend the next day.
On the 19th the weather was fine again, and we went on hoping to find the river fordable, but when we got to the bank we found it rapid and deep. One of our Turks, after a good deal of boasting, plunged in, and in an instant sank, and the torrent was carrying him and his horse floundering away. Another of his brother Turks, seeing him carried down, called loudly on Allah, and stroked his beard in great tribulation, but without stirring a stump. In another minute the man would have been drowned, but our servant Antonetti, who was but a Christian, very pluckily ran in and clawed him out. The poor boaster was already senseless when we got him to land. We took him back to Dervishina, and gradually brought him round, when instead of thanking his stars for his narrow escape, or Antonetti for the plucky part he had played, he did nothing but lament the loss of his gun, 'Tofeki,' which he had himself won, he said, and of his shawl which had cost him 50 piastres. We promised to make the latter good, and left him to rest.
The whole incident was in all senses a damper to our ardour. When we considered that to pass this river we must wait one day at least, and probably four days to get across the one near Suli, the expenditure of time seemed to us all, at least so I thought, greater than we cared to devote to the expedition. So the long and short of it was that we turned back and slept at Bareatis. Next day we got back to Janina. I made up my mind now that I was wasting time over this trip, and wished to get back to Athens. But before leaving I thought it my duty to call once more on Ali Pasha. A most agreeable old man he is. I was more than ever struck with the easy familiarity and perfect good humour of his manners. We found him in a low apartment with a fire in the middle, generally used for his Albanians and known as laapoda. Then we went to see Pouqueville,[45] the French resident. We found him with his brother, both of them the worst type of Frenchmen—vulgar, bragging, genuine children of the Revolution. Nothing worth remembering was said, but I did gather this from his tone—that the Empire in France is not likely to last.
On the 26th my friends, for a wonder, got up early, and we all set out in a boat for a small village where we were to find my horses. There we bid farewell and I mounted. It came on to rain, and I arrived, wet through, at the Three Khans to sleep.
Next day the rain became snow, but I set out nevertheless for Mezzovo. We had to ford the river several times, and for the last hour to Mezzovo were up to our middles in snow. The scenery was magnificent, and the country is well cultivated. Mezzovo is a Vlaki or Wallachian village; the people speak a sort of mixed Greek. They are exceedingly industrious and well-to-do.
Artistically I do not know that I have gained much, but I do not regret the time I have spent in Albania. The climate is more bracing than that of the rest of Greece, and has set me up after my illness. The scenery, though it cannot be at its best in winter, is most beautiful, and the inhabitants are a fine race—not handsome, but hardy and energetic. An Albanian has very few wants. A little bread of calambochi or Indian corn, an onion, and cheese is abundant fare to him. If he changes his linen five times in the year, that is the outside. A knife and a pistol in his girdle and his gun by his side, he sleeps quite well in the open air with his head on a stone and the lappel of his jacket over his face. In summer and winter he wears a fez. His boots are only goatskin sandals, which he makes himself. His activity in them over rocks is surprising.
As for Ali Pasha's government, one has to remember what a chaotic state the country was in before he made himself master of it. The accounts one gets from the elders make it clear what misery there was. No stranger could travel in it, nor could the inhabitants themselves get about. Every valley was at war with its neighbour, and all were professional brigands. All this Ali has reduced to order. There is law—for everyone admits his impartiality as compared with that of rulers in other parts of Turkey—and there is commerce. He has made roads, fortified the borders, put down brigandage, and raised Albania into a power of some importance in Europe.
That in arriving at this end he has often used means which civilised nations disapprove is no doubt true, but there has been in the first place gross exaggeration as to the crimes attributed to him: for instance, that he sees fifteen or twenty heads cut off every day before breakfast, whereas in point of fact there has not been such a thing as a public execution in the past year; and then, in the second, one must make allowance for the ferocious manners amongst which he was brought up.
On the 29th of January, as the weather seemed favourable, we set out eagerly to cross Pindus. The snow was deep in places, but for the first hour and a half we had no great difficulty. It was the last half-hour before getting to the top that was worst. The road is desperately steep up a precipice, and the snow was above the horses' girths. Our chamalides, however, waded through it, often up to their middles, and, carrying the loads on their own shoulders, lifted the horses by their tails and heads alternately, I hardly know how. Although I constantly slipped down on the steep incline, I was so eager to see the view that I was the first at the top. Towards the interior it was glorious: the feet of Pindus rooting themselves far into the country, which, although mountainous, was free from snow; conspicuous was Elymbo (Olympus), the top capped with snow, but the form of it is not beautiful. To the north were other snow-capped mountains. Behind us westward the air was so thick one could see nothing. The west side of the hills is covered with fir, while the east seems to have nothing but oak and birch—quantities of it, but all small trees. As we went down we noticed on the trunks of them the marks of the snow of the year before last, which must have been ten or twelve feet deep. Three and a half hours from our start we got to a khan, where we made a good fire and congratulated ourselves on having got over the hills so well and escaped the fatana—the wind the mountaineers dread.
Our next stage was to Malakash, a Vlaki town. It was astonishing the way our chamalides bore the fatigue of forcing our way through the snow, which was still five or six feet deep in places. They cut a way for the horses, which were constantly falling down and half smothering themselves in the drifts.