The hotel turned out to be an unpretending sort of an establishment, half grocery, half café. It was kept by two brothers, Greeks from Janina. It was situated in the principal street of the Christian quarter, close to the foreign consulates. Toshli's is a rough free-and-easy sort of place, but is to be recommended. The cuisine was really very fair. It was curious to observe in the grocery how many English commodities were procurable.
On the shelves I saw Huntley and Palmer's biscuits, Cross and Blackwell's pickles, and, most wonderful of all, brown Windsor soap—an article for which I should imagine that there could be no demand in Albania.
One meets with certain English manufactures in the most remote regions of the world.
I have bought Gillot's steel pens in an Arab town in a remote oasis of the Saharah.
Another curious fact is, that here at Toshli's, and everywhere else in Eastern Europe where plates are in use, one invariably meets with our old willow-pattern services. There is a very large exportation of these from England to these countries.
The café of the hotel, in which is a billiard-table, is much frequented by the Christian merchants, and the Turkish military doctors of the garrison; these are all Christians, being Armenians, Greeks, Poles, and other foreigners.
Italian is understood by many of the Christian merchants here, being the language of commerce on these coasts.
There must, I should say, be a certain amount of Italian blood in the veins of the citizens of Scutari, for it was long one of the strongest Venetian dependencies, and sustained one of the most heroic sieges of history, when Mahomet II. overran Eastern Europe, in the fifteenth century, with his vast hordes of infidels, inflamed with uninterrupted success.
Scutari was finally acquired by Turkey in 1479, by treaty.
The brothers Toshli received us with open arms, for the gendarme had prepared them for our arrival. Having settled ourselves in a comfortable bed-room, which was elegantly draped with strings of malodorous—not to say putrid—sausages, we indulged in some café-au-lait, a luxury we had not enjoyed for some time.