Most of the southern ramifications of the Bosnian Alps are inhabited by Albanians, but they are separated from their kinsmen in Albania proper by the deep valley of the Drin, a kind of cañon similar to those of the Rocky Mountains, enclosed between precipitous walls several thousand feet in height, and hardly ever trodden by the foot of a wanderer. The mountain systems of Bosnia and Albania are only indirectly connected by a series of ranges and plateaux stretching from the mountain of Glieb in a south-easterly direction as far as the Skhar, or Scardus of the ancients. The crest of this latter runs at right angles to most of the ranges of Western Turkey, and although its culminating point is inferior in height to those of Slav Turkey, it is the point of junction between the Balkan and the {116} mountain systems of Bosnia and Albania. The Skhar is of great importance, too, in the hydrography of Turkey; for two great rivers, the Bulgarian Morava and the Vardar, descend from its flanks, one flowing to the Danube, the other to the Gulf of Saloniki. Chamois and wild goats are still met with in the Skhar, as in the Pindus and Rhodope, and M. Wiet mentions an animal known to the Mirdits as a lucerbal, which appears to be a species of leopard.

A mountain region, hardly 3,000 feet in elevation, but exceedingly difficult of access, rises to the west of the Skhar, on the other side of the Black Drin: this is the citadel of Upper Albania, the country of the Mirdits and Dukajins. Enormous masses of serpentine have erupted there through the chalk, the valleys are hemmed in by bold precipices, and the torrents rapidly run down the hollowed-out beds on the exterior slopes. As a rule, the direction of the tortuous ranges of this mountain country is the same as that of the southern spurs of the Skhar. They gradually decrease in height, enclosing fine upland valleys, where the waters are able to accumulate. The Lake of Okhrida, the largest sheet of water in Upper Albania, has not inaptly been likened to the Lake of Geneva. Its waters are bluer even than those of its Swiss rival, and more transparent, and fish may be seen chasing each other at a depth of sixty feet beneath its surface: hence its ancient Greek name of Lychnidos. The delightful little town of Okhrida and Mount Pieria, with its old Roman castle, guard its shores, and the white houses of numerous villages peep out amongst the chestnut forests which cover the slopes of the surrounding hills. This lake is drained towards the north through the narrow valley of the Black Drin. If the statements of the inhabitants may be credited, the waters of the double basin of Lake Presba reach Lake Okhrida through subterranean channels.

The isolated peak of Tomor commands this lake region on the west. To the south of it commences the chain of the Pindus, locally known as Grammos. At first of moderate height, and crossed by numerous mountain roads affording easy communication between Albania and Macedonia, these mountains gradually increase in height as we proceed south, and exactly to the east of Yanina they form the mountain mass of Metzovo, with which the Pindus, properly so called, takes its rise. This mountain mass is inferior in altitude to the peaks of Bosnia or Northern Albania, but it is far more picturesque than either, its slopes being covered with forests of conifers and beech-trees, and the plains extending along its foot having a more southern aspect. Mount Zygos, or Lachmon, which rises in the centre of this mountain mass, does not afford a very extended panorama, but if we climb the craggy peaks of the Peristera-Vuna, or Smolika, near it, we are able to look at the same time upon the waters of the Ægean and Ionian Seas, and even the shore of Greece may be descried beyond the Gulf of Arta.

A famous lake occupies the bottom of the limestone basin at the western foot of the mountain mass of Metzovo. This is the Lake of Yanina, and nowhere else throughout Epirus do we meet with an equal number of natural curiosities as on the shores of this lake. Its depth is inconsiderable, nowhere exceeding forty feet, and it is fed only by numerous springs rising at the foot of the rocks. There is no {117} visible outlet; but Colonel Leake assures us that each of the two basins into which it is divided is drained by a subterranean channel. The northern lake pours its waters into a sink, or voinikova, and reappears towards the south-west as a considerable river, which flows into the Ionian Sea. This is the Thyamis of the ancients, our modern Kalamas. Farther to the south the ancient Acheron bursts from the rocks, and having received the nauseous waters of the equally famous Cocytus, throws itself into the “bay of sweet waters,” thus called on account of the large volume of water discharged into it by rivers.

[Μ]

Fig. 36.—SOUTHERN EPIRUS.

According to Kiepert. Scale 1 : 1,400,000.

When the waters of the southern and larger basin of Lake Yanina are low, there is but a single effluent, which plunges down into an abyss, and in doing so turns the wheels of a mill. The Cyclopean ruins of the Pelasgic city of Hellas command this huge chasm with its roaring waters. The subterranean river reappears far to the south, and flows into the Gulf of Arta. But when the level of the lake is high, four other sinks swallow up its superabundant waters, and convey them into the main channel, the direction of which is indicated by a few small lakes. The important part played in the mythology of ancient Greece by these subterranean effluents, and particularly by the infernal Acheron and the Cocytus, amply proves the influence exercised by the Pelasgians upon the civilisation of the Hellenes. The myths of the Hellopians became the common property of all Greece, and {118} there was no temple in all Hellas more venerated than their sanctuary at Dodona, where the future might be foretold by listening to the rustling of the leaves of sacred oaks. This sacred grove existed, probably, near one of the Cyclopean towns so numerous in the country, if not on the shore of the lake itself. Some, erroneously no doubt, have looked for it near the castle inhabited in the beginning of this century by Ali Tepeleni, the terrible Pasha of Epirus, who boasted of being a “lighted torch, devouring man.”

The mountains of Suli, to the west of the basin of Yanina, attain an altitude of 3,500 feet, but the neighbouring hills are of moderate height, though abrupt and difficult of access, and near the coast they sink down into small rocky promontories, scantily clothed with shrubs and overrun by jackals. Swamps abound near the shore, and during summer their miasmatic air spreads over the neighbouring villages. To the north of the swamps of Butrinto and of the channel of Corfu, and to the west of the isolated peak of Kundusi, however, the coast rises again, and the austere chain of the Chimæra Mala, or Acroceraunii, extends along it. It was dreaded by the ancients on account of its tempests, and the torrents which poured down its sides. Squalls and changes of wind are frequent near the “Tongue (Linguetta) of Rocks,” the most advanced promontory of this coast, at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea. These are the “infamous rocks” referred to by the Roman poet, upon which many a vessel suffered shipwreck. The channel which separates Turkey at that place from Italy has a width of only 45 miles; it is less than 100 fathoms in depth, and at some former period an isthmus may have united the two countries.[33]