The Balkan Trail

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

THE ANCIENT ARCH OF CONSTANTINE, SALONICA.

The doubt which encompasses the history of every ancient place in Salonica finds its climax in the spot where St. Paul preached. There are no fewer than seven of these, and the Christian who would stand where the Apostle stood has to make a long pilgrimage of mosques and synagogues. The main street of Salonica, which once formed part of the Via Egnatia, is lined to-day with curious little shops like boxes, ten or twelve feet square, and often smaller. The floors are all up off the ground from two to three feet, and the keepers need no chairs. The customer stands on the narrow pavement, and the man within reaches for what is wanted from where he sits on crossed legs. He is a most indifferent salesman, and one may take or leave his wares without drawing a word from him. A large percentage of these little places are weapon shops, where belt-knives from six to eighteen inches in length are made on the premises, and also gaudy pistols of tremendous bores. Second-hand English revolvers are in the collection, strung across the opening, and brand-new Spanish models. The prices of the foreign weapons are high, and when one asks the reason, the explanation is given that they are all contraband, and the Customs officers have to be paid large sums for passing them. These arms dealers will sell to anyone who will buy, Turk, Jew, and Christian alike. The Government places no restriction on the sale of arms to non-Moslems: the regulation is that they shall not possess them.

This is also the street for native shoes, which are manufactured on the premises. The most common foot-gear, worn by every Balkan people, is the ‘charruk.’ It is something more than a sandal, for it has a cover for the toes; it is a slipper pointed like a canoe bow, and closely resembles an American Indian’s moccasin. It is made of skin with hide lacings, which are wound high up a pair of thick woollen stockings, worn like leggings over the trousers. The Turk often wears these, but seldom do his women. The Turkish woman’s favourite footwear is a cross between a sandal and a clog. It is simply a wooden block the shape of the sole of a shoe, and an inch or more thick, with nothing to hold it on the foot but a strap across the toes. A European cannot keep them on his feet, but the Turk manipulates them with marvellous dexterity. Their great convenience is the rapidity with which they can be shed, as this has to be done on so many occasions throughout the Turkish day: at the hours of prayer, and on entering the presence of superiors, and, obviously, whenever it is desired to sit comfortably, for a Turk is most uncomfortable if he is not sitting on his feet. These clogs are hacked with a hatchet out of solid blocks of wood, and even the shoe in high favour with the Consular kavass, a red thing with a huge black pompon on a turned-up toe, is manufactured by the squatting shopkeeper.

In this street one is not shouted at, or dragged bodily into the shops if he stops to look at a display of wares, as he is in Greek and Jewish quarters. This is the business street of the man who opens his shop and sits still till Allah provides the trade.

Certain classes of shops in Salonica perambulate.

The cart has to be largely dispensed with in most Turkish towns, chiefly because the streets are paved. This is not the case in Salonica; the paving is comparatively good there; but the Macedonian has got into the habit of providing for roads paved with cobble stones. Over the backs of asses and sure-footed mountain ponies the butcher has an arrangement of carving boards, and cuts off a lamb chop or a roast at his customer’s door. One has to rise early to see the heads still on the lambs, for they are great delicacies, and go first, and when roasted the unbounded joy of the native cracking the skull and picking out the tasty bits is nauseating in the extreme. The entrails of animals are also relished; they are eaten as the Italian eats his macaroni.

THE TURKISH BUTCHER.

The milkman, generally a Tzigane, does not drive the cow through the streets, but brings the milk slung over an ass, in a skin, one end of which he milks at order. A small Jew, with a huge fez and a man’s coat which reached almost to the skirt of his dress, was a daily nuisance on Consul Avenue. I suppose he dragged his four-footed draper’s shop down the aristocratic foreign thoroughfares to show off his father, who dressed in ‘Franks,’ but whose bellow was distinctly Levantine.