The Balkan Trail

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

ON A FRONTIER BRIDGE.

While I was entertaining the committajis the governor returned to the khan to invite me to luncheon, and entered my room unannounced. I expected to see a hurried scattering of my guests, but none of them so much as changed countenance. The governor took them in at a glance, but otherwise completely ignored them. At this time the Bulgarian Foreign Office was declaring emphatically that every effort was being made to prevent the passing of bands from the Principality into the sovereign State, so it rested with the governor to make excuse for the inactivity of the law in this case. The governor gave explanation at his table. He said he knew every one of the insurgents who were in my room, and that they were all bogus warriors, not worthy of arrest. None of them had ever been to Turkey. They belonged to the External Committee, and they took good care to do no internal work.

While strolling through the town with my Count at a later day, there appeared a band of some twenty unarmed insurgents under arrest. One gendarme had charge of the whole party, and took little heed of their scattering. They were on their way to Sofia. They had just come back from Macedonia after hiding their arms in the mountains, and had come down to the town to surrender. If they allowed themselves to be arrested, I understood, they received free transportation to the capital, where their names were recorded and they were set free on parole; whereas, if they avoided arrest, they were compelled to walk to wherever they would be, for none of them possessed sufficient money to pay railway or coach fare.

They were a mongrel crew, only one clean ‘man’ among them, and that a woman. They looked as if they had seen service. Their outfits covered a wide range of variety, and were much torn and tattered. A few had military overcoats with many patches, some wore native cloaks of broad black and white stripes, and others were wrapped in blankets like American Indians. The woman had no greatcoat, but her uniform was warmer and in better condition than those of the men: the patches were perfect. She carried a needle and thread, but only one kind of medicine, though a red cross decorated her arm. She caught my eye at once, and I sent the Count into the band to ascertain if she would honour me with an interview. My man went up to her with the blunt and burly manner he was wont to wear, grabbed her by the arm, and explained his errand in a word. This, I can imagine, is what he said: ‘Come with me; an American correspondent wants to hear your story!’ The whole band, including the single guard, stopped, wheeled round, and followed the bad-eyed Count and his captive. They gathered about the girl and me, and prompted her memory whenever it failed on points of detail.

THE AMAZON. THE MASCOT.

We sat on two empty wine casks in front of a peasant’s khan, and I took notes as the Count drew from the Amazon an account of her adventures beyond the border.

This band had been in the enemy’s country for about six months, in which time they had had five fights, and she estimated that she herself had killed and wounded no fewer than eight Turks. While she talked she crossed her trousered limbs and drew a dagger from her legging as a Scot would from his sock. She tossed the weapon about and caught it dexterously by the handle, and told me how she marched with her brothers-in-arms fifty miles and more a night.

In the daytime they rested at the summit of some lonely mountain which commanded a length of road and a breadth of valley, and from these ‘crows’ nests’ in the height descended by night to ambush small bodies of Turks or swoop down on little towns, attempting the total destruction of the garrison and the last male Moslem therein. This woman had no mercy on Turks; she said they had slain her mother, her father, and all her brothers in one day. She was a soldier of fortune; revenge was hers, and hope for Macedonia. In concluding her remarks the lady drew a phial of arsenic from her trousers-pocket and informed me that the poison was for the purpose of taking her own life in case of capture by the Turks. I took her photograph, with and without her companions, and the whole band shook hands with me and resumed their march to the railway terminus.