My dragoman and I were ready when the guide arrived, and in less than eight hours we were ‘taken to Krushevo.’
The Monastir Valley was almost deserted. Bridges were down, and we forded the rivers. Occasionally parties of soldiers and bashi-bazouks were potting at something, perhaps at peasants. Near Krushevo we passed Turks on the road, some carrying short adzes and axes in their sashes, as the Albanian wears his yataghan; others bore hand-pumps of reed.
Our difficulties were not serious. We traversed the long plain without mishap, and began at noon to climb the tall mountain to the Vlach town in the sky.
A party of Albanians drove pack-animals to the ruins of a Greek monastery half-way up the mountain, to gather the petroleum tins, still lying about the walls. There were tracks of the Turks everywhere. Here a company had camped, there a battery had been posted, across a fissure in the mountain Adam Aga’s bashi-bazouks had divided booty; barricades of stone where the tents had been, earthworks for the guns, the carcase of a stolen ass, killed to settle dispute between Moslem claimants. There was trace of the insurgents, too; a dozen Turkish graves on a level bank, around them a score of black ghosts, the wives of the slain officials.
We reached the ruins of the guardhouse at the high point in the road and dropped into the wrecked town; there was not a moment to lose. Our stay in Krushevo was of doubtful duration; how long we could avoid the clutches of the garrison was a question. There was yet daylight, and the use of the camera might be restricted to-morrow. A Turk saw me hand over my tired horse and anxiously unstrap my kodak. He knew what it was, and told me not to use it. But this took a minute to translate, and my instrument but a second to snap. He was a mild-mannered man, and instead of taking me in hand himself, he set off to the kaimakam for instructions, and I plunged into the wreckage, lost to him for an hour.
Natives in long gabardines and fezzes emerged from holes and hollow walls and followed me. A young girl spoke English; she attended the mission school at Monastir. A Vlach home from Rome to marry also spoke English. He and his sweetheart had survived, though they had lost everything they had. The insurgents had made him pay fifty pounds (Turkish), for which he held a paper note redeemable with interest by the Principality of Macedonia! Another Vlach invited me to his home, which the Turks had not visited till the petroleum gave out; it was, therefore, only pillaged.
The doors were splintered where the adzes had been applied. The house was bare, stripped of every rug. A rough wooden table had been constructed of a barn door and blocks of wood. The younger members of the family were sent scurrying to the neighbours. From one came a bowl, from another two iron forks and a spoon, which had been saved from the Turks. We got a supper, all eating from the big bowl, the family with their fingers.
We spent the night here. It was a memorable night.
The house stood high upon a rock and overlooked the area of hollow walls. Ruined Vlachs slunk in through the night, sat with us on the balcony, and, whispering, told us the tale of their city. In the dim light of a crescent moon they pointed out the Konak where the Turks had been killed, the woods above where the spies had been executed, the Greek school which the insurgents had used as Government offices, and ‘Hell Hole,’ still containing bodies.
Once the Vlachs stopped abruptly and changed the subject to England. What sort of a place was Angleterre?