CHAPTER XXII.
TOWN OF ANTIVARI—FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF TURKEY—ORIENTAL PASSENGERS—VALUE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF ARABIC OR TURKISH—A MAHOMETAN MERCHANT AND HIS FAMILY—TURKISH TROOPS IN ALBANIA—TOWN AND FORTRESS OF CASTEL DURAZZO—RETURN TO TRIESTE—FAREWELL TO THE READER.
AFTER leaving Budua we kept close in shore, enjoying the wild rugged scenery of the Dalmatian coast till we reached Antivari, where we first came into immediate contact with the Turks on their own Ottoman soil. The first impression, I must confess, was certainly not a favourable one.
Should any one of my readers, with a bias in favour of Ottomans and Ottoman rule, ever determine on visiting Turkey, let him not receive his first impression of that empire by a visit to Antivari. A few wretched hovels, a miserable white-washed house, with a small and dirty red flag over it; a group of miserably-dressed, vile-countenanced, ragamuffin-looking soldiers, in baggy blue trousers and crimson fezzes, constituted all the features of the place. The town of Antivari itself, I heard, was a few miles inland, but if one may judge of the town from its villainous port, it must be wretched in the extreme.
The steamer remained here a couple of hours to land goods and take in passengers, but as the heat was excessive and the prospect of the country most unpromising, I made no attempt to land. I did not however lack entertainment, and while I lounged over the bulwarks on the shady side of the steamer, I amused myself pitching half-francs into the water, which was of very considerable depth and of the clearest and limpidest blue, to half a score or so of lads and small boys who were swimming, and diving, and treading the water in the most surprising manner; they seemed just as much at home in the sea as on the land, and fetched up the coins from the bottom as easily as I could have picked them up from the deck.
When tired of looking at the swimmers, I turned to watch the new arrivals, of which we had a considerable number, all Orientals, and almost all deck passengers. The first which caught my eye, coming up the side of the steamer, was a wretched-looking, squalid creature, dressed in rags, but most picturesque withal. He was small, slight, and extremely dark, just short of black, but with distinctly Caucasian features, not a negroid by any means. He had a small bundle over his shoulders, and in his right hand he carried a short lance, with a very bright steel head, ornamented with a few lines of Damascene work in gold. His head was covered with a somewhat conical-shaped cap, encircled with a scanty and very ragged green turban, while at his side he carried a moderate sized bottle-gourd. He was a very singular looking being, and all I could make out through the captain was that he thought he was a dervish returning home from visiting some sacred shrine in Mahomedan Europe. As to his home, he suspected from his costume it might be in Kurdistan, but it was very much guess work, as the Captain spoke neither Arabic nor Turkish.
Another interesting group consisted of three gaily dressed Orientals, in bag trousers tight at the knees, turban, and highly embroidered jackets. They made their way to the quarter-deck abaft the paddle box, and were about being summarily ejected by the steward in consequence of being deck passengers, when I interposed, and got him to let them stay for a while. They perfectly well understood that it was owing to my interference they were allowed to remain, and so we knocked up a sort of acquaintance, and carried on a lame, very lame conversation by the help of the youngest, who could speak a very few words of Italian. I could not make out any thing about them, whence they came, or whither they were going, but from their features I could easily see they were Asiatics, Arabs most probably, and the youngest, who was also the lightest in colour, had three scars on each cheek, not unlike in shape to our broad arrow.
How I longed for a knowledge of Arabic, how I envied Captain Burton! If he had been there we should at once have known all about them, and the dervish and everyone else, including a tall, handsome Soudani slave, who kept grinning and showing his teeth from ear to ear, while I was carrying on my lame conversation with the Arabs.