Visits to Monasteries in the Levant

by Robert Curzon

I procured some letters of introduction to different persons, sent my English servant and most of my effects to England, and hired a youth to act in the double capacity of servant and interpreter during the journey. One of my friends at Corfu was good enough to procure me the use of a great boat, with I do not know how many oars, belonging to government; and in it I was rowed over the calm bright sea twenty-four miles to Gominitza, where I arrived in five hours. Here I hired three horses with pack-saddles, one for my baggage, one for my servant, and one for myself; and away we went towards Paramathia, which place we were told was four hours off. Paramathia is said to be built upon the site of Dodona, although the exact situation of the oracle is not ascertained; but some of the finest bronzes extant were found there thirty or forty years ago, part of which went to Russia, and part came into the possession of Mr. Hawkins, of Bignor, in Sussex, where they are still preserved.

Our horses were not very good, and our roads were worse; and we scrambled and stumbled over the rocks, up and down hill, all the afternoon, without approaching, as it seemed to me, towards any inhabited place. It was now becoming dark, and the muleteers said we had six hours more to do; it was then seven o'clock, P.M.; we could see nothing, and were upon the top of a hill, where there were plenty of stones and some low bushes, through which we were making our way vaguely, suiting ourselves as to a path, and turning our faces towards any point of the compass which we thought most agreeable, for it did not appear that any of the party knew the way. We now held a council as to what was best to be done; and as we saw lights in some houses about a mile off, I desired one of the muleteers to go there and see if we could get a lodging for the night. "Go to a house?" said the muleteer, "you don't suppose we could be such fools as to go to a house in Albania, where we know nobody?" "No!" said I, "why not?" "Because we should be murdered, of course," said he; "that is if they thought themselves strong enough to venture to undo their doors and let us in; otherwise they would pretend there was nobody in the house, or fire at us out of the window and set the dogs at us; or——" "Oh!" I replied, "that is quite sufficient; I have no desire to trouble your excellent countrymen, only I don't precisely see what else we are to do just now on the top of this hill. How are they off for wolves in this neighbourhood?" "Why," quoth my friend, "I hope you understand that if anything happens to my horses you are bound to reimburse me: as for ourselves, we are armed, and must take our chance; but I don't think there are many wolves here yet; they don't come down from the mountains quite so soon: though certainly it is getting cold already. But we had better sleep here at all events, and at dawn we shall be able, perhaps, to make out a little better where we have got to." There being nothing else for it, we tied the horses' legs together, and I lay down on a travelling carpet by the side of my servant, under the cover of a bush. Awfully cold it was: the horses trembled and shook themselves every now and then, and held their heads down, and I tried all sorts of postures in hopes of making myself snug, but every change was from bad to worse; I could not get warm any how, and a remarkable fact was, that the more sharp stones I picked out from under the carpet the more numerous and sharper were those that remained: my only comfort was to hear the muleteers rolling about too, and anathematizing the stones most lustily. However, I went to sleep in course of time, and was, as it appeared to me, instantaneously awakened by some one shaking me, and telling me it was four o'clock and time to start. It was still as dark as ever, except that a few stars were visible, and we recommenced our journey, stumbling and scrambling about as we had done before, till we came to a place where the horses stopped of their own accord. This it seemed was a ledge of rock above a precipice, about two hundred feet deep, as I judged by the reflection of the stars in the stream which ran below. The dimness of the light made the place look more dangerous and difficult than perhaps it really was. It seems, however, that we were lucky in finding it, for there was no other way off the hill except by this ledge, which was about twelve feet broad. We got off our horses and led them down; they had probably often been there before, for they made no difficulty about it, and in a few hundred yards, the road becoming better, we mounted again, and after five hours' travelling arrived at Paramathia. Just before entering the place we met a party on foot, armed to the teeth, and all carrying their long guns. One of these gentlemen politely asked me if I had a spare purse about me, or any money which I could turn over to his account; but as I looked very dirty and shabby, and as we were close to the town, he did not press his demand, but only asked by which road I intended to leave it. I told him I should remain there for the present, and as we had now reached the houses, he took his departure, to my great satisfaction.

On inquiring for the person to whom I had a letter of introduction, I found he was a shopkeeper who sold cloth in the bazaar. We accordingly went to his shop and found him sitting among his merchandise. When he had read the letter he was very civil, and shutting up his shop, walked on before us to show me the way to his house. It was a very good one, and the best room was immediately given up to me, two old ladies and three or four young ones being turned out in a most summary manner. One or two of the girls were very pretty, and they all vied with each other in their attentions to their guest, looking at me with great curiosity, and perpetually peeping at me through the curtain which hung over the door, and running away when they thought they were observed.

The prettiest of these damsels had only been married a short time: who her husband was, or where he lived, I could not make out, but she amused me by her anxiety to display her smart new clothes. She went and put on a new capote, a sort of white frock coat, without sleeves, embroidered in bright colours down the seams, which showed her figure to advantage; and then she took it off again, and put on another garment, giving me ample opportunity of admiring its effect. I expressed my surprise and admiration in bad Greek, which, however, the fair Albanian appeared to find no difficulty in understanding. She kindly corrected some of my sentences, and I have no doubt I should have improved rapidly under her care, if she had not always run away whenever she heard any one creaking about on the rickety boards of the ante-room and staircase. The other ladies, who were settling themselves in a large gaunt room close by, kept up an interminable clatter, and displayed such unbounded powers of conversation, that it seemed impossible that any one of them could hear what all the others said; till at last the master of the house came up again, and then there was a lull. He told me that I could not hire horses till the afternoon, and as that would have been too late to start, I determined to remain where I was till the next morning. I passed the day in wandering about the place, and considering whether, upon the whole, the dogs or the men of Paramathia were the most savage: for the dogs looked like wolves, and the men like arrant cut-throats, swaggering about, idle and restless, with their long hair, and guns, and pistols, and yataghans; they have none of the composure of the Turks, who delight to sit still in a coffee-house and smoke their pipes, or listen to a story, which saves them the trouble of thinking or speaking. The Albanians did not scream and chatter as the Arabs do, or as their ladies were doing in the houses, but they lounged about the bazaars listlessly, ready to pick a quarrel with any one, and unable to fix themselves down to any occupation; in short they gave me the idea of being a very poor and proud, and good-for-nothing set of scamps.

November 2nd.—The next morning at five o'clock I was on horseback again, and after riding over stones and rocks, and frequently in the bed of a stream, for fourteen hours, I arrived in the evening at Yanina. I was disappointed with the first view of the place. The town is built on the side of a sloping hill above the lake; and as my route lay over the top of this hill, I could see but little of the town until I was quite among the houses, most of which were in a ruinous condition. The lake itself, with an island in it on which are the ruins of a palace built by the famous Ali Pasha, is a beautiful object; but the mountains by which it is bounded on the opposite side are barren, yet not sufficiently broken to be picturesque. The scene altogether put me in mind of the Lake of Genesareth as seen from its western shore near Tiberias. There is a plain to the north and north-west, which is partially cultivated, but it is inferior in beauty to the plains of Jericho, and there is no river like the Jordan to light up the scene with its quick and sparkling waters as it glistens among the trees in its journey towards the lake.

I went to the house of an Italian gentleman who was the principal physician of Yanina, and who I understood was in the habit of affording accommodation to travellers in his house. He received me with great kindness, and gave me an excellent set of rooms, consisting of a bed room, sitting room, and ante-room, all of them much better than those which I occupied in the hotel at Corfu: they were clean and nicely furnished; and altogether the excellence of my quarters in the dilapidated capital of Albania surprised me most agreeably.

The town appears never to have been repaired since the wars and revolutions which occurred at the time of Ali Pasha's death. The houses resemble those of Greece or southern Italy; they are built, some of stone, and some of wood, with tiled roofs. On the walls of many of them there were vines growing. The bazaars are poor, yet I saw very rich arms displayed in some mean little shops, or stalls, as we should call them; for they are all open, like the booths at a fair. The climate is rainy, and there is no lack of mud in wet weather, and dust when it is dry. The whole place had a miserable appearance, nothing seemed to be going on, and the people have a savage, hang-dog look.

I had a good supper and a good bed, and was awakened the next morning by hearing the servants loud in talk about the news of the day. The subject was truly Albanian. A man who had a shop in the bazaar had quarrelled yesterday with some of his fellow townsmen, and in the night they took him out of his bed and cut him to pieces with their yataghans on the hill above the town. Some people coming by early this morning saw various joints of this unlucky man lying on the ground as they passed.

I occupied myself in looking about the place; and having sent to the palace of the vizir to request an audience, it was fixed for the next day. There was not much to see; but I afforded a subject of uninterrupted discussion to all beholders, as it appeared I was the only traveller who had been there for some time. I went to bed early because I had no books to read, and it was a bore trying to talk Greek to my host's family; but I had not been asleep long before I was awakened by the intelligence that a party of robbers had concealed themselves in the ruins round the house, and that we should probably be attacked. Up we all got, and loaded our guns and pistols: the women kept flying about everywhere, and, when they ran against each other in the dark, screamed wofully, as they took everybody for a robber. We had no lights, that we might not afford good marks for the enemy outside, who, however, kept quiet, and did not shoot at us, although every now and then we saw a man or two creeping about among the ruins. My host, who was armed with a gun of prodigious length, was in a state of great alarm; and, having sent for assistance, twenty soldiers arrived, who kept guard round the house, but would not venture among the ruins. These valiant heroes relieved each other during the night; but, as no robbers made their appearance, I got tired of watching for them, and went quietly to bed again.

November 4th.—At nine o'clock in the morning I paid my respects to the Vizir, Mahmoud Pasha, a man with a long nose, and who altogether bore a great resemblance to Pope Benedict XV [XVI in the original (n. of etext transcriber). I stayed some hours with him, talking over Turkish matters; and we got into a brisk argument as to whether England was part of London, or London part of England. He appeared to be a remarkably good-natured man, and took great interest in the affairs of Egypt, from which country I had lately arrived, and asked me numberless questions about Mehemet Ali, comparing his character with that of Ali Pasha, who had built this palace, which was in a very ruinous state, for nothing had been expended to keep it in repair. The hall of audience was a magnificent room, richly decorated with inlaid work of mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell: the ceiling was gilt, and the windows of Venetian plate-glass, but some of them were broken: the floor was loose and almost dangerous; and two holes in the side walls, which had been made by a cannon-ball, were stopped up with pieces of deal board roughly nailed upon the costly inlaid panels. The divan was of red cloth; and a crowd of men, with their girdles stuck full of arms, stood leaning on their long guns at the bottom of the room, listening to our conversation, and laughing loudly whenever a joke was made, but never coming forward beyond the edge of the carpet.