ALI PASHA—PSALLIDA—EUPHROSYNE—MUKHTAR—STARTS FOR A TRIP TO SULI—CASSIOPEIA—UNABLE TO FORD RIVER—TURNS BACK TO JANINA—LEAVES TO RETURN TO ATHENS—CROSSES THE PINDUS THROUGH THE SNOW—MALAKASH—A ROBBER—METEORA—TURKISH RULE—THE MONASTERY—BY TRIKHALA, PHERSALA, ZITUNI, THERMOPYLÆ AND LIVADIA TO ATHENS.

"Next day, as the vizier wished to see us, and we of course to see him, Foresti took us to the palace he was living in for the moment. He has no less than eight in the town. This one is handsome, but the plan is as usual ill-contrived, and there was much less magnificence than I had expected.

We were first led into the upper apartments to await his leisure, and found there a number of fine youths, not very splendidly dressed. After half an hour of waiting we were led into a low room, in the corner of which sat this extraordinary man. He welcomed us politely and said he hoped we had had a good journey and would like Janina, and desired that if there was anything we lacked we would mention it, for that he regarded us as his children, and his house and family were at our disposal. He next asked if any of us spoke Greek; and hearing that I did, asked me when I had learnt it, and how long I had remained in Athens. Then, observing that Hughes was near the fire, he ordered in a screen in the shape of a large vessel of water, saying that young men did not require fire, only old men; and in saying this he laughed with so much bonhomie, his manner was so mild and paternal and so charming in its air of kindness and perfect openness, that I, remembering the blood-curdling stories told of him, could hardly believe my eyes. Finally, he said he hoped to improve our acquaintance, and begged us to stay on. We, however, bowed ourselves out.

The number and richness of the shops is surprising, and the bustle of business is such as I have not seen since leaving Constantinople. We understood that when the vizier first settled at Janina in '87—that is, twenty-seven years ago—there were but five or six shops in the place: now there are more than 2,000. The city has immensely increased, and we passed through several quarters of the town which are entirely new.

The fortresses on the promontory into the lake are of the vizier's building. He has always an establishment of 3,000 soldiers, 100 Tartars (the Sultan himself has but 200), a park of artillery presented him by the English, and German and other French artillerymen. We seem to have supplied him also with arms and ammunition in his wars with Suli and other parts of Epirus. Perhaps it is not much to our honour to have assisted a tyrant in dispossessing or exterminating the lawful owners of the soil, who only fought for their own liberty; but one must remember that, picturesque as they were and desperately as they fought, they were nothing but robbers and freebooters and the scourge of the country.

We passed the 6th of January with Psallida, who is master of a school in Janina. He is, for this country, a learned man. Besides Greek, he speaks Latin and very bad Italian, but as far as manners go he is a mere barbarian. From him I had an account of the Gardiki massacre.[44] I occupied a wet three days in drawing an interior view of a kiosk of the vizier's at the Beshkey Gardens at the north end of the town. Then I got a costume and drew the figures in. Psallida dined with us one day and entertained us with an account of the fair and frail Euphrosyne, who was a celebrity here. Her fate was made the subject of a ballad preserved in Leslie. The story is certainly an awful tragedy. She was of good family and married to a respectable man. Without possessing more education than is usual with Greek ladies she had, besides her great beauty, a natural wit which, with a good deal of love of admiration, soon attracted round her a host of admirers, and she became a reigning beauty. Mukhtar, the son of Ali, who is a dissolute fellow, was attracted by her, and, cutting out his competitors, became her acknowledged lover. His wife, whom he entirely neglected for his new passion, was a daughter of the Vizier of Berat, whose friendship Ali was at that time particularly anxious to cultivate; and when she complained to her father-in-law of his son's conduct, he (Ali) determined to put a stop to it. At the head of his guard he burst at midnight into the room of Euphrosyne, and after calling her the seducer of his son and other names, he forced her to give up whatever presents he had made her, and had her led off to prison with her maid. Next day, in order to make a terrifying example to check the immorality of the town in general and his son in especial, he had nine other women of known bad character arrested, and they and Euphrosyne were led to the brink of the precipice over the lake on which the fortress stands. Her faithful maid refused to desert her, and she and Euphrosyne, linked in each other's arms, leapt together down the fatal rock, as did all the others.

Mukhtar has never forgotten his attachment or forgiven his father, or even seen his wife again, and from having been a gay and frank youth he has become gloomy and ferocious without being less dissolute than before. The court he keeps is a sad blackguard affair, a great contrast to the austere sobriety of his father's.

We called in the evening (January 14) to take leave of Ali Pasha. He was on that day in the Palace of the Fortress at the extremity of the rock over the lake. We passed through the long gallery described by Byron, and into a low anteroom, from which we entered a very handsome apartment, very warm with a large fire in it, and with crimson sofas trimmed with gold lace. There was Ali, to-day a truly Oriental figure. He had a velvet cap, a prodigious fine cloak; he was smoking a long Persian pipe, and held a book in his hand. Foresti says he did this on purpose to show us he could read. Hanging beside him was a small gun magnificently set with diamonds, and a powder-horn; on his right hand also was a feather fan. To his left was a window looking into the courtyard, in which they were playing at the djerid, and in which nine horses stood tethered in their saddles and bridles, as though ready for instant use. I am told this is a piece of form or etiquette.

At first his reception seemed less cordial than before, whether by design or no, and he took very little notice of us. He showed us some leaden pieces of money, and a Spanish coin just found by some country people, and asked us what they were. Then he said he wished he had a coat of beaver such as he had seen on the Danube. He asked Parker whether he had a mother and brothers, and when he heard he was the only son he said it was a sin that he should leave his mother. Why did not he stay at home?

On January 15 we went to call on Mukhtar Pasha. We found him rough, open, and goodhumoured, without any of the inimitable grace of his father, which makes everything Ali says agreeable, however trivial the subject may be. Mukhtar's talk was flat. He was very fond of sport—were we? It was very hot in summer at Trikhala. He had killed so and so many birds; there were loose women at Dramishush; it was a small place, but he would send a man to see that we were properly accommodated; and so on—very civil and rather dull. He smoked a Persian pipe brought him by a beautiful boy very richly dressed, with his hair carefully combed, and another brought him coffee; while coffee and pipes were brought to us by particularly ugly ones. On the sofa beside him were laid out a number of snuff-boxes, mechanical singing birds, and things of that sort. The serai itself was handsome in point of expense, but in the miserable taste now in vogue in Constantinople. The decoration represented painted battle-pieces, sieges, fights between Turks and Cossacks, wild men, and abominations of that sort; while in the centre of the pediment is a pasha surrounded by his guard, and in front of them a couple of Greeks just hanged, as a suitable ornament for the palace of a despot.

On the 16th we set out early for an excursion to Cassiopeia and Suli, across the fine open field behind Janina, past the village of Kapshisda, over a low chain of hills south-west of Janina. Then, after a climb of over an hour, we entered a pass, and presently saw Dramishush in front, on the side of a high mountain.

Cassiopeia is on a gentle height in the middle of a valley. The situation is beautiful, and the theatre the largest and best preserved I have seen in Greece.

Next morning we dismissed Mukhtar Pasha's man who had escorted us so far, and went on south-westwards along the edge of the valley of Cassiopeia. As it grew narrower we climbed a ridge which overhung an awful depth, went over a high mountain, and reached Bareatis, a small village in a pass with a serai of Ali Pasha's, in which he lived for a length of time during the war of Suli. Three and a half hours further on we came to Terbisena, the first village of Suli. It had been pouring all day, and we were not only wet and cold when we arrived but the hovel we got as a lodging let in the water everywhere, and here, huddled in the driest corner we could find, we had to sleep and spend the next day.

On the 19th the weather was fine again, and we went on hoping to find the river fordable, but when we got to the bank we found it rapid and deep. One of our Turks, after a good deal of boasting, plunged in, and in an instant sank, and the torrent was carrying him and his horse floundering away. Another of his brother Turks, seeing him carried down, called loudly on Allah, and stroked his beard in great tribulation, but without stirring a stump. In another minute the man would have been drowned, but our servant Antonetti, who was but a Christian, very pluckily ran in and clawed him out. The poor boaster was already senseless when we got him to land. We took him back to Dervishina, and gradually brought him round, when instead of thanking his stars for his narrow escape, or Antonetti for the plucky part he had played, he did nothing but lament the loss of his gun, 'Tofeki,' which he had himself won, he said, and of his shawl which had cost him 50 piastres. We promised to make the latter good, and left him to rest.

The whole incident was in all senses a damper to our ardour. When we considered that to pass this river we must wait one day at least, and probably four days to get across the one near Suli, the expenditure of time seemed to us all, at least so I thought, greater than we cared to devote to the expedition. So the long and short of it was that we turned back and slept at Bareatis. Next day we got back to Janina. I made up my mind now that I was wasting time over this trip, and wished to get back to Athens. But before leaving I thought it my duty to call once more on Ali Pasha. A most agreeable old man he is. I was more than ever struck with the easy familiarity and perfect good humour of his manners. We found him in a low apartment with a fire in the middle, generally used for his Albanians and known as laapoda. Then we went to see Pouqueville,[45] the French resident. We found him with his brother, both of them the worst type of Frenchmen—vulgar, bragging, genuine children of the Revolution. Nothing worth remembering was said, but I did gather this from his tone—that the Empire in France is not likely to last.

On the 26th my friends, for a wonder, got up early, and we all set out in a boat for a small village where we were to find my horses. There we bid farewell and I mounted. It came on to rain, and I arrived, wet through, at the Three Khans to sleep.

Next day the rain became snow, but I set out nevertheless for Mezzovo. We had to ford the river several times, and for the last hour to Mezzovo were up to our middles in snow. The scenery was magnificent, and the country is well cultivated. Mezzovo is a Vlaki or Wallachian village; the people speak a sort of mixed Greek. They are exceedingly industrious and well-to-do.

Artistically I do not know that I have gained much, but I do not regret the time I have spent in Albania. The climate is more bracing than that of the rest of Greece, and has set me up after my illness. The scenery, though it cannot be at its best in winter, is most beautiful, and the inhabitants are a fine race—not handsome, but hardy and energetic. An Albanian has very few wants. A little bread of calambochi or Indian corn, an onion, and cheese is abundant fare to him. If he changes his linen five times in the year, that is the outside. A knife and a pistol in his girdle and his gun by his side, he sleeps quite well in the open air with his head on a stone and the lappel of his jacket over his face. In summer and winter he wears a fez. His boots are only goatskin sandals, which he makes himself. His activity in them over rocks is surprising.

As for Ali Pasha's government, one has to remember what a chaotic state the country was in before he made himself master of it. The accounts one gets from the elders make it clear what misery there was. No stranger could travel in it, nor could the inhabitants themselves get about. Every valley was at war with its neighbour, and all were professional brigands. All this Ali has reduced to order. There is law—for everyone admits his impartiality as compared with that of rulers in other parts of Turkey—and there is commerce. He has made roads, fortified the borders, put down brigandage, and raised Albania into a power of some importance in Europe.

That in arriving at this end he has often used means which civilised nations disapprove is no doubt true, but there has been in the first place gross exaggeration as to the crimes attributed to him: for instance, that he sees fifteen or twenty heads cut off every day before breakfast, whereas in point of fact there has not been such a thing as a public execution in the past year; and then, in the second, one must make allowance for the ferocious manners amongst which he was brought up.

On the 29th of January, as the weather seemed favourable, we set out eagerly to cross Pindus. The snow was deep in places, but for the first hour and a half we had no great difficulty. It was the last half-hour before getting to the top that was worst. The road is desperately steep up a precipice, and the snow was above the horses' girths. Our chamalides, however, waded through it, often up to their middles, and, carrying the loads on their own shoulders, lifted the horses by their tails and heads alternately, I hardly know how. Although I constantly slipped down on the steep incline, I was so eager to see the view that I was the first at the top. Towards the interior it was glorious: the feet of Pindus rooting themselves far into the country, which, although mountainous, was free from snow; conspicuous was Elymbo (Olympus), the top capped with snow, but the form of it is not beautiful. To the north were other snow-capped mountains. Behind us westward the air was so thick one could see nothing. The west side of the hills is covered with fir, while the east seems to have nothing but oak and birch—quantities of it, but all small trees. As we went down we noticed on the trunks of them the marks of the snow of the year before last, which must have been ten or twelve feet deep. Three and a half hours from our start we got to a khan, where we made a good fire and congratulated ourselves on having got over the hills so well and escaped the fatana—the wind the mountaineers dread.

Our next stage was to Malakash, a Vlaki town. It was astonishing the way our chamalides bore the fatigue of forcing our way through the snow, which was still five or six feet deep in places. They cut a way for the horses, which were constantly falling down and half smothering themselves in the drifts.

From there we followed the course of the river for six hours, and crossed it fifty times at least. On the way we passed a dervish, an Albanian. He was seated on a sort of balcony, very high up, and had a gun in his hand, which he pointed at me and called on me to stop and pay. The sight of the Tartar, however, brought him to reason. Without one a traveller is exposed to great insult from such ruffians. As it was, a poor wretch who tried to pass himself off as one of our party was forced to stop and pay his quota.

In the afternoon we arrived at Meteora, the strange rocks of which we had seen from some distance up the river. We were given quarters in the house of a Cypriote Greek, from whom I learnt a good deal of the terrible exactions of Veli Pasha, in whose dominions we now were. Our host and his two sons, poor wretches with hardly a fez to their heads and mere sandals bound with a thong to their feet, came to welcome us. After the first compliments they fell into the tale of their woes. Their taxes were so heavy that unless the new year were abundantly fruitful the village must be bankrupt and become 'chiflik' or forfeit. When a village is unable to pay its taxes, the vizier, as universal mortgagee, forecloses and the land becomes his private property and the villagers his slaves. This is becoming 'chiflik.'

While we were sitting and talking of these troubles a great noise was heard below. Two Albanians, being refused conachi, had broken in the door of a house and entered by force, and the soubashi was gone out to quell the riot. He very properly refused them any kind of reception and drove them out to the khan.

My hosts had roasted me a fowl, but my heart was so full I could scarcely eat. How long will it please God to afflict these wretched people with such monstrous tyranny? Besides the exactions of the Government, scoundrels such as these Albanians infest the villages, force their way in houses and eat and drink immoderately and pay nothing. To ease my mind, when the daughter of my host brought me some raisins to eat with my wine I gave her a dollar. She seemed hardly to believe her eyes at first, then took it and kissed my hand.

Next morning, January 31st, I ascended to the principal monastery of Meteora. After a tiring walk of half an hour, winding among the crags of this strange place, we came to the foot of the rock on which it is perched, and found that the ladder commonly used, which is made in joints five or six feet long, had been drawn up. We called to the papades who were aloft to let down the rope and net. After some hallooing, down it came, a circular net with the meshes round the circumference gathered on a hook. Michael and myself, with my drawing materials, got in and were drawn up by a windlass. To swing in mid-air trusting to a rope not so thick as my wrist and 124 feet long (I measured it) is anything but pleasant. I shall not forget my sensations as I looked out through the meshes of the net as we were spinning round in the ascent. There was a horrible void below—sheer precipices on each side, and then the slipping of the rope as it crossed on the windlass. Once up, we were pulled in at the entrance, the hook drawn out, and we were set at liberty. The company that received us were some wretched papades, as ignorant as possible. They could tell me next to nothing about their monastery, except that on the occasion of an invasion of the Turks, a bey of Trikhala, one Joseph Ducas, had retired hither and established it and seventeen others. The buildings of ten of them still exist, but only two or three are still inhabited. The church here is a very good one, and there is a chapel of Constantine. The view is magnificent. I gave a dollar to the young priest who took me round, desiring him to use it for any purpose of the church; but I found, from what my peasant guide told me when we had got down, that the scamp had pocketed it for his own use, for that the chief papa had asked him as we were about to leave, if the stranger would not leave some parahs for the church. It was a lovely day, and beneath me, from the village, passed a procession of a bridegroom going to a neighbouring village to fetch his bride. His mother was on one side of his horse, another relative on the other; before him a male relation carried a flag, and behind came all his friends and family in their best dresses with guns on their shoulders, making a gallant show. It was a pretty sight.

We left Kalabaki by Meteora, and reached Trikhala about sunset. The solitude of the town and the vastness of the cemeteries gave one the creeps; and hearing that the plague was in the town at that moment, I mounted again, and rode four hours further to a khan and slept there.

Next day we rode to Phersala (twelve hours); but the plague being there also, we proceeded a further four hours to a khan under Thaumaco (sixteen hours' riding). From Meteora to Phersala is one uninterrupted plain which I thought would never end. I saw many villages, but much misery—especially in Trikhala and Phersala.

Next day we got to Zituni (six hours) about noon. I did not venture to stay on account of the plague, and passed on to Molo, at which we arrived in the evening, passing through the Straits of ThermopylÆ.

Molo is a village of only 200 houses, and yet forty persons had died of the plague in it in the last three days. The terrified inhabitants had fled to the mountains, and we found only two hangees (men attached to the han) to receive us. We meant to have slept here, but the cats and dogs howled so terribly (always a symptom of the plague) that I could not sleep in comfort; so as the moon shone bright, we mounted and rode six hours further to a village opposite Parnassus, passing in safety the fountain famous for robbers who are almost always stationed there. The scenery here is very fine and romantic. In six hours more, after crossing two little plains besides that of ChÆronÆa, we arrived at Livadia (February 3rd). What between the cold, the horror of the plague, and the fatigue, it had been an appalling journey."

[44] The Gardiki massacre took place about 1799. In Ali's youth, his tower had been stormed by the people of Gardiki and his mother and sister outraged—at least, so he said. He nursed his revenge for forty years, and then gratified it by massacring the whole population of the village.