The bazaar, down by the river, is full of quaint types and most interesting. Its uneven pavement is quite as unclean and slippery with the dirt of ages as are the streets of Constantinople, but its dark little sheds are filled by workers, silver and copper smiths, embroiderers, armourers, weavers, jewellers—in fact, one sees every trade being carried on in the same primitive way and with the same tools as in the Middle Ages. Skodra is not a town of progress, for there telephone or electric light is forbidden; machinery of every kind is against the law, and neither newspapers nor books are allowed to enter Albania. Therefore in those crooked streets of the bazaar the traveller is back in mediæval days, and the town of to-day is just as Florence was in the days of Boccaccio or Dante. Like the mediæval Florentines, many of the men from the mountains shave their heads, leaving a tuft of bushy hair at the back, which is cut square at the neck. With their tight-fitting black-and-white striped trousers, black woollen boleros, their belts filled with cartridges, and a rifle over their shoulders, they are a fine, manly race, with swaggering gait, clean-cut features—mostly Catholics, who spit openly at the lean, ragged, ill-fed soldiers of the Sultan. They come down from the mountains in armed bands, and walk through the town, a dozen or so together, in complete defiance of the Turk. With men upon whose heads a price has been set—known brigands or murderers, indeed—I have chatted and drunk coffee in the bazaar, all wild fellows who know no law except their own, and who do not acknowledge the Turk as their ruler. When I inquired of Palok the reason of their immunity from arrest, he replied— “Why, signore, if the Turks captured one of these, the whole of Northern Albania would rise as one man. The tribes would sweep down from the mountains and sack and burn Skodra within twenty-four hours. Life in this town is very uncertain, I can tell you. One never knows when the rising will take place. All is ripe for it, and when it comes, then woe-betide the Turk and all the Moslems. Have you not noticed the Sign of the Cross over the doors of the Christians? Is that not significant?” The Albanian tribesmen are mostly Catholics, together with some Orthodox; yet they combine religion strangely with war. They go to the Catholic Cathedral in Skodra with loaded rifles, which they place before them as they kneel and pray, and before murdering their enemy they will go and ask Providence to assist them. The town Christian of Skodra is, for the most part, a very excellent fellow. Palok, whom I found was well known, introduced me to many of them, and in that wild land I received very many charming kindnesses from perfect strangers.