The streets of Skodra are, however, a perfect panorama of costume. In the dark entries the shuffling Mohammedan women, white-clothed from head to foot and veiled, look ghostly and mysterious; the Mohammedan unmarried girls with the striped red-and-white veil wrapped about them; Albanians from the south in short, stiff cotton skirts like exaggerated kilts; Turks in greasy frock-coats and discoloured fezes, strolling slowly, fingering their beads to pass the time through Ramadan; fierce tribesmen from the mountains in all sorts of different costumes, fully armed and ready to shoot in an instant at discovering an enemy even there in the crowded bazaar; unveiled country women in short, coarse, black homespun skirts, wearing great iron-studded belts and savage ornaments in brass, copper, and gold; giggling girls from the mountains four or five days distant, dressed in their gorgeous gala dresses, laughing as they bargain with the voluble keepers of the tiny shops in the bazaar. Skodra fascinates one. There is no European influence here: not a soul is in European dress. It is the unchanging East—the same life that has existed here for centuries. The Turks are, however, fanatics, and Palok will not allow me to smoke a cigarette in the street in the daytime, for in the fast of Ramadan the Mohammedans abstain from all food, drink, and tobacco from four in the morning till the gun fires on the fortress at sunset. Upon Palok’s advice I even wore a fez, so as not to be too conspicuous. When I asked the reason, he simply grinned, shrugged his shoulders, and said— “The signore believes Skodra to be a safe place. But it is not always so. Why run unnecessary risk? And a fez is very comfortable.” So after buying a fez, I took it to the ironer, a white-bearded old Turk, who pressed it and shrunk it and combed out its tassel with great ceremony, and then I assumed the distinctive mark of the Sultan’s subjects, evidently to the great relief of the faithful Palok. On our first visit to the bazaar Palok discovered a friend. He was a very tall, thin-legged Albanian, in a white fez, a white woollen bolero, and the usual black-and-white woollen trousers and turned-up shoes of raw-hide and interlaced string. In one of the narrow, tortuous ways of the bazaar, on a kind of platform before a small ramshackle booth, where rope and twine were displayed, he was squatting cross-legged, staring into space and awaiting customers. Suddenly espying Palok, he seized his slippers, which stood near him, and sprang out upon the filthy pavement. Next second the pair were clasped in embrace, and after many mutual words of warm welcome in Albanian, I was introduced. The seller of string looked me up and down critically until his eye caught my revolver in my belt, and then, apparently satisfied with my appearance, he touched his chin and brow in salutation.