[Illustration: The Procession with an Armed Guard.] As I strolled through the narrow lanes of the Christian quarter towards the Cathedral, and the gaily-dressed chattering women in groups hurried forward to get a place within, I was struck with their neat and clean appearance. Their finery was in no way dingy or dusty, and yet many of them had been a whole week on a journey through perhaps the roughest region in the whole East. How different was the _festà_ to that I had known in the Italian towns! About the Cathedral there is nothing unusually attractive—a big bare edifice with high square campanile in modern Italian style. It stands in the centre of an open space, surrounded by great high, fortress-like walls, entered by a strong gate with huge iron bars—significant that one day ere long it will be held against the Turks. No Mohammedan ever passes those gates. Even the military patrol lounge outside, leaning on their rifles. Within the enclosure I found a great crowd of peasant women; females of the town, veiled with gauze so fine that one could almost see their faces; Scutarine men in their best jackets and baggy trousers; and the swaggering, white-capped warriors from the mountains, men of the Miriditi,—so dreaded by the Turks that they are allowed to carry their rifles with them,—of the fierce Skreli, the Hoti, and the Kastrati. The Skreli, with the Miriditi, are allowed to carry their rifles because the Turks hold them in fear. The authorities know full well that to arouse their ire would be to bring destruction upon the whole _vilayet_, for they hold the communications, and if the tribes revolted, as they no doubt would, then the army of the Sultan would have a very hard task to suppress the rebellion. So while the Kastrati and the Hoti—also dwellers in the Mountains of the Accursed—the Klementi, the Shiala of the foot-hills, and the others are compelled to leave their rifles at the entrance to the town, the Skreli and the Miriditi stalk along in armed bands of twenty or thirty through the streets to the church, grinning defiance at the Turks, who are supposed by Europe to be their masters. Under the trees around the Cathedral the wild, fierce men, who would hold the traveller to ransom or shoot him with less compunction than they would kill a shepherd-dog, were squatting in rings with their rifles before them, gossiping. Every man wore a belt full of cartridges and a bandolier across his shoulders—sometimes even two. War and religion are strangely mixed in Skodra. Into the dimly-lit Cathedral I managed to squeeze, and there, kneeling on the stones and filling the whole place right out into the grass enclosure, were men of all grades, from the peaceful Scutarine merchant to the wild tribesman, and women with their faces uncovered bowed towards the brilliantly lit altar, where the thin-faced Italian priest mumbled the prayers.