I will write when I can, and beg you to believe me, Your affectionate son, "BYRON." About the middle of November, the young traveller took his departure from Prevesa (the place where the foregoing letter was written), and proceeded, attended by his guard of fifty Albanians,[131] through Acarnania and Ætolia, towards the Morea. "And therefore did he take a trusty band To traverse Acarnania's forest wide, In war well season'd, and with labours tann'd, Till he did greet white Achelous' tide, And from his further bank Ætolia's wolds espied." CHILDE HAROLD, Canto II. His description of the night-scene at Utraikey (a small place situated in one of the bays of the Gulf of Arta) is, no doubt, vividly in the recollection of every reader of these pages; nor will it diminish their enjoyment of the wild beauties of that picture to be made acquainted with the real circumstances on which it was founded, in the following animated details of the same scene by his fellow-traveller:-- "In the evening the gates were secured, and preparations were made for feeding our Albanians. A goat was killed and roasted whole, and four fires were kindled in the yard, round which the soldiers seated themselves in parties. After eating and drinking, the greater part of them assembled round the largest of the fires, and whilst ourselves and the elders of the party were seated on the ground, danced round the blaze to their own songs, in the manner before described, but with an astonishing energy. All their songs were relations of some robbing exploits. One of them, which detained them more than an hour, began thus:--'When we set out from Parga there were sixty of us:'--then came the burden of the verse, "'Robbers all at Parga! Robbers all at Parga! "'Κλεφτεις ποτε Παργα! Κλεφτεις ποτε Παργα!' And as they roared out this stave they whirled round the fire, dropped and rebounded from their knees, and again whirled round as the chorus was again repeated. The rippling of the waves upon the pebbly margin where we were seated filled up the pauses of the song with a milder and not more monotonous music. The night was very dark, but by the flashes of the fires we caught a glimpse of the woods, the rocks, and the lake, which, together with the wild appearance of the dancers, presented us with a scene that would have made a fine picture in the hands of such an artist as the author of the Mysteries of Udolpho."