Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; Turkey -- Politics and government -- 1878-1909
A party of Albanians drove pack-animals to the ruins of a Greek
monastery half-way up the mountain, to gather the petroleum tins, still
lying about the walls. There were tracks of the Turks everywhere. Here
a company had camped, there a battery had been posted, across a fissure
in the mountain Adam Aga’s bashi-bazouks had divided booty; barricades
of stone where the tents had been, earthworks for the guns, the carcase
of a stolen ass, killed to settle dispute between Moslem claimants.
There was trace of the insurgents, too; a dozen Turkish graves on a
level bank, around them a score of black ghosts, the wives of the slain
officials.
We reached the ruins of the guardhouse at the high point in the road
and dropped into the wrecked town; there was not a moment to lose. Our
stay in Krushevo was of doubtful duration; how long we could avoid the
clutches of the garrison was a question. There was yet daylight, and
the use of the camera might be restricted to-morrow. A Turk saw me hand
over my tired horse and anxiously unstrap my kodak. He knew what it
was, and told me not to use it. But this took a minute to translate,
and my instrument but a second to snap. He was a mild-mannered man, and
instead of taking me in hand himself, he set off to the kaimakam for
instructions, and I plunged into the wreckage, lost to him for an hour.
Natives in long gabardines and fezzes emerged from holes and hollow
walls and followed me. A young girl spoke English; she attended the
mission school at Monastir. A Vlach home from Rome to marry also spoke
English. He and his sweetheart had survived, though they had lost
everything they had. The insurgents had made him pay fifty pounds
(Turkish), for which he held a paper note redeemable with interest by
the Principality of Macedonia! Another Vlach invited me to his home,
which the Turks had not visited till the petroleum gave out; it was,
therefore, only pillaged.
The doors were splintered where the adzes had been applied. The
house was bare, stripped of every rug. A rough wooden table had been
constructed of a barn door and blocks of wood. The younger members of
the family were sent scurrying to the neighbours. From one came a bowl,
from another two iron forks and a spoon, which had been saved from the
Turks. We got a supper, all eating from the big bowl, the family with
their fingers.
We spent the night here. It was a memorable night.
The house stood high upon a rock and overlooked the area of hollow
walls. Ruined Vlachs slunk in through the night, sat with us on the
balcony, and, whispering, told us the tale of their city. In the dim
light of a crescent moon they pointed out the Konak where the Turks had
been killed, the woods above where the spies had been executed, the
Greek school which the insurgents had used as Government offices, and
‘Hell Hole,’ still containing bodies.
Once the Vlachs stopped abruptly and changed the subject to England.
What sort of a place was Angleterre?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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