If we exclude these Zinzares, the Greeks of Epirus, the Servians, and the few Osmanli dwelling in the large towns, there remain only the semi-barbarous Gheges and Tosks, whose social condition has hardly undergone any change in the course of three thousand years. In their manners and modes of thought these modern Albanians are the true successors of the ancient Pelasgians, and many a scene that a traveller may witness amongst them carries him back to the days of the Odyssey. G. von Hahn, who has most thoroughly studied the Shkipetars, looks upon them as veritable Dorians, whose ancestors, led by the Heraclidæ, burst forth from the forests of Epirus to conquer the Peloponnesus. They are as courageous, as warlike, as fond of dominion, and as clannish as were their ancestors. Their dress, likewise, is nearly the same, and the white tunic (_fustanelle_) neatly fastened round the waist fairly represents the ancient _chlamys_. The Gheges, like the Dorians of old, are addicted to that mysterious passion which the historians of antiquity have confounded, unfortunately, with a nameless vice, and which links men to children by a pure and ideal love, in which the senses have no part. There is no modern people respecting whom more astounding acts of bravery are recorded than of the Albanians. In the fifteenth century they had their Scanderbeg, who, though the theatre of his glory was more circumscribed than that of his namesake of Macedonia, was hardly inferior to him in genius, and {121} certainly surpassed him in justness and goodness of heart. Or what nation has ever exceeded in courage the Suliote mountaineers, amongst whom not an aged man, a woman, or a child was found to beg for mercy from Ali Pasha’s executioners? The heroism of these Suliote women, who set fire to the ammunition waggons, and then hand in hand precipitated themselves from the rocks, or sought death in the mountain torrents, chanting their own funeral song, will at all times stand forth in history as an astounding fact.