The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and FlowSteiner, Edward Alfred
History
The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow
Steiner, Edward Alfred
United States -- Emigration and immigration
The new régime in Turkey feels this Albanian iron in its veins, for one
of the leaders in the new parliament is of this race, as are many of the
most virile editors of Turkish newspapers. Both officers and privates in
the army which wrought the overthrow of the Sultan are of these same
people, who regard themselves as superior to the Turks and to whom no
greater insult can be given than to call them by the name of their
oppressors.
In my travels through the Balkan, I have often passed through some
portion of Albania, which is a narrow strip of land along the Adriatic,
between Montenegro and Greece, with much of its interior inaccessible.
Its savage state was encouraged by Turkey, which maintained there a
borderland against the power and ideals of the West.
Every village was an armed camp, every house a fortress. Tribal warfare
never ceased; neither the holy seasons of the Church nor harvest time
knew the blessings of peace. Every Albanian was a soldier or brigand and
sometimes both, loyal to those to whom he had sworn loyalty; but the
musket was law between him and the stranger, and the bullet its
executor.
Trained for slaughter, the Albanians spurned common theft, but did not
shrink from murder, for pillage or for revenge. The last time I saw them
at home, was on the shores of Lake Skutari, retreating to their native
mountains in the Albanian Alps, after having pillaged a Montenegrin
village, one of the few prosperous enough to make a raid worth while.
They were resting on a rocky hillside, and as I attempted to take a
snapshot, they resisted religiously, good Mohammedans that they were, by
emptying their rifles after me, doing no more damage than frightening my
worn-out team into a gallop.
To say that the next time I saw them, was in the prayer-meeting room of
a Congregational church, describes graphically the difference between
then and now; for it was a docile, conventional looking company of men
that I met; their fierce mustachios shaved or cropped, their muscular
bodies clothed in the commonplace garments of our civilization. Their
eager, black eyes alone spoke of the hot, Albanian blood in their veins
not yet chilled in our cool, workaday atmosphere.
Neither Gheg nor Tosk ever had a chief like the one who led them that
night in singing the "Shcipetari" song, the battle hymn of Albania; for
he who wore the red skullcap of the chief and beat time as they sang,
whose placid face was lighted by a deeper passion than their own, was an
American,--Arthur Baldwin, Patent Attorney and lover of common folks.
One by one he had gathered them as they drifted into the city by the
lake. "Dagos" they were called; homeless, neglected and treated with
scorn. One after another they swore fealty to their new chief, until now
every one of them acknowledges the sovereignty of his passion over them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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