The mountains of Albania, like those of Montenegro, are a series of natural fastnesses, among which a small army of attack is massacred and a large one starves. Moreover, a large part of the land was not worth the expense of taking. The tribes were exceedingly ferocious, and would have taken a great deal of conquering, but as they had no leader under whom they could combine and make organised attacks, they were not the danger to the Turks that the Montenegrins were. Moreover, the fact that they belonged to the Western and not to the Eastern Church prevented them from making common cause with the other Christian peoples. Once and once only were they on the point of obtaining recognised national existence, and this was under the leadership of the great Skender Beg. But Skender Beg died in 1467, and as yet no one has arisen capable of welding the semi-independent tribes into a solid whole. The Turks purchase peace from them by leaving them to do as they please among their mountains. The Albanians purchase privileges from the Turks by fighting for them and supplying the Turkish army, as they did formerly the Roman, with some of its best soldiers. And Albania to-day remains separated into a number of distinct tribes, which are governed by their own chieftains according to unwritten laws which have been handed down orally from a very remote past. The Turkish "Government" has practically no say in the matter. At any rate, what it says it has not the power to enforce. The Albanian is ignorant and untrained, but he is no fool. His one ruling idea has been to go on being Albanian in the manner of his fathers. He perceived quickly all the points that would enable him to do so, and he seized upon them. The mountain people in the more inaccessible parts retained their Christianity. The Albanians who swooped upon the plains vacated by the Serbs found it greatly to their advantage to profess Mohammedanism, and both Mohammedan and Roman Catholic were ready to make common cause against the Christians of the Eastern Church. So indispensable have the Albanians made themselves to the Turkish Government that it has been forced to concede to them every license, lest it should lose their support. Far from making any attempt at civilising them, it has never scrupled to make use of their savagery in warfare, and in warfare the Albanian can be exceedingly savage. Never from the beginning of time has he been taught anything that the Western world thinks necessary; never in the majority of cases has the most rudimentary education come his way. His Mohammedanism and his Christianity he practises in an original and Albanian manner, and in his heart he is influenced mainly by traditional beliefs and superstitions which are probably far older than either. He purchased his freedom by making himself useful to the Turk, and the Turk has left him in the lowest depths of barbarism. The only schools that exist in the land are