Peaks of Shala

When the sun rose over the blue, snow-crested mountains that are the southernmost slopes of the Dinaric Alps, it made, on the Scutari plain, a pattern of our shadows; shadows of...

Darkness was creeping up the slopes like a rising flood from the valleys, and it had engulfed the trails long before we made the descent into the village of Gjoanni, which I may...

I came back to full consciousness for an instant, stumbling up the stairs, and gathered that we were going to bed. By the torchlight my wrist watch said a quarter past two. Fran...

Concealed by the darkness, we lay back in our wet clothes on the wet rocks and shook with smothered laughter. How Albanian! While Perolli with a hundred honeyed words made excus...

There was a moment of contemplative silence. Beyond the circle of firelight the goats still tore and worried the dried leaves from the oak branches. A woman came leisurely forwa...

Four men of Marke Gjonni’s household went with us to carry the packs, so we left the stone house peaceful on the cliff below our upward-climbing path, not disturbing it with any...

But my delight in this discovery of their intelligence received a violent blow almost at once, for another man--tall, keen featured, black bearded, his face framed in the folds...

Padre Marjan sat with us, but did not eat, as it was a fast day. An apparently endless succession of dishes--soup, lamb, omelettes, pork chops, chicken--was brought in by Cherem...

I may say that such agitators will have a very bad time of it, as doubtless all agitators deserve to have, since all agitators always have had it. There was a conference that af...

THE WATER ORA OF MALI SHARIT--THE COMING OF THE TRIBES TO EUROPE BEFORE THE SEAS WERE BORN, AND HOW THE FIRST GREEKS CAME IN BOATS--WHY ALEXANDER THE GREAT WAS BORN IN EMADHIJA,...

The next morning was Sunday, and we were awakened by the church bell. It hung in a belfry over the padre’s kitchen, and the padre pulled the rope himself. Then tucking his brown...

They made places for us, laid another handful of dry twigs on the fire, and rolled fresh cigarettes. The Lumi Shala was rising higher than they had ever known it to do, they sai...

We started down the bed of a waterfall, the guide and I; the bad going, the exhausting force of the current, my dizziness and breath-taking pains, made the first half mile a blu...

Then his grandmother made three beds, on three sides of the fire. She brought a two-inch-thick mat of woven straw and laid it on the floor; over it she spread a handsome blanket...