CHAPTER XXI.

Return Journey--Narrow Escape--Consequences of Singing--Arrival at the Khan of Malacash--Agreeable Anecdote--Parting from the Robbers at Mezzovo--A Pilau--Wet Ride to Paramathia--Accident to the Baggage-Mule--Its wonderful Escape--Novel Costume--A Deputation--Return to Corfu.

We made our way from the plain and rocks of Meteora by a different path from the one by which we had arrived, and travelled along the north side of the valley of the Peneus; we kept along the side of the hills, which were covered sometimes with forest and sometimes with a kind of jungle or underwood.

During the afternoon of this day, as I was singing away as usual in advance of my party, some one shouted to me from the thicket, but I took no notice of it. However, before I had ridden on many steps a man jumped out of the bush, seized hold of my horse's bridle, and proceeded to draw his pistol from his belt, but luckily the lock had got entangled in the shawl which he wore round his waist. I pushed my horse against him, and in a moment one of us would have been shot; when the appearance of three or four bright gun-barrels in the bushes close by stopped our proceedings. My men now came running up.

"Hallo!" said one of them. "Is that you? You must not attack this gentleman. He is our friend; he is one of us."

"What!" said the man who had stopped me; "Is that you, Mahommed? Is that you, Hassan? What are you doing here? How is this? Is this your friend? I thought he was a Frank."

In short, they explained what kind of brotherhood we had entered into, where we had been, and where we were going, and all about it. I did not understand much of their conversation, and in the midst of it the Albanian came up to me with a reproachful air and told me that they said my being stopped was owing to my singing, and making such a noise. "Why, Sir," he added, "can't you ride quietly, without letting people know where you are? Why can't you do as others do, and be still, like a--"

"Thief," said I.

"Yes, Sir; or like a quiet traveller. In such troublesome times as these, however honest a man may be, he need not try to excite attention."

I felt that the advice was good, and practised it occasionally afterwards.

In seven hours' time we arrived at the khan of Malacash, where I had slept before; and my carpet was spread in my old corner. I heard my companions talking earnestly about something, and on asking what it was, I was told that they could not make out which room it was where the people had been murdered--this room or the outer one.

"How was that?" I inquired.

Why, some time ago, they said, a party of travellers, people belonging to the country, were attacked by robbers at this khan. One of the party, after he had been plundered, had the imprudence to say that he knew who the thieves were. Upon this the gang, after a short consultation, took the party out, one by one, and cut all their throats in the next room; and this was before the present disturbed state of the country. Nevertheless, I slept very soundly, my only sorrow being that no tidings came of the two manuscripts from Meteora.

_November 11th._--In our journey of this day we crossed the chain of the Pindus by a different pass from the one by which we had traversed it before; and in the evening we arrived at Mezzovo, where I was lodged by a schoolmaster who had a comfortable house. The ceiling of the room where we sat was hung all over with bunches of dried or rather drying grapes. Here I presented each of my escort with a small bundle of piasters. We had become so much pleased with each other in the few days we had been together, that we had quite an affecting parting. Their chief, the red velvet personage from whom I had received the letter which gained me the pleasure of their company, was gone, it appeared, towards Berat; but they had found some of their companions, with whom they intended to retire to some small place of defence, the name of which I did not make out, where in a few days they expected to be told what they were to do.

"Why won't you come with us?" said they. "Don't go back to live in a confined, stupid town, to sit all day in a house, and look out of the window. Go back with us into the mountains, where we know every pass, every rock, and every waterfall: you should command us; we would get some more men together: we will go wherever you like, and a rare jolly life we will lead."

"Gentlemen," said I, "I take your kind offers as highly complimentary to me; I am proud to think that I have gained so high a place in your estimation. When you see your captain, pray assure him of my friendship, and how much I feel indebted to him for having given me such gallant and faithful guards."

The poor fellows were evidently sorry to leave me: one of them, the most active and gay of the whole party, seemed more than half inclined to cry; so, cordially shaking hands with them before the door of the schoolmaster of Mezzovo, we parted, with expressions of mutual goodwill.

"Thank goodness they are gone!" said the little schoolmaster; "those palicari are all over the country now; some belong to one chief, some to another; some are for Mahmoud Pasha, and some against him; but I don't know which party is the worst; they are all rogues, every one of them, when they have an opportunity--scamps! sad scamps! These are hard times for quiet, peaceably-disposed people. So now, Sir, we will come in, and lock the door, and make up the fire, for the nights are getting cold."

The schoolmaster had a snug fireplace, with a good divan on each side of it, of blue cloth or baize. These divans came close up to the hearth, which, like the divans, was raised two feet above the floor. The good man brought out his little stores of preserves and marmalade. He was an old bachelor, and we soon made ourselves very comfortable, one on each side of the fire. We had a famous pilau, made by my "_artist_," and the schoolmaster gave us raisins to put in it--not that they are a necessary part of that excellent condiment, but he had not much else to give; so we flavoured the pilau with raisins, as if it had been a lamb, which, by the by, is the prince of Oriental dishes, and, when stuffed with almonds, raisins, pistachio nuts, rice, bread-crumbs, pepper and salt, and well roasted, is a dish to set before a king.

The schoolmaster, judging of me by the company I kept, never suspected my literary pursuits, and was surprised when I asked him if he knew of anything in that line, and assured him that I had no objection to do a little business in the manuscript way. He said he knew of an old merchant who had a great many books, and that to-morrow we would go and see them. Accordingly, the next day we went to see the merchant's house; but his collection was good for nothing; and after returning for an hour or two to the schoolmaster's hospitable mansion, we got into marching order, and defiled off the village green of Mezzovo.

After fording the river thirty-nine times, as we had done before, our jaded steeds at last stood panting under the windows of the doctor at Yanina, whose comfortable house we had left only a few days before. I stayed at Yanina one day, but the Pasha could not see me to hear my account of the protection I had enjoyed from his firman. A messenger had arrived from Constantinople, and the report in the town was that the Pasha would lose his head or his pashalic if he did not put down the disturbances which had arisen in every part of his government. Some said he would escape by bribing the ministers of the Porte; but as I was no politician I did not trouble myself much on the subject His Highness, however, was good enough to send me word that he would give me any assistance that I needed. Accordingly, I asked for a teskéré for post-horses; and the next day galloped in ten hours to Paramathia. All day long the rain poured down in torrents, and I waded through the bed of the swollen stream, which usually served for a high-road, I do not know how many times. I was told the distance was about sixty miles; and it was one of the hardest day's riding I ever accomplished; for there was nothing deserving the name of a road any part of the way; and the entire day was passed in tearing up and down the rocks or wading in the swollen stream. The rain and the cold compelled us and our horses to do our best: in a hot day we could never have accomplished it.

Towards the afternoon, when we were, by computation, about twenty-five miles from Paramathia, as we were proceeding at a trot along a narrow ledge above a stream, the baggage-horse, or mule I think he was, whose halter was tied to the crupper of my horse, suddenly missed his footing, and fell over the precipice. He caught upon the edge with his fore-feet, the halter supported his head, and my horse immediately stopping, leant with all his might against the wall of rock which rose above us, squeezing my left leg between it and the saddle. The noise of the wind and rain, and the dashing of the torrent underneath, prevented my servants hearing my shouts for assistance. I was the last of the party; and I had the pleasure of seeing all my company trotting on, rising in their stirrups, and bumping along the road before me, unconscious of anything having occurred to check their progress towards the journey's end. It was so bad a day that no one thought of anything but getting on. Every man for himself was the order of the day. I could not dismount, because my left leg was squeezed so tightly against the rock, that I every moment expected the bone to snap. My horse's feet were projected towards the edge of the precipice, and in this way he supported the fallen mule, who endeavoured to retain his hold with his chin and his fore-legs. There we were--the mule's eyeballs almost starting out of his head, and all his muscles quivering with the exertion. At last something cracked: the staple in the back of my saddle gave way; off flew the crupper, and I thought at first my horse's tail was gone with it. The baggage-mule made one desperate scrambling effort, but it was of no use, and down he went, over and over among the crashing bushes far beneath, until at length he fell with a loud splash into the waters of the stream. Some of the people hearing the noise made by the falling mule, turned round and came back to see what was the matter; and, horse and men, we all craned our necks over the edge to see what had become of our companion. There he was in the river, with nothing but his head above the water. With some difficulty we made our way down to the edge of the torrent. The mule kept looking at us very quietly all the while till we got close to him, when the muleteer proceeded to assist him by banging him on the head with a great branch of a tree, upon which he took to struggling and scrambling, and at last, to the surprise of all, came out apparently unhurt, at least with no bones broken. The men looked him over, walked him about, gave him a kick or two by way of asking him how he was, and then placing his load upon him again, we pursued our journey.

Before dark we arrived at Paramathia, and went straight to the house where we had been so hospitably received before. We crawled up like so many drowned rats into the upper rooms, where we were met by the whole troop of ladies giggling, screaming, and talking, as if they had never stopped since we left them a week before. When the baggage came to be undone, alas! what a wreck was there! The coffee and the sugar and the shirts had formed an amalgam; mud, shoes, and cambric handkerchiefs all came out together; not a thing was dry. The only consolation was that the beautiful illuminated manuscripts of Meteora had not participated in this dirty deluge.

I was wet to the skin, and my boots were full of water. In this dilemma I asked if our hosts could not lend me something to put on until some of my own clothes could be dried. The ladies were full of pity and compassion; but unfortunately all the men were from home, not having returned from their daily occupations in the bazaar, and their clothes could not be got at. At last the good-humoured young bride, seeing that wherever I stood there was always, in a couple of minutes' time, a puddle upon the floor, entered into an animated consultation with the other ladies, and before long they brought me a shirt, and an immense garment it was, like an English surplice, embroidered in gay colours down the seams. The fair bride contributed the white capote, which I remembered on my former visit, and a girdle. I soon donned this extempore costume. My wet clothes were taken to a great fire, which was lit for the purpose in another room, and I proceeded to dry my hair with a long narrow towel, its ends heavy with gold embroidery, which one of the ladies warmed far me, and twisted round my head in the way usual in the Turkish bath--a method of drying the head well known in most eastern towns, and which saves a great deal of trouble and exertion in rubbing and brushing according to the European method.

I had ensconced myself in the corner of the divan, having nothing else in the way of clothes beyond what I have mentioned, and was employed in looking at one of my feet, which I had stuck out for the purpose, admiring it in all its pristine beauty, for there were no spare slippers to be had, when the curtain was suddenly lifted from over the door, and my servant rushed in and told me with a troubled voice, that the authorities of Paramathia, grieved at their remissness on the former occasion, had presented themselves to compliment me on my arrival in their town, and had brought me a present of tobacco or something, I forget what, in testimony of their anxiety to show their good-will and respect to so distinguished a personage as myself. "Don't let them in!" I exclaimed. "Tell them I will receive them to-morrow. Say anything, but only keep them out." But this was more than my servants could accomplish. My friends at Corfu had sent letters explaining the prodigious honour conferred upon the whole province of Albania by my presence, so that nothing could stop them, and in walked a file of grave elders in long gowns, one or two in stately fur pelisses, which I envied them very much. They took very little notice of me, as I sat screwed up in the corner, and all, ranging themselves upon the divan on the opposite side of the room, sat in solemn silence, looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, whenever they thought they could do so without my perceiving it.

My servant stood in the middle of the room to interpret; and after he had remained there a prodigious while, as it seemed to me, the most venerable of the old gentlemen at last said, "I am Signor Dimitri So-and-so; this is Signor Anastasi So-and-so; this gentleman is uncle to the master of the house; and so on. We are come to pay our respects to the noble and illustrious Englishman who passed through this place before. Pray have the goodness to signify our arrival to his Excellency, and say that we are waiting here to have the honour of offering him our services. Where is the respected milordos?" Although I could not speak Romaic, yet I understood it sufficiently to know what the old gentleman was saying; and great was their surprise and admiration when they found that the unhappy and very insufficiently-clothed little fellow in the corner was the illustrious milordos himself. The said milordos had now to explain how all his baggage had been upset over a precipice, and that he was not exactly prepared to receive so distinguished a party. After mutual apologies, which ended in a good laugh all round, pipes and coffee were brought in. The visit of ceremony was concluded in as dignified a manner as circumstances would permit; and they went away convinced that I must be a very great man in my own country, as I did not get up more than a few inches to salute them, either on their entry or departure--a most undue assumption of dignity on my part which I sincerely regretted, but which the state of my costume rendered absolutely necessary.

_November 15th._--The morning of the following day was bright and clear. I procured fresh horses, and galloped in six hours to the sea at Gominiza. A small vessel was riding at anchor near the shore, whose captain immediately closed with the offer of four dollars to carry me over to Corfu. I was soon on board; and, creeping into a small three-cornered hole under the half-deck, to which I gained access by a hatchway about a foot and a half square, I rolled myself up upon some ropes, and fell asleep at once. It seemed as if I had not been asleep an instant, when my servant, putting his head into the square aperture above, said, "Signore siamo qui." "Yes," said I, "but where is that? What! are we really at Corfu?" I popped my head out of the trap, and there we were sure enough--my fatigue of the day before having made me sleep so soundly that I had been perfectly unconscious of the duration of the voyage; and I landed on the quay congratulating myself on having accomplished the most dangerous and most rapid expedition that it ever was my fortune to undertake.

MONASTERIES OF THE LEVANT.