TOWN OF ANTIVARI—FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF TURKEY—ORIENTAL PASSENGERS—VALUE OF A KNOWLEDGE OF ARABIC OR TURKISH—A MAHOMETAN MERCHANT AND HIS FAMILY—TURKISH TROOPS IN ALBANIA—TOWN AND FORTRESS OF CASTEL DURAZZO—RETURN TO TRIESTE—FAREWELL TO THE READER.
AFTER leaving Budua we kept close in shore, enjoying the wild rugged scenery of the Dalmatian coast till we reached Antivari, where we first came into immediate contact with the Turks on their own Ottoman soil. The first impression, I must confess, was certainly not a favourable one.
Should any one of my readers, with a bias in 292 favour of Ottomans and Ottoman rule, ever determine on visiting Turkey, let him not receive his first impression of that empire by a visit to Antivari. A few wretched hovels, a miserable white-washed house, with a small and dirty red flag over it; a group of miserably-dressed, vile-countenanced, ragamuffin-looking soldiers, in baggy blue trousers and crimson fezzes, constituted all the features of the place. The town of Antivari itself, I heard, was a few miles inland, but if one may judge of the town from its villainous port, it must be wretched in the extreme.
The steamer remained here a couple of hours to land goods and take in passengers, but as the heat was excessive and the prospect of the country most unpromising, I made no attempt to land. I did not however lack entertainment, and while I lounged over the bulwarks on the shady side of the steamer, I amused myself pitching half-francs into the water, which was of very considerable depth and of the clearest and limpidest blue, to half a score or so of lads and small boys who were swimming, and diving, and treading the 293 water in the most surprising manner; they seemed just as much at home in the sea as on the land, and fetched up the coins from the bottom as easily as I could have picked them up from the deck.
When tired of looking at the swimmers, I turned to watch the new arrivals, of which we had a considerable number, all Orientals, and almost all deck passengers. The first which caught my eye, coming up the side of the steamer, was a wretched-looking, squalid creature, dressed in rags, but most picturesque withal. He was small, slight, and extremely dark, just short of black, but with distinctly Caucasian features, not a negroid by any means. He had a small bundle over his shoulders, and in his right hand he carried a short lance, with a very bright steel head, ornamented with a few lines of Damascene work in gold. His head was covered with a somewhat conical-shaped cap, encircled with a scanty and very ragged green turban, while at his side he carried a moderate sized bottle-gourd. He was a very singular looking being, and all I could make out through 294 the captain was that he thought he was a dervish returning home from visiting some sacred shrine in Mahomedan Europe. As to his home, he suspected from his costume it might be in Kurdistan, but it was very much guess work, as the Captain spoke neither Arabic nor Turkish.
Another interesting group consisted of three gaily dressed Orientals, in bag trousers tight at the knees, turban, and highly embroidered jackets. They made their way to the quarter-deck abaft the paddle box, and were about being summarily ejected by the steward in consequence of being deck passengers, when I interposed, and got him to let them stay for a while. They perfectly well understood that it was owing to my interference they were allowed to remain, and so we knocked up a sort of acquaintance, and carried on a lame, very lame conversation by the help of the youngest, who could speak a very few words of Italian. I could not make out any thing about them, whence they came, or whither they were going, but from their features I could easily see they were Asiatics, Arabs most 295 probably, and the youngest, who was also the lightest in colour, had three scars on each cheek, not unlike in shape to our broad arrow.
How I longed for a knowledge of Arabic, how I envied Captain Burton! If he had been there we should at once have known all about them, and the dervish and everyone else, including a tall, handsome Soudani slave, who kept grinning and showing his teeth from ear to ear, while I was carrying on my lame conversation with the Arabs.
Up to this point, Italian and German had enabled me to get on famously; but now that I was getting among Asiatics, although I was still in Europe, I felt my utter helplessness, and the absolute necessity for a knowledge of the language of the Koran, for those who wish to visit the East with pleasure and profit.
The whole deck forward was encumbered with passengers. In one corner seated on a pile of luggage, but well bolstered up by rolls of Persian carpets, was a most truculent-looking 296 Oriental, attended by an intelligent-looking young negro, with a most astonishing Caucasian type of countenance. He wore nothing but a white calico sort of shirt with loose sleeves, and a string of red beads round his neck. He had none of the characteristics of the negro except the colour; had I known anything of Arabic, I could most probably have learnt something about his origin.
In another corner of the deck a Mahomedan merchant (as I was informed he was) had contrived to screen off a place for himself and his family, one of whom, about three years old, was sprawling stark naked on a rug in the broiling sun, while a closely veiled female, his mother I suppose, was chasing small deer all over his person, which was closely spotted as if with measles—but they were only bites!
Quite at the prow of the vessel, somewhat apart, and separated from the rest, was a military officer, evidently of some considerable rank, if one could judge by the orders and stars fastened to his breast, his handsome hilted sabre, and his patent leather boots. He was a heavy morose-looking 297 man of about fifty, with close cropped black beard, blue Turkish uniform, and crimson fez. I was told he was a real pasha, and had with him a suite of two officers and half a dozen soldiers. He was only a deck passenger like the others; but whether he travelled so from poverty, from motives of economy, or from scorning to associate with the hated and envied Nazarenes, I cannot tell, though I strongly suspect that genuine impecuniosity was the real cause of it.
The Turkish troops I saw in this part of Albania were the most wretched specimens I ever witnessed, small, mean, dirty, disreputable-looking in the extreme, and their officers matched them to perfection. Having remarked on their appearance, I was told by the captain of the steamer not to form an opinion of the Ottoman army by such samples, as they always sent their worst regiments to Albania, and that these wretched troops, both officers and men, were alwa............