themselves in the channel between Cefalonia and Zante, the former presenting a chain of rocks to the north, the latter a tract of low land to the south, with the lofty mountains of Albania and Morea forming the eastern termination of the prospect. The scene continued to improve till they approached the opening of the Gulf of Lepanto, and were treated with the view of Patras and the surrounding country. The minarets of the Turkish moschs glittering in the sunbeams, the verdure of the currant trees covering the shores, the woody summits of the hills in the distance, the suburbs of the city decked with gardens, and groves of orange and lemon trees, are set before the reader in very lively colours of description. Such is, indeed, the smiling face which Turkey presents along the far greater part of the long and mazy line of her painted shore, suggesting, alas! to every mind whose perceptions of happiness and dignity have been ennobled by freedom and truth, feelings of disappointment and sorrow at seeing the means of enjoyment so multiplied in vain, and the characters of providential bounty nearly effaced by man's hostility to himself.

"Oh fortunatos nimium sua si bona nôrint!"

In passing northward towards Prevesa, Ithaca, now called Theaki, presented its barren shore; and two little towns were distinctly seen among the trees, with a windmill or two and a tower on the heights; and after doubling the promontory of Santa Maura, rendered memorable by the fate of Sappho and the poetry of Ovid, they landed at Prevesa, a town opposite the Ambracian Gulf, and built on a neck of land in the country formerly called Epirus. Here they were well received by the Greek acting as the English vice-consul at that town; who seems by his care about the substantial part of their entertainment to have been impressed with the notion so general on the continent respecting our countrymen, of their reverence for their stomachs.

The state of the coast of the eastern shores of the Adriatic cannot, in this nautical age, be supposed to be in any obscurity; but Mr. Hobhouse expatiates at considerable length on the ignorance which in all times has prevailed concerning the interior topography of Albania. Nor is this much to be wondered at, when we consider what very bad geographers the Turks themselves are, how little this country has been travelled in modern times, the various dominations to which it has been subjected, and the uniform barbarity of its inhabitants. As Mr. Hobhouse observes, "all that we have till very lately known of modern Albania is, that it is a province of European Turkey, bounded to the north and north-east by a chain of mountains, di

viding it partly from the country formerly called Macedonia, and partly from Servia and Dalmatia; having to the west the Gulf of Venice; to the east Macedonia, Thessaly, and Greece Proper; and terminated to the south by the Gulf of Lepanto, or, according to some, the Gulf of Arta."

The streets of the town of Prevesa are described as being without paving, and resembling dirty lanes, with wooden huts on each side, very narrow, and shaded over head with large rushes or reeds, reaching from the pents of the houses, quite across from one side to the other. The consul's house, where the travellers were lodged, afforded such accommodation as was correspondent to thewretched aspect of the place.

From Prevesa the travellers proceeded on their way to Ioannina, the capital town of the dominions of the famous pacha Ali, by the way of Arta; and this being the commencement of their journey by land through the dominions of the grand signor, a particular account is given us of their preparations and equipment, furnishing some practical hints as to the moral state of the country, and the condition of its police. The dragoman, or Greek interpreter, is upon these occasions a necessary part of the furniture, and, as it appears, a necessary evil. It is by his agency that lodging, food, houses, and all other conveniences, are procured: but while serving in these useful employments, he is no less busily engaged in robbing and defrauding his employer by every artifice and roguery within his power to practise. Knavery, indeed, appears to be the principal accomplishment of the modern Greek, who stands degraded below the Turk as much in spirit as in station. That acute and lively intelligence which in the days of their independence made the Greeks the models to mankind in arts as well as arms, and covered the soil of which they were the masters and heroical defenders with the memorials of their genius, supplying to after ages the never-fading topics of admiration, still presses against the iron boundary by which it is encircled, maintains its ancient activity in a degraded form, and keeps itself in exercise by a mischievous misdirection of its force.

It is painful to be informed by our author that "it is contrary to the nature of things (rather a strong phrase by the by) for a man in the Greek habit to talk in any other than the most submissive and cringing tone to a Turk; and on this account it is always preferable to engage a person as interpreter, accustomed to wear the dress of a Frank, a name that includes all those, of whatever nation, who are dressed in the small clothes, the coat, and the hat of civilized Europe." A striking instance of the prodigious influence of association, and of the secret habitual connexion between the manners and costume of a nation. It was

a maxim of Montesquieu, that the customs of an enslaved people are a part of their servitude; and to follow up the spirit of this observation, we would remark, that their dress is a badge of their servitude. One of the indications of that moral and political change in the state of European Turkey, which we trust the succeeding generation may see, will probably be an imitation of the dress of the Frank.

The author gives a very circumstantial detail of the articles of his baggage, and the provisions for his journey, which may be very useful to succeeding travellers. Concerning the most important of these articles, his advice to the traveller is to provide himself with dollars at Malta, which he may exchange, without loss, at Patrass, or elsewhere, for Venetian zequins, which, being gold coins, are more portable: or having lodged his dollars with a merchant in the Levant, he may obtain bills on the most respectable Greeks in the towns through which he passes. The accounts in Turkey are kept in piasters; and where seventeen and a half of these can be obtained for the credit of a pound sterling, you may consider the exchange at par; and it is to be observed, that the exchange at Constantinople is very fluctuating. It appears that there are several gold coins current in Turkey; the smallest of which is a pretty piece worth two piasters and a half, or, in some places, a little more. The Venetian zequin varies in value from ten to eleven piasters. There are small coins called paras, forty of which go to a piaster, which are very thin, and not so big as a note wafer. The asper, which is the third of a para, was never seen by the author; and copper Our travellers having properly equipped themselves, set out from Prevesa on their Albanian tour, and having crossed the Gulf of Arta, were detained by the weather and want of horses a couple of days at Salora, a small town on the coast of this gulf, called the scale of Arta, where the customs are collected; and here they were obliged to take up their lodging in the barrack, where there was a guard of ten Albanian soldiers for protecting the custom house, Salora being the place through which the imports and exports of all lower Albania are obliged to pass, and which levies a duty of three per cent. upon all imported merchandize belonging to a Turk, and of four per cent. upon the goods of the Christian merchant.

there is none.

Here begins our introduction to the manners and way of life of the Albanian Turk, and we shall therefore extract Mr. Hobhouse's entertaining account for the benefit of our readers.

"We were introduced to the captain of this guard; and, as we passed that evening and the next day and night in the barrack, we had at once an initiation into the way of life of the Albanian Turks. It

was impossible for any men to have a more unsavoury appearance; and though the captain, whose name, by the way, was Elmas, was a little cleaner than the others, yet he was not much to be distinguished from his soldiers, except by a pair of sandals, and a white thin round stick, which he used in walking, and which, like the vine rod of the Roman centurions, is a badge belonging to, or affected by, the better sort of soldiers in Turkey. Notwithstanding, however, their wild and savage appearance, we found them exceedingly mild and good-humoured, and with manners as good as are usually to be found in a garrison.

"We put up our beds in one of their apartments, and were soon well settled. Immediately on our entrance the captain gave ùs coffee and pipes; and, after we had dined in our own room on some fish, bread, and wine, he begged us to come into his chamber and pass the evening with him, to which we consented. The only furniture in the soldier's apartment was a raised low stage, like that used in a kennel, and upon this, covered with a mat, we seated ourselves cross-legged next to the captain. This officer lived in a very easy familiarity with his men; but had a most perfect control over them; and they seemed to do every thing he wished very cheerfully. "All the Albanians strut very much when they walk, projecting their chests, throwing back their heads, and moving very slowly from side to side; but Elmas had this strut more than any man perhaps we ever saw afterwards; and as the sight was then quite new to us, we could not help staring at the magisterial and superlatively dignified air of a man with great holes in his elbows, and looking altogether, as to his garments, like what we call a bull-beggar.

"After walking about in the walled enclosure of the barrack, and enjoying the last rays of the setting sun that were gilding the woody hills and the towers of Vonitza on the other side of the Gulf, we again seated ourselves at the never-failing coffee and pipe, to which the liberality of the captain had added some grapes, and, by the help of our dragoman, kept up a conversation of some length with the Albanians.

"You may suppose that an Englishman has many articles about him to excite the curiosity of such people; but we found this curiosity, though incessant, to be by no means impertinent or troublesome. They took up our watch chains and looked at them, then looked at each other, and smiled. They did not ask a great many questions, but seemed at once satisfied, that the thing was above their comprehension; nor did they praise, or appear to admire much, but contented themselves with smiling, and saying nothing except, English goods! English goods!' or, to give it you in their Greek, '@gaypala Ιγγλέσικα! πράγματα Ιγγλέσικα ! A glass of marascine was given to captain Elmas, and another offered to one of his men, who refused it, being, as he said, under an oath not to touch any thing of the kind. Is not this self-denial called kegging by the Irish? Elmas drank seven or eight glasses of aniseed aqua vitæ, and said it gave him an appetite.

"About seven, the Albanians made preparations for their supper, by washing hands. Dragoman George said, If these fellows did not do this they would stink like the Jews.'-The Turks think that the Christians stink.

"They placed a round table, raised on two strips of wood three inches from the ground, before the captain, and the men sat round on mats on the floor. The supper was fish fried with oil, which they ate with their fingers out of one dish, and curded goat's milk with bread; but in this second course they made use of horn spoons.

"After supper the captain washed his hands with soap, inviting us to do the same, for we had eaten a little with them. He put the ewer into my lap; but he would not give the soap into my hands, though I was sitting close to him, but put it on the floor within an inch of me. This he did with so singular an air, that I enquired of George the meaning of it; and found, that in Turkey there is a very prevalent superstition against giving soap into another's hands: they think. it will wash away love.

"We now smoked, ate grapes, and conversed; and every thing was much to our satisfaction, except the habit, to which we were not then familiarized, of frequent and most violent eructation from our; hosts. The Turks continue at this sport so long, and are so loud, as to make it appear that they do it on purpose; and I once heard that it is done by visitants as a compliment, to show their host that they have digested his good fare. The Moors of Barbary continue croaking for five minutes. Persons of all ranks allow themselves this liberty (I have noticed it in the divan at Constantinople) without shame or restraint; but they would look upon an indecency, however accidental, of another kind, as a pollution and an affront.

"We retired to bed before ten; and the Albanians pulling out their pistols from their waist, loosening their girdles, and wrapping themselves up in their shaggy great coats (or capotes), lay down and slept upon their mats.

"It rained hard the next day, and we spent another evening with our soldiers. The captain Elmas tried a fine Manton gun belonging to my friend, and hitting his mark, every time, was highly delighted, and offered to receive it in exchange for his own; but being informed that it was intended for the Vizier his master, he did not press the bargain. "This day we observed one of the soldiers rubbing, or rather kneading, one of his comrades forcibly on the neck and arms, and pulling his joints. This is the Albanian cure for a cold in the limbs.

6

"We were now quite familiar, and on very easy terms together. In the evening they laughed and sung, and were in high spirits: one of them, as in other small societies, was their butt, and they made us the instruments of their jokes against him. Wewere enquiring names; one of them was Abdoul,' another Yatchee,' and a third we were told to call 'Zourlos.' This person did not seem pleased with our dwelling on his naine; and it was not long before we learnt that we had been calling him Blockhead,' the interpretation of the modern Greek word with which we had addressed him.