July 15, 1S80] 



NA TUBE 



243 



particles of coral. These Pteropod shells, as noted in 

 previous expeditions by different nations, appear to be an 

 important factor in the determination of the movements 

 of great bodies of sea-water. The ridge at the "Wind- 

 ward Passage" is bare coral rock, and on the south side 

 the Pteropod shells were found to be much more 

 numerous than to the northward of the ridge. Soundings 

 and serial temperatures being the special objects of the 

 course, dredgings were only incidentally attempted for 

 the purpose of reconnoitring, as it were, the ground, and 

 it was found that the area passed over was not nearly so 

 rich in animal life as that in which dredgings were taken 

 last year under the lee of the Windward Islands at the 

 eastward of the Caribbean Sea. 



The development of the extraordinary submarine valley 

 in the western Caribbean Sea is a matter of great 

 interest considered as a physical feature. This valley 

 extends in length 700 statute miles from between Jamaica 

 and Cuba nearly to the head of the Bay of Honduras, 

 with an average breadth of 80 miles. Curving around 

 between Misteriosa Bank and Yucatan, and running 

 along between Cuba and the ridge of the Caymans for a 

 distance of 430 miles, with a breadth of 105 miles, it 

 covers an area of over %^,ooo sguare mtVes, having a depth 

 nowhere less than 2,000 fathoms, except at two or three 

 points (the summits of submarine mountains), with a 

 greatest depth, 20 miles south of the Grand Cayman, of 

 3,428 fathoms, thus making the low island of Grand Cay- 

 man, scarcely 20 feet above the sea, the summit of a 

 mountain 20,568 feet above the bottom of the submarine 

 valley beside it — an altitude exceeding that of any moun- 

 tain on the North American continent, above the level of 

 the sea, and giving an altitude to the highest summit of 

 Blue Mountain in Jamaica, above the bottom of the same 

 valley, of nearly 29,000 feet, an altitude as great, probably, 

 as that of the loftiest summit of the Himalayas above the 

 level of the sea. 



For the deepest portion of this great submarine valley 

 the Superintendent of the Ccast and Geodetic Survey has 

 adopted the name of " Bartlett Deep." 



ALBANIA AND THE ALBANIANS 

 A BOUT the dawn of authentic history the Balkan 

 ■^*- peninsula seems to have been mainly occupied by 

 two kindred Ar)-an peoples — the Hellenes in the south, 

 the Thrako-Illyrians in the north. Since then, or, say, 

 for some 3,000 years, this region has been swept by more 

 numerous tides of migration than almost any other 

 country on the globe. Some of these waves, such as those 

 of the Kelts 300 years before, and of the Goths 400 years 

 after, the Christian era, receded without leaving any 

 permanent traces behind them. Some, such as the 

 Romans, are still represented by the Dako-Rumanians of 

 the Danubian principalities and their southern kinsmen, 

 the Zinzars or Kutzo-Vlachs of the Pindus range and 

 Thessaly. Others, such as the Ugrian Bulgars, have 

 been absorbed or assimilated to the Slaves, intruders like 

 themselves, while others again have either resettled the 

 land, as, for instance, the Serbo-Croatians, or else, like 

 the Osmanli of Turki stock, have seized the political 

 control without making any serious attempts at colonisa- 

 tion. The result is a condition of things absolutely with- 

 out a parallel elsewhere — an utter chaos of races, languages, 

 religions, a clash of social interests and national aspira- 

 tions, which has long threatened the peace of the world, 

 and the means of reconciUng which the wisest heads have 

 hitherto failed to discover. 



But beneath and above all these strange vicissitudes 

 and endless complications the two relatively aboriginal 

 elements of the population still here and there hold their 

 ground. The Hellenes have doubtless been largely 

 Slavonised almost everywhere on the mainland,' although 



■ *' La Grece devint une Slavic, et I'idiome cencral fut une langue Slave " 

 (E. Reclus, i. p. 62). 



even here the old Dorians are still believed to survive in 

 the Zakonians of the Spartan hills and the Mainotes of 

 the Tasnarum peninsula. The northern branch, also, of 

 what has not inaptly been called the Thrako-Hellenic 

 family still predominates, and even retains a certain 

 vitality, in the Albanian highlands. Thracians, Paeonians, 

 Dardanians, Moesians, and all the other eastern and 

 northern members of the race have long been extinct as 

 independent nationalities ; but the Illyrian or western 

 branch still continues to be represented by the Shkipetars 

 in their original home, on the south-eastern shores of the 

 Adriatic. 



The term Albania, it is needless to say, possesses no 

 administrative significance, nor even any very strictly- 

 defined geographical limitations. It is purely an ethno- 

 graphic expression, though even in this sense no longer 

 quite conterminous with the people from whom it is 

 derived. In its widest extent Albania stretches from the 

 Montenegrin and Servian frontiers southwards to Greece, 

 and from the Pindus, Grammes, and Char Dagh ranges 

 westwards to the coast. Within this area are comprised 

 three nearly coincident physical and ethnical divisions, 

 for everything here seems to run in triads, so that the 

 more technical data necessary to understand a somewhat 

 intricate subject may be conveniently summed up in the 

 subjoined series of triplets : — 



I. Three Natural Divisions. — i. Upper Albania, 

 reaching as far south as the river Shkumbi, about 41° N. 

 lat., and mainly comprised in the Drin basin. 2. Central 

 Albania, between the Shkumbi and Voyussa rivers, 

 mainly in the Ergent basin. 3. Loiocr Albania, or 

 Epirtis^ thence to the present Greek frontier (Akarnania). 



II. Three Political Divisions. — The Turkish 

 vilayets of Isgodra {Skiitari), Monastir or Qosowa, and 

 Yanina, the two former stretching eastwards beyond the 

 actual limits of Albania proper, most of the third awarded 

 to Greece by the Berlin Conference, which has just con- 

 cluded its labours in connection with the settlement of 

 the new Turko-Greek frontier. 



III. Three Great Lakes. — Those of Skutari, Okhrida, 

 and Yanina, convenient landmarks, a curve described 

 through which from about Antivari to Prevesa, both on 

 the coast, will roughly mark the inland frontier line of 

 Albania proper. 



IV. Three Main Racial Elements.— i. The old 

 Thrako-IUyrian, now everywhere largely intermingled 

 with 2, The Slav (Serbo-Croatian branch) in the north, 

 and with 3, The Hellenic (Dorian branch) in the south. 



V. Three Collective Ethnical or National 

 Names. — i. Shkipctar, the most general national appel- 

 lative of the people, whence Shkiperia (in the Northern 

 dialect Sipenia) the country, and Shkipeia, the language ; 

 from root Shkip, Shkup = rock ; compare Greek, o-kottcXos- ; 

 Latin, scopiilus ; and Ptolemy's old Dardanian town of 

 Skupi. Hence Shkipetar = hillmen, highlanders, ac- 

 cording to the most accepted interpretation. 2. Albanian, 

 unknown, at least in this form, to the natives, yet of 

 respectable antiquity, and now mainly current in the west 

 of Europe and Greece. The word is usually referred to 

 the Keltic or Aryan root alb, alp = height, snowy crest, 

 and has been connected with Ptolemy's Albani, a small 

 tribe whose chief town was Albanopolis, north-west of 

 the Lychnitis Palus (Lake Okhrida). As a general name 

 it occurs first in the Byzantine writings of the eleventh 

 century under the two forms 'KK^avol and 'ApPavtrai,- 



» That \s/iiir€tpos, or " Mainland." so called no doubt originally by the 

 Greeks of the adjacent island of Korkyra (Corfu) 



" Kedrenus, Skylitzes, Anna Comnena. In Georg. Akropol. ("Annals," 

 c. 6S) occurs the expression "rh Tujy 'ApffayiTui' (SfOi. The forms Arberi 

 or Arbernia for the land, and Arbereshi for the people are even still current 

 amongst the Northern Albanians, and must at one time have been very 

 general, for the various Albanian colonies settled in South Italy since the 

 latter half of the fifteenth century even now call themselves Arbresh or 

 Arberesh, and their language Arbrishte or Arberlshte. In Greece also 

 'Apffavirta and 'Ap/SaciTTjs are current as equivalents of 'A\$avia and 

 ■AA/3oc((s. 



