THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



477 



the exercise of power, but abject and harmless 

 in defeat. There is no more cruel master; 

 there is none more submissive when subdued. 



The Ottoman administration, always con- 

 suming, never producing, but repressive of pro- 

 duction, has blasted every people it controlled. 

 Even the Turks themselves, impoverished and 

 oppressed, diminish in numbers. The govern- 

 ment, based solely on force, has always ruth- 

 lessly employed any means to prolong its ex- 

 istence. It has shrunk from no enormity of 

 massacre or extermination. Hundreds of years 

 ago it adopted the color of blood for its flag, 

 and a formal title of the Sultan is "Hounkiar," 

 or the Slayer of Men. 



THE ALBANIANS * 



The Albanians occupy a territory east of the 

 Adriatic, roughly corresponding to ancient 

 Epirus and southern Illyricum. Their origin 

 and language present many difficulties. Pro- 

 fessor Ripley believes they are "indigenous to 

 their country." Dr. Deniker calls them "a sepa- 

 rate Adriatic or Dinaric race." It is reasona- 

 ble to regard them as the most ancient people 

 of southeastern Europe, descendants of the 

 Pelasgi. 



Their language is supposed to be the sole 

 survivor of the primitive Thraco-Illyrian group. 

 Its vocabulary is encumbered with many Greek, 

 Latin, Italian, Slavic, and Turkish words, but 

 the grammar is its own. 



The Albanians show remarkable racial te- 

 nacity. Albanian communities in Italy and 

 Sicily, dating from the fifteenth century and 

 having a population of over 200,000, have fused 

 little with the Italians, and in marked degree 

 retain their own language and customs. So to 

 less extent do 200,000 Albanians domesticated 

 in Greece. 



Disdain of foreigners and pride of ancestry, 

 though ignorant of what that ancestry is, keep 

 them apart. This pride and their mountain life 

 have fostered a passionate love of independ- 

 ence. Grote describes them as "poor, rapacious, 

 fierce, and formidable in battle," but they have 

 many virtues, are faithful, generous, and hos- 

 pitable. Nowhere is a woman safer than in 

 their wild mountains. 



Known by foreigners as Albanians, people 

 of the snow-land, they call themselves skipe- 

 tari, or mountaineers. At home and abroad 

 they number about 1,500,000. Of their numer- 

 ous tribes, the Catholic Mirdites, who allow no 

 Moslem in their vicinity, are the most impor- 

 tant and powerful. 



The river Shkumbi, along which may still be 

 traced the Roman Egnatian Way, separates the 

 Christian Albanians into two groups, north- 

 ward, the Roman Catholic Ghegs ; southward, 

 the Greek Orthodox Toscs. The former use 

 the Latin alphabet, the latter the Greek alpha- 



* See also, in National Geographic Maga- 

 zine, "The Albanians," by Theron J. Damon 

 (November, 1912) ; "Recent Observations in 

 Albania," by Brig. Gen. George P. Scriven 

 (August, 1918). 



bet. They have no accepted alphabet of their 

 own, though many attempts, some of them 

 curious, have been made to supply the lack. At 

 least half the Albanians are Moslems, result of 

 conquest, who will gradually return to their 

 former Christian faith or emigrate. 



George Castriota, or Scanderbeg, who de- 

 feated the Turks continuously through twenty 

 years, is their national hero. Marco Bozzaris, 

 of whom Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote, "At mid- 

 night in his guarded tent," was also an Alba- 

 nian. So was Mahomet Ali Pasha, the fore- 

 most Moslem figure of the nineteenth century. 



European statecraft never showed itself more 

 humorous than when, in 1913, it designated the 

 timorous Prince of Weid to be king of the 

 Albanians. 



THE GREEKS * 



A map of Greek settlements, as they existed 

 in the sixth century before the Christian era, 

 would serve as a map of the lands they inhabit 

 today. Their colonists in southern France and 

 southern Italy have merged in the modern 

 Frenchman and Italian. Otherwise, the Greece 

 of five hundred years before Christ and the 

 Greece of nineteen hundred and eighteen years 

 after Christ coincide. 



Torrents of invasion have flooded Greece — 

 Goths, Venetians, Lombards, French, Germans, 

 Ottomans, Albanians, Vlachs, many of whom 

 have permanently remained. Constantine Por- 

 phyrogenitus wrote, in the tenth century, "All 

 Greece has become Slav." Henri de Valen- 

 ciennes, in the thirteenth century, thought 

 Greece had become French. Fallmerayer, in 

 the nineteenth century, demonstrated that the 

 Greeks have "hardly a drop of true Greek 

 blood in their veins." 



A subject people since their conquest by the 

 Romans, through three centuries serfs of west- 

 ern Europe, the next three centuries slaves to 

 Turks, the Greeks have known freedom only 

 since those seven years of horror which we 

 call the Greek Revolution (1821-8). 



Yet their civilization was able to permeate 

 the Eastern Roman Empire, so that after the 

 seventh century the latter is called the Greek 

 or Byzantine. Until early in the nineteenth 

 century all Turkish Christian subjects in the 

 peninsula were considered Greeks. Their im- 

 perishable language, daily heard in the ritual 

 of their Church, was and is spoken, in however 

 debased and corrupt a form, by Greeks every- 

 where. 



Yet despite decimation and an almost unlim- 

 ited intermingling of foreign elements, the 

 Greek remains the same in physical features, 

 manner of life and occupation, and personal 

 characteristics and tastes. His face is still 



* See also, in National Geographic Maga- 

 zine, "Greece and Montenegro" (March, 1913), 

 and "Greece of Today," by U. S. Senator 

 George Higgins Moses (October, 1915), and 

 <'Saloniki," by H. G. Dwight (September, 

 1916). 



