LAND AND SKATER 
July 10, 1915. 
A BALKAN INTERLUDE. 
By R. A. Scott- James. 
ELEVEN years ago ! It s«ems to me only yesterday 
that my party came clattering into the tumble- 
down town of Ochrida on that burning August 
day — my dragoman and I, with the pock-marked 
Commissary of Police and the escort of songful 
'Albanian gendarmes. All day we had been toiling across 
mountain ridges, down precipitous valleys, past burnt and 
ruined villages, and from far off we had seen the great lake 
of Ochrida shining blue in the distance. After much travel- 
ling we had reached this ancient town, with its narrow, 
cobbled streets and dun-coloured bouses, and heard the wel- 
come splash of the little waves. 
We passed through tlie streets to the Bulgarian house 
where I was to lodge, and the fezzed inhabit-ants gazed 
curiously at the travellers. I was received by a broad- 
browed Bulgarian dame, with hair neatly arrayed in a long, 
dark plait, and by the alert, emphatic youth, her son; and 
was shown into the guest-chamber, a sort of drawing-room, 
where later a mattress and embroidered coverlet were laid on 
the ground for a bed. 
Here I received the smart little Italian officer who re- 
presented the foreign gendarmerie sen-ice in Ochrida. I 
dined with the family in the bare outer hall, the women 
standing whilst the men ate. In the morning I was taken to 
see the Bulgarian Bishop, the fiery Metropolitan who 
breathed out indignation at the fate of compatriots; and the 
Greek barber, a t-alkative man who had been a gentleman's 
valet in England and cherished a picture of Queen Victoria 
and her consort. And I went up the steep hill to the west 
of the town to see the ruins of the castle and the view far 
out across the lak^ 
I lingered amohg these hoary remains, with this eastern 
town straggling down the hill below me, on my left the 
desolated land of Turkey, on my right the dark mountains 
of Albania, and away to the south, beyond the great lake, 
the land still inhabited by Greeks. It seemed to me that 
the whole of history lay stretched out in panorama before me. 
It was not far away that Themistocles, in exile, sought 
sanctuary at the house of Admetus, the Molossian king. 
The town below was once ruled by Alexander the Great. 
The castle takes us back to the great days of Scanderbeg and 
Marco. Here the Bulgarians came, a conquering horde. 
Here came the Serbians, when their power rivalled that of 
the Eastern Empire. Here at last came the ruinous Turks, 
and only a few months ago they had added one more horror 
to the tale, suppressing an abortive insurrection with fire, 
murder, and rape; and the villages all around, as I had seen 
them, were roofless, inhabited by destitute old men, women, 
and children. 
To me then, eleven years ago, it seemed that all that 
history could do had already been wrought upon this seared 
and time-hardened region. It was hopeless and beautiful. 
Upon the ruins the peace of solitude had settled, and civi- 
lisation and energy were infinitely remote. The vast lake, 
stretching beyond vision to the south, its deep blue contrast- 
ing so serenely with the blackness of the surrounding moun- 
tains, held in its depths all the extinct life of centuries. Here, 
surely, history had ended. 
And yet, as I see now, history was ju.st beginning again 
in that seemingly remote place. An epoch-making revolu- 
tion was inaugurated there, when Niazi Bey raised the stan- 
dard of the Young Turks at Resna and Ochrida. In a 
second war it was finally liberated from the Turks. In a 
third it cam« definitely under the rule of Serbia. In a 
fourth, at this moment, it is one of the main bases from 
which the Serbs are feeding the troops which are operating in 
Albania. In those eleven years it has been the navel of 
European history. From the m.ountains which enclose that 
lake like the sides of a deep bowl the ball of the world's 
destiny has been set rolling. Thence started the Younc 
Turkish Revolution, which in turn started two Ballcan wars" 
and from these began the European War. Was not the 
first step taken when Austria said to Serbia: "Your terri- 
tory shall go west as far as Ochrida, and no further ? " But 
Serbia has gone furtJier. 
For me, then, it was a land promising little for the 
future, pregnant only with memories of the past, and beauti- 
ful in its desolation and quiet. In the early afternoon a 
strange craft, a tchun as it is called, was moored just outside 
.he house where I lodged. From primitive times, perhaps 
thousands of years ago, boats such as this have plied on Lako 
Ochrida, Ifc waa a roughly-hewn, punt-shaped vessel, with 
deep sides, and its prow rose high above the water like that 
of an ancient galleon. The stern was low. Across the bul- 
warks, amidships, was placed a square, railed-in platform, 
projecting over the water on each side. High up in the 
prow sat three oarsmen, on benches one below the other like 
steps, with long oars all on the stroke side of the boat. Low 
in the stern sat an aged man with an oar as rudder, ready 
to counteract with the backward movement of his tiller the 
one-sided work of the rowers. 
Nikola, my young host, and Alexandre, my Bulgarian 
dragoman, conducted me to the platform, and there, with 
rugs to lie upon, and my luggage for pillows, we stretched 
ourselves at ease, and the boat pushed away from its mooring. 
The town, tumbling as it seemed from the hill right into the 
water, receded. The women, washing their linen from their 
house doors, made a fringe of bright colours between the blue 
lake and the yellow, white, and green of the houses, the 
minarets and the trees. The water lay smooth as glass. 
The sun poured sub-tropical rays upon our heads. To the 
west lay the high, steep mountains of Albania; to the east 
the equally precipitate mountain ridge which separated us 
from Lake Presba. To the south the lake lost itself among 
the distant heights beneath which, twenty miles off, lay the 
Greek monastery of Sveti Naoum, our destination. 
The men in the prow worked till they sweated, but so 
awkwardly disposed were the oars that progress was slow. 
We moved far out into the middle of the lake, proceeding 
southwards. On the land we could see no signs of habita- 
tions; on the lake there was no vessel but our own. A flock 
of great cranes flew across our track, their legs floating behind 
them, like ships of the air. In mid-water the men stopped 
suddenly from their labours, and rested on their oars. The 
youth, who sat highest in the prow, a Greek, tore off his vest 
and plunged unexpectedly into the water. The man next 
to him, a Serbian, followed suit, and with shouts of pleasure 
the two hoisted themselves in at the stern, their bare legs and 
bodies glistening. There was an outburst of talk and anima- 
tion before the vessel resumed its course. The falling sun 
threw out a red blaze across the Albanian sky, and shed a 
mist of purple over the mountains, and we saw the " wine- 
dark deep " of Homer in the waters of the lake. The even- 
ing breeze came down quite suddenly. Little short, sharp 
waves tossed the tchun up and down, and as suddenly the 
surface became calm again. 
We were nearing the monastery. It rose, an ancient, 
massive pile of white and black, almost sheer above the 
southern margin. As we approached a great bell tolled, and 
its deep tones sounded across the lake and were echoed from 
the hills. It was the signal to announce the arrival of 
strangers. Down the hillside path hurried the dependants 
of the monastery, and the Abbot himself, with high black 
hat and long robes, shook us by the hand and made us 
welcome. 
He conducted me through the great main gate of the 
monastery into the wide courtyard in the middle of which 
stood the little Byzantine chapel, through a great corridor 
and hall to the guest chamber. There I was regaled with 
rakia and tobacco, and the Abbot, with his Socratic face, 
genial, courteous, and wise, discoursed to me about the great 
estates of the monastery, less fruitful than of old owing to 
the policy of the Turks. And when he had introduced 
to me another visitor, a Greek, and invited me to choose 
the menu for the evening meal, he took me out to see the 
kitchen, where cooks were attending to great cauldrons sim- 
mering over fires, to the buttery, and to a cool chamber where 
hundreds of cheeses were stored. He showed me the chapel, 
with its quaint, richly-coloured frescoes, and its Greek inscrip- 
tions, and led me to an open place high up above the lake 
with an expanse of water and mountain stretching out into 
the distance, and left me there till darkness had fallen. 
And that was eleven years ago. All was very peaceful, 
and utterly removed, as it seemed, from the noise of the 
world. And yet even then, just behind those dark moun- 
tains, discontent was simmering; and from further behind 
Governments were stretching out eager and avaricious hands; 
and from still further behind, the Pov/ers of Europe were 
watching. For such solitudes as this, for such Oriental back- 
worlds, civilisation was waiting. 
Frintcd by the Vic-roaiA House PrintingT^T^Ltd., Tudor Street, Whitefriars, London, E.G. 
