both the town and lake are hidden from sight by the ridge, the summit of which is crowned by a medieval castle. The houses on the southern side of the castle-hill have been mostly ruined in some of the late sieges of this unquiet capital of Illyrian Albania. Passing through this scene of desolation, the traveller reaches long lines of bazaars, clustering just below the castle, but only tenanted during the day; the real inhabited part of Scodra being scattered over the plain on the N. side of the castle-hill, and between it and the lake. This suburb (commonly called "the Gardens ") contains some good houses, surrounded with fruit-trees and stately chesnuts. The castle, in which the Pasha resides, commands a magnificent view: northward, the eye sweeps over the town and suburbs and the blue lake beyond, to the dark and jagged mountains of Montenegro; southward lie the plains of the Drin; westward the Adriatic; and eastward the ridges of the distant Pindus. Moreover, most interesting historical recollections are associated with this fortress, long the outpost of the Venetians and of the Ottomans in turn. In this part of Albania a large portion of the Christian population belongs to the Latin Church, and are called Mirdites. The river which flows out of the Lake of Scutari into the Adriatic is the Bojana. A little N. of its mouth is the town of Dulcigno, on the site of the ancient Olcinium.

ROUTE 39.

SCUTARI TO THE DALMATIAN FRONTIER

AND CATTARO.

Proceeding from Scutari to the frontier of Dalmatia 2 days are necessary, it being about 16 hours, and a rough road. At 9 hours from Scutari is the small town of Antivari, near the coast, in the midst of very fine scenery a khan upon the sea-shore is the usual halting place, leaving Antivari a little to the right. The road then continues along the sea-shore, and winds among very grand mountainous scenery, and reaches the frontier of the Austrian

territory in 4 hours: here, at a line of guard-houses, the traveller is stopped, and his passport examined, on which, as at all other Austrian frontiers, he must have got an Austrian minister's signature, or he cannot enter. He is then conducted 2 hours on to Castel Lastua, where there is a lazzaretto, small, but clean, and the people very civil and attentive. Except when some contagious malady is raging in Turkey, quarantine on this frontier of Austria is now entirely dispensed with, and the traveller may return from the East by this route without. any detention whatsoever.

The first town in Dalmatia is Budua, about 3 hours from Castel Lastua by land, but rather less in a boat. Budua is a very small town, strongly fortified by the Venetians. It stood a siege from the Turks in 1686. During the whole of the route from Scutari to Cattaro, the Montenegro mountains rise grandly on the right. The Montenegrines are of Slavonian race, a fragment of the Servia of the Middle Ages, and have never been really conquered by the Turks. They are governed by their Vladika, who formerly was bishop as well as prince. The population of Montenegro amounts to about 100,000, of which number 20,000 are fighting men. The last attempt made by the Turks to conquer them was in 1853. Their capital, Cettigne, is only 5 hours from Cattaro: no traveller should attempt to penetrate into Montenegro from the Turkish frontier; from Cattaro there is no difficulty. For a full account of this singular people and their country, see Sir Gardner Wilkinson's Dalmatia and Montenegro. (HANDBOOK OF TURKEY.)

Four hours, by a good road, brings the traveller from Budua to Catturo (HANDBOOK FOR SOUTHERN GERMANY); a small fortified town, situated in magnificent scenery at the foot of the Montenegro mountains, and at the extremity of the deep winding gulf called Bocche di Cattaro, the Rhizonic Gulf of antiquity. There is a small hotel here, and lodgings can easily be procured. Italian is very generally spoken in all the ports of Dalmatia.

The pitch-mines of Selinitza are only a few miles lower down the Viosa. The mineral pitch formation at this place is one of the most considerable that has been discovered, though inferior to that on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The beds of the mineral are diffused over a surface 4 miles in circumference.. The pitch comes out in various places on the declivity of the ravines, and is occasionally worked in such situations, though more frequently by shafts sunk down from the surface. The pitch is covered only by a loose deposit of calcareous earth and clay, &c. In order to descend the shaft, the traveller is placed in the noose of a rope, and let down by a windlass. The miners say, that the thickness of the bed of pitch amounts, in many places, to 70 or 80 feet. The compact mineral pitch, or asphaltum of Selinitza, has the usual characters of that substance in its greatest state of purity. The colour is nearly black, with a resinous lustre; the fracture is conchoidal; it is slightly brittle; the specific gravity 14 or 1 5. It becomes viscid, or nearly fluid, when heated, and burns with a flame. The property of the pitch-mines, as of all others in Turkey, is nominally vested in the Sultan. The machinery employed about the shafts of the mines is of the simplest description, consisting merely of ropes, windlasses, and wicker-baskets. The miners are paid according to the number of okes of the mineral which they may severally obtain. The carriage to Avlona is performed by horses, at the expense of 1 para per oke, or 1s.

There

per cwt. It seems certain that the ancients were acquainted with this deposit of pitch. Strabo speaks of a place called Nymphæum, in the country of the Apolloniotes, where there was a rock yielding fire, from below which issued fountains of asphaltum. can be little doubt that the Nymphæum of Strabo was the pitch formation on the banks of the Viosa; an opinion confirmed by the phenomena which occur on the spot. In two or three spots in the vicinity of the pitch-mines, Dr. Holland found an inflammable gas issuing from the ground, which easily took fire, and spread a flame of some extent over the surface. A small space of ground, 15 or 20 yards in circumference, showed a surface denuded of vegetation, and covered with stones and earth, and apparently decomposed by sulphureous vapours. The surface was very sensibly heated: on one part of it a streamlet of water issued from the ground, forming in its egress a little basin, through which arose a number of air-bubbles. This gas instantly inflames on the application of a light, and burns with great vividness. The gas frequently ignites from natural causes, especially after heavy rains; and continues burning for several weeks. The wretched village of Selinitza is entirely inhabited by the workmen of the mines.

Proceeding from Selinitza to Avlona, the traveller crosses the hills on which are the pitch-mines, and traversing the valley of the river which comes from Delvino, he crosses the Gypsum hills.

Avlona (the accusative of Aulon, Italicè Valona) is beautifully situated on its gulf, which is so environed with hills, that it has the appearance of a great lake, the southern boundary of which is formed by the steep and rugged ascent of the Acroceraunian mountains. The town is about 1 mile from the sea, and has 8 or 10 minarets. On the shore is a tolerable wharf, with an apology for a fort in the shape of a square enclosure of ruinous walls, with towers and a few cannon. The town occupies a hollow, thickly grown with olive-trees, among which are gardens of herbs mixed with cypresses,

some

poplars, and fruit trees. Beyond it, the rugged hills are covered with olives, and N. extends a woody plain, forming a level shore, except at the north entrance of the gulf, where there are some low white cliffs, separated from the plain by a lagoon, containing saltworks, and a fishery. Avlona has a handsome street, more in the Italian than the Turkish style of architecture. Avlona, or Aulon, in ancient times, derived importance from the safety of its roadstead

"Avlóna lies in a recess or bay of the mountains, which here leave a level space of 2 miles or more between their base and the sea. The town is built for the most part at the foot of a crescent of rock, but the sides are dotted with houses; and at the two horns of this natural amphitheatre stand many conspicuous Dervish tombs of pretty architecture, surrounded by groves of cypress. From hence the eye looks down on Avlona in its garden of plane and olive-trees, its principal buildings, the fine palace of its late Bey, and some good mosques, which stand out in beautiful relief from the wide salt plain and gulf beyond. The gulf, shut in on one side by the long point of mountain called La Linguetta (Italicè, in Greek Glossa), and on the other by the island of Sazona, has exactly the appearance of a lake; so that the effect of the whole picture is most complete and charming."-Lear.

Avlona, and the other towns and villages in this part of Albania, suffered severely from a great earthquake in the autumn of 1851. The ancient town of Aulon stood on the same site as its modern namesake. Aulon (Avλ), a hollow between hills, was an appellation given to many such districts in Greece and Italy, and to places situated in them.

the name of its principal town, long maintained, like the mountaineers of Maina in the Peloponnesus, a wild and savage independence; and their manners and social state are still, in many respects, distinct from those of the neighbouring districts. The traveller should procure at Avlona the assistance of a native Khimariot guide, in addition to his other attendants. "Let a painter visit Acroceraunia: until he does so, he will not be aware of the grandest phases of savage yet classical picturesqueness-whether Illyrian or Epirote -men or mountains; but let him go with a good guide, or he may not come back again.". Lear. That part of Lear's Journals in Albania which refers to Khimára will be found peculiarly interesting.

On leaving Avlóna, the traveller passes some ruined buildings by the sea-side and an extensive olive-ground, and then ascends by a precipitous path to the village of Kanina, which occupies the site of the ancient Bullis maritima, the inland town of that name having stood near Graditsa. The ruinous fort of Kanina occupies the highest point of the hill, and commands a glorious prospect over the Adriatic beyond Avlóna, its bay, the long headland or tongue of Glossa, or Linguetta, and the island of Sâzona, while, inland, the eye ranges over vast ridges of nountains, with an infinity of gorges, woods, and torrents.

Hence the traveller rides down the southern side of the hill of Kanina, and regains the shore, where " a spring of pure and icy fresh water gushes from the foot of a rock into the sea, and offers a natural halting-place for all who travel between Khimára and Avlóna." Mr. Lear remarks that there are many similar coves on the coast east of Plymouth; a home association which will be relished among the "infames scopulos, Acroceraunia." From this fountain it is 4 long hours to Dradziátes, the first Khimariot village. On the road are passed, near the village of Ericho, some remains of the ancient Oricum. The pathway leads along the side of the sea, but generally far above the blue water. Anything more

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frightful than these (so-called) paths along the iron rocks of Acroceraunia it is not easy to imagine: as if to baffle invaders, the edges along which we went slowly, now wound inward, skirting ravines full of lentisk and arbutus, now projected over the bald sides of precipices, so that, at certain unexpected angles, the rider's outer leg hung sheer over the deep sea below. To the first of these surprising bits of horror-samples of the highways of Khimára I had come all unknowingly, my horse turning round a sharp rocky point, and proceeding leisurely thence down a kind of bad staircase, without balustrades. I declined, however, trying a second similar pass on his back, and, at the first spot where there was safe footing, dismounted. Meanwhile the Khimáriot, who ever and anon kept shouting Kaxos Spóμos, Signore! (a bad road, Sir!) fired off his pistol at intervals, partly, as he said, from 'allegria' (mirth), and partly to prevent any one meeting us in this dire and narrow way. When we had overcome the last of the Kakos dromos, lo! a beautiful scene opened at the narrow end of the gulf, which lay like a still and dark lake below the high wall of the Khimára territory. Dradziades, the door, as it were, of Acroceraunia, stands on a height immediately in front, while the majestic snowy peak of Tschika (the lofty point so conspicuous from Corfu, and on the southern side of which stand the real Khimáriot villages) towers over all the scene, than which one more sublime, or more shut out from the world, I do not recollect often to have noticed."-- Lear.

Descending to the shore, the path leads across the sands to the end of the gulf, whence it turns off to the left, and gradually ascends to Dradziádes. Presently it reaches the oak-clad hills immediately below the village, where narrow winding paths lead upward among great rocks and spreading trees worthy of Salvator Rosa. The ferocity of the dogs-descendants of the famous Molossian breed-exceeds in Khimára even what is experienced elsewhere in Albania and Greece; and the traveller must be on his guard against their at

tacks when approaching houses or sheepfolds. In other respects he will be hospitably received among the Acroceraunian mountains, and the accommodation which he will find in the houses of the mountaineers is not inferior to that found elsewhere in these countries. No one, of course, visits this part of the world for food, cleanliness, or sleep. It will always be more correct to say, in the old English phrase, “ We lay in such a place," rather than "We slept there," for vermin of all kinds too often ensure what Milton calls " sober certainty of waking bliss." Lear shrewdly observes,-" The plan of Khimariot hospitality is this: the guest buys a fowl or two, and his hosts cook it, and help him to eat it." Dradziádes is about 7 hours from Avlona, and it had better be made the resting-place for the first night. Vune may be reached the second evening, and Khimára is from thence only half a day's journey.

a

Mr.

After leaving Dradziádes the path proceeds towards Dukádhes, the next village, first through a tract of low wood, and then upwards by a gorge or pass, down which the wind often rushes with frightful force. "At the highest part of the pass a most singular scene opens. The spectator seems on the edge of a high wall, from the brink of which giddy elevation he looks down into a fearfully profound basin, at the roots of the mountain. Above its eastern and southern enclosures rises the giant snow-clad Tschika in all his immensity, while, at his very feet, in a deep, dark green pit of wood and garden, lies the town or village of Dukadhes, its houses scattered like milk-white dice along the banks of a wide torrent.......Shut out by iron walls of mountain, surrounded by sternest features of savage scenery, rock and chasm, precipice and torrent, a more fearful prospect, and more chilling to the very blood, I never beheld-so gloomy and severe-so unredeemed by any beauty or cheerfulness."-Lear. The path descends to Dukadhes from the summit of the pass, over a succession of rugged steeps.

From Dukadhes a rude track leads across the valley, ascending gradually,