Rose Wilder Lane...

I would not have this book considered too seriously. It is not an attempt to untangle one thread in the Balkan snarl; it is not a study of primitive peoples; it is not a contribution to the world’s knowledge, and I hope no one will read it to improve the mind. It should be read as the adventures in it were lived, with a gayly inquiring mind, a taste for strange peoples and unknown trails, and a delight in the unexpected. Here I give you only what I saw, felt, and most casually learned while adve

TRAILS OF THE MOUNTAINEERS—THE MAN OF IPEK KILLS HIS DONKEY—THE HOUSE OF THE BISHOP OF PULTIT—MARRIAGE BY THE LAW OF LEC—THE BLOOD FEUD BETWEEN SHALA AND SHOSHI. Darkness was creeping up the slopes like a rising flood from the valleys, and it had engulfed the trails long before we made the descent into the village of Gjoanni, which I may as well say at once is pronounced Zhwanee. Not that we were thinking about such far-away things as written words. Everything that makes our ordinary lives was a

THE STORY OF PIGEON AND LITTLE EAGLE—THE PREHISTORIC CITY OF POG, AND THE TALE OF THE GOLDEN IMAGE—THE GENDARMES SING OF POLITICS. I came back to full consciousness for an instant, stumbling up the stairs, and gathered that we were going to bed. By the torchlight my wrist watch said a quarter past two. Frances and Alex do not remember even that. Rexh awakened us at eight by shaking us, and we were rolled in blankets on the floor of the bishop’s room. Outside was the pouring sound of a steady rai

WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF MARKE GJONNI—WE HEAR THE VOICE OF AN OREAD—A GUARDIAN SPIRIT OF THE TRAILS. Concealed by the darkness, we lay back in our wet clothes on the wet rocks and shook with smothered laughter. How Albanian! While Perolli with a hundred honeyed words made excuses for the feebleness of foreign women, already weary with only sixteen miles of mountain climbing. He was still explaining when up the trail came the flare of a torch, and an Albanian boy of perhaps fourteen years appeared

THE UNEARTHLY MARRIAGE OF THE MAN OF IPEK—FIRST NIGHT IN A NATIVE ALBANIAN HOUSE. There was a moment of contemplative silence. Beyond the circle of firelight the goats still tore and worried the dried leaves from the oak branches. A woman came leisurely forward and put an iron pan on the coals. When it was hot she brought scraps of pork and laid them in it. Rexh, the little Mohammedan, turned his head so that he should not smell that unclean meat. Frances said to Perolli, in a ravenous voice, “H

IN THE HOUSE OF PADRE MARJAN—LULASH GIVES A WORD OF HONOR AND DISCUSSES MARRIAGE—THE STOLEN DAUGHTER OF SHALA. Padre Marjan sat with us, but did not eat, as it was a fast day. An apparently endless succession of dishes—soup, lamb, omelettes, pork chops, chicken—was brought in by Cheremi and served by Rexh in his red fez. Poor little Rexh! He ate nothing but a bit of corn bread; he said the pork chops had been broiled in the fireplace, and he feared that some of the fat had spattered into the coo

THE CHIEFS OF SHALA PROBATE A WILL—WE VISIT THE HOUSE OF LULASH—A JOURNEY TO UPPER THETHIS. I may say that such agitators will have a very bad time of it, as doubtless all agitators deserve to have, since all agitators always have had it. There was a conference that afternoon in the padre’s bedroom, and this time it was the padre who wanted the principle of private property established. A man had died and left a piece of land to the Church, and the padre wanted the land to build the school on. F

MASS IN THE CHURCH OF THETHIS—A MOUNTAIN CHIEF SEEKS A WIFE—DOWN THE VALLEY OF THE LUMI SHALA, WHILE THE DRANGOJT FIGHT THE DRAGON—HOW REXH CAME TO SCUTARI. The next morning was Sunday, and we were awakened by the church bell. It hung in a belfry over the padre’s kitchen, and the padre pulled the rope himself. Then tucking his brown robe about his bare ankles, he descended the broken, draughty stairs to the church, and we followed him through blasts of cold rain that the wind drove through holes

THE SONG OF THE LAST GREAT WAR WITH THE DRAGON—AN UNEXPECTED BANDIT—HOW AHMET, CHIEF OF THE MATI, WENT BY NIGHT TO VALONA—THE RAISING OF SCANDERBEG’s FLAG—AN ALBANIAN LOVE SONG. They made places for us, laid another handful of dry twigs on the fire, and rolled fresh cigarettes. The Lumi Shala was rising higher than they had ever known it to do, they said, and the Drin was overflowing in the Merdite country. And learning that we were from Scutari, they asked us what we knew of the Tirana governme

THE BACKWARD TRAIL—THE MAN OF SHALA HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR—THE BYRAKTOR OF SHOSHI HEARS THAT THE EARTH IS ROUND. We started down the bed of a waterfall, the guide and I; the bad going, the exhausting force of the current, my dizziness and breath-taking pains, made the first half mile a blur. When we came out on a cliff edge I sat down, and then for the first time I saw Rexh. He stood very gravely, watching me; the rain had melted the dye in his red fez and little streams of it ran down his round,

A NIGHT BY THE BYRAKTOR’S FIRE—THE BYRAKTOR CALLS A COUNCIL—REXH TO THE RESCUE—THE BYRAKTOR’S GENDARME TEARS A PONCHO—MOONLIGHT ON THE SCUTARI PLAIN. Then his grandmother made three beds, on three sides of the fire. She brought a two-inch-thick mat of woven straw and laid it on the floor; over it she spread a handsome blanket of goats’ hair dyed in stripes of magenta and purple; under one end of the mat she put a triangular piece of wood to serve as pillow, and when I lay down she tucked other b

IN WHICH IS RELATED WHAT MAY BE FOUND BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF SILENCE WHICH HIDES ALBANIA, ALSO HOW THE MEN OF DIBRA CAME WITH THEIR RIFLES TO TIRANA, AND HOW AHMET, THE HAWK, CHIEF OF THE MATI AND PRESENT PRIME MINISTER OF ALBANIA, SAVED THE BALKAN EQUILIBRIUM. For me, there has been a sequel to this tale of my first adventures in the Albanian mountains. And if I have transmitted, through the little clickings of my typewriter, something of the interest and charm those adventures had for me, perha