366

MSS. HISTORY OF DRINOPOLIS.

beautiful children become a victim to the despot's lust within the walls of his accursed harem!

Soon after our return, a person was introduced who had brought, at my request, a paper from the Bishop of Argyro-Castro, containing the number of villages and inhabitants in the valley of the Druno. As I understood the bearer had taken the trouble to copy out this document for my use, I presented him with a small pecuniary remuneration he showed great good-nature in accepting it; for I found, to my utter confusion, that I had been feeing one of the most dignified canons of the church. I had not made such a mistake since the time when I gave a pair of English razors to the old dragoman at Tripolitza, who prided himself upon the longest beard in the Morea, a beard which steel had never touched since it first sprouted from his chin, and which he nourished with a more than parental attachment. Beside the statistical paper, the canon gave me a curious history of the settlement of Argyro-Castro, or rather of Drinopolis, written in excellent Romaic, which refers its foundation to Theseus, king of Athens, and contains numberless other inconsistencies and absurdities.

CHAPTER XII.

APRIL 2d.-Signore Nicolo being still indisposed, we left him, and set out in a northerly direction along the western side of the valley. We passed, at some distance on our right, the fortress of Schindriada, crowning the summit of an abrupt eminence: it was built by the vizir about nine years before the surrender of Argyro-Castro, to annoy his enemies and protect that line of country through which he was obliged frequently to pass. In one hour and a half we came to a deep fountain, by the road-side, called Viroua, where the water rises, as it were, out of a profound crater, curling at the surface into broad eddies: it then flows precipitously over a steep rock and forms at once a river. In about half an hour more we turned suddenly to the left, through an opening in the mountain

VISIT TO THE RUINS OF GARDIKI.

368 barrier, down which a torrent from the melted snow, flowing rapidly towards the plain, made it difficult for our horses to keep their legs: the ruins of many villages on all sides scathed by the flames of war, testified the cruel mode of warfare practised by the Albanian soldiery. We toiled for more than an hour up this wild and rugged glen, when the mountains, suddenly taking on each side a bold sweep, formed a perfect amphitheatre, and displayed to view the ruins of Gardiki, spread over the sides and summit of a conical hill which rises in the centre of its vast area high above this mountainous enclosure appeared the huge summits of Acroceraunia, whose wintry snows, now melting, allowed the spiry fir here and there to peep out from beneath its resplendent mantle: few cities could boast of so superb a site. Near the foot of the hill we passed a large farm-house which once served as an outpost to the garrison: the doors and walls, pierced with a thousand bullets, testified the sharp conflicts it had lately sustained in the plain beyond we observed a small village peopled by Suliots, who had been collected on this spot by the pasha's orders; it was thought he meditated to take some signal vengeance upon these unfortunate victims when he had got as many as possible within his grasp.

Having crossed a deep ravine, which defended the city towards the south and east, we ascended its steep hill by a winding narrow path which but a short time before had led Ali's troops to victory. Upon a detached eminence to the right stood a small citadel, whose ruined walls presented nothing worthy of notice: after slightly inspecting them, we entered at once into the mournful skeleton of Gardiki,

a peopled city made a desert place," where no living beings disturbed the solitude, but serpents, owls, and bats. A chilling kind of sensation, like the fascination of some

VISIT TO THE RUINS OF GARDIKI.

369

deadly spell, benumbs the senses, and almost stops the respiration of him who treads, as it were, upon the prostrate corpse of a great city, just abandoned by the animating spirit. The feeling is very different from that which he experiences amidst the fine ruins of antiquity, whose aspect, mellowed down by time and unconnected with any terrible convulsion, inspires only pleasing melancholy, or animating reflections: but here the frightful contrast of a recent dreadful overthrow appals him; and while the deep silence is broken only by the breeze sighing in the ruins and the funereal cypresses which here and there wave over them, he almost expects to meet a spectre at every step.

Amidst these monuments of destruction we found our progress often interrupted by vast masses; nor after an hour's ramble did we discover one habitation which had not suffered in the work of demolition: even the tombs were razed, and the very mosques themselves had not escaped profanation; so duly had the vengeance of an implacable foe been executed : one minaret alone peered out amidst surrounding fragments, to the top of which we ascended, that we might contemplate in its whole extent this melancholy scene. From hence we observed a solitary dervish stealing gently from the covert of some ruins at a distance: probably the poor man had come, in spite of Ali's dire anathema, to live and die amid the relics of this once populous city, to weep over the memory of former days, of friends departed, and connexions broken. Yet the heart of him who had thus rudely torn asunder all the bands of social life, gloried in the dreadful deed, the memory of which, instead of festering like a canker in his bosom, seemed rather a source of joy and exultation.

In our return down the fiumara we marked with sur2 A

VOL. II.

prise the immense quantity of sand and pebbles which a wintry torrent in these mountainous countries will carry into the plain, overwhelming many acres of fine land at its mouth with the most unfruitful materials.

d' infeconda arena

Semina i prati e le campagne amene.

Opposite, in the plain, we observed the deserted han of Valiare, whose walls enclose the mouldering bones of the Gardikiotes, that warlike tribe, which fell not on the battle field, where the shout of rushing squadrons might have sounded their requiem; but like sheep penned up for slaughter, and whose death-song was in the screams of Epirotic vultures that scented from afar their blood. The door was nailed up, and over it an inscription openly testified the dreadful deed, declaring that a similar punishment awaited the wretch who should dare to offer dishonour to the family of Ali.

At about eleven miles from Argyro-Castro, and nine from Tepeleni, the great plain contracts itself into a narrow valley, where a good han appears, near a lofty bridge of a single arch, thrown across the Druno. Soon afterwards this valley becomes a chasm, compressing the bed of the river into a very narrow compass between its parallel ridges of mountains. At the distance of a mile from Tepeleni we passed that magnificent defile anciently called the Fauces Antigoneæ, where Philip was attacked by the Consul Flaminius, and where the rapid Voïussa, the Eas or Aöus of antiquity,* receives the tributary stream of the Druno between the opposite heights of Asnaus and Æropus.

* Flumen Aóus a quibusdam Æas appellatum. Plin. N. H. lib. iii. c. 23. It flows from seven fountains on Mount Pindus, beneath the town of