Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

264 THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. and two saddle mules. The ' kirijee '-a tall young fellow in a fustanella, with a very large sheath-knife as long as a Roman sword-strode alongside and took rides on top of the pack now and again. Loading up and farewells took some time, but at last we were off into the heart of the mountains, away over great loose stones, through wildly magnificent scenery, barren and lifeless, like the bones of a dead world; then over the pass and along a hoofwide track high along the mountain-side. Down far, far below lay the valley of the Viosa, green and fertile,' all a-blowing and a-growing,' and the heights beyond were fiercely blue. The leap from winter and the wilderness to spring and colour was dazzlingly sudden. Had I been a poet I should have written a verse about it. The sunshine warmed the heart of the pack-mule; he sang aloud, leapt with all four feet at once off the ground, wagged his tail, lashed out freely, and played like a lamb upon the giddy brink. The descent was far too abrupt for riding. We scrambled down somehow, and got to the bottom in an hour. Halfway down, in a copse, was a tiny stone chapel, now disused, as all the neighbouring tiny villages have turned Moslem. I was told, however, that it was miraculously protected, and no one dared cut wood near it. This was evidently true, for the trees were the largest in the neighbourhood. The villages scattered about the mountain's foot were mere groups of ten or twenty cottages, but all stone, and solidly built.
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About this Item

Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 264
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001
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https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bosnia/ans3900.0001.001/271

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 1, 2025.
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