Travels in the Slavonic provinces of Turkey-in-Europe, / By Sebright, Georgina Mary Muir (Mackenzie),

CHAPTER XXVI.
FROM IPEK TO DÉTCHANI.

A RED-TUNICKED Arnaout, with his Bashi-bazouks; an uzbashi of nizam, with six troopers carrying flags; mounted citizens, among whom we recognised the Latin elder and a Serb pope; these formed our escort out of Ipek. We drew up before the Mahommedan girls' school. A door in the garden wall was opened by its turbaned keeper, and as we entered it each of us was seized by a hodgia (teacher), more like a harpy. We were embraced, dragged, carried through the court into the house, and finally deposited on a low divan in the corner of a small close room stuffed with women. The harpies began tearing off our riding things and fanning us: the first was enormously fat and red-faced; the second we forget; but the third, haggard and vulturebeaked, was coifed with a pale-green veil. The noise they made was stunning; and among their outcries we distinguished, "Are you Mahommedans? are you Mahommedans?" At first, not feeling sure of consequences, we took no notice of this query; but, rendered desperate by their civilities, at last cried out, "No; we are Christians." These words acted like a spell. The three hodgias fell back, the crowd closed on them, even the voices underwent a lull; we, profiting by this result, contemplated the tenants of the school-room.

Except a few puzzled-looking children, all were grown up, and many past their prime, evidently an assembly of the Arnaout ladies of Ipek. Among the motley garments we recognised the black pelisse and mask-like face of a woman from Vuchitern. Presently we asked, in Serbian, if they would kindly show us their books. Thereupon the harpies-in-chief reappeared. "What did we want? Coffee was coming." Suddenly a voice sounded behind us, and we perceived outside the low window a woman holding a baby, who looked into the room over our shoulders. She spoke Serbian, and said, "You wish them to read, do you not?" Then, lifting up her voice, she shouted into the room, "They want you to teach—teach, I say." General hubbub, every one with a different outcry. "What do you want?" "Books," "Coffee," "Teach." At this juncture the fat hodgia leant over us, and, with hospitable intent to make our seat more comfortable, began clawing up the fusty cushions behind us, and clapping them. Stifled, we sprang to our feet, and as courteously as the crisis permitted, dived and waded through the squatting forms. At the door we met the coffee, but as it had been brewed since the discovery: of our ghiaourism, we were not tempted to do more than put our lips to it. The turbaned keeper laughed good-naturedly at our suffering aspect, and hastened to undo the garden entrance. Once without, the red-coated Arnaout and the uzbashi, the nizam, the Serbs, and the Latins—all appeared saints and angels after the crew within the school.

The patriarchate of Ipek and the monastery of Víssoko Détchani are divided by a distance of three hours, and each lies at the point where a stream called BistritzaThe name Bistritza signifies clear, bright, glancing, and is a common denomination for little rivers in Slavonic countries. In this neighbourhood there are three Bistritzas, tributaries of the Drina.

flows from the mountain gorges into the plain. The town of Ipek occupies an angle between the hills Peklen and Kopaonik; the former heading the chain that runs to Mitrovic, and the latter that which joins the Albanian Koronitza. From this angle to the foot of the Shaar Plánina stretches the fertile plain of Metóchia, divided from that of Kóssovo by a furrow of low hills, marked at its south-west corner by Prizren, on the north-west by Ipek and Détchani.

Our way lay along the base of the Kopaonik, a wooded range shooting up into high fantastic crags, now peaked as an obelisk, now crenelated like the battlements of a castle. Beneath the grey cliff the mountain forest showed an emerald verdure these lands but seldom see; from the forest downwards stretched fields and pastures dotted with groves and fragrant with green hay. It was evening, and this landscape, beautiful with the varied and luxuriant beauty of the west, was bathed in the halo of an eastern sunset.

Nor did the picture lack due foreground; only instead of patient oxen and labourers wending home, we had the flags of cavalry and their prancing steeds, the gold and crimson tunic and long gun of the Arnaout. These warlike ensigns called up to our fancy a cavalcade which some five hundred years ago may have been seen wending its way along the road between Détchani and Ipek. We pictured to ourselves King Urosh returning at eventide from viewing the progress of that fair "Zadūshbina" whose name has come down to posterity interwoven with his own. The aspect of the royal saint is weary and mild, as of a much-tried man near death; verily he was a gentle and bounteous king, and his vague and venerated image is dear to his people yet. But in his train ride those broad-shouldered, eagle-eyed Vlastela whose type still lives in the Bay of Bosnia and in the free-descended

Montenegrīne. Goodly must they have been, those nobles of Serbia, in stately manliness, in bearing and array, for all the pomp of oriential conquerors has not effaced them from the popular eye, and centuries of foreign rule have not reduced their people to borrow a term for "lordliness" from the conqueror's tongue.Gospodstvo, lordliness, and, by implication, stateliness, is taken from the Serbian gospod, lord. The term plemenit, i.e., noble in the sense of high-born, is from the Serbian plémé, family. We find these native words, with others denoting authority, high office, splendour, and every branch and attribute of administration, in parts of Serbia where every rich and powerful man is, or for centuries was, a Turk. They have lived in the popular songs.

We have already alluded to the fact, that the plain of Metóchia, lying as it did in old time between the great monasteries of Ipek, Détchani, and Prizren, received its name as being mostly church-land (μετόχια). Since the emigration of the Serb inhabitants, and the descent of the Arnaouts from the hills, the latter have called it from their old home "Dukadjin." These two names express the change that has come over this on e favoured region. Of all the haunts where the cowardly brigand firing from his ambush plunders the industrious and defenceless, none is now more notorious than the northern corner of Dukadjin; and here the central authority of the Porte cannot even keep up that show of order which elsewhere whitens the sepulchre of freedom. For it is not only the rayah, the peasant the merchant, and the traveller whose life and property are in peril; the lieutenants of the Sultan, escorted by the Sultan's nizam, should they presume to raise taxes from Mussulmans, are shot down in open day. Not far from the road we were now traversing, according to one version of the story, the luckless kaïmakam met his fate. Passing from one village to another in his progress to raise the revenue, he was shot from behind a hedge, and, well

knowing the character of his assailants, would not allow his soldiers to enter the bushes in pursuit. Though not killed, as was at first reported, he was severely wounded; to Ipek he dared not return, and to Prizren he had to be conveyed in a litter.

Such being the associations of our road, we were not surprised when, in crossing a tract of brushwood, the escort divided into three parts, some forming the vanguard, some the rear, while the rest scampered up and down among the bushes with intent to dislodge a lurking gun.

Rather more than half-way between Ipek and Détchani we found the second hegumon of the monastery waiting for us with his companions. Their first anxiety was to remind us of our promise to dismiss the Turks. We accordingly summoned the two leaders, thanked them for their escort, and desired them to return home. They simply refused: "it was too late; besides, their horses could not go back to Ipek without stopping somewhere to bait." But Hadgi Kyril said this was nonsense: if they could go on to Détchani they could go back to Ipek, the distance was nearly equal either way. He "hoped we would insist on it," and evidently became uneasy. The situation was embarrassing, when luckily we espied a minaret peeping out of the greenwood,—sure sign that some Mussulman hamlet was nigh at hand. Thereupon we called the uzbashi, trusting that as a regular soldier he might prove the more amenable, and told him that if he wanted to rest for the night and feed his horses, here was a village convenient for both purposes—no need for him to come a step further. He tried hard to reverse our decision, alleging that he and his soldiers would not hurt the convent, and that they had even their horses' food with them; nay, that should he quit us half-way, the mudir might be seriously

displeased. "Is that all?" said we, and tearing a leaf from a pocket-book wrote on it a few words (in English, of course), and delivered it to him, saying, "Take this to the mudir, and he will be satisfied with your conduct; but if you persist in coming on to the convent, we will write him a letter to-morrow to say that you disobeyed our orders." In the interior of Turkey the most stubborn Mussulman is strangely moved by the sight of writing, especially of a woman writing, and this was not the first time the discovery had stood us in good stead. The document, administered with a bakshish, decided the uzbashi to obey, and even the red-coated Arnaout felt staggered. To him we had given no second order, not being certain how far it might be prudent to drive him against the grain. But he now rode up to the dragoman, and said that if he also received a "paper" and (sous-entendu) a bakshish, he also would go home.

Quiet, deeper than the stillness of evening, seemed to settle on all around us when these ministers of misrule were gone. Protection we lacked not, for soon the footguards of the monastery emerged from under a spreading tree; when once freed from the presence of the Arnaout, the monks, who had hitherto shrunk sulkily behind, rode at our side, and directed our attention to the objects of interest on the way. At length we caught our first view of the "fair" church of Víssoko Détchani. In the opening of a dark glen, at the foot of wooded hills, the clear-cut outline of those marble walls streamed through the twilight with pearly brightness. After a day spent among the savageries of Arnaoutluk, night brought with it the testimony that this was once a Christian land.

At the great gate of the monastery court stood Hadgi Seraphine, the portly abbot, and with him three priests carrying banners and clad in scarlet, crimson, and white. As we alighted, these priests turned about, and marched

before us towards the church, the abbot beckoning to follow in procession. We passed into the shadow of the marble nave, and halted before the gate of the sanctuary. A short prayer was chanted by the priests, a silent prayer followed, and then the abbot welcomed us to Détchani.