Travels in Southeastern Europe

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

92 THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. ' Quite near enough,' said Djaffir. 'If it had been a man you had shot at, he would be dead.' The Turkish 'Government's' extraordinary inability to maintain law and order in the districts which are painted Turkish on the maps is the thing that has struck me the most forcibly in my wanderings; nor is there anything odder than the calmness with which it admits the fact. The Government does not hold itself in any way responsible for outrages on travellers who are without a Government escort. To this day it has never punished the gang that took Miss Stone. I have met with plenty of instances of this. The following, which I will call the story of Marko, is the more striking, because it has nothing to do with revolutionary schemes or politics. It is merely an episode of ordinary village life. It was a village in the South of Albania. In the town but a few miles away was a Turkish Governor and the usual staff of officials, who write for dear life all day and stow the papers in bags. It was a wellto-do Christian village, very clean and tidy. The inhabitants are industrious, intelligent, and physically a very fine-looking set. I stayed several days, and was treated with great hospitality and courtesy at a number of houses, all of which were well built and comfortably fitted. 'What did you think of Marko?' I was asked by my host as we were riding away. I had some difficulty in disentangling Marko from the many to whom I had been introduced. Nor did I ever, to my regret, succeed in calling up a mental picture of his
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Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 92
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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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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