XX -- [April 17, 1903] 

THROUGH MACEDONIA

A "LITTLE SWITZERLAND"

HAUNTS OF THE "KOMITADJIS"

Sofia, April 9.

The last stage on the way from Salonica to Bulgaria, through the Macedonian interior, is the most picturesque. Further to the south--between Nevrocop and Dobrinishta--there are sports of surpassing charm, particularly in those where the mountain passes are narrowest. But even these are matched, if not excelled, at many a point in the long, precipitous defile, which winds as a labyrinthine thread through the mid-region from Mekhomia to the Bulgarian frontier at Djumaia and Barakomo. Between these two extremities this Macedonian fragment of the "daedal earth" presents an unbroken vision of ever shifting forms of grandeur and beauty. Form one direction distant Mount Rilo, the monarch of this unknown little Switzerland, oversees it; cloud-capped Rhodope, a sun-smitten, shadow-dappled Cyclopean medley, as I now recall it, from another; in its center rise the white ridges of Mount Pirin, culminating in El Tepe. Pirin haunts the Bulgarian imagination. Often he is personified in the simple ballads of youthful, obscure heroes self-sacrificed in the secular conflict with the Turk. In a song of Karaveloff's Pirin tells his "mother, the Balkan." why his eyes are dim and his days darkened, though the valleys are radiant with the new spring. His people are enslaved; their children perish by the sword. In language applicable to many a "komitadji" of 1903, Zavocoff and Christo Boteff picture their young patriot alone in Pirin, his life blood ebbing away, without father, or mother, or brother, or sister to witness his hurt and lament his fate; though yet he dies not, "for no one dies who falls in the battle for freedom." And sometimes it is Macedonia herself who is personified, grieving, with Pirin, over her desertion by heedless Europe; calling her people to action, for speech is unavailing.

LEGENDS AND BEAUTIES OF MT. PIRIN

When the British tourist discovers this little Switzerland, as he will do some day--after the Turks have packed up their Gladstone bags and gone off--he will linger over the legends as well as the physical beauties of Mount Pirin. I lately heard of a project by American speculators for opening up the Bulgarian part of the Rilo-Pirin country by means of a railway to Rilo Monastery. The bare mention thereof was enough to rob my friend the Abbot of his night's rest. In addition to yes and no, Dominus Abbas knows at least one English word. That word is "globe-trotter,_ and Dominus Abbas would as lief entertain the enemy of mankind at the shrine of St. John of Rilo as a "globe-trotter." I sympathise with that most excellent monk. I would have the railway stop at Rilo village, three hours distant from the monastery. Never should the silence of the woods nor the sound of their torrents be intruded upon by its discordant screech. Some day, too, people will make fortunes by the mineral springs--hot and cold--of which there are many in the beautiful valleys at the foot of Pirin, and which are perennially running to waste. While the Turk remains in the land it will pay no one to build bath houses such as attract holiday visitors to the watering places of Europe. There are hot mineral springs at Mekhomia, Dobrinishta, Banya, and their neighbour villages. From crevices in the rocks at a spot by the River Masta, near Banya, the hot springs spurts and bubbles under its cloud of vapour. And like the women of Illium, the women of Banya village wash their raiment at stone troughs by the springs, using the hot tap or the cold at pleasure. But that, says the bard, was in the days of peace, before the coming of the Achaians. Whether the Trojan ladies at the stone troughs ever fell out, the bard saith not. At the Banya troughs they sometimes do. They may have it before the arrival of the Turks. At any rate, it would not seem that because of the Macedonian question some Christian women of Banya resorting to the washing troughs occasionally find themselves in hot water--figuratively. A pope has described to me how a "hanum" (Turkish woman) threw her wooden pestle at his wife's head. I saw the (alleged) mark on the reverend lady's forehead. The reflection suggested itself either that the thrower must have exercised great self-restraint, or that the head of the victim must have possessed great powers of passive resistance.

THE SPIRIT OF THE SPRING

But I must now resume my account of this beautiful region of disturbed Macedonia. The Spirit of the Spring, the "Baba Mart" of Slavic folk-song, has come. We hear the rustle of her garments on the meadows and among the trees of the forest--that have broken at her touch into a delicate haze of green, spotted with the white and yellow of her first wild flowers. Something in their Skipetar blood seems to stir the Albanians of my martial cavalcade as they swing into their saddles, among a multitude of spectators, by the courtyard of the Konak, at the door of which his Excellency Hassan Tahsin Bey, surrounded by his retainers--among whom I descry the blood-curdler apparition of a former letter--courteously waves his "bon voyage." He had already said an "au revoir"; but I suspect it was out of politeness, and that, though he and I had got on exceedingly well together, he would, as an honest Turk, rejoice if "The Daily News" and its Correspondent were interned in Jahannam. Not since we marched out of Serres have our Albanians been in so hilarious a mood. They start their national songs, once they are clear of the town and out in the open. One of them in particular loves to exercise his tenor voice. Even our brisk little Turk, the Inspector of military things in general, who usually is as restless as a sparrow, falls for the moment into a worshipful mood. "Ce bleu divin," he exclaims; and the Macedonian sky deserves all that has ever been said of its etherial loveliness and mysterious suggestion of infinite space. "Notre beau pays," he says, while at a turning of our upward path we look round to take a last view of the plain of Bansko, in its vast ring of mountains, stark white in the sun's glare.

Accompanying my escort there is a squad of infantry soldiers, who, having served their time with the colours, are on their way to their village. So we have quite a little army, stronger even than the garrison of the first outpost we come upon in crossing the Pirin range, the outpost of Predell, where we halt for half-an-hour, and where the officer in command regales us with Turkish coffee. Out there, says my friend, the brisk little inspector, pointing to the hill immediately ahead, "I had my first and last brush with the komitadjis. This was in last autumn. It was a small affair. We knocked some of them over and scattered the rest." He appears to rejoice in the prospect of livelier work in the coming summer, by which time the battalions rumoured to be under orders from Asia Minor will have mustered in Macedonia for the harrying of the komitadjis. "Our men can run up these mountains as nimbly as goats," he continues; and he points to the infantrymen, who have marched with us all the way from Mekhomia. Wonderful marchers they are, with their long, easy, elastic stride, under the heavy kit, including rifle and bandolier, which each man carries. If their shooting is as good as their marching they will do execution.

A MOUNTAIN PASS

The mountain pass we are now traversing could be held by a company or two of komitadjis against an army. It is one of the most picturesque in the range of Pirin. Its solitary, stony track, the work of horse-hooves, winds through forests of pine, oak, and beech; falls into the still valleys; rises steeply over the windy summits; skirts the verge of precipitous places, from whose depths the racing torrents, gleaming white through the trees, are barely audible. The boulders in one particular portion of it might almost be described as the rungs of a stone ladder. It takes two hours, or three, to traverse this defile, many parts of which are too narrow for more than one man. Its prettiest spot, as also the handiest for an assailant, and the tightest for an assailed, is just that in which the Miss Stone farce was played. Here, the path is a small strip between two mountains, forest clad. On one side of it, a wall of rock shoots straight up. On the other the stream flows, over-topped by its beeches and its oaks. As we reach the spot, our struggling cavalcade halts in order to make way for a Turkish family, which also has halted, found the corner. On they come at last, gingerly, one by one, all on pony back, with their bundles of rugs, and so forth. Pater-familias, as I suppose he is, sports weapons in his silken sash. Madame is, of course, veiled, so that only her eyes (fine ones they are, too) and the bridge of her nose are visible. As mine is the only outlander figure in the whole cavalcade, Madame honours me with her calm, scrutinising glance as she swings past. I must not raise my cap--with all the reverence due to the occasion and natural to the Western mind. If I did, how Monsieur would flare up--perhaps grasping the hit of his gleaming yataghan! For this is Turkey, and the social law thereof is the law of Islam. When you take stock of a Turkish lady, you must do as I did--make a pretense of looking the other way. Covered from head to foot in her balloon of black silk, Madam sits on a kind of mattress cunningly adjusted to the person and the movements of her stout pony. How Madam is to manage the stone ladder, away up in the mountains, I cannot understand. I have just climbed up it. Madame will have to climb down it, bolsters and all, which strikes me as being the harder feat.

The Turkish family having disappeared, my lively little Turk friend, the Inspector-General, makes fun of the Stone episode. He is sure the Bulgarian Ministers were implicated in it! For the cherished purpose of the Bulgarian Government was to keep the Komitadjis in powder and shot(!) And as the said Government's financial resources were limited, while the Komitadjis were dependent upon them, what more natural than that the Sofia statesmen should arrange a capture, the ransom money whereof might be consecrated to the revolutionary cause? Minister-President Daneff and Miss Stone were both in it! Six of one and half dozen of the other. First rate company was her, the dapper Inspector of Barracks. His view of the situation was typically Turkish. Only that it was quite correct in one respect. The so-called capture was a got-up affair--but by the Komitadjis alone. Since then, the Komitadjis themselves have grown rather ashamed of it. In all that pinchbeck business only one incident interests the present writer. Among the domestic stores which the Bulgar-Macedonian peasant lays up in the last months of the year, there is a juicy preparation the native name of which means "old man." It is an excellent sort of sausage vamped up from somewhere in a pig's inside. The tale goes that in a letter written from her place of captivity, either by Miss Stone or Madame Tsilka, an allusion was made to the killing of "our old man" (meaning the animal itself) for the Komitadji larder. The letter was intercepted by brother Turk, who, when he read it, fell into a transport of delight. For, thought he, the Komitadjis cannot hold out much longer, now that they have taken to cannibalism.

A TOWN OF MISANTHROPES

"A town of misanthropes," the Inspector exclaims, with a careless laugh, as we reach a summit from which we obtain a comprehensive view of the curiously-scattered village of Gradevo. It is has been said of the Boers that they live as far as they can possibly beyond sight of each other's smoke. A glance at Gradevo suggests a disposition of a like retiring character. Its little houses are scattered over the shoulders of a magnificent amphitheatre of mountains. Some of those we have passed are tenantless; the very picture of desolation. Not a dog barks. A few goats, nibbling among the rocks, are the only living things we discover. Whether because of the gravestone stillness of those human dwellings, or because of the waning day, the scene is inexpressibly sad. And yet, of all the mountain panoramas, this one, as seen from the heights of Gradevo, is the finest. Gradevo is one of the many villages whose inhabitants fled to Bulgaria during the "black month." Bulgaria looks very near. But the fugitives of the terror spent many days among the snows of the passes before they succeeded in crossing the border. With very few exceptions they are still in Bulgaria, where they are the helpless cause of anxiety, political and financial, to the Government of the Principality. The village of Bistritza, for example, whose people fled in a body, is still almost uninhabited.

At Gradevo we are almost in the centre of the Macedonian region where the Revolutionary movement first began, where, last autumn, the first fights with the Turks took place, and where the insurrection is better organized than anywhere else. In this region the Bulgarians form the overwhelming majority of the population. As the name Bulgarian appears to give rise to some misconception in the European papers, a word or two by way of exposition may not be out of place. There are the Bulgarians of the Principality. There are the Bulgarians of Macedonia, which province formed part of the Greater Bulgaria that in the Middle Ages was bordered by the three seas--the Adriatic, the Black Sea, and the Aegean--and which had a "Czar" of its own. The Greek strain in their blood differentiates them, to a considerable extent, from the Bulgarian people over whom Prince Ferdinand rules. But Bulgarians they are; or, if the name be preferred, Bulgar-Macedonians, whose language and religion are identical with those of their kinsfolk on the other side of the mountains. And now another word, by way of caution. Let it not be imagined that the purpose of the revolutionary movement is to restore Greater Bulgaria--by annexing Macedonia to it, that is to say. The sole purpose of the insurrection which, unless the Russo-Austrian scheme of reforms be itself reformed, will not be much longer delayed , is to get rid of the Turk, or, to state it otherwise, to bring about equal rights for all sections--Turkish and Christian--in Macedonia. For many, indeed, are the Turks who lament the existing anarchy, and recognize the fact that revolution and a sweeping reform are the only possible alternatives. With Prince Ferdinand's subjects, from Mr. Daneff, the Minister President, downwards, the Macedonian question is entirely a question of humanity--as also of social economies, for Bulgaria herself is being steadily swamped by the immigration of Bulgar-Macedonians, who find life in their own beautiful land intolerable. That is the sense in which the Macedonian question is also a Bulgarian question. It is forced upon all Bulgarian Ministries in spite of themselves. "You are sowing treason in my household," shouts brother Turk, from his side, "you are setting the Balkans on fire." For delicacy and touch-and-go deadly peril, no European question is comparable with that which at this moment confronts Prince Ferdinand and his advisers.