and beg you to believe me,

Your affectionate son,

"BYRON."

About the middle of November, the young traveller took his departure
from Prevesa (the place where the foregoing letter was written), and
proceeded, attended by his guard of fifty Albanians,[131] through
Acarnania and AEtolia, towards the Morea.

"And therefore did he take a trusty band
To traverse Acarnania's forest wide,
In war well season'd, and with labours tann'd,
Till he did greet white Achelous' tide,
And from his further bank AEtolia's wolds espied."

CHILDE HAROLD, Canto II.

His description of the night-scene at Utraikey (a small place situated
in one of the bays of the Gulf of Arta) is, no doubt, vividly in the
recollection of every reader of these pages; nor will it diminish their
enjoyment of the wild beauties of that picture to be made acquainted
with the real circumstances on which it was founded, in the following
animated details of the same scene by his fellow-traveller:--

"In the evening the gates were secured, and preparations were made for
feeding our Albanians. A goat was killed and roasted whole, and four
fires were kindled in the yard, round which the soldiers seated
themselves in parties. After eating and drinking, the greater part of
them assembled round the largest of the fires, and whilst ourselves
and the elders of the party were seated on the ground, danced round
the blaze to their own songs, in the manner before described, but
with an astonishing energy. All their songs were relations of some
robbing exploits. One of them, which detained them more than an hour,
began thus:--'When we set out from Parga there were sixty of
us:'--then came the burden of the verse,

"'Robbers all at Parga!
Robbers all at Parga!

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