f. The opposite side of the town was occupied by the
Turkish Army, wonderfully smart, as if in competition with Austria,
and a Crescent marked the hill on that side. Between the two lay the
native town and bazar.

The local Turkish Governor was an Albanian, Suliman Pasha. He was
delighted to have an English visitor, explained to me the difficulty
of his position, with enemy lands, Austria, Montenegro and Serbia on
three sides of the Sanjak, all intriguing to obtain it, and enemy
soldiers quartered in the town. Austria he was confident was
preparing to move shortly. He believed that even then they had more
troops in the Sanjak than was allowed by treaty.

He pressed me to continue my journey to Mitrovitza and to Prizren,
where the Russians were, he said, stirring up trouble. But the
strict time limit of my holiday made this impossible. The result of
the Murzsteg arrangement was, according to him, that Austria and
Russia regarded the Peninsula as to be shortly theirs, and were
working hard to extend their spheres of influence. Each, under the
so-called reform schemes, had put their gendarmerie in the districts
they could work from best. They had put England in an unimportant
place. England ought to have insisted on being on the frontiers,
then the importation of arms could have been prevented. As it was,
Austria and Russia were both smuggling arms in by means of their
gendarmerie. Russia wanted to provoke a rising of Christians in
order to rush in "to save the Christians." Austria wanted to foment
differences between Moslem and Catholic, and, being nearest to the
spot, hoped Europe would again request her to "restore order" as
in Bosnia. "Then she will be one day's march nearer Salonika," said
the Pasha. I believe his statements were correct.

I had an introduction to one of the leading Serbs of the town, Filip
Gjurashkovitch. The Gjurashkovitch family had left Montenegro owing,
as we have seen, to a fierce quarrel with the Petrovitches. Had
fled, as usual, to Turkish territory and had, for years, held
official positions, Filip had lived in Durazzo, and was strongly in
favour of the establishment of an independent Albania, declaring
that the trouble with the Albanians was due entirely to Turkish
misrule. If given a chance of education they were among the most
intelligent of the Peninsula. He emphasized this by pointing out
that Suliman Pasha was an Albanian, and only a man of great skill
could have kept the peace for