offered for sale, but is set aside,
like an article on which a deposit has been made, until the final
instalment has been paid, when she is delivered to her future husband.

Albania is likewise the only country that I know of where every one
concerned becomes indignant if a murderer is sent to prison. The
relatives of the dear departed resent it because they feel that the
judge has cheated them out of their revenge, which they would probably
obtain, were the murderer at large, by putting a knife or a pistol
bullet between his shoulders. The murderer, of course, objects to the
sentence both because he does not like imprisonment and because he
believes that he could escape from the relatives of his victim were he
given his freedom. If he or his friends have any money, however, the
affair is usually settled on a financial basis, the feud is called off,
the murderer is pardoned, and every one concerned, save only the dead
man, is as pleased and friendly as though nothing had ever happened to
interrupt their friendly relations. A quaint people, the Albanians.

In order to develop the resources of the country and to transform its
present poverty into prosperity, Italy has already inaugurated an
extensive scheme of public works, which includes the reclamation of the
marshes, the reforestation of the mountains, the reconstruction of the
highways, the improvement of the ports, and the construction of a
railway straight across Albania, from the coast at Durazzo to Monastir,
in Serbian Macedonia, where it will connect with the line from Belgrade
to Salonika. This railway will follow the route of one of the most
important arteries of the Roman Empire, the Via Egnatia, that mighty
military and commercial highway, a trans-Adriatic continuation of the
Via Appia, which, starting from Dyracchium, the modern Durazzo, crossed
the Cavaia plain to the Skumbi, climbed the slopes of the Candavian
range, and traversing Macedonia and Thrace, ended at the Bosphorus, thus
linking the capitals of the western and the eastern empires. We traveled
this age-old highway, down which the four-horse chariots of the Caesars
had rumbled two thousand years ago, in another sort of chariot, with the
power of twenty times four horses beneath its sloping hood. This will
entitle us in future years to listen with the condescension of pioneers
to the tales of the tourists who make the same trans-Balkan journey in a
comfortable _wagon-lit_, with hot and cold running