1880) bow his head resignedly before superior
force without sinning against the Moslem's unwritten but inviolable
creed of never giving way before Christians save under absolute
necessity. At once he ordered his troops to carry out the behests of the
Powers; and after some fighting, Dervish Pasha drove the Albanians out
of Dulcigno, and surrendered it to the Montenegrins (Nov.-Dec. 1880).
Such is the official account; but, seeing that the Porte knows how to
turn to account the fanaticism and turbulence of the Albanians[181], it
may be that their resistance all along was but a device of that
resourceful Government to thwart the will of Europe.

[Footnote 180: _Life of Gladstone_, by J. Morley, vol. iii. p. 9.]

[Footnote 181: See _Turkey in Europe_, by "Odysseus," p. 434.]

The same threat as to the seizure of the Turkish customs-house at Smyrna
sufficed to help on the solution of the Greek Question. The delays and
insults of the Turks had driven the Greeks to desperation, and only the
urgent remonstrances of the Powers availed to hold back the Cabinet of
Athens from a declaration of war. This danger by degrees passed away;
but, as usually happens where passions are excited on both sides, every
compromise pressed on the litigants by the arbiters presented great
difficulty. The Congress of Berlin had recommended the extension of
Greek rule over the purely Hellenic districts of Thessaly, assigning as
the new boundaries the course of the Rivers Salammaria and Kalamas, the
latter of which flows into the sea opposite the Island of Corfu.

Another Conference of the Powers (it was the third) met to decide the
details of that proposal; but owing to the change of Government in
France, along with other causes, the whole question proved to be very
intricate. In the end, the Powers induced the Sultan to sign the
Convention of May 24, 1881, whereby the course of the River Arta was
substituted for that of the Kalamas.

As a set-off to this proposal, which involved the loss of Jannina and
Prevesa for Greece, they awarded to the Hellenes some districts north of
the Salammaria which helped partially to screen the town of Larissa from
the danger of Turkish inroads[182]. To this arrangement Moslems and
Christians sullenly assented. On the whole the Greeks gained 13,200
square kilometres in territory and about 150,000 inhabitants, but their
failure to gain several Hellenic districts of Epirus rankled deep in the
popular consciousness a