ich, about the middle
of the nineteenth century, left the region without a single priest, so
that children of the age of eight had not been christened, and the
people in disgust went over to Islam. Near Ochrida, some of them were
asked whether they frequented the mosque.

"Never," they replied.

"What is your religion?"

"Well, it is very strange," they told us, "but we have none."

"What religion did you formerly have?"

"Well, we don't know."

Their priest roams the mountains with his gun, and there has been a
tendency, since a man in this position received his salary from the
State, for many to persuade the mufti to appoint them, irrespective of
whether they could read or write. The devout Moslem is, to the
exclusion of everything else, a Moslem; but in these districts, where
the faith was assumed in a moment of pique or as a protection, and where
the Muhammedan clergy has been so negligent, the people are gladly
cultivating their Christian relatives. In the district of Suva Rieka one
hears of conversions to Christianity, and the functionaries bring no
pressure to bear, unlike the misguided Montenegrin officials who in 1912
rode into Pe['c], the old Patriarchate, and wanted in their delight to
have everyone immediately to adopt the Orthodox faith. Now the
authorities, with greater wisdom, do not interfere in these matters.
They know that Yugoslavia will have no enemy in that house in the
village of Brod, between Tetovo and Prizren, where two brothers are
living together, of whom one went over to Islam. They know that the
Muhammedan Krasnichi of Albania are proclaiming their kinship with the
great Montenegrin clan of Vasojevi['c], that the Gashi are calling to
the Piperi and the Berishi to the Ku[vc]i. The new cordiality will be
impaired neither by the differences of religion nor by the similarity of
costume. The average Albanian of Djakovica would not be any fonder of an
Orthodox fellow-citizen if the latter continues to wear the Albanian
dress which was generally adopted about a hundred years ago, and the
Vasojevi['c] may please themselves as to the wearing of a costume which
they once found so useful in the Middle Ages. They happened to be for
ten days in the Hoti country for the purpose of wiping out a blood
affair, and when they were about to fall into the Hoti's hands they
shouted, "What do you want with us? We are Kastrati!" The Kastrati, to
whom these Albanian-clad people were led, confirmed the stateme