Albania are numerous, big, dirty, white
dogs, large and hostile, and they attack with little hesitation. The
women of Albania are secluded and remote, and indisposed to be of
service to an alien sister. Roads are infrequent and most bridges have
broken down. No bridge has been repaired since the later seventeenth
century, and no new bridge has been made since the decline and fall of
the Roman Empire. There are no shops at all. The scenery is magnificent
but precipitous, and many of the high roads are difficult to trace. And
there is rain. In Albania there is sometimes very heavy rain.

Yet in spite of these drawbacks they spent some splendid hours in their
exploration of that wild lost country beyond the Adriatic headlands.
There was the approach to Cattaro for example, through an arm of the
sea, amazingly beautiful on either shore, that wound its way into
the wild mountains and ended in a deep blue bay under the tremendous
declivity of Montenegro. The quay, with its trees and lateen craft, ran
along under the towers and portcullised gate of the old Venetian wall,
within clustered the town, and then the fortifications zigzagged up
steeply to a monstrous fantastic fortress perched upon a great mountain
headland that overhung the town. Behind it the rocks, slashed to and fro
with the road to Cettinje, continued to ascend into blue haze, upward
and upward until they became a purple curtain that filled half the
heavens. The paved still town was squalid by day, but in the evening it
became theatrically incredible, with an outdoor cafe amidst flowers
and creepers, a Hungarian military band, a rabble of promenaders like a
stage chorus in gorgeous costumes and a great gibbous yellow moon.

And there was Kroia, which Benham and Amanda saw first through the
branches of the great trees that bordered the broad green track they
were following. The town and its castle were poised at a tremendous
height, sunlit and brilliant against a sombre mass of storm cloud, over
vast cliffs and ravines. Kroia continued to be beautiful through a steep
laborious approach up to the very place itself, a clustering group
of houses and bazaars crowned with a tower and a minaret, and from a
painted corridor upon this crest they had a wonderful view of the great
seaward levels, and even far away the blue sea itself stretching between
Scutari and Durazzo. The eye fell in succession down the stages of a
vast and various descent, on the bazaars and tall min