duction, I
found he was a shopkeeper who sold cloth in the bazaar. We accordingly
went to his shop and found him sitting among his merchandise. When he
had read the letter he was very civil, and shutting up his shop, walked
on before us to show me the way to his house. It was a very good one,
and the best room was immediately given up to me, two old ladies and
three or four young ones being turned out in a most summary manner. One
or two of the girls were very pretty, and they all vied with each other
in their attentions to their guest, looking at me with great curiosity,
and perpetually peeping at me through the curtain which hung over the
door, and running away when they thought they were observed.

The prettiest of these damsels had only been married a short time: who
her husband was, or where he lived, I could not make out, but she amused
me by her anxiety to display her smart new clothes. She went and put on
a new capote, a sort of white frock coat, without sleeves, embroidered
in bright colours down the seams, which showed her figure to advantage;
and then she took it off again, and put on another garment, giving me
ample opportunity of admiring its effect. I expressed my surprise and
admiration in bad Greek, which, however, the fair Albanian appeared to
find no difficulty in understanding. She kindly corrected some of my
sentences, and I have no doubt I should have improved rapidly under her
care, if she had not always run away whenever she heard any one creaking
about on the rickety boards of the ante-room and staircase. The other
ladies, who were settling themselves in a large gaunt room close by,
kept up an interminable clatter, and displayed such unbounded powers of
conversation, that it seemed impossible that any one of them could hear
what all the others said; till at last the master of the house came up
again, and then there was a lull. He told me that I could not hire
horses till the afternoon, and as that would have been too late to
start, I determined to remain where I was till the next morning. I
passed the day in wandering about the place, and considering whether,
upon the whole, the dogs or the men of Paramathia were the most savage:
for the dogs looked like wolves, and the men like arrant cut-throats,
swaggering about, idle and restless, with their long hair, and guns, and
pistols, and yataghans; they have none of the composure of the Turks,
who delight to sit still in a coffee-house and smoke their