s of the oil
pipeline. It has fewer port facilities than Durres, however, and no rail
connections with the rest of the country. Sarande, Shengjin, and Porte
Palermo are less important ports.

Only the Drin and Buene rivers might be considered navigable to any
degree and even then only for small ships and short distances. Lake
Scutari and the interior lakes are navigable but are of little
commercial use. Smaller oceangoing craft are used in a limited amount of
coastal trade.

The government is encouraging the creation of a national merchant fleet.
_Lloyd's Register of Shipping_ for 1968 listed eleven Albanian vessels
totaling 36,550 gross tons. Albania and Communist China maintain a
jointly owned shipping line, and the number of ships with Albanian
registry is increasing.

CHAPTER 4

THE PEOPLE

The population increased by about 71 percent from 1950 to 1969 and in
1970 was increasing at a rate that would double the number of
inhabitants in approximately twenty-six years. The median age, about
nineteen years, was increasing slowly. The abundance of rural population
and the increasing tempo of industrial development provided potential
for rapid urban growth, but government controls and a scarcity of
housing tended to restrict population movements.

Persons of Albanian ethnic origin constituted about 97 percent of the
2.1 million population in early 1970. Of ancient Illyrian descent, they
have maintained their homogeneity despite many invasions and centuries
of foreign occupation. The Communist regime, in its effort to develop
social and cultural solidarity, attempted to reduce consciousness of the
differences between the major subgroups, the Gegs in the north and the
Tosks in the south. Some progress has been made, but a continuing
struggle is being carried out against customs and beliefs that are
considered remnants of the past and detract from the achievement of
Communist objectives (see ch. 5, Social System).

The Albanian language is a derivative of the tongues that were spoken by
the ancient Illyrians and Thracians. For many centuries its continuity
was maintained by only verbal means. A standardized alphabet was not
developed until the twentieth century. Since World War II considerable
progress has been made in making the Tosk dialect the standard written
language. In the late 1960s there were still some variations in
spelling.

The pattern of settlement was predominantly one of widely dispersed
v