Tales And Stories

a; yet he had no cause for dread. Did he arrive, tired and hungry, in a solitary village,?did he find himself in the uninhabited wilds suddenly surrounded by a band of klephts,?or in the larger towns did he shrink at finding himself, sole of his race, among the savage mountaineers and despotic Turk,?as soon as he announced himself the Pobratimo1 of Dmitri of the Evil Eye, every hand was held out, every voice spoke welcome. The Albanian, Dmitri, was a native of the village of Korvo. Among the savage mountains of the district between Yannina and Terpellene, the deep broad stream of Argyro-Castro flows; bastioned to the west by abrupt wood-covered precipices, shadowed to the east by elevated mountains. The highest among these is Mount Trebucci; and in a romantic folding of that hill, distinct with minarets, crowned by a dome rising from out a group of pyramidal cypresses, is the picturesque village of Korvo. Sheep and goats form the apparent treasure of its inhabitants ; their guns and yataghans, their warlike habits, and, with them, the noble profession of robbery, are sources of still greater wealth. Among a race renowned for dauntless courage and sanguinary enterprise, Dmitri was distinguished. In Greece, especially in Illyria and Epirus, it is no uncommon thing for persons of the same sex to swear friendship. The Church contains a ritual to consecrate this vow. Two men thus united are called pobratimi, the women poaestrime. It was said that in...