From: Bruni <vib...@ya...> - 2009-12-24 11:37:10
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Sheffield University. Equally admired are his researches into Chinese linguistics and his monograph, the first in the language, on that most obscure subject, Finnish grammar.[88] Will it be believed that in her account of the Balkan tangle Miss Durham does not quote Sir Charles Eliot, but Mr. Horatio Bottomley? It seems that Mr. Bottomley has not devoted much attention to the Balkans, since in November 1920 he poured the vials of his wrath upon the Serbs, who, according to his "latest reports from Montenegro," had destroyed no less than 4000 Montenegrin houses in the district of Dibra, a place which lies some 75 miles by road from the land of the Black Mountain and probably does not possess more than two or three Montenegrin houses; but he flings hard words against the Serbs, and that is good enough for Miss Durham. On the other hand, Sir Charles Eliot, who has travelled largely in Albania, wrote the simple facts about that people and they are obnoxious to this lady. "It is not surprising to find that there is no history of Albania, for there is no union between North and South, or between the different northern tribes and the different southern Beys," said he in 1900, and such a people does not undergo a fundamental change in twenty years. "Only two names," says Eliot, "those of Skanderbeg and Ali Pasha of Janina, emerge from the confusion of justly unrecorded tribal quarrels.... Albania presents nothing but oppositions--North against South, tribe against tribe, Bey against Bey." (According to Miss Durham they are all aflame with the desire to form a nation.) "Even family ties seem to be somewhat weak," says Sir Charles, "for since European influence has diminished the African slave-trade, Albanians have taken to selling their female children to supply the want of negroes." (The Albanians are "enterprising and industrious," says Miss Dur |