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
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