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Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania,
Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania Author:Edward Lear General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1851 Original Publisher: R. Bentley Subjects: Albania Greece Europe History / Ancient / Greece History / Europe / Eastern History / Europe / Greece Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or miss... more »ing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: September 12. This intervening day before my start " somewhere or other" to-morrow, I set apart for lionizing Saloniki with a cicerone. Whatever the past of Saloniki, its present seems gloomy enough. The woe, the doleful- ness of this city ! its narrow, ill-paved streets ; (evil awaits the man who tries to walk with nailed boots on the rounded, slippery stones of a Turkish pavement!) the very few people I met in them, carefully avoiding contact; the closed houses ; the ominous silence; the sultry, oppressive heat of the day; all contributed to impress the mind with a feeling of heavy melancholy. A few Jews in dark dresses and turbans; Jewesses, their hair tied up in long, caterpillar-like green-silk bags, three feet in length; Greek porters, aged blacks, of whom -- freed slaves from Stamboul -- there are many in Saloniki ; these were the only human beings I encountered in threadinga labyrinth of lanes in the lower town, ascending towards the upper part of this formerly extensive city. Once, a bier with a corpse on it, borne by some six or eight of the most wretched creatures, crossed my path ; and when I arrived at the beautiful ruin called the Incantada, two women, I was told, had just expired within the court-yard, and, said the ghastly-looking Greek on the threshold, " You may may come in and examine what you please, and welcome; but once in you are in quarantine, and may not go out," an invitation I declined as politely as I could, and passed onward. ...« less