SCUTAHI, THE KEY OF ALBANIA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 217, 1 February 1913, Page 2 (Supplement)

SCUTAHI, THE KEY OF ALBANIA

TWO THOUSAND YEARS OLD TOWN. Scutari, or Seodra, as it is properly called, which King Nicholas is claiming for Montenegro, is situated at the foot and on the slopes of a low hill where the River Bojana issues from JLake Scutari. The town is said to have been founded by Alexander the Great, but there is no proof of this, and the first mention of its name is in Livy, where the Romans besieged Gentius, King of Ulyria, 8.C., ICB. After the partition of the empire, Scutari was assigned to Constantinople, arjd was later on occupied by the Serbs and the Venetians till the latter surrendered it to the Turks in A.D. 1477. Jt has been called the key of North Albania, as whoever holds it holds the country, and that will account for the eagerness which King Nicholas shows to get possession of it. Its castle, which stands on the highest point of the hill, commands the entrance to the lake, provided that Mount Tarabos, the bare hill on the other side of the Bojana, is not in the hands of the enemy. The best place to view the city is from the anicent castle itself, for there the city, the lake and the plain lie spread out at one's feet, with the mountains of Montenegro and Albania distant background. Looking to 'the north is a narrow strip of plain, with the little fortress of Hum in the dementi and Hoti inlets of the lake, Kopliki Khan, and Vraka Khan, all important points. To the left is the range of mountains separating the lake from the Adriatic Sea, into which the broad stream of the Bojana empties itself in the far distance. A wooden bridge crosses the river where it issues from the lake, and just above it are the fishermen's dwellings, raised on piles in the ancient fashion. Between the castle and the lake lies the eity, looking more like a big village than a town, for except in the main street that runs through the centre of the city the houses stand each in its own garden and surrounded by his high walls of cobble stones taken from the bed of the Kiri. Looking down upon it in summer time, Scutari resembles a forest with only the red-tiled roofs of the houses and the long and graceful spires of minarets standing out above the trees. Further to the right is the gaunt, white mass of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, near the River Kiri, which comes down from the mountains of Drivasto on the north-east. Then, just at the bead of the bridge over the Bojana, is the bazaar with its netwoik of narrow streets, which in many places are covered witli vines. This is the business quarter of the town, where every man who respects himself has bis shop, and where he smokes cigarettes and drinks coffee all day long with his friends and acquaintances. The castle itself was originally built by the Serbs, and bore the name of Rosapha. When the Venetians took the citadel they fortified its square \ towers with bastions,' but since the oc- f ciipation of the Turks the defences have been allowed to fall into decay, though on the eastern gate the Lion of St. Mark is still to be seen. 1

The mosque was formerly the Christian church of the garrison. A great pit in the middle of the castle for a long time showed where the powder magazine once stood. North Albania is a terrible place for thunderstorms, and the story goes that shortly after the Crimean war, when Western ideas were beginning to permeate, an enterprising traveller came along with lightning conductors and persuaded the Pasha to put some of them up to protect his magazine. The Pasha, arguing that, as the conductors were to safeguard the powder, they could not be too close to it, ran them down into the magazine itself, and then waited for a thunderstorm to test their efficiency. The storm was not long in coming, and the lightning conductors justified all that the traveller had said about them by attracting a flash which blew the whole magazine to pieces. To the south of the castle, on the side of the hill, is the suburb of Tabachi, which was formerly the quarter of the rich nobles, but as the result of their faction fights it has long been in ruins. Tt still possesses the finest mosque in the citv. the work of a pasha who was one of the greatest of the native Scutarine Beys, and who built the mosqiip and the bridge over the Kiri I about ITfiS.

Kin" Xicholas has always looked with envious eyes at (lie beautiful city of Scutari, for it is the onlv placp of any size and importance in thp whole country. Evpii Cettinje. t.lio capital of the little Montenegrin kingdom, is but a village and n collection of hovels compared with it.

-As Uip capital of an enlarged Montenegrin kingdom. Scutari would he the natural centre of a southern Slav-Al-banian State, and so King Nicholashopeless of ever wresting Cattaro and •Herzegovina from Austria—is now making a bold bid for the ancient city fortress of the Servian Czars.