Of the inhabitants of Albania—the Arnaouts or Albanese—Lord Byron says they reminded him strongly of the Highlanders of Scotland, whom they undoubtedly resemble in dress, figure, and manner of living.  “The very mountains seemed Caledonian with a kinder climate.  The kilt, though white, the spare active form, their dialect, Celtic in its sound, and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven.  No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese; the Greeks hardly regard them as Christians, or the Turks as Moslems, and in fact they are a mixture of both, and sometimes neither.  Their habits are predatory: all are armed, and the red-shawled Arnaouts, the Montenegrins, Chimeriotes, and Gedges, are treacherous; the others differ somewhat in garb, and essentially in character.  As far as my own experience goes, I can speak favourably.  I was attended by two, an infidel and a Mussulman, to Constantinople and every other part of Turkey which came within my observations, and men more faithful in peril and indefatigable in service are nowhere to be found.  The infidel was named Basilius, the Moslem Dervish Tahiri; the former a man of middle age, and the latter about my own.  Basili was strictly charged by Ali Pasha in person to attend us, and Dervish was one of fifty who accompanied us through the forests of Acarnania, to the banks of the Achelous, and onward to Missolonghi.  There I took him into my own service, and never had occasion to repent it until the moment of my departure.

“When in 1810, after my friend, Mr Hobhouse, left me for England, I was seized with a severe fever in the Morea, these men saved my life by frightening away my physician, whose throat they threatened to cut if I was not cured within a given time.  To this consolatory assurance of posthumous retribution, and a resolute refusal of Dr Romanelli’s prescriptions, I attributed my recovery.  I had left my last remaining English servant at Athens; my dragoman was as ill as myself; and my poor Arnaouts nursed me with an attention which would have done honour to civilization.

“They had a variety of adventures, for the Moslem, Dervish, being a remarkably handsome man, was always squabbling with the husbands of Athens; insomuch that four of the principal Turks paid me a visit of remonstrance at the convent, on the subject of his having taken a woman to the bath—whom he had lawfully bought, however—a thing quite contrary to etiquette.