Hence The Unfinished Look Of Their Houses,
Within And Without.
Why expend thought and wealth upon that which may be
abandoned to-morrow?
The two churches of Vaccarizza, dark and unclean structures, stand side
by side, and I was shown through them by their respective priests, Greek
and Catholic, who walked arm in arm in friendly wise, and meekly smiled
at a running fire of sarcastic observations on the part of another
citizen directed against the "bottega" in general - the shop, as the
church is sometimes irreverently called. The Greco-Catholic cult to
which these Albanians belong is a compromise between the Orthodox and
Roman; their priests may wear beards and marry wives, they use bread
instead of the wafer for sacramental purposes, and there are one or two
other little differences of grave import.
Six Albanian settlements lie on these northern slopes of the Sila - San
Giorgio, Vaccarizza, San Cosimo, Macchia, San Demetrio Corone, and Santa
Sofia d' Epiro. San Demetrio is the largest of them, and thither, after
an undisturbed night's rest at the house of my kind host - the last, I
fear, for many days to come - I drove in the sunlit hours of next
morning. Along the road one can see how thoroughly the Albanians have
done their work; the land is all under cultivation, save for a dark belt
of trees overhead, to remind one of what once it was. Perhaps they have
eradicated the forest over-zealously, for I observe in San Demetrio that
the best drinking water has now to be fetched from a spring at a
considerable distance from the village; it is unlikely that this should
have been the original condition of affairs; deforestation has probably
diminished the water-supply.
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