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A small Serb school had recently been opened in Ochrida, and I was invited there to the Feast of St. Sava. The whole Serb population of Ochrida assembled. We were photographed together. Counting the Greek priest, the schoolmaster and his family, who were from Serbia, and myself, we were a party of some fifty people. Ochrida had a very mixed population.
The Bulgarian Bishop of Ochrida still believed firmly in Russia's invincibility. Furious when I refused to have cartridges, etc., hidden in my room which the Turks never searched he turned on me and declared that England was not a Christian country and would be wiped out by Holy Russia, who had already taken half Japan and would soon take the rest and all India too.
Therefore, the problem of an invading force is to take the mountain outside the city, rather than the city itself. Beyond this lofty eminence, to the westward, rise thickly wooded ridges, rugged mountain fastnesses, through which, along the bottom of a winding defile, runs the road to Resen and Ochrida and three large lakes: Ochrida, Prespa, and Little Prespa.
This was barely a fourth of the distance; nevertheless they were advancing toward Lake Ochrida, west of the Prespa Lakes, against which the Bulgarians rested their right wing. It was evident that they had driven back the Austrians who were supposed to hold this section.
"CHEETAH!" she said suddenly between remonstrance and a cry of terror. The darkness suddenly became quite still. He did not move. She was afraid. "Cheetah!" she said again. "What is it, Amanda?" "I thought . Are you all right?" "Quite." "But do you feel well?" "I've got this cold I caught in Ochrida. I suppose I'm feverish. But yes, I'm well." "You were talking." Silence for a time.
I condoled with the Bulgar Bishop of Ochrida on the terrible massacre of his flock by the Turks. He replied calmly that to him it had been a disappointment. He had expected quite half the population to have been killed, and then Europe would have been forced to intervene. Not a quarter had perished, and he expected it would all have to be done over again.
These were unforgettable scenes, and so too was the wild lonely valley through which they rode to Ochrida amidst walnut and chestnut trees and scattered rocks, and the first vision of that place itself, with its fertile levels dotted with sheep and cattle, its castle and clustering mosques, its spacious blue lake and the great mountains rising up towards Olympus under the sun.
The Kaimmakam was an Albanian Moslem, Mehdi Bey, who kept the balance well under very difficult circumstances, and to-day is one of the leading Albanian Nationalists. He asserted always that Ochrida should, of right, belong to Albania. Albanian it was indeed considered until the rise of the Russo-Bulgar movement.
Why then was Bulgaria so insistent on getting beyond that base line, crossing the Vardar, and possessing herself of Central Macedonia up to Ochrida and the eastern frontier of Albania?
As late as 1860 we find the Lakes of Ochrida and Presba referred to as the Albanian Lakes by English travellers. Through the winter of 1903-4 trouble simmered, arrests were made, murders occurred. I learnt the ethics of murder, which, in Macedonia, were simply: "When a Moslem kills a Moslem so much the better.
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