SERVIA'S SEA-PORT

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 263, 29 March 1913, Page 10

SERVIA'S SEA-PORT

UUKA/ZO. Looked at,from the sea, Durazzo, the Adriatic port which Servia has occupied, has rather an imposing appearance, as it rises out of the water crowned by a castle which, though it will not bear close inspection, might conceivably be a I'iirtn-ss of tremendous power. The castle and town lie on a ridge of rock which was once an island, but which is now joined to the mainland by two narrow strips of roadway. Behind the rock and between the soft roads stretch the salt marshes which are a monopoly of the Government. The castle and town cover the whole of the rock, and neither of them is in particularly good repair. The town is dirty and cramped, and the castle is falling to pieces, and, of course, is useless against modern artillery. But the place, though a shadow of what it was, is still a port of some importance, for the AustrianLloyd steamers touch there, and there is a good road leading to Tirana, a populous and wealthy town about four and twenty miles inland. Durazzo is the most prosperous port in Albania, but it did far more trade before the TransBalkan railway was built, as that drew off most of the traffic which formerly went along the old Roman road, the Via Egnatia, across Albania, Macedonia and Thrace to Constantinople. Durazzo, which was originally called Epidamnus, is said to have been founded by a colony from Corcyra, or Corfu, and under the Kings of Illyria it has already risen to importance. Under the Romans it was made a free city and called Dyrrhachium. Augustus raised it to the position of a Roman colony and adorned it with many splendid monuments, the j fragments of which may still be seen j worked into the castle and the walls of | the town. In fact, as in so many other places, the buildings of the Romans have served as a quarry for the races that came after them. The great importance of the town lay in its position as the starting point of the Via Egnatia on the eastern side of the Adriatic. This splendid road ran from Rome to Brindisi, and then from Durazzo right across in a straight line to Constantinople. It can ried all the travellers and the traffic of the Roman world on the line between' the two capitals, and Dyrrhachium became a magnificent city and a wealthy seaport.

I It must have been a pleasant place then, as well as convenient to Italy, for Cicero chose it as his place of exile, although he seems to have found it rather noisy. The plain across the salt marshes was the scene of Caesar's repulse by Pompey in B.C. 48. and the great conqueror almost invariably landed at Dyrrhachium when he went to the , East. After the division of the empire it fell to the share of Constantinople, and was strongly fortified by the Emperor, for the additional reason that it was the military port which enabled him to keep the pirates of the Adriatic in check. When the Eastern Empire began to totter the town fell into the hands of the Bulgars. the Normans, and the Balsha family of Montenegro, and in 1836 it was taken by Venice, and remained in the possession of the Republic until the Turks captured it in 1501. But all through it the country around remained Albanian, and whoever were the masters of the town, the tribesmen held the mountains and the interior of the country. The primitive fortifications of the Tllyrians were enlarged and strengthened by the Romans, and the castle as it stands is a rare mixture of styles, principally Norman, for the Counts of Anjou who possessed it made use of the Roman ruins for their mediaeval castle. The Venetians and the Turks added to it, also using the same quarry, and quite recently the Turks were building a sea wall, into which they worked blocks of stone with the Latin inscription still visible. The walls of both the town and the castle came down to the very edge of the sea, and in the old days the place was almost impregnable, as Robert of Guiscard found in 1081 when he laid siege to the place with fifteen thousand men, and only succeeded in capturing it in the following year through the treachery of its governor, a Venetian in the Imperial service. Durazzo is the most southern point to which Tto'i'nu Catholicism extends in Albania. The majority of the inhabitants are Mussulmans', Wt the mosques are churches which were converted to their present use. One of the mosques was formerly dedicated to the Virgin, whose cult is widespread in North Albania. The Orthodox Church comes next in numbers, but the Roman Catholics have increased of late, especially since the Austrian.? began to educate native priests for Albania. The Albanians have an extreme dislike of foreigners interfering with their concerns, but the North Albanians take very kindly to Roman Catholicism under their own priests. Even the Mussulman Albanians have a great respect for the saints, and sometimes use their names to swear by, a regrettable habit, which dates from the time before the Turkish occupation. Under the Romans Dyrrachium was called the kev of the Eastern Empire, and to-dav Dnrazzo is the key of the Adriatic, though so little has been heard about it until the Servians announced their intention of getting hold of it. It stands north-east of Rrindisi, above the Straits of Ontario, and could easily be made a powerful naval base. The question of ownership is one of vital importance to Austria and Ttaly. for in hostile hands it would be a very serious menace to both of them. Dnrazzo. of course, rcallv belongs to Albania, and as long as it was in Turkish hands matters jogwed on in the usual somnolent way. and nobodv troubled about the place.