Some recline in groups,
   Scanning the motley scene that varies round. 
   There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops,
   And some that smoke, and some that play, are found. 
   Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground
   Half-whispering, there the Greek is heard to prate. 
   Hark! from the mosque the nightly solemn sound;
   The Muezzin’s call doth shake the minaret. 
“There is no god but God!—­to prayer—­lo, God is great!”

The peculiar quietness and ease with which the Mahommedans say their prayers, struck the travellers as one of the most peculiar characteristics which they had yet witnessed of that people.  Some of the graver sort began their devotions in the places where they were sitting, undisturbed and unnoticed by those around them who were otherwise engaged.  The prayers last about ten minutes they are not uttered aloud, but generally in a low voice, sometimes with only a motion of the lips; and, whether performed in the public street or in a room, attract no attention from the bystanders.  Of more than a hundred of the guards in the gallery of the Vizier’s mansion at Tepellene, not more than five or six were seen at prayers.  The Albanians are not reckoned strict Mahommedans; but no Turk, however irreligious himself, ever disturbs the devotion of others.

It was then the fast of Ramazan, and the travellers, during the night, were annoyed with the perpetual noise of the carousal kept up in the gallery, and by the drum, and the occasional voice of the Muezzin.

   Just at this season, Ramazani’s fast
   Through the long day its penance did maintain: 
   But when the lingering twilight hour was past,
   Revel and feast assumed the rule again. 
   Now all was bustle, and the menial train
   Prepared and spread the plenteous board within;
   The vacant gallery now seem’d made in vain,
   But from the chambers came the mingling din,
And page and slave, anon, were passing out and in.

CHAPTER XII

Audience appointed with Ali Pasha—­Description of the Vizier’s Person—­An Audience of the Vizier of the Morea

The progress of no other poet’s mind can be to clearly traced to personal experience as that of Byron’s.  The minute details in the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold are the observations of an actual traveller.  Had they been given in prose, they could not have been less imbued with fiction.  From this fidelity they possess a value equal to the excellence of the poetry, and ensure for themselves an interest as lasting as it is intense.  When the manners and customs of the inhabitants shall have been changed by time and the vicissitudes of society, the scenery and the mountains will bear testimony to the accuracy of Lord Byron’s descriptions.