The Evil Eye

The Moreot, Katusthius Ziani, travelled wearily, and in fear of its
robber-inhabitants, through the pashalik of Yannina; yet he had no cause
for dread. Did he arrive, tired and hungry, in a solitary village--did
he find himself in the uninhabited wilds suddenly surrounded by a band
of Klephts--or in the larger towns did he shrink at finding himself sole
of his race among the savage mountaineers and despotic Turk--as soon as
he announced himself the Pobratimo[*] of Dmitri of the Evil Eye, every
hand was held out, every voice spoke welcome.

[* In Greece, especially in Illyria and Epirus, it is no uncommon thing
for persons of the same sex to swear friendship; the church contains a
ritual to consecrate this vow. Two men thus united are called pobratimi,
the women posestrime.]

The Albanian, Dmitri, was a native of the village of Korvo. Among the
savage mountains of the district between Yannina and Tepellen, the deep
broad stream of Argyro-Castro flows; bastioned to the west by abrupt
wood-covered precipices, shadowed to the east by elevated mountains. The
highest among these is Mount Trebucci; and in a romantic folding of that
hill, distinct with minarets, crowned by a dome rising from out a group
of pyramidal cypresses, is the picturesque village of Korvo. Sheep and
goats form the apparent treasure of its inhabitants; their guns and
yataghans, their warlike habits, and, with them, the noble profession of
robbery, are sources of still greater wealth. Among a race renowned for
dauntless courage and sanguinary enterprise, Dmitri was distinguished.