AMERICAN REGISTER – 1877

AMERICAN REGISTER – Paris May 12, 1877 – pg.5

The war in Eastern Europe introduces to our notice a personage who but for that dire calamity might have remained in oblivion until the end of time. The individual in question is the Prenk Doda, a very young man, Chief of the Mirdite Clan, dwelling in Mirdita, a mountainous district of Northern Albania. The early life of Prenk Doda was passed amidst the refinements, the elegancies, and the material enjoyments of Stamboul, where he was detained as a hostage for the good behavior of his tribe. As it was made known to the stalwart mountaineers of Mirdita that on the very first row Prenk Doda’s head would be thrown into the Bosphorus, his faithful retainers kept remarkably quiet during the reign of the late Sultan Abdul Aziz.

During the confusion that resulted from the substitution of one maniac Sultan for another equally idiotic, Prenk Doda managed to get a little fresh air and returned to his native mountains. His Constantinople experience appeared for a time to have exercised a sedative effect on his temperament, and the Mirdites were kept quiet during the Serbian and Montenegring campaigns. But when all was over, and the millenium was supposed to have commenced under the auspices of a European conference, the Prenk and his retainers broke out of the mountain fastnesses of Mirdita and had a fine time for a while. A fine time in Mirdita signifies lifting a few cattle and cutting off the heads of a score of Turks, Bashi-Bazouks being generally preferred as more interesting specimens of Turkish inhumanity than other individuals of the same species.

A Turkish force, under Dervish-Basha, was sent the other day against the Mirdites, and, unfortunately for the good cause, the interesting Prenk and his friends came to grief. The Turks marched into Mirditia and the Mirdites retreated before them until the Turks were deeply involved in a very difficult mountainous country, when the Mirdites turned round upon their pursuers and blocked them in. Now this is a pretty good be ginning for Prenk Doda, and shows him to be a young chief of considerable promise. It is said that Prenk’s courage and ingenuity was aroused by an intimation on the part of Dervish-Pashathat he would hang the Prenk when caught.

Under the circumstances, it is but natural that he should desire to reverse the process and hang Dervish-Pasha. A decided reluctance to forcible suspension from a fine old oak is the most powerful of motives to mental and bodily exertion, and it is just possible that the world has not heard the last of Prenk Doda and his Mirdites.