Robert Hichens - The Near East: Ancient Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople

Miramar faded across the pale waters of the Adriatic, which lay like a dream at the foot of the hills where Triest seemed sleeping, all its activities stilled at the summons of peace. Beneath its tower the orange-colored sail of a fishing-boat caught the sunlight, and gleamed like some precious fabric, then faded, too, as the ship moved onward to the forgotten region of rocks and islands, of long, gray mountains, of little cities and ancient fortresses, of dim old churches, from whose campanile the medieval voices of bells ring out the angelus to a people still happily primitive, still unashamed to be picturesque. By the way of the sea we journeyed to a capital where no carriages roll through the narrow streets, where there is not a railway-station, where the citizens are content to go on foot about their business, and where three quarters of the blessings of civilization are blessedly unknown. We had still to touch at Pola, in whose great harbor the dull-green war-ships of Austria lay almost in the shadow of the vast Roman amphitheater, which has lifted its white walls, touched here and there with gold, above the sea for some sixteen hundred years, curiously graceful despite its gigantic bulk, the home now of grasses and thistles, where twenty thousand spectators used to assemble to take their pleasure.

But when Pola was left behind, the ship soon entered the watery paradise. Miramar, Triest, were forgotten. Dalmatia is a land of forgetting, seems happily far away, cut off by the sea from many banalities, many active annoyances of modern life.

Places that are, or that seem to be, remote often hold a certain melancholy, a tristesse of "old, unhappy, far-off things." But Dalmatia has a serene atmosphere, a cheerful purity, a clean and a cozy gaiety which reach out hands to the traveler, and take him at once into intimacy and the breast of a home. Before entering it the ship coasts along a naked region, in which pale, almost flesh-colored hills are backed by mountains of a ghastly grayness. Flesh-color and steel are almost cruelly blended. No habitations were visible. The sea, protected on our right by lines of islands, was waveless. No birds flew above it; no boats moved on it. We seemed to be creeping down into the ultimate desolation.

But presently the waters widened out. At the foot of the hills appeared here and there white groups of houses. A greater warmth, like a breath of hope, stole into the air. White and yellow sails showed on the breast of the sea. Two sturdy men, wearing red caps, and standing to ply their oars, hailed us in the Slav dialect as they passed on their way to the islands. The huge, gray Velebit Mountains still bore us company on our voyage to the South, but they were losing their almost wicked look of dreariness. In the golden light of afternoon romance was descending upon them. And now a long spur of green land thrust itself far out, as if to bar our way onward. The islands closed in upon us again. A white town smiled on us far off at the edge of the happy, green land. It looked full of promises, a little city not to be passed without regretting. It was Zara, the capital without a railway-station of the forgotten country.

Zara, Trau, Spalato, Ragusa, Castelnuovo, Cattaro, Sebenicothese, with two or three other places, represent Dalmatia to the average traveler. Ragusa is, perhaps, the most popular and interesting; Spalato the most populous and energetic; Cattaro the most remarkable scenically. Trau leaves a haunting memory in the mind of him who sees it. Castelnuovo is a little paradise marred in some degree by the soldiers who infest it, and who seem strangely out of place in its tiny ways and its tree-shaded piazza on the hilltop. But Zara has a peculiar charm, half gay, half brightly tender. And nowhere else in all Dalmatia are such exquisite effects of light wedded to water to be seen as on Zara's Canale.

Zara, like other sirens, is deceptive. The city has a face which gives little indication of its soul. Along the shore lie tall and cheerful houses,almost palaces they are,solid and big, modern, with windows opening to the sea, and separated from it only by a broad walk, edged by a strip of pavement, from which might be taken a dive into the limpid water. And here, when the ship tied up, a well-dressed throng of joyous citizens was taking the air. Children were playing and laughing. Two or three row-boats slipped through the gold and silver which the sun, just setting behind the island of Ugljan opposite, showered toward the city. Music came from some place of entertainment. A simple liveliness suggested prosperous homes, the well-being of a community apart, which chose to live "out of the world," away from railroads, motor-cars, and carriage traffic, but which knew how to be modern in its own quiet and decorous way.

Yet Zara had a great soaring campanileit had been visible far off at seaand tiny streets and old buildings, San Donato, the duomo, San Simeone; and five fountains,the cinque pozzi ,and a Venetian tower,the Torre di Buovo d'Antona,and fortification gardens, and lion gateways. Where were all these? A sound of bells came from behind the palaces. And these bells seemed to be proclaiming the truth of Zara.

THE MARKET-PLACE AT SPALATO

Bells ringing in hidden places behind the palaces; bells calling across strange gardens lifted high on mighty walls; bells whispering among pines and murmuring across green depths of glass-like water; bells chiming above the yellowing vines on tiny islands! Who that remembers Zara remembers not Zara's bells?

Walk a few steps from the sea, passing between the big houses which front it into the Piazza delle Erbe, and you come at once into a busy strangeness of Croatia girdled about by Italy. Dalmatia has been possessed wholly or in part by Romans, Goths, Slavs, Hungarians, Turks, Venetians. Now smart Austrian soldiers make themselves at home in Zara, but Italy seems still to rule there, stretching hands out of the past. Italian may be heard on all sides, but the peasants who throng the calle and the market-place and the harbor speak a Slavonic dialect, and in the piazza on any morning, almost in the shadow of the Romanesque cathedral, and watched over by a griffin perched on a high Corinthian column hung with chains, which announce its old service as a pillory, you may hear their chatter, and see the gay colors of costumes which to the untraveled might perhaps suggest comic opera.