And just to offer one more probative demonstration of how puny the world really is, the chief officer of the Petka had been for many years in the service of a trans-Pacific steamship company, and, during that time, had lived in Santa Clara, California. There his three children had been born, and their father assisted in their education by teaching each one to speak five languages in addition to English.
Almost the entire distance from Gravosa to Fiume the course of the steamers lies along an inland passage protected from the sea-swells of the Adriatic by hundreds of islands, some large and some small, but all of a considerable height, while, from the shores of the mainland, the mountains rise with such apparent verticality that it would seem a simple matter to stand at any point along the top and drop a plumb line to the water below. No matter what moment you might gaze up or down the coast or seaward you would be able to see from five to thirty-five islands, without half trying. The water is all of such great depth, even to the edge of the coast, that it is said a vessel might pass safely between two protruding rocks situated so close together as to barely admit of the ship’s passage. The conspicuous absence of lights to warn the mariner at night makes navigation seem difficult and dangerous, but the pilots know the channels as they know their rosaries. Neither are the ships supplied with searchlights to facilitate the picking out of the few buoys that mark the channels farther along. One or two of the particularly narrow places of the course, however, are marked by miniature light-houses, not more than ten feet in height, which stick up from the water to indicate the base of a wall of rock as it juts out into the blackness of the night.
About fifty miles from Ragusa, in the narrow channel which divides the Sabbioncello Peninsula from the island of Curzola, a famous sea battle between the Venetians and the Genoese took place. This affray was won by the latter, who captured the distinguished Venetian navigator, Marco Polo, he having just returned from a cruise in the China Seas. Polo was taken to Genoa and placed in a dungeon, where he laboured over the manuscript of his widely read book of travels. Doge Dandolo, the Venetian ruler and the admiral of the fleet, was also captured and borne away a prisoner of war by the Genoese, but while en route he dashed out his brains against the bulwarks of the galley upon which he was confined.
Just south of Spalato, twenty hours’ ride from Cattaro by this slow steamer, you will pass the island of Solta, where is gathered the honey, world-famed for its excellence, sucked from the blooms of the rosemary and the cistus rose.
The object that will first attract your attention upon entering the harbour of Spalato is the tall campanile, always in repair, and around which the hideous scaffolding has been allowed to remain since 1882, and it will probably remain for some time to come; for the repairs to the tower are so slow in progressing that as soon as one job is finished another presents itself. The building of this campanile was begun by Maria of Hungary about 1300, but her death in 1323 caused an interruption to the work. It was not again taken up until 1360, when Elizabeth the Elder, sent by her son Lewis of Hungary to govern Dalmatia, ordered that the work be carried out under the supervision of the Spalatine architect, Nicolas Tverdoj. The tower was completed in 1416, but it was not so substantially built as it might have been—for we are told that the subtle art of “graft” had made itself felt in Dalmatia even at that date—and as early as 1472 an architect, Nicolo Fiorentino, commenced the repairs which have continued to this day and which, from all appearances, promise to continue until the campanile is a ruin.
From the top of the scaffold, after a somewhat tiresome climb, one can obtain a comprehensive and beautiful panoramic view of Spalato, where lived and died the composer Von Suppe, and also of the harbour.
Aside from the quaintly dressed Dalmatian fisher folk, who patch and re-patch the variegated sails of their tiny craft along the stone quay, the town is interesting from the fact that it contains the best example of Roman domestic architecture to be found anywhere in the world, not excepting the magnificent ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
SPALATO FROM THE CAMPANILE.
The subject of this rather broad, but nevertheless true, statement is the old palace built by Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century, and in which the Roman ex-Emperor took up his abode after his abdication and where he lived until his death in 313, a. d. Its building marked the date of a new departure in architecture; a departure which ended in the development of the Byzantine and the Romanesque art of modern Europe, they having been inaugurated by modifying the rules of the ancients.