CHAPTER XIX
THE GULF OF QUARNERO
The Home of the Bora—Fiume—Abbazia—The Home of the Torpedo—Descendants of the Uscocs.
In summer or fall it is a pleasant boat trip of six hours from Zara to Fiume, which is prettily situated at the north-eastern end of the Gulf of Quarnero. But in the winter and early spring, at which seasons the “Bora,” or north-east wind, is prevalent, keep an eye on the barometer! It is at this north-eastern end of the Gulf, in the mountains back of Fiume, that this dreaded wind is born. Accumulating velocity with every blast, it sweeps down upon the sea with relentless fury, carrying everything before it, overturning carts, upsetting horses in the streets and putting a quietus, for the time being, on all navigation within range.
The western channels and the western slopes of the islands are better protected from the destructive gusts of the “Bora,” but the channels nearest to the Croatian coast are swept by its full fury. Along the eastern shores of these channels the soil is rendered as sterile as the sands of the desert, for the wind cuts the spray from the surface of the water and carries it inland in great clouds, completely obscuring the shore line from the sea, and destroying the tender sprouts of early cereals by depositing upon them the injurious salty sediment. In 1873, while a train was rounding one of the many curves on the line from Agram to Fiume, the “Bora” came up suddenly and blew it from the rails.
The little town of Segna seems to suffer the most from this wind; at any rate many of the stories of the extraordinary violence with which it blows originated there. Some historians tell us that in Segna during the raging of a “Bora” it is unsafe to venture out-of-doors; that it lifts weak or aged adults and little children from the ground and dashes them against the walls of the houses; that those who are obliged to go to the basin where the ships lie must crawl snake-like on the ground to avoid being picked off their feet and hurled into the sea. It is a common occurrence for horses heavily loaded to be thrown down in the market-place of Segna, and although the roofs of all houses are weighted with stones they are often lifted and carried away.
“But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good” and, therefore, the “Bora” was hardly considered wholly unwelcome by the pirates, the Uscocs, who once infested the islands of the bay, finding their safety in the dangers of navigation thereabouts which deterred better ships but less able seamen from hunting them down and sinking their puny craft.