Strangely incongruous with its soporific atmosphere is the bustle and business of Fiume. Finally united to Hungary in 1870, Fiume has grown from a mere seaport town to a thriving manufacturing and shipping city of thirty-nine thousand inhabitants. To-day it is in the class with the Austrian city of Trieste, on the opposite side of the Istrian Peninsula; one of the most cosmopolitan ports in the world. The scene along the docks is interesting, for Fiume is the home port of fleets of coasters which ply up and down the Adriatic, of great steel cargo and passenger ships making scheduled sailings to the Levant, to the coasts of Africa, to the Straits Settlements and the Far East, to North and South America.
VIA ANDRASSY, FIUME.
A few miles to the west of Fiume, nestling snugly on the edge of the bay at the foot of massive Mount Maggiore, lies a fashionable little sea-side resort, patronized by the upper crust of Austrian aristocracy, Abbazia. Here, under the trees or on the porch of the Casino, the élite of the land sips its liquor and smokes its slender cigarettes while the military band interprets the latest Viennese musical success.
And almost within an arm’s reach of Abbazia, just a few yards off in the bay, is one end of the target range of an ever-busy manufacturing plant, whose product has tended more to evolutionize warfare than any device ever invented, the Whitehead torpedo factory. On this range the great fish-like instruments of destruction are tested thoroughly, their parts adjusted and tested again, to assure their deadliness, before shipment to the arsenals of the powers supplied. At one end of the range is the firing station, and in a long line, stretching away toward Abbazia, are the several floating targets, each manned by a signalman with a red flag, under the centres of which the torpedoes must eventually be made to dart before they are ready for delivery. Industrious little power boats shoot up and down the bay collecting the “dead” torpedoes, which, having spent their energy, turn finally from their course and splash about on the surface of the water like wounded porpoises, to tow them back to the launching station for an adjustment of their parts.
What if a torpedo would come to the surface prematurely and hit one of the targets? Some do, and rip great holes in the wooden decks, causing the signalmen to execute some nimble acrobatics, but there is never any danger from explosion, because the “war-heads” of the torpedoes have not yet been put in place; all they carry are the steering-gears and the little compressed air engine. Once in a while, owing to a serious defect in the steering-gear, one will run amuck a few seconds after it has been discharged. Then is the time for the launches to be on the qui vive, for there is no telling what direction the torpedo will take. One of them once made a bee-line for the stone wall which skirts the bay in front of the factory. Like a leaping salmon it mounted this at one bound, bounced along the top for a few yards, demolishing stone-work and making the wall appear as if it had been struck by a thirteen-inch shell, and then plunged into the bay, tearing around this way and that until it made its final death-leap and lay peacefully upon the surface of the water. Then, like a naughty but remorseful boy, it was towed back and given a good spanking in the form of an overhauling of its parts.
In the city of Fiume there are many types—Croatians, Austrian army and navy officers, Italians, Dalmatians, Germans, Englishmen—and all work hard accumulating fortunes, large or small as the case may be; but those who seem to be amassing the largest private estates in proportion to their labours, if one may judge from their daily net receipts, are the piratical porters of the town, who swoop down from all points of the compass upon the unsuspecting traveller. It is safe to say that these are the lineal descendants of the Uscocs of old, having only adopted more modern methods of piracy than those employed by their ancestors,—for from whom else might they have inherited their predatory proclivities? These must have been handed down from father to son, for they are too well developed to admit of mere accidental discovery. Every time one of these porters looks at your luggage he commits petty larceny, in thought, if not in deed. The charge for carrying a small grip from the dock to the hotel, a distance of a hundred feet, may be any amount from the equivalent of twenty-five cents up, and the wise traveller is gulled but once. Some one tried to explain to me why the Fiume porters were allowed to charge any amount they pleased, but it seemed a very unsatisfactory excuse. Suffice it to say that the price demanded for carrying one grip is one krone, with one, two or three kronen added, according to the nationality of the patron. For example: to carry one grip for an Austrian, one krone; for a German, two kronen; for an Englishman, three kronen; for an American, four kronen. It seems that the farther away one lives the more it costs one to have one’s baggage transferred in Fiume. A Chinaman with two grips would go bankrupt in this town in no time.
With a farewell salute to Fiume and her activity, manufacturing, shipping and piratical, we sailed out across the waters of the harbour of this, the western sea-gate to the Balkan Peninsula, homeward bound.
After having wandered over this virgin touring territory, a territory with a future as well as with an eventful past, a territory of big things in war and in peace; after having revelled in its type-pictures and its remarkable scenery, mingled with its unsophisticated peoples and marvelled at its history and its struggles for mere existence, we were struck with thoughts, as we came suddenly from the land of simplicity upon the preying porters of Fiume, at once akin to and conflicting with those of a certain author, who, in an early book of travel, concludes the narration of an experience as follows: