MORLACCA GIRL, ZARA
The dialect spoken in the city is pure Venetian, and the municipality is the only Italian one in Dalmatia. Zara is still the capital, and the diet meets in the city. Here, too, are the only Italian schools in the province, the Slav majority in most places exercising its power to veto everything Italian. The only flourishing industry is the manufacture of maraschino, of which 300,000 bottles are exported annually. The cherries, which are the raw material, are imported from Sebenico, Almissa, and Poljica, near Spalato. The streets are narrow and impossible for carriage traffic; merchandise is put upon long narrow carts, with long poles projecting in front and cross-pieces at the end; the cart is then pushed and pulled by several men. The population is 13,000, and is increased by many country people in the mornings, who come to market, so that the streets and piazzas are crowded with a most distracting variety of costumes. Both men and girls from the country wear little red caps. The men have great light-coloured woollen coats which they throw over their shoulders without putting their arms in, light shirts, sometimes with an embroidered jacket, trousers with embroidery round the pocket-holes (which are in front of the thigh) and a split at the lower part of the side which is buttoned up. They sometimes have a sash round the waist with a knife. The women wear leggings woven roughly in patterns like the wrong side of a tapestry curtain, and shoes somewhat the shape of gondolas, thick skirts with patterned aprons, and small waistcoat-like jackets. Their hair is plaited round the head. The dress of the townspeople is less individual; the head is covered with a white or coloured kerchief, the dress is frequently black, and the modern blouse is sometimes seen. It is interesting to watch the boatloads of country-folk arriving either by the Porta Terra Ferma, close to which are steps and a small harbour, or on the quay by the Porta Marina. Lambs and kids are brought alive and killed and skinned on the quay, the women holding pots or jugs to catch the blood, which they seem to think valuable. The wall of the quay was being rebuilt when we were there the second time, and a diver was working at it. It looked odd to see the stones and buckets of cement lowered into the water with ropes.
There are two antique columns still erect: one, fluted, is in the Piazza S. Simeone, set up in 1729, and the other is in the Piazza dell' Erbe; it was used as a pillory, and the chains with the iron collars still hang to it, having, by centuries of friction, cut deep-curved grooves in the marble with swinging to and fro. This column also has sockets for the insertion of flagstaffs, and attached to it is a much-worn piece of eighth-century sculpture, with the motif of an ornamented cross beneath an arch fastened with clamps. The chroniclers of the seventeenth century record that near this place several drums of columns projected from the earth, and that two entire pillars were erect and united by a piece of the architrave. One was moved to S. Simeone, near to which Mr. T.G. Jackson saw in 1884 the base of a Roman arch excavated beneath the level of the piazza. Other similar fragments have been used in the foundations of S. Donato.
GOING TO MARKET, ZARA
PLANS OF S. DONATO, ZARA