The Dalmatian coast, however, with its numerous bays and gulfs setting far into the land and broken by many headlands, is fringed by a garland of outlying islands. These natural features of the region provide the advantages denied to Italy. Almost every mile of shore in Dalmatia contains a commodious harbor for merchantmen or a well-sheltered base for war vessels. Most of the rivers originating in the mountain chains overlooking blue water flow eastward toward the Danube. Very little silt and sediment therefore finds its way to the Dalmatian coast.
Linguistically, the eastern shore of the Adriatic is Serbian or Albanian. But the history of this coastal land is Italian in spite of the showing of census returns as to the decided numerical inferiority of Italians within its limits. Rome had reached Dalmatia and the Near East by way of the Adriatic. A whole chain of imposing ruins extending to the wild Albanian shores bear the unmistakable impress of Roman splendor. In the partition of the Roman Empire in 295 A.D. Dalmatia was assigned to the western and not to the eastern half. The period of its subjection to Venetian rule is one of the most brilliant in its history. All the civilization it received came from the west.
The fact is that the Italian element has always been predominant. After 1866 its influence was viewed with disfavor by the Austrian government. Serbians and Croats were encouraged to settle in the Italian communities of the coast and officials of the Dual Monarchy were instructed to assist the Slavs in every possible manner with a view to counterbalancing Italian primacy in the province. In recent years the task of the Austrian government became doubly difficult, for its representatives could not avoid playing alternately into the hands of Serbians and Italians.
Dalmatia has always greeted Italian thought as the heritage of Rome and Venice. Its history, its most notable monuments and its whole culture are products of either Roman or Venetian influence. The maritime cities in particular still remain strongholds of Italian thought. Almost every one boasts of a native son who has distinguished himself in the cause of Italy.
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Fig. 32—Map of the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic. Scale, 1:4,000,000. (Ancient names in hair-line type.)
Zara, which Italian authors delight in qualifying as “italianissima,” is the native city of the Italian patriot Arturo Colantti. The great Dalmatian poet Niccoló Tomasseo, whose monument was erected in Sebenico in 1896, was a son of this city and, although an intensely patriotic Slav, nevertheless thus expressed himself in Italian:
Nè più tra’l monte e il mar, povero lembo