LETTER XVII.
Trieste, its Extensive Commerce—Hospitality of Mr. Moore—Ruins of Pola—Immense amphitheatre—Village of Pola—Coast of Dalmatia, of Apulia and Calabria—Otranto—Sails for the Isles of Greece.
Trieste is certainly a most agreeable place. Its streets are beautifully paved and clean, its houses new and well built, and its shops as handsome and as well stocked with every variety of things as those of Paris. Its immense commerce brings all nations to its port, and it is quite the commercial centre of the continent. The Turk smokes cross-legged in the café, the English merchant has his box in the country and his snug establishment in town, the Italian has his opera, and his wife her cavalier, the Yankee captain his respectable boarding-house, and the German his four meals a day at a hotel dyed brown with tobacco. Every nation is at home in Trieste.
The society is beyond what is common in a European mercantile city. The English are numerous enough to support a church, and the circle of which our hospitable consul is the centre, is one of the most refined and agreeable it has been my happiness to meet. The friends of Mr. Moore have pressed every possible civility and kindness upon the commodore and his officers, and his own house has been literally our home on shore. It is the curse of this volant life, otherwise so attractive, that its frequent partings are bitter in proportion to its good fortune. We make friends but to lose them.
We got under way with a light breeze this morning, and stole gently out of the bay. The remembrance of a thousand kindnesses made our anchors lift heavily. We waved our handkerchiefs to the consul, whose balconies were filled with his charming family watching our departure, and with a freshening wind, disappeared around the point, and put up our helm for Pola.
The ruins of Pola, though among the first in the world, are seldom visited. They lie on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, at the head of a superb natural bay, far from any populous town, and are seen only by the chance trader who hugs the shore for the land-breeze, or the Albanian robber who looks down upon them with wonder from the mountains. What their age is I cannot say nearly. The country was conquered by the Romans about one hundred years before the time of our Saviour, and the amphitheatre and temples were probably erected soon after.
We ran into the bay, with the other frigate close astern, and anchored off a small green island which shuts in the inner harbour. There is deep water up to the ancient town on either side, and it seems as if nature had amused herself with constructing a harbour incapable of improvement. Pola lay about two miles from the sea.
It was just evening, and we deferred our visit to the ruins till morning. The majestic amphitheatre stood on a gentle ascent, a mile from the ship, goldenly bright in the flush of sunset; the pleasant smell of the shore stole over the decks, and the bands of the two frigates played alternately the evening through. The receding mountains of Istria changed their light blue veils gradually to grey and sable, and with the pure stars of these enchanted seas, and the shell of a new moon bending over Italy in the west, it was such a night as one remembrances like a friend. The “Constellation” was to part from us here, leaving us to pursue our voyage to Greece. There were those on board who had brightened many of our “hours ashore,” in these pleasant wanderings. We pulled back to our own ship, after a farewell visit, with regrets deepened by crowds of pleasant remembrances.