Each turn brings a new surprise, and so one passes on till one comes to the piazza, and this day being a festival, it swarmed with natives from all the surrounding campagne. The reader must now come with me to the café, where under a thick awning and surrounded by a screen of oleanders and orange-trees in full bloom, we shall take a granita di caffé (a water-ice flavoured with coffee), and study the moving panorama before us, whilst we slowly puff away a cigarette made with the ambrosial tobacco of Trebigna—a kind still unknown in London and in Paris!
CHAPTER VII.
A TYPE OF SHYLOCK—SCENE IN THE STREET—VARIED COSTUMES—MORLACCHI—TURKS FROM THE HERZEGOVINA—WOMEN OF SPALATO—INSPECTION OF THE CITY—THE PORTA AUREA—COURT OF THE VESTIBULE OF THE PALACE—INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL—ILLUSTRIOUS MEN OF SPALATO—MARK ANTONY DE DOMINIS—ST. JEROME—THE MORLACCHI.
SITTING down cross-legged on the very oldest and dirtiest of rugs, and just outside our fragrant hedge of oleander, is to be seen an old Jew, the finest type of a Shylock that could be imagined; with ample, heavy, flowing beard, aquiline nose with sharp cut nostril, and deep-set piercing eyes shadowed by an ample turban. He has before him, on his rug, a collection of arms, pistols of the old approved Turkish form and yataghans of every price, from the common horn-handled weapon in a wooden sheath to the jewel-hilted Kharjar in a sheath of repoussé silver. Around is a motley group of countrymen, all talking at the top of their voices in their several languages, whilst examining and praising or depreciating the weapons there for sale, just as they are either simple flâneurs in the square, or really intending purchasers. The varieties of costume rendered this picturesque group most interesting, there were Morlacchi from the neighbouring mountains with full blue Turkish trowsers fast to the knee; gold embroidered crimson jackets without sleeves, and gaiters to match; the whole finished off by an immense Albanian scarf of many colours wound round the waist, holding a perfect armoury of weapons in the front. On the head most of them wore a small red fez, others wore a turban, but it was not put on like the Jews, they did not seem au fait in settling it; but whatever head-gear they adopted they all were decorated with a tail—a genuine plaited tail coming down their backs with such luxuriance that it might have been the envy of any Celestial. I could not bring myself to like it—though report says that the Morlacchi are wonderfully attached to their tails, and cherish and pet them somewhat in the manner of our old tars in the days of Collingwood and Nelson.
There were Turks from the Herzegovina, ill-looking, badly-clad, scowling Mussulmans, who would willingly have earned ten paras by sending a Christian to his latter home, but still gorgeous in their tatters and vermin. There were Christian Albanians with their white fustanellas, high aquiline nose, glittering eyes, and false smile, in dress somewhat similar to the Morlacchi, but wearing a smaller fez with a long blue tassel. Conspicuous above them all was a Risanese from the Gulf of Cattaro, in full Montenegrin costume; but with a green instead of the white characteristic coat, all overladen about the breast and shoulders with plates of solid gold of considerable thickness, especially over the shoulders, where they would, if required, afford some protection from the blow of a sabre.
Mingled with the men were several women—some very good-looking—with golden-brown hair and dark eyes and eyelashes; their hair in plaits, not hanging but coiled round their heads, which were further adorned with Turkish piastres and other coins. The dress is a mixture of red, white, and blue artistically combined, with coral and coins twisted round their necks.