"I wonder if they have?" soliloquized Sir Ralph. "Well, here we are within three yards of a hotel which, if I've any brains left, is the very one you selected from Baedeker." We all got out as if we had stopped on purpose, and the hotel which Fate and our Chauffeulier had chosen proved very fair, though too modern to be in the picture. If the automobile had flashed us to Mars things could hardly have been more unfamiliar to our eyes than when we walked out next morning to find ourselves in the midst of a great fete. Flags were everywhere: in arched windows, rich with sculptured stone; flying over the great gates of the city; festooned in the charming little houses with fountain courts surrounded by columns. The peasants of the country round had flocked to town for the holiday. Dark, velvet-eyed girls in short dresses of bright-coloured silk heavy with gold embroidery, their hair hidden by white head-dresses flashing with sequins, and tall men in long frock coats of dark crimson or yellow, were exactly like a stage crowd in some wonderful theatre; while handsome Austrian officers wearing graceful blue cloaks draped over one shoulder, might have been operatic heroes. There was strange music in the streets, and a religious procession, which we followed for some time on our way to the maraschino factory which Mr. Barrymore said we must see. Of course, some monks had invented the liqueur, as they always do, but perhaps the cherries which grow only among those mountains, and can't be exported, had as much to do with the original success of the liqueur as the existence of the recipe. If Aunt Kathryn had listened to Mr. Barrymore and me we would have gone from Zara inland to a place called Knin, to visit the cataract of Krka, described as a combination of Niagara and the Rhine Falls. But she said that the very sound of the names would make a cat want to sneeze, and she was sure she would take her death of cold there. So the proposal fell to the ground, and we kept to the coast route, the shortest way of getting to Ragusa and Cattaro. When we had climbed out of Zara by the old post road, begun by Venice and finished by Austria, our way lay among the famous cherry-trees which have made Zara rich. There were miles of undulating country and fields of wheat, interspersed with vines and almond trees which mingled with the cherries. The pastures where sheep and goats grazed were blue and pink with violets and anemones; here and there was an old watch-tower, put up against the Turks; and the rich peasants drove in quaint flat chaises, which looked as if the occupants were sitting in large pancakes.