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. [Illustration: 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 Di terra e poche ignude isole sparte, O Patria mia, sarai; ma la rinata Serbia guerriera mano e mite spirto, showing thereby the extent of the hold of Italian culture over the land. Again, Spalato is the birthplace of Antonio Bajamonti, one of the greatest exponents of Italy’s claims over Dalmatia. According to the Austrian census of 1910 the population of the province consisted of 645,666 inhabitants. Of these it is estimated that 60,000 are Italians, who constitute the progressive and educated element of the population. The Slav inhabitants number approximately 480,000, but only about 30,000 among them have a speaking knowledge of Italian. The mass of this Slavic element is uneducated. The Illyrians were early inhabitants of the eastern Adriatic coast whom the Romans had conquered in order to check piracy in the Adriatic. After being tamed these barbarians formed the substratum of the population of Adriatic cities. Throughout the coast their language was displaced during the Middle Ages by the Venetian of Italian traders. In the Albanian mountains, however, the old Illyrian tongue strongly impregnated with Latin words still survives. Roman influence could not be exerted on this rugged land as strongly as on the coast.