The western channels and the western slopes of the islands are better protected from the destructive gusts of the “Bora,” but the channels nearest to the Croatian coast are swept by its full fury. Along the eastern shores of these channels the soil is rendered as sterile as the sands of the desert, for the wind cuts the spray from the surface of the water and carries it inland in great clouds, completely obscuring the shore line from the sea, and destroying the tender sprouts of early cereals by depositing upon them the injurious salty sediment. In 1873, while a train was rounding one of the many curves on the line from Agram to Fiume, the “Bora” came up suddenly and blew it from the rails. The little town of Segna seems to suffer the most from this wind; at any rate many of the stories of the extraordinary violence with which it blows originated there. Some historians tell us that in Segna during the raging of a “Bora” it is unsafe to venture out-of-doors; that it lifts weak or aged adults and little children from the ground and dashes them against the walls of the houses; that those who are obliged to go to the basin where the ships lie must crawl snake-like on the ground to avoid being picked off their feet and hurled into the sea. It is a common occurrence for horses heavily loaded to be thrown down in the market-place of Segna, and although the roofs of all houses are weighted with stones they are often lifted and carried away. “But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good” and, therefore, the “Bora” was hardly considered wholly unwelcome by the pirates, the Uscocs, who once infested the islands of the bay, finding their safety in the dangers of navigation thereabouts which deterred better ships but less able seamen from hunting them down and sinking their puny craft. Strangely incongruous with its soporific atmosphere is the bustle and business of Fiume. Finally united to Hungary in 1870, Fiume has grown from a mere seaport town to a thriving manufacturing and shipping city of thirty-nine thousand inhabitants. To-day it is in the class with the Austrian city of Trieste, on the opposite side of the Istrian Peninsula; one of the most cosmopolitan ports in the world. The scene along the docks is interesting, for Fiume is the home port of fleets of coasters which ply up and down the Adriatic, of great steel cargo and passenger ships making scheduled sailings to the Levant, to the coasts of Africa, to the Straits Settlements and the Far East, to North and South America. [Illustration: VIA ANDRASSY, FIUME.] A few miles to the west of Fiume, nestling snugly on the edge of the bay at the foot of massive Mount Maggiore, lies a fashionable little sea-side resort, patronized by the upper crust of Austrian aristocracy, Abbazia. Here, under the trees or on the porch of the Casino, the élite of the land sips its liquor and smokes its slender cigarettes while the military band interprets the latest Viennese musical success.