The new frontiers of freedom from the Alps to the ÆgeanPowell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
History
The new frontiers of freedom from the Alps to the Ægean
Powell, E. Alexander (Edward Alexander)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; World War, 1914-1918 -- Territorial questions
at night we dined with the governor-general and his family at the
palace, formerly the residence of the Austrian viceroys. Dinner over, we
lounged in cane chairs on the terrace, served by white-clad,
silent-footed servants with coffee, cigarettes, and the maraschino for
which this coast is famous. Those were never-to-be-forgotten evenings,
for the gently heaving breast of the Adriatic glowed with a
phosphorescent luminousness, the air was heavy with the fragrance of
orange, almond, and oleander, the sky was like purple velvet, and the
stars seemed very near.
Though the population of Dalmatia is overwhelmingly Slav, quite
two-thirds of the 14,000 inhabitants of Zara, its capital, are Italian.
Yet, were it not for the occasional Morlachs in their picturesque
costumes seen in the markets or on the wharfs, one would not suspect the
presence of any Slav element in the town, for the dim and tortuous
streets and the spacious squares bear Italian names--Via del Duomo, Riva
Vecchia, Piazza della Colonna; crouching above the city gates is the
snarling Lion of St. Mark, and everywhere one hears the liquid accents
of the Latin. Zara, like Fiume, is an Italian colony set down on a
Slavonian shore, and, like its sister-city to the north, it bears the
indelible and unmistakable imprint of Italian civilization.
The long, narrow strip of territory sandwiched between the Adriatic and
the Dinaric Alps which comprised the Austrian province of Dalmatia,
though upward of 200 miles in length, has an area scarcely greater than
that of Connecticut and a population smaller than that of Cleveland.
Scarcely more than a tenth of its whole surface is under the plow, the
rest, where it is not altogether sterile, consisting of mountain
pasture. With the exception of scattered groves on the landward slopes,
the country is virtually treeless, the forests for which Dalmatia was
once famous having been cut down by the Venetian ship-builders or
wantonly burned by the Uskok pirates, while every attempt at replanting
has been frustrated by the shallowness of the soil, the frequent
droughts, and the multitudes of goats which browse on the young trees.
The dreary expanse of the Bukovica, lying between Zara and the Bosnian
frontier, is, without exception, the most inhospitable region that I
have ever seen. For mile after mile, far as the eye can see, the earth
is overlaid by a thick stratum of jagged limestone, so rough that no
horse could traverse it, so sharp and flinty that a quarter of an hour's
walking across it would cut to pieces the stoutest pair of boots. Under
the rays of the summer sun these rocks become as hot as the top of a
stove; so hot, indeed, that eggs can be cooked upon them, while metal
objects exposed for only a few minutes to the sun will burn the hand.
Scattered here and there over this terrible plateau are tiny farmsteads,
their houses and the walls shutting in the little patches under
cultivation being built from the stones obtained in clearing the soil, a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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