The next day was the birthday of the Crown Prince, and when I made ready to depart my new friends said, "Of course you are going to stay to the great festival," apparently thinking that that was what I came for. I asked if the young man himself was to be present, and they replied, "Oh! no." "Then," said I, "I think I will not be present either." So I got off at half-past two in a fierce heat, and by easy stages, meeting as I went several of my stalwart third-class fellow-passengers, I reached the Galatea in season for a good dinner. On the way from Cattaro to Spalato the chief object of interest is Ragusa, a strongly fortified city of about twelve thousand inhabitants, which, after maintaining itself as a free republic until 1805, often leaning upon Venice the while, went in the next decade through great vicissitudes, being in 1811 annexed by Napoleon to the new "Kingdom of Illyria," and in 1814 falling into the hands of Austria, so good at taking hold but so slow at letting go. But, after all that may be said of the land-greed of Austria, it has been no evil lot for Dalmatia to fall into her hands. Austria has inherited--let Professor Freeman turn over in his grave to hear it said--the rôle of Rome as road-builder, civilizer, and introducer of general prosperity along this coast. She is now pushing a network of railroads along the coast and up from the coast towns into the interior. Ragusa has a very Venetian look in its old part and a very nineteenth-century look in its new part. Its surroundings are almost as interesting as the city itself. On the lovely island Lacroma, hard by on the south, is a church founded by Richard Cœur de Lion. Somewhat farther off to the north, on the shore, lies Canosa, ever remembered by a spring of pure water shaded by two gigantic plane-trees forty feet in circumference, an enchanted spot. At or near Ragusa lay the Greek city Epidauros. In this region might well be located the "Islands of the Blessed"; for here we begin to encounter islands by tens and dozens, large and small. The rest of the journey was dodging in and out among islands. We have lakes in America which boast their three hundred and sixty-five islands, one for each day in the year; but the Dalmatian islands are not to be counted by hundreds, but by thousands, if one were to count them at all. They are generally spoken of as innumerable. Geologists say that there has been here a subsidence of great strips of land, and that the sea has in some cases broken up the remaining strips into pieces of a size to suit itself, ranging from fifty rods to fifty miles in length. Here comes the infinite charm of sailing along the Dalmatian coast, this interlocking of sea and shore. No wonder that the Dalmatians are all sailors, wooers of the salt sea gale. I myself longed to get off the steamer and get into one of the numerous sailboats that were ploughing through the dashing waves.