r.
Outside the cafe, on the Square (where flocks of pigeons whirl around as
at St. Mark's in Venice), every little table is occupied; but here the
women are gowned in the latest Vienna fashions, and Austrian uniforms
predominate. And the sun shines as warmly as in June (on this 25th day
of March), and the cathedral bells chime a merry accompaniment to a
military band; a sky of the brightest blue gladdens the eye, fragrant
flowers the senses, and the traveler sips his bock or mazagran, and
thanks his stars he is not spending the winter in cold, foggy England.
Refreshments are served by a white-aproned garcon, and street boys
are selling the "Daily Mail" and "Gil Blas," just as they are on the
far-away boulevards of Paris.
CATTARO[13]
BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
The end of a purely Dalmatian pilgrimage will be Cattaro. He who goes
further along the coast will pass into lands that have a history, past
and present, which is wholly distinct from that of the coast which he
has hitherto traced from Zara--we might say from Capo d'Istria--onward.
We have not reached the end of the old Venetian dominion--for that we
must carry our voyage to Crete and Cyprus. But we have reached the end
of the nearly continuous Venetian dominion--the end of the coast which,
save at two small points, was either Venetian or Regusan--the end of
that territory of the two maritime commonwealths which they kept down to
their fall in modern times, and in which they have been succeeded by the
modern Dalmatian kingdom....
The city stands at the end of an inlet of the sea fifteen or twenty
miles long, and it has mountains around it so high that it is only in
fair summer weather that the sun can be seen; in winter Cattaro never
enjoys his presence. There certainly is no place where it is harder to
believe that the smooth waters of the narrow, lake-like inlet, with
mountains on each side which it seems as if one could put out one's hand
and touch, are really part of the same sea which dashes against the
rocks of Ragusa. They end in a meadow-like coast which makes one think
of Bourget or Trasimenus rather than of Hadria. The Dalmatian voyage is
well ended by the sail along the Bocche, the loveliest piece of inland
sea which can be conceived, and whose shores are as rich in curious bits
of political history as they are in scenes of surpassing natural beauty.
The general history of the district consists in the usual tossing to and
fro between the various
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