et,
the Slav form of the name.

The one pre-eminently Italian town of Dalmatia is Zara. From Zara
south, the language becomes more and more Slav. But the Slav
speaking peasants that flock to market are by no means the same in
physical type as the South Slavs of the Bosnian Hinterland. It is
obvious that they are of other blood. They are known as Morlachs,
that is Sea Vlachs, and historically are in all probability
descendants of the pre-Slav native population which, together with
the Roman colonists, fled coast ward before the inrush of the Slav
invaders of the seventh century. Latin culture clung along the coast
and was reinforced later by the Venetians. And a Latin dialect was
spoken until recent times, dying out on the island of Veglio at the
end of the nineteenth century. The Slavizing process which has
steadily gone on is due, partly to natural pressure coastward of the
Slav masses of the Hinterland and partly to artificial means.

Austria, who ever since the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire, had
recognized Italy as a possible danger, had mitigated this by drawing
Italy into the Triple Alliance. But she was well aware that fear of
France, not love of Austria, made Italy take this step. Therefore to
reduce the danger of a strong Italia Irredenta on the east of Adria
she encouraged Atavism against Italianism, regarding the ignorant
and incoherent Slavs as less dangerous than the industrious and
scientific Italians. Similarly, England decided that the half-barbarous
Russians were less likely to be commercial rivals than the
industrious and scientific Germans, and sided with Russia.

Future historians will judge the wisdom of these decisions.

During the fourteen years in which I went up and down the coast, the
Slavizing process in Dalmatia visibly progressed, until the
German-Austrians began to realize that they were "warming a viper,"
and to feel nervous. Almost yearly there were more zones in which no
photographs might be taken and more forts were built.

Having picked up the thread of the Balkans the next thing was to
learn a Balkan language, for in 1900 scarcely a soul in Montenegro
spoke aught but Serb. Nor was any dictionary of the language to be
bought at Cetinje. The one bookshop of Montenegro was carefully
supervised by the Prince, who saw to it that the people should read
nothing likely to disturb their ideas, and the literature obtainable
was mainly old national ballads and the poetical works of the