June, lovely June, has been the bringer of two good things to me—Sicily and the Dalmatian coast; and now that the charm of the latter is fresh it seems almost to outshine the former.

When I came on board the Austrian Lloyd steamer Galatea at Corfu I had little idea of what awaited me. One reads of this “Norway of the South,” this “Switzerland in the sea”; but how little these comparisons convey until the landscape has really been seen. My main purpose was rest from the heat of Greece, and a more or less careful study of the ruins of Spalato.

This Dalmatian line is adapted to one who wishes to travel lazily. The stops as far as Spalato are longer than the passages; the boat, however, starts in each case promptly according to the schedule. The only exception was at Corfu; when all was ready, and we were just about to hoist the anchor, a Greek boatman came up alongside with a barge loaded with casks and boxes. It was so characteristic of a Greek.

While we were moving along the coast of Albania until late in the afternoon, there was nothing new to look out for; and so there was time to get acquainted with the ship and the passengers, to get one’s bearings. There were the rules for passengers printed in five parallel columns—English, French, German, Italian, and Greek—emphasizing the cosmopolitan constituency of the travelling public. In Europe, and especially in the Orient, it always pays to read regulations, particularly the English column, to see how foreigners wrestle with our language. Rule 3 said: “Every damage is to be made good by the person who dit it.” Rule 11: “It is prohibited to any passenger to middle with the command and direction of the vessel.” As I had always trusted to the captain to run his own ship, I felt safe on that point. Particular anxiety for the ladies ran through the rules. One rule was: “Gentlemen are not allowed to enter the cabins of the ladies,” and as a final snapper at the end of the last rule was this sentence: “Passengers having a right to be treated like persons of education will no doubt conform themselves to the rules of good society by respecting their fellow-travellers and paying a due regard to the fair sex.” As we had no ladies at all on board until the journey was about half finished it began to seem as if they had been frightened away.

The captain, like most of the captains of this line, was of Slavic origin. Of other languages than his own he knew only Italian. In this he did all his “cussing” at every port; and it seemed to produce everywhere the proper effect. His gentlest conversational tone was like the blast of a trumpet and could be heard from stem to stern. I took an early opportunity to go up to the bridge when he was there, and remark apologetically that I was travelling per vedere qualche cosa. His laconic reply was, “Ma perchÈ no?” With that I felt myself installed on the bridge, and I spent more hours there during the voyage than any one of the officers. Perhaps the third-class passengers standing below suspected me of attempting to “middle with the command and direction of the vessel.”

Toward evening we passed Akrokeraunia, the massive headland ending off a chain of mountains back of it over six thousand feet high, in antiquity the cynosure of sailors crossing by the shortest line from Italy to Greece. The modern name, Capo Duro, suggests its pitilessness. There it stands running out to the northwest, and so bidding defiance to the strongest wind of the region. The sea has beaten against it since there was a sea; it has broken away a good deal of it, if we may judge by a single isolated island thrown out in front of it. The high mountains seem saying to the sea, “You waste your vain fury on those lower rocks. What will you do when you come to us?” But it is the business of the patient sea to help “draw down the Aonian hills,” and until there shall be no more sea Capo Duro must yield inch by inch.

Having passed Akrokeraunia, we turned sharply to the right, and changed our course from north to south until we dropped anchor in the harbor of Valona. As far as Cattaro the chief function of our boat was the transportation of freight, and that was the reason why the stops were so long. The captain was an ardent fisherman; hardly was the anchor down when his little boat dropped astern, and he fished sometimes far on into the night. He counted his catch not by numbers, but by kilos; and since the other officers in a circle around the stern, leaning over the taffrail, vied with the captain, fish were plentiful on board. All along this shore were great forests of holm-oak, and the cargo that we took on here was almost entirely valonia, so much used in Europe by tanners.

In the night we got off, and I missed the site of the great ancient city Apollonia, a little to the north of our stopping-place. But in the forenoon we stopped at Durazzo, the ancient Dyrrhachium, which, situated at the beginning of the great Via Egnatia, saw the passage of so many Roman armies into Greece. CÆsar and Pompey passed that way to their great struggle for the possession of the world. In earlier days it was known under the name of Epidamnos, as the colony of Kerkyra which set its mother city at war with her own mother city, Corinth, and so lighted the fire that destroyed Greece in the dreadful Peloponnesian war. At Durazzo my only first-class fellow-passenger got off.

Of third-class passengers we had a plenty, and a nondescript crowd they were; in other words, they beggared description. Some were magnificently dressed; but even those who were in rags were picturesque. If a painter had been present he would have been troubled by an embarras de richesse. Red and yellow were the prevailing colors in that motley crowd; gold embroidery was abundant. The few women present kept pretty well in the background, and took little or no part in the exuberant jollity of the men, who sang and danced in true Oriental style, keeping for the most part a somewhat monotonous droning, but rising sometimes into frenzy. This, continued far on into the evening hours, was bewitching. The situation was, or at least seemed to be, made for my special benefit. I seemed to have a private steamer, with the captain and crew working for me, and these fantastic and jolly people amusing me, who had promised not even “to middle.”

But the next day I was brought from reverie to my senses by the coming of first-class passengers. At Dulcino, the first of the two harbors recently gained by Montenegro, which thus became a maritime state, the Mayor of the town came on board to travel via Cattaro up to Cettinje, the capital, a long way around, but the way of least resistance. He did not break the charm, for a more gorgeously dressed and finer-shaped man one seldom sees. Scores of Montenegrins of the singers and dancers of the preceding evening, cooks and gardeners returning to their homes from Constantinople, where they are in great demand, crowded around this magnate and kissed his hand in true Oriental style, which he took in patriarchal fashion. This was in keeping with the scenes of the day before; but this giant’s wife and children were nothing but ordinary, plain people. At the next port, Antivari, a regular European lady, the wife of the Lloyd agent, came on board with the whole population of the village to give her a send-off; and we at once stepped out of dream-land.

I now fell into another mood. The whole voyage, with its long and frequent stops, began to seem a regular lark, and I so entered into the spirit of the thing that I determined at the next stop to get my bicycle up out of the hold and get a little acquaintance with the country which lay back of the long mountain line of coast. As we were booked to stop at Cattaro forty-four and a half hours, that seemed a good place to begin. The big Montenegrins had interested me so much I would go up and see where such fellows grew.

Who can describe the Gulf, or, as they call it there, the Bocche di Cattaro? It enjoys the distinction of being “perhaps the finest harbor in the world.” There is a break in the coast line; as you go in you find yourself in a broad bay; but that is not all; you pass through another opening, into another bay, and so on, the mountains growing higher all the time until, by passing five channels, one so narrow that it used to be stopped by a chain, and so is called to-day Catena, you reach the fifth bay, on the east shore of which, nestled up against the base of a high dark mountain, one of those from which the region Montenegro got its name, lies Cattaro, a town of five or six thousand inhabitants, the outpost of Austria to the south. For a brief period at about the end of the Napoleonic wars, Montenegro held this place and the Bocche. No doubt all Montenegrins long to possess it again; for it is their natural outlet to the sea, from which the thin line of Austria here shuts them out, except for the poor harbors farther south.

Much history has been enacted around this gulf, which was a prize too valuable not to be striven for. In fact, it is a paradise like few on earth. All the way through the devious passages one is reminded of Lake Lucerne by the mountain banks and of Como by the tropical vegetation. Many of the officers of the Austrian Lloyd have their homes on these shores. Our captain and at least one of the other officers spent two days here with their families. The latter brought back word that an American king named Morgan had just visited the Bocche on his yacht.

We arrived shortly after noon; but it took me just an hour and a half to get my bicycle through the custom-house. The officials hardly knew what to do with it. Probably no bicycle had ever entered that port, and it may be a long time before another enters. I have no doubt that they thought me a fool for bringing mine in; and one could hardly blame them for the thought. The Austrian officials, however, are so affable—I have never met an exception—that one cannot think of losing his own patience. In the cool of the day, in order to test the road, I walked, with a very little riding, up the zigzag road, getting a little taste of what awaited one who would go to Cettinje, and then dropped down again in twenty minutes after the sun had gone down. I had had enjoyment enough to pay for the experiment, and had come to the conclusion, on perhaps rather insufficient data, that on the next day, with good weather, I could get to Cettinje and back if I girded myself to it, so slight is the lateral distance on the map.

To make sure of the case, I rose early and left the ship at half-past four, with a cake of chocolate in my pocket, for the rest trusting to living on the country. Not until seven o’clock did the country offer anything. Then I got coffee from a Highland girl at a very primitive inn at the point of one of the zigzags. She had not “a very shower of beauty”; but she did have “the freedom of a mountaineer,” and a kindly twinkle in her eye. A man takes kindly to the hand and face that signify refreshment in time of need. When I asked how far it was to Cettinje the mountain maid said “tetre ore,” which, though it was a rather bad mixture of Italian and something else, probably Slavic, was extremely encouraging. Even if the climb continued for two hours more I ought to reduce her “four hours” to three. In fact, at eight o’clock, at the end of three and a half hours of steady toiling climb, I found myself at an altitude of nearly three thousand feet, almost perpendicularly above Cattaro, with the Galatea so near that it seemed as if I could drop a stone upon her deck; but I thought it best not to try; I was in a hurry. In a few minutes more I broke through the mountain which had given me so much trouble, and I was in Montenegro. I soon passed the frontier town of Njegus, in the bed of a dried-up lake, the birthplace of Prince Nicholas, the ruling sovereign, who has a country house there of such modest appearance that one could hardly believe it to belong to a prince.

Now my work began anew; another mountain wall confronted me and the road, which as far as the border had been good, was freshly strewn with cracked stones, the bicyclist’s terror. When at last I reached the top of this second range, a sight worth seeing unfolded itself before my eye. All Montenegro, a mass of gray stone rising here and there into peaks, lay spread out before me. In the far northeast one could see the important hill fortress of Niksic, but no land anywhere appeared. In fact, all the soil in Montenegro, except in the southern part around Lake Skutari, is found in larger or smaller clefts of the rocks; Cettinje itself being simply one of the largest of these. Now it was downhill, and I abused my wheel shamefully, running it hard over the stones as the only way of accomplishing the journey. At about ten o’clock, just after feasting my eyes on the grand chain of snow-covered Illyrian mountains in the background, I turned a large cliff and looked down into a bowl five or ten times as large as that of Njegus, and saw at its farther end Cettinje, looking like a large German country village with roofs of red tiles. This is without doubt the most primitive capital of Europe. Words almost fail to express its plainness. But it is a place worth seeing, and after a reasonable halt I made haste to traverse in the blazing sun the two or three miles which lay between the rim of the bowl where I stood and the town.

It was some years since I had felt myself so out of the world as I did up there among the mountains and men of Slavic speech. I betook myself to a modest inn, Kraljevic Al Marco, for lunch. After wrestling to my satisfaction with Italian, I noticed that the landlady turned to her little boy and said something to him in Greek. Quick as a flash the ice was broken and we were talking Greek like lightning. It was a family of Greeks, the brother of the landlady being the interpreter at the Greek Consulate.

After an hour or two of rest they showed me about the town for awhile, after which I cut loose to see things for myself. What a plain town it is! The palace of the present sovereign, called the New Palace, is one of the few two-story buildings in the place, but even this has hardly any ornament except four pairs of attached Corinthian columns on each of the stories at the front side, and two pairs on each of the other sides. The so-called “Old Palace” is plainer than most modern jails. The one building of interest is the monastery, in which lies buried the ancestor of the ruling family, on whose sarcophagus the Montenegrins lay their hands and swear when they go out to battle to be good and true soldiers. And they have kept their oaths well. These Montenegrins are simply Servians who never bowed the knee to the Turks. It has occurred more than once or twice that a Turkish army has entered this land of rocks eighty thousand strong, sweeping everything before it, only to return decimated, if perchance it escaped destruction. There is a round tower in the rear of the monastery, on which the heads of Turks used to be nailed up.

It was good luck for me that my visit fell on Sunday, for the men were in their best dress. Dress did not make the man; the man was there to begin with. There was hardly an adult who did not measure over six feet; and they looked every inch a man. If there were only enough of them they would soon settle the Eastern question. Alexander III. of Russia knew how to value his “only faithful ally.” In contrast to the men, the women look like drudges. The male sex has really arrogated to itself all the beauty, a result that has come about from the fact that, while the men have for ages borne arms and ranged free, the women have been the tillers of the scanty soil as well as servants of all work. Men are the one product of Montenegro. The only product of the soil beyond the grain and potatoes, which afford scanty sustenance, is tobacco, which is good and cheap. There is a heavy duty on it in Austria, something like two hundred per cent.; everybody tries to smuggle it in, and the trick often succeeds.

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 Coeur 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.

Had the Galatea stopped as long at Spalato as it had at Cattaro, I should have been tempted to crowd my enjoyment of it into the same space; but she had now transformed herself into an express boat, bent on reaching Trieste in the shortest possible time. So, with some regret, I left my hospitable quarters on my floating home to trust myself to the welcome of an inn.

But little did I care for the inn. Within a quarter of an hour from the time when I left the steamer I was in the heart of one of the strangest cities of the world, threading my way through narrow winding streets, passing here and there a temple, generally embedded in some later building, running up against a continuous wall two or three stories high which I followed until I found a gate that would let me go through it; then I followed the outside of this wall until I found another gate that let me in again, when the maze again engulfed me. I was in the famous Palace of Diocletian.

The city Spalato was once all inside the palace (palatium), and got its name from that fact; but in later years the city has so grown that the palace is embedded and almost lost in the city. In order to get a good idea of the city and palace together one should climb the campanile, a fine Romanesque structure, incomparably finer than that the loss of which Venice now mourns. In 1882 it became necessary to take down all but the four lower stories and rebuild. Money has come in slowly, and the staging which practically hides the beautiful campanile may not come down for several years more. The door leading into this immense wooden structure bore the legend, L’ingresso È vietato. But following a maxim hewn from life, that a sightseer must always go on until he is stopped, I went and pushed my way through the workmen, boss and all, probably with a more assured air because a good citizen had a few minutes before told me, "You will see a sign saying ‘No admittance,’ but it doesn’t mean anything.”

At the foot of the campanile is an Egyptian sphinx whose head has been battered by a falling stone. The natives call it the “man-woman,” and, curiously enough, they call the sun disk between its paws “pogazza” (a loaf of bread), a roundabout corroboration of what I used to hear in childhood: "The moon is made of green cheese; the sun’s a loaf of bread." The view from the top is fine, whether you look landward or seaward; but the real reward of the climb is that here only the extent and plan of the palace and the adjustment of the buildings within it become perfectly clear.

The term “palace” is a misnomer. What we have is really an enormous enclosure, a sort of Roman camp. The area is trapezoidal; in other words, the sides vary in length. The north or landward side, which is the longest, has a length of 700 feet. The circuit is about half a mile, and it consumes the better part of half an hour to work your way around it. There could, of course, be no question of roofing over such a space. The whole area was divided into four approximately equal squares by two great passages, one thirty-six feet broad, leading from the water gate on the south side called the Silver Gate, through which the imperial barge used to sail into the palace, to the Golden Gate on the north side, the other running from the Iron Gate on the west to the Bronze Gate on the east. The first of these ways is interrupted near the south end by the imperial house itself. The enclosing wall was fifty feet high at its lowest part, and was seventy-five feet high near the sea where the ground fell off, so that all the buildings, sacred and profane, distributed within were hidden from view to outsiders. Not only did the imperial family, but courtiers and menials, making a population of some thirty thousand, have quarters here.

The builder and occupant of this palace was the greatest personality of the CÆsars after Marcus Aurelius, whom in military and administrative force he greatly surpassed. Entering the service as a simple legionary, he rose by slow degrees of service in all parts of the empire under various nonentities of emperors, until at Chalkedon, in 284 A.D., the soldiers proclaimed him emperor. There is a legend that a Druid priestess had prophesied to him when he was serving in Belgium under Aurelian that he would become emperor immediately after killing a boar. It is said that he saw the fulfilment of this prophecy when the Emperor Numerianus was assassinated at Chalkedon by a certain Aper (i.e., boar), whom he immediately struck down, exclaiming, “I have killed the boar.” Of course there are those who think that the legend grew out of the name of the assassin. Diocletian’s name will ever be associated with the last and most wide-reaching and systematic persecution of the Christians; but this policy was most likely forced upon him by the fanaticism of his colleague, Galerius. At this time the Roman Empire had become too bulky to be well administered by one man, however able and conscientious, and of his own accord he associated others with himself in the imperial power, confining himself entirely to the eastern part. Two years after he had issued at Nikomedia, in 303 A.D., his edict of persecution of the Christians, the cares of office weighing too heavily upon him, he laid aside the purple, retired to Salona, and began building this palace about four miles distant from it. When his withdrawal was so sorely felt that he was importuned to resume the imperial power, he declined, referring to the sweet peace which he enjoyed among his cabbages at Salona. There can be little doubt that the reason which influenced him to choose Salona as his place of retirement was that it was his birthplace, although the Montenegrins hold that they have the true birthplace in Doclea, not far from Cettinje.

But the old Emperor’s musings in his great palace must have been sadder than Hadrian’s conversings with his soul at Tivoli. Here he learned of the triumph of Christianity through Constantine, a meaner spirit than he. Then came the overturning of his statues at Rome and the banishment and subsequent butchery of his wife and daughter. Added to all this was a painful illness; and in the eighth year of his residence in that palace where he had promised himself so much comfort and sweet peace, to adopt the words of Marcus Aurelius, that noblest Roman of them all, he “found the house smoky and went out.”

Beside the pathetic interest attaching to the great founder of the palace, another interest attaches to the immuring of it in the modern city. In the seventh century Anno Domini waves of barbarians swept down along the coast of Dalmatia. One of these was composed of Avars—a people often mixed up, whether rightly or wrongly, with the Huns. Even more than the Huns they were a “scourge of God.” After leaving a desert in their trail, butchering men and yoking women to their carts, they came into this lovely region, destroyed the great city, and then decided to settle down here. There was a grand scattering of the degenerate Romans, who had been unable to hold their own, to the neighboring islands, but after awhile a remnant came back and occupied the palace, which was fairly well adapted to be used as a fort. Here they defied the Avars, and at last outstayed them. The result was the present city of Spalato.

One’s first impression is that the palace, although tremendously impressive from the outside wherever that is visible, has yet suffered immensely from its partial burial in the modern city. The two temples within were much more buried than the great wall, and have been only partially brought to light again. But in another aspect of the case the modern city saved the palace. Had the latter stood by itself it would have been treated as a stone quarry, like so many ancient cities, Salona itself, for example. Now there is hope that by removing here and there a modern building—a process that was begun some time ago—the greater part of the palace may be restored to the light of day. In fact, the Porta Aurea has quite recently been freed from encumbrances and, even without being restored, makes a fine impression.

From all that one now sees it is clear that the architecture, though impressive as a whole, is shabby when examined in detail. The exquisite finish of the Greek is, of course, lacking. But even compared with some other Roman work it is seen to have been hastily done. Its nearest parallel is found in Palmyra, which was restored by Diocletian.

The enclosing wall has half columns of the Doric order in a lower story and Ionic half columns in a second. Of the buildings inside, the “peristyle” in front of the royal residence makes the best impression, because the space enclosed by it was thoroughly cleared out by the Emperor Francis I. of Austria, nearly a century ago, a benefaction duly recorded on a tablet inserted in an adjacent wall. Many of the columns of the peristyle itself, however, are still half embedded in the walls of buildings too important to be torn down. A building which is now generally identified with the mausoleum of Diocletian forms the present cathedral, the campanile of which caused the destruction of a portion of a peristyle enclosing the mausoleum. This mausoleum is a round building like the Pantheon, and like the latter has a perfectly preserved dome which, unlike that of the Pantheon, was not open at the top. About a quarter of a century ago the interior was restored under the auspices of the ill-matched and ill-fated Rudolf and Stephanie, who are mentioned on a conspicuous tablet, not as furnishing any cash for the enterprise, but as presentibus et opus admirantibus. The interior, forty-two feet in diameter, with eight large columns framing four niches and bearing eight smaller columns superimposed, makes a fine impression, although the space seems rather small for a cathedral. A sculptured frieze encircling the dome at the bottom, and containing, among other things, hunting scenes, must be catalogued as “shapeless sculpture.”

After being presens and admirans for half a day, wherever I could enter and climb, I sought out Father Bulich, the director of the museum as well as supervisor of all the archÆological interests and undertakings of Spalato and Salona, in order to get him to show me the things that were under lock and key. I found him at his house dickering with some visitors for antiquities, and the last I saw of him, two days later, he was engaged in the same occupation. Nothing could exceed his cordiality and his active help. As soon as he could get rid of his visitors he brought out all the best works on Spalato, some of them loaded with illustrations, and sent them around to my hotel. Unfortunately, I could not get half time, even by sitting up all night, to read any large part of them. Then he took me over three of his five or six small museums with which he has to put up instead of the large one for which he prays as well as labors. But though he has done much to bring order out of the chaos which he found, some luckier man than he will probably be the arranger of the museum of Spalato worthy of the name. Amid much that is common and uninteresting, and yet too good to throw away, are objects of great value and importance. Nearly everything is from Salona. He has catalogued and published nearly two thousand seven hundred inscriptions. Gems are strongly represented, as well as coins and other small objects. Sculpture, aside from some good fragments, is represented mostly by sarcophagi, very few of which rise above mediocrity. It is interesting to see here, as elsewhere, a sarcophagus with the representation of PhÆdra and Hippolytos spared by the Christians, who took Hippolytos as the “chaste Joseph.” The oldest object in any of the museums is a sphinx shown by an inscription to belong to Amenophis III., the Memnon of the Greeks, of about 1500 B.C. In one museum is a cast of a really fine head of Herakles, found in the neighborhood but kept by the monks at Sinj.

Of objects which did not come from Salona may be mentioned certain Greek inscriptions which show the presence of Greeks on these coasts and islands long before the great days of Rome. Of course it was unlikely that, having put a girdle of colonies around southern Italy, and pushed up along the eastern shore of the Adriatic as far as Epidauros (Ragusa), they should remain strangers to this region so crowded with islands, just their kind.

Father Bulich took me also into the one building inside the palace that is kept locked. Its chief attraction is a perfectly preserved barrel vault with coffers containing rosettes. This is supposed, partly from its position, to have been Diocletian’s court chapel; but whether it was dedicated to Jupiter or to Æsculapius is a question which divides the authorities. Lanza, Bulich’s predecessor, inferred from a laurel wreath bound by a ribbon which he took to be the imperial crown, sculptured in the rear gable, that this was Diocletian’s mausoleum. This rear end was said by the guide-books to be inaccessible, and so of course it was what I most wanted to see. I mentioned my regret, and, to my surprise, Bulich said, “Oh! it is perfectly accessible.” Then he led the way through several by-ways and up three flights of stairs, almost tumbling over children in the dim light, until at last we got into a kitchen which was backed up against the gable. There was the laurel wreath, to be sure. Little did it interest the rosy-cheeked woman who had her sleeves rolled up above her elbows and was trying in some embarrassment to get them down again before a stranger. The wreath was out of her reach; but the horizontal cornice of the gable was only about four feet above the floor of her kitchen; and she had deployed upon it—a splendid shelf—her oils and essences, her butter and sugar, and all the appliances of a kitchen and a pantry. When Bulich, with all the authority of an archÆologist and a father confessor combined, reproved her for quite a good-sized, fresh nick on the left ascending cornice, her cheeks and even her arms took on a redder hue, probably on account of my presence; for the priest was greeted on every staircase as a familiar friend.

The next day he showed me his excavations at Salona, which he has carried on under great difficulties. Since the Austrian empire has no law for the expropriation of private property for the purpose of archÆological excavations, he has been obliged with his not all too generous funds to make his peace with the owners of the fields; and, since the whole area of Salona is covered by one continuous vineyard, it has been very slow business. But he has managed to get a foothold here and there. Here the greater part of a big amphitheatre has been uncovered, here a long line of sarcophagi; at present he is pushing a few yards farther the uncovering of a huge Christian basilica.

There had been no great surprises for me at Spalato; but Salona, which had been to me a mere name, now suddenly loomed large before my vision as the great city of the Occident next to Rome. Three things made Salona what it was. It had in the first place a fine harbor at the end of a deep bay. The silting up of the harbor in modern times has brought it a little farther from the water’s edge; but that the water once lapped its walls is shown by its water gate. Secondly, just back of Salona there is a great gap in the long chain of mountains that follow the shore at a little interval as far as the eye can reach. Through this gap a great road led into the heart of the Balkan peninsula through what is now known as Bosnia and Servia to the Danube and beyond. Thirdly, the region back of the gap was vastly important to the Romans as a gold-bearing land. In the times of Augustus and Tiberius gold was commonly referred to by the poets as “Dalmatian ore.” Salona was the place where all this gold was gathered for transmission to Rome.

The Romans’ greed for gold was here seen in its sharpest phase. They dug miles into the heart of mountains, and carried water hundreds of miles in artificial channels for washing deposits of gold. Perhaps no one can ever convey or even conceive of the horror of the life of slaves in these works. In droves of tens of thousands, many of them made slaves instead of masters by the mere fortune of war, they were driven into the bowels of the earth with poor chance of seeing the light again. It is, at any rate, a fact that months passed without such re-emergence, a fact which lessened the likelihood of any re-emergence at all. In that great and cruel empire, slave life counted for little; the supply was abundant.

Arthur Evans, who has recently given back to us the palace of Minos, made in a series of essays some twenty-five years ago what French savants would call a “most penetrating study” of the roads and mines of Dalmatia and adjacent regions. Realizing from this book the importance of this great highway from Salona, and being already strongly lured by the sight of that great yawning gap in the mountain range, I took advantage of the fact that my appointment with Bulich was not until four o’clock to make the day a day of exploration. Taking an early start, I worked my way up to the top of the pass over a road laid out with such a gentle grade that I was able to bicycle over nine-tenths of the distance. Arrived at the top, I went on by a gentle down grade four or five miles into the interior toward Sinj; but, finding no commanding point of view, I returned to the top of the pass. From this point the view can hardly be overpraised. Exactly in the middle of the deep cut is Clissa, a sharp cone, on the truncated top of which is a strong fortress with a straggling village on the slope facing Spalato. Although there are no evident remains of masonry in the fort earlier than the mediÆval period, there can be no doubt that a fortress primeval existed here. For once Baedeker deceived me in saying that admission to the fortress would be granted on presentation of a visiting card. The non-commissioned officer in charge stood by his guns, and, in spite of all importunity, refused admission except on the strength of a written permit from the commandant at Spalato. So I contented myself with a view from a point outside the walls some twenty feet lower down. Since it is mainly the view toward Spalato and the sea that is important, there was practically nothing lost. There was just a little feeling of defeat, of being baffled in an attempt to reach the highest height. A railroad is just now approaching completion from Spalato up through this gap to Sinj. When it is finished visitors can enjoy from its many windings all this fine view at their ease.

In twenty minutes I dropped down to Salona, and devoted the rest of the day to exploring the territory of Spalato westward as far as TraÜ, its ancient rival. Every foot of this shore is beautiful; but TraÜ itself surpasses all praise. Its cathedral, in Romanesque style, is complete and unencumbered with later additions. The great west portal, with the figures of Adam and Eve to the right and left, is held by good judges to be unsurpassed by any other portal, whether Romanesque or Gothic. The campanile alone is Gothic, showing that it was somewhat later. It is to be noted, however, that the transition from Romanesque to Gothic all along this shore was nearly a century later than elsewhere. There are other beautiful churches in TraÜ, some of them in ruins. In fact, stagnation almost complete has struck the town, which is crowded into a very narrow space on a diminutive island. Its streets are not broad enough for carriages. There is a Venetian loggia near the cathedral, with columns that had seen service elsewhere. Its flat roof has tumbled in and been replaced by a makeshift. There is a fascination in this absolute inertia which contrasts with the growth and activity of Spalato, only twelve miles away in a straight line. Seven or eight centuries ago these two rivals would have torn each other in pieces but for the stern yet, on the whole, beneficent rule of Venice, tokens of which, in the form of the lion of St. Mark, appear all along the coast, but especially in TraÜ, where they have not been removed. “TraÜ” is an abridgment of Tugurium, the Roman name of the place; but it had an existence in Greek times, being founded by Syracusan Greeks who came by way of the neighboring island, Lissa. I saw one Greek inscription walled into a house near the landing.

At four o’clock on this day of surfeits I met Bulich at the railroad station, “Salona.” He came with a select international party, and for four hours, with tremendous enthusiasm, showed us all about his excavation, and then took us to his excavation quarters, which he calls Villa Tusculum, for a fine supper. I verily believe that had not darkness come on he would have forgotten all about that supper, which was, if not a climax, certainly a fitting close to a memorable day.

A most striking feature of Spalato is the beauty of the women. For some considerable time I had been struck by isolated cases; but one evening, as I sat at a cafÉ on the water front where crowds were leisurely passing, I noticed nursery-maids and others of the servant class endowed with beauty which a duchess might sigh for. I have never set much store by statements which make certain cities—Genzano, near Rome, for instance—noted for beautiful women, and so I called myself to a rigid account in this case, and there was no mistaking the cumulative evidence collected in cold blood. To control my own impression I asked Bulich, the aged, the next day whether I was mistaken. “Certainly not,” said he, “you are making no new discovery.” But, lest he should be considered a prejudiced witness, influenced by local pride, I appeal to the next traveller to look up the matter. He should, however, first prepare his mind by visiting Montenegro.

Knots of men, also, who had come in from the country or from coasting boats, peasantry of the region, men of Slavic race, called here Morlaks, contributed to the picturesqueness of the crowd. Four such men, wearing great red and yellow turbans, jackets covered with embroidery and buttons, great red sashes, and indescribable leg and foot coverings, attracted little attention as they passed and repassed the cafÉ where I sat, simply because they were not much more conspicuous than many other similar groups. Transfer some of these groups of men and women to canvas with photographic exactness, color included, and you have Titian. It seems a pity that “die Kultur die alle Welt beleckt” should ever reach this sweet corner and reduce all this exuberance of color and form to a dead level. The modern tailor ought not to be allowed to enter here with his profane shears and fashion plates.

Continuing my journey from Spalato, I profited by an hour’s stop at TraÜ to review the cathedral. When we had proceeded two-thirds of the way from Spalato to Sebenico, and had just got into the harbor of Ragonitzka, we were struck by a hurricane which subsequently softened down into a regular “bora,” for which Dalmatia is famous. For a few minutes paper parcels and even a pile of books were blown about the deck; but to my surprise certain little red disks on the top of the bare heads of some of the passengers held their places. I then discovered on careful scrutiny that they were held in place by a string carefully concealed in the hair back of the ears. I then made a study of these disks. They merely rested on the top of the head, and could in no sense be regarded as a covering for it. It would be an exaggeration to say that they were no bigger than a ten-cent piece, but not so very much of an exaggeration. To be as exact as possible without actual measurements, I should say that the diameter of most of these was three or four inches. The wearers of them were often clad in an ordinary modern suit of clothes. In Sebenico I continued my comparative study of these red disks. I then found some that nearly covered the top of the head, and at last a few cases that had a slight extension downward all around the head. This made it clear that it was intended for a cap. It furthermore appeared that the more a fellow partook of the nature of a “howling swell” the smaller was his disk. It became perfectly clear, then, that we have in Sebenico a case not of the development but of the disappearance of the cap, what is left being only symbolical, the antithesis of the “tall hat.”

We had four or five hours in Sebenico, and I spent most of the time in visiting two great discarded forts on high hills back of the city. It would have been worth while to stop and wait for another steamer in order to make an excursion into the interior; but I had had almost a surfeit of fine views, and kept on my course. Sebenico is one of the strangest of harbors. After heading for it the steamer has to dodge around island after island, and at last, when it seems confronted by a continuous coast line, it finds a little break through which it goes in and finds itself in a broad bay. When one looks back one wonders how he ever got so far inland with a steamer, and how he is ever going to get out again to the sea that looks so far away. From its sheltered situation, Sebenico was for ages a pirates’ nest. The hand of Venice was here also needed to keep Sebenico from preying on her neighbors, TraÜ and Spalato. Now all the jarring states rest quietly in the bosom of Austria, except that the contention between the old Italian civilization and the new and aggressive Slave element grows ever fiercer, with the danger that the Italian element will be crowded to the wall.

In about four hours after leaving Sebenico we were at Zara, which enjoys the double distinction of being the capital of Dalmatia and the home of maraschino. It has several churches of absorbing interest, both for their architecture and for their contents. Although it has lost immensely in picturesqueness by the tearing down of its old walls, it is still a beautiful city; but it is a modern kind of beauty, which has come from broad boulevards taking the place of the landward wall, and a splendid quay taking the place of the sea wall. Austrian officers in fine uniforms set the tone. It has almost too much of an air of thrift to be picturesque. One sees everywhere, signs of maraschino factories, maraschino stores, and maraschino cafÉs.

As I sat in front of a cafÉ on the modern quay, sipping my second glass of maraschino at what claimed to be the original maraschino establishment in the city, and looked off at the eight Austrian war-ships lying off the shore, a feeling of “change from the old to the new” came over me. Just then such a sunset as is rarely vouchsafed to man was transpiring. The blood-red sun of double size was setting in the illumined sea. I took it as a signal that my Dalmatian journey was at an end. Pola and Fiume I already knew, and Trieste was a common mart. I went back to the steamer.