Spalato

“March 1847.- A white tower, like an obelisk, seen against a grey cloud, well up the coast, was pointed out to me by the brown finger of the helmsman, with the single word “Spalato”. This was the tall campanile of the temple-cathedral. […] The palace of Diocletian, rose from the water, mingled with the swelling sails of vessels arriving and departing; the gardens and villas of the environs curved round in a bay; while the empurpled isles of the Archipelago, some miles distant, lay like blocks of porphyry on the horizon, and completed the panorama. The harbour was full of these vessels, too large to be called boats, and too small to be called ships. One large one next us had several Turks on board, with blue-checked turbans and scarlet robes, who proved to be Bosniacs. They had brought manufactured goods from Trieste, which they were taking home with them. […]. The palace of Diocletian is an inhabited ruin […] and my rooms were situated in the centre of the palace, for one-third of the population of Spalato lives within the walls of this grand edifice. Spalato is situated on a peninsula that intervenes between the Gulf of Salona and the Adriatic; […] and as the fairest races come of mixed breeds, this locking of water in the embrace of land has produced such beauty as is nowhere else to be found in Dalmatia. The town itself is a parallelogram, the length of which is double its breadth, or, in other words, two squares in juxtaposition; one of which is delineated by the shell or outward walls of the palace, and the other by a mass of streets to the westward, in the middle of which is the largest open space in the town, called the Piazza dei Signori. […]. Athens, Rome, and  Thebes, I had seen in ruins, - here the majesty of imperial antiquity conveyed august illusions of contemporaneous existence (pp. 229-234).

The Spalatines have not in general the polished manners and illustrious pedigrees of the Ragusans; but they are, nevertheless, a kind, social, cordial people, with no small stock of mother wit. Arriving in the height of the carnival, I found myself at the wrong time for commercial statistics, and therefore at once surrendered myself to the frivolities of the season. Having received invitation to the balls at the Casino - one of the very few edifices in Spalato that deserve the name of Venetian palazzo - I turned day into night for nearly a week, having always found it best to view men and manners in the way that the inhabitants themselves present them tonthe stranger (pp. 246-247).

Two more balls at the Casino closed the carnival (p. 253). The lottery and the accademia for the poor now became the talk of the town; and the first young ladies of Spalato came forward to sing, as only the families of the members of the Casino were to be admitted. […]. The distress continues, and the poor creatures continue to flock down to the town from the villages, where the provisions are all consumed. Every day at two o’clock, which is the dinner-hour, the doors of the principal inhabitants are crowded with miserable famished figures, waiting for the remnants of the servants’ meals. The Bishop and clergy are most active with charity sermons (p. 283).

Accompanying Carrara to the Calle C., we stopped at the palace of Count C. From the account he gave of the spendthrift and vindictive character of the peasant, the position of the landed proprietor in Dalmatia is any thing but enviable. There need be no misery in Dalmatia, even in bad years, if the cultivation of the mulberry were promoted, the soil and climate adapting themselves so admirably to that plant; and the Count gave me a description of an attempt to introduce it on his property with every prospect of success; but the peasantry soon set their faces against it, and the experiment ended by several hundred young trees being cut down or plucked up in one night (pp. 286-287).

My intercourse with many persons here has shewn me that religious duties are with them not a mere series of blanks in the passport to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns, which are to be filled according to a mechanical routine, but an all-pervading principle. With the poorer classes, however, there are the most incontestable proofs of the contrary; instances are known of a man murdering another on a fast-day, and loathing flesh as grossly sinful; and a procession, of which I was a witness, shewd me instances of penance which one never sees except in superstitious countries. It was after sunset, on Good Friday, for during all the Holy Week there were daily services in the temple-cathedral, that I formed part of the crowd in the Piazza del Tempio. […]. Ranges of men, clad in white, stood each with a thick wax torch in hand ready to move in procession. […]. The most remarkable sight was that of the penitential sinners, who, dressed in black, masked, and barefooted, carried on their shoulders heavy wooden crosses, of such weight and thickness of beam as might have been used in the time of the Romans. All round the town went the procession, some of the penitents, with their hands tied to the extremities of the heavy cross-beams, bending and groaning under their burdens (pp. 292-293)”.