Zara

“A quiet day lolling in steamer-chairs with the propeller’s thud beneath us. The breath of the bora bears us along, the crested whitecaps chase us. To the east, the Vélébit wraps its ashen summits in foggy sheets; low-lying islands girt with shimmering sands float on an amethyst sea. The dreamy noonday hours wear on. And now up over the bow, rising out of the glittering sea, poising her square-cut mass between the mainland and Ugljan, rises Zara, the capital and first port of Dalmatia. […].

We are not novices in traveling, but never shall we forget the strange delight of the first few hours in Zara. Not that the city itself is so interesting, for, though it contains some noteworthy monuments, the general character is that of most Italian towns; narrow streets and tall, straight houses, churches more or less Lombard in character, pointed doorways surmounted by crests as in Venise, courts with old walls shaded by a vine-pergola. But it is the life of the town that is so extraordinary, the wonderful wealth of costume and the variety of types to be seen in its winding streets - costumes the like of whose barbaric splendor is not to be found elsewhere in Europe today.

Take your place in the Via Tribunale in the morning hours when the peasants push their way to and from the market-place. Here two women from Benkovac stop and, looking into each other’s eyes, carefully deposit their bundles on the ground, then kiss each other with resounding smacks upon each cheek. Their hair is plaited with red and green ribbon; their caps, red as tomatoes and embroidered in silk, are half hidden under large kerchiefs. Over coarse linen shirts they wear dark-blue coats, long and shapeless and richly trimmed with beads and braid; their woollen aprons and dangling fringes are of the Oriental design, like Kiskillam rugs; their short skirts show heavy leggings, woven like the aprons, and feet encased in moccasins. About their necks hang numerous jewels and chains of roughly beaten metal, set with bits of colored glass, with carnelians and turquoises. On their fingers gleam cumbrous rings, and their waists are girdled with several lengths of leather-strap studded with metal nails, whence hang long, open-bladed knives. The whole costume, rude and barbaric in the extreme, still has had lavished upon it all the art of which the race is capable. Beside them three women entirely clothed in black, with sad, colorless faces such as Cottet paints, make a melancholy contrast to all their savage finery.

Over there a group of five athletic men from Knin are discussing their affairs, and a brave bit of color they make. […]. Each district varies the design of its costume, each individual varies its details to suit his taste; every color is employed, by preference brilliant red. The road by the Porta Terra Firma is one of the busiest scenes. Here women from Obrovac spin from a distaff as they vend dry boughs in the wood-market; others trudge toward distant mountain homes, staggering under piles if goat-skins or baskets of provisions sufficient for the week to come; fishermen from Arbe and Pasman make ready their gayly painted boats for the homeward cruise; Slavs from Zemonico, robust Bosnians from Bihac, Servians from Kistanje herd their flocks of turkeys, their goats and sheep and cattle; teamsters from Sinjurge along tough mountain ponies, hitched three abreast to rude wagons piled with sacksof grain, - a strange cosmopolitan whirl - half Occident, half Orient, where the blood of many races mingles!” (pp. 70-75).