Ragusa

“After leaving the Trebisnjica with the moon shining on its waters or hiding behind the racing clouds, our train crossed the mountains, then corkscrewed in wide loops down the peaks. Far below in fathomless hollows lay villages, slumbering on hill-tops, with here and there a light gleaming from a tardy window. Villas along the Ombla filed by in ghostly procession and we stopped at Gravosa. It is almost midnight. It has rained, but the night air is soft and fresh. Other carriages starting with ours run a mad race along the road. The horses, their heads toward home, take the hills at a trot and descend at a gallop. […]. A black-mouthed outer gate gulps us in and we descend again; another angle and another gate, again through frowning walls and we have passed the impregnable defences of Ragusa and rattle over her paving-stones. The moonlight floods the long Stradone, flanked by rows of palaces, shutters drawn, asleep; no living being stirs in all the silent street.

Even the morning sunlight fails to dispel the strange impression of our midnight arrival, for the morrow reveals Ragusa of to-day, still a perfect vision of the Middle Ages. Its stone-paved streets, narrow as hallways, squeeze between high houses with heavily grated windows. Not a stone has budged in centuries - nothing new has been erected and nowhere is a sign of decay. Its walls and towers girdle it intact. It is the only city that I know where soldier-life still peoples the mediæval walls; where sentries pace the crenelated towers and sentinels stand guard at every gate. Its massive bastions house whole regiments; its moat, converted to a military road, resounds with the tramp of marching feet, and the drum’s beat and bugle’s call echo back and forth between reverberating walls.

But in spite of her martial appearance Ragusa has always been a peace-loving town. Her citizens were a wily race and built her giant walls and towers not so much from warlike motives as to protect their purses. […]. In Ragusa we always felt we were assisting at a play. In the Plaza there was the scene by the fountain, bright with masks and dolphins, with cupids and jets of sparkling water, where the pigeons love to bathe; where the girls come trooping in their ribboned shoes and snowy stockings and, as they laughingly gossip and draw their pails of water, a little knot of soldiers at the guard-house near by sum up their charms and pick the prettiest” (pp. 106-108). 

“There was the scene at dusk, among the defences of the Porta Ploce, where giant walls and battlemented towers frown down on moated gates and barbicans, where villanous-looking Turks skulk in the shadows driving shaggy cattle and flocks of clucking turkeys. And on the Stradone, Ragusa’s principal street, there was the scene in Michele Kiri’s shop, a cavelike place whose ogive door does triple duty - entrance, window and show-case. As we poke our heads into its dark recess our eyes grow wide with wonder like Aladdin’s as he rubbed his lamp. A group of Albanians sit cross-legged on low benches stitching gold and silver braids on clothes of green and blue. Around the walls hang rows and rows of caps and coats and vests thick with silk embroideries surtouts of scarlet, stiff with golden arabesques and cordings, the fleecy marriage robes of Montenegrines, of softest camel’s hair and set with gems, long, wadded crimson gowns, such as mountain princes wear on state occasions. In cases, jeweled flint-lock pistols gleam and swords and daggers with Toledo blades and hilts of beaten silver. Long-barreled guns inlaid with mother-of-pearl lie by great leathern belts, studded with carnelians encircled by filigree, the wealth of a mountain borderland, where on fête days each man wears his fortune on his back; riches upon riches like a dream of the Arabian Nights, till one thinks to wake and find it vanished.

And at night there were the scenes of humbler life in dingy wine-shops, where smoky oil-lamps cast uncertain lights among the purple wine-kegs and lit up rows and rows of odd-shaped bottles. Amid the flickering shadows, a group of contadini gather around a comrade and his gusla - a primitive guitar - and, grinning, listen as he chants the wondrous deeds of Marko Kraljevic, varying the warlike tale with many a joke and note of merriment. […]. What charming days we spent in quiet old Ragusa, in the genial warmth of her southern sun shining hot on the amethyst sea! What joy to sit upon our porch and over the pine-tops see the green walls frowning and the great mass of San Lorenzo, pigeons wheeling round its casements, brood over the open sea, stretching blue and tender away and away to where it marries the sky!” (pp. 112-114).