Bocche di Cattaro

“A narrow passage between two formidable forts and the heavy waters of the open sea, dashing in foam on rocky crags, are still as if by magic, and we glide into a land-locked bay. Ahead of us mountains tower. A wondrous pearly light flitting through overhanging clouds faintly tinged their highest crags with silver. Down by the water, Castelnuovo’s pink roofs nestle snug among fields and orchards, and above forests of oak and pine darken the slopes. To the right a narrow strait leads to a second bay. But just at the entrance our steamer stops, and a flat barge swings alongside to take off an officer and his horse. […]. The sound of music suddenly surprises us, and, on turning a bend, we see a blaze of myriad lights - an Austrian squadron anchored in Teodo Bay, the band playing for dinner on the flag-ship. […]. Next morning, as we go on deck, we are lying at Cattaro. On every hand great mountains, bare and precipitous, hedge us in. Were it not for the thousand-ton steamer on which we stand, we should fancy ourselves in a mountain lake - a lake as grand as Como, yet sterner, more like Lugano perhaps, and quite as majestic as a Norwegian fjord. […].

After we had “done” the town, the Leda’s captain greets us and proposes a morning drive. A coachman is easily found, a bargain struck, and soon we are rolling along toward the Catene. On the sheltered riviera the vegetation is most luxuriant. Even in these early days of November, heliotrope and tuberoses mingle their heavy perfume with the scent of mignonette and wild jasmine. Orange and lemon trees thrust their ripening fruit over the garden walls of old Venetian palazzi on whose wide balconies oleanders bloom. Pepper-trees and acacias throw feathery shadows on tiny rock-bound ports where fishermen are mending their nets. All along the way we breathe the balm of the rich southern air, the sweet fragrance of the flowers, the stern grandeur of the ever-present mountains whose pearly summits all but lose themselves in the opalescence of the sky.

The Catene is a narrow strait, so called because it could be closed by means of chains in time of need. It connects the three main waterways of the Bocche and affords a comprehensive view of all three: the Bay of Teodo, ample and enclosed by rolling hills; the Bay of Risano, a limited cove shut in by mountains almost 5,000 feet in height, and lastly, the Bay of Cattaro, largest and grandest of all. In front of Perasto, lying among orange-groves at the foot of Monte Cassone, two tiny islets, poised like caravels upon the water, bear the island churches of San Giorgio and the Madonna dello Scapello” (pp. 114-117).