Lesina

"We were leaving Sabioncello behind and passing between Lésina and Torcola when I went on deck at five o'clock the next morning; and in another hour we had run into the harbour of Lésina. […].

The Loggia at Lésina is the handsomest of all. The town is full of fine specimens of Venetian architecture, and there is a piazza in the centre of it, unusually handsome for so small a place. My attention, however, was riveted on the two lovely campanile towers, of the same lightness and elegance as that of Perasto, and it was a pleasure to think I should meet the same beautiful objects all along the Dalmatian coast and islands. The church itself may be plain enough, but, in the Dalmatian expression of Byzantine forms, the campanile is almost always lovely. Lésina is a bishopric, and includes those of Brazza and Cúrzola, which were suppressed in 1830.

At the left of the town and rather beyond it is a curious stone seat or sofa, carved round into a half circle, and hedged in with aloes; it had a very Greek and quaint effect. I heard that the island is thickly planted with aloes, and that much cordage and cloth is made from its fibre: but I have reason to believe this is an exaggeration. When I came to enquire narrowly about the cultivation of the aloe, I never could find any place where it was really carried on, though very many people told me it was 'not here, but farther on'; and I imagine that, if it ever was cultivated and made into anything tolerably good, the manufacture has now died out" (pp. 217-218).