Spalato

"The moment we left Milnà we began to see all the coast of the mainland, with the Vellebich mountains rising behind the shore and towering over the islands; and in a short time the city of Spálato became visible. We arrived alongside of the fine new landing pier at three o'clock. Immediately after, the Podestà Bajamonte sent the excellent Doctor Illich on board to conduct me to the lodgings prepared for me; and I am glad to have the power of thanking him here for his unwearied kindness and attention throughout my stay in Spálato. There is no hotel at present of any kind in Spálato, but one has been built on the grand quay, and in a few months now it will be opened for travellers. I occupied a couple of rooms over the reading salon, and took my meals at the restaurants and cafés in the town. […].

I never could learn when or why an r had been inserted in the last syllable of Spálato, without any discoverable meaning; but it was curious to observe how completely it was supposed to be a piece of fashionable refinement. On the coast of Dalmatia, or farther south, or in the place itself, no peasant ever said anything but Spálato; there one or two of the best educated, or of those who wished to prôner the fact that they had travelled out of their own country, had adopted the r; and farther north it amused me to hear such people hastily correct themselves in conversation to the pronunciation they thought most pleasing to my foreign ears" (pp. 219-221).

"The want of fresh water is the one misfortune of the city - a misfortune to be very soon, I hope, forgotten by the citizens, or to be remembered by them only in their gratitude to their present excellent Podestà, Signor Antonio Bajamonte. Of this remarkable man I must say a few words. His family, always natives of Spálato, were not of noble origin nor of much wealth, but his father acquired a very considerable fortune in medical practice. This he left to his son, who had received the invariable and only education of the young Dalmatian gentry, two or three years at the university of Padua, where he took an M.D. degree. Farther than this he did not travel, so that his modern and active ideas are doubly creditable to him.

Signor Bajamonte had no sooner come into possession of his large fortune and been made Podestà, than he proceeded to dispense it for the good of his native city. First he fronted the town with a magnificent quay, with two landing-piers, and a short row of lofty well-built houses. At the end of this is a large and handsome newly-built house, in which he resides. Then he laid gas in the streets, chiefly at his own expense, and added much to the cleansing of the town. Besides this, after having cleared away much of the débris, and many of the tumble-down streets outside the southern end of the old city, and freed the noble old walls and towers of the huts and hovels clinging to them, he built a variety of very solid neat houses, adding to them a well-built church. He is rightly anxious to get the crowded population out of the narrow, dirty, cooped-up lanes they now inhabit within the old palace walls; after which he hopes the Austrian Government will aid him with a grant of money for clearing the cathedral and other venerable buildings of the miserable houses in which they are now buried. For this, and for money to build a breakwater for the completion of the harbour, he has already petitioned - as yet in vain; but we may hope he will ultimately succeed.

Signor Bajamonte's next gift was a theatre. It is small, but handsome and well-proportioned, and, although over-ornamented, it is pretty and conveniently arranged. In the same block of buildings there is a handsome reading-room, and a library is being formed in connection with it; whilst some of the official residences will be soon completed under the same roof. These buildings form the inner end of a fine large Place, planted with trees, and opening down upon the quay at the northern end of the city. One side of this Place is occupied by a splendid building, with a lofty arcade in front of it, now advanced to its second story. This is to be the Palazzo di Giustizia and the University. Bajamonte has already built a large school for the sons of the Spalatian gentry some way out of the town, and another is being commenced for their daughters. These will be, if well carried out, an infinite gain not only to Spálato but to all Dalmatia; for the instruction given to Dalmatian boys is of the meanest kind, and the unfortunate girls get nothing beyond the commonest rudiments of education, unless their parents send them to Lubiana (Laybach) or Venice. A very few are sent to Vienna; but of the education given them there and at Laybach I heard the same complaint from the parents - that it was too conventual to be of any use to them in the world. Padua, as I have said, is the only real education given to their sons, unless they are sent to the military college at Vienna. […].

Near to the Civil Hospital are two large pits or reservoirs, lined with stone, which are intended to receive the waters of the aqueduct of Salona, whenever Signor Bajamonte can manage, with the help of the citizens or of the Government, to complete the missing miles of this erection. […]. The arches of the aqueduct are seen crossing the plain at intervals, but it will require a good deal of money to render it fit for use. Meantime, as all the water in Spálato is more or less brakish, the military quartered there are employed in fetching water from Jadera at Salona, and the road is covered all day with artillery tumbrils, carrying huge barrels, drawn by sleek and well-conditioned horses.

Everybody agrees in saying that Spálato is a remarkably healty place: the doctor told me there was very little illness at any time, and if an epidemic ever visited them, it took leave almost immediately. The people certainly look remarkably healthy: they are very tall and bony, but not, I think, handsome. I was a bad judge of their appearance, however, after coming so recently from Montenegro - the singularly ungraceful costume of the Morlachi naturally spoiling them much to my eyes after those of the mountaineers. The men of Spálato wear trousers that seemed to me as tight as those of a harlequin, from waist to ankle, and the shortest jackets possible; they have very long hair plaited into a pigtail, with a number of black cords, tassels, and beads, hanging down much below the waist; and sometimes they wear very handsome earrings. The gold and silver work, done here in the old forms, is the very best and most solid on the coast of Dalmatia: but the people are also beginning to buy a great deal of the cheap imitation ornaments from Birmingham and Switzerland, and you cannot pick up in Spálato any of the real antique specimens of gold and enamel work that abound in Ragusa.

Signor Bajamonte is trying to establish a line of steamers to run between Spálato and Pescara, on the opposite Italian shore - a passage of eight hours only, which he hopes may be effected now that the Ancona railway is opened so far. But the grand scheme, dearest of all to his heart, is that of a railway from Spálato to Belgrade - a line which, I am told, is naturally very easy, with no heavy gradients in the Bosnian mountains or other expensive obstacles to be overcome, and which would be of incalculable advantage to the whole of that country. This railway would not only open up the whole of Bosnia and give the rich produce of a perfectly virgin soil to Europe by the sea coast, but it might pave the way to a more real connection of Bosnia with Dalmatia" (pp. 231-236).

"I walked out one evening to the cemetery to see the lovely view thence of Spálato and the mountains. […]. At this spot I saw clearly of how much importance the mole so anxiously desired by the Spalatians is: the outer islands of Brazza and Solta are too far off, and too low to break the SW. gales; and as Spálato is and must be the Liverpool of Dalmatia, she needs absolutely a large and safe harbour" (p. 239).

"Spálato contains 13,000 inhabitants. There are only two families of the Greek rite, but they are building a handsome church for themselves. There is a very large number of Jews, who are now tolerated with as much freedom as in other parts of Austria; but only thirty years ago their condition was little better than that of slaves, and so strictly watched that they were almost prisoners" (p. 244).