Velebit

"Obrovazzo is only a village of five or six hundred inhabitants, but it promises to have an important future, for here begins the mountain road over the Velebit mountains into Croatia, and all the wine brought by ship from the islands is carried that way, while the wood from the forests inland is brought to Obrovazzo for shipment. There is something strangely alluring about that road winding up into the wilderness. It was finished in 1832, but few are the travellers who have passed over it. For tourists the Velebit is still a terra incognita, and likely to remain so on account of the lack of hotel accomodation everywhere in Dalmatia, outside the towns; but the courtesy of the officials makes it comparatively easy to find private lodgings, which indeed the podesta of Obrovazzo offered to secure for us had we wished to sleep there (p. 52).

In spite of the southern latitude, the cold in the Velebit is intense during the winter. At an elevation of about two thousand feet the subtropical vegetation of the shores of the Adriatic is exchanged for that of more Northern climes; wild thyme scents the air, and such old friends as the wild rose of our English hedgerows and the orchis of our meadows grow round about Podprag, which is two thousand five hundred feet above sea-level. From here the road winds up another seven hundred feet to its highest point, which is at the same time the frontier of Croatia. The people of this mountain region are hardy primitive folk, inured from childhood to support life on most frugral diet and go scantily clad in all weathers. The boys learn to be herdsmen as soon as they reach their teens, and they also marry at a very early age (p. 53)".