Arbe

“It was at Arbe that we bade good-bye to Dalmatia. Arbe the remote, though nearest of Dalmatian islands to the port of Fiume. For the fast steamers to Zara and beyond pass it by, though but a few miles from their course. Most travellers, if they know its name at all, know it only vaguely as one of the many islands of this island-studded coast (p. 225).

The great Campanile soars above the Duomo, a silent watcher by the sea over the ruined city. You may have wandered far and wide and seen many lands, not even excepting Italy herself, and yet not found a fairer tower. In all the world there cannot be one more romantically situated than that of Arbe. […]. Arbe has been called “the city of campaniles”; it might also well be termed “the city of churches”. No less than four lovely spires rise above the grey town walls, and though the population of the city to-day numbers but eight hundred and fifty souls, there are fully half a dozen churches still in use (pp. 231-232).

Lives, grey and monotonous enough, of daily toil in the fields or at the fisheries, varied only by the meeting of friends and kinsfolk when the country-folk flock into the little town of Arbe on festas, and gather in its narrow streets before and after Mass (p. 226). In your walks in Arbe you will notice that here, as elsewhere in Dalmatia, it is the women who work in the fields, and, barefooted, follow the primitive plough, which is that of the time of Virgil (p. 234). The women of Arbe delight in snowy stockings, which display substantial legs, only partly hidden by the short full skirts which reach but little below the knee. Their corselet bodices are laced over white chemisettes or coloured handkerchiefs. Earrings of solid gold, handed down as heirlooms, weigh down their often pretty ears; rings, sometimes reaching to the finger-joint, look curiously out of place on hands hardened by toil! But the island beauties are shy; they flee from the camera as they would from the plague, hence their retreating figures instead of their pretty faces in our photographs. We could but think they feared the evil “eye”, for more than once in Dalmatia those who allowed themselves to be photographed for “largesse”, took the precaution first of making the sign of the cross (pp. 226-227)”.