Velebit

“The modern and the Slaavic name of these Illyrian Alps, that run down the east of the Adriatic - sometimes approaching and sometimes receding from the sea-shore - is the Vellebitch. These mountains form the western limit of Croatia and Bosnia. […]. Just before dawn, on the third morning after leaving Carlstadt, I woke up in the diligence, which had stopped to change horses at the post-house on the top of the Vellebitch; my limbs were benumbed with cold, in spite of greatcoat and lined cloak, and a keen wind saluted me as I stepped out of the carriage in deep snow. The chill, clear, starry heavens enabled me to see that I had gained the summit of a pass bordered with pines and surmounted with pinnacles of rock; and a square block of stone on my left attracting my attention, I held the lantern to it, and read on one side, “Croatia”, and on the reverse, “Dalmatia”. […]. As we traversed the summit of the ridge, one snowy peak after another was lighted up with the break of day; and a turn of the road at length bringing us to that side of the Vellebitch which fronted the Adriatic, Dalmatia, in all her peculiarity, lay stretched before me. Here was no tantalising descent of long narrow valleys, as in Italy. To the eye, the transition from the world of the North to the world of the South was immediate. Like the traveller who, after the painful gyrations of a high tower, emerges from darkness to the bird’s-eye view of a new and curious city, I had the whole space, from the hill-tops to the distant islands, before me at a single glance. A long, deep gash in the land, parallel with the mountain, was the Canal of the Morlacks, a gulf of the sea, like a wide river flowing between its banks. Zara, Bencovatz, Nona, - plain and mountain, city and sea, - were all before me. But the greatest curiosity was the road by which I had effected my descent. The Vellebitch, instead of sloping down to the coast, breaks off with an abruptness that borders on the precipitous, and must have tasked the energies of the most scientific road-maker. With the experience of the Simplon, the St. Gotha, and the others leading over the Alps, the Vellebitch is the most perfect of all, and, viewed from below the road, appears like a gigant staircase cut in the face of a rock. One great blank in the landscape to which we descended was a scantiness of vegetation: the air was warm, the colours clear, brilliant, and southern; but the scattered figs and olives, the red earth mingled with rock, and the starved shrubbery, formed a counterpoise that told me not to forget my native verdure-clad north (pp. 2-5)”.