Scardona

“[From Sebenico] an excellent Macadamised road carries the traveller to Scardona; but oh, how dreary the landscape! For many a long mile the footstep of some later Attila seemed to have left its withering impress on these plains. Some districts were stony; others, like the Campagna of Roma, were a desert less by nature then the ruin or neglect of man. The villages are few and far between. Here and there the shell of a vast feudal castle, or the broken arches of the great Roman aqueduct, fifty miles in length, that conveyed the waters of the distant Kerka to the ancient Zara (Jadera), shed a melancholy splendour on the desolate scene. […]. As we approach Scardona, the road descends, and the landscape begins to smile. A brook brawls at our side; detached huts are annexed to enclosed patches of ground; olives, at first scarce and scanty, thicken apace, and are succeded by a noble grove of lofty umbrageous mulberries. A green meadow, and red ploughed land, at length become mingled with gardens, and then the village it self opens to our view; and, strange paradox! Although about to embark on an inlet o of the sea, we feel like mariners arriving in port after a monotonous voyage. Scardona is situated on the tortuous salt-water gulf which, locked in by precipitous highlands, meets the fresh water of the river Kerka, and is accessible to small craft. It retains its Roman name, and in the time of the Empire was a popolous and flourishing municipality […]; but the deep port of Sebenico, near the sea, has become, in its own small way, the emporium of this part of Dalmatia (pp. 11-13)”.