The Cruise of the Branwen

RAGUSA AND SPALATO found the Corso lay along the bottom of a valley into which stone streets as steep as staircases drop sharply like the wynds of Edinburgh. Many of the houses had solid stone walls throughout, and the shops on the Corso often exhibited the old arrangement of an open archway on the ground floor, with a stone counter half across it. Our wanderings at one time brought us to an eigh– teenth-century square, as different as possible from the rest of the town, with a monumental stairway curving up to the Hospital like the steps upon the Capitol at Rome. But it was the harbour, with its tremendous fortifications loom– ing above the water, that impressed me most, and here the full charm and mystery of the place were at their height. We strolled away, through deep-walled streets, arched in for nearly all their length, towards the open sea upon the other border of the town; and so climbed to a garden height that looked out over curtain-walls and bastions and donjon towers, like a Dalmatian Carcassonne, but circled by the blue and silver of the Adriatic, with golden limestone islands set like gems among its foam. Behind the town, all along the sloping shoulders of the mountain range, the white road wound slowly southwards, guarded at each visible end of the horizon by an Austrian fort. A grave but pleasant sound of bells rose gently from the valley, and a Sunday procession of priests and friars passed by us slowly on the dusty road. We moved behind them to the inviting dining– room of the Imperial Hotel, outside the city L 161