SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS
EDITED BY FRANCIS W. HALSEY
CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland
Part Two
VI. HUNGARY--(_Continued_)
HUNGARIAN BATHS AND RESORTS--By H. Tornai de Kövër
THE GIPSIES--By H. Tornai de Kövër
VII. AUSTRIA'S ADRIATIC PORTS
TRIESTE AND POLA--By Edward A. Freeman
SPALATO--By Edward A. Freeman
RAGUSA--By Harry De Windt
CATTARO--By Edward A. Freeman
VIII. OTHER AUSTRIAN SCENES
CRACOW--By Mènie Muriel Dowie
ON THE ROAD TO PRAGUE--By Bayard Taylor
THE CAVE OF ADELSBERG--By George Stillman Hillard
THE MONASTERY OF MÖLK--By Thomas Frognall Dibdin
THROUGH THE TYROL--By William Cullen Bryant
IN THE DOLOMITES--By Archibald Campbell Knowles
CORTINA--By Amelia B. Edwards
IX. ALPINE RESORTS
THE CALL OF THE MOUNTAINS--By Frederick Harrison
INTERLAKEN AND THE JUNGFRAU--By Archibald Campbell Knowles
THE ALTDORF OF WILLIAM TELL--By W.D. M'Crackan
LUCERNE--By Victor Tissot
ZURICH--By W.D. M'Crackan
THE RIGI--By W.D. M'Crackan
CHAMOUNI--AN AVALANCHE--By Percy Bysshe Shelley
ZERMATT--By Archibald Campbell Knowles
PONTRESINA AND ST. MORITZ--By Victor Tissot
GENEVA--By Francis H. Gribble
THE CASTLE OF CHILLON--By Harriet Beecher Stowe
BY RAIL UP THE GORNER-GRAT--By Archibald Campbell Knowles
THROUGH THE ST. GOTHARD INTO ITALY--By Victor Tissot
X. ALPINE MOUNTAIN CLIMBING
FIRST ATTEMPTS HALF A CENTURY AGO--By Edward Whymper
FIRST TO THE TOP O THE MATTERHORN--By Edward Whymper
THE LORD FRANCIS DOUGLAS TRAGEDY--By Edward Whymper
AN ASCENT OF MONTE ROSA (1858)--By John Tyndall
MONT BLANC ASCENDED, HUXLEY GOING PART WAY--By John Tyndall
THE JUNGFRAU-JOCH--By Sir Leslie Stephen
XI. OTHER ALPINE TOPICS
THE GREAT ST. BERNARD HOSPICE--By Archibald Campbell Knowles
AVALANCHES--By Victor Tissot
HUNTING THE CHAMOIS--By Victor Tissot
THE CELEBRITIES OF GENEVA--By Francis H. Gribble
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VI
Frontispiece
THE MATTERHORN
KURSAAL AT MARIENBAD
MARIENBAD, AUSTRIA
MONASTERY OF ST. ULRIC AND AFRA, AUGSBURG
MONASTERY OF MÖLK ON THE DANUBE ABOVE VIENNA
MEMORIAL TABLET AND ROAD IN THE IRON GATE OF THE DANUBE
QUAY AT FIUME
ROYAL PALACE IN BUDAPEST
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, BUDAPEST
SUSPENSION BRIDGE OVER THE DANUBE AT BUDAPEST
STREET IN BUDAPEST
CATHEDRAL OF SPALATO
REGUSA, DALMATIA
MIRAMAR
GENEVA
REGATTA DAY ON LAKE GENEVA
VITZNAU, THE LAKE TERMINUS OF THE RIGI RAILROAD
RHINE FALLS NEAR SCHAFFHAUSEN
PONTRESINA IN THE ENGADINE
ST. MORITZ IN THE ENGADINE
FRIBOURG
BERNE
VIVEY, LAKE GENEVA
THE TURNHALLE, ZURICH
INTERLAKEN
LUCERNE
VIADUCTS ON AN ALPINE RAILWAY
THE WOLFORT VIADUCT
BALMAT--SAUSSURE MONUMENT IN CHAMONIX
ROOFED WOODEN BRIDGE AT LUCERNE
THE CASTLE OF CHILLON
CLOUD EFFECT ABOVE INTERLAKEN
DAVOS IN WINTER
[Illustration: THE KURSAL AT MARIENBAD]
[Illustration: MARIENBAD, AUSTRIA]
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF ST. ULRIC AND AFRA, AT AUGSBURG
IN BAVARIA]
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF MÖLK ON THE DANUBE ABOVE VIENNA]
[Illustration: MEMORIAL TABLET AND ROAD IN THE IRON GATE
OF THE DANUBE]
[Illustration: THE QUAY OF THE FIUME AT THE HEAD OF THE ADRIATIC]
[Illustration: THE ROYAL PALACE AT BUDAPEST]
[Illustration: THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT AT BUDAPEST]
[Illustration: THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE OVER THE DANUBE AT BUDAPEST]
[Illustration: STREET IN BUDAPEST]
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF SPALATO
Burial-place of the Emperor Diocletian]
[Illustration: REGUSA, DALMATIA]
[Illustration: MIRAMAR
Long the home of the ex-Empress Carlotta of Mexico]
[Illustration: GENEVA]
[Illustration: REGATTA DAY ON LAKE GENEVA]
[Illustration: VITZNAU, THE LAKE TERMINUS OF THE RIGI RAILROAD]
[Illustration: THE RHINE FALLS NEAR SCHAFFHAUSEN]
VI
HUNGARY
(_Continued_)
HUNGARIAN BATHS AND RESORTS[1]
BY H. TORNAI DE KÖVËR
In Hungary there are great quantities of unearthed riches, and not only
in the form of gold. These riches are the mineral waters that abound in
the country and have been the natural medicine of the people for many
years. Water in itself was always worshiped by the Hungarians in the
earliest ages, and they have found out through experience for which
ailment the different waters may be used. There are numbers of small
watering-places in the most primitive state, which are visited by the
peasants from far and wide, more especially those that are good for
rheumatism.
Like all people that work much in the open, the Hungarian in old age
feels the aching of his limbs. The Carpathians are full of such baths,
some of them quite primitive; others are used more as summer resorts,
where the well-to-do town people build their villas; others, again,
like Tátra Füred, Tátra Lomnicz, Csorba, and many others, have every
accommodation and are visited by people from all over Europe. In former
times Germans and Poles were the chief visitors, but now people come
from all parts to look at the wonderful ice-caves (where one can skate
in the hottest summer), the waterfalls, and the great pine forests, and
make walking, driving, and riding tours right up to the snow-capped
mountains, preferring the comparative quiet of this Alpine district to
that of Switzerland. Almost every place has some special mineral water,
and among the greatest wonders of Hungary are the hot mud-baths of
Pöstyén.
This place is situated at the foot of the lesser Carpathians, and is
easily reached from the main line of the railway. The scenery is lovely
and the air healthy, but this is nothing compared to the wondrous waters
and hot mire which oozes out of the earth in the vicinity of the river
Vág. Hot sulfuric water, which contains radium, bubbles up in all parts
of Pöstyén, and even the bed of the cold river is full of steaming
hot mud. As far back as 1551 we know of the existence of Pöstyén as a
natural cure, and Sir Spencer Wells, the great English doctor, wrote
about these waters in 1888. They are chiefly good for rheumatism, gout,
neuralgia, the strengthening of broken bones, strains, and also for
scrofula.
On the premises there is a quaint museum with crutches and all sort of
sticks and invalid chairs left there by their former owners in grateful
acknowledgment of the wonderful waters and mire that had healed them. Of
late there has been much comfort added; great new baths have been built,
villas and new hotels added, so that there is accommodation for rich
and poor alike. The natural heat of the mire is 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
Plenty of amusements are supplied for those who are not great
sufferers--tennis, shooting, fishing, boating, and swimming being all
obtainable. The bathing-place and all the adjoining land belongs to
Count Erdödy.
Another place of the greatest importance is the little bath "Parád,"
hardly three hours from Budapest, situated in the heart of the mountains
of the "Mátra." It is the private property of Count Kárólyi. The place
is primitive and has not even electric light. Its waters are a wonderful
combination of iron and alkaline, but this is not the most important
feature. Besides the baths there is a strong spring of arsenic water
which, through a fortunate combination, is stronger and more digestible
than Roncegno and all the other first-rate waters of that kind in the
world.
Not only in northern Hungary does one find wondrous cures, it is the
same in Transylvania. There are healing and splendid mineral waters for
common use all over the country lying idle and awaiting the days when
its owners will be possest by the spirit of enterprise. Borszek,
Szováta, and many others are all wonders in their way, waters that would
bring in millions to their owners if only worked properly. Szováta,
boasts of a lake containing such an enormous proportion of salt that not
even the human body can sink into its depths.
In the south there is Herkulesfürdö, renowned as much for the beauty of
its scenery as for its waters. Besides those mentioned there are all
the summer pleasure resorts; the best of these are situated along Lake
Balaton. The tepid water, long sandbanks, and splendid air from the
forests make them specially healthy for delicate children. But not only
have the bathing-places beautiful scenery from north to south and from
east to west, in general the country abounds in Alpine districts,
waterfalls, caves, and other wonders of nature. The most beautiful
tour is along the river Vág, starting from the most northerly point in
Hungary near the beautiful old stronghold of Árva in the county of Árva.
All those that care to see a country as it really is, and do not mind
going out of the usual beaten track of the globe-trotter, should go down
the river Vág. It can not be done by steamer, or any other comfortable
contrivance, one must do it on a raft, as the rapids of the river are
not to be passed by any other means. The wood is transported in this
way from the mountain regions to the south, and for two days one passes
through the most beautiful scenery. Fantastic castles loom at the top of
mountain peaks, and to each castle is attached a page of the history of
the Middle Ages, when the great noblemen were also the greatest robbers
of the land, and the people were miserable serfs, who did all the work
and were taxed and robbed by their masters. Castles, wild mountain
districts, rugged passes, villages, and ruins are passed like a
beautiful panorama. The river rushes along, foaming and dashing over
sharp rocks. The people are reliable and very clever in handling the
raft, which requires great skill, especially when conducted over the
falls at low water. Sometimes there is only one little spot where the
raft can pass, and to conduct it over those rapids requires absolute
knowledge of every rock hidden under the shallow falls. If notice is
given in time, a rude hut will be built on the raft to give shelter
and make it possible to have meals cooked, altho in the simplest way
(consisting of baked potatoes and stew), by the Slavs who are in charge
of the raft. If anything better is wanted it must be ordered by stopping
at the larger towns; but to have it done in the simple way is entering
into the true spirit of the voyage.
THE GIPSIES[2]
BY H. TORNAI DE KÖVËR
Gipsies! Music! Dancing! These are words of magic to the rich and poor,
noblemen and peasant alike, if he be a true Hungarian. There are two
kinds of gipsies. The wandering thief, who can not be made to take up
any occupation. These are a terribly lawless and immoral people, and
there seems to be no way of altering their life and habits, altho much
has been written on the subject to improve matters; but the Government
has shown itself to be helpless as yet. These people live here and
there, in fact everywhere, leading a wandering life in carts, and camp
wherever night overtakes them. After some special evil-doing they will
wander into Rumania or Russia and come back after some years when the
deed of crime has been forgotten. Their movements are so quick and
silent that they outwit the best detectives of the police force. They
speak the gipsy language, but often a half-dozen other languages
besides, in their peculiar chanting voice. Their only occupation is
stealing, drinking, smoking, and being a nuisance to the country in
every way.
The other sort of gipsies consist of those that have squatted down in
the villages some hundreds of years ago. They live in a separate part of
the village, usually at the end, are dirty and untidy and even an unruly
people, but for the most part have taken up some honest occupation.
They make the rough, unbaked earth bricks that the peasant cottages are
mostly made of, are tinkers and blacksmiths, but they do the lowest kind
of work too. Besides these, however, there are the talented ones. The
musical gipsy begins to handle his fiddle as soon as he can toddle.
The Hungarians brought their love of music with them from Asia. Old
parchments have been found which denote that they had their songs and
war-chants at the time of the "home-making," and church and folk-songs
from their earliest Christian period. Peasant and nobleman are musical
alike--it runs in the race. The gipsies that have settled among them
caught up the love of music and are now the best interpreters of the
Hungarian songs. The people have got so used to their "blackies," as
they call them, that no lesser or greater fête day can pass without
the gipsy band having ample work to do in the form of playing for the
people. Their instruments are the fiddle, 'cello, viola, clarinet,
tárogato (a Hungarian specialty), and, above all, the cymbal. The
tárogato looks like a grand piano with the top off. It stands on four
legs like a table and has wires drawn across it; on these wires the
player performs with two little sticks, that are padded at the ends
with cotton-wool. The sound is wild and weird, but if well played very
beautiful indeed. The gipsies seldom compose music. The songs come into
life mostly on the spur of the moment. In the olden days war-songs and
long ballads were the most usual form of music. The seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were specially rich in the production of songs that
live even now. At that time the greatest gipsy musician was a woman: her
name was "Czinka Panna," and she was called the Gipsy Queen. With the
change of times the songs are altered too, and now they are mostly
lyric. Csárdás is the quick form of music, and tho' of different
melodies it must always be kept to the same rhythm. This is not much
sung to, but is the music for the national dance. The peasants play on
a little wooden flute which is called the "Tilinko," or "Furulya," and
they know hundreds of sad folk-songs and lively Csárdás. While living
their isolated lives in the great plains they compose many a beautiful
song.
It is generally from the peasants and the musical country gentry that
the gipsy gets his music. He learns the songs after a single hearing,
and plays them exactly according to the singer's wish. The Hungarian
noble when singing with the gipsies is capable of giving the dark-faced
boys every penny he has. In this manner many a young nobleman has been
ruined, and the gipsies make nothing of it, because they are just like
their masters and "spend easily earned money easily," as the saying
goes. Where there is much music there is much dancing. Every Sunday
afternoon after church the villages are lively with the sound of the
gipsy band, and the young peasant boys and girls dance.
The Slovaks of the north play a kind of bagpipe, which reminds one of
the Scotch ones; but the songs of the Slovak have got very much mixed
with the Hungarian. The Rumanian music is of a distinct type, but the
dances all resemble the Csárdás, with the difference that the quick
figures in the Slav and Rumanian dances are much more grotesque and
verging on acrobatism.
VII
AUSTRIA'S ADRIATIC PORTS
TRIESTE AND POLA[3]
BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
Trieste stands forth as a rival of Venice, which has, in a low practical
view of things, outstript her. Italian zeal naturally cries for the
recovery of a great city, once part of the old Italian kingdom, and
whose speech is largely, perhaps chiefly, Italian to this day. But, a
cry of "Italia Irredenta," however far it may go, must not go so far
as this. Trieste, a cosmopolitan city on a Slavonic shore, can not be
called Italian in the same sense as the lands and towns so near Verona
which yearn to be as Verona is. Let Trieste be the rival, even the
eyesore, of Venice, still Southern Germany must have a mouth.
We might, indeed, be better pleased to see Trieste a free city, the
southern fellow of Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg; but it must not be
forgotten that the Archduke of Austria and Lord of Trieste reigns at
Trieste by a far better right than that by which he reigns at Cattaro
and Spizza. The present people of Trieste did not choose him, but the
people of Trieste five hundred years back did choose the forefather of
his great-grandmother. Compared with the grounds of which kingdoms,
duchies, counties, and lordships, are commonly held in that
neighborhood, such a claim as this must be allowed to be respectable
indeed.
The great haven of Trieste may almost at pleasure be quoted as either
confirming or contradicting the rule that it is not in the great
commercial cities of Europe that we are to look for the choicest or the
most plentiful remains of antiquity. Sometimes the cities themselves
are of modern foundation; in other cases the cities themselves, as
habitations of men and seats of commerce, are of the hoariest antiquity,
but the remains of their early days have perished through their very
prosperity. Massalia,[4] with her long history, with her double wreath
of freedom, the city which withstood Cæsar and which withstood Charles
of Anjou, is bare of monuments of her early days. She has been the
victim of her abiding good fortune. We can look down from the height on
the Phôkaian harbor; but for actual memorials of the men who fled from
the Persian, of the men who defied the Roman and the Angevin, we might
look as well at Liverpool or at Havre.
Genoa, Venice herself, are hardly real exceptions; they were indeed
commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling
cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we
to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted
to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the
head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the
snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the other side of
her inland sea, with her harbor full of the ships of every nation, her
streets echoing with every tongue, is she to be reckoned as an example
of the rule or an exception to it?
No city at first sight seems more thoroughly modern; old town and
new, wide streets and narrow, we search them in vain for any of those
vestiges of past times which in some cities meet us at every step.
Compare Trieste with Ancona;[5] we miss the arch of Trajan on the haven;
we miss the cupola of Saint Cyriacus soaring in triumph above the
triumphal monument of the heathen. We pass through the stately streets
of the newer town, we thread the steep ascents which lead us to the
older town above, and we nowhere light on any of those little scraps of
ornamental architecture, a window, a doorway, a column, which meet us at
every step in so many of the cities of Italy.
Yet the monumental wealth of Trieste is all but equal to the monumental
wealth of Ancona. At Ancona we have the cathedral church and the
triumphal arch; so we have at Trieste; tho' at Trieste we have nothing
to set against the grand front of the lower and smaller church of
Ancona. But at Ancona arch and duomo both stand out before all eyes;
at Trieste both have to be looked for. The church of Saint Justus at
Trieste crowns the hill as well as the church of Saint Cyriacus at
Ancona; but it does not in the same way proclaim its presence. The
castle, with its ugly modern fortifications, rises again above the
church; and the duomo of Trieste, with its shapeless outline and its
low, heavy, unsightly campanile, does not catch the eyes like the Greek
cross and cupola of Ancona.
Again at Trieste the arch could never, in its best days, have been a
rival to the arch at Ancona; and now either we have to hunt it out by an
effort, or else it comes upon us suddenly, standing, as it does, at the
head of a mean street on the ascent to the upper town. Of a truth it can
not compete with Ancona or with Rimini, with Orange[6] or with Aosta.
But the duomo, utterly unsightly as it is in a general view, puts on
quite a new character when we first see the remains of pagan times
imprisoned in the lower stage of the heavy campanile, still more so when
we take our first glance of its wonderful interior. At the first glimpse
we see that here there is a mystery to be unraveled; and as we gradually
find the clue to the marvelous changes which it has undergone, we
feel that outside show is not everything, and that, in point both
of antiquity and of interest, tho' not of actual beauty, the double
basilica of Trieste may claim no mean place among buildings of its own
type. Even after the glories of Rome and Ravenna, the Tergestine church
may be studied with no small pleasure and profit, as an example of a
kind of transformation of which neither Rome nor Ravenna can supply
another example....
The other ancient relic at Trieste is the small triumphal arch. On one
side it keeps its Corinthian pilasters; on the other they are imbedded
in a house. The arch is in a certain sense double; but the two are close
together, and touch in the keystone. The Roman date of this arch can not
be doubted; but legends connect it both with Charles the Great and with
Richard of Poitou and of England, a prince about whom Tergestine fancy
has been very busy. The popular name of the arch is Arco Riccardo.
Such, beside some fragments in the museum, are all the remains that the
antiquary will find in Trieste; not much in point of number, but, in the
case of the duomo at least, of surpassing interest in their own way. But
the true merit of Trieste is not in anything that it has itself, its
church, its arch, its noble site. Placed there at the head of the gulf,
on the borders of two great portions of the Empire, it leads to the land
which produced that line of famous Illyrian Emperors who for a while
checked the advance of our own race in the world's history, and it leads
specially to the chosen home of the greatest among them.[7] The chief
glory of Trieste, after all, is that it is the way to Spalato....
At Pola the monuments of Pietas Julia claim the first place; the
basilica, tho' not without a certain special interest, comes long after
them. The character of the place is fixt by the first sight of it; we
see the present and we see the more distant past; the Austrian navy is
to be seen, and the amphitheater is to be seen. But intermediate times
have little to show; if the duomo strikes the eye at all, it strikes it
only by the extreme ugliness of its outside, nor is there anything very
taking, nothing like the picturesque castle of Pirano, in the works
which occupy the site of the colonial capitol. The duomo should not be
forgotten; even the church of Saint Francis is worth a glance; but it is
in the remains of the Roman colony, in the amphitheater, the arches,
the temples, the fragments preserved in that temple which serves, as
at Nîmes,[8] for a museum, that the real antiquarian wealth of Pola
lies....
The known history of Pola begins with the Roman conquest of Istria
in 178 B.C. The town became a Roman colony and a flourishing seat of
commerce. Its action on the republican side in the civil war brought
on it the vengeance of the second Cæsar. But the destroyer became
the restorer, and Pietas Julia, in the height of its greatness, far
surpassed the extent either of the elder or the younger Pola. Like all
cities of this region, Pola kept up its importance down to the days of
the Carlovingian Empire, the specially flourishing time of the whole
district being that of Gothic and Byzantine dominion at Ravenna. A
barbarian king, the Roxolan Rasparasanus, is said to have withdrawn to
Pola after the submission of his nation to Hadrian; and the panegyrists
of the Flavian house rank Pola along with Trier and Autun among the
cities which the princes of that house had adorned or strengthened. But
in the history of their dynasty the name of the city chiefly stands out
as the chosen place for the execution of princes whom it was convenient
to put out of the way.
Here Crispus died at the bidding of Constantine, and Gallus at the
bidding of Constantius. Under Theodoric, Pola doubtless shared that
general prosperity of the Istrian land on which Cassiodorus grows
eloquent when writing to its inhabitants. In the next generation Pola
appears in somewhat of the same character which has come back to it in
our own times; it was there that Belisarius gathered the Imperial fleet
for his second and less prosperous expedition against the Gothic lords
of Italy. But, after the break up of the Frankish Empire, the history of
medieval Pola is but a history of decline. It was, in the geography of
Dante, the furthest city of Italy; but, like most of the other cities of
its own neighborhood, its day of greatness had passed away when Dante
sang.
Tossed to and fro between the temporal and spiritual lords who claimed
to be marquesses of Istria, torn by the dissensions of aristocratic and
popular parties among its own citizens, Pola found rest, the rest of
bondage, in submission to the dominion of Saint Mark in 1331.[9] Since
then, till its new birth in our own times, Pola has been a failing city.
Like the other Istrian and Dalmatian towns, modern revolutions have
handed it over from Venice to Austria, from Austria to France, from
France to Austria again. It is under its newest masters that Pola has
at last begun to live a fresh life, and the haven whence Belisarius[10]
sailed forth has again become a haven in more than name, the cradle of
the rising navy of the united Austrian and Hungarian realm.
That haven is indeed a noble one. Few sights are more striking than to
see the huge mass of the amphitheater at Pola seeming to rise at once
out of the land-locked sea. As Pola is seen now, the amphitheater is the
one monument of its older days, which strikes the eye in the general
view, and which divides attention with signs that show how heartily the
once forsaken city has entered on its new career. But in the old time
Pola could show all the buildings which befitted its rank as a colony
of Rome. The amphitheater, of course, stood without the walls; the city
itself stood at the foot and on the slope of the hill which was crowned
by the capitol of the colony, where the modern fortress rises above the
Franciscan church. Parts of the Roman wall still stand; one of its gates
is left; another has left a neighbor and a memory....
Travelers are sometimes apt to complain, and that not wholly without
reason, that all amphitheaters are very like one another. At Pola this
remark is less true than elsewhere, as the amphitheater there has
several marked peculiarities of its own. We do not pretend to expound
all its details scientifically; but this we may say, that those who
dispute--if the dispute still goes on--about various points as regards
the Coliseum at Rome will do well to go and look for some further light
in the amphitheater of Pola. The outer range, which is wonderfully
perfect, while the inner arrangements are fearfully ruined, consists, on
the side toward the town, of two rows of arches, with a third story with
square-headed openings above them.
But the main peculiarity in the outside is to be found in four
tower-like projections, not, as at Arles and Nîmes, signs of Saracenic
occupation, but clearly parts of the original design. Many conjectures
have been made about them; they look as if they were means of approach
to the upper part of the building; but it is wisest not to be positive.
But the main peculiarity of this amphitheater is that it lies on the
slope of a hill, which thus supplied a natural basement for the seats on
one side only. But this same position swallowed up the lower arcade on
this side, and it hindered the usual works underneath the seats from
being carried into this part of the building.
SPALATO[11]
BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
The main object and center of all historical and architectural inquiries
on the Dalmatian coast is, of course, the home of Diocletian, the still
abiding palace of Spalato. From a local point of view, it is the spot
which the greatest of the long line of renowned Illyrian Emperors chose
as his resting-place from the toils of warfare and government, and
where he reared the vastest and noblest dwelling that ever arose at the
bidding of a single man. From an ecumenical point of view, Spalato is
yet more. If it does not rank with Rome, Old and New, with Ravenna and
with Trier, it is because it never was, like them, an actual seat of
empire. But it not the less marks a stage, and one of the greatest
stages, in the history of the Empire.
On his own Dalmatian soil, Docles of Salone, Diocletian of Rome, was the
man who had won fame for his own land, and who, on the throne of the
world, did not forget his provincial birthplace. In the sight of Rome
and of the world Jovius Augustus was more than this. Alike in the
history of politics and in the history of art, he has left his mark on
all time that has come after him, and it is on his own Spalato that
his mark has been most deeply stamped. The polity of Rome and the
architecture of Rome alike received a new life at his hands. In each
alike he cast away shams and pretenses, and made the true construction
of the fabric stand out before men's eyes. Master of the Rome world, if
not King, yet more than King, he let the true nature of his power be
seen, and, first among the Cæsars, arrayed himself with the outward pomp
of sovereignty.
In a smaller man we might have deemed the change a mark of weakness, a
sign of childish delight in gewgaws, titles, and trappings. Such could
hardly have been the motive in the man who, when he deemed that his work
was done, could cast away both the form and the substance of power, and
could so steadily withstand all temptations to take them up again. It
was simply that the change was fully wrought; that the chief magistrate
of the commonwealth had gradually changed into the sovereign of the
Empire; that Imperator, Cæsar, and Augustus, once titles lowlier than
that of King, had now become, as they have ever since remained, titles
far loftier. The change was wrought, and all that Diocletian did was to
announce the fact of the change to the world.
Nor did the organizing hand of Jovius confine its sphere to the polity
of the Empire only. He built himself a house, and, above all builders,
he might boast himself of the house that he had builded. Fast by his
own birthplace--a meaner soul might have chosen some distant
spot--Diocletian reared the palace which marks a still greater epoch in
Roman art than his political changes mark in Roman polity. On the inmost
shore of one of the lake-like inlets of the Hadriatic, an inlet guarded
almost from sight by the great island of Bua at its mouth, lay his own
Salona, now desolate, then one of the great cities of the Roman world.
But it was not in the city, it was not close under its walls, that
Diocletian fixt his home. An isthmus between the bay of Salona and the
outer sea cuts off a peninsula, which again throws out two horns into
the water to form the harbor which has for ages supplanted Salona.
There, not on any hill-top, but on a level spot by the coast, with the
sea in front, with a background of more distant mountains, and with
one peaked hill rising between the two seas like a watch-tower, did
Diocletian build the house to which he withdrew when he deemed that his
work of empire was over. And in building that house, he won for himself,
or for the nameless genius whom he set at work, a place in the history
of art worthy to rank alongside of Iktinos of Athens and Anthemios of
Byzantium, of William of Durham and of Hugh of Lincoln.
And now the birthplace of Jovius is forsaken, but his house still
abides, and abides in a shape marvelously little shorn of its ancient
greatness. The name which it still bears comes straight from the name of
the elder home of the Cæsars. The fates of the two spots have been in a
strange way the converse of one another. By the banks of the Tiber the
city of Romulus became the house of a single man: by the shores of the
Hadriatic the house of a single man became a city. The Palatine hill
became the Palatium of the Cæsars, and Palatium was the name which was
borne by the house of Cæsar by the Dalmatian shore. The house became a
city; but its name still clave to it, and the house of Jovius still,
at least in the mouths of its own inhabitants, keeps its name in the
slightly altered form of Spalato....
We land with the moon lighting up the water, with the stars above us,
the northern wain shining on the Hadriatic, as if, while Diocletian was
seeking rest by Salona, the star of Constantine was rising over York
and Trier. Dimly rising above us we see, disfigured indeed, but not
destroyed, the pillared front of the palace, reminding us of the
Tabularium of Rome's own capitol. We pass under gloomy arches, through
dark passages and presently we find ourselves in the center of palace
and city, between those two renowned rows of arches which mark the
greatest of all epochs in the history of the building art. We think how
the man who reorganized the Empire of Rome was also the man who first
put harmony and consistency into the architecture of Rome. We think
that, if it was in truth the crown of Diocletian which passed to every
Cæsar from the first Constantius to the last Francis, it was no less in
the pile which rose into being at his word that the germ was planted
which grew into Pisa and Durham, into Westminster and Saint Ouen.
There is light enough to mark the columns put for the first time to
their true Roman use, and to think how strange was the fate which called
up on this spot the happy arrangement which had entered the brain of no
earlier artist--the arrangement which, but a few years later, was to be
applied to another use in the basilica of the Lateran and in Saint Paul
Without the Walls. Yes, it is in the court of the persecutor, the man
who boasted that he had wiped out the Christian superstition from the
world, that we see the noblest forestalling of the long arcades of the
Christian basilica.
It is with thoughts like these, thoughts pressing all the more upon us
where every outline is clear and every detail is visible, that we tread
for the first time the Court of Jovius--the columns with their arches on
either side of us, the vast bell-tower rising to the sky, as if to mock
the art of those whose mightiest works might still seem only to grovel
upon earth. Nowhere within the compass of the Roman world do we find
ourselves more distinctly in the presence of one of the great minds
of the world's history; we see that, alike in politics and in art,
Diocletian breathed a living soul into a lifeless body. In the bitter
irony of the triumphant faith, his mausoleum has become a church, his
temple has become a baptistery, the great bell-tower rises proudly over
his own work; his immediate dwelling-place is broken down and crowded
with paltry houses; but the sea-front and the Golden Gate are still
there amid all disfigurements, and the great peristyle stands almost
unhurt, to remind us of the greatest advance that a single mind ever
made in the progress of the building art.
At the present time the city into which the house of Diocletian has
grown is the largest and most growing town of the Dalmatian coast. It
has had to yield both spiritual and temporal precedence to Zara, but,
both in actual population and all that forms the life of a city, Spalato
greatly surpasses Zara and all its other neighbors. The youngest
Dalmatian towns, which could boast neither of any mythical origin nor of
any Imperial foundation, the city which, as it were, became a city by
mere chance, has outstript the colonies of Epidauros, of Corinth, and of
Rome.
The palace of Diocletian had but one occupant; after the founder no
Emperor had dwelled in it, unless we hold that this was the villa near
Salona where the deposed Emperor Nepos was slain, during the patriciate
of Odoacer. The forsaken palace seems, while still almost new, to have
become a cloth factory, where women worked, and which therefore appears
in the "Notitia" as a Gynæcium. But when Salona was overthrown, the
palace stood ready to afford shelter to those who were driven from their
homes. The palace, in the widest sense of the word--for of course its
vast circuit took in quarters for soldiers and officials of various
kinds, as well as the rooms actually occupied by the Emperor--stood
ready to become a city.
It was a chester ready made, with its four streets, its four gates, all
but that toward the sea flanked with octagonal towers, and with four
greater square towers at the corners. To this day the circuit of the
walls is nearly perfect; and the space contained within them must be as
large as that contained within some of the oldest chesters in our own
island. The walls, the towers, the gates, are those of a city rather
than of a house. Two of the gates, tho' their towers are gone, are
nearly perfect; the "porta aurea," with its graceful ornaments; the
"porta ferrea" in its stern plainness, strangely crowned with its small
campanile of later days perched on its top. Within the walls, besides
the splendid buildings which still remain, besides the broken-down walls
and chambers which formed the immediate dwelling-place of the founder,
the main streets were lined with massive arcades, large parts of which
still remain.
Diocletian, in short, in building a house, had built a city. In the days
of Constantine Porphyrogenitus it was a "Káotpov"--Greek and English had
by his day alike borrowed the Latin name; but it was a "Káotpov" which
Diocletian had built as his own house, and within which was his hall
and palace. In his day the city bore the name of Aspalathon, which he
explains to mean "little palace." When the palace had thus become a
common habitation of men, it is not wonderful that all the more private
buildings whose use had passed away were broken down, disfigured, and
put to mean uses.
The work of building over the site must have gone on from that day to
this. The view in Wheeler shows several parts of the enclosure occupied
by ruins which are now covered with houses. The real wonder is that so
much has been spared and has survived to our own days. And we are rather
surprised to find Constantine saying that in his time the greater part
had been destroyed. For the parts which must always have been the
stateliest remain still. The great open court, the peristyle, with its
arcades, have become the public plaza of the town; the mausoleum on
one side of it and the temple on the other were preserved and put to
Christian uses.
We say the mausoleum, for we fully accept the suggestion made by
Professor Glavinich, the curator of the museum of Spalato, that the
present duomo, traditionally called the Temple of Jupiter, was not a
temple, but a mausoleum. These must have been the great public buildings
of the palace, and, with the addition of the bell-tower, they remain the
chief public buildings of the modern city. But, tho' the ancient square
of the palace remains wonderfully perfect, the modern city, with its
Venetian defenses, its Venetian and later buildings, has spread itself
far beyond the walls of Diocletian. But those walls have made the
history of Spalato, and it is the great buildings which stand within
them that give Spalato its special place in the history of architecture.
RAGUSA[12]
BY HARRY DE WINDT
Viewed from the sea, and at first sight, the place somewhat resembles
Monte Carlo with its white villas, palms, and background of rugged,
gray hills. But this is the modern portion of the town, outside the
fortifications, erected many centuries ago. Within them lies the
real Ragusa--a wonderful old city which teems with interest, for its
time-worn buildings and picturesque streets recall, at every turn, the
faded glories of this "South Slavonic Athens." A bridge across the moat
which protects the old city is the link between the present and past.
In new Ragusa you may sit on the crowded esplanade of a fashionable
watering place; but pass through a frowning archway into the old
town, and, save in the main street, which has modern shops and other
up-to-date surroundings, you might be living in the dark ages. For as
far back as in the ninth century Ragusa was the capital of Dalmatia
and an independent republic, and since that period her literary and
commercial triumphs, and the tragedies she has survived in the shape
of sieges, earthquakes, and pestilence, render the records of this
little-known state almost as engrossing as those of ancient Rome.
Until I came here I had pictured a squalid Eastern place, devoid of
ancient or modern interest; most of my fellow-countrymen probably do
likewise, notwithstanding the fact that when London was
a small and obscure town Ragusa was already an important center of
commerce and civilization. The republic was always a peaceful one, and
its people excelled in trade and the fine arts. Thus, as early as the
fourteenth century the Ragusan fleet was the envy of the world; its
vessels were then known as Argusas to British mariners, and the English
word "Argosy" is probably derived from the name. These tiny ships went
far afield--to the Levant and Northern Europe, and even to the Indies--a
voyage frought, in those days, with much peril. At this epoch Ragusa had
achieved a mercantile prosperity unequalled throughout Europe, but in
later years the greater part of the fleet joined and perished with the
Spanish Armada.
And this catastrophe was the precursor of a series of national
disasters. In 1667 the city was laid waste by an earthquake which
killed over twenty thousand people, and this was followed by a terrible
visitation of the plague, which further decimated the population.
Ragusa, however, was never a large city, and even at its zenith, in
the sixteenth century, it numbered under forty thousand souls, and now
contains only about a third of that number.
In 1814 the Vienna Congress finally deprived the republic of its
independence, and it became (with Dalmatia) an Austrian possession.
Trade has not increased here of recent years, as in Herzegovina and
Bosnia. The harbor, at one time one of the most important ports in
Europe, is too small and shallow for modern shipping, and the oil
industry, once the backbone of the place, has sadly dwindled of late
years.
Ragusa itself now having no harbor worthy of the name, the traveler by
sea must land at Gravosa about a mile north of the old city. Gravosa is
merely a suburb of warehouses, shipping, and sailor-men, as unattractive
as the London Docks, and the Hotel Petko swarmed with mosquitoes and
an animal which seems to thrive and flourish throughout the Balkan
States--the rat.
The old Custom House is perhaps the most beautiful building in Ragusa,
and is one of the few which survived the terrible earthquake of 1667.
The structure bears the letters "I.H.S." over the principal entrance in
commemoration of this fact. Its courtyard is a dream of beauty, and the
stone galleries around it are surrounded with inscriptions of great age.
Ragusa is a Slav town, but altho' the name of streets appear in Slavonic
characters, Italian is also spoken on every side and the "Stradone,"
with its arcades and narrow precipitous alleys at right angles, is not
unlike a street in Naples. The houses are built in small blocks, as
a protection against earthquakes--the terror of every Ragusan (only
mention the word and he will cross himself)--and here on a fine Sunday
morning you may see Dalmatians, Albanians, and Herzegovinians in their
gaudiest finery, while here and there a wild-eyed Montenegrin, armed to
the teeth, surveys the gay scene with a scowl, of shyness rather than
ill-humor.
Outside the café, on the Square (where flocks of pigeons whirl around as
at St. Mark's in Venice), every little table is occupied; but here the
women are gowned in the latest Vienna fashions, and Austrian uniforms
predominate. And the sun shines as warmly as in June (on this 25th day
of March), and the cathedral bells chime a merry accompaniment to a
military band; a sky of the brightest blue gladdens the eye, fragrant
flowers the senses, and the traveler sips his bock or mazagran, and
thanks his stars he is not spending the winter in cold, foggy England.
Refreshments are served by a white-aproned garçon, and street boys
are selling the "Daily Mail" and "Gil Blas," just as they are on the
far-away boulevards of Paris.
CATTARO[13]
BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
The end of a purely Dalmatian pilgrimage will be Cattaro. He who goes
further along the coast will pass into lands that have a history, past
and present, which is wholly distinct from that of the coast which he
has hitherto traced from Zara--we might say from Capo d'Istria--onward.
We have not reached the end of the old Venetian dominion--for that we
must carry our voyage to Crete and Cyprus. But we have reached the end
of the nearly continuous Venetian dominion--the end of the coast which,
save at two small points, was either Venetian or Regusan--the end of
that territory of the two maritime commonwealths which they kept down to
their fall in modern times, and in which they have been succeeded by the
modern Dalmatian kingdom....
The city stands at the end of an inlet of the sea fifteen or twenty
miles long, and it has mountains around it so high that it is only in
fair summer weather that the sun can be seen; in winter Cattaro never
enjoys his presence. There certainly is no place where it is harder to
believe that the smooth waters of the narrow, lake-like inlet, with
mountains on each side which it seems as if one could put out one's hand
and touch, are really part of the same sea which dashes against the
rocks of Ragusa. They end in a meadow-like coast which makes one think
of Bourget or Trasimenus rather than of Hadria. The Dalmatian voyage is
well ended by the sail along the Bocche, the loveliest piece of inland
sea which can be conceived, and whose shores are as rich in curious bits
of political history as they are in scenes of surpassing natural beauty.
The general history of the district consists in the usual tossing to and
fro between the various powers which have at different times been strong
in the neighborhood. Cattaro was in the reign of Basil the Macedonian
besieged and taken by Saracens, who presently went on unsuccessfully to
besiege Ragusa. And, as under Byzantine rule it was taken by Saracens,
so under Venetian rule it was more than once besieged by Turks. In the
intermediate stages we get the usual alternations of independence and of
subjection to all the neighboring powers in turn, till in 1419 Cattaro
finally became Venetian. At the fall of the republic it became part of
the Austrian share of the spoil. When the spoilers quarreled, it fell
to France. When England, Russia, and Montenegro were allies, the city
joined the land of which it naturally forms the head, and Cattaro became
the Montenegrin haven and capital. When France was no longer dangerous,
and the powers of Europe came together to parcel out other men's goods,
Austria calmly asked for Cattaro back again, and easily got it.
In the city of Cattaro the Orthodox Church is still in a minority, but
it is a minority not far short of a majority. Outside its walls, the
Orthodox outnumber the Catholics. In short, when we reach Cattaro, we
have very little temptation to fancy ourselves in Italy or in any part
of Western Christendom. We not only know, but feel, that we are on the
Byzantine side of the Hadriatic; that we have, in fact, made our way
into Eastern Europe.
And East and West, Slav and Italian, New Rome and Old, might well
struggle for the possession of the land and of the water through which
we pass from Ragusa to our final goal at Cattaro. The strait leads us
into a gulf; another narrow strait leads us into an inner gulf; and on
an inlet again branching out of that inner gulf lies the furthest of
Dalmatian cities. The lower city, Cattaro itself, seems to lie so
quietly, so peacefully, as if in a world of its own from which nothing
beyond the shores of its own Bocche could enter, that we are tempted to
forget, not only that the spot has been the scene of so many revolutions
through so many ages, but that it is even now a border city, a city on
the marchland of contending powers, creeds, and races....
The city of Cattaro itself is small, standing on a narrow ledge between
the gulf and the base of the mountain. It carries the features of the
Dalmatian cities to what any one who has not seen Traü will call their
extreme point. But, tho' the streets of Cattaro are narrow, yet they are
civilized and airy-looking compared with those of Traü, and the little
paved squares, as so often along this coast, suggest the memory of the
ruling city.