168 AN entomologist's visit to dalmatia in 1873. 



from the altered manner that our countrymen were not 

 unpopular. I may say here that Italian is the language of 

 the towns, an inheritance of the Venetian occupation, and 

 Sclave the country. The language of official life is of course 

 German. One day, at the dinner-table on board the steamer, 

 an Austrian naval officer whispered to me that of nine persons 

 sitting at the opposite side, all Austrian subjects, seven spoke 

 diffisrent languages ; these were in addition to the three just 

 mentioned — Polish, Magyar, Czech, and Morlach. 



For the antiquarian, Spalatro may be the most interesting 

 of the towns. It contains the remains of a palace of 

 Diocletian, where the column was first used to support the 

 arch, and the ruins of two or three temples. Ragusa is a 

 fortress (like Zara and Cattaro), with well-built houses 

 within the walls, and is the residence of the foreign consuls, 

 but it is frequently subjected to the shocks of earthquakes. 

 Outside the walls there are a number of country-houses, 

 many of them roofless, such as they have been since 1813, 

 when the place was taken from the French by English and 

 Austrians. Why they should be simply roofless, or why 

 they should be allowed to remain so, are questions to which 

 I have not heard any answer. About a mile or less from 

 Ragusa is the wooded island of Lacroma, once the residence 

 of the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian. 



It was while at Ragusa that one day, whilst my daughter 

 was making a sketch from the hill between that place and 

 Gravosa, we were pounced upon by two gensdarmes, who, 

 after having in the mildest manner got hold of the sketch- 

 book, insisted on taking us before the "Behorden" for 

 taking plans (?) without permission of the military governor. 

 There was nothing for it but to go quietly, and so, to 

 our intense annoyance, we were marched to the town, and 

 then through its whole length to the old Venetian palace, 



