48 A RECENT VISIT TO THE DALMATIAN COAST. 
early impressions have led us to believe, but that it possesses 
fertile plains, and valleys rich in corn and oil and wine. This 
narrow strip of land bordering the sea, in its people and language, 
still bears the impress of its early Roman colonization, and since 
that time, during all the stormy vicissitudes of its history, it has 
never ceased to be the bulwark of civilization as opposed to the 
barbarism, which, even to this day, is divided from it by but a 
few miles breadth of mountains. As we travel further south these 
mountains approach nearer and nearer to the sea, until at Cattaro, 
they almost touch the coast. 
The mountains and the lower-lying hills in front consist for the 
most part of a very hard grey limestone, which is so light in 
colour as occasionally to give the appearance of snow-clad 
heights. This limestone is of about the age of our chalk, from 
which, however, it differs greatly in hardness, as it is almost as 
compact a rock as our mountain limestone, and makes a most 
excellent building stone. Owing to the comparative ease with 
which this rock, like all limestones, is acted upon by rain charged 
with the carbonic acid derived from the air and other sources, the 
prevailing outlines of the hills and mountains are flowing ones. 
There is, however, in these flowing lines of the foot-hills and 
rounded rocks of the shore and islands an entire absence of any 
of those indications of ice action which are so evident to the 
trained eye where they occur. This part of Europe, in fact, owes 
nothing of its sculpturing to the ice-sheets which have left such a 
strong impress upon the scenery of Northern Europe. 
As one sails along the channel of Spalato with the low-lying 
island of Bua to the left, the town of Spalato itself gradually comes 
into view, built on a narrow promontory running westward. The 
sections in the sea cliffs here indicate an enormous amount of 
folding and contortion, giving one some idea of the force of those 
great lateral earth-thrusts, which, increasing in magnitude as we 
travel eastward, have resulted in the elevation of the Dinaric Alps. 
As the town is neared, all such thoughts are for a time 
banished by the expectation of the architectural wonders of the 
place we are approaching, for it is here that Diocletian, one of the 
