66 A RECENT VISIT TO THE DALMATIAN COAST. 
We have still another reminder of the vanished greatness of 
this little Republic in the word avgosy, which owes its origin to 
the town of Ragusa, and carries us back to a time when it shared 
with Venice the carrying trade of the Adriatic, and sent out its 
argosies to all parts of the world. 
The town lies at the foot of the mountains, which here 
approach very near to the coast, ‘‘ A ledge of Christendom with a 
background of barbarism.’”’ It is built on the neck of a rocky 
isthmus, and with its bastions, towers, and all the various adjuncts 
of an ancient fortress, affords a magnificent example of a medizval 
fortified town, whilst every islet near it is also strongly fortified. 
Ragusa has from time to time suffered immense damage from 
earthquakes, which are of frequent occurrence, but are curiously 
local in their effects. The records of the sixteenth century contain 
abundance of evidence of the alarming nature of these earth- 
quakes, and in the year 1667 nearly the whole town was destroyed. 
It might consequently be expected that Ragusan architecture 
would present but few points of interest. Such, however, is by 
no means the case, as there are several buildings which in part, 
at least, date back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 
The Rector’s Palace, which is on the site of an older building 
devoted to the same use, was built about 1464 by two very 
celebrated architects, Michelozzo Michelozzi and Giorgio Orsini. 
It consists of a loggia of six round arches between two solid 
structures which originally carried towers, the windows above 
being Italian-Gothic. This building has aroused the enthusiasm 
of Professor Freeman, who looks upon it as ‘‘ One of the fairest 
triumphs of human skill within the range of the builder’s art,” and 
from a study of this palace, of the dogana or custom-house, and of 
the house of Count Caboga, near Gravosa, he concludes that early 
forms of architecture were in use in Ragusa until a very late date, 
that in fact architecture did not pass through the same stages of 
development here as in most other places, and that there is no 
line of demarcation in point of time between the true Romanesque 
and the Renaissance. In the chief arcades of the principal 
buildings the round arch of the Romanesque style passed into 
