18 Dalmatian Politics [1889 



greatest pleasure, poor man, he has had for many months. He came 

 down to put us into our carriage and insisted upon paying the driver 

 his hire." 



We left Sheykh Obeyd on the 8th of March and Alexandria on 

 the 10th. 



Here ends our winter's stay in Egypt of that year. 



' 13th March. — We are in the Gulf of Fiume, and our journey is 

 nearly over, on our way to Fiume to spend a fortnight with the Hoyos 

 family before returning home. The captain of our ship, the Ceres, is 

 a Dalmatian, and by his own account was much mixed up in past times 

 with revolutionary affairs. He tells me his two brothers emigrated to 

 America after 1848, and his son has recently been in prison for political 

 reasons. He talks of a social war as imminent in Europe, especially 

 in Germany, France, and Italy, and looks upon Bismarck as the deviser 

 of all evil, and on a revolt against him and military ideas as certain. 

 He believes, too, in the overthrow of the British Empire in India by 

 the Russians, who will be joined by the Indians. He has recently seen 

 Arabi in Ceylon. We touched at Corfu and Lissa, and the Ionian 

 Islands, terribly bare and scored with burnings. We saw them well, 

 coasting close under Zante, Ithaca, and Cephalonia. Corfu is a pretty 

 town, little changed since the British evacuation, though the people on 

 board say the place is in decline. Lissa we saw by moonlight. Admiral 

 Tegethoff, who won the battle there for Austria, did so against orders 

 and against rules. The Italian fleet was four times his strength, but 

 his action was fortunate and probably saved the Dalmatian coast to 

 Austria. There are three parties it seems in Dalmatia: a Philo-Rus- 

 sian, the most numerous ; a Philo- Austrian, the most wealthy and 

 educated ; and a Philo-Italian, confined to a few sea-coast towns. The 

 officers on board are all Catholic and Philo-Austrian but radicals, and 

 talk something very like socialism without disguise. They are bitterly 

 opposed to Russia. They are all Dalmatians. They resent the union 

 of Fiume to Hungary, but admit that there is no National party in 

 Dalmatia. The captain, Gelachich, is a capital fellow, a native of 

 Lessina." 



At Lissa we received news of the discomfiture of the " Times " in 

 the Parnell case, by far the most important incident at home since the 

 overthrow of Gladstone in 1886. 



" iSth March, Villa Hoyos, Fiume. — We have been a week here 

 staying with Count and Countess George Hoyos and their children, 

 governesses, and tutors, a large cheerful party of the kind I like. The 

 villa is like Paddockhurst (their place in Sussex) in miniature. The 

 Hoyos' are of ancient Spanish extraction, brought to Austria by Charles 

 Quint, and she is the daughter of Whitehead, the inventor of the 

 torpedo, who, beginning life as an engineer on board an Austrian 



