1913!] At Ragusa 



spin out their busy lives. At Ragusa we tarried longer; A bUnd 

 yet not long enough in that red-roofed, rockbound <'/*^'""y 

 city set against green hills studded with slim cypresses 

 and facing the vivid Adriatic ! 

 To quote from a writer ^ who knows the land well: 



Ragusa is a dream city by the sea. Picture to yourself one of 

 the walled Etruscan towns of northern Italy, only with more 

 massive, sterner walls and towers, and set it down by the 

 laughing waters of the blue Adriatic; add palms and flowering 

 aloes of giant size growing wild wherever they can gain a foot- 

 hold in the rocks right down to the edge of the sea, together 

 with cacti and oleanders of every shade from purest white to 

 deepest crimson; people it with figures more than half Oriental, 

 with knives stuck in their belts, and cloaks rivalling in colour the 

 crimson of the oleander blossoms, and you have Ragusa, the 

 proud little republic of yore which never yielded even to the 

 might of Venice in the zenith of her power, the half-Eastern, 

 half-Western, yet unspoilt Ragusa of to-day! 



During our stay we made a delightful trip by Delightful 

 steamer to the very source of the neighboring river 

 Ombla, a considerable stream which boils up out of a 

 cave at the base of the mountain wall only four miles 

 from the sea; this and the Rjeka (which feeds Lake 

 Scutari) carry the bulk of the leakage of Montenegro 

 perched high above. Another excursion took us to the 

 still, forested, flowery island of Lacroma, which 

 duplicates in miniature the poet-haunted "isles of 

 Greece." On another day we drove down the rugged 

 peninsula to the south, crossing into the fertile Val di 

 Breno just below the Herzegovina frontier, where a 

 small stream straggles out from a group of little deep, 

 cold caves. In one of these a hog had been securely 

 stabled, and his grunts from below caused us some 

 surprise as we inspected his retreat. 



iMaude M. Holbach in "Dalmatia." 



1: 525 n 



excursions 



