THE WHIRLPOOL OF THE BALKANS 



181 



Photograph by Herbert Corey 



TREKKING THROUGH MACEDONIA IN WAR TIME 



Macedonia has a glorious tradition as the homeland of Philip of Macedon and his son, 



Alexander, the Great. 



to me by the royal captor, Nicholas, as I 

 was one day journeying in auto with him 

 to pass a week-end at his villa at Nikshich. 



Skirting the Dalmatian coast the little 

 steamer, with its motley ship's company, 

 makes many a port and there may be 

 seen many a remnant of an earlier and 

 an even greater Latin supremacy in this 

 land of changing allegiance ; for here the 

 Roman Empire long centuries ago set 

 some of its strongest outposts, and its 

 monuments as they appear today are 

 among the best preserved examples of 

 Rome's art and architecture at one of its 

 finest periods. 



The coliseum at Pola is a majestic pile, 

 well worthy to stand with its great proto- 

 type at Rome, while at Spalato the temple 

 and baths built by Diocletian after his 

 abdication are still extant and in use by 

 the thrifty natives as public buildings. 

 Diocletian himself was born in this part 

 of the world, and among the few works 

 of men which antedate the coming of the 

 Montenegrins to the Land of the Black 

 Mountain are the scanty remains of a 

 Roman structure which once adorned the 

 great emperor's birthplace. 



This extreme north of the Near East 



became Austrian in name by the Treaty 

 of Berlin in 1878 ; and the yoke of the 

 Hapsburgs sat all too heavily upon the 

 mingled races who people these shores. 



THE LAST PATRIARCHAL RULER 



Alien rulers this region has had in num- 

 bers, but probably none who were held 

 in more cordial hatred than the late 

 Franz Joseph, the visible symbol of 

 whose power was never absent from 

 view, beginning with the huge naval 

 arsenal and docks at Pola, a short dis- 

 tance below Trieste, and ending with the 

 frowning casemates which pierce the hills 

 at Cattaro, where the mountain sides lit- 

 erally bristled with cannon and where the 

 clank of the saber constantly echoed 

 across the pavements of the town which, 

 though Italian in aspect and Austrian in 

 allegiance, remained, nevertheless. Serb 

 in feeling, its heart ever in the highlands 

 beyond the beetling crags which hem in 

 the mountain eyrie of the Montenegrin 

 eagle from the sea. 



Here Austrian extension to the south- 

 ward was halted because thrust in be- 

 tween the Austrian littoral and the shores 

 of autonomous Albania was the narrow 



