notch of the arrowhead, toward Italy, is Trieste--terminus of the
railway to Vienna. In the opposite notch is Fiume--terminus of the
railway which runs across Croatia and Hungary to Budapest. And at the
very tip of the arrow, as though it had been ground to a deadly
sharpness, is Pola, formerly Austria's greatest naval base. Dotting the
western coast of Istria, between Trieste and Pola, are four small
towns--Parenzo, Pirano, Capodistria and Rovigno--all purely and
distinctively Italian, and, on the other side of the peninsula, the
famous resort of Abbazia, popular with wealthy Hungarians and with the
yachtsmen of all nations before the war.

Parenzo, Pirano, Capodistria and Rovigno were all outposts of the
Venetian Republic, forming an outer line of defense against the Slav
barbarians of the interior. Everything about them speaks of Venice: the
snarling Lion of St. Mark which is carved above their gates and
surmounts the marble columns in their piazzas; their old, old
churches--the one at Parenzo was built in the sixth century, being
copied after the famous basilica at Ravenna, across the Adriatic--the
interiors of many of them adorned, like that of St. Mark's in Venice,
with superb mosaics of gold and semi-precious stones; the carved lions'
heads, _bocca del leone_, for receiving secret missives; the delicate
tracery above the doors and windows of the palazzos, and all those other
architectural features so characteristic of the City of the Doges. There
is no questioning what these Istrian coast-towns were or are. They are
as Italian to-day as when, a thousand years ago, they formed a part of
Venice's far-flung skirmish line. But penetrate even a single mile into
the interior of the peninsula and you find a wholly different race from
these Latins of the littoral, a different architecture (if architecture
can be applied to square huts built of sun-dried bricks) and a different
tongue. These people are the Croats, a hardy, industrious agricultural