The long, narrow strip of territory sandwiched between the Adriatic and
the Dinaric Alps which comprised the Austrian province of Dalmatia,
though upward of 200 miles in length, has an area scarcely greater than
that of Connecticut and a population smaller than that of Cleveland.
Scarcely more than a tenth of its whole surface is under the plow, the
rest, where it is not altogether sterile, consisting of mountain
pasture. With the exception of scattered groves on the landward slopes,
the country is virtually treeless, the forests for which Dalmatia was
once famous having been cut down by the Venetian ship-builders or
wantonly burned by the Uskok pirates, while every attempt at replanting
has been frustrated by the shallowness of the soil, the frequent
droughts, and the multitudes of goats which browse on the young trees.
The dreary expanse of the Bukovica, lying between Zara and the Bosnian
frontier, is, without exception, the most inhospitable region that I
have ever seen. For mile after mile, far as the eye can see, the earth
is overlaid by a thick stratum of jagged limestone, so rough that no
horse could traverse it, so sharp and flinty that a quarter of an hour's
walking across it would cut to pieces the stoutest pair of boots. Under
the rays of the summer sun these rocks become as hot as the top of a
stove; so hot, indeed, that eggs can be cooked upon them, while metal
objects exposed for only a few minutes to the sun will burn the hand.
Scattered here and there over this terrible plateau are tiny farmsteads,
their houses and the walls shutting in the little patches under
cultivation being built from the stones obtained in clearing the soil, a
task requiring incredible patience. No wonder that the folk who dwell
in them are characterized by expressions as stony and hopeless as the
soil from which they wring a wretched existence.

No seaboard of the Mediterranean, save only the coast of Greece, is so