all our friends either in bed with bad colds, or on the wing for England
and elsewhere; we inhaled a _quant. suff._ of choking vapour, even
in the comfortable Britannia Hotel; and, on the morning of the 23rd, we
awoke to find ourselves moored alongside of the new warehouses on the
new port of Hungarian, or rather Croatian, Fiume.

Fiume had made prodigious strides since I last saw her in 1878; and she
is gradually taking the wind out of the sails of her sister-rival. While
old Tergeste wastes time and trouble upon futile questions of policy,
and angry contrasts between Germans and Slavs, and Italians and
Triestines, Fiume looks to the main chance. The neat, clean, and
well-watered little harbour-city may be called a two-dinner-a-day place,
so profuse is her hospitality to strangers. Here, too, we once more
enjoyed her glorious outlook, the warm winter sun gilding the
snowy-silvery head of Monte Maggiore and raining light and life upon the
indigo-tinted waters of Fiume Bay. Next to Naples, I know nothing in
Europe more beautiful than this ill-named Quarnero. We saw a shot or so
of the far-famed Whitehead torpedo, which now makes twenty-one miles an
hour; and on Nov. 25 we began to run down the Gulf _en route_ for
Patras.

It was a pleasure to emerge from the stern and gloomy Adriatic; and
nothing could be more lovely than the first evening amongst the Ionian
Islands. To port, backed by the bold heights of the Grecian sea-range,
lay the hoary mount, and the red cliffs, 780 feet high, of Sappho's
Leap, a never-forgotten memory. Starboard rose bleak Ithaca, fronting
the black mountain of Cephalonia, now bald and bare, but clothed with
dark forests till these were burnt down by some mischievous
malignant. Whatever of sterility deformed the scene lay robed under a
glory of colour painted with perfect beauty by the last smile of the