University of Virginia Library

78. LETTER LXXVIII.

Trieste is certainly a most agreeable place. Its
streets are beautifully paved and clean, its houses new

and well built, and its shops as handsome and as well
stocked with every variety of thing as those of Paris.
Its immense commerce brings all nations to its port,
and it is quite the commercial centre of the continent.
The Turk smokes cross-legged in the café, the English
merchant has his box in the country and his snug
establishment in town, the Italian has his opera and
his wife her cavalier, the Yankee captain his respectable
boarding-house, and the German his four meals a
day at a hotel died brown with tobacco. Every nation
is at home in Trieste.

The society is beyond what is common in a European
mercantile city. The English are numerous enough
to support a church, and the circle, of which our
hospitable consul is the centre, is one of the most
refined and agreeable it has been my happiness to
meet. The friends of Mr. Moore have pressed every
possible civility and kindness upon the commodore
and his officers, and his own house has been literally
our home on shore. It is the curse of this volant life,
otherwise so attractive, that its frequent partings are
bitter in proportion to its good fortune. We make
friends but to lose them.

We got under way with a light breeze this morning,
and stole gently out of the bay. The remembrance
of a thousand kindnesses made our anchors lift heavily.
We waved our handkerchiefs to the consul, whose
balconies were filled with his charming family watching
our departure, and, with a freshening wind, disappeared
around the point, and put up our helm for Pola.

The ruins of Pola, though among the first in the
world, are seldom visited. They lie on the eastern
shore of the Adriatic, at the head of a superb natural
bay, far from any populous town, and are seen only by
the chance trader who hugs the shore for the land-breeze,
or the Albanian robber who looks down upon
them with wonder from the mountains. What their
age is I can not say nearly. The country was conquered
by the Romans about one hundred years before
the time of our Savior, and the amphitheatre and temples
were probably erected soon after.

We ran into the bay, with the other frigate close
astern, and anchored off a small green island which
shuts in the inner harbor. There is deep water up
to the ancient town on either side, and it seems as if
nature had amused herself with constructing a harbor
incapable of improvement. Pola lay about two miles
from the sea.

It was just evening, and we deferred our visit to the
ruins till morning. The majestic amphitheatre stood
on a gentle ascent, a mile from the ship, goldenly
bright in the flush of sunset; the pleasant smell of the
shore stole over the decks, and the bands of the two
frigates played alternately the evening through. The
receding mountains of Istria changed their light blue
veils gradually to gray and sable, and with the pure
stars of these enchanted seas, and the shell of a new
moon bending over Italy in the west, it was such a
night as one remembrances like a friend. The Constellation
was to part from us here, leaving us to pursue
our voyage to Greece. There were those on board
who had brightened many of our “hours ashore,” in
these pleasant wanderings. We pulled back to our
own ship, after a farewell visit, with regrets deepened
by crowds of pleasant remembrances.

The next morning we pulled ashore to the ruins.
The amphitheatre was close upon the sea, and, to my
surprise and pleasure, there was no cicerone. A contemplative
donkey was grazing under the walls, but
there was no other living creature near. We looked
at its vast circular wall with astonishment. The coliseum
at Rome, a larger building of the same description,
is, from the outside, much less imposing. The
whole exterior wall, a circular pile one hundred feet
high in front, and of immense blocks of marble and
granite, is as perfect as when the Roman workman
hewed the last stone. The interior has been nearly
all removed. The well-hewn blocks of the many rows
of seats were too tempting, like those of Rome, to the
barbarians who were building near. The circle of the
arena, in which the gladiators and wild beasts of these
then new-conquered provinces fought, is still marked
by the foundations of its barrier. It measures two
hundred and twenty-three feet. Beneath it is a broad
and deep canal, running toward the sea, filled with
marble columns, still erect upon their pedestals, used
probably for the introduction of water for the naumachia.
The whole circumference of the amphitheatre is twelve
hundred and fifty-six feet, and the thickness of the exterior
wall seven feet six inches. Its shape is oblong,
the length being four hundred and thirty-six feet, and
the breadth three hundred and fifty. The measurements
were taken by the captain's orders, and are doubtless
critically correct.

We loitered about the ruins several hours, finding
in every direction the remains of the dilapidated interior.
The sculpture upon the fallen capitals and
fragments of frieze was in the highest style of ornament.
The arena is overgrown with rank grass, and the crevices
in the walls are filled with flowers. A vineyard,
with its large blue grape just within a week of ripeness,
encircles the rear of the amphitheatre. The
boat's crew were soon among them, much better amused
than they could have been by all the antiquities in
Istria.

We walked from the amphitheatre to the town; a
miserable village built around two antique temples,
one of which still stands alone, with its fine corinthian
columns, looking just ready to crumble. The other
is incorporated barbarously with the guard-house of
the place, and is a curious mixture of beautiful sculpture
and dirty walls. The pediment, which is still perfect,
in the rear of the building, is a piece of carving, worthy
of the choicest cabinet of Europe. The thieveries
from the amphitheatre are easily detected. There is
scarce a beggar's house in the village, that does not
show a bit or two of sculptural marble upon its front.

At the end of the village stands a triumphal arch,
recording the conquests of a Roman consul. Its front,
toward the town, is of Parian marble, beautifully
chiselled. One recognises the solid magnificence of
that glorious nation, when he looks on these relies of
their distant conquests, almost perfect after eighteen
hundred years. It seems as if the foot-print of a Roman
were eternal.

We stood out of the little bay, and with a freshwind,
ran down the coast of Dalmatia, and then crossing
to the Italian side, kept down the ancient shore of
Apulia and Calabria to the mouth of the Adriatic. I
have been looking at the land with the glass, as we ran
smoothly along, counting castle after castle built boldly
on the sea, and behind them, on the green hills, the
thickly built villages, with their smoking chimneys and
tall spires, pictures of fertility and peace. It was upon
these shores that the Barbary corsairs descended so
often during the last century, carrying off for eastern
harems, the lovely women of Italy. We are just off
Otranto, and a noble old castle stands frowning from
the extremity of the Cape. We could throw a shot
into its embrasures as we pass. It might be the “Castle
of Otranto,” for the romantic looks it has from the sea.

We have out-sailed the Constellation, or we should
part from her here. Her destination is France; and
we should be to-morrow amid the [16] Isles of Greece.
The pleasure of realizing the classic dreams of one's
boyhood, is not to be expressed in a line. I look forward
to the succeeding month or two as to the “red-letter”
chapter of my life. Whatever I may find the

reality, my heart has glowed warmly and delightfully
with the anticipation. Commodore Patterson is,
fortunately for me, a scholar and a judicious lover of
the arts, and loses no opportunity, consistently with his
duty, to give his officers the means of examining the
curious and the beautiful in these interesting seas.
The cruise, thus far, has been one of continually mingled
pleasure and instruction, and the best of it, by every
association of our early days, is to come.