fine thoroughfares bordered by
well-constructed four-story buildings of brick and stone; with numerous
surprisingly well-stocked shops; with miles and miles of concrete moles
and wharfs, equipped with harbor machinery of the most modern
description, and adjacent to them rows of warehouses as commodious as
the Bush Terminals in Brooklyn, and rising here and there above the
trees and the housetops, like fingers pointing to heaven, the graceful
campaniles of fine old churches, one of which, the cathedral, was
already old when the Great Navigator turned the prows of his caravels
westward from Cadiz in quest of this land we live in.

Fiume lacks none of the conditions which make a great seaport: there is
deep water and a convenient approach, which is protected against the
ocean and against a hostile fleet by the islands of Veglia and Cherso
and against the north winds by the rocky plateau of the Karst. Yet,
despite its natural advantages and the millions which were spent in its
development by the Hungarian Government, Fiume never developed into a
port of the size and importance which the foreign commerce of Hungary
would have seemed to require, this being largely due to its unfortunate
geographical condition, for the dreary and inhospitable Karst completely
shuts the city off from the interior, the numerous tunnels and steep
gradients making rail transport by this route difficult and consequently
expensive.

The public life of the city centers in the Piazza Adamich, a broad
square on which front numerous hotels, restaurants, and coffee-houses,
before which lounge, from midmorning until midnight, a considerable
proportion of the Italian population, sipping _cafe nero_, or tall
drinks concocted from sweet, bright-colored syrups, scanning the papers
and discussing, with much noise and gesticulation, the political
situation and the doings of the peace commissioners in Paris. Save only
Barcelona, Fiume has the most excitable and irritable population of any
city that I know. When we were there street disturbances were as
frequent as dog-fights used to be in Constantinople before the Turks
recognized that the best gloves are made from dogskins. As I have said,
a few days before our arrival a mob had attacked and killed in most
barbarous fashion a number of Annamite soldiers who were guarding a
French warehouse on the quay. Several prominent Fumani with whom I
talked attempted to justify the massacre on the ground that a French
s