lluvial plain between the foothills and the sea.

The Adriatic was once bounded by a kind of ridge stretching from Monte
Gargano to Albania. North of this line the depth is much less than in
the Ionian Sea. When the surface of the earth sank, the Dalmatian
islands were formed by the letting in of the sea. The depth near Parenzo
is about 120 ft.; in the Quarnero, near Fiume, 195 ft.; between Cherso
and Arbe, 335 ft.; and south-west of the island Zuri (some 24 miles from
the mainland), about 700 ft. Depths as great as 335 ft. to 490 ft. are,
however, not very common within nine miles of the mainland. In the
Bocche di Cattaro the depth near the mouth is 165 ft., but half a mile
west of the Punta d'Ostro, 335 ft. North of the line from Monte Gargano
to Pelagosa, Cazza, and Curzola it is never as much as 780 ft.;
south-east of this line the bottom sinks so much that between Cattaro
and Brindisi it reaches a depth of over 5,000 ft. The tide is scarcely
perceptible, and the currents are very slight. The land is still
sinking, as is proved by the Roman sarcophagi found beneath the water at
Vranjic and the submerged roads between Aquileia and Grado; while there
are records of the destruction of ancient towns from sudden subsidences,
as that of Cissa, near Rovigno. The subsidence has been calculated as
about a yard in 1,000 years. Cluverius proves from Ptolemy that in
antiquity the name Adriatic only applied to that part of the gulf which
lay to the north of a line between Monte Gargano and Durazzo. A passage
of Strabo, describing the people of Epirus, runs: "The Adriatic being
ended, the Ionian commences, the first shore of which is in the
neighbourhood of Epidamnus and Apollonia." When Venice conquered Durazzo
the limits of the Adriatic were extended, and it was thenceforth called
the Gulf of Venice. In 1859 the almost incredible fact is recorded that
it was frozen for several days!

The Austrian provinces which lie along the coast are, commencing at the
north, the Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia. In the first the Julian
Alps form a great boundary wall to the plain of the Isonzo, from which
the ground rises between Monfalcone and Nabresina to the stony district
of the Karst. The Istrian ranges are spurs from this lofty plateau, the
chain culminating in Monte Maggiore, north-west of Fiume. All these
heights belong to the Julian Alps. Beyond Fiume, southwards, there are
three principal mountain chains, all of which have much t