canopy similar to that carried over the Host. It was delicate and
pretty, and a great contrast to "Tombe," which we had seen in years gone
by in Italy, and a few days before at Capodistria.

There were thirty churches in Zara, fifteen of which have been destroyed
or given to different bodies. Seven are now Catholic, and four preserve
their outward shape, but are secularised.

The Loggia, the open hall of justice, ascribed to Sanmichele in its
original form, was restored shortly before the end of the Venetian rule.
It is now the Paravia library. It has three arches between coupled Doric
columns, and is still quite well preserved. The Palace of the Priors,
the former rulers of the town, was enlarged by the addition of private
houses for the residencas of the Venetian Count and the _provveditore_;
while the commune had to be content with the corn-magazine, near S.
Simeone, which is still the communal palace. When the Austrian governor
followed the Venetian _provveditore_ the palace was restored and
modernised. It is a Venetian building of 1562, with a clock-tower which
was restored in 1798; the clock itself was put up in 1807.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE TOWN OF NONA

_To face page 239_]

Nona is some hour-and-a-half's drive from Zara, for the greater part of
the way over stony uplands with very little vegetation, but with
extensive views over land and sea when the weather is fine. We were
troubled by showers and a bitter wind, against which our overcoats were
an insufficient protection; and we looked with some wonder at the herd
boys and girls and other peasants whom we met, many of them barefoot and
with no additional clothing to what they had found sufficient in the
market the day before when the sun shone strongly. The town is now a
mere village of some 500 inhabitants, and, though a few antique
fragments may be seen, and the ruins of several churches of different
periods, it is difficult to realise that it was once one of the most
important towns in Dalmatia. It appears to have been a Roman port, and
the head of one of the roads to Byzantium across Dalmatia--an ancient
Liburnian city, the great prosperity of which, at the end of the first
century A.D., is attested by the coins found here. It was called AEnona
and AEnonium by Pliny and Ptolemy, Nona by Porphyrogenitus. Destroyed by
the Slavs in the seventh century, re-occupied and restored by another
branch, the dukes and kings of Croatia made it one of the t