a pattern on the outer robe. The
background and the frieze are entirely covered with little votive silver
plaques.

From the hill which one mounts on the return, the whole of Ragusa lies
spread at one's feet, from the great fort S. Lorenzo, perched upon its
rock, to the Torre Menze, the culminating point of the walls, in front
of which the lower slopes of Monte Sergio are covered with the houses of
the suburb. On a fine evening the view past the fort towards the Bocche
is enchanting, but when _scirocco_ blows, and the foam splashes high up
the rocks, it is not safe to approach the edge. Here a pleasant garden
has been laid out, and aloes grow, though not so luxuriantly as on the
other side of the town.

Above the door of the salt-magazine near Porta Ploce is the oldest
relief of S. Blaise, possibly dating from the beginning of the
thirteenth century. Behind the communal palace is the harbour, Porto
Casson, which recalls the prosperity of the Republic, when it was one of
the richest countries in the world, and when the merchants and privateer
captains who lived in the Via Priko, upon the hill, owned between them
100,000,000 ducats, according to computation.

From here a little steam-launch plies in the afternoon to the island of
Lacroma, on which a cloister was founded in the eleventh century, the
Benedictine rule being transplanted hither in 1023 from the Tremiti
Islands in the person of Fra Pietro the Ragusan, who, with a priest
named Leone, laid the foundations of the monastery on land given them
for that purpose. An inscription mentions the name of Vitalis the
archbishop, son of Dominus Theodore (1023-1047). It was the Ragusan
Westminster Abbey till the Franciscan and Dominican churches were built.
Here it was that Richard Coeur de Lion escaped from shipwreck, and,
according to local tradition, founded the cathedral of Ragusa in
gratitude for his escape, though the entries in the Ragusan archives
prove that it was built by contributions from the nobles. The ill-fated
Maximilian of Mexico owned the island, and restored the convent as a
country residence, in which the unfortunate Crown Prince Rudolf also
lived. We, who had gone there in hopes of seeing something of the
eleventh-century buildings, were disappointed at being taken through
corridors and rooms containing objects which were looked upon as relics,
and finally round some elaborately laid out and luxuriant gardens to one
or two natural curiosities. The buil