ding is now occupied by a school,
towards the support of which a landing-tax of one corona per person is
exacted. This did not, however, prevent the man who showed us round
telling us that he was dependent on the charity of visitors! All that
is to be seen in the way of architecture is a cloister of the early
Renaissance period, pretty enough with its garden within; but I should
certainly not recommend the English tourist to spend time and money in
visiting the island.

Beyond the harbour of Ragusa the road leads below the Dominican convent
to the outer Ploce gate, passing two chapels--SS. Annunziata, with a
group of S. John the Baptist and two other saints in the tympanum of the
Gothic doorway, and S. Luke, with Renaissance decoration and tympanum.
Turning sharply beneath two gates, above the outer of which S. Blaise
stands in his usual place, the road passes over a stone bridge which
replaces the original drawbridge, and through the outer gates to the
lazaretto and Turkish bazaar. Here there is a late Renaissance fountain,
at which country people, most of whom are Herzegovinians, may be seen
watering their mules, for the road to Trebinje comes down to this gate.
There is little else to see in the bazaar, the importance of which has
much declined; but from this side of the town charming views of Ragusa
may be obtained, with a foreground of rocks, of aloes, often in bloom,
of rough steps going down to the shore, or a little farther away, where
the height of Lapad can be seen crowning the city, of olives and stony
roads; always with the blue sea stretching from below towards and beyond
the grey town shut so securely within its walls. Beyond is the
romantically, situated deserted convent of S. Giacomo degli Olivi, and
from it paths wander farther among olives and cypresses along the edge
of the cliff, below which, on the level of the water, is the grotto
Spila Betina.

The Republic was a curious mixture of enlightenment and oriental
backwardness. In 1335 the whole town was paved, a great sewer was
constructed, and there were regulations about tiling and other
constructional matters. Traffic in slaves was abolished by act of the
Greater Council on January 26, 1416. In 1432 a foundling hospital was
established, and in 1435 public schools. All who died of the plague in
1430 were burnt, by advice of the Ferrarese physician Giacomo Godwaldo,
who also established the custom of isolating the sick some years before.
Yet, in the