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The next morning they started at six, and held their course south until they were sure that the brig could no longer be seen even from the highest point on the island, and at four bells in the afternoon changed their course, and, sailing between Scarpanto and Carso, headed north and passed before nightfall between Slazida and Placa.
"I have visited the wild hills of the upper Isonzo, have inspected the strange Carso region on the left bank of the river, and have continued my investigations on the Isonzo front as far as Aquileia and the sea.
In a hollow to my left were the roofs of Gorizia, the town which the Italians are endeavouring to take. A long desolate ridge, the Carso, extends to the south of the town, and stretches down nearly to the sea. The crest is held by the Austrians and the Italian trenches have been pushed within fifty yards of them.
The war on the Carso front in Italy I say nothing of the mountain warfare, which is a thing in itself is in fact still in the stage that I have called B. It is good warfare well waged, but not such an intensity of warfare. It has not, as one says of pianos and voices, the same compass.
As one goes eastward by this railway, there is a grand panorama of hills, circling the whole horizon; to the north and north-east the Carnic Alps and Cadore, their highest summits crowned with snow even in the full heat of summer; eastward the Julian Alps, beyond the Isonzo, stretching from a point north of Tolmino, down behind the Carso, almost to Fiume in the south-east; and yet further round the circle to the southward the mountains of Istria, running behind Trieste and its wide blue gulf, whose waters are invisible from this railway across the plain.
This activity gradually increased in vehemence. At the end of about two weeks it decreased slightly for a few days, only to be taken up again with renewed vigor and to be maintained with hardly a break during the balance of April, 1916. Coincident with this artillery duel there developed a series of violent engagements on the Carso plateau to the east of the lower Isonzo.
Notwithstanding bad weather conditions and the violent fire of the Austrian artillery, the aviators came down low to drop a ton and half of high explosives. Numerous air flights took place and one Austrian machine was brought down; one of the Italian machines was reported missing. Austrian seaplanes dropped bombs at several points on the Carso without causing casualties or damage.
But, though the phrase Italia Irredenta was originally interpreted as referring only to the Trentino and Trieste, it has gradually assumed, in the course of years, a broader significance, until now it includes all that portion of the Tyrol lying south of the Brenner, the Carso plateau, Trieste and its immediate hinterland, the entire Istrian Peninsula, the Hungarian port of Fiume, and the whole of Dalmatia and Albania.
To the south of Goritz, too, the Italian advance came to a standstill after the Vallone Valley, separating the Doberdo from the Carso Plateau, had been crossed. Continuous fighting, however, went on along the northern edge of the Carso Plateau throughout the balance of the month of August, 1916, much of it being done by the artillery of both sides.
Thus must she often have appeared to Italians fighting and dying by sea and land to reach her, who remained ever just out of reach. The Battery moved up to its new position on the edge of the Carso on the night of July 25th. The guns were drawn by Italian tractors.
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