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THE KARST. Along the eastern coast of the Adriatic, as far south as Montenegro, lies a belt of limestone mountains singularly worn and honeycombed by the solvent action of water.
According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau lying north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts in Europe, is owing to the felling of the woods, centuries ago, to build the navies of Venice.
With its snowy buildings spread on the slopes of a shallow amphitheater between the sapphire waters of the Adriatic and the barren flanks of the Istrian Karst, it suggested a lovely siren, all glistening and white, who had emerged from the sea to lie upon the bare brown breast of a mountain giant.
More visionary projectors have gone further, and imagined that advantage might be taken of the natural tunnels under the Karst for the passage of roads, railways, and even navigable canals.
"Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but bare rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind was once subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to build her fleets."
In short, the towns of the western coast are undeniably Italian; the rest of the peninsula is solidly Slav. The interior of Istria consists, in the main, of a barren, monotonous and peculiarly unlovely limestone plateau known as the Karst, a continuation of that waterless and treeless ridge, called by Italians the Carso, which stretches from Trieste northwestward to Goritzia and beyond.
This I supplemented by sitting in the cafe when the officers came back and hearing their curses. The men were dead-beat. The water supply had broken down, so had the food. The burning limestone karst had been too much for the men from the plains, and they broke down badly. Only the Croats and Bosniaks had stood the test. The manoeuvres were a failure.
Yet, despite its natural advantages and the millions which were spent in its development by the Hungarian Government, Fiume never developed into a port of the size and importance which the foreign commerce of Hungary would have seemed to require, this being largely due to its unfortunate geographical condition, for the dreary and inhospitable Karst completely shuts the city off from the interior, the numerous tunnels and steep gradients making rail transport by this route difficult and consequently expensive.
Fiume lacks none of the conditions which make a great seaport: there is deep water and a convenient approach, which is protected against the ocean and against a hostile fleet by the islands of Veglia and Cherso and against the north winds by the rocky plateau of the Karst.
Montenegro is entered some little distance from the top, but, as only a row of paving stones indicates the spot, it is not till the carriage dashes through a rocky gorge and out into the open Karst beyond that the traveller realises that he has crossed the border. The sudden change is startling, from the blue sea and green valleys to grey masses of limestone rock and barren mountains.
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