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There are also many French, Hungarians, Bosniaks, Herzegovinians, Germans, Swiss, and gypsies, the Slav majority increasing towards the south. In Istria the present inhabitants may be divided into Italians, Roumanians, and Slavs: to the last division belong the Morlacchi, the Tschitsches, Slovens, and Croats.
The bulk, however, wore a dress resembling that of the Morlacchi tight hose, shoes of cord or rawhide, a red-brown waistcoat without sleeves, and a red felt cap on the head. They wore their hair in long locks, with wild-looking moustaches, had earrings of iron or silver, and their weapons were semicircular axes, and knives which they carried in their girdles.
Most of them wore the picturesque costume of the Morlacchi; but the next day we saw them again, clad in the characterless, sack-like slop-suit which seems to be thought a mark of civilisation, having lost much of their individuality without gaining anything in exchange.
What I wrote some eighteen years ago of Weber's labors in Dresden may serve again to make plain how the militant Germanism of the composer achieved its great triumph. The Italian regime was maintained in Dresden through the efforts of the conductor of the Italian opera, Morlacchi; the concert master, Poledro; the church composer, Schubert, and Count von Einsiedel, Cabinet Minister.
Not so much fashion smiled upon the efforts of these young ladies, as upon the cancan of the Signorina Morlacchi a winter earlier; but there was a most fair appearance of honest-looking, handsomely dressed men and women; and you could pick out, all over the parquet, faces of one descent from the deaconship, which you wondered were not afraid to behold one another there.
Finally, there is the koporan, a jacket with sleeves of blue cloth, with embroidery on the elbows and back; but few Morlacchi wear it. Round the neck is the gerdan, several strings of glass beads of different colours; it is bound at the stomach by the litar, a long band of leather a couple of inches wide covered with little tin discs and very heavy.
Records exist of Croats raids in the tenth century, whilst further south there were two great immigrations the first, in the seventh century, by the "Belocroats," called by Porphyrogenitus, Croats, from the banks of the Elbe, descendants of whom may to-day be found in the islands; and the second, in the fourteenth century, by the people of Rascia, who now inhabit much of the interior and are known as "Morlacchi," a name derived from the Slav "Mauro vlach," the black Wallachs.
Then they go off to church. Other customs accompany the journey home. The Morlacchi are very hospitable; if any one approaches one of their houses they ask him in, and will not let him go without his tasting bread and wine. They are exceedingly loyal and devoted to their native land.
Even the wells dried up completely. The land fort remained untouched; the sea fort, the dogana, and the lazaretto were partially damaged, but can be repaired in a short time. A good deal of plundering went on, the peasants and Morlacchi looking on the catastrophe as a godsend.
There was therefore no further question of this particular post, but I was then informed that the death of Morlacchi had left vacant a court conductorship, and it was thought that the King would be willing to offer me the post.
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