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By the secret Treaty of London, signed April 26, 1915, England, France, and Russia had promised Italy that she should receive the Trentino and Southern Tyrol, including in its population more than 250,000 Germans. Italy was also promised Trieste and the Istrian peninsula, the boundary running just west of Fiume, over which city, it should be remembered, she acquired no claim under this treaty.
A few miles south of Canfanaro is the little town of San Vincenti, in which is one of the best preserved of the Istrian castles, showing indeed little sign of ruin externally. It occupies one side of the main piazza.
At Aquileia the only object remaining from the treasury is a statue of the Madonna and Child, of Istrian marble, heavily painted. The work resembles in style the carving at S. Giovanni in Fonte, Verona.
By such an arrangement Austria would have retained nearly the whole of the Istrian Peninsula, the cities of Pola and Fiume, the entire Dalmatian coast, and the majority of the Dalmatian Islands. But she refused to even consider Italy's proposed changes in the Adriatic, or to do more than slightly increase her offer in the Trentino.
I also secured the split half of a ball, or rather an oblate spheroid, of serpentine with depressions, probably where held by finger and thumb; the same form is still used for grinding in the Istrian island of Veglia. This is one of the few rude stone implements that rewarded our careful search. The north-eastern, which is the main Wady, has a sole uneven with low swells and falls.
The next town along the coast, Parenzo, is celebrated for its fine sixth-century cathedral, the pride of the whole of Istria "the land of basilicas," and is the headquarters of the Istrian Archæological Society, several of whose members have devoted much time and money to the elucidation of the history, construction, and decoration of the building.
From Salcaro to the sea it issues from the gorge into a more level country the plateaus of Gorizia and of Carso although even the southern part of the line is dominated by a series of elevations in supporting distance of each other. Until the line of the Isonzo was forced, Trieste and the entire Istrian Peninsula might be regarded as safe.
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.
San Michele is the island close before Murano, where the Lombardi built one of their most romantically graceful churches of pale Istrian stone, and where the Campo Santo has for centuries received the dead into its oozy clay. The cemetery is at present undergoing restoration.
During the continuance of this schism, in 610, three Istrian bishops were taken from their very churches by the military, and carried off to Grado, where they were compelled to bend to the Imperial will in the matter. Gregory III. sanctioned the division of the two patriarchates in 731, both having become orthodox, Aquileia in 698 and Grado in 715.
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