Jules Verne

“ The modern shipping trade must have harbors where there is a good anchorage, and water deep enough to receive vessels of large tonnage. Ragusa has no such harbor. The basin is narrow, crowded with rocks at the water level, and hardly large enough to admit small coasters and fishing-boats.
Fortunately about a mile and a half to the north, on one of the indentations of the Bay of Ombla Fumera, a caprice of nature has formed an excellent harbor adapted for all the needs of modern navigation. This is at Gravosa, and the harbor is, perhaps, the best on the Dalmatian coast. ”

“ Since their departure from Provence, where they had known no relatives and seemed to have been produced by spontaneous generation, they had wandered about from markets to fairs, living ill rather than well, but still living, and if not dining every day, at least having something for supper every night; and that was good enough for them, for, as Point Pescade remarked, “We need not ask for the impossible.” ”

“ It has water enough even for war ships; there are several yards for repairing and building ships; and there the large mail boats can put in with which the immediate future is to endow the waters of the world. It follows, therefore, that the road from Ragusa to Gravosa has become a regular boulevard, planted with magnificent trees, bordered with charming villas, frequented by the population of the town, which in 1882 amounted to from 16.000 to 17,000 inhabitants. ”

“ In addition to the traveling showman who had come to the fair to make money out of the curiosity of the locals, the country folk and mountaineers had thronged in to take part in the public rejoicings. The women were in great numbers, girls from Ragusa, peasants from the neighborhood, fish-women from the coast. ”

“ Now, alas! the tour which had never been very good threatened to become very bad, and the poor fellows had but one desire, and that they knew not how to realize; it was to get back to their native land and never come so far away from it again. But they were dragging a weight behind them, the weight of misery, and to walk many leagues with that weight at their feet was very hard. ”

“ Fifteen years after the events related in the prologue of this history, on the 24th of May, 1882, there was a holiday at Ragusa, one of the chief towns of the Dalmatian provinces.
Dalmatia is a narrow tongue of land lying between the southern Dinaric Alps, Herzegovina and the Adriatic. It is just large enough to hold a population of from four to five hundred thousand, with a little squeezing. ”