This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1889. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... THE WRESTLERS OF RAGUSA. CHAPTER I. PESCADE AND MATIFOU. 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 northern 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. A fine race are these- Dalmatians: sober in an arid country, where arable land is rare, proud amid the many political vicissitudes they have undergone, haughty towards Austria which gained them by the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1815, and honest towards all; so much so that the country can be called, according to a beautiful expression reported by M. Yriarte, "The land of the lockless doors." Dalmatia is divided into four circles, and these are subdivided into districts; the circles are those of Zara, Spalato, Cattaro, and Ragusa. The governor-general resides at Zara, the capital of the province, where the Diet meets of which many members form part of the Upper House at Vienna. Times are much changed since the sixteenth century, when Uscoques--fugitive Turks at war with the Mussulmans as well as the Christians, with the Sultan as well as the Venetian Republic--were the-terror of the sea. But the Uscoques have disappeared, and traces of them are no longer to be found in Carniola. The Adriatic is now as safe as any other part of the poetical Mediterranean. Ragusa, or rather the small state of Ragusa, was a republic even before Venice. It was only in 1808 that a decree of Napoleon united it, the year following, to the kingdom of Illyria and made of it a duchy for Marshal Marmont. In the ninth century Ragusan vessels, whi...