It reminded one of the return of the townspeople within the walls at nightfall necessitated by the mediæval custom of closing the gates an hour after "Ave Maria," after which none could enter or leave the cities; and how the lamps of the shrines were the only illumination of the streets, about which none were allowed to go without carrying a light.
In the train we had as fellow traveller an engineer who spoke English well. He said that all over Istria nothing could be obtained to eat (except, of course, in the more important towns). He had been constructing a new line near Divača, where nothing was obtainable, and he and his companions had been obliged to take a cook and all supplies with them. He appeared to have a very bad opinion of the Triestines, whom he characterised as drunken swine, which we had not observed ourselves. He said that beer was too dear for the majority, so they got drunk on black wine and brandy--a statement which sounded strange to our English ears. The smaller boats, being for the use of the country people, are very inconvenient for tourists, since they generally start so as to arrive at Trieste early in the day, thus allowing of return the same night with the purchases made. Baedeker advises an excursion to Muggia and on to Capodistria and Isola and Pirano, "returning by boat in the evening"; but the last boat from Pirano leaves at 1.30 p.m., and the last one from Capodistria at 4.0 (by which, by-the-bye, we paid twice as much as we paid for the same journey in the morning), and after that the traveller is dependent upon the little railway, which lands him in Trieste after 10.0 p.m., at the S. Andrea Station, rather late to obtain a meal.
The next place along the coast, after passing the Promontory of Salvore and turning south, is Umago. It is sheltered behind a shoal, upon which the Chronicles say that the ship laden with the relics of S. Mark struck during a storm on its way to Venice. It was given as a feud to the bishop of Trieste in 929, at Pavia, by Ugo of Provence, king of Italy, and to the bishop of Cittanova in 1029 or 1038 by the Emperor Conrad. It had been sacked by the Slavs of Croatia and Dalmatia in 876, at the same time with Cittanova, Rovigno, and Sipar (at which last place very early wall-paintings are said to exist). It swore fealty to Venice in 1269; but very little is known of its history, the English apparently having burnt the archives in the piazza early in the nineteenth century. At that period no one seems to have thought that such things could be of any value; indeed at Portole, about 1850, the podestà actually sold all the communal deeds to the grocer of the place, thinking them useless rubbish, and at Cittanova the parchments were used by the citizens to mend windows!