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It resembles in some measure St. Michel except that there is no sign of preservation or restoration. The few summer guests, recruited from the lower Austrian middle class have no understanding for Arbes wonderful history. It must be a real treasure store for a man like Ferdinand. Transcriptions in latin are used like common brick to build walls for miserable hovels wherein the native Dalmatians and Croats are housed. In a low little structure, probably a cow stable, I found a genuine green marble head stuck in as a bit of ornamentation. There are enough fragments lying about to rebuild a beautiful 14th century palace any time. 

The town is situated on a island surrounded by the blue Adria with bleak chalk mountains of the main shore around. It looks rather forbidding than romantic and gives you the impression of a pirates hidden retreat. Likely that its population consisted of pirates in years gone by. Its vegetation is semitropical though the trees are dwarfed on account of the thin layer of soil. All this region was wooded in the days of ancient Rome, but the Romans begun to devastate it by cutting the trees to build their ships and the Venetians completed the ruin of the forests. Then the rains washed down the soil and the nude rocks have remained. Lately Austria got busy to reforest it, with some success