As we sped down the Corsia Deak we passed a large hotel
which, as was quite evident, had recently been renamed, for the words
"Albergo d'Annunzio" were fresh and staring. But underneath was the
former name, which had been so imperfectly obliterated that it could
still easily be deciphered. It was "Hotel Wilson."
To correctly visualize Fiume you must imagine a town no larger than
Atlantic City crowded upon a narrow shelf between a towering mountain
wall and the sea; a town with broad and moderately clean streets,
shaded, save in the center of the city, by double rows of stately trees
and paved with large square flagstones which make abominably rough
riding; a town with several fine thoroughfares bordered by
well-constructed four-story buildings of brick and stone; with numerous
surprisingly well-stocked shops; with miles and miles of concrete moles
and wharfs, equipped with harbor machinery of the most modern
description, and adjacent to them rows of warehouses as commodious as
the Bush Terminals in Brooklyn, and rising here and there above the
trees and the housetops, like fingers pointing to heaven, the graceful
campaniles of fine old churches, one of which, the cathedral, was
already old when the Great Navigator turned the prows of his caravels
westward from Cadiz in quest of this land we live in.
Fiume lacks none of the conditions which make a great seaport: there is
deep water and a convenient approach, which is protected against the
ocean and against a hostile fleet by the islands of Veglia and Cherso
and against the north winds by the rocky plateau of the Karst.
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