Jugoslovenski Rotar

As soon as the restlessness of the first acquaintance ceases, our littoral unveils itself entirely to him who wishes to know it all. When the blue mistral ripples the surface, and the chirping of cicadas floods the sunny beach, then in the incandescent white light the phantastic world of the neighbouring mountains rises up above the coast. Like a Stage for an unseen performance these silvery mountains stand up flooded by glaring light, washed by the rain and wind. These mountains are high — higher than the city steeples, higher than the lithe cypress trees, whose dark tops stand out against the soft background, so high that only the clouds driven by the mistral hang on their steep slopes and peaks. The hard and sharp stone becomes soft and light like a dream or an unreal thought in the blue distance. The white chain of these mountains shuts out the interior from the coast.

At such a moment we feel a desire to unveil the secret of these silvery mountains, to penetrate their rocks, to climb their peaks and to discover the world which they hide.

We leave comfort and the sunny warmth of the beach, we take the road, the lane, the path which lead from the littoral into our mountains. Constructed roads enable us to reach our goal by swift means of conveyance. In a few hours from any place in the northern littoral, from Senj, Jablanac, Sv. Juraj, Karlobag, we can reach the Velebitski Kukovi, or from Obrovac we can reach Alan or the queer Tulove Grede, cr from Split the Troglav in the Dinara, or — by train if you wish — from Metkovié and Gabela, via Mostar, the unique. gorges of the river Neretva at the foot of Gvrsnica and Prenj. More to the south the road climbs from the riviera of Dubrovnik and from Boka Kotorska to Orjen and even farther, over Duga and Nikšić to Durmitor. A road famous for its daring construction and beautiful views of the Bay of Kotor winds up to the village of NjeguSi under the Lovéen, and still more to the south a road leads through Budva on to Ivanova Korita. All these roads are alive with daily traffic. Some of them e. g. the gorge of the river Neretva have served from times immemorial as important arteries of communication between the coast and the interior.

By all these roads we enter the silvery mountains stretching along our coast, we enter into the world of the Dinaric Alps. To-day under the common name of the Dinaric Alpe on the Continent of Europe is known the younger limestone formation, which together with the southern limestone Alps forms an organic whole. The name of the Dinarie Alps is autochtonous precisely in Yugoslavia, where the characteristic features of these mountains are the most fully developed. The younger limestone formation enters Yugoslavia from the north-west and thence it bends along the eastern Adriatic coast filling the whole of the north-western part of the Balkan Peninsula with its chain of mountains. This system embraces all the mountains from the Julian Alps on the northern frontier to the lake of Prespa in the south of Yugoslavia. Even the Adriatic islands are a component part of this system, since they are of the same mesozoic limestone construction as the mountains of the coast. They also follow in parallel lines the coast and its mountains. Only through the shifting and sinking of the Hastern