Free Port of Trieste

Cesare Dell'Acqua, Trieste is declared a free port

Reached Trieste on the P.M. of Friday [85] the 12th of November, when we were most happy to [refresh] ourselves once more in a comfortable bed.  Now wrote letters home and took passages for Athens to sail on Monday 11th-- Have been in hopes of getting letters from home and friends or from London but fear shall have to wait till we may arrive at Constantinople. Are in many respects much pleased with Trieste. It is very finely situated at the head of the Adriatic at the base of a very high hill cultivated with all the tropical fruits &c. Though a part of Austria, it is in every respect but exact situation an Italian town--language, customs, manners, &c all Italian. The place is thronged with people from every nation in the world, and being a free port, one sees here the Merchants, composed of Greeks Turks [86] and from every nation of Europe. The variety of costumes, some most beautiful and some most singular, is very great. Directly in front of my window is the Piazza Grande, and as a marketplace and actually filled with  peasants in every style of dress imaginable, and all selling the different kinds of fruit of this country and of the more southern climes.  I think I never saw such a motley assemblage of people and dress as there are in the streets of this city.  Being a free port and the only one of any consequence in Austria, 'tis flourishing, and increasing greatly. It has an admirable port and a great quantity of shipping--2d Ohio[?].

Commorodre Isaac Hull
by L. Pellegrin, 1841

Com^r [Isaac] Hull [1773-1841], at this time commander of the Mediterranean Squadron] has lately been here, and created quite a sensation.  Now gone to Smyrna. Intending sailing tomorrow for Ancona Corfu Patmos & Athens, spending some days in [87] Greece, and then going to Constantinople--and as matters appear at present rather more [foreseeable] from France, am in hopes of going to Alexandria, and returning home by way of Malta, reach Marseilles early in the spring--and then my voyage's over.

Vienna to Trieste

After spending some ten days or more very pleasantly, we took a carriage to ourselves, not being able to obtain the Courier, and started on the evening of the 10th of Nov for Trieste.  The journey which had we not had a carriage to ourselves would have been very fatiguing, was accomplished comparatively easily by us in some 70 hours. The posting regulations in Germany generally are admirably arranged--you pay before hand for every thing, horses, postillions &c., and have no further trouble. a paper is given you mentioning the time that each post must be performed in, and if any complaints they must be written on the paper and you obtain redress.  The route is very hilly, and very beautiful in scenery, the road in many parts made at great expense and sometimes almost equalling that over the Simplon.

Strauss at the Volksgarten

Another Evening I spent in listening to Strauss & his band in the Volksgarten. there was no dancing, and only a promenade. He performed all his newest pieces and was of course most enchanting.  His hair & eyes are very black and his face in parts deeply wrinkled from the movement of the muscles caused when he is executing some part of his pieces[.] at other times he is looking carelessly around nodding to acquaintances that he recognizes in the company, and apparently not attending to his music at all but his bow is always at work, and "discourses most excellent music."-----[84]