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.