140 lAgosta, meleda, cannosa
first nests of piracy that the Doge Orseolo was called on to extirpate. The Narentine pirates, the Paganoi, had converted Lagosta into one of their principal strongholds. Standing well out into the open Adriatic it was eminently suited to observe and plunder Venetian shipping making for Venice at the head of the Gulf. The Doge was completely successful; in the year 1000 he entirely destroyed the fortress of Lagosta, and compelled the inhabitants to build farther inland. Curiously enough, Lagosta was the farthest point of Venetian conquest in the middle Adriatic, and it did not remain long in Venetian hands; it went back to Byzantium; then passed under Hungarian and Serbian dominion, till finally, in the thirteenth century, it became the property and the sea outpost of Ragusa. The present town is built on an amphitheatre of hills, dominated by the highest point, 1564 ft. high, and called, of course, like almost every hill in the Dalmatian islands, Hum (the mound).
   To continue our journey down the coast we must return to Curzola; and leaving it we still skirt the peninsula of Sabbioncello, dominated b} the arid peak of Monte Vipera, so stern and repellent by day, but capable of taking the most