48
NONA
S. Donato at Zara. Passing on through the deserted streets, where houses once stood, but ! which are now mere lanes flanked by stone dykes covered with brambles, we gathered a little company of the village youths, fair-haired and, I must say, clear-skinned and rosy, showing no signs of the dreaded malaria; and this they themselves confirmed, declaring that there were one hundred such in the township, all hale and hearty. Draining operations may be producing the desired effect, but I should not care to sleep in Nona.
   At the extreme end of the town, near the eastern gate which pierces the walls and leads to the causeway and bridge that carry the road to the mainland over swamps where women were gathering cockles, with Yelebit in the background dominating a vast plain in character and colour recalling the Roman Campagna, stands the beautiful ruined church of S. Ambrogio, a Benedictine building of finely cut and dressed stone, with sharp angle edges, reminding one of the Arab work on the tombs of the Kaliphs at Cairo, or the sharp edging of Caen stone at Wressle in Yorkshire. The church is roofless now, but the side windows, round-headed and deeply splayed out wards, are still intact, one of them composed of