Brindisi

And you don't really hear about Brno, really, if you're not from that country.

Brindisi in Italy would probably be in this category too.

It's a port city known for maybe being a stop for ferries.

And there's some ancient Roman roads connecting to it, but it hasn't been really historically relevant for thousands of years.

When Croesus could not afford the halice, and had neither boats nor the means of building a bridge, he began upstream and constructed a ditch behind his camp, thus bringing the channel of the river in the rear of his army.

When Gnaeus Pompey at Brundisium had planned to leave Italy and to transfer the war to another field, since Caesar was heavy on his heels, Just as he was on the point of embarking, he placed obstacles in some roads; others he blocked by constructing walls across them; others he intersected with trenches, setting sharp stakes in the latter and laying hurdles covered with earth across the openings.

Some of the roads leading to the harbour he guarded by throwing beams across and piling them one upon another in a huge heap.

After consummating these arrangements, wishing to produce the appearance of intending to retain possession of the city, he left a few archers as a guard on the walls; the remainder of his troops he led out in good order to the ships.

The design was accompanied by the words, Hic Inclusus Vitam Perdit.

Another well-preserved mosaic of this character was discovered in 1884 in Brindisi and placed in the Municipal Museum of that town.

It measures seventeen feet by ten feet six inches and shows within a square labyrinth Theseus in the act of clubbing the Minotaur, who has fallen to his knees.

Around the labyrinth are various perches with birds thereon, perhaps in allusion to the automatic birds reputed to have been made by Daedalus, cf.

The package of notes not being found when five o'clock sounded from the ponderous clock in the drawing office, the amount was passed to the account of profit and loss.

As soon as the robbery was discovered, pick detectives hastened off to Liverpool, Glasgow, Havre, Suez, Brindisi, New York, and other ports.

Inspired by the proffered reward of two thousand pounds and five percent on the sum that might be recovered, detectives were also charged with narrowly watching those who had arrived or left London by rail, and a judicial examination was at once entered upon.

There were real grounds for supposing, as the Daily Telegraph said, that the thief did not belong to a professional band.

"Only eighty days, now that the section between Rothal and Allahabad on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway has been opened.

Here is the estimate made by the Daily Telegraph.

From London to Suez, via Mount Cenis and Brindisi by rail and steamboats, seven days.

days.From Suez to Bombay by steamer, thirteen days.

However, it is absurd to pretend that I thought anything was unusual.

I went off at five o'clock on Sunday afternoon to sleep away the hour or two that still had to be got through before we arrived at Brindisi.

once there we few passengers transhipped our hand baggage verified our berths there were only a score of us in all and then after an aimless ramble of half an hour in brindisi we returned to dinner at the htel international not wholly surprised that the town had been the death of virgil if i remember rightly there is a gaily painted hall at the ente nationale i do not wish to advertise anything but there is no other place in brindisi at which to await the coming of the mails and after dinner i was looking with awe at a trellis overgrown with blue vines when colvin moved across the room to my table He picked up Il Secolo, but almost immediately gave up the pretense of reading it.

He turned squarely to me and said, Would you do me a favour? One doesn't do favours to stray acquaintances on continental expresses without knowing something more of them than I knew of Colvin.

But I smiled in a non-committal way and asked him what he wanted.

i wasn't wrong in part of my estimate of him he said bluntly will you let me sleep in your cabin on the osiris and he covered a little as he said it now there is nothing more tiresome than having to put up with a stable companion at sea and i asked him rather pointedly surely there is room for all of us i thought that perhaps he had been partnered off with some mangy levantine and wanted to escape from him at all hazards colvin still somewhat confused said yes i am in a cabin by myself but you would do me the greatest favour if you would allow me to share yours this was all very well but besides the fact that i always sleep better when alone there had been some recent thefts on board these boats and i hesitated frank and honest and self-conscious as colvin was just then the mail train came in with a clatter and a rush of escaping steam and i asked him to see me again about it on the boat when we started he answered me curtly i am a member of white's and the beefsteak i smiled to myself as he said it but i remembered in a moment that the man if he were really what he claimed to be and i make no doubt that he was must have been sorely put to it before he urged the fact as a guarantee of his respectability to a total stranger at a brindisi hotel That evening, as we cleared the red and green harbour lights of Brindisi, Colvin explained, this is his story in his own words.

when i was travelling in india some years ago i made the acquaintance of a youngish man in the woods and forests we camped out together for a week and i found him a pleasant companion john broughton was a light-hearted soul when off duty but a steady and capable man in any of the small emergencies that continually arise in that department he was liked and trusted by the natives and his future was well assured in government service when a fair-sized estate was unexpectedly left to him and he joyfully shook the dust of the indian plains from his feet and returned to england for five years he drifted about london i saw him now and then we dined together about every eighteen months and i could trace pretty exactly the gradual sickening of broughton with a merely idle life he then set out on a couple of long voyages returned as restless as before and at last told me that he had decided to marry and settle down at his place thurnley abbey which had long been empty he spoke about looking after the property and standing for his constituency in the usual way he was quite happy and full of information about his future among other things i asked him about thurnleigh abbey he confessed that he hardly knew the place the last tenant a man called clark had lived in one wing for fifteen years and seen no one he had been a miser and a hermit it was the rarest thing for a light to be seen at the abbey after dark only the barest necessities of life were ordered and the tenant himself received them at the side door his one half-caste man-servant after a month's stay in the house had abruptly left without warning and had returned to the southern states one thing broughton complained bitterly about clark had wilfully spread the rumour among the villagers that the abbey was haunted and had even condescended to play childish tricks with spirit lamps and salt in order to scare trespassers away at night he had been detected in the act of this tomfoolery but the story spread and no one said broughton would venture near the house except in broad daylight the hauntedness of thurnleigh abbey was now he said with a grin part of the gospel of the countryside but he and his young wife were going to change all that would i propose myself any time i liked i of course said i would and equally of course intended to do nothing of the sort without a definite invitation the house was put in thorough repair though not a stick of the old furniture and tapestry were removed floors and ceilings were re-laid the roof was made water-tight again and the dust of half a century was scoured out he showed me some photographs of the place it was called an abbey though as a matter of fact it had been only the infirmary of the long-vanished abbey of cloister some five miles away the larger part of this building remained as it had been in pre-reformation days but a wing had been added in jacobean times and that part of the house had been kept in something like repair by mr clarke he had in both the ground and the first floors set a heavy timber door strongly barred with iron in the passage between the earlier and the jacobean parts of the house and had entirely neglected the former so there had been a good deal of work to be done.

Broughton, whom I saw in London two or three times about this time, made a deal of fun over the positive refusal of the workmen to remain after sundown.