Fiume

Fiume (Illyr. Rika, Lat. Fanum St Viti ad flumen), an important seaport of Hungary, at the mouth of the Fiumara, 142 miles WSW. of Agram by rail, and 35 miles ESE. of Trieste across the Istrian peninsula, stands at the head of the beautiful Gulf of Quarnero, in the Adriatic, where the Julian Alps end. It consists of an old and new town, the latter, on the sea, being well built and laid out with many handsome streets and squares. Its extensive industries include manufactures of paper, torpedoes, tobacco (government factory, with over 2000 hands), sails, ropes, chemicals, starch, liqueurs, &c., besides a large petroleum-refinery, American flour-mills, and a rice-shelling factory. The tunny-fisheries of the Gulf also are valuable. Fiume's chief importance, however, is as the entrepôt of a great and steadily increasing commerce. A free port from 1717 till 1891, it has a harbour with a lighthouse and several breakwaters, which was greatly improved by the Hungarian government in the years following 1872, when new moles and quays with warehouses, and petroleum and other docks, were added, at a cost of nearly a million sterling, with the immediate effect of increasing the trade fivefold within the next twelve years. Further improvements were carried out in 1888-95. Between 6000 and 7000 ships, of over 800,000 tons, yearly enter the port: the outgoing ships have about the same tonnage. The exports reach in some years a value of about £5,000,000, chiefly flour and grain, oak staves and timber, prunes, wine, mineral waters, sugar, and torpedoes; the imports have a value of about £4,000,000, rice, crude petroleum, tobacco, wine, coffee, and cotton goods being the principal items. The trade is almost entirely a transit trade, even the petroleum and rice going forward into the interior after manipulation. Nearly half of the entire foreign trade is carried under the British flag; the aggregate direct trade in British vessels has greatly increased. The chief imports from Britain are cotton goods and yarn, American tobacco, machinery, and coal; a large quantity of paddy rice and jute are imported from British India. Area of town and territory, over 12 sq. m.; pop. (1891) 29,494.—The county of Fiume, belonging to Croatia, lies to the east, between Carniola and the sea, and is almost entirely filled by the Karst range. In the relatively small valley area, and along the coast, olives, figs, pomegranates, and citrons flourish. Area, 1000 sq. m.; population, 90,000. See Litrow, Fiume und seine Umgebungen (Fiume, 1884).