The rivers Cetina and Ruda
Abbot Alberto Fortis, scientist, botanist and mineralogist, born 1741 in Padua, wrote about his journeys through the regions where Croats lived. His notes were interesting letters to famous friends all over Europe. Later, these travelogues were collected in the book Journey through Dalmatia (Viaggio in Dalmazia) and were published for the first time in 1774. This book was in Europe the biggest literary sensation from the Italy of the 18th century. The very popular, separate chapter about the Morlaks was first translated to German, Die Sitten der Morlacken, Bern 1775, and later to French Lettre a Mylord Comte de Bute Sur les moeurs et usages des Morlaques, Bern 1778, to English Travels into Dalmatia, London 1778, after that Swedish Bref on Morlackerna, Göteborg 1792, Travell to Dalmatia etc. In 1776, in Croatia, Ivan Lovrić (around 1754–1777), a native from the town of Sinj, wrote in the region which Fortis called Morlakia, the extraordinary addition to the partly polemic tone of Fortis, Comments on the Journey through Dalmatia by Alberto Fortis and the life of Stanislav Sočivica. Due to the interesting observations, the enormous popularity of these notes, especially about the Morlaks, has been lasting until today in Europe. Alberto Fortis addressed his journey along the river Cetina as follows:
GIOVANNI MARSILIO
PROFESSOR OF BOTANY AT THE UNIVERSITY
IN PADUA,
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
IN LONDON ETC.
The whole chapter about the river Cetina has one title: About the course of the river Cetina or Tilurus with old authors. The chapter has eleven parts. The first eight parts deal with the course of the river itself, while the other three are less concerned with the river and more with the town of Omiš and the republic Poljička republika. He begins his travelogue with eleven subheadings: About the sources of the Cetina, Travel below the Earth’s surface, Morlak meal at the cemetery, The lowland of the field Paško polje, Salt source, Otok (Island), Ruins of the colony Aequum, Limestone of Sinj, About the fortress of Sinj and the nearby field, The course of the river Cetina between the sinkhole and the waterfalls and The course of the Cetina from Zadvarje to the estuary. In his first sentence of the first chapter, Fortis wrote:
"Near the small village of Jarebice, three miles from Vrlika, below a marble mount, there are four main sources of the Tilurus, which the natives call Cetina. After a short course, all flow in one riverbed – hence the name of the place Vrilo Cetine (source of the Cetina)… The clear, small lake, almost hidden by the rocks and the shadow of the trees, has a diameter of around thirty feet; the natives say it has no ground; we threw stones of different size in it and lost them out of sight before they touched the ground. Countless trout, some of as much as twenty-five small Libra , come with the water from the heart of the mountain. One can see also other kinds of freshwater fish. But the hole through which they come out, can not be reached and can not be seen by anyone looking horizontally from the outside. In order to discover it, one has to climb on the top of a rock and look down… A bit farther, there was our lunch. The place for it was chosen at the old cemetery near the ruins of a church, which was dedicated to Ascension (the church of Sveti Spas – St. Saviour). Between the graves, there were many trees, offering delightful shadow. The large rocks – below them were the remains of old heroes – are remarkable for their number and size; I said old heroes because the numerous weapons, which can be found there, show that they were warriors. Below the trees there must be more than two hundred very heavy stones, each one heavier than a piece of marble; with good reason, one could call them giants’ graves."
On the road from Knin to Sinj, two hundred years after the publication of Fortis’ book, a few kilometres before Vrlika, I turned left to my friends, through the village of Civljane, on the narrow road below the mountain Dinara and its connections with the other giant mountain Kamešnica. The view of the sand, which developed due to the erosion of this massif, was spectacular. From here stretches, one hundred metres long, the enormous amount of sand hills, to half of the mountain, and produces deep cuttings with torrents originating from sudden cloudbursts. All this water is only part of the water potential of the Cetina, which owes its two major and several smaller sources, totally eight, to the processes and the collecting of water in the middle and over these gigantic mountains. Fortis wrote about the same view: “…the memory of the marble sand hills, which cover the Illyrian mountains, made us boldly guess that the true sources of the Cetina were not those we had visited, but that they were just branches of a river below the surface of the earth, whose ancient riverbed had been the endless plateaus in past centuries…and especially at those places, where the folds of the mountain often break off the rivers, Mylord Hervey realised the obvious traces of subsidence on the slopes of the Kozjak, Gnjat and Dinara,which clearly show that the cause for the interruption of their layers was a large, sudden breakthrough, probably even several…"
After having passed the first source in the village of Kotluša, at the second source, called Jarebica (partridge) or Vukovića vrelo (Vuković’s source), there were already very many trout, whereas the major source Glavaš near the church St. Saviour was a true phenomenon. In the cone-shaped cleft flows from the break, whose deepness was measured by diving with 109 metres, constantly a considerable amount of first class, crystal clear water. When we visited this source for the first time, there were trout of two or four pounds, swimming in certain intervals on the surface and chasing sedges (Trichoptera), who were developing from larvae to dry flies. It was especially attractive to watch from the top of the rock, just like Fortis did, how these trout chased from the deep of several dozen metres vertically up to the surface to catch the spotted fly. The natives, who were anything but friendly, threw stones in the water to spoil our day. So, after several stones had dangerously landed directly in front of us, we decided it would be wise not to follow the destiny of Captain James Cook, who also had certain misunderstandings with the natives on the islands of Hawaii.
After a short break, we immediately went to the water, on the exact place where I had seen the huge trout the previous year. Already after my first throw I felt a blow, but Joža did not believe me. But the second throw resulted in a big trout, never caught before. The water was foaming, but I was well prepared and fished with medium gear, as I knew what it was about here. Nevertheless, I screamed in surprise that it must have been a huchen. I only asked myself what it was doing there, because it usually lives in waters of the Danube region. I was very excited, but managed to pull this fish monster to the wall where I stood. I had a hard time pulling its head out of the water in order to weaken the fish more, but you just could not reach it, as the water flew so heavily out of the turbines that it would have pulled me to Trilj if I had tried. Šipek somehow scaled headlong down the wall and slowly and carefully pushed the fish into the lifting gear, which was not meant for such huge specimen. The trout was 80 cm long and had 11 pounds. The beautiful pigments and the noble form were breathtaking, not only for me, but also for the inhabitants of the village of Ruda who had suddenly gathered there. I made some photos with my robust Praktica and the camera Bolex Super 8.
We celebrated my lucky catch with a rich dinner with crayfish and fried breaded frogs’ legs in the small inn To Jaša in Trilj, where today there is the nice hotel Saint Michael. In the morning we drove to Zagreb, so that I could immediately preserve this splendid trophy. My often visits to the Cetina and its waters aroused the curiosity of the natives, just like the first missionaries in the jungles of Matto Grosso attracted attention. Such comparisons are really not exaggerated, as the natives could not understand why a person would drive 400 km just to go fishing and then threw still living small fish again in the water. A very special attraction was my sunshield for the head; it had the form of a small, colourful umbrella, like those worn by English soccer fans. Because of the strong Mediterranean sun and the lack of shade, each hat or cap meant only stronger heat to the head, so that this colourful umbrella gave excellent shade, while the air could circulate. For me, it was a comfortable and useful solution. For the natives, it was entertaining and attractive, so that we all were satisfied and happy. The change between fishing adventures and regularly caught trophies, which I always celebrated with my friends with crab-buzzara and fried breaded frogs’ legs in Trilj, culminated when I discovered with my Polaroid glasses in the region called Magaretuša a shoal of about one hundred trout, each having four or twelve pounds. The fish swam like warships in a convoy beneath an endless shoal of Illyrian dace. What a sight! Upstream, under the bridge, there rested several other remarkable fish, which the natives could not see without the special glasses. One of the trout had a large, fresh wound at the back. A man called Stipe had come by the fish, so observers told me. You could see the poor trout very well; with the white wound it was a contrast to the ground, so that the people always looked for the movement of the white spot.
The father of my friends, the Vidalinas, also had to work hard for many years in Germany to be able to support his children and to build them a decent home. I shared Fortis’ opinion about the fishermen of Zloselo. But to me it was clear that it was not the people’s fault, but that the badly organised government was to blame. So I offered to write an affirmative article for the well-known magazine Fly Fisherman in order to invite wealthy fishermen to visit this region and fish huge trout in the Ruda, which I would corroborate with attractive photos of Šipek’s and my catches. But it was a bad moment or it was too early for something like that, considering the political conditions in Tito’s state. Over middlemen, the powerful organisation of old partisans, SUBNOR , had a say. They let me know they would not allow the former army of occupation to marsh again through the unconquered land. I understood immediately, and such dangerous, heretic ideas would not ever come into my mind again. Actually, the leaders and the system of the former state ware so paranoiac and afraid of everything from abroad that near Magaretuša on the Ruda there was a table forbidding the trespassing to foreigners. Most of the islands of the Adriatic were then so transfixed with different, secret tunnels that I sometimes imagine these islands sinking because of the many holes from Tito’s time, just like Atlantis.