Lopud was economically the most developed of the Dubrovnik islands, also called the Elaphites, and has remained so to the present. If we agreed to relate its etymology to the Greek word for deer, we should hasten to remark that there are no deer on the island. Nor does it have the number of snakes necessary to justify the suggestion that it is a »snake island«. Nevertheless, a painted snake does exist on the island and is well worth seeing! It is in the church of Our Lady of Sunje built in the early 12U1 century. This was the votive church of the Visconti family of Milan, and was probably built by the crusader mentioned by Tasso in his Gerusalemme liberata. According to tradition he was rescued here from a shipwreck, returning from Palestine. The old painting in the church seems to corroborate the story: it represents the well-known insignia of the Viscontis, the large serpent, swallowing a naked infant. The corruption of the Italian word for the large Visconti snake, biscione, gave its name to the neighbouring sand beach (Vala od Sunja) and the church itself (Gospa od Sunja). When we disembark in the port of Lopud, and see the row of fine gothic buildings crowned with two monasteries, we remember the unsubstantiated yet attractive calculation according to which this litUe town had as many as 14 000 inhabitants in the 16U1 century. The most famous native of Lopud, Miho Pracat, must be remembered on the occasion of our visit. In our time Pracat's life has been described by Luko Paljetak; before the war, Ernest Katic put him into a play about Cvijeta Zuzoric. Pracat is the only citizen of Dubrovnik who was considered worthy of a monument by the grateful city fathers. The gratitude must have been extraordinary, be¬cause the monument was placed in the very middle of the Rector's Palace! True, there really was cause for gratitude, because the will which Pracat, the richest Ragusan of all time, left after his death in the first half of the 17U1 century has remained unrivalled in Croatian history for its generosity to the poor and downtrodden. If the amount bequeathed was limited only to the money he left for the freeing of bonded people, that sum alone would have secured him a respectable place among notable Ragusans. Lopud is also the cradle of Dubrovnik's seafarers. It is not an accident, therefore, that the captain who brings Uncle Maroje from Dubrovnik to Rome is presented as a native of Lopud, and that he also takes them back in the end. The women of Lopud also have a place in the literature of Dubrovnik, primarily as figures of lonely wives or widows in black, but also as the town prostitutes. Several men of literature and culture were born here. To be remembered among them is one Petar Palikuca who, as Gundulit's biographers tell us, was the poet's teacher. He is also interesting because he was the first Ragusan commoner to become the headmaster of a school. Before him people were mostly imported for this job. Another Lopud-born personality was Frano Uccellini¬Tice born in 1847, later bishop of Kotor, admirer of the mystic Solovev and the first Croat to translate the entire Divine Comedy by Dante into Croatian.