Mut. Costumi.
Every one worked hard in those young days, from the Doge downwards, at the administration of the Republic, at beautifying the city, at commerce and the development of navigation; and as for play, they were passionate lovers of the chase and of grebe-shooting. The latter sport was the delight of rich and poor alike, apparently without much regard to the time of year, but its strict rules hindered any wholesale slaughter. The sportsman dressed himself in green in order that his figure might not scare the grebes, as he poled his narrow punt—the ‘fisolara’—amongst the sedge and reeds at the mouths of the rivers. If he had boatmen to help him, they wore green too. Now it seems to have been the rule that no weapon should be used in this sort of shooting but the cross-bow, charged with clay bullets or with small bolts, and it would have been thought as unsportsmanlike to snare the birds as it is nowadays to catch trout with worms; and as the grebe is a great diver, when in danger, and is by no means easy to hit with a good shot-gun, it must have required remarkable skill to shoot him with such a poor weapon as the cross-bow of the tenth century. The Venetians used to fasten the heads of the birds they killed upon doors and windows as trophies, just as a Bavarian gentleman or a Black Forester of our own time mounts the horns of every roebuck he shoots and hangs them in his hall.
If I have dwelt too long upon these details it is
THE STEPS OF THE SALUTE
because I am inclined to think that a sportsmanlike spirit has characterised all young nations; and the spirit of the true sportsman is not to kill wantonly, but to measure himself in strength, or skill, or speed, against his fellow-man, and against wild things, and often against nature herself, with fairplay on both sides; and the true delight of his sport lies in doing for pleasure what his ancestors were forced to do in the original struggle for life.
And so after this brief glance at early Venice, I go on to speak of the circumstances and the men that presently directed the young state to a form of development which was without example in the past history of nations, and was destined to have no imitators in the future.
THE RIVA AT NIGHT