THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, VENICE
I
THE BEGINNINGS
In the beginning the river washed sand and mud out through the shallow water at the two mouths of the Brenta; and the tide fought against the streams at flood, so that the silt rose up in bars, but at ebb the salt water rushed out again, mingled with the fresh, and strong turbid currents hollowed channels between the banks, leading out to seaward, until the islands and bars took permanent shape and the currents acquired regular directions, in and out, between and amongst them. In the beginning the spirit of unborn Venice seemed to say, more truly than Archimedes, ‘Give me a place whereon to stand, and I will move the world’;
THE LIGHTS OF THE LIDO
and the rivers and the tides heaped up the sand and made a dry place for her in the midst of the sea.
The lagoon is a shallow basin, roughly shaped like a crescent, its convexity making a bay in the mainland, its concave side bounded against the open sea by the curving banks, called ‘Lidi,’ beaches, which are long and narrow islands, to distinguish them from the islets of less regular shape that rise above the surface here and there within the confines of the lagoon, those on which Venice stands, and Torcello and Murano, and others which make a miniature archipelago, ending with Chioggia, at the southern point of the crescent.
CHIOGGIA