THE BAY OF VENICE.
A LIQUID LABYRINTH.
"LIKE A HUGE SEA-WALL."
The first surprise awaiting almost every visitor to Venice is that of seeing all its buildings rise directly from the sea. He knows, of course, that Venice rests upon a hundred islands, linked by four hundred and fifty bridges. Hence, he expects to see between the houses and the liquid streets some fringe of earth, some terrace or embankment. But no:—the stately mansions emerge from the ocean like a huge sea-wall, and, when the surface of the water is disturbed by a light breeze or passing boat, it overflows their marble steps as softly as the ultimate ripple of the surf spreads its white foam along the beach. As, then, our gondolier takes us farther through this liquid labyrinth, we naturally ask in astonishment, "What was the origin of this mysterious city? How came it to be founded thus within the sea?" The wonder is easily explained. In the fifth century after Christ, when the old Roman empire had well-nigh perished under the deadly inroads of barbarians, another devastating army entered Italy, led by a man who was regarded as the "scourge of God." This man was Attila. Such was the ruin always left behind him, that he could boast with truth that the grass grew not where his horse had trod. A few men seeking to escape this vandal, fled to a group of uninhabited islands in the Adriatic. Exiled from land, they cast themselves in desperation on the sea.
THE OCEAN CITY.
But no one can behold this ocean-city without perceiving that those exiles were rewarded for their courage. The sea became their mother,—their divinity. She sheltered them with her encircling waves. She nourished them from her abundant life. She forced them to build boats in which to transport merchandise from land to land. And they, obeying her, grew from a feeble colony of refugees to be a powerful republic, and made their city a nucleus of vast wealth and commerce,—a swinging door between the Orient and Occident, through which there ebbed and flowed for centuries a tide of golden wealth, of which her glorious sunsets seemed but the reflection.