resqueness, so that Chioggia is always
artist-ridden.

The steamer gives you an hour in which to drift about in the sunshine
and meditate upon the inferiority of any material other than water for
the macadamizing of roads. There are sights too: Carpaccio's very last
picture, painted in 1520, in S. Domenico; a Corso Vittorio Emmanuele; a
cathedral; a Giardino Pubblico; and an attractive stone parapet with a
famous Madonna on it revered by fishermen and sailors. The town is
historically important, for was not the decisive battle of Chioggia
fought here in 1379 between the Venetians and their ancient enemies the
Genoese?

But I cannot pretend that Chioggia is to my taste. To come to it on the
journey to Venice, knowing what is in store, might put one in a mood to
forgive its earthy situation and earthy ways; but when, all in love with
water, one visits it from Venice, one resents the sound and sight of
traffic, the absence of gondolas, and the presence of heat unalleviated.

At five o'clock, punctually to the minute, the steamer leaves the quay
and breaks the stillness of the placid lagoon. A few fishing boats are
dotted about, one of them with sails of yellow and blue, as lovely as a
Chinese rug; others the deep red that Clara Montalba has reproduced so
charmingly; and a few with crosses or other religious symbols. The boat
quickly passes the mouth of the Chioggia harbour, the third spot at
which the long thread of land which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic
is pierced, and then makes for Palestrina, surely the narrowest town on
earth, with a narrower walled cemetery just outside, old boats decaying
on the shore, and the skin of naked boys who frolic at the water's edge
glowing in the declining sun. Never were such sun-traps as these strips
of towns along this island bank, only a few inches above sea level and
swept by every wind that blows.

Hugging the coast, which is fringed with tamarisk and an occasional
shumac, we come next to Porto Secco, another tiny settlement among
vegetable gardens. Its gay church, yellow washed, with a green door and
three saints on the roof, we can see inverted in the water, so still is
it, until our gentle wash blurs all. Porto Secco's front is all pinks
and yellows, reds, ochres, and white; and the sun is now so low that the
steamer's shadow creeps along these facades, keeping step with the boat.
More market gardens, and then the next mouth of the harbour, (known as
Malamocco, altho