Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1874-07-18

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port the outftting place of large
part of the millions of Crusaders
and pilgrims to the Holy Land. and |
they furnished the shipping to bear
them thither and back-so many of
them as lived to return. These fool
ish Crusades thus built up the pros
perity of Venice and made her the
"Queen of the Adriatic," filing her
Golfers with untold wealth, drawn
from every part of fEurope. The i'm
mense impetus then given was not
lost for several subsequent centuries.
The trade of the Orient continued
to flow into Europe through the
Venetian gateway until the sixteenth
century, when it began to take 9TH
er routes, and pass away from Ven
Ice never to return.
Venice reached her
HIGHEST PINNACLE FOR WEALTH AND
POWER
about A. D. 1920. Then was the
elimination of her wonderful career.
She was then the focus of the COM
merce between Europe and Asia
Her population was nearly 25O,00O.
Her annual exports were valued at
Sl00,O00,0 0,0O0-an enormous sum In
those days. Her clear annual profits
were estimated at 100000. She
sent to sea 800 ships mnnaed by
eight thousand sailors and 5000
small craft, handled by 1900 men.
Her navy was much the largest of
any nation in the world. The re-
public possessed numerous colonies
in the Grecian seas, including Can
dia, Cyprus, and Rhodes together
with the entire Dalmatian Coast on
the opposite side of the Adriatic. At
one time she successfully resisted,
single handed, an alliance of all
other Italian States, from Genoa to
Naples, aided by Hungary. She
extended her island possessions to
Ravenna and Bologna, on the south
and nearly to Milan on the west.
In these days she occupied the
same relative commercial and naval
Importance and rank that Great
Britain now does among the nations,
and carried her head equally high
and naughty. She waged
FIERCE WARFARE WITH THE TURKS
for three centuries and repeatedly
destroyed their fleets. In 1871 the
Venetian feet were mainly instru-
mental in gaining the great naval
battle of Lehanto over the Turks.
1t was the Trafalgar of that century,
and from the blow which Venice
that day inflicted on the Mahometans
at sea, they never afterwards re-
covered. During the next century
she repeatedly defeated the Turks
on the sea. AS often as they would
build a feet the Venetians attacked
and destroyed it. But she was de-
Ginning in prosperity and strength.
The discoveries of new ocean-routes
to the Indies and China transferred
her rich overland commerce to the
Portuguese, Dutch and British,
and. her wealth and power gradu-
ally
sUBsIDED AND PASSED AWAY,
and she ceased to occupy a promi-
nent position among European ma
tions. Her colonial possessions
were wrestled from her, one after
the other, and in the Italian PENN
sula she was driven back between
the angle formed between the Alps,
the Mincio and the Po. The Doge
and the Senate opposed the princi-
pies of the French Revolution and
refused to form an alliance with
France. Irritated thereat Bonaparte
invaded and captured Venice de-
posed the Doge and suppressed the
Senate, and by the peace of Compo
Tormio, Venice ceased to be a ma
tion, and was ceded to Austria as
province, and with short intermis-
sion during Napoleon's reign as EN-
peror, it remained in the hands of the
Austrians until 1866, when the Pru-
slams delivered it from their yoke,
and gave it to Italy, where it natur-
ally belonged, and anxiously desired
to be attached. Venice maintained
her independence from the fall of
the Roman Empire until the estab-
lishment of the French Republic,
period of 1,345 years, and filed the
world with her power and glory.
No city exerts so strong a spell
over the imagination as Venice. 1t
is
FULL OF DRAMATIC INTEREST,
and poets have never failed to find
a fund of plot, incident, and charac-
ter there. Its unique situation and
amphibious nature, its conquest and
commerce, its dark conspiraeies and
darker judicial murders, lift its his
tory out of the prosaic commonplace |
of other nations, and make it a melo-
drama and tragedy. As one writer
remarks, "Shylock " still darkens the
Ratio with his frown; the lordly |
Othello yet stalks across the piazza |
of St. Marks; and every veil that
futters in the breeze shrouds the |
roguish eyes of a Jessica." Every
thing is dreamlike, and unlike any
thing ever seen before. The palaces |
rising from the waters, seem like |
things of fairy-land. There is no
noise, no danger, no dust, no hustle
of business, no horses or carriages.
THE GoNDoLA
takes the place of horses, horse-rail-
roads, dummies, carts, trucks, andaus
and buggies, on the land. l asked a
gondolier, who spoke little English
if he had ever seen a horse. lie re-
piled, "Never in Venice except In
the butchers stalls!" Many of these
gondoIiers are tall, splendid speci-
mems, straight as a pine tree, and
who might act as models for statues
of Mars or Apollo. As they handle
their oars standing erect, with long
graceful, swinging motion of the
body, they look the very poetry of
motion. l never tire Watching them.
BY the light of the moon, as they
glided noiselessly into obscurity and