Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-31
PICTURES FROM ITALY.
The Gondolier { Venice Vain, Offens-
i've AnimaEThs City in Early
Morning.
The Golden Red Hair Commonly Known al
Venetian not Found on the Native Fe-
male Of To-Day.
copyrighted 1907

u
copyrighted 1901
Correspondence of the Gazette.
VALLoMBRosA, ITALY, May 6.-The human in
terest OF Venice is, after all its chief enchant-
ment. If one can fling off the enslavement Of
the fiction woven about it, there is still enough
to know and enjoy. In endeavoring to analyze
| causes for the creation of the universally false
sentiment existing concerning it, the best excuse
can find is in the popularity of its situation
1t has always impressed travellers strangely. A
city without a horse other beast of burden
strikes one as a curious ANOMALY. This
unceasing seeming of strange and remarka-
bic phases, mas easily been distorted into the
wonderful, the marvellous. The vivid fancy with
the opulent imagination and poetic sense have
done the rest. Each succeeding traveller has
scraped the empyrian of imagery to Guido his
predecessor in floral description and matchless
smile. Coming from the mountains of Italy at
once across what seems to be an arm of the sea,
but which in fact Is so shallow a lagoon that
school-boy might wade it in many places at ebb-
tide, to city built SO that the earth it really
stands upon, and the Diling, forming the per-
fectly secure foundation for other structures and
street sides, is wholly hidden from view, the
feeling of actually being at sea is difficult to
overcome. Indeed, this one fact about ones al
most lnerauiCA0ie nrst impressions mas hau more
70 do than all else IN giving poettravelers their
Venetian frenzies. Then again the
constant intensifcation of this i'm
preston further unhinges the aver
age mind. In no other city can one avoid the
roar and thunder of battling tides of humans
and conveyances upon the streets. There is not
a sound of this sort IN Venice. Then, wherever
one secures a vista towards the horizon the
waters of the Adriatic is first seen and the i'm
preston of being upon the is further en-
phaslZed. Again, the quaint, strange craft of
these waters, instead OF here and there the land,
in view whenever glimpses towards the
outer world are had. One must be at sea, is the
impulse of mental conclusion. And more mysti-
flying than all, you who have looked from your
window into street, where the solid earth is
below, must perforce see nothing but water,
moving craft upon water, and, as though you
looked from the portfolio of some mystic craft,
you see through this nautical sense
OF riding upon the ocean, in the
structures opposite your window, otn-
craft which must be floating alongside your
own have passed over the Bahama banks, in
a sailing vessel, where, for 125 miles, bed of
coral more than 1000 feet high often less
than twelve, and never more than eighteen feet
from the seas level. If that bank stood against
the Florida, instead of the Bahama shore, the
capitalists would have winter resort city stand
ing upon the white coral bed inside of quarter
of century, and would regard the expenditure
of two or three hundred millions of dollars to
make an American Venice, very trifling incl
dent in American development. One must come
to think of Venice in some such way as this in
order to measure it in justice and truth.
It is probable that the sanity of one who
should visit Venice without making study of
the gondolier would be doubted. l endeavored
to do this earnestly, but find. after ALL that he
is very ordinary sort of a fellow. He is better
you with some slight suavity and grace. In but
one other respect is he In any degree remark
able. He is tall, 1.-the ana slender. All his
limbs show fine development from rowing up
right, every muscle coming into play at every
stroke of the This gives the gondoliers
sinewy development most admirable. There !
are somewhat more than 200 licensed gondoliers:
twenty cents an hour is the legal rate for
the services OF boat and boatman, this tariff
hire; and the gondolier's costume in sum
mer comprises linen trowsers, linen shirt
open at Ire throat exposing black and hairy
chest, sgreasy, colored sash, and dirty straw
hat with jauutily-roIled rim. He works as little
as ,Che can and live. He sleeps and eats
fhd smokes and guzzles when not at
water, used as he Is to it, and permits his
clumsy graft to approach the region of
''choppy" waves. He is, briefly, vain, often
sive animal whom poets have spoiled and anna
teur photographers have developed into in
sufferable bully of those winding, watery |
streets For real manhood, bravery hardihood
sunniness of heart and manner and true pic,
turesqueness of costume and bearing, the quad |
anero of Havana harbor is incomparably the |
more interesting man and character.
To my mind a scene in early morning on Grand |
canal in Venice is far more interesting than one
in the early evening, when the faded aristocracy
OF the city are moving about with apparent list
nessless in their private black gondolas, decorat-
ed with their owners coats Of arms or opelled by
private gondoIers in ridiculous ligeries, or at |
night when the canal in general is wholly and |
extensively show object to open-mouthed |
strangers. |
while the gray is yet upon the water, and |
the gurgling of the tides is like the |
chuckling of night imps in the dark retreats of |
the lowest arches and angles, then it is that the
oldest and most fascinating professions pass |
and repass away down there in the shadows be- !
meath your window. scores of little, long |
outlying islands are on their way to the market |
at the Rialto. Their sails red, with blue |
UPS and yellow center pieces, and most gro |
tesque figures of Madonnas are painted some |
where on their gaudily colored sterns. These |
barges are propelled by poles in the hands of |
men in purple, pink, blue and orange gar |
tables. Here and there sandaio, |
gondola, darts by. It is roEed by two men, with |
tasseled caps. like the Biscayan fishermen. A |
half-dozen goats are tied head and tail to the |
are milking these on their way to the next Gus |
toner. Barcas, with soldiers speeding to or /
from guard-changing, fill the shadowy way with |
a din of chattering profanity. Here are four /
nuns with bowed heads being rowed on some err !
rand OF mercy. Again whole families of the |
lowlier classes, especially pious through some |
common bereavement, are setting out to be |
present at some very cheap and early mass. |
Here come crowd Of boats with villagers, vege- |
tables, fowls. hagons OF milk bestowed in deWy Il
wisps of grass rolls of butter in last year sweet
white cornhusks, and numberless and nameless |
stuffs for the mercato. They are from |
have been astir at midnight Follow |
ing these is a curious procession OF gondolss |
piled higher than the gondoliers' heads with
household goods and the people owning them |
who are thus moving, follow in their own
gondolas, suggesting funeral of household
gods cut short in its cortege. There are friars
with huge baskets in their gondolas setting out
TO the markets to buy and beg for their breth-
rem and the poor; tired fishermen with boat
loads of cleaning fruit of the sea; sailors sub
dued and sullen after an all nights registering
on their way back to their dogs life and the
the ships; messengers with the nights coIlec- |
ton of kilograms ;bakers in white linen caps and
shirts. with boat loads of black, brown and |
white bread; water carriers with huge casks and |
hagons of drinking water; butchers, icemen,
grocerymen, all in boats making their first
rounds and all of them down there
upon the water in the shadows seeming
like some weird and silent naskers in =
dream.
Titan gives his ''Bella, - in the Pitt Gallery,
that light, feecy and almost transparent golden I
red hair commonly known as Venetian This is
another OF those pretty Venetian mysticisms /
which 1t is unpleasant to dissipate. have seen
perhaps 20. COZ women in Venice. Among all |
these no Venetian woman was crowned with hair |
of any snch color. Out of Difference to a late
freak on the part Of Patti, there were English,
French and American danes whose heads were
glowing beacons of the Titan style The women !
of Venice have square heads with wide fore
heads, deeply sunken and lustrous eyes |
with wide. archin1 brows which meet