appearance are called canals, but which, in truth, are no more than so
many small natural branches of the sea. On the margin of these passages,
the walls of the dwellings arise literally from out of the water, since
economy of room has caused their owners to extend their possessions to
the very verge of the channel, in the manner that quays and wharfs are
pushed into the streams in our own country. In many instances the
islands themselves were no more than banks, which were periodically
bare, and on all, the use of piles has been necessary to support the
superincumbent loads of palaces, churches, and public monuments, under
which, in the course of ages, the humble spits of sand have been made
to groan.

The great frequency of the canals, and perhaps some attention to economy
of labor, has given to by far the greater part of the buildings the
facility of an approach by water. But, while nearly every dwelling has
one of its fronts on a canal, there are always communications by the
rear with the interior passages of the town. It is a fault in most
descriptions, that while the stranger hears so much of the canals of
Venice, but little is said of her streets: still, narrow, paved,
commodious, and noiseless passages of this description, intersect all
the islands, which communicate with each other by means of a countless
number of bridges. Though the hoof of a horse or the rumbling of a wheel
is never heard in these strait avenues, they are of great resort for all
the purposes of ordinary intercourse.

Gino issued into one of these thoroughfares when he quitted the private
passage which communicated with the palace of his master. He threaded
the throng by which it was crowded, with a dexterity that resembled the
windings of an eel among the weeds of the Lagunes. To the numerous
greetings of his fellows, he replied only by nods; nor did he once