swinging low against their sides, while the sunlight glances back from
the gold and silver glory of the scales of living fish, crowded and
palpitating within their meshes.

The fisherfolk who guide these barks are gray and gnomelike in their
coloring, tanned by sky and sea and ceaseless atmospheres of fish, into
a neutral tint,--less vivid in hues of skin and hair, with eyes less
brilliant, with less vivacity and charm of bearing than the gay
Venetians,--but they are the descendants of those island tribes from
which the commerce and greatness of Venice issued; there is almost a
show of stateliness in the aggravating slowness with which their heavily
freighted barks proceed, serenely occupying the best of the narrow
waterway. They are not envious of the hangers-on of those palaces of the
nobles, these free fisherfolk of the islands; they have only haughty
stares for the servile set of gondoliers in lacings of gold and
scarlet--who are not nobles nor fishers, nor people of the soil--and
they pass them silently, with much ostentation of taking all the
gondoliers of Murano into the friendliness of their jests and curses, as
the barges touch and clash with some swiftly gliding gondolier of their
own rank, who wears no bravery or armorial bearings.

Their homes--long, low, white-washed cottages--spread along the main
channel and reach in lessening, dotted lines far off into the sea, where
other islands lie in friendly nearness; but the Bridge, with the Lions
of St. Mark on archivolt and parapet--the invariable official signet of
Venetian dominion--stretches between that simpler quarter and this,
which holds the great houses of Murano, whose masters, a sort of _petite
noblesse_, have made their names illustrious by marvelous inventions in
that exquisite industry in which Venice has no rival.