The old woman who had opened the door of the campanile was surprised into
hospitality by the sum of money we gave her, and took us through her house
(which was certainly very neat and clean) into her garden, where she
explained the nature of many familiar trees and shrubs to us poor
Venetians.

We went back home over the twilight lagoon, and Giovanna expressed the
general feeling when she said: "_Torsello xe beo--no si pol negar--la
campagna xe bea; ma, benedetta la mia Venezia!_"

(The country is beautiful--it can't be denied--Torcello is beautiful; but
blessed be my Venice!)

The panorama of the southern lagoon is best seen in a voyage to Chioggia,
or Ciozza, the quaint and historic little city that lies twenty miles away
from Venice, at one of the ports of the harbor. The Giant Sea-wall, built
there by the Republic in her decline, is a work of Roman grandeur, which
impresses you more deeply than any other monument of the past with a sense
of her former industrial and commercial greatness. Strips of village
border the narrow Littorale all the way to Chioggia, and on the right lie
the islands of the lagoon. Chioggia itself is hardly more than a village,
--a Venice in miniature, like Murano, with canals and boats and bridges.
But here the character of life is more amphibious than in brine-bound
Venice; and though there is no horse to be seen in the central streets of
Chioggia, peasants' teams penetrate her borders by means of a long bridge
from the main-land.

Of course Chioggia has passed through the customary vicissitudes of
Italian towns, and has been depopulated at divers times by pestilence,