which flock into the city in vast numbers at the first approach of cold,
and, sailing up and down the canals between the palaces, bring to the
dwellers in the city a full sense of mid-ocean forlornness and desolation,
now rioted on the savage winds, with harsh cries, and danced upon the
waves of the bitter brine, with a clamorous joy that had something
eldritch and unearthly in it.

A place so much given to gossip as Venice did not fail to produce many
memorable incidents of the cold; but the most singular adventure was that
of the old man employed at the Armenian Convent to bring milk from the
island of San Lazzaro to the city. One night, shortly after the coldest
weather set in, he lost his oar as he was returning to the island. The
wind, which is particularly furious in that part of the lagoon, blew his
boat away into the night, and the good brothers at the convent naturally
gave up their milkman for lost. The winds and waters drifted him eight
miles from the city into the northern lagoon, and there lodged his boat in
the marshes, where it froze fast in the stiffening mud. The luckless
occupant had nothing to eat or drink in his boat, where he remained five
days and nights, exposed to the inclemency of cold many degrees below
friendship in severity. He made continual signs of distress, but no boat
came near enough to discover him. At last, when the whole marsh was frozen
solid, he was taken off by some fishermen, and carried to the convent,
where he remains in perfectly recovered health, and where no doubt he will
be preserved alive many years in an atmosphere which renders dying a San
Lazzaro a matter of no small difficulty. During the whole time of his
imprisonment, he sustained life against hunger and cold by smoking. I
suppose no one will be surprised to learn that he was rescued by the
fishermen through the miraculous interposition of the Madonna--as any one
might have seen by the votive picture hung up at her shrine on a bridge of
the Riva degli Schiavoni, wherein the Virgin was represented breaking