swept by every wind that blows.

Hugging the coast, which is fringed with tamarisk and an occasional
shumac, we come next to Porto Secco, another tiny settlement among
vegetable gardens. Its gay church, yellow washed, with a green door and
three saints on the roof, we can see inverted in the water, so still is
it, until our gentle wash blurs all. Porto Secco's front is all pinks
and yellows, reds, ochres, and white; and the sun is now so low that the
steamer's shadow creeps along these façades, keeping step with the boat.
More market gardens, and then the next mouth of the harbour, (known as
Malamocco, although Malamocco town is still distant), with a coastguard
station, a fort, acres of coal and other signs of militancy on the
farther side. It is here that the Lido proper begins and the island
broadens out into meadows.

At the fort pier we are kept waiting for ten minutes while a live duck
submits to be weighed for fiscal purposes, and the delay gives an old
man with razor-fish a chance to sell several pennyworths. By this time
the sun is very near the horizon, setting in a roseate sky over a lagoon
of jade. There is not a ripple. The tide is very low. Sea birds fleck
with white the vast fields of mud. The peacefulness of it all under such
unearthly beauty is almost disquieting.

Next comes Malamocco itself, of which not much is seen but a little
campo--almost an English village green--by the pier, and children
playing on it. Yet three thousand people live here, chiefly growers of
melons, tomatoes, and all the picturesque vegetables which are heaped up
on the bank of the Grand Canal in the Rialto market and are carried to
Venice in boats day after day for ever.