Malamocco was a seat of ducal government when Venice was only a village,
and not until the seventh century did the honours pass to Venice: hence
a certain alleged sense of superiority on the part of the Malamoccans,
although not only has the original Malamocco but the island on which it
was built disappeared beneath the tide. Popilia too, a city once also of
some importance, is now the almost deserted island of Poveglia which we
pass just after leaving Malamocco, as we steam along that splendid wide
high-way direct to Venice--between the mud-flats and the sea-mews and
those countless groups of piles marking the channel, which always
resemble bunches of giant asparagus and sometimes seem to be little
companies of drowning people who have sworn to die together.


[Illustration: FROM THE DOGANA AT NIGHT]


Here we overtake boats on the way to the Rialto market, some hastening
with oars, others allowing their yellow sails to do the work, heaped
high with vegetables and fruit. Just off the mud the sardine catchers
are at work, waist high in the water.

The sun has now gone, the sky is burning brighter and brighter, and
Venice is to be seen: either between her islands or peeping over them.
S. Spirito, now a powder magazine, we pass, and S. Clemente, with its
barrack-like red buildings, once a convent and now a refuge for poor mad
women, and then La Grazia, where the consumptives are sent, and so we
enter the narrow way between the Giudecca and S. Giorgio Maggiore, on
the other side of which Venice awaits us in all her twilight loveliness.
And disembarking we are glad to be at home again. For even an
afternoon's absence is like an act of treachery.