on camels to Alexandria, or whether they came through the rich and pleasant land of Persia and the Syrian desert to Antioch and Tyre, or whether they slowly pushed their way in a long, thin caravan across the highlands of Central Asia, and south of the Caspian Sea to Trebizond, and so sailed through the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, Venice was their natural focus.  Only Constantinople might have rivalled her, and Constantinople she conquered.  To Venice, therefore, as if drawn by a magnet, came the spoils of the East, and from Venice they went by horse across the Alps by the Brenner and St Gothard passes to Germany and France, or in galleys by way of the Straits of Gibraltar to England and Flanders;[1] and the galleys and pack-horses came back again to Venice, laden with the metals of Germany, the furs of Scandinavia, the fine wools of England, the cloth of Flanders, and the wine of France.

[Footnote B:  ‘Hic vobis, aquatilium avium more, domus est.’]

But if geography gave Venice an unrivalled site, the Venetians did the rest.  Through all the early years of their history they defied Constantinople to the east of them, and Pope and Holy Roman Emperor to the west; sometimes turning to one, sometimes to the other, but stubbornly bent all the while upon independence, replying, when invited to become subjects:  ’God, Who is our help and protector has saved us to dwell upon these waters.  This Venice, which we have raised in the lagoons, is our mighty habitation, no power of emperor or of prince can touch us’; apt, if threatened, to retire to their islands and derisively to fire cannon balls of bread into the mainland force, which sought to starve them out.[2] Always they were conscious that their future lay upon the waters, and in that East, whose colour had crept into their civilization and warmed their blood.  They were eastern and western both, the Venetians, hot hearts for loving and conquering, icy heads for scheming and ruling.  Bit by bit they secured the ring of mainland behind them, all the while keeping at bay the Saracen and Slav sea rovers, whose ships were the terror of the Mediterranean.  Then they descended upon the pirates of Dalmatia, who thus harassed their trading vessels, and took all the Dalmatian coast.  The Doge of Venice became Duke of Dalmatia.  ‘True it is,’ says their chronicles, ’that the Adriatic Sea is in the duchy of Venice,’[3] and they called it the ‘Gulf of Venice’.  Now it was that there was first instituted the magnificent symbolical ceremony of wedding the sea, with the proud words ’Desponsamus te mare in signum veri perpetuique domini’![4]

She was a maiden city, bright and free,
No guile seduced, no force could violate,
And when she took unto herself a mate
She must espouse the everlasting sea.

And truly it seemed as though the very sea had sworn to honour and obey her.