VENICE, capital of Ve etia, now an important section of the kingdom o taly, is built on 72 ‘,‘ islands on piles in the midst f a salt lagoon or shallow lake. It is dividecrlo two unequal parts by the Canalazzo, or Grand ana,l, the course of which through the city follows the form of an inverted S ; is 300 feet wide, crossed near the middle of its course by the Ponte di Rialto, a , splendid marble structure of one spacious arch. In the midst of the labyrinth of canals and streets there are several large piazzas, nearly all of which are adorned with fine churches or palaces. The principal of these is the Piazza di San Marco, a large oblong area 562 feet by 232, surrounded by elegant buildings, and containing at its eastern extremity the metropolitan church of San Marco, , a singular but brilliant combination of the Gothic and the oriental style of architecture. Before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese in 1486, Venice was one of the most powerful commercial and maritime states in Europe. The people of Venice had opened a trade route to India down the river Euphrates. Venetian merchants sailed from Venice to Tripoli, thence their goods were carried in caravans to Aleppo, which was a famous mart, whose reputation even Shakespeare did not fail to notice. Front Aleppo the caravans niade their way to Bir, on the banks of the Euphrates. Here the merchandise was transferred to boats, and conveyed down the river to a point near Baghdad on the Tigris. Baghdad being reached, the mer chandise was then transferred to boats on the Tigris, and carried down to Bussora and the island of Ormuz in the Persian Gulf. In those days Ormuz was the greatest emporium in the east. There all the velvets, cloths, and manufactures of the west were exchanged for the spices, drugs, and precious stones of the east. The wealth
acquired by the merchants of Venice in their trade with the east excited the envy of the whole of Europe. The Portuguese especially spared no expense in their endeavours to discover a new route to India, and, after nearly a century of the most indomitable exertions, they in the latter part of the 15th century found their way to Calicut by way of the Cape. The Indian trade of those days was revolutionized. In a very short time the trade routes by the Red Sea and the Euphrates were completely forgotten, and the cheapest and shortest route between Europe and India was the high sea ; but, after making use of the sea route for 500 years, the route followed by the ships of king Solomon and Hiram, king of Tyre, is again found to be the best, and the great ships of the Peninsular Company make Venice their final port.
Venice was founded about A.D. 452 by those who fled from before Attila t he Hun. So early as A.D. 525, it was importing silks front the east ; and front A.D. 802 dates her great trade in eastern spices, drugs, and silks. Both Genoa and Venice co-operated in the Crusades, and both suffered by the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, A.D. 1453; and Venice yet further in consequence of the annexation of Syria and Egypt to the Ottoman empire by Selirn, A.D. 1516-17. When Venice, A.D. 1475-87, acquired possession of Cyprus, Famagusta became the emporium of its overland trade with the east, both through Egypt and Syria, and continued to be the first com mercial city of the Levant, until taken by the Turks, A.D. 1570-71.