And yet as a matter of fact to the Venetians the rest are rivers--Rio this and Rio that--and this the canal.
During a stay in Venice of however short a time one is so often on the Grand Canal that a knowledge of its palaces should come early.

For fifteen centimes one may travel its whole length in a steamboat, and back again for another fifteen, and there is no more interesting half-hour's voyage in the world.

The guide books, as a rule, describe both banks from the same starting-point, which is usually the Molo.

This seems to me to be a mistake, for two reasons.

One is that even in a leisurely gondola "all'ora" one cannot keep pace with literature bearing on both sides at once, and the other is that since one enters Venice at the railway station it is interesting to begin forthwith to learn something of the city from that point and one ought not to be asked to read backwards to do this.