Barges filled with Brenta
water or Mirano wine take up their station at the neighbouring steps,
and then ensues a mighty splashing and hurrying to and fro of men with
tubs upon their heads. The brawny fellows in the wine-barge are red
from brows to breast with drippings of the vat. And now there is a
bustle in the quarter. A _barca_ has arrived from S. Erasmo, the
island of the market-gardens. It is piled with gourds and pumpkins,
cabbages and tomatoes, pomegranates and pears--a pyramid of gold and
green and scarlet. Brown men lift the fruit aloft, and women bending
from the pathway bargain for it. A clatter of chaffering tongues, a
ring of coppers, a Babel of hoarse sea-voices, proclaim the sharpness
of the struggle. When the quarter has been served, the boat sheers
off diminished in its burden. Boys and girls are left seasoning their
polenta with a slice of _zucca_, while the mothers of a score of
families go pattering up yonder courtyard with the material for their
husbands' supper in their handkerchiefs. Across the canal, or more
correctly the _Rio_, opens a wide grass-grown court. It is
lined on the right hand by a row of poor dwellings, swarming with
gondoliers' children. A garden wall runs along the other side, over
which I can see pomegranate-trees in fruit and pergolas of vines. Far
beyond are more low houses, and then the sky, swept with sea-breezes,
and the masts of an ocean-going ship against the dome and turrets of
Palladio's Redentore.
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