Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1894 — BUILT IN A SWAMP. [ARTICLE]

BUILT IN A SWAMP.

Venice Founded ee • Refuge From Savage Invaders. The City of Venice is approached from behind by a railroad constructed over a stretch of swamp which is not very unlike the near approach to several New Jersey coast towns. There is u trifle more water and not no much grass, but according toa writer in the Philadelphia Telegraph, the rido into the city is anything but a. subject for a chapter of tine romance. Out beyond this swamp was another swamp which was a, little higher. It had been out of the water longer and had caught enough of seaweed, sand, shells and sediment to be fit for birds to nest on. There was one island called tho Rialto, which was really quite seeure, and around this one there was said to be about seventy-five or eighty other islands which are to-day occupied by the city of Venice. Home fit these were originally not Islands at all. They were merely high places in a great bog, which, by the cutting of channels and by artifical means, were converted into more or less fit places forth© erection of buildings. Without consulting history, one could almost guess that such an unfavorable spot as this was not selected as the sit© for a city out of free choice; and, indeed, it was not. Venice was started during the fifth and sixth centuries. The inhabitants of Padua and a few more Roman cities, chased out by the Huns, the tioths. and other tribes of barbarians, took refuge there in an Adriatic lagoon. The savages of Asia had no boats, so that the settlement was very safe, and, leading an independent life, prospered by itself during the middle ages at a surprising rate. It was* montrous work to make the citysecure from the sea. Ship loads of stone were brought from other coasts. Dams and canals were built, at great cost, and the residents finally got enough of dry land about them to feel moderately safe. It wan still, however, a difficult thing to find foundations for the houses, especially as many of the rich men desired to put up heavy marble palaces, and it frequently costs mate in Venice to-day to sink the rocks and piles for a house than it does to put on the superstructure. Few cities have ever be«n built under greater difficulties T t ' * - - . •