Chapter I

A blazing sun and a clear limpid sky, a long lagoon, gray-green and silver, a noble flight of steps serving as water-landing for half a dozen gay-colored gondolas, a grand balustrade protecting a broad platform leading to the porch and entrance of the most exquisitely beautiful building of modern times--the Art Palace of the Great Exposition!

From the corner of this balustrade a red rag of an awning, torn from an old tarpaulin, is stretched to an oar, its black shadow spilling down the white steps. Under this awning, flat on his back, sound asleep, lies a gondolier, fresh from Venice. Despite his nondescript costume of brigand’s leggings and cavalier’s cap I cannot mistake that broad chest and sunny face, the crisp black hair, and the fine lines of the throat and thigh.

“Espero!” I call out in glad surprise.

“_Commandi Signore_,” comes the quick reply, as he springs to his feet.

Other gondoliers join us: Marco, who at home plys a boat at the _Traghetto_, just above the _Salute_; and Luigi, who for five years past has won at the Annual Regatta on the Grand Canal--a superb fellow is Luigi, as handsome as a Venetian, and every inch a gondolier; and Francesco, his brother, first gondolier to the Countess, whose palace fronts the _Accademia_. For the instant I am in Venice again, while they all talk to me at once, telling me of their friends and mine whom we have known there--subjects far more absorbing than all the surprises of this new world. Five minutes later we are swinging up the Lagoon, Marco bending his oar aft, Espero on the cushions beside me.

There is to me a seeming fitness in entering the Court of Honor reclining in a gondola and rowed by a gondolier. No other craft that floats could so perfectly harmonize with these surroundings; none so dainty, so graceful, so dignified. There are no other oarsmen who could move with such ease and finish. These stately water-birds of Venice and their masters add, too, an element of the picturesque. They are to the lagoons what the flowers are to the esplanades, or the swans to the smaller inlets. The launches, noiseless as they are, seem out of place here and jar upon your senses; they are too new, too suggestive of progress and revenue and time-saving. But the gondola revives the traditions and customs of those earlier centuries, when this great White City of the Lake was still in its glory. Moreover, it is the only sort of princely craft which these noble families, whom you feel sure have lived for centuries in these great palaces, could use in their magnificent goings and comings.

For whenever I stand on the bridge of the Peristyle and look across the Court of Honor, surrendering myself to the magic spell of its beauty, I cannot help yielding to the conviction that this noble quadrangle is surrounded by palaces of marble

which have taken centuries to perfect; that the grounds and walks, stretches of grass, masses of flowering plants, and bold colossal statues have all been added from time to time, as in other palace gardens of old, when opportunity or royal whim dictated; that this great city was built ages ago, long before the time of the Greeks, who modelled their own temples along their classic lines; and that not only were its builders the ablest and most learned men of all ages, but that their descendants, those who live beneath these roofs, are the wisest, the most cultured, and the most artistic men and women of their time.

To me, moreover, the City is never evanescent nor unreal; never like a house built upon the sands. It is, when I look at it in amazed delight, not only entirely genuine, but firm and solid as the marble which it resembles. It is too vast, and the elements of atmosphere, perspective and proportion, enter too largely into its _ensemble_ to make it appear other than genuine. When, for instance, you stand in Athens, near the Parthenon, and your eye falls on a broken column at your feet, you _see_ that it is marble, and you _know_ that it is heavy. But without this sample stone in the foreground, and your knowledge of the character and quality of the material, the whole temple is to you, from where you look, only a film of light, now ivory, now alabaster, now lost in purple shadows. Here, about the White City, there is no broken column as an eye test, there are only superb façades, reaching skyward, and great stretches of columns and arches, relieved by gilded domes and sculptured frieze. They are never close to you--no comprehensive view is possible nearer than two hundred feet, and who can tell “staff” from marble at that distance--but far away, across the shimmer of the Lagoon, or over the massing of foliage or clustered roofs.

There is, in addition to all this element of reality, a reality which every one must feel for himself, still another charm--an undefinable quality that constantly surprises and delights you. To this is united a majestic picturesqueness investing these superb palaces and royal gardens with a distinction never attained by any of their predecessors. This does not seem to be due so much to colossal proportions nor to the never-ending series of buildings piled one behind the other, as to the skill shown by architects

and landscape gardeners in the general plan. Especially is this charm felt in the absence of rectangular lines of construction; in the winding in and out of the lagoons; in the neglected fringing of untrimmed foliage skirting the water’s edge; in the half submerged bits of islands where the ducks plume their feathers; in the informal formality of great massing of plants; in the dotting of broad stretches of gray-green water with gay-colored gondolas; and in the colossal proportions of superb decorative statues, so that a glimpse of Venice can be caught between the forelegs of a huge sculptured bull, and the columns of a classic temple be outlined over the back of some water-sprayed mermaid.

It is easy while under the spell of this Ancient City to persuade myself that in this their festival year, these nobles who dwell here are holding high carnival, with much feasting and merry-making, and illuminations at night. That they have bidden all the nations of the earth to join them in these gracious festivities lasting many months; and that as an especial honor, and for the delight and entertainment of these distinguished guests, they have decreed that a great fair shall be held where may be seen many strange people from the uttermost parts of the earth, who, with barbaric dancing and weird music may depict the manners and customs of their climes. That this Fair of the Festival Year shall be placed, not within the lines of the Palaces but outside the walls of the Great City, at the end of a broad highway, rolled out like a huge carpet of many colors.

* * * * *

Rousing myself from these reveries, I bid Espero good-by, join the throng, follow through the gates and so out upon this broad highway, the Plaisance. My dreams are all true. Along the crowded thoroughfare move half the wild tribes of the earth--Javanese, Esquimaux, natives of the Soudan, Bedouins from beyond the Great Desert, Algerians, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, and Turks. Fringing each edge of this gay promenade I find the huts of the Javanese and Soudanese, the tents of the Bedouins and Arabs, and the more pretentious booths and structures of the Algerians and kindred people. Here, too, are the quaint gateways and open squares of old German and Austrian towns; the low-roofed, deftly constructed houses of the Japanese; the intricate carvings of India covering the booths, and, draping the doors of the Eastern bazaars the rich stuffs, rugs, and tapestries of the Orient.

Near the entrance to the Turkish village, tucked away on one side of the highway, just out of the rush of the never-ceasing throng, and yet close enough to be within call, rises the dome of a small Mosque. Above this a single, snow-white minaret shoots up into the blue.

When the sun is gone there leans from a tiny balcony high up on this needle of a minaret, a white-robed priest. Suddenly above the whirl and hurry there filters down through the soft twilight air the Muezzin’s call for prayer:

“La Ilah Ell-Allah Muhammed Rassoul Ell-Allah.”

To me there is nothing so simple, nothing so impressive, nothing so devout, as a Muhammedan standing in the presence of his God. There is a childlike faith, a manly trust, a sincere belief evinced and experienced by these believers, that never seems to predominate in any other form of religion.

How often, in a great cathedral, do you come upon a figure silently leaving the confessional, and catching a full view of the face, detect a lingering trace of sorrow, or anxiety, or doubt. But watch the faces of these Muhammedans, these poor sedan-chair carriers, and of that broad-shouldered Arab, who has been moving great boxes of unpacked goods on his back all day. How tired they all look as they enter the Mosque, bowing low with reverent awe, and prostrating themselves wearily to the pavement. It is as if each penitent had brought his very burden within these sacred precincts, supplicating for relief.

Now look, when the silent service is over, and study these same faces as, with a light-hearted spring, each man rises from his knees and with serene expression, and calm, restful eyes takes up once more the burden of his life.

This exquisite and picturesque little Mosque--it is the prototype of the purest bit of Eastern architecture in Stamboul--these thoroughly genuine people, this sacred service--not as a necessary part of the Oriental exhibit, but as an essential, indispensable part of the life of the natives themselves--this combination of the genuine and the picturesque is to me the true keynote of the Great Exposition.