Every gondolier belongs to a traghetto (ferry-boat station), from which gondolas cross over to Venice from various points on the Giudecca. These traghette have been established for centuries--no one knows exactly how long; but certainly they were in existence in the fourteenth century. To a gondolier a traghetto is, as it were, a club. There are sixteen traghette. Each is governed by its own laws and constitutions, which are still strictly kept; each has its own history, archives, and parchment documents. By this society are regulated the gondolier's wages, the limits of his obedience, his holidays, everything appertaining to his welfare. There is at each traghetto a little house in which the gondoliers can sit and gossip and mend their boats. One sees some of the finest types there. Years ago they used to sing there on moonlight nights, in their beautiful broken Venetian patois, verses from Tasso. It is long since they have done this as a habit; but they will do it sometimes if you pay them sufficiently well. One often hears them singing on the lagoon to the accompaniment of an Englishman's golden coins. You can almost imagine on such occasions that you are living away back in the Middle Ages--except that now the Venetians drink a good deal, as they certainly never did then, and sing in thick, guttural voices, somewhat hoarse, but on the whole beautiful, as the musical Venetian dialect must always be. The songs that they sing are all about lovely maidens and romantic excursions on the water. The singing is very fine from a distance, the melody of a human voice floating out on the calm and silence of the night. The gondoliers are proud of their talent, and value it highly. Nearly every gondolier belongs to a bank. He is a capable financier. In company with twenty-nine other men, he deposits 10 lire, and pledges to pay a weekly sum of 1 lira throughout the year. On his failing to pay up once a week, 10 per cent. on each lira is charged. Gondoliers are supposed to borrow a certain amount, for which 10 per cent. is charged, every year. The accounts of the bank are settled in September, and then a new venture is started.