From San Pietro one sees, on the opposite side the canal, a neighborhood much adorned with fishing-nets. They are spread or hung everywhere that they can be made to stay on, and at a distance the effect is curious and picturesque. Old sails, too, are being dried or mended, while new ones are cut, sewed, or painted. This last process is novel and interesting; and as Giacomo needed a new sail for the sandolo, we saw the operation. The colors used are principally red and orange, and more rarely a pale green and a heavy sort of blue. If by chance you see a distant sail with a spot of sky blue on it, you will find on nearer acquaintance that you were looking at the real sky through a rent in the sail. The colors are made by mixing a kind of earth with water and adding the coloring matter; and these colors are "set" by dipping the sail, when finished, in the sea, and drying it in the sun, repeating this several times. The colors are applied with a sponge instead of a brush; and when one sees in how rude a manner the painting is done, it seems a wonder that the results are so effective. The artist (?) simply walks around the edge of his design with his sponge full of color, and the broad, rough outline is made. A certain slap and dash puts in the details, and the background is laid on rapidly. Our new sail had a red heart pierced by an orange arrow, on a blue field, and the outer border was in stripes of dull red and orange. It sounds uncommonly ugly on paper, but Giacomo and Anita were very proud of it; and after it was soiled and faded it was not bad, although the plain colors, or stripes and geometrical designs, are preferable, we think,--but we are not Venetian gondoliers or fishermen. {218} CHAPTER XII. VENETIAN WOMEN: CATERINA CORNARO, ROSALBA CARRIERA. In the history of Venice women play a very unimportant part. They seem, so far as the public were concerned, to have been put away with their best clothes, only to be brought out on such occasions as were suitable for the display of fine attire and splendid jewels. If they had power, it was certainly behind the throne, and so far behind that by no chance was it ever apparent. The names of eight women who devotedly nursed the Genoese prisoners after the battle of Porto d' Anzo, have been preserved. There is a tradition about a very beautiful and learned Pisani. Now and then an abbess is mentioned, like that one of San Zaccaria, of the Morosini family, who presented the Beretta to the Republic. All we know of Caterina Cornaro seems to depend upon the fact that the Republic, by adopting her and making her Queen of Cyprus, was able to add that island to its dependencies. But for that fact we should probably not have heard of her; and, in short, of what Venetian woman do we know, of whom we may be proud, save Rosalba Carriera? and she was born after Venice was far on the way to its decline.