December, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
635 
The Doge’s palace and companile, Venice, Italy 
to Havana. My traveling companion 
and I were shown their place of deposit, 
during a visit to that city, in an old 
Spanish cathedral, where they re- 
mained until the close of the Spanish- 
American war, and in 1899 they made 
another voyage to Spain, and were once 
again re-interred at Seville, where it is 
to be hoped that his peregrinating and 
peripatetic osseous system, or what re- 
mains of it, may rest in peace until the 
sounding of the last trump. 
T HE next morning after leaving Ge- 
noa for Milan I was awakened at 
(six o’clock by a violent oscillating 
motion, fore and aft, of my bed, which 
subsided for a few minutes and then 
began more violently than before. 
About noon telegrams began to be re- 
ceived announcing that a very severe 
earthquake had occurred along the Ri- 
viera, demolishing many buildings and 
accompanied with a great loss of life. 
We were fortunate in making our 
escape the day before, inasmuch as our 
hotel was greatly damaged with the loss 
of several lives. 
Milan, the Paris of Italy, is finely 
situated on the fertile plains of Lom- 
bardy. It is a handsome city of quite 
modern appearance. It has numerous 
elegant public buildings, including sev- 
eral libraries, a museum and an observ- 
atory. Della Scala theater is the finest 
and one of the largest opera houses in 
the world. It has isix tiers of boxes and 
seats nearly four thousand persons. 
Some of the old gates of the city are 
still in a good state of preservation and 
are quite imposing. There is a very 
fine and spacious public park of pleas- 
ing appearance; also a really artistic 
memorial arch, crowned with a fine 
sculpture of a chariot with six gallop- 
ing horses. Among other places of in- 
terest is a stone, outdoor, amphitheater, 
capable of seating thirty thousand per- 
sons, which, if it had more space in the 
arena, would make an excellent baseball 
park, when the Milanese are sufficiently 
educated. There are several commem- 
orative monuments of great artistic 
beauty. 
Milan is well provided with many 
churches and cathedrals, old and mod- 
ern, some of great antiquity, which con- 
tain many works of art and paintings 
by such old masters as Titian, Rubens, 
Paul Veronese and others. Painted on 
the wall of the refectory of one of the 
old cathedrals is the most celebrated 
picture in the world, “The Last Sup- 
per,” by Leonardo de Vinci; it is fif- 
teen by thirty feet, and is one of the 
many wonderful attractions of Milan. 
That sublime creation of art, the 
Milan Cathedral, with its forest of pin- 
nacles, is built entirely of white mar- 
ble, and is the finest specimen of Gothic 
architecture in Italy. It will not fail to 
astonish the beholder with iL extreme 
beauty and magnificence. It is wonder- 
ful in size and. grandeur. Along its 
facade are thousands of statutes, with 
many others, and some excellent paint- 
ings in the interior. The altar is a 
wonderful example of ancient art, its 
front being inlaid with gold, silver and 
precious stores. The pulpit is unique 
in design, being built on several arches, 
with the canopy of the rostrum or tri- 
bune ceiled in a decorative pattern of 
mosaic and gold. Its floor is occupied 
by the chair of St. Ambrose, who was 
Bishop of Milan in the fourth century. 
St. Ambrose is said to have been a most 
lovable man, and one universally ad- 
mired and respected. He was a great 
lover of fishes, and is said to have 
preached to them. He was especially 
fond of the grayling which he called 
“The Flower of Fishes,” owing to its 
beautiful appearance, with its body re- 
sembling mother of pearl, and its fins 
ornate with the delicate tints of the 
rose, columbine and hyacinth. 
T HE Milanese are among the finest 
and most intelligent people of 
Europe. They are well advanced 
in the arts and sciences and the manu- 
facture of silks, velvets and. cotton and 
woolen textiles. They seem more like 
Americans, I think, than any other na- 
tion, being of all shades of hair and 
complexion, and in dress and manner 
are much similar. On the promenades 
and in the galleries, from their general 
appearance, one might well imagine 
oneself in an American city. 
During our sojourn in Milan there 
occured the first presentation of Verdi’s 
new opera “Othello.” Music lovers 
were present from all over Europe. We 
paid twenty-five dollars for a seat in 
the immense Della Scala opera house, 
as it was to be a great ovation to the 
talented composer. The audience was 
composed of the royalty, nobility and 
the most intelligent people of Europe. 
All were properly and correctly dressed 
and without any ostentatious display of 
wealth or extreme fashion, such as one 
Usually sees on such occasions in Eng- 
land, or in the United States. 
We were rather disappointed in the 
performance, inasmuch as the orches- 
tration was decidedly Wagnerian, and 
its brazen blare was somewhat rasping, 
and occasionally drowned the voice of 
the singer. The part of Othello was 
represented by a tall, spare, tremulo 
tenor with a thin, high-pitched voice, 
which seemed to us as rather incongru- 
ous in a Moorish warrior. The part 
might better have been written for a 
barytone voice with a fairly high reg- 
ister. But I presume that the parts of 
lover and tenor are inseparable. 
I N crossing the plains of Lombardy in 
our jorney from Milan to Venice we 
noticed many mulberry trees, the 
leaves of which are necessary in the 
culture of the silkworm, an industry 
that is quite an important one in Lom- 
bardy, and a great quantity of silk- 
worm gut for the use of the angler is 
annually exported, in addition to the 
silk spun for weaving fabrics of various 
kinds. At the railway station in Venice 
we and our luggage were transported 
in a gondola to the entrance of our hotel. 
The “Queen of the Adriatic” is, of 
course, unrivaled for beauty and its 
unique situation. Being built on sev- 
enty islands it is both novel and at- 
tractive. The Grand Canal winds 
through the city intersected by some 
hundred and fifty smaller canals, which 
are crossed by three hundred bridges. 
The bridges are both narrow and steep, 
being intended only for pedestrians, 
and being quite high in the center to 
allow the passage of the gondolas, the 
ascent and descent across them is by 
steps and short platforms. Beside the 
canals there are numerous streets, or 
rather alleys, being but four or five 
feet wide, which furnish the approach 
to the back entrances of residences and 
other buildings, the front entrances be- 
ing on the canals. All traffic is carried 
on by gondolas, inasmuch as the only 
horses in Venice are the four bronze 
ones on the pediment of St. Mark’s. 
(continued on page 664) 
