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                             Innocents Abroad

                           Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

          Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

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About the electronic version

Innocents Abroad
Twain, Mark, 1835-1910

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1996
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About the print version

Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain

     Prepared for the University of Virginia Library Electronic Text
Center.

     Spell-check and verification made against printed text.

English fiction; prose Young Readers LCSH
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                                  Preface

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -v-

      THIS book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a
solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that
profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to
works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet notwithstanding it is
only a record of a pic-nic, it has a purpose, which is to suggest to the
reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at
them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those
countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought
to look at objects of interest beyond the sea -- other books do that, and
therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need.

      I offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of
travel-writing that may be charged against me -- for I think I have seen
with impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least honestly,
whether wisely or not.

      In this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for the
Daily Alta California, of San Francisco, the proprietors of that journal
having waived their rights and given me the necessary permission. I have
also inserted portions of several letters written for the New York Tribune
and the New York Herald.

      THE AUTHOR.
SAN FRANCISCO.

                   --------------------------------------
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                                 Chapter 1

                                 CHAPTER I.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -19-

     FOR months the great pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land
was chatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America and discussed at
countless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of excursions -- its like
had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which
attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic
scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam
ferry-boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up
some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out
with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression that it
was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying and
cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond the broad ocean in many a
strange clime and in many a land renowned in history! They were to sail for
months over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean; they were to
scamper about the decks by day, filling the ship with shouts and laughter
-- or read novels and poetry in the shade of the smokestacks, or watch for
the jelly-fish and the nautilus over the side, and the shark, the whale,
and other strange monsters of the deep; and at night they were to dance in
the open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a ballroom that stretched
from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bending heavens and lighted
by no meaner lamps than the stars and the magnificent moon-dance, and
promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make love, and search the skies for
constellations that never associate with the "Big Dipper" they

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -20-

were so tired of; and they were to see the ships of twenty navies -- the
customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples -- the great cities of half
a world -- they were to hob-nob with nobility and hold friendly converse
with kings and princes, grand moguls, and the anointed lords of mighty
empires! It was a brave conception; it was the offspring of a most
ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed it: the bold
originality, the extraordinary character, the seductive nature, and the
vastness of the enterprise provoked comment everywhere and advertised it in
every household in the land. Who could read the program of the excursion
without longing to make one of the party? I will insert it here. It is
almost as good as a map. As a text for this book, nothing could be better:

          EXCURSION TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT, THE CRIMEA, GREECE, AND
     INTERMEDIATE POINTS OF INTEREST.
     BROOKLYN, February 1st, 1867

          The undersigned will make an excursion as above during the
     coming season, and begs to submit to you the following programme:

           A first-class steamer, to be under his own command, and
     capable of accommodating at least one hundred and fifty cabin
     passengers, will be selected, in which will be taken a select
     company, numbering not more than three-fourths of the ship's
     capacity. There is good reason to believe that this company can
     be easily made up in this immediate vicinity, of mutual friends
     and acquaintances.

           The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort,
     including library and musical instruments.

           An experienced physician will be on board.

           Leaving New York about June 1st, a middle and pleasant
     route will be taken across the Atlantic, and passing through the
     group of Azores, St. Michael will be reached in about ten days. A
     day or two will be spent here, enjoying the fruit and wild
     scenery of these islands, and the voyage continued, and Gibraltar
     reached in three or four days.

           A day or two will be spent here in looking over the
     wonderful subterraneous fortifications, permission to visit these
     galleries being readily obtained.

           From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and
     France, Marseilles will be reached in three days. Here ample time
     will be given not only to look over the city, which was founded
     six hundred years before the Christian era, and its artificial
     port, the finest of the kind in the Mediterranean, but to visit
     Paris during the Great Exhibition; and the beautiful city of
     Lyons, lying intermediate, from the heights of

             -------------------------------------------------
                                    -21-

     which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc and the Alps can be distinctly
     seen. Passengers who may wish to extend the time at Paris can do
     so, and, passing down through Switzerland, rejoin the steamer at
     Genoa.

           From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The
     excursionists will have an opportunity to look over this, the
     "magnificent city of palaces," and visit the birthplace of
     Columbus, twelve miles off, over a beautiful road built by
     Napoleon I. From this point, excursions may be made to Milan,
     Lakes Como and Maggiore, or to Milan, Verona (famous for its
     extraordinary fortifications), Padua, and Venice. Or, if
     passengers desire to visit Parma (famous for Correggio's
     frescoes) and Bologna, they can by rail go on to Florence, and
     rejoin the steamer at Leghorn, thus spending about three weeks
     amid the cities most famous for art in Italy.

           From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the coast
     in one night, and time appropriated to this point in which to
     visit Florence, its palaces and galleries; Pisa, its cathedral
     and "Leaning Tower," and Lucca and its baths, and Roman
     amphitheater; Florence, the most remote, being distant by rail
     about sixty miles.

           From Leghorn to Naples (calling at Civita Vecchia to land
     any who may prefer to go to Rome from that point), the distance
     will be made in about thirty-six hours; the route will lay along
     the coast of Italy, close by Caprera, Elba, and Corsica.
     Arrangements have been made to take on board at Leghorn a pilot
     for Caprera, and, if practicable, a call will be made there to
     visit the home of Garibaldi.

           Rome [by rail], Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Vergil's
     tomb, and possibly the ruins of Paestum can be visited, as well
     as the beautiful surroundings of Naples and its charming bay.

           The next point of interest will be Palermo, the most
     beautiful city of Sicily, which will be reached in one night from
     Naples. A day will be spent here, and leaving in the evening, the
     course will be taken towards Athens.

           Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through
     the group of Aeolian Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania,
     both active volcanoes, through the Straits of Messina, with
     "Scylla" on the one hand and "Charybdis" on the other, along the
     east coast of Sicily, and in sight of Mount Etna, along the south
     coast of Italy, the west and south coast of Greece, in sight of
     ancient Crete, up Athens Gulf, and into the Piraeus, Athens will
     be reached in two and a half or three days. After tarrying here
     awhile, the Bay of Salamis will be crossed, and a day given to
     Corinth, whence the voyage will be continued to Constantinople,
     passing on the way through the Grecian Archipelago, the
     Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the mouth of the Golden
     Horn, and arriving in about forty-eight hours from Athens.

           After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out
     through the beautiful Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to
     Sebastopol and Balaklava, a run of about twenty-four hours. Here
     it is proposed to remain two days, visiting the harbors,
     fortifications, and battlefields of the Crimea; thence back
     through the Bosphorus, touching at Constantinople to take in any
     who may have preferred to remain there; down through the Sea of
     Marmora and the Dardanelles, along the coasts of ancient Troy and
     Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which will be reached in two or two and
     a half days from Constantinople. A sufficient stay will be made
     here to give opportunity of visiting Ephesus, fifty miles distant
     by rail.

           From Smyrna towards the Holy Land the course will lay
     through the Grecian

             -------------------------------------------------
                                    -22-

     Archipelago, close by the Isle of Patmos, along the coast of
     Asia, ancient Pamphylia, and the Isle of Cyprus. Beirut will be
     reached in three days. At Beirut time will be given to visit
     Damascus; after which the steamer will proceed to Joppa.

           From Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of
     Tiberias, Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem, and other points of
     interest in the Holy Land can be visited, and here those who may
     have preferred to make the journey from Beirut through the
     country, passing through Damascus, Galilee, Capernaum, Samaria,
     and by the River Jordan and Sea of Tiberias, can rejoin the
     steamer.

           Leaving Joppa, the next point of interest to visit will be
     Alexandria, which will be reached in twenty-four hours. The ruins
     of Caesar's Palace, Pompey's Pillar, Cleopatra's Needle, the
     Catacombs, and ruins of ancient Alexandria will be found worth
     the visit. The journey to Cairo, one hundred and thirty miles by
     rail, can be made in a few hours, and from which can be visited
     the site of ancient Memphis, Joseph's Granaries, and the
     Pyramids.

           From Alexandria the route will be taken homeward, calling
     at Malta, Cagliari (in Sardinia), and Palma (in Majorca), all
     magnificent harbors, with charming scenery, and abounding in
     fruits.

           A day or two will be spent at each place, and leaving Parma
     in the evening, Valencia in Spain will be reached the next
     morning. A few days will be spent in this, the finest city of
     Spain.

           From Valencia, the homeward course will be continued,
     skirting along the coast of Spain. Alicant, Carthagena, Palos,
     and Malaga will be passed but a mile or two distant, and
     Gibraltar reached in about twenty-four hours.

           A stay of one day will be made here, and the voyage
     continued to Madeira, which will be reached in about three days.
     Captain Marryatt writes: "I do not know a spot on the globe which
     so much astonishes and delights upon first arrival as Madeira." A
     stay of one or two days will be made here, which, if time
     permits, may be extended, and passing on through the islands, and
     probably in sight of the Peak of Teneriffe, a southern track will
     be taken, and the Atlantic crossed within the latitudes of the
     northeast trade winds, where mild and pleasant weather, and a
     smooth sea, can always be expected.

           A call will be made at Bermuda, which lies directly in this
     route homeward, and will be reached in about ten days from
     Madeira, and after spending a short time with our friends the
     Bermudians, the final departure will be made for home, which will
     be reached in about three days.

           Already, applications have been received from parties in
     Europe wishing to join the Excursion there.

           The ship will at all times be a home, where the
     excursionists, if sick, will be surrounded by kind friends, and
     have all possible comfort and sympathy.

           Should contagious sickness exist in any of the ports named
     in the program, such ports will be passed, and others of interest
     substituted.

           The price of passage is fixed at $1,250, currency, for each
     adult passenger. Choice of rooms and of seats at the tables
     apportioned in the order in which passages are engaged; and no
     passage considered engaged until ten percent of the passage money
     is deposited with the treasurer.



             -------------------------------------------------
                                    -23-

     Passengers can remain on board of the steamer, at all ports, if
     they desire, without additional expense, and all boating at the
     expense of the ship.

           All passages must be paid for when taken, in order that the
     most perfect arrangements be made for starting at the appointed
     time.

           Applications for passage must be approved by the committee
     before tickets are issued, and can be made to the undersigned.

           Articles of interest or curiosity, procured by the
     passengers during the voyage, may be brought home in the steamer
     free of charge.

           Five dollars per day, in gold, it is believed, will be a
     fair calculation to make for all traveling expenses onshore and
     at the various points where passengers may wish to leave the
     steamer for days at a time.

           The trip can be extended, and the route changed, by
     unanimous vote of the passengers.


                                  [Image]

          CHAS. C. DUNCAN,
     117 WALL STREET, NEW YORK
     R. R. G******, Treasurer

          Committee on Applications
     J. T. H*****, ESQ. R. R. G*****, ESQ. C. C. Duncan

          Committee on Selecting Steamer
     CAPT. W. W. S* * * *, Surveyor for Board of Underwriters

           C. W. C******, Consulting Engineer for U.S. and Canada
     J. T. H*****, Esq.
     C. C. DUNCAN

           P.S. -- The very beautiful and substantial side-wheel
     steamship "Quaker City" has been chartered for the occasion, and
     will leave New York June 8th. Letters have been issued by the
     government commending the party to courtesies abroad.

     What was there lacking about that program to make it perfectly
irresistible? Nothing that any finite mind could discover. Paris, England,
Scotland, Switzerland, Italy -- Garibaldi! The Grecian Archipelago!
Vesuvius! Constantinople! Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt and "our friends the
Bermudians"! People in Europe desiring to join the excursion -- contagious
sickness to be avoided -- boating at the expense of the ship -- physician
on board -- the circuit of the globe to be made if the passengers
unanimously desired it -- the company to be rigidly selected by a pitiless
"Committee on Applications" -- the vessel to be as rigidly selected by as
pitiless a "Committee on Selecting Steamer." Human

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -24-

nature could not withstand these bewildering temptations. I hurried to the
treasurer's office and deposited my ten percent. I rejoiced to know that a
few vacant staterooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal
examination into my character by that bowelless committee, but I referred
to all the people of high standing I could think of in the community who
would be least likely to know anything about me.

      Shortly a supplementary program was issued which set forth that the
Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. I then paid
the balance of my passage money.

      I was provided with a receipt and duly and officially accepted as an
excursionist. There was happiness in that but it was tame compared to the
novelty of being "select."

      This supplementary program also instructed the excursionists to
provide themselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the
ship, with saddles for Syrian travel, green spectacles and umbrellas, veils
for Egypt, and substantial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing in the
Holy Land. Furthermore, it was suggested that although the ship's library
would afford a fair amount of reading matter, it would still be well if
each passenger would provide himself with a few guidebooks, a Bible, and
some standard works of travel. A list was appended, which consisted chiefly
of books relating to the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part of the
excursion and seemed to be its main feature.

      Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition,
but urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other
passengers who could have been spared better and would have been spared
more willingly. Lieutenant General Sherman was to have been of the party
also, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular
actress had entered her name on the ship's books, but something interfered
and she couldn't go. The "Drummer Boy of the Potomac" deserted, and lo, we
had never a celebrity left!

      However, we were to have a "battery of guns" from the Navy Department
(as per advertisement) to be used in

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -25-

answering royal salutes; and the document furnished by the Secretary of the
Navy, which was to make "General Sherman and party" welcome guests in the
courts and camps of the old world, was still left to us, though both
document and battery, I think, were shorn of somewhat of their original
august proportions. However, had not we the seductive program still, with
its Paris, its Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and "our friends
the Bermudians?" What did we care?

                                 Chapter 2

                                CHAPTER II.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -26-

     OCCASIONALLY, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall
Street to inquire how the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was
coming on, how additions to the passenger list were averaging, how many
people the committee were decreeing not "select" every day and banishing in
sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we were to have a little
printing press on board and issue a daily newspaper of our own. I was glad
to learn that our piano, our parlor organ, and our melodeon were to be the
best instruments of the kind that could be had in the market. I was proud
to observe that among our excursionists were three ministers of the gospel,
eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military and naval
chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop of "Professors" of various
kinds, and a gentleman who had "COMMISSIONER OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA" thundering after his name in one awful
blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a back seat in that
ship because of the uncommonly select material that would alone be
permitted to pass through the camel's eye of that committee on credentials;
I had schooled myself to expect an imposing array of military and naval
heroes and to have to set that back seat still further back in consequence
of it maybe; but I state frankly that I was all unprepared for this
crusher.

      I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said
that if that potentate must go over in our ship, why, I supposed he must --
but that to my thinking, when the United

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                                    -27-

States considered it necessary to send a dignitary of that tonnage across
the ocean, it would be in better taste, and safer, to take him apart and
cart him over in sections in several ships.

      Ah, if I had only known then that he was only a common mortal, and
that his mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the collecting
of seeds and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar
bullfrogs for that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil the
Smithsonian Institute, I would have felt so much relieved.

      During that memorable month I basked in the happiness of being for
once in my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement.
Everybody was going to Europe -- I, too, was going to Europe. Everybody was
going to the famous Paris Exposition -- I, too, was going to the Paris
Exposition. The steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the various
ports of the country at the rate of four or five thousand a week in the
aggregate. If I met a dozen individuals during that month who were not
going to Europe shortly, I have no distinct remembrance of it now. I walked
about the city a good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, who was booked for the
excursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophisticated, companionable;
but he was not a man to set the river on fire. He had the most
extraordinary notions about this European exodus and came at last to
consider the whole nation as packing up for emigration to France. We
stepped into a store on Broadway one day, where he bought a handkerchief,
and when the man could not make change, Mr. B. said:

      "Never mind, I'll hand it to you in Paris."

      "But I am not going to Paris."

      "How is -- what did I understand you to say?"

      "I said I am not going to Paris."

      "Not going to Paris! Not g -- well, then, where in the nation are you
going to?"

      "Nowhere at all."

      "Not anywhere whatsoever? -- not any place on earth but this?"



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -28-

"Not any place at all but just this -- stay here all summer."

      My comrade took his purchase and walked out of the store without a
word -- walked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Up the street
apiece he broke silence and said impressively: "It was a lie -- that is my
opinion of it!"

      In the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her passengers.
I was introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my roommate, and
found him to be intelligent, cheerful of spirit, unselfish, full of
generous impulses, patient, considerate, and wonderfully good-natured. Not
any passenger that sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his endorsement
of what I have just said. We selected a stateroom forward of

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                                    -29-

the wheel, on the starboard side, "below decks." It bad two berths in it, a
dismal dead-light, a sink with a washbowl in it, and a long, sumptuously
cushioned locker, which was to do service as a sofa -- partly -- and partly
as a hiding place for our things. Notwithstanding all this furniture, there
was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with
entire security to the cat. However, the room was large, for a ship's
stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory.

      The vessel was appointed to sail on a certain Saturday early in June.

      A little after noon on that distinguished Saturday I reached the ship
and went on board. All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen that remark
before somewhere.] The pier was crowded with carriages and men; passengers
were arriving and hurrying on board; the vessel's decks were encumbered
with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists, arrayed in unattractive
traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain and looking as
droopy and woebegone as so many molting chickens. The gallant flag was up,
but it was under the spell, too, and hung limp and disheartened by the
mast. Altogether, it was the bluest, bluest spectacle! It was a pleasure
excursion -- there was no gainsaying that, because the program said so --
it was so nominated in the bond -- but it surely hadn't the general aspect
of one.

      Finally, above the banging, and rumbling, and shouting, and hissing
of steam rang the order to "cast off!" -- a sudden rush to the gangways --
a scampering ashore of visitors-a revolution of the wheels, and we were off
-- the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the dripping
crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the slippery decks; the
flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the "battery of guns" spake not --
the ammunition was out.

      We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor. It was
still raining. And not only raining, but storming. "Outside" we could see,
ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must lie still, in the
calm harbor, till the storm should abate. Our passengers hailed from
fifteen

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -30-

states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before; manifestly it would
not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until they had got their
sea-legs on. Toward evening the two steam tugs that had accompanied us with
a rollicking champagne-party of young New Yorkers on board who wished to
bid farewell to one of our number in due and ancient form departed, and we
were alone on the deep. On deep five fathoms, and anchored fast to the
bottom. And out in the solemn rain, at that. This was pleasuring with a
vengeance.

      It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for prayer
meeting. The first Saturday night of any other pleasure excursion might
have been devoted to whist and dancing; but I submit it to the unprejudiced
mind if it would have been in good taste for us to engage in such
frivolities, considering what we had gone through and the frame of mind

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -31-

we were in. We would have shone at a wake, but not at anything more
festive.

      However, there is always a cheering influence about the sea; and in
my berth that night, rocked by the measured swell of the waves and lulled
by the murmur of the distant surf, I soon passed tranquilly out of all
consciousness of the dreary experiences of the day and damaging
premonitions of the future.

                                 Chapter 3

                                CHAPTER III.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -32-

      ALL day Sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a great deal, but
the sea had not. It was still piling its frothy hills high in air
"outside," as we could plainly see with the glasses. We could not properly
begin a pleasure excursion on Sunday; we could not offer untried stomachs
to so pitiless a sea as that. We must lie still till Monday. And we did.
But we had repetitions of church and prayer-meetings; and so, of course, we
were just as eligibly situated as we could have been any where.

      I was up early that Sabbath morning and was early to breakfast. I
felt a perfectly natural desire to have a good, long, unprejudiced look at
the passengers at a time when they should be free from self-consciousness
-- which is at breakfast, when such a moment occurs in the lives of human
beings at all.

      I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people -- I might
almost say, so many venerable people. A glance at the long lines of heads
was apt to make one think it was all gray. But it was not. There was a
tolerably fair sprinkling of young folks, and another fair sprinkling of
gentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither
actually old or absolutely young.

      The next morning we weighed anchor and went to sea. It was a great
happiness to get away after this dragging, dispiriting delay. I thought
there never was such gladness in the air before, such brightness in the
sun, such beauty in the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -33-

sea. I was satisfied with the picnic then and with all its belongings. All
my malicious instincts were dead within me; and as America faded out of
sight, I think a spirit of charity rose up in their place that was as
boundless, for the time being, as the broad ocean that was heaving its
billows about us. I wished to express my feelings -- I wished to lift up my
voice and sing; but I did not know anything to sing, and so I was obliged
to give up the idea. It was no loss to the ship, though, perhaps.

      It was breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One
could not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit
was taking a deadly aim at the sun in midheaven, and at the next it was
trying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird
sensation it is to feel the stem of a ship sinking swiftly from under you
and see the bow climbing high away among the clouds! One's safest course
that day was to clasp a railing and hang on; walking was too precarious a
pastime.

      By some happy fortune I was not seasick. -- That was a thing to be
proud of. I had not always escaped before. If there is one thing in the
world that will make a man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited, it
is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day it sea, when nearly all
his comrades are seasick. Soon a venerable fossil, shawled to the chin and
bandaged like a mummy, appeared at the door of the after deck-house, and
the next lurch of the ship shot him into my arms. I said:

      "Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day."

      He put his hand on his stomach and said, "Oh, my!" and then staggered
away and fell over the coop of a skylight.

      Presently another old gentleman was projected from the same door with
great violence. I said:

      "Calm yourself, Sir -- There is no hurry. It is a fine day, Sir."

      He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said "Oh, my!" and reeled
away.



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -34-

In a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly from the same
door, clawing at the air for a saving support. I said:

      "Good morning, Sir. It is a fine day for pleasuring. You were about
to say -- "

      "Oh, my!"

      I thought so. I anticipated him, anyhow. I stayed there and was
bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour, perhaps; and all I got out of any
of them was "Oh, my!"

      I went away then in a thoughtful mood. I said, this is a good
pleasure excursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but still
they are sociable. I like those old people,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -35-

but somehow they all seem to have the "Oh, my" rather bad.

      I knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was
glad of it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves.
Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant;
walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the breezy
foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but these are
all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing people suffering
the miseries of seasickness.

      I picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon. At one
time I was climbing up the quarterdeck when the vessel's stem was in the
sky; I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable. Somebody
ejaculated:

      "Come, now, that won't answer. Read the sign up there -- NO SMOKING
ABAFT THE WHEEL!"

      It was Captain Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went forward, of
course. I saw a long spyglass lying on a desk in one of the upper-deck
state-rooms back of the pilot-house and reached after it -- there was a
ship in the distance.

      "Ah, ah -- hands off! Come out of that!"

      I came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep -- but in a low voice:

      "Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant
voice?"

      "It's Captain Bursley -- executive officer -- sailing master."

      I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to
do, fell to carving a railing with my knife. Somebody said, in an
insinuating, admonitory voice:

      "Now, say -- my friend -- don't you know any better than to be
whittling the ship all to pieces that way? You ought to know better than
that."

      I went back and found the deck sweep.

      "Who is that smooth-faced, animated outrage yonder in the fine
clothes?"

      "That's Captain L****, the owner of the ship -- he's one of the main
bosses."



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -36-

In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the pilot-house
and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they "take the sun"
through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel through it. I
had hardly got it to my eye when someone touched me on the shoulder and
said deprecatingly:

      "I'll have to get you to give that to me, Sir. If there's anything
you'd like to know about taking the sun, I'd as soon tell you as not -- but
I don't like to trust anybody with that instrument. If you want any
figuring done -- Aye, aye, sir!"

      He was gone to answer a call from the other side. I sought the
deck-sweep.

      "Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sanctimonious
countenance?"

      "It's Captain Jones, sir -- the chief mate."



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -37-

"Well. This goes clear away ahead of anything I ever heard of before. Do
you -- now I ask you as a man and a brother -- do you think I could venture
to throw a rock here in any given direction without hitting a captain of
this ship?"

      "Well, sir, I don't know -- I think likely you'd fetch the captain of
the watch may be, because he's a-standing right yonder in the way."

      I went below -- meditating and a little downhearted. I thought, if
five cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a pleasure
excursion.

                                 Chapter 4

                                CHAPTER IV.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -38-

      WE plowed along bravely for a week or more, and without any conflict
of jurisdiction among the captains worth mentioning. The passengers soon
learned to accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, and life in
the ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the routine of a
barrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it was not entirely so by any
means -- but there was a good deal of sameness about it. As is always the
fashion at sea, the passengers shortly began to pick up sailor terms -- a
sign that they were beginning to feel at home. Half-past six was no longer
half-past six to these pilgrims from New England, the South, and the
Mississippi Valley, it was "seven bells"; eight, twelve, and four o'clock
were "eight bells"; the captain did not take the longitude at nine o'clock,
but at "two bells." They spoke glibly of the "after cabin," the "for'rard
cabin," "port and starboard" and the "fo'castle."

      At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for
such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people
walked arm-in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine
summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves up
in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and
looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until luncheon, and from luncheon
until dinner at six in the evening, the employments and amusements were
various. Some reading was done, and much smoking and sewing, though not by
the same parties; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked after

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -39-

and wondered at; strange ships had to be scrutinized through opera-glasses,
and sage decisions arrived at concerning them; and more than that,
everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was run up and
politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of those strangers;
in the smoking room there were always parties of gentlemen playing euchre,
draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes, that delightfully harmless
game; and down on the main deck, "for'rard" -- for'rard of the
chicken-coops and the cattle -- we had what was called "horse billiards."
Horse billiards is a fine game. It affords good, active exercise, hilarity,
and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of "hop-scotch" and shuffleboard
played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch diagram is marked out on the deck
with chalk, and each compartment numbered. You stand off three or four
steps, with some broad wooden disks before you on the deck, and these you
send forward with a vigorous thrust of a long crutch. If a disk stops on a
chalk line, it does not count anything. If it stops in division No. 7, it
counts 7; in 5, it counts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play
at a time. That game would be very simple played on a stationary floor, but
with us, to play it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling
of the ship to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for
a heel to the right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was
that that disk missed the whole hopscotch plan a yard or two, and then
there was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.

      When it rained the passengers had to stay in the house, of course --
or at least the cabins -- and amuse themselves with games, reading, looking
out of the windows at the very familiar billows, and talking gossip.

      By 7 o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour's
promenade on the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a large
majority of the party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a handsome
saloon fifty or sixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this
saloon the "Synagogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the
Plymouth Collection and a short prayer, and seldom

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -40-

occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accompanied by
parlor-organ music when the sea was smooth enough to allow a performer to
sit at the instrument without being lashed to his chair.

      After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a writing
school. The like of that picture was never seen in a ship before. Behind
the long dining tables on either side of the saloon, and scattered from one
end to the other of the latter, some twenty or thirty gentlemen and ladies
sat them down under the swaying lamps and for two or three hours wrote
diligently in their journals. Alas! that journals so voluminously begun
should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as most of them did! I
doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host but can show a hundred
fair pages of journal concerning the first twenty days' voyaging in the
Quaker City, and I am morally certain that not ten of the party can show
twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty thousand miles of
voyaging! At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to
keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this
work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a
journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if he
only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures
that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty's sake, and
invincible determination may hope to venture upon so tremendous an
enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.

      One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head
full of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in
the way of length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress
every morning in the most glowing and spirited way, and say:

      "Oh, I'm coming along bully!" (he was a little given to slang in his
happier moods.) "I wrote ten pages in my journal last night -- and you know
I wrote nine the night before and twelve the night before that. Why, it's
only fun!"

      "What do you find to put in it, Jack?"



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -41-

"Oh, everything. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how many miles
we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games I beat and horse
billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the text of the sermon
Sundays (because that'll tell at home, you know); and the ships we saluted
and what nation they were; and which way the wind was, and whether there
was a heavy sea, and what sail we carried, though we don't ever carry any,
principally, going against a head wind always -- wonder what is the reason
of that? -- and how many lies Moult has told -- Oh, every thing! I've got
everything down. My father told me to keep that journal. Father wouldn't
take a thousand dollars for it when I get it done."

      "No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars -- when you
get it done."

      "Do you? -- no, but do you think it will, though?

      "Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars -- when
you get it done. May be more."

      "Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain't no slouch of a
journal."

      But it shortly became a most lamentable "slouch of a journal." One
night in Paris, after a hard day's toil in sightseeing, I said:

      "Now I'll go and stroll around the cafes awhile, Jack, and give you a
chance to write up your journal, old fellow."

      His countenance lost its fire. He said:

      "Well, no, you needn't mind. I think I won't run that journal
anymore. It is awful tedious. Do you know -- I reckon I'm as much as four
thousand pages behind hand. I haven't got any France in it at all. First I
thought I'd leave France out and start fresh. But that wouldn't do, would
it? The governor would say, 'Hello, here -- didn't see anything in France?
That cat wouldn't fight, you know. First I thought I'd copy France out of
the guide-book, like old Badger in the for'rard cabin, who's writing a
book, but there's more than three hundred pages of it. Oh, I don't think a
journal's any use -- -do you? They're only a bother, ain't they?"



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -42-

"Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a journal
properly kept is worth a thousand dollars -- when you've got it done."

      "A thousand! -- well, I should think so. I wouldn't finish it for a
million."

      His experience was only the experience of the majority of that
industrious night school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a heartless
and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal
a year.

      A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists
amused and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which met
in the writing school after prayers and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -43-

read aloud about the countries we were approaching and discussed the
information so obtained.

      Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his
transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic-lantern exhibition. His
views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two home
pictures among them. He advertised that he would "open his performance in
the after cabin at 'two bells' (nine P.M.) and show the passengers where
they shall eventually arrive" -- which was all very well, but by a funny
accident the first picture that flamed out upon the canvas was a view of
Greenwood Cemetery!

      On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the
awnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by hanging
a number of ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music consisted of the
well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little asthmatic and apt to
catch its breath where it ought to come out strong, a clarinet which was a
little unreliable on the high keys and rather melancholy on the low ones,
and a disreputable accordion that had a leak somewhere and breathed louder
than it squawked -- a more elegant term does not occur to me just now.
However, the dancing was infinitely worse than the music. When the ship
rolled to starboard the whole platoon of dancers came charging down to
starboard with it, and brought up in mass at the rail; and when it rolled
to port they went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of
sentiment. Waltzers spun around precariously for a matter of fifteen
seconds and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go
overboard. The Virginia reel, as performed on board the Quaker City, had
more genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw before, and was as full
of interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate chances and
hairbreadth escapes to the participant. We gave up dancing, finally.

      We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary with toasts, speeches, a
poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea that
hadn't a mock trial on board. The purser was accused of stealing an
overcoat from stateroom

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -44-

No. 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks, a crier of the court,
constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and for the defendant;
witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much challenging. The
witnesses were stupid and unreliable and contradictory, as witnesses always
are. The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and vindictively abusive of
each other, as was characteristic and proper. The case was at last
submitted and duly finished by the judge with an absurd decision and a
ridiculous sentence.

      The acting of charades was tried on several evenings by the young
gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished
success of all the amusement experiments.

      An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a
failure. There was no oratorical talent in the ship.

      We all enjoyed ourselves -- I think I can safely say that, but

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -45-

it was in a rather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we
played the flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what
there was of it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very
pretty tune -- how well I remember it -- I wonder when I shall ever get rid
of it. We never played either the melodeon or the organ except at devotions
-- but I am too fast: young Albert did know part of a tune something about
"O Something-Or-Other How Sweet It Is to Know That He's His
What's-his-Name" (I do not remember the exact title of it, but it was very
plaintive and full of sentiment); Albert played that pretty much all the
time until we contracted with him to restrain himself. But nobody ever sang
by moonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational singing at church
and prayers was not of a superior order of architecture. I put up with it
as long as I could and then joined in and tried to improve it, but this
encouraged young George to join in too, and that made a failure of it;
because George's voice was just "turning," and when he was singing a dismal
sort of bass it was apt to fly off the handle and startle everybody with a
most discordant cackle on the upper notes. George didn't know the tunes,
either, which was also a drawback to his performances. I said:

      "Come, now, George, don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It
will provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It is a
good tune -- you can't improve it any, just off-hand, in this way."

      "Why, I'm not trying to improve it -- and I am singing like the
others -- just as it is in the notes."

      And he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame
but himself when his voice caught on the center occasionally and gave him
the lockjaw.

      There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing
head-winds to our distressing choir-music. There were those who said openly
that it was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music going on, even
when it was at its best; and that to exaggerate the crime by letting George
help was simply flying in the face of Providence. These said that

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -46-

the choir would keep up their lacerating attempts at melody until they
would bring down a storm some day that would sink the ship.

      There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said
the pilgrims had no charity:

      "There they are, down there every night at. eight bells, praying for
fair winds -- when they know as well as I do that this is the only ship
going east this time of the year, but there's a thousand coming west --
what's a fair wind for us is a head wind to them -- the Almighty's blowing
a fair wind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it
clear around so as to accommodate one -- and she a steamship at that! It
ain't good sense, it ain't good reason, it ain't good Christianity, it
ain't common human charity. Avast with such nonsense!"

                                 Chapter 5

                                 CHAPTER V.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -47-

      TAKING it "by and large," as the sailors say, we had a pleasant ten
days' run from New York to the Azores islands -- not a fast run, for the
distance is only twenty-four hundred miles, but a right pleasant one in the
main. True, we had head winds all the time, and several stormy experiences
which sent fifty percent of the passengers to bed sick and made the ship
look dismal and deserted -- stormy experiences that all will remember who
weathered them on the tumbling deck and caught the vast sheets of spray
that every now and then sprang high in air from the weather bow and swept
the ship like a thunder-shower; but for the most part we had balmy summer
weather and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the
phenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at
the same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the part
of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when we
reflected that we were gaining about twenty minutes every day because we
were going east so fast -- we gained just about enough every day to keep
along with the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had left
behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place and remained
always the same.

      Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West and is on his first
voyage, was a good deal worried by the constantly changing "ship time." He
was proud of his new watch at first and used to drag it out promptly when
eight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he were
losing

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -48-

confidence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on deck and said
with great decision:

      "This thing's a swindle!"

      "What's a swindle?"

      "Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois -- gave $150 for her
-- and I thought she was good. And, by George, she is good onshore, but
somehow she don't keep up her lick here on the water -- gets seasick may
be. She skips; she runs along regular enough till half-past eleven, and
then, all of a sudden, she lets down. I've set that old regulator up faster
and faster, till I've shoved it clear around, but it don't do any good; she
just distances every watch in the ship, and clatters along in a way that's
astonishing till it is noon, but them eight bells always gets in about ten
minutes ahead of her anyway. I don't know what to do with her now. She's
doing all she can -- she's going her best gait, but it won't save her. Now,
don't you know, there ain't a watch in the ship that's making better time
than she is, but what does it signify? When you hear them eight bells
you'll find her just about ten minutes short of her score sure."

      The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow
was trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he
had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the
watch was "on its best gait," and so nothing was left him but to fold his
hands and see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the captain, and he
explained to him the mystery of "ship time" and set his troubled mind at
rest. This young man asked a great many questions about seasickness before
we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were and how he was to
tell when he had it. He found out.

      We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, &c., of course, and by
and by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular
list of sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant
carmine color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly that
spreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot or
two

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -49-

long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an accomplished
sailor and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when a storm
threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely and goes
down when a gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in good
sailing order by turning over and dipping it in the water for a moment.
Seamen say the nautilus is only found in these waters between the 35th and
45th parallels of latitude.

      At three o'clock on the morning of the twenty-first of June, we were
awakened and notified that the Azores islands were in sight. I said I did
not take any interest in islands at three o'clock in the morning. But
another persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally
believing that the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in
peace, I got up and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half o'clock
now, and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were huddled about the
smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all were wrapped in
wintry costumes and looking sleepy and unhappy in the pitiless gale and the
drenching spray.



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -50-

The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud standing
up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon it the sun
came out and made it a beautiful picture -- a mass of green farms and
meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred feet and mingled its
upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with sharp, steep ridges and
cloven with narrow canyons, and here and there on the heights, rocky
upheavals shaped themselves into mimic battlements and castles; and out of
rifted clouds came broad shafts of sunlight, that painted summit, and slope
and glen, with bands of fire, and left belts of somber shade between. It
was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole exiled to a summer land!

      We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore,
and all the opera glasses in the ship were called into requisition to
settle disputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of
trees or groves of weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea
were really villages or only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries.
Finally we stood to sea and bore away for San Miguel, and Flores shortly
became a dome of mud again and sank down among the mists, and disappeared.
But to many a seasick passenger it was good to see the green hills again,
and all were more cheerful after this episode than anybody could have
expected them to be, considering how sinfully early they had gotten up.

      But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm came
up about noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel that common sense
dictated a run for shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest island of
the group -- Fayal (the people there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the
accent on the first syllable). We anchored in the open roadstead of Horta,
half a mile from the shore. The town has eight thousand to ten thousand
inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of fresh green
vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more attractive. It sits
in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are three hundred to seven
hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear to their summits -- not a
foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every acre is cut up into little
square

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -51-

inclosures by stone walls, whose duty it is to protect the growing products
from the destructive gales that blow there. These hundreds of green
squares, marked by their black lava walls, make the hills look like vast
checkerboards.

      The islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has
Portuguese characteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of
swarthy, noisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese
boatmen, with brass rings in their ears and fraud in their hearts, climbed
the ship's sides, and various parties of us contracted with them to take us
ashore at so much a head, silver coin of any country. We landed under the
walls of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve-and
thirty-two-pounders, which Horta considered a most formidable institution,
but if we were ever to get after it with one of our turreted monitors, they
would have to move it out in the country if they wanted it where they could
go and find it again when they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty
one -- men and women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed
and unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession beggars. They
trooped after us, and never more while we tarried in Fayal did we get rid
of them. We walked up the middle of the principal street, and these vermin
surrounded us on all sides and glared upon us; and every moment excited
couples shot ahead of the procession to get a good look back, just as
village boys do when they accompany the elephant on his advertising trip
from street to street. It was very flattering to me to be part of the
material for such a sensation. Here and there in the doorways we saw women
with fashionable Portuguese hoods on. This hood is of thick blue cloth,
attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness. It
stands up high and spreads far abroad, and is unfathomably deep. It fits
like a circus tent, and a woman's head is hidden away in it like the man's
who prompts the singers from his tin shed in the stage of an opera. There
is no particle of trimming about this monstrous capote, as they call it --
it is just a plain, ugly dead-blue mass of sail, and a woman can't go
within eight points of the wind with one of them on; she has

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -52-

to go before the wind or not at all. The general style of the capote is the
same in all the islands, and will remain so for the next ten thousand
years, but each island shapes its capotes just enough differently from the
others to enable an observer to tell at a glance what particular island a
lady hails from.

      The Portuguese pennies, or reis (pronounced rays), are prodigious. It
takes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial estimates are
made in reis. We did not know this until after we had found it out through
Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so grateful to be on solid land
once more that he wanted to give a feast -- said he had heard it was a
cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He invited nine of
us, and we ate an excellent dinner at the principal hotel. In the midst of
the jollity produced by good cigars, good wine, and passable anecdotes, the
landlord presented his bill. Blucher glanced at it and his countenance
fell. He took another look to assure himself that his senses had not
deceived him and then read the items aloud, in a faltering voice, while the
roses in his cheeks turned to ashes:

      "'Ten dinners, at 600 reis, 6,000 reis!' Ruin and desolation!

      " 'Twenty-five cigars, at 100 reis, 2,500 reis!' Oh, my sainted
mother!

      "'Eleven bottles of wine, at 1,200 reis, 13,200 reis!' Be with us
all!

      "'TOTAL, TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED REIS!' The suffering
Moses! There ain't money enough in the ship to pay that bill! Go -- leave
me to my misery, boys, I am a ruined community."

      I think it was the blankest-looking party I ever saw. Nobody could
say a word. It was as if every soul had been

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                                    -53-

stricken dumb. Wine glasses descended slowly to the table, their contents
untasted. Cigars dropped unnoticed from nerveless fingers. Each man sought
his neighbor's eye, but found in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At
last the fearful silence was broken. The shadow of a desperate resolve
settled upon Blucher's countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and said:

      "Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'll never, never stand
it. Here's a hundred and fifty dollars, Sir, and it's all you'll get --
I'll swim in blood before I'll pay a cent more."

      Our spirits rose and the landlord's fell -- at least we thought so;
he was confused, at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word
that had been said. He glanced from the

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                                    -54-

little pile of gold pieces to Blucher several times and then went out. He
must have visited an American, for when he returned, he brought back his
bill translated into a language that a Christian could understand -- thus:


                                  [Image]

*10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or . . . .$6.00
*25 cigars, 2,500 reis, or . . . .2.50
*11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or . . . .13.20
*Total 21,700 reis, or . . . .$21.70

Happiness reigned once more in Blucher's dinner party. More refreshments
were ordered.

                                 Chapter 6

                                CHAPTER VI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -55-

      I THINK the Azores must be very little known in America. Out of our
whole ship's company there was not a solitary individual who knew anything
whatever about them. Some of the party, well read concerning most other
lands, had no other information about the Azores than that they were a
group of nine or ten small islands far out in the Atlantic, something more
than halfway between New York and Gibraltar. That was all. These
considerations move me to put in a paragraph of dry facts just here.

      The community is eminently Portuguese -- that is to say, it is slow,
poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by
the King of Portugal, and also a military governor, who can assume supreme
control and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The islands
contain a population of about 200,000, almost entirely Portuguese.
Everything is staid and settled, for the country was one hundred years old
when Columbus discovered America. The principal crop is corn, and they
raise it and grind it just as their great-great-great-grandfathers did.
They plow with a board slightly shod with iron; their trifling little
harrows are drawn by men and women; small windmills grind the corn, ten
bushels a day, and there is one assistant superintendent to feed the mill
and a general superintendent to stand by and keep him from going to sleep.
When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys and actually turn the
whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are in proper position,
instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could be moved instead of
the

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                                    -56-

mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after the fashion prevalent in the
time of Methuselah. There is not a wheelbarrow in the land -- they carry
everything on their heads, or on donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose
wheels are solid blocks of wood and whose axles turn with the wheel. There
is not a modern plow in the islands or a threshing machine. All attempts to
introduce them have failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself
and prayed God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than
his father did before him. The climate is mild; they never have snow or
ice, and I saw no chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women, and
children of a family all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean,
are ravaged by vermin, and are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the
stranger, and are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for
their dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than the
donkeys they eat and sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese in the
camp are the half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the
soldiers of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to
twenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as much.
They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this makes them rich
and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the islands, and an excellent
wine was made and exported. But a disease killed all the vines fifteen
years ago, and since that time no wine has been made. The islands being
wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is necessarily very rich. Nearly every
foot of ground is under cultivation, and two or three crops a year of each
article are produced, but nothing is exported save a few oranges -- chiefly
to England. Nobody comes here, and nobody goes away. News is a thing
unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion equally unknown. A
Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our civil war was over.
Because, he said, somebody had told him it was -- or at least it ran in his
mind that somebody had told him something like that! And when a passenger
gave an officer of the garrison copies of the Tribune, the Herald, and
Times, he was

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -57-

surprised to find later news in them from Lisbon than he had just received
by the little monthly steamer. He was told that it came by cable. He said
he knew they had tried to lay a cable ten years ago, but it had been in his
mind somehow that they hadn't succeeded!

      It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We
visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old and found in it a
piece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was crucified. It was
polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of preservation as if the
dread tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of eighteen
centuries ago. But these confiding people believe in that piece of wood
unhesitatingly.

      In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid silver
-- at least they call it so, and I think myself it would go a couple of
hundred to the ton (to speak after the fashion of the silver miners) -- and
before it is kept forever burning a small lamp. A devout lady who died,
left money and contracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul,
and also stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always, day and
night. She did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very small
lamp and a very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I think, if
it went out altogether.

      The great altar of the cathedral and also three or four minor ones
are a perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm
of rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree work, some
on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and
some with two or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left to
blow -- all of them crippled and discouraged, and fitter subjects for the
hospital than the cathedral.

      The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with
figures of almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the
fanciful costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of
something or somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the
story. The old father,

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                                    -58-

reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told us if he could
have risen. But he didn't.

      As we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little
donkeys ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least.
They consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, and this
furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups, but really
such supports were not needed -- to use such a saddle was the next thing to
riding a dinner table -- there was ample support clear out to one's knee
joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese muleteers crowded around us, offering
their beasts at half a dollar an hour -- more rascality to the stranger,
for the market price is sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us mounted the
ungainly affairs and submitted to the indignity of making a ridiculous
spectacle of ourselves through the principal streets of a town of 10,000
inhabitants.

      We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a stampede,
and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were necessary.
There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers beside, and
they banged the donkeys with their goad sticks, and pricked them with their
spikes, and shouted something that sounded like "Sekki-yah!" and kept up a
din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam itself. These rascals were all
on foot, but no matter, they were always up to time -- they can outrun and
outlast a donkey. Altogether, ours was a lively and a picturesque
procession, and drew crowded audiences to the balconies wherever we went.

      Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered
zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher
against carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with high
stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and then
on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally came to the house
he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off at the
doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to the muleteer, "Now, that's
enough, you know; you go slow hereafter."

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -59-

But the fellow knew no English and did not understand, so he simply said,
"Sekki-yah!" and the donkey was off again like a shot. He turned a comer
suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every mule
stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a heap. No
harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more consequence
than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after the catastrophe
and waited for their dismembered saddles to be patched up and put on by the
noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry and wanted to swear, but every
time he opened his mouth his animal did so

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -60-

also and let off a series of brays that drowned all other sounds.

      It was fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the
beautiful canyons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a
fresh, new, exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred
worn and threadbare home pleasures.

      The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an island
with only a handful of people in it -- 25,000 -- and yet such fine roads do
not exist in the United States outside of Central Park. Everywhere you go,
in any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare, just
sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters neatly
paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like Broadway.
They talk much of the Russ pavement in New York, and call it a new
invention -- yet here they have been using it in this remote little isle of
the sea for two hundred years! Every street in Horta is handsomely paved
with the heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and true as a floor --
not marred by holes like Broadway. And every road is fenced in by tall,
solid lava walls, which will last a thousand years in this land where frost
is unknown. They are very thick, and are often plastered and whitewashed
and capped with projecting slabs of cut stone. Trees from gardens above
hang their swaying tendrils down, and contrast their bright green with the
whitewash or the black lava of the walls and make them beautiful. The trees
and vines stretch across these narrow roadways sometimes and so shut out
the sun that you seem to be riding through a tunnel. The pavements, the
roads, and the bridges are all government work.

      The bridges are of a single span -- a single arch -- of cut stone,
without a support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental
pebblework. Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them tasteful
and handsome -- and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those
marvelous pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever
roads and streets and the outsides of houses were perfectly

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                                    -61-

free from any sign or semblance of dirt, or dust, or mud, or uncleanliness
of any kind, it is Horta, it is Fayal. The lower classes of the people, in
their persons and their domiciles, are not clean -- but there it stops --
the town and the island are miracles of cleanliness.

      We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion, and the
irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through the main street,
goading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting "Sekki-yah," and singing
"John Brown's Body" in ruinous English.

      When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and
jawing and swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us was
nearly deafening. One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the use of
his donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up, another a
quarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen guides presented
bills for showing us the way through the town and its environs; and every
vagrant of them was more vociferous, and more vehement and more frantic in
gesture than his neighbor. We paid one guide and paid for one muleteer to
each donkey.

      The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed along
the shore of the island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up
with one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7,613 feet,
and thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island adrift in a
fog!

      We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc., in
these Azores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here to write Patent
Office reports.

      We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six
days out from the Azores.

                                 Chapter 7

                                CHAPTER VII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -62-

     A WEEK of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea; a week of
seasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely quarterdecks drenched with spray
-- spray so ambitious that it even coated the smokestacks thick with a
white crust of salt to their very tops; a week of shivering in the shelter
of the lifeboats and deckhouses by day and blowing suffocating "clouds" and
boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking room at night.

      And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was
no thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling
of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters. But
the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven -- then paused an
instant that seemed a century and plunged headlong down again, as from a
precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The blackness
of darkness was everywhere. At long intervals a flash of lightning clove it
with a quivering line of fire that revealed a heaving world of water where
was nothing before, kindled the dusky cordage to glittering silver, and lit
up the faces of the men with a ghastly luster!

      Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds
and the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night,
and it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest
and see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral
cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on
the ocean. And once out -- once where they could see the

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                                    -63-

ship struggling in the strong grasp of the storm -- once where they could
hear the shriek of the winds and face the driving spray and look out upon
the majestic picture the lightnings disclosed, they were prisoners to a
fierce fascination they could not resist, and so remained. It was a wild
night -- and a very, very long one.

      Everybody was sent scampering to the deck at seven o'clock this
lovely morning of the thirtieth of June with the glad news that land was in
sight! It was a rare thing and a joyful, to see all the ship's family
abroad once more, albeit the happiness that sat upon every countenance
could only partly conceal the ravages which that long siege of storms had
wrought there. But dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks
flushed again, and frames weakened by sickness gathered new life from the
quickening influences of the bright, fresh morning. Yea, and from a still
more potent influence: the worn castaways were to see the blessed land
again! -- and to see it was to bring back that motherland that was in all
their thoughts.

      Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar, the
tall yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their bases veiled
in a blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds -- the same being
according to Scripture, which says that "clouds and darkness are over the
land." The words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I
believe. On our left were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The strait
is only thirteen miles wide in its narrowest part.

      At short intervals along the Spanish shore were quaint-looking old
stone towers -- Moorish, we thought -- but learned better afterwards. In
former times the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish Main in
their boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart
in and capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they
could find. It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The Spaniards
built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a sharper
lookout on the Moroccan speculators.

      The picture on the other hand was very beautiful to eyes weary of the
changeless sea, and by and by the ship's company

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -64-

     grew wonderfully cheerful. But while we stood admiring the
cloud-capped peaks and the lowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture
burst upon us and chained every eye like a magnet -- a stately ship, with
canvas piled on canvas till she was one towering mass of bellying sail! She
came speeding over the sea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were
forgotten. All homage was for the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed
she swept superbly by and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze!
Quicker than thought, hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a
cheer went up! She was beautiful before -- she was radiant now. Many a one
on our decks knew then for the first time how tame a sight his country's
flag is at home compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to
see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would
stir a very river of sluggish blood!

      We were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and already the
African one, "Ape's Hill," a grand old mountain with summit streaked with
granite ledges, was in sight. The other, the great Rock of Gibraltar, was
yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of
navigation and the end of the world. The information the ancients didn't
have was very voluminous. Even the prophets wrote book after book and
epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted at the existence of a great
continent on our side of the water; yet they must have known it was there,
I should think.

      In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock,

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                                    -65-

standing seemingly in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed
on all sides by the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no
tedious traveled parrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could not be two
rocks like that in one kingdom.

      The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say,
by 1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base. One
side and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as the side
of a house, the other end is irregular and the other side is a steep slant
which an army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of this slant
is the walled town of Gibraltar -- or rather the town occupies part of the
slant. Everywhere -- on hillside, in the precipice, by the sea, on the
heights -- everywhere you choose to look, Gibraltar is clad with masonry
and bristling with guns. It makes a striking and lively picture from
whatsoever point you contemplate it. It is pushed out into the sea on the
end of a flat, narrow strip of land, and is suggestive of a "gob" of mud on
the end of a shingle. A few hundred yards of this flat ground at its base
belongs to the English, and then, extending across the strip from the
Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of a mile, comes the
"Neutral Ground," a space two or three hundred yards wide, which is free to
both parties.

      "Are you going through Spain to Paris?" That question was bandied
about the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never
could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again or more
tired of answering, "I don't know." At the last moment six or seven had
sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did go,
and I felt a sense of relief at once -- it was forever too late now and I
could make up my mind at my leisure not to go. I must have a prodigious
quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

      But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten
rid of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another -- a
tiresome repetition of a legend that

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                                    -66-

had nothing very astonishing about it, even in the first place: "That high
hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because one of the queens of
Spain placed her chair there when the French and Spanish troops were
besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot till the
English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English hadn't been
gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day, she'd have had to
break her oath or die up there."

      We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered
the subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These
galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in them
great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six
hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean
work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery
guns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but they might
as well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the
perpendicular wall of the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford superb
views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was hollowed
out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and whose windows
were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far away, and a soldier
said:

      "That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because a
queen of Spain placed her chair there once when the French and Spanish
troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the
spot till the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English
hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day, she'd
have had to break her oath or die up there."

      On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no
doubt the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was
good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it. The view from the
narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels seeming like the tiniest
little toy boats were turned into noble ships by the telescopes, and other
vessels that were fifty miles away and even sixty, they

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                                    -67-

said, and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distinguished
through those same telescopes. Below, on one side, we looked down upon an
endless mass of batteries and on the other straight down to the sea.

      While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my
baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to
another party came up and said:

      "Se±or, that high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair -- "

      "Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me.
Don't -- now don't inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me anymore
today!"

      There -- I had used strong language after promising I would never do
so again; but the provocation was more than human nature could bear. If you
had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa and
the blue Mediterranean

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -68-

spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze and enjoy and surfeit
yourself in its beauty in silence, you might have even burst into stronger
language than I did.

      Gibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them of nearly
four years' duration (it failed), and the English only captured it by
stratagem. The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying so
impossible a project as the taking it by assault -- and yet it has been
tried more than once.

      The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old
castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town,
with moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in
battles and sieges that are forgotten now. A secret chamber in the rock
behind it was discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of
exquisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that
antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman.
Roman armor and Roman relics of various kinds have been found in a cave in
the sea extremity of Gibraltar; history says Rome held this part of the
country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the
statement.

      In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick,
stony coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only
lived before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may
be true -- it looks reasonable enough -- but as long as those parties can't
vote anymore, the matter can be of no great public interest. In this cave
likewise are found skeletons and fossils of animals that exist in every
part of Africa, yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any
portion of Spain save this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that
the channel between Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the
low, neutral neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was
once ocean, and of course that these African animals, being over at
Gibraltar (after rock, perhaps -- there is plenty there), got closed out
when the great change occurred. The hills in

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -69-

Africa, across the channel, are full of apes, and there are now and always
have been apes on the rock of Gibraltar -- but not elsewhere in Spain! The
subject is an interesting one.

      There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and
so uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress
costumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed
Highlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and veiled
Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and turbaned,
sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and long-robed,
bare-legged, ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetußn and Tangier, some
brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink -- and Jews from all
around, in gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they are in pictures
and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years ago, no doubt. You
can easily understand that a tribe (somehow our pilgrims suggest that
expression, because they march in a straggling procession through these
foreign places with such an Indian-like air of complacency and independence
about them) like ours, made up from fifteen or sixteen states of the Union,
found enough to stare at in this shifting panorama of fashion today.

      Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people
among us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the Oracle
in that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who
eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have
any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of
a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of any
long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will serenely
venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up complacently
with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally when cornered
will slide to the other side of the question, say he has been there all the
time, and come back at you with your own spoken arguments, only with the
big words all tangled, and play them in your very teeth as original with
himself. He

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -70-

reads a chapter in the guidebooks, mixes the facts all up, with his bad
memory, and then goes off to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom
which has been festering in his brain for years and which he gathered in
college from erudite authors who are dead now and out of print. This
morning at breakfast he pointed out of the window and said:

      "Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast? It's one
of them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say -- and there's the ultimate one
alongside of it."

      "The ultimate one -- that is a good word -- but the pillars are not
both on the same side of the strait." (I saw he had been deceived by a
carelessly written sentence in the guidebook.)

      "Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it
that way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don't say nothing about
it -- just shirks it complete -- Gibbons always done that when he got stuck
-- but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, be says that they was
both on the same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and
Langomarganbl -- -- "

      "Oh, that will do -- that's enough. If you have got your hand in for
inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say -- let them be
on the same side."

      We don't mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the
Oracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising
idiot on board, and they do distress

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -71-

the company. The one gives copies of his verses to consuls, commanders,
hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch -- to anybody, in fact, who will submit to a
grievous infliction most kindly meant. His poetry is all very well on
shipboard, notwithstanding when he wrote an "Ode to the Ocean in a Storm"
in one half hour, and an "Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the
Ship" in the next, the transition was considered to be rather abrupt; but
when he sends an invoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal and another to
the commander in chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar with the
compliments of the Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the
passengers.

      The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not
bright, not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, someday if he
recollects the answers to all his questions. He is known about the ship as
the "Interrogation Point," and this by constant use has become shortened to
"Interrogation." He has distinguished himself twice already. In Fayal they
pointed out a hill and told him it was 800 feet high and 1,100 feet long.
And they told him there was a tunnel 2,000 feet long and 1,000 feet high
running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He repeated it
to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes. Finally, he took a
useful hint from this remark, which a thoughtful old pilgrim made:

      "Well, yes, it is a little remarkable -- singular tunnel altogether
-- stands up out of the top of the hill about two hundred feet, and one end
of it sticks out of the hill about nine hundred!"

      Here in Gibraltar he comers these educated British officers and
badgers them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can
perform! He told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and
knock Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea!



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -72-

At this present moment half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure
excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half the list of
white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish
town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than that
we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do otherwise who speeds over these
sparkling waters and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny land. Care
cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction.

      We even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of Malabat (a
stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco) without a twinge of fear. The whole
garrison turned out under arms and assumed a threatening attitude -- yet
still we did not fear. The entire garrison marched and counter-marched
within the rampart, in full view -- yet notwithstanding even this, we never
flinched.



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -73-

I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the
garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben
Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to help
him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and he was
competent to do that, had done it two years already. That was evidence
which one could not well refute. There is nothing like reputation.

      Every now and then my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes
itself upon me. Dan and the ship's surgeon and I had been up to the great
square, listening to the music of the fine military bands and contemplating
English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and at nine o'clock were
on our way to the theater, when we met the General, the Judge, the
Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of the United States of
America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, who had been to the Club House to
register their several titles and impoverish the bill of fare; and they
told us to go over to the little variety store near the Hall of Justice and
buy some kid gloves. They said they were elegant and very moderate in
price. It seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid gloves, and we
acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the store offered me a
pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she said they would look very
pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched me tenderly. I glanced
furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem rather a comely member. I
tried a glove on my left and blushed a little. Manifestly the size was too
small for me. But I felt gratified when she said:

      "Oh, it is just right!" Yet I knew it was no such thing.

      I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said:

      "Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves -- but some
gentlemen are so awkward about putting them on."

      It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting
on the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove
from the base of the thumb

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -74-

into the palm of the hand -- and tried to hide the rent. She kept up her
compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die:

      "Ah, you have had experience! [A rip down the back of the hand.] They
are just right for you -- your hand is very small -- if they tear you need
not pay for them. [A rent across the middle.] I can always tell when a
gentleman understands putting on kid gloves. There is a grace about it that
only comes with long practice." The whole after-guard of the glove "fetched
away," as the sailors say, the fabric parted across the knuckles, and
nothing was left but a melancholy ruin.

      I was too much flattered to make an exposure and throw the
merchandise on the angel's hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still
happy; but I hated the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in
the proceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean
when I said cheerfully:

      "This one does very well; it fits elegantly. I like a glove that
fits. No, never mind, ma'am, never mind; I'll put the other on in the
street. It is warm here."

      It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill,
and as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light in
the woman's eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from the
street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, I
said to myself

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -75-

with withering sarcasm, "Oh, certainly; you know how to put on kid gloves,
don't you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your senses
by every petticoat that chooses to take the trouble to do it!"

      The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally Dan said musingly:

      "Some gentlemen don't know how to put on kid gloves at all, but some
do."

      And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought):

      "But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on
kid gloves."

      Dan soliloquized after a pause:

      "Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very
long practice."

      "Yes, indeed, I've noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like
he was dragging a cat out of an ash hole by the tail, he understands
putting on kid gloves; he's had ex -- -- "

      "Boys, enough of a thing's enough! You think you are very smart, I
suppose, but I don't. And if you go and tell any of those old gossips in
the ship about this thing, I'll never forgive you for it; that's all."

      They let me alone then for the time being. We always let each other
alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had
bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together this
morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with broad
yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public exhibition. We
had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take her in. She did that
for us.

      Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry
us ashore on their backs from the small boats.

                                 Chapter 8

                               CHAPTER VIII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -76-

     THIS is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it
-- these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well
enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present. Tangier
is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we have found
foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always with things
and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and so the novelty
of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted something thoroughly
and uncompromisingly foreign -- foreign from top to bottom -- foreign from
center to circumference -- foreign inside and outside and all around --
nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness -- nothing to remind us
of any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo! In Tangier we
have found it. Here is not the slightest thing that ever we have seen save
in pictures -- and we always mistrusted the pictures before. We cannot
anymore. The pictures used to seem exaggerations -- they seemed too weird
and fanciful for reality. But behold, they were not wild enough -- they
were not fanciful enough -- they have not told half the story. Tangier is a
foreign land if ever there was one, and the true spirit of it can never be
found in any book save The Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible,
yet swarms of humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city
enclosed in a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old.
All the houses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone,
plastered outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -77-

top, no cornices, whitewashed all over -- a crowded city of snowy tombs!
And the doors are arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures;
the floors are laid in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated,
many-colored porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles
and broad bricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms
(of Jewish dwellings) save divans -- what there is in Moorish ones no man
may know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the
streets are oriental -- some of them three feet wide, some six, but only
two that are over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of them by extending
his body across them. Isn't it an oriental picture?

      There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors
proud of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews whose
fathers fled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians from
the mountains -- born cut-

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -78-

throats -- and original, genuine Negroes as black as Moses; and howling
dervishes and a hundred breeds of Arabs -- all sorts and descriptions of
people that are foreign and curious to look upon.

      And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a
bronzed Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket,
gold and crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist,
trousers that only come a little below his knee and yet have twenty yards
of stuff in them, ornamented scimitar, bare shins, stockingless feet,
yellow slippers, and gun of preposterous length -- a mere soldier! -- I
thought he was the Emperor at least. And here are aged Moors with flowing
white beards and long white robes with vast cowls; and Bedouins with long,
cowled, striped cloaks; and Negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven
except a kinky scalp lock back of the ear or, rather, upon the after corner
of the skull; and all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of weird costumes,
and all more or less ragged. And here are Moorish women who are enveloped
from head to foot in coarse white robes, and whose sex can only be
determined by the fact that they only leave one eye visible and never look
at men of their own race, or are looked at by them in public. Here are five
thousand Jews in blue gabardines, sashes about their waists, slippers upon
their feet, little skullcaps upon the backs of their heads, hair combed
down on the forehead, and cut straight across the middle of it from side to
side -- the selfsame fashion their Tangier ancestors have worn for I don't
know how many bewildering centuries. Their feet and ankles are bare. Their
noses are all hooked, and hooked alike. They all resemble each other so
much that one could almost believe they were of one family. Their women are
plump and pretty, and do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the
last degree comforting.

      What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh and
jest and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only
the stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet
are suited to a venerable

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -79-

antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall that was old when Columbus
discovered America; was old when Peter the Hermit roused the knightly men
of the Middle Ages to arm for the first Crusade; was old when Charlemagne
and his paladins beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants and
genii in the fabled days of the olden time; was old when Christ and his
disciples walked the earth; stood where it stands today when the lips of
Memnon were vocal and men bought and sold in the streets of ancient Thebes!

      The Phoenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Romans, all
have battled for Tangier -- all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged,
oriental-looking Negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling
his goatskin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the
Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge built
by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the infant
Saviour in the Virgin's arms have stood upon it, maybe.

      Near it are the ruins of a dockyard where Caesar repaired his ships
and loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before the
Christian era.

      Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the
phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood a
monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than two
thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:



     "WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF
     THE LAND OF CANAAN BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA."

Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from here is a
tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an unsuccessful revolt
against King David, and these their descendants are still under a ban and
keep to themselves.

      Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And
it was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -80-

clad in his lion skin, landed here, four thousand years ago. In these
streets he met Anitus, the king of the country, and brained him with his
club, which was the fashion among gentlemen in those days. The people of
Tangier (called Tingis then) lived in the rudest possible huts and dressed
in skins and carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild beasts they were
constantly obliged to war with. But they were a gentlemanly race and did no
work. They lived on the natural products of the land. Their king's country
residence was at the famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the
coast from here. The garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone now
-- no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a personage as
Hercules did exist in ancient times and agree that he was an enterprising
and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good, bona-fide god,
because that would be unconstitutional.

      Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules, where
that hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of the Tangier
country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages, which fact makes
me think Hercules could not have traveled much, else he would not have kept
a journal.

      Five days' journey from here -- say two hundred miles -- are the
ruins of an ancient city, of whose history there is neither record nor
tradition. And yet its arches, its columns, and its statues proclaim it to
have been built by an enlightened race.

      The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an ordinary
shower bath in a civilized land. The Muhammadan merchant, tinman,
shoemaker, or vendor of trifles sits cross-legged on the floor and reaches
after any article you may want to buy. You can rent a whole block of these
pigeonholes for fifty dollars a month. The market people crowd the
marketplace with their baskets of figs, dates, melons, apricots, etc., and
among them file trains of laden asses, not much larger, if any, than a
Newfoundland dog. The scene is lively, is picturesque, and smells like a
police court. The Jewish money-changers

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -81-

have their dens close at hand, and all day long are counting bronze coins
and transferring them from one bushel basket to another. They don't coin
much money nowadays, I think. I saw none but what was dated four or five
hundred years back, and was badly worn and battered. These coins are not
very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have money
suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said he bad
"swamped the bank, had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head of the
firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the change." I
bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling myself. I am not
proud on account of having so much money, though. I care nothing for
wealth.

      The Moors have some small silver coins and also some silver slugs
worth a dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce -- so much so that
when poor ragged Arabs see one they beg to be allowed to kiss it.

      They have also a small gold coin worth two dollars. And that reminds
me of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers carry
letters through the country and charge a liberal postage. Every now and
then they fall into the hands of marauding bands and get robbed. Therefore,
warned by experience, as soon as they have collected two dollars' worth of
money they exchange it for one of those little gold pieces, and when
robbers come upon them, swallow it. The stratagem was good while it was
unsuspected, but after that the marauders simply gave the sagacious United
States mail an emetic and sat down to wait.



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -82-

The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great officers under
him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular system of taxation,
but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on some rich man,
and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison. Therefore, few men in
Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a luxury. Vanity occasionally
leads a man to display wealth, but sooner or later the Emperor trumps up a
charge against him -- any sort of one will do -- and confiscates his
property. Of course, there are many rich men in the empire, but their money
is buried, and they dress in rags and counterfeit poverty. Every now and
then the Emperor imprisons a man who is suspected of the crime of being
rich, and makes things so uncomfortable for him that he is forced to
discover where he has hidden his money.

      Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of the
foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the Emperor's face
with impunity.

                                 Chapter 9

                                CHAPTER IX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -83-

      ABOUT the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after landing
here, came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just mounted some
mules and asses and started out under the guardianship of the stately, the
princely, the magnificent Hadji Muhammad Lamarty (may his tribe increase!)
when we came upon a fine Moorish mosque, with tall tower, rich with
checker-work of many-colored porcelain, and every part and portion of the
edifice adorned with the quaint architecture of the Alhambra, and Blucher
started to ride into the open doorway. A startling "Hi-hi!" from our camp
followers and a loud "Halt!" from an English gentleman in the party checked
the adventurer, and then we were informed that so dire a profanation is it
for a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred threshold of a Moorish
mosque that no amount of purification can ever make it fit for the faithful
to pray in again. Had Blucher succeeded in entering the place, he would no
doubt have been chased through the town and stoned; and the time has been,
and not many years ago, either, when a Christian would have been most
ruthlessly slaughtered if captured in a mosque. We caught a glimpse of the
handsome tessellated pavements within and of the devotees performing their
ablutions at the fountains, but even that we took that glimpse was a thing
not relished by the Moorish bystanders.

      Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order.
The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been long since there
was an artificer among them

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -84-

capable of curing so delicate a patient as a debilitated clock. The great
men of the city met in solemn conclave to consider how the difficulty was
to be met. They discussed the matter thoroughly but arrived at no solution.
Finally, a patriarch arose and said:

      "Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a Portuguee
dog of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his
presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the
stones and the cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore, send
the Christian dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to mend
the clock, and let him go as an ass!"

      And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the
inside of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his
natural character. We visited the jail and found Moorish prisoners making
mats and baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of civilization.)
Murder is punished with death. A short time ago three murderers were taken
beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are not good, and neither are
Moorish marksmen. In this instance they set up the poor criminals at long
range, like so many targets, and practiced on them -- kept them hopping
about and dodging bullets for half an hour before they managed to drive the
center.

      When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg
and nail them up in the marketplace as a warning to everybody. Their
surgery is not artistic. They slice around the bone a little, then break
off the limb. Sometimes the patient gets well; but, as a general thing, he
don't. However, the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were always brave.
These criminals undergo the fearful operation without a wince, without a
tremor of any kind, without a groan! No amount of suffering can bring down
the pride of a Moor or make him shame his dignity with a cry.

      Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it.
There are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting
in dim parlors, no lovers' quarrels and reconciliations --

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -85-

no nothing that is proper to approaching matrimony. The young man takes the
girl his father selects for him, marries her, and after that she is
unveiled, and he sees her for the first time. If after due acquaintance she
suits him, he retains her; but if he suspects her purity, he bundles her
back to her father; if he finds her diseased, the same; or if, after just
and reasonable time is allowed her, she neglects to bear children, back she
goes to the home of her childhood.

      Muhammadans here who can afford it keep a good many wives on hand.
They are called wives, though I believe the Koran only allows four genuine
wives -- the rest are concubines. The Emperor of Morocco don't know how
many wives he has, but thinks he has five hundred. However, that is near
enough -- a dozen or so, one way or the other, don't matter.

      Even the Jews in the interior have a plurality of wives.

      I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for
they are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a
Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for the
wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.

      They carry their children at their backs, in a sack, like other
savages the world over.

      Many of the Negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But the moment
a female slave becomes her master's concubine her bonds are broken, and as
soon as a male slave can read the first chapter of the Koran (which
contains the creed) he can no longer be held in bondage.

      They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Muhammadans' comes on
Friday, the Jews' on Saturday, and that of the Christian Consuls on Sunday.
The Jews are the most radical. The Moor goes to his mosque about noon on
his Sabbath, as on any other day, removes his shoes at the door, performs
his ablutions, makes his salaams, pressing his forehead to the pavement
time and again, says his prayers, and goes back to his work.



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -86-

But the Jew shuts up shop; will not touch copper or bronze money at all;
soils his fingers with nothing meaner than silver and gold; attends the
synagogue devoutly; will not cook or have anything to do with fire; and
religiously refrains from embarking in any enterprise.

      The Moor who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca is entitled to high
distinction. Men call him Hadji, and he is thenceforward a great personage.
Hundreds of Moors come to Tangier every year and embark for Mecca. They go
part of the way in English steamers, and the ten or twelve dollars they pay
for passage is about all the trip costs. They take with them a quantity of
food, and when the commissary department fails they "skirmish," as Jack
terms it in his sinful, slangy way. From the time they leave till they get
home again, they never wash, either on land or sea. They are usually gone
from five to seven months, and as they do not change their clothes during
all that time, they are totally unfit for the drawing room when they get
back.

      Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together
the ten dollars their steamer passage costs, and when one of them gets back
he is a bankrupt forever after. Few Moors can ever build up their fortunes
again in one short lifetime after so reckless an outlay. In order to
confine the dignity of Hadji to gentlemen of patrician blood and
possessions, the Emperor decreed that no man should make the pilgrimage
save bloated aristocrats who were worth a hundred dollars in specie. But
behold how iniquity can circumvent the law! For a consideration, the Jewish
money-changer lends the pilgrim one hundred dollars long enough for him to
swear himself through, and then receives it back before the ship sails out
of the harbor!

      Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is that Spain
sends her heaviest ships of war and her loudest guns to astonish these
Muslims, while America and other nations send only a little contemptible
tub of a gunboat occasionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn by what
they see, not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -87-

Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a
small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their
representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant them
their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish minister
makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be just or not.

      Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a disputed
piece of property opposite Gibraltar, and captured the city of Tetouan. She
compromised on an augmentation of her territory, twenty million dollars'
indemnity in money, and peace. And then she gave up the city. But she never
gave it up until the Spanish soldiers had eaten up all the cats. They would
not compromise as long as the cats held out. Spaniards are very fond of
cats. On the contrary, the Moors reverence cats as something sacred. So the
Spaniards touched them on a tender point that time. Their unfeline conduct
in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a hatred toward them in the
breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving them out of Spain was tame
and passionless. Moors and Spaniards are foes forever now. France had a
minister here once who embittered the nation against him in the most
innocent way. He killed a couple of battalions of cats (Tangier is full of
them) and made a parlor carpet out of their hides. He made his carpet in
circles -- first a circle of old gray tomcats, with their tails all
pointing toward the center; then a circle of yellow cats; next a circle of
black cats and a circle of white ones; then a circle of all sorts of cats;
and, finally, a centerpiece of assorted kittens. It was very beautiful, but
the Moors curse his memory to this day.

      When we went to call on our American Consul General today I noticed
that all possible games for parlor amusement seemed to be represented on
his center tables. I thought that hinted at lonesomeness. The idea was
correct. His is the only American family in Tangier. There are many foreign
consuls in this place, but much visiting is not indulged in. Tangier is
clear out of the world, and what is the use of

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -88-

visiting when people have nothing on earth to talk about? There is none. So
each consul's family stays at home chiefly and amuses itself as best it
can. Tangier is full of interest for one day, but after that it is a weary
prison. The Consul General has been here five years, and has got enough of
it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His family seize
upon their letters and papers when the mail arrives, read them over and
over again for two days or three, talk them over and over again for two or
three more till they wear them out, and after that for days together they
eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old road, and see the
same old tiresome things that even decades of centuries have scarcely
changed, and say never a single word! They have literally nothing whatever
to talk about. The arrival of an American man-of-war is a godsend to them.
"O Solitude, where are the charms which sages have seen in thy face?" It is
the completest exile that I can conceive of. I would seriously recommend to
the government of the United States that when a man commits a crime so
heinous

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -89-

that the law provides no adequate punishment for it, they make him Consul
General to Tangier.

      I am glad to have seen Tangier -- the second-oldest town in the
world. But I am ready to bid it good-bye, I believe.

      We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morning, and
doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port within the next
forty-eight hours.

                                 Chapter 10

                                 CHAPTER X.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -90-

     WE passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City, in mid-ocean.
It was in all respects a characteristic Mediterranean day -- faultlessly
beautiful. A cloudless sky; a refreshing summer wind; a radiant sunshine
that glinted cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested mountains of
water; a sea beneath us that was so wonderfully blue, so richly,
brilliantly blue, that it overcame the dullest sensibilities with the spell
of its fascination.

      They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean -- a thing that is
certainly rare in most quarters of the globe. The evening we sailed away
from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy mist so
rich, so soft, so enchantingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle, that
serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner gong
and tarried to worship!

      He said: "Well, that's gorgis, ain't it! They don't have none of them
things in our parts, do they? I consider that them effects is on account of
the superior refragability, as you may say, of the sun's diramic
combination with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of Jubiter. What
should you think?"

      "Oh, go to bed!" Dan said that, and went away.

      "Oh, yes, it's all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an
argument which another man can't answer. Dan don't never stand any chance
in an argument with me. And he knows it, too. What should you say, Jack?"

      "Now, Doctor, don't you come bothering around me with that dictionary
bosh. I don't do you any harm, do I? Then you let me alone."



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -91-

"He's gone, too. Well, them fellows have all tackled the old Oracle, as
they say, but the old man's most too many for 'em. Maybe the Poet Lariat
ain't satisfied with them deductions?"

      The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme and went below.

      "'Pears that he can't qualify, neither. Well, I didn't expect nothing
out of him. I never see one of them poets yet that knowed anything. He'll
go down now and grind out about four reams of the awfullest slush about
that old rock and give it to a consul, or a pilot, or a nigger, or anybody
he comes across first which he can impose on. Pity but somebody'd take that
poor old lunatic and dig all that poetry rubbage out of him. Why can't a
man put his intellect onto things that's some value? Gibbons, and
Hippocratus, and Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient philosophers was
down on poets -- "

      "Doctor," I said, "you are going to invent authorities now and I'll
leave you, too. I always enjoy your conversation, notwithstanding the
luxuriance of your syllables, when the philosophy you offer rests on your
own responsibility; but when you begin to soar -- when you begin to support
it with the evidence of authorities who are the creations of your own fancy
-- I lose confidence."

      That was the way to flatter the doctor. He considered it a sort of
acknowledgment on my part of a fear to argue with him. He was always
persecuting the passengers with abstruse propositions framed in language
that no man could understand, and they endured the exquisite torture a
minute or two and then abandoned the field. A triumph like this, over half
a

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -92-

dozen antagonists was sufficient for one day; from that time forward he
would patrol the decks beaming blandly upon all comers, and so tranquilly,
blissfully happy!

      But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the
Fourth of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our
information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent
aloft except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the ship
below, and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance. During
the morning, meetings were held and all manner of committees set to work on
the celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon the ship's company assembled
aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic melodeon, and the
consumptive clarinet crippled "The Star-Spangled Banner," the choir chased
it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the
final note and slaughtered it. Nobody mourned.

      We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not
intentional and I do not endorse it), and then the President, throned
behind a cable locker with a national flag spread over it, announced the
"Reader," who rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence
which we have all listened to so often without paying any attention to what
it said; and after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to
quarters and he made that same old speech about our national greatness
which we so religiously believe and so fervently applaud. Now came the
choir into court again, with the complaining instruments, and assaulted
"Hail Columbia"; and when victory hung wavering in the scale, George
returned with his dreadful wild-goose stop turned on and the choir won, of
course. A minister pronounced the benediction, and the patriotic little
gathering disbanded. The Fourth of July was safe, as far as the
Mediterranean was concerned.

      At dinner in the evening, a well-written original poem was recited
with spirit by one of the ship's captains, and thirteen regular toasts were
washed down with several baskets of champagne. The speeches were bad --
execrable almost without

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -93-

exception. In fact, without any exception but one. Captain Duncan made a
good speech; he made the only good speech of the evening. He said:

      "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: -- May we all live to a green old age and be
prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne."

      It was regarded as a very able effort.

      The festivities, so to speak, closed with another of those miraculous
balls on the promenade deck. We were not used to dancing on an even keel,
though, and it was only a questionable success. But take it all together,
it was a bright, cheerful, pleasant Fourth.

      Toward nightfall the next evening, we steamed into the great
artificial harbor of this noble city of Marseilles, and saw the dying
sunlight gild its clustering spires and ramparts, and flood its leagues of
environing verdure with a mellow radiance that touched with an added charm
the white villas that flecked the landscape far and near. [Copyright
secured according to law.]

      There were no stages out, and we could not get on the pier from the
ship. It was annoying. We were full of enthusiasm -- we wanted to see
France! Just at nightfall our party of three contracted with a waterman for
the privilege of using his boat as a bridge -- its stern was at our
companion ladder and its bow touched the pier. We got in and the fellow
backed out into the harbor. I told him in French that all we wanted was to
walk over his thwarts and step ashore, and asked him what he went away out
there for. He said he could not understand me. I repeated. Still he could
not understand. He appeared to be very ignorant of French. The doctor tried
him, but he could not understand the doctor. I asked this boatman to
explain his conduct, which he did; and then I couldn't understand him. Dan
said:

      "Oh, go to the pier, you old fool -- that's where we want to go!"

      We reasoned calmly with Dan that it was useless to speak to this
foreigner in English -- that he had better let us conduct this business in
the French language and not let the stranger see how uncultivated he was.



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -94-

"Well, go on, go on," he said, "don't mind me. I don't wish to interfere.
Only, if you go on telling him in your kind of French, he never will find
out where we want to go to. That is what I think about it."

      We rebuked him severely for this remark and said we never knew an
ignorant person yet but was prejudiced. The Frenchman spoke again, and the
doctor said:

      "There now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the douain. Means he
is going to the hotel. Oh, certainly -- we don't know the French language."

      This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further criticism
from the disaffected member. We coasted past the sharp bows of a navy of
great steamships and stopped at last at a government building on a stone
pier. It was easy to remember then that the douain was the customhouse and
not the hotel. We did not mention it, however. With winning French
politeness the officers merely opened and closed our satchels, declined to
examine our passports, and sent us on our way. We stopped at the first cafΘ
we came to and entered. An old woman seated us at a table and waited for
orders. The doctor said:

      "Avez-vous du vin?"

      The dame looked perplexed. The doctor said again, with elaborate
distinctness of articulation:

      "Avez-vous du -- vin!"

      The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said:

      "Doctor, there is a flaw in your pronunciation somewhere. Let me try
her. Madame, avez-vous du vin? It isn't any use, Doctor -- take the
witness."

      "Madame, avez-vous du vin -- du fromage -- pain -- pickled pigs' feet
-- beurre -- des oeufs -- du boeuf -- horseradish, sauerkraut, hog and
hominy -- anything, anything in the world that can stay a Christian
stomach!"

      She said:

      "Bless you, why didn't you speak English before? I don't know
anything about your plagued French!"

      The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member spoiled

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -95-

the supper, and we dispatched it in angry silence and got away as soon as
we could. Here we were in beautiful France -- in a vast stone house of
quaint architecture -- surrounded by all manner of curiously worded French
signs -- stared at by strangely habited, bearded French people --
everything gradually and surely forcing upon us the coveted consciousness
that at last, and beyond all question, we were in beautiful France and
absorbing its nature to the forgetfulness of everything else, and coming to
feel the happy romance of the thing in all its enchanting delightfulness --
and to think of this skinny veteran intruding with her vile English, at
such a moment, to blow the fair vision to the winds! It was exasperating.

      We set out to find the centre of the city, inquiring the direction
every now and then. We never did succeed in making anybody understand just
exactly what we wanted, and neither did we ever succeed in comprehending
just exactly what they

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -96-

said in reply, but then they always pointed -- they always did that -- and
we bowed politely and said, "Merci, monsieur," and so it was a blighting
triumph over the disaffected member anyway. He was restive under these
victories and often asked:

      "What did that pirate say?"

      "Why, he told us which way to go to find the Grand Casino."

      "Yes, but what did he say?"

      "Oh, it don't matter what he said -- we understood him. These are
educated people -- not like that absurd boatman."

      "Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction
that goes some where -- for we've been going around in a circle for an
hour. I've passed this same old drugstore seven times."

      We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood (but we knew it was
not). It was plain that it would not do to pass that drugstore again,
though -- we might go on asking directions, but we must cease from
following finger-pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the
disaffected member.

      A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bordered by
blocks of vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone every house and
every block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks
for a mile, and all brilliantly lighted -- brought us at last to the
principal thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing
constellations of gas burners, gaily dressed men and women thronging the
sidewalks -- hurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation, and
laughter everywhere! We found the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, and
wrote down who we were, where we were born, what our occupations were, the
place we came from last, whether we were married or single, how we liked
it, how old we were, where we were bound for and when we expected to

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -97-

get there, and a great deal of information of similar importance -- all for
the benefit of the landlord and the secret police. We hired a guide and
began the business of sightseeing immediately. That first night on French
soil was a stirring one. I cannot think of half the places we went to or
what we particularly saw; we had no disposition to examine carefully into
anything at all -- we only wanted to glance and go -- to move, keep moving!
The spirit of the country was upon us. We sat down, finally, at a late
hour, in the great Casino, and called for unstinted champagne. It is so
easy to be bloated aristocrats where it costs nothing of consequence! There
were about five hundred people in that dazzling place, I suppose, though
the walls being papered entirely with mirrors, so to speak, one could not
really tell but that there were a hundred thousand. Young, daintily dressed
exquisites and young, stylishly dressed women, and also old gentlemen and
old ladies, sat in couples and groups about innumerable marble-topped
tables and ate fancy suppers, drank wine, and kept up a chattering din of
conversation that was dazing to the senses. There was a stage at the far
end and a large orchestra; and every now and then actors and actresses in
preposterous comic dresses came out and sang the most extravagantly funny
songs, to judge by their absurd actions; but that audience merely suspended
its chatter, stared cynically, and never once smiled, never once applauded!
I had always thought that Frenchmen were ready to laugh at any thing.

                                 Chapter 11

                                CHAPTER XI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -98-

     WE are getting foreignized rapidly and with facility. We are getting
reconciled to halls and bedchambers with unhomelike stone floors and no
carpets -- floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness
that is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, noiseless
waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about your back and your
elbows like butterflies, quick to comprehend orders, quick to fill them;
thankful for a gratuity without regard to the amount; and always polite --
never otherwise than polite. That is the strangest curiosity yet -- a
really polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. We are getting used to
driving right into the central court of the hotel, in the midst of a
fragrant circle of vines and flowers, and in the midst also of parties of
gentlemen sitting quietly reading the paper and smoking. We are getting
used to ice frozen by artificial process in ordinary bottles -- the only
kind of ice they have here. We are getting used to all these things, but we
are not getting used to carrying our own soap. We are sufficiently
civilized to carry our own combs and toothbrushes, but this thing of having
to ring for soap every time we wash is new to us and not pleasant at all.
We think of it just after we get our heads and faces thoroughly wet or just
when we think we have been in the bathtub long enough, and then, of course,
an annoying delay follows. These Marseillaises make Marseillaise hymns and
Marseilles vests and Marseilles soap for all the world, but they never sing
their hymns or wear their vests or wash with their soap themselves.



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                    -99-

We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the table d'hote
with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction. We take soup, then wait a
few minutes for the fish; a few minutes more and the plates are changed,
and the roast beef comes; another change and we take peas; change again and
take lentils; change and take snail patties (I prefer grasshoppers); change
and take roast chicken and salad; then strawberry pie and ice cream; then
green figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, etc.; finally coffee. Wine with
every course, of course, being in France. With such a cargo on board,
digestion is a slow process, and we must sit long in the cool chambers and
smoke -- and read French newspapers, which have a strange fashion of
telling a perfectly straight story till you get to the "nub" of it, and
then a word drops in that no man can translate, and that story is ruined.
An embankment fell on some Frenchmen yesterday, and the papers are full of
it today -- but whether those sufferers were killed, or crippled, or
bruised, or only scared is more than I can possibly make out, and yet I
would just give anything to know.

      We were troubled a little at dinner today by the conduct of an
American, who talked very loudly and coarsely and laughed boisterously
where all others were so quiet and well behaved. He ordered wine with a
royal flourish and said:

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -100-

"I never dine without wine, sir" (which was a pitiful falsehood), and
looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected to
find in their faces. All these airs in a land where they would as soon
expect to leave the soup out of the bill of fare as the wine! -- in a land
where wine is nearly as common among all ranks as water! This fellow said:
"I am a free-born sovereign, sir, an American, sir, and I want everybody to
know it!" He did not mention that he was a lineal descendant of Balaam's
ass, but everybody knew that without his telling it.

      We have driven in the Prado -- that superb avenue bordered with
patrician mansions and noble shade trees -- and have visited the chΓteau
Boarely and its curious museum. They showed us a miniature cemetery there
-- a copy of the first graveyard that was ever in Marseilles, no doubt. The
delicate little skeletons were lying in broken vaults and had their
household gods and kitchen utensils with them. The original of this
cemetery was dug up in the principal street of the city a few years ago. It
had remained there, only twelve feet underground, for a matter of
twenty-five hundred years or thereabouts. Romulus was here before he built
Rome, and thought something of founding a city on this spot, but gave up
the idea. He may have been personally acquainted with some of these
Phoenicians whose skeletons we have been examining.

      In the great Zoological Gardens we found specimens of all the animals
the world produces, I think, including a dromedary, a monkey ornamented
with tufts of brilliant blue and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -101-

carmine hair -- a very gorgeous monkey he was -- a hippopotamus from the
Nile, and a sort of tall, long-legged bird with a beak like a powder horn
and close-fitting wings like the tails of a dress coat. This fellow stood
up with his eyes shut and his shoulders stooped forward a little, and
looked as if he had his hands under his coat tails. Such tranquil
stupidity, such supernatural gravity, such self-righteousness, and such
ineffable self-complacency as were in the countenance and attitude of that
gray-bodied, dark-winged, bald-headed, and preposterously uncomely bird! He
was so ungainly, so pimply about the head, so scaly about the legs, yet so
serene, so unspeakably satisfied! He was the most comical-looking creature
that can be imagined. It was good to hear Dan and the doctor laugh -- such
natural and such enjoyable laughter had not been heard among our
excursionists since our ship sailed away from America. This bird was a
godsend to us, and I should be an ingrate if I forgot to make honorable
mention of him in these pages. Ours was a pleasure excursion; therefore we
stayed with that bird an hour and made the most of him. We stirred him up
occasionally, but he only unclosed an eye and slowly closed it again,
abating no jot of his stately piety of demeanor or his tremendous
seriousness. He only seemed to say, "Defile not Heaven's anointed with
unsanctified hands." We did not know his name, and so we called him "The
Pilgrim." Dan said:



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -102-

"All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection."

      The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a common cat! This
cat had a fashion of climbing up the elephant's hind legs and roosting on
his back. She would sit up there, with her paws curved under her breast,
and sleep in the sun half the afternoon. It used to annoy the elephant at
first, and he would reach up and take her down, but she would go aft and
climb up again. She persisted until she finally conquered the elephant's
prejudices, and now they are inseparable friends. The cat plays about her
comrade's forefeet or his trunk often, until dogs approach, and then she
goes aloft out of danger. The elephant has annihilated several dogs lately
that pressed his companion too closely.

      We hired a sailboat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the
small islands in the harbor to visit the Castle d'If. This ancient fortress
has a melancholy history. It has been used as a prison for political
offenders for two or three hundred years, and its dungeon walls are scarred
with the rudely carved names of many and many a captive who fretted his
life away here and left no record of himself but these sad epitaphs wrought
with his own hands. How thick the names were! And their long-departed
owners seemed to throng the gloomy cells and corridors with their phantom
shapes. We loitered through dungeon after dungeon, away down into the
living rock below the level of the sea, it seemed. Names everywhere! --
some plebeian, some noble, some even princely. Plebeian, prince, and noble
had one solicitude in common -- they would not be forgotten! They could
suffer solitude, inactivity, and the horrors of a silence that no sound
ever disturbed, but they could not bear the thought of being utterly
forgotten by the world. Hence the carved names. In one cell, where a little
light penetrated, a man had lived twenty-seven years without seeing the
face of a human being -- lived in filth and wretchedness, with no
companionship but his own thoughts, and they were sorrowful enough and
hopeless enough, no doubt. Whatever his jailers considered that he needed
was conveyed to his cell by night through a wicket.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -103-

This man carved the walls of his prison house from floor to roof with all
manner of figures of men and animals grouped in intricate designs. He had
toiled there year after year, at his self-appointed task, while infants
grew to boyhood -- to vigorous youth -- idled through school and college --
acquired a profession -- claimed man's mature estate -- married and looked
back to infancy as to a thing

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -104-

of some vague, ancient time, almost. But who shall tell how many ages it
seemed to this prisoner? With the one, time flew sometimes; with the other,
never -- it crawled always. To the one, nights spent in dancing had seemed
made of minutes instead of hours; to the other, those selfsame nights had
been like all other nights of dungeon life and seemed made of slow,
dragging weeks instead of hours and minutes.

      One prisoner of fifteen years had scratched verses upon his walls,
and brief prose sentences -- brief, but full of pathos. These spoke not of
himself and his hard estate, but only of the shrine where his spirit fled
the prison to worship -- of home and the idols that were templed there. He
never lived to see them.

      The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers at home
are wide -- fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of
Dumas' heroes passed their confinement -- heroes of "Monte Cristo." It was
here that the brave AbbΘ wrote a book with his own blood, with a pen made
of a piece of iron hoop, and by the light of a lamp made out of shreds of
cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food; and then dug through the
thick wall with some trifling instrument which he wrought himself out of a
stray piece of iron or table cutlery and freed DantΘs from his chains. It
was a pity that so many weeks of dreary labor should have come to naught at
last.

      They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated "Iron Mask" --
that ill-starred brother of a hardhearted king of France -- was confined
for a season before he was sent to hide the strange mystery of his life
from the curious in the dungeons of Ste. Marguerite. The place had a far
greater interest for us than it could have had if we had known beyond all
question who the Iron Mask was, and what his history had been, and why this
most unusual punishment had been meted out to him. Mystery! That was the
charm. That speechless tongue, those prisoned features, that heart so
freighted with unspoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed with its
piteous secret had been here. These dank walls had known the man whose
dolorous story is a sealed book forever! There was fascination in the spot.

                                 Chapter 12

                                CHAPTER XII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -105-

      WE have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France.
What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of bright
green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their grasses
trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and measured and their
symmetry preserved by the most architectural of gardeners. Surely the long
straight rows of stately poplars that divide the beautiful landscape like
the squares of a checker-board are set with line and plummet, and their
uniform height determined with a spirit level. Surely the straight, smooth,
pure white turnpikes are jack-planed and sandpapered every day. How else
are these marvels of symmetry, cleanliness, and order attained? It is
wonderful. There are no unsightly stone walls and never a fence of any
kind. There is no dirt, no decay, no rubbish anywhere -- nothing that even
hints at untidiness -- nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly
and beautiful -- every thing is charming to the eye.

      We had such glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy
banks; of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery; of quaint old
red-tiled villages with mossy medieval cathedrals looming out of their
midst; of wooded hills with ivy-grown towers and turrets of feudal castles
projecting above the foliage; such glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us,
such visions of fabled fairyland!

      We knew then what the poet meant when he sang of:

     " -- thy cornfields green, and sunny vines,
     O pleasant land of France!"

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -106-

      And it is a pleasant land. No word describes it so felicitously as
that one. They say there is no word for "home" in the French language.
Well, considering that they have the article itself in such an attractive
aspect, they ought to manage to get along without the word. Let us not
waste too much pity on "homeless" France. I have observed that Frenchmen
abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going back to France some time or
other. I am not surprised at it now.

      We are not infatuated with these French railway cars, though. We took
first-class passage, not because we wished to attract attention by doing a
thing which is uncommon in Europe but because we could make our journey
quicker by so doing. It is hard to make railroading pleasant in any
country. It is too tedious. Stagecoaching is infinitely more delightful.
Once I crossed the plains and deserts and mountains of the West in a
stagecoach, from the Missouri line to California, and since then all my
pleasure trips must be measured to that rare holiday frolic. Two thousand
miles of ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and
never a weary moment, never a lapse of interest! The first seven hundred
miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer and smoother
than any sea and figured with designs fitted to its magnitude -- the
shadows of the clouds. Here were no scenes but summer scenes, and no
disposition inspired by them but to lie at full length on the mail sacks in
the grateful breeze and dreamily smoke the pipe of peace -- what other,
where all was repose and contentment? In cool mornings, before the sun was
fairly up, it was worth a lifetime of city toiling and moiling to perch in
the foretop with the driver and see the six mustangs scamper under the
sharp snapping of the whip that never touched them; to scan the blue
distances of a world that knew no lords but us; to cleave the wind with
uncovered head and feel the sluggish pulses rousing to the spirit of a
speed that pretended to the resistless rush of a typhoon! Then thirteen
hundred miles of desert solitudes; of limitless panoramas of bewildering
perspective; of mimic cities, of pinnacled cathedrals, of massive
fortresses, counterfeited in the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -107-

eternal rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of
dizzy altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where
thunders and lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and
the storm clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces! But
I forgot. I am in elegant France now, and not scurrying through the great
South Pass and the Wind River Mountains, among antelopes and buffaloes and
painted Indians on the warpath. It is not meet that I should make too
disparaging comparisons between humdrum travel on a railway and that royal
summer flight across a continent in a stagecoach. I meant in the beginning
to say that railway journeying is tedious and tiresome, and so it is --
though at the time I was thinking particularly of a dismal fifty-hour
pilgrimage between New York and St. Louis. Of course our trip through
France was not really tedious because all its scenes and experiences were
new and strange; but as Dan says, it had its "discrepancies."

      The cars are built in compartments that hold eight persons each. Each
compartment is partially subdivided, and so there are two tolerably
distinct parties of four in it. Four face the other four. The seats and
backs are thickly padded and cushioned and are very comfortable; you can
smoke if you wish; there are no bothersome peddlers; you are saved the
infliction of a multitude of disagreeable fellow passengers. So far, so
well. But then the conductor locks you in when the train starts; there is
no water to drink in the car; there is no heating apparatus for night
travel; if a drunken rowdy should get in, you could not remove a matter of
twenty seats from him or enter another car; but above all, if you are worn
out and must sleep, you must sit up and do it in naps, with cramped legs
and in a torturing misery that leaves you withered and lifeless the next
day -- for behold they have not that culmination of all charity and human
kindness, a sleeping car, in all France. I prefer the American system. It
has not so many grievous "discrepancies."

      In France, all is clockwork, all is order. They make no

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -108-

mistakes. Every third man wears a uniform, and whether he be a marshal of
the empire or a brakeman, he is ready and perfectly willing to answer all
your questions with tireless politeness, ready to tell you which car to
take, yea, and ready to go and put you into it to make sure that you shall
not go astray. You cannot pass into the waiting room of the depot till you
have secured your ticket, and you cannot pass from its only exit till the
train is at its threshold to receive you. Once on board, the train will not
start till your ticket has been examined -- till every passenger's ticket
has been inspected. This is chiefly for your own good. If by any
possibility you have managed to take the wrong train, you will be handed
over to a polite official who will take you whither you belong and bestow
you with many an affable bow. Your ticket will be inspected every now and
then along the route, and when it is time to change cars you will know it.
You are in the hands of officials who zealously study your welfare and your
interest, instead of turning their talents to the invention of new methods
of discommoding and snubbing you, as is very often the main employment of
that exceedingly self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of America.

      But the happiest regulation in French railway government

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -109-

is -- thirty minutes to dinner! No five-minute boltings of flabby rolls,
muddy coffee, questionable eggs, gutta-percha beef, and pies whose
conception and execution are a dark and bloody mystery to all save the cook
that created them! No, we sat calmly down -- it was in old Dijon, which is
so easy to spell and so impossible to pronounce except when you civilize it
and call it Demijohn -- and poured out rich Burgundian wines and munched
calmly through a long table d'h⌠te bill of fare, snail patties, delicious
fruits and all, then paid the trifle it cost and stepped happily aboard the
train again, without once cursing the railroad company. A rare experience
and one to be treasured forever.

      They say they do not have accidents on these French roads, and I
think it must be true. If I remember rightly, we passed high above wagon
roads or through tunnels under them, but never crossed them on their own
level. About every quarter of a mile, it seemed to me, a man came out and
held up a club till the train went by, to signify that everything was safe
ahead. Switches were changed a mile in advance by pulling a wire rope that
passed along the ground by the rail, from

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -110-

station to station. Signals for the day and signals for the night gave
constant and timely notice of the position of switches.

      No, they have no railroad accidents to speak of in France. But why?
Because when one occurs, somebody has to hang for it! 12.1 Not hang, maybe,
but be punished at least with such vigor of emphasis as to make negligence
a thing to be shuddered at by railroad officials for many a day thereafter.
"No blame attached to the officers" -- that lying and disaster-breeding
verdict so common to our softhearted juries is seldom rendered in France.
If the trouble occurred in the conductor's department, that officer must
suffer if his subordinate cannot be proven guilty; if in the engineer's
department and the case be similar, the engineer must answer.

      The Old Travelers -- those delightful parrots who have "been here
before" and know more about the country than Louis Napoleon knows now or
ever will know -- tell us these things, and we believe them because they
are pleasant things to believe and because they are plausible and savor of
the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -111-

rigid subjection to law and order which we behold about us everywhere.

      But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel
and lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a
few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every
individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle
valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme
the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand aim, is to
subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the
blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you know anything.
They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at
your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your
traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities; they deride your
most trusted authors and demolish the fair images they have set up for your
willing worship with the pitiless ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast! But
still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their witless platitudes,
for their supernatural ability to bore, for their delightful asinine
vanity, for their luxuriant fertility of imagination, for their startling,
their brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity!

      By Lyons and the Saone (where we saw the lady of Lyons and thought
little of her comeliness), by Villa Franca, Tonnere, venerable Sens, Melun,
Fontainebleau, and scores of other beautiful cities, we swept, always
noting the absence of hog

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -112-

wallows, broken fences, cow lots, unpainted houses, and mud, and always
noting, as well, the presence of cleanliness, grace, taste in adorning and
beautifying, even to the disposition of a tree or the turning of a hedge,
the marvel of roads in perfect repair, void of ruts and guiltless of even
an inequality of surface -- we bowled along, hour after hour, that
brilliant summer day, and as nightfall approached we entered a wilderness
of odorous flowers and shrubbery, sped through it, and then, excited,
delighted, and half persuaded that we were only the sport of a beautiful
dream, lo, we stood in magnificent Paris!

      What excellent order they kept about that vast depot! There was no
frantic crowding and jostling, no shouting and swearing, and no swaggering
intrusion of services by rowdy hackmen. These latter gentry stood outside
-- stood quietly by their long line of vehicles and said never a word. A
kind of hackman general seemed to have the whole matter of transportation
in his hands. He politely received the passengers and ushered them to the
kind of conveyance they wanted, and told the driver where to deliver them.
There was no "talking back," no dissatisfaction about overcharging, no
grumbling about anything. In a little while we were speeding through the
streets of Paris and delightfully recognizing certain names and places with
which books had long ago made us familiar. It was like meeting an old
friend when we read Rue de Rivoli on the street corner; we knew the genuine
vast palace of the Louvre as well as we knew its picture; when we passed by
the Column of July we needed no one to tell us what it was or to remind us
that on its site once stood the grim Bastille, that grave of human hopes
and happiness, that dismal prison house within whose dungeons so many young
faces put on the wrinkles of age, so many proud spirits grew humble, so
many brave hearts broke.

      We secured rooms at the hotel, or rather, we had three beds put into
one room, so that we might be together, and then we went out to a
restaurant, just after lamplighting, and ate a comfortable, satisfactory,
lingering dinner. It was a pleasure to eat where everything was so tidy,
the food so well cooked,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -113-

the waiters so polite, and the coming and departing company so moustached,
so frisky, so affable, so fearfully and wonderfully Frenchy! All the
surroundings were gay and enlivening. Two hundred people sat at little
tables on the sidewalk, sipping wine and coffee; the streets were thronged
with light vehicles and with joyous pleasure-seekers; there was music in
the air, life and action all about us, and a conflagration of gaslight
everywhere!

      After dinner we felt like seeing such Parisian specialties as we
might see without distressing exertion, and so we sauntered through the
brilliant streets and looked at the dainty trifles in variety stores and
jewelry shops. Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put
unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the
incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed we
impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile
verbs and participles.

      We noticed that in the jewelry stores they had some of the articles
marked "gold" and some labeled "imitation." We wondered at this
extravagance of honesty and inquired into the matter. We were informed that
inasmuch as most people are not able to tell false gold from the genuine
article, the government compels jewelers to have their gold work assayed
and stamped officially according to its fineness and their imitation work
duly labeled with the sign of its falsity. They told us the jewelers would
not dare to violate this law, and that whatever a stranger bought in one of
their stores might be depended upon as being strictly what it was
represented to be. Verily, a wonderful land is France!

      Then we hunted for a barber-shop. From earliest infancy it had been a
cherished ambition of mine to be shaved some day in a palatial barber-shop
in Paris. I wished to recline at full length in a cushioned invalid chair,
with pictures about me and sumptuous furniture; with frescoed walls and
gilded arches above me and vistas of Corinthian columns stretching far
before me; with perfumes of Araby to intoxicate my senses and the slumbrous
drone of distant noises to soothe me to

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -114-

sleep. At the end of an hour I would wake up regretfully and find my face
as smooth and as soft as an infant's. Departing, I would lift my hands
above that barber's head and say, "Heaven bless you, my son!"

      So we searched high and low, for a matter of two hours, but never a
barber-shop could we see. We saw only wig-making establishments, with
shocks of dead and repulsive hair bound upon the heads of painted waxen
brigands who stared out from glass boxes upon the passer-by with their
stony eyes and scared him with the ghostly white of their countenances. We
shunned these signs for a time, but finally we concluded that the
wig-makers must of necessity be the barbers as well, since we could find no
single legitimate representative of the fraternity. We entered and asked,
and found that it was even so.

      I said I wanted to be shaved. The barber inquired where my room was.
I said never mind where my room was, I wanted to be shaved -- there, on the
spot. The doctor said he would be shaved also. Then there was an excitement
among those two barbers! There was a wild consultation, and afterwards a
hurrying to and fro and a feverish gathering up of razors from obscure
places and a ransacking for soap. Next they took us into a little mean,
shabby back room; they got two ordinary sitting-room chairs and placed us
in them with our coats on. My old, old dream of bliss vanished into thin
air!

      I sat bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the wig-making
villains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by
plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I expelled the nasty stuff with a
strong English expletive and said, "Foreigner, beware!" Then this outlaw
strapped his razor on his boot, hovered over me ominously for six fearful
seconds, and then swooped down upon me like the genius of destruction. The
first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from my face and lifted me
out of the chair. I stormed and raved, and the other boys enjoyed it. Their
beards are not strong and thick. Let us draw the curtain over this
harrowing scene.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -115-

Suffice it that I submitted and went through with the cruel infliction of a
shave by a French barber; tears of exquisite agony coursed down my cheeks
now and then, but I survived. Then the incipient assassin held a basin of
water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face, and into my
bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense of washing away
the soap and blood. He dried my features with a towel and was going to comb
my hair, but I asked to be excused. I said, with withering irony, that it
was sufficient to be skinned -- I declined to be scalped.

      I went away from there with my handkerchief about my face, and never,
never, never desired to dream of palatial Parisian barber-shops anymore.
The truth is, as I believe I have since found out, that they have no barber
shops worthy of the name in Paris -- and no barbers, either, for that
matter. The impostor who does duty as a barber brings his pans and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -116-

napkins and implements of torture to your residence and deliberately skins
you in your private apartments. Ah, I have suffered, suffered, suffered,
here in Paris, but never mind -- the time is coming when I shall have a
dark and bloody revenge. Someday a Parisian barber will come to my room to
skin me, and from that day forth that barber will never be heard of more.

     At eleven o'clock we alighted upon a sign which manifestly referred to
billiards. Joy! We had played billiards in the Azores with balls that were
not round and on an ancient table that was very little smoother than a
brick pavement -- one of those wretched old things with dead cushions, and
with patches in the faded cloth and invisible obstructions that made the
balls describe the most astonishing and unsuspected angles and perform
feats in the way of unlooked-for and almost impossible "scratches" that
were perfectly bewildering. We had played at Gibraltar with balls the size
of a walnut, on a table like a public square -- and in both instances we
achieved far more aggravation than amusement. We expected to fare better
here, but we were mistaken. The cushions were a good deal higher than the
balls, and as the balls had a fashion of always stopping under the
cushions, we accomplished very little in the way of caroms. The cushions
were hard and unelastic, and the cues were so crooked that in making a shot
you had to allow for the curve or you would infallibly put the "English" on
the wrong side of the hall. Dan was to mark while the doctor and I played.
At the end of an hour neither of us had made a count, and so Dan was tired
of keeping tally with nothing to tally, and we were heated and angry and
disgusted. We paid the heavy bill -- about six cents -- and said we would
call around sometime when we had a week to spend, and finish the game.

      We adjourned to one of those pretty cafΘs and took supper and tested
the wines of the country, as we had been instructed to do, and found them
harmless and unexciting. They might have been exciting, however, if we had
chosen to drink a sufficiency of them.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -117-

     To close our first day in Paris cheerfully and pleasantly, we now
sought our grand room in the Grand Hotel du Louvre and climbed into our
sumptuous bed to read and smoke -- but alas!

     It was pitiful,
     In a whole city-full,
     Gas we had none.

      No gas to read by -- nothing but dismal candles. It was a shame. We
tried to map out excursions for the morrow; we puzzled over French "guides
to Paris"; we talked disjointedly in a vain endeavor to make head or tail
of the wild chaos of the day's sights and experiences; we subsided to
indolent smoking; we gaped and yawned and stretched -- then feebly wondered
if we were really and truly in renowned Paris, and drifted drowsily away
into that vast mysterious void which men call sleep.



12.1 They go on the principle that it is better that one innocent man
should suffer than five hundred.
Note: 12.2: page 117: Running header reads: "Gastly Experience" Footnote:
"Joke by the Doctor"

                                 Chapter 13

                               CHAPTER XIII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -118-

      THE next morning we were up and dressed at ten o'clock. We went to
the commissionaire of the hotel -- I don't know what a commissionaire is,
but that is the man we went to -- and told him we wanted a guide. He said
the national Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen and
Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to find a good guide
unemployed. He said he usually kept a dozen or two on hand, but he only had
three now. He called them. One looked so like a very pirate that we let him
go at once. The next one spoke with a simpering precision of pronunciation
that was irritating and said:

      "If ze zhentlemans will to me make ze grande honneur to me rattain in
hees serveece, I shall show to him every sing zat is magnifique to look
upon in ze beautiful Parree. I speaky ze Angleesh pairfaitemaw."

      He would have done well to have stopped there, because he had that
much by heart and said it right off without making a mistake. But his
self-complacency seduced him into attempting a flight into regions of
unexplored English, and the reckless experiment was his ruin. Within ten
seconds he was so tangled up in a maze of mutilated verbs and torn and
bleeding forms of speech that no human ingenuity could ever have gotten him
out of it with credit. It was plain enough that he could not "speaky" the
English quite as "pairfaitemaw" as he had pretended he could.

      The third man captured us. He was plainly dressed, but he had a
noticeable air of neatness about him. He wore a

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -119-

high silk hat which was a little old, but had been carefully brushed. He
wore second-hand kid gloves, in good repair, and carried a small rattan
cane with a curved handle -- a female leg -- of ivory. He stepped as gently
and as daintily as a cat crossing a muddy street; and oh, he was urbanity;
he was quiet, unobtrusive self-possession; he was deference itself! He
spoke softly and guardedly; and when he was about to make a statement on
his sole responsibility or offer a suggestion, he weighed it by drachms and
scruples first, with the crook of his little stick placed meditatively to
his teeth. His opening speech was perfect. It was perfect in construction,
in phraseology, in grammar, in emphasis, in pronunciation -- everything. He
spoke little and guardedly after that. We were charmed. We were more than
charmed -- we were overjoyed. We hired him at once. We never even asked him
his price. This man -- our lackey, our servant, our unquestioning slave
though he was -- was still a gentleman -- we could see that -- while of the
other two one was coarse and awkward and the other was a born pirate. We
asked our man Friday's name. He drew from his pocketbook a snowy little
card and passed it to us with a profound bow:


                                  [Image]

     A. BILLFINGER,
     Guide to Paris, France, Germany,
     Spain, &c., &c.
     Grande Hotel du Louvre.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -120-

     "Billfinger! Oh, carry me home to die!"

      That was an "aside" from Dan. The atrocious name grated harshly on my
ear, too. The most of us can learn to forgive, and even to like, a
countenance that strikes us unpleasantly at first, but few of us, I fancy,
become reconciled to a jarring name so easily. I was almost sorry we had
hired this man, his name was so unbearable. However, no matter. We were
impatient to start. Billfinger stepped to the door to call a carriage, and
then the doctor said:

      "Well, the guide goes with the barbershop, with the billiard-table,
with the gasless room, and may be with many another pretty romance of
Paris. I expected to have a guide named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand de
la Chartreuse, or something that would sound grand in letters to the
villagers at home, but to think of a Frenchman by the name of Billfinger!
Oh! This is absurd, you know. This will never do. We can't say Billfinger;
it is nauseating. Name him over again; what had we better call him? Alexis
du Caulaincourt?"

      "Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville," I suggested.

      "Call him Ferguson," said Dan.

      That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without debate, we
expunged Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Ferguson.

      The carriage -- an open barouche -- was ready. Ferguson mounted
beside the driver, and we whirled away to breakfast. As was proper, Mr.
Ferguson stood by to transmit our orders and answer questions. By and by,
he mentioned casually -- the artful adventurer -- that he would go and get
his breakfast as soon as we had finished ours. He knew we could not get
along without him and that we would not want to loiter about and wait for
him. We asked him to sit down and eat with us. He begged, with many a bow,
to be excused. It was not proper, he said; he would sit at another table.
We ordered him peremptorily to sit down with us.

     Here endeth the first lesson. It was a mistake.

      As long as we had that fellow after that, he was always

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -121-

hungry; he was always thirsty. He came early; he stayed late; he could not
pass a restaurant; he looked with a lecherous eye upon every wineshop.
Suggestions to stop, excuses to eat and to drink, were forever on his lips.
We tried all we could to fill him so full that he would have no room to
spare for a fortnight, but it was a failure. He did not hold enough to
smother the cravings of his superhuman appetite.

      He had another "discrepancy" about him. He was always wanting us to
buy things. On the shallowest pretenses he would inveigle us into shirt
stores, boot stores, tailor shops, glove shops -- anywhere under the broad
sweep of the heavens that there seemed a chance of our buying anything.
Anyone could have guessed that the shopkeepers paid him a percentage on the
sales, but in our blessed innocence we didn't until this feature of his
conduct grew unbearably prominent. One day Dan happened to mention that he
thought of buying three or four silk dress patterns for presents.
Ferguson's hungry eye was upon him in an instant. In the course of twenty
minutes the carriage stopped.

      "What's this?"

      "Zis is ze finest silk magazin in Paris -- ze most celebrate."

      "What did you come here for? We told you to take us to the palace of
the Louvre."

      "I suppose ze gentleman say he wish to buy some silk."

     "You are not required to 'suppose' things for the party, Ferguson. We
do not wish to tax your energies too much. We will bear some of the burden
and heat of the day ourselves. We will endeavor to do such 'supposing' as
is really necessary to be done. Drive on." So spake the doctor.

      Within fifteen minutes the carriage halted again, and before another
silk store. The doctor said:

      "Ah, the palace of the Louvre -- beautiful, beautiful edifice! Does
the Emperor Napoleon live here now, Ferguson?"

      "Ah, Doctor! You do jest; zis is not ze palace; we come there
directly. But since we pass right by zis store, where is such beautiful
silk -- "



         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -122-

"Ah! I see, I see. I meant to have told you that we did not wish to
purchase any silks to-day, but in my absent-mindedness I forgot it. I also
meant to tell you we wished to go directly to the Louvre, but I forgot that
also. However, we will go there now. Pardon my seeming carelessness,
Ferguson. Drive on."

      Within the half hour we stopped again -- in front of another silk
store. We were angry; but the doctor was always serene, always
smooth-voiced. He said:

      "At last! How imposing the Louvre is, and yet how small! How
exquisitely fashioned! How charmingly situated! -- Venerable, venerable
pile -- "

      "Pairdon, Doctor, zis is not ze Louvre -- it is -- "

      "What is it?"

      "I have ze idea -- it come to me in a moment -- zat ze silk in zis
magazin -- "

      "Ferguson, how heedless I am. I fully intended to tell you

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -123-

that we did not wish to buy any silks to-day, and I also intended to tell
you that we yearned to go immediately to the palace of the Louvre, but
enjoying the happiness of seeing you devour four breakfasts this morning
has so filled me with pleasurable emotions that I neglect the commonest
interests of the time. However, we will proceed now to the Louvre,
Ferguson."

      "But, doctor," (excitedly,) "it will take not a minute -- not but one
small minute! Ze gentleman need not to buy if he not wish to -- but only
look at ze silk -- look at ze beautiful fabric. [Then pleadingly.] Sair --
just only one leetle moment!"

      Dan said, "Confound the idiot! I don't want to see any silks today,
and I won't look at them. Drive on."

      And the doctor: "We need no silks now, Ferguson. Our hearts yearn for
the Louvre. Let us journey on -- let us journey on."

      "But doctor! It is only one moment -- one leetle moment. And ze time
will be save -- entirely save! Because zere is nothing to see now -- it is
too late. It want ten minute to four and ze Louvre close at four -- only
one leetle moment, Doctor!"

      The treacherous miscreant! After four breakfasts and a gallon of
champagne, to serve us such a scurvy trick. We got no sight of the
countless treasures of art in the Louvre galleries that day, and our only
poor little satisfaction was in the reflection that Ferguson sold not a
solitary silk dress pattern.

      I am writing this chapter partly for the satisfaction of abusing that
accomplished knave Billfinger, and partly to show whosoever shall read this
how Americans fare at the hands of the Paris guides and what sort of people
Paris guides are. It need not be supposed that we were a stupider or an
easier prey than our countrymen generally are, for we were not. The guides
deceive and defraud every American who goes to Paris for the first time and
sees its sights alone or in company with others as little experienced as
himself. I shall visit

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -124-

Paris again someday, and then let the guides beware! I shall go in my war
paint -- I shall carry my tomahawk along.

      I think we have lost but little time in Paris. We have gone to bed
every night tired out. Of course we visited the renowned International
Exposition. All the world did that. We went there on our third day in Paris
-- and we stayed there nearly two hours. That was our first and last visit.
To tell the truth, we saw at a glance that one would have to spend weeks --
yea, even months -- in that monstrous establishment to get an intelligible
idea of it. It was a wonderful show, but the moving masses of people of all
nations we saw there were a still more wonderful show. I discovered that if
I were to stay there a month, I should still find myself looking at the
people instead of the inanimate objects on exhibition. I got a little
interested in some curious old tapestries of the thirteenth century, but a
party of Arabs came by, and their dusky faces and quaint costumes called my
attention away at once. I watched a silver swan, which had a living grace
about his movements and a living intelligence in his eyes -- watched him
swimming about as comfortably and as unconcernedly as if he had been born
in a morass instead of a jeweler's shop -- watched him seize a silver fish
from under the water and hold up his head and go through all the customary
and elaborate motions of swallowing it -- but the moment it disappeared
down his throat some tattooed South Sea Islanders approached and I yielded
to their attractions.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -125-

Presently I found a revolving pistol several hundred years old which looked
strangely like a modern Colt, but just then I heard that the Empress of the
French was in another part of the building, and hastened away to see what
she might look like. We heard martial music -- we saw an unusual number of
soldiers walking hurriedly about -- there was a general movement among the
people. We inquired what it was all about and learned that the Emperor of
the French and the Sultan of Turkey were about to review twenty-five
thousand troops at the Arc de l'Etoile. We immediately departed. I had a
greater anxiety to see these men than I could have had to see twenty
expositions.

      We drove away and took up a position in an open space opposite the
American minister's house. A speculator bridged a couple of barrels with a
board and we hired standing places on it. Presently there was a sound of
distant music; in another minute a pillar of dust came moving slowly toward
us; a moment more and then, with colors flying and a grand crash of
military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen emerged from the dust and
came down the street on a gentle trot. After them came a long line of
artillery; then more cavalry, in splendid uniforms; and then their imperial
majesties Napoleon III and Abdul Aziz. The vast concourse of people swung
their hats and shouted -- the windows and housetops in the wide vicinity
burst into a snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs, and the wavers of the same
mingled their cheers with those of the masses below. It was a stirring
spectacle.

      But the two central figures claimed all my attention. Was ever such a
contrast set up before a multitude till then? Napoleon in military uniform
-- a long-bodied, short-legged man, fiercely moustached, old, wrinkled,
with eyes half closed, and such a deep, crafty, scheming expression about
them! -- Napoleon, bowing ever so gently to the loud plaudits, and watching
everything and everybody with his cat eyes from under his depressed hat
brim, as if to discover any sign that those cheers were not heartfelt and
cordial.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -126-

     Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman empire -- clad in dark green
European clothes, almost without ornament or insignia of rank; a red
Turkish fez on his head; a short, stout, dark man, black-bearded,
black-eyed, stupid, unprepossessing -- a man whose whole appearance somehow
suggested that if he only had a cleaver in his hand and a white apron on,
one would not be at all surprised to hear him say: "A mutton roast today,
or will you have a nice porterhouse steak?"

      Napoleon III, the representative of the highest modern civilization,
progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by
nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive, superstitious
-- and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood. Here
in brilliant Paris, under

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -127-

this majestic Arch of Triumph, the First Century greets the Nineteenth!

      NAPOLEON III., Emperor of France! Surrounded by shouting thousands,
by military pomp, by the splendors of his capital city, and companioned by
kings and princes -- this is the man who was sneered at and reviled and
called Bastard -- yet who was dreaming of a crown and an empire all the
while; who was driven into exile -- but carried his dreams with him; who
associated with the common herd in America and ran foot races for a wager
-- but still sat upon a throne in fancy; who braved every danger to go to
his dying mother -- and grieved that she could not be spared to see him
cast aside his plebeian vestments for the purple of royalty; who kept his
faithful watch and walked his weary beat a common policeman of London --
but dreamed the while of a coming night when he should tread the long-drawn
corridors of the Tuileries; who made the miserable fiasco of Strasbourg;
saw his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful of its lesson, refuse to perch upon
his shoulder; delivered his carefully prepared, sententious burst of
eloquence upon unsympathetic ears; found himself a prisoner, the butt of
small wits, a mark for the pitiless ridicule of all the world -- yet went
on dreaming of coronations and splendid pageants as before; who lay a
forgotten captive in the dungeons of Ham -- and still schemed and planned
and pondered over future glory and future power; President of France at
last! a coup d'etat, and surrounded by applauding armies, welcomed by the
thunders of cannon, he mounts a throne and waves before an astounded world
the sceptre of a mighty empire! Who talks of the marvels of fiction? Who
speaks of the wonders of romance? Who prates of the tame achievements of
Aladdin and the Magii of Arabia?

      ABDUL-AZIZ, Sultan of Turkey, Lord of the Ottoman Empire! Born to a
throne; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as his meanest slave; chief of a
vast royalty, yet the puppet of his Premier and the obedient child of a
tyrannical mother; a man who sits upon a throne -- the beck of whose finger
moves

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navies and armies -- who holds in his hands the power of life and death
over millions -- yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eats, idles with his eight
hundred concubines, and when he is surfeited with eating and sleeping and
idling, and would rouse up and take the reins of government and threaten to
be a sultan, is charmed from his purpose by wary Fuad Pacha with a pretty
plan for a new palace or a new ship -- charmed away with a new toy, like
any other restless child; a man who sees his people robbed and oppressed by
soulless tax-gatherers, but speaks no word to save them; who believes in
gnomes and genii and the wild fables of The Arabian Nights, but has small
regard for the mighty magicians of to-day, and is nervous in the presence
of their mysterious railroads and steamboats and telegraphs; who would see
undone in Egypt all that great Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer
rather to forget than emulate him; a man who found his great empire a blot
upon the earth -- a degraded, poverty-stricken, miserable, infamous
agglomeration of ignorance, crime, and brutality -- and will idle away the
allotted days of his trivial life and then pass to the dust and the worms
and leave it so!

      Napoleon has augmented the commercial prosperity of France in ten
years to such a degree that figures can hardly compute it. He has rebuilt
Paris and has partly rebuilt every city in the state. He condemns a whole
street at a time, assesses the damages, pays them, and rebuilds superbly.
Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the original owner is
given the first choice by the government at a stated price before the
speculator is permitted to purchase. But above all things, he has taken the
sole control of the empire of France into his hands and made it a tolerably
free land -- for people who will not attempt to go too far in meddling with
government affairs. No country offers greater security to life and property
than France, and one has all the freedom he wants, but no license -- no
license to interfere with anybody or make anyone uncomfortable.

      As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch a dozen
abler men in a night.

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                                   -129-

     The bands struck up, and the brilliant adventurer, Napoleon III., the
genius of Energy, Persistence, Enterprise; and the feeble Abdul-Aziz, the
genius of Ignorance, Bigotry, and Indolence, prepared for the Forward --
March!

      We saw the splendid review, we saw the white-moustached old Crimean
soldier, Canrobert, Marshal of France, we saw -- well, we saw every thing,
and then we went home satisfied.

                                 Chapter 14

                                CHAPTER XIV.

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                                   -130-

     WE went to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We had heard of it before.
It surprises me sometimes to think how much we do know and how intelligent
we are. We recognized the brown old Gothic pile in a moment; it was like
the pictures. We stood at a little distance and changed from one point of
observation to another and gazed long at its lofty square towers and its
rich front, clustered thick with stony, mutilated saints who had been
looking calmly down from their perches for ages. The Patriarch of Jerusalem
stood under them in the old days of chivalry and romance, and preached the
third Crusade, more than six hundred years ago; and since that day they
have stood there and looked quietly down upon the most thrilling scenes,
the grandest pageants, the most extraordinary spectacles that have grieved
or delighted Paris. These battered and broken-nosed old fellows saw many
and many a cavalcade of mail-clad knights come marching home from Holy
Land; they heard the bells above them toll the signal for the St.
Bartholomew's Massacre, and they saw the slaughter that followed; later
they saw the Reign of Terror, the carnage of the Revolution, the overthrow
of a king, the coronation of two Napoleons, the christening of the young
prince that lords it over a regiment of servants in the Tuileries to-day --
and they may possibly continue to stand there until they see the Napoleon
dynasty swept away and the banners of a great republic floating above its
ruins. I wish these old parties could speak. They could tell a tale worth
the listening to.

      They say that a pagan temple stood where Notre Dame now

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                                   -131-

stands, in the old Roman days, eighteen or twenty centuries ago -- remains
of it are still preserved in Paris; and that a Christian church took its
place about A.D. 300; another took the place of that in A.D. 500; and that
the foundations of the present cathedral were laid about A.D. 1100. The
ground ought to be measurably sacred by this time, one would think. One
portion of this noble old edifice is suggestive of the quaint fashions of
ancient times. It was built by Jean Sans-Peur, Duke of Burgundy, to set his
conscience at rest -- he had assassinated the Duke of Orleans. Alas! Those
good old times are gone when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name
and soothe his troubles to sleep simply by getting out his bricks and
mortar and building an addition to a church.

      The portals of the great western front are bisected by square
pillars. They took the central one away in 1852, on the occasion of
thanksgivings for the reinstitution of the presidential power -- but
precious soon they had occasion to reconsider that motion and put it back
again! And they did.

      We loitered through the grand aisles for an hour or two, staring up
at the rich stained-glass windows embellished with blue and yellow and
crimson saints and martyrs, and trying to admire the numberless great
pictures in the chapels, and then we were admitted to the sacristy and
shown the magnificent robes which the Pope wore when he crowned Napoleon I;
a wagon-load of solid gold and silver utensils used in the great public
processions and ceremonies of the church; some nails of the true cross, a
fragment of the cross itself, a part of the crown of thorns. We had already
seen a large piece of the true cross in a church in the Azores, but no
nails. They showed us likewise the bloody robe which that archbishop of
Paris wore who exposed his sacred person and braved the wrath of the
insurgents of 1848, to mount the barricades and hold aloft the olive branch
of peace in the hope of stopping the slaughter. His noble effort cost him
his life. He was shot dead. They showed us a cast of his face taken after
death, the bullet that killed him, and the two vertebrae in which it
lodged. These people have a somewhat singular

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                                   -132-

taste in the matter of relics. Ferguson told us that the silver cross which
the good archbishop wore at his girdle was seized and thrown into the
Seine, where it lay embedded in the mud for fifteen years, and then an
angel appeared to a priest and told him where to dive for it; he did dive
for it and got it, and now it is there on exhibition at Notre Dame, to be
inspected by anybody who feels an interest in inanimate objects of
miraculous intervention.

      Next we went to visit the Morgue, that horrible receptacle for the
dead who die mysteriously and leave the manner of their taking off a dismal
secret. We stood before a grating and looked through into a room which was
hung all about with the clothing of dead men; coarse blouses, water-soaked;
the delicate garments of women and children; patrician vestments,

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                                   -133-

hacked and stabbed and stained with red; a hat that was crushed and bloody.
On a slanting stone lay a drowned man, naked, swollen, purple; clasping the
fragment of a broken bush with a grip which death had so petrified that
human strength could not unloose it -- mute witness of the last despairing
effort to save the life that was doomed beyond all help. A stream of water
trickled ceaselessly over the hideous face. We knew that the body and the
clothing were there for identification by friends, but still we wondered if
anybody could love that repulsive object or grieve for its loss. We grew
meditative and wondered if, some forty years ago, when the mother of that
ghastly thing was dandling it upon her knee, and kissing it and petting it
and displaying it with satisfied pride to the passers-by, a prophetic
vision of this dread ending ever flitted through her brain. I half feared
that the mother, or the wife or a brother of the dead man might come while
we stood there, but nothing of the kind occurred. Men and women came, and
some looked eagerly in and pressed their faces against the bars; others
glanced carelessly at the body and turned away with a disappointed look --
people, I thought, who live upon strong excitements and who attend the
exhibitions of the Morgue regularly, just as other people go to see
theatrical spectacles every night. When one of these looked in and passed
on, I could not help thinking --

      "Now this don't afford you any satisfaction -- a party with his head
shot off is what you need."

      One night we went to the celebrated Jardin Mabille, but only staid a
little while. We wanted to see some of this kind of Paris life, however,
and therefore the next night we went to a similar place of entertainment in
a great garden in the suburb of AsniΦres. We went to the railroad depot,
toward evening, and Ferguson got tickets for a second-class carriage. Such
a perfect jam of people I have not often seen -- but there was no noise, no
disorder, no rowdyism. Some of the women and young girls that entered the
train we knew to be of the demi-monde, but others we were not at all sure
about.

      The girls and women in our carriage behaved themselves

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                                   -134-

modestly and becomingly all the way out, except that they smoked. When we
arrived at the garden in AsniΦres, we paid a franc or two admission and
entered a place which had flower beds in it, and grass plots, and long,
curving rows of ornamental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded bower
convenient for eating ice cream in. We moved along the sinuous gravel
walks, with the great concourse of girls and young men, and suddenly a
domed and filigreed white temple, starred over and over and over again with
brilliant gas jets, burst upon us like a fallen sun. Nearby was a large,
handsome house with its ample front illuminated in the same way, and above
its roof floated the Star-Spangled Banner of America.

      "Well!" I said. "How is this?" It nearly took my breath away.

      Ferguson said an American -- a New Yorker -- kept the place, and was
carrying on quite a stirring opposition to the Jardin Mabille.

      Crowds composed of both sexes and nearly all ages were frisking about
the garden or sitting in the open air in front of the flagstaff and the
temple, drinking wine and coffee or smoking. The dancing had not begun yet.
Ferguson said there was to be an exhibition. The famous Blondin was going
to perform on a tightrope in another part of the garden. We went thither.
Here the light was dim, and the masses of people were pretty closely packed
together. And now I made a mistake which any donkey might make, but a
sensible man never. I committed an error which I find myself repeating
every day of my life. Standing right before a young lady, I said:

      "Dan, just look at this girl, how beautiful she is!"

      "I thank you more for the evident sincerity of the compliment, sir,
than for the extraordinary publicity you have given to it!" This in good,
pure English.

      We took a walk, but my spirits were very, very sadly dampened. I did
not feel right comfortable for some time afterward. Why will people be so
stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of ten
thousand persons?

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                                   -135-

     But Blondin came out shortly. He appeared on a stretched cable, far
away above the sea of tossing hats and handkerchiefs, and in the glare of
the hundreds of rockets that whizzed heavenward by him he looked like a wee
insect. He balanced his pole and walked the length of his rope -- two or
three hundred feet; he came back and got a man and carried him across; he
returned to the center and danced a jig; next he performed some gymnastic
and balancing feats too perilous to afford a pleasant spectacle; and he
finished by fastening to his person a thousand Roman candies, Catherine
wheels, serpents and rockets of all manner of brilliant colors, setting
them on fire all at once and walking and waltzing across his rope again in
a blinding blaze of glory that lit up the garden and the people's faces
like a great conflagration at midnight.

      The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple. Within it was a
drinking saloon, and all around it was a

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                                   -136-

broad circular platform for the dancers. I backed up against the wall of
the temple, and waited. Twenty sets formed, the music struck up, and then
-- I placed my hands before my face for very shame. But I looked through my
fingers. They were dancing the renowned "Can-can." A handsome girl in the
set before me tripped forward lightly to meet the opposite gentleman,
tripped back again, grasped her dresses vigorously on both sides with her
hands, raised them pretty high, danced an extraordinary jig that had more
activity and exposure about it than any jig I ever saw before, and then,
drawing her clothes still higher, she advanced gaily to the center and
launched a vicious kick full at her vis-a-vis that must infallibly have
removed his nose if he had been seven feet high. It was a mercy he was only
six.

      That is the can-can. The idea of it is to dance as wildly, as
noisily, as furiously as you can; expose yourself as much as possible if
you are a woman; and kick as high as you can, no matter which sex you
belong to. There is no word of exaggeration in this. Any of the staid,
respectable, aged people who were there that night can testify to the truth
of that statement. There were a good many such people present. I suppose
French morality is not of that straight-laced description which is shocked
at trifles.

      I moved aside and took a general view of the can-can. Shouts,
laughter, furious music, a bewildering chaos of darting and intermingling
forms, stormy jerking and snatching of gay dresses, bobbing beads, flying
arms, lightning flashes of white-stockinged

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                                   -137-

calves and dainty slippers in the air, and then a grand final rush, riot, a
terrific hubbub, and a wild stampede! Heavens! Nothing like it has been
seen on earth since trembling Tam O'Shanter saw the devil and the witches
at their orgies that stormy night in "Alloway's auld haunted kirk."

      We visited the Louvre, at a time when we had no silk purchases in
view, and looked at its miles of paintings by the old masters. Some of them
were beautiful, but at the same time they carried such evidences about them
of the cringing spirit of those great men that we found small pleasure in
examining them. Their nauseous adulation of princely patrons was more
prominent to me and chained my attention more surely than the charms of
color and expression which are claimed to be in the pictures. Gratitude for
kindnesses is well, but it seems to me that some of those artists carried
it so far that it ceased to be gratitude and became worship. If there is a
plausible excuse for the worship of men, then by all means let us forgive
Rubens and his brethren.

      But I will drop the subject, lest I say something about the old
masters that might as well be left unsaid.

      Of course we drove in the Bois de Boulogne, that limitless park, with
its forests, its lakes, its cascades, and its broad avenues. There were
thousands upon thousands of vehicles abroad, and the scene was full of life
and gaiety. There were very common hacks, with father and mother and all
the children in them; conspicuous little open carriages with celebrated
ladies of questionable reputation in them; there were Dukes and Duchesses
abroad, with gorgeous footmen perched behind, and equally gorgeous
outriders perched on each of the six horses; there were blue and silver,
and green and gold, and pink and black, and all sorts and descriptions of
stunning and startling liveries out, and I almost yearned to be a flunkey
myself, for the sake of the fine clothes.

      But presently the Emperor came along and he outshone them all. He was
preceded by a bodyguard of gentlemen on horseback in showy uniforms, his
carriage-horses (there appeared

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                                   -138-

to be somewhere in the remote neighborhood of a thousand of them,) were
bestridden by gallant-looking fellows, also in stylish uniforms, and after
the carriage followed another detachment of bodyguards. Everybody got out
of the way; everybody bowed to the Emperor and his friend the Sultan; and
they went by on a swinging trot and disappeared.

     I will not describe the Bois de Boulogne. I can not do it. It is
simply a beautiful, cultivated, endless, wonderful wilderness. It is an
enchanting place. It is in Paris now, one may say, but a crumbling old
cross in one portion of it reminds one that it was not always so. The cross
marks the spot where a celebrated troubadour was waylaid and murdered in
the fourteenth century. It was in this park that that fellow with an
unpronounceable name made the attempt upon the Russian Czar's life last
spring with a pistol. The bullet struck a tree. Ferguson showed us the
place. Now in America that interesting tree would be chopped down or
forgotten within the next five years, but it will be treasured here. The
guides will point it out to visitors for the next eight hundred years, and
when it decays and falls down they will put up another there and go on with
the same old story just the same.

                                 Chapter 15

                                CHAPTER XV.

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                                   -139-

      ONE of our pleasantest visits was to PΦre la Chaise, the national
burying-ground of France, the honored resting-place of some of her greatest
and best children, the last home of scores of illustrious men and women who
were born to no titles, but achieved fame by their own energy and their own
genius. It is a solemn city of winding streets and of miniature marble
temples and mansions of the dead gleaming white from out a wilderness of
foliage and fresh flowers. Not every city is so well peopled as this, or
has so ample an area within its walls. Few palaces exist in any city that
are so exquisite in design, so rich in art, so costly in material, so
graceful, so beautiful.

      We had stood in the ancient church of St. Denis, where the marble
effigies of thirty generations of kings and queens lay stretched at length
upon the tombs, and the sensations invoked were startling and novel; the
curious armor, the obsolete costumes, the placid faces, the hands placed
palm to palm in eloquent supplication -- it was a vision of gray antiquity.
It seemed curious enough to be standing face to face, as it were, with old
Dagobert I., and Clovis and Charlemagne, those vague, colossal heroes,
those shadows, those myths of a thousand years ago! I touched their
dust-covered faces with my finger, but Dagobert was deader than the sixteen
centuries that have passed over him, Clovis slept well after his labor for
Christ, and old Charlemagne went on dreaming of his paladins, of bloody
Roncesvalles, and gave no heed to me.

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                                   -140-

      The great names of PΦre la Chaise impress one, too, but differently.
There the suggestion brought constantly to his mind is, that this place is
sacred to a nobler royalty -- the royalty of heart and brain. Every faculty
of mind, every noble trait of human nature, every high occupation which men
engage in, seems represented by a famous name. The effect is a curious
medley. Davoust and Massena, who wrought in many a battle tragedy, are
here, and so also is Rachel, of equal renown in mimic tragedy on the stage.
The AbbΘ Sicard sleeps here -- the first great teacher of the deaf and dumb
-- a man whose heart went out to every unfortunate, and whose life was
given to kindly offices in their service; and not far off, in repose and
peace at last, lies Marshal Ney, whose stormy spirit knew no music like the
bugle call to arms. The man who originated public gas-lighting, and that
other benefactor who introduced the cultivation of the potato and thus
blessed millions of his starving countrymen, lie with the Prince of
Masserano, and with exiled queens and princes of Further India. Gay-Lussac
the chemist, Laplace the astronomer, Larrey the surgeon, de SΘze the
advocate, are here, and with them are Talma, Bellini, Rubini; de Balzac,
Beaumarchais, Beranger; MoliΦre and Lafontaine, and scores of other men
whose names and whose worthy labors are as familiar in the remote by-places
of civilization as are the historic deeds of the kings and princes that
sleep in the marble vaults of St. Denis.

      But among the thousands and thousands of tombs in PΦre la Chaise,
there is one that no man, no woman, no youth of either sex, ever passes by
without stopping to examine. Every visitor has a sort of indistinct idea of
the history of its dead and comprehends that homage is due there, but not
one in twenty thousand clearly remembers the story of that tomb and its
romantic occupants. This is the grave of Abelard and Heloise -- a grave
which has been more revered, more widely known, more written and sung about
and wept over, for seven hundred years, than any other in Christendom save
only that of the Saviour. All visitors linger pensively about

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                                   -141-

it; all young people capture and carry away keepsakes and mementoes of it;
all Parisian youths and maidens who are disappointed in love come there to
bail out when they are full of tears; yea, many stricken lovers make
pilgrimages to this shrine from distant provinces to weep and wail and
"grit" their teeth over their heavy sorrows, and to purchase the sympathies
of the chastened spirits of that tomb with offerings of immortelles and
budding flowers.

      Go when you will, you find somebody snuffling over that tomb. Go when
you will, you find it furnished with those bouquets and immortelles. Go
when you will, you find a gravel-train from Marseilles arriving to supply
the deficiencies caused by memento-cabbaging vandals whose affections have
miscarried.

      Yet who really knows the story of Abelard and Heloise? Precious few
people. The names are perfectly familiar to every body, and that is about
all. With infinite pains I have acquired a knowledge of that history, and I
propose to narrate it here, partly for the honest information of the public
and partly to show that public that they have been wasting a good deal of
marketable sentiment very unnecessarily.


                        STORY OF ABELARD AND HELOISE

     Heloise was born seven hundred and sixty-six years ago.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -142-

She may have had parents. There is no telling. She lived with her uncle
Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral of Paris. I do not know what a canon of a
cathedral is, but that is what he was. He was nothing more than a sort of a
mountain howitzer, likely, because they had no heavy artillery in those
days. Suffice it, then, that Heloise lived with her uncle the howitzer and
was happy. She spent the most of her childhood in the convent of Argenteuil
-- never heard of Argenteuil before, but suppose there was really such a
place. She then returned to her uncle, the old gun, or son of a gun, as the
case may be, and he taught her to write and speak Latin, which was the
language of literature and polite society at that period.

      Just at this time, Pierre Abelard, who had already made himself
widely famous as a rhetorician, came to found a school of rhetoric in
Paris. The originality of his principles, his eloquence, and his great
physical strength and beauty created a profound sensation. He saw Heloise,
and was captivated by her blooming youth, her beauty, and her charming
disposition. He wrote to her; she answered. He wrote again; she answered
again. He was now in love. He longed to know her -- to speak to her face to
face.

      His school was near Fulbert's house. He asked Fulbert to allow him to
call. The good old swivel saw here a rare opportunity: his niece, whom he
so much loved, would absorb knowledge from this man, and it would not cost
him a cent. Such was Fulbert -- penurious.

      Fulbert's first name is not mentioned by any author, which

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                                   -143-

is unfortunate. However, George W. Fulbert will answer for him as well as
any other. We will let him go at that. He asked Abelard to teach her.

      Abelard was glad enough of the opportunity. He came often and staid
long. A letter of his shows in its very first sentence that he came under
that friendly roof like a cold-hearted villain as he was, with the
deliberate intention of debauching a confiding, innocent girl. This is the
letter:

     "I cannot cease to be astonished at the simplicity of Fulbert; I
     was as much surprised as if he had placed a lamb in the power of
     a hungry wolf. Heloise and I, under pretext of study, gave
     ourselves up wholly to love, and the solitude that love seeks our
     studies procured for us. Books were open before us, but we spoke
     oftener of love than philosophy, and kisses came more readily
     from our lips than words."

      And so, exulting over an honorable confidence which to his degraded
instinct was a ludicrous "simplicity," this unmanly Abelard seduced the
niece of the man whose guest he was. Paris found it out. Fulbert was told
of it -- told often -- but refused to believe it. He could not comprehend
how a man could be so depraved as to use the sacred protection and security
of hospitality as a means for the commission of such a crime as that. But
when he heard the rowdies in the streets singing the love-songs of Abelard
to Heloise, the case was too plain -- love-songs come not properly within
the teachings of rhetoric and philosophy.

      He drove Abelard from his house. Abelard returned secretly and
carried Heloise away to Palais, in Brittany, his native country. Here,
shortly afterward, she bore a son, who, from his rare beauty, was surnamed
Astrolabe -- William G. The girl's flight enraged Fulbert, and he longed
for vengeance, but feared to strike lest retaliation visit Heloise -- for
he still loved her tenderly. At length Abelard offered to marry Heloise --
but on a shameful condition: that the marriage should be kept secret from
the world, to the end that (while her good name remained a wreck, as
before,) his priestly reputation might be kept untarnished. It was like
that miscreant. Fulbert saw his opportunity and consented. He would see

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -144-

the parties married, and then violate the confidence of the man who had
taught him that trick; he would divulge the secret and so remove somewhat
of the obloquy that attached to his niece's fame. But the niece suspected
his scheme. She refused the marriage at first; she said Fulbert would
betray the secret to save her, and besides, she did not wish to drag down a
lover who was so gifted, so honored by the world, and who had such a
splendid career before him. It was noble, self-sacrificing love, and
characteristic of the pure-souled Heloise, but it was not good sense.

      But she was overruled, and the private marriage took place. Now for
Fulbert! The heart so wounded should be healed at last; the proud spirit so
tortured should find rest again; the humbled head should be lifted up once
more. He proclaimed the marriage in the high places of the city and
rejoiced that dishonor had departed from his house. But lo! Abelard denied
the marriage! Heloise denied it! The people, knowing the former
circumstances, might have believed Fulbert had only Abelard denied it, but
when the person chiefly interested -- the girl herself -- denied it, they
laughed, despairing Fulbert to scorn.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -145-

     The poor canon of the cathedral of Paris was spiked again. The last
hope of repairing the wrong that had been done his house was gone. What
next? Human nature suggested revenge. He compassed it. The historian says:

     "Ruffians, hired by Fulbert, fell upon Abelard by night, and
     inflicted upon him a terrible and nameless mutilation."

      I am seeking the last resting place of those "ruffians." When I find
it I shall shed some tears on it, and stack up some bouquets and
immortelles, and cart away from it some gravel whereby to remember that
howsoever blotted by crime their lives may have been, these ruffians did
one just deed, at any rate, albeit it was not warranted by the strict
letter of the law.

      Heloise entered a convent and gave good-bye to the world and its
pleasures for all time. For twelve years she never heard of Abelard --
never even heard his name mentioned. She had become prioress of Argenteuil
and led a life of complete seclusion. She happened one day to see a letter
written by him, in which he narrated his own history. She cried over it and
wrote him. He answered, addressing her as his "sister in Christ." They
continued to correspond, she in the unweighed language of unwavering
affection, he in the chilly phraseology of the polished rhetorician. She
poured out her heart in passionate, disjointed sentences; he replied with
finished essays, divided deliberately into heads and sub-heads, premises
and argument. She showered upon him the tenderest epithets that love could
devise, he addressed her from the North Pole of his frozen heart as the
"Spouse of Christ!" The abandoned villain!

      On account of her too easy government of her nuns, some disreputable
irregularities were discovered among them, and the Abbot of St. Denis broke
up her establishment. Abelard was the official head of the monastery of St.
Gildas de Ruys, at that time, and when he heard of her homeless condition a
sentiment of pity was aroused in his breast (it is a wonder the unfamiliar
emotion did not blow his head off,) and he placed

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                                   -146-

her and her troop in the little oratory of the Paraclete, a religious
establishment which he had founded. She had many privations and sufferings
to undergo at first, but her worth and her gentle disposition won
influential friends for her, and she built up a wealthy and flourishing
nunnery. She became a great favorite with the heads of the church, and also
the people, though she seldom appeared in public. She rapidly advanced in
esteem, in good report, and in usefulness, and Abelard as rapidly lost
ground. The Pope so honored her that he made her the head of her order.
Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and ranking as the first debater of his
time, became timid, irresolute, and distrustful of his powers. He only
needed a great misfortune to topple him from the high position he held in
the world of intellectual excellence, and it came. Urged by kings and
princes to meet the subtle St. Bernard in debate and crush him, he stood up
in the presence of a royal and illustrious assemblage, and when his
antagonist had finished he looked about him and stammered a commencement;
but his courage failed him, the cunning of his tongue was gone: with his
speech unspoken, he trembled and sat down, a disgraced and vanquished
champion.

      He died a nobody, and was buried at Cluny, A.D., 1144. They removed
his body to the Paraclete afterward, and when Heloise died, twenty years
later, they buried her with him, in accordance with her last wish. He died
at the ripe age of 64, and she at 63. After the bodies had remained
entombed three hundred years, they were removed once more. They were
removed again in 1800, and finally, seventeen years afterward, they were
taken up and transferred to PΘre la Chaise, where they will remain in peace
and quiet until it comes time for them to get up and move again.

      History is silent concerning the last acts of the mountain howitzer.
Let the world say what it will about him, I, at least, shall always respect
the memory and sorrow for the abused trust and the broken heart and the
troubled spirit of the old smooth-bore. Rest and repose be his!

     Such is the story of Abelard and Heloise. Such is the history

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                                   -147-

that Lamartine has shed such cataracts of tears over. But that man never
could come within the influence of a subject in the least pathetic without
overflowing his banks. He ought to be dammed -- or leveed, I should more
properly say. Such is the history -- not as it is usually told, but as it
is when stripped of the nauseous sentimentality that would enshrine for our
loving worship a dastardly seducer like Pierre Abelard. I have not a word
to say against the misused, faithful girl, and would not withhold from her
grave a single one of those simple tributes which blighted youths and
maidens offer to her memory, but I am sorry enough that I have not time and
opportunity to write four or five volumes of my opinion of her friend the
founder of the Parachute, or the Paraclete, or whatever it was.

      The tons of sentiment I have wasted on that unprincipled humbug in my
ignorance! I shall throttle down my emotions hereafter, about this sort of
people, until I have read them up and know whether they are entitled to any
tearful attentions or not. I wish I had my immortelles back, now, and that
bunch of radishes.

      In Paris we often saw in shop windows the sign "English Spoken Here,"
just as one sees in the windows at home the sign "Ici on parle francaise."
We always invaded these places at once -- and invariably received the
information, framed in faultless French, that the clerk who did the English
for the establishment had just gone to dinner and would be back in an hour
-- would Monsieur buy something? We wondered why those parties happened to
take their dinners at such erratic and extraordinary hours, for we never
called at a time when an exemplary Christian would be in the least likely
to be abroad on such an errand. The truth was, it was a base fraud -- a
snare to trap the unwary -- chaff to catch fledglings with. They had no
English-murdering clerk. They trusted to the sign to inveigle foreigners
into their lairs, and trusted to their own blandishments to keep them there
till they bought something.

     We ferreted out another French imposition -- a frequent

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                                   -148-

sign to this effect: "ALL MANNER OF AMERICAN DRINKS ARTISTICALLY PREPARED
HERE." We procured the services of a gentleman experienced in the
nomenclature of the American bar, and moved upon the works of one of these
impostors. A bowing, aproned Frenchman skipped forward and said:

     "Que voulez les messieurs?" I do not know what "Que voulez les
messieurs?" means, but such was his remark.

      Our general said, "We will take a whiskey straight."

     [A stare from the Frenchman.]

      "Well, if you don't know what that is, give us a champagne
cock-tail."

     [A stare and a shrug.]

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                                   -149-

     "Well, then, give us a sherry cobbler."

     The Frenchman was checkmated. This was all Greek to him.

     "Give us a brandy smash!"

     The Frenchman began to back away, suspicious of the ominous vigor of
the last order -- began to back away, shrugging his shoulders and spreading
his hands apologetically.

     The General followed him up and gained a complete victory. The
uneducated foreigner could not even furnish a Santa Cruz Punch, an
Eye-Opener, a Stone-Fence, or an Earthquake. It was plain that he was a
wicked impostor.

     An acquaintance of mine said the other day that he was doubtless the
only American visitor to the Exposition who had had the high honor of being
escorted by the Emperor's bodyguard. I said with unobtrusive frankness that
I was astonished that such a long-legged, lantern-jawed,
unprepossessing-looking specter as he should be singled out for a
distinction like that, and asked how it came about. He said he had attended
a great military review in the Champ de Mars some time ago, and while the
multitude about him was growing thicker and thicker every moment he
observed an open space inside the railing. He left his carriage and went
into it. He was the only person there, and so he had plenty of room, and
the situation being central, he could see all the preparations going on
about the field. By and by there was a sound of music, and soon the Emperor
of the French and the Emperor of Austria, escorted by the famous Cent
Gardes, entered the enclosure. They seemed not to observe him, but
directly, in response to a sign from the commander of the guard, a young
lieutenant came toward him with a file of his men following, halted, raised
his hand, and gave the military salute, and then said in a low voice that
he was sorry to have to disturb a stranger and a gentleman, but the place
was sacred to royalty. Then this New Jersey phantom rose up and bowed and
begged pardon, then with the officer beside him, the file of men marching
behind him, and with every mark of respect, he was escorted to his carriage
by the imperial Cent

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                                   -150-

Gardes! The officer saluted again and fell back, the New Jersey sprite
bowed in return and had presence of mind enough to pretend that he had
simply called on a matter of private business with those emperors, and so
waved them an adieu and drove from the field!

      Imagine a poor Frenchman ignorantly intruding upon a public rostrum
sacred to some six-penny dignitary in America. The police would scare him
to death first with a storm of their elegant blasphemy, and then pull him
to pieces getting him away from there. We are measurably superior to the
French in some things, but they are immeasurably our betters in others.

      Enough of Paris for the present. We have done our whole duty by it.
We have seen the Tuileries, the Napoleon Column, the Madeleine, that wonder
of wonders the tomb of Napoleon, all the great churches and museums,
libraries, imperial palaces, and sculpture and picture galleries, the
Pantheon, Jardin des Plantes, the opera, the circus, the legislative body,
the billiard rooms, the barbers, the grisettes --

     Ah, the grisettes! I had almost forgotten. They are another romantic
fraud. They were (if you let the books of travel tell it) always so
beautiful -- so neat and trim, so graceful -- so naive and trusting -- so
gentle, so winning -- so faithful to their shop duties, so irresistible to
buyers in their prattling importunity -- so devoted to their
poverty-stricken students of the Latin Quarter -- so lighthearted and happy
on their Sunday picnics in the suburbs -- and oh, so charmingly, so
delightfully immoral!

      Stuff! For three or four days I was constantly saying:

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                                   -151-

     "Quick, Ferguson! Is that a grisette?"

      And he always said, "No."

      He comprehended at last that I wanted to see a grisette. Then he
showed me dozens of them. They were like nearly all the Frenchwomen I ever
saw -- homely. They had large hands, large feet, large mouths; they had pug
noses as a general thing, and moustaches that not even good breeding could
overlook; they combed their hair straight back without parting; they were
ill-shaped, they were not winning, they were not graceful; I knew by their
looks that they ate garlic and onions; and lastly and finally, to my
thinking it would be base flattery to call them immoral.

     Aroint thee, wench! I sorrow for the vagabond student of the Latin
Quarter now, even more than formerly I envied him. Thus topples to earth
another idol of my infancy.

      We have seen every thing, and tomorrow we go to Versailles. We shall
see Paris only for a little while as we come back to take up our line of
march for the ship, and so I may as well bid the beautiful city a regretful
farewell. We shall travel many thousands of miles after we leave here and
visit many great cities, but we shall find none so enchanting as this.

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                                   -152-

     Some of our party have gone to England, intending to take a roundabout
course and rejoin the vessel at Leghorn or Naples several weeks hence. We
came near going to Geneva, but have concluded to return to Marseilles and
go up through Italy from Genoa.

     I will conclude this chapter with a remark that I am sincerely proud
to be able to make -- and glad, as well, that my comrades cordially endorse
it, to wit: by far the handsomest women we have seen in France were born
and reared in America.

     I feel now like a man who has redeemed a failing reputation and shed
luster upon a dimmed escutcheon, by a single just deed done at the eleventh
hour.

     Let the curtain fall, to slow music.

                                 Chapter 16

                                CHAPTER XVI.

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                                   -153-

      VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze and stare and try
to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the
Garden of Eden -- but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of
beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite
dream. The scene thrills one like military music! A noble palace,
stretching its ornamented front, block upon block away, till it seemed that
it would never end; a grand promenade before it, whereon the armies of an
empire might parade; all about it rainbows of flowers, and colossal statues
that were almost numberless and yet seemed only scattered over the ample
space; broad flights of stone steps leading down from the promenade to
lower grounds of the park -- stairways that whole regiments might stand to
arms upon and have room to spare; vast fountains whose great bronze
effigies discharged rivers of sparkling water into the air and mingled a
hundred curving jets together in forms of matchless beauty; wide
grass-carpeted avenues that branched hither and thither in every direction
and wandered to seemingly interminable distances, walled all the way on
either side with compact ranks of leafy trees whose branches met above and
formed arches as faultless and as symmetrical as ever were carved in stone;
and here and there were glimpses of sylvan lakes with miniature ships
glassed in their surfaces. And every where -- on the palace steps, and the
great promenade, around the fountains, among the trees, and far under the
arches of the endless avenues -- hundreds

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                                   -154-

and hundreds of people in gay costumes walked or ran or danced, and gave to
the fairy picture the life and animation which was all of perfection it
could have lacked.

      It was worth a pilgrimage to see. Everything is on so gigantic a
scale. Nothing is small -- nothing is cheap. The statues are all large; the
palace is grand; the park covers a fair-sized county; the avenues are
interminable. All the distances and all the dimensions about Versailles are
vast. I used to think the pictures exaggerated these distances and these
dimensions beyond all reason, and that they made Versailles more beautiful
than it was possible for any place in the world to be. I know now that the
pictures never came up to the subject in any respect, and that no painter
could represent Versailles on canvas as beautiful as it is in reality. I
used to abuse Louis XIV for spending two hundred millions of dollars in
creating this marvelous park, when bread was so scarce

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                                   -155-

with some of his subjects; but I have forgiven him now. He took a tract of
land sixty miles in circumference and set to work to make this park and
build this palace and a road to it from Paris. He kept 36,000 men employed
daily on it, and the labor was so unhealthy that they used to die and be
hauled off by cartloads every night. The wife of a nobleman of the time
speaks of this as an "inconvenience," but naively remarks that "it does not
seem worthy of attention in the happy state of tranquillity we now enjoy."

     I always thought ill of people at home who trimmed their shrubbery
into pyramids and squares and spires and all manner of unnatural shapes,
and when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to
feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom of
it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees into
unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room, and then
surely they look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred thousand
tall forest trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of leaf or
branch to grow on the trunk lower down than six feet above the ground; from
that point the boughs begin to project, and very gradually they extend
outward further and further till they meet overhead, and a faultless tunnel
of foliage is formed. The arch is mathematically precise. The effect is
then very fine. They make trees take fifty different shapes, and so these
quaint effects are infinitely varied and picturesque. The trees in no two
avenues are shaped alike, and consequently the eye is not fatigued with
anything in the nature of monotonous uniformity. I will drop this subject
now, leaving it to others to determine how these people manage to make
endless ranks of lofty forest trees grow to just a certain thickness of
trunk (say a foot and two-thirds); how they make them spring to precisely
the same height for miles; how they make them grow so close together; how
they compel one huge limb to spring from the same identical spot on each
tree and form the main sweep of the arch; and how all these things are kept
exactly in the same condition and in the same exquisite shapeliness and
symmetry

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                                   -156-

month after month and year after year -- for I have tried to reason out the
problem and have failed.

      We walked through the great hall of sculpture and the one hundred and
fifty galleries of paintings in the palace of Versailles, and felt that to
be in such a place was useless unless one had a whole year at his disposal.
These pictures are all battle scenes, and only one solitary little canvas
among them all treats of anything but great French victories. We wandered,
also, through the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon, those monuments of
royal prodigality, and with histories so mournful -- filled, as it is, with
souvenirs of Napoleon the First, and three dead kings and as many queens.
In one sumptuous bed they had all slept in succession, but no one occupies
it now. In a large dining room stood the table at which Louis XIV and his
mistress Madame Maintenon, and after them Louis XV, and Pompadour, had sat
at their meals naked and unattended -- for the table stood upon a trapdoor,
which descended with it to regions below when it was necessary to replenish
its dishes. In a room of the Petit Trianon stood the furniture, just as
poor Marie Antoinette left it when the mob came and dragged her and the
King to Paris, never to return. Near at hand, in the stables, were
prodigious carriages that showed no color but gold -- carriages used by
former kings of France on state occasions, and never used now save when a
kingly head is to be crowned or an imperial infant christened. And with
them were some curious sleighs, whose bodies were shaped like lions, swans,
tigers, etc. -- vehicles that had once been handsome with pictured designs
and fine workmanship, but were dusty and decaying now. They had their
history. When Louis XIV had finished the Grand Trianon, he told Maintenon
he had created a Paradise for her, and asked if she could think of anything
now to wish for. He said he wished the Trianon to be perfection -- nothing
less. She said she could think of but one thing -- it was summer, and it
was balmy France -- yet she would like well to sleigh ride in the leafy
avenues of Versailles! The next morning found miles and miles of grassy
avenues spread thick with snowy salt and

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                                   -157-

sugar, and a procession of those quaint sleighs waiting to receive the
chief concubine of the gaiest and most unprincipled court that France has
ever seen!

      From sumptuous Versailles, with its palaces, its statues, its
gardens, and its fountains, we journeyed back to Paris and sought its
antipodes -- the Faubourg St. Antoine. Little, narrow streets; dirty
children blockading them; greasy, slovenly women capturing and spanking
them; filthy dens on first floors, with rag stores in them (the heaviest
business in the Faubourg is the chiffonier's); other filthy dens where
whole suits of second and third-hand clothing are sold at prices that would
ruin any proprietor who did not steal his stock; still other filthy dens
where they sold groceries -- sold them by the half-pennyworth -- five
dollars would buy the man out, goodwill and all. Up these little crooked
streets they will murder a man for seven dollars and dump the body in the
Seine. And up some other of these streets -- most of them, I should say --
live lorettes.

      All through this Faubourg St. Antoine, misery, poverty, vice, and
crime go hand in hand, and the evidences of it stare one in the face from
every side. Here the people live who begin the revolutions. Whenever there
is anything of that kind to be done, they are always ready. They take as
much genuine pleasure in building a barricade as they do in cutting a
throat or shoving a friend into the Seine. It is these savage-looking
ruffians who storm the splendid halls of the Tuileries occasionally, and
swarm into Versailles when a king is to be called to account.

      But they will build no more barricades, they will break no more
soldiers' heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of all
that. He is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead
noble boulevards as straight as an arrow -- avenues which a cannon ball
could traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more
irresistible than the flesh and bones of men -- boulevards whose stately
edifices will never afford refuges and plotting places for starving,
discontented revolution breeders. Five of these great thoroughfares

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                                   -158-

radiate from one ample centre -- a centre which is exceedingly well adapted
to the accommodation of heavy artillery. The mobs used to riot there, but
they must seek another rallying-place in future. And this ingenious
Napoleon paves the streets of his great cities with a smooth, compact
composition of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of flagstones -- no
more assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. I cannot feel friendly
toward my quondam fellow-American, Napoleon III., especially at this
time,16.1 when in fancy I see his credulous victim, Maximilian, lying stark
and stiff in Mexico, and his maniac widow watching eagerly from her French
asylum for the form that will never come -- but I do admire his nerve, his
calm self-reliance, his shrewd good sense.



16.1 July, 1867.

                                 Chapter 17

                               CHAPTER XVII.

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                                   -159-

      WE had a pleasant journey of it seaward again. We found that for the
three past nights our ship had been in a state of war. The first night the
sailors of a British ship, being happy with grog, came down on the pier and
challenged our sailors to a free fight. They accepted with alacrity,
repaired to the pier, and gained -- their share of a drawn battle. Several
bruised and bloody members of both parties were carried off by the police
and imprisoned until the following morning. The next night the British boys
came again to renew the fight, but our men had had strict orders to remain
on board and out of sight. They did so, and the besieging party grew noisy
and more and more abusive as the fact became apparent (to them) that our
men were afraid to come out. They went away finally with a closing burst of
ridicule and offensive epithets. The third night they came again and were
more obstreperous than ever. They swaggered up and down the almost deserted
pier, and hurled curses, obscenity, and stinging sarcasms at our crew. It
was more than human nature could bear. The executive officer ordered our
men ashore -- with instructions not to fight. They charged the British and
gained a brilliant victory. I probably would not have mentioned this war
had it ended differently. But I travel to learn, and I still remember that
they picture no French defeats in the battle-galleries of Versailles.

      It was like home to us to step on board the comfortable ship again
and smoke and lounge about her breezy decks. And yet it was not altogether
like home, either, because so

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                                   -160-

many members of the family were away. We missed some pleasant faces which
we would rather have found at dinner, and at night there were gaps in the
euchre-parties which could not be satisfactorily filled. "Moult." was in
England, Jack in Switzerland, Charley in Spain. Blucher was gone, none
could tell where. But we were at sea again, and we had the stars and the
ocean to look at, and plenty of room to meditate in.

      In due time the shores of Italy were sighted, and as we stood gazing
from the decks, early in the bright summer morning, the stately city of
Genoa rose up out of the sea and flung back the sunlight from her hundred
palaces.

      Here we rest for the present -- or rather, here we have been trying
to rest, for some little time, but we run about too much to accomplish a
great deal in that line.

      I would like to remain here. I had rather not go any further. There
may be prettier women in Europe, but I doubt it. The population of Genoa is
120,000; two-thirds of these are women, I think, and at least two-thirds of
the women are beautiful. They are as dressy and as tasteful and as graceful
as they could possibly be without being angels. However, angels are not
very dressy, I believe. At least the angels in pictures are not -- they
wear nothing but wings. But these Genoese women do look so charming. Most
of the young demoiselles are robed in a cloud of white from head to foot,
though many trick themselves out more elaborately. Nine-tenths of them wear
nothing on their heads but a filmy sort of veil, which falls down their
backs like a white mist. They are very fair, and many of them have blue
eyes, but black and dreamy dark brown ones are met with oftenest.

      The ladies and gentlemen of Genoa have a pleasant fashion of
promenading in a large park on the top of a hill in the center of the city,
from six till nine in the evening, and then eating ices in a neighboring
garden an hour or two longer. We went to the park on Sunday evening. Two
thousand persons were present, chiefly young ladies and gentlemen. The
gentlemen were dressed in the very latest Paris fashions, and the

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                                   -161-

robes of the ladies glinted among the trees like so many snowflakes. The
multitude moved round and round the park in a great procession. The bands
played, and so did the fountains; the moon and the gas lamps lit up the
scene, and altogether it was a brilliant and an animated picture. I scanned
every female face that passed, and it seemed to me that all were handsome.
I never saw such a freshet of loveliness before. I did not see how a man of
only ordinary decision of character could marry here, because before he
could get his mind made up he would fall in love with somebody else.

      Never smoke any Italian tobacco. Never do it on any account. It makes
me shudder to think what it must be made of. You cannot throw an old cigar
"stub" down anywhere, but some vagabond will pounce upon it on the instant.
I like to smoke a good deal, but it wounds my sensibilities to see one of
these stub-hunters watching me out of the corners

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                                   -162-

of his hungry eyes and calculating how long my cigar will be likely to
last. It reminded me too painfully of that San Francisco undertaker who
used to go to sick-beds with his watch in his hand and time the corpse. One
of these stub-hunters followed us all over the park last night, and we
never had a smoke that was worth anything. We were always moved to appease
him with the stub before the cigar was half gone, because he looked so
viciously anxious. He regarded us as his own legitimate prey, by right of
discovery, I think, because he drove off several other professionals who
wanted to take stock in us.

      Now, they surely must chew up those old stubs, and dry and sell them
for smoking-tobacco. Therefore, give your custom to other than Italian
brands of the article.

      "The Superb" and the "City of Palaces" are names which Genoa has held
for centuries. She is full of palaces, certainly, and the palaces are
sumptuous inside, but they are very rusty without and make no pretensions
to architectural magnificence. "Genoa the Superb" would be a felicitous
title if it referred to the women.

      We have visited several of the palaces -- immense thick-walled piles,
with great stone staircases, tesselated marble pavements on the floors,
(sometimes they make a mosaic work, of intricate designs, wrought in
pebbles or little fragments of marble laid in cement,) and grand salons
hung with pictures by Rubens, Guido, Titian, Paul Veronese, and so on, and
portraits of heads of the family, in plumed helmets and gallant coats of
mail, and patrician ladies in stunning costumes of centuries ago. But, of
course, the folks were all out in the country for the summer, and might not
have known enough to ask us to dinner if they had been at home, and so all
the grand empty salons, with their resounding pavements, their grim
pictures of dead ancestors, and tattered banners with the dust of bygone
centuries upon them, seemed to brood solemnly of death and the grave, and
our spirits ebbed away, and our cheerfulness passed from us. We never went
up to the eleventh story. We always began to suspect ghosts. There was

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                                   -163-

always an undertaker-looking servant along, too, who handed us a program,
pointed to the picture that began the list of the salon he was in, and then
stood stiff and stark and unsmiling in his petrified livery till we were
ready to move on to the next chamber, whereupon he marched sadly ahead and
took up another malignantly respectful position as before. I wasted so much
time praying that the roof would fall in on these dispiriting flunkies that
I had but little left to bestow upon palace and pictures.

      And besides, as in Paris, we had a guide. Perdition catch all the
guides. This one said he was the most gifted linguist in Genoa, as far as
English was concerned, and that only two persons in the city beside himself
could talk the language at all. He showed us the birthplace of Christopher
Columbus,

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                                   -164-

and after we had reflected in silent awe before it for fifteen minutes, he
said it was not the birthplace of Columbus, but of Columbus' grandmother!
When we demanded an explanation of his conduct he only shrugged his
shoulders and answered in barbarous Italian. I shall speak further of this
guide in a future chapter. All the information we got out of him we shall
be able to carry along with us, I think.

      I have not been to church so often in a long time as I have in the
last few weeks. The people in these old lands seem to make churches their
specialty. Especially does this seem to be the case with the citizens of
Genoa. I think there is a church every three or four hundred yards all over
town. The streets are sprinkled from end to end with shovel-hatted,
long-robed, well-fed priests, and the church bells by dozens are pealing
all the day long, nearly. Every now and then one comes across a friar of
orders gray, with shaven head, long, coarse robe, rope girdle and beads,
and with feet cased in sandals or entirely bare. These worthies suffer in
the flesh and do penance all their lives, I suppose, but they look like
consummate famine-breeders. They are all fat and serene.

     The old Cathedral of San Lorenzo is about as notable a building as we
have found in Genoa. It is vast, and has colonnades of noble pillars, and a
great organ, and the customary pomp of gilded moldings, pictures, frescoed
ceilings, and so forth. I cannot describe it, of course -- it would require
a

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                                   -165-

good many pages to do that. But it is a curious place. They said that half
of it -- from the front door halfway down to the altar -- was a Jewish
synagogue before the Saviour was born, and that no alteration had been made
in it since that time. We doubted the statement, but did it reluctantly. We
would much rather have believed it. The place looked in too perfect repair
to be so ancient.

      The main point of interest about the cathedral is the little Chapel
of St. John the Baptist. They only allow women to enter it on one day in
the year, on account of the animosity they still cherish against the sex
because of the murder of the Saint to gratify a caprice of Herodias. In
this Chapel is a marble chest, in which, they told us, were the ashes of
St. John; and around it was wound a chain, which, they said, had confined
him when he was in prison. We did not desire to disbelieve these
statements, and yet we could not feel certain that they were correct --
partly because we could have broken that chain, and so could St. John, and
partly because we had seen St. John's ashes before, in another church. We
could not bring ourselves to think St. John had two sets of ashes.

      They also showed us a portrait of the Madonna which was painted by
St. Luke, and it did not look half as old and smoky as some of the pictures
by Rubens. We could not help admiring the Apostle's modesty in never once
mentioning in his writings that he could paint.

      But isn't this relic matter a little overdone? We find a piece of the
true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that held
it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have seen as
much as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns; they have
part of one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one also in Notre
Dame. And as for bones of St. Denis, I feel certain we have seen enough of
them to duplicate him if necessary.

      I only meant to write about the churches, but I keep wandering from
the subject. I could say that the Church of the Annunciation is a
wilderness of beautiful columns, of statues,

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                                   -166-

gilded moldings, and pictures almost countless, but that would give no one
an entirely perfect idea of the thing, and so where is the use? One family
built the whole edifice, and have got money left. There is where the
mystery lies. We had an idea at first that only a mint could have survived
the expense.

     These people here live in the heaviest, highest, broadest, darkest,
solidest houses one can imagine. Each one might "laugh a siege to scorn." A
hundred feet front and a hundred high is about the style, and you go up
three flights of stairs before you begin to come upon signs of occupancy.
Everything is stone, and stone of the heaviest -- floors, stairways,
mantels, benches -- everything. The walls are four to five feet thick. The
streets generally are four or five to eight feet wide and as crooked as a
corkscrew. You go along one of these gloomy cracks, and look up and behold
the sky like a mere ribbon of light, far above your head, where the tops of
the tall houses on either side of the street bend almost together. You feel
as if you were at the bottom of some tremendous abyss, with all the world
far above you. You wind in and out and here and there, in the most
mysterious way, and have no more idea of the points of the compass than if
you were a blind man. You can never persuade yourself that these are
actually streets, and the frowning, dingy, monstrous houses dwellings, till
you see one of these beautiful, prettily dressed women emerge from them --
see her emerge from a dark, dreary-looking den that looks dungeon all over,
from the ground away halfway up to heaven. And then you wonder that such a
charming moth could come from such a forbidding shell as that. The streets
are wisely made narrow and the houses heavy and thick and stony, in order
that the people may be cool in this roasting climate. And they are cool,
and stay so. And while I think of it -- the men wear hats and have very
dark complexions, but the women wear no headgear but a flimsy veil like a
gossamer's web, and yet are exceedingly fair as a general thing. Singular,
isn't it?

      The huge palaces of Genoa are each supposed to be occupied

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                                   -167-

by one family, but they could accommodate a hundred, I should think. They
are relics of the grandeur of Genoa's palmy days -- the days when she was a
great commercial and maritime power several centuries ago. These houses,
solid marble palaces though they be, are in many cases of a dull pinkish
color, outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured with Genoese battle
scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids, and with familiar illustrations
from Grecian mythology. Where the paint has yielded to age and exposure and
is peeling off in flakes and patches, the effect is not happy. A noseless
Cupid or a Jupiter with an eye out or a Venus with a fly-blister on her
breast, are not attractive features in a picture. Some of these painted
walls reminded me somewhat of the tall van, plastered with fanciful bills
and posters, that follows the bandwagon of a circus about a country
village. I have not read or heard that the outsides of the houses of any
other European city are frescoed in this way.

      I can not conceive of such a thing as Genoa in ruins. Such massive
arches, such ponderous substructions as support these towering broad-winged
edifices, we have seldom seen before; and surely the great blocks of stone
of which these edifices are built can never decay; walls that are as thick
as an ordinary American doorway is high cannot crumble.

      The republics of Genoa and Pisa were very powerful in the Middle
Ages. Their ships filled the Mediterranean, and they carried on an
extensive commerce with Constantinople and Syria. Their warehouses were the
great distributing depots from whence the costly merchandise of the East
was sent abroad over Europe. They were warlike little nations and defied,
in those days, governments that overshadow them now as mountains overshadow
molehills. The Saracens captured and pillaged Genoa nine hundred years ago,
but during the following century Genoa and Pisa entered into an offensive
and defensive alliance and besieged the Saracen colonies in Sardinia and
the Balearic Isles with an obstinacy that maintained its pristine vigor and
held to its purpose for forty long years. They were victorious at last and
divided their conquests

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                                   -168-

equably among their great patrician families. Descendants of some of those
proud families still inhabit the palaces of Genoa, and trace in their own
features a resemblance to the grim knights whose portraits hang in their
stately halls, and to pictured beauties with pouting lips and merry eyes
whose originals have been dust and ashes for many a dead and forgotten
century.

      The hotel we live in belonged to one of those great orders of knights
of the Cross in the times of the Crusades, and its mailed sentinels once
kept watch and ward in its massive turrets and woke the echoes of these
halls and corridors with their iron heels.

      But Genoa's greatness has degenerated into an unostentatious commerce
in velvets and silver filagreework. They say that each European town has
its specialty. These filagree things are Genoa's specialty. Her smiths take
silver ingots and work them up into all manner of graceful and beautiful
forms. They make bunches of flowers, from flakes and wires of silver, that
counterfeit the delicate creations the frost weaves upon a windowpane; and
we were shown a miniature silver temple whose fluted columns, whose
Corinthian capitals and rich entablatures, whose spire, statues, bells, and
ornate lavishness of sculpture were wrought in polished silver, and with
such matchless art that every detail was a fascinating study and the
finished edifice a wonder of beauty.

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                                   -169-

     We are ready to move again, though we are not really tired yet of the
narrow passages of this old marble cave. Cave is a good word -- when
speaking of Genoa under the stars. When we have been prowling at midnight
through the gloomy crevices they call streets, where no footfalls but ours
were echoing, where only ourselves were abroad, and lights appeared only at
long intervals and at a distance, and mysteriously disappeared again, and
the houses at our elbows seemed to stretch upward farther than ever toward
the heavens, the memory of a cave I used to know at home was always in my
mind, with its lofty passages, its silence and solitude, its shrouding
gloom, its sepulchral echoes, its flitting lights, and more than all, its
sudden revelations of branching crevices and corridors where we least
expected them.

      We are not tired of the endless processions of cheerful, chattering
gossipers that throng these courts and streets all day long, either; nor of
the coarse-robed monks; nor of the "Asti"

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                                   -170-

wines, which that old doctor (whom we call the Oracle,) with customary
felicity in the matter of getting everything wrong, misterms "nasty." But
we must go, nevertheless.

      Our last sight was the cemetery (a burial place intended to
accommodate 60,000 bodies,) and we shall continue to remember it after we
shall have forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble collonaded corridor
extending around a great unoccupied square of ground; its broad floor is
marble, and on every slab is an inscription -- for every slab covers a
corpse. On either side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are
monuments, tombs, and sculptured figures that are exquisitely wrought and
are full of grace and beauty. They are new and snowy; every outline is
perfect, every feature guiltless of mutilation, flaw, or blemish; and
therefore, to us these far-reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred
fold more lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary they have saved from
the wreck of ancient art and set up in the galleries of Paris for the
worship of the world.

      Well provided with cigars and other necessaries of life, we are now
ready to take the cars for Milan.

                                 Chapter 18

                               CHAPTER XVIII.

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                                   -171-

      ALL day long we sped through a mountainous country whose peaks were
bright with sunshine, whose hillsides were dotted with pretty villas
sitting in the midst of gardens and shrubbery, and whose deep ravines were
cool and shady and looked ever so inviting from where we and the birds were
winging our flight through the sultry upper air.

      We had plenty of chilly tunnels wherein to check our perspiration,
though. We timed one of them. We were twenty minutes passing through it,
going at the rate of thirty to thirty-five miles an hour.

      Beyond Alessandria we passed the battle-field of Marengo.

      Toward dusk we drew near Milan and caught glimpses of the city and
the blue mountain peaks beyond. But we were not caring for these things --
they did not interest us in the least. We were in a fever of impatience; we
were dying to see the renowned cathedral! We watched -- in this direction
and that -- all around -- everywhere. We needed no one to point it out --
we did not wish any one to point it out -- we would recognize it even in
the desert of the great Sahara.

      At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the amber
sunlight, rose slowly above the pygmy housetops, as one sometimes sees, in
the far horizon, a gilded and pinnacled mass of cloud lift itself above the
waste of waves, at sea, -- the Cathedral! We knew it in a moment.

      Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural
autocrat was our sole object of interest.

      What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -172-

yet so delicate, so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and
yet it seems in the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that
might vanish with a breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its
wilderness of spires were cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows
fell upon its snowy roof! It was a vision! -- a miracle! -- an anthem sung
in stone, a poem wrought in marble!

      Howsoever you look at the great cathedral, it is noble, it is
beautiful! Wherever you stand in Milan or within seven miles of Milan, it
is visible and when it is visible, no other object can chain your whole
attention. Leave your eyes unfettered by your will but a single instant and
they will surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when
you rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at
night. Surely it must be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man
conceived.

      At nine o'clock in the morning we went and stood before this marble
colossus. The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a
bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been so
ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living creatures
-- and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex that one might
study it a week without exhausting its interest. On the great steeple --
surmounting the myriad of spires -- inside of the spires -- over the doors,
the windows -- in nooks and corners -- every where that a niche or a perch
can be found about the enormous building, from summit to base, there is a
marble statue, and every statue is a study in itself! Raphael, Angelo,
Canova -- giants like these gave birth to the designs, and their own pupils
carved them. Every face is eloquent with expression, and every attitude is
full of grace. Away above, on the lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and
fretted spires spring high in the air, and through their rich tracery one
sees the sky beyond. In their midst the central steeple towers proudly up
like the mainmast of some great Indiaman among a fleet of coasters.

      We wished to go aloft. The sacristan showed us a marble

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                                   -173-

stairway (of course it was marble, and of the purest and whitest -- there
is no other stone, no brick, no wood, among its building materials) and
told us to go up one hundred and eighty-two steps and stop till he came. It
was not necessary to say stop -- we should have done that any how. We were
tired by the time we got there. This was the roof. Here, springing from its
broad marble flagstones, were the long files of spires, looking very tall
close at hand, but diminishing in the distance like the pipes of an organ.
We could see now that the statue on the top of each was the size of a large
man, though they all looked like dolls from the street. We could

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -174-

see, also, that from the inside of each and every one of these hollow
spires, from sixteen to thirty-one beautiful marble statues looked out upon
the world below.

      From the eaves to the comb of the roof stretched in endless
succession great curved marble beams, like the fore-and-aft braces of a
steamboat, and along each beam from end to end stood up a row of richly
carved flowers and fruits -- each separate and distinct in kind, and over
15,000 species represented. At a little distance these rows seem to close
together like the ties of a railroad track, and then the mingling together
of the buds and blossoms of this marble garden forms a picture that is very
charming to the eye.

      We descended and entered. Within the church, long rows of fluted
columns, like huge monuments, divided the building

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                                   -175-

into broad aisles, and on the figured pavement fell many a soft blush from
the painted windows above. I knew the church was very large, but I could
not fully appreciate its great size until I noticed that the men standing
far down by the altar looked like boys, and seemed to glide, rather than
walk. We loitered about gazing aloft at the monster windows all aglow with
brilliantly colored scenes in the lives of the Saviour and his followers.
Some of these pictures are mosaics, and so artistically are their thousand
particles of tinted glass or stone put together that the work has all the
smoothness and finish of a painting. We counted sixty panes of glass in one
window, and each pane was adorned with one of these master achievements of
genius and patience.

      The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture which he said
was considered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since it was not
possible that any other artist, of any epoch, could have copied nature with
such faultless accuracy. The figure was that of a man without a skin; with
every vein, artery, muscle, every fiber and tendon and tissue of the human
frame represented in minute detail. It looked natural, because somehow it
looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be likely to look that
way unless his attention were occupied with some other matter. It was a
hideous thing, and yet there was a fascination about it some where. I am
very sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it now. I shall dream of it
sometimes. I shall dream that it is resting its corded arms on the bed's
head and looking down on me with its dead eyes; I shall dream that it is
stretched between the sheets with me and touching me with its exposed
muscles and its stringy cold legs.

      It is hard to forget repulsive things. I remember yet how I ran off
from school once, when I was a boy, and then, pretty late at night,
concluded to climb into the window of my father's office and sleep on a
lounge, because I had a delicacy about going home and getting thrashed. As
I lay on the lounge and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I fancied
I could see a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched

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                                   -176-

upon the floor. A cold shiver went through me. I turned my face to the
wall. That did not answer. I was afraid that that thing would creep over
and seize me in the dark. I turned back and stared at it for minutes and
minutes -- they seemed hours. It appeared to me that the lagging moonlight
never, never would get to it. I turned to the wall and counted twenty, to
pass the feverish time away. I looked -- the pale square was nearer. I
turned again and counted fifty -- it was almost touching it. With desperate
will I turned again and counted one hundred, and faced about, all in a
tremble. A white human hand lay in the moonlight! Such an awful sinking at
the heart -- such a sudden gasp for breath! I felt -- I cannot tell what I
felt. When I recovered strength enough, I faced the wall again. But no boy
could have remained so with that mysterious hand behind him. I counted
again and looked -- the most of a naked arm was

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                                   -177-

exposed. I put my hands over my eyes and counted till I could stand it no
longer, and then -- the pallid face of a man was there, with the corners of
the mouth drawn down, and the eyes fixed and glassy in death! I raised to a
sitting posture and glowered on that corpse till the light crept down the
bare breastline by line -- inch by inch -- past the nipple -- and then it
disclosed a ghastly stab!

      I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in any sort of
a hurry, but I simply went -- that is sufficient. I went out at the window,
and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the sash, but it was
handier to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it. -- I was not
scared, but I was considerably agitated.

      When I reached home, they whipped me, but I enjoyed it. It seemed
perfectly delightful. That man had been stabbed near the office that
afternoon, and they carried him in there to doctor him, but he only lived
an hour. I have slept in the same room with him often since then -- in my
dreams.

      Now we will descend into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan
Cathedral, and receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been silent
and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years.

     The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle. This was
the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a man
whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the
faint-hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and
wherever he found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open.
With his story in one's mind he can almost see his benignant countenance
moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague
swept the city, brave where all others were cowards, full of compassion
where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the instinct of
self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying with all,
helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a time when parents forsook
their children, the friend deserted

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                                   -178-

the friend, and the brother turned away from the sister while her pleadings
were still wailing in his ears.

      This was good St. Charles BorromΘo, Bishop of Milan. The people
idolized him; princes lavished uncounted treasures upon him. We stood in
his tomb. Near by was the sarcophagus, lighted by the dripping candles. The
walls were faced with bas-reliefs representing scenes in his life done in
massive silver. The priest put on a short white lace garment over his black
robe, crossed himself, bowed reverently, and began to turn a windlass
slowly. The sarcophagus separated in two parts, lengthwise, and the lower
part sank down and disclosed a coffin of rock crystal as clear as the
atmosphere. Within lay the body, robed in costly habiliments covered with
gold embroidery and starred with scintillating gems. The decaying head was
black with age, the dry skin was drawn tight to the bones, the eyes were
gone, there was a hole in the temple and another in the cheek, and the
skinny lips were parted as in a ghastly smile! Over this dreadful face, its
dust and decay and its mocking grin, hung a crown sown thick with flashing
brilliants; and upon the breast lay crosses and croziers of solid gold that
were splendid with emeralds and diamonds.

      How poor, and cheap, and trivial these gew-gaws seemed in presence of
the solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of Death! Think of Milton,
Shakspeare, Washington, standing before a reverent world tricked out in the
glass beads, the brass ear-rings and tin trumpery of the savages of the
plains!

      Dead BartolomΘo preached his pregnant sermon, and its burden was: You
that worship the vanities of earth -- you that long for worldly honor,
worldly wealth, worldly fame -- behold their worth!

      To us it seemed that so good a man, so kind a heart, so simple a
nature, deserved rest and peace in a grave sacred from the intrusion of
prying eyes, and believed that he himself would have preferred to have it
so, but peradventure our wisdom was at fault in this regard.

      As we came out upon the floor of the church again, another priest
volunteered to show us the treasures of the church.

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                                   -179-

What, more? The furniture of the narrow chamber of death we had just
visited weighed six millions of francs in ounces and carats alone, without
a penny thrown into the account for the costly workmanship bestowed upon
them! But we followed into a large room filled with tall wooden presses
like wardrobes. He threw them open, and behold, the cargoes of "crude
bullion" of the assay offices of Nevada faded out of my memory. There were
Virgins and bishops there, above their natural size, made of solid silver,
each worth, by weight, from eight hundred thousand to two millions of
francs, and bearing gemmed books in their hands worth eighty thousand;
there were bas-reliefs that weighed six hundred pounds, carved in solid
silver; croziers and crosses, and candlesticks six and eight feet high, all
of virgin gold, and brilliant with precious stones; and beside these were
all manner of cups and vases, and such things, rich in proportion. It was
an Aladdin's

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                                   -180-

palace. The treasures here, by simple weight, without counting workmanship,
were valued at fifty millions of francs! If I could get the custody of them
for a while, I fear me the market price of silver bishops would advance
shortly, on account of their exceeding scarcity in the Cathedral of Milan.

      The priests showed us two of St. Paul's fingers, and one of St.
Peter's; a bone of Judas Iscariot, (it was black,) and also bones of all
the other disciples; a handkerchief in which the Saviour had left the
impression of his face. Among the most precious of the relics were a stone
from the Holy Sepulchre, part of the crown of thorns, (they have a whole
one at Notre Dame,) a fragment of the purple robe worn by the Saviour, a
nail from the Cross, and a picture of the Virgin and Child painted by the
veritable hand of St. Luke. This is the second of St. Luke's Virgins we
have seen. Once a year all these holy relics are carried in procession
through the streets of Milan.

      I like to revel in the dryest details of the great cathedral. The
building is five hundred feet long by one hundred and eighty wide, and the
principal steeple is in the neighborhood of four hundred feet high. It has
7,148 marble statues, and will have upwards of three thousand more when it
is finished. In addition it has one thousand five hundred bas-reliefs. It
has one hundred and thirty-six spires -- twenty-one more are to be added.
Each spire is surmounted by a statue six and a half feet high. Every thing
about the church is marble, and all from the same quarry; it was bequeathed
to the Archbishopric for this purpose centuries ago. So nothing but the
mere workmanship costs; still that is expensive -- the bill foots up six
hundred and eighty-four millions of francs thus far (considerably over a
hundred millions of dollars,) and it is estimated that it will take a
hundred and twenty years yet to finish the cathedral. It looks complete,
but is far from being so. We saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday,
alongside of one which had been standing these four hundred years, they
said. There are four staircases leading up to the main steeple, each of
which cost a hundred thousand dollars,

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                                   -181-

with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn them. Marco Compioni
was the architect who designed the wonderful structure more than five
hundred years ago, and it took him forty-six years to work out the plan and
get it ready to hand over to the builders. He is dead now. The building was
begun a little less than five hundred years ago, and the third generation
hence will not see it completed.

      The building looks best by moonlight, because the older portions of
it, being stained with age, contrast unpleasantly

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                                   -182-

with the newer and whiter portions. It seems somewhat too broad for its
height, but may be familiarity with it might dissipate this impression.

      They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter's at
Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human
hands.

      We bid it good-bye, now -- possibly for all time. How surely, in some
future day, when the memory of it shall have lost its vividness, shall we
half believe we have seen it in a wonderful dream, but never with waking
eyes!

                                 Chapter 19

                                CHAPTER XIX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -183-

      "DO you wis zo haut can be?"

     That was what the guide asked when we were looking up at the bronze
horses on the Arch of Peace. It meant, do you wish to go up there? I give
it as a specimen of guide-English. These are the people that make life a
burthen to the tourist. Their tongues are never still. They talk forever
and forever, and that is the kind of billingsgate they use. Inspiration
itself could hardly comprehend them. If they would only show you a
masterpiece of art, or a venerable tomb, or a prison-house, or a
battle-field, hallowed by touching memories or historical reminiscences, or
grand traditions, and then step aside and hold still for ten minutes and
let you think, it would not be so bad. But they interrupt every dream,
every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling. Sometimes
when I have been standing before some cherished old idol of mine that I
remembered years and years ago in pictures in the geography at school, I
have thought I would give a whole world if the human parrot at my side
would suddenly perish where he stood and leave me to gaze, and ponder, and
worship.

      No, we did not "wis zo haut can be." We wished to go to La Scala, the
largest theater in the world, I think they call it. We did so. It was a
large place. Seven separate and distinct masses of humanity -- six great
circles and a monster parquette.

      We wished to go to the Ambrosian Library, and we did that also. We
saw a manuscript of Virgil, with annotations in the handwriting of
Petrarch, the gentleman who loved another

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                                   -184-

man's Laura, and lavished upon her all through life a love which was a
clear waste of the raw material. It was sound sentiment, but bad judgment.
It brought both parties fame, and created a fountain of commiseration for
them in sentimental breasts that is running yet. But who says a word in
behalf of poor Mr. Laura? (I do not know his other name.) Who glorifies
him? Who bedews him with tears? Who writes poetry about him? Nobody. How do
you suppose he liked the state of things that has given the world so much
pleasure? How did he enjoy having another man following his wife every
where and making her name a familiar word in every garlic-exterminating
mouth in Italy with his sonnets to her pre-empted eyebrows? They got fame
and sympathy -- he got neither. This is a peculiarly felicitous instance of
what is called poetical justice. It is all very fine; but it does not chime
with my notions of right. It is too one-sided -- too ungenerous.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -185-

Let the world go on fretting about Laura and Petrarch if it will; but as
for me, my tears and my lamentations shall be lavished upon the unsung
defendant.

      We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady for whom I
have always entertained the highest respect, on account of her rare
histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid gold goblets made of gilded
wood, her high distinction as an operatic screamer, and the facility with
which she could order a sextuple funeral and get the corpses ready for it.
We saw one single coarse yellow hair from Lucrezia's head, likewise. It
awoke emotions, but we still live. In this same library we saw some
drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians call him Mickel Angelo,) and
Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.) We reserve our opinion of these
sketches.

      In another building they showed us a fresco representing some lions
and other beasts drawing chariots; and they seemed to project so far from
the wall that we took them to be sculptures. The artist had shrewdly
heightened the delusion by painting dust on the creatures' backs, as if it
had fallen there naturally and properly. Smart fellow -- if it be smart to
deceive strangers.

     Elsewhere we saw a huge Roman amphitheatre, with its stone seats still
in good preservation. Modernized, it is now the scene of more peaceful
recreations than the exhibition of a party of wild beasts with Christians
for dinner. Part of the time, the Milanese use it for a race track, and at
other seasons they flood it with water and have spirited yachting regattas
there. The guide told us these things, and he would hardly try so hazardous
an experiment as the telling of a falsehood, when it is all he can do to
speak the truth in English without getting the lock-jaw.

     In another place we were shown a sort of summer arbor, with a fence
before it. We said that was nothing. We looked again, and saw, through the
arbor, an endless stretch of garden, and shrubbery, and grassy lawn. We
were perfectly willing to go in there and rest, but it could not be done.
It was

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                                   -186-

only another delusion -- a painting by some ingenious artist with little
charity in his heart for tired folk. The deception was perfect. No one
could have imagined the park was not real. We even thought we smelled the
flowers at first.

      We got a carriage at twilight and drove in the shaded avenues with
the other nobility, and after dinner we took wine and ices in a fine garden
with the great public. The music was excellent, the flowers and shrubbery
were pleasant to the eye, the scene was vivacious, everybody was genteel
and well-behaved, and the ladies were slightly moustached, and handsomely
dressed, but very homely.

      We adjourned to a cafΘ and played billiards an hour, and I made six
or seven points by the doctor pocketing his ball, and he made as many by my
pocketing my ball. We came near making a carom sometimes, but not the one
we were trying to make. The table was of the usual European style --
cushions dead and twice as high as the balls; the cues in bad repair. The
natives play only a sort of pool on them. We have never seen any body
playing the French three-ball game yet, and I doubt if there is any such
game known in France, or that there lives any man mad enough to try to play
it on one of these European tables. We bad to stop playing finally because
Dan got to sleeping fifteen minutes between the counts and paying no
attention to his marking.

     Afterward we walked up and down one of the most popular streets for
some time, enjoying other people's comfort and wishing we could export some
of it to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts at home. Just in
this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe -- comfort. In
America, we hurry -- which is well; but when the day's work is done, we go
on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our
business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought
to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our
energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean
and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime in Europe.
When an acre of ground has produced long and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -187-

well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear
across the continent in the same coach he started in -- the coach is
stabled somewhere on the plains and its heated machinery allowed to cool
for a few days; when a razor has seen long service and refuses to hold an
edge, the barber lays it away for a few weeks, and the edge comes back of
its own accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate objects, but none
upon ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might
be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our
edges!

      I do envy these Europeans the comfort they take. When the work of the
day is done, they forget it. Some of them go, with wife and children, to a
beer hall and sit quietly and genteelly drinking a mug or two of ale and
listening to music; others walk the streets, others drive in the avenues;
others assemble in the great ornamental squares in the early evening to
enjoy the sight and the fragrance of flowers and to hear the military bands
play -- no European city being without its fine military music at eventide;
and yet others of the populace sit in the open air in front of the
refreshment houses and eat ices and drink mild beverages that could not
harm a child. They go to bed moderately early, and sleep well. They are
always quiet, always orderly, always cheerful, comfortable, and
appreciative of life and its manifold blessings. One never sees a drunken
man among them. The change that has come over our little party is
surprising. Day by day we lose some of our restlessness and absorb some of
the spirit of quietude and ease that is in the tranquil atmosphere about us
and in the demeanor of the people. We grow wise apace. We begin to
comprehend what life is for.

      We have had a bath in Milan, in a public bath-house. They were going
to put all three of us in one bath-tub, but we objected. Each of us had an
Italian farm on his back. We could have felt affluent if we had been
officially surveyed and fenced in. We chose to have three bathtubs, and
large ones -- tubs suited to the dignity of aristocrats who had real
estate, and brought it with them. After we were stripped and had

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -188-

taken the first chilly dash, we discovered that haunting atrocity that has
embittered our lives in so many cities and villages of Italy and France --
there was no soap. I called. A woman answered, and I barely had time to
throw myself against the door -- she would have been in, in another second.
I said:

     "Beware, woman! Go away from here -- go away, now, or it will be the
worse for you. I am an unprotected male, but I will preserve my honor at
the peril of my life!"

      These words must have frightened her, for she skurried away very
fast.

      Dan's voice rose on the air:

     "Oh, bring some soap, why don't you!"

     The reply was Italian. Dan resumed:

     "Soap, you know -- soap. That is what I want -- soap. S-o-a-p, soap;
s-o-p-e, soap; s-o-u-p, soap. Hurry up! I don't know how you Irish spell
it, but I want it. Spell it to suit yourself, but fetch it. I'm freezing."

     I heard the doctor say impressively:

     "Dan, how often have we told you that these foreigners cannot
understand English? Why will you not depend upon us? Why will you not tell
us what you want, and let us ask for it in the language of the country? It
would save us a great deal of the humiliation your reprehensible ignorance
causes us. I will address this person in his mother tongue: 'Here,
cospetto! corpo di Bacco! Sacramento! Solferino! -- Soap, you son of a
gun!' Dan, if you would let ustalk for you, you would never expose your
ignorant vulgarity."

      Even this fluent discharge of Italian did not bring the soap at once,
but there was a good reason for it. There was not such an article about the
establishment. It is my belief that there never had been. They had to send
far up town, and to several different places before they finally got it, so
they said. We had to wait twenty or thirty minutes. The same thing had
occurred the evening before, at the hotel. I think I have divined the
reason for this state of things at last. The English know how to travel
comfortably, and they carry soap with them; other foreigners do not use the
article.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -189-

     At every hotel we stop at we always have to send out for soap, at the
last moment, when we are grooming ourselves for dinner, and they put it in
the bill along with the candles and other nonsense. In Marseilles they make
half the fancy toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only
have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from
books of travel, just as they have acquired an uncertain notion of clean
shirts, and the peculiarities of the gorilla, and other curious matters.
This reminds me of poor Blucher's note to the landlord in Paris:

     PARIS, le 7 Juillet.
     Monsieur le Landlord -- Sir: Pourquoi don't you mettez some savon
     in your bed-chambers? Est-ce que vous pensez I will steal it? La
     nuit passΘe you charged me pour deux chandelles when I only had
     one; hier vous avez charged me avec glace when I had none at all;
     tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me,
     mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. Savon
     is a necessary de la vie to any body but a Frenchman, et je
     l'aurai hors de cet h⌠tel or make trouble. You hear me. Allons.
     BLUCHER.

     I remonstrated against the sending of this note, because it was so
mixed up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of it;
but Blucher said he guessed the old man could read the French of it and
average the rest.

      Blucher's French is bad enough, but it is not much worse than the
English one finds in advertisements all over Italy every day. For instance,
observe the printed card of the hotel we shall probably stop at on the
shores of Lake Como:
                                  [Image]


                                 "NOTISH."

           "This hotel which the best it is in Italy and most superb,
     is handsome locate on the best situation of the lake, with the
     most splendid view near the Villas Melzy, to the King of Belgian,
     and Serbelloni. This hotel have recently enlarge, do offer all
     commodities on moderate price, at the strangers gentlemen who
     whish spend the seasons on the Lake Come."

     How is that, for a specimen? In the hotel is a handsome little chapel
where an English clergyman is employed to preach to such of the guests of
the house as hail from England and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -190-

America, and this fact is also set forth in barbarous English in the same
advertisement. Wouldn't you have supposed that the adventurous linguist who
framed the card would have known enough to submit it to that clergyman
before he sent it to the printer?

      Here in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church, is the
mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the world -- "The Last
Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci. We are not infallible judges of pictures,
but of course we went there to see this wonderful painting, once so
beautiful, always so worshipped by masters in art, and forever to be famous
in song and story. And the first thing that occurred was the infliction on
us of a placard fairly reeking with wretched English. Take a morsel of it:

     "Bartholomew (that is the first figure on the left hand side at
     the spectator,) uncertain and doubtful about what he thinks to
     have heard, and upon which he wants to be assured by himself at
     Christ and by no others."

      Good, isn't it? And then Peter is described as "argumenting in a
threatening and angrily condition at Judas Iscariot."

      This paragraph recalls the picture. "The Last Supper" is painted on
the dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main
church in ancient times, I suppose. It is battered and scarred in every
direction, and stained and discolored by time, and Napoleon's horses kicked
the legs off most the disciples when they (the horses, not the disciples,)
were stabled there more than half a century ago.

     I recognized the old picture in a moment -- the Saviour with bowed
head seated at the centre of a long, rough table with scattering fruits and
dishes upon it, and six disciples on either side in their long robes,
talking to each other -- the picture from which all engravings and all
copies have been made for three centuries. Perhaps no living man has ever
known an attempt to paint the Lord's Supper differently. The world seems to
have become settled in the belief, long ago, that it is not possible for
human genius to outdo this creation of da Vinci's. I suppose painters will
go on copying it as long as any of the original is

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -191-

left visible to the eye. There were a dozen easels in the room, and as many
artists transferring the great picture to their canvases. Fifty proofs of
steel engravings and lithographs were scattered around, too. And as usual,
I could not help noticing how superior the copies were to the original,
that is, to my inexperienced eye. Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a
Michelangelo, a Carracci, or a da Vinci (and we see them every day,) you
find artists copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. Maybe
the originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now.

     This picture is about thirty feet long, and ten or twelve high, I
should think, and the figures are at least life size. It is one of the
largest paintings in Europe.

     The colors are dimmed with age; the countenances are scaled

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -192-

and marred, and nearly all expression is gone from them; the hair is a dead
blur upon the wall, and there is no life in the eyes. Only the attitudes
are certain.

     People come here from all parts of the world, and glorify this
masterpiece. They stand entranced before it with bated breath and parted
lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of
rapture:

     "Oh, wonderful!"

     "Such expression!"

     "Such grace of attitude!"

     "Such dignity!"

     "Such faultless drawing!"

     "Such matchless coloring!"

     "Such feeling!"

     "What delicacy of touch!"

     "What sublimity of conception!"

     "A vision! A vision!"

     I only envy these people; I envy them their honest admiration, if it
be honest -- their delight, if they feel delight. I harbor no animosity
toward any of them. But at the same time the thought will intrude itself
upon me, How can they see what is not visible? What would you think of a
man who looked at some decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra,
and said: "What matchless beauty! What soul! What expression!" What would
you think of a man who gazed upon a dingy, foggy sunset, and said: "What
sublimity! What feeling! What richness of coloring!" What would you think
of a man who stared in ecstasy upon a desert of stumps and said: "Oh, my
soul, my beating heart, what a noble forest is here!"

      You would think that those men had an astonishing talent for seeing
things that had already passed away. It was what I thought when I stood
before "The Last Supper" and heard men apostrophizing wonders, and beauties
and perfections which had faded out of the picture and gone, a hundred
years before they were born. We can imagine the beauty that was once in an
aged face; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps;

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -193-

but we can not absolutely see these things when they are not there. I am
willing to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon the
Last Supper and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left, supply a
tint that has faded away, restore an expression that is gone; patch, and
color, and add, to the dull canvas until at last its figures shall stand
before him aglow with the life, the feeling, the freshness, yea, with all
the noble beauty that was theirs when first they came from the hand of the
master. But I can not work this miracle. Can those other uninspired
visitors do it, or do they only happily imagine they do?

     After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last Supper
was a very miracle of art once. But it was three hundred years ago.

     It vexes me to hear people talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression,"
"tone," and those other easily acquired and inexpensive technicalities of
art that make such a fine show in conversations concerning pictures. There
is not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a pictured face
is intended to express. There is not one man in five hundred that can go
into a court-room and be sure that he will not mistake some harmless
innocent of a juryman for the black-hearted assassin on trial. Yet such
people talk of "character" and presume to interpret "expression" in
pictures. There is an old story that Matthews, the actor, was once lauding
the ability of the human face to express the passions and emotions hidden
in the breast. He said the countenance could disclose what was passing in
the heart plainer than the tongue could.

     "Now," he said, "observe my face -- what does it express?"

     "Despair!"

     "Bah, it expresses peaceful resignation! What does this express?"

      "Rage!"

     "Stuff! It means terror! This!"

     "Imbecility!"

     "Fool! It is smothered ferocity! Now this!"

     "Joy!"

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -194-

     "Oh, perdition! Any ass can see it means insanity!"

     Expression! People coolly pretend to read it who would think
themselves presumptuous if they pretended to interpret the hieroglyphics on
the obelisks of Luxor -- yet they are fully as competent to do the one
thing as the other. I have heard two very intelligent critics speak of
Murillo's Immaculate Conception (now in the museum at Seville,) within the
past few days. One said:

     "Oh, the Virgin's face is full of the ecstasy of a joy that is
complete -- that leaves nothing more to be desired on earth!"

     The other said:

     "Ah, that wonderful face is so humble, so pleading -- it says as
plainly as words could say it: 'I fear; I tremble; I am unworthy. But Thy
will be done; sustain Thou Thy servant!'"

     The reader can see the picture in any drawing-room; it can be easily
recognized: the Virgin (the only young and really beautiful Virgin that was
ever painted by one of the old masters, some of us think,) stands in the
crescent of the new moon, with a multitude of cherubs hovering about her,
and more coming; her hands are crossed upon her breast, and upon her
uplifted countenance falls a glory out of the heavens. The reader may amuse
himself, if he chooses, in trying to determine which of these gentlemen
read the Virgin's "expression" aright, or if either of them did it.

     Any one who is acquainted with the old masters will comprehend how
much "The Last Supper" is damaged when I say that the spectator can not
really tell, now, whether the disciples are Hebrews or Italians. These
ancient painters never

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -195-

succeeded in denationalizing themselves. The Italian artists painted
Italian Virgins, the Dutch painted Dutch Virgins, the Virgins of the French
painters were Frenchwomen -- none of them ever put into the face of the
Madonna that indescribable something which proclaims the Jewess, whether
you find her in New York, in Constantinople, in Paris, Jerusalem, or in the
empire of Morocco. I saw in the Sandwich Islands, once, a picture copied by
a talented German artist from an engraving in one of the American
illustrated papers. It was an allegory, representing Mr. Davis in the act
of signing a secession act or some such document. Over him hovered the
ghost of Washington in warning attitude, and in the background a troop of
shadowy soldiers in Continental uniform were limping with shoeless,
bandaged feet through a driving snow-storm. Valley Forge was suggested, of
course. The copy seemed accurate, and yet there was a discrepancy
somewhere. After a long examination I discovered what it was -- the shadowy
soldiers were all Germans! Jeff Davis was a German! even the hovering ghost
was a German ghost! The artist had unconsciously worked his nationality
into the picture. To tell the truth, I am getting a little perplexed about
John the Baptist and his portraits. In France I finally grew reconciled to
him as a Frenchman; here he is unquestionably an Italian. What next? Can it
be possible that the painters make John the Baptist a Spaniard in Madrid
and an Irishman in Dublin?

     We took an open barouche and drove two miles out of Milan to "see ze
echo," as the guide expressed it. The road was smooth, it was bordered by
trees, fields, and grassy meadows, and the soft air was filled with the
odor of flowers. Troops of picturesque peasant girls, coming from work,
hooted at us, shouted at us, made all manner of game of us, and entirely
delighted me. My long-cherished judgment was confirmed. I always did think
those frowsy, romantic, unwashed peasant girls I had read so much about in
poetry were a glaring fraud.

     We enjoyed our jaunt. It was an exhilarating relief from tiresome
sight-seeing.

     We distressed ourselves very little about the astonishing

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -196-

echo the guide talked so much about. We were growing accustomed to
encomiums on wonders that too often proved no wonders at all. And so we
were most happily disappointed to find in the sequel that the guide had
even failed to rise to the magnitude of his subject.

     We arrived at a tumble-down old rookery called the Palazzo Simonetti
-- a massive hewn-stone affair occupied by a family of ragged Italians. A
good-looking young girl conducted us to a window on the second floor which
looked out on a court walled on three sides by tall buildings. She put her
head out at the window and shouted. The echo answered more times than we
could count. She took a speaking trumpet and through it she shouted, sharp
and quick, a single "Ha!" The echo answered:

     "Ha! -- -- -- ha! -- -- -ha! -- -ha! -- ha!-ha! ha! h-a-a-a-a-a!"

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -197-

and finally went off into a rollicking convulsion of the jolliest laughter
that could be imagined. It was so joyful -- so long continued -- so
perfectly cordial and hearty, that every body was forced to join in. There
was no resisting it.

     Then the girl took a gun and fired it. We stood ready to count the
astonishing clatter of reverberations. We could not say one, two, three,
fast enough, but we could dot our notebooks with our pencil points almost
rapidly enough to take down a sort of short-hand report of the result. My
page revealed the following account. I could not keep up, but I did as well
as I could:


                                  [Image]

                      Fifty-two Distinct Repetitions.

     I set down fifty-two distinct repetitions, and then the echo got the
advantage of me. The doctor set down sixty-four, and thenceforth the echo
moved too fast for him, also. After the separate concussions could no
longer be noted, the reverberations dwindled to a wild, long-sustained
clatter of sounds such as a watchman's rattle produces. It is likely that
this is the most remarkable echo in the world.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -198-

     The doctor, in jest, offered to kiss the young girl, and was taken a
little aback when she said he might for a franc! The commonest gallantry
compelled him to stand by his offer, and so he paid the franc and took the
kiss. She was a philosopher. She said a franc was a good thing to have, and
she did not care any thing for one paltry kiss, because she had a million
left. Then our comrade, always a shrewd businessman, offered to take the
whole cargo at thirty days, but that little financial scheme was a failure.

                                 Chapter 20

                                CHAPTER XX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -199-

      WE left Milan by rail. The Cathedral six or seven miles behind us;
vast, dreamy, bluish, snow-clad mountains twenty miles in front of us, --
these were the accented points in the scenery. The more immediate scenery
consisted of fields and farm-houses outside the car and a monster-headed
dwarf and a moustached woman inside it. These latter were not show-people.
Alas, deformity and female beards are too common in Italy to attract
attention.

      We passed through a range of wild, picturesque hills, steep, wooded,
cone-shaped, with rugged crags projecting here and there, and with
dwellings and ruinous castles perched away up toward the drifting clouds.
We lunched at the curious old town of Como, at the foot of the lake, and
then took the small steamer and had an afternoon's pleasure excursion to
this place, -- Bellaggio.

     When we walked ashore, a party of policemen (people whose cocked hats
and showy uniforms would shame the finest uniform in the military service
of the United States,) put us into a little stone cell and locked us in. We
had the whole passenger list for company, but their room would have been
preferable, for there was no light, there were no windows, no ventilation.
It was close and hot. We were much crowded. It was the Black Hole of
Calcutta on a small scale. Presently a smoke rose about our feet -- a smoke
that smelled of all the dead things of earth, of all the putrefaction and
corruption imaginable.

      We were there five minutes, and when we got out it was hard to tell
which of us carried the vilest fragrance.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -200-

     These miserable outcasts called that "fumigating" us, and the term was
a tame one indeed. They fumigated us to guard themselves against the
cholera, though we hailed from no infected port. We had left the cholera
far behind us all the time. However, they must keep epidemics away somehow
or other, and fumigation is cheaper than soap. They must either wash
themselves or fumigate other people. Some of the lower classes had rather
die than wash, but the fumigation of strangers causes them no pangs. They
need no fumigation themselves. Their habits make it unnecessary. They carry
their preventive with them; they sweat and fumigate all the day long. I
trust I am a humble and a consistent Christian. I try to do what is right.
I know it is my duty to "pray for them that despitefully use me;" and
therefore, hard as it is, I shall still try to pray for these fumigating,
maccaroni-stuffing organ-grinders.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -201-

     Our hotel sits at the water's edge -- at least its front garden does
-- and we walk among the shrubbery and smoke at twilight; we look afar off
at Switzerland and the Alps, and feel an indolent willingness to look no
closer; we go down the steps and swim in the lake; we take a shapely little
boat and sail abroad among the reflections of the stars; lie on the thwarts
and listen to the distant laughter, the singing, the soft melody of flutes
and guitars that comes floating across the water from pleasuring gondolas;
we close the evening with exasperating billiards on one of those same old
execrable tables. A midnight luncheon in our ample bed-chamber; a final
smoke in its contracted veranda facing the water, the gardens, and the
mountains; a summing up of the day's events. Then to bed, with drowsy
brains harassed with a mad panorama that mixes up pictures of France, of
Italy, of the ship, of the ocean, of home, in grotesque and bewildering
disorder. Then a melting away of familiar faces, of cities, and of tossing
waves, into a great calm of forgetfulness and peace.

     After which, the nightmare.

     Breakfast in the morning, and then the lake.

     I did not like it yesterday. I thought Lake Tahoe was much finer. I
have to confess now, however, that my judgment erred somewhat, though not
extravagantly. I always had an idea that Como was a vast basin of water,
like Tahoe, shut in by great mountains. Well, the border of huge mountains
is here, but the lake itself is not a basin. It is as crooked as any brook,
and only from one-quarter to two-thirds as wide as the Mississippi. There
is not a yard of low ground on either side of it -- nothing but endless
chains of mountains that spring abruptly from the water's edge and tower to
altitudes varying from a thousand to two thousand feet. Their craggy sides
are clothed with vegetation, and white specks of houses peep out from the
luxuriant foliage everywhere; they are even perched upon jutting and
picturesque pinnacles a thousand feet above your head.

     Again, for miles along the shores, handsome country seats, surrounded
by gardens and groves, sit fairly in the water, sometimes

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -202-

in nooks carved by Nature out of the vine-hung precipices, and with no
ingress or egress save by boats. Some have great broad stone staircases
leading down to the water, with heavy stone balustrades ornamented with
statuary and fancifully adorned with creeping vines and bright-colored
flowers -- for all the world like a drop curtain in a theatre, and lacking
nothing but long-waisted, high-heeled women and plumed gallants in silken
tights coming down to go serenading in the splendid gondola in waiting.

     A great feature of Como's attractiveness is the multitude of pretty
houses and gardens that cluster upon its shores and on its mountain sides.
They look so snug and so homelike, and at eventide when every thing seems
to slumber, and the music of the vesper bells comes stealing over the
water, one almost believes that nowhere else than on the lake of Como can
there be found such a paradise of tranquil repose.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -203-

     From my window here in Bellaggio, I have a view of the other side of
the lake now, which is as beautiful as a picture. A scarred and wrinkled
precipice rises to a height of eighteen hundred feet; on a tiny bench half
way up its vast wall, sits a little snowflake of a church, no bigger than a
martin-box, apparently; skirting the base of the cliff are a hundred orange
groves and gardens, flecked with glimpses of the white dwellings that are
buried in them; in front, three or four gondolas lie idle upon the water --
and in the burnished mirror of the lake, mountain, chapel, houses, groves
and boats are counterfeited so brightly and so clearly that one scarce
knows where the reality leaves off and the reflection begins!

     The surroundings of this picture are fine. A mile away, a grove-plumed
promontory juts far into the lake and glasses its palace in the blue
depths; in midstream a boat is cutting the shining surface and leaving a
long track behind, like a ray of light; the mountains beyond are veiled in
a dreamy purple haze; far in the opposite direction a tumbled mass of domes
and verdant slopes and valleys bars the lake, and here indeed does distance
lend enchantment to the view -- for on this broad canvas, sun and clouds
and the richest of atmospheres have blended a thousand tints together, and
over its surface the filmy lights and shadows drift, hour after hour, and
glorify it with a beauty that seems reflected out of Heaven itself. Beyond
all question, this is the most voluptuous scene we have yet looked upon.

     Last night the scenery was striking and picturesque. On the other side
crags and trees and snowy houses were reflected in the lake with a
wonderful distinctness, and streams of light from many a distant window
shot far abroad over the still waters. On this side, near at hand, great
mansions, white with moonlight, glared out from the midst of masses of
foliage that lay black and shapeless in the shadows that fell from the
cliff above -- and down in the margin of the lake every feature of the
weird vision was faithfully repeated.

     Today we have idled through a wonder of a garden attached to a ducal
estate -- but enough of description is enough, I judge.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -204-

I suspect that this was the same place the gardener's son deceived the Lady
of Lyons with, but I do not know. You may have heard of the passage
somewhere:

     "A deep vale,
     Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world,
     Near a clear lake margined by fruits of gold
     And whispering myrtles:
     Glassing softest skies, cloudless,
     Save with rare and roseate shadows;
     A palace, lifting to eternal heaven its marbled walls,
     From out a glossy bower of coolest foliage musical with birds."

     That is all very well, except the "clear" part of the lake. It
certainly is clearer than a great many lakes, but how dull its waters are
compared with the wonderful transparence of Lake Tahoe! I speak of the
north shore of Tahoe, where one can count the scales on a trout at a depth
of a hundred and eighty feet. I have tried to get this statement off at par
here, but with no success; so I have been obliged to negotiate it at fifty
percent discount. At this rate I find some takers; perhaps the reader will
receive it on the same terms -- ninety feet instead of one hundred and
eighty. But let it be remembered that those are forced terms -- Sheriff's
sale prices. As far as I am privately concerned, I abate not a jot of the
original assertion that in those strangely magnifying waters one may count
the scales on a trout (a trout of the large kind,) at a depth of a hundred
and eighty feet -- may see every pebble on the bottom -- might even count a
paper of dray-pins. People talk of the transparent waters of the Mexican
Bay of Acapulco, but in my own experience I know they cannot compare with
those I am speaking of. I have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a
measured depth of eighty-four feet I have seen them put their noses to the
bait and I could see their gills open and shut. I could hardly have seen
the trout themselves at that distance in the open air.

     As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing among the
snow-peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong
upon me again that Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in that
august presence.

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                                   -205-

     Sorrow and misfortune overtake the legislature that still from year to
year permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cognomen! Tahoe! It suggests no
crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. Tahoe for a sea in the
clouds: a sea that has character and asserts it in solemn calms at times,
at times in savage storms; a sea whose royal seclusion is guarded by a
cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts nine thousand feet
above the level world; a sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose
belongings are all beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity!

     Tahoe means grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and
suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute -- possibly it is Digger. I am
satisfied it was named by the Diggers -- those degraded savages who roast
their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones with
tar, and "gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads and ears, and
go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These are the gentry
that named the Lake.

     People say that Tahoe means "Silver Lake" -- "Limpid Water" --
"Falling Leaf." Bosh. It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the
Digger tribe, -- and of the Pi-utes as well. It isn't worth while, in these
practical times, for people to talk about Indian poetry -- there never was
any in them -- except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians. But they are an
extinct tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have camped
with the Indians; I have been on the warpath with them, taken part in the
chase with them -- for grasshoppers; helped them steal cattle; I have
roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would gladly eat
the whole race if I had a chance.

     But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my comparison of the
lakes. Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the truth.
They say it is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it does not
look a dead enough blue for that. Tahoe is one thousand five hundred and
twenty-five feet deep in the centre, by the state geologist's measurement.
They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -206-

feet high: but I feel sure that three thousand feet of that statement is a
good honest lie. The lake is a mile wide, here, and maintains about that
width from this point to its northern extremity -- which is distant sixteen
miles: from here to its southern extremity -- say fifteen miles -- it is
not over half a mile wide in any place, I should think. Its snow-clad
mountains one hears so much about are only seen occasionally, and then in
the distance, the Alps. Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles wide, and its
mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits are never free from snow
the year round. One thing about it is very strange: it never has even a
skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same range of
mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over in winter.

     It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way places and
compare notes with him. We have found one of ours here -- an old soldier of
the war, who is seeking bloodless adventures and rest from his campaigns in
these sunny lands.20.1



20.1 Colonel J. HERON FOSTER, editor of a Pittsburgh journal, and a most
estimable gentleman. As these sheets are being prepared for the press I am
pained to learn of his decease shortly after his return home -- M.T.

                                 Chapter 21

                                CHAPTER XXI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -207-

     WE voyaged by steamer down the Lago di Lecco, through wild mountain
scenery, and by hamlets and villas, and disembarked at the town of Lecco.
They said it was two hours, by carriage to the ancient city of Bergamo, and
that we would arrive there in good season for the railway train. We got an
open barouche and a wild, boisterous driver, and set out. It was
delightful. We had a fast team and a perfectly smooth road. There were
towering cliffs on our left, and the pretty Lago di Lecco on our right, and
every now and then it rained on us. Just before starting, the driver picked
up, in the street, a stump of a cigar an inch long, and put it in his
mouth. When he had carried it thus about an hour, I thought it would be
only Christian charity to give him a light. I handed him my cigar, which I
had just lit, and he put it in his mouth and returned his stump to his
pocket! I never saw a more sociable man. At least I never saw a man who was
more sociable on a short acquaintance.

     We saw interior Italy, now. The houses were of solid stone, and not
often in good repair. The peasants and their children were idle, as

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                                   -208-

a general thing, and the donkeys and chickens made themselves at home in
drawing-room and bed-chamber and were not molested. The drivers of each and
every one of the slow-moving market-carts we met were stretched in the sun
upon their merchandise, sound a sleep. Every three or four hundred yards,
it seemed to me, we came upon the shrine of some saint or other -- a rude
picture of him built into a huge cross or a stone pillar by the road-side.
-- Some of the pictures of the Saviour were curiosities in their way. They
represented him stretched upon the cross, his countenance distorted with
agony. From the wounds of the crown of thorns; from the pierced side; from
the mutilated hands and feet; from the scourged body -- from every
hand-breadth of his person streams of blood were flowing! Such a gory,
ghastly spectacle would frighten the children out of their senses, I should
think. There were some unique auxiliaries to the painting which added to
its spirited effect. These were genuine wooden and iron implements, and
were prominently disposed round about the figure: a bundle of nails; the
hammer to drive them; the sponge; the reed that supported it; the cup of
vinegar; the ladder for the ascent of the cross; the spear that pierced the
Saviour's side. The crown of thorns was made of real thorns, and was nailed
to the sacred head. In some Italian church-paintings,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -209-

even by the old masters, the Saviour and the Virgin wear silver or gilded
crowns that are fastened to the pictured head with nails. The effect is as
grotesque as it is incongruous.

     Here and there, on the fronts of roadside inns, we found huge, coarse
frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the shrines. It could not have
diminished their sufferings any to be so uncouthly represented. We were in
the heart and home of priest craft -- of a happy, cheerful, contented
ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and everlasting
unaspiring worthlessness. And we said fervently, It suits these people
precisely; let them enjoy it, along with the other animals, and Heaven
forbid that they be molested. We feel no malice toward these fumigators.

     We passed through the strangest, funniest, undreampt-of old towns,
wedded to the customs and steeped in the dreams of the elder ages, and
perfectly unaware that the world turns round! And perfectly indifferent,
too, as to whether it turns around or stands still. They have nothing to do
but eat and sleep and sleep and eat, and toil a little when they can get a
friend to stand by and keep them awake. They are not paid for thinking --
they are not paid to fret about the world's concerns. They were were not
respectable people -- they were not worthy people -- they were not learned
and wise and brilliant people -- but in their breasts, all their stupid
lives long, resteth a peace that passeth understanding! How can men,
calling themselves men, consent to be so degraded and happy.

     We whisked by many a gray old medieval castle, clad thick with ivy
that swung its green banners down from towers and turrets

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -210-

where once some old Crusader's flag had floated. The driver pointed to one
of these ancient fortresses, and said, (I translate):

     "Do you see that great iron hook that projects from the wall just
under the highest window in the ruined tower?"

     We said we could not see it at such a distance, but had no doubt it
was there.

     "Well," he said; "there is a legend connected with that iron hook.
Nearly seven hundred years ago, that castle was the property of the noble
Count Luigi Gennaro Guido Alphonso di Genova -- "

     "What was his other name?" said Dan.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -211-

     "He had no other name. The name I have spoken was all the name he had.
He was the son of -- "

     "Poor but honest parents -- that is all right -- never mind the
particulars -- go on with the legend."


                                THE LEGEND.

     Well, then, all the world, at that time, was in a wild excitement
about the Holy Sepulchre. All the great feudal lords in Europe were
pledging their lands and pawning their plate to fit out men-at-arms so that
they might join the grand armies of Christendom and win renown in the Holy
Wars. The Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild September
morning, armed with battle-ax, portcullis and thundering culverin, he rode
through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop
of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur,
with him. His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a tearful
adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses of the fortress, and he
galloped away with a happy heart.

     He made a raid on a neighboring baron and completed his outfit with
the booty secured. He then razed the castle to the ground, massacred the
family and moved on. They were hardy fellows in the grand old days of
chivalry. Alas! Those days will never come again.

     Count Luigi grew high in fame in Holy Land. He plunged into the
carnage of a hundred battles, but his good Excalibur always brought him out
alive, albeit often sorely wounded. His face became browned by exposure to
the Syrian sun in long marches; he suffered hunger and thirst; he pined in
prisons, he languished in loathsome plague-hospitals. And many and many a
time he thought of his loved ones at home, and wondered if all was well
with them. But his heart said, Peace, is not thy brother watching over thy
household?

     * * * * * * *

     Forty-two years waxed and waned; the good fight was won; Godfrey
reigned in Jerusalem -- the Christian hosts reared the banner of the cross
above the Holy Sepulchre!

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -212-

     Twilight was approaching. Fifty harlequins, in flowing robes,
approached this castle wearily, for they were on foot, and the dust upon
their garments betokened that they had traveled far. They overtook a
peasant, and asked him if it were likely they could get food and a
hospitable bed there, for love of Christian charity, and if perchance, a
moral parlor entertainment might meet with generous countenance -- "for,"
said they, "this exhibition hath no feature that could offend the most
fastidious taste."

     "Marry," quoth the peasant, "an' it please your worships, ye had
better journey many a good rood hence with your juggling circus than trust
your bones in yonder castle."

     "How now, sirrah!" exclaimed the chief monk, "explain thy ribald
speech, or by'r Lady it shall go hard with thee."

     "Peace, good mountebank, I did but utter the truth that was in my
heart. San Paolo be my witness that did ye but find the stout Count
Leonardo in his cups, sheer from the castle's topmost battlements would he
hurl ye all! Alack-a-day, the good Lord Luigi reigns not here in these sad
times."

     "The good Lord Luigi?"

     "Aye, none other, please your worship. In his day, the poor rejoiced
in plenty and the rich he did oppress; taxes were not known, the fathers of
the church waxed fat upon his bounty; travelers went and came, with none to
interfere; and whosoever would, might tarry in his halls in cordial
welcome, and eat his bread and drink his wine, withal. But woe is me! some
two and forty years agone the good count rode hence to fight for Holy
Cross, and many a year hath flown since word or token have we had of him.
Men say his bones lie bleaching in the fields of Palestine."

     "And now?"

     "Now! God 'a mercy, the cruel Leonardo lords it in the castle. He
wrings taxes from the poor; he robs all travelers that journey by his
gates; he spends his days in feuds and murders, and his nights in revel and
debauch; he roasts the fathers of the church upon his kitchen spits, and
enjoyeth the same, calling it pastime. These thirty years Luigi's countess

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -213-

hath not been seen by any he in all this land, and many whisper that she
pines in the dungeons of the castle for that she will not wed with
Leonardo, saying her dear lord still liveth and that she will die ere she
prove false to him. They whisper likewise that her daughter is a prisoner
as well. Nay, good jugglers, seek ye refreshment other wheres. 'Twere
better that ye perished in a Christian way than that ye plunged from off
yon dizzy tower. Give ye good-day."

     "God keep ye, gentle knave -- farewell."

     But heedless of the peasant's warning, the players moved straightway
toward the castle.

     Word was brought to Count Leonardo that a company of mountebanks
besought his hospitality.

     "'Tis well. Dispose of them in the customary manner. Yet stay! I have
need of them. Let them come hither. Later, cast them from the battlements
-- or -- how many priests have ye on hand?"

     "The day's results are meagre, good my lord. An abbot and a dozen
beggarly friars is all we have."

     "Hell and furies! Is the estate going to seed? Send hither the
mountebanks. Afterward, broil them with the priests."

     The robed and close-cowled harlequins entered. The grim Leonardo sate
in state at the head of his council board. Ranged up and down the hall on
either hand stood near a hundred men-at-arms.

     "Ha, villains!" quoth the count, "What can ye do to earn the
hospitality ye crave."

     "Dread lord and mighty, crowded audiences have greeted our humble
efforts with rapturous applause. Among our body count we the versatile and
talented Ugolino; the justly celebrated Rodolpho; the gifted and
accomplished Roderigo; the management have spared neither pains nor expense
-- "

     "S'death! What can ye do? Curb thy prating tongue."

     "Good my lord, in acrobatic feats, in practice with the dumb-bells, in
balancing and ground and lofty tumbling are we versed -- and sith your
highness asketh me, I venture here to publish that in the truly marvelous
and entertaining Zampillaerostation -- "

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -214-

     "Gag him! throttle him! Body of Bacchus! am I a dog that I am to be
assailed with polysyllabled blasphemy like to this? But hold! Lucretia,
Isabel, stand forth! Sirrah, behold this dame, this weeping wench. The
first I marry, within the hour; the other shall dry her tears or feed the
vultures. Thou and thy vagabonds shall crown the wedding with thy
merry-makings. Fetch hither the priest!"

     The dame sprang toward the chief player.

     "O, save me!" she cried; "save me from a fate far worse than death!
Behold these sad eyes, these sunken cheeks, this withered frame! See thou
the wreck this fiend hath made, and let thy heart be moved with pity! Look
upon this damosel; note her wasted form, her halting step, her bloomless
cheeks where youth should blush and happiness exult in smiles! Hear us and
have compassion. This monster was my husband's brother. He who should have
been our shield against all harm, hath kept us shut within the noisome
caverns of his donjon-keep for lo these thirty years. And for what crime?
None other than that I would not belie my troth, root out my strong love
for him who marches with the legions of the cross in Holy Land, (for O, he
is not dead!) and wed wit h him! Save us, O, save thy persecuted
suppliants!"

     She flung herself at his feet and clasped his knees.

     "Ha!-ha!-ha!" shouted the brutal Leonardo. "Priest, to thy work!" and
he dragged the weeping dame from her refuge. "Say, once for all, will you
be mine? -- for by my halidome, that breath that uttereth thy refusal shall
be thy last on earth!"

     "NE-VER?"

     "Then die!" and the sword leaped from its scabbard.

     Quicker than thought, quicker than the lightning's flash, fifty
monkish habits disappeared, and fifty knights in splendid armor stood
revealed! fifty falchions gleamed in air above the men-at-arms, and
brighter, fiercer than them all, flamed Excalibur aloft, and cleaving
downward struck the brutal Leonardo's weapon from his grasp!

     "A Luigi to the rescue! Whoop!"

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -215-

     "A Leonardo! tare an ouns!"

     "Oh, God, Oh, God, my husband!"

     "Oh, God, Oh, God, my wife!"

     "My father!"

     "My precious!" [Tableau.]

     Count Luigi bound his usurping brother hand and foot. The practiced
knights from Palestine made holyday sport of carving the awkward
men-at-arms into chops and steaks. The victory was complete. Happiness
reigned. The knights all married the daughter. Joy! wassail! finis!

     "But what did they do with the wicked brother?"

     "Oh nothing -- only hanged him on that iron hook I was speaking of. By
the chin."

     "As how?"

     "Passed it up through his gills into his mouth."

     "Leave him there?"

     "Couple of years."

     "Ah -- is -- is he dead?"

     "Six hundred and fifty years ago, or such a matter."

     "Splendid legend -- splendid lie -- drive on."

     We reached the quaint old fortified city of Bergamo, the renowned in
history, some three-quarters of an hour before the train was ready to
start. The place has thirty or forty thousand inhabitants and is remarkable
for being the birthplace of harlequin. When we discovered that, that legend
of our driver took to itself a new interest in our eyes.

     Rested and refreshed, we took the rail happy and contented. I shall
not tarry to speak of the handsome Lago di Gardi; its stately castle that
holds in its stony bosom the secrets of an age so remote that even
tradition goeth not back to it;

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -216-

the imposing mountain scenery that ennobles the landscape thereabouts; nor
yet of ancient Padua or haughty Verona; nor of their Montagues and
Capulets, their famous balconies and tombs of Juliet and Romeo et al., but
hurry straight to the ancient city of the sea, the widowed bride of the
Adriatic. It was a long, long ride. But toward evening, as we sat silent
and hardly conscious of where we were -- subdued into that meditative calm
that comes so surely after a conversational storm -- some one shouted --

     "VENICE!"

     And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great
city, with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist of
sunset.

                                 Chapter 22

                               CHAPTER XXII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -217-

     THIS Venice, which was a haughty, invincible, magnificent Republic for
nearly fourteen hundred years; whose armies compelled the world's applause
whenever and wherever they battled; whose navies well nigh held dominion of
the seas, and whose merchant fleets whitened the remotest oceans with their
sails and loaded these piers with the products of every clime, is fallen a
prey to poverty, neglect and melancholy decay. Six hundred years ago,
Venice was the Autocrat of Commerce; her mart was the great commercial
centre, the distributing-house from whence the enormous trade of the Orient
was spread abroad over the Western world. To-day her piers are deserted,
her warehouses are empty, her merchant fleets are vanished, her armies and
her navies are but memories. Her glory is departed, and with her crumbling
grandeur of wharves and palaces about her she sits among her stagnant
lagoons, forlorn and beggared, forgotten of the world. She that in her
palmy days commanded the commerce of a hemisphere and made the weal or woe
of nations with a beck of her puissant finger, is become the humblest among
the peoples of the earth, -- a peddler of glass beads for women, and
trifling toys and trinkets for school-girls and children.

     The venerable Mother of the Republics is scarce a fit subject for
flippant speech or the idle gossipping of tourists. It seems a sort of
sacrilege to disturb the glamour of old romance that pictures her to us
softly from afar off as through a tinted mist, and curtains her ruin and
her desolation from our view. One ought, indeed, to turn away from her
rags, her poverty and her humiliation, and think of her only as she was
when she

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -218-

sunk the fleets of Charlemagne; when she humbled Frederick Barbarossa or
waved her victorious banners above the battlements of Constantinople.

     We reached Venice at eight in the evening, and entered a hearse
belonging to the Grand Hotel d'Europe. At any rate, it was more like a
hearse than any thing else, though to speak by the card, it was a gondola.
And this was the storied gondola of Venice! -- the fairy boat in which the
princely cavaliers of the olden time were wont to cleave the waters of the
moonlit canals and look the eloquence of love into the soft eyes of
patrician beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet touched his
guitar and sang as only gondoliers can sing! This the famed gondola and
this the gorgeous gondolier! -- the one an inky, rusty old canoe with a
sable hearse-body clapped on to the middle of it, and the other a mangy,
barefooted guttersnipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which
should have been sacred from public scrutiny. Presently, as he turned a
corner and shot his hearse into a dismal ditch between two long rows of
towering, untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier began to sing, true to
the traditions of his race. I stood it a little while. Then I said:

     "Now, here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a
stranger, but I am not going to have my feelings lacerated by any such
caterwauling as that. If that goes on, one of us has got to take water. It
is enough that my cherished dreams of Venice have been blighted forever as
to the romantic gondola and the gorgeous gondolier; this system of
destruction shall go no farther; I will accept the hearse, under protest,
and you may fly your flag of truce in peace, but here I register a dark and
bloody oath that you shan't sing. Another yelp, and overboard you go."

     I began to feel that the old Venice of song and story had departed
forever. But I was too hasty. In a few minutes we swept gracefully out into
the Grand Canal, and under the mellow moonlight the Venice of poetry and
romance stood revealed. Right from the water's edge rose long lines of
stately palaces of marble; gondolas were gliding swiftly hither and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -219-

thither and disappearing suddenly through unsuspected gates and alleys;
ponderous stone bridges threw their shadows athwart the glittering waves.
There was life and motion everywhere, and yet everywhere there was a hush,
a stealthy sort of stillness, that was suggestive of secret enterprises of
bravoes and of lovers; and clad half in moonbeams and half in mysterious
shadows, the grim old mansions of the Republic seemed to have an expression
about them of having an eye out for just such enterprises as these at that
same moment. Music came floating over the waters -- Venice was complete.

     It was a beautiful picture -- very soft and dreamy and beautiful. But
what was this Venice to compare with the Venice of midnight? Nothing. There
was a fΩte -- a grand fΩte in honor of some saint who had been instrumental
in checking the cholera three hundred years ago, and all Venice was abroad
on the water. It was no common affair, for the Venetians did not know how
soon they might need the saint's services again, now that the cholera was
spreading every where. So in one vast space -- say a third of a mile wide
and two miles long -- were collected two thousand gondolas, and every one
of them had from two to ten, twenty and even thirty colored lanterns
suspended about it, and from four to a dozen occupants. Just as far as the
eye could reach, these painted lights were massed together -- like a vast
garden of many-colored flowers, except that these blossoms were never
still; they were ceaselessly gliding in and out, and mingling together, and
seducing you into bewildering attempts to follow their mazy evolutions.
Here and there a strong red, green, or blue glare from a rocket that was
struggling to get away, splendidly illuminated all the boats around it.
Every gondola that swam by us, with its crescents and pyramids and circles
of colored lamps hung aloft, and lighting up the faces of the young and the
sweet-scented and lovely below, was a picture; and the reflections of those
lights, so long, so slender, so numberless, so many-colored and so
distorted and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture likewise, and one that
was enchantingly beautiful. Many and many a party of young ladies and
gentlemen had their state gondolas handsomely

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -220-

decorated, and ate supper on board, bringing their swallow-tailed,
white-cravatted varlets to wait upon them, and having their tables tricked
out as if for a bridal supper. They had brought along the costly globe
lamps from their drawing-rooms, and the lace and silken curtains from the
same places, I suppose. And they had also brought pianos and guitars, and
they played and sang operas, while the plebeian paper-lanterned gondolas
from the suburbs and the back alleys crowded around to stare and listen.

     There was music every where -- chorusses, string bands, brass bands,
flutes, every thing. I was so surrounded, walled in, with music,
magnificence and loveliness, that I became inspired with the spirit of the
scene, and sang one tune myself. However, when I observed that the other
gondolas had sailed away, and my gondolier was preparing to go overboard, I
stopped.

     The fΩte was magnificent. They kept it up the whole night long, and I
never enjoyed myself better than I did while it lasted.

     What a funny old city this Queen of the Adriatic is! Narrow streets,
vast, gloomy marble palaces, black with the corroding damps of centuries,
and all partly submerged; no dry

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -221-

land visible any where, and no sidewalks worth mentioning; if you want to
go to church, to the theatre, or to the restaurant, you must call a
gondola. It must be a paradise for cripples, for verily a man has no use
for legs here.

     For a day or two the place looked so like an overflowed Arkansas town,
because of its currentless waters laving the very doorsteps of all the
houses, and the cluster of boats made fast under the windows, or skimming
in and out of the alleys and by-ways, that I could not get rid of the
impression that there was nothing the matter here but a spring freshet, and
that the river would fall in a few weeks and leave a dirty high-water mark
on the houses, and the streets full of mud and rubbish.

     In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under
the charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered
sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once more
with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago. It is easy, then,
in fancy, to people these silent canals with plumed gallants and fair
ladies -- with Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans upon the
rich argosies of Venetian commerce -- with Othellos and Desdemonas, with
Iagos and Roderigos -- with noble fleets and victorious legions returning
from the wars. In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn,
poverty-stricken, and commerceless -- forgotten and utterly insignificant.
But in the moonlight, her fourteen centuries of greatness fling their
glories about her, and once more is she the princeliest among the nations
of the earth.

     "There is a glorious city in the sea;
     The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
     Ebbing and flowing;
     and the salt-sea weed
     Clings to the marble of her palaces.
     No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,
     Lead to her gates! The path lies o'er the sea,
     Invisible: and from the land we went,
     to a floating city -- steering in,
     And gliding up her streets, as in a dream,
     So smoothly, silently -- by many a dome,
     Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
     The statues ranged along an azure sky;

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     By many a pile, in more than Eastern pride,
     Of old the residence of merchant kings;
     The fronts of some, tho' time had shatter'd them,
     Still glowing with the richest hues of art,
     As tho' the wealth within them had run o'er."

     What would one naturally wish to see first in Venice? The Bridge of
Sighs, of course -- and next the Church and the Great Square of St. Mark,
the Bronze Horses, and the famous Lion of St. Mark.

     We intended to go to the Bridge of Sighs, but happened into the Ducal
Palace first -- a building which necessarily figures largely in Venetian
poetry and tradition. In the Senate Chamber of the ancient Republic we
wearied our eyes with staring at acres of historical paintings by
Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, but nothing struck us forcibly except the one
thing that strikes all strangers forcibly -- a black square in the midst of
a gallery of portraits. In one long row, around the great hall, were
painted the portraits of the Doges of Venice (venerable fellows, with
flowing white beards, for of the three hundred Senators eligible to the
office, the oldest was usually chosen Doge,) and each had its complimentary
inscription attached -- till you came to the place that should have had
Marino Faliero's picture in it, and that was blank and black -- blank,
except that it bore a terse inscription, saying that the conspirator had
died for his crime. It seemed cruel to keep that pitiless inscription still
staring from the walls after the unhappy wretch had been in his grave five
hundred years.

     At the head of the Giant's Staircase, where Marino Faliero was
beheaded, and where the Doges were crowned in ancient times, two small
slits in the stone wall were pointed out -- two harmless, insignificant
orifices that would never attract a stranger's attention -- yet these were
the terrible Lions' Mouths! The heads were gone (knocked off by the French
during their occupation of Venice,) but these were the throats, down which
went the anonymous accusation, thrust in secretly at dead of night by an
enemy, that doomed many an innocent man to walk the Bridge of Sighs and
descend into the dungeon which

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none entered and hoped to see the sun again. This was in the old days when
the Patricians alone governed Venice -- the common herd had no vote and no
voice. There were one thousand five hundred Patricians; from these, three
hundred Senators were chosen; from the Senators a Doge and a Council of Ten
were selected, and by secret ballot the Ten chose from their own number a
Council of Three. All these were Government spies, then, and every spy was
under surveillance himself -- men spoke in whispers in Venice, and no man
trusted his neighbor -- not always his own brother. No man knew who the
Council of Three were -- not even the Senate, not even the Doge; the
members of that dread tribunal met at night in a chamber to themselves,
masked, and robed from head to foot in scarlet cloaks, and did not even
know each other, unless by voice. It was their duty to judge heinous
political crimes, and from their sentence there was no appeal. A nod to the
executioner was sufficient. The doomed man was marched down a hall and out
at a door-way into the covered Bridge of Sighs, through it and into the
dungeon and unto his death. At no time in his transit was he visible to any
save his conductor. If a man had an enemy in those old days, the cleverest
thing he could do was to slip a note for the Council of Three into the
Lion's mouth, saying "This man is plotting against the Government." If the
awful Three found no proof, ten to one they would drown him anyhow, because
he was a deep rascal, since his plots were unsolvable. Masked judges and
masked executioners, with unlimited power, and no appeal from their
judgements, in that hard, cruel age, were not likely to be lenient with men
they suspected yet could not convict.

     We walked through the hall of the Council of Ten, and presently
entered the infernal den of the Council of Three.

     The table around which they had sat was there still, and likewise the
stations where the masked inquisitors and executioners formerly stood,
frozen, upright and silent, till they received a bloody order, and then,
without a word, moved off like the inexorable machines they were, to carry
it out. The frescoes on the walls were startlingly suited to the place. In

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all the other saloons, the halls, the great state chambers of the palace,
the walls and ceilings were bright with gilding, rich with elaborate
carving, and resplendent with gallant pictures of Venetian victories in
war, and Venetian display in foreign courts, and hallowed with portraits of
the Virgin, the Saviour of men, and the holy saints that preached the
Gospel of Peace upon earth -- but here, in dismal contrast, were none but
pictures of death and dreadful suffering! -- not a living figure but was
writhing in torture, not a dead one but was smeared with blood, gashed with
wounds, and distorted with the agonies that had taken away its life!

     From the palace to the gloomy prison is but a step -- one might almost
jump across the narrow canal that intervenes. The ponderous stone Bridge of
Sighs crosses it at the second story -- a bridge that is a covered tunnel
-- you can not be seen when you walk in it. It is partitioned lengthwise,
and through one compartment walked such as bore light sentences in ancient
times, and through the other marched sadly the wretches whom the Three had
doomed to lingering misery and utter oblivion in the dungeons, or to sudden
and mysterious death. Down below the level of the water, by the light of
smoking torches, we were shown the damp, thick-walled cells where many a
proud patrician's life was eaten away by the long-drawn miseries of
solitary imprisonment -- without light, air, books; naked, unshaven,
uncombed, covered with vermin; his useless tongue forgetting its office,
with none to speak to; the days and nights of his life no longer marked,
but merged into one eternal eventless night; far away from all cheerful
sounds, buried in the silence of a tomb; forgotten by his helpless friends,
and his fate a dark mystery to them forever; losing his own memory at last,
and knowing no more who he was or how he came there; devouring the loaf of
bread and drinking the water that were thrust into the cell by unseen
hands, and troubling his worn spirit no more with hopes and fears and
doubts and longings to be free; ceasing to scratch vain prayers and
complainings on walls where none, not even himself, could see them, and
resigning himself to hopeless apathy, driveling childishness,

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lunacy! Many and many a sorrowful story like this these stony walls could
tell if they could but speak.

     In a little narrow corridor, near by, they showed us where many a
prisoner, after lying in the dungeons until he was forgotten by all save
his persecutors, was brought by masked executioners and garroted, or sewed
up in a sack, passed through a little window to a boat, at dead of night,
and taken to some remote spot and drowned.

     They used to show to visitors the implements of torture wherewith the
Three were wont to worm secrets out of the accused -- villainous machines
for crushing thumbs; the stocks where a prisoner sat immovable while water
fell drop by drop upon his head till the torture was more than humanity
could bear; and a devilish contrivance of steel, which inclosed a
prisoner's head like a shell, and crushed it slowly by means of a screw. It
bore the stains of blood that had trickled through its joints long ago, and
on one side it had a projection whereon the torturer rested his elbow
comfortably and bent down his ear to catch the moanings of the sufferer
perishing within.

     Of course we went to see the venerable relic of the ancient glory of
Venice, with its pavements worn and broken by the passing feet of a
thousand years of plebeians and patricians -- The Cathedral of St. Mark. It
is built entirely of precious marbles, brought from the Orient -- nothing
in its composition is domestic. Its hoary traditions make it an object of
absorbing interest to even the most careless stranger, and thus far it had
interest for me; but no further. I could not go into ecstacies over its
coarse mosaics, its unlovely Byzantine architecture, or its five hundred
curious interior columns from as many distant quarries. Every thing was
worn out -- every block of stone was smooth and almost shapeless with the
polishing hands and shoulders of loungers who devoutly idled here in
by-gone centuries and have died and gone to the dev -- no, simply died, I
mean.

     Under the altar repose the ashes of St. Mark -- and Matthew, Luke and
John, too, for all I know. Venice reveres those relics above all things
earthly. For fourteen hundred years St. Mark has been her patron saint.
Every thing about the city

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seems to be named after him or so named as to refer to him in some way --
so named, or some purchase rigged in some way to scrape a sort of hurrahing
acquaintance with him. That seems to be the idea. To be on good terms with
St. Mark, seems to be the very summit of Venetian ambition. They say St.
Mark had a tame lion, and used to travel with him -- and every where that
St. Mark went, the lion was sure to go. It was his protector, his friend,
his librarian. And so the Winged Lion of St. Mark, with the open Bible
under his paw, is a favorite emblem in the grand old city. It casts its
shadow from the most ancient pillar in Venice, in the Grand Square of St.
Mark, upon the throngs of free citizens below, and has so done for many a
long century. The winged lion is found every where -- and doubtless here,
where the winged lion is, no harm can come.

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     St. Mark died at Alexandria, in Egypt. He was martyred, I think.
However, that has nothing to do with my legend. About the founding of the
city of Venice -- say four hundred and fifty years after Christ -- (for
Venice is much younger than any other Italian city,) a priest dreamed that
an angel told him that until the remains of St. Mark were brought to
Venice, the city could never rise to high distinction among the nations;
that the body must be captured, brought to the city, and a magnificent
church built over it; and that if ever the Venetians allowed the Saint to
be removed from his new resting-place, in that day Venice would perish from
off the face of the the earth. The priest proclaimed his dream, and
forthwith Venice set about procuring the corpse of St. Mark. One expedition
after another tried and failed, but the project was never abandoned during
four hundred years. At last it was secured by stratagem, in the year eight
hundred and something. The commander of a Venetian expedition disguised
himself, stole the bones, separated them, and packed them in vessels filled
with lard. The religion of Mahomet causes its devotees to abhor anything
that is in the nature of pork, and so when the Christian was stopped by the
officers at the gates of the city, they only glanced once into his precious
baskets, then turned up their noses at the unholy lard, and let him go. The
bones were buried in the vaults of the grand cathedral, which had been
waiting long years to receive them, and thus the safety and the greatness
of Venice were secured. And to this day there be those in Venice who
believe that if those holy ashes were stolen away, the ancient city would
vanish like a dream, and its foundations be buried forever in the
unremembering sea.

                                 Chapter 23

                               CHAPTER XXIII.

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     THE Venetian gondola is as free and graceful, in its gliding movement,
as a serpent. It is twenty or thirty feet long, and is narrow and deep,
like a canoe; its sharp bow and stern sweep upward from the water like the
horns of a crescent with the abruptness of the curve slightly modified.

     The bow is ornamented with a steel comb with a battle-ax attachment
which threatens to cut passing boats in two occasionally, but never does.
The gondola is painted black because in the zenith of Venetian magnificence
the gondolas became too gorgeous altogether, and the Senate decreed that
all such display must cease, and a solemn, unembellished black be
substituted. If the truth were known, it would doubtless appear that rich
plebeians grew too prominent in their affectation of patrician show on the
Grand Canal, and required a wholesome snubbing. Reverence for the hallowed
Past and its traditions keeps the dismal fashion in force now that the
compulsion exists no longer. So let it remain. It is the color of mourning.
Venice mourns. The stern of the boat is decked over and the gondolier
stands there. He uses a single oar -- a long blade, of course, for he
stands nearly erect. A wooden peg, a foot and a half high, with two slight
crooks or curves in one side of it and one in the other, projects above the
starboard gunwale. Against that peg the gondolier takes a purchase with his
oar, changing it at intervals to the other side of the peg or dropping it
into another of the crooks, as the steering of the craft may demand -- and
how in the world

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                                   -229-

he can back and fill, shoot straight ahead, or flirt suddenly around a
corner, and make the oar stay in those insignificant notches, is a problem
to me and a never diminishing matter of interest. I am afraid I study the
gondolier's marvelous skill more than I do the sculptured palaces we glide
among. He cuts a corner so closely, now and then, or misses another gondola
by such an imperceptible hair-breadth that I feel myself "scrooching," as
the children say, just as one does when a buggy wheel grazes his elbow. But
he makes all his calculations with the nicest precision, and goes darting
in and out among a Broadway confusion of busy craft with the easy
confidence of the educated hackman. He never makes a mistake.

     Sometimes we go flying down the great canals at such a gait that we
can get only the merest glimpses into front doors, and again, in obscure
alleys in the suburbs, we put on a solemnity suited to the silence, the
mildew, the stagnant waters, the clinging weeds, the deserted houses and
the general lifelessness of the place, and move to the spirit of grave
meditation.

     The gondolier is a picturesque rascal for all he wears no satin
harness, no plumed bonnet, no silken tights. His attitude is stately; he is
lithe and supple; all his movements are full of grace. When his long canoe,
and his fine figure, towering from its high perch on the stern, are cut
against the evening sky, they make a picture that is very novel and
striking to a foreign eye.

     We sit in the cushioned carriage-body of a cabin, with the curtains
drawn, and smoke, or read, or look out upon the passing boats, the houses,
the bridges, the people, and enjoy ourselves much more than we could in a
buggy jolting over our cobble-stone pavements at home. This is the
gentlest, pleasantest locomotion we have ever known.

     But it seems queer -- ever so queer -- to see a boat doing

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duty as a private carriage. We see business men come to the front door,
step into a gondola, instead of a street car, and go off down town to the
counting-room.

     We see visiting young ladies stand on the stoop, and laugh, and kiss
good-bye, and flirt their fans and say "Come soon -- now do -- you've been
just as mean as ever you can be -- mother's dying to see you -- and we've
moved into the new house, O such a love of a place! -- so convenient to the
post office and the church, and the Young Men's Christian Association; and
we do have such fishing, and such carrying on,

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and such swimming-matches in the back yard -- Oh, you must come -- no
distance at all, and if you go down through by St. Mark's and the Bridge of
Sighs, and cut through the alley and come up by the church of Santa Maria
dei Frari, and into the Grand Canal, there isn't a bit of current -- now do
come, Sally Maria -- by-bye!" and then the little humbug trips down the
steps, jumps into the gondola, says, under her breath, "Disagreeable old
thing, I hope she won't!" goes skimming away, round the corner; and the
other girl slams the street door and says, "Well, that infliction's over,
any way, -- but I suppose I've got to go and see her -- tiresome stuck-up
thing!" Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world. We
see the diffident young man, mild of moustache, affluent of hair, indigent
of brain, elegant of costume, drive up to her father's mansion, tell his
hackman to bail out and wait, start fearfully up the steps and meet "the
old gentleman" right on the threshold! -- hear him ask what street the new
British Bank is in -- as if that were what he came for -- and then bounce
into his boat and skurry away with his coward heart in his boots! -- see
him come sneaking around the corner again, directly, with a crack of the
curtain open toward the old gentleman's disappearing gondola, and out
scampers his Susan with a flock of little Italian endearments fluttering
from her lips, and goes to drive with him in the watery avenues down toward
the Rialto.

     We see the ladies go out shopping, in the most natural way, and flit
from street to street and from store to store, just in the good old
fashion, except that they leave the gondola, instead of a private carriage,
waiting at the curbstone a couple of hours for them, -- waiting while they
make the nice young clerks pull down tons and tons of silks and velvets and
moire antiques and those things; and then they buy a paper of pins and go
paddling away to confer the rest of their disastrous patronage on some
other firm. And they always have their purchases sent home just in the good
old way. Human nature is very much the same all over the world; and it is
so like my dear native home to see a Venetian lady go into a

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store and buy ten cents' worth of blue ribbon and have it sent home in a
scow. Ah, it is these little touches of nature that move one to tears in
these far-off foreign lands.

     We see little girls and boys go out in gondolas with their nurses, for
an airing. We see staid families, with prayer-book and beads, enter the
gondola dressed in their Sunday best, and float away to church. And at
midnight we see the theatre break up and discharge its swarm of hilarious
youth and beauty; we hear the cries of the hackman-gondoliers, and behold
the struggling crowd jump aboard, and the black multitude of boats go
skimming down the moonlit avenues; we see them separate here and there, and
disappear up divergent streets; we hear the faint sounds of laughter and of
shouted farewells floating up out of the distance; and then, the strange
pageant being gone, we have lonely stretches of glittering water -- of
stately buildings -- of blotting shadows -- of weird stone faces creeping
into the moonlight -- of deserted bridges -- of motionless boats at anchor.
And over all broods that mysterious stillness, that stealthy quiet, that
befits so well this old dreaming Venice.

     We have been pretty much every where in our gondola. We have bought
beads and photographs in the stores, and wax matches in the Great Square of
St. Mark. The last remark suggests a digression. Every body goes to this
vast square in the evening. The military bands play in the centre of it and
countless couples of ladies and gentlemen promenade up and down on either
side, and platoons of them are constantly drifting away toward the old
Cathedral, and by the venerable column with the Winged Lion of St . Mark on
its top, and out to where the boats lie moored; and other platoons are as
constantly arriving from the gondolas and joining the great throng. Between
the promenaders and the side-walks are seated hundreds and hundreds of
people at small tables, smoking and taking granita, (a first cousin to
ice-cream;) on the side-walks are more employing themselves in the same
way. The shops in the first floor of the tall rows of buildings that wall
in three sides of the square are brilliantly lighted,

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the air is filled with music and merry voices, and altogether the scene is
as bright and spirited and full of cheerfulness as any man could desire. We
enjoy it thoroughly. Very many of the young women are exceedingly pretty
and dress with rare good taste. We are gradually and laboriously learning
the ill-manners of staring them unflinchingly in the face -- not because
such conduct is agreeable to us, but because it is the custom of the
country and they say the girls like it. We wish to learn all the curious,
outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off"
and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our
untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake
off. All our passengers are paying strict attention to this thing, with the
end in view which I have mentioned. The gentle reader will never, never
know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad. I speak
now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been
abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be
otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of
fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass
after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels.

     On this subject let me remark that there are Americans abroad in Italy
who have actually forgotten their mother tongue in three months -- forgot
it in France. They can not even write their address in English in a hotel
register. I append these evidences, which I copied verbatim from the
register of a hotel in a certain Italian city:

     "John P. Whitcomb, Etats Unis.
     "Wm. L. Ainsworth, travailleur (he meant traveler, I suppose,)
     Etats Unis.
     "George P. Morton et fils, d'Amerique.
     "Lloyd B. Williams, et trois amis, ville de Boston, Amerique.
     "J. Ellsworth Baker, tout de suite de France, place de naissance
     Amerique, destination la Grand Bretagne."

     I love this sort of people. A lady passenger of ours tells of a
fellow-citizen of hers who spent eight weeks in Paris and then returned
home and addressed his dearest old bosom

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                                   -234-

friend Herbert as Mr. "Er-bare!" He apologized, though, and said, "'Pon my
soul it is aggravating, but I cahn't help it -- I have got so used to
speaking nothing but French, my dear Erbare -- damme there it goes again!
-- got so used to French pronunciation that I cahn't get rid of it -- it is
positively annoying, I assure you." This entertaining idiot, whose name was
Gordon, allowed himself to be hailed three times in the street before he
paid any attention, and then begged a thousand pardons and said he had
grown so accustomed to hearing himself addressed as M'sieu Gor-r-dong,"
with a roll to the r, that he had forgotten the legitimate sound of his
name! He wore a rose in his button-hole; he gave the French salutation --
two flips of the hand in front of the face; he called Paris Pairree in
ordinary English conversation; he carried envelopes bearing foreign
postmarks protruding from his breast-pocket; he cultivated a moustache and
imperial, and did what else he could to suggest to the beholder his pet
fancy that he resembled Louis Napoleon -- and in a spirit of thankfulness
which is entirely unaccountable, considering the slim foundation there was
for it, he praised his Maker that he was as he was, and went on enjoying
his little life just the same as if he really had been deliberately
designed and erected by the great Architect of the Universe.

     Think of our Whitcombs, and our Ainsworths and our Williamses writing
themselves down in dilapidated French in foreign hotel registers! We laugh
at Englishmen, when we are at home, for sticking so sturdily to their
national ways and customs, but we look back upon it from abroad very
forgivingly. It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his
nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is

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                                   -235-

pitiable to see him making of himself a thing that is neither male nor
female, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl -- a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite
Frenchman!

     Among a long list of churches, art galleries, and such things, visited
by us in Venice, I shall mention only one -- the church of Santa Maria dei
Frari. It is about five hundred years old, I believe, and stands on twelve
hundred thousand piles. In it lie the body of Canova and the heart of
Titian, under magnificent monuments. Titian died at the age of almost one
hundred years. A plague which swept away fifty thousand lives was raging at
the time, and there is notable evidence of the reverence in which the great
painter was held, in the fact that to him alone the state permitted a
public funeral in all that season of terror and death.

     In this church, also, is a monument to the doge Foscari, whose name a
once resident of Venice, Lord Byron, has made permanently famous.

     The monument to the doge Giovanni Pesaro, in this church, is a
curiosity in the way of mortuary adornment. It is eighty feet high and is
fronted like some fantastic pagan temple. Against it stand four colossal
Nubians, as black as night, dressed in white marble garments. The black
legs are bare, and through rents in sleeves and breeches, the skin, of
shiny black marble, shows. The artist was as ingenious as his funeral
designs were absurd. There are two bronze skeletons bearing scrolls, and
two great dragons uphold the sarcophagus. On high, amid all this
grotesqueness, sits the departed doge.

     In the conventual buildings attached to this church are the state
archives of Venice. We did not see them, but they are said to number
millions of documents. "They are the records of centuries of the most
watchful, observant and suspicious government that ever existed -- in which
every thing was written down and nothing spoken out." They fill nearly
three hundred rooms. Among them are manuscripts from the archives of nearly
two thousand families, monasteries and convents. The secret history of
Venice for a thousand years

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                                   -236-

is here -- its plots, its hidden trials, its assassinations, its
commissions of hireling spies and masked bravoes -- food, ready to hand,
for a world of dark and mysterious romances.

     Yes, I think we have seen all of Venice. We have seen, in these old
churches, a profusion of costly and elaborate sepulchre ornamentation such
as we never dreampt of before. We have stood in the dim religious light of
these hoary sanctuaries, in the midst of long ranks of dusty monuments and
effigies of the great dead of Venice, until we seemed drifting back, back,
back, into the solemn past, and looking upon the scenes and mingling with
the peoples of a remote antiquity. We have been in a half-waking sort of
dream all the time. I do not know how else to describe the feeling. A part
of our being has remained still in the nineteenth century, while another
part of it has seemed in some unaccountable way walking among the phantoms
of the tenth.

     We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with looking at
them and refuse to find interest in them any longer. And what wonder, when
there are twelve hundred pictures by Palma the Younger in Venice and
fifteen hundred by Tintoretto? And behold there are Titians and the works
of other artists in proportion. We have seen Titian's celebrated Cain and
Abel, his David and Goliah, his Abraham's Sacrifice. We have seen
Tintoretto's monster picture, which is seventy-four feet long and I do not
know how many feet high, and

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                                   -237-

thought it a very commodious picture. We have seen pictures of martyrs
enough, and saints enough, to regenerate the world. I ought not to confess
it, but still, since one has no opportunity in America to acquire a
critical judgment in art, and since I could not hope to become educated in
it in Europe in a few short weeks, I may therefore as well acknowledge with
such apologies as may be due, that to me it seemed that when I had seen one
of these martyrs I had seen them all. They all have a marked family
resemblance to each other, they dress alike, in coarse monkish robes and
sandals, they are all bald headed, they all stand in about the same
attitude, and without exception they are gazing heavenward with
countenances which the Ainsworths, the Mortons and the Williamses, et fils,
inform me are full of "expression." To me there is nothing tangible about
these imaginary portraits, nothing that I can grasp and take a living
interest in. If great Titian had only been gifted with prophecy, and had
skipped a martyr, and gone over to England and painted a portrait of
Shakspeare, even as a youth, which we could all have confidence in now, the
world down to the latest generations would have forgiven him the lost
martyr in the rescued seer. I think posterity could have spared one more
martyr for the sake of a great historical picture of Titian's time and
painted by his brush -- such as Columbus returning in chains from the
discovery of a world, for instance. The old masters did paint some Venetian
historical pictures, and these we did not tire of looking at,
notwithstanding representations of the formal introduction of defunct doges
to the Virgin Mary in regions beyond the clouds clashed rather harshly with
the proprieties, it seemed to us.

     But humble as we are, and unpretending, in the matter of art, our
researches among the painted monks and martyrs have not been wholly in
vain. We have striven hard to learn. We have had some success. We have
mastered some things, possibly of trifling import in the eyes of the
learned, but to us they give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our
little acquirements as do others who have learned far more, and we

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love to display them full as well. When we see a monk going about with a
lion and looking tranquilly up to heaven, we know that that is St. Mark.
When we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven,
trying to think of a word, we know that that is St. Matthew. When we see a
monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull
beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome.
Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage.
When we see a party looking tranquilly up to heaven, unconscious that his
body is shot through and through with arrows, we know that that is St.
Sebastian. When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but
having no trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are. We do this
because we humbly wish to learn. We have seen thirteen thousand St.
Jeromes, and twenty-two thousand St. Marks, and sixteen thousand St.
Matthews, and sixty thousand St. Sebastians, and four millions of assorted
monks, undesignated, and we

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                                   -239-

feel encouraged to believe that when we have seen some more of these
various pictures, and had a larger experience, we shall begin to take an
absorbing interest in them like our cultivated countrymen from Amerique.

     Now it does give me real pain to speak in this almost unappreciative
way of the old masters and their martyrs, because good friends of mine in
the ship -- friends who do thoroughly and conscientiously appreciate them
and are in every way competent to discriminate between good pictures and
inferior ones -- have urged me for my own sake not to make public the fact
that I lack this appreciation and this critical discrimination myself. I
believe that what I have written and may still write about pictures will
give them pain, and I am honestly sorry for it. I even promised that I
would hide my uncouth sentiments in my own breast. But alas! I never could
keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault
must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal
amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises,
that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I
grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly
developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity. I certainly meant
to keep that promise, but I find I can not do

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it. It is impossible to travel through Italy without speaking of pictures,
and can I see them through others' eyes?

     If I did not so delight in the grand pictures that are spread before
me every day of my life by that monarch of all the old masters, Nature, I
should come to believe, sometimes, that I had in me no appreciation of the
beautiful, whatsoever.

     It seems to me that whenever I glory to think that for once I have
discovered an ancient painting that is beautiful and worthy of all praise,
the pleasure it gives me is an infallible proof that it is not a beautiful
picture and not in any wise worthy of commendation. This very thing has
occurred more times than I can mention, in Venice. In every single instance
the guide has crushed out my swelling enthusiasm with the remark:

     " It is nothing -- it is of the Renaissance."

     I did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was, and so always
I had to simply say,

     "Ah! so it is -- I had not observed it before."

     I could not bear to be ignorant before a cultivated negro, the
offspring of a South Carolina slave. But it occurred too often for even my
self-complacency, did that exasperating "It is nothing -- it is of the
Renaissance." I said at last:

     "Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him
permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?"

     We learned, then, that Renaissance was not a man; that renaissance was
a term used to signify what was at best but an imperfect rejuvenation of
art. The guide said that after Titian's time and the time of the other
great names we had grown so familiar with, high art declined; then it
partially rose again -- an inferior sort of painters sprang up, and these
shabby pictures were the work of their hands. Then I said, in my heat, that
I "wished to goodness high art had declined five hundred years sooner." The
Renaissance pictures suit me very well, though sooth to say its school were
too much given to painting real men and did not indulge enough in martyrs.

     The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had

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                                   -241-

yet who knew any thing. He was born in South Carolina, of slave parents.
They came to Venice while he was an infant. He has grown up here. He is
well educated. He reads, writes, and speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and
French, with perfect facility; is a worshipper of art and thoroughly
conversant with it; knows the history of Venice by heart and never tires of
talking of her illustrious career. He dresses better than any of us, I
think, and is daintily polite. Negroes are deemed as good as white people,
in Venice, and so this man feels no

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                                   -242-

desire to go back to his native land. His judgment is correct.

     I have had another shave. I was writing in our front room this
afternoon and trying hard to keep my attention on my work and refrain from
looking out upon the canal. I was resisting the soft influences of the
climate as well as I could, and endeavoring to overcome the desire to be
indolent and happy. The boys sent for a barber. They asked me if I would be
shaved. I reminded them of my tortures in Genoa, Milan, Como; of my
declaration that I would suffer no more on Italian soil. I said "Not any
for me, if you please."

     I wrote on. The barber began on the doctor. I heard him say:

     "Dan, this is the easiest shave I have had since we left the ship."

     He said again, presently:

     "Why Dan, a man could go to sleep with this man shaving him."

     Dan took the chair. Then he said:

     "Why this is Titian. This is one of the old masters."

     I wrote on. Directly Dan said:

     "Doctor, it is perfect luxury. The ship's barber isn't any thing to
him."

     My rough beard wee distressing me beyond measure. The barber was
rolling up his apparatus. The temptation was too strong. I said:

     "Hold on, please. Shave me also."

     I sat down in the chair and closed my eyes. The barber soaped my face,
and then took his razor and gave me a rake that well nigh threw me into
convulsions. I jumped out of the chair: Dan and the doctor were both wiping
blood off their faces and laughing.

     I said it was a mean, disgraceful fraud.

     They said that the misery of this shave had gone so far beyond any
thing they had ever experienced before, that they could not bear the idea
of losing such a chance of hearing a cordial opinion from me on the
subject.

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                                   -243-

     It was shameful. But there was no help for it. The skinning was begun
and had to be finished. The tears flowed with every rake, and so did the
fervent execrations. The barber grew confused, and brought blood every
time. I think the boys enjoyed it better than any thing they have seen or
heard since they left home.

     We have seen the Campanile, and Byron's house and Balbi's the
geographer, and the palaces of all the ancient dukes and doges of Venice,
and we have seen their effeminate descendants airing their nobility in
fashionable French attire in the Grand Square of St. Mark, and eating ices
and drinking cheap wines, instead of wearing gallant coats of mail and
destroying fleets and armies as their great ancestors did in the days of
Venetian glory. We have seen no bravoes with poisoned stilettos, no masks,
no wild carnival; but we have seen the ancient pride of Venice, the grim
Bronze Horses that figure in a thousand legends. Venice may well cherish
them, for they are the only horses she ever had. It is said there are
hundreds of people in this curious city who never have seen a living horse
in their lives. It is entirely true, no doubt.

     And so, having satisfied ourselves, we depart to-morrow, and leave the
venerable Queen of the Republics to summon her vanished ships, and marshal
her shadowy armies, and know again in dreams the pride of her old renown.

                                 Chapter 24

                               CHAPTER XXIV.

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                                   -244-

     SOME of the Quaker City's passengers had arrived in Venice from
Switzerland and other lands before we left there, and others were expected
every day. We heard of no casualties among them, and no sickness.

     We were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we rattled through
a good deal of country by rail without caring to stop. I took few notes. I
find no mention of Bologna in my memorandum book, except that we arrived
there in good season, but saw none of the sausages for which the place is
so justly celebrated.

     Pistoia awoke but a passing interest.

     Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated the great
figure of David in the grand square, and the sculptured group they call the
Rape of the Sabines. We wandered through the endless collections of
paintings and statues of the Pitti and Ufizzi galleries, of course. I make
that statement in self-defense; there let it stop. I could not rest under
the imputation that I visited Florence and did not traverse its weary miles
of picture galleries. We tried indolently to recollect something about the
Guelphs and Ghibelines and the other historical cut-throats whose quarrels
and assassinations make up so large a share of Florentine history, but the
subject was not attractive. We had been robbed of all the fine mountain
scenery on our little journey by a system of railroading that had three
miles of tunnel to a hundred yards of daylight, and we were not inclined to
be sociable with Florence. We had seen the spot, outside the city
somewhere, where these people

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                                   -245-

had allowed the bones of Galileo to rest in unconsecrated ground for an age
because his great discovery that the world turned around was regarded as a
damning heresy by the church; and we know that long after the world had
accepted his theory and raised h is name high in the list of its great men,
they had still let him rot there. That we had lived to see his dust in
honored sepulture in the church of Santa Croce we owed to a society of
literati, and not to Florence or her rulers. We saw DantΘ's tomb in that
church, also, but we were glad to know that his body was not in it; that
the ungrateful city that had exiled him and persecuted him would give much
to have it there, but need not hope to ever secure that high honor to
herself. Medicis are good enough for Florence. Let her plant Medicis and
build grand monuments over them to testify how gratefully she was wont to
lick the hand that scourged her.

     Magnanimous Florence! Her jewelry marts are filled with artists in
mosaic. Florentine mosaics are the choicest in all the world. Florence
loves to have that said. Florence is

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                                   -246-

proud of it. Florence would foster this specialty of hers. She is grateful
to the artists that bring to her this high credit and fill her coffers with
foreign money, and so she encourages them with pensions. With pensions!
Think of the lavishness of it. She knows that people who piece together the
beautiful trifles die early, because the labor is so confining, and so
exhausting to hand and brain, and so she has decreed that all these people
who reach the age of sixty shall have a pension after that! I have not
heard that any of them have called for their dividends yet. One man did
fight along till he was sixty, and started after his pension, but it
appeared that there had been a mistake of a year in his family record, and
so he gave it up and died.

     These artists will take particles of stone or glass no larger than a
mustard seed, and piece them together on a sleeve button or a shirt stud,
so smoothly and with such nice adjustment of the delicate shades of color
the pieces bear, as to form a pigmy rose with stem, thorn, leaves, petals
complete, and all as softly and as truthfully tinted as though Nature had
builded it herself. They will counterfeit a fly, or a high-toned bug, or
the ruined Coliseum, within the cramped circle of a breastpin, and do it so
deftly and so neatly that any man might think a master painted it.

     I saw a little table in the great mosaic school in Florence -- a
little trifle of a centre table -- whose top was made of some sort of
precious polished stone, and in the stone was inlaid the

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                                   -247-

figure of a flute, with bell-mouth and a mazy complication of keys. No
painting in the world could have been softer or richer; no shading out of
one tint into another could have been more perfect; no work of art of any
kind could have been more faultless than this flute, and yet to count the
multitude of little fragments of stone of which they swore it was formed
would bankrupt any man's arithmetic! I do not think one could have seen
where two particles joined each other with eyes of ordinary shrewdness.
Certainly we could detect no such blemish. This table-top cost the labor of
one man for ten long years, so they said, and it was for sale for
thirty-five thousand dollars.

     We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence,
to weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli, (I
suppose they are buried there, but it may be that they reside elsewhere and
rent their tombs to other parties -- such being the fashion in Italy,) and
between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and admire the Arno.
It is popular to admire the Arno. It is a great historical creek with four
feet in the channel and some scows floating around. It would be a very
plausible river if they would pump some water into it. They all call it a
river, and they honestly think it is a river, do these dark and bloody
Florentines. They even help out the delusion by building bridges over it. I
do not see why they are too good to wade.

     How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter
prejudices sometimes! I might enter Florence under happier auspices a month
hence and find it all beautiful, all attractive. But I do not care to think
of it now, at all, nor of its roomy shops filled to the ceiling with snowy
marble and alabaster copies of all the celebrated sculptures in Europe --
copies so enchanting to the eye that I wonder how they can really be shaped
like the dingy petrified nightmares they are the portraits of. I got lost
in Florence at nine o'clock, one night, and staid lost in that labyrinth of
narrow streets and long rows of vast buildings that look all alike, until
toward

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                                   -248-

three o'clock in the morning. It was a pleasant night and at first there
were a good many people abroad, and there were cheerful lights about.
Later, I grew accustomed to prowling about mysterious drifts and tunnels
and astonishing and interesting myself with coming around corners expecting
to find the hotel staring me in the face, and not finding it doing any
thing of the kind. Later still, I felt tired. I soon felt remarkably tired.
But there was no one abroad, now -- not even a policeman. I walked till I
was out of all patience, and very hot and thirsty. At last, somewhere after
one o'clock, I came unexpectedly to one of the city gates. I knew then that
I was very far from the hotel. The soldiers thought I wanted to leave the
city, and they sprang up and barred the way with their muskets. I said:

     "Hotel d'Europe!"

     It was all the Italian I knew, and I was not certain whether that was
Italian or French. The soldiers looked stupidly at

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                                   -249-

each other and at me, and shook their heads and took me into custody. I
said I wanted to go home. They did not understand me. They took me into the
guard-house and searched me, but they found no sedition on me. They found a
small piece of soap (we carry soap with us, now,) and I made them a present
of it, seeing that they regarded it as a curiosity. I continued to say
Hotel d'Europe, and they continued to shake their heads, until at last a
young soldier nodding in the corner roused up and said something. He said
he knew where the hotel was, I suppose, for the officer of the guard sent
him away with me. We walked a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, it
appeared to me, and then he got lost. He turned this way and that, and
finally gave it up and signified that he was going to spend the remainder
of the morning trying to find the city gate again. At that moment it struck
me that there was something familiar about the house over the way. It was
the hotel!

     It was a happy thing for me that there happened to be a soldier there
that knew even as much as he did; for they say that the policy of the
government is to change the soldiery from one place to another constantly
and from country to city, so that they can not become acquainted with the
people and grow lax in their duties and enter into plots and conspiracies
with friends. My experiences of Florence were chiefly unpleasant. I will
change the subject.

     At Pisa we climbed up to the top of the strangest structure the world
has any knowledge of -- the Leaning Tower. As every one knows, it is in the
neighborhood of one hundred and eighty feet high -- and I beg to observe
that one hundred and eighty feet reach to about the hight of four ordinary
three-story buildings piled one on top of the other, and is a very
considerable altitude for a tower of uniform thickness to aspire to, even
when it stands upright -- yet this one leans more than thirteen feet out of
the perpendicular. It is seven hundred years old, but neither history or
tradition say whether it was built as it is, purposely, or whether one of
its sides has settled. There is no record that it ever stood straight up.
It is built

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                                   -250-

of marble. It is an airy and a beautiful structure, and each of its eight
stories is encircled by fluted columns, some of marble and some of granite,
with Corinthian capitals that were handsome when they were new. It is a
bell tower, and in its top hangs a chime of ancient bells. The winding
staircase within is dark, but one always knows which side of the tower he
is on because of his naturally gravitating from one side to the other of
the staircase with the rise or dip of the tower. Some of the stone steps
are foot-worn only on one end; others only on the other end; others only in
the middle. To look down into the tower from the top is like looking down
into a tilted well. A rope that hangs from the centre

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                                   -251-

of the top touches the wall before it reaches the bottom. Standing on the
summit, one does not feel altogether comfortable when he looks down from
the high side; but to crawl on your breast to the verge on the lower side
and try to stretch your neck out far enough to see the base of the tower,
makes your flesh creep, and convinces you for a single moment in spite of
all your philosophy, that the building is falling. You handle yourself very
carefully, all the time, under the silly impression that if it is not
falling, your trifling weight will start it unless you are particular not
to "bear down" on it.

     The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe.
It is eight hundred years old. Its grandeur has outlived the high
commercial prosperity and the political importance that made it a
necessity, or rather a possibility. Surrounded by poverty, decay and ruin,
it conveys to us a more tangible impression of the former greatness of Pisa
than books could give us.

     The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning Tower, is
a stately rotunda, of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure. In it
hangs the lamp whose measured swing suggested to Galileo the pendulum. It
looked an insignificant thing to have conferred upon the world of science
and mechanics such a mighty extension of their dominions as it has.
Pondering, in its suggestive presence, I seemed to see a crazy universe of
swinging disks, the toiling children of this sedate parent. He appeared to
have an intelligent expression about him of knowing that he was not a lamp
at all; that he was a Pendulum; a pendulum disguised, for prodigious and
inscrutable purposes of his own deep devising, and not a common pendulum
either, but the old original patriarchal Pendulum -- the Abraham Pendulum
of the world.

     This Baptistery is endowed with the most pleasing echo of all the
echoes we have read of. The guide sounded two sonorous notes, about half an
octave apart; the echo answered with the most enchanting, the most
melodious, the richest blending of sweet sounds that one can imagine. It
was like a long-drawn chord of a church organ, infinitely softened by

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                                   -252-

distance. I may be extravagant in this matter, but if this be the case my
ear is to blame -- not my pen. I am describing a memory -- and one that
will remain long with me.

     The peculiar devotional spirit of the olden time, which placed a
higher confidence in outward forms of worship than in the watchful guarding
of the heart against sinful thoughts and the hands against sinful deeds,
and which believed in the protecting virtues of inanimate objects made holy
by contact with holy things, is illustrated in a striking manner in one of
the cemeteries of Pisa. The tombs are set in soil brought in ships from the
Holy Land ages ago. To be buried in such ground was regarded b y the
ancient Pisans as being more potent for salvation than many masses
purchased of the church and the vowing of many candles to the Virgin.

     Pisa is believed to be about three thousand years old. It was one of
the twelve great cities of ancient Etruria, that commonwealth which has
left so many monuments in testimony of its extraordinary advancement, and
so little history of itself that is tangible and comprehensible. A Pisan
antiquarian gave me an ancient tear-jug which he averred was full four
thousand years old. It was found among the ruins of one of the oldest of
the Etruscan cities. He said it came from a tomb, and was used by some
bereaved family in that remote age when even the Pyramids of Egypt were
young, Damascus a village, Abraham a prattling infant and ancient Troy not
yet dreampt of, to receive the tears wept for some lost idol of a
household. It spoke to us in a language of its own; and with a pathos more
tender than any words might bring, its mute eloquence swept down the long
roll of the centuries with its tale of a vacant chair, a familiar footstep
missed from the threshold, a pleasant voice gone from the chorus, a
vanished form! -- a tale which is always so new to us, so startling, so
terrible, so benumbing to the senses, and behold how threadbare and old it
is! No shrewdly-worded history could have brought the myths and shadows of
that old dreamy age before us clothed with human flesh and warmed with
human sympathies so vividly as did this poor little unsentient vessel of
pottery.

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                                   -253-

     Pisa was a republic in the middle ages, with a government of her own,
armies and navies of her own and a great commerce. She was a warlike power,
and inscribed upon her banners many a brilliant fight with Genoese and
Turks. It is said that the city once numbered a population of four hundred
thousand; but her sceptre has passed from her grasp, now, her ships and her
armies are gone, her commerce is dead. Her battle-flags bear the mold and
the dust of centuries, her marts are deserted, she has shrunk en far within
her crumbling walls, and her great population has diminished to twenty
thousand souls. She has but one thing left to boast of, and that is not
much, viz: she is the second city of Tuscany.

     We reached Leghorn in time to see all we wished to see of it long
before the city gates were closed for the evening, and then came on board
the ship.

     We felt as though we had been away from home an age. We never entirely
appreciated, before, what a very pleasant den our state-room is; nor how
jolly it is to sit at dinner in one's own seat in one's own cabin, and hold
familiar conversation with friends in one's own language. Oh, the rare
happiness of comprehending every single word that is said, and knowing that
every word one says in return will be understood as well! We would talk
ourselves to death, now, only there are only about ten passengers out of
the sixty-five to talk to. The others are wandering, we hardly know where.
We shall not go ashore in Leghorn. We are surfeited with Italian cities for
the present, and much prefer to walk the familiar quarterdeck and view this
one from a distance.

     The stupid magnates of this Leghorn government can not understand that
so large a steamer as ours could cross the broad Atlantic with no other
purpose than to indulge a party of ladies and gentlemen in a pleasure
excursion. It looks too improbable. It is suspicious, they think. Something
more important must be hidden behind it all. They can not understand it,
and they scorn the evidence of the ship's papers. They have decided at last
that we are a battalion of incendiary,

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                                   -254-

blood-thirsty Garibaldians in disguise! And in all seriousness they have
set a gun-boat to watch the vessel night and day, with orders to close down
on any revolutionary movement in a twinkling! Police boats are on patrol
duty about us all the time, and it is as much as a sailor's liberty is
worth to show himself in a red shirt. These policemen follow the executive
officer's boat from shore to ship and from ship to shore and watch his dark
maneuvres with a vigilant eye. They will arrest him yet unless he assumes
an expression of countenance that shall have less of carnage, insurrection
and sedition in it. A visit paid in a friendly way to General Garibaldi
yesterday (by cordial invitation,) by some of our passengers, has gone far
to confirm the dread suspicions the government harbors toward us. It is
thought the friendly visit was only the cloak of a bloody conspiracy. These
people draw near and watch us when we bathe in the sea from the ship's
side. Do they think we are communing with a reserve force of rascals at the
bottom?

     It is said that we shall probably be quarantined at Naples. Two or
three of us prefer not to run this risk. Therefore, when we are rested, we
propose to go in a French steamer to Civita and from thence to Rome, and by
rail to Naples. They do not quarantine the cars, no matter where they got
their passengers from.

                                 Chapter 25

                                CHAPTER XXV.

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                                   -255-

     THERE are a good many things about this Italy which I do not
understand -- and more especially I can not understand how a bankrupt
Government can have such palatial railroad depots and such marvels of
turnpikes. Why, these latter are as hard as adamant, as straight as a line,
as smooth as a floor, and as white as snow. When it is too dark to see any
other object, one can still see the white turnpikes of France and Italy;
and they are clean enough to eat from, without a table-cloth. And yet no
tolls are charged.

     As for the railways -- we have none like them. The cars slide as
smoothly along as if they were on runners. The depots are vast palaces of
cut marble, with stately colonnades of the same royal stone traversing them
from end to end, and with ample walls and ceilings richly decorated with
frescoes. The lofty gateways are graced with statues, and the broad floors
are all laid in polished flags of marble.

     These things win me more than Italy's hundred galleries of priceless
art treasures, because I can understand the one and am not competent to
appreciate the other. In the turnpikes, the railways, the depots, and the
new boulevards of uniform houses in Florence and other cities here, I see
the genius of Louis Napoleon, or rather, I see the works of that statesman
imitated. But Louis has taken care that in France there shall be a
foundation for these improvements -- money. He has always the wherewithal
to back up his projects; they strengthen France and never weaken her. Her
material prosperity is genuine. But here the case is different. This
country is

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -256-

bankrupt. There is no real foundation for these great works. The prosperity
they would seem to indicate is a pretence. There is no money in the
treasury, and so they enfeeble her instead of strengthening. Italy has
achieved the dearest wish of her heart and become an independent State --
and in so doing she has drawn an elephant in the political lottery. She has
nothing to feed it on. Inexperienced in government, she plunged into all
manner of useless expenditure, and swamped her treasury almost in a day.
She squandered millions of francs on a navy which she did not need, and the
first time she took her new toy into action she got it knocked higher than
Gilderoy's kite -- to use the language of the Pilgrims.

     But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good. A year ago, when Italy
saw utter ruin staring her in the face and her greenbacks hardly worth the
paper they were printed on, her Parliament ventured upon a coup de main
that would have appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less desperate
circumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of the Church!
This in priest-ridden Italy! This in a land which has groped in the
midnight of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred years! It was a rare
good fortune for Italy, the stress of weather that drove her to break from
this prison-house.

     They do not call it confiscating the church property. That would sound
too harshly yet. But it amounts to that. There are thousands of churches in
Italy, each with untold millions of treasures stored away in its closets,
and each with its battalion of priests to be supported. And then there are
the estates of the Church -- league on league of the richest lands and the
noblest forests in all Italy -- all yielding immense revenues to the
Church, and none paying a cent in taxes to the State. In some great
districts the Church owns all the property -- lands, watercourses, woods,
mills and factories. They buy, they sell, they manufacture, and since they
pay no taxes, who can hope to compete with them?

     Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will yet seize
it in rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt. Something

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -257-

must be done to feed a starving treasury, and there is no other resource in
all Italy -- none but the riches of the Church. So the Government intends
to take to itself a great portion of the revenues arising from priestly
farms, factories, etc., and also intends to take possession of the churches
and carry them on, after its own fashion and upon its own responsibility.
In a few instances it will leave the establishments of great pet churches
undisturbed, but in all others only a handful of priests will be retained
to preach and pray, a few will be pensioned, and the balance turned adrift.

     Pray glance at some of these churches and their embellishments, and
see whether the Government is doing a righteous thing or not. In Venice,
to-day, a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are twelve hundred
priests. Heaven only knows how many there were before the Parliament
reduced their numbers. There was the great Jesuit Church. Under the old
regime it required sixty priests to engineer it -- the Government does it
with five, now, and the others are discharged from service. All about that
church wretchedness and poverty abound. At its door a dozen hats and
bonnets were doffed to us, as many heads were humbly bowed, and as many
hands extended, appealing for pennies -- appealing with foreign words we
could not understand, but appealing mutely, with sad eyes, and sunken
cheeks, and ragged raiment, that no words were needed to translate. Then we
passed within the great doors, and it seemed that the riches of the world
were before us! Huge columns carved out of single masses of marble, and
inlaid from top to bottom with a hundred intricate figures wrought in
costly verde antique; pulpits of the same rich materials, whose draperies
hung down in many a pictured fold, the stony fabric counterfeiting the
delicate work of the loom; the grand altar brilliant with polished facings
and balustrades of oriental agate, jasper, verde antique, and other
precious stones, whose names, even, we seldom hear -- and slabs of
priceless lapis lazuli lavished every where as recklessly as if the church
had owned a quarry of it. In the midst of all this magnificence, the solid
gold and silver furniture of the altar

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seemed cheap and trivial. Even the floors and ceilings cost a princely
fortune.

     Now, where is the use of allowing all those riches to lie idle, while
half of that community hardly know, from day to day, how they are going to
keep body and soul together? And, where is the wisdom in permitting
hundreds upon hundreds of millions of francs to be locked up in the useless
trumpery of churches all over Italy, and the people ground to death with
taxation to uphold a perishing Government?

     As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all
her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of
a vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens
to accomplish it. She is to-day one vast museum of magnificence and misery.
All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could hardly buy
the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And for every beggar
in America, Italy can show a hundred -- and rags and vermin to match. It is
the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth.

     Look at the grand Duomo of Florence -- a vast pile that has

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been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not
nearly finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but
when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking,
too suggestive, and I said, "O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of
enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye?
Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?"

     Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that
Cathedral.

     And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body
I can think of. They have a grand mausoleum in Florence, which they built
to bury our Lord and Saviour and the Medici family in. It sounds
blasphemous, but it is true, and here they act blasphemy. The dead and
damned Medicis who cruelly tyrannized over Florence and were her curse for
over two hundred years, are salted away in a circle of costly vaults, and
in their midst the Holy Sepulchre was to have been set up. The expedition
sent to Jerusalem to seize it got into trouble and could not accomplish the
burglary, and so the centre of the mausoleum is vacant now. They say the
entire mausoleum was intended for the Holy Sepulchre, and was only turned
into a family burying place after the Jerusalem expedition failed -- but
you will excuse me. Some of those Medicis would have smuggled themselves in
sure. -- What they had not the effrontery to do, was not worth doing. Why,
they had their trivial, forgotten exploits on land and sea pictured out in
grand frescoes (as did also the ancient Doges of Venice) with the Saviour
and the Virgin throwing bouquets to them out of the clouds, and the Deity
himself applauding from his throne in Heaven! And who painted these things?
Why, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Raphael -- none other than the
world's idols, the "old masters."

     Andrea del Sarto glorified his princes in pictures that must save them
for ever from the oblivion they merited, and they let him starve. Served
him right. Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine and Marie
de Medicis seated in heaven and

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conversing familiarly with the Virgin Mary and the angels, (to say nothing
of higher personages,) and yet my friends abuse me because I am a little
prejudiced against the old masters -- because I fail sometimes to see the
beauty that is in their productions . I can not help but see it, now and
then, but I keep on protesting against the groveling spirit that could
persuade those masters to prostitute their noble talents to the adulation
of such monsters as the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes of two an d
three hundred years ago, all the same.

     I am told that the old masters had to do these shameful things for
bread, the princes and potentates being the only patrons of art. If a
grandly gifted man may drag his pride and his manhood in the dirt for bread
rather than starve with the nobility that is in him untainted, the excuse
is a valid one. It would excuse theft in Washingtons and Wellingtons, and
unchastity in women as well.

     But somehow, I can not keep that Medici mausoleum out of my memory. It
is as large as a church; its pavement is rich enough for the pavement of a
King's palace; its great dome is gorgeous with frescoes; its walls are made
of -- what? Marble? -- plaster? -- wood? -- paper? No. Red porphyry --
verde antique -- jasper -- oriental agate -- alabaster -- mother-of-pearl
-- chalcedony -- red coral -- lapis lazuli! All the vast walls are made
wholly of these precious stones, worked in, and in and in together in
elaborate pattern s and figures, and polished till they glow like great
mirrors with the pictured splendors reflected from the dome overhead. And
before a statue of one of those dead Medicis reposes a crown that blazes
with diamonds and emeralds enough to buy a ship-of-the-line, almost. These
are the things the Government has its evil eye upon, and a happy thing it
will be for Italy when they melt away in the public treasury.

     And now -- . However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and
destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of vituperation.

     Having eaten the friendless orphan -- having driven away his

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comrades -- having grown calm and reflective at length -- I now feel in a
kindlier mood. I feel that after talking so freely about the priests and
the churches, justice demands that if I know any thing good about either I
ought to say it. I have heard of many things that redound to the credit of
the priesthood, but the most notable matter that occurs to me now is the
devotion one of the mendicant orders showed during the prevalence of the
cholera last year. I speak of the Dominican friars -- men who wear a
coarse, heavy brown robe and a cowl, in this hot climate, and go barefoot.
They live on alms altogether, I believe. They must unquestionably love
their religion, to suffer so much for it. When the cholera was raging in
Naples; when the people were dying by hundreds and hundreds every day; when
every concern for the public welfare was swallowed up in selfish private
interest, and every citizen made the taking care of himself his sole
object, these men banded themselves together and went about nursing the
sick and burying the dead. Their noble efforts cost many of them their
lives. They laid them down cheerfully, and well they might. Creeds
mathematically precise, and hair-splitting niceties of doctrine, are
absolutely necessary for the salvation of some kinds of souls, but surely
the charity, the purity, the unselfishness that are in the hearts of men
like these would save their souls though they were bankrupt in the true
religion -- which is ours.

     One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Vecchia with
us in the little French steamer. There were only half a dozen of us in the
cabin. He belonged in the steerage. He was the life of the ship, the
bloody-minded son of the Inquisition! He and the leader of the marine band
of a French man-of-war played on the piano and sang opera turn about; they
sang duets together; they rigged impromptu theatrical costumes and gave us
extravagant farces and pantomimes. We got along first-rate with the friar,
and were excessively conversational, albeit he could not understand what we
said, and certainly he never uttered a word that we could guess the meaning
of.

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     This Civita Vecchia is the finest nest of dirt, vermin and ignorance
we have found yet, except that African perdition they call Tangier, which
is just like it. The people here live in alleys two yards wide, which have
a smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining. It is well the
alleys are not wider, because they hold as much smell now as a person can
stand, and of course, if they were wider they would hold more, and then the
people would die. These alleys are paved with stone, and carpeted with
deceased cats, and decayed rags, and decomposed vegetable-tops, and
remnants of old boots, all soaked with dish-water, and the people sit
around on stools and enjoy it. They are indolent, as a general thing, and
yet have few pastimes. They work two or three hours at a time, but not
hard, and then they knock off and catch flies. This does not require any
talent, because they only have to grab -- if they do not get the one they
are after, they get another. It is all the same to them. They have no
partialities. Whichever one they get is the one they want.

     They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them arrogant.
They are very quiet, unpretending people. They have more of these kind of
things than other communities, but they do not boast.

     They are very uncleanly -- these people -- in face, in person and
dress. When they see any body with a clean shirt on, it arouses their
scorn. The women wash clothes, half the day, at the public tanks in the
streets, but they are probably somebody else's. Or may be they keep one set
to wear and another to wash; because they never put on any that have ever
been washed. When they get done washing, they sit in the alleys and nurse
their cubs. They nurse one ash-cat at a time, and the others scratch their
backs against the door-post and are happy.

     All this country belongs to the Papal States. They do not appear to
have any schools here, and only one billiard table. Their education is at a
very low stage. One portion of the men go into the military, another into
the priesthood, and the rest into the shoe-making business.

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      They keep up the passport system here, but so they do in Turkey. This
shows that the Papal States are as far advanced as Turkey. This fact will
be alone sufficient to silence the tongues of malignant calumniators. I had
to get my passport vised for Rome in Florence, and then they would not let
me come ashore here until a policeman had examined it on the wharf and sent
me a permit. They did not even dare to let me take my passport in my hands
for twelve hours, I looked so formidable. They judged it best to let me
cool down. They thought I wanted to take the town, likely. Little did they
know me. I wouldn't have it. They examined my baggage at the depot. They
took one of my ablest jokes and read it over carefully twice and then read
it backwards. But it was too deep for them. They passed it around, and
every body speculated on it awhile, but it mastered them all.

     It was no common joke. At length a veteran officer spelled it over
deliberately and shook his head three or four times and said that in his
opinion it was seditious. That was the first time I felt alarmed. I
immediately said I would explain the document, and they crowded around. And
so I explained and

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                                   -264-

explained and explained, and they took notes of all I said, but the more I
explained the more they could not understand it, and when they desisted at
last, I could not even understand it myself. They said they believed it was
an incendiary document, leveled at the government. I declared solemnly that
it was not, but they only shook their heads and would not be satisfied.
Then they consulted a good while; and finally they confiscated it. I was
very sorry for this, because I had worked a long time on that joke, and
took a good deal of pride in it, and now I suppose I shall never see it any
more. I suppose it will be sent up and filed away among the criminal
archives of Rome, and will always be regarded as a mysterious infernal
machine which would have blown up like a mine and scattered the good Pope
all around, but for a miraculous providential interference. And I suppose
that all the time I am in Rome the police will dog me about from place to
place because they think I am a dangerous character.

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                                   -265-

     It is fearfully hot in Civita Vecchia. The streets are made very
narrow and the houses built very solid and heavy and high, as a protection
against the heat. This is the first Italian town I have seen which does not
appear to have a patron saint. I suppose no saint but the one that went up
in the chariot of fire could stand the climate.

     There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathedral, with
eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not
show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any
smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d'oeuvres of Reubens or
Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven't
any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the true cross.
We are going to Rome. There is nothing to see here.

                                 Chapter 26

                               CHAPTER XXVI.

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                                   -266-

     WHAT is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells
a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring
to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have
walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you
are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea -- to discover
a great thought -- an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field
that many a brain -- plow had gone over before. To find a new planet, to
invent a new hinge, to find the way to make the lightnings carry your
messages. To be the first -- that is the idea. To do something, say
something, see something, before any body else -- these are the things that
confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and
commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Morse, with his first
message, brought by his servant, the lightning; Fulton, in that long-drawn
century of suspense, when he placed his hand upon the throttle-valve and
lo, the steamboat moved; Jenner, when his patient with the cow's virus in
his blood, walked through the smallpox hospitals unscathed; Howe, when the
idea shot through his brain that for a hundred and twenty generations the
eye had been bored through the wrong end of the needle; the nameless lord
of art who laid down his chisel in some old age that is forgotten, now, and
gloated upon the finished Laocoon; Daguerre, when he commanded the sun,
riding in the zenith, to print the landscape upon his insignifi cant
silvered plate, and

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                                   -267-

he obeyed; Columbus, in the Pinta's shrouds, when he swung his hat above a
fabled sea and gazed abroad upon an unknown world! These are the men who
have really lived -- who have actually comprehended what pleasure is -- who
have crowded long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single moment.

     What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before
me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is
there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me
before it pass to others? What can I discover? -- Nothing. Nothing
whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here. But if I were only a Roman! --
If, added to my own I could be gifted with modern Roman sloth, modern Roman
superstition, and modern Roman boundlessness of ignorance, what bewildering
worlds of unsuspected wonders I would discover! Ah, if I were only a
habitant of the Campagna five and twenty miles from Rome! Then I would
travel.

     I would go to America, and see, and learn, and return to the Campagna
and stand before my countrymen an illustrious discoverer. I would say:

     "I saw there a country which has no overshadowing Mother Church, and
yet the people survive. I saw a government which never was protected by
foreign soldiers at a cost greater than that required to carry on the
government itself. I saw common men and common women who could read; I even
saw small children of common country people reading from books; if I dared
think you would believe it, I would say they could write, also. In the
cities I saw people drinking a delicious beverage made of chalk and water,
but never once saw goats driven through their Broadway or their
Pennsylvania Avenue or their Montgomery street and milked at the doors of
the houses. I saw

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real glass windows in the houses of even the commonest people. Some of the
houses are not of stone, nor yet of bricks; I solemnly swear they are made
of wood. Houses there will take fire and burn, sometimes -- actually burn
entirely down, and not leave a single vestige behind. I could state that
for a truth, upon my death-bed. And as a proof that the circumstance is not
rare, I aver that they have a thing which they call a fire-engine, which
vomits forth great streams of water, and is kept always in readiness, by
night and by day, to rush to houses that are burning. You would think one
engine would be sufficient, but some great cities have a hundred; they keep
men hired, and pay them by the month to do nothing but put out fires. For a
certain sum of money other men will insure that your house shall not burn
down; and if it burns they will pay you for it. There are hundreds and
thousands of schools, and any body may go and learn to be wise, like a
priest. In that singular country if a rich man dies a sinner, he is damned;
he can not buy salvation with money for masses. There is really not much
use in being rich, there. Not much use as far as the other world is
concerned, but much, very much use, as concerns this; because there, if a
man be rich, he is very greatly honored, and can become a legislator, a
governor, a general, a senator, no matter how ignorant an ass he is -- just
as in our beloved Italy the nobles hold all the great places, even though
sometimes they are born noble idiots. There, if a man be rich, they give
him costly presents, they ask him to feasts, they invite him to drink
complicated beverages; but if he be poor and in debt, they require him to
do that which they term to "settle." The women put on a different dress
almost every day; the dress is usually fine, but absurd in shape; the very
shape and fashion of it changes twice in a hundred years; and did I but
covet to be called an extravagant falsifier, I would say it changed even
oftener. Hair does not grow upon the American women's heads; it is made for
them by cunning workmen in the shops, and is curled and frizzled into
scandalous and ungodly forms. Some persons wear eyes of glass which they
see through with facility perhaps,

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                                   -269-

else they would not use them; and in the mouths of some are teeth made by
the sacrilegious hand of man. The dress of the men is laughably grotesque.
They carry no musket in ordinary life, nor no long-pointed pole; they wear
no wide green-lined cloak; they wear no peaked black felt hat, no leathern
gaiters reaching to the knee, no goat-skin breeches with the hair side out,
no hob-nailed shoes, no prodigious spurs. They wear a conical hat termed a
"nail-kag;" a coat of saddest black; a shirt which s hows dirt so easily
that it has to be changed every month, and is very troublesome; things
called pantaloons, which are held up by shoulder straps, and on their feet
they wear boots which are ridiculous in pattern and can stand no wear. Yet
dressed in this fantastic garb, these people laughed at my costume. In that
country, books are so common that it is really no curiosity to see one.
Newspapers also. They have a great machine which prints such things by
thousands every hour.

     "I saw common men, there -- men who were neither priests nor princes
-- who yet absolutely owned the land they tilled. It was not rented from
the church, nor from the nobles. I am ready to take my oath of this. In
that country you might fall from a third story window three several times,
and not mash either a soldier or a priest. -- The scarcity of such people
is astonishing. In the cities you will see a dozen civilians for every
soldier, and as many for every priest or preacher. Jews, there, are treated
just like human beings, instead of dogs. They can work at any business they
please; they can sell brand new goods if they want to; they can keep
drug-stores; they can practice medicine among Christians; they can even
shake hands with Christians if they choose; they can associate with them,
just the same as one human being does with another human being; they don't
have to stay shut up in one corner of the towns; they can live in any part
of a town they like best; it is said they even have the privilege of buying
land and houses, and owning them themselves, though I doubt that, myself;
they never have had to run races naked through the public streets, against
jackasses, to please the people in

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                                   -270-

carnival time; there they never have been driven by the soldiers into a
church every Sunday for hundreds of years to hear themselves and their
religion especially and particularly cursed; at this very day, in that
curious country, a Jew is allowed to vote , hold office, yea, get up on a
rostrum in the public street and express his opinion of the government if
the government don't suit him! Ah, it is wonderful. The common people there
know a great deal; they even have the effrontery to complain if they are
not properly governed, and to take hold and help conduct the government
themselves; if they had laws like ours, which give one dollar of every
three a crop produces to the government for taxes, they would have that law
altered: instead of paying thirty-three dollars in taxes, out of every one
hundred they receive, they complain if they have to pay seven. They are
curious people. They do not know when they are well off. Mendicant priests
do not prowl among them with baskets begging for the church and eating up
their substance. One hardly ever sees a minister of the gospel going around
there in his bare feet, with a basket, begging for subsistence. In that
country the preachers are not like our mendicant orders of friars -- they
have two or three suits of clothing, and they wash sometimes. In that land
are mountains far higher than the Alban mountains; the vast Roman Campagna,
a hundred miles long and full forty broad, is really small compared to the
United States of America; the Tiber, that celebrated river of ours, which
stretches its mighty course almost two hundred miles, and which a lad can
scarcely throw a stone across at Rome, is not so long, nor yet so wide, as
the American Mississippi -- nor yet the Ohio, nor even the Hudson. In
America the people are absolutely wiser and know much more than their
grandfathers did. They do not plow with a sharpened stick, nor yet with a
three-cornered block of wood that merely scratches the top of the ground.
We do that because our fathers did, three thousand years ago, I suppose.
But those people have no holy reverence for their ancestors. They plow with
a plow that is a sharp, curved blade of iron, and it cuts into the earth
full five inches. And this is not all. They

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cut their grain with a horrid machine that mows down whole fields in a day.
If I dared, I would say that sometimes they use a blasphemous plow that
works by fire and vapor and tears up an acre of ground in a single hour --
but -- but -- I see by your looks that you do not believe the things I am
telling you. Alas, my character is ruined, and I am a branded speaker of
untruths!"

     Of course we have been to the monster Church of St. Peter, frequently.
I knew its dimensions. I knew it was a prodigious structure. I knew it was
just about the length of the capitol at Washington -- say seven hundred and
thirty feet. I knew it was three hundred and sixty-four feet wide, and
consequently wider than the capitol. I knew that the cross on the top of
the dome of the church was four hundred and thirty-eight feet above the
ground, and therefore about a hundred or may be a hundred and twenty-five
feet higher than the dome of the capitol. -- Thus I had one gauge. I wished
to come as near forming a correct idea of how it was going to look, as
possible; I had a curiosity to see how much I would err. I erred
considerably. St. Peter's did not look nearly so large as the capitol, and
certainly not a twentieth part as beautiful, from the outside.

     When we reached the door, and stood fairly within the church, it was
impossible to comprehend that it was a very large building. I had to cipher
a comprehension of it. I had to ransack my memory for some more similes.
St. Peter's is bulky. Its height and size would represent two of the
Washington capitol set one on top of the other -- if the capitol were
wider; or two blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary buildings set one
on top of the other. St. Peter's was that large, but it could and would not
look so. The trouble was that every thing in it and about it was on such a
scale of uniform vastness that there were no contrasts to judge by -- none
but the people, and I had not noticed them. They were insects. The statues
of children holding vases of holy water were immense, according to the
tables of figures, but so was every thing else around them. The mosaic
pictures in the dome were huge, and were made of thousands and thousands of
cubes of glass as large as

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                                   -272-

the end of my little finger, but those pictures looked smooth, and gaudy of
color, and in good proportion to the dome. Evidently they would not answer
to measure by. Away down toward the far end of the church (I thought it was
really clear at the far end, but discovered afterward that it was in the
centre, under the dome,) stood the thing they call the baldacchino -- a
great bronze pyramidal frame-work like that which upholds a mosquito bar.
It only looked like a considerably magnified bedstead -- nothing more. Yet
I knew it was a good deal more than half as high as Niagara Falls. It was
overshadowed by a dome so mighty that its own height was snubbed. The four
great square piers or pillars that stand equidistant from each other in the
church, and support the roof, I could not work up to their real dimensions
by any method of comparison. I knew that the faces of each were about the
width of a very large dwelling-house front, (fifty or sixty feet,) and that
they were twice as high as an ordinary three-story dwelling, but still they
looked small. I tried all the different ways I could think of to compel
myself to understand how large St. Peter's was, but with small success. The
mosaic portrait of an Apostle who was writing with a pen six feet long
seemed only an ordinary Apostle.

     But the people attracted my attention after a while. To stand in the
door of St. Peter's and look at men down toward its further extremity, two
blocks away, has a diminishing effect on them; surrounded by the prodigious
pictures and statues, and lost in the vast spaces, they look very much
smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the open air. I
"averaged" a man as he passed me and watched him as he drifted far down by
the baldacchino and beyond -- watched him dwindle to an insignificant
school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent throng of human pigmies
gliding about him, I lost him. The church had lately been decorated, on the
occasion of a great ceremony in honor of St. Peter, and men were engaged,
now, in removing the flowers and gilt paper from the walls and pillars. As
no ladders could reach the great heights, the men swung themselves

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down from balustrades and the capitals of pilasters by ropes, to do this
work. The upper gallery which encircles the inner sweep of the dome is two
hundred and forty feet above the floor of the church -- very few steeples
in America could reach up to it. Visitors always go up there to look down
into the church because one gets the best idea of some of the heights and
distances from that point. While we stood on the floor one of the workmen
swung loose from that gallery at the end of a long rope. I had not
supposed, before, that a man could look so much like a spider. He was
insignificant in size, and his rope seemed only a thread. Seeing that he
took up so little space, I could believe the story, then, that ten thousand
troops went to St. Pete r's, once, to hear mass, and their commanding
officer came afterward, and not finding them, supposed they had not yet
arrived. But they were in the church, nevertheless -- they were in one of
the transepts. Nearly fifty thousand persons assembled in St. Peter's to
hear the publishing of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It is
estimated that the floor of the church affords standing room for -- for a
large number of people; I have forgotten the exact figures. But it is no
matter -- it is near enough.

     They have twelve small pillars, in St. Peter's, which came from
Solomon's Temple. They have, also -- which was far more interesting to me
-- a piece of the true cross, and some nails, and a part of the crown of
thorns.

     Of course we ascended to the summit of the dome, and of course we also
went up into the gilt copper ball which is above it. -- There was room
there for a dozen persons, with a little crowding, and it was as close and
hot as an oven. Some of those people who are so fond of writing their names
in prominent places had been there before us -- a million or two, I should
think. From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every notable object in
Rome, from the Castle of St. Angelo to the Coliseum. He can discern the
seven hills upon which Rome is built. He can see the Tiber, and the
locality of the bridge which Horatius kept "in the brave days of old" when
Lars Porsena attempted to cross it with his invading host. He can

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see the spot where the Horatii and the Curatii fought their famous battle.
He can see the broad green Campagna, stretching away toward the mountains,
with its scattered arches and broken aqueducts of the olden time, so
picturesque in their gray ruin, and so daintily festooned with vines. He
can see the Alban Mountains, the Appenines, the Sabine Hills, and the blue
Mediterranean. He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful
to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe. --
About his feet is spread the remnant of a city that once had a population
of four million souls; and among its massed edifices stand the ruins of
temples, columns, and triumphal arches that knew the Cµsars, and the
noonday of Roman splendor; and close by them, in unimpaired strength, is a
drain of arched and heavy masonry that belonged to that older city which
stood here before Romulus and Remus were born or Rome thought of. The
Appian Way is here yet, and looking much as it did, perhaps, when the
triumphal processions of the Emperors moved over it in other days bringing
fettered princes from the confines of the earth. We can not see the long
array of chariots and mail-clad men laden with the spoils of conquest, but
we can imagine the pageant, after a fashion. We look out upon many objects
of interest from the dome of St. Peter's; and last of all, almost at our
feet, our eyes rest upon the building which was once the Inquisition. How
times changed, between the older ages and the new! Some seventeen or
eighteen centuries ago, the ignorant men of Rome were wont to put
Christians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild beasts in
upon them for a show. It was for a lesson as well. It was to teach the
people to abhor and fear the new doctrine the followers of Christ were
teaching. The beasts tore the victims limb from limb and made poor mangled
corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians came
into power, when the holy Mother Church became mistress of the barbarians,
she taught them the error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them
in this pleasant Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who was
so gentle

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                                   -275-

and so merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him;
and they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor him -- first
by twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their
flesh with pincers -- red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable
in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by
roasting them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The true
religion, properly administered, as the good Mother Church used to
administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive, also.
There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and
stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the system of
degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized people. It is a
great pity the playful Inquisition is no more.

     I prefer not to describe St. Peter's. It has been done before. The
ashes of Peter, the disciple of the Saviour, repose in a crypt under the
baldacchino. We stood reverently in that place; so did we also in the
Mamertine Prison, where he was confined, where he converted the soldiers,
and where tradition says he caused a spring of water to flow in order that
he might baptize them. But when they showed us the print of Peter's face in
the hard stone of the prison wall and said he made that by falling up
against it, we doubted. And when, also, the monk at the church of San
Sebastian showed us a paving-stone with two great footprints in it and said
that Peter's feet made those, we lacked confidence again. Such things do
not impress one. The monk s aid that angels came and liberated Peter from
prison by night, and he started away from Rome by the Appian Way. The
Saviour met him and told him to go back, which he did. Peter left those
footprints in the stone upon which he stood at the time. It was not stated
how it was ever discovered whose footprints they were, seeing the interview
occurred secretly and at night. The print of the face in the prison was
that of a man of common size; the footprints were those of a man ten or
twelve feet high. The discrepancy confirmed our unbelief.

     We necessarily visited the Forum, where Cµsar was assassinated,

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                                   -276-

and also the Tarpeian Rock. We saw the Dying Gladiator at the Capitol, and
I think that even we appreciated that wonder of art; as much, perhaps, as
we did that fearful story wrought in marble, in the Vatican -- the Laocoon.
And then the Coliseum.

     Every body knows the picture of the Coliseum; every body recognizes at
once that "looped and windowed" band-box with a side bitten out. Being
rather isolated, it shows to better advantage than any other of the
monuments of ancient Rome. Even the beautiful Pantheon, whose pagan altars
uphold the cross, now, and whose Venus, tricked out in consecrated
gimcracks, does reluctant duty as a Virgin Mary to-day, is built about with
shabby houses and its stateliness sadly marred. But the monarch of all
European ruins, the Coliseum, maintains that reserve and that royal
seclusion which is proper to majesty. Weeds and flowers spring from its
massy arches and its circling seats, and vines hang their fringes from its
lofty

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                                   -277-

walls. An impressive silence broods over the monstrous structure where such
multitudes of men and women were wont to assemble in other days. The
butterflies have taken the places of the queens of fashion and beauty of
eighteen centuries ago, and the lizards sun themselves in the sacred seat
of the Emperor. More vividly than all the written histories, the Coliseum
tells the story of Rome's grandeur and Rome's decay. It is the worthiest
type of both that exists. Moving about the Rome of to-day, we might find it
hard to believe in her old magnificence and her millions of population; but
with this stubborn evidence before us that she was obliged to have a
theatre with sitting room for eighty thousand persons and standing room for
twenty thousand more, to accommodate such of her citizens as required
amusement, we find belief less difficult. The Coliseum is over one thousand
six hundred feet long, seven hundred and fifty wide, and one hundred and
sixty-five high. Its shape is oval.

     In America we make convicts useful at the same time that we punish
them for their crimes. We farm them out and compel them to earn money for
the State by making barrels and building roads. Thus we combine business
with retribution, and all things are lovely. But in ancient Rome they
combined religious duty with pleasure. Since it was necessary that the new
sect called Christians should be exterminated, the people judged it wise to
make this work profitable to the State at the same time, and entertaining
to the public. In addition to the gladiatorial combats and other shows,
they sometimes threw members of the hated sect into the arena of the
Coliseum and turned wild beasts in upon them. It is estimated that seventy
thousand Christians suffered martyrdom in this place. This has made the
Coliseum holy ground, in the eyes of the followers of the Saviour. And well
it might; for if the chain that bound a saint, and the footprints a saint
has left upon a stone he chanced to stand upon, be holy, surely the spot
where a man gave up his life for his faith is holy.

     Seventeen or eighteen centuries ago this Coliseum was the theatre of
Rome, and Rome was mistress of the world. Splendid

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                                   -278-

pageants were exhibited here, in presence of the Emperor, the great
ministers of State, the nobles, and vast audiences of citizens of smaller
consequence. Gladiators fought with gladiators and at times with warrior
prisoners from many a distant land. It was the theatre of Rome -- of the
world -- and the man of fashion who could not let fall in a casual and
unintentional manner something about "my private box at the Coliseum" could
not move in the first circles. When the clothing-store merchant wished to
consume the corner grocery man with envy, he bought secured seats in the
front row and let the thing be known. When the irresistible dry goods clerk
wished to blight and destroy, according to his native instinct, he got
himself up regardless of expense and took some other fellow's young lady to
the Coliseum, and then accented the affront by cramming her with ice cream
between the acts, or by approaching the cage and stirring up the martyrs
with his whalebone cane for her edification. The Roman swell was in his
true element only when he stood up against a pillar and fingered his
moustache unconscious of the ladies; when he viewed the bloody combats
through an opera-glass two inches long; when he excited the envy of
provincials by criticisms which showed that he had been to the Coliseum
many and many a time and was long ago over the novelty of it; when he
turned away with a yawn at last and said,

     "He a star! handles his sword like an apprentice brigand! he'll do for
the country, may be, but he don't answer for the metropolis!"

     Glad was the contraband that had a seat in the pit at the Saturday
matinee, and happy the Roman street-boy who ate his peanuts and guyed the
gladiators from the dizzy gallery.

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                                   -279-

     For me was reserved the high honor of discovering among the rubbish of
the ruined Coliseum the only playbill of that establishment now extant.
There was a suggestive smell of mint-drops about it still, a corner of it
had evidently been chewed, and on the margin, in choice Latin, these words
were written in a delicate female hand:



     "Meet me on the Tarpeian Rock tomorrow evening, dear, at sharp
     seven. Mother will be absent on a visit to her friends in the
     Sabine Hills.
     CLAUDIA."

     Ah, where is that lucky youth to-day, and where the little hand that
wrote those dainty lines? Dust and ashes these seventeen hundred years!

     Thus reads the bill:


                                  [Image]



     ROMAN COLISEUM.

     UNPARALLELED ATTRACTION!

                 NEW PROPERTIES! NEW LIONS! NEW GLADIATORS!

     Engagement of the renowned

                         MARCUS MARCELLUS VALERIAN!

                            FOR SIX NIGHTS ONLY!

     The management beg leave to offer to the public an entertainment
     surpassing in magnificence any thing that has heretofore been
     attempted on any stage. No expense has been spared to make the
     opening season one which shall be worthy the generous patronage
     which the management feel sure will crown their efforts. The
     management beg leave to state that they have succeeded in
     securing the services of a

                             GALAXY OF TALENT!

     such as has not been beheld in Rome before.

     The performance will commence this evening with a

                          GRAND BROADSWORD COMBAT!

     between two young and promising amateurs and a celebrated
     Parthian gladiator who has just arrived a prisoner from the Camp
     of Verus.

     This will be followed by a grand moral

                           BATTLE-AX ENGAGEMENT!

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -280-

                                  [Image]

     between the renowned Valerian (with one hand tied behind him,)
     and two gigantic savages from Britain.

     After which the renowned Valerian (if he survive,) will fight
     with the broad-sword,

                                LEFT HANDED!

     against six Sophomores and a Freshman from the Gladiatorial
     College!

     A long series of brilliant engagements will follow, in which the
     finest talent of the Empire will take part

     After which the celebrated Infant Prodigy known as

                           "THE YOUNG ACHILLES,"

     will engage four tiger whelps in combat, armed with no other
     weapon than his little spear!

     The whole to conclude with a chaste and elegant

                             GENERAL SLAUGHTER!

     In which thirteen African Lions and twenty-two Barbarian
     Prisoners will war with each other until all are exterminated.

                            BOX OFFICE NOW OPEN.

     Dress Circle One Dollar; Children and Servants half price.

     An efficient police force will be on hand to preserve order and
     keep the wild beasts from leaping the railings and discommoding
     the audience.

     Doors open at 7; performance begins at 8.

     POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST.

     Diodorus Job Press.

     It was as singular as it was gratifying that I was also so fortunate
as to find among the rubbish of the arena, a stained and mutilated copy of
the Roman Daily Battle-Ax, containing a critique upon this very
performance. It comes to hand too late by many centuries to rank as news,
and therefore I translate and publish it simply to show how very little the
general style and phraseology of dramatic criticism has altered in the ages
that have dragged their slow length along since the carriers laid this one
damp and fresh before their Roman patrons:

          "THE OPENING SEASON. -- COLISEUM. -- Notwithstanding the
     inclemency of the weather, quite a respectable number of the rank
     and fashion of the city assembled last night to witness the debut
     upon metropolitan boards of the young tragedian

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -281-

     who has of late been winning such golden opinions in the
     amphitheatres of the provinces. Some sixty thousand persons were
     present, and but for the fact that the streets were almost
     impassable, it is fair to presume that the house would have been
     full. His august Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied the
     imperial box, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Many illustrious
     nobles and generals of the Empire graced the occasion with their
     presence, and not the least among them was the young patrician
     lieutenant whose laurels, won in the ranks of the "Thundering
     Legion," are still so green upon his brow. The cheer which
     greeted his entrance was heard beyond the Tiber!

          "The late repairs and decorations add both to the comeliness
     and the comfort of the Coliseum. The new cushions are a great
     improvement upon the hard marble seats we have been so long
     accustomed to. The present management deserve well of the public.
     They have restored to the Coliseum the gilding, the rich
     upholstery and the uniform magnificence which old Coliseum
     frequenters tell us Rome was so proud of fifty years ago.

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -282-

          "The opening scene last night -- the broadsword combat
     between two young amateurs and a famous Parthian gladiator who
     was sent here a prisoner -- was very fine. The elder of the two
     young gentlemen handled his weapon with a grace that marked the
     possession of extraordinary talent. His feint of thrusting,
     followed instantly by a happily delivered blow which unhelmeted
     the Parthian, was received with hearty applause. He was not
     thoroughly up in the backhanded stroke, but it was very
     gratifying to his numerous friends to know that, in time,
     practice would have overcome this defect. However, he was killed.
     His sisters, who were present, expressed considerable regret. His
     mother left the Coliseum. The other youth maintained the contest
     with such spirit as to call forth enthusiastic bursts of
     applause. When at last he fell a corpse, his aged mother ran
     screaming, with hair disheveled and tears streaming from her
     eyes, and swooned away just as her hands were clutching at the
     railings of the arena. She was promptly removed by the police.
     Under the circumstances the woman's conduct was pardonable,
     perhaps, but we suggest that such exhibitions interfere with the
     decorum which should be preserved during the performances, and
     are highly improper in the presence of the Emperor. The Parthian
     prisoner fought bravely and well; and well he might, for he was
     fighting for both life and liberty. His wife and children were
     there to nerve his arm with their love, and to remind him of the
     old home he should see again if h e conquered. When his second
     assailant fell, the woman clasped her children to her breast and
     wept for joy. But it was only a transient happiness. The captive
     staggered toward her and she saw that the liberty he had earned
     was earned too late. He was wounded unto death. Thus the first
     act closed in a manner which was entirely satisfactory. The
     manager was called before the curtain and returned his thanks for
     the honor done him, in a speech which was replete with wit and
     humor, and closed by hoping that his humble efforts to afford
     cheerful and instructive entertainment would continue to meet
     with the approbation of the Roman public

          "The star now appeared, and was received with vociferous
     applause and the simultaneous waving of sixty thousand
     handkerchiefs. Marcus Marcellus Valerian (stage name -- his real
     name is Smith,) is a splendid specimen of physical development,
     and an artist of rare merit. His management of the battle-ax is
     wonderful. His gayety and his playfulness are irresistible, in
     his comic parts, and yet they are inferior to his sublime
     conceptions in the grave realm of tragedy. When his ax was
     describing fiery circles about the heads of the bewildered
     barbarians, in exact time with his springing body and his
     prancing legs, the audience gave way to uncontrollable bursts of
     laughter; but when the back of his weapon broke the skull of one
     and almost in the same instant its edge clove the other's body in
     twain, the howl of enthusiastic applause that shook the building,
     was the acknowledgment of a critical assemblage that he was a
     master of the noblest department of his profession. If he has a
     fault, (and we are sorry to even intimate that he has,) it is
     that of glancing at the audience, in the midst of the most
     exciting moments of the performance, as if seeking admiration.
     The pausing in a fight to bow when bouquets are thrown to him is
     also in bad taste. In the great left-handed combat he appeared to
     be looking at the audience half the time, instead of carving his
     adversaries; and when he had slain all the sophomores and was
     dallying with the freshman. he

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -283-

     stooped and snatched a bouquet as it fell, and offered it to his
     adversary at a time when a blow was descending which promised
     favorably to be his death-warrant. Such levity is proper enough
     in the provinces, we make no doubt, but it ill suits the dignity
     of the metropolis. We trust our young friend will take these
     remarks in good part, for we mean them solely for his benefit.
     All who know us are aware that although we are at times justly
     severe upon tigers and martyrs, we never intentionally offend
     gladiators.

          "The Infant Prodigy performed wonders. He overcame his four
     tiger whelps with ease, and with no other hurt than the loss of a
     portion of his scalp. The General Slaughter was rendered with a
     faithfulness to details which reflects the highest credit upon
     the late participants in it.

          "Upon the whole, last night's performances shed honor not
     only upon the management but upon the city that encourages and
     sustains such wholesome and instructive entertainments. We would
     simply suggest that the practice of vulgar young boys in the
     gallery of shying peanuts and paper pellets at the tigers, and
     saying "Hi-yi!" and manifesting approbation or dissatisfaction by
     such observations as "Bully for the lion!" "Go it, Gladdy!"
     "Boots!" "Speech!" "Take a walk round the block!" and so on, are
     extremely reprehensible, when the Emperor is present, and ought
     to be stopped by the police. Several times last night, when the
     supernumeraries entered the arena to drag out the bodies, the
     young ruffians in the gallery shouted, "Supe! supe!" and also,
     "Oh, what a coat!" and "Why don't you pad them shanks?" and made
     use of various other remarks expressive of derision. These things
     are very annoying to the audience.

          "A matinee for the little folks is promised for this
     afternoon, on which occasion several martyrs will be eaten by the
     tigers. The regular performance will continue every night till
     further notice. Material change of programme every evening.
     Benefit of Valerian, Tuesday, 29th, if he lives."

      I have been a dramatic critic myself, in my time, and I was often
surprised to notice how much more I knew about Hamlet than Forrest did; and
it gratifies me to observe, now, how much better my brethren of ancient
times knew how a broad sword battle ought to be fought than the gladiators.

                                 Chapter 27

                               CHAPTER XXVII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -284-

     SO far, good. If any man has a right to feel proud of himself, and
satisfied, surely it is I. For I have written about the Coliseum, and the
gladiators, the martyrs, and the lions, and yet have never once used the
phrase "butchered to make a Roman holiday." I am the only free white man of
mature age, who has accomplished this since Byron originated the
expression.

     Butchered to make a Roman holiday sounds well for the first seventeen
or eighteen hundred thousand times one sees it in print, but after that it
begins to grow tiresome. I find it in all the books concerning Rome -- and
here latterly it reminds me of Judge Oliver. Oliver was a young lawyer,
fresh from the schools, who had gone out to the deserts of Nevada to begin
life. He found that country, and our ways of life, there, in those early
days, different from life in New England or Paris. But he put on a woollen
shirt and strapped a navy revolver to his person, took to the bacon and
beans of the country, and determined to do in Nevada as Nevada did. Oliver
accepted the situation so completely that although he must have sorrowed
over many of his trials, he never complained -- that is, he never
complained but once. He, two others, and myself, started to the new silver
mines in the Humboldt mountains -- he to be Probate Judge of Humboldt
county, and we to mine. The distance was two hundred miles. It was dead of
winter. We bought a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred pounds of
bacon, flour, beans, blasting-powder, picks and shovels in it; we bought
two sorry-looking

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -285-

Mexican "plugs," with the hair turned the wrong way and more corners on
their bodies than there are on the mosque of Omar; we hitched up and
started. It was a dreadful trip. But Oliver did not complain. The horses
dragged the wagon two miles from town and then gave out. Then we three
pushed the wagon seven miles, and Oliver moved ahead and pulled the horses
after him by the bits. We complained, but Oliver did not. The ground was
frozen, and it froze our backs while we slept; the wind swept across our
faces and froze our noses. Oliver did not complain. Five days of pushing
the wagon by day and freezing by night brought us to the bad part of the
journey -- the Forty Mile Desert, or the Great American Desert, if you
please. Still, this mildest-mannered man that ever was, had not complained.
We started across at eight in the morning, pushing through sand that had no
bottom; toiling all day long by the wrecks of a thousand wagons, the
skeletons of ten thousand oxen; by wagon-tires enough to hoop the
Washington Monument to the top, and ox-chains enough to girdle Long Island;
by human graves; with our throats parched always, with thirst; lips
bleeding from the alkali dust; hungry, perspiring, and very, very weary --
so weary that when we dropped in the sand every fifty yards to rest the
horses, we could hardly keep from going to sleep -- no complaints from
Oliver: none the next morning at three o'clock, when we got across, tired
to death.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -286-

     Awakened two or three nights afterward at midnight, in a narrow canon,
by the snow falling on our faces, and appalled at the imminent danger of
being "snowed in," we harnessed up and pushed on till eight in the morning,
passed the "Divide" and knew we were saved. No complaints. Fifteen days of
hardship and fatigue brought us to the end of the two hundred miles, and
the Judge had not complained. We wondered if any thing could exasperate
him. We built a Humboldt house. It is done in this way. You dig a square in
the steep base of the mountain, and set up two uprights and top them with
two joists. Then you stretch a great sheet of "cotton domestic" from the
point where the joists join the hill-side down over the joists to the
ground; this makes the roof and the front of the mansion; the sides and
back are the dirt walls your digging has left. A chimney is easily made by
turning up one corner of the roof. Oliver was sitting alone in this dismal
den, one night, by a sage-brush fire, writing poetry; he was very fond of
digging poetry out of himself -- or blasting it out when it came hard. He
heard an animal's footsteps close to the roof; a stone or two and some dirt
came through and fell by him. He grew uneasy and said "Hi! -- clear out
from there, can't you!" -- from time to time. But by and by he fell asleep
where he sat, and pretty soon a mule fell down the chimney! The fire flew
in every direction, and Oliver went over backwards. About

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -287-

ten nights after that, he recovered confidence enough to go to writing
poetry again. Again he dozed off to sleep, and again a mule fell down the
chimney. This time, about half of that side of the house came in with the
mule. Struggling to get up, the mule kicked the candle out and smashed most
of the kitchen furniture, and raised considerable dust. These violent
awakenings must have been annoying to Oliver, but he never complained. He
moved to a mansion on the opposite side of the canon, because he had
noticed the mules did not go there. One night about eight o'clock he was
endeavoring to finish his poem, when a stone rolled in -- then a hoof
appeared below the canvas -- then part of a cow -- the after part. He
leaned back in dread, and shouted "Hooy! hooy! get out of this!" and the
cow struggled manfully -- lost ground steadily -- dirt and dust streamed
down, and before Oliver could get well away, the entire cow crashed through
on to the table and made a shapeless wreck of every thing!

     Then, for the first time in his life, I think, Oliver complained. He
said,

     "This thing is growing monotonous!"

     Then he resigned his judgeship and left Humboldt county. "Butchered to
make a Roman holyday" has grown monotonous to me.

     In this connection I wish to say one word about Michael Angelo
Buonarotti. I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo -- that
man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture -- great in
every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast --
for luncheon -- for dinner -- for tea -- for supper -- for between meals. I
like a change, occasionally. In Genoa, he designed every thing; in Milan he
or his pupils designed every thing; he designed the Lake of Como; in Padua,
Verona, Venice, Bologna, who did we ever hear of, from guides, but Michael
Angelo? In Florence, he painted every thing, designed every thing, nearly,
and what he did not design he used to sit on a favorite stone and look at,
and they showed us the stone. In Pisa he designed every thing but the old
shot-tower, and they would have attributed

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -288-

that to him if it had not been so awfully out of the perpendicular. He
designed the piers of Leghorn and the custom house regulations of Civita
Vecchia. But, here -- here it is frightful. He designed St. Peter's; he
designed the Pope; he designed the Pantheon, the uniform of the Pope's
soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the Coliseum, the Capitol, the Tarpeian
Rock, the Barberini Palace, St. John Lateran, the Campagna, the Appian Way,
the Seven Hills, the Baths of Caracalla, the Claudian Aqueduct, the Cloaca
Maxima -- the eternal bore designed the Eternal City, and unless all men
and books do lie, he painted every thing in it! Dan said the other day to
the guide, "Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say
that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!"

     I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled
with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angelo
was dead.

     But we have taken it out of this guide. He has marched us through
miles of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and
through miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has
shown us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to
frescoe the heavens -- pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with him
we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for us --
imbecility and idiotic questions. These creatures never suspect -- they
have no idea of a sarcasm.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -289-

     He shows us a figure and says: "Statoo brunzo." (Bronze statue.)

     We look at it indifferently and the doctor asks: "By Michael Angelo?"

     "No -- not know who."

     Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum. The doctor asks: "Michael
Angelo?"

     A stare from the guide. "No -- thousan' year before he is born."

     Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again: "Michael Angelo?"

     "Oh, mon dieu, genteelmen! Zis is two thousan' year before he is
born!"

     He grows so tired of that unceasing question sometimes, that he dreads
to show us any thing at all. The wretch has tried all the ways he can think
of to make us comprehend that Michael Angelo is only responsible for the
creation of a part of the world, but somehow he has not succeeded yet.
Relief for overtasked eyes and brain from study and sightseeing is
necessary, or we shall become idiotic sure enough. Therefore this guide
must continue to suffer. If he does not enjoy it, so much the worse for
him. We do.

     In this place I may as well jot down a chapter concerning those
necessary nuisances, European guides. Many a man has wished in his heart he
could do without his guide; but knowing he could not, has wished he could
get some amusement out of him as a remuneration for the affliction of his
society. We accomplished this latter matter, and if our experience can be
made useful to others they are welcome to it.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -290-

      Guides know about enough English to tangle every thing up so that a
man can make neither head or tail of it. They know their story by heart --
the history of every statue, painting, cathedral or other wonder they show
you. They know it and tell it as a parrot would -- and if you interrupt,
and throw them off the track, they have to go back and begin over again.
All their lives long, they are employed in showing strange things to
foreigners and listening to their bursts of admiration. It is human nature
to take delight in exciting admiration. It is what prompts children to say
"smart" things, and do absurd ones, and in other ways "show off" when
company is present. It is what makes gossips turn out in rain and storm to
go and be the first to tell a startling bit of news. Think, then, what a
passion it becomes with a guide, whose privilege it is, every day, to show
to strangers wonders that throw them into perfect ecstasies of admiration!
He gets so that he could not by any possibility live in a soberer
atmosphere. After we discovered this, we never went into ecstacies any more
-- we never admired any thing -- we never showed any but impassible faces
and stupid indifference in the presence of the sublimest wonders a guide
had to display. We had found their weak point. We have made good use of it
ever since. We have made some of those people savage, at times, but we have
never lost our own serenity.

     The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can keep his
countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more
imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives. It comes
natural to him.

     The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because
Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion before
any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he had
swallowed a spring mattress. He was full of animation -- full of
impatience. He said:

     "Come wis me, genteelmen! -- come! I show you ze letter writing by
Christopher Colombo! -- write it himself! -- write it wis his own hand! --
come!"

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                                   -291-

     He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of
keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread before
us. The guide's eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the parchment
with his finger:

     "What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so? See! handwriting
Christopher Colombo! -- write it himself!"

     We looked indifferent -- unconcerned. The doctor examined the document
very deliberately, during a painful pause. -- Then he said, without any
show of interest:

     "Ah -- Ferguson -- what -- what did you say was the name of the party
who wrote this?"

     "Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!"

     Another deliberate examination.

     "Ah -- did he write it himself; or -- or how?"

     "He write it himself! -- Christopher Colombo! He's own hand-writing,
write by himself!"

     Then the doctor laid the document down and said:

     "Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could
write better than that."

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                                   -292-

     "But zis is ze great Christo -- "

     "I don't care who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw. Now you
musn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not
fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real
merit, trot them out! -- and if you haven't, drive on!"

     We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but he made one
more venture. He had something which he thought would overcome us. He said:

     "Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me! I show you beautiful, O, magnificent
bust Christopher Colombo! -- splendid, grand, magnificent!"

     He brought us before the beautiful bust -- for it was beautiful -- and
sprang back and struck an attitude:

     "Ah, look, genteelmen! -- beautiful, grand, -- bust Christopher
Colombo! -- beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal!"

     The doctor put up his eye-glass -- procured for such occasions:

     "Ah -- what did you say this gentleman's name was?"

     "Christopher Colombo! -- ze great Christopher Colombo!"

     "Christopher Colombo -- the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did
he do?"

     "Discover America! -- discover America, Oh, ze devil!"

     "Discover America. No -- that statement will hardly wash. We are just
from America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher Colombo --
pleasant name -- is -- is he dead?"

     "Oh, corpo di Baccho! -- three hundred year!"

     "What did he die of?"

     "I do not know! -- I can not tell."

     "Small-pox, think?"

     "I do not know, genteelmen! -- I do not know what he die of!"

     "Measles, likely?"

     "May be -- may be -- I do not know -- I think he die of somethings."

     "Parents living?"

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                                   -293-

     "Im-poseeeble!"

     "Ah -- which is the bust and which is the pedestal?"

     "Santa Maria! -- zis ze bust! -- zis ze pedestal!"

     "Ah, I see, I see -- happy combination -- very happy combination,
indeed. Is -- is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?"

     That joke was lost on the foreigner -- guides can not master the
subtleties of the American joke.

     We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yesterday we spent
three or four hours in the Vatican, again, that wonderful world of
curiosities. We came very near expressing interest, sometimes -- even
admiration -- it was very hard to keep from it. We succeeded though. Nobody
else ever did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was bewildered --
non-plussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up extraordinary
things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -294-

it was a failure; we never showed any interest in any thing. He had
reserved what he considered to be his greatest wonder till the last -- a
royal Egyptian mummy, the best preserved in the world, perhaps. He took us
there. He felt so sure, this time, that some of his old enthusiasm came
back to him:

     "See, genteelmen! -- Mummy! Mummy!"

     The eye-glass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever.

     "Ah, -- Ferguson -- what did I understand you to say the gentleman's
name was?"

     "Name? -- he got no name! -- Mummy! -- 'Gyptian mummy!"

     " Yes, yes. Born here?"

     " No! 'Gyptian mummy!"

     "Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?"

     "No! -- not Frenchman, not Roman! -- born in Egypta!"

     "Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. Foreign locality,
likely. Mummy -- mummy. How calm he is -- how self-possessed. Is, ah -- is
he dead?"

     "Oh, sacre bleu, been dead three thousan' year!"

     The doctor turned on him savagely:

     "Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this! Playing us for
Chinamen because we are strangers and trying to learn! Trying to impose
your vile second-hand carcasses on us! -- thunder and lightning, I've a
notion to -- to -- if you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out! -- or
by George we'll brain you!"

     We make it exceedingly interesting for this Frenchman. However, he has
paid us back, partly, without knowing it. He came to the hotel this morning
to ask if we were up, and he endeavored as well as he could to describe us,
so that the landlord would know which persons he meant. He finished with
the casual remark that we were lunatics. The observation was so innocent
and so honest that it amounted to a very good thing for a guide to say.

     There is one remark (already mentioned,) which never yet has failed to
disgust these guides. We use it always, when we can think of nothing else
to say. After they have exhausted

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                                   -295-

their enthusiasm pointing out to us and praising the beauties of some
ancient bronze image or broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in
silence for five, ten, fifteen minutes -- as long as we can hold out, in
fact -- and then ask:

     "Is -- is he dead?"

     That conquers the serenest of them. It is not what they are looking
for -- especially a new guide. Our Roman Ferguson is the most patient,
unsuspecting, long-suffering subject we have had yet. We shall be sorry to
part with him. We have enjoyed his society very much. We trust he has
enjoyed ours, but we are harassed with doubts.

     We have been in the catacombs. It was like going down into a very deep
cellar, only it was a cellar which had no end to it. The narrow passages
are roughly hewn in the rock, and on each hand as you pass along, the
hollowed shelves are carved out, from three to fourteen deep; each held a
corpse once. There are names, and Christian symbols, and prayers, or
sentences expressive of Christian hopes, carved upon nearly every
sarcophagus. The dates belong away back in the dawn of the Christian era,
of course. Here, in these holes in the ground, the first Christians
sometimes burrowed to escape persecution. They crawled out at night to get
food, but remained under cover in the day time. The priest told us that St.
Sebastian lived under ground for some time while he was being hunted; he
went out one day, and the soldiery discovered and shot him to death with
arrows. Five or six of the early Popes -- those who reigned about sixteen
hundred years ago -- held their papal courts and advised with their clergy
in the bowels of the earth. During seventeen years -- from A. D. 235 to A.
D. 252 -- the Popes did not appear above ground. Four were raised to the
great office during that period. Four years apiece, or thereabouts. It is
very suggestive of the unhealthiness of underground graveyards as places of
residence. One Pope afterward spent his entire pontificate in the catacombs
-- eight years. Another was discovered in them and murdered in the
episcopal chair. There was no satisfaction

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -296-

in being a Pope in those days. There were too many annoyances. There are
one hundred and sixty catacombs under Rome, each with its maze of narrow
passages crossing and recrossing each other and each passage walled to the
top with scooped graves its entire length. A careful estimate makes the
length of the passages of all the catacombs combined foot up nine hundred
miles, and their graves number seven millions. We did not go through all
the passages of all the catacombs. We were very anxious to do it, and made
the necessary arrangements, but our too limited time obliged us to give up
the idea. So we only groped through the dismal labyrinth of St. Callixtus,
under the Church of St. Sebastian. In the various catacombs are small
chapels rudely hewn in the stones, and here the early Christians often held
their religious services by dim, ghostly lights. Think of mass and a sermon
away down in those tangled caverns under ground!

     In the catacombs were buried St. Cecilia, St. Agnes, and several other
of the most celebrated of the saints. In the catacomb of St. Callixtus, St.
Bridget used to remain long hours in holy contemplation, and St. Charles
Borromeo was wont to spend whole nights in prayer there. It was also the
scene of a very marvelous thing.



     "Here the heart of St. Philip Neri was so inflamed with divine
     love as to burst his ribs."

     I find that grave statement in a book published in New York in 1808,
and written by "Rev. William H. Neligan, LL.D., M. A., Trinity College,
Dublin; Member of the Archaeological Society of Great Britain." Therefore,
I believe it. Otherwise, I could not. Under other circumstances I should
have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for dinner.

     This author puts my credulity on its mettle every now and then. He
tells of one St. Joseph Calasanctius whose house in Rome he visited; he
visited only the house -- the priest has been dead two hundred years. He
says the Virgin Mary appeared to this saint. Then he continues:

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -297-



     "His tongue and his heart, which were found after nearly a
     century to be whole, when the body was disinterred before his
     canonization, are still preserved in a glass case, and after two
     centuries the heart is still whole. When the French troops came
     to Rome, and when Pius VII. was carried away prisoner, blood
     dropped from it."

     To read that in a book written by a monk far back in the Middle Ages,
would surprise no one; it would sound natural and proper; but when it is
seriously stated in the middle of the nineteenth century, by a man of
finished education, an LL.D., M. A., and an Archaeological magnate, it
sounds strangely enough. Still, I would gladly change my unbelief for
Neligan's faith, and let him make the conditions as hard as he pleased.

     The old gentleman's undoubting, unquestioning simplicity has a rare
freshness about it in these matter-of-fact railroading and telegraphing
days. Hear him, concerning the church of Ara Coeli:



     "In the roof of the church, directly above the high altar, is
     engraved, 'Regina Coeli laetare Alleluia." In the sixth century
     Rome was visited by a fearful pestilence. Gregory the Great urged
     the people to do penance, and a general procession was formed. It
     was to proceed from Ara Coeli to St. Peter's. As it passed before
     the mole of Adrian, now the Castle of St. Angelo, the sound of
     heavenly voices was heard singing (it was Easter morn,) Regina
     Coeli, laetare! alleluia! quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia!
     resurrexit sicut dixit; alleluia!" The Pontiff, carrying in his
     hands the portrait of the Virgin, (which is over the high altar
     and is said to have been painted by St. Luke,) answered, with the
     astonished people, 'Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia!' At the same
     time an angel was seen to put up a sword in a scabbard, and the
     pestilence ceased on the same day. There are four circumstances
     which confirm 27.1this miracle: the annual procession which takes
     place in the western church on the feast of St Mark; the statue
     of St. Michael, placed on the mole of Adrian, which has since
     that time been called the Castle of St. Angelo; the antiphon
     Regina Coeli which the Catholic church sings during paschal time;
     and the inscription in the church."



27.1 The italics are mine -- M. T.

                                 Chapter 28

                              CHAPTER XXVIII.

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                                   -298-

      FROM the sanguinary sports of the Holy Inquisition; the slaughter of
the Coliseum; and the dismal tombs of the Catacombs, I naturally pass to
the picturesque horrors of the Capuchin Convent. We stopped a moment in a
small chapel in the church to admire a picture of St. Michael vanquishing
Satan -- a picture which is so beautiful that I can not but think it
belongs to the reviled "Renaissance," notwithstanding I believe they told
us one of the ancient old masters painted it -- and then we descended into
the vast vault underneath.

     Here was a spectacle for sensitive nerves! Evidently the old masters
had been at work in this place. There were six divisions in the apartment,
and each division was ornamented with a style of decoration peculiar to
itself -- and these decorations we re in every instance formed of human
bones! There were shapely arches, built wholly of thigh bones; there were
startling pyramids, built wholly of grinning skulls; there were quaint
architectural structures of various kinds, built of shin bones and the
bones of the arm; on the wall were elaborate frescoes, whose curving vines
were made of knotted human vertebrµ; whose delicate tendrils were made of
sinews and tendons; whose flowers were formed of knee-caps and toe-nails.
Every lasting portion of the human frame was represented in these intricate
designs (they were by Michael Angelo, I think,) and there was a careful
finish about the work, and an attention to details that betrayed the
artist's love of his labors as well as his schooled ability. I asked the
good-natured monk who accompanied us, who did this? And he said, "We did
it" -- meaning himself and his brethren up stairs. I could see that

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                                   -299-

the old friar took a high pride in his curious show. We made him talkative
by exhibiting an interest we never betrayed to guides.

     "Who were these people?"

     "We -- up stairs -- Monks of the Capuchin order -- my brethren."

     "How many departed monks were required to upholster these six
parlors?"

     "These are the bones of four thousand."

     "It took a long time to get enough?"

     "Many, many centuries."

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -300-

     "Their different parts are well separated -- skulls in one room, legs
in another, ribs in another -- there would be stirring times here for a
while if the last trump should blow. Some of the brethren might get hold of
the wrong leg, in the confusion, and the wrong skull, and find themselves
limping, and looking through eyes that were wider apart or closer together
than they were used to. You can not tell any of these parties apart, I
suppose?"

     "Oh, yes, I know many of them."

     He put his finger on a skull. "This was Brother Anselmo -- dead three
hundred years -- a good man."

     He touched another. "This was Brother Alexander -- dead two hundred
and eighty years. This was Brother Carlo -- dead about as long."

     Then he took a skull and held it in his hand, and looked reflectively
upon it, after the manner of the grave-digger when he discourses of Yorick.

     "This," he said, "was Brother Thomas. He was a young prince, the scion
of a proud house that traced its lineage back to the grand old days of Rome
well nigh two thousand years ago. He loved beneath his estate. His family
persecuted him; persecuted the girl, as well. They drove her from Rome; he
followed; he sought her far and wide; he found no trace of her. He came
back and offered his broken heart at our altar and his weary life to the
service of God. But look you. Shortly his father died, and likewise his
mother. The girl returned, rejoicing. She sought every where for him whose
eyes had used to look tenderly into hers out of this poor skull, but she
could not find him. At last, in this coarse garb we wear, she recognized
him in the street. He knew her. It was too late. He fell where he stood.
They took him up and brought him here. He never spoke afterward. Within the
week he died. You can see the color of his hair -- faded, somewhat -- by
this thin shred that clings still to the temple. "This," [taking up a thigh
bone,] "was his. The veins of this leaf in the decorations over your head,
were his finger-joints, a hundred and fifty years ago."

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -301-

     This business-like way of illustrating a touching story of the heart
by laying the several fragments of the lover before us and naming them, was
as grotesque a performance, and as ghastly, as any I ever witnessed. I
hardly knew whether to smile or shudder. There are nerves and muscles in
our frames whose functions and whose methods of working it seems a sort of
sacrilege to describe by cold physiological names and surgical
technicalities, and the monk's talk suggested to me something of this kind.
Fancy a surgeon, with his nippers lifting tendons, muscles and such things
into view, out of the complex machinery of a corpse, and observing, "Now
this little nerve quivers -- the vibration is imparted to this muscle --
from here it is passed to this fibrous substance; here its ingredients are
separated by the chemical action of the blood -- one part goes to the heart
and thrills it with what is popularly termed emotion, another part follows
this nerve to the brain and communicates intelligence of a startling
character -- the third part glides along this passage and touches the
spring connected with the fluid receptacles that lie in the rear of the
eye. Thus, by this simple and beautiful process, the party is informed that
his mother is dead, and he weeps." Horrible!

     I asked the monk if all the brethren up stairs expected to be put in
this place when they died. He answered quietly:

     "We must all lie here at last."

     See what one can accustom himself to. -- The reflection that he must
some day be taken apart like an engine or a clock, or like a house whose
owner is gone, and worked up into arches and pyramids and hideous frescoes,
did not distress this monk in the least. I thought he even looked as if he
were thinking, with complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well
on top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes which
possibly they lacked at present.

     Here and there, in ornamental alcoves, stretched upon beds of bones,
lay dead and dried-up monks, with lank frames dressed in the black robes
one sees ordinarily upon priests. We examined one closely. The skinny hands
were clasped upon the breast; two lustreless tufts of hair stuck to the
skull;

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                                   -302-

the skin was brown and sunken; it stretched tightly over the cheek bones
and made them stand out sharply; the crisp dead eyes were deep in the
sockets; the nostrils were painfully prominent, the end of the nose being
gone; the lips had shriveled away from the yellow teeth: and brought down
to us through the circling years, and petrified there, was a weird laugh a
full century old!

     It was the jolliest laugh, but yet the most dreadful, that one can
imagine. Surely, I thought, it must have been a most extraordinary joke
this veteran produced with his latest breath, that he has not got done
laughing at it yet. At this moment I saw that the old instinct was strong
upon the boys, and I said we had better hurry to St. Peter's. They were
trying to keep from asking, "Is -- is he dead?"

     It makes me dizzy, to think of the Vatican -- of its wilderness of
statues, paintings, and curiosities of every description and every age. The
"old masters" (especially in sculpture,) fairly swarm, there. I can not
write about the Vatican. I think I shall never remember any thing I saw
there distinctly but the mummies, and the Transfiguration, by Raphael, and
some other things it is not necessary to mention now. I shall remember the
Transfiguration partly because it was placed in a room almost by its elf;
partly because it is acknowledged by

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -303-

all to be the first oil painting in the world; and partly because it was
wonderfully beautiful. The colors are fresh and rich, the "expression," I
am told, is fine, the "feeling" is lively, the "tone" is good, the "depth"
is profound, and the width is about four and a half feet, I should judge.
It is a picture that really holds one's attention; its beauty is
fascinating. It is fine enough to be a Renaissance. A remark I made a while
ago suggests a thought -- and a hope. Is it not possible that the reason I
find such charms in this picture is because it is out of the crazy chaos of
the galleries? If some of the others were set apart, might not they be
beautiful? If this were set in the midst of the tempest of pictures one
finds in the vast galleries of the Roman palaces, would I think it so
handsome? If, up to this time, I had seen only one "old master" in each
palace, instead of acres and acres of walls and ceilings fairly papered
with them, might I not have a more civilized opinion of the old master s
than I have now? I think so. When I was a school-boy and was to have a new
knife, I could not make up my mind as to which was the prettiest in the
show-case, and I did not think any of them were particularly pretty; and so
I chose with a heavy heart. But when I looked at my purchase, at home,
where no glittering blades came into competition with it, I was astonished
to see how handsome it was. To this day my new hats look better out of the
shop than they did in it with other new hats. It begins to dawn upon me,
now, that possibly, what I have been taking for uniform ugliness in the
galleries may be uniform beauty after all. I honestly hope it is, to
others, but certainly it is not to me. Perhaps the reason I used to enjoy
going to the Academy

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -304-

of Fine Arts in New York was because there were but a few hundred paintings
in it, and it did not surfeit me to go through the list. I suppose the
Academy was bacon and beans in the Forty-Mile Desert, and a European
gallery is a state dinner of thirteen courses. One leaves no sign after him
of the one dish, but the thirteen frighten away his appetite and give him
no satisfaction.

     There is one thing I am certain of, though. With all the Michael
Angelos, the Raphaels, the Guidos and the other old masters, the sublime
history of Rome remains unpainted! They painted Virgins enough, and popes
enough and saintly scarecrows enough, to people Paradise, almost, and these
things are all they did paint. "Nero fiddling o'er burning Rome," the
assassination of Cµsar, the stirring spectacle of a hundred thousand people
bending forward with rapt interest, in the coliseum, to see two skillful
gladiators hacking away each others' lives, a tiger springing upon a
kneeling martyr -- these and a thousand other matters which we read of with
a living interest, must be sought for only in books -- not among the
rubbish left by the old masters -- who are no more, I have the satisfaction
of informing the public.

     They did paint, and they did carve in marble, one historical scene,
and one only, (of any great historical consequence.) And what was it and
why did they choose it, particularly? It was the Rape of the Sabines, and
they chose it for the legs and busts.

     I like to look at statues, however, and I like to look at pictures,
also -- even of monks looking up in sacred ecstacy, and monks looking down
in meditation, and monks skirmishing for

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -305-

something to eat -- and therefore I drop ill nature to thank the papal
government for so jealously guarding and so industriously gathering up
these things; and for permitting me, a stranger and not an entirely
friendly one, to roam at will and unmolested among them, charging me
nothing, and only requiring that I shall behave myself simply as well as I
ought to behave in any other man's house. I thank the Holy Father right
heartily, and I wish him long life and plenty of happiness.

     The Popes have long been the patrons and preservers of art, just as
our new, practical Republic is the encourager and upholder of mechanics. In
their Vatican is stored up all that is curious and beautiful in art; in our
Patent Office is hoarded all that is curious or useful in mechanics. When a
man invents a new style of horse-collar or discovers a new and superior
method of telegraphing, our government issues a patent to him that is worth
a fortune; when a man digs up an ancient statue in the Campagna, the Pope
gives him a fortune in gold coin. We can make something of a guess at a
man's character by the style of nose he carries on his face. The Vatican
and the Patent Office are governmental noses, and they bear a deal of
character about them.

     The guide showed us a colossal statue of Jupiter, in the Vatican,
which he said looked so damaged and rusty -- so like the God of the
Vagabonds -- because it had but recently been dug up in the Campagna. He
asked how much we supposed this Jupiter was worth? I replied, with
intelligent promptness, that he was probably worth about four dollars --
may be four and a half. "A hundred thousand dollars!" Ferguson said.
Ferguson said, further, that the Pope permits no ancient work of this kind
to leave his dominions. He appoints a commission to examine discoveries
like this and report upon the value; then the Pope pays the discoverer
one-half of that assessed value and takes the statue. He said this Jupiter
was dug from a field which had just been bought for thirty-six thousand
dollars, so the first crop was a good one for the new farmer. I do not know
whether Ferguson always tells the truth or not, but I suppose he does. I
know that an exorbitant export duty is

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -306-

exacted upon all pictures painted by the old masters, in order to
discourage the sale of those in the private collections. I am satisfied,
also, that genuine old masters hardly exist at all, in America, because the
cheapest and most insignificant of them are valued at the price of a fine
farm. I proposed to buy a small trifle of a Raphael, myself, but the price
of it was eighty thousand dollars, the export duty would have made it
considerably over a hundred, and so I studied on it awhile and concluded
not to take it.

     I wish here to mention an inscription I have seen, before I forget it:

     "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth TO MEN OF GOOD WILL!" It
is not good scripture, but it is sound Catholic and human nature.

     This is in letters of gold around the apsis of a mosaic group at the
side of the scala santa, church of St. John Lateran, the Mother and
Mistress of all the Catholic churches of the world. The group represents
the Saviour, St. Peter, Pope Leo, St. Silvester, Constantine and
Charlemagne. Peter is giving the pallium to the Pope, and a standard to
Charlemagne. The Saviour is giving the keys to St. Silvester, and a
standard to Constantine. No prayer is offered to the Saviour, who seems to
be of little importance any where in Rome; but an inscription below says,
"Blessed Peter, give life to Pope Leo and victory to king Charles." It does
not say, "Intercede for us, through the Saviour, with the Father, for this
boon," but "Blessed Peter, give it us."

     In all seriousness -- without meaning to be frivolous -- without
meaning to be irreverent, and more than all, without meaning to be
blasphemous, -- I state as my simple deduction from the things I have seen
and the things I have heard, that the Holy Personages rank thus in Rome:

     First -- "The Mother of God" -- otherwise the Virgin Mary.

     Second -- The Deity.

     Third -- Peter.

     Fourth -- Some twelve or fifteen canonized Popes and martyrs.

     Fifth -- Jesus Christ the Saviour -- (but always as an infant in
arms.)

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -307-

     I may be wrong in this -- my judgment errs often, just as is the case
with other men's -- but it is my judgment, be it good or bad.

     Just here I will mention something that seems curious to me. There are
no "Christ's Churches" in Rome, and no "Churches of the Holy Ghost," that I
can discover. There are some four hundred churches, but about a fourth of
them seem to be named for t he Madonna and St. Peter. There are so many
named for Mary that they have to be distinguished by all sorts of affixes,
if I understand the matter rightly. Then we have churches of St. Louis; St.
Augustine; St. Agnes; St. Calixtus; St. Lorenzo in Lucina; St. Lorenzo in
Damaso; St. Cecilia; St. Athanasius; St. Philip Neri; St. Catherine, St.
Dominico, and a multitude of lesser saints whose names are not familiar in
the world -- and away down, clear out of the list of the churches, comes a
couple of hospitals: one of them is named for the Saviour and the other for
the Holy Ghost!

     Day after day and night after night we have wandered among the
crumbling wonders of Rome; day after day and night after night we have fed
upon the dust and decay of five-and-twenty centuries -- have brooded over
them by day and dreampt of them by night till sometimes we seemed moldering
away ourselves, and growing defaced and cornerless, and liable at any
moment to fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in the legs, and
"restored" with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and
set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble
their names on forever and forevermore.

     But the surest way to stop writing about Rome is to stop. I wished to
write a real "guide-book" chapter on this fascinating city, but I could not
do it, because I have felt all the time like a boy in a candy-shop -- there
was every thing to choose from, and yet no choice. I have drifted along
hopelessly for a hundred pages of manuscript without knowing where to
commence. I will not commence at all. Our passports have been examined. We
will go to Naples.

                                 Chapter 29

                               CHAPTER XXIX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -308-

     THE ship is lying here in the harbor of Naples -- quarantined. She has
been here several days and will remain several more. We that came by rail
from Rome have escaped this misfortune. Of course no one is allowed to go
on board the ship, or come ashore from her. She is a prison, now. The
passengers probably spend the long, blazing days looking out from under the
awnings at Vesuvius and the beautiful city -- and in swearing. Think of ten
days of this sort of pastime! -- We go out every day in a boat and request
them to come ashore. It soothes them. We lie ten steps from the ship and
tell them how splendid the city is; and how much better the hotel fare is
here than any where else in Europe; and how cool it is; and what frozen
continents of ice cream there are; and what a time we are having cavorting
about the country and sailing to the islands in the Bay. This tranquilizes
them.


                            ASCENT OF VESUVIUS.

     I shall remember our trip to Vesuvius for many a day -- partly because
of its sight-seeing experiences, but chiefly on account of the fatigue of
the journey. Two or three of us had been resting ourselves among the
tranquil and beautiful scenery of the island of Ischia, eighteen miles out
in the harbor, for two days; we called it "resting," but I do not remember
now what the resting consisted of, for when we got back to Naples we had
not slept for forty-eight hours. We were just about to go to bed early in
the evening, and catch up on

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -309-

some of the sleep we had lost, when we heard of this Vesuvius expedition.
There was to be eight of us in the party, and we were to leave Naples at
midnight. We laid in some provisions for the trip, engaged carriages to
take us to Annunciation, and then moved about the city, to keep awake, till
twelve. We got away punctually, and in the course of an hour and a half
arrived at the town of Annunciation. Annunciation is the very last place
under the sun. In other towns in Italy the people lie around quietly and
wait for you to ask them a question or do some overt act that can be
charged for -- but in Annunciation they have lost even that fragment of
delicacy; they seize a lady's shawl from a chair and hand it to her and
charge a penny; they open a carriage door, and charge for it -- shut it
when you get out, and charge for it; they help you to take off a duster --
two cents; brush your clothes and make them worse than they were before --
two cents; smile upon you -- two cents; bow, with a lick-spittle smirk, hat
in hand -- two cents; they volunteer all information, such as that the
mules will arrive presently -- two cents -- warm day, sir -- two cents --
take you four hours to make the ascent -- two cents. And so they go. They
crowd you -- infest you -- swarm about you, and sweat and smell
offensively, and look sneaking and mean, and obsequious. There is no office
too degrading for them to perform, for money. I have had no opportunity

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -310-

to find out any thing about the upper classes by my own observation, but
from what I hear said about them I judge that what they lack in one or two
of the bad traits the canaille have, they make up in one or two others that
are worse. How the people beg! -- many of them very well dressed, too.

     I said I knew nothing against the upper classes by personal
observation. I must recall it! I had forgotten. What I saw their bravest
and their fairest do last night, the lowest multitude that could be scraped
up out of the purlieus of Christendom would blush to do, I think. They
assembled by hundreds, and even thousands, in the great Theatre of San
Carlo, to do -- what? Why, simply, to make fun of an old woman -- to
deride, to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped, but whose
beauty is faded now and whose voice has lost its former richness. Every
body spoke of the rare sport there was to be. They said the theatre would
be crammed, because Frezzolini was going to sing. It was said she could not
sing well, now, but then the people liked to see her, anyhow. And so we
went. And every time the woman sang they hissed and laughed -- the whole
magnificent house -- and as soon as she left the stage they called her on
again with applause. Once or twice she was encored five and six times in
succession, and received with hisses when she appeared, and discharged with
hisses and laughter when she had finished -- then instantly encored and
insulted again! And how the high-born knaves enjoyed it! White-kidded
gentlemen and ladies laughed till the tears came, and clapped their hands
in very ecstacy when that unhappy old woman would come meekly out for the
sixth time, with uncomplaining patience, to meet a storm of hisses! It was
the cruelest exhibition -- the most wanton, the most unfeeling. The singer
would have conquered an audience of American rowdies by her brave,
unflinching tranquillity (for she answered encore after encore, and smiled
and bowed pleasantly, and sang the best she possibly could, and went bowing
off, through all the jeers and hisses, without ever losing countenance or
temper:) and surely in any other land than Italy her sex and her
helplessness must have been an ample protection

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -311-

to her -- she could have needed no other. Think what a multitude of small
souls were crowded into that theatre last night. If the manager could have
filled his theatre with Neapolitan souls alone, without the bodies, he
could not have cleared less than ninety millions of dollars. What traits of
character must a man have to enable him to help three thousand miscreants
to hiss, and jeer, and laugh at one friendless old woman, and shamefully
humiliate her? He must have all the vile, mean traits there are. My
observation persuades me (I do not like to venture beyond my own personal
observation,) that the upper classes of Naples possess those traits of
character. Otherwise they may be very good people; I can not say.

     ASCENT OF VESUVIUS -- CONTINUED.

     In this city of Naples, they believe in and support one of the
wretchedest of all the religious impostures one can find in Italy -- the
miraculous liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. Twice a year the
priests assemble all the people at the Cathedral, and get out this vial of
clotted blood and let them see it slowly dissolve and become liquid -- and
every day for eight days, this dismal farce is repeated, while the priests
go among the crowd and collect money for the exhibition. The first day, the
blood liquefies in forty-seven minutes -- the church is crammed, then, and
time must be allowed the collectors to get around: after that it liquefies
a little quicker and a little quicker, every day, as the houses grow
smaller, till on the eighth day, with only a few dozens present to see the
miracle, it liquefies in four minutes.

     And here, also, they used to have a grand procession, of priests,
citizens, soldiers, sailors, and the high dignitaries of the City
Government, once a year, to shave the head of a made-up Madonna -- a
stuffed and painted image, like a milliner's dummy -- whose hair
miraculously grew and restored itself every twelve months. They still kept
up this shaving procession as late as four or five years ago. It was a
source of great profit to the church that possessed the remarkable effigy,
and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -312-

the ceremony of the public barbering of her was always carried out with the
greatest possible eclat and display -- the more the better, because the
more excitement there was about it the larger the crowds it drew and the
heavier the revenues it produced -- but at last a day came when the Pope
and his servants were unpopular in Naples, and the City Government stopped
the Madonna's annual show.

     There we have two specimens of these Neapolitans -- two of the
silliest possible frauds, which half the population religiously and
faithfully believed, and the other half either believed also or else said
nothing about, and thus lent themselves to the support of the imposture. I
am very well satisfied to think the whole population believed in those
poor, cheap miracles -- a people who want two cents every time they bow to
you, and who abuse a woman, are capable of it, I think.

     ASCENT OF VESUVIUS -- CONTINUED.

     These Neapolitans always ask four times as much money as they intend
to take, but if you give them what they first demand, they feel ashamed of
themselves for aiming so low, and immediately ask more. When money is to be
paid and received, there is always some vehement jawing and gesticulating
about it. One can not buy and pay for two cents' worth of clams without
trouble and a quarrel. One "course," in a two-horse carriage, costs a franc
-- that is law -- but the hackman always demands more, on some pretence or
other, and if he gets it he makes a new demand. It is said that a stranger
took a one-horse carriage for a course -- tariff, half a franc. He gave the
man five francs, by way of experiment. He demanded more, and received
another franc. Again he demanded more, and got a franc -- demanded more,
and it was refused. He grew vehement -- was again refused, and became
noisy. The stranger said, "Well, give me the seven francs again, and I will
see what I can do" -- and when he got them, he handed the hackman half a
franc, and he immediately asked for two cents to buy a drink with. It may
be thought that I am prejudiced.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -313-

Perhaps I am. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not.

     ASCENT OF VESUVIUS -- CONTINUED.

     Well, as I was saying, we got our mules and horses, after an hour and
a half of bargaining with the population of Annunciation, and started
sleepily up the mountain, with a vagrant at each mule's tail who pretended
to be driving the brute along, but was really holding on and getting
himself dragged up instead. I made slow headway at first, but I began to
get dissatisfied at the idea of paying my minion five francs to hold my

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -314-

mule back by the tail and keep him from going up the hill, and so I
discharged him. I got along faster then.

     We had one magnificent picture of Naples from a high point on the
mountain side. We saw nothing but the gas lamps, of course -- two-thirds of
a circle, skirting the great Bay -- a necklace of diamonds glinting up
through the darkness from the remote distance -- less brilliant than the
stars overhead, but more softly, richly beautiful -- and over all the great
city the lights crossed and recrossed each other in many and many a
sparkling line and curve. And back of the town, far around and abroad over
the miles of level campagna, were scattered rows, and circles, and clusters
of lights, all glowing like so many gems, and marking where a score of
villages were sleeping. About this time, the fellow who was hanging on to
the tail of the horse in front of me and practicing all sorts of
unnecessary cruelty upon the animal, got kicked some fourteen rods, and
this incident, together with the fairy spectacle of the lights far in the
distance, made me serenely happy, and I was glad I started to Vesuvius.

     ASCENT OF MOUNT VESUVIUS -- CONTINUED.

     This subject will be excellent matter for a chapter, and tomorrow or
next day I will write it.

                                 Chapter 30

                                CHAPTER XXX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -315-

      ASCENT OF VESUVIUS -- CONTINUED.

     "SEE Naples and die." Well, I do not know that one would necessarily
die after merely seeing it, but to attempt to live there might turn out a
little differently. To see Naples as we saw it in the early dawn from far
up on the side of Vesuvius, is to see a picture of wonderful beauty. At
that distance its dingy buildings looked white -- and so, rank on rank of
balconies, windows and roofs, they piled themselves up from the blue ocean
till the colossal castle of St. Elmo topped the grand white pyramid and
gave the picture symmetry, emphasis and completeness. And when its lilies
turned to roses -- when it blushed under the sun's first kiss -- it was
beautiful beyond all description. One might well say, then, "See Naples and
die." The frame of the picture was charming, itself. In front, the smooth
sea -- a vast mosaic of many colors; the lofty islands swimming in a dreamy
haze in the distance; at our end of the city the stately double peak of
Vesuvius, and its strong black ribs and seams of lava stretching down to
the limitless level campagna -- a green carpet that enchants the eye and
leads it on and on, past clusters of trees, and isolated houses, and snowy
villages, until it shreds out in a fringe of mist and general vagueness far
away. It is from the Hermitage, there on the side of Vesuvius, that one
should "see Naples and die."

     But do not go within the walls and look at it in detail. That takes
away some of the romance of the thing. The

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -316-

people are filthy in their habits, and this makes filthy streets and breeds
disagreeable sights and smells. There never was a community so prejudiced
against the cholera as these Neapolitans are. But they have good reason to
be. The cholera generally vanquishes a Neapolitan when it seizes him,
because, you understand, before the doctor can dig through the dirt and get
at the disease the man dies. The upper classes take a sea-bath every day,
and are pretty decent.

     The streets are generally about wide enough for one wagon, and how
they do swarm with people! It is Broadway repeated in every street, in
every court, in every alley! Such masses, such throngs, such multitudes of
hurrying, bustling, struggling humanity! We never saw the like of it,
hardly even in New York, I think. There are seldom any sidewalks, and when
there are, they are not often wide enough to pass a man on without caroming
on him. So everybody walks in the street -- and where the street is wide
enough, carriages are forever dashing along. Why a thousand people are not
run over and crippled every day is a mystery that no man can solve. But if
there is an eighth wonder in the world, it must be the dwelling-houses of
Naples. I honestly believe a good majority

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -317-

of them are a hundred feet high! And the solid brick walls are seven feet
through. You go up nine flights of stairs before you get to the "first"
floor. No, not nine, but there or thereabouts. There is a little bird-cage
of an iron railing in front of every window clear away up, up, up, among
the eternal clouds, where the roof is, and there is always somebody looking
out of every window -- people of ordinary size looking out from the first
floor, people a shade smaller from the second, people that look a little
smaller yet from the third -- and from thence upward they grow smaller and
smaller by a regularly graduated diminution, till the folks in the topmost
windows seem more like birds in an uncommonly tall martin-box than any
thing else. The perspective of one of these narrow cracks of streets, with
its rows of tall houses stretching away till they come together in the
distance like railway tracks; its clothes-lines crossing over at all
altitudes and waving their bannered raggedness over the swarms of people
below; and the white-dressed women perched in balcony railings all the way
from the pavement up to the heavens -- a perspective like that is really
worth going into Neapolitan details to see.

      ASCENT OF VESUVIUS -- CONTINUED.

     Naples, with its immediate suburbs, contains six hundred and
twenty-five thousand inhabitants, but I am satisfied it covers no more
ground than an American city of one hundred and fifty thousand. It reaches
up into the air infinitely higher than three American cities, though, and
there is where the secret of it lies. I will observe here, in passing, that
the contrasts between opulence and poverty, and magnificence and misery,
are more frequent and more striking in Naples than in Paris even. One must
go to the Bois de Boulogne to see fashionable dressing, splendid equipages
and stunning liveries, and to the Faubourg St. Antoine to see vice, misery,
hunger, rags, dirt -- but in the thoroughfares of Naples these things are
all mixed together. Naked boys of nine years and the fancy-dressed children
of luxury; shreds and tatters, and brilliant

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -318-

uniforms; jackass-carts and state-carriages; beggars, Princes and Bishops,
jostle each other in every street. At six o'clock every evening, all Naples
turns out to drive on the Riviere di Chiaja, (whatever that may mean;) and
for two hours one may stand there and see the motliest and the worst mixed
procession go by that ever eyes beheld. Princes (there are more Princes
than policemen in Naples -- the city is infested with them) -- Princes who
live up seven flights of stairs and don't own any principalities, will keep
a carriage and go hungry; and clerks, mechanics, milliners and strumpets
will go without their dinners and squander the money on a hack-ride in the
Chiaja; the rag-tag and rubbish of the city stack themselves up, to the
number of twenty or thirty, on a rickety little go-cart hauled by a donkey
not much bigger than a cat, and they drive in the Chiaja; Dukes and
bankers, in sumptuous carriages and with gorgeous drivers and footmen, turn
out, also, and so the furious procession goes. For two hours rank and
wealth, and obscurity and poverty clatter along side by side in the wild
procession, and then go home serene, happy, covered with glory!

     I was looking at a magnificent marble staircase in the King's palace,
the other day, which, it was said, cost five million francs, and I suppose
it did cost half a million, may be. I felt as if it must be a fine thing to
live in a country where there was such comfort and such luxury as this. And
then I stepped out musing, and almost walked over a vagabond who was eating
his dinner on the curbstone -- a piece of bread and a bunch of grapes. When
I found that this mustang was clerking in a fruit establishment (he had the
establishment along with him in a basket,) at two cents a day, and that he
had no palace at home where he lived, I lost some of my enthusiasm
concerning the happiness of living in Italy.

     This naturally suggests to me a thought about wages here. Lieutenants
in the army get about a dollar a day, and common soldiers a couple of
cents. I only know one clerk -- he gets four dollars a month. Printers get
six dollars and a half a month, but I have heard of a foreman who gets
thirteen.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -319-

To be growing suddenly and violently rich, as this man is, naturally makes
him a bloated aristocrat. The airs he puts on are insufferable.

     And, speaking of wages, reminds me of prices of merchandise. In Paris
you pay twelve dollars a dozen for Jouvin's best kid gloves; gloves of
about as good quality sell here at three or four dollars a dozen. You pay
five and six dollars apiece for fine linen shirts in Paris; here and in
Leghorn you pay two and a half. In Marseilles you pay forty dollars for a
first-class dress coat made by a good tailor, but in Leghorn you can get a
full dress suit for the same money. Here you get handsome business suits at
from ten to twenty dollars, and in Leghorn you can get an overcoat for
fifteen dollars that would cost you seventy in New York. Fine kid boots are
worth eight dollars in Marseilles and four dollars here. Lyons velvets rank
higher in America than those of Genoa. Yet the bulk of Lyons velvets you
buy in the States are made in Genoa and imported into Lyons, where they
receive the Lyons stamp and are then exported to America. You can buy
enough velvet in Genoa for twenty-five dollars to make a five hundred
dollar cloak in New York -- so the ladies tell me. Of course these things
bring me back, by a natural and easy transition, to the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -320-

     ASCENT OF VESUVIUS -- CONTINUED.

     And thus the wonderful Blue Grotto is suggested to me. It is situated
on the Island of Capri, twenty-two miles from Naples. We chartered a little
steamer and went out there. Of course, the police boarded us and put us
through a health examination, and inquired into our politics, before they
would let us land. The airs these little insect Governments put on are in
the last degree ridiculous. They even put a policeman on board of our boat
to keep an eye on us as long as we were in the Capri dominions. They
thought we wanted to steal the grotto, I suppose. It was worth stealing.
The entrance to the cave is four feet high and four feet wide, and is in
the face of a lofty perpendicular cliff -- the sea-wall. You enter in

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -321-

small boats -- and a tight squeeze it is, too. You can not go in at all
when the tide is up. Once within, you find yourself in an arched cavern
about one hundred and sixty feet long, one hundred and twenty wide, and
about seventy high. How deep it is no man knows. It goes down to the bottom
of the ocean. The waters of this placid subterranean lake are the
brightest, loveliest blue that can be imagined. They are as transparent as
plate glass, and their coloring would shame the richest sky that ever bent
over Italy. No tint could be more ravishing, no lustre more superb. Throw a
stone into the water, and the myriad of tiny bubbles that are created flash
out a brilliant glare like blue theatrical fires. Dip an oar, and its blade
turns to splendid frosted silver, tinted with blue. Let a man jump in, and
instantly he is cased in an armor more gorgeous than ever kingly Crusader
wore.

     Then we went to Ischia, but I had already been to that

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -322-

island and tired myself to death "resting" a couple of days and studying
human villainy, with the landlord of the Grande Sentinelle for a model. So
we went to Procida, and from thence to Pozzuoli, where St. Paul landed
after he sailed from Samos. I landed at precisely the same spot where St.
Paul landed, and so did Dan and the others. It was a remarkable
coincidence. St. Paul preached to these people seven days before he started
to Rome.

     Nero's Baths, the ruins of Baiµ, the Temple of Serapis; Cumµ, where
the Cumµn Sybil interpreted the oracles, the Lake Agnano, with its ancient
submerged city still visible far down in its depths -- these and a hundred
other points of interest we examined with critical imbecility, but the
Grotto of the Dog claimed our chief attention, because we had heard and
read so much about it. Every body has written about the Grotto del Cane and
its poisonous vapors, from Pliny down to Smith, and every tourist has held
a dog over its floor by the legs to test the capabilities of the place. The
dog dies in a minute and a half -- a chicken instantly. As a general thing,
strangers who crawl in there to sleep do not get up until they are called.
And then they don't either. The stranger that ventures to sleep there takes
a permanent contract. I longed to see this grotto. I resolved to take a dog
and hold him myself'; suffocate him a little, and time him; suffocate him
some more and then finish him. We reached the grotto at about three in the
afternoon, and proceeded at once to make the experiments. But now, an
important difficulty presented itself. We had no dog.

     ASCENT OF VESUVIUS -- CONTINUED.

     At the Hermitage we were about fifteen or eighteen hundred feet above
the sea, and thus far a portion of the ascent had been pretty abrupt. For
the next two miles the road was a mixture -- sometimes the ascent was
abrupt and sometimes it was not: but one characteristic it possessed all
the time, without failure -- without modification -- it was all
uncompromisingly

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -323-

and unspeakably infamous. It was a rough, narrow trail, and led over an old
lava flow -- a black ocean which was tumbled into a thousand fantastic
shapes -- a wild chaos of ruin, desolation, and barrenness -- a wilderness
of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent
asunder -- of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and twisted masses of blackness
that mimicked branching roots, great vines, trunks of trees, all interlaced
and mingled together: and all these weird shapes, all this turbulent
panorama, all this stormy, far-stretching waste of blackness, with its
thrilling suggestiveness of life, of action, of boiling, surging, furious
motion, was petrified! -- all stricken dead and cold in the instant of its
maddest rioting! -- fettered, paralyzed, and left to glower at heaven in
impotent rage for evermore!

     Finally we stood in a level, narrow valley (a valley that had been
created by the terrific march of some old time irruption) and on either
hand towered the two steep peaks of Vesuvius. The one we had to climb --
the one that contains the active volcano -- seemed about eight hundred or
one thousand feet high, and looked almost too straight-up-and-down for any
man to climb, and certainly no mule could climb it with a man on his back.
Four of these native pirates will carry you to the top in a sedan chair, if
you wish it, but suppose they were to slip and let you fall, -- is it
likely that you would ever stop rolling? Not this side of eternity,
perhaps. We left the mules, sharpened our finger-nails, and began the
ascent I have been writing about so long, at twenty minutes to six in the
morning. The path led straight up a rugged sweep of loose chunks of
pumice-stone, and for about every two steps forward we took, we slid back
one. It was so excessively steep that we had to stop, every fifty or sixty
steps, and rest a moment. To see our comrades, we had to look very nearly
straight up at those above us, and very nearly straight down at those
below. We stood on the summit at last -- it had taken an hour and fifteen
minutes to make the trip.

     What we saw there was simply a circular crater -- a circular ditch, if
you please -- about two hundred feet deep, and four

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -324-

or five hundred feet wide, whose inner wall was about half a mile in
circumference. In the centre of the great circus ring thus formed, was a
torn and ragged upheaval a hundred feet high, all snowed over with a
sulphur crust of many and many a brilliant and beautiful color, and the
ditch inclosed this like the moat of a castle, or surrounded it as a little
river does a little island, if the simile is better. The sulphur coating of
that island was gaudy in the extreme -- all mingled together in the richest
confusion were red, blue, brown, black, yellow, white -- I do not know that
there was a color, or shade of a color, or combination of colors,
unrepresented -- and when the sun burst through the morning mists and fired
this tinted magnificence, it topped imperial Vesuvius like a jeweled crown!

     The crater itself -- the ditch -- was not so variegated in coloring,
but yet, in its softness, richness, and unpretentious elegance, it was more
charming, more fascinating to the eye. There was nothing "loud" about its
well-bred and well-creased look. Beautiful? One could stand and look down
upon it for a week without getting tired of it. It had the semblance of a
pleasant meadow, whose slender grasses and whose velvety mosses were
frosted with a shining dust, and tinted with palest green that deepened
gradually to the darkest hue of the orange leaf, and deepened yet again
into gravest brown, then faded into orange, then into brightest gold, and
culminated in the delicate pink of a new-blown rose. Where portions of the
meadow had sunk, and where other portions had been broken up like an
ice-floe, the cavernous openings of the one, and the ragged upturned edges
exposed by the other, were hung with a lace-work of soft-tinted crystals of
sulphur that changed their deformities into quaint shapes and figures that
were full of grace and beauty.

     The walls of the ditch were brilliant with yellow banks of sulphur and
with lava and pumice-stone of many colors. No fire was visible any where,
but gusts of sulphurous steam issued silently and invisibly from a thousand
little cracks and fissures in the crater, and were wafted to our noses with
every

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -325-

breeze. But so long as we kept our nostrils buried in our handkerchiefs,
there was small danger of suffocation.

     Some of the boys thrust long slips of paper down into holes and set
them on fire, and so achieved the glory of lighting their cigars by the
flames of Vesuvius, and others cooked eggs over fissures in the rocks and
were happy.

     The view from the summit would have been superb but for the fact that
the sun could only pierce the mists at long intervals. Thus the glimpses we
had of the grand panorama below were only fitful and unsatisfactory.


                                THE DESCENT.

     The descent of the mountain was a labor of only four minutes. Instead
of stalking down the rugged path we ascended, we chose one which was bedded
knee-deep in loose ashes, and ploughed our way with prodigious strides that
would almost have shamed the performance of him of the seven-league boots.

     The Vesuvius of today is a very poor affair compared to the mighty
volcano of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, but I am glad I visited it. It
was well worth it.

     It is said that during one of the grand eruptions of Vesuvius it
discharged massy rocks weighing many tons a thousand feet into the air, its
vast jets of smoke and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -326-

steam ascended thirty miles toward the firmament, and clouds of its ashes
were wafted abroad and fell upon the decks of ships seven hundred and fifty
miles at sea! I will take the ashes at a moderate discount, if any one will
take the thirty miles of smoke, but I do not feel able to take a commanding
interest in the whole story by myself.

                                 Chapter 31

                               CHAPTER XXXI.
                         THE BURIED CITY OF POMPEII

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -327-

     THEY pronounce it Pom-pay-e. I always had an idea that you went down
into Pompeii with torches, by the way of damp, dark stairways, just as you
do in silver mines, and traversed gloomy tunnels with lava overhead and
something on either hand like dilapidated prisons gouged out of the solid
earth, that faintly resembled houses. But you do nothing the kind. Fully
one-half of the buried city, perhaps, is completely exhumed and thrown open
freely to the light of day; and there stand the long rows of solidly-built
brick houses (roofless) just as they stood eighteen hundred years ago, hot
with the flaming sun; and there lie their floors, clean-swept, and not a
bright fragment tarnished or waiting of the labored mosaics that pictured
them with the beasts, and birds, and flowers which we copy in perishable
carpets to-day; and here are the Venuses, and Bacchuses, and Adonises,
making love and getting drunk in many-hued frescoes on the walls of saloon
and bed-chamber; and there are the narrow streets and narrower sidewalks,
paved with flags of good hard lava, the one deeply rutted with the
chariot-wheels, and the other with the passing feet of the Pompeiians of
by-gone centuries; and there are the bake-shops, the temples, the halls of
justice, the baths, the theatres -- all clean-scraped and neat, and
suggesting nothing of the nature of a silver mine away down in the bowels
of the earth. The broken pillars lying about, the doorless doorways and the
crumbled tops of the wilderness of walls,

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                                   -328-

were wonderfully suggestive of the "burnt district" in one of our cities,
and if there had been any charred timbers, shattered windows, heaps of
debris, and general blackness and smokiness about the place, the
resemblance would have been perfect. But no -- the sun shines as brightly
down on old Pompeii to-day as it did when Christ was born in Bethlehem, and
its streets are cleaner a hundred times than ever Pompeiian saw them in her
prime. I know whereof I speak -- for in the great, chief thoroughfares
(Merchant street and the Street of Fortune) have I not seen with my own
eyes how for two hundred years at least the pavements were not repaired! --
bow ruts five and even ten inches deep were worn into the thick flagstones
by the chariot-wheels of generations of swindled tax-payers? And do I not
know by these signs that Street Commissioners of Pompeii never attended to
their business, and that if they never mended the pavements they never
cleaned them? And, besides, is it not the inborn nature of Street
Commissioners

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                                   -329-

to avoid their duty whenever they get a chance? I wish I knew the name of
the last one that held office in Pompeii so that I could give him a blast.
I speak with feeling on this subject, because I caught my foot in one of
those ruts, and the sadness that came over me when I saw the first poor
skeleton, with ashes and lava sticking to it, was tempered by the
reflection that may be that party was the Street Commissioner.

     No -- Pompeii is no longer a buried city. It is a city of hundreds and
hundreds of roofless houses, and a tangled maze of streets where one could
easily get lost, without a guide, and have to sleep in some ghostly palace
that had known no living tenant since that awful November night of eighteen
centuries ago.

     We passed through the gate which faces the Mediterranean, (called the
"Marine Gate,") and by the rusty, broken image of Minerva, still keeping
tireless watch and ward over the possessions it was powerless to save, and
went up a long street and stood in the broad court of the Forum of Justice.
The floor was level and clean, and up and down either side was a noble
colonnade of broken pillars, with their beautiful Ionic and Corinthian
columns scattered about them. At the upper end were the vacant seats of the
Judges, and behind them we descended into a dungeon where the ashes and
cinders had found two prisoners chained on that memorable November night,
and tortured them to death. How they must have tugged at the pitiless
fetters as the fierce fires surged around them!

     Then we lounged through many and many a sumptuous private mansion
which we could not have entered without a formal invitation in
incomprehensible Latin, in the olden time, when the owners lived there --
and we probably wouldn't have got it. These people built their houses a
good deal alike. The floors were laid in fanciful figures wrought in
mosaics of many-colored marbles. At the threshold your eyes fall upon a
Latin sentence of welcome, sometimes, or a picture of a dog, with the
legend "Beware of the Dog," and sometimes a picture

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                                   -330-

of a bear or a faun with no inscription at all. Then you enter a sort of
vestibule, where they used to keep the hat-rack, I suppose; next a room
with a large marble basin in the midst and the pipes of a fountain; on
either side are bedrooms; beyond the fountain is a reception-room, then a
little garden, dining-room, and so forth and so on. The floors were all
mosaic, the walls were stuccoed, or frescoed, or ornamented with
bas-reliefs, and here and there were statues, large and small, and little
fish-pools, and cascades of sparkling water that sprang from secret places
in the colonnade of handsome pillars that surrounded the court, and kept
the flower-beds fresh and the air cool. Those Pompeiians were very
luxurious in their tastes and habits. The most exquisite bronzes we have
seen in Europe, came from the exhumed cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii,
and also the finest cameos and the most delicate engravings on precious
stones; their pictures, eighteen or nineteen centuries old, are often much
more pleasing than the celebrated

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                                   -331-

rubbish of the old masters of three centuries ago. They were well up in
art. From the creation of these works of the first, clear up to the
eleventh century, art seems hardly to have existed at all -- at least no
remnants of it are left -- and it was curious to see how far (in some
things, at any rate,) these old time pagans excelled the remote generations
of masters that came after them. The pride of the world in sculptures seem
to be the Laocoon and the Dying Gladiator, in Rome. They are as old as
Pompeii, were dug from the earth like Pompeii; but their exact age or who
made them can only be conjectured. But worn, and cracked, without a
history, and with the blemishing stains of numberless centuries upon them,
they still mutely mock at all efforts to rival their perfections.

     It was a quaint and curious pastime, wandering through this old silent
city of the dead -- lounging through utterly deserted streets where
thousands and thousands of human beings once bought and sold, and walked
and rode, and made the place resound with the noise and confusion of
traffic and pleasure. They were not lazy. They hurried in those days. We
had evidence of that. There was a temple on one corner, and it was a
shorter cut to go between the columns of that temple from one street to the
other than to go around -- and behold that pathway had been worn deep into
the heavy flagstone floor of the building by generations of time-saving
feet! They would not go around when it was quicker to go through. We do
that way in our cities.

     Every where, you see things that make you wonder how old these old
houses were before the night of destruction came -- things, too, which
bring back those long dead inhabitants and place the living before your
eyes. For instance: The steps (two feet thick -- lava blocks) that lead up
out of the school, and the same kind of steps that lead up into the dress
circle of the principal theatre, are almost worn through! For ages the boys
hurried out of that school, and for ages their parents hurried into that
theatre, and the nervous feet that have been dust and ashes for eighteen
centuries have left their record for

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                                   -332-

us to read to-day. I imagined I could see crowds of gentlemen and ladies
thronging into the theatre, with tickets for secured seats in their hands,
and on the wall, I read the imaginary placard, in infamous grammar,
"POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST, EXCEPT MEMBERS OF THE PRESS!" Hanging about the
doorway (I fancied,) were slouchy Pompeiian street-boys uttering slang and
profanity, and keeping a wary eye out for checks. I entered the theatre,
and sat down in one of the long rows of stone benches in the dress circle,
and looked at the place for the orchestra, and the ruined stage, and around
at the wide sweep of empty boxes, and thought to myself, "This house won't
pay." I tried to imagine the music in full blast, the leader of the
orchestra beating time, and the "versatile" So-and-So (who had "just
returned from a most successful tour in the provinces to play his last and
farewell engagement of positively six nights only, in Pompeii, previous to
his departure for Herculaneum,") charging around the stage and piling the
agony mountains high -- but I could not do it with such a "house" as that;
those empty benches tied my fancy down to dull reality. I said, these
people that ought to be here have been dead, and still, and moldering to
dust for ages and ages, and will never care for the trifles and follies of
life any more for ever -- "Owing to circumstances, etc., etc., there will
not be any performance to-night." Close down the curtain. Put out the
lights.

     And so I turned away and went through shop after shop and store after
store, far down the long street of the merchants, and called for the wares
of Rome and the East, but the tradesmen were gone, the marts were silent,
and nothing was left but the broken jars all set in cement of cinders and
ashes: the wine and the oil that once had filled them were gone with their
owners.

     In a bake-shop was a mill for grinding the grain, and the furnaces for
baking the bread: and they say that here, in the same furnaces, the
exhumers of Pompeii found nice, well baked loaves which the baker had not
found time to remove from the ovens the last time he left his shop, because
circumstances compelled him to leave in such a hurry.

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                                   -333-

     In one house (the only building in Pompeii which no woman is now
allowed to enter,) were the small rooms and short beds of solid masonry,
just as they were in the old times, and on the walls were pictures which
looked almost as fresh as if they were painted yesterday, but which no pen
could have the hardihood to describe; and here and there were Latin
inscriptions -- obscene scintillations of wit, scratched by hands that
possibly were uplifted to Heaven for succor in the midst of a driving storm
of fire before the night was done.

     In one of the principal streets was a ponderous stone tank, and a
water-spout that supplied it, and where the tired, heated toilers from the
Campagna used to rest their right hands when they bent over to put their
lips to the spout, the thick stone was worn down to a broad groove an inch
or two deep. Think of the countless thousands of hands that had pressed
that spot in the ages that are gone, to so reduce a stone that is as hard
as iron!

     They had a great public bulletin board in Pompeii -- a place where
announcements for gladiatorial combats, elections, and such things, were
posted -- not on perishable paper, but carved in enduring stone. One lady,
who, I take it, was rich and well brought up, advertised a dwelling or so
to rent, with baths and all the modern improvements, and several hundred
shops, stipulating that the dwellings should not be put to immoral
purposes. You can find out who lived in many a house in Pompeii by the
carved stone door-plates affixed to them: and in the same way you can tell
who they were that occupy the tombs. Every where around are things that
reveal to you something of the customs and history of this forgotten
people. But what would a volcano leave of an American city, if it once
rained its cinders on it? Hardly a sign or a symbol to tell its story.

     In one of these long Pompeiian halls the skeleton of a man was found,
with ten pieces of gold in one hand and a large key in the other. He had
seized his money and started toward the door, but the fiery tempest caught
him at the very threshold, and he sank down and died. One more minute of
precious

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                                   -334-

time would have saved him. I saw the skeletons of a man, a woman, and two
young girls. The woman had her hands spread wide apart, as if in mortal
terror, and I imagined I could still trace upon her shapeless face
something of the expression of wild despair that distorted it when the
heavens rained fire in these streets, so many ages ago. The girls and the
man lay with their faces upon their arms, as if they had tried to shield
them from the enveloping cinders. In one apartment eighteen skeletons were
found, all in sitting postures, and blackened places on the walls still
mark their shapes and show their attitudes, like shadows. One of them, a
woman, still wore upon her skeleton throat a necklace, with her name
engraved upon it -- JULIE DI DIOMEDE.

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                                   -335-

     But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern
research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete armor;
who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of Rome, and
full of the stern courage which had given to that name its glory, stood to
his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till the hell that raged
around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could not conquer.

     We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not
write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he
so well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier -- not a policeman
-- and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid, -- because the warrior
instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have staid,
also -- because he would have been asleep.

     There are not half a dozen flights of stairs in Pompeii, and no other
evidences that the houses were more than one story high. The people did not
live in the clouds, as do the Venetians, the Genoese and Neapolitans of
to-day.

     We came out from under the solemn mysteries of this city of the
Venerable Past -- this city which perished, with all its old ways and its
quaint old fashions about it, remote centuries ago, when the Disciples were
preaching the new religion, which is as old as the hills to us now -- and
went dreaming among the trees that grow over acres and acres of its still
buried streets and squares, till a shrill whistle and the cry of "All
aboard -- last train for Naples!" woke me up and reminded me that I
belonged in the nineteenth century, and was not a dusty mummy, caked with
ashes and cinders, eighteen hundred years old. The transition was
startling. The idea of a railroad train actually running to old dead
Pompeii, and whistling irreverently, and calling for passengers in the most
bustling and business-like way, was as strange a thing as one could
imagine, and as unpoetical and disagreeable as it was strange.

     Compare the cheerful life and the sunshine of this day with the
horrors the younger Pliny saw here, the 9th of November, A.D. 79, when he
was so bravely striving to remove his

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                                   -336-

mother out of reach of harm, while she begged him, with all a mother's
unselfishness, to leave her to perish and save himself.

          'By this time the murky darkness had so increased that one
     might have believed himself abroad in a black and moonless night,
     or in a chamber where all the lights had been extinguished. On
     every hand was heard the complaints of women, the wailing of
     children, and the cries of men. One called his father, another
     his son, and another his wife, and only by their voices could
     they know each other. Many in their despair begged that death
     would come and end their distress.

          "Some implored the gods to succor them, and some believed
     that this night was the last, the eternal night which should
     engulf the universe!

          "Even so it seemed to me -- and I consoled myself for the
     coming death with the reflection: BEHOLD, THE WORLD IS PASSING
     AWAY!"

      * * * * * * * *

     After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiµ, of Pompeii,
and after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless
imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing
strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting
character of fame. Men lived long lives, in the olden time, and struggled
feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory, in generalship,
or in literature, and then laid them down and died, happy in the possession
of an enduring history and a deathless name. Well, twenty little centuries
flutter away, and what is left of these things? A crazy inscription on a
block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries bother over and tangle up and make
nothing out of but a bare name (which they spell wrong) -- no history, no
tradition, no poetry -- nothing that can give it even a passing interest.
What may be left of General Grant's great name forty centuries hence? This
-- in the Encyclopedia for A. D. 5868, possibly:



     "URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT -- popular poet of ancient times in the
     Aztec provinces of the United States of British America. Some
     authors say flourished about A. D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah
     Foo-foo states that he was a cotemporary of Scharkspyre, the
     English poet, and flourished about A. D. 1328, some three
     centuries after the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote
     'Rock me to Sleep, Mother.'"

     These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.

                                 Chapter 32

                               CHAPTER XXXII.

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                                   -337-

     HOME, again! For the first time, in many weeks, the ship's entire
family met and shook hands on the quarter-deck. They had gathered from many
points of the compass and from many lands, but not one was missing; there
was no tale of sickness or death among the flock to dampen the pleasure of
the reunion. Once more there was a full audience on deck to listen to the
sailors' chorus as they got the anchor up, and to wave an adieu to the land
as we sped away from Naples. The seats were full at dinner again, the
domino parties were complete, and the life and bustle on the upper deck in
the fine moonlight at night was like old times -- old times that had been
gone weeks only, but yet they were weeks so crowded with incident,
adventure and excitement, that they seemed almost like years. There was no
lack of cheerfulness on board the Quaker City. For once, her title was a
misnomer.

     At seven in the evening, with the western horizon all golden from the
sunken sun, and specked with distant ships, the full moon sailing high over
head, the dark blue of the sea under foot, and a strange sort of twilight
affected by all these different lights and colors around us and about us,
we sighted superb Stromboli. With what majesty the monarch held his lonely
state above the level sea! Distance clothed him in a purple gloom, and
added a veil of shimmering mist that so softened his rugged features that
we seemed to see him through a a web of silver gauze. His torch was out;
his fires were smoldering; a tall column of smoke that rose up and lost

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                                   -338-

itself in the growing moonlight was all the sign he gave that he was a
living Autocrat of the Sea and not the spectre of a dead one.

     At two in the morning we swept through the Straits of Messina, and so
bright was the moonlight that Italy on the one hand and Sicily on the other
seemed almost as distinctly visible as though we looked at them from the
middle of a street we were traversing. The city of Messina, milk-white, and
starred and spangled all over with gaslights, was a fairy spectacle. A
great party of us were on deck smoking and making a noise, and waiting to
see famous Scylla and Charybdis. And presently the Oracle stepped out with
his eternal spy-glass and squared himself on the deck like another Colossus
of Rhodes. It was a surprise to see him abroad at such an hour. Nobody
supposed he cared anything about an old fable like that of Scylla and
Charybdis. One of the boys said:

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                                   -339-

     " Hello, doctor, what are you doing up here at this time of night ? --
What do you want to see this place for?"

     " What do I want to see this place for? Young man, little do you know
me, or you wouldn't ask such a question. I wish to see all the places
that's mentioned in the Bible."

     "Stuff -- this place isn't mentioned in the Bible."

     "It ain't mentioned in the Bible! -- this place ain't -- well now,
what place is this, since you know so much about it?"

     "Why it's Scylla and Charybdis."

     "Scylla and Cha -- confound it, I thought it was Sodom and Gomorrah!"

     And he closed up his glass and went below. The above is the ship
story. Its plausibility is marred a little by the fact that the Oracle was
not a biblical student, and did not spend much of his time instructing
himself about Scriptural localities. -- They say the Oracle complains, in
this hot weather, lately, that the only beverage in the ship that is
passable, is the butter. He did not mean butter, of course, but inasmuch as
that article remains in a melted state now since we are out of ice, it is
fair to give him the credit of getting one long word in the right place,
anyhow, for once in his life. He said, in Rome, that the Pope was a
noble-looking old man, but he never did think much of his Iliad.

     We spent one pleasant day skirting along the Isles of Greece. They are
very mountainous. Their prevailing tints are gray and brown, approaching to
red. Little white villages surrounded by trees, nestle in the valleys or
roost upon the lofty perpendicular sea-walls.

     We had one fine sunset -- a rich carmine flush that suffused the
western sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea. -- Fine sunsets seem to
be rare in this part of the world -- or at least, striking ones. They are
soft, sensuous, lovely -- they are exquisite refined, effeminate, but we
have seen no sunsets here yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that flame
in the track of the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes.

     But what were sunsets to us, with the wild excitement upon us of
approaching the most renowned of cities! What cared

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                                   -340-

we for outward visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a thousand other
heroes of the great Past were marching in ghostly procession through our
fancies? What were sunsets to us, who were about to live and breathe and
walk in actual Athens; yea, and go far down into the dead centuries and bid
in person for the slaves, Diogenes and Plato, in the public market-place,
or gossip with the neighbors about the siege of Troy or the splendid deeds
of Marathon? We scorned to consider sunsets.

     We arrived, and entered the ancient harbor of the Pirµus at last. We
dropped anchor within half a mile of the village. Away off, across the
undulating Plain of Attica, could be seen a little square-topped hill with
a something on it, which our glasses soon discovered to be the ruined
edifices of the citadel of the Athenians, and most prominent among them
loomed the venerable Parthenon. So exquisitely clear and pure is this
wonderful atmosphere that every column of the noble structure was
discernible through the telescope, and even the smaller ruins about it
assumed some semblance of shape. This at a distance of five or six miles.
In the valley, near the Acropolis, (the square-topped hill before spoken
of,) Athens itself could be vaguely made out with an ordinary lorgnette.
Every body was anxious to get ashore and visit these classic localities as
quickly as possible. No land we had yet seen had aroused such universal
interest among the passengers.

     But bad news came. The commandant of the Pirµus came in his boat, and
said we must either depart or else get outside the harbor and remain
imprisoned in our ship, under rigid quarantine, for eleven days! So we took
up the anchor and moved outside, to lie a dozen hours or so, taking in
supplies, and then sail for Constantinople. It was the bitterest
disappointment we had yet experienced. To lie a whole day in sight of the
Acropolis, and yet be obliged to go away without visiting Athens!
Disappointment was hardly a strong enough word to describe the
circumstances.

     All hands were on deck, all the afternoon, with books and maps and
glasses, trying to determine which "narrow rocky

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                                   -341-

ridge" was the Areopagus, which sloping hill the Pnyx, which elevation the
Museum Hill, and so on. And we got things confused. Discussion became
heated, and party spirit ran high. Church members were gazing with emotion
upon a hill which they said was the one St. Paul preached from, and another
faction claimed that that hill was Hymettus, and another that it was
Pentelicon! After all the trouble, we could be certain of only one thing --
the square-topped hill was the Acropolis, and the grand ruin that crowned
it was the Parthenon, whose picture we knew in infancy in the school books.

     We inquired of every body who came near the ship, whether there were
guards in the Pirµus, whether they were strict, what the chances were of
capture should any of us slip ashore, and in case any of us made the
venture and were caught, what would be probably done to us? The answers
were discouraging: There was a strong guard or police force; the Pirµus was
a small town, and any stranger seen in it would surely attract attention --
capture would be certain. The commandant said the punishment would be
"heavy;" when asked "how heavy?" he said it would be "very severe" -- that
was all we could get out of him.

     At eleven o'clock at night, when most of the ship's company were abed,
four of us stole softly ashore in a small boat, a clouded moon favoring the
enterprise, and started two and two, and far apart, over a low hill,
intending to go clear around the

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                                   -342-

Pirµus, out of the range of its police. Picking our way so stealthily over
that rocky, nettle-grown eminence, made me feel a good deal as if I were on
my way somewhere to steal something. My immediate comrade and I talked in
an undertone about quarantine laws and their penalties, but we found
nothing cheering in the subject. I was posted. Only a few days before, I
was talking with our captain, and he mentioned the case of a man who swam
ashore from a quarantined ship somewhere, and got imprisoned six months for
it; and when he was in Genoa a few years ago, a captain of a quarantined
ship went in his boat to a departing ship, which was already outside of the
harbor, and put a letter on board to be taken to his family, and the
authorities imprisoned him three months for it, and then conducted him and
his ship fairly to sea, and warned him never to show himself in that port
again while he lived. This kind of conversation did no good, further than
to give a sort of dismal interest to our quarantine-breaking expedition,
and so we dropped it. We made the entire circuit of the town without seeing
any body but one man, who stared at us curiously, but said nothing, and a
dozen persons asleep on the ground before their doors, whom we walked among
and never woke -- but we woke up dogs enough, in all conscience -- we
always had one or two barking at our heels, and several times we had as
many as ten and twelve at once. They made such a preposterous din that
persons aboard our ship said they could tell how we were progressing for a
long time, and where we were, by the barking of the dogs. The clouded moon
still favored us. When we had made the whole circuit, and were passing
among the houses on the further side of the town, the moon came out
splendidly, but we no longer feared the light. As we approached a well,
near a house, to get a drink, the owner merely glanced at us and went
within. He left the quiet, slumbering town at our mercy. I record it here
proudly, that we didn't do any thing to it.

     Seeing no road, we took a tall hill to the left of the distant
Acropolis for a mark, and steered straight for it over all obstructions,
and over a little rougher piece of country than

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                                   -343-

exists any where else outside of the State of Nevada, perhaps. Part of the
way it was covered with small, loose stones -- we trod on six at a time,
and they all rolled. Another part of it was dry, loose, newly-ploughed
ground. Still another part of it was a long stretch of low grape-vines,
which were tanglesome and troublesome, and which we took to be brambles.
The Attic Plain, barring the grape-vines, was a barren, desolate,
unpoetical waste -- I wonder what it was in Greece's Age of Glory, five
hundred years before Christ?

     In the neighborhood of one o'clock in the morning, when we were heated
with fast walking and parched with thirst, Denny exclaimed, "Why, these
weeds are grape-vines!" and in five minutes we had a score of bunches of
large, white, delicious grapes, and were reaching down for more when a dark
shape rose mysteriously up out of the shadows beside us and said "Ho!" And
so we left.

     In ten minutes more we struck into a beautiful road, and unlike some
others we had stumbled upon at intervals, it led in the right direction. We
followed it. It was broad, and smooth, and white -- handsome and in perfect
repair, and shaded on both sides for a mile or so with single ranks of
trees, and also with luxuriant vineyards. Twice we entered

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                                   -344-

and stole grapes, and the second time somebody shouted at us from some
invisible place. Whereupon we left again. We speculated in grapes no more
on that side of Athens.

     Shortly we came upon an ancient stone aqueduct, built upon arches, and
from that time forth we had ruins all about us -- we were approaching our
journey's end. We could not see the Acropolis now or the high hill, either,
and I wanted to follow the road till we were abreast of them, but the
others overruled me, and we toiled laboriously up the stony hill
immediately in our front -- and from its summit saw another -- climbed it
and saw another! It was an hour of exhausting work. Soon we came upon a row
of open graves, cut in the solid rock -- (for a while one of them served
Socrates for a prison) -- we passed around the shoulder of the hill, and
the citadel, in all its ruined magnificence, burst upon us! We hurried
across the ravine and up a winding road, and stood on the old Acropolis,
with the prodigious walls of the citadel towering above our heads. We did
not stop to inspect their massive blocks of marble, or measure their
height, or guess at their extraordinary thickness, but passed at once
through a great arched passage like a railway tunnel, and went straight to
the gate that leads to the ancient temples. It was locked! So, after all,
it seemed that we were not to see the great Parthenon face to face. We sat
down and

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                                   -345-

held a council of war. Result: the gate was only a flimsy structure of wood
-- we would break it down. It seemed like desecration, but then we had
traveled far, and our necessities were urgent. We could not hunt up guides
and keepers -- we must be on the ship before daylight. So we argued. This
was all very fine, but when we came to break the gate, we could not do it.
We moved around an angle of the wall and found a low bastion -- eight feet
high without -- ten or twelve within. Denny prepared to scale it, and we
got ready to follow. By dint of hard scrambling he finally straddled the
top, but some loose stones crumbled away and fell with a crash into the
court within. There was instantly a banging of doors and a shout. Denny
dropped from the wall in a twinkling, and we retreated in disorder to the
gate. Xerxes took that mighty citadel four hundred and eighty years before
Christ, when his five millions of soldiers and camp-followers followed him
to Greece, and if we four Americans could have remained unmolested five
minutes longer, we would have taken it too.

     The garrison had turned out -- four Greeks. We clamored at the gate,
and they admitted us. [Bribery and corruption.]

     We crossed a large court, entered a great door, and stood upon a
pavement of purest white marble, deeply worn by footprints. Before us, in
the flooding moonlight, rose the noblest ruins we had ever looked upon --
the Propylµ; a small Temple of Minerva; the Temple of Hercules, and the
grand Parthenon. [We got these names from the Greek guide, who didn't seem
to know more than seven men ought to know.] These edifices were all built
of the whitest Pentelic marble, but have a pinkish stain upon them now.
Where any part is broken, however, the fracture looks like fine loaf sugar.
Six caryatides, or marble women, clad in flowing robes, support the portico
of the Temple of Hercules, but the porticos and colonnades of the other
structures are formed of massive Doric and Ionic pillars, whose flutings
and capitals are still measurably perfect, notwithstanding the centuries
that have gone over them and the sieges they have suffered. The Parthenon,
originally, was two hundred and twenty-six feet long, one hundred

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                                   -346-

wide, and seventy high, and had two rows of great columns, eight in each,
at either end, and single rows of seventeen each down the sides, and was
one of the most graceful and beautiful edifices ever erected.

     Most of the Parthenon's imposing columns are still standing, but the
roof is gone. It was a perfect building two hundred and fifty years ago,
when a shell dropped into the Venetian magazine stored here, and the
explosion which followed wrecked and unroofed it. I remember but little
about the Parthenon, and I have put in one or two facts and figures for the
use of other people with short memories. Got them from the guide-book.

     As we wandered thoughtfully down the marble-paved length of this
stately temple, the scene about us was strangely impressive. Here and
there, in lavish profusion, were gleaming white statues of men and women,
propped against blocks of

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                                   -347-

marble, some of them armless, some without legs, others headless -- but all
looking mournful in the moonlight, and startlingly human! They rose up and
confronted the midnight intruder on every side -- they stared at him with
stony eyes from unlooked-for nooks and recesses; they peered at him over
fragmentary heaps far down the desolate corridors; they barred his way in
the midst of the broad forum, and solemnly pointed with handless arms the
way from the sacred fane; and through the roofless temple the moon looked
down, and banded the floor and darkened the scattered fragments and broken
statues with the slanting shadows of the columns.

     What a world of ruined sculpture was about us! Set up in rows --
stacked up in piles -- scattered broadcast over the wide area of the
Acropolis -- were hundreds of crippled statues of all sizes and of the most
exquisite workmanship; and vast fragments of marble that once belonged to
the entablatures, covered with bas-reliefs representing battles and sieges,
ships of war with three and four tiers of oars, pageants and processions --
every thing one could think of. History says that the temples of the
Acropolis were filled with the noblest works of Praxiteles and Phidias, and
of many a great master in sculpture besides -- and surely these elegant
fragments attest it.

     We walked out into the grass-grown, fragment-strewn court beyond the
Parthenon. It startled us, every now and then, to see a stony white face
stare suddenly up at us out of the grass with its dead eyes. The place
seemed alive with ghosts. I half expected to see the Athenian heroes of
twenty centuries ago glide out of the shadows and steal into the old temple
they knew so well and regarded with such boundless pride.

     The full moon wag riding high in the cloudless heavens, now. We
sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty battlements
of the citadel, and looked down -- a vision! And such a vision! Athens by
moonlight! The prophet that thought the splendors of the New Jerusalem were
revealed to him, surely saw this instead! It lay in the level plain right
under our feet -- all spread abroad like a picture -- and we looked down
upon it as we might have looked

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                                   -348-

from a balloon. We saw no semblance of a street, but every house, every
window, every clinging vine, every projection was as distinct and sharply
marked as if the time were noon-day; and yet there was no glare, no
glitter, nothing harsh or repulsive -- the noiseless city was flooded with
the mellowest light that ever streamed from the moon, and seemed like some
living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. On its further side was a
little temple, whose delicate pillars and ornate front glowed with a rich
lustre that chained the eye like a spell; and nearer by, the palace of the
king reared its creamy walls out of the midst of a great garden of
shrubbery that was flecked all over with a random shower of amber lights --
a spray of golden sparks that lost their brightness in the glory of the
moon, and glinted softly upon the sea of dark foliage like the pallid stars
of the milky-way. Overhead the stately columns, majestic still in their
ruin -- under foot the dreaming city -- in the distance the silver sea --
not on the broad earth is there an other picture half so beautiful!

     As we turned and moved again through the temple, I wished that the
illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it again
and reveal themselves to our curious eyes -- Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes,
Socrates, Phocion, Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon, Herodotus,
Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a constellation of
celebrated names! But more than all, I wished that old Diogenes, groping so
patiently with his lantern, searching so zealously for one solitary honest
man in all the world, might meander along and stumble on our party. I ought
not to say it, may be, but still I suppose he would have put out his light.

     We left the Parthenon to keep its watch over old Athens, as it had
kept it for twenty-three hundred years, and went and stood outside the
walls of the citadel. In the distance was the ancient, but still almost
perfect Temple of Theseus, and close by, looking to the west, was the Bema,
from whence Demosthenes thundered his philippics and fired the wavering
patriotism of his countrymen. To the right was Mars Hill, where the
Areopagus sat in ancient times. and where St. Paul defined

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                                   -349-

his position, and below was the market-place where he "disputed daily" with
the gossip-loving Athenians. We climbed the stone steps St. Paul ascended,
and stood in the square-cut place he stood in, and tried to recollect the
Bible account of the matter -- but for certain reasons, I could not recall
the words. I have found them since:

     "Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred
     in him, when he saw the city wholly given up to idolatry.
     "Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with
     the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met
     with him.
                             * * * * * * * * *

     "And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we
     know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is?
                             * * * * * * * * *

     "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars hill, and said, Ye men of
     Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious;
     "For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar
     with this inscription: To THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom, therefore, ye
     ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." -- Acts, ch. xvii."

     It occurred to us, after a while, that if we wanted to get home before
daylight betrayed us, we had better be moving. So we hurried away. When far
on our road, we had a parting view of the Parthenon, with the moonlight
streaming through its open colonnades and touching its capitals with
silver. As it looked then, solemn, grand, and beautiful it will always
remain in our memories.

     As we marched along, we began to get over our fears, and ceased to
care much about quarantine scouts or any body else. We grew bold and
reckless; and once, in a sudden burst of courage, I even threw a stone at a
dog. It was a pleasant reflection, though, that I did not hit him, because
his master might just possibly have been a policeman. Inspired by this
happy failure, my valor became utterly uncontrollable, and at intervals I
absolutely whistled, though on a moderate key. But boldness breeds
boldness, and shortly I plunged into a Vineyard, in the full light of the
moon, and captured a gallon of superb grapes, not even minding the presence
of a peasant who rode by on a mule. Denny and Birch followed my example.

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                                   -350-

Now I had grapes enough for a dozen, but then Jackson was all swollen up
with courage, too, and he was obliged to enter a vineyard presently. The
first bunch he seized brought trouble. A frowsy, bearded brigand sprang
into the road with a shout, and flourished a musket in the light of the
moon! We sidled toward the Pirµus -- not running you understand, but only
advancing with celerity. The brigand shouted again, but still we advanced.
It was getting late, and we had no time to fool away on every ass that
wanted to drivel Greek platitudes to us. We would just as soon have talked
with him as not if we had not been in a hurry. Presently Denny said, "Those
fellows are following us!"

     We turned, and, sure enough, there they were -- three fantastic
pirates armed with guns. We slackened our pace to let them come up, and in
the meantime I got out my cargo of grapes and dropped them firmly but
reluctantly into the shadows by the wayside. But I was not afraid. I only
felt that it was not right to steal grapes. And all the more so when the
owner was around -- and not only around, but with his friends around also.
The villains came up and searched a bundle Dr.

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                                   -351-

Birch had in his hand, and scowled upon him when they found it had nothing
in it but some holy rocks from Mars Hill, and these were not contraband.
They evidently suspected him of playing some wretched fraud upon them, and
seemed half inclined to scalp the party. But finally they dismissed us with
a warning, couched in excellent Greek, I suppose, and dropped tranquilly in
our wake. When they had gone three hundred yards they stopped, and we went
on rejoiced. But behold, another armed rascal came out of the shadows and
took their place, and followed us two hundred yards. Then he delivered us
over to another miscreant, who emerged from some mysterious place, and he
in turn to another! For a mile and a half our rear was guarded all the
while by armed men. I never traveled in so much state before in all my
life.

     It was a good while after that before we ventured to steal any more
grapes, and when we did we stirred up another troublesome brigand, and then
we ceased all further speculation in that line. I suppose that fellow that
rode by on the mule posted all the sentinels, from Athens to the Pirµus,
about us.

     Every field on that long route was watched by an armed sentinel, some
of whom had fallen asleep, no doubt, but were on hand, nevertheless. This
shows what sort of a country modern Attica is -- a community of
questionable characters. These men were not there to guard their
possessions against strangers, but against each other; for strangers seldom
visit Athens and the Pirµus, and when they do, they go in daylight, and can
buy all the grapes they want for a trifle. The modern inhabitants are
confiscators and falsifiers of high repute, if gossip speaks truly
concerning them, and I freely believe it does.

     Just as the earliest tinges of the dawn flushed the eastern sky and
turned the pillared Parthenon to a broken harp hung in the pearly horizon,
we closed our thirteenth mile of weary, round-about marching, and emerged
upon the sea-shore abreast the ships, with our usual escort of fifteen
hundred Pirµan dogs howling at our heels. We hailed a boat that was two or
three

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -352-

hundred yards from shore, and discovered in a moment that it was a
police-boat on the lookout for any quarantine-breakers that might chance to
be abroad. So we dodged -- we were used to that by this time -- and when
the scouts reached the spot we had so lately occupied, we were absent. They
cruised along the shore, but in the wrong direction, and shortly our own
boat issued from the gloom and took us aboard. They had heard our signal on
the ship. We rowed noiselessly away, and before the police-boat came in
sight again, we were safe at home once more.

     Four more of our passengers were anxious to visit Athens, and started
half an hour after we returned; but they had not been ashore five minutes
till the police discovered and chased them so hotly that they barely
escaped to their boat again, and that was all. They pursued the enterprise
no further.

     We set sail for Constantinople to-day, but some of us little care for
that. We have seen all there was to see in the old city that had its birth
sixteen hundred years before Christ was born, and was an old town before
the foundations of Troy were laid -- and saw it in its most attractive
aspect. Wherefore, why should we worry ?

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -353-

     Two other passengers ran the blockade successfully last night. So we
learned this morning. They slipped away so quietly that they were not
missed from the ship for several hours. They had the hardihood to march
into the Pirµus in the early dusk and hire a carriage. They ran some danger
of adding two or three months' imprisonment to the other novelties of their
Holy Land Pleasure Excursion. I admire "cheek." 32.1 But they went and came
safely, and never walked a step.



32.1 Quotation from the Pilgrims.

                                 Chapter 33

                              CHAPTER XXXIII.

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                                   -354-

     From Athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw
little but forbidding sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted by
three or four graceful columns of some ancient temple, lonely and deserted
-- a fitting symbol of the desolation that has come upon all Greece in
these latter ages. We saw no ploughed fields, very few villages, no trees
or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and hardly ever an isolated
house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture,
manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports its poverty-stricken
people or its Government, is a mystery.

     I suppose that ancient Greece and modern Greece compared, furnish the
most extravagant contrast to be found in history. George I., an infant of
eighteen, and a scraggy nest of foreign office holders, sit in the places
of Themistocles, Pericles, and the illustrious scholars and generals of the
Golden Age of Greece. The fleets that were the wonder of the world when the
Parthenon was new, are a beggarly handful of fishing-smacks now, and the
manly people that performed such miracles of valor at Marathon are only a
tribe of unconsidered slaves to-day. The classic Illyssus has gone dry, and
so have all the sources of Grecian wealth and greatness. The nation numbers
only eight hundred thousand souls, and there is poverty and misery and
mendacity enough among them to furnish forty millions and be liberal about
it. Under King Otho the revenues of the State were five millions of dollars
-- raised from a tax of one-tenth of all the agricultural products

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -355-

of the land (which tenth the farmer had to bring to the royal granaries on
pack-mules any distance not exceeding six leagues) and from extravagant
taxes on trade and commerce. Out of that five millions the small tyrant
tried to keep an army of ten thousand men, pay all the hundreds of useless
Grand Equerries in Waiting, First Grooms of the Bedchamber, Lord High
Chancellors of the Exploded Exchequer, and all the other absurdities which
these puppy-kingdoms indulge in, in imitation of the great monarchies; and
in addition he set about building a white marble palace to cost about five
millions itself. The result was, simply: ten into five goes no times and
none over. All these things could not be done with five millions, and Otho
fell into trouble.

      The Greek throne, with its unpromising adjuncts of a ragged
population of ingenious rascals who were out of employment eight months in
the year because there was little for them to borrow and less to
confiscate, and a waste of barren hills and weed-grown deserts, went
begging for a good while. It was offered to one of Victoria's sons, and
afterwards to various other younger sons of royalty who had no thrones and
were out of business, but they all had the charity to decline the dreary
honor, and veneration enough for Greece's ancient greatness to refuse to
mock her sorrowful rags and dirt with a tinsel throne in this day of her
humiliation -- till they came to this young Danish George, and he took it.
He has finished

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -356-

the splendid palace I saw in the radiant moonlight the other night, and is
doing many other things for the salvation of Greece, they say.

     We sailed through the barren Archipelago, and into the narrow channel
they sometimes call the Dardanelles and sometimes the Hellespont. This part
of the country is rich in historic reminiscences, and poor as Sahara in
every thing else. For instance, as we approached the Dardanelles, we
coasted along the Plains of Troy and past the mouth of the Scamander; we
saw where Troy had stood (in the distance,) and where it does not stand now
-- a city that perished when the world was young. The poor Trojans are all
dead, now. They were born too late to see Noah's ark, and died too soon to
see our menagerie. We saw where Agamemnon's fleets rendezvoused, and away
inland a mountain which the map said was Mount Ida. Within the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -357-

Hellespont we saw where the original first shoddy contract mentioned in
history was carried out, and the "parties of the second part " gently
rebuked by Xerxes. I speak of the famous bridge of boats which Xerxes
ordered to be built over the narrowest part of the Hellespont (where it is
only two or three miles wide.) A moderate gale destroyed the flimsy
structure, and the King, thinking that to publicly rebuke the contractors
might have a good effect on the next set, called them out before the army
and had them beheaded. In the next ten minutes he let a new contract for
the bridge. It has been observed by ancient writers that the second bridge
was a very good bridge. Xerxes crossed his host of five millions of men on
it, and if it had not been purposely destroyed, it would probably have been
there yet. If our Government would rebuke some of our shoddy contractors
occasionally, it might work much good. In the Hellespont we saw where
Leander and Lord Byron swam across, the one to see her upon whom his soul's
affections were fixed with a devotion that only death could impair, and the
other merely for a flyer, as Jack says. We had two noted tombs near us,
too. On one shore slept Ajax, and on the other Hecuba.

      We had water batteries and forts on both sides of the Hellespont,
flying the crimson flag of Turkey, with its white crescent, and
occasionally a village, and sometimes a train of camels; we had all these
to look at till we entered the broad sea of Marmora, and then the land soon
fading from view, we resumed euchre and whist once more.

      We dropped anchor in the mouth of the Golden Horn at daylight in the
morning. Only three or four of us were up to see the great Ottoman capital.
The passengers do not turn out at unseasonable hours, as they used to, to
get the earliest possible glimpse of strange foreign cities. They are well
over that. If we were lying in sight of the Pyramids of Egypt, they would
not come on deck until after breakfast, now-a-days.

      The Golden Horn is a narrow arm of the sea, which branches from the
Bosporus (a sort of broad river which connects the Marmora and Black Seas,)
and, curving around, divides the

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                                   -358-

city in the middle. Galata and Pera are on one side of the Bosporus, and
the Golden Horn; Stamboul (ancient Byzantium) is upon the other. On the
other bank of the Bosporus is Scutari and other suburbs of Constantinople.
This great city contains a million inhabitants, but so narrow are its
streets, and so crowded together are its houses, that it does not cover
much more than half as much ground as New York City. Seen from the
anchorage or from a mile or so up the Bosporus, it is by far the handsomest
city we have seen. Its dense array of houses swells upward from the water's
edge, and spreads over the domes of many hills; and the gardens that peep
out here and there, the great globes of the mosques, and the countless
minarets that meet the eye every where, invest the metropolis with the
quaint Oriental aspect one dreams of when he reads books of eastern travel.
Constantinople makes a noble picture.

     But its attractiveness begins and ends with its picturesqueness. From
the time one starts ashore till he gets back again, he execrates it. The
boat he goes in is admirably miscalculated for the service it is built for.
It is handsomely and neatly fitted up, but no man could handle it well in
the turbulent currents that sweep down the Bosporus from the Black Sea, and
few men could row it satisfactorily even in still water. It is a long,
light canoe (caique,) large at one end and tapering to a knife blade at the
other. They make that long sharp end the bow, and you can imagine how these
boiling currents spin it about. It has two oars, and sometimes four, and no
rudder. You start to go to a given point and you run in fifty different
directions before you get there. First one oar is backing water, and then
the other; it is seldom that both are going ahead at once. This kind of
boating is calculated to drive an impatient man mad in a week. The boatmen
are the awkwardest, the stupidest, and the most unscientific on earth,
without question.

      Ashore, it was -- well, it was an eternal circus. People were thicker
than bees, in those narrow streets, and the men were dressed in all the
outrageous, outlandish, idolatrous, extravagant,

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                                   -359-

thunder-and-lightning costumes that ever a tailor with the delirium tremens
and seven devils could conceive of. There was no freak in dress too crazy
to be indulged in; no absurdity too absurd to be tolerated; no frenzy in
ragged diabolism too fantastic to be attempted. No two men were dressed
alike. It was a wild masquerade of all imaginable costumes -- every
struggling throng in every street was a dissolving view of stunning
contrasts. Some patriarchs wore awful turbans, but the grand mass of the
infidel horde wore the fiery red skull-cap they call a fez. All the
remainder of the raiment they indulged in was utterly indescribable.

     The shops here are mere coops, mere boxes, bath-rooms, closets -- any
thing you please to call them -- on the first floor. The Turks sit
cross-legged in them, and work and trade and smoke long pipes, and smell
like -- like Turks. That covers the ground. Crowding the narrow streets in
front of them are beggars, who beg forever, yet never collect any thing;
and wonderful cripples, distorted out of all semblance of humanity, almost;
vagabonds driving laden asses; porters carrying dry-goods boxes as large as
cottages on their backs; peddlers of grapes, hot corn, pumpkin seeds, and a
hundred other things, yelling like fiends; and sleeping happily,
comfortably, serenely, among the hurrying feet, are the famed dogs of
Constantinople; drifting noiselessly about are squads of Turkish women,
draped from chin to feet in flowing robes, and with snowy veils bound about
their heads, that disclose only the eyes and a vague, shadowy notion of
their features. Seen moving about, far away in the dim, arched aisles of
the Great Bazaar, they look as the shrouded dead must have looked when they
walked forth from their graves amid the storms and thunders and earthquakes
that burst upon Calvary that awful night of the Crucifixion. A street in
Constantinople is a picture which one ought to see once -- not oftener.

     And then there was the goose-rancher -- a fellow who drove a hundred
geese before him about the city, and tried to sell them. He had a pole ten
feet long, with a crook in the end of it, and occasionally a goose would
branch out from the flock

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -360-

and make a lively break around the corner, with wings half lifted and neck
stretched to its utmost. Did the goose-merchant get excited? No. He took
his pole and reached after that goose with unspeakable sang froid -- took a
hitch round his neck, and "yanked" him back to his place in the flock
without an effort. He steered his geese with that stick as easily as
another man would steer a yawl. A few hours afterward we saw him sitting on
a stone at a corner, in the midst of the turmoil, sound asleep in the sun,
with his geese squatting around him, or dodging out of the way of asses and
men. We came

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -361-

by again, within the hour, and he was taking account of stock, to see
whether any of his flock had strayed or been stolen. The way he did it was
unique. He put the end of his stick within six or eight inches of a stone
wall, and made the geese march in single file between it and the wall. He
counted them as they went by. There was no dodging that arrangement.

      If you want dwarfs -- I mean just a few dwarfs for a curiosity -- go
to Genoa. If you wish to buy them by the gross, for retail, go to Milan.
There are plenty of dwarfs all over Italy, but it did seem to me that in
Milan the crop was luxuriant. If you would see a fair average style of
assorted cripples, go to Naples, or travel through the Roman States. But if
you would see the very heart and home of cripples and human monsters, both,
go straight to Constantinople. A beggar in Naples who can show a foot which
has all run into one horrible toe, with one shapeless nail on it, has a
fortune -- but such an exhibition as that would not provoke any notice in
Constantinople. The man would starve. Who would pay any attention to
attractions like his among the rare monsters that throng the bridges of the
Golden Horn and display their deformities in the gutters of Stamboul? O,
wretched impostor! How could he stand against the three-legged woman, and
the man with his eye in his cheek? How would he blush in presence of the
man with fingers on his elbow? Where would he hide himself when the dwarf
with seven fingers on each hand, no upper lip, and his under-jaw gone, came
down in his majesty? Bismillah! The cripples of Europe are a delusion and a
fraud. The truly gifted flourish only in the by-ways of Pera and Stamboul.

      That three-legged woman lay on the bridge, with her stock in trade so
disposed as to command the most striking effect -- one natural leg, and two
long, slender, twisted ones with feet on them like somebody else's
fore-arm. Then there was a man further along who had no eyes, and whose
face was the color of a fly-blown beefsteak, and wrinkled and twisted like
a lava-flow -- and verily so tumbled and distorted were his features

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -362-

that no man could tell the wart that served him for a nose from
hischeek-bones. In Stamboul was a man with a prodigious head, anuncommonly
long body, legs eight inches long and feet like snow-shoes.He traveled on
those feet and his hands, and was as sway-backed as ifthe Colossus of
Rhodes had been riding him. Ah, a beggar has to haveexceedingly good points
to make a living in Constantinople. Ablue-faced man, who had nothing to
offer except that he had been blownup in a mine, would be regarded as a
rank impostor, and a mere damagedsoldier on crutches would never make a
cent. It would pay him to get apiece of his head taken off, and cultivate a
wen like a carpet sack.

     The Mosque of St. Sophia is the chief lion of Constantinople. You must
get a firman and hurry there the first thing. We did that. We did not get a
firman, but we took along four or five francs apiece, which is much the
same thing.

      I do not think much of the Mosque of St. Sophia. I suppose I lack
appreciation. We will let it go at that. It is the rustiest old barn in
heathendom. I believe all the interest that attaches to it comes from the
fact that it was built for a Christian church and then turned into a
mosque, without much alteration, by the Mohammedan conquerors of the land.
They made me take off my boots and walk into the place in my stocking-feet.
I caught cold, and got myself so stuck up with a complication of gums,
slime and general corruption, that I wore out more than two thousand pair
of boot-jacks getting my boots off that night, and even then some Christian
hide peeled off with them. I abate not a single boot-jack.

      St. Sophia is a colossal church, thirteen or fourteen hundred years
old, and unsightly enough to be very, very much older. Its immense dome is
said to be more wonderful than St. Peter's, but its dirt is much more
wonderful than its dome, though they never mention it. The church has a
hundred and seventy pillars in it, each a single piece, and all of costly
marbles of various kinds, but they came from ancient temples at Baalbec,
Heliopolis, Athens and Ephesus, and are battered, ugly and repulsive. They
were a thousand years old when this

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                                   -363-

church was new, and then the contrast must have been ghastly -- if
Justinian's architects did not trim them any. The inside of the dome is
figured all over with a monstrous inscription in Turkish characters,
wrought in gold mosaic, that looks as glaring as a circus bill; the
pavements and the marble balustrades are all battered and dirty; the
perspective is marred every where by a web of ropes that depend from the
dizzy height of the dome, and suspend countless dingy, coarse oil lamps,
and ostrich-eggs, six or seven feet above the floor. Squatting and sitting
in groups, here and there and far and near, were ragged Turks reading
books, hearing sermons, or receiving lessons like children. and in fifty
places were more

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                                   -364-

of the same sort bowing and straightening up, bowing again and getting down
to kiss the earth, muttering prayers the while, and keeping up their
gymnastics till they ought to have been tired, if they were not.

     Every where was dirt, and dust, and dinginess, and gloom; every where
were signs of a hoary antiquity, but with nothing touching or beautiful
about it; every where were those groups of fantastic pagans; overhead the
gaudy mosaics and the web of lamp-ropes -- nowhere was there any thing to
win one's love or challenge his admiration.

     The people who go into ecstacies over St. Sophia must surely get them
out of the guide-book (where every church is spoken of as being "considered
by good judges to be the most marvelous structure, in many respects, that
the world has ever seen.") Or else they are those old connoisseurs from the
wilds of New Jersey who laboriously learn the difference between a fresco
and a fire-plug and from that day forward feel privileged to void their
critical bathos on painting, sculpture and architecture forever more.

     We visited the Dancing Dervishes. There were twenty-one of them. They
wore a long, light-colored loose robe that hung to their heels. Each in his
turn went up to the priest (they were all within a large circular railing)
and bowed profoundly and then went spinning away deliriously and took his
appointed place in the circle, and continued to spin. When all had spun
themselves to their places, they were about five or six feet apart -- and
so situated, the entire circle of spinning pagans spun itself three
separate times around the room. It took twenty-five minutes to do it. They
spun on the left foot, and kept themselves going by passing the right
rapidly before it and digging it against the waxed floor. Some of them made
incredible " time." Most of them spun around forty times in a minute, and
one artist averaged about sixty-one times a minute, and kept it up during
the whole twenty-five. His robe filled with air and stood out all around
him like a balloon.

     They made no noise of any kind, and most of them tilted their heads
back and closed their eyes, entranced with a sort of

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                                   -365-

devotional ecstacy. There was a rude kind of music, part of the time, but
the musicians were not visible. None but spinners were allowed within the
circle. A man had to either spin or stay outside. It was about as barbarous
an exhibition as we have witnessed yet. Then sick persons came and lay
down, and beside them women laid their sick children (one a babe at the
breast,) and the patriarch of the Dervishes walked upon their bodies. He
was supposed to cure their diseases by trampling upon their breasts or
backs or standing on the back of their necks. This is well enough for a
people who think all their affairs are made or marred by viewless spirits
of the air -- by giants, gnomes, and genii -- and who still believe, to
this day, all the wild tales in the Arabian Nights. Even so an intelligent
missionary tells me.

     We visited the Thousand and One Columns. I do not know what it was
originally intended for, but they said it was built for a reservoir. It is
situated in the centre of Constantinople. You go down a flight of stone
steps in the middle of a barren place, and there you are. You are forty
feet under ground, and in the midst of a perfect wilderness of tall,
slender, granite columns, of Byzantine architecture. Stand where you would,
or change your position as often as you pleased, you were always a centre
from which radiated a dozen long archways and colonnades that lost
themselves in distance and the sombre twilight of the place. This old
dried-up reservoir is occupied by a few ghostly silk-spinners now, and one
of them showed me a cross cut high up in one of the pillars. I suppose he
meant me to understand that the institution was there before the Turkish
occupation, and I thought he made a remark to that effect; but he must have
had an impediment in his speech, for I did not understand him.

      We took off our shoes and went into the marble mausoleum of the
Sultan Mahmoud, the neatest piece of architecture, inside, that I have seen
lately. Mahmoud's tomb was covered with a black velvet pall, which was
elaborately embroidered with silver; it stood within a fancy silver
railing; at the sides and corners were silver candlesticks that would weigh
more

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                                   -366-

than a hundred pounds, and they supported candles as large as a man's leg;
on the top of the sarcophagus was a fez, with a handsome diamond ornament
upon it, which an attendant said cost a hundred thousand pounds, and lied
like a Turk when he said it. Mahmoud's whole family were comfortably
planted around him.

     We went to the great Bazaar in Stamboul, of course, and I shall not
describe it further than to say it is a monstrous hive of little shops --
thousands, I should say -- all under one roof, and cut up into innumerable
little blocks by narrow streets which are arched overhead. One street is
devoted to a particular kind of merchandise, another to another, and so on.

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                                   -367-

When you wish to buy a pair of shoes you have the swing of the whole street
-- you do not have to walk yourself down hunting stores in different
localities. It is the same with silks, antiquities, shawls, etc. The place
is crowded with people all the time, and as the gay-colored Eastern fabrics
are lavishly displayed before every shop, the great Bazaar of Stamboul is
one of the sights that are worth seeing. It is full of life, and stir, and
business, dirt, beggars, asses, yelling peddlers, porters, dervishes,
high-born Turkish female shoppers, Greeks, and weird-looking and weirdly
dressed Mohammedans from the mountains and the far provinces -- and the
only solitary thing one does not smell when he is in the Great Bazaar, is
something which smells good.

                                 Chapter 34

                               CHAPTER XXXIV.

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                                   -368-

     MOSQUES are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are plenty, but
morals and whiskey are scarce. The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to
drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the
Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy. It makes our
cheeks burn with shame to see such a thing permitted here in Turkey. We do
not mind it so much in Salt Lake, however.

     Circassian and Georgian girls are still sold in Constantinople by
their parents, but not publicly. The great slave marts we have all read so
much about -- where tender young girls were stripped for inspection, and
criticised and discussed just as if they were horses at an agricultural
fair -- no longer exist. The exhibition and the sales are private now.
Stocks are up, just at present, partly because of a brisk demand created by
the recent return of the Sultan's suite from the courts of Europe; partly
on account of an unusual abundance of bread-stuffs, which leaves holders
untortured by hunger and enables them to hold back for high prices; and
partly because buyers are too weak to bear the market, while sellers are
amply prepared to bull it. Under these circumstances, if the American
metropolitan newspapers were published here in Constantinople, their next
commercial report would read about as follows, I suppose:

                         SLAVE GIRL MARKET REPORT.

     "Best brands Circassians, crop of 1850, ú200; 1852, ú250; 1854,
     ú300. Best brands Georgian, none in market; second quality, 1851,
     ú180. Nineteen fair to

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -369-

     middling Wallachian girls offered at ú130 @ 150, but no takers;
     sixteen prime A 1 sold in small lots to close out -- terms
     private.

     "Sales of one lot Circassians, prime to good, 1852 to 1854, at
     ú240 @ 242 1/2, buyer 30; one forty-niner -- damaged -- at ú23,
     seller ten, no deposit. Several Georgians, fancy brands, 1852,
     changed hands to fill orders. The Georgians now on hand are
     mostly last year's crop, which was unusually poor. The new crop
     is a little backward, but will be coming in shortly. As regards
     its quantity and quality, the accounts are most encouraging. In
     this connection we can safely say, also, that the new crop of
     Circassians is looking extremely well. His Majesty the Sultan has
     already sent in large orders for his new harem, which will be
     finished within a fortnight, and this has naturally strengthened
     the market and given Circassian stock a strong upward tendency.
     Taking advantage of the inflated market, many of our shrewdest
     operators are selling short. There are hints of a "corner" on
     Wallachians.

     "There is nothing new in Nubians. Slow sale.

     "Eunuchs -- None offering; however, large cargoes are expected
     from Egypt today."

     I think the above would be about the style of the commercial report.
Prices are pretty high now, and holders firm; but, two or three years ago,
parents in a starving condition brought their young daughters down here and
sold them for even twenty and thirty dollars, when they could do no better,
simply to save themselves and the girls from dying of want. It is sad to
think of so distressing a thing as this, and I for one am sincerely glad
the prices are up again.

     Commercial morals, especially, are bad. There is no gainsaying that.
Greek, Turkish and Armenian morals consist only in attending church
regularly on the appointed Sabbaths, and in breaking the ten commandments
all the balance of the week. It comes natural to them to lie and cheat in
the first place, and then they go on and improve on nature until they
arrive at perfection. In recommending his son to a merchant as a valuable
salesman, a father does not say he is a nice, moral, upright boy, and goes
to Sunday School and is honest, but he says, "This boy is worth his weight
in broad pieces of a hundred -- for behold, he will cheat whomsoever hath
dealings with him, and from the Euxine to the waters of Marmora there
abideth not so gifted a liar!" How is that for a recommendation? The
Missionaries tell me that they hear encomiums like that passed upon people
every day. They say of a person they

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                                   -370-

admire, "Ah, he is a charming swindler, and a most exquisite liar!"

     Every body lies and cheats -- every body who is in business, at any
rate. Even foreigners soon have to come down to the custom of the country,
and they do not buy and sell long in Constantinople till they lie and cheat
like a Greek. I say like a Greek, because the Greeks are called the worst
transgressors in this line. Several Americans long resident in
Constantinople contend that most Turks are pretty trustworthy, but few
claim that the Greeks have any virtues that a man can discover -- at least
without a fire assay.

     I am half willing to believe that the celebrated dogs of
Constantinople have been misrepresented -- slandered. I have always been
led to suppose that they were so thick in the streets that they blocked the
way; that they moved about in organized companies, platoons and regiments,
and took what they wanted by determined and ferocious assault; and that at
night they drowned all other sounds with their terrible howlings. The dogs
I see here can not be those I have read of.

     I find them every where, but not in strong force. The most I have
found together has been about ten or twenty. And night or day a fair
proportion of them were sound asleep. Those that were not asleep always
looked as if they wanted to be. I never saw such utterly wretched,
starving, sad-visaged, broken-hearted looking curs in my life. It seemed a
grim satire to accuse such brutes as these of taking things by force of
arms. They hardly seemed to have strength enough or ambition enough to walk
across the street -- I do not know that I have seen one walk that far yet.
They are mangy and bruised and mutilated, and often you see one with the
hair singed off him in such wide and well defined tracts that he looks like
a map of the new Territories. They are the sorriest beasts that breathe --
the most abject -- the most pitiful. In their faces is a settled expression
of melancholy, an air of hopeless despondency. The hairless patches on a
scalded dog are preferred by the fleas of Constantinople to a wider range
on a healthier dog; and the exposed places suit the fleas exactly. I

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                                   -371-

saw a dog of this kind start to nibble at a flea -- a fly attracted his
attention, and he made a snatch at him; the flea called for him once more,
and that forever unsettled him; he looked sadly at his flea-pasture, then
sadly looked at his bald spot. Then he heaved a sigh and dropped his head
resignedly upon his paws. He was not equal to the situation.

     The dogs sleep in the streets, all over the city. From one end of the
street to the other, I suppose they will average about eight or ten to a
block. Sometimes, of course, there are fifteen or twenty to a block. They
do not belong to any body, and they seem to have no close personal
friendships among each other. But they district the city themselves, and
the dogs of each district, whether it be half a block in extent, or ten
blocks, have to remain within its bounds. Woe to a dog if he crosses the
line! His neighbors would snatch the balance of his hair off in a second.
So it is said. But they don't look it.

     They sleep in the streets these days. They are my compass -- my guide.
When I see the dogs sleep placidly on, while men, sheep, geese, and all
moving things turn out and go around them, I know I am not in the great
street where the hotel is, and must go further. In the Grand Rue the dogs
have a sort of air of being on the lookout -- an air born of being

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                                   -372-

obliged to get out of the way of many carriages every day -- and that
expression one recognizes in a moment. It does not exist upon the face of
any dog without the confines of that street. All others sleep placidly and
keep no watch. They would not move, though the Sultan himself passed by.

     In one narrow street (but none of them are wide) I saw three dogs
lying coiled up, about a foot or two apart. End to end they lay, and so
they just bridged the street neatly, from gutter to gutter. A drove of a
hundred sheep came along. They stepped right over the dogs, the rear
crowding the front, impatient to get on. The dogs looked lazily up,
flinched a little when the impatient feet of the sheep touched their raw
backs -- sighed, and lay peacefully down again. No talk could be plainer
than that. So some of the sheep jumped over them and others scrambled
between, occasionally chipping a leg with their sharp hoofs, and when the
whole flock had made the trip, the dogs sneezed a little, in the cloud of
dust, but never budged their bodies an inch. I thought I was lazy, but I am
a steam-engine compared to a Constantinople dog. But was not that a
singular scene for a city of a million inhabitants?

     These dogs are the scavengers of the city. That is their official
position, and a hard one it is. However, it is their protection. But for
their usefulness in partially cleansing these terrible streets, they would
not be tolerated long. They eat any thing and every thing that comes in
their way, from melon rinds and spoiled grapes up through all the grades
and species of dirt and refuse to their own dead friends and relatives --
and yet they are always lean, always hungry, always despondent. The people
are loath to kill them -- do not kill them, in fact. The Turks have an
innate antipathy to taking the life of any dumb animal, it is said. But
they do worse. They hang and kick and stone and scald these wretched
creatures to the very verge of death, and then leave them to live and
suffer.

     Once a Sultan proposed to kill off all the dogs here, and did begin
the work -- but the populace raised such a howl of horror about it that the
massacre was stayed. After a while,

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                                   -373-

he proposed to remove them all to an island in the Sea of Marmora. No
objection was offered, and a ship-load or so was taken away. But when it
came to be known that somehow or other the dogs never got to the island,
but always fell overboard in the night and perished, another howl was
raised and the transportation scheme was dropped.

     So the dogs remain in peaceable possession of the streets. I do not
say that they do not howl at night, nor that they do not attack people who
have not a red fez on their heads. I only say that it would be mean for me
to accuse them of these unseemly things who have not seen them do them with
my own eyes or heard them with my own ears.

     I was a little surprised to see Turks and Greeks playing newsboy right
here in the mysterious land where the giants and genii of the Arabian
Nights once dwelt -- where winged horses and hydra-headed dragons guarded
enchanted castles -- where Princes and Princesses flew through the air on
carpets that obeyed a mystic talisman -- where cities whose houses were
made of precious stones sprang up in a night under the hand of the
magician, and where busy marts were suddenly stricken with a spell and each
citizen lay or sat, or stood with weapon raised or foot advanced, just as
he was, speechless and motionless, till time had told a hundred years!

     It was curious to see newsboys selling papers in so dreamy a land as
that. And, to say truly, it is comparatively a new thing here. The selling
of newspapers had its birth in Constantinople about a year ago, and was a
child of the Prussian and Austrian war.

     There is one paper published here in the English language -- The
Levant Herald -- and there are generally a number of Greek and a few French
papers rising and falling, struggling up and falling again. Newspapers are
not popular with the Sultan's Government. They do not understand
journalism. The proverb says, "The unknown is always great." To the court,
the newspaper is a mysterious and rascally institution. They know what a
pestilence is, because they have one occasionally that thins the people out
at the rate of two

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                                   -374-

thousand a day, and they regard a newspaper as a mild form of pestilence.
When it goes astray, they suppress it -- pounce upon it without warning,
and throttle it. When it don't go astray for a long time, they get
suspicious and throttle it anyhow, because they think it is hatching
deviltry. Imagine the Grand Vizier in solemn council with the magnates of
the realm, spelling his way through the hated newspaper, and finally
delivering his profound decision: "This thing means mischief -- it is too
darkly, too suspiciously inoffensive -- suppress it! Warn the publisher
that we can not have this sort of thing: put the editor in prison!"

     The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constantinople. Two
Greek papers and one French one were suppressed here within a few days of
each other. No victories of the Cretans are allowed to be printed. From
time to time the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various editors that
the Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and although that

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -375-

editor knows better, he still has to print the notice. The Levant Herald is
too fond of speaking praisefully of Americans to be popular with the
Sultan, who does not relish our sympathy with the Cretans, and therefore
that paper has to be particularly circumspect in order to keep out of
trouble. Once the editor, forgetting the official notice in his paper that
the Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter of a very different tenor,
from the American Consul in Crete, and was fined two hundred and fifty
dollars for it. Shortly he printed another from the same source and was
imprisoned three months for his pains. I think I could get the assistant
editorship of the Levant Herald, but I am going to try to worry along
without it.

     To suppress a paper here involves the ruin of the publisher, almost.
But in Naples I think they speculate on misfortunes of that kind. Papers
are suppressed there every day, and spring up the next day under a new
name. During the ten days or a fortnight we staid there one paper was
murdered and resurrected twice. The newsboys are smart there, just as they
are elsewhere. They take advantage of popular weaknesses. When they find
they are not likely to sell out, they approach a citizen mysteriously, and
say in a low voice -- "Last copy, sir: double price; paper just been
suppressed!" The man buys it, of course, and finds nothing in it. They do
say -- I do not vouch for it -- but they do say that men sometimes print a
vast edition of a paper, with a ferociously seditious article in it,
distribute it quickly among the newsboys, and clear out till the
Government's indignation cools. It pays well. Confiscation don't amount to
any thing. The type and presses are not worth taking care of.

     There is only one English newspaper in Naples. It has seventy
subscribers. The publisher is getting rich very deliberately -- very
deliberately indeed.

     I never shall want another Turkish lunch. The cooking apparatus was in
the little lunch room, near the bazaar, and it was all open to the street.
The cook was slovenly, and so was the table, and it had no cloth on it. The
fellow took a mass of sausage meat and coated it round a wire and laid it
on a

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                                   -376-

charcoal fire to cook. When it was done, he laid it aside and a dog walked
sadly in and nipped it. He smelt it first, and probably recognized the
remains of a friend. The cook took it away from him and laid it before us.
Jack said, "I pass" -- he plays euchre sometimes -- and we all passed in
turn. Then the cook baked a broad, flat, wheaten cake, greased it well with
the sausage, and started towards us with it. It dropped in the dirt, and he
picked it up and polished it on his breeches, and laid it before u s. Jack
said, "I pass." We all passed. He put some eggs in a frying pan, and stood
pensively prying slabs of meat from between his teeth with a fork. Then he
used the fork to turn the eggs with -- and brought them along. Jack said
"Pass again." All followed suit. We did not know what to do, and so we
ordered a new ration of sausage. The cook got out his wire, apportioned a
proper amount of sausage-meat, spat it on his hands and fell to work! This
time, with one accord, we all passed out. We paid and left . That is all I
learned about Turkish lunches. A Turkish lunch is good, no doubt, but it
has its little drawbacks.

     When I think how I have been swindled by books of Oriental travel, I
want a tourist for breakfast. For years and years I have dreamed of the
wonders of the Turkish bath; for years and years I have promised myself
that I would yet enjoy one. Many and many a time, in fancy, I have lain in
the marble bath, and breathed the slumbrous fragrance of Eastern spices
that filled the air; then passed through a weird and complicated system of
pulling and hauling, and drenching and scrubbing, by a gang of naked
savages who loomed vast and vaguely through the steaming mists, like
demons; then rested for a while on a divan fit for a king; then passed
through another complex ordeal, and one more fearful than the first; and,
finally, swathed in soft fabrics, been conveyed to a princely saloon and
laid on a bed of eider down, where eunuchs, gorgeous of costume, fanned me
while I drowsed and dreamed, or contentedly gazed at the rich hangings of
the apartment, the soft carpets, the sumptuous furniture, the pictures, and
drank delicious

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -377-

coffee, smoked the soothing narghili, and dropped, at the last, into
tranquil repose, lulled by sensuous odors from unseen censers, by the
gentle influence of the narghili's Persian tobacco, and by the music of
fountains that counterfeited the pattering of summer rain.

     That was the picture, just as I got it from incendiary books of
travel. It was a poor, miserable imposture. The reality is no more like it
than the Five Points are like the Garden of Eden. They received me in a
great court, paved with marble slabs; around it were broad galleries, one
above another, carpeted with seedy matting, railed with unpainted
balustrades, and furnished with huge rickety chairs, cushioned with rusty
old mattresses, indented with impressions left by the forms of nine
successive generations of men who had reposed upon them. The place was
vast, naked, dreary; its court a barn, its galleries stalls for human
horses. The cadaverous, half nude varlets that served in the establishment
had nothing of poetry in their appearance, nothing of romance, nothing of
Oriental splendor. They shed no entrancing odors -- just the contrary.
Their hungry eyes and their lank forms continually suggested one glaring,
unsentimental fact -- they wanted what they term in California "a square
meal."

     I went into one of the racks and undressed. An unclean starveling
wrapped a gaudy table-cloth about his loins, and hung a white rag over my
shoulders. If I had had a tub then, it would have come natural to me to
take in washing. I was then conducted down stairs into the wet, slippery
court, and the first things that attracted my attention were my heels. My
fall excited no comment. They expected it, no doubt. It belonged in the
list of softening, sensuous influences peculiar to this home of Eastern
luxury. It was softening enough, certainly, but its application was not
happy. They now gave me a pair of wooden clogs -- benches in miniature,
with leather straps over them to confine my feet (which they would have
done, only I do not wear No. 13s.) These things dangled uncomfortably by
the straps when I lifted up my feet, and came down in awkward and
unexpected places when I put them on

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                                   -378-

the floor again, and sometimes turned sideways and wrenched my ankles out
of joint. However, it was all Oriental luxury, and I did what I could to
enjoy it.

     They put me in another part of the barn and laid me on a stuffy sort
of pallet, which was not made of cloth of gold, or Persian shawls, but was
merely the unpretending sort of thing I have seen in the negro quarters of
Arkansas. There was nothing whatever in this dim marble prison but five
more of these biers. It was a very solemn place. I expected that the spiced
odors of Araby were going to steal over my senses now, but they did not. A
copper-colored skeleton, with a rag

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -379-

around him, brought me a glass decanter of water, with a lighted tobacco
pipe in the top of it, and a pliant stem a yard long, with a brass
mouth-piece to it.

     It was the famous "narghili" of the East -- the thing the Grand Turk
smokes in the pictures. This began to look like luxury. I took one blast at
it, and it was sufficient; the smoke went in a great volume down into my
stomach, my lungs, even into the uttermost parts of my frame. I exploded
one mighty cough, and it was as if Vesuvius had let go. For the next five
minutes I smoked at every pore, like a frame house that is on fire on the
inside. Not any more narghili for me. The smoke had a vile taste, and the
taste of a thousand infidel tongues that remained on that brass mouthpiece
was viler still. I was getting discouraged. Whenever, hereafter, I see the
cross-legged Grand Turk smoking his narghili, in pretended bliss, on the
outside of a paper of Connecticut tobacco, I shall know him for the
shameless humbug he is.

     This prison was filled with hot air. When I had got warmed up
sufficiently to prepare me for a still warmer temperature, they took me
where it was -- into a marble room, wet, slippery and steamy, and laid me
out on a raised platform in the centre. It was very warm. Presently my man
sat me down by a tank of hot water, drenched me well, gloved his hand with
a coarse mitten, and began to polish me all over with it. I began to smell
disgreeably. The more he polished the worse I smelt. It was alarming. I
said to him:

     "I perceive that I am pretty far gone. It is plain that I ought to be
buried without any unnecessary delay. Perhaps you had better go after my
friends at once, because the weather is warm, and I can not 'keep' long."'

     He went on scrubbing, and paid no attention. I soon saw that he was
reducing my size. He bore hard on his mitten, and from under it rolled
little cylinders, like maccaroni. It could not be dirt, for it was too
white. He pared me down in this way for a long time. Finally I said:

     "It is a tedious process. It will take hours to trim me to the size
you want me; I will wait; go and borrow a jack-plane."

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -380-

     He paid no attention at all.

     After a while he brought a basin, some soap, and something that seemed
to be the tail of a horse. He made up a prodigious quantity of soap-suds,
deluged me with them from head to foot, without warning me to shut my eyes,
and then swabbed me viciously with the horse-tail. Then he left me there, a
snowy statue of lather, and went away. When I got tired of waiting I went
and hunted him up. He was propped against the wall, in another room,
asleep. I woke him. He was not disconcerted. He took me back and flooded me
with hot water, then turbaned my head, swathed me with dry table-cloths,
and conducted me to a latticed chicken-coop in one of the galleries, and
pointed to one of those Arkansas beds. I mounted it, and vaguely expected
the odors of Araby a gain. They did not come.

     The blank, unornamented coop had nothing about it of that oriental
voluptuousness one reads of so much. It was more suggestive of the county
hospital than any thing else. The skinny servitor brought a narghili, and I
got him to take it out again without wasting any time about it. Then he
brought the world-renowned Turkish coffee that poets have sung so
rapturously for many generations, and I seized upon it as the last hope
that was left of my old dreams of Eastern luxury. It was another fraud. Of
all the unchristian beverages that ever passed my lips, Turkish coffee is
the worst. The cup is small, it is smeared with grounds; the coffee is
black, thick, unsavory of smell, and execrable in taste. The bottom of the
cup has a muddy sediment in it half an inch deep. This goes down your
throat, and portions of it lodge by the way, and produce a tickling
aggravation that keeps you barking and coughing for an hour.

     Here endeth my experience of the celebrated Turkish bath, and here
also endeth my dream of the bliss the mortal revels in who passes through
it. It is a malignant swindle. The man who enjoys it is qualified to enjoy
any thing that is repulsive to sight or sense, and he that can invest it
with a charm of poetry is able to do the same with any thing else in the
world that is tedious, and wretched, and dismal, and nasty.

                                 Chapter 35

                               CHAPTER XXXV.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -381-

     WE left a dozen passengers in Constantinople, and sailed through the
beautiful Bosporus and far up into the Black Sea. We left them in the
clutches of the celebrated Turkish guide, "FAR-AWAY MOSES," who will seduce
them into buying a ship-load of ottar of roses, splendid Turkish vestments,
and ail manner of curious things they can never have any use for. Murray's
invaluable guide-books have mentioned Far-away Moses' name, and he is a
made man. He rejoices daily in the fact that he is a recognized celebrity.
However, we can not alter our established customs to please the whims of
guides; we can not show partialities this late in the day. Therefore,
ignoring this fellow's brilliant fame, and ignoring the fanciful name he
takes such pride in, we called him Ferguson, just as we had done with all
other guides. It has kept him in a state of smothered exasperation all the
time. Yet we meant him no harm. After he has gotten himself up regardless
of expense, in showy, baggy trowsers, yellow, pointed slippers, fiery fez,
silken jacket of blue, voluminous waist-sash of fancy Persian stuff filled
with a battery of silver-mounted horse-pistols, and has strapped on his
terrible scimetar, he considers it an unspeakable humiliation to be called
Ferguson. It can not be helped. All guides are Fergusons to us. We can not
master their dreadful foreign names.

     Sebastopol is probably the worst battered town in Russia or any where
else. But we ought to be pleased with it, nevertheless, for we have been in
no country yet where we have been so kindly received, and where we felt
that to be Americans

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -382-

was a sufficient visΘ for our passports. The moment the anchor was down,
the Governor of the town immediately dispatched an officer on board to
inquire if he could be of any assistance to us, and to invite us to make
ourselves at home in Sebastopol! If you know Russia, you know that this was
a wild stretch of hospitality. They are usually so suspicious of strangers
that they worry them excessively with the delays and aggravations incident
to a complicated passport system. Had we come from any other country we
could not have had permission to enter Sebastopol and leave again under
three days -- but as it was, we were at liberty to go and come when and
where we pleased. Every body in Constantinople warned us to be very careful
about our passports, see that they were strictly en regle, and never to
mislay them for a moment: and they told us of numerous instances of
Englishmen and others who were delayed days, weeks, and even months, in
Sebastopol, on account of trifling informalities in their passports, and
for which they were not to blame. I had lost my passport, and was traveling
under my room-mate's, who stayed behind in Constantinople to await our
return. To read the description of him in that passport and then look at
me, any man could see that I was no more like him than I am like Hercules.
So I went into the harbor of Sebastopol with fear and trembling -- full of
a vague, horrible apprehension that I was going to be found out and hanged.
But all that time my true passport

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -383-

had been floating gallantly overhead -- and behold it was only our flag.
They never asked us for any other.

     We have had a great many Russian and English gentlemen and ladies on
board to-day, and the time has passed cheerfully away. They were all
happy-spirited people, and I never heard our mother tongue sound so
pleasantly as it did when it fell from those English lips in this far-off
land. I talked to the Russians a good deal, just to be friendly, and they
talked to me from the same motive; I am sure that both enjoyed the
conversation, but never a word of it either of us understood. I did most of
my talking to those English people though, and I am sorry we can not carry
some of them along with us.

     We have gone whithersoever we chose, to-day, and have met with nothing
but the kindest attentions. Nobody inquired whether we had any passports or
not.

     Several of the officers of the Government have suggested that we take
the ship to a little watering-place thirty miles from here, and pay the
Emperor of Russia a visit. He is rusticating there. These officers said
they would take it upon themselves to insure us a cordial reception. They
said if we would go, they would not only telegraph the Emperor, but send a
special courier overland to announce our coming. Our time is so short,
though, and more especially our coal is so nearly out, that we judged it
best to forego the rare pleasure of holding social intercourse with an
Emperor.

     Ruined Pompeii is in good condition compared to Sebastopol. Here, you
may look in whatsoever direction you please, and your eye encounters
scarcely any thing but ruin, ruin, ruin! -- fragments of houses, crumbled
walls, torn and ragged hills, devastation every where! It is as if a mighty
earthquake had spent all its terrible forces upon this one little spot. For
eighteen long months the storms of war beat upon the helpless town, and
left it at last the saddest wreck that ever the sun has looked upon. Not
one solitary house escaped unscathed -- not one remained habitable, even.
Such utter and complete ruin one could hardly conceive of. The houses had
all been solid, dressed stone structures; most of them were ploughed

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -384-

through and through by cannon balls -- unroofed and sliced down from eaves
to foundation -- and now a row of them, half a mile long, looks merely like
an endless procession of battered chimneys. No semblance of a house remains
in such as these. Some of the larger buildings had corners knocked off;
pillars cut in two; cornices smashed; holes driven straight through the
walls. Many of these holes are as round and as cleanly cut as if they had
been made with an auger. Others are half pierced through, and the clean
impression is there in the rock, as smooth and as shapely as if it were
done in putty. Here and there a ball still sticks in a wall, and from it
iron tears trickle down and discolor the stone.

     The battle-fields were pretty close together. The Malakoff tower is on
a hill which is right in the edge of the town. The Redan was within
rifle-shot of the Malakoff; Inkerman was a mile away; and Balaklava removed
but an hour's ride. The French trenches, by which they approached and
invested the Malakoff were carried so close under its sloping sides that
one might have stood by the Russian guns and tossed a stone into them.
Repeatedly, during three terrible days, they swarmed up the little Malakoff
hill, and were beaten back with terrible slaughter. Finally, they captured
the place, and drove the Russians out, who then tried to retreat into the
town, but the English had taken the Redan, and shut them off with a wall of
flame; there was nothing for them to do but go back and retake the Malakoff
or die under its guns. They did go back; they took the Malakoff and retook
it two or three times, but their desperate valor could not avail, and they
had to give up at last.

     These fearful fields, where such tempests of death used to rage, are
peaceful enough now; no sound is heard, hardly a living thing moves about
them, they are lonely and silent -- their desolation is complete.

     There was nothing else to do, and so every body went to hunting
relics. They have stocked the ship with them. They brought them from the
Malakoff, from the Redan, Inkerman, Balaklava -- every where. They have
brought cannon balls,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -385-

broken ramrods, fragments of shell -- iron enough to freight a sloop. Some
have even brought bones -- brought them laboriously from great distances,
and were grieved to hear the surgeon pronounce them only bones of mules and
oxen. I knew Blucher would not lose an opportunity like this. He brought a
sack full on board and was going for another. I prevailed upon him not to
go. He has already turned his state-room into a museum of worthless
trumpery, which he has gathered up in his travels. He is labeling his
trophies, now. I picked up one a while ago, and found it marked "Fragment
of a Russian General." I carried it out to get a better light upon it -- it
was nothing but a couple of teeth and part of the jaw-bone of a horse. I
said with some asperity:

     "Fragment of a Russian General! This is absurd. Are you never going to
learn any sense?"

     He only said: "Go slow -- the old woman won't know any different."
[His aunt.]

     This person gathers mementoes with a perfect recklessness, now-a-days;
mixes them all up together, and then serenely labels them without any
regard to truth, propriety, or even plausibility. I have found him breaking
a stone in two, and labeling half of it "Chunk busted from the pulpit of
Demosthenes," and the other half "Darnick from the Tomb of Abelard and
Heloise." I have known him to gather up a handful of pebbles by the
roadside, and bring them on board ship and label them as coming from twenty
celebrated localities five hundred miles apart. I remonstrate against these
outrages upon reason and truth, of course, but it does no good. I get the
same tranquil, unanswerable reply every time:

     "It don't signify -- the old woman won't know any different."

     Ever since we three or four fortunate ones made the midnight trip to
Athens, it has afforded him genuine satisfaction to give every body in the
ship a pebble from the Mars-hill where St. Paul preached. He got all those
pebbles on the sea shore, abreast the ship, but professes to have gathered
them

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -386-

from one of our party. However, it is not of any use for me to expose the
deception -- it affords him pleasure, and does no harm to any body. He says
he never expects to run out of mementoes of St. Paul as long as he is in
reach of a sand-bank. Well, he is no worse than others. I notice that all
travelers supply deficiencies in their collections in the same way. I shall
never have any confidence in such things again while I live.

                                 Chapter 36

                               CHAPTER XXXVI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -387-

     WE have got so far east, now -- a hundred and fifty-five degrees of
longitude from San Francisco -- that my watch can not "keep the hang" of
the time any more. It has grown discouraged, and stopped. I think it did a
wise thing. The difference in time between Sebastopol and the Pacific coast
is enormous. When it is six o'clock in the morning here, it is somewhere
about week before last in California. We are excusable for getting a little
tangled as to time. These distractions and distresses about the time have
worried me so much that I was afraid my mind was so much affected that I
never would have any appreciation of time again; but when I noticed how
handy I was yet about comprehending when it was dinner-time, a blessed
tranquillity settled down upon me, and I am tortured with doubts and fears
no more.

     Odessa is about twenty hours' run from Sebastopol, and is the most
northerly port in the Black Sea. We came here to get coal, principally. The
city has a population of one hundred and thirty-three thousand, and is
growing faster than any other small city out of America. It is a free port,
and is the great grain mart of this particular part of the world. Its
roadstead is full of ships. Engineers are at work, now, turning the open
roadstead into a spacious artificial harbor. It is to be almost inclosed by
massive stone piers, one of which will extend into the sea over three
thousand feet in a straight line.

     I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I
"raised the hill" and stood in Odessa for the first time. It looked just
like an American city; fine, broad streets, and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -388-

straight as well; low houses, (two or three stories,) wide, neat, and free
from any quaintness of architectural ornamentation; locust trees bordering
the sidewalks (they call them acacias;) a stirring, business-look about the
streets and the stores; fast walkers; a familiar new look about the houses
and every thing; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust that was
so like a message from our own dear native land that we could hardly
refrain from shedding a few grateful tears and execrations in the old
time-honored American way. Look up the street or down the street, this way
or that way, we saw only America! There was not one thing to remind us that
we were in Russia. We walked for some little distance, reveling in this
home vision, and then we came upon a church and a hack-driver, and presto!
the illusion vanished! The church had a slender-spired dome that rounded
inward at its base, and looked like a turnip turned upside down, and the
hackman seemed to be dressed in a long petticoat with out any hoops. These
things were essentially foreign, and so were the carriages -- but every
body knows about these things, and there is no occasion for my describing
them.

     We were only to stay here a day and a night and take in coal; we
consulted the guide-books and were rejoiced to know that there were no
sights in Odessa to see; and so we had one good, untrammeled holyday on our
hands, with nothing to do but idle about the city and enjoy ourselves. We
sauntered through the markets and criticised the fearful and wonderful
costumes from the back country; examined the populace as far as eyes could
do it; and closed the entertainment with an ice-cream debauch. We do not
get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are apt to dissipate to
excess. We never cared any thing about ice-cream at home, but we look upon
it with a sort of idolatry now that it is so scarce in these red-hot
climates of the East.

     We only found two pieces of statuary, and this was another blessing.
One was a bronze image of the Duc de Richelieu, grand-nephew of the
splendid Cardinal. It stood in a spacious, handsome promenade, overlooking
the sea, and from its base a

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -389-

vast flight of stone steps led down to the harbor -- two hundred of them,
fifty feet long, and a wide landing at the bottom of every twenty. It is a
noble staircase, and from a distance the people toiling up it looked like
insects. I mention this statue and this stairway because they have their
story. Richelieu founded Odessa -- watched over it with paternal care --
labored with a fertile brain and a wise understanding for its best
interests -- spent his fortune freely to the same end -- endowed it with a
sound prosperity, and one which will yet make it one of the great cities of
the Old World -- built this noble stairway with money from his own private
purse -- and -- . Well, the people for whom he had done so much, let him
walk down these same steps, one day, unattended, old, poor, without a
second coat to his back; and when, years afterwards, he died in Sebastopol
in poverty and neglect, they called a meeting, subscribed liberally, and
immediately erected this tasteful monument to his memory, and named a great
street after him. It reminds me of what Robert Burns' mother said when they
erected a stately monument to his memory: "Ah, Robbie, ye asked them for
bread and they hae gi'en ye a stane."

     The people of Odessa have warmly recommended us to go and call on the
Emperor, as did the Sebastopolians. They have telegraphed his Majesty, and
he has signified his willingness to grant us an audience. So we are getting
up the anchors and preparing to sail to his watering-place. What a
scratching around there will be, now! what a holding of important meetings
and appointing of solemn committees! -- and what a furbishing up of
claw-hammer coats and white silk neck-ties! As this fearful ordeal we are
about to pass through pictures itself to my fancy in all its dread
sublimity, I begin to feel my fierce desire to converse with a genuine
Emperor cooling down and passing away. What am I to do with my hands? What
am I to do with my feet? What in the world am I to do with myself?

                                 Chapter 37

                              CHAPTER XXXVII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -390-

     WE anchored here at Yalta, Russia, two or three days ago. To me the
place was a vision of the Sierras. The tall, gray mountains that back it,
their sides bristling with pines -- cloven with ravines -- here and there a
hoary rock towering into view -- long, straight streaks sweeping down from
the summit to the sea, marking the passage of some avalanche of former
times -- all these were as like what one sees in the Sierras as if the one
were a portrait of the other. The little village of Yalta nestles at the
foot of an amphitheatre which slopes backward and upward to the wall of
hills, and looks as if it might have sunk quietly down to its present
position from a higher elevation. This depression is covered with the great
parks and gardens of noblemen, and through the mass of green foliage the
bright colors of their palaces bud out here and there like flowers. It is a
beautiful spot.

     We had the United States Consul on board -- the Odessa Consul. We
assembled in the cabin and commanded him to tell us what we must do to be
saved, and tell us quickly. He made a speech. The first thing he said fell
like a blight on every hopeful spirit: he had never seen a court reception.
(Three groans for the Consul.) But he said he had seen receptions at the
Governor¡General's in Odessa, and had often listened to people's
experiences of receptions at the Russian and other courts, and believed he
knew very well what sort of ordeal we were about to essay. (Hope budded
again.) He said we were many; the summer¡palace was small -- a mere

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -391-

mansion; doubtless we should be received in summer fashion -- in the
garden; we would stand in a row, all the gentlemen in swallow¡tail coats,
white kids, and white neck¡ties, and the ladies in light¡colored silks, or
something of that kind; at the proper moment -- 12 meridian -- the Emperor,
attended by his suite arrayed in splendid uniforms, would appear and walk
slowly along the line, bowing to some, and saying two or three words to
others. At the moment his Majesty appeared, a universal, delighted,
enthusiastic smile ought to break out like a rash among the passengers -- a
smile of love, of gratification, of admiration -- and with one accord, the
party must begin to bow -- not obsequiously, but respectfully, and with
dignity; at the end of fifteen minutes the Emperor would go in the house,
and we could run along home again. We felt immensely relieved. It seemed,
in a manner, easy. There was not a man in the party but believed that with
a little practice he could stand in a row, especially if there were others
along; there was not a man but believed he could bow without tripping on
his coat tail and breaking his neck; in a word, we came to believe we were
equal to any item in the performance except that complicated smile. The
Consul also said we ought to draft a little address to the Emperor, and
present it to one of his aides¡de¡camp, who would forward it to him at the
proper time. Therefore, five gentlemen were appointed to prepare the
document, and the fifty others went sadly smiling about the ship --
practicing. During the next twelve hours we had the general appearance,
somehow, of being at a funeral, where every body was sorry the death had
occurred, but glad it was over -- where every body was smiling, and yet
broken-hearted.

     A committee went ashore to wait on his Excellency the
Governor¡General, and learn our fate. At the end of three hours of boding
suspense, they came back and said the Emperor would receive us at noon the
next day -- would send carriages for us -- would hear the address in
person. The Grand Duke Michael had sent to invite us to his palace also.
Any man could see that there was an intention here to show that Russia's

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -392-

friendship for America was so genuine as to render even her private
citizens objects worthy of kindly attentions.

     At the appointed hour we drove out three miles, and assembled in the
handsome garden in front of the Emperor's palace.

     We formed a circle under the trees before the door, for there was no
one room in the house able to accommodate our three. score persons
comfortably, and in a few minutes the imperial family came out bowing and
smiling, and stood in our midst. A number of great dignitaries of the
Empire, in undress unit forms, came with them. With every bow, his Majesty
said a word of welcome. I copy these speeches. There is character in them
-- Russian character -- which is politeness itself, and the genuine
article. The French are polite, but it is often mere ceremonious
politeness. A Russian imbues his polite things with a heartiness, both of
phrase and expression, that compels

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -393-

belief in their sincerity. As I was saying, the Czar punctuated his
speeches with bows:

     " Good morning -- I am glad to see you -- I am gratified -- I am
delighted -- I am happy to receive you!"

     All took off their hats, and the Consul inflicted the address on him.
He bore it with unflinching fortitude; then took the rusty¡looking document
and handed it to some great officer or other, to be filed away among the
archives of Russia -- in the stove. He thanked us for the address, and said
he was very much pleased to see us, especially as such friendly relations
existed between Russia and the United States. The Empress said the
Americans were favorites in Russia, and she hoped the Russians were
similarly regarded in America. These were all the speeches that were made,
and I recommend them to parties who present policemen with gold watches, as
models of brevity and point. After this the Empress went and talked
sociably (for an Empress) with various ladies around the circle; several
gentlemen entered into a disjointed general conversation with the Emperor;
the Dukes and Princes, Admirals and Maids of Honor dropped into
free-and¡easy chat with first one and then another of our party, and
whoever chose stepped forward and spoke with the modest little Grand
Duchess Marie, the Czar's daughter. She is fourteen years old,
light¡haired, blue¡eyed, unassuming and pretty. Every body talks English.

     The Emperor wore a cap, frock coat and pantaloons, all of some kind of
plain white drilling -- cotton or linen and sported

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -394-

no jewelry or any insignia whatever of rank. No costume could be less
ostentatious. He is very tall and spare, and a determined¡looking man,
though a very pleasant¡looking one nevertheless. It is easy to see that he
is kind and affectionate There is something very noble in his expression
when his cap is off. There is none of that cunning in his eye that all of
us noticed in Louis Napoleon's.

     The Empress and the little Grand Duchess wore simple suits of foulard
(or foulard silk, I don't know which is proper,) with a small blue spot in
it; the dresses were trimmed with blue; both ladies wore broad blue sashes
about their waists; linen collars and clerical ties of muslin; low¡crowned
straw¡hats trimmed with blue velvet; parasols and flesh¡colored gloves The
Grand Duchess had no heels on her shoes. I do not know this of my own
knowledge, but one of our ladies told me so. I was not looking at her
shoes. I was glad to observe that she wore her own hair, plaited in thick
braids against the back of her head, instead of the uncomely thing they
call a waterfall, which is about as much like a waterfall as a
canvas¡covered ham is Like a cataract. Taking the kind expression that is
in the Emperor's face and the gentleness that is in his young daughter's
into consideration, I wondered if it would not tax the Czar's firmness to
the utmost to condemn a supplicating wretch to misery in the wastes of
Siberia if she pleaded for him. Every time their eyes met, I saw more and
more what a tremendous power that weak, diffident school¡girl could wield
if she chose to do it. Many and many a time she might rule the Autocrat of
Russia, whose lightest word is law to seventy millions of human beings She
was only a girl, and she looked like a thousand others I have seen, but
never a girl provoked such a novel and peculiar interest in me before. A
strange, new sensation is a rare thing in this hum¡drum life, and I had it
here. There was nothing stale or worn out about the thoughts and feelings
the situation and the circumstances created. It seemed strange -- stranger
than I can tell -- to think that the central figure in the cluster of men
and women, chatting here under the trees like the most ordinary individual

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -395-

in the land, was a man who could open his lips and ships would fly through
the waves, locomotives would speed over the plains, couriers would hurry
from village to village, a hundred telegraphs would flash the word to the
four corners of an Empire that stretches its vast proportions over a
seventh part of the habitable globe, and a countless multitude of men would
spring to do his bidding. I had a sort of vague desire to examine his hands
and see if they were of flesh and blood, like other men's. Here was a man
who could do this wonderful thing, and yet if I chose I could knock him
down. The case was plain, but it seemed preposterous, nevertheless -- as
preposterous as trying to knock down a mountain or wipe out a continent. If
this man sprained his ankle, a million miles of telegraph would carry the
news over mountains -- valleys -- uninhabited deserts -- under the
trackless sea -- and ten thousand newspapers would prate of it; if he were
grievously ill, all the nations would know it before the sun rose again; if
he dropped lifeless where he stood, his fall might shake the thrones of
half a world ! If I could have stolen his coat, I would have done it. When
I meet a man like that, I want something to remember him by.

     As a general thing, we have been shown through palaces by some
plush¡legged filagreed flunkey or other, who charged a franc for it; but
after talking with the company half an hour, the Emperor of Russia and his
family conducted us all through their mansion themselves. They made no
charge. They seemed to take a real pleasure in it.

     We spent half an hour idling through the palace, admiring the cosy
apartments and the rich but eminently home¡like appointments of the place,
and then the Imperial family bade our party a kind good¡bye, and proceeded
to count the spoons.

     An invitation was extended to us to visit the palace of the eldest
son, the Crown Prince of Russia, which was near at hand. The young man was
absent, but the Dukes and Countesses and Princes went over the premises
with us as leisurely as was the case at the Emperor's, and conversation
continued as lively as ever.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -396-

     It was a little after one o'clock, now. We drove to the Grand Duke
Michael's, a mile away, in response to his invitation, previously given.

     We arrived in twenty minutes from the Emperor's. It is a lovely place.
The beautiful palace nestles among the grand old groves of the park, the
park sits in the lap of the picturesque crags and hills, and both look out
upon the breezy ocean. In the park are rustic seats, here and there, in
secluded nooks that are dark with shade; there are rivulets of crystal
water; there are lakelets, with inviting, grassy banks; there are glimpses
of sparkling cascades through openings in the wilderness of foliage; there
are streams of clear water gushing from mimic knots on the trunks of forest
trees; there are miniature marble temples perched upon gray old crags;
there are airy lookouts whence one may gaze upon a broad expanse of
landscape and ocean. The palace is modeled after the choicest forms of
Grecian architecture, and its wide colonnades surround a central court that
is banked with rare flowers that fill the place with their fragrance, and
in their midst springs a fountain that cools the summer air, and may
possibly breed mosquitoes, but I do not think it does.

     The Grand Duke and his Duchess came out, and the presentation
ceremonies were as simple as they had been at the Emperor's. In a few
minutes, conversation was under way, as before. The Empress appeared in the
verandah, and the little Grand Duchess came out into the crowd. They had
beaten us there. In a few minutes, the Emperor came himself on horseback.
It was very pleasant. You can appreciate it if you have ever visited
royalty and felt occasionally that possibly you might be wearing out your
welcome -- though as a general thing, I believe, royalty is not scrupulous
about discharging you when it is done with you.

     The Grand Duke is the third brother of the Emperor, is about
thirty¡seven years old, perhaps, and is the princeliest figure in Russia.
He is even taller than the Czar, as straight as an Indian, and bears
himself like one of those gorgeous knights we read about in romances of the
Crusades. He looks

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -397-

like a great¡hearted fellow who would pitch an enemy into the river in a
moment, and then jump in and risk his life fishing him out again. The
stories they tell of him show him to be of a brave and generous nature. He
must have been desirous of proving that Americans were welcome guests in
the imperial palaces of Russia, because he rode all the way to Yalta and
escorted our procession to the Emperor╣s himself, and kept his aids
scurrying about, clearing the road and offering assistance wherever it
could be needed. We were rather familiar with him then, because we did not
know who he was. We recognized him now, and appreciated the friendly spirit
that prompted him to do us a favor that any other Grand Duke in the world
would have doubtless declined to do. He had plenty of servitors whom he
could have sent, but he chose to attend to the matter himself.

     The Grand Duke was dressed in the handsome and showy uniform of a
Cossack officer. The Grand Duchess had on a white alpaca robe, with the
seams and gores trimmed with black barb lace, and a little gray hat with a
feather of the same color. She is young, rather pretty modest and
unpretending, and full of winning politeness.

     Our party walked all through the house, and then the nobility escorted
them all over the grounds, and finally brought them back to the palace
about half¡past two o'clock to breakfast. They called it breakfast, but we
would have called it luncheon. It consisted of two kinds of wine; tea,
bread, cheese, and cold meats, and was served on the centre¡tables in the
reception room and the verandahs -- anywhere that was convenient; there was
no ceremony. It was a sort of picnic. I had heard before that we were to
breakfast there, but Blucher said he believed Baker's boy had suggested it
to his Imperial Highness. I think not -- though it would be like him.
Baker's boy is the famine¡breeder of the ship. He is always hungry. They
say he goes about the state¡rooms when the passengers are out, and eats up
all the soap. And they say he eats oakum. They say he will eat any thing he
can get between meals, but he prefers oakum. He does not like oakum for

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -398-

dinner, but he likes it for a lunch, at odd hours, or any thing that way.
It makes him very disagreeable, because it makes his breath bad, and keeps
his teeth all stuck up with tar. Baker's boy may have suggested the
breakfast, but I hope he did not. It went off well, anyhow. The illustrious
host moved about from place to place, and helped to destroy the provisions
and keep the conversation lively, and the Grand Duchess talked with the
verandah parties and such as had satisfied their appetites and straggled
out from the reception room.

     The Grand Duke's tea was delicious. They give one a lemon to squeeze
into it, or iced milk, if he prefers it. The former is best. This tea is
brought overland from China. It injures the article to transport it by sea.

     When it was time to go, we bade our distinguished hosts good¡bye, and
they retired happy and contented to their apartments to count their spoons.

     We had spent the best part of half a day in the home of royalty, and
had been as cheerful and comfortable all the time as we could have been in
the ship. I would as soon have thought of being cheerful in Abraham's bosom
as in the palace of an Emperor. I supposed that Emperors were terrible
people. I thought they never did any thing but wear magnificent crowns and
red velvet dressing¡gowns with dabs of wool sewed on them in spots, and sit
on thrones and scowl at the flunkies and the people in the parquette, and
order Dukes and Duchesses off to execution. I find, however, that when one
is so fortunate as to get behind the scenes and see them at home and in the
privacy of their firesides, they are strangely like common mortals. They
are pleasanter to look upon then than they are in their theatrical aspect.
It seems to come as natural to them to dress and act like other people as
it is to put a friend's cedar pencil in your pocket when you are done using
it. But I can never have any confidence in the tinsel kings of the theatre
after this. It will be a great loss. I used to take such a thrilling
pleasure in them. But, hereafter, I will turn me sadly away and say;

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -399-

     "This does not answer -- this isn't the style of king that I am
acquainted with."

     When they swagger around the stage in jeweled crowns and splendid
robes, I shall feel bound to observe that all the Emperors that ever I was
personally acquainted with wore the commonest sort of clothes, and did not
swagger. And when they come on the stage attended by a vast body-guard of
supes in helmets and tin breastplates, it will be my duty as well as my
pleasure to inform the ignorant that no crowned head of my acquaintance has
a soldier any where about his house or his person.

     Possibly it may be thought that our party tarried too long, or did
other improper things, but such was not the case. The company felt that
they were occupying an unusually responsible position -- they were
representing the people of America, not the Government -- and therefore
they were careful to do their best to perform their high mission with
credit.

     On the other hand, the Imperial families, no doubt, considered

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -400-

that in entertaining us they were more especially entertaining the people
of America than they could by showering attentions on a whole platoon of
ministers plenipotentiary and therefore they gave to the event its fullest
significance, as an expression of good will and friendly feeling toward the
entire country. We took the kindnesses we received as attentions thus
directed, of course, and not to ourselves as a party. That we felt a
personal pride in being received as the representatives of a nation, we do
not deny; that we felt a national pride in the warm cordiality of that
reception, can not be doubted.

     Our poet has been rigidly suppressed, from the time we let go the
anchor. When it was announced that we were going to visit the Emperor of
Russia, the fountains of his great deep were broken up, and he rained
ineffable bosh for four¡and-twenty hours. Our original anxiety as to what
we were going to do with ourselves, was suddenly transformed into anxiety
about what we were going to do with our poet. The problem was solved at
last. Two alternatives were offered him -- he must either swear a dreadful
oath that he would not issue a line of his poetry while he was in the
Czar's dominions, or else remain under guard on board the ship until we
were safe at Constantinople again. He fought the dilemma long, but yielded
at last. It was a great deliverance. Perhaps the savage reader would like a
specimen of his style. I do not mean this term to be offensive. I only use
it because " the gentle reader" has been used so often that any change from
it can not but be refreshing:

     "Save us and sanctify us, and finally, then,
     See good provisions we enjoy while we journey to Jerusalem.
     For so man proposes, which it is most true
     And time will wait for none, nor for us too."

     The sea has been unusually rough all day. However, we have had a
lively time of it, anyhow. We have had quite a run of visitors. The
Governor¡General came, and we received him with a salute of nine guns. He
brought his family with him. I observed that carpets were spread from the
pier¡head

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -401-

to his carriage for him to walk on, though I have seen him walk there
without any carpet when he was not on business. I thought may be he had
what the accidental insurance people might call an extra¡hazardous polish
("policy" joke, but not above mediocrity,) on his boots, and wished to
protect them, but I examined and could not see that they were blacked any
better than usual. It may have been that he had forgotten his carpet,
before, but he did not have it with him, anyhow. He was an exceedingly
pleasant old gentleman; we all liked him, especially Blucher. When he went
away, Blucher invited him to come again and fetch his carpet along.

     Prince Dolgorouki and a Grand Admiral or two, whom we had seen
yesterday at the reception, came on board also. I was a little distant with
these parties, at first, because when I have been visiting Emperors I do
not like to be too familiar with people I only know by reputation, and
whose moral characters and standing in society I can not be thoroughly
acquainted with. I judged it best to be a little offish, at first. I said
to myself, Princes and Counts and Grand Admirals are very well, but they
are not Emperors, and one can not be too particular about who he associates
with.

     Baron Wrangel came, also. He used to be Russian Ambassador at
Washington. I told him I had an uncle who fell down a shaft and broke
himself in two, as much as a year before that. That was a falsehood, but
then I was not going to let any man eclipse me on surprising adventures,
merely for the want of a little invention. The Baron is a fine man, and is
said to stand high in the Emperor's confidence and esteem.

     Baron Ungern¡Sternberg, a boisterous, whole¡souled old nobleman, came
with the rest. He is a man of progress and enterprise -- a representative
man of the age. He is the Chief Director of the railway system of Russia --
a sort of railroad king. In his line he is making things move along in this
country He has traveled extensively in America. He says he has tried
convict labor on his railroads, and with perfect success. He says the
convict" work well, and are quiet and peaceable. He observed that he
employs nearly ten thousand of them now.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -402-

This appeared to be another call on my resources. I was equal to the
emergency. I said we had eighty thousand convicts employed on the railways
in America -- all of them under sentence of death for murder in the first
degree. That closed him out.

     We had General Todtleben (the famous defender of Sebastopol, during
the siege,) and many inferior army and also navy officers, and a number of
unofficial Russian ladies and gentlemen. Naturally, a champagne luncheon
was in order, and was accomplished without loss of life. Toasts and jokes
were discharged freely, but no speeches were made save one thanking the
Emperor and the Grand Duke, through the Governor-General, for our
hospitable reception, and one by the Governor¡General in reply, in which he
returned the Emperor's thanks for the speech, etc., etc.

                                 Chapter 38

                              CHAPTER XXXVIII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -403-

     WE returned to Constantinople, and after a day or two spent in
exhausting marches about the city and voyages up the Golden Horn in
caiques, we steamed away again. We passed through the Sea of Marmora and
the Dardanelles, and steered for a new land -- a new one to us, at least --
Asia. We had as yet only acquired a bowing acquaintance with it, through
pleasure excursions to Scutari and the regions round about.

     We passed between Lemnos and Mytilene, and saw them as we had seen
Elba and the Balearic Isles -- mere bulky shapes, with the softening mists
of distance upon them -- whales in a fog, as it were. Then we held our
course southward, and began to "read up" celebrated Smyrna.

     At all hours of the day and night the sailors in the forecastle amused
themselves and aggravated us by burlesquing our visit to royalty. The
opening paragraph of our Address to the Emperor was framed as follows:

     "We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for
recreation -- and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state -- and,
therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before your
Majesty, save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the
lord of a realm, which, through good and through evil report, has been the
steadfast friend of the land we love so well."

     The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -404-

wrapped royally in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee
stains, and bearing a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin,
walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan,
careless of the flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains,
Dukes and Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that
spare tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting
"watch below," transformed into graceless ladies and uncouth pilgrims, by
rude travesties upon waterfalls, hoopskirts, white kid gloves and
swallow-tail coats, moved solemnly up the companion way, and bowing low,
began a system of complicated and extraordinary smiling which few monarchs
could look upon and live. Then the mock consul, a slush-plastered
deck-sweep, drew out a soiled fragment of paper and proceeded to read,
laboriously

     "To His Imperial Majesty, Alexander II., Emperor of Russia:

     "We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for
recreation, -- and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state -- and
therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before your
Majesty -- "

     The Emperor -- "Then what the devil did you come for?"

      -- "Save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the
lord of a realm which -- "

     The Emperor -- " Oh, d -- n the Address! -- read it to the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -405-

police. Chamberlain, take these people over to my brother, the Grand
Duke's, and give them a square meal. Adieu! I am happy -- I am gratified --
I am delighted -- I am bored. Adieu, adieu -- vamos the ranch! The First
Groom of the Palace will proceed to count the portable articles of value
belonging to the premises."

     The farce then closed, to be repeated again with every change of the
watches, and embellished with new and still more extravagant inventions of
pomp and conversation.

     At all times of the day and night the phraseology of that tiresome
address fell upon our ears. Grimy sailors came down out of the foretop
placidly announcing themselves as "a handful of private citizens of
America, traveling simply for recreation and unostentatiously," etc.; the
coal passers moved to their duties in the profound depths of the ship,
explaining the blackness of their faces and their uncouthness of dress,
with the reminder that they were "a handful of private citizens, traveling
simply for recreation," etc., and when the cry rang through the vessel at
midnight: "EIGHT BELLS! -- LARBOARD WATCH, TURN OUT!" the larboard watch
came gaping and stretching out of their den, with the everlasting formula:
"Aye-

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -406-

aye, sir! We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply
for recreation, and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state!"

     As I was a member of the committee, and helped to frame the Address,
these sarcasms came home to me. I never heard a sailor proclaiming himself
as a handful of American citizens traveling for recreation, but I wished he
might trip and fall overboar d, and so reduce his handful by one
individual, at least. I never was so tired of any one phrase as the sailors
made me of the opening sentence of the Address to the Emperor of Russia.

     This seaport of Smyrna, our first notable acquaintance in Asia, is a
closely packed city of one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, and,
like Constantinople, it has no outskirts. It is as closely packed at its
outer edges as it is in the centre, and then the habitations leave suddenly
off and the plain beyond seems houseless. It is just like any other
Oriental city. That is to say, its Moslem houses are heavy and dark, and as
comfortless as so many tombs; its streets are crooked, rudely and roughly
paved, and as narrow as an ordinary staircase; the streets uniformly carry
a man to any other place than the one he wants to go to, and surprise him
by landing him in the most unexpected localities; business is chiefly
carried on in great covered bazaars, celled like a honeycomb with
innumerable shops no larger than a common closet, and the whole hive cut up
into a maze of alleys about wide enough to accommodate a laden camel, and
well calculated to confuse a stranger and eventually lose him; every where
there is dirt, every where there are fleas, every where there are lean,
broken-hearted dogs; every alley is thronged with people; wherever you
look, your eye rests upon a wild masquerade of extravagant costumes; the
workshops are all open to the streets, and the workmen visible; all manner
of sounds assail the ear, and over them all rings out the muezzin's cry
from some tall minaret, calling the faithful vagabonds to prayer; and
superior to the call to prayer, the noises in the streets, the interest of
the costumes -- superior to every thing, and claiming the bulk of attention

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -407-

first, last, and all the time -- is a combination of Mohammedan stenches,
to which the smell of even a Chinese quarter would be as pleasant as the
roasting odors of the fatted calf to the nostrils of the returning
Prodigal. Such is Oriental luxury -- such is Oriental splendor! We read
about it all our days, but we comprehend it not until we see it. Smyrna is
a very old city. Its name occurs several times in the Bible, one or two of
the disciples of Christ visited it, and here was located one of the
original seven apocalyptic churches spoken of in Revelations. These
churches were symbolized in the Scriptures as candlesticks, and on certain
conditions there was a sort of implied promise that Smyrna should be
endowed with a "crown of life." She was to "be faithful unto death" --
those were the terms. She has not kept up her faith straight along, but the
pilgrims that wander hither consider that she has come near enough to it to
save her, and so they point to the fact that Smyrna to-day wears her crown
of life, and is a great city, with a great commerce and full of energy,
while the cities wherein were located the other six churches, and to which
no crown of life was promised, have vanished from the earth. So Smyrna
really still possesses her crown of life, in a business point of view. Her
career, for eighteen centuries, has been a chequered one, and she has been
under the rule of princes of many creeds, yet there has been no season
during all that time, as far as we know, (and during such seasons as she
was inhabited at all,) that she has been without her little community of
Christians "faithful unto death." Hers was the only church against which no
threats were implied in the Revelations, and the only one which survived.

     With Ephesus, forty miles from here, where was located another of the
seven churches, the case was different. The "candlestick" has been removed
from Ephesus. Her light has been put out. Pilgrims, always prone to find
prophecies in the Bible, and often where none exist, speak cheerfully and
complacently of poor, ruined Ephesus as the victim of prophecy. And yet
there is no sentence that promises, without due qualification, the
destruction of the city. The words are:

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -408-



     "Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent,
     and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly,
     and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou
     repent."

     That is all; the other verses are singularly complimentary to Ephesus.
The threat is qualified. There is no history to show that she did not
repent. But the cruelest habit the modern prophecy-savans have, is that one
of coolly and arbitrarily fitting the prophetic shirt on to the wrong man.
They do it without regard to rhyme or reason. Both the cases I have just
mentioned are instances in point. Those "prophecies" are distinctly leveled
at the "churches of Ephesus, Smyrna," etc., and yet the pilgrims invariably
make them refer to the cities instead. No crown of life is promised to the
town of Smyrna and its commerce, but to the handful of Christians who
formed its "church." If they were "faithful unto death," they have t heir
crown now -- but no amount of faithfulness and legal shrewdness combined
could legitimately drag the city into a participation in the promises of
the prophecy. The stately language of the Bible refers to a crown of life
whose lustre will reflect the day-beams of the endless ages of eternity,
not the butterfly existence of a city built by men's hands, which must pass
to dust with the builders and be forgotten even in the mere handful of
centuries vouchsafed to the solid world itself between its cradle and its
grave.

     The fashion of delving out fulfillments of prophecy where that
prophecy consists of mere "ifs," trenches upon the absurd. Suppose, a
thousand years from now, a malarious swamp builds itself up in the shallow
harbor of Smyrna, or something else kills the town; and suppose, also, that
within that time the swamp that has filled the renowned harbor of Ephesus
and rendered her ancient site deadly and uninhabitable to-day, becomes hard
and healthy ground; suppose the natural consequence ensues, to wit: that
Smyrna becomes a melancholy ruin, and Ephesus is rebuilt. What would the
prophecy-savans say? They would coolly skip over our age of the world, and
say: "Smyrna was not faithful unto death, and so her crown of life was
denied her; Ephesus repented, and lo! her candle-

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -409-

stick was not removed. Behold these evidences! How wonderful is prophecy!"

     Smyrna has been utterly destroyed six times. If her crown of life had
been an insurance policy, she would have had an opportunity to collect on
it the first time she fell. But she holds it on sufferance and by a
complimentary construction of language which does not refer to her. Six
different times, however, I suppose some infatuated prophecy-enthusiast
blundered along and said, to the infinite disgust of Smyrna and the
Smyrniotes: "In sooth, here is astounding fulfillment of prophecy! Smyrna
hath not been faithful unto death, and behold her crown of life is vanished
from her head. Verily, these things be astonishing!"

     Such things have a bad influence. They provoke worldly men into using
light conversation concerning sacred subjects. Thick-headed commentators
upon the Bible, and stupid preachers and teachers, work more damage to
religion than sensible, cool-brained clergymen can fight away again, toil
as they may. It is not good judgment to fit a crown of life upon a city
which has been destroyed six times. That other class of wiseacres who twist
prophecy in such a manner as to make it promise the destruction and
desolation of the same city, use judgment just as bad, since the city is in
a very flourishing condition now, unhappily for them. These things put
arguments into the mouth of infidelity.

     A portion of the city is pretty exclusively Turkish; the Jews have a
quarter to themselves; the Franks another quarter; so, also, with the
Armenians. The Armenians, of course, are Christians. Their houses are
large, clean, airy, handsomely paved with black and white squares of
marble, and in the centre of many of them is a square court, which has in
it a luxuriant flower-garden and a sparkling fountain; the doors of all the
rooms open on this. A very wide hall leads to the street door, and in this
the women sit, the most of the day. In the cool of the evening they dress
up in their best raiment and show themselves at the door. They are all
comely of countenance, and exceedingly neat and cleanly; they look as if
they

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -410-

were just out of a band-box. Some of the young ladies -- many of them, I
may say -- are even very beautiful; they average a shade better than
American girls -- which treasonable words I pray may be forgiven me. They
are very sociable, and will smile back when a stranger smiles at them, bow
back when he bows, and talk back if he speaks to them. No introduction is
required. An hour's chat at the door with a pretty girl one never saw
before, is easily obtained, and is very pleasant. I have tried it. I could
not talk anything but English, and the girl knew nothing but Greek, or
Armenian, or some such barbarous tongue, but we got along very well. I find
that in cases like these, the fact that you can not comprehend each other
isn't much of a drawback. In that Russia n town of Yalta I danced an
astonishing sort of dance an hour long, and one I had not heard of before,
with a very pretty girl, and we talked incessantly, and laughed
exhaustingly, and neither one ever knew what the other was driving at. But
it was splendid. There were twenty people in the set, and the dance was
very lively and complicated. It was complicated enough without me -- with
me it was more so. I threw in a figure now and then that surprised those
Russians. But I have never ceased to think of that girl. I have written to
her, but I can not direct the epistle because her name is one of those
nine-jointed Russian affairs, and there are not letters enough in our
alphabet to hold out. I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce it when
I am awake, but I make a stagger at it in my dreams, and get up with the
lockjaw in the morning. I am fading. I do not take my meals now, with any
sort of regularity. Her dear name haunts me still in my dreams. It is awful
on teeth. It never comes out of my mouth but it fetches an old snag along
with it. And then the lockjaw closes down and nips off a couple of the last
syllables -- but they taste good.

     Coming through the Dardanelles, we saw camel trains on shore with the
glasses, but we were never close to one till we got to Smyrna. These camels
are very much larger than the scrawny specimens one sees in the menagerie.
They stride along these streets, in single file, a dozen in a train, with

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -411-

heavy loads on their backs, and a fancy-looking negro in Turkish costume,
or an Arab, preceding them on a little donkey and completely overshadowed
and rendered insignificant by the huge beasts. To see a camel train laden
with the spices of Arabia and the rare fabrics of Persia come marching
through the narrow alleys of the bazaar, among porters with their burdens,
money-changers, lamp-merchants, Al-naschars in the glassware business,
portly cross-legged Turks smoking the famous narghili; and the crowds
drifting to and fro in the fanciful costumes of the East, is a genuine
revelation of the Orient. The picture lacks nothing. It casts you back at
once into your forgotten boyhood, and again you dream over the wonders of
the Arabian Nights; again your companions are princes, your lord is the
Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, and your servants are terrific giants and genii
that come with smoke and lightning and thunder, and go as a storm goes when
they depart!

                                 Chapter 39

                               CHAPTER XXXIX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -412-

     WE inquired, and learned that the lions of Smyrna consisted of the
ruins of the ancient citadel, whose broken and prodigious battlements frown
upon the city from a lofty hill just in the edge of the town -- the Mount
Pagus of Scripture, they call it; the site of that one of the Seven
Apocalyptic Churches of Asia which was located here in the first century of
the Christian era; and the grave and the place of martyrdom of the
venerable Polycarp, who suffered in Smyrna for his religion some eighteen
hundred years ago.

     We took little donkeys and started. We saw Polycarp's tomb, and then
hurried on.

     The "Seven Churches" -- thus they abbreviate it -- came next on the
list. We rode there -- about a mile and a half in the sweltering sun -- and
visited a little Greek church which they said was built upon the ancient
site; and we paid a small fee, and the holy attendant gave each of us a
little wax candle as a remembrancer of the place, and I put mine in my hat
and the sun melted it and the grease all ran down the back of my neck; and
so now I have not any thing left but the wick, and it is a sorry and a
wilted-looking wick at that.

     Several of us argued as well as we could that the "church" mentioned
in the Bible meant a party of Christians, and not a building; that the
Bible spoke of them as being very poor -- so poor, I thought, and so
subject to persecution (as per Polycarp's martyrdom) that in the first
place they probably could

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -413-

not have afforded a church edifice, and in the second would not have dared
to build it in the open light of day if they could; and finally, that if
they had had the privilege of building it, common judgment would have
suggested that they build it somewhere near the town. But the elders of the
ship's family ruled us down and scouted our evidences. However, retribution
came to them afterward. They found that they had been led astray and had
gone to the wrong place; they discovered that the accepted site is in the
city.

     Riding through the town, we could see marks of the six Smyrnas that
have existed here and been burned up by fire or knocked down by
earthquakes. The hills and the rocks are rent asunder in places,
excavations expose great blocks of building-stone that have lain buried for
ages, and all the mean houses and walls of modern Smyrna along the way are
spotted white with broken pillars, capitals and fragments of sculptured
marble that once adorned the lordly palaces that were the glory of the city
in the olden time.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -414-

     The ascent of the hill of the citadel is very steep, and we proceeded
rather slowly. But there were matters of interest about us. In one place,
five hundred feet above the sea, the perpendicular bank on the upper side
of the road was ten or fifteen feet high, and the cut exposed three veins
of oyster shells, just as we have seen quartz veins exposed in the cutting
of a road in Nevada or Montana. The veins were about eighteen inches thick
and two or three feet apart, and they slanted along downward for a distance
of thirty feet or more, and then disappeared where the cut joined the road.
Heaven only knows how far a man might trace them by "stripping." They were
clean, nice oyster shells, large, and just like any other oyster shells.
They were thickly massed together, and none were scattered above or below
the veins. Each one was a well-defined lead by itself, and without a spur.
My first instinct was to set up the usual --


                                  NOTICE:

          "We, the undersigned, claim five claims of two hundred feet
     each, (and one for discovery,) on this ledge or lode of
     oyster-shells, with all its dips, spurs, angles, variations and
     sinuosities, and fifty feet on each side of the same, to work it,
     etc., etc., according to the mining laws of Smyrna."

     They were such perfectly natural-looking leads that I could hardly
keep from "taking them up." Among the oyster-shells were mixed many
fragments of ancient, broken crockery ware. Now how did those masses of
oyster-shells get there? I can not determine. Broken crockery and
oyster-shells are suggestive of restaurants -- but then they could have had
no such places away up there on that mountain side in our time, because
nobody has lived up there. A restaurant would not pay in such a stony,
forbidding, desolate place. And besides, there were no champagne corks
among the shells. If there ever was a restaurant there, it must have been
in Smyrna's palmy days, when the hills were covered with palaces. I could
believe in one restaurant, on those terms; but then how about the three?
Did they have restaurants there at three different periods of the world? --
because there are two or three feet of solid earth

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -415-

between the oyster leads. Evidently, the restaurant solution will not
answer.

     The hill might have been the bottom of the sea, once, and been lifted
up, with its oyster-beds, by an earthquake -- but, then, how about the
crockery? And moreover, how about three oyster beds, one above another, and
thick strata of good honest earth between?

     That theory will not do. It is just possible that this hill is Mount
Ararat, and that Noah's Ark rested here, and he ate oysters and threw the
shells overboard. But that will not do, either. There are the three layers
again and the solid earth between -- and, besides, there were only eight in
Noah's family, and they could not have eaten all these oysters in the two
or three months they staid on top of that mountain. The beasts -- however,
it is simply absurd to suppose he did not know any more than to feed the
beasts on oyster suppers.

     It is painful -- it is even humiliating -- but I am reduced at last to
one slender theory: that the oysters climbed up there of their own accord.
But what object could they have had in view? -- what did they want up
there? What could any oyster want to climb a hill for? To climb a hill must
necessarily be fatiguing and annoying exercise for an oyster. The most
natural conclusion would be that the oysters climbed up there to look at
the scenery. Yet when one comes to reflect upon the nature of an oyster, it
seems plain that he does not care for scenery. An oyster has no taste for
such things; he cares nothing for the beautiful. An oyster is of a retiring
disposition, and not lively -- not even cheerful above the average, and
never enterprising. But above all, an oyster does not take any interest in
scenery -- he scorns it. What have I arrived at now? Simply at the point I
started from, namely, those oyster shells are there, in regular layers,
five hundred feet above the sea, and no man knows how they got there. I
have hunted up the guide-books, and the gist of what they say is this:
"They are there, but how they got there is a mystery."

     Twenty-five years ago, a multitude of people in America put on their
ascension robes, took a tearful leave of their

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -416-

friends, and made ready to fly up into heaven at the first blast of the
trumpet. But the angel did not blow it. Miller's resurrection day was a
failure. The Millerites were disgusted. I did not suspect that there were
Millers in Asia Minor, but a gentleman tells me that they had it all set
for the world to come to an end in Smyrna one day about three years ago.
There was much buzzing and preparation for a long time previously, and it
culminated in a wild excitement at the appointed time. A vast number of the
populace ascended the citadel hill early in the morning, to get out of the
way of the general destruction, and many of the infatuated closed up their
shops and retired from all earthly business. But the strange part of it was
that about three in the afternoon, while this gentleman and his friends
were at dinner in the hotel, a terrific storm of rain, accompanied by
thunder and lightning, broke forth and continued with dire fury for two or
three hours. It was a thing unprecedented in Smyrna at that time of the
year, and scared some of the most skeptical. The

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -417-

streets ran rivers and the hotel floor was flooded with water. The dinner
had to be suspended. When the storm finished and left every body drenched
through and through, and melancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists
came down from the mountain as dry as so many charity-sermons! They had
been looking down upon the fearful storm going on below, and really
believed that their proposed destruction of the world was proving a grand
success.

     A railway here in Asia -- in the dreamy realm of the Orient -- in the
fabled land of the Arabian Nights -- is a strange thing to think of. And
yet they have one already, and are building another. The present one is
well built and well conducted, by an English Company, but is not doing an
immense amount of business. The first year it carried a good many
passengers, but its freight list only comprised eight hundred pounds of
figs!

     It runs almost to the very gates of Ephesus -- a town great in all
ages of the world -- a city familiar to readers of the Bible, and one which
was as old as the very hills when the disciples of Christ preached in its
streets. It dates back to the shadowy ages of tradition, and was the
birthplace of gods renowned in Grecian mythology. The idea of a locomotive
tearing through such a place as this, and waking the phantoms of its old
days of romance out of their dreams of dead and gone centuries, is curious
enough.

     We journey thither tomorrow to see the celebrated ruins.

                                 Chapter 40

                                CHAPTER XL.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -418-

     THIS has been a stirring day. The Superintendent of the railway put a
train at our disposal, and did us the further kindness of accompanying us
to Ephesus and giving to us his watchful care. We brought sixty scarcely
perceptible donkeys in the freight cars, for we had much ground to go over.
We have seen some of the most grotesque costumes, along the line of the
railroad, that can be imagined. I am glad that no possible combination of
words could describe them, for I might then be foolish enough to attempt
it.

     At ancient Ayassalook, in the midst of a forbidding desert, we came
upon long lines of ruined aqueducts, and other remnants of architectural
grandeur, that told us plainly enough we were nearing what had been a
metropolis, once. We left the train and mounted the donkeys, along with our
invited guests -- pleasant young gentlemen from the officers' list of an
American man-of-war.

     The little donkeys had saddles upon them which were made very high in
order that the rider's feet might not drag the ground. The preventative did
not work well in the cases of our tallest pilgrims, however. There were no
bridles -- nothing but a single rope, tied to the bit. It was purely
ornamental, for the donkey cared nothing for it. If he were drifting to
starboard, you might put your helm down hard the other way, if it were any
satisfaction to you to do it, but he would continue to drift to starboard
all the same. There was only one process which could be depended on, and it
was to

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -419-

get down and lift his rear around until his head pointed in the right
direction, or take him under your arm and carry him to a part of the road
which he could not get out of without climbing. The sun flamed down as hot
as a furnace, and neck-scarfs, veils and umbrellas seemed hardly any
protection; they served only to make the long procession look more than
ever fantastic -- for be it known the ladies were all riding astride
because they could not stay on the shapeless saddles sidewise, the men were
perspiring and out of temper, their feet were banging against the rocks,
the donkeys were capering in every direction but the right one and being
belabored with clubs for it, and every Dow and then a broad umbrella would
suddenly go down out of the cavalcade, announcing to all that one more
pilgrim had bitten the dust. It was a wilder picture than those solitudes
had seen for many a day. No donkeys ever existed that were as hard to
navigate as these, I think, or that had so many vile, exasperating
instincts. Occasionally

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -420-

signally we grew so tired and breathless with fighting them that we had to
desist, -- and immediately the donkey would come down to a deliberate walk.
This, with the fatigue, and the sun, would put a man asleep; and soon as
the man was asleep, the donkey would lie down. My donkey shall never see
his boyhood's home again. He has lain down once too often. We all stood in
the vast theatre of ancient Epllesus, -- the stone-benched amphitheatre I
mean -- and had our picture taken. We looked as proper there as we would
look any where, I suppose. We do not embellish the general desolation of a
desert much. We add what dignity we can to a stately ruin with our green
umbrellas and jackasses, but it is little. However, we mean well.

     I wish to say a brief word of the aspect of Ephesus.

     On a high, steep hill, toward the sea, is a gray ruin of ponderous
blocks of marble, wherein, tradition says, St. Paul was imprisoned eighteen
centuries ago. From these old walls you have the finest view of the
desolate scene where once stood Ephesus, the proudest city of ancient
times, and whose Temple of Diana was so noble in design, and so exquisite
of workmanship, that it ranked high in the list of the Seven Wonders of the
World.

     Behind you is the sea; in front is a level green valley, (a marsh, in
fact,) extending far away among the mountains; to the right of the front
view is the old citadel of Ayassalook, on a high hill; the ruined Mosque of
the Sultan Selim stands near it in the plain, (this is built over the grave
of St. John,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -421-

and was formerly Christian Church ;) further toward you is the hill of
Pion, around whose front is clustered all that remains of the ruins of
Ephesus that still stand; divided from it by a narrow valley is the long,
rocky, rugged mountain of Coressus. The scene is a pretty one, and yet
desolate -- for in that wide plain no man can live, and in it is no human
habitation. But for the crumbling arches and monstrous piers and broken
walls that rise from the foot of the hill of Pion, one could not believe
that in this place once stood a city whose renown is older than tradition
itself. It is incredible to reflect that things as familiar all over the
world to-day as household words, belong in the history and in the shadowy
legends of this silent, mournful solitude. We speak of Apollo and of Diana
-- they were born here; of the metamorphosis of Syrinx into a reed -- it
was done here; of the great god Pan -- he dwelt in the caves of this hill
of Coressus; of the Amazons -- this was their best prized home; of Bacchus
and Hercules both fought the warlike women here; of the Cyclops -- they
laid the ponderous marble blocks of some of the ruins yonder; of Homer --
this was one of his many birthplaces; of Cirmon of Athens; of Alcibiades,
Lysander, Agesilaus -- they visited here; so did Alexander the Great; so
did Hannibal and Antiochus, Scipio, Lucullus and Sylla; Brutus, Cassius,
Pompey, Cicero, and Augustus; Antony was a judge in this place, and left
his seat in the open court, while the advocates were speaking, to run after
Cleopatra, who passed the door; from this city these two sailed on pleasure
excursions, in galleys with silver oars and perfumed sails, and with
companies of beautiful girls to serve them, and actors and musicians to
amuse them; in days that seem almost modern, so remote are they from the
early history of this city, Paul the Apostle preached the new religion
here, and so did John, and here it is supposed the former was pitted
against wild beasts, for in 1 Corinthians, xv. 32 he says:

     "If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at
     Ephesus," &c.,

when many men still lived who had seen the Christ; here

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -422-

Mary Magdalen died, and here the Virgin Mary ended her days with John,
albeit Rome has since judged it best to locate her grave elsewhere; six or
seven hundred years ago -- almost yesterday, as it were -- troops of
mail-clad Crusaders thronged the streets; and to come down to trifles, we
speak of meandering streams, and find a new interest in a common word when
we discover that the crooked river Meander, in yonder valley, gave it to
our dictionary. It makes me feel as old as these dreary hills to look down
upon these moss-hung ruins, this historic desolation. One may read the
Scriptures and believe, but he can not go and stand yonder in the ruined
theatre and in imagination people it again with the vanished multitudes who
mobbed Paul's comrades there and shouted, with one voice, "Great is Diana
of the Ephesians!" The idea of a shout in such a solitude as this almost
makes one shudder.

     It was a wonderful city, this Ephesus. Go where you will about these
broad plains, you find the most exquisitely sculptured marble fragments
scattered thick among the dust and weeds; and protruding from the ground,
or lying prone upon it, are beautiful fluted columns of porphyry and all
precious

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -423-

marbles; and at every step you find elegantly carved capitals and massive
bases, and polished tablets engraved with Greek inscriptions. It is a world
of precious relics, a wilderness of marred and mutilated gems. And yet what
are these things to the wonders that lie buried here under the ground ? At
Constantinople, at Pisa, in the cities of Spain, are great mosques and
cathedrals, whose grandest columns came from the temples and palaces of
Ephesus, and yet one has only to scratch the ground here to match them. We
shall never know what magnificence is, until this imperial city is laid
bare to the sun.

     The finest piece of sculpture we have yet seen and the one that
impressed us most, (for we do not know much about art and can not easily
work up ourselves into ecstacies over it,) is one that lies in this old
theatre of Ephesus which St. Paul's riot has made so celebrated. It is only
the headless body of a man, clad in a coat of mail, with a Medusa head upon
the breast-plate, but we feel persuaded that such dignity and such majesty
were never thrown into a form of stone before.

      What builders they were, these men of antiquity! The massive arches
of some of these ruins rest upon piers that are

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -424-

fifteen feet square and built entirely of solid blocks of marble, some of
which are as large as a Saratoga trunk, and some the size of a
boarding-house sofa. They are not shells or shafts of stone filled inside
with rubbish, but the whole pier is a mass of solid masonry. Vast arches,
that may have been the gates of the city, are built in the same way. They
have braved the storms and sieges of three thousand years, and have been
shaken by many an earthquake, but still they stand. When they dig alongside
of them, they find ranges of ponderous masonry that are as perfect in every
detail as they were the day those old Cyclopian giants finished them. An
English Company is going to excavate Ephesus -- and then!

     And now am I reminded of --

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -425-


                     THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.

     In the Mount of Pion, yonder, is the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. Once
upon a time, about fifteen hundred years ago, seven young men lived near
each other in Ephesus, who belonged to the despised sect of the Christians.
It came to pass that the good King Maximilianus, (I am telling this story
for nice little boys and girls,) it came to pass, I say, that the good King
Maximilianus fell to persecuting the Christians, and as time rolled on he
made it very warm for them. So the seven young men said one to the other,
let us get up and travel. And they got up and traveled. They tarried not to
bid their fathers and mothers good-bye, or any friend they knew. They only
took certain moneys which their parents had, and garments that belonged
unto their friends, whereby they might remember them when far away; and
they took also the dog Ketmehr, which was the property of their neighbor
Malchus, because the beast did run his head into a noose which one of the
young men was carrying carelessly, and they had not time to release him;
and they took also certain chickens that

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -426-

seemed lonely in the neighboring coops, and likewise some bottles of
curious liquors that stood near the grocer's window; and then they departed
from the city. By-and-by they came to a marvelous cave in the Hill of Pion
and entered into it and feasted, and presently they hurried on again. But
they forgot the bottles of curious liquors, and left them behind. They
traveled in many lands, and had many strange adventures. They were virtuous
young men, and lost no opportunity that fell in their way to make their
livelihood. Their motto was in these words, namely, "Procrastination is the
thief of time." And so, whenever they did come upon a man who was alone,
they said, Behold, this person hath the wherewithal -- let us go through
him. And they went through him. At the end of five years they had waxed
tired of travel and adventure, and longed to revisit their old home again
and hear the voices and see the faces that were dear unto their youth.
Therefore they went through such parties as fell in their way where they
sojourned at that time, and journeyed back toward Ephesus again. For the
good King Maximilianus was become converted unto the new faith, and the
Christians rejoiced because they were no longer persecuted. One day as the
sun went down, they came to the cave in the Mount of Pion, and they said,
each to his fellow, Let us sleep here, and go and feast and make merry with
our friends when the morning cometh. And each of the seven lifted up his
voice and said, It is a whiz. So they went in, and lo, where they had put
them, there lay the bottles of strange liquors, and they judged that age
had not impaired their excellence. Wherein the wanderers were right, and
the heads of the same were level. So each of the young men drank six
bottles, and behold they felt very tired, then, and lay down and slept
soundly.

     When they awoke, one of them, Johannes -- surnamed Smithianus -- said,
We are naked. And it was so. Their raiment was all gone, and the money
which they had gotten from a stranger whom they had proceeded through as
they approached the city, was lying upon the ground, corroded and rusted
and defaced. Likewise the dog Ketmehr was gone, and nothing save the brass
that was upon his collar remained. They wondered

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -427-

much at these things. But they took the money, and they wrapped about their
bodies some leaves, and came up to the top of the hill. Then were they
perplexed. The wonderful temple of Diana was gone; many grand edifices they
had never seen before stood in the city; men in strange garbs moved about
the streets, and every thing was changed.

     Johannes said, It hardly seems like Ephesus. Yet here is the great
gymnasium; here is the mighty theatre, wherein I have seen seventy thousand
men assembled; here is the Agora; there is the font where the sainted John
the Baptist immersed the converts; yonder is the prison of the good St.
Paul, where we all did use to go to touch the ancient chains that bound him
and be cured of our distempers; I see the tomb of the disciple Luke, and
afar off is the church wherein repose the ashes of the holy John, where the
Christians of Ephesus go twice a year to gather the dust from the tomb,
which is able to make bodies whole again that are corrupted by disease, and
cleanse the soul from sin; but see how the wharves encroach upon the sea,
and what multitudes of ships are anchored in the bay; see, also, how the
city hath stretched abroad, far over the valley behind Pion, and even unto
the walls of Ayassalook; and lo, all the hills are white with palaces and
ribbed with colonnades of marble. How mighty is Ephesus become !

     And wondering at what their eyes had seen, they went down into the
city and purchased garments and clothed themselves. And when they would
have passed on, the merchant bit the coins which they had given him, with
his teeth, and turned them about and looked curiously upon them, and cast
them upon his counter, and listened if they rang; and then he said, These
be bogus. And they said, Depart thou to Hades, and went their way. When
they were come to their houses, they recognized them, albeit they seemed
old and mean; and they rejoiced, and were glad. They ran to the doors, and
knocked, and strangers opened, and looked inquiringly upon them. And they
said, with great excitement, while their hearts beat high, and the color in
their faces came and went, Where is my father? Where is my mother? Where
are Dionysius and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -428-

Serapion, and Pericles, and Decius? And the strangers that opened said, We
know not these. The Seven said, How, you know them not? How long have ye
dwelt here, and whither are they gone that dwelt here before ye ? And the
strangers said, Ye play upon us with a jest, young men; we and our fathers
have sojourned under these roofs these six generations; the names ye utter
rot upon the tombs, and they that bore them have run their brief race, have
laughed and sung, have borne the sorrows and the weariness that were
allotted them, and are at rest; for nine-score years the summers have come
and gone, and the autumn leaves have fallen, since the roses faded out of
their cheeks and they laid them to sleep with the dead.

     Then the seven young men turned them away from their homes, and the
strangers shut the doors upon them. The wanderers marveled greatly, and
looked into the faces of all they met, as hoping to find one that they
knew; but all were strange, and passed them by and spake no friendly word.
They were sore distressed and sad. Presently they spake unto a citizen and
said, Who is King in Ephesus ? And the citizen answered and said, Whence
come ye that ye know not that great Laertius reigns in Ephesus ? They
looked one at the other, greatly perplexed, and presently asked again,
Where, then, is the good King Maximilianus ? The citizen moved him apart,
as one who is afraid, and said, Verily these men be mad, and dream dreams,
else would they know that the King whereof they speak is dead above two
hundred years agone.

     Then the scales fell from the eyes of the Seven, and one said, Alas,
that we drank of the curious liquors. They have made us weary, and in
dreamless sleep these two long centuries have we lain. Our homes are
desolate, our friends are dead. Behold, the jig is up -- let us die. And
that same day went they forth and laid them down and died. And in that
self-same day, likewise, the Seven-up did cease in Ephesus, for that the
Seven that were up were down again, and departed and dead withal. And the
names that be upon their tombs, even unto this time, are Johannes
Smithianus, Trumps, Gift, High, and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -429-

Low, Jack, and The Game. And with the sleepers lie also the bottles wherein
were once the curious liquors: and upon them is writ, in ancient letters,
such words as these -- Dames of heathen gods of olden time, perchance:
Rumpunch, Jinsling, Egnog.

     Such is the story of the Seven Sleepers, (with slight variations,) and
I know it is true, because I have seen the cave myself.

     Really, so firm a faith had the ancients this legend, that as late as
eight or nine hundred years ago, learned travelers held it in superstitious
fear. Two of them record that they ventured into it, but ran quickly out
again, not daring to tarry lest they should fall asleep and outlive their
great grand-children a century or so. Even at this day the ignorant
denizens of the neighboring country prefer not to sleep in it.

                                 Chapter 41

                                CHAPTER XLI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -430-

     WHEN I last made a memorandum, we were at Ephesus. We are in Syria,
now, encamped in the mountains of Lebanon. The interregnum has been long,
both as to time and distance. We brought not a relic from Ephesus! After
gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and breaking ornaments from
the interior work of the Mosques; and after bringing them at a cost of
infinite trouble and fatigue, five miles on muleback to the railway depot,
a government officer compelled all who had such things to disgorge! He had
an order from Constantinople to look out for our party, and see that we
carried nothing off. It was a wise, a just, and a well-deserved rebuke, but
it created a sensation. I never resist a temptation to plunder a stranger's
premises without feeling insufferably vain about it. This time I felt proud
beyond expression. I was serene in the midst of the scoldings that were
heaped upon the Ottoman government for its affront offered to a pleasuring
party of entirely respectable gentlemen and ladies I said, "We that have
free souls, it touches us not." The shoe not only pinched our party, but it
pinched hard; a principal sufferer discovered that the imperial order was
inclosed in an envelop bearing the seal of the British Embassy at
Constantinople, and therefore must have been inspired by the representative
of the Queen. This was bad -- very bad. Coming solely from the Ottomans, it
might have signified only Ottoman hatred of Christians, and a vulgar
ignorance as to genteel methods of expressing it; but coming from the
Christianized, educated, politic British legation, it simply intimated that
we were a sort

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -431-

of gentlemen and ladies who would bear watching! So the party regarded it,
and were incensed accordingly. The truth doubtless was, that the same
precautions would have been taken against any travelers, because the
English Company who have acquired the right to excavate Ephesus, and have
paid a great sum for that right, need to be protected, and deserve to be.
They can not afford to run the risk of having their hospitality abused by
travelers, especially since travelers are such notorious scorners of honest
behavior.

      We sailed from Smyrna, in the wildest spirit of expectancy, for the
chief feature, the grand goal of the expedition, was near at hand -- we
were approaching the Holy Land ! Such a burrowing into the hold for trunks
that had lain buried for weeks, yes for months; such a hurrying to and fro
above decks and below; such a riotous system of packing and unpacking; such
a littering up of the cabins with shirts and skirts, and indescribable and
unclassable odds and ends; such a making up of bundles, and setting apart
of umbrellas, green spectacles and thick veils; such a critical inspection
of saddles and bridles that had never yet touched horses; such a cleaning
and loading of revolvers and examining of bowie-knives; such a half-soling
of the seats of pantaloons with serviceable buckskin; then such a poring
over ancient maps; such a reading up of Bibles and Palestine travels; such
a marking out of routes; such exasperating efforts to divide up the company
into little bands of congenial spirits who might make the long and arduous
Journey without quarreling; and morning, noon and night, such mass-meetings
in the cabins, such speech-making, such sage suggesting, such worrying and
quarreling, and such a general raising of the very mischief, was never seen
in the ship before!

      But it is all over now. We are cut up into parties of six or eight,
and by this time are scattered far and wide. Ours is the only one, however,
that is venturing on what is called " the long trip " -- that is, out into
Syria, by Baalbec to Damascus, and thence down through the full length of
Palestine. It would be a tedious, and also a too risky journey, at this hot

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -432-

season of the year, for any but strong, healthy men, accustomed somewhat to
fatigue and rough life in the open air. The other parties will take shorter
journeys.

     For the last two months we have been in a worry about one portion of
this Holy Land pilgrimage. I refer to transportation service. We knew very
well that Palestine was a country which did not do a large passenger
business, and every man we came across who knew any thing about it gave us
to understand that not half of our party would be able to get dragomen and
animals. At Constantinople every body fell to telegraphing the American
Consuls at Alexandria and Beirout to give notice that we wanted dragomen
and transportation. We were desperate -- would take horses, jackasses,
cameleopards, kangaroos -- any thing. At Smyrna, more telegraphing was
done, to the same end. Alsa fearing for the worst, we telegraphed for a
large number of seats in the diligence for Damascus, and horses for the
ruins of Baalbec.

     As might have been expected, a notion got abroad in Syria and Egypt
that the whole population of the Province of America (the Turks consider us
a trifling little province in some unvisited corner of the world,) were
coming to the Holy Land -- and so, when we got to Beirout yesterday, we
found the place full of dragomen and their outfits. We had all intended to
go by diligence to Damascus, and switch off to Baalbec as we went along --
because we expected to rejoin the ship, go to Mount Carmel, and take to the
woods from there. However, when our own private party of eight found that
it was possible, and proper enough, to make the "long trip," we adopted
that programme. We have never been much trouble to a Consul before, but we
have been a fearful nuisance to our Consul at Beirout. I mention this
because I can not help admiring his patience, his industry, and his
accommodating spirit. I mention it also, because I think some of our ship's
company did not give him as full credit for his excellent services as he
deserved.

     Well, out of our eight, three were selected to attend to all business
connected with the expedition. The rest of us had

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -433-

nothing to do but look at the beautiful city of Beirout, with its bright,
new houses nestled among a wilderness of green shrubbery spread abroad over
an upland that sloped gently down to the sea; and also at the mountains of
Lebanon that environ it; and likewise to bathe in the transparent blue
water that rolled its billows about the ship (we did not know there were
sharks there.) We had also to range up and down through the town and look
at the costumes. These are picturesque and fanciful, but not so varied as
at Constantinople and Smyrna; the women of Beirout add an agony -- in the
two former cities the sex wear a thin veil which one can see through (and
they often expose their ancles, ) but at Beirout they cover their entire
faces with dark-colored or black veils, so that they look like mummies, and
then expose their breasts to the public. A young gentleman (I believe he
was a Greek,) volunteered to show us around the city, and said it would
afford him great pleasure, because he was studying English and wanted
practice in that language. When we had finished the rounds, however, he
called for remuneration -- said he hoped the gentlemen would give him a
trifle in the way of a few piastres (equivalent to a few five cent pieces.)
We did so. The Consul was surprised when he heard it, and said he knew the
young fellow's family very well, and that they were an old and highly
respectable family and worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars! Some
people, so situated, would have been ashamed of the berth he had with us
and his manner of crawling into it.

     At the appointed time our business committee reported, and said all
things were in readdress -- that we were to start to-day, with horses, pack
animals, and tents, and go to Baalbec, Damascus, the Sea of Tiberias, and
thence southward by the way of the scene of Jacob's Dream and other notable
Bible localities to Jerusalem -- from thence probably to the Dead Sea, but
possibly not -- and then strike for the ocean and rejoin the ship three or
four weeks hence at Joppa; terms, five dollars a day apiece, in gold, and
every thing to be furnished by the dragoman. They said we would lie as well
as at a hotel. I had read something like that before, and did not shame my
judgment

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -434-

by believing a word of it. I said nothing, however, but packed up a blanket
and a shawl to sleep in, pipes and tobacco, two or three woollen shirts, a
portfolio, a guide-book, and a Bible. I also took along a towel and a cake
of soap, to inspire respect in the Arabs, who would take me for a king in
disguise.

     We were to select our horses at 3 P.M. At that hour Abraham, the
dragoman, marshaled them before us. With all solemnity I set it down here,
that those horses were the hardest lot I ever did come across, and their
accoutrements were in exquisite keeping with their style. One brute had an
eye out; another had his tail sawed off close, like a rabbit, and was proud
of it; another had a bony ridge running from his neck to his tail, like one
of those ruined aqueducts one sees about Rome, and had a neck on him like a
bowsprit; they all limped, and had sore backs, and likewise raw places and
old scales scattered about their persons like brass nails in a hair trunk;
their gaits were marvelous to contemplate, and replete with variety under
way the procession looked like a fleet in a storm. It was fearful. Blucher
shook his head and said:

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -435-

"That dragon is going to get himself into trouble fetching these old crates
out of the hospital the way they are, unless he has got a permit."

     I said nothing. The display was exactly according to the guide-book,
and were we not traveling by the guide-book ? I selected a certain horse
because I thought I saw him shy, and I thought that a horse that had spirit
enough to shy was not to be despised.

     At 6 o'clock P.M., we came to a halt here on the breezy summit of a
shapely mountain overlooking the sea, and the handsome valley where dwelt
some of those enterprising Phoenicians of ancient times we read so much
about; all around us are what were once the dominions of Hiram, King of
Tyre, who furnished timber from the cedars of these Lebanon hills to build
portions of King Solomon's Temple with.

     Shortly after six, our pack train arrived. I had not seen it before,
and a good right I had to be astonished. We had nineteen serving men and
twenty-six pack mules! It was a perfect caravan. It looked like one, too,
as it wound among the rocks. I wondered what in the very mischief we wanted
with such a vast turn-out as that, for eight men. I wondered awhile, but
soon I began to long for a tin plate, and some bacon and beans. I had
camped out many and many a time before, and knew just what was coming. I
went off, without waiting for serving men, and unsaddled my horse, and
washed such portions of his ribs and his spine as projected through his
hide, and when I came back, behold five stately circus tents were up --
tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and crimson, and
all manner of splendid adornment! I was speechless. Then they brought eight
little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents; they put a soft
mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white sheets on each
bed. Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and on it placed
pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels -- one set for
each man; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and said we could put our
small trifles in them for convenience, and if we needed pins or such
things, they were sticking every

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -436-

where. Then came the finishing touch -- they spread carpets on the floor! I
simply said, "If you call this camping out, all right -- but it isn't the
style I am used to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a
discount."

     It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables -- candles set in
bright, new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell -- a genuine,
simon-pure bell -- rang, and we were invited to " the saloon." I had
thought before that we had a tent or so too many, but now here was one, at
least, provided for; it was to be used for nothing but an eating-saloon.
Like the others, it was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in,
and was very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of
a place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and
napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we
were used to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks, soup-plates,
dinner-plates -- every thing, in the handsomest kind of style. It was
wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those stately fellows in baggy
trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a dinner which consisted of roast
mutton, roast chicken, roast goose,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -437-

potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands
were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a
finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other
finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that
polite dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole
affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for a
very long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future !

     It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning.

     They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to
be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.

                                 Chapter 42

                               CHAPTER XLII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -438-

     WE are camped near Temnin-el-Foka -- a name which the boys have
simplified a good deal, for the sake of convenience in spelling. They call
it Jacksonville. It sounds a little strangely, here in the Valley of
Lebanon, but it has the merit of being easier to remember than the Arabic
name.

                      "COME LIKE SPIRITS, SO DEPART."

     "The night shall be filled with music,
     And the cares that infest the day
     Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
     And as silently steal away."

     I slept very soundly last night, yet when the dragoman's bell rang at
half-past five this morning and the cry went abroad of "Ten minutes to
dress for breakfast!" I heard both. It surprised me, because I have not
heard the breakfast gong in the ship for a month, and whenever we have had
occasion to fire a salute at daylight, I have only found it out in the
course of conversation afterward. However, camping out, even though it be
in a gorgeous tent, makes one fresh and lively in the morning -- especially
if the air you are breathing is the cool, fresh air of the mountains.

     I was dressed within the ten minutes, and came out. The saloon tent
had been stripped of its sides, and had nothing left but its roof; so when
we sat down to table we could look out over a noble panorama of mountain,
sea and hazy valley. And sitting thus, the sun rose slowly up and suffused
the picture with a world of rich coloring.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -439-

     Hot mutton chops, fried chicken, omelettes, fried potatoes and coffee
-- all excellent. This was the bill of fare. It was sauced with a savage
appetite purchased by hard riding the day before, and refreshing sleep in a
pure atmosphere. As I called for a second cup of coffee, I glanced over my
shoulder, and behold our white village was gone -- the splendid tents had
vanished like magic! It was wonderful how quickly those Arabs had "folded
their tents;" and it was wonderful, also, how quickly they had gathered the
thousand odds and ends of the camp together and disappeared with them.

     By half-past six we were under way, and all the Syrian world seemed to
be under way also. The road was filled with mule trains and long
processions of camels. This reminds me that we have been trying for some
time to think what a camel looks like, and now we have made it out. When he
is down on all his knees, flat on his breast to receive his load, he looks
something like a goose swimming; and when he is upright he looks like an
ostrich with an extra set of legs. Camels are not beautiful, and their long
under lip gives them an exceedingly "gallus" 42.1 expression. They have
immense, flat, forked cushions of feet, that make a track in the dust like
a pie with a slice cut out of it. They are not particular about their diet.
They would eat a tombstone if they could bite it. A thistle grows about
here which has needles on it that would pierce through leather, I think; if
one touches you, you can find relief in nothing but profanity. The camels
eat these. They show by their actions that they enjoy them. I suppose it
would be a real treat to a camel to have a keg of nails for supper.

     While I am speaking of animals, I will mention that I have a horse now
by the name of "Jericho." He is a mare. I have seen remarkable horses
before, but none so remarkable as this. I wanted a horse that could shy,
and this one fills the bill. I

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -440-

had an idea that shying indicated spirit. If I was correct, I have got the
most spirited horse on earth. He shies at every thing he comes across, with
the utmost impartiality. He appears to have a mortal dread of telegraph
poles, especially; and it is fortunate that these are on both sides of the
road, because as it is now, I never fall off twice in succession on the
same side. If I fell on the same side always, it would get to be monotonous
after a while. This creature has scared at every thing he has seen to-day,
except a haystack. He walked up to that with an intrepidity and a
recklessness that were astonishing. And it would fill any one with
admiration to see how he preserves his self-possession in the presence of a
barley sack. This dare-devil bravery will be the death of this horse some
day.

     He is not particularly fast, but I think he will get me through the
Holy Land. He has only one fault. His tail has been chopped off or else he
has sat down on it too hard, some time or other, and he has to fight the
flies with his heels. This is all very well, but when he tries to kick a
fly off the top of his head with his hind foot, it is too much variety. He
is going to get himself into trouble that way some day. He reaches around
and bites my legs too. I do not care particularly about that, only I do not
like to see a horse too sociable.

     I think the owner of this prize had a wrong opinion about him. He had
an idea that he was one of those fiery, untamed steeds, but he is not of
that character. I know the Arab had

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -441-

this idea, because when he brought the horse out for inspection in Beirout,
he kept jerking at the bridle and shouting in Arabic, "Ho! will you? Do you
want to run away, you ferocious beast, and break your neck?" when all the
time the horse was not doing anything in the world, and only looked like he
wanted to lean up against something and think. Whenever he is not shying at
things, or reaching after a fly, he wants to do that yet. How it would
surprise his owner to know this.

     We have been in a historical section of country all day. At noon we
camped three hours and took luncheon at Mekseh, near the junction of the
Lebanon Mountains and the Jebel el Kuneiyiseh, and looked down into the
immense, level, garden-like Valley of Lebanon. To-night we are camping near
the same valley, and have a very wide sweep of it in view. We can see the
long, whale-backed ridge of Mount Hermon projecting above the eastern
hills. The "dews of Hermon" are falling upon us now, and the tents are
almost soaked with them.

     Over the way from us, and higher up the valley, we can discern,
through the glasses, the faint outlines of the wonderful ruins of Baalbec,
the supposed Baal-Gad of Scripture. Joshua, and another person, were the
two spies who were sent into this land of Canaan by the children of Israel
to report upon its character -- I mean they were the spies who reported
favorably. They took back with them some specimens of the grapes of this
country, and in the children's picture-books they are always represented as
bearing one monstrous bunch swung to a pole between them, a respectable
load for a pack-train. The Sunday-school books exaggerated it a little. The
grapes are most excellent to this day, but the bunches are not as large as
those in the pictures. I was surprised and hurt when I saw them, because
those colossal bunches of grapes were one of my most cherished juvenile
traditions.

     Joshua reported favorably, and the children of Israel journeyed on,
with Moses at the head of the general government, and Joshua in command of
the army of six hundred thousand fighting men. Of women and children and
civilians there was

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -442-

a countless swarm. Of all that mighty host, none but the two faithful spies
ever lived to set their feet in the Promised Land. They and their
descendants wandered forty years in the desert, and then Moses, the gifted
warrior, poet, statesman and philosopher, went up into Pisgah and met his
mysterious fate. Where he was buried no man knows -- for



     "* * * no man dug that sepulchre,
     And no man saw it e'er --
     For the Sons of God upturned the sod
     And laid the dead man there!"

     Then Joshua began his terrible raid, and from Jericho clear to this
Baal-Gad, he swept the land like the Genius of Destruction. He slaughtered
the people, laid waste their soil, and razed their cities to the ground. He
wasted thirty-one kings also. One may call it that, though really it can
hardly be called wasting them, because there were always plenty of kings in
those days, and to spare. At any rate, he destroyed thirty-one kings, and
divided up their realms among his Israelites. He divided up this valley
stretched out here before us, and so it was once Jewish territory. The Jews
have long since disappeared from it, however.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -443-

     Back yonder, an hour's journey from here, we passed through an Arab
village of stone dry-goods boxes (they look like that,) where Noah's tomb
lies under lock and key. [Noah built the ark.] Over these old hills and
valleys the ark that contained all that was left of a vanished world once
floated.

     I make no apology for detailing the above information. It will be news
to some of my readers, at any rate.

     Noah's tomb is built of stone, and is covered with a long stone
building. Bucksheesh let us in. The building had to be long, because the
grave of the honored old navigator is two hundred and ten feet long itself!
It is only about four feet high, though. He must have cast a shadow like a
lightning-rod. The proof that this is the genuine spot where Noah was
buried can only be doubted by uncommonly incredulous people. The evidence
is pretty straight. Shem, the son of Noah, was present at the burial, and
showed the place to his descendants, who transmitted the knowledge to their
descendants, and the lineal descendants of these introduced themselves to
us to-day. It was pleasant to make the acquaintance of members of so
respectable a family. It was a thing to be proud of. It was the next thing
to being acquainted with Noah himself.

     Noah's memorable voyage will always possess a living interest for me,
henceforward.

     If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered
around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe
would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little -- not much, but enough to make
it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a
diving-bell. The Syrians are very poor, and yet they are ground down by a
system of taxation that would drive any other nation frantic. Last year
their taxes were heavy enough, in all conscience -- but this year they have
been increased by the addition of taxes that were forgiven them in times of
famine in former years. On top of this the Government has levied a tax of
one-tenth of the whole proceeds of the land. This is only half the story.
The Pacha of a Pachalic does not trouble himself with appointing
tax-collectors. He figures up what all these taxes ought to

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -444-

amount to in a certain district. Then he farms the collection out. He calls
the rich men together, the highest bidder gets the speculation, pays the
Pacha on the spot, and then sells out to smaller fry, who sell in turn to a
piratical horde of still smaller fry. These latter compel the peasant to
bring his little trifle of grain to the village, at his own cost. It must
be weighed, the various taxes set apart, and the remainder returned to the
producer. But the collector delays this duty day after day, while the
producer's family are perishing for bread; at last the poor wretch, who can
not but understand the game, says, "Take a quarter -- take half -- take
two-thirds if you will, and let me go!" It is a most outrageous state of
things.

     These people are naturally good-hearted and intelligent, and with
education and liberty, would be a happy and contented race. They often
appeal to the stranger to know if the great world will not some day come to
their relief and save them. The Sultan has been lavishing money like water
in England and Paris, but his subjects are suffering for it now.

     This fashion of camping out bewilders me. We have boot-jacks and a
bath-tub, now, and yet all the mysteries the pack-mules carry are not
revealed. What next?



42.1 Excuse the slang -- no other word will describe it.

                                 Chapter 43

                               CHAPTER XLIII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -445-

     WE had a tedious ride of about five hours, in the sun, across the
Valley of Lebanon. It proved to be not quite so much of a garden as it had
seemed from the hill-sides. It was a desert, weed-grown waste, littered
thickly with stones the size of a man's fist. Here and there the natives
had scratched the ground and reared a sickly crop of grain, but for the
most part the valley was given up to a handful of shepherds, whose flocks
were doing what they honestly could to get a living, but the chances were
against them. We saw rude piles of stones standing near the roadside, at
intervals, and recognized the custom of marking boundaries which obtained
in Jacob's time. There were no walls, no fences, no hedges -- nothing to
secure a man's possessions but these random heaps of stones. The Israelites
held them sacred in the old patriarchal times, and these other Arabs, their
lineal descendants, do so likewise. An American, of ordinary intelligence,
would soon widely extend his property, at an outlay of mere manual labor,
performed at night, under so loose a system of fencing as this.

      The plows these people use are simply a sharpened stick, such as
Abraham plowed with, and they still winnow their wheat as he did -- they
pile it on the house-top, and then toss it by shovel-fulls into the air
until the wind has

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -446-

blown all the chaff away. They never invent any thing, never learn any
thing.

     We had a fine race, of a mile, with an Arab perched on a camel. Some
of the horses were fast, and made very good time, but the camel scampered
by them without any very great effort. The yelling and shouting, and
whipping and galloping, of all parties interested, made it an exhilarating,
exciting, and particularly boisterous race.

     At eleven o'clock, our eyes fell upon the walls and columns of
Baalbec, a noble ruin whose history is a sealed book. It has stood there
for thousands of years, the wonder and admiration of travelers; but who
built it, or when it was built, are questions that may never be answered.
One thing is very sure, though. Such grandeur of design, and such grace of
execution, as one sees in the temples of Baalbec, have not

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -447-

been equaled or even approached in any work of men's hands that has been
built within twenty centuries past.

     The great Temple of the Sun, the Temple of Jupiter, and several
smaller temples, are clustered together in the midst of one of these
miserable Syrian villages, and look strangely enough in such plebeian
company. These temples are built upon massive substructions that might
support a world, almost; the materials used are blocks of stone as large as
an omnibus -- very few, if any of them, are smaller than a carpenter's tool
chest -- and these substructions are traversed by tunnels of masonry
through which a train of cars might pass. With such foundations as these,
it is little wonder that Baalbec has lasted so long. The Temple of the Sun
is nearly three hundred feet long and one hundred and sixty feet wide. It
had fifty-four columns around it, but only six are standing now -- the
others lie broken at its base, a confused and picturesque heap. The six
columns are their bases, Corinthian capitals and entablature -- and six
more shapely columns do not exist. The columns and the entablature together
are ninety feet high -- a prodigious altitude for shafts of stone to reach,
truly -- and yet one only thinks of their beauty and symmetry when looking
at them; the pillars

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -448-

look slender and delicate, the entablature, with its elaborate sculpture,
looks like rich stucco-work. But when you have gazed aloft till your eyes
are weary, you glance at the great fragments of pillars among which you are
standing, and find that they are eight feet through; and with them lie
beautiful capitals apparently as large as a small cottage; and also single
slabs of stone, superbly sculptured, that are four or five feet thick, and
would completely cover the floor of any ordinary parlor. You wonder where
these monstrous things came from, and it takes some little time to satisfy
yourself that the airy and graceful fabric that towers above your head is
made up of their mates. It seems too preposterous.

     The Temple of Jupiter is a smaller ruin than the one I have been
speaking of, and yet is immense. It is in a tolerable state of
preservation. One row of nine columns stands almost uninjured. They are
sixty-five feet high and support a sort of porch or roof, which connects
them with the roof of the building. This porch-roof is composed of
tremendous slabs of stone, which are so finely sculptured on the under side
that the work looks like a fresco from below. One or two of these slabs had
fallen, and again I wondered if the gigantic masses of carved stone that
lay about me were no larger than those above my head. Within the temple,
the ornamentation was elaborate and colossal. What a wonder of
architectural beauty and grandeur this edifice must have been when it was
new! And what a noble picture it and its statelier companion, with the
chaos of mighty fragments scattered about them, yet makes in the moonlight!

     I can not conceive how those immense blocks of stone were ever hauled
from the quarries, or how they were ever raised to the dizzy heights they
occupy in the temples. And yet these sculptured blocks are trifles in size
compared with the rough-hewn blocks that form the wide verandah or platform
which surrounds the Great Temple. One stretch of that platform, two hundred
feet long, is composed of blocks of stone as large, and some of them
larger, than a street-car. They surmount a wall about ten or twelve feet
high. I thought those were

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -449-

large rocks, but they sank into insignificance compared with those which
formed another section of the platform. These were three in number, and I
thought that each of them was about as long as three street cars placed end
to end, though of course they are a third wider and a third higher than a
street car. Perhaps two railway freight cars of the largest pattern, placed
end to end, might better represent their size. In combined length these
three stones stretch nearly two hundred feet; they are thirteen feet
square; two of them are sixty-four feet long each, and the third is
sixty-nine. They are built into the massive wall some twenty feet above the
ground. They are there, but how they got there is the question. I have seen
the hull of a steamboat that was smaller than one of those stones. All
these great walls are as exact and shapely as the flimsy things we build of
bricks in these days. A race

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -450-

of gods or of giants must have inhabited Baalbec many a century ago. Men
like the men of our day could hardly rear such temples as these.

     We went to the quarry from whence the stones of Baalbec were taken. It
was about a quarter of a mile off, and down hill. In a great pit lay the
mate of the largest stone in the ruins. It lay there just as the giants of
that old forgotten time had left it when they were called hence -- just as
they had left it, to remain for thousands of years, an eloquent rebuke unto
such as are prone to think slightingly of the men who lived before them.
This enormous block lies there, squared and ready for the builders' hands
-- a solid mass fourteen feet by seventeen, and but a few inches less than
seventy feet long! Two buggies could be driven abreast of each other, on
its surface,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -451-

from one end of it to the other, and leave room enough for a man or two to
walk on either side.

     One might swear that all the John Smiths and George Wilkinsons, and
all the other pitiful nobodies between Kingdom Come and Baalbec would
inscribe their poor little names upon the walls of Baalbec's magnificent
ruins, and would add the town, the county and the State they came from --
and swearing thus, be infallibly correct. It is a pity some great ruin does
not fall in and flatten out some of these reptiles, and scare their kind
out of ever giving their names to fame upon any walls or monuments again,
forever.

     Properly, with the sorry relics we bestrode, it was a three days'
journey to Damascus. It was necessary that we should do it in less than
two. It was necessary because our three pilgrims would not travel on the
Sabbath day. We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day, but
there are times when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is
righteous, becomes a sin, and this was a case in point. We pleaded for the
tired, ill-treated horses, and tried to show that their faithful service
deserved kindness in return, and their hard lot compassion. But when did
ever self-righteousness know the sentiment of pity? What were a few long
hours added to the hardships of some over-taxed brutes when weighed against
the peril of those human souls? It was not the most promising party to
travel with and hope to gain a higher veneration for religion through the
example of its devotees. We said the Saviour who pitied dumb beasts and
taught that the ox must be rescued from the mire even on the Sabbath day,
would not have counseled a forced march like this. We said the "long trip"
was exhausting and therefore dangerous in the blistering heats of summer,
even when the ordinary days' stages were traversed, and if we persisted in
this hard march, some of us might be stricken down with the fevers of the
country in consequence of it. Nothing could move the pilgrims. They must
press on. Men might die, horses might die, but they must enter upon holy
soil next week, with no Sabbath-breaking stain upon them. Thus they were
willing to commit a sin

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -452-

against the spirit of religious law, in order that they might preserve the
letter of it. It was not worth while to tell them "the letter kills." I am
talking now about personal friends; men whom I like; men who are good
citizens; who are honorable, upright, conscientious; but whose idea of the
Saviour's religion seems to me distorted. They lecture our shortcomings
unsparingly, and every night they call us together and read to us chapters
from the Testament that are full of gentleness, of charity, and of tender
mercy; and then all the next day they stick to their saddles clear up to
the summits of these rugged mountains, and clear down again. Apply the
Testament's gentleness, and charity, and tender mercy to a toiling, worn
and weary horse? -- Nonsense -- these are for God's human creatures, not
His dumb ones. What the pilgrims choose to do, respect for their almost
sacred character demands that I should allow to pass -- but I would so like
to catch any other member of the party riding his horse up one of these
exhausting hills once!

     We have given the pilgrims a good many examples that might benefit
them, but it is virtue thrown away. They have

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -453-

never heard a cross word out of our lips toward each other -- but they have
quarreled once or twice. We love to hear them at it, after they have been
lecturing us. The very first thing they did, coming ashore at Beirout, was
to quarrel in the boat. I have said I like them, and I do like them -- but
every time they read me a scorcher of a lecture I mean to talk back in
print.

     Not content with doubling the legitimate stages, they switched of£f
the main road and went away out of the way to visit an absurd fountain
called Figia, because Baalam's ass had drank there once. So we journeyed
on, through the terrible hills and deserts and the roasting sun, and then
far into the night, seeking the honored pool of Baalam's ass, the patron
saint of all pilgrims like us. I find no entry but this in my note-book:



     "Rode to-day, altogether, thirteen hours, through deserts,
     partly, and partly over barren, unsightly hills, and latterly
     through wild, rocky scenery, and camped at about eleven o'clock
     at night on the banks of a limpid stream, near a Syrian village.
     Do not know its name -- do not wish to know it -- want to go to
     bed. Two horses lame (mine and Jack's) and the others worn out.
     Jack and I walked three or four miles, over the hills, and led
     the horses. Fun -- but of a mild type."

     Twelve or thirteen hours in the saddle, even in a Christian land and a
Christian climate, and on a good horse, is a tiresome journey; but in an
oven like Syria, in a ragged spoon of a saddle that slips fore-and-aft, and
"thort-ships," and every way, and on a horse that is tired and lame, and
yet must be whipped and spurred with hardly a moment's cessation all day
long, till the blood comes from his side, and your conscience hurts you
every time you strike if you are half a man, -- it is a journey to be
remembered in bitterness of spirit and execrated with emphasis for a
liberal division of a man's lifetime.

                                 Chapter 44

                               CHAPTER XLIV.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -454-

     THE next day was an outrage upon men and horses both. It was another
thirteen-hour stretch (including an hour's "nooning.") It was over the
barrenest chalk-hills and through the baldest canons that even Syria can
show. The heat quivered in the air ever y where. In the canons we almost
smothered in the baking atmosphere. On high ground, the reflection from the
chalk-hills was blinding. It was cruel to urge the crippled horses, but it
had to be done in order to make Damascus Saturday night. We saw ancient
tombs and temples of fanciful architecture carved out of the solid rock
high up in the face of precipices above our heads, but we had neither time
nor strength to climb up there and examine them. The terse language of my
note-book will answer for the rest of this day's experiences:

     Broke camp at 7 A.M., and made a ghastly trip through the Zeb
     Dana valley and the rough mountains -- horses limping and that
     Arab screech-owl that does most of the singing and carries the
     water-skins, always a thousand miles ahead, of course, and no
     water to drink -- will he never die? Beautiful stream in a chasm,
     lined thick with pomegranate, fig, olive and quince orchards, and
     nooned an hour at the celebrated Baalam's Ass Fountain of Figia,
     second in size in Syria, and the coldest water out of Siberia --
     guide-books do not say Baalam's ass ever drank there -- somebody
     been imposing on the pilgrims, may be. Bathed in it -- Jack and
     I. Only a second -- ice-water. It is the principal source of the
     Abana river -- only one-half mile down to where it joins.
     Beautiful place -- giant trees all around -- so shady and cool,
     if one could keep awake -- vast stream gushes straight out from
     under the mountain in a torrent. Over it is a very ancient ruin,
     with no known history -- supposed to have been for the worship of
     the deity of the fountain or Baalam's ass or somebody. Wretched
     nest of human vermin about the fountain -- rags, dirt, sunken
     cheeks, pallor of sickness, sores, projecting bones, dull, aching
     misery in

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -455-

     their eyes and ravenous hunger speaking from every eloquent fibre
     and muscle from head to foot. How they sprang upon a bone, how
     they crunched the bread we gave them! Such as these to swarm
     about one and watch every bite he takes, with greedy looks, and s
     wallow unconsciously every time he swallows, as if they half
     fancied the precious morsel went down their own throats -- hurry
     up the caravan! -- I never shall enjoy a meal in this distressful
     country. To think of eating three times every day under such
     circumstances for three weeks yet -- it is worse punishment than
     riding all day in the sun. There are sixteen starving babies from
     one to six years old in the party, and their legs are no larger
     than broom handles. Left the fountain at 1 P.M. (the fountain
     took us at least two hours out of our way,) and reached Mahomet's
     lookout perch, over Damascus, in time to get a good long look
     before it was necessary to move on. Tired? Ask of the winds that
     far away with fragments strewed the sea."

     As the glare of day mellowed into twilight, we looked down upon a
picture which is celebrated all over the world. I think I have read about
four hundred times that when Mahomet was a simple camel-driver he reached
this point and looked down upon Damascus for the first time, and then made
a certain renowned remark. He said man could enter only one paradise; he
preferred to go to the one above. So he sat down there and feasted his eyes
upon the earthly paradise of Damascus, and then went away without entering
its gates. They have erected a tower on the hill to mark the spot where he
stood.

     Damascus is beautiful from the mountain. It is beautiful even to
foreigners accustomed to luxuriant vegetation, and I can easily understand
how unspeakably beautiful it must be to eyes that are only used to the
God-forsaken barrenness and desolation of Syria. I should think a Syrian
would go wild with ecstacy when such a picture bursts upon him for the
first time.

     From his high perch, one sees before him and below him, a wall of
dreary mountains, shorn of vegetation, glaring fiercely

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -456-

in the sun; it fences in a level desert of yellow sand, smooth as velvet
and threaded far away with fine lines that stand for roads, and dotted with
creeping mites we know are camel-trains and journeying men; right in the
midst of the desert is spread a billowy expanse of green foliage; and
nestling in its heart sits the great white city, like an island of pearls
and opals gleaming out of a sea of emeralds. This is the picture you see
spread far below you, with distance to soften it, the sun to glorify it ,
strong contrasts to heighten the effects, and over it and about it a
drowsing air of repose to spiritualize it and make it seem rather a
beautiful estray from the mysterious worlds we visit in dreams than a
substantial tenant of our coarse, dull globe. And when you think of the
leagues of blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky, sun-burnt, ugly, dreary,
infamous country you have ridden over to get here, you think it is the most
beautiful, beautiful picture that ever human eyes rested upon in all the
broad universe! If I were to go to Damascus again, I would camp on
Mahomet's hill about a week, and then go away. There is no need to go
inside the walls. The Prophet was wise without knowing it when he decided
not to go down into the paradise of Damascus.

     There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden which
Damascus stands in was the Garden of Eden, and modern writers have gathered
up many chapters of evidence tending to show that it really was the Garden
of Eden, and that the rivers Pharpar and Abana are the "two rivers" that
watered Adam's Paradise. It may be so, but it is not paradise now, and one
would be as happy outside of it as he would be likely to be within. It is
so crooked and cramped and dirty that one can not realize that he is in the
splendid city he saw from the hill-top. The gardens are hidden by high
mud-walls, and the paradise is become a very sink of pollution and
uncomeliness. Damascus has plenty of clear, pure water in it, though, and
this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful and blessed.
Water is scarce in blistered Syria. We run railways by our large cities in
America; in Syria they curve the roads so as to make them run by the meagre
little

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -457-

puddles they call "fountains," and which are not found oftener on a journey
than every four hours. But the "rivers" of Pharpar and Abana of Scripture
(mere creeks,) run through Damascus, and so every house and every garden
have their sparkling fountains and rivulets of water. With her forest of
foliage and her abundance of water, Damascus must be a wonder of wonders to
the Bedouin from the deserts. Damascus is simply an oasis -- that is what
it is. For four thousand years its waters have not gone dry or its
fertility failed. Now we can understand why the city has existed so long.
It could not die. So long as its waters remain to it away out there in the
midst of that howling desert, so long will Damascus live to bless the sight
of the tired and thirsty wayfarer.



     "Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of
     spring, blooming as thine own rose-bud, and fragrant as thine own
     orange flower, O Damascus, pearl of the East!"

     Damascus dates back anterior to the days of Abraham, and is the oldest
city in the world. It was founded by Uz, the grandson of Noah. "The early
history of Damascus is shrouded in the mists of a hoary antiquity." Leave
the matters written of in the first eleven chapters of the Old Testament
out, and no recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in
existence to receive the news of it. Go back as far as you will into the
vague past, there was always a Damascus. In the writings of every century
for more than four thousand years, its name has been mentioned and its
praises sung. To Damascus, years are only moments, decades are only
flitting trifles of time. She measures time, not by days and months and
years, but by the empires she has seen rise, and prosper and crumble to
ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw the foundations of Baalbec, and
Thebes, and Ephesus laid; she saw these villages grow into mighty cities,
and amaze the world with their grandeur -- and she has lived to see them
desolate, deserted, and given over to the owls and the bats. She saw the
Israelitish empire exalted, and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece
rise, and flourish

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -458-

two thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she saw it
overshadow the world with its power; she saw it perish. The few hundreds of
years of Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were, to grave old
Damascus, only a trifling scintillation hardly worth remembering. Damascus
has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she lives. She has
looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will see the tombs of
a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims the name, old
Damascus is by right the Eternal City.

     We reached the city gates just at sundown. They do say that one can
get into any walled city of Syria, after night, for bucksheesh, except
Damascus. But Damascus, with its four thousand years of respectability in
the world, has many old fogy notions. There are no street lamps there, and
the law compels all who go abroad at night to carry lanterns, just as was
the case in old days, when heroes and heroines of the Arabian Nights walked
the streets of Damascus, or flew away toward Bagdad on enchanted carpets.

     It was fairly dark a few minutes after we got within the wall, and we
rode long distances through wonderfully crooked streets, eight to ten feet
wide, and shut in on either aide by the high mud-walls of the gardens. At
last we got to where lanterns could be seen flitting about here and there,
and knew we were in the midst of the curious old city. In a little narrow
street, crowded with our pack-mules and with a swarm of uncouth Arabs, we
alighted, and through a kind of a hole in the wall entered the hotel. We
stood in a great flagged court, with flowers and citron trees about us, and
a huge tank in the centre that was receiving the waters of many pipes. We
crossed the court and entered the rooms prepared to receive four of us. In
a large marble-paved recess between the two rooms was a tank of clear, cool
water, which was kept running over all the time by the streams that were
pouring into it from half a dozen pipes. Nothing, in this scorching,
desolate land could look so refreshing as this pure water flashing in the
lamp-light; nothing could look so beautiful, nothing could sound so
delicious

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -459-

as this mimic rain to ears long unaccustomed to sounds of such a nature.
Our rooms were large, comfortably furnished, and even had their floors
clothed with soft, cheerful-tinted carpets. It was a pleasant thing to see
a carpet again, for if there is any thing drearier than the tomb-like,
stone-paved parlors and bed-rooms of Europe and Asia, I do not know what it
is. They make one think of the grave all the time. A very broad, gaily
caparisoned divan, some twelve or fourteen feet long, extended across one
side of each room, and opposite were single beds with spring mattresses.
There were great looking-glasses and marble-top tables. All this luxury was
as grateful to systems and senses worn out with an exhausting day's travel,
as it was unexpected -- for one can not tell what to expect in a Turkish
city of even a quarter of a million inhabitants.

     I do not know, but I think they used that tank between the rooms to
draw drinking water from; that did not occur to me, however, until I had
dipped my baking head far down into its cool depths. I thought of it then,
and superb as the bath was, I was sorry I had taken it, and was about to go
and explain to the landlord. But a finely curled and scented poodle dog
frisked up and nipped the calf of my leg just then, and before I had time
to think, I had soused him to the bottom of the tank, and when I saw a
servant coming with a pitcher I went off and left the pup trying to climb
out and not succeeding very well. Satisfied revenge was all I needed to
make me perfectly happy, and when I walked in to supper that first night in
Damascus I was in that condition. We lay on those divans a long time, after
supper, smoking narghilies and long-stemmed chibouks, and talking about the
dreadful ride of the day, and I knew then what I had sometimes known before
-- that it is worth while to get tired out, because one so enjoys resting
afterward.

     In the morning we sent for donkeys. It is worthy of note that we had
to send for these things. I said Damascus was an old fossil, and she is.
Any where else we would have been assailed by a clamorous army of
donkey-drivers, guides,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -460-

peddlers and beggars -- but in Damascus they so hate the very sight of a
foreign Christian that they want no intercourse whatever with him; only a
year or two ago, his person was not always safe in Damascus streets. It is
the most fanatical Mohammedan purgatory out of Arabia. Where you see one
green turban of a Hadji elsewhere (the honored sign that my lord has made
the pilgrimage to Mecca,) I think you will see a dozen in Damascus. The
Damascenes are the ugliest, wickedest looking villains we have seen. Al l
the veiled women we had seen yet, nearly, left their eyes exposed, but
numbers of these in Damascus completely hid the face under a close-drawn
black veil that made the woman look like a mummy. If ever we caught an eye
exposed it was quickly hidden from our contaminating Christian vision; the
beggars actually passed us by without demanding bucksheesh; the merchants
in the bazaars did not hold up their goods and cry out eagerly, "Hey,
John!" or " Look this, Howajji!" On the contrary, they only scowled at us
and said never a word.

     The narrow streets swarmed like a hive with men and women in strange
Oriental costumes, and our small donkeys knocked them right and left as we
plowed through them, urged on by the merciless donkey-boys. These
persecutors run after the animals, shouting and goading them for hours
together; they keep the donkey in a gallop always, yet never get tired
themselves or

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -461-

fall behind. The donkeys fell down and spilt us over their heads
occasionally, but there was nothing for it but to mount and hurry on again.
We were banged against sharp corners, loaded porters, camels, and citizens
generally; and we were so taken up with looking out for collisions and
casualties that we had no chance to look about us at all. We rode half
through the city and through the famous "street which is called Straight"
without seeing any thing, hardly. Our bones were nearly knocked out of
joint, we were wild with excitement, and our sides ached with the jolting
we had suffered. I do not like riding in the Damascus street-cars.

     We were on our way to the reputed houses of Judas and Ananias. About
eighteen or nineteen hundred years ago, Saul, a native of Tarsus, was
particularly bitter against the new sect called Christians, and he left
Jerusalem and started across the country on a furious crusade against them.
He went forth "breathing threatenings and slaughter against the disciples
of the Lord."

     "And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there
     shined round about him a light from heaven:
     "And he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him,
     'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?'
     "And when he knew that it was Jesus that spoke to him he
     trembled, and was astonished, and said, 'Lord, what wilt thou
     have me to do?'"

     He was told to arise and go into the ancient city and one would tell
him what to do. In the meantime his soldiers stood speechless and
awe-stricken, for they heard the mysterious voice but saw no man. Saul rose
up and found that that fierce supernatural light had destroyed his sight,
and he was blind, so "they led him by the hand and brought him to
Damascus." He was converted.

     Paul lay three days, blind, in the house of Judas, and during that
time he neither ate nor drank.

     There came a voice to a citizen of Damascus, named Ananias, saying,
"Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire at the
house of Judas, for one called Saul, of Tarsus; for behold, he prayeth."

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -462-

     Ananias did not wish to go at first, for he had heard of Saul before,
and he had his doubts about that style of a "chosen vessel" to preach the
gospel of peace. However, in obedience to orders, he went into the "street
called Straight" (how he found his way into it, and after he did, how he
ever found his way out of it again, are mysteries only to be accounted for
by the fact that he was acting under Divine inspiration.) He found Paul and
restored him, and ordained him a preacher; and from this old house we had
hunted up in the street which is miscalled Straight, he had started out on
that bold missionary career which he prosecuted till his death. It was not
the house of the disciple who sold the Master for thirty pieces of silver.
I make this explanation in justice to Judas, who was a far different sort
of man from the person just referred to. A very different style of man, and
lived in a very good house. It is a pity we do not know more about him.

     I have given, in the above paragraphs, some more information for
people who will not read Bible history until they are defrauded into it by
some such method as this. I hope that no friend of progress and education
will obstruct or interfere with my peculiar mission.

     The street called Straight is straighter than a corkscrew, but not as
straight as a rainbow. St. Luke is careful not to commit himself; he does
not say it is the street which is straight, but the "street which is called
Straight." It is a fine piece of irony; it is the only facetious remark in
the Bible, I believe. We traversed the street called Straight a good way,
and then turned off and called at the reputed house of Ananias. There is
small question that a part of the original house is there still; it is an
old room twelve or fifteen feet under ground, and its masonry is evidently
ancient. If Ananias did not live there in St. Paul's time, somebody else
did, which is just as well. I took a drink out of Ananias' well, and
singularly enough, the water was just as fresh as if the well had been dug
yesterday.

     We went out toward the north end of the city to see the place where
the disciples let Paul down over the Damascus wall at dead of night -- for
he preached Christ so fearlessly

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -463-

in Damascus that the people sought to kill him, just as they would to-day
for the same offense, and he had to escape and flee to Jerusalem.

     Then we called at the tomb of Mahomet's children and at a tomb which
purported to be that of St. George who killed the dragon, and so on out to
the hollow place under a rock where Paul hid during his flight till his
pursuers gave him up; and to the mausoleum of the five thousand Christians
who were massacred in Damascus in 1861 by the Turks. They say those narrow
streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and children were
butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all through the
Christian quarter; they say, further, that the stench was dreadful. All the
Christians who could get away fled from the city, and the Mohammedans would
not defile their hands by burying the "infidel dogs." The thirst for blood
extended to the high lands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time
twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred and their possessions
laid waste. How they hate a Christian in Damascus! -- and pretty much all
over Turkeydom as well. And how they will pay for it w hen Russia turns her
guns upon them again!

     It is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for
interposing to save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so
richly deserved for a thousand years. It hurts my vanity to see these
pagans refuse to eat of food that has been cooked for us; or to eat from a
dish we have eaten from; or to drink from a goatskin which we have polluted
with our Christian lips, except by filtering the water through a rag which
they put over the mouth of it or through a sponge! I never disliked a
Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is ready
to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find it good
breeding or good judgment to interfere.

     In Damascus they think there are no such rivers in all the world as
their little Abana and Pharpar. The Damascenes have always thought that
way. In 2 Kings, chapter v., Naaman boasts extravagantly about them. That
was three thousand

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -464-

years ago. He says: "Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of Damascus, better
than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean?" But
some of my readers have forgotten who Naaman was, long ago. Naaman was the
commander of the Syrian armies. He was the favorite of the king and lived
in great state. "He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper."
Strangely enough, the house they point out to you now as his, has been
turned into a leper hospital, and the inmates expose their horrid
deformities and hold up their hands and beg for bucksheesh when a stranger
enters.

     One can not appreciate the horror of this disease until he looks upon
it in all its ghastliness, in Naaman's ancient dwelling in Damascus. Bones
all twisted out of shape, great knots protruding from face and body, joints
decaying and dropping away -- horrible!

                                 Chapter 45

                                CHAPTER XLV.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -465-

     THE last twenty-four hours we staid in Damascus I lay prostrate with a
violent attack of cholera, or cholera morbus, and therefore had a good
chance and a good excuse to lie there on that wide divan and take an honest
rest. I had nothing to do but listen to the pattering of the fountains and
take medicine and throw it up again. It was dangerous recreation, but it
was pleasanter than traveling in Syria. I had plenty of snow from Mount
Hermon, and as it would not stay on my stomach, there was nothing to
interfere with my eating it -- there was always room for more. I enjoyed
myself very well. Syrian travel has its interesting features, like travel
in any other part of the world, and yet to break your leg or have the
cholera adds a welcome variety to it.

     We left Damascus at noon and rode across the plain a couple of hours,
and then the party stopped a while in the shade of some fig-trees to give
me a chance to rest. It was the hottest day we had seen yet -- the
sun-flames shot down like the shafts of fire that stream out before a
blow-pipe -- the rays seemed to fall in a steady deluge on the head and
pass downward like rain from a roof. I imagined I could distinguish between
the floods of rays -- I thought I could tell when each flood struck my
head, when it reached my shoulders, and when the next one came. It was
terrible. All the desert glared so fiercely that my eyes were swimming in
tears all the time. The boys had white umbrellas heavily lined with dark
green. They were a priceless blessing. I thanked fortune that I had one,
too, notwithstanding it was packed up with

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -466-

the baggage and was ten miles ahead. It is madness to travel in Syria
without an umbrella. They told me in Beirout (these people who always gorge
you with advice) that it was madness to travel in Syria without an
umbrella. It was on this account that I got one.

     But, honestly, I think an umbrella is a nuisance any where when its
business is to keep the sun off. No Arab wears a brim to his fez, or uses
an umbrella, or any thing to shade his eyes or his face, and he always
looks comfortable and proper in the sun. But of all the ridiculous sights I
ever have seen, our party of eight is the most so -- they do cut such an
outlandish figure. They travel single file; they all wear the endless white
rag of Constantinople wrapped round and round their hats and dangling down
their backs; they all wear thick green spectacles, with side-glasses to
them; they all hold white umbrellas, lined with green, over their heads;
without exception their stirrups are too short -- they are the very worst
gang of horsemen on earth, their animals to a horse trot fearfully hard --
and when they get strung out one after the other; glaring straight ahead
and breathless; bouncing high and out of turn, all along the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -467-

line; knees well up and stiff, elbows flapping like a rooster's that is
going to crow, and the long file of umbrellas popping convulsively up and
down -- when one sees this outrageous picture exposed to the light of day,
he is amazed that the gods don't get out their thunderbolts and destroy
them off the face of the earth! I do -- I wonder at it. I wouldn't let any
such caravan go through a country of mine.

     And when the sun drops below the horizon and the boys close their
umbrellas and put them under their arms, it is only a variation of the
picture, not a modification of its absurdity.

     But may be you can not see the wild extravagance of my panorama. You
could if you were here. Here, you feel all the time just as if you were
living about the year 1200 before Christ -- or back to the patriarchs -- or
forward to the New Era. The scenery of the Bible is about you -- the
customs of the patriarchs are around you -- the same people, in the same
flowing robes, and in sandals, cross your path -- the same long trains of
stately camels go and come -- the same impressive religious solemnity and
silence rest upon the desert and the mountains that were upon them in the
remote ages of antiquity, and behold, intruding upon a scene like this,
comes this fantastic mob of green-spectacled Yanks, with their flapping
elbows and bobbing umbrellas! It is Daniel in the lion's den with a green
cotton umbrella under his arm, all over again.

     My umbrella is with the baggage, and so are my green spectacles -- and
there they shall stay. I will not use them. I will show some respect for
the eternal fitness of things. It will be bad enough to get sun-struck,
without looking ridiculous into the bargain. If I fall, let me fall bearing
about me the semblance of a Christina, at least.

     Three or four hours out from Damascus we passed the spot where Saul
was so abruptly converted, and from this place we looked back over the
scorching desert, and had our last glimpse of beautiful Damascus, decked in
its robes of shining green. After nightfall we reached our tents, just
outside of the nasty Arab village of Jonesborough. Of course the real name
of the place is El something or other, but the boys still refuse to

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -468-

recognize the Arab names or try to pronounce them. When I say that that
village is of the usual style, I mean to insinuate that all Syrian villages
within fifty miles of Damascus are alike -- so much alike that it would
require more than human intelligence to tell wherein one differed from
another. A Syrian village is a hive of huts one story high (the height of a
man,) and as square as a dry-goods box; it is mud-plastered all over, flat
roof and all, and generally whitewashed after a fashion. The same roof
often extends over half the town, covering many of the streets, which are
generally about a yard wide. When you ride through one of these villages at
noon-day, you first meet a melancholy dog, that looks up at you and
silently begs that you won't run over him, but he does not offer to get out
of the way; next you meet a young boy without any clothes on, and he holds
out his hand and says "Bucksheesh!" -- he don't really expect a cent, but
then he learned to say that before he learned to say mother, and now he can
not break himself of it; next you meet a woman with a black veil drawn
closely over her face, and her bust exposed; finally, you come to several
sore-eyed children and children in all stages of mutilation and decay; and
sitting humbly in the dust, and all fringed with filthy rags, is a poor
devil whose arms and legs are gnarled and twisted like grape-vines. These
are all the people you are likely to see. The balance of the population are
asleep within doors, or abroad tending goats in the plains and on the
hill-sides. The village is built on some consumptive little water-course,
and about it is a little fresh-looking vegetation. Beyond this charmed
circle, for miles on every side, stretches a weary desert of sand and
gravel, which produces a gray bunchy shrub like sage-brush. A Syrian
village is the sorriest sight in the world, and its surroundings are
eminently in keeping with it.

     I would not have gone into this dissertation upon Syrian villages but
for the fact that Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter of Scriptural notoriety, is
buried in Jonesborough, and I wished the public to know about how he is
located. Like Homer, he is said to be buried in many other places, but this
is the only true and genuine place his ashes inhabit.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -469-

     When the original tribes were dispersed, more than four thousand years
ago, Nimrod and a large party traveled three or four hundred miles, and
settled where the great city of Babylon afterwards stood. Nimrod built that
city. He also began to build the famous Tower of Babel, but circumstances
over which he had no control put it out of his power to finish it. He ran
it up eight stories high, however, and two of them still stand, at this day
-- a colossal mass of brickwork, rent down the centre by earthquakes, and
seared and vitrified by the lightnings of an angry God. But the vast ruin
will still stand for ages, to shame the puny labors of these modern
generations of men. Its huge compartments are tenanted by owls and lions,
and old Nimrod lies neglected in this wretched village, far from the scene
of his grand enterprise.

     We left Jonesborough very early in the morning, and rode forever and
forever and forever, it seemed to me, over parched deserts and rocky hills,
hungry, and with no water to drink. We had drained the goat-skins dry in a
little while. At noon we halted before the wretched Arab town of El Yuba
Dam, perched on the side of a mountain, but the dragoman said if we applied
there for water we would be attacked by the whole tribe, for they did not
love Christians. We had to journey on. Two hours later we reached the foot
of a tall isolated mountain, which is crowned by the crumbling castle of
Banias, the stateliest ruin of that kind on earth, no doubt. It is a
thousand feet long and two hundred wide, all of the most symmetrical, and
at the same time the most ponderous masonry. The massive towers and
bastions are more than thirty feet high, and have been sixty. From the
mountain's peak its broken turrets rise above the groves of ancient oaks
and olives, and look wonderfully picturesque. It is of such high antiquity
that no man knows who built it or when it was built. It is utterly
inaccessible, except in one place, where a bridle-path winds upward among
the solid rocks to the old portcullis. The horses' hoofs have bored holes
in these rocks to the depth of six inches during the hundreds and hundreds
of years that the castle was garrisoned. We wandered for three hours

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -470-

among the chambers and crypts and dungeons of the fortress, and trod where
the mailed heels of many a knightly Crusader had rang, and where Phenician
heroes had walked ages before them.

     We wondered how such a solid mass of masonry could be affected even by
an earthquake, and could not understand what agency had made Banias a ruin;
but we found the destroyer, after a while, and then our wonder was
increased tenfold. Seeds had fallen in crevices in the vast walls; the
seeds had sprouted; the tender, insignificant sprouts had hardened; they
grew larger and larger, and by a steady, imperceptible pressure forced the
great stones apart, and now are bringing sure destruction upon a giant work
that has even mocked the earthquakes to scorn! Gnarled and twisted trees
spring from the old walls every where, and beautify and overshadow the gray
battlements with a wild luxuriance of foliage.

     From these old towers we looked down upon a broad, far-reaching green
plain, glittering with the pools and rivulets which are the sources of the
sacred river Jordan. It was a grateful vision, after so much desert.

     And as the evening drew near, we clambered down the mountain, through
groves of the Biblical oaks of Bashan, (for we were just stepping over the
border and entering the long-sought Holy Land,) and at its extreme foot,
toward the wide valley, we entered this little execrable village of Banias
and camped in a great grove of olive trees near a torrent of sparkling
water whose banks are arrayed in fig-trees, pomegranates and oleanders in
full leaf. Barring the proximity of the village, it is a sort of paradise.

     The very first thing one feels like doing when he gets into camp, all
burning up and dusty, is to hunt up a bath. We followed the stream up to
where it gushes out of the mountain side, three hundred yards from the
tents, and took a bath that was so icy that if I did not know this was the
main source of the sacred river, I would expect harm to come of it. It was
bathing at noonday in the chilly source of the Abana, "River of Damascus,"
that gave me the cholera, so Dr. B. said. However, it generally does give
me the cholera to take a bath.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -471-

     The incorrigible pilgrims have come in with their pockets full of
specimens broken from the ruins. I wish this vandalism could be stopped.
They broke off fragments from Noah's tomb; from the exquisite sculptures of
the temples of Baalbec; from the houses of Judas and Ananias, in Damascus;
from the tomb of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter in Jonesborough; from the worn
Greek and Roman inscriptions set in the hoary walls of the Castle of
Banias; and now they have been hacking and chipping these old arches here
that Jesus looked upon in the flesh. Heaven protect the Sepulchre when this
tribe invades Jerusalem!

     The ruins here are not very interesting. There are the massive walls
of a great square building that was once the citadel; there are many
ponderous old arches that are so smothered with debris that they barely
project above the ground; there are heavy-walled sewers through which the
crystal brook of which Jordan is born still runs; in the hill-side are the
substructions of a costly marble temple that Herod the Great built here --
patches of its handsome mosaic floors still remain; there is a quaint old
stone bridge that was here before Herod's time, may be; scattered every
where, in the paths and in the woods, are Corinthian capitals, broken
porphyry pillars, and little fragments of sculpture; and up yonder in the
precipice where the fountain gushes out, are well-worn Greek inscriptions
over niches in the rock where in ancient times the Greeks, and after them
the Romans, worshipped the sylvan god Pan. But trees and bushes grow above
many of these ruins now; the miserable huts of a little crew of filthy
Arabs are perched upon the broken masonry of antiquity, the whole place has
a sleepy, stupid, rural look about it, and one can hardly bring himself to
believe that a busy, substantially built city once existed here, even two
thousand years ago. The place was nevertheless the scene of an event whose
effects have added page after page and volume after volume to the world's
history. For in this place Christ stood when he said to Peter:

     "Thou art Peter; and upon this rock will I build my church, and
     the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give
     unto thee the keys of the Kingdom

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -472-

     of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound
     in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be
     loosed in heaven."

     On those little sentences have been built up the mighty edifice of the
Church of Rome; in them lie the authority for the imperial power of the
Popes over temporal affairs, and their godlike power to curse a soul or
wash it white from sin. To sustain the position of "the only true Church,"
which Rome claims was thus conferred upon her, she has fought and labored
and struggled for many a century, and will continue to keep herself busy in
the same work to the end of time. The memorable words I have quoted give to
this ruined city about all the interest it possesses to people of the
present day.

     It seems curious enough to us to be standing on ground that was once
actually pressed by the feet of the Saviour. The situation is suggestive of
a reality and a tangibility that seem at variance with the vagueness and
mystery and ghostliness that one naturally attaches to the character of a
god. I can not comprehend yet that I am sitting where a god has stood, and
looking upon the brook and the mountains which that god looked upon, and am
surrounded by dusky men and women whose ancestors saw him, and even talked
with him, face to face, and carelessly, just as they would have done with
any other stranger. I can not comprehend this; the gods of my understanding
have been always hidden in clouds and very far away.

     This morning, during breakfast, the usual assemblage of squalid
humanity sat patiently without the charmed circle of the camp and waited
for such crumbs as pity might bestow upon their misery. There were old and
young, brown-skinned and yellow. Some of the men were tall and stalwart,
(for one hardly sees any where such splendid-looking men as here in the
East,) but all the women and children looked worn and sad, and distressed
with hunger. They reminded me much of Indians, did these people. They had
but little clothing, but such as they had was fanciful in character and
fantastic in its arrangement. Any little absurd gewgaw or gimcrack they had
they disposed in such a way as to make it attract attention

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -473-

most readily. They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our
every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly
Indian, and which makes a white man so nervous and uncomfortable and savage
that he wants to exterminate the whole tribe.

     These people about us had other peculiarities, which I have noticed in
the noble red man, too: they were infested with vermin, and the dirt had
caked on them till it amounted to bark.

     The little children were in a pitiable condition -- they all had sore
eyes, and were otherwise afflicted in various ways. They say that hardly a
native child in all the East is free from sore eyes, and that thousands of
them go blind of one eye or both every year. I think this must be so, for I
see plenty of blind people every day, and I do not remember seeing any
children that hadn't sore eyes. And, would you suppose that an American
mother could sit for an hour, with her child in her arms, and let a hundred
flies roost upon its eyes all that time undisturbed? I see that every day.
It makes my flesh creep. Yesterday we met a woman riding on a little
jackass, and she had a little child in her arms -- honestly, I thought the
child had goggles on as we approached, and I wondered how its mother could
afford so much style. But when we drew near, we saw that the goggles were
nothing but a camp meeting of flies assembled around each of the child's
eyes, and at the same time there was a detachment prospecting its nose. The
flies were happy, the child was contented, and so the mother did not
interfere.

     As soon as the tribe found out that we had a doctor in our party, they
began to flock in from all quarters. Dr. B., in the charity of his nature,
had taken a child from a woman who sat near by, and put some sort of a wash
upon its diseased eyes. That woman went off and started the whole nation,
and it was a sight to see them swarm! The lame, the halt, the blind, the
leprous -- all the distempers that are bred of indolence, dirt, and
iniquity -- were represented in the Congress in ten minutes, and still they
came! Every woman that had a

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -474-

sick baby brought it along, and every woman that hadn't, borrowed one. What
reverent and what worshiping looks they bent upon that dread, mysterious
power, the Doctor! They watched him take his phials out; they watched him
measure the particles of white powder; they watched him add drops of one
precious liquid, and drops of another; they lost not the slightest
movement; their eyes were riveted upon him with a fascination that nothing
could distract. I believe they thought he was gifted like a god. When each
individual got his portion of medicine, his eyes were radiant with joy --
notwithstanding by nature they are a thankless and impassive race -- and
upon his face was written the unquestioning faith that nothing on earth
could prevent the patient from getting well now.

     Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious,
disease-tortured creatures: He healed the sick. They flocked to our poor
human doctor this morning when the fame of what he had done to the sick
child went abroad in the land, and they worshiped him with their eyes while
they did not know

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -475-

as yet whether there was virtue in his simples or not. The ancestors of
these -- people precisely like them in color, dress, manners, customs,
simplicity -- flocked in vast multitudes after Christ, and when they saw
Him make the afflicted whole with a word, it is no wonder they worshiped
Him. No wonder His deeds were the talk of the nation. No wonder the
multitude that followed Him was so great that at one time -- thirty miles
from here -- they had to let a sick man down through the roof because no
approach could be made to the door; no wonder His audiences were so great
at Galilee that He had to preach from a ship removed a little distance from
the shore; no wonder that even in the desert places about Bethsaida, five
thousand invaded His solitude, and He had to feed them by a miracle or else
see them suffer for their confiding faith and devotion; no wonder when
there was a great commotion in a city in those days, one neighbor explained
it to another in words to this effect: "They say that Jesus of Nazareth is
come!"

     Well, as I was saying, the doctor distributed medicine as long as he
had any to distribute, and his reputation is mighty in Galilee this day.
Among his patients was the child of the Shiek's daughter -- for even this
poor, ragged handful of sores and sin has its royal Shiek -- a poor old
mummy that looked as if he would be more at home in a poor-house than in
the Chief Magistracy of this tribe of hopeless, shirtless savages. The
princess -- I mean the Shiek's daughter -- was only thirteen or fourteen
years old, and had a very sweet face and a pretty one. She was the only
Syrian female we have seen yet who was not so sinfully ugly that she
couldn't smile after ten o'clock Saturday night without breaking the
Sabbath. Her child was a hard specimen, though -- there wasn't enough of it
to make a pie, and the poor little thing looked so pleadingly up at all who
came near it (as if it had an idea that now was its chance or never,) that
we were filled with compassion which was genuine and not put on.

     But this last new horse I have got is trying to break his neck over
the tent-ropes, and I shall have to go out and anchor

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -476-

him. Jericho and I have parted company. The new horse is not much to boast
of, I think. One of his hind legs bends the wrong way, and the other one is
as straight and stiff as a tent-pole. Most of his teeth are gone, and he is
as blind as bat. His nose has been broken at some time or other, and is
arched like a culvert now. His under lip hangs down like a camel's, and his
ears are chopped off close to his head. I had some trouble at first to find
a name for him, but I finally concluded to call him Baalbec, because he is
such a magnificent ruin. I can not keep from talking about my horses,
because I have a very long and tedious journey before me, and they
naturally occupy my thoughts about as much as matters of apparently much
greater importance.

     We satisfied our pilgrims by making those hard rides from Baalbec to
Damascus, but Dan's horse and Jack's were so crippled we had to leave them
behind and get fresh animals for them. The dragoman says Jack's horse died.
I swapped horses with Mohammed, the kingly-looking Egyptian who is our
Ferguson's lieutenant. By Ferguson I mean our dragoman Abraham, of course.
I did not take this horse on account of his personal appearance, but
because I have not seen his back. I do not wish to see it. I have seen the
backs of all the other horses, and found most of them covered with dreadful
saddle-boils which I know have not been washed or doctored for years. The
idea of riding all day long over such ghastly inquisitions

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -477-

of torture is sickening. My horse must be like the others, but I have at
least the consolation of not knowing it to be so.

     I hope that in future I may be spared any more sentimental praises of
the Arab's idolatry of his horse. In boyhood I longed to be an Arab of the
desert and have a beautiful mare, and call her Selim or Benjamin or
Mohammed, and feed her with my own hands, and let her come into the tent,
and teach her to caress me and look fondly upon me with her great tender
eyes; and I wished that a stranger might come at such a time and offer me a
hundred thousand dollars for her, so that I could do like the other Arabs
-- hesitate, yearn for the money, but overcome by my love for my mare, at
last say, "Part with thee, my beautiful one! Never with my life! Away,
tempter, I scorn thy gold!" and then bound into the saddle and speed over
the desert like the wind!

     But I recall those aspirations. If these Arabs be like the other
Arabs, their love for their beautiful mares is a fraud. These of my
acquaintance have no love for their horses, no sentiment of pity for them,
and no knowledge of how to treat them or care for them. The Syrian
saddle-blanket is a quilted mattress two or three inches thick. It is never
removed from the horse, day or night. It gets full of dirt and hair, and
becomes soaked with sweat. It is bound to breed sores. These pirates never
think of washing a horse's back. They do not shelter the horses in the
tents, either -- they must stay out and take the weather as it comes. Look
at poor cropped and dilapidated "Baalbec," and weep for the sentiment that
has been wasted upon the Selims of romance!

                                 Chapter 46

                               CHAPTER XLVI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -478-

     ABOUT an hour's ride over a rough, rocky road, half flooded with
water, and through a forest of oaks of Bashan, brought us to Dan.

     From a little mound here in the plain issues a broad stream of limpid
water and forms a large shallow pool, and then rushes furiously onward,
augmented in volume. This puddle is an important source of the Jordan. Its
banks, and those of the brook are respectably adorned with blooming
oleanders, but the unutterable beauty of the spot will not throw a
well-balanced man into convulsions, as the Syrian books of travel would
lead one to suppose.

      From the spot I am speaking of, a cannon-ball would carry beyond the
confines of Holy Land and light upon profane ground three miles away. We
were only one little hour's travel within the borders of Holy Land -- we
had hardly begun to appreciate yet that we were standing upon any different
sort of earth than that we had always been used to, and see how the
historic names began already to cluster! Dan -- Bashan -- Lake Huleh -- the
Sources of Jordan -- the Sea of Galilee. They were all in sight but the
last, and it was not far away. The little township of Bashan was once the
kingdom so famous in Scripture for its bulls and its oaks. Lake Huleh is
the Biblical "Waters of Merom." Dan was the northern and Beersheba the
southern limit of Palestine -- hence the expression "from Dan to
Beersheba." It is equivalent to our phrases "from Maine to Texas" -- "from
Baltimore to San Francisco." Our expression and that of the Israelites both

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -479-

mean the same -- great distance. With their slow camels and asses, it was
about a seven days' journey from Dan to Beersheba -- -say a hundred and
fifty or sixty miles -- it was the entire length of their country, and was
not to be undertaken without great preparation and much ceremony. When the
Prodigal traveled to " a far country," it is not likely that he went more
than eighty or ninety miles. Palestine is only from forty to sixty miles
wide. The State of Missouri could be split into three Palestines, and there
would then be enough material left for part of another -- possibly a whole
one. From Baltimore to San Francisco is several thousand miles, but it will
be only a seven days' journey in the cars when I am two or three years
older.46.1 If I live I shall necessarily have to go across the continent
every now and then in those cars, but one journey from Dan to Beersheba
will be sufficient, no doubt. It must be the most trying of the two.
Therefore, if we chance to discover that from Dan to Beersheba seemed a
mighty stretch of country to the Israelites, let us not be airy with them,
but reflect that it was and is a mighty stretch when one can not traverse
it by rail.

      The small mound I have mentioned a while ago was once occupied by the
Phenician city of Laish. A party of filibusters from Zorah and Eschol
captured the place, and lived there

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -480-

     in a free and easy way, worshiping gods of their own manufacture and
stealing idols from their neighbors whenever they wore their own out.
Jeroboam set up a golden calf here to fascinate his people and keep them
from making dangerous trips to Jerusalem to worship, which might result in
a return to their rightful allegiance. With all respect for those ancient
Israelites, I can not overlook the fact that they were not always virtuous
enough to withstand the seductions of a golden calf. Human nature has not
changed much since then.

     Some forty centuries ago the city of Sodom was pillaged by the Arab
princes of Mesopotamia, and among other prisoners they seized upon the
patriarch Lot and brought him here on their way to their own possessions.
They brought him to Dan, and father Abraham, who was pursuing them, crept
softly in at dead of night, among the whispering oleanders and under the
shadows of the stately oaks, and fell upon the slumbering victors and
startled them from their dreams with the clash of steel. He recaptured Lot
and all the other plunder.

      We moved on. We were now in a green valley, five or six miles wide
and fifteen long. The streams which are called the sources of the Jordan
flow through it to Lake Huleh, a shallow pond three miles in diameter, and
from the southern extremity of the Lake the concentrated Jordan flows out.
The Lake is surrounded by a broad marsh, grown with reeds. Between the
marsh and the mountains which wall the valley is a respectable strip of
fertile land; at the end of the valley, toward Dan , as much as half the
land is solid and fertile, and watered by Jordan's sources. There is enough
of it to make a farm. It almost warrants the enthusiasm of the spies of
that rabble of adventurers who captured Dan. They said: "We have seen the
land, and behold it is very good. * * * A place where there is no want of
any thing that is in the earth."

     Their enthusiasm was at least warranted by the fact that they had
never seen a country as good as this. There was

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -481-

enough of it for the ample support of their six hundred men and their
families, too.

     When we got fairly down on the level part of the Danite farm, we came
to places where we could actually run our horses. It was a notable
circumstance.

      We had been painfully clambering over interminable hills and rocks
for days together, and when we suddenly came upon this astonishing piece of
rockless plain, every man drove the spurs into his horse and sped away with
a velocity he could surely enjoy to the utmost, but could never hope to
comprehend in Syria.

      Here were evidences of cultivation -- a rare sight in this country --
an acre or two of rich soil studded with last season's dead corn-stalks of
the thickness of your thumb and very wide apart. But in such a land it was
a thrilling spectacle. Close to it was a stream, and on its banks a great
herd of curious-looking Syrian goats and sheep were gratefully eating
gravel. I do not state this as a petrified fact -- I only suppose they were
eating gravel, because there did not appear to be any thing else for them
to eat. The shepherds that tended them were the very pictures of Joseph and
his brethren I have no doubt in the world. They were tall, muscular, and
very dark-skinned Bedouins, with inky black beards. They had firm lips,
unquailing eyes, and a kingly stateliness of bearing. They wore the
parti-colored half bonnet, half hood, with fringed ends falling upon their
shoulders, and the full, flowing robe barred with broad black stripes --
the dress one sees in all pictures of the swarthy sons of the desert. These
chaps would sell their younger brothers if they had a chance, I think. They
have the manners, the customs, the dress, the occupation and the loose
principles of the ancient stock. [They attacked our camp last night, and I
bear them no good will.] They had with them the pigmy jackasses one sees
all over Syria and remembers in all pictures of the "Flight into Egypt,"
where Mary and the Young Child are riding and Joseph is walking alongside,
towering high above the little donkey's shoulders.

     But really, here the man rides and carries the child, as a

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -482-

general thing, and the woman walks. The customs have not changed since
Joseph's time. We would not have in our houses a picture representing
Joseph riding and Mary walking; we would see profanation in it, but a
Syrian Christian would not. I know that hereafter the picture I first spoke
of will look odd to me.

     We could not stop to rest two or three hours out from our camp, of
course, albeit the brook was beside us. So we went on an hour longer. We
saw water, then, but nowhere in all the waste around was there a foot of
shade, and we were scorching to death. "Like unto the shadow of a great
rock in a weary land." Nothing in the Bible is more beautiful than that,
and surely there is no place we have wandered to that is able to give it
such touching expression as this blistering, naked, treeless land.

      Here you do not stop just when you please, but when you can. We found
water, but no shade. We traveled on and found a tree at last, but no water.
We rested and lunched, and came on to this place, Ain Mellahah (the boys
call it Baldwinsville.) It was a very short day's run, but the dragoman
does not want to go further, and has invented a plausible lie about the
country beyond this being infested by ferocious Arabs, who would make
sleeping in their midst a dangerous pastime. Well, they ought to be
dangerous. They carry a rusty old weather-beaten flint-lock gun, with a
barrel that is longer than themselves; it has no sights on it, it will not
carry farther than a brickbat, and is not half so certain. And the great
sash they wear in many a fold around their waists has two or three absurd
old horse-pistols in it that are rusty

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -483-

from eternal disuse -- weapons that would hang fire just about long enough
for you to walk out of range, and then burst and blow the Arab's head off.
Exceedingly dangerous these sons of the desert are.

      It used to make my blood run cold to read Wm. C. Grimes' hairbreadth
escapes from Bedouins, but I think I could read them now without a tremor.
He never said he was attacked by Bedouins, I believe, or was ever treated
uncivilly, but then in about every other chapter he discovered them
approaching, any how, and he had a blood-curdling fashion of working up the
peril; and of wondering how his relations far away would feel could they
see their poor wandering boy, with his weary feet and his dim eyes, in such
fearful danger; and of thinking for the last time of the old homestead, and
the dear old church, and the cow, and those things; and of finally
straightening his form to its utmost height in the saddle, drawing his
trusty revolver, and then dashing the spurs into "Mohammed" and sweeping
down upon the ferocious enemy determined to sell his life as dearly as
possible. True the Bedouins never did any thing to him when he arrived, and
never had any intention of doing any thing to him in the first place, and
wondered

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -484-

what in the mischief he was making all that to-do about; but still I could
not divest myself of the idea, somehow, that a frightful peril had been
escaped through that man's dare-devil bravery, and so I never could read
about Wm. C. Grimes' Bedouins and sleep comfortably afterward. But I
believe the Bedouins to be a fraud, now. I have seen the monster, and I can
outrun him. I shall never be afraid of his daring to stand behind his own
gun and discharge it.

     About fifteen hundred years before Christ, this camp-ground of ours by
the Waters of Merom was the scene of one of Joshua's exterminating battles.
Jabin, King of Hazor, (up yonder above Dan,) called all the sheiks about
him together, with their hosts, to make ready for Israel's terrible General
who was approaching.

     "And when all these Kings were met together, they came and
     pitched together by the Waters of Merom, to fight against Israel.

     "And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much
     people, even as the sand that is upon the sea-shore for
     multitude," etc.

      But Joshua fell upon them and utterly destroyed them, root and
branch. That was his usual policy in war. He never left any chance for
newspaper controversies about who won the battle. He made this valley, so
quiet now, a reeking slaughter-pen.

     Somewhere in this part of the country -- I do not know exactly where
-- Israel fought another bloody battle a hundred years later. Deborah, the
prophetess, told Barak to take ten thousand men and sally forth against
another King Jabin who had been doing something. Barak came down from Mount
Tabor, twenty or twenty-five miles from here, and gave battle to Jabin's
forces, who were in command of Sisera. Barak won the fight, and while he
was making the victory complete by the usual method of exterminating the
remnant of the defeated host, Sisera fled away on foot, and when he was
nearly exhausted by fatigue and thirst, one Jael, a woman he seems to have
been acquainted with, invited him to come into her tent and rest himself.
The weary soldier acceded readily enough,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -485-

and Jael put him to bed. He said he was very thirsty, and asked his
generous preserver to get him a cup of water. She brought him some milk,
and he drank of it gratefully and lay down again, to forget in pleasant
dreams his lost battle and his humbled pride. Presently when he was asleep
she came softly in with a hammer and drove a hideous tent-pen down through
his brain!

     "For he was fast asleep and weary. So he died." Such is the touching
language of the Bible. "The Song of Deborah and Barak" praises Jael for the
memorable service she had rendered, in an exultant strain:

     "Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be,
     blessed shall she be above women in the tent.
     "He asked for water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth
     butter in a lordly dish.
     "She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the
     workman's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote
     off his head when she had pierced and stricken through his
     temples.
     "At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he
     bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead."

      Stirring scenes like these occur in this valley no more. There is not
a solitary village throughout its whole extent -- not for thirty miles in
either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents,
but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles, hereabouts,
and not see ten human beings.

     To this region one of the prophecies is applied:

     I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies which
     dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you
     among the heathen, and I will draw out a sword after you; and
     your land shall be desolate and your cities waste."

     No man can stand here by deserted Ain Mellahah and say the prophecy
has not been fulfilled.

     In a verse from the Bible which I have quoted above, occurs the phrase
"all these kings." It attracted my attention in a moment, because it
carries to my mind such a vastly different

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -486-

significance from what it always did at home. I can see easily enough that
if I wish to profit by this tour and come to a correct understanding of the
matters of interest connected with it, I must studiously and faithfully
unlearn a great many things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine. I
must begin a system of reduction. Like my grapes which the spies bore out
of the Promised Land, I have got every thing in Palestine on too large a
scale. Some of my ideas were wild enough. The word Palestine always brought
to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. I
do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I could
not conceive of a small country having so large a history. I think I was a
little surprised to find that the grand Sultan of Turkey was a man of only
ordinary size. I must try to reduce my ideas of Palestine to a more
reasonable shape. One gets large impressions in boyhood, sometimes, which
he has to fight against all his life. "All these kings." When I used to
read that in Sunday School, it suggested to me the several kings of such
countries as England, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, etc., arrayed in
splendid robes ablaze with jewels, marching in grave procession, with
sceptres of gold in their hands and flashing crowns upon their heads. But
here in Ain Mellahah, after coming through Syria, and after giving serious
study to the character and customs of the country, the phrase "all these
kings" loses its grandeur. It suggests only a parcel of petty chiefs --
ill-clad and ill-conditioned savages much like our Indians, who lived in
full sight of each other and whose "kingdoms" were large when they were
five miles square and contained two thousand souls. The combined monarchies
of the thirty "kings" destroyed by Joshua on one of his famous campaigns,
only covered an area about equal to four of our counties of ordinary size.
The poor old sheik we saw at Cesarea Philippi with his ragged band of a
hundred followers, would have been called a "king " in those ancient times.

      It is seven in the morning, and as we are in the country, the grass
ought to be sparkling with dew, the flowers enriching

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -487-

the air with their fragrance, and the birds singing in the trees. But alas,
there is no dew here, nor flowers, nor birds, nor trees. There is a plain
and an unshaded lake, and beyond them some barren mountains. The tents are
tumbling, the Arabs are quarreling like dogs and cats, as usual, the
campground is strewn with packages and bundles, the labor of packing them
upon the backs of the mules is progressing with great activity, the horses
are saddled, the umbrellas are out, and in ten minutes we shall mount and
the long procession will move again. The white city of the Mellahah,
resurrected for a moment out of the dead centuries, will have disappeared
again and left no sign.



46.1 The railroad has been completed, since the above was written.

                                 Chapter 47

                               CHAPTER XLVII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -488-

     WE traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough,
but is given over wholly to weeds -- a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we
saw only three persons -- Arabs, with nothing on but a long coarse shirt
like the "tow-linen" shirts which used to form the only summer garment of
little negro boys on Southern plantations. Shepherds they were, and they
charmed their flocks with the traditional shepherd's pipe -- a reed
instrument that made music as exquisitely infernal as these same Arabs
create when they sing.

     In their pipes lingered no echo of the wonderful music the shepherd
forefathers heard in the Plains of Bethlehem what time the angels sang
"Peace on earth, good will to men."

     Part of the ground we came over was not ground at all, but rocks --
cream-colored rocks, worn smooth, as if by water; with seldom an edge or a
corner on them, but scooped out, honey-combed, bored out with eye-holes,
and thus wrought into all manner of quaint shapes, among which the uncouth
imitation of skulls was frequent. Over this part of the route were
occasional remains of an old Roman road like the Appian Way, whose
paving-stones still clung to their places with Roman tenacity.

     Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchres and desolation,
glided in and out among the rocks or lay still and sunned themselves. Where
prosperity has reigned, and fallen; where glory has flamed, and gone out;
where beauty has dwelt, and passed away; where gladness was, and sorrow is;
where the pomp of life has been, and silence and death brood in its high

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -489-

places, there this reptile makes his home, and mocks at human vanity. His
coat is the color of ashes: and ashes are the symbol of hopes that have
perished, of aspirations that came to nought, of loves that are buried. If
he could speak, he would say, Build temples: I will lord it in their ruins;
build palaces: I will inhabit them; erect empires: I will inherit them;
bury your beautiful: I will watch the worms at their work; and you, who
stand here and moralize over me: I will crawl over your corpse at the last.

     A few ants were in this desert place, but merely to spend the summer.
They brought their provisions from Ain Mellahah -- eleven miles.

     Jack is not very well to-day, it is easy to see; but boy as he is, he
is too much of a man to speak of it. He exposed himself to the sun too much
yesterday, but since it came of his earnest desire to learn, and to make
this journey as useful as the opportunities will allow, no one seeks to
discourage him by fault-finding. We missed him an hour from the camp, and
then found him some distance away, by the edge of a brook,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -490-

and with no umbrella to protect him from the fierce sun. If he had been
used to going without his umbrella, it would have been well enough, of
course; but he was not. He was just in the act of throwing a clod at a
mud-turtle which was sunning itself on a small log in the brook. We said:

     "Don't do that, Jack. What do you want to harm him for? What has he
done?"

     "Well, then, I won't kill him, but I ought to, because he is a fraud."

     We asked him why, but he said it was no matter. We asked him why, once
or twice, as we walked back to the camp but he still said it was no matter.
But late at night, when he was sitting in a thoughtful mood on the bed, we
asked him again and he said:

     "Well, it don't matter; I don't mind it now, but I did not like it
to-day, you know, because I don't tell any thing that isn't so, and I don't
think the Colonel ought to, either. But he did; he told us at prayers in
the Pilgrims' tent, last night, and he seemed as if he was reading it out
of the Bible, too, about this country flowing with milk and honey, and
about the voice of the turtle being heard in the land. I thought that was
drawing it a little strong, about the turtles, any how, but I asked Mr.
Church if it was so, and he said it was, and what Mr. Church tells me, I
believe. But I sat there and watched that turtle nearly an hour to-day, and
I almost burned up in the sun; but I never heard him sing. I believe I
sweated a double handful of sweat- -- I know I did -- because it got in my
eyes, and it was running down over my nose all the time; and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -491-

you know my pants are tighter than any body else's -- Paris foolishness --
and the buckskin seat of them got wet with sweat, and then got dry again
and began to draw up and pinch and tear loose -- it was awful -- but I
never heard him sing. Finally I said, This is a fraud -- that is what it
is, it is a fraud -- and if I had had any sense I might have known a cursed
mud-turtle couldn't sing. And then I said, I don't wish to be hard on this
fellow, and I will just give him ten minutes to commence; ten minutes --
and then if he don't, down goes his building. But he didn't commence, you
know. I had staid there all that time, thinking may be he might, pretty
soon, because he kept on raising his head up and letting it down, and
drawing the skin over his eyes for a minute and then opening them out
again, as if he was trying to study up something to sing, but just as the
ten minutes were up and I was all beat out and blistered, he laid his
blamed head down on a knot and went fast asleep."

     "It was a little hard, after you had waited so long."

     "I should think so. I said, Well, if you won't sing,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -492-

you shan't sleep, any way; and if you fellows had let me alone I would have
made him shin out of Galilee quicker than any turtle ever did yet. But it
isn't any matter now -- let it go. The skin is all off the back of my
neck."

     About ten in the morning we halted at Joseph's Pit. This is a ruined
Khan of the Middle Ages, in one of whose side courts is a great walled and
arched pit with water in it, and this pit, one tradition says, is the one
Joseph's brethren cast him into. A more authentic tradition, aided by the
geography of the country, places the pit in Dothan, some two days' journey
from here. However, since there are many who believe in this present pit as
the true one, it has its interest.

     It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book
which is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is certain
that not many things within its lids may take rank above the exquisite
story of Joseph. Who taught those ancient writers their simplicity of
language, their felicity of expression, their pathos, and above all, their
faculty of sinking themselves entirely out of sight of the reader and
making the narrative stand out alone and seem to tell itself? Shakspeare is
always present when one reads his book; Macaulay is present when we follow
the march of his stately sentences; but the Old Testament writers are
hidden from view.

     If the pit I have been speaking of is the right one, a scene
transpired there, long ages ago, which is familiar to us all in pictures.
The sons of Jacob had been pasturing their flocks near there. Their father
grew uneasy at their long absence, and sent Joseph, his favorite, to see if
any thing had gone wrong with them. He traveled six or seven days' journey;
he was only seventeen years old, and, boy like, he toiled through that long
stretch of the vilest, rockiest, dustiest country in Asia, arrayed in the
pride of his heart, his beautiful claw-hammer coat of many colors. Joseph
was the favorite, and that was one crime in the eyes of his brethren; he
had dreamed dreams, and interpreted them to foreshadow his elevation far
above all his family in the far future, and that was another; he was
dressed well and had doubtless displayed the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -493-

harmless vanity of youth in keeping the fact prominently before his
brothers. These were crimes his elders fretted over among themselves and
proposed to punish when the opportunity should offer. When they saw him
coming up from the Sea of Galilee, they recognized him and were glad. They
said, "Lo, here is this dreamer -- let us kill him." But Reuben pleaded for
his life, and they spared it. But they seized the boy, and stripped the
hated coat from his back and pushed him into the pit. They intended to let
him die there, but Reuben intended to liberate him secretly. However, while
Reuben was away for a little while, the brethren sold Joseph to some
Ishmaelitish merchants who were journeying towards Egypt. Such is the
history of the pit. And the self-same pit is there in that place, even to
this day; and there it will remain until the next detachment of
image-breakers and tomb desecraters arrives from the Quaker City excursion,
and they will infallibly dig it up and carry it away with them. For behold
in them is no reverence for the solemn monuments of the past, and
whithersoever they go they destroy and spare not.

     Joseph became rich, distinguished, powerful -- as the Bible expresses
it, "lord over all the land of Egypt." Joseph was the real king, the
strength, the brain of the monarchy, though Pharaoh held the title. Joseph
is one of the truly great men of the Old Testament. And he was the noblest
and the manliest, save Esau. Why shall we not say a good word for the
princely Bedouin? The only crime that can be brought against him is that he
was unfortunate. Why must every body praise Joseph's great-hearted
generosity to his cruel brethren, without stint of fervent language, and
fling only a reluctant bone of praise to Esau for his still sublimer
generosity to the brother who had wronged him? Jacob took advantage of
Esau's consuming hunger to rob him of his birthright and the great honor
and consideration that belonged to the position; by treachery and falsehood
he robbed him of his father's blessing; he made of him a stranger in his
home, and a wanderer. Yet after twenty years had passed away and Jacob met
Esau

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -494-

and fell at his feet quaking with fear and begging piteously to be spared
the punishment he knew he deserved, what did that magnificent savage do? He
fell upon his neck and embraced him! When Jacob -- who was incapable of
comprehending nobility of character -- still doubting, still fearing,
insisted upon "finding grace with my lord" by the bribe of a present of
cattle, what did the gorgeous son of the desert say?

     "Nay, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself!"

     Esau found Jacob rich, beloved by wives and children, and traveling in
state, with servants, herds of cattle and trains of camels -- but he
himself was still the uncourted outcast this brother had made him. After
thirteen years of romantic mystery, the brethren who had wronged Joseph,
came, strangers in a strange land, hungry and humble, to buy "a little
food"; and being summoned to a palace, charged with crime, they beheld in
its owner their wronged brother; they were trembling beggars -- he, the
lord of a mighty empire ! What Joseph that ever lived would have thrown
away such a chance to "show off?" Who stands first -- outcast Esau
forgiving Jacob in prosperity, or Joseph on a king's throne forgiving the
ragged tremblers whose happy rascality placed him there?

     Just before we came to Joseph's Pit, we had "raised" a hill, and
there, a few miles before us, with not a tree or a shrub to interrupt the
view, lay a vision which millions of worshipers in the far lands of the
earth would give half their possessions to see -- the sacred Sea of
Galilee!

     Therefore we tarried only a short time at the pit. We rested the
horses and ourselves, and felt for a few minutes the blessed shade of the
ancient buildings. We were out of water, but the two or three scowling
Arabs, with their long guns, who were idling about the place, said they had
none and that there was none in the vicinity. They knew there was a little
brackish water in the pit, but they venerated a place made sacred by their
ancestor's imprisonment too much to be willing to see Christian dogs drink
from it. But Ferguson tied rags and handkerchiefs together till he made a
rope long enough to

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -495-

lower a vessel to the bottom, and we drank and then rode on; and in a short
time we dismounted on those shores which the feet of the Saviour have made
holy ground.

     At noon we took a swim in the Sea of Galilee -- a blessed privilege in
this roasting climate -- and then lunched under a neglected old fig-tree at
the fountain they call Ain-et-Tin, a hundred yards from ruined Capernaum.
Every rivulet that gurgles out of the rocks and sands of this part of the
world is dubbed with the title of "fountain," and people familiar with the
Hudson, the great lakes and the Mississippi fall into transports of
admiration over them, and exhaust their powers of composition in writing
their praises. If all the poetry and nonsense that have been discharged
upon the fountains and the bland scenery of this region were collected in a
book, it would make a most valuable volume to burn.

     During luncheon, the pilgrim enthusiasts of our party, who had been so
light-hearted and so happy ever since they touched holy ground that they
did little but mutter incoherent rhapsodies, could scarcely eat, so anxious
were they to "take shipping" and sail in very person

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -496-

upon the waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles. Their anxiety
grew and their excitement augmented with every fleeting moment, until my
fears were aroused and I began to have misgivings that in their present
condition they might break recklessly loose from all considerations of
prudence and buy a whole fleet of ships to sail in instead of hiring a
single one for an hour, as quiet folk are wont to do. I trembled to think
of the ruined purses this day's performances might result in. I could not
help reflecting bodingly upon the intemperate zeal with which middle-aged
men are apt to surfeit themselves upon a seductive folly which they have
tasted for the first time. And yet I did not feel that I had a right to be
surprised at the state of things which was giving me so much concern. These
men had been taught from infancy to revere, almost to worship, the holy
places whereon their happy eyes were resting now. For many and many a year
this very picture had visited their thoughts by day and floated through
their dreams by night. To stand before it in the flesh -- to see it as they
saw it now -- to sail upon the hallowed sea, and kiss the holy soil that
compassed it about: these were aspirations they had cherished while a
generation dragged its lagging seasons by and left its furrows in their
faces and its frosts upon their hair. To look upon this picture, and sail
upon this sea, they had forsaken home and its idols and journeyed thousands
and thousands of miles, in weariness and tribulation. What wonder that the
sordid lights of work-day prudence should pale before the glory of a hope
like theirs in the full splendor of its fruition? Let them squander
millions! I said -- who speaks of money at a time like this?

     In this frame of mind I followed, as fast as I could, the eager
footsteps of the pilgrims, and stood upon the shore of the lake, and
swelled, with hat and voice, the frantic hail they sent after the "ship"
that was speeding by. It was a success. The toilers of the sea ran in and
beached their barque. Joy sat upon every countenance.

     "How much? -- ask him how much, Ferguson! -- how much to take us all
-- eight of us, and you -- to Bethsaida, yonder,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -497-

and to the mouth of Jordan, and to the place where the swine ran down into
the sea -- quick! -- and we want to coast around every where -- every
where! -- all day long! -- I could sail a year in these waters! -- and tell
him we'll stop at Magdala and finish at Tiberias! -- ask him how much? --
any thing -- any thing whatever! -- tell him we don't care what the expense
is!" [I said to myself, I knew how it would be.]

     Ferguson -- (interpreting) -- "He says two Napoleons -- eight
dollars."

     One or two countenances fell. Then a pause.

     "Too much! -- we'll give him one!"

     I never shall know how it was -- I shudder yet when I think how the
place is given to miracles -- but in a single instant of time, as it seemed
to me, that ship was twenty paces from the shore, and speeding away like a
frightened thing! Eight crestfallen creatures stood upon the shore, and O,
to think of it! this -- this -- after all that overmastering ecstacy! Oh,
shameful, shameful ending, after such unseemly boasting! It was

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -498-

too much like "Ho! let me at him!" followed by a prudent "Two of you hold
him -- one can hold me!"

     Instantly there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp.The two
Napoleons were offered -- more if necessary -- andpilgrims and dragoman
shouted themselves hoarse with pleadings to theretreating boatmen to come
back. But they sailed serenely away andpaid no further heed to pilgrims who
had dreamed all their lives ofsome day skimming over the sacred waters of
Galilee and listening toits hallowed story in the whisperings of its waves,
and had journeyedcountless leagues to do it, and -- and then concluded that
the farewas too high. Impertinent Mohammedan Arabs, to think such things
ofgentlemen of another faith!

     Well, there was nothing to do but just submit and forego the privilege
of voyaging on Genessaret, after coming half around the globe to taste that
pleasure. There was a time, when the Saviour taught here, that boats were
plenty among the fishermen of the coasts -- but boats and fishermen both
are gone, now; and old Josephus had a fleet of men-of-war in these waters
eighteen centuries ago -- a hundred and thirty bold canoes -- but they,
also, have passed away and left no sign. They battle here no more by sea,
and the commercial marine of Galilee numbers only two small ships, just of
a pattern with the little skiffs the disciples knew. One was lost to us for
good -- the other was miles away and far out of hail. So we mounted the
horses and rode grimly on toward Magdala, cantering along in the edge of
the water for want of the means of passing over it

     How the pilgrims abused each other! Each said it was the other's
fault, and each in turn denied it. No word was spoken by the sinners --
even the mildest sarcasm might have been dangerous at such a time. Sinners
that have been kept down and had examples held up to them, and suffered
frequent lectures, and been so put upon in a moral way and in the matter of
going slow and being serious and bottling up slang, and so crowded in
regard to the matter of being proper and always and forever behaving, that
their lives have become a burden

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -499-

to them, would not lag behind pilgrims at such a time as this, and wink
furtively, and be joyful, and commit other such crimes -- because it would
not occur to them to do it. Otherwise they would. But they did do it,
though -- and it did them a world of good to hear the pilgrims abuse each
other, too. We took an unworthy satisfaction in seeing them fall out, now
and then, because it showed that they were only poor human people like us,
after all.

     So we all rode down to Magdala, while the gnashing of teeth waxed and
waned by turns, and harsh words troubled the holy calm of Galilee.

     Lest any man think I mean to be ill-natured when I talk about our
pilgrims as I have been talking, I wish to say in all sincerity that I do
not. I would not listen to lectures from men I did not like and could not
respect; and none of these can say I ever took their lectures unkindly, or
was restive under the infliction, or failed to try to profit by what they
said to me. They are better men than I am; I can say that honestly; they
are good friends of mine, too -- and besides, if they did not wish to be
stirred up occasionally in print, why in the mischief did they travel with
me? They knew me. They knew my liberal way -- that I like to give and take
-- when it is for me to give and other people to take. When one of them
threatened to leave me in Damascus when I had the cholera, he had no real
idea of doing it -- I know his passionate nature and the good impulses that
underlie it. And did I not overhear Church, another pilgrim, say he did not
care who went or who staid, he would stand by me till I walked out of
Damascus on my own feet or was carried out in a coffin, if it was a year?
And do I not include Church every time I abuse the pilgrims -- and would I
be likely to speak ill-naturedly of him ? I wish to stir them up and make
them healthy; that is all.

     We had left Capernaum behind us. It was only a shapeless ruin. It bore
no semblance to a town, and had nothing about it to suggest that it had
ever been a town. But all desolate and unpeopled as it was, it was
illustrious ground. From it

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -500-

sprang that tree of Christianity whose broad arms overshadow so many
distant lands to-day. After Christ was tempted of the devil in the desert,
he came here and began his teachings; and during the three or four years he
lived afterward, this place was his home almost altogether. He began to
heal the sick, and his fame soon spread so widely that sufferers came from
Syria and beyond Jordan, and even from Jerusalem, several days' journey
away, to be cured of their diseases. Here he healed the centurion's servant
and Peter's mother-in-law, and multitudes of the lame and the blind and
persons possessed of devils; and here, also, he raised Jairus's daughter
from the dead. He went into a ship with his disciples, and when they roused
him from sleep in the midst of a storm, he quieted the winds and lulled the
troubled sea to rest with his voice. He passed over to the other side, a
few miles away and relieved two men of devils, which passed into some
swine. After his return he called Matthew from the receipt of customs,
performed some cures, and created scandal by eating with publicans and
sinners. Then he went healing and teaching through Galilee, and even
journeyed to Tyre and Sidon. He chose the twelve disciples, and sent them
abroad to preach the new gospel. He worked miracles in Bethsaida and
Chorazin -- villages two or three miles from Capernaum. It was near one of
them that the miraculous draft of fishes is supposed to have been taken,
and it was in the desert places near the other that he fed the thousands by
the miracles of the loaves and fishes. He cursed them both, and Capernaum
also, for not repenting, after all the great works he had done in their
midst, and prophesied against them. They are all in ruins, now -- which is
gratifying to the pilgrims, for, as usual, they fit the eternal words of
gods to the evanescent things of this earth; Christ, it is more probable,
referred to the people, not their shabby villages of wigwams: he said it
would be sad for them at "the day of judgment" -- and what business have
mud-hovels at the Day of Judgment? It would not affect the prophecy in the
least -- it would neither prove it or disprove it -- if these towns were
splendid cities now instead of the almost

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -501-

vanished ruins they are. Christ visited Magdala, which is near by
Capernaum, and he also visited Cesarea Philippi. He went up to his old home
at Nazareth, and saw his brothers Joses, and Judas, and James, and Simon --
those persons who, being own brothers to Jesus Christ, one would expect to
hear mentioned sometimes, yet who ever saw their names in a newspaper or
heard them from a pulpit? Who ever inquires what manner of youths they
were; and whether they slept with Jesus, played with him and romped about
him; quarreled with him concerning toys and trifles; struck him in anger,
not suspecting what he was? Who ever wonders what they thought when they
saw him come back to Nazareth a celebrity, and looked long at his
unfamiliar face to make sure, and then said, "It is Jesus?" Who wonders
what passed in their minds when they saw this brother, (who was only a
brother to them, however much he might be to others a mysterious stranger
who was a god and had stood face to face with God above the clouds,) doing
strange miracles with crowds of astonished people for witnesses? Who
wonders if the brothers of Jesus asked him to come home with them, and said
his mother and his sisters were grieved at his long absence, and would be
wild with delight to see his face again ? Who ever gives a thought to the
sisters of Jesus at all ? -- yet he had sisters; and memories of them must
have stolen into his mind often when he was ill-treated among strangers;
when he was homeless and said he had not where to lay his head; when all
deserted him, even Peter, and he stood alone among his enemies.

     Christ did few miracles in Nazareth, and staid but a little while. The
people said, "This the Son of God! Why, his father is nothing but a
carpenter. We know the family. We see them every day. Are not his brothers
named so and so, and his sisters so and so, and is not his mother the
person they call Mary ? This is absurd." He did not curse his home, but he
shook its dust from his feet and went away.

     Capernaum lies close to the edge of the little sea, in a small plain
some five miles long and a mile or two wide, which is mildly adorned with
oleanders which look all the better contrasted

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -502-

with the bald hills and the howling deserts which surround them, but they
are not as deliriously beautiful as the books paint them. If one be calm
and resolute he can look upon their comeliness and live.

     One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our
observation is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which sprang
the now flourishing plant of Christianity. The longest journey our Saviour
ever performed was from here to Jerusalem -- about one hundred to one
hundred and twenty miles. The next longest was from here to Sidon -- say
about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide apart -- as American
appreciation of distances would naturally suggest -- the places made most
particularly celebrated by the presence of Christ are nearly all right here
in full view, and within cannon-shot of Capernaum. Leaving out two or three
short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his life, preached his gospel, and
performed his miracles within a compass no larger than an ordinary county
in the United States. It is as much as I can do to comprehend this
stupefying fact. How it wears a man out to have to read up a hundred pages
of history every two or three miles -- for verily the celebrated localities
of Palestine occur that close together. How wearily, how bewilderingly they
swarm about your path!

     In due time we reached the ancient village of Magdala.

                                 Chapter 48

                              CHAPTER XLVIII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -503-

     MAGDALA is not a beautiful place. It is thoroughly Syrian, and that is
to say that it is thoroughly ugly, and cramped, squalid, uncomfortable, and
filthy -- just the style of cities that have adorned the country since
Adam's time, as all writers have labored hard to prove, and have succeeded.
The streets of Magdala are any where from three to six feet wide, and
reeking with uncleanliness. The houses are from five to seven feet high,
and all built upon one arbitrary plan -- the ungraceful form of a dry-goods
box. The sides are daubed with a smooth white plaster, and tastefully
frescoed aloft and alow with disks of camel-dung placed there to dry. This
gives the edifice the romantic appearance of having been riddled with
cannon-balls, and imparts to it a very warlike aspect. When the artist has
arranged his materials with an eye to just proportion -- the small and the
large flakes in alternate rows, and separated by carefully-considered
intervals -- I know of nothing more cheerful to look upon than a spirited
Syrian fresco. The flat, plastered roof is garnished by picturesque stacks
of fresco materials, which, having become thoroughly dried and cured, are
placed there where it will be convenient. It is used for fuel. There is no
timber of any consequence in Palestine -- none at all to waste upon fires
-- and neither are there any mines of coal. If my description has been
intelligible, you will perceive, now, that a square, flat-roofed hovel,
neatly frescoed, with its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with
dried camel-refuse, gives to a landscape a feature that is exceedingly
festive and picturesque, especially if one is

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -504-

careful to remember to stick in a cat wherever, about the premises, there
is room for a cat to sit. There are no windows to a Syrian hut, and no
chimneys. When I used to read that they let a bed-ridden man down through
the roof of a house in Capernaum to get him into the presence of the
Saviour, I generally had a three-story brick in my mind, and marveled that
they did not break his neck with the strange experiment. I perceive now,
however, that they might have taken him by the heels and thrown him clear
over the house without discommoding him very much. Palestine is not changed
any since those days, in manners, customs, architecture, or people.

     As we rode into Magdala not a soul was visible. But the ring of the
horses' hoofs roused the stupid population, and they all came trooping out
-- old men and old women, boys and girls, the blind, the crazy, and the
crippled, all in ragged, soiled and scanty raiment, and all abject beggars
by nature, instinct and education. How the vermin-tortured vagabonds did
swarm! How they showed their scars and sores, and piteously pointed to
their maimed and crooked limbs, and begged with their pleading eyes for
charity! We had invoked a spirit we could not lay. They hung to the
horses's tails, clung to their manes and the stirrups, closed in on every
aide in scorn of dangerous hoofs -- and out of their infidel throats, with
one accord, burst an agonizing and most infernal chorus: "Howajji,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -505-

bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! bucksheesh!
bucksheesh!" I never was in a storm like that before.

     As we paid the bucksheesh out to sore-eyed children and brown, buxom
girls with repulsively tattooed lips and chins, we filed through the town
and by many an exquisite fresco, till we came to a bramble-infested
inclosure and a Roman-looking ruin which had been the veritable dwelling of
St. Mary Magdalene, the friend and follower of Jesus. The guide believed
it, and so did I. I could not well do otherwise, with the house right there
before my eyes as plain as day. The pilgrims took down portions of the
front wall for specimens, as is their honored custom, and then we departed.

     We are camped in this place, now, just within the city walls of
Tiberias. We went into the town before nightfall and looked at its people
-- we cared nothing about its houses. Its people are best examined at a
distance. They are particularly uncomely Jews, Arabs, and negroes. Squalor
and poverty are the pride of Tiberias. The young women wear their dower
strung upon a strong wire that curves downward from the top of the head to
the jaw -- Turkish silver coins which they have raked together or
inherited. Most of these maidens were not wealthy, but some few had been
very kindly dealt with by fortune. I saw heiresses there worth, in their
own right -- worth, well, I suppose I might venture to say, as much as nine
dollars and a half. But such cases are rare. When you come across one of
these, she naturally puts on airs. She will not ask for bucksheesh. She
will not even permit of undue familiarity. She assumes a crushing dignity
and goes on serenely practicing with her fine-tooth comb and quoting poetry
just the same as if you were not present at all. Some people can not stand
prosperity.

     They say that the long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking body-snatchers,
with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of
each ear, are the old, familiar, self-righteous Pharisees we read of in the
Scriptures. Verily, they look it. Judging merely by their general style,
and without

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -506-

other evidence, one might easily suspect that self-righteousness was their
specialty.

     From various authorities I have culled information concerning
Tiberias. It was built by Herod Antipas, the murderer of John the Baptist,
and named after the Emperor Tiberius. It is believed that it stands upon
the site of what must have been, ages ago, a city of considerable
architectural pretensions, judging by the fine porphyry pillars that are
scattered through Tiberias and down the lake shore southward. These were
fluted, once, and yet, although the stone is about as hard as iron, the
flutings are almost worn away. These pillars are small, and doubtless the
edifices they adorned were distinguished more for elegance than grandeur.
This modern town -- Tiberias -- is only mentioned in the New Testament;
never in the Old.

     The Sanhedrim met here last, and for three hundred years

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -507-

Tiberias was the metropolis of the Jews in Palestine. It is one of the four
holy cities of the Israelites, and is to them what Mecca is to the
Mohammedan and Jerusalem to the Christian. It has been the abiding place of
many learned and famous Jewish rabbins. They lie buried here, and near them
lie also twenty-five thousand of their faith who traveled far to be near
them while they lived and lie with them when they died. The great Rabbi Ben
Israel spent three years here in the early part of the third century. He is
dead, now.

     The celebrated Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake Tahoe48.1
by a good deal -- it is just about two-thirds as large. And when we come to
speak of beauty, this sea is no more to be compared to Tahoe than a
meridian of longitude is to a rainbow. The dim waters of this pool can not
suggest the limpid brilliancy of Tahoe; these low, shaven, yellow hillocks
of rocks and sand, so devoid of perspective, can not suggest the grand
peaks that compass Tahoe like a wall, and whose ribbed and chasmed fronts
are clad with stately pines that seem to grow small and smaller as they
climb, till one might fancy them reduced to weeds and shrubs far upward,
where they join the everlasting snows. Silence and solitude brood over
Tahoe; and silence and solitude brood also over this lake of Genessaret.
But the solitude of the one is as cheerful and fascinating as the solitude
of the other is dismal and repellant.

     In the early morning one watches the silent battle of dawn and
darkness upon the waters of Tahoe with a placid interest; but when the
shadows sulk away and one by one the hidden beauties of the shore unfold
themselves in the full splendor of noon; when the still surface is belted
like a rainbow with broad bars of blue and green and white, half the
distance from circumference to centre; when, in the lazy summer afternoon,
he lies in a boat, far out to where the dead blue of the deep water begins,
and smokes the pipe of peace and idly winks at the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -508-

distant crags and patches of snow from under his cap-brim; when the boat
drifts shoreward to the white water, and he lolls over the gunwale and
gazes by the hour down through the crystal depths and notes the colors of
the pebbles and reviews the finny armies gliding in procession a hundred
feet below; when at night he sees moon and stars, mountain ridges feathered
with pines, jutting white capes, bold promontories, grand sweeps of rugged
scenery topped with bald, glimmering peaks, all magnificently pictured in
the polished mirror of the lake, in richest, softest detail, the tranquil
interest that was born with the morning deepens and deepens, by sure
degrees, till it culminates at last in resistless fascination!

     It is solitude, for birds and squirrels on the shore and fishes in the
water are all the creatures that are near to make it otherwise, but it is
not the sort of solitude to make one dreary. Come to Galilee for that. If
these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never,
never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and
faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum; this
stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal plumes of
palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of the miracle ran down
into the sea, and doubtless thought it was better to swallow a devil or two
and get drowned into the bargain than have to live longer in such a place;
this cloudless, blistering sky; this solemn, sailless, tintless lake,
reposing within its rim of yellow hills and low, steep banks, and looking
just as expressionless and unpoetical (when we leave its sublime history
out of the question,) as any metropolitan reservoir in Christendom -- if
these things are not food for rock me to sleep, mother, none exist, I
think.

     But I should not offer the evidence for the prosecution and leave the
defense unheard. Wm. C. Grimes deposes as follows: --



     "We had taken ship to go over to the other side. The sea was not
     more than six miles wide. Of the beauty of the scene, however, I
     can not say enough, nor can I imagine where those travelers
     carried their eyes who have described the scenery of the lake as
     tame or uninteresting. The first great characteristic of it is

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -509-



     the deep basin in which it lies. This is from three to four
     hundred feet deep on all sides except at the lower end, and the
     sharp slope of the banks, which are all of the richest green, is
     broken and diversified by the wΓdys and water-courses which work
     their way down through the sides of the basin, forming dark
     chasms or light sunny valleys. Near Tiberias these banks are
     rocky, and ancient sepulchres open in them, with their doors
     toward the water. They selected grand spots, as did the Egyptians
     of old, for burial places, as if they designed that when the
     voice of God should reach the sleepers, they should walk forth
     and open their eyes on scenes of glorious beauty. On the east,
     the wild and desolate mountains contrast finely with the deep
     blue lake; and toward the north, sublime and majestic, Hermon
     looks down on the sea, lifting his white crown to heaven with the
     pride of a hill that has seen the departing footsteps of a
     hundred generations. On the north-east shore of the sea was a
     single tree, and this is the only tree of any size visible from
     the water of the lake, except a few lonely palms in the city of
     Tiberias, and by its solitary position attracts more attention
     than would a forest. The whole appearance of the scene is
     precisely what we would expect and desire the scenery of
     Genessaret to be, grand beauty, but quiet calm. The very
     mountains are calm."

     It is an ingeniously written description, and well calculated to
deceive. But if the paint and the ribbons and the flowers be stripped from
it, a skeleton will be found beneath.

     So stripped, there remains a lake six miles wide and neutral in color;
with steep green banks, unrelieved by shrubbery; at one end bare, unsightly
rocks, with (almost invisible) holes in them of no consequence to the
picture; eastward, "wild and desolate mountains;" (low, desolate hills, he
should have said;) in the north, a mountain called Hermon, with snow on it;
peculiarity of the picture, "calmness;" its prominent feature, one tree.

     No ingenuity could make such a picture beautiful -- to one's actual
vision.

     I claim the right to correct misstatements, and have so corrected the
color of the water in the above recapitulation. The waters of Genessaret
are of an exceedingly mild blue, even from a high elevation and a distance
of five miles. Close at hand (the witness was sailing on the lake,) it is
hardly proper to call them blue at all, much less "deep" blue. I wish to
state, also, not as a correction, but as matter of opinion, that Mount
Hermon is not a striking or picturesque mountain by any means, being too
near the height of its immediate neighbors

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -510-

to be so. That is all. I do not object to the witness dragging a mountain
forty-five miles to help the scenery under consideration, because it is
entirely proper to do it, and besides, the picture needs it.

     "C. W. E.," (of " Life in the Holy Land,") deposes as follows: --



     "A beautiful sea lies unbosomed among the Galilean hills, in the
     midst of that land once possessed by Zebulon and Naphtali, Asher
     and Dan. The azure of the sky penetrates the depths of the lake,
     and the waters are sweet and cool. On the west, stretch broad
     fertile plains; on the north the rocky shores rise step by step
     until in the far distance tower the snowy heights of Hermon; on
     the east through a misty veil are seen the high plains of Perea,
     which stretch away in rugged mountains leading the mind by varied
     paths toward Jerusalem the Holy. Flowers bloom in this
     terrestrial paradise, once beautiful and verdant with waving
     trees; singing birds enchant the ear; the turtle-dove soothes
     with its soft note; the crested lark sends up its song toward
     heaven, and the grave and stately stork inspires the mind with
     thought, and leads it on to meditation and repose. Life here was
     once idyllic, charming; here were once no rich, no poor, no high,
     no low. It was a world of ease, simplicity, and beauty; now it is
     a scene of desolation and misery."

     This is not an ingenious picture. It is the worst I ever saw. It
describes in elaborate detail what it terms a "terrestrial paradise," and
closes with the startling information that this paradise is "a scene of
desolation and misery."

     I have given two fair, average specimens of the character of the
testimony offered by the majority of the writers who visit this region. One
says, "Of the beauty of the scene I can not say enough," and then proceeds
to cover up with a woof of glittering sentences a thing which, when
stripped for inspection, proves to be only an unobtrusive basin of water,
some mountainous desolation, and one tree. The other, after a conscientious
effort to build a terrestrial paradise out of the same materials, with the
addition of a "grave and stately stork," spoils it all by blundering upon
the ghastly truth at the last.

     Nearly every book concerning Galilee and its lake describes the
scenery as beautiful. No -- not always so straightforward as that.
Sometimes the impression intentionally conveyed is that it is beautiful, at
the same time that the author is careful

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -511-

not to say that it is, in plain Saxon. But a careful analysis of these
descriptions will show that the materials of which they are formed are not
individually beautiful and can not be wrought into combinations that are
beautiful. The veneration and the affection which some of these men felt
for the scenes they were speaking of, heated their fancies and biased their
judgment; but the pleasant falsities they wrote were full of honest
sincerity, at any rate. Others wrote as they did, because they feared it
would be unpopular to write otherwise. Others were hypocrites and
deliberately meant to deceive. Any of them would say in a moment, if asked,
that it was always right and always best to tell the truth. They would say
that, at any rate, if they did not perceive the drift of the question.

     But why should not the truth be spoken of this region? Is the truth
harmful? Has it ever needed to hide its face? God made the Sea of Galilee
and its surroundings as they are. Is it the province of Mr. Grimes to
improve upon the work?

     I am sure, from the tenor of books I have read, that many who have
visited this land in years gone by, were Presbyterians, and came seeking
evidences in support of their particular creed; they found a Presbyterian
Palestine, and they had already made up their minds to find no other,
though possibly they did not know it, being blinded by their zeal. Others
were Baptists, seeking Baptist evidences and a Baptist Palestine. Others
were Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, seeking evidences indorsing
their several creeds, and a Catholic, a Methodist, an Episcopalian
Palestine. Honest as these men's intentions may have been, they were full
of partialities and prejudices, they entered the country with their
verdicts already prepared, and they could no more write dispassionately and
impartially about it than they could about their own wives and children.
Our pilgrims have brought their verdicts with them. They have shown it in
their conversation ever since we left Beirout. I can almost tell, in set
phrase, what they will say when they see Tabor, Nazareth, Jericho and
Jerusalem -- because I have the books they will "smouch" their ideas from.
These authors write pictures and frame rhapsodies, and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -512-

lesser men follow and see with the author's eyes instead of their own, and
speak with his tongue. What the pilgrims said at Cesarea Philippi surprised
me with its wisdom. I found it afterwards in Robinson. What they said when
Genessaret burst upon their vision, charmed me with its grace. I find it in
Mr. Thompson's "Land and the Book." They have spoken often, in happily
worded language which never varied, of how they mean to lay their weary
heads upon a stone at Bethel, as Jacob did, and close their dim eyes, and
dream, perchance, of angels descending out of heaven on a ladder. It was
very pretty. But I have recognized the weary head and the dim eyes,
finally. They borrowed the idea -- and the words -- and the construction --
and the punctuation -- from Grimes. The pilgrims will tell of Palestine,
when they get home, not as it appeared to them, but as it appeared to
Thompson and Robinson and Grimes -- with the tints varied to suit each
pilgrim's creed.

     Pilgrims, sinners and Arabs are all abed, now, and the camp is still.
Labor in loneliness is irksome. Since I made my last few notes, I have been
sitting outside the tent for half an hour. Night is the time to see
Galilee. Genessaret under these lustrous stars has nothing repulsive about
it. Genessaret with the glittering reflections of the constellations
flecking its surface, almost makes me regret that I ever saw the rude glare
of the day upon it. Its history and its associations are its chiefest
charm, in any eyes, and the spells they weave are feeble in the searching
light of the sun. Then, we scarcely feel the fetters. Our thoughts wander
constantly to the practical concerns of life, and refuse to dwell upon
things that seem vague and unreal. But when the day is done, even the most
unimpressible must yield to the dreamy influences of this tranquil
starlight. The old traditions of the place steal upon his memory and haunt
his reveries, and then his fancy clothes all sights and sounds with the
supernatural. In the lapping of the waves upon the beach, he hears the dip
of ghostly oars; in the secret noises of the night he hears spirit voices;
in the soft sweep of the breeze, the rush of invisible wings. Phantom

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -513-

ships are on the sea, the dead of twenty centuries come forth from the
tombs, and in the dirges of the night wind the songs of old forgotten ages
find utterance again.

     In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of
the heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of
a religion able to save a world; and meet for the stately Figure appointed
to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high decrees. But in the sunlight,
one says: Is it for the deeds which were done and the words which were
spoken in this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen centuries gone, that
the bells are ringing to-day in the remote islands of the sea and far and
wide over continents that clasp the circumference of the huge globe?

     One can comprehend it only when night has hidden all incongruities and
created a theatre proper for so grand a drama.



48.1 I measure all lakes by Tahoe, partly because I am far more familiar
with it than with any other, and partly because I have such a high
admiration for it and such a world of pleasant recollections of it, that it
is very nearly impossible for me to speak of lakes and not mention it.

                                 Chapter 49

                               CHAPTER XLIX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -514-

     WE took another swim in the Sea of Galilee at twilight yesterday, and
another at sunrise this morning. We have not sailed, but three swims are
equal to a sail, are they not? There were plenty of fish visible in the
water, but we have no outside aids in this pilgrimage but "Tent Life in the
Holy Land," "The Land and the Book," and other literature of like
description -- no fishing-tackle. There were no fish to be had in the
village of Tiberias. True, we saw two or three vagabonds mending their
nets, but never trying to catch any thing with them.

     We did not go to the ancient warm baths two miles below Tiberias. I
had no desire in the world to go there. This seemed a little strange, and
prompted me to try to discover what the cause of this unreasonable
indifference was. It turned out to be simply because Pliny mentions them. I
have conceived a sort of unwarrantable unfriendliness toward Pliny and St.
Paul, because it seems as if I can never ferret out a place that I can have
to myself. It always and eternally transpires that St. Paul has been to
that place, and Pliny has "mentioned" it.

     In the early morning we mounted and started. And then a weird
apparition marched forth at the head of the procession -- a pirate, I
thought, if ever a pirate dwelt upon land. It was a tall Arab, as swarthy
as an Indian; young-say thirty years of age. On his head he had closely
bound a gorgeous yellow and red striped silk scarf, whose ends, lavishly
fringed with tassels, hung down between his shoulders and dallied with the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -515-

wind. From his neck to his knees, in ample folds, a robe swept down that
was a very star-spangled banner of curved and sinuous bars of black and
white. Out of his back, somewhere, apparently, the long stem of a chibouk
projected, and reached far above his right shoulder. Athwart his back,
diagonally, and extending high above his left shoulder, was an Arab gum of
Saladin's time, that was splendid with silver plating from stock clear up
to the end of its measureless stretch of barrel. About his waist was bound
many and many a yard of elaborately figured but sadly tarnished stuff that
came from sumptuous Persia, and among the baggy folds in front the sunbeams
glinted from a formidable battery of old brass-mounted horse-pistols and
the gilded hilts of blood-thirsty knives. There were holsters for more
pistols appended to the wonderful stack of long-haired goat-skins and
Persian carpets, which the man had been taught to regard in the light of a
saddle; and down among the pendulous rank of vast tassels that swung from
that saddle, and clanging against the iron shovel of a stirrup that propped
the warrior's knees up toward his chin, was a crooked, silver-clad scimitar
of such awful dimensions and such implacable expression that no man might
hope to look upon it and not shudder. The fringed and bedizened prince
whose privilege it is to ride the pony and lead the elephant into a country
village is poor and naked compared to this chaos of paraphernalia, and the
happy vanity of the one is the very poverty of satisfaction compared to the
majestic serenity, the overwhelming complacency of the other.

     "Who is this? What is this?" That was the trembling inquiry all down
the line.

     "Our guard! From Galilee to the birthplace of the Savior, the country
is infested with fierce Bedouins, whose sole happiness it is, in this life,
to cut and stab and mangle and murder unoffending Christians. Allah be with
us!"

     "Then hire a regiment! Would you send us out among these desperate
hordes, with no salvation in our utmost need but this old turret?"

     The dragoman laughed-not at the facetiousness of the simile,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -516-

for verily, that guide or that courier or that dragoman never yet lived
upon earth who had in him the faintest appreciation of a joke, even though
that joke were so broad and so ponderous that if it fell on him it would
flatten him out like a postage stamp-the dragoman laughed, and then,
emboldened by some thought that was in his brain, no doubt, proceeded to
extremities and winked.

     In straits like these, when a man laughs, it is encouraging when he
winks, it is positively reassuring. He finally intimated that one guard
would be sufficient to protect us, but that that one was an absolute
necessity. It was because of the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -517-

moral weight his awful panoply would have with the Bedouins. Then I said we
didn't want any guard at all. If one fantastic vagabond could protect eight
armed Christians and a pack of Arab servants from all harm, surely that
detachment could protect themselves. He shook his head doubtfully. Then I
said, just think of how it looks -- think of how it would read, to
self-reliant Americans, that we went sneaking through this deserted
wilderness under the protection of this masquerading Arab, who would break
his neck getting out of the country if a man that was a man ever started
after him. It was a mean, low, degrading position. Why were we ever told to
bring navy revolvers with us if we had to be protected at last by this
infamous star-spangled scum of the desert? These appeals were vain-the
dragoman only smiled and shook his head.

     I rode to the front and struck up an acquaintance with King
Solomon-in-all-his-glory, and got him to show me his lingering eternity of
a gun. It had a rusty dint lock; it was ringed and barred and plated with
silver from end to end, but it was as desperately out of the perpendicular
as are the billiard cues of '49 that one finds yet in service in the
ancient mining camps of California. The muzzle was eaten by the rust of
centuries into a ragged filigree-work, like the end of a burnt-out
stove-pipe. I shut one eye and peered within -- it was flaked with iron
rust like an old steamboat boiler. I borrowed the ponderous pistols and
snapped them. They were rusty inside, too -- had not been loaded for a
generation. I went back, full of encouragement, and reported to the guide,
and asked him to discharge this dismantled fortress. It came out, then.
This fellow was a retainer of the Sheik of Tiberias. He was a source of
Government revenue. He was to the Empire of Tiberias what the customs are
to America. The Sheik imposed guards upon travelers and charged them for
it. It is a lucrative source of emolument, and sometimes brings into the
national treasury as much as thirty-five or forty dollars a year.

     I knew the warrior's secret now; I knew the hollow vanity of his rusty
trumpery, and despised his asinine complacency.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -518-

I told on him, and with reckless daring the cavalcade straight ahead into
the perilous solitudes of the desert, and scorned his frantic warnings of
the mutilation and death that hovered about them on every side.

     Arrived at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the lake, (I
ought to mention that the lake lies six hundred feet below the level of the
Mediterranean-no traveler ever neglects to flourish that fragment of news
in his letters,) as bald and unthrilling a panorama as any land can afford,
perhaps, was spread out before us. Yet it was so crowded with historical
interest, that if all the pages that have been written about it were spread
upon its surface, they would flag it from horizon to horizon like a
pavement. Among the localities comprised in this view, were Mount Hermon;
the hills that border Cesarea Philippi, Dan, the Sources of the Jordan and
the Waters of Merom; Tiberias; the Sea of Galilee; Joseph's Pit; Capernaum;
Bethsaida; the supposed scenes of the Sermon on the Mount, the feeding of
the multitudes and the miraculous draught of fishes; the declivity down
which the swine ran to the sea; the entrance and the exit of the Jordan;
Safed, "the city set upon a hill," one of the four holy cities of the Jews,
and the place where they believe the real Messiah will appear when he comes
to redeem the world; part of the battle-field of Hattin, where the knightly
Crusaders fought their last fight, and in a blaze of glory passed from the
stage and ended their splendid career forever; Mount Tabor, the traditional
scene of the Lord's Transfiguration. And down toward the southeast lay a
landscape that suggested to my mind a quotation (imperfectly remembered, no
doubt:)

     "The Ephraimites, not being called upon to share in the rich
     spoils of the Ammonitish war, assembled a mighty host to fight
     against Jeptha, Judge of Israel; who, being apprised of their
     approach, gathered together the men of Israel and gave them
     battle and put them to flight. To make his victory the more
     secure, he stationed guards at the different fords and passages
     of the Jordan, with instructions to let none pass who could not
     say Shibboleth. The Ephraimites, being of a different tribe,
     could not frame to pronounce the word right, but called it
     Sibboleth, which proved them enemies and cost them their lives;
     wherefore, forty and two thousand fell at the different fords and
     passages of the Jordan that day."

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -519-

     We jogged along peacefully over the great caravan route from Damascus
to Jerusalem and Egypt, past Lubia and other Syrian hamlets, perched, in
the unvarying style, upon the summit of steep mounds and hills, and fenced
round about with giant cactuses, (the sign of worthless land,) with prickly
pears upon them like hams, and came at last to the battle-field of Hattin.

     It is a grand, irregular plateau, and looks as if it might have been
created for a battle-field. Here the peerless Saladin met the Christian
host some seven hundred years ago, and broke their power in Palestine for
all time to come. There had long been a truce between the opposing forces,
but according to the Guide-Book, Raynauld of Chatillon, Lord of Kerak,
broke it by plundering a Damascus caravan, and refusing to give up either
the merchants or their goods when Saladin demanded them. This conduct of an
insolent petty chieftain stung the Sultan to the quick, and he swore that
he would slaughter Raynauld with his own hand, no matter how, or when, or
where he found him. Both armies prepared for war. Under the weak King of
Jerusalem was the very flower of the Christian chivalry. He foolishly
compelled them to undergo a long, exhausting march, in the scorching sun,
and then, without water or other refreshment, ordered them to encamp in
this open plain. The splendidly mounted masses of Moslem soldiers swept
round the north end of Genessaret, burning and destroying as they came, and
pitched their camp in front of the opposing lines. At dawn the terrific
fight began. Surrounded on all sides by the Sultan's swarming battalions,
the Christian Knights fought on without a hope for their lives. They fought
with desperate valor, but to no purpose; the odds of heat and numbers, and
consuming thirst, were too great against them. Towards the middle of the
day the bravest of their band cut their way through the Moslem ranks and
gained the summit of a little hill, and there, hour after hour, they closed
around the banner of the Cross, and beat back the charging squadrons of the
enemy.

     But the doom of the Christian power was sealed. Sunset

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -520-

found Salad in Lord of Palestine, the Christian chivalry strewn in heaps
upon the field, and the King of Jerusalem, the Grand Master of the
Templars, and Raynauld of Chatillon, captives in the Sultan's tent. Salad
in treated two of the prisoners with princely courtesy, and ordered
refreshments to be set before them. When the King handed an iced Sherbet to
Chatillon, the Sultan said," It is thou that givest it to him, not I." He
remembered his oath, and slaughtered the hapless Knight of Chatillon with
his own hand.

     It was hard to realize that this silent plain had once resounded with
martial music and trembled to the tramp of armed men. It was hard to people
this solitude with rushing columns of cavalry, and stir its torpid pulses
with the shouts of victors, the shrieks of the wounded, and the flash of
banner and steel above the surging billows of war. A desolation is here
that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.

     We reached Tabor safely, and considerably in advance of that old
iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a human being on the whole
route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and
alone, a giant sentinel above the Plain of Esdraelon. It rises some
fourteen hundred feet above the surrounding level, a green, wooden cone,
symmetrical and full of grace -- a prominent landmark, and one that is
exceedingly pleasant to eyes surfeited with the repulsive monotony of
desert Syria. We climbed the steep path to its summit, through breezy
glades of thorn and oak. The view presented from its highest peak was
almost beautiful. Below, was the broad, level plain of Esdraelon, checkered
with fields like a chess-board, and full as smooth and level, seemingly;
dotted about its borders with white, compact villages, and faintly
penciled, far and near, with the curving lines of roads and trails. When it
is robed in the fresh verdure of spring, it must form a charming picture,
even by itself. Skirting its southern border rises "Little Hermon," over
whose summit a glimpse of Gilboa is caught. Nain, famous for the raising of
the widow's son, and Endor, as famous for the performances

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -521-

of her witch are in view. To the eastward lies the Valley of the Jordan and
beyond it the mountains of Gilead. Westward is Mount Carmel. Hermon in the
north -- the table-lands of Bashan -- Safed, the holy city, gleaming white
upon a tall spur of the mountains of Lebanon -- a steel-blue corner of the
Sea of Galilee -- saddle-peaked Hattin, traditional "Mount of Beatitudes"
and mute witness brave fights of the Crusading host for Holy Cross -- these
fill up the picture.

     To glance at the salient features of this landscape through the
picturesque framework of a ragged and ruined stone window -- arch of the
time of Christ, thus hiding from sight all that is unattractive, is to
secure to yourself a pleasure worth climbing the mountain to enjoy. One
must stand on his head to get the best effect in a fine sunset, and set a
landscape in a bold, strong framework that is very close at hand, to bring
out all its beauty. One learns this latter truth never more to forget it,
in that mimic land of enchantment, the wonderful garden of my lord the
Count Pallavicini, near Genoa. You go wandering for hours among hills and
wooded glens, artfully contrived to leave the impression that Nature shaped
them and not man; following winding paths and coming suddenly upon leaping
cascades and rustic bridges; finding sylvan lakes where you expected them
not; loitering through battered mediµval castles in miniature that seem
hoary with age and yet were built a dozen years ago; meditating over
ancient crumbling tombs,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -522-

whose marble columns were marred and broken purposely by the modern artist
that made them; stumbling unawares upon toy palaces, wrought of rare and
costly materials, and again upon a peasant's hut, whose dilapidated
furniture would never suggest that it was made so to order; sweeping round
and round in the midst of a forest on an enchanted wooden horse that is
moved by some invisible agency; traversing Roman roads and passing under
majestic triumphal arches; resting in quaint bowers where unseen spirits
discharge jets of water on you from every possible direction, and where
even the flowers you touch assail you with a shower; boating on a
subterranean lake among caverns and arches royally draped with clustering
stalactites, and passing out into open day upon another lake, which is
bordered with sloping banks of grass and gay with patrician barges that
swim at anchor in the shadow of a miniature marble temple that rises out of
the clear water and glasses its white statues, its rich capitals and fluted
columns in the tranquil depths. So, from marvel to marvel you have drifted
on, thinking all the time that the one last seen must be the chiefest. And,
verily, the chiefest wonder is reserved until the last, but you do not see
it until you step ashore, and passing through a wilderness of rare flowers,
collected from every corner of the earth, you stand at the door of one more
mimic temple. Right in this place the artist taxed his genius to the
utmost, and fairly opened the gates of fairy land. You look through an
unpretending pane of glass, stained yellow ¡ the first thing you see is a
mass of quivering foliage, ten short steps before you, in the midst of
which is a ragged opening like a gateway-a thing that is common enough in
nature, and not apt to excite suspicions of a deep human design-and above
the bottom of the gateway, project, in the most careless way! a few broad
tropic leaves and brilliant flowers. All of a sudden, through this bright,
bold gateway, you catch a glimpse of the faintest, softest, richest picture
that ever graced the dream of a dying Saint, since John saw the New
Jerusalem glimmering above the clouds of Heaven. A broad sweep of sea,
flecked with careening sails; a sharp, jutting cape, and a

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -523-

lofty lighthouse on it; a sloping lawn behind it; beyond, a portion of the
old "city of palaces," with its parks and hills and stately mansions;
beyond these, a prodigious mountain, with its strong outlines sharply cut
against ocean and sky; and over all, vagrant shreds and flakes of cloud,
floating in a sea of gold. The ocean is gold, the city is gold, the meadow,
the mountain, the sky -- every thing is golden-rich, and mellow, and dreamy
as a vision of Paradise. No artist could put upon canvas, its entrancing
beauty, and yet, without the yellow glass, and the carefully contrived
accident of a framework that cast it into enchanted distance and shut out
from it all unattractive features, it was not a picture to fall into
ecstacies over. Such is life, and the trail of the serpent is over us all.

     There is nothing for it now but to come back to old Tabor, though the
subject is tiresome enough, and I can not stick to it for wandering off to
scenes that are pleasanter to remember. I think I will skip, any how. There
is nothing about Tabor (except we concede that it was the scene of the
Transfiguration,) but some gray old ruins, stacked up there in all ages of
the world from the days of stout Gideon and parties that flourished thirty
centuries ago to the fresh yesterday of Crusading times. It has its Greek
Convent, and the coffee there is good, but never a splinter of the true
cross or bone of a hallowed saint to arrest the idle thoughts of worldlings
and turn them into graver channels. Catholic church is nothing to me that
has no relics.

     The plain of Esdraelon -- "the battle-field of the nations" -- only
sets one to dreaming of Joshua, and Benhadad, and Saul, and Gideon;
Tamerlane, Tancred, Coeur de Lion, and Saladin; the warrior Kings of
Persia, Egypt's heroes, and Napoleon -- for they all fought here. If the
magic of the moonlight could summon from the graves of forgotten centuries
and many lands the countless myriads that have battled on this wide,
far-reaching floor, and array them in the thousand strange Costumes of
their hundred nationalities, and send the vast host sweeping down the
plain, splendid with plumes and banners and glittering lances, I could stay
here an age to see the phantom

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -524-

pageant. But the magic of the moonlight is a vanity and a fraud; and whoso
putteth his trust in it shall suffer sorrow and disappointment.

     Down at the foot of Tabor, and just at the edge of the storied Plain
of Esdraelon, is the insignificant village of Deburieh, where Deborah,
prophetess of Israel, lived. It is just like Magdala.

                                 Chapter 50

                                 CHAPTER L.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -525-

     We descended from Mount Tabor, crossed a deep ravine, followed a
hilly, rocky road to Nazareth -- distant two hours. All distances in the
East are measured by hours, not miles. A good horse will walk three miles
an hour over nearly any kind of a road; therefore, an hour, here, always
stands for three miles. This method of computation is bothersome and
annoying; and until one gets thoroughly accustomed to it, it carries no
intelligence to his mind until he has stopped and translated the pagan
hours into Christian miles, just as people do with the spoken words of a
foreign language they are acquainted with, but not familiarly enough to
catch the meaning in a moment. Distances traveled by human feet are also
estimated by hours and minutes, though I do not know what the base of the
calculation is. In Constantinople you ask, "How far is it to the
Consulate?" and they answer, "About ten minutes." "How far is it to the
Lloyds' Agency?" "Quarter of an hour." "How far is it to the lower bridge?"
"Four minutes." I can not be positive about it, but I think that there,
when a man orders a pair of pantaloons, he says he wants them a quarter of
a minute in the legs and nine seconds around the waist.

     Two hours from Tabor to Nazareth -- and as it was an uncommonly
narrow, crooked trail, we necessarily met all the camel trains and jackass
caravans between Jericho and Jacksonville in that particular place and
nowhere else. The donkeys do not matter so much, because they are so small
that you can jump your horse over them if he is an animal of spirit,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -526-

but a camel is not jumpable. A camel is as tall as any ordinary
dwelling¡house in Syria -- which is to say a camel is from one to two, and
sometimes nearly three feet taller than a good-sized man. In this part of
the country his load is oftenest in the shape of colossal sacks -- one on
each side. He and his cargo take up as much room as a carriage. Think of
meeting this style of obstruction in a narrow trail. The camel would not
turn out for a king. He stalks serenely along, bringing his cushioned
stilts forward with the long, regular swing of a pendulum, and whatever is
in the way must get out of the way peaceably, or be wiped out forcibly by
the bulky sacks. It was a tiresome ride to us, and perfectly exhausting to
the horses. We were compelled to jump over upwards of eighteen hundred
donkeys, and only one person in the party was unseated less than sixty
times by the camels. This seems like a powerful statement, but the poet has
said, "Things are not what they seem." I can not think of any thing, now,
more certain to make one shudder, than to have a soft¡footed camel sneak up
behind him and touch him on the ear with its cold, flabby under¡lip. A
camel did this for one of the boys, who was drooping over his saddle in a
brown study. He glanced up and saw the majestic apparition hovering above
him, and made frantic efforts to get out of the way, but the camel reached
out and bit him on the shoulder before he accomplished it. This was the
only pleasant incident of the journey.

     At Nazareth we camped in an olive grove near the Virgin Mary's
fountain, and that wonderful Arab "guard" came to collect some bucksheesh
for his "services" in following us from Tiberias and warding off invisible
dangers with the terrors of his armament. The dragoman had paid his master,
but that counted as nothing -- if you hire a man to sneeze for you, here,
and another man chooses to help him, you have got to pay both. They do
nothing whatever without pay. How it must have surprised these people to
hear the way of salvation offered to them "without money and without
price." If the manners, the people or the customs of this country have
changed since

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -527-

the Saviour's time, the figures and metaphors of the Bible are not the
evidences to prove it by.

     We entered the great Latin Convent which is built over the traditional
dwelling¡place of the Holy Family. We went down a flight of fifteen steps
below the ground level, and stood in a small chapel tricked out with
tapestry hangings, silver lamps, and oil paintings. A spot marked by a
cross, in the marble floor, under the altar, was exhibited as the place
made forever holy by the feet of the Virgin when she stood up to receive
the message of the angel. So simple, so unpretending a locality, to be the
scene of so mighty an event ! The very scene of the Annunciation -- an
event which has been commemorated by splendid shrines and august temples
all over the civilized world, and one which the princes of art have made it
their loftiest ambition to picture worthily on their canvas; a spot whose
history is familiar to the very children of every house, and city, and
obscure hamlet of the furthest lands of Christendom; a spot which myriads
of men would toil across the breadth of a world to see, would consider it a
priceless privilege to look upon. It was easy to think these thoughts. But
it was not easy to bring myself up to the magnitude of the situation. I
could sit off several thousand miles and imagine the angel appearing, with
shadowy wings and lustrous countenance, and note the glory that streamed
downward upon the Virgin's head while the message from the Throne of God
fell upon her ears -- any one can do that, beyond the ocean, but few can do
it here. I saw the little recess from which the angel stepped, but could
not fill its void. The angels that I know are creatures of unstable fancy
-- they will not fit in niches of substantial stone. Imagination labors
best in distant fields. I doubt if any man can stand in the Grotto of the
Annunciation and people with the phantom images of his mind its too
tangible walls of stone.

     They showed us a broken granite pillar, depending from the roof, which
they said was hacked in two by the Moslem conquerors of Nazareth, in the
vain hope of pulling down the sanctuary. But the pillar remained
miraculously suspended

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -528-

in the air, and, unsupported itself, supported then and still supports the
roof. By dividing this statement up among eight, it was found not difficult
to believe it.

     These gifted Latin monks never do any thing by halves. If they were to
show you the Brazen Serpent that was elevated in the wilderness, you could
depend upon it that they had on hand the pole it was elevated on also, and
even the hole it stood in. They have got the "Grotto" of the Annunciation
here; and just as convenient to it as one's throat is to his mouth, they
have also the Virgin's Kitchen, and even her sitting¡room, where she and
Joseph watched the infant Saviour play with Hebrew toys eighteen hundred
years ago. All under one roof, and all clean, spacious, comfortable
"grottoes." It seems curious that personages intimately connected with the
Holy Family always lived in grottoes -- in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in
imperial Ephesus -- and yet nobody else in their day and generation thought
of doing any thing of the kind. If they ever did, their grottoes are all
gone, and I suppose we ought to wonder at the peculiar marvel of the
preservation of these I speak of When the Virgin fled from Herod's wrath,
she hid in a grotto in Bethlehem, and the same is there to this day. The
slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was done in a grotto; the Saviour
was born in a grotto -- both are shown to pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly
strange that these tremendous events all happened in grottoes -- and
exceedingly fortunate, likewise, because the strongest houses must crumble
to ruin in time, but a grotto in the diving rock will last forever. It is
an imposture -- this grotto stuff -- but it is one that all men ought to
thank the Catholics for. Wherever they ferret out a lost locality made holy
by some Scriptural event, they straightway build a massive -- almost
imperishable -- church there, and preserve the memory of that locality for
the gratification of future generations. If it had been left to Protestants
to do this most worthy work, we would not even know where Jerusalem is
to¡day, and the man who could go and put his finger on Nazareth would be
too wise for this world. The world owes the Catholics its good will even
for the happy rascality

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -529-

of hewing out these bogus grottoes in the rock; for it is infinitely more
satisfactory to look at a grotto, where people have faithfully believed for
centuries that the Virgin once lived, than to have to imagine a
dwelling¡place for her somewhere, any where, nowhere, loose and at large
all over this town of Nazareth. There is too large a scope of country. The
imagination can not work. There is no one particular spot to chain your
eye, rivet your interest, and make you think. The memory of the Pilgrims
can not perish while Plymouth Rock remains to us. The old monks are wise.
They know how to drive a stake through a pleasant tradition that will hold
it to its place forever.

     We visited the places where Jesus worked for fifteen years as a
carpenter, and where he attempted to teach in the synagogue and was driven
out by a mob. Catholic chapels stand upon these sites and protect the
little fragments of the ancient walls which remain. Our pilgrims broke off
specimens. We visited, also, a new chapel, in the midst of the town, which
is built around a boulder some twelve feet long by four feet thick; the
priests discovered, a few years ago, that the disciples had sat upon this
rock to rest, once, when they had walked up from Capernaum. They hastened
to preserve the relic. Relics are very good property. Travelers are
expected to pay for seeing them, and they do it cheerfully. We like the
idea. One's conscience can never be the worse for the knowledge that he has
paid his way like a man. Our pilgrims would have liked very well to get out
their lampblack and stencil¡plates and paint their names on that rock,
together with the names of the villages they hail from in America, but the
priests permit nothing of that kind. To speak the strict truth, however,
our party seldom offend in that way, though we have men in the ship who
never lose an opportunity to do it. Our pilgrims' chief sin is their lust
for "specimens." I suppose that by this time they know the dimensions of
that rock to an inch, and its weight to a ton; and I do not hesitate to
charge that they will go back there to¡night and try to carry it off.

     This "Fountain of the Virgin" is the one which tradition

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -530-

says Mary used to get water from, twenty times a day, when she was a girl,
and bear it away in a jar upon her head. The water streams through faucets
in the face of a wall of ancient masonry which stands removed from the
houses of the village. The young girls of Nazareth still collect about it
by the dozen and keep up a riotous laughter and sky¡larking. The Nazarene
girls are homely. Some of them have large, lustrous eyes, but none of them
have pretty faces. These girls wear a single garment, usually, and it is
loose, shapeless, of undecided color ; it is generally out of repair, too.
They wear, from crown to jaw, curious strings of old coins, after the
manner of the belles of Tiberias, and brass jewelry upon their wrists and
in their ears. They wear no shoes and stockings. They are the most human
girls we have found in the country yet, and the best natured. But there is
no question that these picturesque maidens sadly lack comeliness.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -531-

     A pilgrim -- the "Enthusiast" -- said: "See that tall, graceful girl!
look at the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance!"

     Another pilgrim came along presently and said: "Observe that tall,
graceful girl; what queenly Madonna-like gracefulness of beauty is in her
countenance."

     I said: "She is not tall, she is short; she is not beautiful, she is
homely; she is graceful enough, I grant, but she is rather boisterous."

     The third and last pilgrim moved by, before long, and he said: "Ah,
what a tall, graceful girl! what Madonna-like gracefulness of queenly
beauty!"

     The verdicts were all in. It was time, now, to look up the authorities
for all these opinions. I found this paragraph, which follows. Written by
whom? Wm. C. Grimes:

     "After we were in the saddle, we rode down to the spring to have
     a last look at the women of Nazareth, who were, as a class, much
     the prettiest that we had seen in the East. As we approached the
     crowd a tall girl of nineteen advanced toward

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -532-

     Miriam and offered her a cup of water. Her movement was graceful
     and queenly. We exclaimed on the spot at the Madonna-like beauty
     of her countenance. Whitely was suddenly thirsty, and begged for
     water, and drank it slowly, with his eyes over the top of the
     cup, fixed on her large black eyes, which gazed on him quite as
     curiously as he on her. Then Moreright wanted water. She gave it
     to him and he managed to spill it so as to ask for another cup,
     and by the time she came to me she saw through the operation; her
     eyes were full of fun as she looked at me. I laughed outright,
     and she joined me in as gay a shout as ever country maiden in old
     Orange county. I wished for a picture of her. A Madonna, whose
     face was a portrait of that beautiful Nazareth girl, would be a
     'thing of beauty' and 'a joy forever.'"

     That is the kind of gruel which has been served out from Palestine for
ages. Commend me to Fennimore Cooper to find beauty in the Indians, and to
Grimes to find it in the Arabs. Arab men are often fine looking, but Arab
women are not. We can all believe that the Virgin Mary was beautiful; it is
not natural to think otherwise; but does it follow that it is our duty to
find beauty in these present women of Nazareth?

     I love to quote from Grimes, because he is so dramatic. And because he
is so romantic. And because he seems to care but little whether he tells
the truth or not, so he scares the reader or excites his envy or his
admiration.

     He went through this peaceful land with one hand forever on his
revolver, and the other on his pocket-handkerchief. Always, when he was not
on the point of crying over a holy place, he was on the point of killing an
Arab. More surprising things happened to him in Palestine than ever
happened to any traveler here or elsewhere since Munchausen died.

     At Beitin, where nobody had interfered with him, he crept out of his
tent at dead of night and shot at what he took to be an Arab lying on a
rock, some distance away, planning evil. The ball killed a wolf. Just
before he fired, he makes a dramatic picture of himself -- as usual, to
scare the reader:

     "Was it imagination, or did I see a moving object on the surface
     of the rock? If it were a man, why did he not now drop me ? He
     had a beautiful shot as I stood out in my black boornoose against
     the white tent. I had the sensation of an entering bullet in my
     throat, breast, brain."

     Reckless creature!

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -533-

     Riding toward Genessaret, they saw two Bedouins, and "we looked to our
pistols and loosened them quietly in our shawls," etc. Always cool.

     In Samaria, he charged up a hill, in the face of a volley of stones;
he fired into the crowd of men who threw them. He says:

     "I never lost an opportunity of impressing the Arabs with the
     perfection of American and English weapons, and the danger of
     attacking any one of the armed Franks. I think the lesson of that
     ball not lost."

     At Beitin he gave his whole band of Arab muleteers a piece of his
mind, and then --

     "I contented myself with a solemn assurance that if there
     occurred another instance of disobedience to orders I would
     thrash the responsible party as he never dreamed of being
     thrashed, and if I could not find who was responsible, I would
     whip them all, from first to last, whether there was a governor
     at hand to do it or I had to do it myself"

     Perfectly fearless, this man.

     He rode down the perpendicular path in the rocks, from the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -534-

Castle of Banias to the oak grove, at a flying gallop, his horse striding
"thirty feet" at every bound. I stand prepared to bring thirty reliable
witnesses to prove that Putnam's famous feat at Horseneck was insignificant
compared to this.

     Behold him -- always theatrical -- looking at Jerusalem -- this time,
by an oversight, with his hand off his pistol for once.

     "I stood in the road, my hand on my horse's neck, and with my dim
     eyes sought to trace the outlines of the holy places which I had
     long before fixed in my mind, but the fast¡flowing tears forbade
     my succeeding. There were our Mohammedan servants, a Latin monk,
     two Armenians and a Jew in our cortege, and all alike gazed with
     overflowing eyes."

     If Latin monks and Arabs cried, I know to a moral certainty that the
horses cried also, and so the picture is complete.

     But when necessity demanded, he could be firm as adamant. In the
Lebanon Valley an Arab youth -- a Christian; he is particular to explain
that Mohammedans do not steal -- robbed him of a paltry ten dollars' worth
of powder and shot. He convicted him before a sheik and looked on while he
was punished by the terrible bastinado. Hear him:

     "He (Mousa) was on his back in a twinkling, howling, shouting,
     screaming, but he was carried out to the piazza before the door,
     where we could see the operation, and laid face down. One man sat
     on his back and one on his legs, the latter holding up his feet,
     while a third laid on the bare soles a rhinoceros-hide
     koorbash50.1 that whizzed through the air at every stroke. Poor
     Moreright was in agony, and Nama and Nama the Second (mother and
     sister of Mousa,) were on their faces begging and wailing, now
     embracing my knees and now Whitely's, while the brother, outside,
     made the air ring with cries louder than Mousa's. Even Yusef came
     and asked me on his knees to relent, and last of all, Betuni --
     the rascal had lost a feed-bag in their house and had been
     loudest in his denunciations that morning -- besought the Howajji
     to have mercy on the fellow."

     But not he! The punishment was "suspended," at the fifteenth blow to
hear the confession. Then Grimes and his party rode away, and left the
entire Christian family to be fined and as severely punished as the
Mohammedan sheik should deem proper.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -535-



     "As I mounted, Yusef once more begged me to interfere and have
     mercy on them, but I looked around at the dark faces of the
     crowd, and I couldn't find one drop of pity in my heart for
     them."

     He closes his picture with a rollicking burst of humor which contrasts
finely with the grief of the mother and her children.

     One more paragraph:

     "Then once more I bowed my head. It is no shame to have wept in
     Palestine. I wept, when I saw Jerusalem, I wept when I lay in the
     starlight at Bethlehem. I wept on the blessed shores of Galilee.
     My hand was no less firm on the rein, my anger did not tremble on
     the trigger of my pistol when I rode with it in my right hand
     along the shore of the blue sea" (weeping.) "My eye was not
     dimmed by those tears nor my heart in aught weakened. Let him who
     would sneer at my emotion close this volume here, for he will
     find little to his taste in my journeyings through Holy Land."

     He never bored but he struck water.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -536-

     I am aware that this is a pretty voluminous notice of Mr. Grimes'
book. However, it is proper and legitimate to speak of it, for "Nomadic
Life in Palestine" is a representative book -- the representative of a
class of Palestine books -- and a criticism upon it will serve for a
criticism upon them all. And since I am treating it in the comprehensive
capacity of a representative book, I have taken the liberty of giving to
both book and author fictitious names. Perhaps it is in better taste, any
how, to do this.



50.1 "A Koorbash is Arabic for cowhide, the cow being a rhinoceros. It is
the most cruel whip known to fame. Heavy as lead, and flexible as
India-rubber, usually about forty inches long and tapering gradually from
an inch in diameter to a point, it administers a blow which leaves its mark
for time." -- Scow Life in Egypt, by the same author.

                                 Chapter 51

                                CHAPTER LI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -537-

      NAZARETH is wonderfully interesting because the town has an air about
it of being precisely as Jesus left it, and one finds himself saying, all
the time, "The boy Jesus has stood in this doorway -- has played in that
street -- has touched these stones with his hands -- has rambled over these
chalky hills." Whoever shall write the boyhood of Jesus ingeniously will
make a book which will possess a vivid interest for young and old alike. I
judge so from the greater interest we found in Nazareth than any of our
speculations upon Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee gave rise to. It was not
possible, standing by the Sea of Galilee, to frame more than a vague,
far-away idea of the majestic Personage who walked upon the crested waves
as if they had been solid earth, and who touched the dead and they rose up
and spoke. I read among my notes, now, with a new interest, some sentences
from an edition of 1621 of the Apocryphal New Testament. [Extract.]

           "Christ, kissed by a bride made dumb by sorcerers, cures
     her. A leprous girl cured by the water in which the infant Christ
     was washed, and becomes the servant of Joseph and Mary. The
     leprous son of a Prince cured in like manner.

           "A young man who had been bewitched and turned into a mule,
     miraculously cured by the infant Savior being put on his back,
     and is married to the girl who had been cured of leprosy.
     Whereupon the bystanders praise God.

           "Chapter 16. Christ miraculously widens or contracts gates,
     milk-pails, sieves or boxes, not properly made by Joseph, he not
     being skillful at his carpenter's trade. The King of Jerusalem
     gives Joseph an order for a throne. Joseph works on it for two
     years and makes it two spans too short. The King being angry with
     him, Jesus comforts him -- commands him to pull one side of the
     throne while he pulls the other, and brings it to its proper
     dimensions.

           "Chapter 19. Jesus, charged with throwing a boy from the
     roof of a house, miraculously

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -538-

     causes the dead boy to speak and acquit him; fetches water for
     his mother, breaks the pitcher and miraculously gathers the water
     in his mantle and brings it home.

          "Sent to a schoolmaster, refuses to tell his letters, and
     the schoolmaster going to whip him, his hand withers."

     Further on in this quaint volume of rejected gospels is an epistle of
St. Clement to the Corinthians, which was used in the churches and
considered genuine fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. In it this
account of the fabled phoenix occurs:

     "1. Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection,
     which is seen in the Eastern countries, that is to say, in
     Arabia.
     "2. There is a certain bird called a phoenix. Of this there is
     never but one at a time, and that lives five hundred years. And
     when the time of its dissolution draws near, that it must die, it
     makes itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices,
     into which, when its time is fulfilled, it enters and dies.
     "3. But its flesh, putrefying, breeds a certain worm, which,
     being nourished by the juice of the dead bird, brings forth
     feathers; and when it is grown to a perfect state, it takes up
     the nest in which the bones of its parent lie, and carries it
     from Arabia into Egypt, to a city called Heliopolis:
     "4. And flying in open day in the sight of all men, lays it upon
     the altar of the sun, and so returns from whence it came.
     "5. The priests then search into the records of the time, and
     find that it returned precisely at the end of five hundred
     years."

     Business is business, and there is nothing like punctuality,
especially in a phoenix.

     The few chapters relating to the infancy of the Saviour contain many
things which seem frivolous and not worth preserving. A large part of the
remaining portions of the book read like good Scripture, however. There is
one verse that ought not to have been rejected, because it so evidently
prophetically refers to the general run of Congresses of the United States:

     "199. They carry themselves high, and as prudent men; and though
     they are fools, yet would seem to be teachers."

     I have set these extracts down, as I found them. Everywhere among the
cathedrals of France and Italy, one finds traditions of personages that do
not figure in the Bible, and of miracles that are not mentioned in its
pages. But they are

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -539-

all in this Apocryphal New Testament, and though they have been ruled out
of our modern Bible, it is claimed that they were accepted gospel twelve or
fifteen centuries ago, and ranked as high in credit as any. One needs to
read this book before he visits those venerable cathedrals, with their
treasures of tabooed and forgotten tradition.

      They imposed another pirate upon us at Nazareth -- another invincible
Arab guard. We took our last look at the city, clinging like a whitewashed
wasp's nest to the hill-side, and at eight o'clock in the morning departed.
We dismounted and drove the horses down a bridle-path which I think was
fully as crooked as a corkscrew, which I know to be as steep as the
downward sweep of a rainbow, and which I believe to be the worst piece of
road in the geography, except one in the Sandwich Islands, which I remember
painfully, and possibly one or two mountain trails in the Sierra Nevadas.
Often, in this narrow path the horse had to poise himself nicely on a rude
stone step and then drop his fore-feet

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -540-

over the edge and down something more than half his own height. This
brought his nose near the ground, while his tail pointed up toward the sky
somewhere, and gave him the appearance of preparing to stand on his head. A
horse cannot look dignified in this position. We accomplished the long
descent at last, and trotted across the great Plain of Esdraelon.

     Some of us will be shot before we finish this pilgrimage. The pilgrims
read "Nomadic Life" and keep themselves in a constant state of Quixotic
heroism. They have their hands on their pistols all the time, and every now
and then, when you least expect it, they snatch them out and take aim at
Bedouins who are not visible, and draw their knives and make savage passes
at other Bedouins who do not exist. I am in deadly peril always, for these
spasms are sudden and irregular, and of course I cannot tell when to be
getting out of the way. If I am accidentally murdered, some time, during
one of these romantic frenzies of the pilgrims, Mr. Grimes must be rigidly
held to answer as an accessory before the fact. If the pilgrims would take
deliberate aim and shoot at a man, it would be all right and proper --
because that man would not be in any danger; but these random assaults are
what I object to. I do not wish to see any more places like Esdraelon,
where the ground is level and people can gallop. It puts melodramatic
nonsense into the pilgrims' heads. All at once, when one is jogging along
stupidly in the sun, and thinking about something ever so far away, here
they come, at a stormy gallop, spurring and whooping at those ridgy old
sore-backed plugs till their heels fly higher than their heads, and as they
whiz by, out comes a little potato-gum of a revolver, there is a startling
little pop, and a small pellet goes singing through the air. Now that I
have begun this pilgrimage, I intend to go through with it, though sooth to
say, nothing but the most desperate valor has kept me to my purpose up to
the present time. I do not mind Bedouins, -- I am not afraid of them;
because neither Bedouins nor ordinary Arabs have shown any disposition to
harm us, but I do feel afraid of my own comrades.

     Arriving at the furthest verge of the Plain, we rode a little

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -541-

way up a hill and found ourselves at Endor, famous for its witch. Her
descendants are there yet. They were the wildest horde of half-naked
savages we have found thus far. They swarmed out of mud bee-hives; out of
hovels of the dry-goods box pattern; out of gaping caves under shelving
rocks; out of crevices in the earth. In five minutes the dead solitude and
silence of the place were no more, and a begging, screeching, shouting mob
were struggling about the horses' feet and blocking the way. ''Bucksheesh!
bucksheesh ! bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh !" It was Magdala over again,
only here the glare from the infidel eyes was fierce and full of hate. The
population numbers two hundred and fifty, and more than half the citizens
live in caves in the rock. Dirt, degradation and savagery are Endor's
specialty. We say no more about Magdala and Deburieh now. Endor heads the
list. It is worse than any Indian campoodie. The hill is barren, rocky, and
forbidding. No sprig of grass is visible, and only one tree. This is a
fig-tree, which maintains a precarious footing among the rocks at the mouth
of the dismal cavern once occupied by the veritable Witch of Endor. In this
cavern, tradition says, Saul, the king, sat at midnight, and stared and
trembled, while the earth shook, the thunders crashed among the hills, and
out of the midst of fire and smoke the spirit of the dead prophet rose up
and confronted him. Saul had crept to this place in the darkness, while his
army slept, to learn what fate awaited him in the morrow's battle. He went
away a sad man, to meet disgrace and death.

     A spring trickles out of the rock in the gloomy recesses of the
cavern, and we were thirsty. The citizens of Endor objected to our going in
there. They do not mind dirt; they do not mind rags; they do not mind
vermin; they do not mind barbarous ignorance and savagery; they do not mind
a reasonable degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and holy
before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shudder and grow
almost pale at the idea of Christian lips polluting a spring whose waters
must descend into their sanctified gullets. We had no wanton desire to
wound even their feelings

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -542-

or trample upon their prejudices, but we were out of water, thus early in
the day, and were burning up with thirst. It was at this time, and under
these circumstances, that I framed an aphorism which has already become
celebrated. I said: "Necessity knows no law." We went in and drank.

     We got away from the noisy wretches, finally, dropping them in squads
and couples as we filed over the hills -- the aged first, the infants next,
the young girls further on; the strong men ran beside us a mile, and only
left when they had secured the last possible piastre in the way of
bucksheesh.

      In an hour, we reached Nain, where Christ raised the widow's son to
life. Nain is Magdala on a small scale. It has no population of any
consequence. Within a hundred yards of it is the original graveyard, for
aught I know; the tombstones lie flat on the ground, which is Jewish
fashion in Syria. I believe the Moslems do not allow them to have upright
tombstones. A Moslem grave is usually roughly plastered over and
whitewashed, and has at one end an upright projection which is shaped into
exceedingly rude attempts at ornamentation. In the cities, there is often
no appearance of a grave at all; a tall, slender marble tombstone,
elaborately lettred, gilded and painted, marks the burial place, and this
is surmounted by a turban, so carved and shaped as to signify the dead
man's rank in life.

      They showed a fragment of ancient wall which they said was one side
of the gate out of which the widow's dead son was being brought so many
centuries ago when Jesus met the procession:

     "Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold there was
     a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a
     widow: and much people of the city was with her.
     "And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said,
     Weep not.
     "And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood
     still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, arise.
     "And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he
     delivered him to his mother.
     "And there came a fear on all. And they glorified God, saying,
     That a great prophet is risen up among us; and That God hath
     visited his people."

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -543-

     A little mosque stands upon the spot which tradition says was occupied
by the widow's dwelling. Two or three aged Arabs sat about its door. We
entered, and the pilgrims broke specimens from the foundation walls, though
they had to touch, and even step, upon the "praying carpets" to do it. It
was almost the same as breaking pieces from the hearts of those old Arabs.
To step rudely upon the sacred praying mats, with booted feet -- a thing
not done by any Arab -- was to inflict pain upon men who had not offended
us in any way. Suppose a party of armed foreigners were to enter a village
church in America and break ornaments from the altar railings for
curiosities, and climb up and walk upon the Bible and the pulpit cushions?
However, the cases are different. One is the profanation of a temple of our
faith -- the other only the profanation of a pagan one.

      We descended to the Plain again, and halted a moment at a well -- of
Abraham's time, no doubt. It was in a desert place. It was walled three
feet above ground with squared and heavy blocks of stone, after the manner
of Bible pictures. Around it some camels stood, and others knelt. There was
a group of sober little donkeys with naked, dusky children clambering about
them, or sitting astride their rumps, or pulling their tails. Tawny,
black-eyed, barefooted maids, arrayed in rags and adorned with brazen
armlets and pinchbeck ear-rings, were poising water-jars upon their heads,
or drawing water from the well. A flock of sheep stood by, waiting for the
shepherds to fill the hollowed stones with water, so that they might drink
-- stones which, like those that walled the well, were worn smooth and
deeply creased by the chafing chins of a hundred generations of thirsty
animals. Picturesque Arabs sat upon the ground, in groups, and solemnly
smoked their long-stemmed chibouks. Other Arabs were filling black
hog-skins with water -- skins which, well filled, and distended with water
till the short legs projected painfully out of the proper line, looked like
the corpses of hogs bloated by drowning. Here was a grand Oriental picture
which I had worshiped a thousand times in soft, rich steel engravings! But
in the engraving

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -544-

there was no desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly features; no
sore eyes; no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the countenances; no
raw places on the donkeys' backs; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown
tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a couple of tons of powder
placed under the party and touched off would heighten the effect and give
to the scene a genuine interest and a charm which it would always be
pleasant to recall, even though a man lived a thousand years. Oriental
scenes look best in steel engravings. I cannot be imposed upon any more by
that picture of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. I shall say to myself,
You look fine, Madam but your feet are not clean and you smell like a
camel.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -545-

     Presently a wild Arab in charge of a camel train recognized an old
friend in Ferguson, and they ran and fell upon each other's necks and
kissed each other's grimy, bearded faces upon both cheeks. It explained
instantly a something which had always seemed to me only a farfetched
Oriental figure of speech. I refer to the circumstance of Christ's rebuking
a Pharisee, or some such character, and reminding him that from him he had
received no "kiss of welcome." It did not seem reasonable to me that men
should kiss each other, but I am aware, now, that they did. There was
reason in it, too. The custom was natural and proper; because people must
kiss, and a man would not be likely to kiss one of the women of this
country of his own free will and accord. One must travel, to learn. Every
day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for
me before, take to themselves a meaning.

     We journeyed around the base of the mountain -- "Little Hermon," --
past the old Crusaders' castle of El Fuleh, and arrived at Shunem. This was
another Magdala, to a fraction, frescoes and all. Here, tradition says, the
prophet Samuel was born, and here the Shunamite woman built a little house
upon the city wall for the accommodation of the prophet Elisha. Elisha
asked her what she expected in return. It was a perfectly natural question,
for these people are and were in the habit of proffering favors and
services and then expecting and begging for pay. Elisha knew them well. He
could not comprehend that any body should build for him that humble little
chamber for the mere sake of old friendship, and with no selfish motive
whatever. It used to seem a very impolite, not to say

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -546-

a rude, question, for Elisha to ask the woman, but it does not seem so to
me now. The woman said she expected nothing Then for her goodness and her
unselfishness, he rejoiced her heart with the news that she should bear a
son. It was a high reward -- but she would not have thanked him for a
daughter -- daughters have always been unpopular here. The son was born,
grew, waxed strong, died. Elisha restored him to life in Shunem.

     We found here a grove of lemon trees -- cool, shady, hung with fruit.
One is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare, but to me this grove
seemed very beautiful. It was beautiful. I do not overestimate it. I must
always remember Shunem gratefully, as a place which gave to us this leafy
shelter after our long, hot ride. We lunched, rested, chatted, smoked our
pipes an hour, and then mounted and moved on.

     As we trotted across the Plain of Jezreel, we met half a dozen Digger
Indians (Bedouins) with very long spears in their

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -547-

hands, cavorting around on old crowbait horses, and spearing imaginary
enemies; whooping, and fluttering their rags in the wind, and carrying on
in every respect like a pack of hopeless lunatics. At last, here were the
"wild, free sons of the desert, speeding over the plain like the wind, on
their beautiful Arabian mares" we had read so much about and longed so much
to see! Here were the "picturesque costumes!" This was the "gallant
spectacle!" Tatterdemalion vagrants -- cheap braggadocio -- "Arabian mares"
spined and necked like the ichthyosaurus in the museum, and humped and
cornered like a dromedary! To glance at the genuine son of the desert is to
take the romance out of him forever -- to behold his steed is to long in
charity to strip his harness off and let him fall to pieces.

      Presently we came to a ruinous old town on a hill, the same being the
ancient Jezreel.

      Ahab, King of Samaria, (this was a very vast kingdom, for those days,
and was very nearly half as large as Rhode Island) dwelt in the city of
Jezreel, which was his capital. Near him lived a man by the name of Naboth,
who had a vineyard. The King asked him for it, and when he would not give
it, offered to buy it. But Naboth refused to sell it. In those days it was
considered a sort of crime to part with one's inheritance at any price --
and even if a man did part with it, it reverted to himself or his heirs
again at the next jubilee year. So this spoiled child of a King went and
lay down on the bed with his face to the wall, and grieved sorely. The
Queen, a notorious character in those days, and whose name is a by-word and
a reproach even in these, came in and asked him wherefore he sorrowed, and
he told her. Jezebel said she could secure the vineyard; and she went forth
and forged letters to the nobles and wise men, in the King's name, and
ordered them to proclaim a fast and set Naboth on high before the people,
and suborn two witnesses to swear that he had blasphemed. They did it, and
the people stoned the accused by the city wall, and he died. Then Jezebel
came and told the King, and said, Behold, Naboth is no more -- rise up and
seize the vineyard. So Ahab seized the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -548-

vineyard, and went into it to possess it. But the Prophet Elijah came to
him there and read his fate to him, and the fate of Jezebel; and said that
in the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, dogs should also lick
his blood -- and he said, likewise, the dogs should eat Jezebel by the wall
of Jezreel. In the course of time, the King was killed in battle, and when
his chariot wheels were washed in the pool of Samaria, the dogs licked the
blood. In after years, Jehu, who was King of Israel, marched down against
Jezreel, by order of one of the Prophets, and administered one of those
convincing rebukes so common among the people of those days: he killed many
kings and their subjects, and as he came along he saw Jezebel, painted and
finely dressed, looking out of a window, and ordered that she be thrown
down to him. A servant did it, and Jehu's horse trampled her under foot.
Then Jehu went in and sat down to dinner; and presently he said, Go and
bury this cursed woman, for she is a King's daughter. The spirit of charity
came upon him too late, however, for the prophecy had already been
fulfilled -- the dogs had eaten her, and they "found no more of her than
the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands."

     Ahab, the late King, had left a helpless family behind him, and Jehu
killed seventy of the orphan sons. Then he killed all the relatives, and
teachers, and servants and friends of the family, and rested from his
labors, until he was come near to Samaria, where he met forty-two persons
and asked them who they were; they said they were brothers of the King of
Judah. He killed them. When he got to Samaria, he said he would show his
zeal for the Lord; so he gathered all the priests and people together that
worshiped Baal, pretending that he was going to adopt that worship and
offer up a great sacrifice; and when they were all shut up where they could
not defend themselves, he caused every person of them to be killed. Then
Jehu, the good missionary, rested from his labors once more.

      We went back to the valley, and rode to the Fountain of Ain Jelud.
They call it the Fountain of Jezreel, usually. It is a pond about one
hundred feet square and four feet deep,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -549-

with a stream of water trickling into it from under an overhanging ledge of
rocks. It is in the midst of a great solitude. Here Gideon pitched his camp
in the old times; behind Shunem lay the "Midianites, the Amalekites, and
the Children of the East," who were "as grasshoppers for multitude; both
they and their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea-side for
multitude." Which means that there were one hundred and thirty-five
thousand men, and that they had transportation service accordingly.

      Gideon, with only three hundred men, surprised them in the night, and
stood by and looked on while they butchered each other until a hundred and
twenty thousand lay dead on the field.

      We camped at Jenin before night, and got up and started again at one
o'clock in the morning. Somewhere towards daylight we passed the locality
where the best authenticated tradition locates the pit into which Joseph's
brethren threw him, and about noon, after passing over a succession of
mountain tops, clad with groves of fig and olive trees, with the
Mediterranean in sight some forty miles away, and going by many ancient
Biblical cities whose inhabitants glowered savagely upon our Christian
procession, and were seemingly inclined to practice on it with stones, we
came to the singularly terraced and unlovely hills that betrayed that we
were out of Galilee and into Samaria at last.

      We climbed a high hill to visit the city of Samaria, where the woman
may have hailed from who conversed with Christ at Jacob's Well, and from
whence, no doubt, came also the celebrated Good Samaritan. Herod the Great
is said to have made a magnificent city of this place, and a great number
of coarse 1imestone columns, twenty feet high and two feet through, that
are almost guiltless of architectural grace of shape and ornament, are
pointed out by many authors as evidence of the fact. They would not have
been considered handsome in ancient Greece, however.

      The inhabitants of this camp are particularly vicious, and stoned two
parties of our pilgrims a day or two ago who

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -550-

brought about the difficulty by showing their revolvers when they did not
intend to use them -- a thing which is deemed bad judgment in the Far West,
and ought certainly to be so considered any where. In the new Territories,
when a man puts his hand on a weapon, he knows that he must use it; he must
use it instantly or expect to be shot down where he stands. Those pilgrims
had been reading Grimes.

     There was nothing for us to do in Samaria but buy handfuls of old
Roman coins at a franc a dozen, and look at a dilapidated church of the
Crusaders and a vault in it which once contained the body of John the
Baptist. This relic was long ago carried away to Genoa.

      Samaria stood a disastrous siege, once, in the days of Elisha, at the
hands of the King of Syria. Provisions reached such a figure that "an ass'
head was sold for eighty pieces of silver and the fourth part of a cab of
dove's dung for five pieces of silver."

      An incident recorded of that heavy time will give one a very good
idea of the distress that prevailed within these crumbling walls. As the
King was walking upon the battlements one day, "a woman cried out, saying,
Help, my lord, O King ! And the King said, What aileth thee? and she
answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him
to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat
him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him;
and she hath hid her son."

      The prophet Elisha declared that within four and twenty hours the
prices of food should go down to nothing, almost, and it was so. The Syrian
army broke camp and fled, for some cause or other, the famine was relieved
from without, and many a shoddy speculator in dove's dung and ass's meat
was ruined.

      We were glad to leave this hot and dusty old village and hurry on. At
two o'clock we stopped to lunch and rest at ancient Shechem, between the
historic Mounts of Gerizim and Ebal, where in the old times the books of
the law, the curses and the blessings, were read from the heights to the
Jewish multitudes below.

                                 Chapter 52

                                CHAPTER LII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -551-

     THE narrow canon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, is under
high cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is well
watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with the
barren hills that tower on either side. One of these hills is the ancient
Mount of Blessings and the other the Mount of Curses and wise men who seek
for fulfillments of prophecy think they find here a wonder of this kind --
to wit, that the Mount of Blessings is strangely fertile and its mate as
strangely unproductive. We could not see that there was really much
difference between them in this respect, however.

     Shechem is distinguished as one of the residences of the patriarch
Jacob, and as the seat of those tribes that cut themselves loose from their
brethren of Israel and propagated doctrines not in conformity with those of
the original Jewish creed. For thousands of years this clan have dwelt in
Shechem under strict tabu, and having little commerce or fellowship with
their fellow men of any religion or nationality. For generations they have
not numbered more than one or two hundred, but they still adhere to their
ancient faith and maintain their ancient rites and ceremonies. Talk of
family and old descent ! Princes and nobles pride themselves upon lineages
they can trace back some hundreds of years. What is this trifle to this
handful of old first families of Shechem who can name their fathers
straight back without a flaw for thousands -- straight back to a period so
remote that men reared in a country where the days of two hundred years ago
are called

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -552-

"ancient" times grow dazed and bewildered when they try to comprehend it!
Here is respectability for you -- here is "family" -- here is high descent
worth talking about. This sad, proud remnant of a once mighty community
still hold themselves aloof from all the world; they still live as their
fathers lived, labor as their fathers labored, think as they did, feel as
they did, worship in the same place, in sight of the same landmarks, and in
the same quaint, patriarchal way their ancestors did more than thirty
centuries ago. I found myself gazing at any straggling scion of this
strange race with a riveted fascination, just as one would stare at a
living mastodon, or a megatherium that had moved in the grey dawn of
creation and seen the wonders of that mysterious world that was before the
flood.

     Carefully preserved among the sacred archives of this curious
community is a MSS. copy of the ancient Jewish law, which is said to be the
oldest document on earth. It is written on vellum, and is some four or five
thousand years old. Nothing but bucksheesh can purchase a sight. Its fame
is somewhat dimmed in these latter days, because of the doubts so many
authors of Palestine travels have felt themselves privileged to cast upon
it. Speaking of this MSS. reminds me that I procured from the high¡priest
of this ancient Samaritan community, at great expense, a secret document of
still higher antiquity and far more extraordinary interest, which I propose
to publish as soon as I have finished translating it.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -553-

     Joshua gave his dying injunction to the children of Israel at Shechem,
and buried a valuable treasure secretly under an oak tree there about the
same time. The superstitious Samaritans have always been afraid to hunt for
it. They believe it is guarded by fierce spirits invisible to men.

     About a mile and a half from Shechem we halted at the base of Mount
Ebal before a little square area, inclosed by a high stone wall, neatly
whitewashed. Across one end of this inclosure is a tomb built after the
manner of the Moslems. It is the tomb of Joseph. No truth is better
authenticated than this.

     When Joseph was dying he prophesied that exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt which occurred four hundred years afterwards. At the same time he
exacted of his people an oath that when they journeyed to the land of
Canaan they would bear his bones with them and bury them in the ancient
inheritance of his fathers. The oath was kept.

     "And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up
     out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which
     Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a
     hundred pieces of silver."

     Few tombs on earth command the veneration of so many races and men of
divers creeds as this of Joseph. "Samaritan and Jew, Moslem and Christian
alike, revere it, and honor it with their visits. The tomb of Joseph, the
dutiful son, the affectionate, forgiving brother, the virtuous man, the
wise Prince and ruler. Egypt felt his influence -- the world knows his
history."

     In this same "parcel of ground" which Jacob bought of the sons of
Hamor for a hundred pieces of silver, is Jacob's celebrated well. It is cut
in the solid rock, and is nine feet square and ninety feet deep. The name
of this unpretending hole in the ground, which one might pass by and take
no notice of, is as familiar as household words to even the children and
the peasants of many a far¡off country. It is more famous than the
Parthenon; it is older than the Pyramids.

     It was by this well that Jesus sat and talked with a woman

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -554-

of that strange, antiquated Samaritan community I have been speaking of,
and told her of the mysterious water of life. As descendants of old English
nobles still cherish in the traditions of their houses how that this king
or that king tarried a day with some favored ancestor three hundred years
ago, no doubt the descendants of the woman of Samaria, living there in
Shechem, still refer with pardonable vanity to this conversation of their
ancestor, held some little time gone by, with the Messiah of the
Christians. It is not likely that they undervalue a distinction such as
this. Samaritan nature is human nature, and human nature remembers contact
with the illustrious, always.

     For an offense done to the family honor, the sons of Jacob
exterminated all Shechem once.

     We left Jacob's Well and traveled till eight in the evening, but
rather slowly, for we had been in the saddle nineteen hours, and the horses
were cruelly tired. We got so far ahead of the tents that we had to camp in
an Arab village, and sleep on the ground. We could have slept in the
largest of the houses; but there were some little drawbacks: it was
populous with vermin, it had a dirt floor, it was in no respect cleanly,
and there was a family of goats in the only bedroom, and two donkeys in the
parlor. Outside there were no inconveniences, except that the dusky,
ragged, earnest¡eyed villagers of both sexes and all ages grouped
themselves on their haunches all around us, and discussed us and criticised
us with noisy tongues till midnight. We did not mind the noise, being
tired, but, doubtless, the reader is aware that it is almost an impossible
thing to go to sleep when you know that people are looking at you. We went
to bed at ten, and got up again at two and started once more. Thus are
people persecuted by dragomen, whose sole ambition in life is to get ahead
of each other.

     About daylight we passed Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant rested
three hundred years, and at whose gates good old Eli fell down and "brake
his neck" when the messenger, riding hard from the battle, told him of the
defeat of his people, the death of his sons, and, more than all, the
capture of Israel's pride, her hope, her refuge, the ancient Ark her

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -555-

forefathers brought with them out of Egypt. It is little wonder that under
circumstances like these he fell down and brake his neck. But Shiloh had no
charms for us. We were so cold that there was no comfort but in motion, and
so drowsy we could hardly sit upon the horses.

     After a while we came to a shapeless mass of ruins, which still bears
the name of Bethel. It was here that Jacob lay down and had that superb
vision of angels flitting up and down a ladder that reached from the clouds
to earth, and caught glimpses of their blessed home through the open gates
of Heaven

     The pilgrims took what was left of the hallowed ruin, and we pressed
on toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jerusalem.

     The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and
bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became. There could not have been
more fragments of stone strewn broadcast over this part of the world, if
every ten square feet of the land had been occupied by a separate and
distinct stonecutter's establishment for an age. There was hardly a tree or
a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a
worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that
is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to
Jerusalem. The only difference between the roads and the surrounding
country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the roads than in
the surrounding country.

     We passed Ramah, and Beroth, and on the right saw the tomb of the
prophet Samuel, perched high upon a commanding eminence. Still no Jerusalem
came in sight. We hurried on impatiently. We halted a moment at the ancient
Fountain of Beira, but its stones, worn deeply by the chins of thirsty
animals that are dead and gone centuries ago, had no interest for us -- we
longed to see Jerusalem. We spurred up hill after hill, and usually began
to stretch our necks minutes before we got to the top -- but disappointment
always followed: -- more stupid hills beyond -- more unsightly landscape --
no Holy City.

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                                   -556-

     At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bite of wall and
crumbling arches began to line the way -- we toiled up one more hill, and
every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high! Jerusalem !

     Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid, massed
together and hooped with high gray walls, the venerable city gleamed in the
sun. So small! Why, it was no larger than an American village of four
thousand inhabitants, and no larger than an ordinary Syrian city of thirty
thousand. Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people

     We dismounted and looked, without speaking a dozen sentences, across
the wide intervening valley for an hour or more; and noted those prominent
features of the city that pictures make familiar to all men from their
school days till their death. We could recognize the Tower of Hippicus, the
Mosque of Omar, the Damascus Gate, the Mount of Olives, the Valley of
Jehoshaphat, the Tower of David, and the Garden of Gethsemane¡¡and dating
from these landmarks could tell very nearly the localities of many others
we were not able to distinguish.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -557-

     I record it here as a notable but not discreditable fact that not even
our pilgrims wept. I think there was no individual in the party whose brain
was not teeming with thoughts and images and memories invoked by the grand
history of the venerable city that lay before us, but still among them all
was no "voice of them that wept."

     There was no call for tears. Tears would have been out of place. The
thoughts Jerusalem suggests are full of poetry, sublimity, and more than
all, dignity. Such thoughts do not find their appropriate expression in the
emotions of the nursery.

     Just after noon we entered these narrow, crooked streets, by the
ancient and the famed Damascus Gate, and now for several hours I have been
trying to comprehend that I am actually in the illustrious old city where
Solomon dwelt, where Abraham held converse with the Deity, and where walls
still stand that witnessed the spectacle of the Crucifixion.

                                 Chapter 53

                               CHAPTER LIII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -558-

     A FAST walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk
entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one
understand how small it is. The appearance of the city is peculiar. It is
as knobby with countless little domes as a prison door is with bolt-heads.
Every house has from one to half a dozen of these white plastered domes of
stone, broad and low, sitting in the centre of, or in a cluster upon, the
flat roof. Wherefore, when one looks down from an eminence, upon the
compact mass of houses (so closely crowded together, in fact, that there is
no appearance of streets at all, and so the city looks solid,) he sees the
knobbiest town in the world, except Constantinople. It looks as if it might
be roofed, from centre to circumference, with inverted saucers. The
monotony of the view is interrupted only by the great Mosque of Omar, the
Tower of Hippicus, and one or two other buildings that rise into commanding
prominence.

     The houses are generally two stories high, built strongly of masonry,
whitewashed or plastered outside, and have a cage of wooden lattice-work
projecting in front of every window. To reproduce a Jerusalem street, it
would only be necessary to up-end a chicken-coop and hang it before each
window in an alley of American houses.

     The streets are roughly and badly paved with stone, and are tolerably
crooked -- enough so to make each street appear to close together
constantly and come to an end about a hundred yards ahead of a pilgrim as
long as he chooses to walk in it. Projecting from the top of the lower
story of many of the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -559-

houses is a very narrow porch-roof or shed, without supports from below;
and I have several times seen cats jump across the street from one shed to
the other when they were out calling. The cats could have jumped double the
distance without extraordinary exertion. I mention these things to give an
idea of how narrow the streets are. Since a cat can jump across them
without the least inconvenience, it is hardly necessary to state that such
streets are too narrow for carriages. These vehicles cannot navigate the
Holy City.

     The population of Jerusalem is composed of Moslems, Jews, Greeks,
Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a
handful of Protestants. One hundred of the latter sect are all that dwell
now in this birthplace of Christianity. The nice shades of nationality
comprised in the above list, and the languages spoken by them, are
altogether too numerous to mention. It seems to me that all the races and
colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen
thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness, poverty and
dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule
more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the
blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one
word of but one language apparently -- the eternal "bucksheesh." To see the
numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -560-

throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the
ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to
descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is
mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.

     One naturally goes first to the Holy Sepulchre. It is right in the
city, near the western gate; it and the place of the Crucifixion, and, in
fact, every other place intimately connected with that tremendous event,
are ingeniously massed together and covered by one roof -- the dome of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

      Entering the building, through the midst of the usual assemblage of
beggars, one sees on his left a few Turkish guards -- for Christians of
different sects will not only quarrel, but fight, also, in this sacred
place, if allowed to do it. Before you is a marble slab, which covers the
Stone of Unction, whereon the Saviour's body was laid to prepare it for
burial. It was found necessary to conceal the real stone in this way in
order to save it from destruction. Pilgrims were too much given to chipping
off pieces of it to carry home. Near by is a circular railing which marks
the spot where the Virgin stood when the Lord's body was anointed.

      Entering the great Rotunda, we stand before the most sacred locality
in Christendom -- the grave of Jesus. It is in the centre of the church,
and immediately under the great dome. It is inclosed in a sort of little
temple of yellow and white stone, of fanciful design. Within the little
temple is a portion of the very stone which was rolled away from the door
of the Sepulchre, and on which the angel was sitting when Mary came thither
"at early dawn." Stooping low, we enter the vault -- the Sepulchre itself.
It is only about six feet by seven, and the stone couch on which the dead
Saviour lay extends from end to end of the apartment and occupies half its
width. It is covered with a marble slab which has been much worn by the
lips of pilgrims. This slab serves as an altar, now. Over it hang some
fifty gold and silver lamps, which are kept always burning, and the place
is otherwise scandalized by trumpery, gewgaws, and tawdry ornamentation.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -561-

      All sects of Christians (except Protestants,) have chapels under the
roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and each must keep to itself and
not venture upon another's ground. It has been proven conclusively that
they can not worship together around the grave of the Saviour of the World
in peace. The chapel of the Syrians is not handsome; that of the Copts is
the humblest of them all. It is nothing but a dismal cavern, roughly hewn
in the living rock of the Hill of Calvary. In one side of it two ancient
tombs are hewn, which are claimed to be those in which Nicodemus and Joseph
of Aramathea were buried.

      As we moved among the great piers and pillars of another part of the
church, we came upon a party of black-robed, animal-looking Italian monks,
with candles in their hands, who were chanting something in Latin, and
going through some kind of religious performance around a disk of white
marble let into the floor. It was there that the risen Saviour appeared to
Mary Magdalen in the likeness of a gardener. Near by was a similar stone,
shaped like a star -- here the Magdalen herself stood, at the same time.
Monks were performing in this place also. They perform everywhere -- all
over the vast building, and at all hours. Their candles are always flitting
about in the gloom, and making the dim old church more dismal than there is
any necessity that it should be, even though it is a tomb.

      We were shown the place where our Lord appeared to His mother after
the Resurrection. Here, also, a marble slab marks the place where St.
Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, found the crosses about
three hundred years after the Crucifixion. According to the legend, this
great discovery elicited extravagant demonstrations of joy. But they were
of short duration. The question intruded itself: "Which bore the blessed
Saviour, and which the thieves?" To be in doubt, in so mighty a matter as
this -- to be uncertain which one to adore -- was a grievous misfortune. It
turned the public joy to sorrow. But when lived there a holy priest who
could not set to simple a trouble as this at rest? One of these soon hit

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                                   -562-

upon a plan that would be a certain test. A noble lady lay very ill in
Jerusalem. The wise priests ordered that the three crosses be taken to her
bedside one at a time. It was done. When her eyes fell upon the first one,
she uttered a scream that was heard beyond the Damascus Gate, and even upon
the Mount of Olives, it was said, and then fell back in a deadly swoon.
They recovered her and brought the second cross. Instantly she went into
fearful convulsions, and it was with the greatest difficulty that six
strong men could hold her. They were afraid, now, to bring in the third
cross. They began to fear that possibly they had fallen upon the wrong
crosses, and that the true cross was not with this number at all. However,
as the woman seemed likely to die with the convulsions that were tearing
her, they concluded that the third could do no more than put her out of her
misery with a happy dispatch. So they brought it, and behold, a miracle!
The woman sprang from her bed, smiling and joyful, and perfectly restored
to health. When we listen to evidence like this, we cannot but believe. We
would be ashamed to doubt, and properly, too. Even the very part of
Jerusalem where this all occurred is there yet. So there is really no room
for doubt.

     The priests tried to show us, through a small screen, a fragment of
the genuine Pillar of Flagellation, to which Christ was bound when they
scourged him. But we could not see it, because it was dark inside the
screen. However, a baton is kept here, which the pilgrim thrusts through a
hole in the screen, and then he no longer doubts that the true Pillar of
Flagellation is in there. He can not have any excuse to doubt it, for he
can feel it with the stick. He can feel it as distinctly as he could feel
any thing.

      Not far from here was a niche where they used to preserve a piece of
the True Cross, but it is gone, now. This piece of the cross was discovered
in the sixteenth century. The Latin priests say it was stolen away, long
ago, by priests of another sect. That seems like a hard statement to make,
but we know very well that it was stolen, because we have seen it ourselves
in several of the cathedrals of Italy and France.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -563-

      But the relic that touched us most was the plain old sword of that
stout Crusader, Godfrey of Bulloigne -- King Godfrey of Jerusalem. No blade
in Christendom wields such enchantment as this -- no blade of all that rust
in the ancestral halls of Europe is able to invoke such visions of romance
in the brain of him who looks upon it -- none that can prate of such
chivalric deeds or tell such brave tales of the warrior days of old. It
stirs within a man every memory of the Holy Wars that has been sleeping in
his brain for years, and peoples his thoughts with mail-clad images, with
marching armies, with battles and with sieges. It speaks to him of Baldwin,
and Tancred, the princely Saladin, and great Richard of the Lion Heart. It
was with just such blades as these that these splendid heroes of romance
used to segregate a man, so to speak, and leave the half of him to fall one
way and the other half the other. This very sword has cloven hundreds of
Saracen Knights from crown to chin in those old times when Godfrey wielded
it. It was enchanted, then, by a genius that was under the command of King
Solomon. When danger approached its master's tent it always struck the
shield and clanged out a fierce alarm upon the startled ear of night. In
times of doubt, or in fog or darkness, if it were drawn from its sheath it
would point instantly toward the foe, and thus reveal the way -- and it
would also attempt to start after them of its own accord. A Christian could
not be so disguised that it would not know him and refuse to hurt him --
nor a Moslem so disguised that it would not leap from its scabbard and take
his life. These statements are all well authenticated in many legends that
are among the most trustworthy legends the good old Catholic monks
preserve. I can never forget old Godfrey's sword, now. I tried it on a
Moslem, and clove him in twain like a doughnut. The spirit of Grimes was
upon me, and if I had had a graveyard I would have destroyed all the
infidels in Jerusalem. I wiped the blood off the old sword and handed it
back to the priest -- I did not want the fresh gore to obliterate those
sacred spots that crimsoned its brightness one day six hundred years ago
and thus gave Godfrey warning that before the sun went down his journey of
life would end.

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                                   -564-

     Still moving through the gloom of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we
came to a small chapel, hewn out of the rock -- a place which has been
known as "The Prison of Our Lord" for many centuries. Tradition says that
here the Saviour was

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -565-

confined just previously to the crucifixion. Under an altar by the door was
a pair of stone stocks for human legs. These things are called the "Bonds
of Christ," and the use they were once put to has given them the name they
now bear.

     The Greek Chapel is the most roomy, the richest and the showiest
chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its altar, like that of all the
Greek churches, is a lofty screen that extends clear across the chapel, and
is gorgeous with gilding and pictures. The numerous lamps that hang before
it are of gold and silver, and cost great sums.

      But the feature of the place is a short column that rises from the
middle of the marble pavement of the chapel, and marks the exact centre of
the earth. The most reliable traditions tell us that this was known to be
the earth's centre, ages ago, and that when Christ was upon earth he set
all doubts upon the subject at rest forever, by stating with his own lips
that the tradition was correct. Remember, He said that that particular
column stood upon the centre of the world. If the centre of the world
changes, the column changes its position accordingly. This column has moved
three different times of its own accord. This is because, in great
convulsions of nature, at three different times, masses of the earth --
whole ranges of mountains, probably -- have flown off into space, thus
lessening the diameter of the earth, and changing the exact locality of its
centre by a point or two. This is a very curious and interesting
circumstance, and is a withering rebuke to those philosophers who would
make us believe that it is not possible for any portion of the earth to fly
off into space.

      To satisfy himself that this spot was really the centre of the earth,
a sceptic once paid well for the privilege of ascending to the dome of the
church to see if the sun gave him a shadow at noon. He came down perfectly
convinced. The day was very cloudy and the sun threw no shadows at all; but
the man was satisfied that if the sun had come out and made shadows it
could not have made any for him. Proofs like these are not to be set aside
by the idle tongues of cavilers. To such as are not bigoted, and are
willing to be convinced, they carry a conviction that nothing can ever
shake.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -566-

     If even greater proofs than those I have mentioned are wanted, to
satisfy the headstrong and the foolish that this is the genuine centre of
the earth, they are here. The greatest of them lies in the fact that from
under this very column was taken the dust from which Adam was made. This
can surely be regarded in the light of a settler. It is not likely that the
original first man would have been made from an inferior quality of earth
when it was entirely convenient to get first quality from the world's
centre. This will strike any reflecting mind forcibly. That Adam was formed
of dirt procured in this very spot is amply proven by the fact that in six
thousand years no man has ever been able to prove that the dirt was not
procured here whereof he was made.

      It is a singular circumstance that right under the roof of this same
great church, and not far away from that illustrious column, Adam himself,
the father of the human race, lies buried. There is no question that he is
actually buried

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -567-

in the grave which is pointed out as his -- there can be none -- because it
has never yet been proven that that grave is not the grave in which he is
buried.

      The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers,
far away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover
the grave of a blood relation. True, a distant one, but still a relation.
The unerring instinct of nature thrilled its recognition. The fountain of
my filial affection was stirred to its profoundest depths, and I gave way
to tumultuous emotion. I leaned upon a pillar and burst into tears. I deem
it no shame to have wept over the grave of my poor dead relative. Let him
who would sneer at my emotion close this volume here, for he will find
little to his taste in my journeyings through Holy Land. Noble old man --
he did not live to see me -- he did not live to see his child. And I -- I
-- alas, I did not live to see him. Weighed down by sorrow and
disappointment, he died before I was born -- six thousand brief summers
before I was born. But let us try to bear it with fortitude. Let us trust
that he is better off where he is. Let us take comfort in the thought that
his loss is our eternal gain.

      The next place the guide took us to in the holy church was an altar
dedicated to the Roman soldier who was of the military guard that attended
at the Crucifixion to keep order, and who -- when the vail of the Temple
was rent in the awful darkness that followed; when the rock of Golgotha was
split asunder by an earthquake; when the artillery of heaven thundered, and
in the baleful glare of the lightnings the shrouded dead flitted about the
streets of Jerusalem -- shook with fear and said, "Surely this was the Son
of God!" Where this altar stands now, that Roman soldier stood then, in
full view of the crucified Saviour -- in full sight and hearing of all the
marvels that were transpiring far and wide about the circumference of the
Hill of Calvary. And in this self-same spot the priests of the Temple
beheaded him for those blasphemous words he had spoken.

     In this altar they used to keep one of the most curious relics

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                                   -568-

that human eyes ever looked upon -- a thing that had power to fascinate the
beholder in some mysterious way and keep him gazing for hours together. It
was nothing less than the copper plate Pilate put upon the Saviour's cross,
and upon which he wrote, "THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS." I think St.
Helena, the mother of Constantine, found this wonderful memento when she
was here in the third century. She traveled all over Palestine, and was
always fortunate. Whenever the good old enthusiast found a thing mentioned
in her Bible, Old or New, she would go and search for that thing, and never
stop until she found it. If it was Adam, she would find Adam; if it was the
Ark, she would find the Ark; if it was Goliath, or Joshua, she would find
them. She found the inscription here that I was speaking of, I think. She
found it in this very spot, close to where the martyred Roman soldier
stood. That copper plate is in one of the churches in Rome, now. Any one
can see it there. The inscription is very distinct.

     We passed along a few steps and saw the altar built over the very spot
where the good Catholic priests say the soldiers divided the raiment of the
Saviour.

      Then we went down into a cavern which cavilers say was once a
cistern. It is a chapel, now, however -- the Chapel of St. Helena. It is
fifty-one feet long by forty-three wide. In it is a marble chair which
Helena used to sit in while she superintended her workmen when they were
digging and delving for the True Cross. In this place is an altar dedicated
to St. Dimas, the penitent thief. A new bronze statue is here -- a statue
of St. Helena. It reminded us of poor Maximilian, so lately shot. He
presented it to this chapel when he was about to leave for his throne in
Mexico.

      From the cistern we descended twelve steps into a large
roughly-shaped grotto, carved wholly out of the living rock. Helena blasted
it out when she was searching for the true Cross. She had a laborious piece
of work, here, but it was richly rewarded. Out of this place she got the
crown of thorns, the nails of the cross, the true Cross itself, and the
cross of the penitent thief. When she thought she had found every

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -569-

thing and was about to stop, she was told in a dream to continue a day
longer. It was very fortunate. She did so, and found the cross of the other
thief.

     The walls and roof of this grotto still weep bitter tears in memory of
the event that transpired on Calvary, and devout pilgrims groan and sob
when these sad tears fall upon them from the dripping rock. The monks call
this apartment the "Chapel of the Invention of the Cross" -- a name which
is unfortunate, because it leads the ignorant to imagine that a tacit
acknowledgment is thus made that the tradition that Helena found the true
Cross here is a fiction -- an invention. It is a happiness to know,
however, that intelligent people do not doubt the story in any of its
particulars.

      Priests of any of the chapels and denominations in the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre can visit this sacred grotto to weep and pray and worship
the gentle Redeemer. Two different congregations are not allowed to enter
at the same time, however, because they always fight.

      Still marching through the venerable Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
among chanting priests in coarse long robes and sandals; pilgrims of all
colors and many nationalities, in all sorts of strange costumes; under
dusky arches and by dingy piers and columns; through a sombre cathedral
gloom freighted with smoke and incense, and faintly starred with scores of
candles that appeared suddenly and as suddenly disappeared, or drifted
mysteriously hither and thither about the distant aisles like ghostly
jack-o'-lanterns -- we came at last to a small chapel which is called the
"Chapel of the Mocking." Under the altar was a fragment of a marble column;
this was the seat Christ sat on when he was reviled, and mockingly made
King, crowned with a crown of thorns and sceptred with a reed. It was here
that they blindfolded him and struck him, and said in derision, "Prophesy
who it is that smote thee." The tradition that this is the identical spot
of the mocking is a very ancient one. The guide said that Saewulf was the
first to mention it. I do not know Saewulf, but still, I cannot well refuse
to receive his evidence -- none of us can.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -570-

     They showed us where the great Godfrey and his brother Baldwin, the
first Christian Kings of Jerusalem, once lay buried by that sacred
sepulchre they had fought so long and so valiantly to wrest from the hands
of the infidel. But the niches that had contained the ashes of these
renowned crusaders were empty. Even the coverings of their tombs were gone
-- destroyed by devout members of the Greek Church, because Godfrey and
Baldwin were Latin princes, and had been reared in a Christian faith whose
creed differed in some unimportant respects from theirs.

     We passed on, and halted before the tomb of Melchisedek! You will
remember Melchisedek, no doubt; he was the King who came out and levied a
tribute on Abraham the time that he pursued Lot's captors to Dan, and took
all their property from them. That was about four thousand years ago, and
Melchisedek died shortly afterward. However, his tomb is in a good state of
preservation.

      When one enters the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sepulchre
itself is the first thing he desires to see, and really is almost the first
thing he does see. The next thing he has a strong yearning to see is the
spot where the Saviour was crucified. But this they exhibit last. It is the
crowning glory of the place. One is grave and thoughtful when he stands in
the little Tomb of the Saviour -- he could not well be otherwise in such a
place -- but he has not the slightest possible belief that ever the Lord
lay there, and so the interest he feels in the spot is very, very greatly
marred by that reflection. He looks at the place where Mary stood, in
another part of the church, and where John stood, and Mary Magdalen; where
the mob derided the Lord; where the angel sat; where the crown of thorns
was found, and the true Cross; where the risen Saviour appeared -- he looks
at all these places with interest, but with the same conviction he felt in
the case of the Sepulchre, that there is nothing genuine about them, and
that they are imaginary holy places created by the monks. But the place of
the Crucifixion affects him differently. He fully believes that he is
looking upon the very spot where the Savior gave up his

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -571-

life. He remembers that Christ was very celebrated, long before he came to
Jerusalem; he knows that his fame was so great that crowds followed him all
the time; he is aware that his entry into the city produced a stirring
sensation, and that his reception was a kind of ovation; he can not
overlook the fact that when he was crucified there were very many in
Jerusalem who believed that he was the true Son of God. To publicly execute
such a personage was sufficient in itself to make the locality of the
execution a memorable place for ages; added to this, the storm, the
darkness, the earthquake, the rending of the vail of the Temple, and the
untimely waking of the dead, were events calculated to fix the execution
and the scene of it in the memory of even the most thoughtless witness.
Fathers would tell their sons about the strange affair, and point out the
spot; the sons would transmit the story to their children, and thus a
period of three hundred years would easily be spanned53.1 -- at which time
Helena came and built a church upon Calvary to commemorate the death and
burial of the Lord and preserve the sacred place in the memories of men;
since that time there has always been a church there. It is not possible
that there can be any mistake about the locality of the Crucifixion. Not
half a dozen persons knew where they buried the Saviour, perhaps, and a
burial is not a startling event, any how; therefore, we can be pardoned for
unbelief in the Sepulchre, but not in the place of the Crucifixion. Five
hundred years hence there will be no vestige of Bunker Hill Monument left,
but America will still know where the battle was fought and where Warren
fell. The crucifixion of Christ was too notable an event in Jerusalem, and
the Hill of Calvary made too celebrated by it, to be forgotten in the short
space of three hundred years. I climbed the stairway in the church which
brings one to the top of the small inclosed pinnacle of rock, and looked
upon the place where the true cross once stood, with a far more absorbing
interest than I had ever felt in any thing earthly before. I could not
believe that the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -572-

     three holes in the top of the rock were the actual ones the crosses
stood in, but I felt satisfied that those crosses had stood so near the
place now occupied by them, that the few feet of possible difference were a
matter of no consequence.

     When one stands where the Saviour was crucified, he finds it all he
can do to keep it strictly before his mind that Christ was not crucified in
a Catholic Church. He must remind himself every now and then that the great
event transpired in the open air, and not in a gloomy, candle-lighted cell
in a little corner of a vast church, up-stairs -- a small cell all
bejeweled and bespangled with flashy ornamentation, in execrable taste.

      Under a marble altar like a table, is a circular hole in the marble
floor, corresponding with the one just under it in which the true Cross
stood. The first thing every one does is to kneel down and take a candle
and examine this hole. He does this strange prospecting with an amount of
gravity that can never be estimated or appreciated by a man who has not
seen the operation. Then he holds his candle before a richly engraved
picture of the Saviour, done on a messy slab of gold, and wonderfully rayed
and starred with diamonds, which hangs above the hole within the altar, and
his solemnity changes to lively admiration. He rises and faces the finely
wrought figures of the Saviour and the malefactors uplifted upon their
crosses behind the altar, and bright with a metallic lustre of many colors.
He turns next to the figures close to them of the Virgin and Mary Magdalen;
next to the rift in the living rock made by the earthquake at the time of
the Crucifixion, and an extension of which he had seen before in the wall
of one of the grottoes below; he looks next at the show-case with a figure
of the Virgin in it, and is amazed at the princely fortune in precious gems
and jewelry that hangs so thickly about the form as to hide it like a
garment almost. All about the apartment the gaudy trappings of the Greek
Church offend the eye and keep the mind on the rack to remember that this
is the Place of the Crucifixion -- Golgotha -- the Mount of Calvary. And
the last thing he looks at is that which was also the first -- the place
where the true Cross stood. That will chain him to the spot and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -573-

compel him to look once more, and once again, after he has satisfied all
curiosity and lost all interest concerning the other matters pertaining to
the locality.

     And so I close my chapter on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre -- the
most sacred locality on earth to millions and millions of men, and women,
and children, the noble and the humble, bond and free. In its history from
the first, and in its tremendous associations, it is the most illustrious
edifice in Christendom. With all its clap-trap side-shows and unseemly
impostures of every kind, it is still grand, reverend, venerable -- for a
god died there; for fifteen hundred years its shrines have been wet with
the tears of pilgrims from the earth's remotest confines; for more than two
hundred, the most gallant knights that ever wielded sword wasted their
lives away in a struggle to seize it and hold it sacred from infidel
pollution. Even in our own day a war, that cost millions of treasure and
rivers of blood, was fought because two rival nations claimed the sole
right to put a new dome upon it. History is full of this old Church of the
Holy Sepulchre -- full of blood that was shed because of the respect and
the veneration in which men held the last resting-place of the meek and
lowly, the mild and gentle, Prince of Peace!



53.1 The thought is Mr. Prime's, not mine, and is full of good sense. I
borrowed it from his "Tent Life." -- M. T.

                                 Chapter 54

                                CHAPTER LIV.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -572-

     WE were standing in a narrow street, by the Tower of Antonio. "On
these stones that are crumbling away," the guide said, "the Saviour sat and
rested before taking up the cross. This is the beginning of the Sorrowful
Way, or the Way of Grief." The party took note of the sacred spot, and
moved on. We passed under the "Ecce Homo Arch," and saw the very window
from which Pilate's wife warned her husband to have nothing to do with the
persecution of the Just Man. This window is in an excellent state of
preservation, considering its great age. They showed us where Jesus rested
the second time, and where the mob refused to give him up, and said, "Let
his blood be upon our heads, and upon our children's children forever." The
French Catholics are building a church on this spot, and with their usual
veneration for historical relics, are incorporating into the new such
scraps of ancient walls as they have found there. Further on, we saw the
spot where the fainting Saviour fell under the weight of his cross. A great
granite column of some ancient temple lay there at the time, and the heavy
cross struck it such a blow that it broke in two in the middle. Such was
the guide's story when he halted us before the broken column.

     We crossed a street, and came presently to the former residence of St.
Veronica. When the Saviour passed there, she came out, full of womanly
compassion, and spoke pitying words to him, undaunted by the hootings and
the threatenings of the mob, and wiped the perspiration from his face with
her handkerchief. We had heard so much of St. Veronica, and seen

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -575-

her picture by so many masters, that it was like meeting an old friend
unexpectedly to come upon her ancient home in Jerusalem. The strangest
thing about the incident that has made her name so famous, is, that when
she wiped the perspiration away, the print of the Saviour's face remained
upon the handkerchief, a perfect portrait, and so remains unto this day. We
knew this, because we saw this handkerchief in a cathedral in Paris, in
another in Spain, and in two others in Italy. In the Milan cathedral it
costs five francs to see it, and at St. Peter's, at Rome, it is almost
impossible to see it at any price. No tradition is so amply verified as
this of St. Veronica and her handkerchief.

     At the next corner we saw a deep indention in the hard stone masonry
of the corner of a house, but might have gone heedlessly by it but that the
guide said it was made by the elbow of the Saviour, who stumbled here and
fell. Presently we came to just such another indention in a stone wall. The
guide said the Saviour fell here, also, and made this depression with his
elbow.

     There were other places where the Lord fell, and others where he
rested; but one of the most curious landmarks of ancient history we found
on this morning walk through the crooked lanes that lead toward Calvary,
was a certain stone built into a house -- a stone that was so seamed and
scarred that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the human face. The
projections that answered for cheeks were worn smooth by the passionate
kisses of generations of pilgrims from distant lands. We asked "Why ?" The
guide said it was because this was one of "the very stones of Jerusalem "
that Christ mentioned when he was reproved for permitting the people to cry
"Hosannah !" when he made his memorable entry into the city upon an ass.
One of the pilgrims said, "But there is no evidence that the stones did cry
out -- Christ said that if the people stopped from shouting Hosannah, the
very stones would do it." The guide was perfectly serene. He said, calmly,
"This is one of the stones that would have cried out. "It was of little use
to try to shake this fellow's simple faith -- it was easy to see that.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -576-

     And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and abiding interest
-- the veritable house where the unhappy wretch once lived who has been
celebrated in song and story for more than eighteen hundred years as the
Wandering Jew. On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he stood in this old
doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the struggling mob that was
approaching, and when the weary Saviour would have sat down and rested him
a moment, pushed him rudely away and said, "Move on!" The Lord said, "Move
on, thou, likewise," and the command has never been revoked from that day
to this. All men know how that the miscreant upon whose head that just
curse fell has roamed up and down the wide world, for ages and ages,
seeking rest and never finding it -- courting death but always in vain --
longing to stop, in city, in wilderness, in desert solitudes, yet hearing
always that relentless warning to march -- march on! They say -- do these
hoary traditions -- that when Titus sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered eleven
hundred thousand Jews in her streets and by¡ways, the Wandering Jew was
seen always in the thickest of the fight, and that when battle¡axes gleamed
in the air, he bowed his head beneath them; when swords flashed their
deadly lightnings, he sprang in their way; he bared his breast to whizzing
javelins, to hissing arrows, to any and to every weapon that promised death
and forgetfulness, and rest. But it was useless -- he walked forth out of
the carnage without a wound. And it is said that five hundred years
afterward he followed Mahomet when he carried destruction to the cities of
Arabia, and then turned against him, hoping in this way to win the death of
a traitor. His calculations were wrong again. No quarter was given to any
living creature but one, and that was the only one of all the host that did
not want it. He sought death five hundred years later, in the wars of the
Crusades, and offered himself to famine and pestilence at Ascalon. He
escaped again -- he could not die. These repeated annoyances could have at
last but one effect -- they shook his confidence. Since then the Wandering
Jew has carried on a kind of desultory toying with the most promising of
the aids

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -577-

and implements of destruction, but with small hope, as a general thing. He
has speculated some in cholera and railroads, and has taken almost a lively
interest in infernal machines and patent medicines. He is old, now, and
grave, as becomes an age like his; he indulges in no light amusements save
that he goes sometimes to executions, and is fond of funerals.

     There is one thing he can not avoid; go where he will about the world,
he must never fail to report in Jerusalem every fiftieth year. Only a year
or two ago he was here for the thirty¡seventh time since Jesus was
crucified on Calvary. They say that many old people, who are here now, saw
him then, and had seen him before. He looks always the same -- old, and
withered, and hollow¡eyed, and listless, save that there is about him
something which seems to suggest that he is looking for some one, expecting
some one -- the friends of his youth, perhaps. But the most of them are
dead, now. He always pokes about the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -578-

old streets looking lonesome, making his mark on a wall here and there, and
eyeing the oldest buildings with a sort of friendly half interest; and he
sheds a few tears at the threshold of his ancient dwelling, and bitter,
bitter tears they are. Then he collects his rent and leaves again. He has
been seen standing near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on many a
starlight night, for he has cherished an idea for many centuries that if he
could only enter there, he could rest. But when he approaches, the doors
slam to with a crash, the earth trembles, and all the lights in Jerusalem
burn a ghastly blue! He does this every fifty years, just the same. It is
hopeless, but then it is hard to break habits one has been eighteen hundred
years accustomed to. The old tourist is far away on his wanderings, now.
How he must smile to see a pack of blockheads like us, galloping about the
world, and looking wise, and imagining we are finding out a good deal about
it! He must have a consuming contempt for the ignorant, complacent asses
that go skurrying about the world in these railroading days and call it
traveling.

     When the guide pointed out where the Wandering Jew had left his
familiar mark upon a wall, I was filled with astonishment. It read:

     "S T. -- 1860 -- X."

     All I have revealed about the Wandering Jew can be amply proven by
reference to our guide.

     The mighty Mosque of Omar, and the paved court around it, occupy a
fourth part of Jerusalem. They are upon Mount Moriah, where King Solomon's
Temple stood. This Mosque is the holiest place the Mohammedan knows,
outside of Mecca. Up to within a year or two past, no Christian could gain
admission to it or its court for love or money. But the prohibition has
been removed, and we entered freely for bucksheesh.

     I need not speak of the wonderful beauty and the exquisite grace and
symmetry that have made this Mosque so celebrated -- because I did not see
them. One can not see such things at an instant glance -- one frequently
only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after
considerable

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -579-

acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to Niagara Falls, to majestic
mountains and to mosques -- especially to mosques.

     The great feature of the Mosque of Omar is the prodigious rock in the
centre of its rotunda. It was upon this rock that Abraham came so near
offering up his son Isaac -- this, at least, is authentic¡¡it is very much
more to be relied on than most of the traditions, at any rate. On this
rock, also, the angel stood and threatened Jerusalem, and David persuaded
him to spare the city. Mahomet was well acquainted with this stone. From it
he ascended to heaven. The stone tried to follow him, and if the angel
Gabriel had not happened by the merest good luck to be there to seize it,
it would have done it. Very few people have a grip like Gabriel -- the
prints of his monstrous fingers, two inches deep, are to be seen in that
rock to-day.

     This rock, large as it is, is suspended in the air. It does not touch
any thing at all. The guide said so. This is very wonderful. In the place
on it where Mahomet stood, he left his foot¡prints in the solid stone. I
should judge that he wore about eighteens. But what I was going to say,
when I spoke of the rock being suspended, was, that in the floor of the
cavern under it they showed us a slab which they said covered a hole which
was a thing of extraordinary interest to all Mohammedans, because that hole
leads down to perdition, and every soul that is transferred from thence to
Heaven must pass up through this orifice. Mahomet stands there and lifts
them out by the hair. All Mohammedans shave their heads, but they are
careful to leave a lock of hair for the Prophet to take hold of. Our guide
observed that a good Mohammedan would consider himself doomed to stay with
the damned forever if he were to lose his scalp¡lock and die before it grew
again. The most of them that I have seen ought to stay with the damned, any
how, without reference to how they were barbered.

     For several ages no woman has been allowed to enter the cavern where
that important hole is. The reason is that one of the sex was once caught
there blabbing every thing she

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -580-

knew about what was going on above ground, to the rapscallions in the
infernal regions down below. She carried her gossiping to such an extreme
that nothing could be kept private -- nothing could be done or said on
earth but every body in perdition knew all about it before the sun went
down. It was about time to suppress this woman's telegraph, and it was
promptly done. Her breath subsided about the same time.

     The inside of the great mosque is very showy with variegated marble
walls and with windows and inscriptions of elaborate mosaic. The Turks have
their sacred relics, like the Catholics. The guide showed us the veritable
armor worn by the great son-in-law and successor of Mahomet, and also the
buckler of Mahomet's uncle. The great iron railing which surrounds the rock
was ornamented in one place with a thousand rags tied to its open work.
These are to remind Mahomet not to forget the worshipers who placed them
there. It is considered the next best thing to tying threads around his
finger by way of reminders.

     Just outside the mosque is a miniature temple, which marks the spot
where David and Goliah used to sit and judge the people. 54.1

     Every where about the Mosque of Omar are portions of pillars,
curiously wrought altars, and fragments of elegantly carved marble --
precious remains of Solomon's Temple. These have been dug from all depths
in the soil and rubbish of Mount Moriah, and the Moslems have always shown
a disposition to preserve them with the utmost care. At that portion of the
ancient wall of Solomon's Temple which is called the Jew's Place of
Wailing, and where the Hebrews assemble every Friday to kiss the venerated
stones and weep over the fallen greatness of Zion, any one can see a part
of the unquestioned and undisputed Temple of Solomon, the same consisting
of three or four stones lying one upon the other, each of which is about
twice as long as a seven-octave piano, and about as thick as such a piano
is high. But, as I have remarked before, it is

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -581-

only a year or two ago that the ancient edict prohibiting Christian rubbish
like ourselves to enter the Mosque of Omar and see the costly marbles that
once adorned the inner Temple was annulled. The designs wrought upon these
fragments are all quaint and peculiar, and so the charm of novelty is added
to the deep interest they naturally inspire. One meets with these venerable
scraps at every turn, especially in the neighboring Mosque el Aksa, into
whose inner walls a very large number of them are carefully built for
preservation. These pieces of stone, stained and dusty with age, dimly hint
at a grandeur we have all been taught to regard as the princeliest ever
seen on earth; and they call up pictures of a pageant that is familiar to
all imaginations -- camels laden with spices and treasure -- beautiful
slaves, presents for Solomon's harem -- a long cavalcade of richly
caparisoned beasts and warriors -- and Sheba's Queen in the van of this
vision of "Oriental magnificence." These elegant fragments bear a richer
interest than the solemn vastness of the stones the Jews kiss in the Place
of Wailing can ever have for the heedless sinner.

     Down in the hollow ground, underneath the olives and the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -582-

orange¡trees that flourish in the court of the great Mosque, is a
wilderness of pillars -- remains of the ancient Temple; they supported it.
There are ponderous archways down there, also, over which the destroying
"plough" of prophecy passed harmless. It is pleasant to know we are
disappointed, in that we never dreamed we might see portions of the actual
Temple of Solomon, and yet experience no shadow of suspicion that they were
a monkish humbug and a fraud.

     We are surfeited with sights. Nothing has any fascination for us, now,
but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We have been there every day, and
have not grown tired of it; but we are weary of every thing else. The
sights are too many. They swarm about you at every step; no single foot of
ground in all Jerusalem or within its neighborhood seems to be without a
stirring and important history of its own. It is a very relief to steal a
walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to talk unceasingly about
every stone you step upon and drag you back ages and ages to the day when
it achieved celebrity.

     It seems hardly real when I find myself leaning for a moment on a
ruined wall and looking listlessly down into the historic pool of Bethesda.
I did not think such things could be so crowded together as to diminish
their interest. But in serious truth, we have been drifting about, for
several days, using our eyes and our ears more from a sense of duty than
any higher and worthier reason. And too often we have been glad when it was
time to go home and be distressed no more about illustrious localities.

     Our pilgrims compress too much into one day. One can gorge sights to
repletion as well as sweetmeats. Since we breakfasted, this morning, we
have seen enough to have furnished us food for a year's reflection if we
could have seen the various objects in comfort and looked upon them
deliberately. We visited the pool of Hezekiah, where David saw Uriah's wife
coming from the bath and fell in love with her.

     We went out of the city by the Jaffa gate, and of course were told
many things about its Tower of Hippicus.

     We rode across the Valley of Hinnom, between two of the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -583-

Pools of Gihon, and by an aqueduct built by Solomon, which still conveys
water to the city. We ascended the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas
received his thirty pieces of silver, and we also lingered a moment under
the tree a venerable tradition says he hanged himself on.

     We descended to the canon again, and then the guide began to give name
and history to every bank and boulder we came to: "This was the Field of
Blood; these cuttings in the rocks were shrines and temples of Moloch; here
they sacrificed children; yonder is the Zion Gate; the Tyropean Valley, the
Hill of Ophel; here is the junction of the Valley of Jehoshaphat -- on your
right is the Well of Job." We turned up Jehoshaphat. The recital went on.
"This is the Mount of Olives; this is the Hill of Offense; the nest of huts
is the Village of Siloam; here, yonder, every where, is the King's Garden;
under this great tree Zacharias, the high priest, was murdered; yonder is
Mount Moriah and the Temple wall; the tomb of Absalom; the tomb of St.
James; the tomb of Zacharias; beyond, are the Garden of Gethsemane and the
tomb of the Virgin Mary; here is the Pool of Siloam, and -- "

     We said we would dismount, and quench our thirst, and rest. We were
burning up with the heat. We were failing under the accumulated fatigue of
days and days of ceaseless marching. All were willing.

     The Pool is a deep, walled ditch, through which a clear stream of
water runs, that comes from under Jerusalem somewhere, and passing through
the Fountain of the Virgin, or being supplied from it, reaches this place
by way of a tunnel of heavy masonry. The famous pool looked exactly as it
looked in Solomon's time, no doubt, and the same dusky, Oriental women,
came down in their old Oriental way, and carried off jars of the water on
their heads, just as they did three thousand years ago, and just as they
will do fifty thousand years hence if any of them are still left on earth.

     We went away from there and stopped at the Fountain of the Virgin. But
the water was not good, and there was no comfort or peace any where, on
account of the regiment of boys

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -584-

and girls and beggars that persecuted us all the time for bucksheesh. The
guide wanted us to give them some money, and we did it; but when he went on
to say that they were starving to death we could not but feel that we had
done a great sin in throwing obstacles in the way of such a desirable
consummation, and so we tried to collect it back, but it could not be done.

     We entered the Garden of Gethsemane, and we visited the Tomb of the
Virgin, both of which we had seen before. It is not meet that I should
speak of them now. A more fitting time will come.

     I can not speak now of the Mount of Olives or its view of Jerusalem,
the Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab; nor of the Damascus Gate or the
tree that was planted by King Godfrey of Jerusalem. One ought to feel
pleasantly when he talks of these things. I can not say any thing about the
stone column that projects over Jehoshaphat from the Temple wall like a
cannon, except that the Moslems believe Mahomet will sit astride of it when
he comes to judge the world. It is a pity he could not judge it from some
roost of his own in Mecca, without trespassing on our holy ground. Close by
is the Golden Gate, in the Temple wall -- a gate that was an elegant piece
of sculpture in the time of the Temple, and is even so yet. From it, in
ancient times, the Jewish High Priest turned loose the scapegoat and let
him flee to the wilderness and bear away his twelve¡month load of the sins
of the people. If they were to turn one loose now, he would not get as far
as the Garden of Gethsemane, till these miserable vagabonds here would
gobble him up, 54.2 sins and all. They wouldn't care. Mutton¡chops and sin
is good enough living for them. The Moslems watch the Golden Gate with a
jealous eye, and an anxious one, for they have an honored tradition that
when it falls, Islamism will fall and with it the Ottoman Empire. It did
not grieve me any to notice that the old gate was getting a little shaky.

     We are at home again. We are exhausted. The sun has roasted us,
almost.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -585-

     We have full comfort in one reflection, however. Our experiences in
Europe have taught us that in time this fatigue will be forgotten; the heat
will be forgotten; the thirst, the tiresome volubility of the guide, the
persecutions of the beggars -- and then, all that will be left will be
pleasant memories of Jerusalem, memories we shall call up with always
increasing interest as the years go by, memories which some day will become
all beautiful when the last annoyance that incumbers them shall have faded
out of our minds never again to return. School¡boy days are no happier than
the days of after life, but we look back upon them regretfully because we
have forgotten our punishments at school, and how we grieved when our
marbles were lost and our kites destroyed -- because we have forgotten all
the sorrows and privations of that canonized epoch and remember only its
orchard robberies, its wooden sword pageants and its fishing holydays. We
are satisfied. We can wait. Our reward will come. To us, Jerusalem and
to¡day's experiences will be an enchanted memory a year hence -- memory
which money could not buy from us.



54.1 A pilgrim informs me that it was not David and Goliah, but David and
Saul. I stick to my own statement -- the guide told me, and he ought to
know.

54.2 Favorite pilgrim expression.

                                 Chapter 55

                                CHAPTER LV.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -586-

     WE cast up the account. It footed up pretty fairly. There was nothing
more at Jerusalem to be seen, except the traditional houses of Dives and
Lazarus of the parable, the Tombs of the Kings, and those of the Judges;
the spot where they stoned one of the disciples to death, and beheaded
another; the room and the table made celebrated by the Last Supper; the
fig-tree that Jesus withered; a number of historical places about
Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, and fifteen or twenty others in
different portions of the city itself.

     We were approaching the end. Human nature asserted itself, now.
Overwork and consequent exhaustion began to have their natural effect. They
began to master the energies and dull the ardor of the party. Perfectly
secure now, against failing to accomplish any detail of the pilgrimage,
they felt like drawing in advance upon the holiday soon to be placed to
their credit. They grew a little lazy. They were late to breakfast and sat
long at dinner. Thirty or forty pilgrims had arrived from the ship, by the
short routes, and much swapping of gossip had to be indulged in. And in hot
afternoons, they showed a strong disposition to lie on the cool divans in
the hotel and smoke and talk about pleasant experiences of a month or so
gone by -- for even thus early do episodes of travel which were sometimes
annoying, sometimes exasperating and full as often of no consequence at all
when they transpired, begin to rise above the dead level of monotonous
reminiscences and become shapely landmarks in one's memory. The fog-

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -587-

whistle, smothered among a million of trifling sounds, is not noticed a
block away, in the city, but the sailor hears it far at sea, whither none
of those thousands of trifling sounds can reach. When one is in Rome, all
the domes are alike; but when he has gone away twelve miles, the city fades
utterly from sight and leaves St. Peter's swelling above the level plain
like an anchored balloon. When one is traveling in Europe, the daily
incidents seem all alike; but when he has placed them all two months and
two thousand miles behind him, those that were worthy of being remembered
are prominent, and those that were really insignificant have vanished. This
disposition to smoke, and idle and talk, was not well. It was plain that it
must not be allowed to gain ground. A diversion must be tried, or
demoralization would ensue. The Jordan, Jericho and the Dead Sea were
suggested. The remainder of Jerusalem must be left unvisited, for a little
while. The journey was approved at once. New life stirred in every pulse.
In the saddle -- abroad on the plains -- sleeping in beds bounded only by
the horizon: fancy was at work with these things in a moment. -- It was
painful to note how readily these town-bred men had taken to the free life
of the camp and the desert The nomadic instinct is a human instinct; it was
born with Adam and transmitted through the patriarchs, and after thirty
centuries of steady effort, civilization has not educated it entirely out
of us yet. It has a charm which, once tasted, a man will yearn to taste
again. The nomadic instinct can not be educated out of an Indian at all.

     The Jordan journey being approved, our dragoman was notified.

     At nine in the morning the caravan was before the hotel door and we
were at breakfast. There was a commotion about the place. Rumors of war and
bloodshed were flying every where. The lawless Bedouins in the Valley of
the Jordan and the deserts down by the Dead Sea were up in arms, and were
going to destroy all comers. They had had a battle with a troop of Turkish
cavalry and defeated them; several men killed. They had shut up the
inhabitants of a village and a

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -588-

Turkish garrison in an old fort near Jericho, and were besieging them. They
had marched upon a camp of our excursionists by the Jordan, and the
pilgrims only saved their lives by stealing away and flying to Jerusalem
under whip and spur in the darkness of the night. Another of our parties
had been fired on from an ambush and then attacked in the open day. Shots
were fired on both sides. Fortunately there was no bloodshed. We spoke with
the very pilgrim who had fired one of the shots, and learned from his own
lips how, in this imminent deadly peril, only the cool courage of the
pilgrims, their strength of numbers and imposing display of war material,
had saved them from utter destruction. It was reported that the Consul had
requested that no more of our pilgrims should go to the Jordan while this
state of things lasted; and further, that he was unwilling that any more
should go, at least without an unusually strong military guard. Here was
trouble. But with the horses at the door and every body aware of what they
were there for, what would you have done? Acknowledged that you were
afraid, and backed shamefully out? Hardly. It would not be human nature,
where there were so many women. You would have done as we did: said you
were not afraid of a million Bedouins -- and made your will and proposed
quietly to yourself to take up an unostentatious position in the rear of
the procession.

      I think we must all have determined upon the same line of tactics,
for it did seem as if we never would get to Jericho. I had a notoriously
slow horse, but somehow I could not keep him in the rear, to save my neck.
He was forever turning up in the lead. In such cases I trembled a little,
and got down to fix my saddle. But it was not of any use. The others all
got down to fix their saddles, too. I never saw such a time with saddles.
It was the first time any of them had got out of order in three weeks, and
now they had all broken down at once. I tried walking, for exercise -- I
had not had enough in Jerusalem searching for holy places. But it was a
failure. The whole mob were suffering for exercise, and it was not fifteen

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -589-

minutes till they were all on foot and I had the lead again. It was very
discouraging.

     This was all after we got beyond Bethany. We stopped at the village of
Bethany, an hour out from Jerusalem. They showed us the tomb of Lazarus. I
had rather live in it than in any house in the town. And they showed us
also a large "Fountain of Lazarus," and in the centre of the village the
ancient dwelling of Lazarus. Lazarus appears to have been a man of
property. The legends of the Sunday Schools do him great injustice; they
give one the impression that he was poor. It is because they get him
confused with that Lazarus who had no merit but his virtue, and virtue
never has been as respectable as money. The house of Lazarus is a
three-story edifice, of stone masonry, but the accumulated rubbish of ages
has buried all of it but the upper story. We took candles and descended to
the dismal cell-like chambers where Jesus sat at meat with Martha and Mary,
and conversed with them about their brother. We could not but look upon
these old dingy apartments with a more than common interest.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -590-

     We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top, of the Dead Sea, lying like
a blue shield in the plain of the Jordan, and now we were marching down a
close, flaming, rugged, desolate defile, where no living creature could
enjoy life, except, perhaps, a salamander. It was such a dreary, repulsive,
horrible solitude! It was the "wilderness" where John preached, with
camel's hair about his loins -- raiment enough -- but he never could have
got his locusts and wild honey here. We were moping along down through this
dreadful place, every man in the rear. Our guards -- two gorgeous young
Arab sheiks, with cargoes of swords, guns, pistols and daggers on board --
were loafing ahead.

     "Bedouins!"

      Every man shrunk up and disappeared in his clothes like a mud-turtle.
My first impulse was to dash forward and destroy the Bedouins. My second
was to dash to the rear to see if there were any coming in that direction.
I acted on the latter impulse. So did all the others. If any Bedouins had
approached us, then, from that point of the compass, they would have paid
dearly for their rashness. We all remarked that, afterwards. There would
have been scenes of riot and

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -591-

bloodshed there that no pen could describe. I know that, because each man
told what he would have done, individually; and such a medley of strange
and unheard-of inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of. One man
said he had calmly made up his mind to perish where he stood, if need be,
but never yield an inch; he was going to wait, with deadly patience, till
he could count the stripes upon the first Bedouin's jacket, and then count
them and let him have it. Another was going to sit still till the first
lance reached within an inch of his breast, and then dodge it and seize it.
I forbear to tell what he was going to do to that Bedouin that owned it. It
makes my blood run cold to think of it. Another was going to scalp such
Bedouins as fell to his share, and take his bald-headed sons of the desert
home with him alive for trophies. But the wild-eyed pilgrim rhapsodist was
silent. His orbs gleamed with a deadly light, but his lips moved not.
Anxiety grew, and he was questioned. If he had got a Bedouin, what would he
have done with him -- shot him? He smiled a smile of grim contempt and
shook his head. Would he have stabbed him? Another shake. Would he have
quartered him -- flayed him? More shakes. Oh! horror what would he have
done?

      "Eat him!"

     Such was the awful sentence that thundered from his lips. What was
grammar to a desperado like that ? I was glad in my heart that I had been
spared these scenes of malignant carnage. No Bedouins attacked our terrible
rear. And none attacked the front. The new-comers were only a reinforcement
of cadaverous Arabs, in shirts and bare legs, sent far ahead of us to
brandish rusty guns, and shout and brag, and carry on like lunatics, and
thus scare away all bands of marauding Bedouins that might lurk about our
path. What a shame it is that armed white Christians must travel under
guard of vermin like this as a protection against the prowling vagabonds of
the desert -- those sanguinary outlaws who are always going to do something
desperate, but never do it. I may as well mention here that on our whole
trip we saw no

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -592-

Bedouins, and had no more use for an Arab guard than we could have had for
patent leather boots and white kid gloves. The Bedouins that attacked the
other parties of pilgrims so fiercely were provided for the occasion by the
Arab guards of those parties, and shipped from Jerusalem for temporary
service as Bedouins. They met together in full view of the pilgrims, after
the battle, and took lunch, divided the bucksheesh extorted in the season
of danger, and then accompanied the cavalcade home to the city! The
nuisance of an Arab guard is one which is created by the Sheiks and the
Bedouins together, for mutual profit, it is said, and no doubt there is a
good deal of truth in it.

     We visited the fountain the prophet Elisha sweetened (it is sweet
yet,) where he remained some time and was fed by the ravens.

     Ancient Jericho is not very picturesque as a ruin. When Joshua marched
around it seven times, some three thousand years ago, and blew it down with
his trumpet, he did the work so well and so completely that he hardly left
enough of the city to cast a shadow. The curse pronounced against the
rebuilding of it, has never been removed. One King, holding the curse in
light estimation, made the attempt, but was stricken sorely for his
presumption. Its site will always remain unoccupied; and yet it is one of
the very best locations for a town we have seen in all Palestine.

     At two in the morning they routed us out of bed -- another piece of
unwarranted cruelty -- another stupid effort of our dragoman to get ahead
of a rival. It was not two hours to the Jordan. However, we were dressed
and under way before any one thought of looking to see what time it was,
and so we drowsed on through the chill night air and dreamed of camp fires,
warm beds, and other comfortable things.

     There was no conversation. People do not talk when they are cold, and
wretched, and sleepy. We nodded in the saddle, at times, and woke up with a
start to find that the procession had disappeared in the gloom. Then there
was energy and attention to business until its dusky outlines came in sight

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -593-

again. Occasionally the order was passed in a low voice down the line:
"Close up -- close up! Bedouins lurk here, every where!" What an exquisite
shudder it sent shivering along one's spine!

     We reached the famous river before four o'clock, and the night was so
black that we could have ridden into it without seeing it. Some of us were
in an unhappy frame of mind. We waited and waited for daylight, but it did
not come. Finally we went away in the dark and slept an hour on the ground,
in the bushes, and caught cold. It was a costly nap, on that account, but
otherwise it was a paying investment because it brought unconsciousness of
the dreary minutes and put us in a somewhat fitter mood for a first glimpse
of the sacred river.

     With the first suspicion of dawn, every pilgrim took off his clothes
and waded into the dark torrent, singing

     "On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
     And cast a wistful eye
     To Canaan's fair and happy land,
     Where my possessions lie."

     But they did not sing long. The water was so fearfully cold that they
were obliged to stop singing and scamper out again. Then they stood on the
bank shivering, and so chagrined and so grieved, that they merited holiest
compassion. Because another dream, another cherished hope, had failed. They
had promised themselves all along that they would cross the Jordan where
the Israelites crossed it when they entered Canaan from their long
pilgrimage in the desert. They would cross where the twelve stones were
placed in memory of that great event. While they did it they would picture
to themselves that vast army of pilgrims marching through the cloven
waters, bearing the hallowed ark of the covenant and shouting hosannahs,
and singing songs of thanksgiving and praise. Each had promised himself
that he would be the first to cross. They were at the goal of their hopes
at last, but the current was too swift, the water was too cold!

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -594-

     It was then that Jack did them a service. With that engaging
recklessness of consequences which is natural to youth, and so proper and
so seemly, as well, he went and led the way across the Jordan, and all was
happiness again. Every individual waded over, then, and stood upon the
further bank. The water was not quite breast deep, any where. If it had
been more, we could hardly have accomplished the feat, for the strong
current would have swept us down the stream, and we would have been
exhausted and drowned before reaching a place where we could make a
landing. The main object compassed, the drooping, miserable party sat down
to wait for the sun again, for all wanted to see the water as well as feel
it. But it was too cold a pastime. Some cans were filled from the holy
river, some canes cut from its banks, and then we mounted and rode
reluctantly away to keep from freezing to death. So we saw the Jordan very
dimly. The thickets of bushes that bordered its banks threw their shadows
across its shallow, turbulent waters ("stormy," the hymn makes them, which
is rather a complimentary stretch of fancy,) and we could not judge of the
width of the stream by the eye. We knew by our wading experience, however,
that many streets in America are double as wide as the Jordan.

     Daylight came, soon after we got under way, and in the course of an
hour or two we reached the Dead Sea. Nothing grows in the flat, burning
desert around it but weeds and the Dead Sea apple the poets say is
beautiful to the eye, but crumbles to ashes and dust when you break it.
Such as we found were not handsome, but they were bitter to the taste. They
yielded no dust. It was because they were not ripe, perhaps.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -595-

     The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the sun, around the
Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living creature upon it or
about its borders to cheer the eye. It is a scorching, arid, repulsive
solitude. A silence broods over the scene that is depressing to the
spirits. It makes one think of funerals and death.

     The Dead Sea is small. Its waters are very clear, and it has a pebbly
bottom and is shallow for some distance out from the shores. It yields
quantities of asphaltum; fragments of it lie all about its banks; this
stuff gives the place something of an unpleasant smell.

     All our reading had taught us to expect that the first plunge into the
Dead Sea would be attended with distressing results -- our bodies would
feel as if they were suddenly pierced by millions of red-hot needles; the
dreadful smarting would continue for hours; we might even look to be
blistered from head to foot, and suffer miserably for many days. We were
disappointed. Our eight sprang in at the same time that another party of
pilgrims did, and nobody screamed once. None of them ever did complain of
any thing more than a slight pricking sensation in places where their skin
was abraded, and then only for a short time. My face smarted for a couple
of hours, but it was partly because I got it badly sun-burned while I was
bathing, and staid in so long that it became plastered over with salt.

     No, the water did not blister us; it did not cover us with a slimy
ooze and confer upon us an atrocious fragrance; it was not very slimy; and
I could not discover that we smelt really any worse than we have always
smelt since we have been in Palestine. It was only a different kind of
smell, but not conspicuous on that account, because we have a great deal of
variety in that respect. We didn't smell, there on the Jordan, the same as
we do in Jerusalem; and we don't smell in Jerusalem just as we did in
Nazareth, or Tiberias, or Cesarea Philippi, or any of those other ruinous
ancient towns in Galilee. No, we change all the time, and generally for the
worse. We do our own washing.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -596-

     It was a funny bath. We could not sink. One could stretch himself at
full length on his back, with his arms on his breast, and all of his body
above a line drawn from the corner of his jaw past the middle of his side,
the middle of his leg and through his ancle bone, would remain out of
water. He could lift his head clear out, if he chose. No position can be
retained long; you lose your balance and whirl over, first on your back and
then on your face, and so on. You can lie comfortably, on your back, with
your head out, and your legs out from your knees down, by steadying
yourself with your hands. You can sit, with your knees drawn up to your
chin and your arms clasped around them, but you are bound to turn over
presently, because you are top-heavy in that position. You can stand up
straight in water that is over your head, and from the middle of your
breast upward you will not be wet. But you can not remain so. The water
will soon float your feet to the surface. You can not swim on your back and
make any progress of any consequence, because your feet stick away above
the surface, and there is nothing to propel yourself with but your heels.
If you swim on your face, you kick up the water like a stern-wheel boat.
You make no headway. A horse is so top-heavy that he can neither swim nor
stand up in the Dead Sea. He turns over on his side at once. Some of us
bathed for more than an hour, and then came out coated with salt till we
shone like icicles. We scrubbed it off with a coarse towel and rode off
with a splendid brand-new smell, though it was one which was not any more
disagreeable than those we have been for several weeks enjoying. It was the
variegated villainy and novelty of it that charmed us. Salt crystals
glitter in the sun about the shores of the lake. In places they coat the
ground like a brilliant crust of ice.

     When I was a boy I somehow got the impression that the river Jordan
was four thousand miles long and thirty-five miles wide. It is only ninety
miles long, and so crooked that a man does not know which side of it he is
on half the time. In going ninety miles it does not get over more than
fifty miles of ground. It is not any wider than Broadway in New York.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -597-

There is the Sea of Galilee and this Dead Sea -- neither of them twenty
miles long or thirteen wide. And yet when I was in Sunday School I thought
they were sixty thousand miles in diameter.

     Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most
cherished traditions of our boyhood. Well, let them go. I have already seen
the Empire of King Solomon diminish to the size of the State of
Pennsylvania; I suppose I can bear the reduction of the seas and the river.

     We looked every where, as we passed along, but never saw grain or
crystal of Lot's wife. It was a great disappointment. For many and many a
year we had known her sad story, and taken that interest in her which
misfortune always inspires. But she was gone. Her picturesque form no
longer looms above the desert of the Dead Sea to remind the tourist of the
doom that fell upon the lost cities.

     I can not describe the hideous afternoon's ride from the Dead Sea to
Mars Saba. It oppresses me yet, to think of it. The sun so pelted us that
the tears ran down our cheeks once or twice. The ghastly, treeless,
grassless, breathless canons smothered us as if we had been in an oven. The
sun had positive weight to it, I think. Not a man could sit erect under it.
All drooped low in the saddles. John preached in this "Wilderness!" It must
have been exhausting work. What a very heaven the messy towers and ramparts
of vast Mars Saba looked to us when we caught a first glimpse of them!

     We staid at this great convent all night, guests of the hospitable
priests. Mars Saba, perched upon a crag, a human nest stock high up against
a perpendicular mountain wall, is a world of grand masonry that rises,
terrace upon terrace away above your head, like the terraced and retreating
colonnades one sees in fanciful pictures of Belshazzar's Feast and the
palaces of the ancient Pharaohs. No other human dwelling is near. It was
founded many ages ago by a holy recluse who lived at first in a cave in the
rock -- a cave which is inclosed in the convent walls, now, and was
reverently shown to us by the priests. This recluse, by his rigorous
torturing of his flesh,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -598-

his diet of bread and water, his utter withdrawal from all society and from
the vanities of the world, and his constant prayer and saintly
contemplation of a skull, inspired an emulation that brought about him many
disciples. The precipice on the opposite side of the canyon is well
perforated with the small holes they dug in the rock to live in. The
present occupants of Mars Saba, about seventy in number, are all hermits.
They wear a coarse robe, an ugly, brimless stove-pipe of a hat, and go
without shoes. They eat nothing whatever but bread and salt; they drink
nothing but water. As long as they live they can never go outside the
walls, or look upon a woman -- for no woman is permitted to enter Mars
Saba, upon any pretext whatsoever.

     Some of those men have been shut up there for thirty years. In all
that dreary time they have not heard the laughter of a child or the blessed
voice of a woman; they have seen no human tears, no human smiles; they have
known no human joys, no wholesome human sorrows. In their hearts are no
memories of the past, in their brains no dreams of the future. All that is
lovable, beautiful, worthy, they have put far away from them; against all
things that are pleasant to look upon, and all sounds that are music to the
ear, they have barred their massive doors and reared their relentless walls
of stone forever. They have banished the tender grace of life and left only
the sapped and skinny mockery. Their lips are lips that never kiss and
never sing; their hearts are hearts that never hate and never love; their
breasts are breasts that never swell with the sentiment, "I have a country
and a flag." They are dead men who walk.

     I set down these first thoughts because they are natural -- not
because they are just or because it is right to set them down. It is easy
for book-makers to say "I thought so and so as I looked upon such and such
a scene" -- when the truth is, they thought all those fine things
afterwards. One's first thought is not likely to be strictly accurate, yet
it is no crime to think it and none to write it down, subject to
modification by later experience. These hermits are dead men, in several

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -599-

respects, but not in all; and it is not proper, that, thinking ill of them
at first, I should go on doing so, or, speaking ill of them I should
reiterate the words and stick to them. No, they treated us too kindly for
that. There is something human about them somewhere. They knew we were
foreigners and Protestants, and not likely to feel admiration or much
friendliness toward them. But their large charity was above considering
such things. They simply saw in us men who were hungry, and thirsty, and
tired, and that was sufficient. They opened their doors and gave us
welcome. They asked no questions, and they made no self-righteous display
of their hospipitality. They fished for no compliments. They moved quietly
about, setting the table for us, making the beds, and bringing water to
wash in, and paid no heed when we said it was wrong for them to do that
when we had men whose business it was to perform such offices. We fared
most comfortably, and sat late at dinner. We walked all over the building
with the hermits afterward, and then sat on the lofty battlements and
smoked while we enjoyed the cool air, the wild scenery and the sunset. One
or two chose cosy bed-rooms to sleep in, but the nomadic instinct prompted
the rest to sleep on the broad divan that extended around the great hall,
because it seemed like sleeping out of doors, and so was more cheery and
inviting. It was a royal rest we had.

     When we got up to breakfast in the morning, we were new men. For all
this hospitality no strict charge was made. We could give something if we
chose; we need give nothing, if we were poor or if we were stingy. The
pauper and the miser are as free as any in the Catholic Convents of
Palestine. I have been educated to enmity toward every thing that is
Catholic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I find it much easier to
discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits. But there is one thing I
feel no disposition to overlook, and no disposition to forget: and that is,
the honest gratitude I and all pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers in
Palestine. Their doors are always open, and there is always a welcome for
any worthy man who comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -600-

purple. The Catholic Convents are a priceless blessing to the poor. A
pilgrim without money, whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, can travel
the length and breadth of Palestine, and in the midst of her desert wastes
find wholesome food and a clean bed every night, in these buildings.
Pilgrims in better circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and the
fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Convent. Without
these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine would be a pleasure which
none but the strongest men could dare to undertake. Our party, pilgrims and
all, will always be ready and always willing, to touch glasses and drink
health, prosperity and long life to the Convent Fathers of Palestine.

     So, rested and refreshed, we fell into line and filed away over the
barren mountains of Judea, and along rocky ridges and through sterile
gorges, where eternal silence and solitude reigned. Even the scattering
groups of armed shepherds we met the afternoon before, tending their flocks
of long-haired goats, were wanting here. We saw but two living creatures.
They were gazelles, of "soft-eyed" notoriety. They looked like very young
kids, but they annihilated distance like an express train. I have not seen
animals that moved faster, unless I might say it of the antelopes of our
own great plains.

     At nine or ten in the morning we reached the Plain of the Shepherds,
and stood in a walled garden of olives where the shepherds were watching
their flocks by night, eighteen centuries ago, when the multitude of angels
brought them the tidings that the Saviour was born. A quarter of a mile
away was Bethlehem of Judea, and the pilgrims took some of the stone wall
and hurried on.

     The Plain of the Shepherds is a desert, paved with loose stones, void
of vegetation, glaring in the fierce sun. Only the music of the angels it
knew once could charm its shrubs and flowers to life again and restore its
vanished beauty. No less potent enchantment could avail to work this
miracle.

     In the huge Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built fifteen
hundred years ago by the inveterate St. Helena, they took us below ground,
and into a grotto cut in the living rock. This was

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -601-

the "manger" where Christ was born. A silver star set in the floor bears a
Latin inscription to that effect. It is polished with the kisses of many
generations of worshiping pilgrims. The grotto was tricked out in the usual
tasteless style observable in all the holy places of Palestine. As in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, envy and uncharitableness were apparent here.
The priests and the members of the Greek and Latin churches can not come by
the same corridor to kneel in the sacred birthplace of the Redeemer, but
are compelled to approach and retire by different avenues, lest they
quarrel and fight on this holiest ground on earth.

     I have no "meditations," suggested by this spot where the very first
"Merry Christmas!" was uttered in all the world, and from whence the friend
of my childhood, Santa Claus, departed on his first journey, to gladden and
continue to gladden roaring firesides on wintry mornings in many a distant
land forever and forever. I touch, with reverent finger, the actual spot
where the infant Jesus lay, but I think -- nothing.

     You can not think in this place any more than you can in any other in
Palestine that would be likely to inspire reflection. Beggars, cripples and
monks compass you about, and make you think only of bucksheesh when you
would rather think of something more in keeping with the character of the
spot.

     I was glad to get away, and glad when we had walked through the
grottoes where Eusebius wrote, and Jerome fasted, and Joseph prepared for
the flight into Egypt, and the dozen other distinguished grottoes, and knew
we were done. The Church of the Nativity is almost as well packed with
exceeding holy places as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself. They even
have in it a grotto wherein twenty thousand children were slaughtered by
Herod when he was seeking the life of the infant Saviour.

     We went to the Milk Grotto, of course -- a cavern where Mary hid
herself for a while before the flight into Egypt. Its walls were black
before she entered, but in suckling the Child, a drop of her milk fell upon
the floor and instantly changed the darkness of the walls to its own snowy
hue. We took

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -602-

many little fragments of stone from here, because it is well known in all
the East that a barren woman hath need only to touch her lips to one of
these and her failing will depart from her. We took many specimens, to the
end that we might confer happiness upon certain households that we wot of.

     We got away from Bethlehem and its troops of beggars and
relic-peddlers in the afternoon, and after spending some little time at
Rachel's tomb, hurried to Jerusalem as fast as possible. I never was so
glad to get home again before. I never have enjoyed rest as I have enjoyed
it during these last few hours. The journey to the Dead Sea, the Jordan and
Bethlehem was short, but it was an exhausting one. Such roasting heat, such
oppressive solitude, and such dismal desolation can not surely exist
elsewhere on earth. And such fatigue!

     The commonest sagacity warns me that I ought to tell the customary
pleasant lie, and say I tore myself reluctantly away from every noted place
in Palestine. Every body tells that, but with as little ostentation as I
may, I doubt the word of every he who tells it. I could take a dreadful
oath that I have never heard any one of our forty pilgrims say any thing of
the sort, and they are as worthy and as sincerely devout as any that come
here. They will say it when they get home, fast enough, but why should they
not? They do not wish to array themselves against all the Lamartines and
Grimeses in the world. It does not stand to reason that men are reluctant
to leave places where the very life is almost badgered out of them by
importunate swarms of beggars and peddlers who hang in strings to one's
sleeves and coat-tails and shriek and shout in his ears and horrify his
vision with the ghastly sores and malformations they exhibit. One is glad
to get away. I have heard shameless people say they were glad to get away
from Ladies' Festivals where they were importuned to buy by bevies of
lovely young ladies. Transform those houris into dusky hags and ragged
savages, and replace their rounded forms with shrunken and knotted
distortions, their soft hands with scarred and hideous deformities, and the
persuasive music of their voices with the discordant din of a hated
language, and then

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -603-

see how much lingering reluctance to leave could be mustered. No, it is the
neat thing to say you were reluctant, and then append the profound thoughts
that "struggled for utterance," in your brain; but it is the true thing to
say you were not reluctant, and found it impossible to think at all --
though in good sooth it is not respectable to say it, and not poetical,
either.

     We do not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when
the glare, and the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we
revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom
pageants of an age that has passed away.

                                 Chapter 56

                                CHAPTER LVI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -604-

      WE visited all the holy places about Jerusalem which we had left
unvisited when we journeyed to the Jordan and then, about three o'clock one
afternoon, we fell into procession and marched out at the stately Damascus
gate, and the walls of Jerusalem shut us out forever. We paused on the
summit of a distant hill and took a final look and made a final farewell to
the venerable city which had been such a good home to us.

      For about four hours we traveled down hill constantly. We followed a
narrow bridle-path which traversed the beds of the mountain gorges, and
when we could we got out of the way of the long trains of laden camels and
asses, and when we could not we suffered the misery of being mashed up
against perpendicular walls of rock and having our legs bruised by the
passing freight. Jack was caught two or three times, and Dan and Moult as
often. One horse had a heavy fall on the slippery rocks, and the others had
narrow escapes. However, this was as good a road as we had found in
Palestine, and possibly even the best, and so there was not much grumbling.

      Sometimes, in the glens, we came upon luxuriant orchards of figs,
apricots, pomegranates, and such things, but oftener the scenery was
rugged, mountainous, verdureless and forbidding. Here and there, towers
were perched high up on acclivities which seemed almost inaccessible. This
fashion is as old as Palestine itself and was adopted in ancient times for
security against enemies.

      We crossed the brook which furnished David the stone that

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -605-

killed Goliah, and no doubt we looked upon the very ground whereon that
noted battle was fought. We passed by a picturesque old gothic ruin whose
stone pavements had rung to the armed heels of many a valorous Crusader,
and we rode through a piece of country which we were told once knew Samson
as a citizen.

      We staid all night with the good monks at the convent of Ramleh, and
in the morning got up and galloped the horses a good part of the distance
from there to Jaffa, or Joppa, for the plain was as level as a floor and
free from stones, and besides this was our last march in Holy Land. These
two or three hours finished, we and the tired horses could have rest and
sleep as long as we wanted it. This was the plain of which Joshua spoke
when he said, "Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley
of Ajalon." As we drew near to Jaffa, the boys spurred up the horses and
indulged in the excitement of an actual race -- an experience we had hardly
had since we raced on donkeys in the Azores islands.

      We came finally to the noble grove of orange-trees in which the
Oriental city of Jaffa lies buried; we passed through the walls, and rode
again down narrow streets and among swarms of animated rags, and saw other
sights and had other experiences we had long been familiar with. We
dismounted, for the last time, and out in the offing, riding at anchor, we
saw the ship! I put an exclamation point there because we felt one when we
saw the vessel. The long pilgrimage was ended, and somehow we seemed to
feel glad of it.

      [For description of Jaffa, see Universal Gazetteer.] Simon the Tanner
formerly lived here. We went to his house. All the pilgrims visit Simon the
Tanner's house. Peter saw the vision of the beasts let down in a sheet when
he lay upon the roof of Simon the Tanner's house. It was from Jaffa that
Jonah sailed when he was told to go and prophesy against Nineveh, and no
doubt it was not far from the town that the whale threw him up when he
discovered that he had no ticket. Jonah was disobedient, and of a
fault-finding, complaining disposition, and deserves to be lightly spoken
of, almost. The

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -606-

timbers used in the construction of Solomon's Temple were floated to Jaffa
in rafts, and the narrow opening in the reef through which they passed to
the shore is not an inch wider or a shade less dangerous to navigate than
it was then. Such is the sleepy nature of the population Palestine's only
good seaport has now and always had. Jaffa has a history and a stirring
one. It will not be discovered any where in this book. If the reader will
call at the circulating library and mention my name, he will be furnished
with books which will afford him the fullest information concerning Jaffa.

      So ends the pilgrimage. We ought to be glad that we did not make it
for the purpose of feasting our eyes upon fascinating aspects of nature,
for we should have been disappointed -- at least at this season of the
year. A writer in "Life in the Holy Land" observes:



     "Monotonous and uninviting as much of the Holy Land will appear
     to persons accustomed to the almost constant verdure of flowers,
     ample streams and varied surface of our own country, we must
     remember that its aspect to the Israelites after the weary march
     of forty years through the desert must have been very different."

     Which all of us will freely grant. But it truly is "monotonous and
uninviting," and there is no sufficient reason for describing it as being
otherwise.

      Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must
be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are
unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a
feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and
despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a
vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint,
no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled
with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is
distinct, there is no perspective -- distance works no enchantment here. It
is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.

     Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full
flush of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -607-

contrast with the far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every
side. I would like much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time,
and Shechem, Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee -- but even then
these spots would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste
of a limitless desolation.

     Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a
curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom
and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the
plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists -- over whose waveless
surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead -- about whose borders
nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous
fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the
touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of
Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a
squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed,
lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than
three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their
humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew
the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the
shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on
earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and
unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem
itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur,
and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there
to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple
which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman
crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the
annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee,
where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour
sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and
commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -608-

is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and
Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about
them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate
the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited
only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.

     Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise?
Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?

     Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry
and tradition -- it is dream-land.

                                 Chapter 57

                               CHAPTER LVII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -609-

     IT was worth a kingdom to be at sea again. It was a relief to drop all
anxiety whatsoever -- all questions as to where we should go; how long we
should stay; whether it were worth while to go or not; all anxieties about
the condition of the horses; all such questions as "Shall we ever get to
water?" "Shall we ever lunch?" "Ferguson, how many more million miles have
we got to creep under this awful sun before we camp?" It was a relief to
cast all these torturing little anxieties far away -- ropes of steel they
were, and every one with a separate and distinct strain on it -- and feel
the temporary contentment that is born of the banishment of all care and
responsibility. We did not look at the compass: we did not care, now, where
the ship went to, so that she went out of sight of land as quickly as
possible. When I travel again, I wish to go in a pleasure ship. No amount
of money could have purchased for us, in a strange vessel and among
unfamiliar faces, the perfect satisfaction and the sense of being at home
again which we experienced when we stepped on board the "Quaker City," --
our own ship -- after this wearisome pilgrimage. It is a something we have
felt always when we returned to her, and a something we had no desire to
sell.

     We took off our blue woollen shirts, our spurs, and heavy boots, our
sanguinary revolvers and our buckskin-seated pantaloons, and got shaved and
came out in Christian costume once more. All but Jack, who changed all
other articles of his dress, but clung to his traveling pantaloons. They
still preserved their ample buckskin seat intact; and so his short pea
jacket and his long, thin legs assisted to make him a picturesque

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -610-

object whenever he stood on the forecastle looking abroad upon the ocean
over the bows. At such times his father's last injunction suggested itself
to me. He said:

      "Jack, my boy, you are about to go among a brilliant company of
gentlemen and ladies, who are refined and cultivated, and thoroughly
accomplished in the manners and customs of good society. Listen to their
conversation, study their habits of life, and learn. Be polite and obliging
to all, and considerate towards every one's opinions, failings and
prejudices. Command the just respect of all your fellow-voyagers, even
though you fail to win their friendly regard. And Jack -- don't you ever
dare, while you live, appear in public on those decks in fair weather, in a
costume unbecoming your mother's drawing-room!"

      It would have been worth any price if the father of this hopeful
youth could have stepped on board some time, and seen him standing high on
the fore-castle, pea jacket, tasseled red fez, buckskin patch and all,
placidly contemplating the ocean -- a rare spectacle for any body's
drawing-room.

      After a pleasant voyage and a good rest, we drew near to Egypt and
out of the mellowest of sunsets we saw the domes and minarets of Alexandria
rise into view. As soon as the anchor was down, Jack and I got a boat and
went ashore. It was night by this time, and the other passengers were
content to remain at home

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -611-

and visit ancient Egypt after breakfast. It was the way they did at
Constantinople. They took a lively interest in new countries, but their
school-boy impatience had worn off, and they had learned that it was wisdom
to take things easy and go along comfortably -- these old countries do not
go away in the night; they stay till after breakfast.

     When we reached the pier we found an army of Egyptian boys with
donkeys no larger than themselves, waiting for passengers -- for donkeys
are the omnibuses of Egypt. We preferred to walk, but we could not have our
own way. The boys crowded about us, clamored around us, and slewed their
donkeys exactly across our path, no matter which way we turned. They were
good-natured rascals, and so were the donkeys. We mounted, and the boys ran
behind us and kept the donkeys in a furious gallop, as is the fashion at
Damascus. I believe I would rather ride a donkey than any beast in the
world. He goes briskly, he puts on no airs, he is docile, though

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -612-

opinionated. Satan himself could not scare him, and he is convenient --
very convenient. When you are tired riding you can rest your feet on the
ground and let him gallop from under you.

     We found the hotel and secured rooms, and were happy to know that the
Prince of Wales had stopped there once. They had it every where on signs.
No other princes had stopped there since, till Jack and I came. We went
abroad through the town, then, and found it a city of huge commercial
buildings, and broad, handsome streets brilliant with gas-light. By night
it was a sort of reminiscence of Paris. But finally Jack found an ice-cream
saloon, and that closed investigations for that evening. The weather was
very hot, it had been many a day since Jack had seen ice-cream, and so it
was useless to talk of leaving the saloon till it shut up.

     In the morning the lost tribes of America came ashore and infested the
hotels and took possession of all the donkeys and other open barouches that
offered. They went in picturesque procession to the American Consul's; to
the great gardens; to Cleopatra's Needles; to Pompey's Pillar; to the
palace of the Viceroy of Egypt; to the Nile; to the superb groves of
date-palms. One of our most inveterate relic-hunters had his hammer with
him, and tried to break a fragment off the upright Needle and could not do
it; he tried the prostrate one and failed; he borrowed a heavy sledge
hammer from a mason and tried again. He tried Pompey's Pillar, and this
baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty monolith were sphinxes of noble
countenance, carved out of Egyptian granite as

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -613-

hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of five thousand
years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter battered at these
persistently, and sweated profusely over his work. He might as well have
attempted to deface the moon. They regarded him serenely with the stately
smile they had worn so long, and which seemed to say, "Peck away, poor
insect; we were not made to fear such as you; in ten-score dragging ages we
have seen more of your kind than there are sands at your feet: have they
left a blemish upon us?"

     But I am forgetting the Jaffa Colonists. At Jaffa we had taken on
board some forty members of a very celebrated community. They were male and
female; babies, young boys and young girls; young married people, and some
who had passed a shade beyond the prime of life. I refer to the "Adams
Jaffa Colony." Others had deserted before. We left in Jaffa Mr. Adams, his
wife, and fifteen unfortunates who not only had no money but did not know
where to turn or whither to go. Such was the statement made to us. Our
forty were miserable enough in the first place, and they lay about the
decks seasick all the voyage, which about completed their misery, I take
it. However, one or two young men remained upright, and by constant
persecution we wormed out of them some little information. They gave it
reluctantly and in a very fragmentary condition, for, having been
shamefully humbugged by their prophet, they felt humiliated and unhappy. In
such circumstances people do not like to talk.

     The colony was a complete fiasco. I have already said that such as
could get away did so, from time to time. The prophet Adams -- once an
actor, then several other things, afterward a Mormon and a missionary,
always an adventurer -- remains at Jaffa with his handful of sorrowful
subjects. The forty we brought away with us were chiefly destitute, though
not all of them. They wished to get to Egypt. What might become of them
then they did not know and probably did not care -- any thing to get away
from hated Jaffa. They had little to hope for. Because after many appeals
to the sympathies of

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -614-

New England, made by strangers of Boston, through the newspapers, and after
the establishment of an office there for the reception of moneyed
contributions for the Jaffa colonists, One Dollar was subscribed. The
consul-general for Egypt showed me the newspaper paragraph which mentioned
the circumstance and mentioned also the discontinuance of the effort and
the closing of the office. It was evident that practical New England was
not sorry to be rid of such visionaries and was not in the least inclined
to hire any body to bring them back to her. Still, to get to Egypt, was
something, in the eyes of the unfortunate colonists, hopeless as the
prospect seemed of ever getting further.

     Thus circumstanced, they landed at Alexandria from our ship. One of
our passengers, Mr. Moses S. Beach, of the New York Sun, inquired of the
consul-general what it would cost to send these people to their home in
Maine by the way of Liverpool, and he said fifteen hundred dollars in gold
would do it. Mr. Beach gave his check for the money and so the troubles of
the Jaffa colonists were at an end.57.1

     Alexandria was too much like a European city to be novel, and we soon
tired of it. We took the cars and came up here

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -615-

to ancient Cairo, which is an Oriental city and of the completest pattern.
There is little about it to disabuse one's mind of the error if he should
take it into his head that he was in the heart of Arabia. Stately camels
and dromedaries, swarthy Egyptians, and likewise Turks and black
Ethiopians, turbaned, sashed, and blazing in a rich variety of Oriental
costumes of all shades of flashy colors, are what one sees on every hand
crowding the narrow streets and the honeycombed bazaars. We are stopping at
Shepherd's Hotel, which is the worst on earth except the one I stopped at
once in a small town in the United States. It is pleasant to read this
sketch in my note-book, now, and know that I can stand Shepherd's Hotel,
sure, because I have been in one just like it in America and survived:

          I stopped at the Benton House. It used to be a good hotel,
     but that proves nothing -- I used to be a good boy, for that
     matter. Both of us have lost character of late years. The Benton
     is not a good hotel. The Benton lacks a very great deal of being
     a good hotel. Perdition is full of better hotels than the Benton.

           It was late at night when I got there, and I told the clerk
     I would like plenty of lights, because I wanted to read an hour
     or two. When I reached No. 15 with the porter (we came along a
     dim hall that was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in
     many places, and patched with old scraps of oil cloth -- a hall
     that sank under one's feet, and creaked dismally to every
     footstep,) he struck a light -- two inches of sallow, sorrowful,
     consumptive tallow candle, that burned blue, and sputtered, and
     got discouraged and went out. The porter lit it again, and I
     asked if that was all the light the clerk sent. He said, "Oh no,
     I've got another one here," and he produced another couple of
     inches of tallow candle. I said, "Light them both -- I'll have to
     have one to see the other by." He did it, but the result was
     drearier than darkness itself. He was a cheery, accommodating
     rascal. He said he would

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -616-

     go "somewheres" and steal a lamp. I abetted and encouraged him in
     his criminal design. I heard the landlord get after him in the
     hall ten minutes afterward.

          "Where are you going with that lamp?"

          "Fifteen wants it, sir."

          "Fifteen! why he's got a double lot of candles -- does the
     man want to illuminate the house? -- does he want to get up a
     torch-light procession? -- what is he up to, any how?"

           "He don't like them candles -- says he wants a lamp."

          "Why what in the nation does -- why I never heard of such a
     thing? What on earth can he want with that lamp?"

           "Well, he only wants to read -- that's what he says."

           "Wants to read, does he? -- ain't satisfied with a thousand
     candles, but has to have a lamp! -- I do wonder what the devil
     that fellow wants that lamp for? Take him another candle, and
     then if -- "

          "But he wants the lamp -- says he'll burn the d -- d old
     house down if he don't get a lamp!" (a remark which I never
     made.)

          "I'd like to see him at it once. Well, you take it along --
     but I swear it beats my time, though -- and see if you can't find
     out what in the very nation he wants with that lamp."

           And he went off growling to himself and still wondering and
     wondering over the unaccountable conduct of No. 15. The lamp was
     a good one, but it revealed some disagreeable things -- a bed in
     the suburbs of a desert of room -- a bed that had hills and
     valleys in it, and you'd have to accommodate your body to the
     impression left in it by the man that slept there last, before
     you could lie comfortably; a carpet that had seen better days; a
     melancholy washstand in a remote corner, and a dejected pitcher
     on it sorrowing over a broken nose; a looking-glass split across
     the centre, which chopped your head off at the chin and made you
     look like some dreadful unfinished monster or other; the paper
     peeling in shreds from the walls.

          I sighed and said: "This is charming; and now don't you
     think you could get me something to read?"

          The porter said, "Oh, certainly; the old man's got dead
     loads of books;" and he was gone before I could tell him what
     sort of literature I would rather have. And yet his countenance
     expressed the utmost confidence in his ability to execute the
     commission with credit to himself. The old man made a descent on
     him.

          "What are you going to do with that pile of books?"

          "Fifteen wants 'em, sir."

          "Fifteen, is it? He'll want a warming-pan, next -- he'll
     want a nurse! Take him every thing there is in the house -- take
     him the bar-keeper -- take him the baggage-wagon -- take him a
     chamber-maid! Confound me, I never saw any thing like it. What
     did he say he wants with those books?"

           "Wants to read 'em, like enough; it ain't likely he wants
     to eat 'em, I don't reckon."

           "Wants to read 'em -- wants to read 'em this time of night,
     the infernal lunatic! Well, he can't have them."

          "But he says he's mor'ly bound to have 'em; he says he'll
     just go a-rairin' and a-chargin' through this house and raise
     more -- well, there's no tellin' what he

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -617-

     won't do if he don't get 'em; because he's drunk and crazy and
     desperate, and nothing'll soothe him down but them cussed books."
     [I had not made any threats, and was not in the condition
     ascribed to me by the porter.]

          "Well, go on; but I will be around when he goes to rairing
     and charging, and the first rair he makes I'll make him rair out
     of the window." And then the old gentleman went off, growling as
     before.

          The genius of that porter was something wonderful. He put an
     armful of books on the bed and said "Good night" as confidently
     as if he knew perfectly well that those books were exactly my
     style of reading matter. And well he might. His selection covered
     the whole range of legitimate literature. It comprised "The Great
     Consummation," by Rev. Dr. Cummings -- theology; "Revised
     Statutes of the State of Missouri" -- law; "The Complete
     Horse-Doctor" -- medicine; "The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor
     Hugo -- romance; "The works of William Shakspeare" -- poetry. I
     shall never cease to admire the tact and the intelligence of that
     gifted porter.

     But all the donkeys in Christendom, and most of the Egyptian boys, I
think, are at the door, and there is some noise going on, not to put it in
stronger language. -- We are about starting to the illustrious Pyramids of
Egypt, and the donkeys for the voyage are under inspection. I will go and
select one before the choice animals are all taken.



57.1 It was an unselfish act of benevolence; it was done without any
ostentation, and has never been mentioned in any newspaper, I think.
Therefore it is refreshing to learn now, several months after the above
narrative was written, that another man received all the credit of this
rescue of the colonists. Such is life.

                                 Chapter 58

                               CHAPTER LVIII.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -618-

     THE donkeys were all good, all handsome, all strong and in good
condition, all fast and all willing to prove it. They were the best we had
found any where, and the most recherche. I do not know what recherche is,
but that is what these donkeys were, anyhow. Some were of a soft
mouse-color, and the others were white, black, and vari-colored. Some were
close-shaven, all over, except that a tuft like a paint-brush was left on
the end of the tail. Others were so shaven in fanciful landscape garden
patterns, as to mark their bodies with curving lines, which were bounded on
one side by hair and on the other by the close plush left by the shears.
They had all been newly barbered, and were exceedingly stylish. Several of
the white ones were barred like zebras with rainbow stripes of blue and red
and yellow paint. These were indescribably gorgeous. Dan and Jack selected
from this lot because they brought back Italian reminiscences of the "old
masters." The saddles were the high, stuffy, frog-shaped things we had
known in Ephesus and Smyrna. The donkey-boys were lively young Egyptian
rascals who could follow a donkey and keep him in a canter half a day
without tiring. We had plenty of spectators when we mounted, for the hotel
was full of English people bound overland to India and officers getting
ready for the African campaign against the Abyssinian King Theodorus. We
were not a very large party, but as we charged through the streets of the
great metropolis, we made noise for five hundred, and displayed activity
and created excitement in proportion. Nobody can steer a donkey, and some
collided with camels, dervishes,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -619-

effendis, asses, beggars and every thing else that offered to the donkeys a
reasonable chance for a collision. When we turned into the broad avenue
that leads out of the city toward Old Cairo, there was plenty of room. The
walls of stately date-palms that fenced the gardens and bordered the way,
threw their shadows down and made the air cool and bracing. We rose to the
spirit of the time and the race became a wild rout, a stampede, a terrific
panic. I wish to live to enjoy it again.

     Somewhere along this route we had a few startling exhibitions of
Oriental simplicity. A girl apparently thirteen years of age came along the
great thoroughfare dressed like Eve before the fall. We would have called
her thirteen at home; but here girls who look thirteen are often not more
than nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of superb build,
bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However, an hour's
acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the pilgrims to it, and
then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily do even the most startling
novelties grow tame and spiritless to these sight-surfeited wanderers.

     Arrived at Old Cairo, the camp-followers took up the donkeys and
tumbled them bodily aboard a small boat with a lateen sail, and we followed
and got under way. The deck was closely packed with donkeys and men; the
two sailors had to climb over and under and through the wedged mass to work
the sails, and the steersman had to crowd four or five donkeys out of the
way when he wished to swing his tiller and put his helm hard-down. But what
were their troubles to us? We had nothing to do; nothing to do but enjoy
the trip; nothing to do but shove the donkeys off our corns and look at the
charming scenery of the Nile.

     On the island at our right was the machine they call the Nilometer, a
stone-column whose business it is to mark the rise of the river and
prophecy whether it will reach only thirty-two feet and produce a famine,
or whether it will properly flood the land at forty and produce plenty, or
whether it will rise to forty-three and bring death and destruction to
flocks and crops -- but how it does all this they could not explain to us
so

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -620-

that we could understand. On the same island is still shown the spot where
Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Near the spot we sailed
from, the Holy Family dwelt when they sojourned in Egypt till Herod should
complete his slaughter of the innocents. The same tree they rested under
when they first arrived, was there a short time ago, but the Viceroy of
Egypt sent it to the Empress Eugenie lately. He was just in time, otherwise
our pilgrims would have had it.

     The Nile at this point is muddy, swift and turbid, and does not lack a
great deal of being as wide as the Mississippi.

     We scrambled up the steep bank at the shabby town of Ghizeh, mounted
the donkeys again, and scampered away. For four or five miles the route lay
along a high embankment which they say is to be the bed of a railway the
Sultan means to build for no other reason than that when the Empress of the
French comes to visit him she can go to the Pyramids in comfort. This is
true Oriental hospitality. I am very glad it is our privilege to have
donkeys instead of cars.

     At the distance of a few miles the Pyramids rising above the palms,
looked very clean-cut, very grand and imposing, and very soft and filmy, as
well. They swam in a rich haze that

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -621-

took from them all suggestions of unfeeling stone, and made them seem only
the airy nothings of a dream -- structures which might blossom into tiers
of vague arches, or ornate colonnades, may be, and change and change again,
into all graceful forms of architecture, while we looked, and then melt
deliciously away and blend with the tremulous atmosphere.

     At the end of the levee we left the mules and went in a sailboat
across an arm of the Nile or an overflow, and landed where the sands of the
Great Sahara left their embankment, as straight as a wall, along the verge
of the alluvial plain of the river. A laborious walk in the flaming sun
brought us to the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. It was a fairy
vision no longer. It was a corrugated, unsightly mountain of stone. Each of
its monstrous sides was a wide stairway which rose upward, step above step,
narrowing as it went, till it tapered to a point far aloft in the air.
Insect men and women -- pilgrims from the Quaker City -- were creeping
about its dizzy perches, and one little black swarm were waving postage
stamps from the airy summit -- handkerchiefs will be understood.

     Of course we were besieged by a rabble of muscular Egyptians and Arabs
who wanted the contract of dragging us to the top -- all tourists are. Of
course you could not hear your own voice for the din that was around you.
Of course the Sheiks said they were the only responsible parties; that all
contracts must be made with them, all moneys paid over to them, and none
exacted from us by any but themselves alone. Of course they contracted that
the varlets who dragged us up should not mention bucksheesh once. For such
is the usual routine. Of course we contracted with them, paid them, were
delivered into the hands of the draggers, dragged up the Pyramids, and
harried and be-deviled for bucksheesh from the foundation clear to the
summit. We paid it, too, for we were purposely spread very far apart over
the vast side of the Pyramid. There was no help near if we called, and the
Herculeses who dragged us had a way of asking sweetly and flatteringly for
bucksheesh, which was seductive, and of looking fierce and threatening to

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -622-

throw us down the precipice, which was persuasive and convincing.

     Each step being full as high as a dinner-table; there being very, very
many of the steps; an Arab having hold of each of our arms and springing
upward from step to step and snatching us with them, forcing us to lift our
feet as high as our breasts every time, and do it rapidly and keep it up
till we were ready to faint, who shall say it is not lively, exhilarating,
lacerating, muscle-straining, bone-wrenching and perfectly excruciating and
exhausting pastime, climbing the Pyramids? I beseeched the varlets not to
twist all my joints asunder; I iterated, reiterated, even swore to them
that I did not wish to beat any body to the top; did all I could to
convince them that if I got there the last of all I would feel blessed
above men and grateful to them forever; I begged them, prayed them, pleaded
with them to let me stop and rest a moment -- only one little moment: and
they only answered with some more frightful springs, and an unenlisted
volunteer behind opened a bombardment of determined boosts

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -623-

with his head which threatened to batter my whole political economy to
wreck and ruin.

     Twice, for one minute, they let me rest while they extorted
bucksheesh, and then continued their maniac flight up the Pyramid. They
wished to beat the other parties. It was nothing to them that I, a
stranger, must be sacrificed upon the altar of their unholy ambition. But
in the midst of sorrow, joy blooms. Even in this dark hour I had a sweet
consolation. For I knew that except these Mohammedans repented they would
go straight to perdition some day. And they never repent -- they never
forsake their paganism. This thought calmed me, cheered me, and I sank
down, limp and exhausted, upon the summit, but happy, so happy and serene
within.

     On the one hand, a mighty sea of yellow sand stretched away toward the
ends of the earth, solemn, silent, shorn of vegetation, its solitude
uncheered by any forms of creature life; on the other, the Eden of Egypt
was spread below us -- a broad green floor, cloven by the sinuous river,
dotted with villages, its vast distances measured and marked by the
diminishing stature of receding clusters of palms. It lay asleep in an
enchanted atmosphere. There was no sound, no motion. Above the date-plumes
in the middle distance, swelled a domed and pinnacled mass, glimmering
through a tinted, exquisite mist; away toward the horizon a dozen shapely
pyramids watched over ruined Memphis: and at our feet the bland impassible
Sphynx looked out upon the picture from her throne in the sands as placidly
and pensively as she had looked upon its like full fifty lagging centuries
ago.

     We suffered torture no pen can describe from the hungry appeals for
bucksheesh that gleamed from Arab eyes and poured incessantly from Arab
lips. Why try to call up the traditions of vanished Egyptian grandeur; why
try to fancy Egypt following dead Rameses to his tomb in the Pyramid, or
the long multitude of Israel departing over the desert yonder? Why try to
think at all? The thing was impossible. One must bring his meditations cut
and dried, or else cut and dry them afterward.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -624-

     The traditional Arab proposed, in the traditional way, to run down
Cheops, cross the eighth of a mile of sand intervening between it and the
tall pyramid of Cephron, ascend to Cephron's summit and return to us on the
top of Cheops -- all in nine minutes by the watch, and the whole service to
be rendered for a single dollar. In the first flush of irritation, I said
let the Arab and his exploits go to the mischief. But stay. The upper third
of Cephron was coated with dressed marble, smooth as glass. A blessed
thought entered my brain. He must infallibly break his neck. Close the
contract with dispatch, I said, and let him go. He started. We watched. He
went bounding down the vast broadside, spring after spring, like an ibex.
He grew small and smaller till he became a bobbing pigmy, away down toward
the bottom -- then disappeared. We turned and peered over the other side --
forty seconds -- eighty seconds -- a hundred -- happiness, he is dead
already! -- two minutes -- and a quarter -- "There he goes!" Too true -- it
was too true. He was very small, now. Gradually, but surely, he overcame
the level ground. He began to spring and climb again. Up, up, up -- at last
he reached the smooth coating -- now for it. But he clung to it with toes
and fingers, like a fly. He crawled this way and that -- away to the right,
slanting upward -- away to the left, still slanting upward -- and stood at
last, a black peg on the summit, and waved his pigmy scarf! Then he crept
downward to the raw steps again, then picked up his agile heels and flew.
We lost him presently. But presently again we saw him under us, mounting
with undiminished energy. Shortly he bounded into our midst with a gallant
war-whoop. Time, eight minutes, forty-one seconds. He had won. His bones
were intact. It was a failure. I reflected. I said to myself, he is tired,
and must grow dizzy. I will risk another dollar on him.

     He started again. Made the trip again. Slipped on the smooth coating
-- I almost had him. But an infamous crevice saved him. He was with us once
more -- perfectly sound. Time, eight minutes, forty-six seconds.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -625-

     I said to Dan, "Lend me a dollar -- I can beat this game, yet."

     Worse and worse. He won again. Time, eight minutes, forty-eight
seconds. I was out of all patience, now. I was desperate. -- Money was no
longer of any consequence. I said, "Sirrah, I will give you a hundred
dollars to jump off this pyramid head first. If you do not like the terms,
name your bet. I scorn to stand on expenses now. I will stay right here and
risk money on you as long as Dan has got a cent."

     I was in a fair way to win, now, for it was a dazzling opportunity for
an Arab. He pondered a moment, and would have done it, I think, but his
mother arrived, then, and interfered. Her tears moved me -- I never can
look upon the tears of woman with indifference -- and I said I would give
her a hundred to jump off, too.

     But it was a failure. The Arabs are too high-priced in Egypt. They put
on airs unbecoming to such savages.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -626-

     We descended, hot and out of humor. The dragoman lit candles, and we
all entered a hole near the base of the pyramid, attended by a crazy rabble
of Arabs who thrust their services upon us uninvited. They dragged us up a
long inclined chute, and dripped candle-grease all over us. This chute was
not more than twice as wide and high as a Saratoga trunk, and was walled,
roofed and floored with solid blocks of Egyptian granite as wide as a
wardrobe, twice as thick and three times as long. We kept on climbing,
through the oppressive gloom, till I thought we ought to be nearing the top
of the pyramid again, and then came to the "Queen's Chamber," and shortly
to the Chamber of the King. These large apartments were tombs. The walls
were built of monstrous masses of smoothed granite, neatly joined together.
Some of them were nearly as large square as an ordinary parlor. A great
stone sarcophagus like a bath-tub stood in the centre of the King's
Chamber. Around it were gathered a picturesque group of Arab savages and
soiled and tattered pilgrims, who held their candles aloft in the gloom
while they chattered, and the winking blurs of light shed a dim glory down
upon one of the irrepressible memento-seekers who was pecking at the
venerable sarcophagus with his sacrilegious hammer.

     We struggled out to the open air and the bright sunshine, and for the
space of thirty minutes received ragged Arabs by couples, dozens and
platoons, and paid them bucksheesh for services they swore and proved by
each other that they had rendered, but which we had not been aware of
before -- and as each party was paid, they dropped into the rear of the
procession and in due time arrived again with a newly-invented delinquent
list for liquidation.

     We lunched in the shade of the pyramid, and in the midst of this
encroaching and unwelcome company, and then Dan and Jack and I started away
for a walk. A howling swarm of beggars followed us -- surrounded us --
almost headed us off. A sheik, in flowing white bournous and gaudy
head-gear, was with them. He wanted more bucksheesh. But we had adopted a
new code -- it was millions for defense, but not a cent for

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -627-

bucksheesh. I asked him if he could persuade the others to depart if we
paid him. He said yes -- for ten francs. We accepted the contract, and said
--

     "Now persuade your vassals to fall back."

     He swung his long staff round his head and three Arabs bit the dust.
He capered among the mob like a very maniac. His blows fell like hail, and
wherever one fell a subject went down. We had to hurry to the rescue and
tell him it was only necessary to damage them a little, he need not kill
them. -- In two minutes we were alone with the sheik, and remained so. The
persuasive powers of this illiterate savage were remarkable.

     Each side of the Pyramid of Cheops is about as long as the Capitol at
Washington, or the Sultan's new palace on the Bosporus, and is longer than
the greatest depth of St. Peter's at Rome -- which is to say that each side
of Cheops extends seven hundred and some odd feet. It is about seventy-five
feet higher than the cross on St. Peter's. The first time I ever went down
the Mississippi, I thought the highest bluff on the river between St. Louis
and New Orleans -- it was near Selma, Missouri -- was probably the highest
mountain in the world. It is four hundred and thirteen feet high. It still
looms in my memory with undiminished grandeur. I can still see the trees
and bushes growing smaller and smaller as I followed them up its huge slant
with my eye, till they became a feathery fringe on the distant summit. This
symmetrical Pyramid of Cheops

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -628-

-- this solid mountain of stone reared by the patient hands of men -- this
mighty tomb of a forgotten monarch -- dwarfs my cherished mountain. For it
is four hundred and eighty feet high. In still earlier years than those I
have been recalling, Holliday's Hill, in our town, was to me the noblest
work of God. It appeared to pierce the skies. It was nearly three hundred
feet high. In those days I pondered the subject much, but I never could
understand why it did not swathe its summit with never-failing clouds, and
crown its majestic brow with everlasting snows. I had heard that such was
the custom of great mountains in other parts of the world. I remembered how
I worked with another boy, at odd afternoons stolen from study and paid for
with stripes, to undermine and start from its bed an immense boulder that
rested upon the edge of that hilltop; I remembered how, one Saturday
afternoon, we gave three hours of honest effort to the task, and saw at
last that our reward was at hand; I remembered how we sat down, then, and
wiped the perspiration away, and waited to let a picnic party get out of
the way in the road below -- and then we started the boulder. It was
splendid. It went crashing down the hillside, tearing up saplings, mowing
bushes down like grass, ripping and crushing and smashing every thing in
its path -- eternally splintered and scattered a wood pile at the foot of
the hill, and then sprang from the high bank clear over a dray in the road
-- the negro glanced up once and dodged -- and the next second it made
infinitesimal mince-meat of a frame cooper-shop, and the coopers swarmed
out like bees. Then we said it was perfectly magnificent, and left. Because
the coopers were starting up the hill to inquire.

     Still, that mountain, prodigious as it was, was nothing to the Pyramid
of Cheops. I could conjure up no comparison that would convey to my mind a
satisfactory comprehension of the magnitude of a pile of monstrous stones
that covered thirteen acres of ground and stretched upward four hundred and
eighty tiresome feet, and so I gave it up and walked down to the Sphynx.

     After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -629-

face was so sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity
not of earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never
any thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image
of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the
landscape, yet looking at nothing -- nothing but distance and vacancy. It
was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into the
past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time -- over lines of
century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and nearer
together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the
horizon of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of departed ages;
of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations whose
birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation
it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and
decay, of five thousand slow revolving years. It was the type of an
attribute of man -- of a faculty of his heart and brain. It was MEMORY --
RETROSPECTION -- wrought into visible, tangible form. All who know what
pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and faces that
have vanished -- albeit only a trifling score of years gone by -- will have
some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave eyes that look
so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before History was born --
before Tradition had being -- things that were, and forms that moved, in a
vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of -- and passed one by
one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange new
age, and uncomprehended scenes.

     The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its
magnitude; it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And
there is that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone,
with its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one
something of what he shall feel when he shall stand at last in the awful
presence of God.

     There are some things which, for the credit of America, should be left
unsaid, perhaps; but these very things happen sometimes to be the very
things which, for the real benefit of

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -630-

Americans, ought to have prominent notice. While we stood looking, a wart,
or an excrescence of some kind, appeared on the jaw of the Sphynx. We heard
the familiar clink of a hammer, and understood the case at once. One of our
well meaning reptiles -- I mean relic-hunters -- had crawled up there and
was trying to break a "specimen " from the face of this the most majestic
creation the hand of man has wrought. But the great image contemplated the
dead ages as calmly as ever, unconscious of the small insect that was
fretting at its jaw. Egyptian granite that has defied the storms and
earthquakes of all time has nothing to fear from the tack-hammers of
ignorant excursionists -- highwaymen like this specimen. He failed in his
enterprise. We sent a sheik to arrest him if he had the authority, or to
warn him, if he had not, that by the laws of Egypt the crime he was
attempting to commit was punishable with imprisonment or the bastinado.
Then he desisted and went away.

     The Sphynx: a hundred and twenty-five feet long, sixty feet high, and
a hundred and two feet around the head, if I remember rightly -- carved out
of one solid block of stone harder than any iron. The block must have been
as large as the Fifth Avenue Hotel before the usual waste (by the
necessities of sculpture) of a fourth or a half of the original mass was
begun. I only set

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -631-

down these figures and these remarks to suggest the prodigious labor the
carving of it so elegantly, so symmetrically, so faultlessly, must have
cost. This species of stone is so hard that figures cut in it remain sharp
and unmarred after exposure to the weather for two or three thousand years.
Now did it take a hundred years of patient toil to carve the Sphynx? It
seems probable.

     Something interfered, and we did not visit the Red Sea and walk upon
the sands of Arabia. I shall not describe the great mosque of Mehemet Ali,
whose entire inner walls are built of polished and glistening alabaster; I
shall not tell how the little birds have built their nests in the globes of
the great chandeliers that hang in the mosque, and how they fill the whole
place with their music and are not afraid of any body because their
audacity is pardoned, their rights are respected, and nobody is allowed to
interfere with them, even though the mosque be thus doomed to go unlighted;
I certainly shall not tell the hackneyed story of the massacre of the
Mamelukes, because I am glad the lawless rascals were massacred, and I do
not wish to get up any sympathy in their behalf; I shall not tell how that
one solitary Mameluke jumped his horse a hundred feet down from the
battlements of the citadel and escaped, because I do not think much of that
-- I could have done it myself; I shall not tell of Joseph's well which he
dug in the solid rock of the citadel hill and which is still as good as
new, nor how the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -632-

same mules he bought to draw up the water (with an endless chain) are still
at it yet and are getting tired of it, too; I shall not tell about Joseph's
granaries which he built to store the grain in, what time the Egyptian
brokers were "selling short," unwitting that there would be no corn in all
the land when it should be time for them to deliver; I shall not tell any
thing about the strange, strange city of Cairo, because it is only a
repetition, a good deal intensified and exaggerated, of the Oriental cities
I have already spoken of; I shall not tell of the Great Caravan which
leaves for Mecca every year, for I did not see it; nor of the fashion the
people have of prostrating themselves and so forming a long human pavement
to be ridden over by the chief of the expedition on its return, to the end
that their salvation may be thus secured, for I did not see that either; I
shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway -- I shall
only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies
three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that
purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out
pettishly, "D -- n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent -- pass
out a King;"58.1 I shall not tell of the groups of mud cones stuck like
wasps' nests upon a thousand mounds above high water-mark the length and
breadth of Egypt -- villages of the lower classes; I shall not speak of the
boundless sweep of level plain, green with luxuriant grain, that gladdens
the eye as far as it can pierce through the soft, rich atmosphere of Egypt;
I shall not speak of the vision of the Pyramids seen at a distance of five
and twenty miles, for the picture is too ethereal to be limned by an
uninspired pen; I shall not tell of the crowds of dusky women who flocked
to the cars when they stopped a moment at a station, to sell us a drink of
water or a ruddy, juicy pomegranate; I shall not tell of the motley
multitudes and wild costumes that graced a fair we found in full blast at
another barbarous station; I shall not tell how we feasted on fresh dates
and enjoyed the pleasant landscape all through the

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -633-

flying journey; nor how we thundered into Alexandria, at last, swarmed out
of the cars, rowed aboard the ship, left a comrade behind, (who was to
return to Europe, thence home,) raised the anchor, and turned our bows
homeward finally and forever from the long voyage; nor how, as the mellow
sun went down upon the oldest land on earth, Jack and Moult assembled in
solemn state in the smoking-room and mourned over the lost comrade the
whole night long, and would not be comforted. I shall not speak a word of
any of these things, or write a line. They shall be as a sealed book. I do
not know what a sealed book is, because I never saw one, but a sealed book
is the expression to use in this connection, because it is popular.

     We were glad to have seen the land which was the mother of
civilization -- which taught Greece her letters, and through Greece Rome,
and through Rome the world; the land which could have humanized and
civilized the hapless children of Israel, but allowed them to depart out of
her borders little better than savages. We were glad to have seen that land
which had an enlightened religion with future eternal rewards and
punishment in it, while even Israel's religion contained no promise of a
hereafter. We were glad to have seen that land which had glass three
thousand years before England had it, and could paint upon it as none of us
can paint now; that land which knew, three thousand years ago, well nigh
all of medicine and surgery which science has discovered lately; which had
all those curious surgical instruments which science has invented

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -634-

recently; which had in high excellence a thousand luxuries and necessities
of an advanced civilization which we have gradually contrived and
accumulated in modern times and claimed as things that were new under the
sun; that had paper untold centuries before we dreampt of it -- and
waterfalls before our women thought of them; that had a perfect system of
common schools so long before we boasted of our achievements in that
direction that it seems forever and forever ago; that so embalmed the dead
that flesh was made almost immortal -- which we can not do; that built
temples which mock at destroying time and smile grimly upon our lauded
little prodigies of architecture; that old land that knew all which we know
now, perchance, and more; that walked in the broad highway of civilization
in the gray dawn of creation, ages and ages before we were born; that left
the impress of exalted, cultivated Mind upon the eternal front of the
Sphynx to confound all scoffers who, when all her other proofs had passed
away, might seek to persuade the world that imperial Egypt, in the days of
her high renown, had groped in darkness.



58.1 Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to
believe it. I can believe any thing.

                                 Chapter 59

                                CHAPTER LIX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -635-

     WE were at sea now, for a very long voyage -- we were to pass through
the entire length of the Levant; through the entire length of the
Mediterranean proper, also, and then cross the full width of the Atlantic
-- a voyage of several weeks. We naturally settled down into a very slow,
stay-at-home manner of life, and resolved to be quiet, exemplary people,
and roam no more for twenty or thirty days. No more, at least, than from
stem to stern of the ship. It was a very comfortable prospect, though, for
we were tired and needed a long rest.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -636-

     We were all lazy and satisfied, now, as the meager entries in my
note-book (that sure index, to me, of my condition,) prove. What a stupid
thing a note-book gets to be at sea, any way. Please observe the style:



     "Sunday -- Services, as usual, at four bells. Services at night,
     also. No cards.

     "Monday -- Beautiful day, but rained hard. The cattle purchased
     at Alexandria for beef ought to be shingled. Or else fattened.
     The water stands in deep puddles in the depressions forward of
     their after shoulders. Also here and there all over their backs.
     It is well they are not cows -- it would soak in and ruin the
     milk. The poor devil eagle59.1 from Syria looks miserable and
     droopy in the rain, perched on the forward capstan. He appears to
     have his own opinion of a sea voyage, and if it were put into
     language and the language solidified, it would probably
     essentially dam the widest river in the world.

     "Tuesday -- Somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Malta.
     Can not stop there. Cholera. Weather very stormy. Many passengers
     seasick and invisible.

     "Wednesday -- Weather still very savage. Storm blew two land
     birds to sea, and they came on board. A hawk was blown off, also.
     He circled round and round the ship, wanting to light, but afraid
     of the people. He was so tired, though, that he had to light, at
     last, or perish. He stopped in the foretop, repeatedly, and was
     as often blown away by the wind. At last Harry caught him. Sea
     full of flying-fish. They rise in flocks of three hundred and
     flash along above the tops of the waves a distance of two or
     three hundred feet, then fall and disappear.

     "Thursday -- Anchored off Algiers, Africa. Beautiful city,
     beautiful green hilly landscape behind it. Staid half a day and
     left. Not permitted to land, though we showed a clean bill of
     health. They were afraid of Egyptian plague and cholera.

     "Friday -- Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening,
     promenading the deck. Afterwards, charades.

     "Saturday -- Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening,
     promenading the decks. Afterwards, dominoes.

     "Sunday -- Morning service, four bells. Evening service, eight
     bells. Monotony till midnight. -- Whereupon, dominoes.

     "Monday -- Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening,
     promenading the decks. Afterward, charades and a lecture from Dr.
     C. Dominoes.

     "No date -- Anchored off the picturesque city of Cagliari,
     Sardinia. Staid till midnight, but not permitted to land by these
     infamous foreigners. They smell inodorously -- they do not wash
     -- they dare not risk cholera.

     "Thursday -- Anchored off the beautiful cathedral city of Malaga,
     Spain. -- Went ashore in the captain's boat -- not ashore,
     either, for they would not let us land. Quarantine. Shipped my
     newspaper correspondence, which they took with tongs, dipped it
     in sea water, clipped it full of holes, and then fumigated it
     with villainous vapors till it smelt like a Spaniard. Inquired
     about chances to run to blockade and visit the Alhambra at
     Granada. Too risky -- they might hang a body. Set sail -- middle
     of afternoon.

             -------------------------------------------------
                                   -637-

     "And so on, and so on, and so forth, for several days. Finally,
     anchored off Gibraltar, which looks familiar and home-like."

     It reminds me of the journal I opened with the New Year, once, when I
was a boy and a confiding and a willing prey to those impossible schemes of
reform which well-meaning old maids and grandmothers set for the feet of
unwary youths at that season of the year -- setting oversized tasks for
them, which, necessarily failing, as infallibly weaken the boy's strength
of will, diminish his confidence in himself and injure his chances of
success in life. Please accept of an extract:



     "Monday -- Got up, washed, went to bed.
     "Tuesday -- Got up, washed, went to bed.
     "Wednesday -- Got up, washed, went to bed.
     "Thursday -- Got up, washed, went to bed.
     "Friday -- Got up, washed, went to bed.
     "Next Friday -- Got up, washed, went to bed.
     "Friday fortnight -- Got up, washed, went to bed.
     "Following month -- Got up, washed, went to bed."

     I stopped, then, discouraged. Startling events appeared to be too
rare, in my career, to render a diary necessary. I still reflect with
pride, however, that even at that early age I washed when I got up. That
journal finished me. I never have had the nerve to keep one since. My loss
of confidence in myself in that line was permanent.

     The ship had to stay a week or more at Gibraltar to take in coal for
the home voyage.

     It would be very tiresome staying here, and so four of us ran the
quarantine blockade and spent seven delightful days in Seville, Cordova,
Cadiz, and wandering through the pleasant rural scenery of Andalusia, the
garden of Old Spain. The experiences of that cheery week were too varied
and numerous for a short chapter and I have not room for a long one.
Therefore I shall leave them all out.



59.1 Afterwards presented to the Central Park.

                                 Chapter 60

                                CHAPTER LX.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -638-

     TEN or eleven o'clock found us coming down to breakfast one morning in
Cadiz. They told us the ship had been lying at anchor in the harbor two or
three hours. It was time for us to bestir ourselves. The ship could wait
only a little while because of the quarantine. We were soon on board, and
within the hour the white city and the pleasant shores of Spain sank down
behind the waves and passed out of sight. We had seen no land fade from
view so regretfully.

     It had long ago been decided in a noisy public meeting in the main
cabin that we could not go to Lisbon, because we must surely be quarantined
there. We did every thing by mass-meeting, in the good old national way,
from swapping off one empire for another on the programme of the voyage
down to complaining of the cookery and the scarcity of napkins. I am
reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery made by a
passenger. The coffee had been steadily growing more and more execrable for
the space of three weeks, till at last it had ceased to be coffee
altogether and had assumed the nature of mere discolored water -- so this
person said. He said it was so weak that it was transparent an inch in
depth around the edge of the cup. As he approached the table one morning he
saw the transparent edge -- by means of his extraordinary vision long
before he got to his seat. He went back and complained in a high-handed way
to Capt. Duncan. He said the coffee was disgraceful. The Captain showed
his. It seemed tolerably good. The incipient mutineer was more outraged
than ever, then, at what he denounced as the partiality shown

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -639-

the captain's table over the other tables in the ship. He flourished back
and got his cup and set it down triumphantly, and said:

     "Just try that mixture once, Captain Duncan."

     He smelt it -- tasted it -- smiled benignantly -- then said:

     "It is inferior -- for coffee -- but it is pretty fair tea."

     The humbled mutineer smelt it, tasted it, and returned to his seat. He
had made an egregious ass of himself before the whole ship. He did it no
more. After that he took things as they came. That was me.

     The old-fashioned ship-life had returned, now that we were no longer
in sight of land. For days and days it continued just the same, one day
being exactly like another, and, to me, every one of them pleasant. At last
we anchored in the open roadstead of Funchal, in the beautiful islands we
call the Madeiras.

     The mountains looked surpassingly lovely, clad as they were in living,
green; ribbed with lava ridges; flecked with white cottages; riven by deep
chasms purple with shade; the great slopes dashed with sunshine and mottled
with shadows flung from the drifting squadrons of the sky, and the superb
picture fitly crowned by towering peaks whose fronts were swept by the
trailing fringes of the clouds.

     But we could not land. We staid all day and looked, we abused the man
who invented quarantine, we held half a dozen mass-meetings and crammed
them full of interrupted speeches,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -640-

motions that fell still-born, amendments that came to nought and
resolutions that died from sheer exhaustion in trying to get before the
house. At night we set sail.

     We averaged four mass-meetings a week for the voyage -- we seemed
always in labor in this way, and yet so often fallaciously that whenever at
long intervals we were safely delivered of a resolution, it was cause for
public rejoicing, and we hoisted the flag and fired a salute.

     Days passed -- and nights; and then the beautiful Bermudas rose out of
the sea, we entered the tortuous channel, steamed hither and thither among
the bright summer islands, and rested at last under the flag of England and
were welcome. We were not a nightmare here, where were civilization and
intelligence in place of Spanish and Italian superstition, dirt and dread
of cholera. A few days among the breezy groves, the flower gardens,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -641-

the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of blue water that went curving in
and out, disappearing and anon again appearing through jungle walls of
brilliant foliage, restored the energies dulled by long drowsing on the
ocean, and fitted us for our final cruise -- our little run of a thousand
miles to New York -- America -- HOME.

     We bade good-bye to "our friends the Bermudians," as our programme
hath it -- the majority of those we were most intimate with were negroes --
and courted the great deep again. I said the majority. We knew more negroes
than white people, because we had a deal of washing to be done, but we made
some most excellent friends among the whites, whom it will be a pleasant
duty to hold long in grateful remembrance.

     We sailed, and from that hour all idling ceased. Such another system
of overhauling, general littering of cabins and packing of trunks we had
not seen since we let go the anchor in the harbor of Beirout. Every body
was busy. Lists of all purchases had to be made out, and values attached,
to facilitate matters at the custom-house. Purchases bought by bulk in
partnership had to be equitably divided, outstanding debts canceled,
accounts compared, and trunks, boxes and packages labeled. All day long the
bustle and confusion continued.

     And now came our first accident. A passenger was running through a
gangway, between decks, one stormy night, when he caught his foot in the
iron staple of a door that had been heedlessly left off a hatchway, and the
bones of his leg broke

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -642-

at the ancle. It was our first serious misfortune. We had traveled much
more than twenty thousand miles, by land and sea, in many trying climates,
without a single hurt, without a serious case of sickness and without a
death among five and sixty passengers. Our good fortune had been wonderful.
A sailor had jumped overboard at Constantinople one night, and was seen no
more, but it was suspected that his object was to desert, and there was a
slim chance, at least, that he reached the shore. But the passenger list
was complete. There was no name missing from the register.

     At last, one pleasant morning, we steamed up the harbor of New York,
all on deck, all dressed in Christian garb -- by special order, for there
was a latent disposition in some quarters to come out as Turks -- and amid
a waving of handkerchiefs from welcoming friends, the glad pilgrims noted
the shiver of the decks that told that ship and pier had joined hands again
and the long, strange cruise was over. Amen.

                                 Chapter 61

                                CHAPTER LXI.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -643-

     IN this place I will print an article which I wrote for the New York
Herald the night we arrived. I do it partly because my contract with my
publishers makes it compulsory; partly because it is a proper, tolerably
accurate, and exhaustive summing up of the cruise of the ship and the
performances of the pilgrims in foreign lands; and partly because some of
the passengers have abused me for writing it, and I wish the public to see
how thankless a task it is to put one's self to trouble to glorify
unappreciative people. I was charged with "rushing into print" with these
compliments. I did not rush. I had written news letters to the Herald
sometimes, but yet when I visited the office that day I did not say any
thing about writing a valedictory. I did go to the Tribune office to see if
such an article was wanted, because I belonged on the regular staff of that
paper and it was simply a duty to do it. The managing editor was absent,
and so I thought no more about it. At night when the Herald's request came
for an article, I did not "rush." In fact, I demurred for a while, because
I did not feel like writing compliments then, and therefore was afraid to
speak of the cruise lest I might be betrayed into using other than
complimentary language. However, I reflected that it would be a just and
righteous thing to go down and write a kind word for the Hadjis -- Hadjis
are people who have made the pilgrimage -- because parties not interested
could not do it so feelingly as I, a fellow-Hadji, and so I penned the
valedictory. I have read it, and read it again; and if there is a sentence
in it that is not fulsomely complimentary to

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -644-

captain, ship and passengers, I can not find it. If it is not a chapter
that any company might be proud to have a body write about them, my
judgment is fit for nothing. With these remarks I confidently submit it to
the unprejudiced judgment of the reader:

     RETURN OF THE HOLY LANDEXCURSIONISTS -- THE STORY OF THE CRUISE.

     TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD:

     The steamer Quaker City has accomplished at last her extraordinary
voyage and returned to her old pier at the foot of Wall street. The
expedition was a success in some respects, in some it was not. Originally
it was advertised as a "pleasure excursion." Well, perhaps, it was a
pleasure excursion, but certainly it did not look like one; certainly it
did not act like one. Any body's and every body's notion of a pleasure
excursion is that the parties to it will of a necessity be young and giddy
and somewhat boisterous. They will dance a good deal, sing a good deal,
make love, but sermonize very little. Any body's and every body's notion of
a well conducted funeral is that there must be a hearse and a corpse, and
chief mourners and mourners by courtesy , many old people, much solemnity,
no levity, and a prayer and a sermon withal. Three-fourths of the Quaker
City's passengers were between forty and seventy years of age! There was a
picnic crowd for you! It may be supposed that the other fourth was composed
of young girls. But it was not. It was chiefly composed of rusty old
bachelors and a child of six years. Let us average the ages of the Quaker
City's pilgrims and set the figure down as fifty years. Is any man insane
enough to imagine that this picnic of patriarchs sang, made love, danced,
laughed, told anecdotes, dealt in ungodly levity? In my experience they
sinned little in these matters. No doubt it was presumed here at home that
these frolicsome veterans laughed and sang and romped all day, and day
after day, and kept up a noisy excitement from one end of the ship to the
other; and that they played blind-man's buff or danced quadrilles and
waltzes on moonlight evenings on the quarter-deck; and that at odd moments
of unoccupied time they jotted a laconic item or two in the journals they
opened on such an elaborate plan when they left home, and then skurried off
to their whist and euchre labors under the cabin lamps. If these things
were presumed, the presumption was at fault. The venerable excursionists
were not gay and frisky. They played no blind-man's buff; they dealt not in
whist; they shirked not the irksome journal, for alas! most of them were
even writing books. They never romped, they talked but little, they never
sang, save in the nightly prayer-meeting. The pleasure ship was a
synagogue, and the pleasure trip was a funeral excursion without a corpse.
(There is nothing exhilarating about a funeral excursion without a corpse.)
A free, hearty laugh was a sound that was not heard oftener than once in
seven days about those decks or in those cabins, and when it was heard it
met with precious little sympathy. The excursionists danced, on three
separate evenings, long, long ago,

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -645-

(it seems an age.) quadrilles, of a single set, made up of three ladies and
five gentlemen, (the latter with handkerchiefs around their arms to signify
their sex.) who timed their feet to the solemn wheezing of a melodeon; but
even this melancholy orgie was voted to be sinful, and dancing was
discontinued.

     The pilgrims played dominoes when too much Josephus or Robinson's Holy
Land Researches, or book-writing, made recreation necessary -- for dominoes
is about as mild and sinless a game as any in the world, perhaps, excepting
always the ineffably insipid diversion they call croquet, which is a game
where you don't pocket any balls and don't carom on any thing of any
consequence, and when you are done nobody has to pay, and there are no
refreshments to saw off, and, consequently, there isn't any satisfaction
whatever about it -- they played dominoes till they were rested, and then
they blackguarded each other privately till prayer-time. When they were not
seasick they were uncommonly prompt when the dinner-gong sounded. Such was
our daily life on board the ship -- solemnity, decorum, dinner, dominoes,
devotions, slander. It was not lively enough for a pleasure trip; but if we
had only had a corpse it would have made a noble funeral excursion. It is
all over now; but when I look back, the idea of these venerable fossils
skipping forth on a six months' picnic, seems exquisitely refreshing. The
advertised title of the expedition -- "The Grand Holy Land Pleasure
Excursion" -- was a misnomer. "The Grand Holy Land Funeral Procession"
would have been better -- much better.

     Wherever we went, in Europe, Asia, or Africa, we made a sensation,
and, I suppose I may add, created a famine. None of us had ever been any
where before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a wild novelty to
us, and we conducted ourselves i n accordance with the natural instincts
that were in us, and trammeled ourselves with no ceremonies, no
conventionalities. We always took care to make it understood that we were
Americans -- Americans! When we found that a good many foreigners had
hardly ever heard of America, and that a good many more knew it only as a
barbarous province away off somewhere, that had lately been at war with
somebody, we pitied the ignorance of the Old World, but abated no jot of
our importance. Many and many a simple community in the Eastern hemisphere
will remember for years the incursion of the strange horde in the year of
our Lord 1867, that called themselves Americans, and seemed to imagine in
some unaccountable way that they had a right to be proud of it. We
generally created a famine, partly because the coffee on the Quaker City
was unendurable, and sometimes the more substantial fare was not strictly
first class; and partly because one naturally tires of sitting long at the
same board and eating from the same dishes.

     The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They
looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America.
They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that
we looked out for expenses, and got what we conveniently could out of a
franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just
simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We
never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. One
of our passengers said to a shopkeeper, in reference to a proposed return
to buy a pair of gloves, "Allong restay trankeel -- may be ve coom
Moonday;" and would you believe it, that shopkeeper, a born

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -646-

Frenchman, had to ask what it was that had been said. Sometimes it seems to
me, somehow, that there must be a difference between Parisian French and
Quaker City French.

     The people stared at us every where, and we stared at them. We
generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with them,
because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we crushed
them. And yet we took kindly to the manners and customs, and especially to
the fashions of the various people we visited. When we left the Azores, we
wore awful capotes and used fine tooth combs -- successfully. When we came
back from Tangier, in Africa, we were topped with fezzes of the bloodies t
hue, hung with tassels like an Indian's scalp-lock. In France and Spain we
attracted some attention in these costumes. In Italy they naturally took us
for distempered Garibaldians, and set a gunboat to look for any thing
significant in our changes of uniform. We made Rome howl. We could have
made any place howl when we had all our clothes on. We got no fresh raiment
in Greece -- they had but little there of any kind. But at Constantinople,
how we turned out! Turbans, scimetars, fezzes, horse-pistols, tunics,
sashes, baggy trowsers, yellow slippers -- Oh, we were gorgeous! The
illustrious dogs of Constantinople barked their under jaws off, and even
then failed to do us justice. They are all dead by this time. They could
not go through such a run of business as we gave them and survive.

     And then we went to see the Emperor of Russia. We just called on him
as comfortably as if we had known him a century or so, and when we had
finished our visit we variegated ourselves with selections from Russian
costumes and sailed away again more picturesque than ever. In Smyrna we
picked up camel's hair shawls and other dressy things from Persia; but in
Palestine -- ah, in Palestine -- our splendid career ended. They didn't
wear any clothes there to speak of. We were satisfied, and stopped. We made
no experiments. We did not try their costume. But we astonished the natives
of that country. We astonished them with such eccentricities of dress as we
could muster. We prowled through the Holy Land, from Cesarea Philippi to
Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, a weird procession of pilgrims, gotten up
regardless of expense, solemn, gorgeous, green-spectacled, drowsing under
blue umbrellas, and astride of a sorrier lot of horses, camels and asses
than those that came out of Noah's ark, after eleven months of seasickness
and short rations. If ever those children of Israel in Palestine forget
when Gideon's Band went through there from America, they ought to be cursed
once more and finished. It was the rarest spectacle that ever astounded
mortal eyes, perhaps.

     Well, we were at home in Palestine. It was easy to see that that was
the grand feature of the expedition. We had cared nothing much about
Europe. We galloped through the Louvre, the Pitti, the Ufizzi, the Vatican
-- all the galleries -- and through the pictured and frescoed churches of
Venice, Naples, and the cathedrals of Spain; some of us said that certain
of the great works of the old masters were glorious creations of genius,
(we found it out in the guide-book, though we got hold of the wrong picture
sometimes,) and the others said they were disgraceful old daubs. We
examined modern and ancient statuary with a critical eye in Florence, Rome,
or any where we found it, and praised it if we saw fit, and if we didn't we
said we preferred the wooden Indians in front of the cigar stores of
America. But

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -647-

the Holy Land brought out all our enthusiasm. We fell into raptures by the
barren shores of Galilee; we pondered at Tabor and at Nazareth; we exploded
into poetry over the questionable loveliness of Esdraelon; we meditated at
Jezreel and Samaria over the missionary zeal of Jehu; we rioted -- fairly
rioted among the holy places of Jerusalem; we bathed in Jordan and the Dead
Sea, reckless whether our accident-insurance policies were extra-hazardous
or not, and brought away so many jugs of precious water from both places
that all the country from Jericho to the mountains of Moab will suffer from
drouth this year, I think. Yet, the pilgrimage part of the excursion was
its pet feature -- there is no question about that. After dismal, smileless
Palestine, beautiful Egypt had few charms for us. We merely glanced at it
and were ready for home.

     They wouldn't let us land at Malta -- quarantine; they would not let
us land in Sardinia; nor at Algiers, Africa; nor at Malaga, Spain, nor
Cadiz, nor at the Madeira islands. So we got offended at all foreigners and
turned our backs upon them and cam e home. I suppose we only stopped at the
Bermudas because they were in the programme. We did not care any thing
about any place at all. We wanted to go home. Homesickness was abroad in
the ship -- it was epidemic. If the authorities of New York had known how
badly we had it, they would have quarantined us here.

     The grand pilgrimage is over. Good-bye to it, and a pleasant memory to
it, I am able to say in all kindness. I bear no malice, no ill-will toward
any individual that was connected with it, either as passenger or officer.
Things I did not like at all yesterday I like very well to-day, now that I
am at home, and always hereafter I shall be able to poke fun at the whole
gang if the spirit so moves me to do, without ever saying a malicious word.
The expedition accomplished all that its programme promised that it should
accomplish, and we ought all to be satisfied with the management of the
matter, certainly. Bye-bye!

     MARK TWAIN.

     I call that complimentary. It is complimentary; and yet I never have
received a word of thanks for it from the Hadjis; on the contrary I speak
nothing but the serious truth when I say that many of them even took
exceptions to the article. In endeavoring to please them I slaved over that
sketch for two hours, and had my labor for my pains. I never will do a
generous deed again.

                                CONCLUSION.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -648-

     NEARLY one year has flown since this notable pilgrimage was ended; and
as I sit here at home in San Francisco thinking, I am moved to confess that
day by day the mass of my memories of the excursion have grown more and
more pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of travel which encumbered them
flitted one by one out of my mind -- and now, if the Quaker City were
weighing her anchor to sail away on the very same cruise again, nothing
could gratify me more than to be a passenger. With the same captain and
even the same pilgrims, the same sinners. I was on excellent terms with
eight or nine of the excursionists (they are my staunch friends yet,) and
was even on speaking terms with the rest of the sixty-five. I have been at
sea quite enough to know that that was a very good average. Because a long
sea-voyage not only brings out all the mean traits one has, and exaggerates
them, but raises up others which he never suspected he possessed, and even
creates new ones. A twelve months' voyage at sea would make of an ordinary
man a very miracle of meanness. On the other hand, if a man has good
qualities, the spirit seldom moves him to exhibit them on shipboard, at
least with any sort of emphasis. Now I am satisfied that our pilgrims are
pleasant old people on shore; I am also satisfied that at sea on a second
voyage they would be pleasanter, somewhat, than they were on our grand
excursion, and so I say without hesitation that I would be glad enough to
sail with them again. I could at least enjoy life with my handful of old
friends. They could enjoy life with their cliques as well -- passengers
invariably divide up into cliques, on all ships.

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -649-

     And I will say, here, that I would rather travel with an excursion
party of Methuselahs than have to be changing ships and comrades
constantly, as people do who travel in the ordinary way. Those latter are
always grieving over some other ship they have known and lost, and over
other comrades whom diverging routes have separated from them. They learn
to love a ship just in time to change it for another, and they become
attached to a pleasant traveling companion only to lose him. They have that
most dismal experience of being in a strange vessel, among strange people
who care nothing about them, and of undergoing the customary bullying by
strange officers and the insolence of strange servants, repeated over and
over again within the compass of every month. They have also that other
misery of packing and unpacking trunks -- of running the distressing
gauntlet of custom-houses -- of the anxieties attendant upon getting a mass
of baggage from point to point on land in safety. I had rasher sail with a
whole brigade of patriarchs than suffer so. We never packed our trunks but
twice -- when we sailed from New York, and when we returned to it. Whenever
we made a land journey, we estimated how many days we should be gone and
what amount of clothing w e should need, figured it down to a mathematical
nicety, packed a valise or two accordingly, and left the trunks on board.
We chose our comrades from among our old, tried friends, and started. We
were never dependent upon strangers for companionship. We often had
occasion to pity Americans whom we found traveling drearily among strangers
with no friends to exchange pains and pleasures with. Whenever we were
coming back from a land journey, our eyes sought one thing in the distance
first -- the ship -- and when we saw it riding at anchor with the flag
apeak, we felt as a returning wanderer feels when he sees his home. When we
stepped on board, our cares vanished, our troubles were at an end -- for
the ship was home to us. We always had the same familiar old state-room to
go to, and feel safe and at peace and comfortable again.

     I have no fault to find with the manner in which our excursion

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -650-

was conducted. Its programme was faithfully carried out -- a thing which
surprised me, for great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they
perform. It would be well if such an excursion could be gotten up every
year and the system regularly inaugurated. Travel is fatal to prejudice,
bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on
these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can
not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's
lifetime.

     The Excursion is ended, and has passed to its place among the things
that were. But its varied scenes and its manifold incidents will linger
pleasantly in our memories for many a year to come. Always on the wing, as
we were, and merely pausing a moment to catch fitful glimpses of the
wonders of half a world, we could not hope to receive or retain vivid
impressions of all it was our fortune to see. Yet our holyday flight has
not been in vain -- for above the confusion of vague recollections, certain
o f its best prized pictures lift themselves and will still continue
perfect in tint and outline after their surroundings shall have faded away.

     We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of
Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again, we
hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw majestic
Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset and swimming
in a sea of rainbows. In fancy we shall see Milan again, and her stately
Cathedral with its marble wilderness of graceful spires. And Padua --
Verona -- Como, jeweled with stars; and patrician Venice, afloat on her
stagnant flood -- silent, desolate, haughty -- scornful of her humbled
state -- wrapping herself in memories of her lost fleets, of battle and
triumph, and all the pageantry of a glory that is departed.

     We can not forget Florence -- Naples -- nor the foretaste of heaven
that is in the delicious atmosphere of Greece -- and surely not Athens and
the broken temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome -- nor the
green plain that compasses her round about, contrasting its brightness with
her

         ---------------------------------------------------------
                                   -651-

gray decay -- nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the plain and
clothe their looped and windowed raggedness with vines. We shall remember
St. Peter's: not as one sees it when he walks the streets of Rome and
fancies all her domes are just alike, but a s he sees it leagues away, when
every meaner edifice has faded out of sight and that one dome looms
superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace, strongly
outlined as a mountain.

     We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus -- the colossal
magnificence of Baalbec -- the Pyramids of Egypt -- the prodigious form,
the benignant countenance of the Sphynx -- Oriental Smyrna -- sacred
Jerusalem -- Damascus, the "Pearl of the East," the pride of Syria, the
fabled Garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights,
the oldest metropolis on earth, the one city in all the world that has kept
its name and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and
Empires of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little
season of pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten!

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------