CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library D 975.C62 1869 innocents abroad: or Tiie new Pilgrim's 3 1924 026 423 354 The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http ://www. arch i ve . o rg/detai Is/cu31 924026423354 TUB PILGRIM'S VISION. THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, OB THE IE¥ PILGEIMS' PROGEESS; BEING SOME ACCOUNT OP THE STEAMSHIP OUAKER CITY'S PLEASURE EXCURSION TO EUROPE AND THE HOLY LAND; WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, INCIDENTS AND ADVENTURES, AS THEY APPEARED TO THE A U T H E. WITH TWO HUNDRED AND THffiTY-FODE ILDSTRATIONS. MAEK TWAIN, (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.) BY BDBICIUPnON ONLY, AND NOT VOB. SALE IN THE BOOK-BTOSBH, BESIDBNTS OT ANY BTATB DSSIHUrS A COPY BHOUU> ADDBEBS THE PUBT.HHEBII, AND AN AGENT WILL CALL UPON THEM.) HARTFORD, CONN.: <^/ "' AMERICAN PTTBLISHING CQ^BfPANT. (. F. G. GILMAN ft CO., CHICAGO, ILL. ; W. E. BLISg, TOIfEDO, OHIO.; i . \\ '' KETTLETON & CO., CINCINNATI, OHIO. ; D. ASHMBAD,plaiLADELPHM,|IWlir, J. W. GOODSPEED, NEW ORLEANS, Lf.< \ ^ ^ A. ROMAN & COMPANY, SAN FRANQISpPi CAL. 1873, .,/ Entered accordiog to act of Cosgress, in year 1869, ^tj AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO., in the office of tlie Libiariali of Congress at Washington, ^Y j\/l0ST J'ATIEiSlT JIeADEI^ AND JVLOST J^HAI^ITABLE pi^ITIC, Jhis yoLUME IS Affectionately Inscribed. PEEFAOE. Tms book is a record of a, pleasure-trip. If it wei-e 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 not- withstanding 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 travelled in those countries before him. I make small pretence of showing any one 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 ofier 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 TVibime and the New York Herald. THE AUTHOR. Sau- Fraitcisco, 1869. PAOB 1. The QuAKKB (^TT IN A Stqbu Fboktbpieoe — 2. Ilhtminatkd Titl»-Paok— Thk Phobim's Vision — 8. " I 'LL Pat Ton IK Pabis " 28 4. Thb Stakt '. 80 B. "Good MoBKiKO, Sie" ... ••■■•'■ ** 6. The Old Pieate '. !. 86 7. D ANOINQ Uhdeb Biffioui/tw 42 8. The MooK Teiai. , 44 9. "Land, hoI" 49 10. The Capote 52 11. RniN AiTD Desolation 68 12. Poet OF HoBTA, Fayal (Ii^lPaqe), faoepage 56 18. "SekSj-TahI" .'. 59 14. Beautiful Stbangeb , 64 15. Bock of Oibealtab (Full Paoe), face faoe 6S 16. " Queen's Oh aie " 67 17. The Oeaole 79 18. The Intebbogation Point 71 19. Gabeison atMalabat 72 20. Enteetaining AN Angel. 74 21. TiEWOF A Steeetin Tanqiee .....' 77 22. Change foe a Napoleon 81 28. The Consul's Family gg 24. "PoetLabiat" ., 91 25. FiBST Buppee IN Feanoe gg 26. Painting..., (g 47. EiKGiNO FOB Soap 99 28. "WiNBiSiBl" 100 29. The Pilgbim 101 80. The Peisoneb lOg 81. Homeless Feanoe (Full Page), face page IQg 82. Eailboad Official IN Feanoe lOg 88. " FrvB MnnJTBS FOE Ebfbeshhbntb." Axxbioa 109 Tllustrations, vii TABTS M. " Thirty If IN1TTE8 FOB DimnsB," Fbanob 110 96. Tbb Old Tkatellkb HI 86. ADecodkd SnAVB * 116' 87. A Gas-tlt SuBSTinrnB 117 88. The Theee GoiDBS J '. 119 89. " Ze Silk Magasik " 122 40. Return in Wab Paint 124 41. Napoleon III 126 42. Abddl Aziz ^. 126 48. TheMoehitb 182 44. "We TOOK A -WALK / 186 46. ThbCak-Cah 186 46. Graves OF Abelard and Heloise 141 47. A Pair OF Canons of 18th Centuby 142 48. The Pbitatb Marriage 144 49. American Drinks 14S ' 50. EoYAL Honors to a Yankee. ."^ 150 61. The Grisetie 161 53. Fountain at Versailles 164 68. Women of Genoa ; ' 161 54. Petrified Lackey. 163 66. Pbiest and Fbiab .-. 164 66. Statue of Columbus 168 ST. Grates of Sixty Thousand 169 '58. EooF AND 3pibeb of Cathedbal at Milan (Pull Page), pack page. 172 69. Centeal Door OF Cathedral AT Milan 178 60. Intebiob OF Cathedbal at Milan 174 61. Boyhood's Expebibnoe :,...; ^ 176 62. Tbeasureb op the Cathedral , 179 68. OATHdDRAL AT MiLAN 181 64 La Soala Theatre 184 66. Copying FROM Old Masters 191 66. Facial Expression 194 67. The Echo 196 6a Note Book 197 69. A Kiss FOR A Feanc 198 70. Thb Fumigation 200 Tl. Lake Como „ 202 72. Garden, Lake Como (Fdu Page), Face Page , 204 73. Social Deitee 207 74 'Wayside Shrine 208 76. Peace AND Happiness 209 76. Castle OF Count Luioi. '. 210 77. The "Wicked Beothke 216 78. Disgusted Gondolier 220 79. Cathedral OF St. Mark 226 80. The Pes ; 229 81. "Good-by" 286 82. M'SIEUB GOR-B-DOXa •-'-''-■ 284 83. Monument TO the Doge 236 84. St. Mare. By the Old Masters 238 85. St. Matthew. By the Old Masters 288 86. St. Jerome. By the Old Masters 238 87. St. Sebastian. By the Old Masters 239 88. St. Unknown. By the Old Masters 289 viii Jllustrations. PAOB 89. EultoBbiiisi: Ml 90. Bbidge op Sighs **1 91. Flobekob ; 246 9a. The Pbhbiohee 246 98. " I Want TO oo Home" 2*8 94. The Leaking Towee 2S0 96. The CoNTBABT 288 96. Italian Pastiues 263 9T. Incendiaby Document 264 98. AE0MAN0rt869 26T 99. Mameetine Peison 2T6 100. OldEoman 218 101. Coliseum of Ancient Eome 281 103. Did not Complain 285 103. Humboldt Houbb ' 286 104 Dan 28S 106. Beonze Statue 289 106. Penmanship 291 lOT. OnaBust 298 108. Vaults of the Content 299 109. Deibd Content Feuits ■ 302 110. AttheStoeb SOS HI. At Home 804 112. Soothing the Pilgbims 809 118. Ascent of Mt. Tbsutius i 818 114 Bay OF Naples ' 816 116. The Mustang i 319 116. Island OP Capei 320 IIT. BlueGeotto 821 118. Vesuvius and Bat of Naples (Full Page), pace page 823 119. The Descent 825 120. EuiN3,PoMPEn , 827 121. FoEUM OF Justice, Pompeii 830 122. House, Pompeh 336 128. Steomboli. 838 124. View of the Acbofolis, looking West 341 12B. "Hoi" 848 126. The Assault 844 12T. The Caeyatides 346 128. The Paethenon (Full Page), face page 348 129. We Sidled, not Ean. 360 180. Ancient Aceopolis ., 862 181. Tah- Piece, Euins 863 183. Queen of Geeeoe 865 138. Palace at Athens 856 184. Steeet Scene in Constantinople (Full Page) face page 369 186. OoosE Eanoheb 360 186. Mosque OF St. Sophia. 368 18T. TuKKisB Mausoleum 866 188. Slandebed Dogs 371 189. Thb Censob on Duty , 874 140. TuEEisn Bath 87S 141. Fab- A-WAY-MosES 882 142. A Feagment , 885 148. Tail-Fiboe— A Memento 38S jLtUSTRATIONS. ix 141 Taita 7B0U THE Bupxsos'a Paiaok S92 14& EUPEBOB OF Rttssia 898 146. TiNSBL Kma 899 14T. Ship Eupebob 404 148. The ISeoeption 405 149. StkEET BOEHE in SUYSITA , : 411 150. Smtbha. ,.41* 151. Ajt Appabent Succebs 416 152. DBDTiNa TO Stabboabd. 419 158. A SpoiledNap 420 154. ANOIENr AUFHITHEATBE AX EphESUS '.. 422 155. MoDEBN Amphitheatbb atEphbbus... 428 166. BuiHS OF EpHEauB 424 15T. The Jodbset. .' 425 158. Gbateb of the Seteh Sleepebb 420 159. The Seleotiok 484 160. CAMpmo Out 486 161. Tail Piece— Ababb' Tekts 48T 162. A Good Eeedee. 489 168. iNTBBEBTINa FAte 440 164 Sithdat School Obapeb 442 163. Air Old Foot 445 166. Bage with a Camel. : 446' 167. Temple of the Sun 447 168. EuiHS OF ^lalbeo. 449' 169. Hewn Stotes in Quaeet 460 ITO. Mebot 4% ITl. PatbonBaist 468 1T2. "Watbb Cabbieb ^ .^. 466 173. View ofDamabcub, (Full Page) face page 456 174. Stbeet Cabs of Damascus 460 176, FullDeessed Toueibt - 466 176. Impeo-mptu Hospital 474 177. The Hobsb " Baalbeo " 476 178. OakopBabhan ; 479 179. Dangebous Aeab .' ' „.„ 488 180. Gbimeb ox the "Wae-Path 488 181. Tail-Piece— Bedouin Camp 487 183. HoMKOP Ancient Pomp.". '. 489 188. Jack 490 184 A Disappointed Audience 491, 185. Fig-Tbee ^ 495. 186. "Faeetoo High" 49T 187. Syeian House ^.. 504 188. TiBEBtAS AND Sea of Galilee , ". „^ 606 189. TheGuabd ; 518 190. Mount Taboe , 521 191. Taii-Pieo«— Gathebino Fuel ~ - B24 192. Fountain of the Vibgin - 630 198. " Madonna- LIKE Bbautt " 531 194 Putbnam Outdone 533 195. The Bastinado , 635 196. "IWept" 63S 197. "Want OF Dighitt ^ 639 198. An Oeiental Well , 644 Illustrations, rAsa 189. 4JJABS SAinmio 64S 500. Few SoKB or TBS DxaBBT 5M 501. 8hbohi!h ; 663 ' 902. Tail FiEo«— Qatb or Jebusalsh 866 !08, Bl»OASB IH JSBVSAI'IIH 669 904. Gh^boh or the Holt Sbpui.ohbb 664 905. ObateofApah • 666 906. Ymw or jEBueALBM (FuxL Faob), rACEPAQB 674 907. The 'Waitdbbiho Jew 677 908. MopQVBorOvAB 681 909. AnEpidewio , 689 910. Chabqe oir Bbpottiss. 690 911. Dead Sea 594 9l9. Gbotto or thb N'ATrvm (TiTLL Paqx), face PAGE 601 913. Jafpa (FrjLL'FAaB), rAOBPAfiE 006 914. BxAB ELETATioif or Jack 610 916. Stbbetin Alexajhibia '• '• 611 916. TiOESOT or EsTFT 612 217. Eastebk UoNAEca i 614 218. Moses S. Beach 61S 219. RooH No. 16 617 ■ i^. The Nilokeieb ; 620 221 Ascent oil the Ftbahiss 622, 292 HioH Hopes Fbustbatid 626 ^S& Kino's Cbambeb' in the Ftbahid, (Full Page), face, paob 626 224. A FoWEBFin, Abguhebt 627 226. PiRAHIDS AND SPHTHX, (FtILL FaGe), FAOE PAGE 629 226. The Relic Honteb/ , 630 227 The Mahelcke's Leap ► 631 228. Would hot be Cohfobted 633 229. Tia • FiECE, The Tbatbleb 634 230 HouEWARD Bound -635 231. Bad Coffee •.',. 639 232 OuB Fbiends the Bebhddiahs 640 233. Captain DnHCAN 641 234. TiiL PiEOE,FDna 661 CONTENTS. CHAPTER L topnlar Talk of the Exeureion— Programme of the Trip— Duly Ticketed for the EzcurBion — ^Defection of the Celebrities 19 CHAPTER IL Grand Preparations — ^An Imposing Dignitary — The European Exodus — Mr. Bluoher's Opinion — Stateroom No. 10 — The Assembling of, the dona-^At Sea at last ■ 26 CHAPTER III. "Averapng" the Passengers — "Far, far at Sea" — ^Tribulation among the' Patriarchs — Seeking Amusement under Difficulties — live Captains in the Ship ; 32 CHAPTER IV. Tl;e Pilgrims Becoming Domesticated — Pilgrim Life at Sea — " Horse-Billiards " ^The "Synagogue" — The Writing School— Jack's " Journal "---Thoi "Q. C. Club"— The Magic Lantern— State Ball on Deck— Mock Trials- Charades — Pilgrim Solemnity — Slow Musio — ^The Executive Officer De- livers an Opinion 38 CHAPTER T. Summer in Mid- Atlantic — An Eccentric Moon — Mr. Blucher Loses Confidence — The Mystery of " Ship Time "—The Denizens of the Deep — " Land- Hol" — The First Landing on a Foreign Shorer— Sensation among the Natives — Something about the Azores Islands — Blucher's Disastrous Din- ■ ner — The Happy Result 4T CHAPTER VL Solid Information — A Fossil Community — Curious Ways anct Customs— Jesuit Humbuggeiy — ^Fantastic Pilgrimizing— Origin of the Russ Pavement — Squaring Accounts with the Fossils — ^At Sea Again 65 CHAPTER TIL A Tempest at Night^^Spain and Africa on Exhibition — Greeting a Majestic Stranger — The Pillars of Hercules — The Bock of Gibraltar — Tiresome Repetition^-" The Queen's Chair " — Serenity Conquered — Curiosities of the Secret Caverns — Personnel of Gibraltar — Some Odd Characters — A Private Frolic in Africa^— Bearding a Moorish Garrison (^rithout loss of life J — Tanity Rebuked— Disembarking in the Empire of Morocco 62 XH CoNTJarrs. CHAPTER vin. PAflS The Ancient City of Tangier, Morocco— Strange Sights — ^A Cradle of An- tiquity—We become Wealthy— How they Rob the Mail in Africa— The Danger of being Opulent in Morocco 16 CHAPTER IX. A Pilgrim in Deadly Peril — How they Mended the Clock — Moorish Punish- ments for Crime — Marriage Customs — ^Looking Several ways for Sunday — Shrewd Practice of Mohammedan Pitgrims — Reverence for Cats — Bliss of being a Consul-General 83 CHAPTER X. Fourth of July at Sea — Mediterranean Sunset — The " Oracle " is Delivered of an Opinion — Celebration Ceremonies — The Captain's Speech — France in Sigjit — The Ignorant Native — In Marseilles — Another Blunder — Iiost in the Great CTity — Found Again — A Frenciiy Scene 9ft CHAPTER XI. Gettli^g "Used to it "—No Soap— Bill of Pare, Table d'h6te — "Am American Sir I" — A Curious Discovery — ^Tho "Pilgrim" Bird — Strange Companion- ship — A Grave of the Living — A Long Captivity — Some of Dumas' He- roes — Dungeon of the Famous " Iron Mask." 98 CHAPTER XIL A Holiday Flight through France — Summer Garb of the Landscape — Abroad on the Great Plains — Peculiarities of French Cars — French Politeness — American Railway Officials — " Twenty Mnutes to Dinner I" — Why there are no Accidents — Tiie "Old Travellers" — Still on the Wing — Paris at Last — French Order and Quiet — Place of the Bastile — Seeing the Sights — ^A Barbarous Atrocity — Absurd Billiards 105 CHAPTER xrn. More Trouble — Monsieur Billfinger — Ee-Christening the Frenchman — In the Clutches of a Paris Guide— The International Exposition — Pine Military Review — Glimpse of the Emperor Napoleon and the Sultan of Turkey. . . . 118 CHAPTER Xrv. The Venerable Cathedral of Notre-Dame — Jean Sanspeur's Addition — Treas- ures and Sacred Relics — The Legend of the Cross — The Morgue— The Outrageous Con- Cow— Blondin Aflame — The Louvre Palace — ^The Great Park — Showy Pageantry — Preservation of Noted Things 130 CHAPTER XT. French National Burying-Gfround — Among the Great Dead — The Shrine of Disappointed Love— The Stray of Abelard and Heloise — " English Spoken Here"— "American Drinks Compounded Here "—Imperial Honors to an American — The Over-estimated Griisette — Departure from Paris— A De- liberate Opinion Concerning the Comeliness of American Women 139 CHAPTER XVL VeraailleB— Paradise Regained— A Wonderful Park— Paradise Lost— Napole- onic Strategy 153 GoiXTESTB. xiii CHAPTER XVn. PASS War— The American Forces Victorious — " Home Again " — ^Italy in Sight — The " City of Palaces " — Beauty of the Genoese Women— The " Stub- Hunters " — Among the Palaces — Gifted Guide — Church Magnificence— " Women not Admitted " — How the Genoese Live — ^Massive Architecture — A Scrap of Ancient History — Graves for 60,000 169 CHAPTER XVni. Flying Through Italy — Ifarengo — First Glimpse of the Famous Cathedral — Description of some of its Wonders — A Horror Carved in Stone — An Unpleasant Adventure — A Good Man — A Sermon from the Tomb — Tons of Gold and Silver — Some More Holy Relics — Solomon's Temple Rivalled IH CHAPTER XIX. "Do You Wis zo Haut can be? " — La Soala — Petrarch and Laura — Lucrezia Sorgia — Ingenious Frescoes — Ancient Roman Amphitheatre — A Clever Delusion — Distressing Billiards — The Chief Charm of European Life — An Italian Bath — Wanted: Soap — Crippled French — Mutilated English — ^The Most Celebrated Painting in the World — Amateur Raptures — Uninspired Critics — Anecdote — ^A Wonderful Echo— A Kiss for a Franc 183 CHAPTER XX. Rural Italy by Rail — Fumigated, According to Law — The Sorrowing English- man — Night by the Lalte of Como — The Famous Lake — Its Scenery — Como compared with Tahoe — Meeting a Shipmate 199 CHAPTER XXL The Pretty Lago di Lecco — A Carriage Drive in the Country— Astonishing Sociability in a Coachman — A Sleepy Land — Bloody Shrines — The Heart and Home of Priestcraft — A Thrilling Mediaeval Romance — The Birthplace of Harlequin — Approaching Venice 20t CHAPTER XXIL Kight in Venice — The " Gay Gondolier " — The Grand FSte by Moonlight — The Notable Sights of Venice — The Mother of the Republics Desolate 211 CHAPTER XXIIL The Famous Gondola — The Gondola in an Unroraantic Aspect — Tho Great Square of St. Mark and the Winged Lion — Snobs, at Home and Abroad — Sepulchres of the Great Dead — A Tilt at the " Old Masters " — ^A Contra- band Guide — The Conspiracy — Moving Again 228 CHAPTER XXIV. Down Through Italy by Rail — ^Idling in Florence — Dante and Galileo — ^An Ungrateful City — Dazzhng Generosity — ^Wonderful Mosaics — The Histori- cal Arno — ^Lost Again — Found Again, but no Fatted Calf Ready — The Leaning Tower of Pisa — ^The Ancient Duomo — The Old Original First Pendulum that Ever Swung — An Enchanting Echo— A New Holy Sepulchre — A Relic of Antiquity — A Fallen Republic — At Leghorn — At Home Again, and Satisfied, on Board the Ship — Our Vessel an Object of Grave Suspicion— Gen. Garibaldi Visited — Threats of Quarantine 244 iiV' COZITEIITB. CHAPTER XXV. I FAOa The "Works of Bankruptcy— Ballwaj Grandeur— How to Fill an Empty Treasufy— The Snmptuousneaa of Mother Chureh— BcMlesiastioal Splen- dor — ^Uagnifloence and Misery — General Execration — More Magnificence —A Good Word for the Priests — CiTita Vecehia the Dismal— Off for " Borne 255 CHAPTER XXVI. The Modern Roman on His Trayela — The Grandeur of St. Peter's — ^Holy Belies — Grand Tiew from the Dome — The Holy Inquisition — ^Interesting Old Monkish Frauds — The Ruined Coliseum^-The Coliseum in the Days of its Prime — 'Ancient Play-bill of a Coliseum Performance — A Roman : Newspaper Criticism ITOO Years Old 266 CHAPTER XXTII. " Butchered to Make a Roman Holiday " — The Man who Never Complained — An Exasperating Subject — Asinine Guides— The Roman Catacombs — The Saiht Whose Fervor Burst his Bibs — ^The Miracle of the Bleeding Heart — The Legend of Ara Cceli 284 CHAPTER XXYHL Picturesque Horrors — The Legend of Brother Thomas — Sorrow Scientifically Analyzed — A Festive Company of the Dead — The Great Vatican Museum — Artist Sins of Omission — The Rape of the Sabines — ^Papal Protection of Art— High Price of " Old Masters " — ^Improved Scripture — Scale of Rank of the Holy Personages in Rome — Scale of Honors Accorded Them — FoS- silizmg — ^Away for Naples 298 CHAPTER Yirx Naples — In Quarantine at Last — Annunciation — Ascent of Mount Vesuvius — ^A Two-Cent Community — ^The Black Side of Neapolitan Character — Monkish Miracles — Ascent of Mount Yesuvius Continued — ^The Stranger and the Hackman — Night View of Naples from the Mountain-side^ Ascent of Vesuvius Continued 308 CHAPTER yy-y Ascent of Vesuvius Continued — Beautiful View at Dawn — Less Beautiful View in the Back Streets — Ascent of Vesuvius Continued — Dwellings a Hundred Feet High — A Motley Procession — Bill of Fare for a Pedler's Breakfast — Princely Salaries — Ascent of Vesuvius Continued — ^An Aver- age of Prices— The Wonderful "Blue Grotto" — Visit to Celebrated Localities in the Bay of Naples — ^The Poisoned "Grotto of the Dog" — A Petrified Sea of Lava — The Ascent Continued — The Summit Reached — Description of the Crater — ^Descent of Vesuvius 31S CHAPTER XXXL The Buried City of Pompeii — How DweUings Appear that have been Unoccu- pied for Eighteen Hundred Years — ^The Judgment Seat — Desolation — The Footprints of the Departed—" No Women Admitted " — Theatres, Bake- shops, Schools, etc. — Skeletons Preserved by the Ashes and Cinders — The Brave Martyr to Duty— Bip Van Winkle — The Perishable Nature of Fame , 331 Contests. xv OHAPTBB tXSJL PAOB At Sea Once More-^Thfe PUgfima all Well— SilpeiU Stroittboli— SleUy by Moonlighfr—Scyllft ond Chtttybdia— The " Ot-dde " at Faijlt^^kirting the Isles of Greece'^AlUiietit Athetia^^Blookaded by Quarantine and BeAised Permission to Enter— Running the Blockade — ^A Bloodless Midnight Ad- venture— Turning Robbers from Necessity — Attempt to Carry the Aorop- olis by Storm — We Fail — Among the Glories of the Past — A World of Ruined Sculpture — A Jaify VialOfii — ^FambtlS Localities — Retreating in Good Of dSr- Captuf ed by the Guaifds— T*av«lling iil MUitMy State— Safe' on Board Again „ -. ' '. . . 331 CHAPTER xrxni. Modern Greece — ^Fallen Grdtttness-^Sailing Through the Archipelago and thp Datdanelles — Footprints bf Htstory-^The Fitat Shoddy Contractor of Whom History gitca any ACflsiittt^AnGhored Before Constantinople— Fantastic Fashions — The Ingenious Gooae-BBnChe]^'uMarrellous Cripplea — The Great Moa(lue-^The Thousand aitld One Gblumns — The Grand Bazaar of Stamboul 354 CHAPTER XXXIV. Scarcity of Morals and Whiskey— -Slave-Girl Market Report — Commercial Morality at a Discount — The Slandered Pogs of Constantinople — Ques- tionable Delights of Newspaperdom in Turkey; — Ingenious Italian Journalism — No More Turkish Lunches Desired^ — The Turkish Bath Fraud — The Narghileh Fraud — Jaekplaned by a Native — The Turkish Coffee Fi —"I 368 CHAPTER XXXV. Sailing Through the Boapfli'ua and theplack Sea— " Far- A way Moses " — Melancholy Sebastopol — Hospitably , Received in Russia— Pleasant Eng- lish People — ^Desperate FigkMug — Belio Hunting — How Travellers Form " Cabinets " .....,....,.,. ,^ ., 381 CHAPTER XXXVL Nine Thouaand Miles East^^Imitation Ainerican Tovirn in Rusaia — Gratitude that Came Too Late-<-To Visit the Autocrat of AU the Busaias 38T CHAPTER XXXVIL - Summer Home of Royalty — Practising for the Dread Ordeal — Committee on Imperial Address— fiepeption by the Emperor and Family — Dresses of the Imperial Party— Conoentfated Power — Counting the Spoons^- At the Grand Duke's— A Charming Villa— 'A Knightly Figure — The Grand Duchess — A Grand Ducal Breakfast-^Baker'a Boy> tha Famine-Breeder — Theatrical Monarchs a Fraud-^aved as by Fire — The Governor-Gen- eral's Viait to the Ship— Official "Style " — Aristocratic Visitors— "Mun- chausenizing " with Them— Closing Ceremoniea, ...,.., '. 390 CHAPTER XXXVin. Return to Constantinople^ — We Sail for Aaiv — The Sailors Burleaque the Imperial. ViaitorB--Anoient Smyrna — The " Oriental Splendor " Fraud-r- The " Biblical Crown of Life " — Pilgrim PropheCy-Savana — Sociable Armenian Girls^ — A Sweet ReminisoeAtie^^" The Camels are Coming, Ha-hal" <,....' 403. ivi COHTBNTS. CHAPTER XXXIX. ma Smyrna's Lions— The Martyr Polyoarp— The "Seven Churches "— Remains of the Six Smymas^Mysterious Oyster Mine— Oysters Seeking Seen- ery— A Millerite Tradition— A Eailroad Out of its Sphere 412 CHAPTER XL. Journeying Toward Ancient Bphesus— Ancient Ayassalook— The Tillanous Donkey— A Fantastic Procession— Bygone Magnificence— Fragments of History — The Legend of the Seven Sleepers 418 CHAPTER XLI. Vandalism Prohibited — Angry Pilgrims — Approaching Holy Land I — ^The "Shrill Note of Preparation— Distress About Dragomans and Transporta- tion — The " Long ^ute " Adopted — In Syria — Something about Beirout -A Choice Specimen of a Greek " Ferguson " — Outfits — ^Hideous Horse- flesh—Pilgrim " Style "—What of Aladdin's Lamp ? 430 CHAPTER XLH. '• Jacksonville," in the Mountains of Lebanon — Breakfasting above a Grand Panorama — The Tanished City — The Peculiar Steed, "Jericho" — The Pilgrim's Progress — Bible Scenes — Mount Hermon, Joshua's Battle- fields, etc.- The Tomb of Noah— A Most Unfortunate People 438 CHAPTER XLHL Patriarchal Customs — Magnificent Baalbec — Description of the Ruins — Scrib- bling Smiths and Joneses — Pilgrim Fidelity to tiie Letter of the Law — The Revered Fountain of Baalam's Ass 446 CHAPTER XLrV. Extracts from Note-Book — Mahomet's Paradise and the Bible's — ^Beautiful Da- mascus, the Oldest City on Earth — Oriental Scenes within the Curious Old City- Damascus Street Cai^-The Story of St. Paul— The "Street called Straight " — Mahomet's Tomb and St. George's — ^The Christian Massacre- Mohammedan Dread of Pollution — ^The House of Naaman — ^The Horrors of Leprosy 464 CHAPTER XLT. The Cholera by way of Yariety — Hot — ^Another Outlandish Procession — Pen- and-ink Photograph of " Jonesborough," Syria — Tomb of Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter — The Stateliest Ruin of All— Stepping over the Borders of Holy Land — ^Bathing in the Sources of Jordan — ^More " Specimen "- Hunting — Ruins of Cesarea-Philippi — " On This Rock 'Will I Build my Church " — The People the Disciples Knew — The Noble Steed " Baalbec " — Sentimental Horse Idolatry of the Arabs 466 CHAPTER XLVI. Dan — Bashan — Genessaret — ^A Notable Panorama — Smallness of Palestine — Scraps of History — Character of the Country — ^Bedouin Shepherds — Glimpses of the Poary Past — Mr. Grimes's Bedouins — A Battle-Ground of Joshua — That Soldier's Manner of Fighting — Barak's Battle— The Neoessiiy of Unlearning Some Things — ^Desolation 4TS Contents. xvii CHAPTER XLTU. PASB Jack's Adventure — Joseph's Pit — The Story of Joseph — Joseph's Magnanim- ity and Esau's — The Sacred Lake of Genesaaret — Enthusiasm of the Pil- grims — Why We did not Sail on Galilee — About Capernaum — Concerning the Saviour's Brothers and Sisters — Journeying toward Magdala 488 CHAPTER XLTIII. Curious Specimens of Art and Architecture — Public Reception of the Filgiims — ^Mary Magdalen's House — ^Tiberias and its Queer Inhabitants — ^The Sa- cred Sea of Galilee — Galilee by NighV 603 CHAPTER XLIX. The Ancient Baths — ^Te Apparition — A Distinguished Panorama^-The last Battle of the Crusades — The Story of the lord of Kerak — Mount Tabor — What one Sees from its Top — A. Memory of a Wonderful Garden — The House of Deborah the Prophetess 614 CHAPTER L. Toward Nazareth — ^Bitten By a Camel — Grotto of the Annunciation, Nazareth — Noted Grottoes in General — Joseph's Workshop — A Sacred Bowlder — The Fountain of the Virgin — Questionable Female Beauty — Literary Cu- riosities. 626 CHAPTER LI. The Boyhood of the Saviour — Unseemly Antics of Sober Pilgrims — ^Home of the Witch of Endor — Nain — Profanation — A Popular Oriental Picture — Biblical Metaphors Becoming steadily More Intelligible — The Shunem Miracle — The "Free Son of The Desert" — Ancient Jezreel — Jehu's Achievements — Samaria and its Famous Siege 637 CHAPTER LIL A Curious Remnant of the Past — Shechem — The Oldest " First Family " on Barth-^The Oldesif Manuscript Extant — The Genuine Tomb of Joseph—^ Jacob's Well — Shiloh — Camping with the Arabs — Jacob's Ladder — More Desolation — Ramah, B^roth, the Tomb of Samuel, the Fountain of Beira — ^Impatience — Approaching Jerusalem — The Holy City in Sight — Noting its Prominent Features — Domiciled Within the Sacred Walla 661 CHAPTER LIII. " The Joy of the Whole Earth " — Description of Jerusalem — Church of the Holy Sepulchre — The Stone of XTnctioii — The Grave of Jesus — Graves of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea — Places of the Apparition — The Finding of the Three Crosses— The Legend — Monkish Impostures — The Pillar of Flagellation— The Place of a Relic^Godfrey'a Sword--" The Bonds of Christ "— " The Center of the Earth "—Place whence the Dust was taken of which Adam was Made — Grave of Adam — The Martyred ' Soldier — The Copper Plate that was On the Cross — The Good St. Helena — Place of the Division of the Garments — St, Dimaa, the Penitent Thief — The Late Emperor Maximilian's Contribution — Grotto wherein the Crosaes were Found, and the Nails, and the Crown of Thorns — Chapel of the Mocking — Tomb of Melohizedek — Graves of Two Renowned Crusaders —The Place of the Crucifixion 668 xviii Contents. CHAPTER LIT. PASZ The " Sorrowful "Way " — The Legend of St. Teronica's Handkerchief— An H- lustrioua Stone— House of the 'Wandering Jew — ^The Tradition of the Wanderer — Solomon's Temple — Mosque of Omar — Moslem Traditions — ' " Women not Admitted " — The Pate of a Gossip — Turkish Sacred Relies — Judgment Seat of David and Saul — GSenuine Precious Remains of Solomon's Temple— Surfeited with Sights — The Pool of Siloam — The Gar- den of Gethsemane and Other Sacred LocalitieB 61i CHAPTER LT. Rebellion in the Camp — Charms of Nomadic Life — Dismal Rumors — En Route for Jericho and The Dead Sea — Pilgrim Strategy — Bethany and the Dwell- ing of Lazarus — " Bedouins I " — Ancient Jericho — Misery — The Night March — The Dead Sea — An Idea of What a "Wilderness " in Palestine is — The Holy Hermits of Mars Saba — Good St. Saba — Women not Admit- ted — Buried from the World for all Time — Unselfish Catholic Benevolence — Gazelles — The Plain of the Shepherds — Birthplace of the Saviour, Bethlehem — Church of the Nativity— Its Hundred Holy Places — The Fa- mous "Milk "' Grotto — Tradition — Return to Jerusalem — Exhausted. . . . 686 CHAPTER LVT. Departure from Jerusalem — Samson^-The Plain of Sharon — Arrival at Joppa — ^House of Simon the Tanner — The Long Pilgrimage Ended — Character of Palestine Scenery — The Curse 604 CHAPTER LTU. The Happiness of being at Sea once more — " Home " as it is In a Pleasure- Ship — " Shaking Hands " with the Teasel — Jack in Costume — His Fa- ther's Parting Advice — Approaching Egypt — Ashore in Alexandria — A Deserved Compliment for the Donkeys — Invasion of the Lost Tribes of America — End of the Celebrated "Jaffa Colony" — Scenes in Grand Cai- ro — Shepheard's Hotel Contrasted with a Certain American Hotel — Fre- parmg for the Pyramids 609 CHAPTER LTIIL "Recherche " Donkeys — ^A Wild Ride — Specimens of Egyptian Modesty — Mo- ses in the Bulrushes — Place where the Holy FamUy Sojourned — Distant ' view of the Pyramids — A Nearer Tiew — The Ascent — Superb Tiew from the top of the Pyramid— "Backsheesh! Backsheesh! "—An Arab Exploit — In the Bowels of the Pyramid — Strategy — Reminiscence of "Holiday's Hill"— Boyish Exploit— The Majestic Sphynx— Things the Author will not Tell— Grand Old Egypt 618 CHAPTER LIX. Gand walked out of the store without a word— walked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Fp the street apiece he broke silence and said impressively : " It was a lie — ^that is my opinion of it !" "I'll pay you in paius." In the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her pas- sengers. I was introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my room mate, and found him to be intelligent, cheerftil of spirit, unselfish, full of generous impulses, patient, consid- erate, and wonderfully good-natured. Not any passenger that sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his indorsement of what I have just said. We selected a state-room forward of SEA-GOING LODGINGS. 29 the wheel, on the starboard side, " below decks." It had two berths in it, a dismal dead-light, a sink with a wash-bowl 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 aU 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 state-room, 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 driz- zling rain and looking as droopy and woe-begone 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 pleas- ure excursion — ^there was no gainsaying that, because the programme 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 revolu- tion 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 an- chor. It was still raining. And not only raining, but storming. "Outside" we coijld see, ourselves, that there was a tre- mendous sea on. We must lie still, in the calm harbor, till the storm should abaite. Our passengers hailed from fifteen 80 "CAST OFF." THE START. States ; only a few of them had ever been to sea before ; mani- festly it would not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until they had got their sea-legs on. Toward evening the two ^team-tugs that had accompanied us with a rollicking cham- pagne-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 ven- geance. It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for prayer meeting. The first Saturday night of any other pleas- ure excursion might have been devoted to whist and dan- cing ; 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 "CAST OFF." 81 we were in. We would hav.e shone at a wake, but not at any thing 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. OHAPTEE III. A LL day Sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a -^^J- 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 nt)t properly begin a pleasure excur- sion 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-meet- ings ; 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 actu- ally 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 UNDER WAY "POR GOOD." 83 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 any thing to sing, and so I was obliged to give up the idea. It was no loss to the ship though, 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 mid-heaven, 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 stern 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 pecu- liarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to have his stomach behave itself, the first day at 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 mj 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 sky- light. 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 I'" and reeled away. 84 TRIBULATION AMONG THE PATRIAECHS. In a little while another veteran waa 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 — " •■QOOD MORNING, SIR.' "OA, my!" I tliovrght so. I anticipated him, any how. I staid there and was bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour perhaps; and all I got out of any of them was " Oh, my 1" 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 lilie those old people,;. TBANSGBESSING THE LAWS. 35 but somehow they all seem to have the " Oh, my " rather bad. I knew what was the matter with them. They were sea- siek. And I was glad of it. We all like to see people sea- sick when we are not, ourselves. Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside, is pleasant ; walking thei quarter-deck 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 after- noon. At one time I was climbing up the quarter-deck when the vessel's stem was in the sky ; I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable. Somebody ejaculated : " Come, now, tJiat won't answer. Eead the sign up there- No SMOKING ABAIT THE WHEEL !" It was Oapt. Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went for- ward, of course. I saw a long spy-glass 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" 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 Capt. Bursley — executive ofBcer — sailing-master." ' I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to do, fell to carving a railing -with my knife. Some- body said, in an insinuating, admonitory voice : "Now say — my Mend— nion't you know any better than, to be whittling the ship aU to pieces that way ? Tau ought to^ know better than that." I went back and found the deck-sweep : "Who is that smooth-faced animated outr^e yonderrih the fine clothes ?" " That's Capt. L****, the owner of the diip— he's one of the main bosses." 36 TEANSGEESSING THE LAWS. 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 some one touched me on the shoulder and ,Baid, deprecatingly : " I'll have to get you to give that to me. Sir. If there's any THE OLD PIRATE. thing you'd like to know about taking the sun, I'd as soon tell you as not — ^but I don't like to trust any body with tiiat 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 Bancti« imonioms countenance?" " It's Capt. Jones, Sir — the chief mate." TBAKSGRESSING THE LAWS. 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 1 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 down-hearted. I thought, if five cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five cap- tains do with a pleasure excursion. OHAPTEE lY. WE plowed along travely for a week or more, and wiih- out any conflict of jurisdiction among the captains worth mentiomng. The passengers soon learned to accommo- date themselves to their new circumstances, and life in the ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as thie 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 saUor 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 break- fast, for such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people walked arm-in-arm np 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 hmcheon until dinner at six in the evening, the employ- ments 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 PILGRIM LIFE AT SEA. 39 and "wondered at ; strange ships had to be scrutinized through opera-glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning themj and more than that, every body took a personal interest 'in see- ing 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'jard 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 mixturfe of " hop-scotch " and shuffle-board played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch diagram is marked out on the deck with chalk, and each compartment numbered. You stand off thi'ee 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 any thing. 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 sta- tionary 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 hop-scotch 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 famil- iar 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 " Syna- gogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the "Plymouth Collection," and a short prayer, and seldom 40 THE "SYNAGOGUE." occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accom- panied 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, arid for two or three hours wr .-.-»'" A y '111 *• w \^ THE CATHED-RAL. 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 Jesnit humbuggery flour- ishes. 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 con- tracted 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 under- stand. 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 ginger- bread. 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 discour- aged, 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, 58 FANTASTIC PILGBIMIZING. 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 cov- ered 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 Por- tuguese 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 naaking 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 necessaryr 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 " Selcki-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 pro- cession, and di'ew 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 comers 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 here- THE CATASTKOPHE. 59 after." But the fellow knew no English and did not under- stand, so he simply said, " Sehki-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 "SEKKI-TAHl in a heap. No harm done. A fall fi'om 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 ORIGIN OF THE BUSS PAVEMENT. also, and let off a series of brays that drowned all other sounds. It was fun, skurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful canons. 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 pleasui'es. 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 out- side of Central Park. Every where you go, in any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare, just sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters ne&,tly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like Broadway. They talk much of the Kuss 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 tinie as a floor — -not marred by holes Hke 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 Tines stretch across these narrow roadways- sometimes, and so shut out the sun that you seem to be riding through a tunnel. The pave- ments, the j-oads, 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 pebble work. Every where are walls, walls, walls, — and all of them tasteful and handsome — and eter- nally substantial ; and every where are those marvelous pave- ments, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever roads and streets, and the outsides of houses, were perfectly SQUARING ACCOUNTS. 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 domicils, 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 " Sekld-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. Sut I will desist. I am not here to write Patent-Ofiiee reports. We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six days out from the Azores. OHAPTEE YII. A "WEEK of bnffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea ; a week of seasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely quarter-decks drenched with spray — spray so ambitious that it even coated the smoke-stacks thick with a white crust of salt to their very tops ; a week of shivering in the shelter of the life-boats and deck-houses 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. 13ut 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 every where. At long inter- vals 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 lustre ! 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 lamp's and imagine the horrors that were abroad on the ocean. And once out — once where they could see the SPAIN AND AFRICA ON EXHIBITIOK. 63 ship struggling in the strotig 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. Every body was sent scampering to the deck at seven o'clock this lovely morning of the 30th 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. Tea, and from a still more potent influence : the worn casta- ways were to see the blessed land again ! — and to see it was to bring back that mother-land that was in all their thoughts. Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gib- raltar, 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 be- lieve. 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 oppor- tunity 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 popiilar. 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 bye and bye the ship's com- 64 GREETING A MAJESTIC STRANGER. pany grew wonderfully cheerful. But while we stood admire ing 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 every body gazed, she swept superbly by and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze ! Q ui eker than thought, hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up ! She was beautiful be- fore — she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then for the first time how tame a sight his coun- try'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, tile great Rock of Gibraltar, was yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of navi- gation 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, BEAUTIFUL STEANGEB. THE KOCK OF GIBEALTAE. 65 standing seemingly in the centre of 1;he wide strait and app^- ently washed on all sides by the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no tedious traveled parrot to tell us it was Gibraltai;'. 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 tQwn occupies part of the slant. Every where — on hillside, in the precipice, by the sea, on the heights, — every where 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 om 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 jts 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 questions was bandied about the ship day and night from, Fayal to,> Gibraltar, and I thought I never could get so tired: of hearingi any one combination of words again, or more tired of answer- ing, " 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 n6, sooner gotten rid of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar? guides started another — a tiresome repetition of a legend that* 5 66 TIRESOME EEPETITION. hSd 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 Tivjien 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 port-holes 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 ai-my could hardly climb the perpendicular wall of the rock any how. Those lofty port-holes afford superb views of the sea, though. At one place, vrhere a jutting crag was hollowed out iiito a great chamber whose furniture was huge camion and whose windows were port-holes, 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, Bhe'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 vessel's 'that 'were fifty miles away, and even sixty, they 'the queen's chair.' 67 said, and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distin- guished 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 : "Senor, 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 donH inflict . that most in-FEENAL old legend on me any more to-day !" 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 Medi- 68 CUEIOSITIES OF THE SECRET CAyEESTS. terraneafl, spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze, and enjoy, and aurfeit yourself with its beauty in silence, you might have even burst into stronger language than I did. Gibraltar haa 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 any body 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 stanch 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 for- gotten now. A secret chamber, in the rock behind it, was discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of ex- quisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it ia supposed to be Eomaii. Roman armor and Koman relics, of various kinds, have been found in a cave in the sea extremity of Gib- raltar ; history says Home held this part of the country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the state- ment. ' 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 any more, 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 Gib- raltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the low, neutral neck b^t^vsteen 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 hijls in ECCENTRIC SHIPMATES. 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 Koque, and veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and turbaned, sashed and trowsered Moorish merchants from Fez, and long-robed, bare-legged, ragged Mohammedan vagabonds from Tetouan and Tangier, some brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink — and Jews froni all around, in gaberdine, skull-cap and slippers, just as they are in pictures and theatres, 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 stra^ling 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 to-day. 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 nnocent old ass who eal^ 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 ECCENTRIC SHIPMATES. reads a chapter in the guide-books, 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 1 — 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 ward — ^but the Pillars are ilo't both on the same side of the strait." (I saw he had been deceived by a carelessly written sentence in the Guide Book.) " Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it that way, and some states it differ- ent. Old Gib- bons don't say nothing about it, — just shirks it complete — Gib- bons always done that when he got stuck-^- but there is Ko- lampton, what does • he say? Why, he 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 he 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 TH£ ORACLE. ECCENTRIC SHIPMATES. 71 the company. The one gives copies of his verses to Consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch, — to any body, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly meant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwith- standing when he wrote an " Ode to the Ocean in a Storm " in one half-hour, and an " Apostrophe to the Eooster 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 commaader-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, some day, 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 al- ready. In Fayal they pointed out a hill and told him it was eight hun- dred feet high and eleven hundred feet long. And they told him there was a tunnel two thousand feet long and one thousand feet high running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He repeated it to every body, discussed it, and read it from his notes. Finally, he took a usfeful hint from this remark which a thoughtful old pilgrim made : " Well, yes, it is a little reniarkable — singular tunnel alto- gether — 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 ! "INTEKEOGATION POINT." 72 A PKIVATE FBOLIO IN AFRICA. At this present moment, half a dozen of us are taking a ' private pleasure excursion of oilr own devising. We form rather more than half the Hst of white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish town of Tan- gier, Africa. !N"othing could be more absolutety certain than that we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do other- wise who speeds over these sparkling waters, and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny land. Care can not 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 notwithstand- ing even this, we never flinched. BEARBING THE MOOE IN HIS CASTLE. 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 iine military bands, and contemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and, at 9 o'clock, were on our way to the theatre, 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 theatre 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 under- stand putting on the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort, and tore the glove from the base of the thumb 74 VANITY REBUKED. 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 under- stands 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 mei'chandise on the angel's hands. I was hot, vexed, con- fused, 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 cheer- fully,- " 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 \ronical; and when I looked back from the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, I said to my- ENIESIAININGr AK ANGEL. IN THE EMPIRE OF MOEOCOO. 75 self, 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,) " Bat it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on kid gloves." Dan solilopuized, 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 ; Ae'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 things 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. Bijt 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 &om the small boats. OHAPTEE YIII. THIS 18 royal ! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it — these dominions of the Emperbr 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 un- compromisingly foreign-^foreign from top to bottom — foreign from centre to circumference — ^foreign inside and outside and all around — nothing any where about it to dilute its foreign- ness— 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 can not any more. 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 inclosed 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 ORIENTAL WONDERS. 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 vari- colored diamond-flags ; in tesselated many-colored porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez ; in red tiles and broad bricks that time can not wear ; there is no furniture in the VIEW OF A STREET IN TANfilEB. 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^sDme 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 — bom cut- 78 A FUNNT TOWN. tliroats — 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 em- broidered jacket, gold and crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist, trowsersthat only come a little below his knee, and yet have twenty yards of stuff in them, ornamented scimetar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow felippers, 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 Kiffians with heads clean-shaven, except a kinky scalp-lock back of the ear, or rather up on the after comer 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 gaberdines, sashes about their waists, slippers upon their feet, little skull-caps 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 self- same 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 meas- ured speech of the sons of the Prophet are suited to a vener- A CRADLE OF ANTIQUITY. 79 able 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 to-day when the lips of Memnon were vocal, and men bought and'sold in the streets of ancient Thebes ! • The Phcenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Komans, 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 goat-skin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the Romans twelve hundi'ed 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, may be. Near it are the ruins of a dock-yard 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 Koman historians less than two thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed ; "We aue the CAUAANrrES. We aee they that have BEEN DEIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CaNAAN BY THE JeWISH EOBBEE, 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 them- selves. Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it was a town, though a queer one, when Her- 80 STORES AJSTD MEECHANTS. cules, 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 ra,ce, 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 jnan, but decline to believe him a good, bona fide god, because, that would be unconstitutional. Down here at Cape Spartel is ^ cefebrated cave of Her- cules, where that hero took refuge wh'fen he wBl vanquished and driven out of the Tangier country. It'^.fuH'sf inscrip- tions in the dead languages, whiclKfejt" m^es i^tJ^i^hiiifc^Ier- cules 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 ah ordinary shower-bath in a civilized land. The Mohammedan 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 pigeon-holes for fifty dollars a month. The market people crowd the market- place 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 pic- turesque, and smells like a police court. The Jewish' money- WE BECOME WEALTHY. 81 CHANGE FOR A NAPOIBOK. changers 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 now-a-days, 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 had " swamped the bank; had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head of the firm had gone on t^e streot^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 slags 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. Andl 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 'dol- lars' 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. 6 82 CURIOUS REVENUE SYSTEM. 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 wa;nt 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 pro- tection of the foreign consuls, and then they can flout then riches in the Emperor's face, with impunity. OHAPTEE IX. ABOUT the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after landing here, came near finishing that heedless Blueher. We had jnst , mounted some mules and asses, and started out under the guardianship of the stately, the princely, the magnificent Hadji Mohammed 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 door-way. 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 heeof 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 tesselated 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 MOORISH PUNISHMENTS FOR CRIME. 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 arbse 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 Bees 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 aiid 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 in- stance, 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 man- aged to drive the centre. When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg, and nail them up in the market-place as a warning to every body. Their surgery is not artistic. They slice around l^e bone a little ; then break off the limb. Sometimes the patient gets well ; but, as a general thing, he don't. How- ever, 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 recon- THREE SUNDAYS IN A WEEK. 85 ciliations — ^no nothing that is proper to approaching matri- mony. 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 neg- lects to bear children, back she goes to the home of her child- hood. Mohammedans 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 — tlie rest are concu- bines. 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 Moham- medan's comes on Friday, the Jew's 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 fore- head to the pavement time and again, says his prayers, and goes back to his work. 86 SHARP PRACTICE OF MOHAMMEDAN PILGRIMS. But the Jew sliiits 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 any thing 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 thence- forward 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 Moore 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 circiimvent 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 Moslems; while America, and other nations, send only a little cbntismptible tub of a gun-boat occa- sionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn by what they see ; not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the OATS FOB DINNER. 87 Mediterranean, but they seldom toucli at African ports. The Moors have a small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their representatives to a deal of red tape cir- cumlocution 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 dis- puted 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 em- bittered 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 tom-cats, with their tails all pointing towards the centi-e; 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 centre- -piece 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, to-day, I noticed that all possible games for parlor amusement seemed to be represented on his centre-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 THE consul's family. 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 centu- ries have scarcely changed, and say never a single word! THE CONSULS' FAMILY. They have literally nothing whatever to talk about. The ar- rival of an American man-of-war is a god-send to them. " Oh, 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 FAREWELL TO TANGIER. 89 that the law provides no adequate ptmishment for it, they make him Consul-General to Tangier. I am glad to have seen Tatigier — ^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 morn- ing; and doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port ■wpthin the next forty-eight hours. CHAPTEE X. "TTTE passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City, VV 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 sensibiHties 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 even- ing we sailed away from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy mist so rich, so soft, so enchant- ingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle, that serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner- gong ^and tarried to wprship ! He said: "Well, that's gorgis, ain't it! Tliey 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 diraihic 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." THE OKACIiE IS DELIVERED OF AN OPINION. 91 "POET LAEIAT." " 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. Many be 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 any thing. He'll go down, now, and grind out about four reams of the awfallest slash about that old rock, and give it to a consul, or a pilot, or a nigger, or any body 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 in- tellect onto things that's some value ? Gibbons, and Hippo- cratus, and Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient philosophers was down on poets — " " Doctor," I said, " you are going to invent authorities, now, and I'U 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 halt a 92 CELEBRATION CEREMONIES, 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 an- nounced 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 awnmgs; the flute, the asthmatic melodeon, and the con- sumptive clarinet crippled the Star Spangled Banner, the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacer- ating 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 indorse 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 tliat same old Declaration of Independence which we liave 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 quar- ters and he made that same old speech about our national greatness which we so religiously believe and so fervently ap- plaud. Now came the choir into court again, with the com- plaining 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 cham- pagne. The speeches were bad — execrable, almost without THE CAPTAIN'S ELOQUENT ADDRESS. 93 exception. In fact, without any exception, but one. Capt. 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 ques- tionable success. But take it altogether, it was a bright, cheer- ful, 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 fiar 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 enthusi- asm — 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. 1 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 un- derstand 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 hi& 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 "AVEZ-VOUS DU VIN?" ""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 French- man spoke again, and the doctor said : " There, now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the davmn. 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 farther critiqism 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 re- member then, that the douain was the custom-house, and not the hotel. We did not mention it, however. With winning French politeness, the oflBcers merely opened and closed our satchels, declined to examine oUr passports, and sent us on our ' way. We stopped at the first caf6 we came to, and entered. An old woman seated us at a table an4 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 — ou fromage — pain — ^pickled pigs' feet — ^beurre — des oefs — du beuf^ — ^horse-radish, sour-crout, hog and hominy — any thing, any thing in the world that can stay a Christian stomach I" She said : " Bless you, why didn't you speak English before ? — ^I don't know any thing about your plagued French !" The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member spoiled FIRST SUPPER IN FRANCE, 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 FIBST SUPPER IK PRANCE. manner of curiously worded French signs — stared at by strangely-habited, bearded French people — every thing grad- , ually 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 every thing 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 di- rection every now and^-then. We neVer did succeed in making any body understand just exactly what we wanted, and neither did we ever succeed in comprehending just exactly what they m LOST. — FOUND. Ji— Tl. 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 disaifected member, any way. He was restive under these victories and often asked : " What did that pirate say?" " Why, he told us which way vO go, to iind the Grand, Casino." " Yes, but what did he sayf" " Oh, it don't matter what he said — ive understood him. These are educated people-ruot like that absurd boatman." "Well, I wish they were edu- cated enough to tell a man a di- rection that goes some where — poiNTiNs. for we've been going around in a circle for an hour-r-I've passed this same old drug store seven times." We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood, (but we kniew it was not.) It was plain that it would not do to pass that drug store again, though — we might go on asking direc- tions, but we must cease from following finger-pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the disafi«cted member. A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bor- dered 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 side- walks — dhurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation and laughter every where ! 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 A FRENCHT SCENE. 97 get there, and a great deal of information of similar import- ance — all for the benefit of the landlord and the secret police, "We hired a guide and began the business of sight-seeing im- mediately. That first night on French soil was a stirring one. I can not think of half the places we went to, or what we par- ticularly saw ; we had no disposition to examine carefully, into any thing 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 aboilt innumerable marble-topped tables, and ate fancy suppers, drank wine and kept up a chattering din of con- versation that was dazing to the senses. There was a stage at the far end, and a large orchestra ; and every now aud 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' onc« applauded ! I had always thought that Frenchmen were read^ to laugh at any thing. 7 OHAPTEE XI. "TTTE are getting foreignized rapidly, and with facility. ' ^ We are getting reconciled to halls and bed-chamber? ■with unhoraelike 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 re- gard to the amount ; and always polite — ^never otherwise than polite. That is the strangest curiosity yet — a really pohte hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. "We are getting used to driv- ing 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 artiflcial pro- cess 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 tooth-brushes ; 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 bath-tub long enough, and then, of course, an annoying delay follows. These Marseillaise make Marseillaise hymn's, 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. RINGING FOB SOAP, 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 chang- ed, and the roast beef comes ; another change and we take peas; change again and take lentils ; change and take snail patties (I pre- fer grasshoppers ;) change and take roast chicken and sal- ad; then strawberry pie and ice cream; then ^een figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, &c. ; 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 em- bankment fell on some 'frenchmen yesterday, and the papers are full of it to-day — ^but whether those sufferers were killed, or crippled, or bruised, or only scared, is more than I can pos- sibly make out, and yet I would just give any thing to know. We were troubled a little at dinner to-day, 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 : EINGIKG FOB SOAP. 100 "AN AMERICAN, SIEI" WINE, smi " I never dine without wine, sir," (which was a pitiful false- hood,) and looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected t'o find in their faces. All these a;irs 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-bom sovereign, sir, an Ameri- can, sir, and I want every body to know it!" He did not mention that he was a lineal descendant of Balaa;m's ass ; but every body 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 Chateau 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 under ground, for a matter of twenty-five hundred years, or thereabouts. Eomulus was here before he built Eome, 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 ex- amining. In the great Zoological Gardens, we found specimens of all the animals the world produces, I think, including a drome- dary, a. jnonkey ornamented with tufts of brilliant blue and THE "PILGRIM" BIRD. 101 carmine hair — a very gorgeous monkey he was — a hippopot- amus from the Mle, 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 ineffa- ble selt-complacency as were in the countenance and attitude of that gray-bodied, dark-winged; bald-headed, and pre- posterously uncomely bird ! He was so ungainly, so pimply about the head, so scaly about the legs ; yet so serene, so un- speakably satisfied ! He was the most comical looking creature that can be imagined. It was good to hear Dan and the doctor laugh — such nat- ural and such enjoyable laughter had not been heard among our excursionists since our ship sailed away from America. This bird was a god-send to us, and I should be an ingrate if I forgot to make honorable mention of him in these pages. Ours was a pleas- ure 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 : THE PtteRIM. 102 STRANGE COMPANIONSHIP. " All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection." The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a com- mon cat! This cat had a fashion of climbing up the ele- phant's hind legs, and roosting on his back. She would sit np there, with her paws curved imder 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 insep- arable 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 doga lately, that pressed his companion too closely. We hired a sail-boat 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 hun- dred 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 comdors 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 every where ! — 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, inac- tivity, and the horrors of a silence that no sound ever dis- turbed ; 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 soiTowful enough, and hopeless enough, no doubt. Whatever his jailers considered that he needed was conveyed to his cell by night, through a wicket. A LONG CAPTIVITT. 103 This man carved the^walls of his prison-hoiise from floor to roof with all mamier 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 ma- ture estate — married and looked back to infancy as to a thing 104 DUNGEON OF THE of some vague, ancient time, almost. But who shall teU 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 self-same 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 iifteen 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 tha,t were templed there. He never lived to see them. The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-cham- bers at home are wide — fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dis- mal cells in which two of Dumas' heroes passed their confine- ment — heroes of "Monte Christo." It was here that the brave Abb6 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 instru- ment which he wrought himself out of a stray piece of iron or table cutlery, and freed Dantes 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 hard-hearted 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 St. Marguerite. The place had a far greater interest for us than it could .have had if we had known be- yond all question who the Iron Mask was, and what his his- tory 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 XII. "TTXE have come five hundred miles by rail through the * V 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 spiiit level. Surely the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are jack-planed and sandpapered every day. How else are these marvels of sym- metry, cleanhness 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 any where — 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 Ehone gliding along between its grassy banks ; of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrub- bery ; of quaint old red-tiled villages with mossy mediaeval 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 fairy-land ! We knew, then, what the poet meant, when he sang of — " — thy cornfields green, and sunny vines, pleasant land of France 1" 106 SUMMER GARB OF THE LANDSCAPE. And it is a pleasant land. No word describes it so felici- tously as. that one. They say there is no word for " home " in the French language. Well, considering that they hare 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 French- men abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going back to France some time or other. I am hot surprised at it now. We are not infatuated with these F^-ench railway cars, though. We took , first class passage, not because we vdshed 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. Stage-coaching is infinitely more delightful. Once I crossed the plains and deserts apd mountains of the West, in a stage-coach, from the Missouri line to California, ajid 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 m-ateful 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 Kfetiine of city toiling and moiling, to perch in the foretop with the driver and see the six mustangs scamper under the sharp. snapping of a whip that never touched theni ; to scan the blue distances df 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 pin- nacled cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the Peculiarities of French cars, 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 tem- pests 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 skur- rying throngh the great South Pass and the Wind Eiver Mountains, among antelopes and bufialoes, and painted In- dians on the war path. It is not meet that I should make too disparaging comparisons between hum-drum travel on a rail- way and that royal summer flight across a continent in a stage-coach. 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 pil- grimage 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 m it. Four face the other four. The seats and backs are thickly padded and cush- ioned and are very comfortable ; you can smoke, if you wish ; there are no bothersome peddlers ; you are saved the infiiction 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 culmi- nation 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 I'rance, all is clockwork, all is order. They make no 108 PBENCH POLITENESS. mistakes. Every third man wears a Tiniform, 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. Yon can not pass into the waiting-room of the depot till you have secured your ticket, and you can not pass from its only exit till the train is at its threshold to receive RAILROAD OFFICIAL IN FRANCE. 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 aflable bow. Tour 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, "thirty minutes FOK DINNEEf" 109 is — ^thirty minutes to dinner! No five-minute boltings of flabby rolls, muddy coffee, questionable eggs, gutta-perGha 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'hote bUl of fare, snaU-patties, delicious fruits and all, then paid the trifle it cost and stepped happily aboard the train again, without FIVE MltrUTES FOB EBFEESHMEKTa" — AMERICA. 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 every thing was safe ahead. Switches were changed a mile in advance, by pulling a wire rope that passed along the groimd by the rail, from 110 WHY THEEE ARE NO ACCIDENTS. 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 ! * Not hang, may be, but be punished at least with such vigor of emphasis as to make negligence a thing to be shud- dered at by railroad oflScials for many a day thereafter. " No blame attached to the officers " — that lying and disaster-breed- ing verdict so common to our soft-hearted juries, is seldom "THIRTY MINUTES FOB DINNER I" — ^PRANCE. rendered in France. If the trouble occurred in the conduct- or's department, that officer must suflfer if his subordinate can not 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, arid we believe them because they are pleasant things to believe, and because they are plausible and savor of the * They go on the principle that it is better that one innocent man should suffer than Ave hundred. THE "old travelers." Ill rigid subjection to law and order which we behold about U8 every where. 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 throt- tle-valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth ! Their cen- tral idea, their grand aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insig- nificant and humble in the blaze of their cos- mopolitan glory ! They will not let you know any thing. They sneer at your most inoflfensive suggestions ; they laugh unfeelingly at your treas- ured dreams of foreign lands ; th^y 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 woi'ship 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, Ton- nere, venerable Sens, Melun, Fontainebleau, and scores of other beautiful cities, we swept, always noting the absence of hog- THE OLD TRATELEE. 11? PARIS AT LAST, ■wallows, broken fences, cowlots, 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 sur- face—we bowled along, hour after hour, that brilliant summer dayj 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 trans- portation 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 grumbhng about any thing. 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 " Jiue de Bivoli " on the street comer ; 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 Bas- tile, that grave of human hopes and happiness, that dismal prison-house within whose dungeons so many young faceg 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 piit into one r9om, so that we might be together, and then we went out to a restaurant, just after lamp-lighting, and ate a comfortable, satisfactory, lingering dinner. It was a pleasure to eat where every thing was so tidy, the food so well cooked, SEEING THE SIGHTS. 113 the waiters so polite, and the coming and departing company so moustached, so frisky, so affable, so fearfully and wonder fully Fi-enchy ! All the surroxmdings were gay and enliven ing. 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 aU about us, and a conflagration of gaslight every where ! 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 tho 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 tho ' articles marked " gold," and some labeled " imitation." "W"". wondered at this extravagance of honesty, and inquired into the matter. We were informed that inasmuch as m.ost 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 theii- 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. — Yerily, 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 of 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 perfunies of Araby to intoxicate my senses, and the slumbrous drone of distant noises to soothe me to 8 114 A BARBAEODS ATEOCITT. 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. Depart- ing, 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 after- wards a Inirrying 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 Trillains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I ex- pelled "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 fearfiil seconds, and then swooped down upon me like the genius of destruc- tion. 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. A BARBAROUS ATROCITY. 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 di'ied my features A DECIDED SHAVE. 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 any more, ^he 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 ABSURD "BILLIAEDS. 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. Some day 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 impos- sible " 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 cui-ve or you would infallibly put the " English " on the wrong side of the ball. 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 some time when we had a week to spend, and finish the game. We adjourned to one of those pretty cafts and took supper and tested the wines of the country, as we had been instructed to do, and foimd them harmless and unexciting. They might have been exciting, however, if we had chosen to drink a suffi- eiency of them. GASTLT EXPEEIENCE* 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-fuU, Gas we had none. No gas to read by— nothing but dismal candles. It waa 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 wUd chaos of A GAS-TLT SUBSTITCTK. 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 tmly in renowned Paris, and drifted drowsily away into that vast mysterious void which men caU sleep. * Joke by the Doctor. OHAPTEE XIII. 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 great Inter- 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 pro- nunciation 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 at- tempiting 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 " pairfaite- maw " 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 MONSIEUR BILLFINGEB. 119 higli silk hat which was a little old, but had been carefully brushed. He wore second-hand kid gloves, in good repair, THE THREE GUIDES. 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 sugges- tion, 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 — every thing. He spoke little. and guardedly, after that. We were charmed. We were more than charmed — we were over- joyed. 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 pocket-book a snowy little card, and passed it to us with a pi'ofound bow : A. BlLLPINGEH, Guide to Paris, France, Germany, Spain, &c., &c., Grande Bbiel du Louvre. 120 EE-CHRISTENING THE FRENCHMAN. " 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 Uke, a countenance that strikes us unpleasantly at first, but few of us, I fancy, becdme reconciled to a jar- ring 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 dofetor said : " Well, the guide goes with the barber-shop, with the bil- liard-table, with the gasless room, and may be with many an- other pretty romance of Paris. I expected to have a guide named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand de la Chartreuse, oi something that would sound grand in letters to the villagers at home ; but to think of a Frenchman by the name .of Bill- finger ! 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 Caulain- court?" " Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville,'* I suggested. "Call him Ferguson," said Dan. That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without de- bate,, we expunged Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Fer- guson. 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. Bye and bye," he mentioned casually — the artful adventurer — that he would go and get his breakfast as soon as we had finished GUI's. 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 "SOLD." 121 hungry; he was always thirsty. He came early; he stayed late ; he could not pass a restaurant ; he looked with a lecher- ous eye upon every wine shop. 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 ; hut it was a failure. He did not hold enough to smother the cravings of his superhuman appetite. He had another " discrepancy " about him. He wag always wanting us to buy things. On the shallowest prete^ises, he would inveigle us into shirt stores, boot stores, tailor shops, glove shops — any where under the broad sweep of the heavens that there seemed a chance of our buying any thing. Any one could have guessed that the shopkeepers paid him a per centage 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 tainutes, the carriage stopped. "What's this?" " Zis is ze finest silk magazin in Paris — ze most cele- brate." " 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 our- selves. 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 Kapoleon live here now, Ferguson?" " Ah, doctor ! yoii 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 "sold." " 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 care- lessness, 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 itr " I have ze idea — it come to me in a moment — ^zat ze silk in zis magazin — " "ZB SILK MAOAZIN. " Ferguson, how heedless I am. I fully intended to tell you "SOLD." 123 that we did not wish to buy any silks to-day, and I also in- tended to tell you that we yearned to go ininiediately to the palace of the Louvre, but enjoying the happiness of seeing you devour four breakfasts this morning has so tilled 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 leetk mo- ment !" Dan said, " Confound the idiot ! I don't want to see any silks to-day, and I wonH 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 jour- ney on." "But doctor I 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, doc- tor!" 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 pat- tern. I am writing this chapter partly for the satisfaction of abus- ing 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 guide's 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 ift company with others as little experienced as himself. I shall visit 124 THE INTEENATIONA-L EXPOSITION'. Paris again some day, and then let the guides beware! 1 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 Ex- position. 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 establish- ment, to get an intelligible idea of it. It was a wonderfiil 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 my- self looking at the people in- / stead 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 ©yes-^— watched him swimming about as comfortably and as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller's shop — ^watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hbld 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. EBTUEN IN WAH-PAINT. PINE MILITARY REVIEW. 125 Presently I found a revolving pistol several hundred years old which looked strangely like a modem 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 unusuai number of soldiers walking hurriedly about — there was ^ 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 VMoik. We immediately de- parted. 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 a,nd we hired standing-places on it. Presently there was a sound of distant music ; in an- other 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 Ma- jesties Napoleon III. and Abdul Aziz. The vast concourse of people swung their hats and shouted — ^the windows and house-tops in the wide vicinity burst into a sno^-storm 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 ? Na- poleon, 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 ! — Na- poleon, bowing ever so gently to the loud plaudits, and watch- ing every thing and every body 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 NAPOLEON III. NAPOLEON III. Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman Empire,-^. clad in dark green European clothes, almost without or- nament or insignia of rank; a red Turkish fez on his head — a short, stout, dark man, black- bearded, black- eyed, stupid, unpre- possessing — a man whose whole ap- pearance 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 to-day, or will you have a nice ■ porter-house steak?" Napoleon III., the representative of the highest mod- ern civilization, pre gross, and ■ refine- ment; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by na- ture and training filthy, brutish, ig- norant, unprogress- ive, superstitious — and a government whose Three Graces are Tyrannyj Rapacity, Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under ABDUL AZIZ. NAPOLEON III. 127 this ipajestic Arch of Triumph, the Eirst Century greets the Nineteenth ! Napoleon III., Emperor of France ! Surrounded by shout- ing 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 po- liceman 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, senten- tious burst of eloquence, unto unsympathetic ears ; found him- self a prisoner, the butt of small wits, a mark for the pitiless ridicule of all the world — yet went on dreaming of corona- tions 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 Em- pire ! 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 128 THE SULTAN OF TJJBKET- navies and armies— who holds in his hands the power of life and death over millions — ^yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eat^ idtes with his eight hundred concubines, and when he is siu:- feited with eating and sleeping and idlipg, and would rouse up and take the reins of government and threaten to be a Sul- tan, 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 ner- vous in the presence of their mysterious railroads and steam- boats 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, infemous 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 medding with government affiairs. No country offers greater security to life and property than France, and one has aU the freedom he wants, but no license — no license to interfere with any body, or rnake any one uncomfortable. As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch a dozen abler men in a night. THE REVIEW. — CANROBEBT. 129 The bands struck up, and the brilliant adv^enturer, Napo- leon III., the genius of Energy, Persistence, Enterprise ; and the feeble Abdul- Aziz, the genius of Ignorance, Bigotry afid Indolence, prepared for the Forward — ^March ! We saw the splendid review, we saw the white-moustached old Crimean soldier, Ganrobert, Marshal of France, we saw — well, we saw every thing, and then we weni; home satisfied. CHAPTER XIT. 'TTT'E went to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. — "We had W heard of it before. It surprises me, sometimes, to think how much we do knoA, , and how intelligent Me 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 thi-illing scenes, the grandest pageants, the most extraordinary spectacles that have grieved or de- lighted Paris. Thes.e 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 thei saw the slaughter' that followed; later, they saw the Keign ">f Terror, the eai'nage of the Revolution, the overthrow of a ki-ir, the coronation of two Napoleons, the ;hristening of the yotmg prince tha,t 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 Eepublic 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 Darao now JEAN SANS-PEUE'S ADDITIOr. 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 as- sassinated 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 oc- casion of thanksgivings for the reinstitution of' the Presiden- tial 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 tiying to admire the numberless great pictures in the chapels, and then we were admitted to the sacristy and shown the magnifi- cent robes which the Pope wore when he crowned JS^apoleon L; 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 Azortes, 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 132 THE MOEGITE. taste in tlie matter of relics. Ferguson told us that tlie silver cross vMch 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 any body who feels an interest in inanimate ob- jects of miraculous intervention. ' ^e went • ;it the M 1 . 1 B, that 111 e recep- 1 ■ for the ■' 111 vl^o die I !■ iously iikI I ave the 111 M roftlieir I ' i_ off a dismal secret. "We stood be- fore a grating and looked through into a room which was hung all about with the clothing of dead men ; coarse blouses, water-soaked ; the deli- cate garments of women and children; patrician vestments, THE MORGDE. THE MORGUE. 133 hacked and stabbed and stained witb red; a liat that was crushed and bloody. On a slanting stone lay a drowned man, naked, swollen, purple ; clasping the fragment of a bro- ken bush with a grip which death had so petrified that human strength could not unloose it — mute witness of the last despair- ing 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 identifica- tion by friends, but still we wondered if any body could love that repulsive object or grieve for its loss. We grew medita- tive and wondered if, some forty years ago, when the mother of that ghastly thing was dandling it upon her knee, and kiss- ing it and petting it and displaying it w^ith satisfied pride to the passers-by, a prophetic vision of this dread ending ever fiitted 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 thea- trical 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 wo went to the celebrated Jardin Mahille, 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 Asnidres. Wc 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 demirmonde, but others wc were not at all sure about. The girls and women in our carriage behaved themselves 134 BALAAM'S FEIEND SPEAKS. modestly and becomingly, all the way out, except that they Bmoked. When we arrived at the garden in Asni^res, we paid a franc or two admission, and entefed a place which had flow- er-beds in it, and grass plats, and long, curving rows of orna- mental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded bower con- venient 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 filagreed white temple, starred over and over and over again with brilliant gas-jets, burst upon us like a fallen sun. Near by 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 Torker — kept the place, arid was carrying on quite a stirring opposition to the Jardin Mahilh. Crowds, composed of both sexes and nearly all ages, were frisking about the garden or sitting in the open air in front of the flag-staff 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 tight-rope in another part of the garden. We went thither. Here the light was dim, and the masses of peo- ple 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 And 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 compli- ment, 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 damp- ened. I did not feel right comfortable for some time after- ward. Why will people be so stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of ten thousand persons ? BLONDIN IN A FLAME. 135 But Blondin came out shortly. He appeared on a stretched cable, far away above the sea of tossing hats and handker- chiefs, and in the glare of the hundreds of rockets that whizzed heavenward by him he looked like a wee insect. He balanced WE TOOK A WALK. his pole and walked the length of his rope — two or three hun- dred feet; he came back and got a man and carried hini across ; he returned to the centre 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 Boman candles, 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 136 THE OUTRAGEOUS "CAN-CAN. 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 shaime. 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 gen- tleman — 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 centre and launched a vi- cious 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 ol tliat straightJaced description which is shocked at trifles. I moved aside and took a general view of the can