Mark Twain
---------------
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
ROUGHING IT
---------------
Volume arrangement, notes, and chronology Copyright ;cW 1984 by
Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced commercially
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Distributed to the trade in the United States
and Canada by the Viking Press.
The paper used in this publication meets the
minimum requirements of the American National Standard
for Information Sciences--Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ansi z 39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-11296
For Cataloging in Publication Data, see end of Notes section.
isbn 0-940450-25-9
------
Second Printing
Manufactured in the United States of America
[te Guy Cardwell
wrote the notes and selected
the texts for this volume
[te Grateful acknowledgement is made to the National Endowment
for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation for their
generous financial support of this series.
[te Contents
Each section has its own table of contents.
The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress 1
Roughing It 525
Chronology 987
Note on the Texts 995
Notes 1001
[te THE
INNOCENTS ABROAD,
or
THE NEW PILGRIMS' PROGRESS;
being some account of the steamship quaker city's pleasure excursion to europe and
the holy land; with descriptions
of countries, nations, incidents
and adventures, as they
appeared
to the
AUTHOR.
to
my most patient reader
and
most charitable critic,
MY AGED MOTHER,
this volume is affectionately
inscribed.
[te Preface
This book is a record of a pleasure-trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet notwithstanding it is only a record of a pic-nic, it has a purpose, which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who 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 offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of travel-writing that may be charged against me--for I think I have seen with impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least honestly, whether wisely or not.
In this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for the Daily Alta California, of San Francisco, the proprietors of that journal having waived their rights and given me the necessary permission. I have also inserted portions of several letters written for the New York Tribune and the New York Herald.
THE AUTHOR.
San Francisco, 1869.
[te Contents
Chapter I.
Popular Talk of the Excursion--Programme of the Trip--Duly Ticketed for the Excursion--Defection of the Celebrities 17
Chapter II.
Grand Preparations--An Imposing Dignitary--The European Exodus--Mr. Blucher's Opinion--Stateroom No. 10--The Assembling of the Clans--At Sea at last 23
Chapter III.
Averaging
the Passengers--Far, far at Sea
--Tribulation
among the Patriarchs--Seeking Amusement under
Difficulties--Five Captains in the Ship 27
Chapter IV.
The Pilgrims Becoming Domesticated--Pilgrim Life at Sea--
Horse-Billiards
--The Synagogue
--The Writing School--Jack's <
q>Journal--The Q. C. Club
--The Magic Lantern--State Ball on
Deck--Mock Trials--Charades--Pilgrim Solemnity--Slow Music--The
Executive Officer
Delivers an Opinion 31
Chapter V.
Summer in Mid-Atlantic--An Eccentric Moon--Mr. Blucher Loses
Confidence--The Mystery of Ship Time
--The Denizens of the Deep--<
q>Land-Ho!--The First Landing on a Foreign Shore--Sensation among
the Natives--Something about the Azores Islands--Blucher's Disastrous
Dinner--The Happy Result 38
Chapter VI.
Solid Information--A Fossil Community--Curious Ways and Customs--Jesuit Humbuggery--Fantastic Pilgrimizing--Origin of the Russ Pavement--Squaring Accounts with the Fossils--At Sea Again 44
Chapter VII.
A Tempest at Night--Spain and Africa on Exhibition--Greeting a Majestic
Stranger--The Pillars of Hercules--The Rock 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 (without loss of
life)--Vanity Rebuked--Disembarking in the Empire of Morocco 50
Chapter VIII.
The Ancient City of Tangier, Morocco--Strange Sights--A Cradle of Antiquity--We become Wealthy--How they Rob the Mail in Africa--The Danger of being Opulent in Morocco 61
Chapter IX.
A Pilgrim in Deadly Peril--How they Mended the Clock--Moorish Punishments for Crime--Marriage Customs--
Looking Several ways for Sunday--Shrewd Practice of Mohammedan Pilgrims--Reverence for Cats--Bliss of being a Consul-General 67
Chapter X.
Fourth of July at Sea--Mediterranean Sunset--The Oracle
is
Delivered of an Opinion--Celebration Ceremonies--The Captain's
Speech--France in Sight--The Ignorant Native--In Marseilles--Another
Blunder--Lost in the Great City--Found Again--A Frenchy Scene 73
Chapter XI.
Getting Used to it
--No Soap--Bill of Fare, Table d'h;afote--
An American Sir!
--A Curious Discovery--The Pilgrim
Bird--Strange Companionship--A Grave of the Living--A Long
Captivity--Some of Dumas' Heroes--Dungeon of the Famous Iron Mask
80
Chapter XII.
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 Minutes to Dinner!
--Why there are no Accidents--The 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
85
Chapter XIII.
More Trouble--Monsieur Billfinger--Re-Christening the Frenchman--In the Clutches of a Paris Guide--The International Exposition--Fine Military Review--Glimpse of the Emperor Napoleon and the Sultan of Turkey 95
Chapter XIV.
The Venerable Cathedral of Notre-Dame--Jean Sanspeur's Addition--Treasures and Sacred Relics--The Legend of the Cross--The Morgue--The Outrageous Can-Can--Blondin Aflame--The Louvre Palace--The Great Park--Showy Pageantry--Preservation of Noted Things 104
Chapter XV.
French National Burying-Ground--Among the Great Dead--The Shrine of
Disappointed Love--The Story of Abelard and Heloise--English Spoken
Here
--American Drinks Compounded Here
--Imperial Honors to an
American--The Over-estimated Grisette--Departure from Paris--A
Deliberate Opinion Concerning the Comeliness of American Women
111
Chapter XVI.
Versailles--Paradise Regained--A Wonderful Park--Paradise Lost--Napoleonic Strategy 122
Chapter XVII.
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 60,000 127
Chapter XVIII.
Flying Through Italy--Marengo--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 136
Chapter XIX.
Do You Wis zo Haut can be?
--La Scala--Petrarch and
Laura--Lucrezia Borgia--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 144
Chapter XX.
Rural Italy by Rail--Fumigated, According to Law--The Sorrowing Englishman--Night by the Lake of Como--The Famous Lake--Its Scenery--Como compared with Tahoe--Meeting a Shipmate 157
Chapter XXI.
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 Medi;aeval Romance--The Birthplace of Harlequin--Approaching Venice 163
Chapter XXII.
Night in Venice--The Gay Gondolier
--The Grand F;afete by
Moonlight--The Notable Sights of Venice--The Mother of the Republics
Desolate 170
Chapter XXIII.
The Famous Gondola--The Gondola in an Unromantic Aspect--The 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 Contraband Guide--The Conspiracy--Moving Again 180
Chapter XXIV.
Down Through Italy by Rail--Idling in Florence--Dante and Galileo--An Ungrateful City--Dazzling Generosity--Wonderful Mosaics--The Historical 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 192
Chapter XXV.
The Works of Bankruptcy--Railway Grandeur--How to Fill an Empty Treasury--The Sumptuousness of Mother Church--Ecclesiastical Splendor--Magnificence and Misery--General Execration--More Magnificence--A Good Word for the Priests--Civita Vecchia the Dismal--Off for Rome 200
Chapter XXVI.
The Modern Roman on His Travels--The Grandeur of St. Peter's--Holy Relics--Grand View 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 1700 Years Old 209
Chapter XXVII.
Butchered to Make a Roman Holiday
--The Man who Never
Complained--An Exasperating Subject--Asinine Guides--The Roman
Catacombs--The Saint Whose Fervor Burst his Ribs--The Miracle of the
Bleeding Heart--The Legend of Ara C;oeli 225
Chapter XXVIII.
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--Fossilizing--Away for Naples 236
Chapter XXIX.
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 Vesuvius Continued--The Stranger and the Hackman--Night View of Naples from the Mountain-side--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued 244
Chapter XXX.
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 Average
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 250
Chapter XXXI.
The Buried City of Pompeii--How Dwellings Appear that have been
Unoccupied for Eighteen Hundred Years--The Judgment
Seat--Desolation--The Footprints of the Departed--
Chapter XXXII.
At Sea Once More--The Pilgrims all Well--Superb Stromboli--Sicily by
Moonlight--Scylla and Charybdis--The
Chapter XXXIII.
Modern Greece--Fallen Greatness--Sailing Through the Archipelago and
the Dardanelles--Footprints of History--The First Shoddy Contractor of
whom History gives any Account--Anchored Before
Constantinople--Fantastic Fashions--The Ingenious
Goose-Rancher--Marvellous Cripples--The Great Mosque--The Thousand and
One Columns--The Grand Bazaar of Stamboul 280
Chapter XXXIV.
Scarcity of Morals and Whiskey--Slave-Girl Market Report--Commercial
Morality at a Discount--The Slandered Dogs of
Constantinople--Questionable Delights of Newspaperdom in
Turkey--Ingenious Italian Journalism--No More Turkish Lunches
Desired--The Turkish Bath Fraud--The Narghileh Fraud--Jackplaned by a
Native--The Turkish Coffee Fraud 290
Chapter XXXV.
Sailing Through the Bosporus and the Black Sea--No Women Admitted<
/q>--Theatres, Bake-shops, Schools, etc.--Skeletons Preserved by the
Ashes and Cinders--The Brave Martyr to Duty--Rip Van Winkle--The
Perishable Nature of Fame 259
301
Oracle
at Fault--Skirting
the Isles of Greece--Ancient Athens--Blockaded by Quarantine and
Refused Permission to Enter--Running the Blockade--A Bloodless Midnight
Adventure--Turning Robbers from Necessity--Attempt to Carry the
Acropolis by Storm--We Fail--Among the Glories of the Past--A World of
Ruined Sculpture--A Fairy Vision--Famous Localities--Retreating in Good
Order--Captured by the Guards--Travelling in Military State--Safe on
Board Again 267
Far-Away Moses
--Melancholy Sebastopol--Hospitably Received in Russia--Pleasant
English People--Desperate Fighting--Relic Hunting--How Travellers Form <
q>Cabinets
Chapter XXXVI.
Nine Thousand Miles East--Imitation American Town in Russia--Gratitude that Came Too Late--To Visit the Autocrat of All the Russias 306
Chapter XXXVII.
Summer Home of Royalty--Practising for the Dread Ordeal--Committee on
Imperial Address--Reception by the Emperor and Family--Dresses of the
Imperial Party--Concentrated Power--Counting the Spoons--At the Grand
Duke's--A Charming Villa--A Knightly Figure--The Grand Duchess--A Grand
Ducal Breakfast--Baker's Boy, the Famine-Breeder--Theatrical Monarchs a
Fraud--Saved as by Fire--The Governor-General's Visit to the
Ship--Official
Chapter XXXVIII.
Return to Constantinople--We Sail for Asia--The Sailors Burlesque the
Imperial Visitors--Ancient Smyrna--The
Chapter XXXIX.
Smyrna's Lions--The Martyr Polycarp--The
Chapter XL.
Journeying Toward Ancient Ephesus--Ancient Ayassalook--The Villanous
Donkey--A Fantastic Procession--Bygone Magnificence--Fragments of
History--The Legend of the Seven Sleepers 332
Chapter XLI.
Vandalism Prohibited--Angry Pilgrims--Approaching Holy Land!--The
Chapter XLII.
Peculiar Steed,
Chapter XLIII.
Patriarchal Customs--Magnificent Baalbec--Description of the
Ruins--Scribbling Smiths and Joneses--Pilgrim Fidelity to the Letter of
the Law--The Revered Fountain of Baalam's Ass 352
Chapter XLIV.
Extracts from Note-Book--Mahomet's Paradise and the
Bible's--Beautiful Damascus, the Oldest City on Earth--Oriental Scenes
within the Curious Old City--Damascus Street Car--The Story of St.
Paul--The
Chapter XLV.
The Cholera by way of Variety--Hot--Another Outlandish
Procession--Pen-and-Ink Photograph of
Chapter XLVI.
Dan--Bashan--Genessaret--A Notable Panorama--Smallness of
Palestine--Scraps of History--Character of the Country--Bedouin
Shepherds--Glimpses of the Hoary Past--Mr. Grimes's Bedouins--A
Battle-Ground of Joshua--That Soldier's Manner of Fighting--Barak's
Battle--The Necessity of Unlearning Some Things--Desolation 379
Chapter XLVII.
Jack's Adventure--Joseph's Pit--The Story of Joseph--Joseph's
Magnanimity and Esau's--The Sacred Lake of Genessaret--Enthusiasm of
the Pilgrims--Why We did not Sail on Galilee--About
Capernaum--Concerning the Saviour's Brothers and Sisters--Journeying
toward Magdala 387
Chapter XLVIII.
Curious Specimens of Art and Architecture--Public Reception of the
Pilgrims--Mary Magdalen's House--Tiberias and its Queer
Inhabitants--The Sacred Sea of Galilee--Galilee by Night 399
Chapter XLIX.
The Ancient Baths--Ye 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 409
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 Curiosities 418
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
Chapter LII.
A Curious Remnant of the Past--Shechem--The Oldest
Chapter LIII.
Crucifixion 445
Chapter LIV.
The
Localities 458
Chapter LV.
Rebellion in the Camp--Charms of Nomadic Life--Dismal Rumors--En Route
for Jericho and The Dead Sea--Pilgrim Strategy--Bethany and the
Dwelling of Lazarus--
Chapter LVI.
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 483
Chapter LVII.
The Happiness of being at Sea once more--
Chapter LVIII.
Chapter LIX.
Going Home--A Demoralized Note-Book--A Boy's Diary--Mere Mention of Old
Spain--Departure from Cadiz--A Deserved Rebuke--The Beautiful
Madeiras--Tabooed--In the Delightful Bermudas--An English
Welcome--Good-by to
Chapter LX.
Thankless Devotion--A Newspaper Valedictory--Conclusion 510
[te
Chapter I
For months the great Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land was
chatted about in the newspapers every where in America, and discussed
at countless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of Excursions--its
like had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest
which attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a
gigantic scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an
ungainly steam ferry-boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts,
and paddling up some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and
wear themselves out with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under
the impression that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship
with flags flying and cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond
the broad ocean, in many a strange clime and in many a land renowned in
history! They were to sail for months over the breezy Atlantic and the
sunny Mediterranean; they were to scamper about the decks by day,
filling the ship with shouts and laughter--or read novels and poetry in
the shade of the smoke-stacks, or watch for the jelly-fish and the
nautilus, over the side, and the shark, the whale, and other strange
monsters of the deep; and at night they were to dance in the open air,
on the upper deck, in the midst of a ball-room that stretched from
horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bending heavens and lighted by
no meaner lamps than the stars and the magnificent moon--dance, and
promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make love, and search the skies for
constellations that never associate with the
It was a brave conception; it was the offspring of a most ingenious
brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed it: the bold
originality, the extraordinary character, the seductive nature, and the
vastness of the enterprise provoked comment every where and advertised
it in every household in the land. Who could read the programme of the
excursion without longing to make one of the party? I will insert it
here. It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this book, nothing
could be better:
excursion to the holy land, egypt, the crimea, greece, and intermediate
points of interest.
Brooklyn, February 1st, 1867.
The undersigned will make an excursion as above during the coming
season, and begs to submit to you the following programme:
A first-class steamer, to be under his own command, and capable of
accommodating at least one hundred and fifty cabin passengers, will be
selected, in which will be taken a select company, numbering not more
than three-fourths of the ship's capacity. There is good reason to
believe that this company can be easily made up in this immediate
vicinity, of mutual friends and acquaintances.
The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort, including
library and musical instruments.
An experienced physician will be on board.
Leaving New York about June 1st, a middle and pleasant route will be
taken across the Atlantic, and passing through the group of Azores, St.
Michael will be reached in about ten days. A day or two will be spent
here, enjoying the fruit and wild scenery of these islands, and the
voyage continued, and Gibraltar reached in three or four days.
A day or two will be spent here in looking over the wonderful
subterraneous fortifications, permission to visit these galleries being
readily obtained.
From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and France,
Marseilles will be reached in three days. Here ample time will be given
not only to look over the city, which was founded six hundred years
before the Christian era, and its artificial port, the finest of the
kind in the Mediterranean, but to visit Paris during the Great
Exhibition; and the beautiful city of Lyons, lying intermediate, from
the heights of which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc and the Alps can be
distinctly seen. Passengers who may wish to extend the time at Paris
can do so, and, passing down through Switzerland, rejoin the steamer at
Genoa.
From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The excursionists will
have an opportunity to look over this, the
From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the coast in one
night, and time appropriated to this point in which to visit Florence,
its palaces and galleries; Pisa, its Cathedral and
From Leghorn to Naples, (calling at Civita Vecchia to land any who may
prefer to go to Rome from that point,) the distance will be made in
about thirty-six hours; the route will lay along the coast of Italy,
close by Caprera, Elba, and Corsica. Arrangements have been made to
take on board at Leghorn a pilot for Caprera, and, if practicable, a
call will be made there to visit the home of Garibaldi.
Rome, ;obby rail;cb Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Virgil's tomb, and
possibly, the ruins of P;aestum, can be visited, as well as the
beautiful surroundings of Naples and its charming bay.
The next point of interest will be Palermo, the most beautiful city of
Sicily, which will be reached in one night from Naples. A day will be
spent here, and leaving in the evening, the course will be taken
towards Athens.
Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through the group of ;
aEolian Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania, both active
volcanoes, through the Straits of Messina, with
After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out through the
beautiful Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to Sebastopol and Balaklava,
a run of about twenty-four hours. Here it is proposed to remain two
days, visiting the harbors, fortifications, and battle-fields of the
Crimea; thence back through the Bosphorus, touching at Constantinople
to take in any who may have preferred to remain there; down through the
Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, along the coasts of ancient Troy
and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which will be reached in two or two and a
half days from Constantinople. A sufficient stay will be made here to
give opportunity of visiting Ephesus, fifty miles distant by rail.
From Smyrna towards the Holy Land the course will lay through the
Grecian Archipelago, close by the Isle of Patmos, along the coast of
Asia, ancient Pamphylia, and the Isle of Cyprus. Beirout will be
reached in three days. At Beirout time will be given to visit Damascus;
after which the steamer will proceed to Joppa.
From Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias, Nazareth,
Bethany, Bethlehem, and other points of interest in the Holy Land can
be visited, and here those who may have preferred to make the journey
from Beirout through the country, passing through Damascus, Galilee,
Capernaum, Samaria, and by the River Jordan and Sea of Tiberias, can
rejoin the steamer.
Leaving Joppa, the next point of interest to visit will be Alexandria,
which will be reached in twenty-four hours. The ruins of C;aesar's
Palace, Pompey's Pillar, Cleopatra's Needle, the Catacombs, and ruins
of ancient Alexandria, will be found worth the visit. The journey to
Cairo, one hundred and thirty miles by rail, can be made in a few
hours, and from which can be visited the site of ancient Memphis,
Joseph's Granaries, and the Pyramids.
From Alexandria the route will be taken homeward, calling at Malta,
Cagliari (in Sardinia,) and Parma (in Majorca,) all magnificent
harbors, with charming scenery, and abounding in fruits.
A day or two will be spent at each place, and leaving Parma in the
evening, Valencia in Spain will be reached the next morning. A few days
will be spent in this, the finest city of Spain.
From Valencia, the homeward course will be continued, skirting along
the coast of Spain. Alicant, Carthagena, Palos, and Malaga, will be
passed but a mile or two distant, and Gibraltar reached in about
twenty-four hours.
A stay of one day will be made here, and the voyage continued to
Madeira, which will be reached in about three days. Captain Marryatt
writes:
A call will be made at Bermuda, which lies directly in this route
homeward, and will be reached in about ten days from Madeira, and after
spending a short time with our friends the Bermudians, the final
departure will be made for home, which will be reached in about three
days.
Already, applications have been received from parties in Europe wishing
to join the Excursion there.
The ship will at all times be a home, where the excursionists, if sick,
will be surrounded by kind friends, and have all possible comfort and
sympathy.
Should contagious sickness exist in any of the ports named in the
programme, such ports will be passed, and others of interest
substituted.
The price of passage is fixed at $1,250, currency, for each adult
passenger. Choice of rooms and of seats at the tables apportioned in
the order in which passages are engaged, and no passage considered
engaged until ten per cent. of the passage money is deposited with the
treasurer.
Passengers can remain on board of the steamer, at all ports, if they
desire, without additional expense, and all boating at the expense of
the ship.
All passages must be paid for when taken, in order that the most
perfect arrangements be made for starting at the appointed time.
Applications for passage must be approved by the committee before
tickets are issued, and can be made to the undersigned.
Articles of interest or curiosity, procured by the passengers during
the voyage, may be brought home in the steamer free of charge.
Five dollars per day, in gold, it is believed, will be a fair
calculation to make for all traveling expenses on shore, and at the
various points where passengers may wish to leave the steamer for days
at a time.
The trip can be extended, and the route changed, by unanimous vote of
the passengers.
CHAS. C. DUNCAN,
117 Wall Street, New York.
R. R. G******, Treasurer.
Committee on Applications.
J. T. H*****, Esq., R. R. G*****, Esq., C. C. DUNCAN.
Committee on selecting Steamer.
Capt. W. W. S****. Surveyor for Board of Underwriters.
C. W. C******, Consulting Engineer for U.S. and Canada.
J. T. H*****, Esq.
C. C. DUNCAN.
P. S.--The very beautiful and substantial side wheel steamship
What was there lacking about that programme, to make it perfectly
irresistible? Nothing, that any finite mind could discover. Paris,
England, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy--Garibaldi! The Grecian
archipelago! Vesuvius! Constantinople! Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt and
Shortly a supplementary programme was issued which set forth that the
Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. I then
paid the balance of my passage money.
I was provided with a receipt, and duly and officially accepted as an
excursionist. There was happiness in that, but it was tame compared to
the novelty of being
This supplementary programme also instructed the excursionists to
provide themselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the
ship; with saddles for Syrian travel; green spectacles and umbrellas;
veils for Egypt; and substantial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing
in the Holy Land. Furthermore, it was suggested that although the
ship's library would afford a fair amount of reading matter, it would
still be well if each passenger would provide himself with a few
guide-books, a Bible and some standard works of travel. A list was
appended, which consisted chiefly of books relating to the Holy Land
since the Holy Land was part of the excursion and seemed to be its main
feature.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition, but
urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other
passengers who could have been spared better, and would have been
spared more willingly. Lieut. Gen. Sherman was to have been of the
party, also, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A
popular actress had entered her name on the ship's books, but something
interfered, and she couldn't go. The
However, we were to have a
Occasionally, during the following month, I dropped in at 117
Wall-street to inquire how the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel
was coming on; how additions to the passenger list were averaging; how
many people the committee were decreeing not
I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said
that if that potentate must go over in our ship, why, I supposed he
must--but that to my thinking, when the United States considered it
necessary to send a dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean, it
would be in better taste, and safer, to take him apart and cart him
over in sections, in several ships.
Ah, if I had only known, then, that he was only a common mortal, and
that his mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the
collecting of seeds, and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and
peculiar bullfrogs for that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old
fossil, the Smithsonian Institute, I would have felt so much relieved.
During that memorable month I basked in the happiness of being for once
in my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement. Every
body was going to Europe--I, too, was going to Europe. Every body was
going to the famous Paris Exposition--I, too, was going to the Paris
Exposition. The steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the
various ports of the country at the rate of four or five thousand a
week, in the aggregate. If I met a dozen individuals, during that
month, who were not going to Europe shortly, I have no distinct
remembrance of it now. I walked about the city a good deal with a young
Mr. Blucher, who was booked for the excursion. He was confiding,
good-natured, unsophisticated, companionable; but he was not a man to
set the river on fire. He had the most extraordinary notions about this
European exodus, and came at last to consider the whole nation as
packing up for emigration to France. We stepped into a store in
Broadway, one day, where he bought a handkerchief, and when the man
could not make change, Mr. B. said:
My comrade took his purchase and walked out of the store without a
word--walked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Up the
street apiece he broke silence and said impressively:
In the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her passengers. I
was introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my room mate, and
found him to be intelligent, cheerful of spirit, unselfish, full of
generous impulses, patient, considerate, and wonderfully good-natured.
Not any passenger that sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his
indorsement of what I have just said. We selected a state-room forward
of the wheel, on the starboard side,
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. ;obI have seen that
remark before, somewhere.;cb The pier was crowded with carriages and
men; passengers were arriving and hurrying on board; the vessel's decks
were encumbered with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists,
arrayed in unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a
drizzling rain and looking as droopy and 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 pleasure 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
We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor. It was
still raining. And not only raining, but storming.
It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for prayer meeting.
The first Saturday night of any other pleasure excursion might have
been devoted to whist and dancing; but I submit it to the unprejudiced
mind if it would have been in good taste for us to engage in such
frivolities, considering what we had gone through and the frame of mind
we were in. We would have 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.@[te
Chapter III
A[cmll day sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a great deal, but
the sea had not. It was still piling its frothy hills high in air
I was up early that Sabbath morning, and was early to breakfast. I felt
a perfectly natural desire to have a good, long, unprejudiced look at
the passengers, at a time when they should be free from
self-consciousness--which is at breakfast, when such a moment occurs in
the lives of human beings at all.
I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people--I might almost
say, so many venerable people. A glance at the long lines of heads was
apt to make one think it was all gray. But it was not. There was a
tolerably fair sprinkling of young folks, and another fair sprinkling
of gentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither
actually old or absolutely young.
The next morning, we weighed anchor and went to sea. It was a great
happiness to get away, after this dragging, dispiriting delay. I
thought there never was such gladness in the air before, such
brightness in the sun, such beauty in the 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,[[[[[[[ perhaps.
It was breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One could
not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit was
taking a deadly aim at the sun in 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 peculiarly 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 my arms. I
said:
He put his hand on his stomach and said,
Presently another old gentleman was projected from the same door, with
great violence. I said:
He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said,
In a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly from the same
door, clawing at the air for a saving support. I said:
I thought 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
I went away, then, in a thoughtful mood. I said, this is a good
pleasure excursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but
still they are sociable. I like those old people, but somehow they all
seem to have the
I knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was glad
of it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves.
Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside, is
pleasant; walking the 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 afternoon. At one
time I was climbing up the quarter-deck when the vessel's stern was in
the sky; I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable.
Somebody ejaculated:
It was Capt. Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went forward, 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:
I came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep--but in a low voice:
I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to do,
fell to carving a railing with my knife. Somebody said, in an
insinuating, admonitory voice:
I went back and found the deck-sweep:
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
He was gone, to answer a call from the other side. I sought the
deck-sweep:
I went below--meditating, and a little down-hearted. I thought, if five
cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a pleasure
excursion.
[te
Chapter IV
We plowed along bravely for a week or more, and without any conflict of
jurisdiction among the captains worth mentioning. The passengers soon
learned to accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, and life
in the ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the routine
of a barrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it was not entirely
so by any means--but there was a good deal of sameness about it. As is
always the fashion at sea, the passengers shortly began to pick up
sailor terms--a sign that they were beginning to feel at home.
Half-past six was no longer half-past six to these pilgrims from New
England, the South, and the Mississippi Valley, it was
At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for
such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people
walked arm-in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the
fine summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped
themselves up in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea
and toast, and looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until luncheon, and
from luncheon until dinner at six in the evening, the employments and
amusements were various. Some reading was done; and much smoking and
sewing, though not by the same parties; there were the monsters of the
deep to be looked after and wondered at; strange ships had to be
scrutinized through opera-glasses, and sage decisions arrived at
concerning them; and more than that, every body took a personal
interest in seeing that the flag was run up and politely dipped three
times in response to the salutes of those strangers; in the
smoking-room there were always parties of gentlemen playing euchre,
draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes, that delightfully harmless
game; and down on the main deck,
When it rained, the passengers had to stay in the house, of course--or
at least the cabins--and amuse themselves with games, reading, looking
out of the windows at the very familiar billows, and talking gossip.
By 7 o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour's promenade
on the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a large majority
of the party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a handsome saloon
fifty or sixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this
saloon the
After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a
writing-school. The like of that picture was never seen in a ship
before. Behind the long dining-tables on either side of the saloon, and
scattered from one end to the other of the latter, some twenty or
thirty gentlemen and ladies sat them down under the swaying lamps, and
for two or three hours wrote diligently in their journals. Alas! that
journals so voluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a
conclusion as most of them did! I doubt if there is a single pilgrim of
all that host but can show a hundred fair pages of journal concerning
the first twenty days' voyaging in the Quaker City; and I am morally
certain that not ten of the party can show twenty pages of journal for
the succeeding twenty thousand miles of voyaging! At certain periods it
becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his
performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm
that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest
pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if he only lives
twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are
made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty's sake, and
invincible determination, may hope to venture upon so tremendous an
enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful
defeat.
One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head
full of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon
in the way of length, and straightness, and slimness, used to report
progress every morning in the most glowing and spirited way, and say:
But it shortly became a most lamentable
His countenance lost its fire. He said:
His experience was only the experience of the majority of that
industrious night-school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a
heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to
keep a journal a year.
A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists
amused and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which
met in the writing-school after prayers and read aloud about the
countries we were approaching, and discussed the information so
obtained.
Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his
transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic lantern exhibition.
His views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two
home pictures among them. He advertised that he would
On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the
awnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by
hanging a number of ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music
consisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little
asthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong;
a clarinet which was a little unreliable on the high keys and rather
melancholy on the low ones; and a disreputable accordion that had a
leak somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked--a more elegant
term does not occur to me just now. However, the dancing was infinitely
worse than the music. When the ship rolled to starboard the whole
platoon of dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought
up in mass at the rail; and when it rolled to port, they went
floundering down to port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers
spun around precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went
skurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go overboard. The
Virginia reel, as performed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine
reel about it than any reel I ever saw before, and was as full of
interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate chances and
hairbreadth escapes to the participant. We gave up dancing, finally.
We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary, with toasts, speeches, a
poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea
that hadn't a mock trial on board. The purser was accused of stealing
an overcoat from state-room No. 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks,
a crier of the court, constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and
for the defendant; witnesses were subp;oenaed, and a jury empaneled
after much challenging. The witnesses were stupid, and unreliable and
contradictory, as witnesses always are. The counsel were eloquent,
argumentative and vindictively abusive of each other, as was
characteristic and proper. The case was at last submitted, and duly
finished by the judge with an absurd decision and a ridiculous sentence.
The acting of charades was tried, on several evenings, by the young
gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished
success of all the amusement experiments.
An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a failure.
There was no oratorical talent in the ship.
We all enjoyed ourselves--I think I can safely say that, but it was in
a rather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we played
the flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what
there was of it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very
pretty tune--how well I remember it--I wonder when I shall ever get rid
of it. We never played either the melodeon or the organ, except at
devotions--but I am too fast: young Albert did know part of a
tune--something about
And he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame but
himself when his voice caught on the centre occasionally, and gave him
the lockjaw.
There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing
head-winds to our distressing choir-music. There were those who said
openly that it was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music
going on, even when it was at its best; and that to exaggerate the
crime by letting George help, was simply flying in the face of
Providence. These said that the choir would keep up their lacerating
attempts at melody until they would bring down a storm some day that
would sink the ship.
There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said
the Pilgrims had no charity:
Taking it
Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West, and is on his first
voyage, was a good deal worried by the constantly changing
The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was
trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he
had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the
watch was
We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, &c., of course, and by
and by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular
list of sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant
carmine color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly,
that spreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a
foot or two long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is
an accomplished sailor, and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail
when a storm threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and furls it
entirely and goes down when a gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail
wet and in good sailing order by turning over and dipping it in the
water for a moment. Seamen say the nautilus is only found in these
waters between the 35th and 45th parallels of latitude.
At three o'clock on the morning of the 21st of June, we were awakened
and notified that the Azores islands were in sight. I said I did not
take any interest in islands at three o'clock in the morning. But
another persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally
believing that the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in
peace, I got up and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half
o'clock now, and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were huddled
about the smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all were
wrapped in wintry costumes, and looking sleepy and unhappy in the
pitiless gale and the drenching spray.
The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud
standing up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon
it, the sun came out and made it a beautiful picture--a mass of green
farms and meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred feet,
and mingled its upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with
sharp, steep ridges, and cloven with narrow canons, and here and there
on the heights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic
battlements and castles; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts of
sunlight, that painted summit, and slope, and glen, with bands of fire,
and left belts of sombre shade between. It was the aurora borealis of
the frozen pole exiled to a summer land!
We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore, and
all the opera-glasses in the ship were called into requisition to
settle disputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of
trees or groves of weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea
were really villages or only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries.
Finally, we stood to sea and bore away for San Miguel, and Flores
shortly became a dome of mud again, and sank down among the mists and
disappeared. But to many a seasick passenger it was good to see the
green hills again, and all were more cheerful after this episode than
any body could have expected them to be, considering how sinfully early
they had gotten up.
But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm came up
about noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel that common sense
dictated a run for shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest island
of the group--Fayal, (the people there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the
accent on the first syllable.) We anchored in the open roadstead of
Horta, half a mile from the shore. The town has eight thousand to ten
thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of
fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more
attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheatre of hills which are
three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated
clear to their summits--not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and
every acre is cut up into little square inclosures by stone walls,
whose duty it is to protect the growing products from the destructive
gales that blow there. These hundreds of green squares, marked by their
black lava walls, make the hills look like vast checker-boards.
The islands belong to Portugal, and every thing in Fayal has Portuguese
characteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of swarthy,
noisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese boatmen,
with brass rings in their ears, and fraud in their hearts, climbed the
ship's sides, and various parties of us contracted with them to take us
ashore at so much a head, silver coin of any country. We landed under
the walls of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve and
thirty-two pounders, which Horta considered a most formidable
institution, but if we were ever to get after it with one of our
turreted monitors, they would have to move it out in the country if
they wanted it where they could go and find it again when they needed
it. The group on the pier was a rusty one--men and women, and boys and
girls, all ragged, and barefoot, uncombed and unclean, and by instinct,
education, and profession, beggars. They trooped after us, and never
more, while we tarried in Fayal, did we get rid of them. We walked up
the middle of the principal street, and these vermin surrounded us on
all sides, and glared upon us; and every moment excited couples shot
ahead of the procession to get a good look back, just as village boys
do when they accompany the elephant on his advertising trip from street
to street. It was very flattering to me to be part of the material for
such a sensation. Here and there in the doorways we saw women, with
fashionable Portuguese hoods on. This hood is of thick blue cloth,
attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness. It
stands up high, and spreads far abroad, and is unfathomably deep. It
fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is hidden away in it like
the man's who prompts the singers from his tin shed in the stage of an
opera. There is no particle of trimming about this monstrous capote, as
they call it--it is just a plain, ugly dead-blue mass of sail, and a
woman can't go within eight points of the wind with one of them on; she
has to go before the wind or not at all. The general style of the
capote is the same in all the islands, and will remain so for the next
ten thousand years, but each island shapes its capotes just enough
differently from the others to enable an observer to tell at a glance
what particular island a lady hails from.
The Portuguese pennies or reis (pronounced rays) are prodigious. It
takes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial estimates
are made in reis. We did not know this until after we had found it out
through Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so grateful to be on
solid land once more, that he wanted to give a feast--said he had heard
it was a cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He
invited nine of us, and we ate an excellent dinner at the principal
hotel. In the midst of the jollity produced by good cigars, good wine,
and passable anecdotes, the landlord presented his bill. Blucher
glanced at it and his countenance fell. He took another look to assure
himself that his senses had not deceived him, and then read the items
aloud, in a faltering voice, while the roses in his cheeks turned to
ashes:
I think it was the blankest looking party I ever saw. No body could
say a word. It was as if every soul had been stricken dumb.
Wine-glasses descended slowly to the table, their contents untasted.
Cigars dropped unnoticed from nerveless fingers. Each man sought his
neighbor's eye, but found in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At
last the fearful silence was broken. The shadow of a desperate resolve
settled upon Blucher's countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and
said:
Our spirits rose and the landlord's fell--at least we thought so; he
was confused at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word
that had been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to
Blucher several times, and then went out. He must have visited an
American, for, when he returned, he brought back his bill translated
into a language that a Christian could understand--thus:
10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or $6.00
25 cigars, 2,500 reis, or 2.50
11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or 13.20
Total 21,700 reis, or $21.70
Happiness reigned once more in Blucher's dinner party. More
refreshments were ordered.
@[te
Chapter VI
I think the Azores must be very little known in America. Out of our
whole ship's company there was not a solitary individual who knew any
thing whatever about them. Some of the party, well read concerning most
other lands, had no other information about the Azores than that they
were a group of nine or ten small islands far out in the Atlantic,
something more than half way between New York and Gibraltar. That was
all. These considerations move me to put in a paragraph of dry facts
just here.
The community is eminently Portuguese--that is to say, it is slow,
poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed
by the King of Portugal; and also a military governor, who can assume
supreme control and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The
islands contain a population of about 200,000, almost entirely
Portuguese. Every thing is staid and settled, for the country was one
hundred years old when Columbus discovered America. The principal crop
is corn, and they raise it and grind it just as their
great-great-great-grandfathers did. They plow with a board slightly
shod with iron; their trifling little harrows are drawn by men and
women; small windmills grind the corn, ten bushels a day, and there is
one assistant superintendent to feed the mill and a general
superintendent to stand by and keep him from going to sleep. When the
wind changes they hitch on some donkeys, and actually turn the whole
upper half of the mill around until the sails are in proper position,
instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could be moved instead
of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after the fashion
prevalent in the time of Methuselah. There is not a wheel-barrow in the
land--they carry every thing on their heads, or on donkeys, or in a
wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of wood and whose
axles turn with the wheel. There is not a modern plow in the islands,
or a threshing-machine. All attempts to introduce them have failed. The
good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield him
from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before him.
The climate is mild; they never have snow or ice, and I saw no
chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women and children of a
family, all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are
ravaged by vermin, and are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the
stranger, and are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence
for their dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than
the donkeys they eat and sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese
in the camp are the half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit
priests and the soldiers of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer
are twenty to twenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic
about twice as much. They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar,
and this makes them rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the
islands, and an excellent wine was made and exported. But a disease
killed all the vines fifteen years ago, and since that time no wine has
been made. The islands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is
necessarily very rich. Nearly every foot of ground is under
cultivation, and two or three crops a year of each article are
produced, but nothing is exported save a few oranges--chiefly to
England. Nobody comes here, and nobody goes away. News is a thing
unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion equally unknown. A
Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our civil war was over?
because, he said, somebody had told him it was--or at least it ran in
his mind that somebody had told him something like that! And when a
passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the Tribune, the
Herald, and Times, he was surprised to find later news in them from
Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly steamer. He was
told that it came by cable. He said he knew they had tried to lay a
cable ten years ago, but it had been in his mind, somehow, that they
hadn't succeeded!
It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We
visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old, and found in
it a piece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was crucified.
It was polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of preservation
as if the dread tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of
eighteen centuries ago. But these confiding people believe in that
piece of wood unhesitatingly.
In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid
silver--at least they call it so, and I think myself it would go a
couple of hundred to the ton (to speak after the fashion of the silver
miners,) and before it is kept forever burning a small lamp. A devout
lady who died, left money and contracted for unlimited masses for the
repose of her soul, and also stipulated that this lamp should be kept
lighted always, day and night. She did all this before she died, you
understand. It is a very small lamp, and a very dim one, and it could
not work her much damage, I think, if it went out altogether.
The great altar of the cathedral, and also three or four minor ones,
are a perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a
swarm of rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree
work, some on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the
other, and some with two or three fingers gone, and some with not
enough nose left to blow--all of them crippled and discouraged, and
fitter subjects for the hospital than the cathedral.
The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with
figures of almost life size, very elegantly wrought, and dressed in the
fanciful costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of
something or somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the
story. The old father, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686,
might have told us if he could have risen. But he didn't.
As we came down through the town, we encountered a squad of little
donkeys ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the
least. They consisted of a sort of saw-buck, with a small mattress on
it, and this furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no
stirrups, but really such supports were not needed--to use such a
saddle was the next thing to riding a dinner table--there was ample
support clear out to one's knee joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese
muleteers crowded around us, offering their beasts at half a dollar an
hour--more rascality to the stranger, for the market price is sixteen
cents. Half a dozen of us mounted the ungainly affairs, and submitted
to the indignity of making a ridiculous spectacle of ourselves through
the principal streets of a town of 10,000 inhabitants.
We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a stampede,
and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were
necessary. There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers
beside, and they banged the donkeys with their goad-sticks, and pricked
them with their spikes, and shouted something that sounded like
Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered
zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher
against carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with
high stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side
and then on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally came
to the house he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping
Blucher off at the doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to the
muleteer,
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 pleasures.
The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an island
with only a handful of people in it--25,000--and yet such fine roads do
not exist in the United States outside of Central Park. 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 neatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly
paved ones like Broadway. They talk much of the Russ pavement in New
York, and call it a new invention--yet here they have been using it in
this remote little isle of the sea for two hundred years! Every street
in Horta is handsomely paved with the heavy Russ blocks, and the
surface is neat and true as a floor--not marred by holes like Broadway.
And every road is fenced in by tall, solid lava walls, which will last
a thousand years in this land where frost is unknown. They are very
thick, and are often plastered and whitewashed, and capped with
projecting slabs of cut stone. Trees from gardens above hang their
swaying tendrils down, and contrast their bright green with the
whitewash or the black lava of the walls, and make them beautiful. The
trees and vines stretch across these narrow roadways sometimes, and so
shut out the sun that you seem to be riding through a tunnel. The
pavements, the roads, and the bridges are all government work.
The bridges are of a single span--a single arch--of cut stone, without
a support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebble
work. Every where are walls, walls, walls,--and all of them tasteful
and handsome--and eternally substantial; and every where are those
marvelous pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if
ever roads and streets, and the outsides of houses, were perfectly 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
When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and
jawing, and swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us,
was nearly deafening. One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the
use of his donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up,
another a quarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen
guides presented bills for showing us the way through the town and its
environs; and every vagrant of them was more vociferous, and more
vehement, and more frantic in gesture than his neighbor. We paid one
guide, and paid for one muleteer to each donkey.
The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed along the
shore of the Island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up
with one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7,613
feet, and thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island
adrift in a fog!
We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc. in these
Azores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here to write
Patent-Office reports.
We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six days
out from the Azores.
@[te
Chapter VII
A week of buffeting 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
And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no
thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling
of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters.
But the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heas said, It
hardly seems like Ephesus. Yet here is the great gymnasium; here is the
mighty theatre, wherein I have seen seventy thousand men assembled;
here is the Agora; there is the font where the sainted John the Baptist
immersed the converts; yonder is the prison of the good St. Paul, where
we all did use to go to touch the ancient chains that bound him +--and
Jews from 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
straggling procession through these foreign places with such an
Indian-like air of complacency and independence about them,) like ours,
made up from fifteen or sixteen States of the Union, found enough to
stare at in this shifting panorama of fashion 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 innocent old
ass who eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France
would have any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when
he can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows
the meaning of any long word he uses, or ever gets it in the right
place: yet he will serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse
subject, and back it up complacently with quotations from authors who
never existed, and finally when cornered will slide to the other side
of the question, say he has been there all the time, and come back at
you with your own spoken arguments, only with the big words all
tangled, and play them in your very teeth as original with himself. He
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:
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 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, notwithstanding when
he wrote an
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
Here in Gibraltar he corners 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!
At this present moment, half a dozen of us are taking a private
pleasure excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half
the list of white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the
venerable Moorish town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more
absolutely certain than that we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do
otherwise who speeds over these sparkling waters, and breathes the soft
atmosphere of this sunny land. Care 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 notwithstanding
even this, we never flinched.
I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of
the garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet
Ali Ben Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more
garrisons to help him; but they said no; he had nothing to do but hold
the place, and he was competent to do that; had done it two years
already. That was evidence which one could not well refute. There is
nothing like reputation.
Every now and then, my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes
itself upon me. Dan and the ship's surgeon and I had been up to the
great square, listening to the music of the fine military bands, and
contemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and,
at 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:
I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said:
It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on
the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort, and tore the
glove from the base of the thumb 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:
I was too much flattered to make an exposure, and throw the merchandise
on the angel's hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still happy; but
I hated the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in the
proceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean
when I said cheerfully,--
It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill,
and as I passed out with a fascinating bow, I thought I detected a
light in the woman's eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked
back from the street, and she was laughing all to herself about
something or other, I said to myself, with withering sarcasm,
The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally, Dan said, musingly:
And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought,)
Dan soliloquized, after a pause:
They let me alone then, for the time being. We always let each other
alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had
bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together
this morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with
broad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public
exhibition. We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take
her in. She did that for us.
Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us
ashore on their backs from the small boats.@[te
Chapter VIII
This is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of
it--these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party
well enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present.
Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we
have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but
always with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with
before, and so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force.
We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign--foreign
from top to bottom--foreign from centre to circumference--foreign
inside and outside and all around--nothing any where about it to dilute
its foreignness--nothing to remind us of any other people or any other
land under the sun. And lo! in Tangier we have found it. Here is not
the slightest thing that ever we have seen save in pictures--and we
always mistrusted the pictures before. We 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 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 rooms (of Jewish dwellings) save
divans--what there is in Moorish ones no man may know; within their
sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the streets are
oriental--some of them three feet wide, some six, but only two that are
over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of them by extending his body
across them. Isn't it an oriental picture?
There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors,
proud of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews, whose
fathers fled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians
from the mountains--born cutthroats--and original, genuine negroes, as
black as Moses; and howling dervishes, and a hundred breeds of
Arabs--all sorts and descriptions of people that are foreign and
curious to look upon.
And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a bronzed
Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket, gold
and crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist,
trowsers that only come a little below his knee, and yet have twenty
yards of stuff in them, ornamented scimetar, bare shins, stockingless
feet, yellow slippers, and gun of preposterous length--a mere
soldier!--I thought he was the Emperor at least. And here are aged
Moors with flowing white beards, and long white robes with vast cowls;
and Bedouins with long, cowled, striped cloaks, and negroes and
Riffians with heads clean-shaven, except a kinky scalp-lock back of the
ear, or rather up on the after corner of the skull, and all sorts of
barbarians in all sorts of weird costumes, and all more or less ragged.
And here are Moorish women who are enveloped from head to foot in
coarse white robes and whose sex can only be determined by the fact
that they only leave one eye visible, and never look at men of their
own race, or are looked at by them in public. Here are five thousand
Jews in blue 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 measured speech of the sons of the
Prophet are suited to a venerable 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 Ph;oenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Romans, all
have battled for Tangier--all have won it and lost it. Here is a
ragged, oriental-looking negro from some desert place in interior
Africa, filling his goat-skin with water from a stained and battered
fountain built by the Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a
ruined arch of a bridge built by Julius C;aesar 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 C;aesar repaired his ships
and loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before
the Christian era.
Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the
phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood
a monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than
two thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:
Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from here
is a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an unsuccessful
revolt against King David, and these their descendants are still under
a ban and keep to themselves.
Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it
was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion-skin,
landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he met Anitus,
the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the
fashion among gentlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called
Tingis, then,) lived in the rudest possible huts, and dressed in skins
and carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild beasts they were
constantly obliged to war with. But they were a gentlemanly race, and
did no work. They lived on the natural products of the land. Their
king's country residence was at the famous Garden of Hesperides,
seventy miles down the coast from here. The garden, with its golden
apples, (oranges,) is gone now--no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians
concede that such a personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times,
and agree that he was an enterprising and energetic man, but decline to
believe him a good, bona fide god, because that would be
unconstitutional.
Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules, where
that hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of the
Tangier country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages,
which fact makes me think Hercules could not have traveled much, else
he would not have kept a journal.
Five days' journey from here--say two hundred miles--are the ruins of
an ancient city, of whose history there is neither record nor tradition.
And yet its arches, its columns, and its statues, proclaim it to have
been built by an enlightened race.
The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an ordinary
shower-bath in a civilized land. The 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
picturesque, and smells like a police court. The Jewish money-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
The Moors have some small silver coins, and also some silver slugs
worth a dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce--so much so that
when poor ragged Arabs see one they beg to be allowed to kiss it.
They have also a small gold coin worth two dollars. And that reminds me
of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers carry
letters through the country, and charge a liberal postage. Every now
and then they fall into the hands of marauding bands and get robbed.
Therefore, warned by experience, as soon as they have collected two
dollars' worth of money they exchange it for one of those little gold
pieces, and when robbers come upon them, swallow it. The stratagem was
good while it was unsuspected, but after that the marauders simply gave
the sagacious United States mail an emetic and sat down to wait.
The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great officers
under him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular system of
taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on
some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison.
Therefore, few men in Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a
luxury. Vanity occasionally leads a man to display wealth, but sooner
or later the Emperor trumps up a charge against him--any sort of one
will do--and confiscates his property. Of course, there are many rich
men in the empire, but their money is buried, and they dress in rags
and counterfeit poverty. Every now and then the Emperor imprisons a man
who is suspected of the crime of being rich, and makes things so
uncomfortable for him that he is forced to discover where he has hidden
his money.
Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of the
foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the Emperor's
face with impunity.@[te
Chapter IX
About the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after landing
here, came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just mounted
some mules and asses, and started out under the guardianship of the
stately, the princely, the magnificent Hadji 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
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 capable of curing so delicate a
patient as a debilitated clock. The great men of the city met in solemn
conclave to consider how the difficulty was to be met. They discussed
the matter thoroughly but arrived at no solution. Finally, a patriarch
arose and said:
And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the inside
of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his
natural character. We visited the jail, and found Moorish prisoners
making mats and baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of
civilization.) Murder is punished with death. A short time ago, three
murderers were taken beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are
not good, and neither are Moorish marksmen. In this instance, they set
up the poor criminals at long range, like so many targets, and
practiced on them--kept them hopping about and dodging bullets for half
an hour before they managed to drive the 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 the bone a little; then
break off the limb. Sometimes the patient gets well; but, as a general
thing, he don't. However, the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were
always brave. These criminals undergo the fearful operation without a
wince, without a tremor of any kind, without a groan! No amount of
suffering can bring down the pride of a Moor, or make him shame his
dignity with a cry.
Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it. There
are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting in
dim parlors, no lovers' quarrels and reconciliations--no nothing that
is proper to approaching matrimony. The young man takes the girl his
father selects for him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled,
and he sees her for the first time. If, after due acquaintance, she
suits him, he retains her; but if he suspects her purity, he bundles
her back to her father; if he finds her diseased, the same; or if,
after just and reasonable time is allowed her, she neglects to bear
children, back she goes to the home of her childhood.
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--the rest are concubines. The Emperor of Morocco don't
know how many wives he has, but thinks he has five hundred. However,
that is near enough--a dozen or so, one way or the other, don't matter.
Even the Jews in the interior have a plurality of wives.
I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women, (for
they are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of
a Christian dog when no male Moor is by,) and I am full of veneration
for the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.
They carry their children at their backs, in a sack, like other savages
the world over.
Many of the negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But the moment a
female slave becomes her master's concubine her bonds are broken, and
as soon as a male slave can read the first chapter of the Koran (which
contains the creed,) he can no longer be held in bondage.
They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Mohammedan'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
forehead to the pavement time and again, says his prayers, and goes
back to his work.
But the Jew shuts up shop; will not touch copper or bronze money at all;
soils his fingers with nothing meaner than silver and gold; attends
the synagogue devoutly; will not cook or have 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
Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together the
ten dollars their steamer passage costs; and when one of them gets back
he is a bankrupt forever after. Few Moors can ever build up their
fortunes again in one short lifetime, after so reckless an outlay. In
order to confine the dignity of Hadji to gentlemen of patrician blood
and possessions, the Emperor decreed that no man should make the
pilgrimage save bloated aristocrats who were worth a hundred dollars in
specie. But behold how iniquity can circumvent the law! For a
consideration, the Jewish money-changer lends the pilgrim one hundred
dollars long enough for him to swear himself through, and then receives
it back before the ship sails out of the harbor!
Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is, that Spain
sends her heaviest ships of war and her loudest guns to astonish these
Moslems; while America, and other nations, send only a little
contemptible tub of a gun-boat occasionally. The Moors, like other
savages, learn by what they see; not what they hear or read. We have
great fleets in the Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African
ports. The Moors have a small opinion of England, France, and America,
and put their representatives to a deal of red tape circumlocution
before they grant them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the
moment the Spanish Minister makes a demand, it is acceded to at once,
whether it be just or not.
Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a disputed piece
of property opposite Gibraltar, and captured the city of Tetouan. She
compromised on an augmentation of her territory; twenty million dollars
indemnity in money; and peace. And then she gave up the city. But she
never gave it up until the Spanish soldiers had eaten up all the cats.
They would not compromise as long as the cats held out. Spaniards are
very fond of cats. On the contrary, the Moors reverence cats as
something sacred. So the Spaniards touched them on a tender point that
time. Their unfeline conduct in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused
a hatred toward them in the breasts of the Moors, to which even the
driving them out of Spain was tame and passionless. Moors and Spaniards
are foes forever now. France had a Minister here once who embittered
the nation against him in the most innocent way. He killed a couple of
battalions of cats (Tangier is full of them,) and made a parlor carpet
out of their hides. He made his carpet in circles--first a circle of
old gray tom-cats, with their tails all pointing towards the centre;
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 visiting when
people have nothing on earth to talk about? There is none. So each
Consul's family stays at home chiefly, and amuses itself as best it can.
Tangier is full of interest for one day, but after that it is a weary
prison. The Consul-General has been here five years, and has got enough
of it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His family
seize upon their letters and papers when the mail arrives, read them
over and over again for two days or three, talk them over and over
again for two or three more, till they wear them out, and after that,
for days together, they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the
same old road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades
of centuries have scarcely changed, and say never a single word! They
have literally nothing whatever to talk about. The arrival of an
American man-of-war is a god-send to them.
I am glad to have seen Tangier--the second oldest town in the world.
But I am ready to bid it good bye, I believe.
We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morning; and
doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port within the next
forty-eight hours.
@[te
Chapter X
We passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City, in mid-ocean. It
was in all respects a characteristic Mediterranean day--faultlessly
beautiful. A cloudless sky; a refreshing summer wind; a radiant
sunshine that glinted cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested
mountains of water; a sea beneath us that was so wonderfully blue, so
richly, brilliantly blue, that it overcame the dullest sensibilities
with the spell of its fascination.
They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean--a thing that is
certainly rare in most quarters of the globe. The evening we sailed
away from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy
mist so rich, so soft, so enchantingly vague and dreamy, that even the
Oracle, that serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned
the dinner-gong and tarried to worship!
He said:
The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme, and went below.
That was the way to flatter the doctor. He considered it a sort of
acknowledgment on my part of a fear to argue with him. He was always
persecuting the passengers with abstruse propositions framed in
language that no man could understand, and they endured the exquisite
torture a minute or two and then abandoned the field. A triumph like
this, over half a dozen antagonists was sufficient for one day; from
that time forward he would patrol the decks beaming blandly upon all
comers, and so tranquilly, blissfully happy!
But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth
of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our
information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent
aloft, except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the
ship below, and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance.
During the morning, meetings were held and all manner of committees
set to work on the celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon the ship's
company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the
asthmatic melodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled the Star
Spangled Banner, the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with
a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered it.
Nobody mourned.
We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not
intentional and I do not indorse it,) and then the President, throned
behind a cable-locker with a national flag spread over it, announced
the
At dinner in the evening, a well-written original poem was recited with
spirit by one of the ship's captains, and thirteen regular toasts were
washed down with several baskets of champagne. The speeches were
bad--execrable, almost without 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:
It was regarded as a very able effort.
The festivities, so to speak, closed with another of those miraculous
balls on the promenade deck. We were not used to dancing on an even
keel, though, and it was only a questionable success. But take it
altogether, it was a bright, cheerful, pleasant Fourth.
Toward nightfall, the next evening, we steamed into the great
artificial harbor of this noble city of Marseilles, and saw the dying
sunlight gild its clustering spires and ramparts, and flood its leagues
of environing verdure with a mellow radiance that touched with an added
charm the white villas that flecked the landscape far and near. ;
obCopyright secured according to law.;cb
There were no stages out, and we could not get on the pier from the
ship. It was annoying. We were full of enthusiasm--we wanted to see
France! Just at nightfall our party of three contracted with a waterman
for the privilege of using his boat as a bridge--its stern was at our
companion ladder and its bow touched the pier. We got in and the fellow
backed out into the harbor. I told him in French that all we wanted was
to walk over his thwarts and step ashore, and asked him what he went
away out there for? He said he could not understand me. I repeated.
Still, he could not understand. He appeared to be very ignorant of
French. The doctor tried him, but he could not understand the doctor. I
asked this boatman to explain his conduct, which he did; and then I
couldn't understand him. Dan said:
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.
We rebuked him severely for this remark, and said we never knew an
ignorant person yet but was prejudiced. The Frenchman spoke again, and
the doctor said:
This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further criticism
from the disaffected member. We coasted past the sharp bows of a navy
of great steamships, and stopped at last at a government building on a
stone pier. It was easy to remember then, that the douain was the
custom-house, and not the hotel. We did not mention it, however. With
winning French politeness, the officers merely opened and closed our
satchels, declined to examine our passports, and sent us on our way. We
stopped at the first caf;aae we came to, and entered. An old woman
seated us at a table and waited for orders. The doctor said:
The dame looked perplexed. The doctor said again, with elaborate
distinctness of articulation:
The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said:
She said:
The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member spoiled the supper,
and we dispatched it in angry silence and got away as soon as we could.
Here we were in beautiful France--in a vast stone house of quaint
architecture--surrounded by all manner of curiously worded French
signs--stared at by strangely-habited, bearded French people--every
thing gradually and surely forcing upon us the coveted consciousness
that at last, and beyond all question we were in beautiful France and
absorbing its nature to the forgetfulness of 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 direction
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 said in reply--but then they
always pointed--they always did that, and we bowed politely and said
We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood, (but we knew it was not.)
It was plain that it would not do to pass that drug store again,
though--we might go on asking directions, but we must cease from
following finger-pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the
disaffected member.
A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bordered by blocks
of vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone,--every house and
every block precisely like all the other houses and all the other
blocks for a mile, and all brilliantly lighted,--brought us at last to
the principal thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing
constellations of gas-burners, gaily dressed men and women thronging
the side-walks--hurry, 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 get there, and a great deal of information of similar
importance--all for the benefit of the landlord and the secret police.
We hired a guide and began the business of sight-seeing immediately.
That first night on French soil was a stirring one. I can not think of
half the places we went to, or what we particularly 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 about innumerable
marble-topped tables, and ate fancy suppers, drank wine and kept up a
chattering din of conversation that was dazing to the senses. There was
a stage at the far end, and a large orchestra; and every now and then
actors and actresses in preposterous comic dresses came out and sang
the most extravagantly funny songs, to judge by their absurd actions;
but that audience merely suspended its chatter, stared cynically, and
never once smiled, never once applauded! I had always thought that
Frenchmen were ready to laugh at any thing.@[te
Chapter XI
We are getting foreignized rapidly, and with facility. We are getting
reconciled to halls and bed-chambers with unhomelike stone floors, and
no carpets--floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a
sharpness that is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to
tidy, noiseless waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about
your back and your elbows like butterflies, quick to comprehend orders,
quick to fill them; thankful for a gratuity without regard to the
amount; and always polite--never otherwise than polite. That is the
strangest curiosity yet--a really polite hotel waiter who isn't an
idiot. We are getting used to driving right into the central court of
the hotel, in the midst of a fragrant circle of vines and flowers, and
in the midst, also, of parties of gentlemen sitting quietly reading the
paper and smoking. We are getting used to ice frozen by artificial
process in ordinary bottles--the only kind of ice they have here. We
are getting used to all these things; but we are not getting used to
carrying our own soap. We are sufficiently civilized to carry our own
combs and 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 hymns,
and Marseilles vests, and Marseilles soap for all the world; but they
never sing their hymns, or wear their vests, or wash with their soap
themselves.
We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the table d'hote
with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction. We take soup; then
wait a few minutes for the fish; a few minutes more and the plates are
changed, and the roast beef comes; another change and we take peas;
change again and take lentils; change and take snail patties (I prefer
grasshoppers;) change and take roast chicken and salad; then strawberry
pie and ice cream; then green figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, &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
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:
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 there-abouts. Romulus was here before he
built Rome, and thought something of founding a city on this spot, but
gave up the idea. He may have been personally acquainted with some of
these Ph;oenicians whose skeletons we have been examining.
In the great Zo;auological Gardens, we found specimens of all the
animals the world produces, I think, including a dromedary, a monkey
ornamented with tufts of brilliant blue and carmine hair--a very
gorgeous monkey he was--a hippopotamus from the Nile, and a sort of
tall, long-legged bird with a beak like a powder-horn, and
close-fitting wings like the tails of a dress coat. This fellow stood
up with his eyes shut and his shoulders stooped forward a little, and
looked as if he had his hands under his coat tails. Such tranquil
stupidity, such supernatural gravity, such self-righteousness, and such
ineffable self-complacency as were in the countenance and attitude of
that gray-bodied, dark-winged, bald-headed, and preposterously uncomely
bird! He was so ungainly, so pimply about the head, so scaly about the
legs; yet so serene, so unspeakably satisfied! He was the most comical
looking creature that can be imagined. It was good to hear Dan and the
doctor laugh--such natural and such enjoyable laughter had not been
heard among our excursionists since our ship sailed away from America.
This bird was a 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 pleasure
excursion; therefore we stayed with that bird an hour, and made the
most of him. We stirred him up occasionally, but he only unclosed an
eye and slowly closed it again, abating no jot of his stately piety of
demeanor or his tremendous seriousness. He only seemed to say,
The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a common cat! This cat
had a fashion of climbing up the elephant's hind legs, and roosting on
his back. She would sit up there, with her paws curved under her
breast, and sleep in the sun half the afternoon. It used to annoy the
elephant at first, and he would reach up and take her down, but she
would go aft and climb up again. She persisted until she finally
conquered the elephant's prejudices, and now they are inseparable
friends. The cat plays about her comrade's forefeet or his trunk often,
until dogs approach, and then she goes aloft out of danger. The
elephant has annihilated several dogs lately, that pressed his
companion too closely.
We hired a 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 hundred years, and its dungeon
walls are scarred with the rudely carved names of many and many a
captive who fretted his life away here, and left no record of himself
but these sad epitaphs wrought with his own hands. How thick the names
were! And their long-departed owners seemed to throng the gloomy cells
and corridors with their phantom shapes. We loitered through dungeon
after dungeon, away down into the living rock below the level of the
sea, it seemed. Names 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,
inactivity, and the horrors of a silence that no sound ever disturbed;
but they could not bear the thought of being utterly forgotten by the
world. Hence the carved names. In one cell, where a little light
penetrated, a man had lived twenty-seven years without seeing the face
of a human being--lived in filth and wretchedness, with no
companionship but his own thoughts, and they were sorrowful enough, and
hopeless enough, no doubt. Whatever his jailers considered that he
needed was conveyed to his cell by night, through a wicket. This man
carved the walls of his prison-house from floor to roof with all manner
of figures of men and animals, grouped in intricate designs. He had
toiled there year after year, at his self-appointed task, while infants
grew to boyhood--to vigorous youth--idled through school and
college--acquired a profession--claimed man's mature estate--married
and looked back to infancy as to a thing of some vague, ancient time,
almost. But who shall tell how many ages it seemed to this prisoner?
With the one, time flew sometimes; with the other, never--it crawled
always. To the one, nights spent in dancing had seemed made of minutes
instead of hours; to the other, those 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 fifteen years had scratched verses upon his walls, and
brief prose sentences--brief, but full of pathos. These spoke not of
himself and his hard estate; but only of the shrine where his spirit
fled the prison to worship--of home and the idols that were templed
there. He never lived to see them.
The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers at home
are wide--fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of
Dumas' heroes passed their confinement--heroes of
They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated
We have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France.
What a bewitching land it is!--What a garden! Surely the leagues of
bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and
their grasses trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and
measured and their symmetry preserved by the most architectural of
gardeners. Surely the long straight rows of stately poplars that divide
the beautiful landscape like the squares of a checker-board are set
with line and plummet, and their uniform height determined with a
spirit level. Surely the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are
jack-planed and sandpapered every day. How else are these marvels of
symmetry, cleanliness and order attained? It is wonderful. There are no
unsightly stone walls, and never a fence of any kind. There is no dirt,
no decay, no rubbish 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 Rhone gliding along between its grassy
banks; of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery; of quaint old
red-tiled villages with mossy medi;aeval 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--@
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 International Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen
and Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to find a
good guide unemployed. He said he usually kept a dozen or two on hand,
but he only had three now. He called them. One looked so like a very
pirate that we let him go at once. The next one spoke with a simpering
precision of pronunciation that was irritating, and said:
He would have done well to have stopped there, because he had that much
by heart and said it right off without making a mistake. But his
self-complacency seduced him into attempting a flight into regions of
unexplored English, and the reckless experiment was his ruin. Within
ten seconds he was so tangled up in a maze of mutilated verbs and torn
and bleeding forms of speech that no human ingenuity could ever have
gotten him out of it with credit. It was plain enough that he could not
The third man captured us. He was plainly dressed, but he had a
noticeable air of neatness about him. He wore a high silk hat which was
a little old, but had been carefully brushed. He wore second-hand kid
gloves, in good repair, and carried a small rattan cane with a curved
handle--a female leg, of ivory. He stepped as gently and as daintily as
a cat crossing a muddy street; and oh, he was urbanity; he was quiet,
unobtrusive self-possession; he was deference itself! He spoke softly
and guardedly; and when he was about to make a statement on his sole
responsibility, or offer a suggestion, he weighed it by drachms and
scruples first, with the crook of his little stick placed meditatively
to his teeth. His opening speech was perfect. It was perfect in
construction, in phraseology, in grammar, in emphasis, in
pronunciation--every thing. He spoke little and guardedly, after that.
We were charmed. We were more than charmed--we were overjoyed. We hired
him at once. We never even asked him his price. This man--our lackey,
our servant, our unquestioning slave though he was, was still a
gentleman--we could see that--while of the other two one was coarse and
awkward, and the other was a born pirate. We asked our man Friday's
name. He drew from his pocket-book a snowy little card, and passed it
to us with a profound bow:
A. Billfinger,
Guide to Paris, France, Germany,
Spain, &c., &c.,
Grande Hotel du Louvre.
That was an
That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without debate, we expunged
Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Ferguson.
The carriage--an open barouche--was ready. Ferguson mounted beside the
driver, and we whirled away to breakfast. As was proper, Mr. Ferguson
stood by to transmit our orders and answer questions. Bye and bye, he
mentioned casually--the artful adventurer--that he would go and get his
breakfast as soon as we had finished ours. He knew we could not get
along without him, and that we would not want to loiter about and wait
for him. We asked him to sit down and eat with us. He begged, with many
a bow, to be excused. It was not proper, he said; he would sit at
another table. We ordered him peremptorily to sit down with us.
Here endeth the first lesson. It was a mistake.
As long as we had that fellow after that, he was always hungry; he was
always thirsty. He came early; he stayed late; he could not pass a
restaurant; he looked with a lecherous eye upon every 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; but it was a failure. He did not hold
enough to smother the cravings of his superhuman appetite.
He had another
Within fifteen minutes the carriage halted again, and before another
silk store. The doctor said:
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:
Dan said,
And the doctor:
The treacherous miscreant! After four breakfasts and a gallon of
champagne, to serve us such a scurvy trick. We got no sight of the
countless treasures of art in the Louvre galleries that day, and our
only poor little satisfaction was in the reflection that Ferguson sold
not a solitary silk dress pattern.
I am writing this chapter partly for the satisfaction of abusing that
accomplished knave, Billfinger, and partly to show whosoever shall read
this how Americans fare at the hands of the Paris guides, and what sort
of people Paris guides are. It need not be supposed that we were a
stupider or an easier prey than our countrymen generally are, for we
were not. The guides deceive and defraud every American who goes to
Paris for the first time and sees its sights alone or in company with
others as little experienced as himself. I shall visit Paris again some
day, and then let the guides beware! I shall go in my war-paint--I
shall carry my tomahawk along.
I think we have lost but little time in Paris. We have gone to bed
every night tired out. Of course we visited the renowned International
Exposition. All the world did that. We went there on our third day in
Paris--and we stayed there nearly two hours. That was our first and
last visit. To tell the truth, we saw at a glance that one would have
to spend weeks--yea, even months--in that monstrous establishment, to
get an intelligible idea of it. It was a wonderful show, but the moving
masses of people of all nations we saw there were a still more
wonderful show. I discovered that if I were to stay there a month, I
should still find myself looking at the people instead of the inanimate
objects on exhibition. I got a little interested in some curious old
tapestries of the thirteenth century, but a party of Arabs came by, and
their dusky faces and quaint costumes called my attention away at once.
I watched a silver swan, which had a living grace about his movements,
and a living intelligence in his eyes--watched him swimming about as
comfortably and as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass
instead of a jeweller's shop--watched him seize a silver fish from
under the water and hold up his head and go through all the customary
and elaborate motions of swallowing it--but the moment it disappeared
down his throat some tattooed South Sea Islanders approached and I
yielded to their attractions. Presently I found a revolving pistol
several hundred years old which looked strangely like a modern Colt,
but just then I heard that the Empress of the French was in another
part of the building, and hastened away to see what she might look like.
We heard martial music--we saw an unusual number of soldiers walking
hurriedly about--there was a general movement among the people. We
inquired what it was all about, and learned that the Emperor of the
French and the Sultan of Turkey were about to review twenty-five
thousand troops at the Arc de l'Etoile. We immediately departed. I had
a greater anxiety to see these men than I could have had to see twenty
Expositions.
We drove away and took up a position in an open space opposite the
American Minister's house. A speculator bridged a couple of barrels
with a board and we hired standing-places on it. Presently there was a
sound of distant music; in another minute a pillar of dust came moving
slowly toward us; a moment more, and then, with colors flying and a
grand crash of military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen emerged
from the dust and came down the street on a gentle trot. After them
came a long line of artillery; then more cavalry, in splendid uniforms;
and then their Imperial Majesties Napoleon III. and Abdul Aziz. The
vast concourse of people swung their hats and shouted--the windows and
house-tops in the wide vicinity burst into a snow-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? Napoleon, in military
uniform--a long-bodied, short-legged man, fiercely moustached, old,
wrinkled, with eyes half closed, and such a deep, crafty, scheming
expression about them!--Napoleon, bowing ever so gently to the loud
plaudits, and watching 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.
Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman Empire,--clad in dark green
European clothes, almost without ornament or insignia of rank; a red
Turkish fez on his head--a short, stout, dark man, black-bearded,
black-eyed, stupid, unprepossessing--a man whose whole appearance
somehow suggested that if he only had a cleaver in his hand and a white
apron on, one would not be at all surprised to hear him say:
Napoleon III., the representative of the highest modern civilization,
progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by
nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive,
superstitious--and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny,
Rapacity, Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of
Triumph, the First Century greets the Nineteenth!
Napoleon III., Emperor of France! Surrounded by shouting thousands, by
military pomp, by the splendors of his capital city, and companioned by
kings and princes--this is the man who was sneered at, and reviled, and
called Bastard--yet who was dreaming of a crown and an Empire all the
while; who was driven into exile--but carried his dreams with him; who
associated with the common herd in America, and ran foot-races for a
wager--but still sat upon a throne, in fancy; who braved every danger
to go to his dying mother--and grieved that she could not be spared to
see him cast aside his plebeian vestments for the purple of royalty;
who kept his faithful watch and walked his weary beat a common
policeman of London--but dreamed the while of a coming night when he
should tread the long-drawn corridors of the Tuileries; who made the
miserable fiasco of Strasbourg; saw his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful
of its lesson, refuse to perch upon his shoulder; delivered his
carefully-prepared, sententious burst of eloquence, unto unsympathetic
ears; found himself a prisoner, the butt of small wits, a mark for the
pitiless ridicule of all the world--yet went on dreaming of coronations
and splendid pageants, as before; who lay a forgotten captive in the
dungeons of Ham--and still schemed and planned and pondered over future
glory and future power; President of France at last! a coup d'etat, and
surrounded by applauding armies, welcomed by the thunders of cannon, he
mounts a throne and waves before an astounded world the sceptre of a
mighty Empire! Who talks of the marvels of fiction? Who speaks of the
wonders of romance? Who prates of the tame achievements of Aladdin and
the Magii of Arabia?
Abdul-Aziz, Sultan of Turkey, Lord of the Ottoman Empire! Born to a
throne; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as his meanest slave; chief of
a vast royalty, yet the puppet of his Premier and the obedient child of
a tyrannical mother; a man who sits upon a throne--the beck of whose
finger moves navies and armies--who holds in his hands the power of
life and death over millions--yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eats, idles
with his eight hundred concubines, and when he is surfeited with eating
and sleeping and idling, and would rouse up and take the reins of
government and threaten to be a Sultan, is charmed from his purpose by
wary Fuad Pacha with a pretty plan for a new palace or a new
ship--charmed away with a new toy, like any other restless child; a man
who sees his people robbed and oppressed by soulless tax-gatherers, but
speaks no word to save them; who believes in gnomes, and genii and the
wild fables of the Arabian Nights, but has small regard for the mighty
magicians of to-day, and is nervous in the presence of their mysterious
railroads and 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, infamous agglomeration
of ignorance, crime, and brutality, and will idle away the allotted
days of his trivial life, and then pass to the dust and the worms and
leave it so!
Napoleon has augmented the commercial prosperity of France, in ten
years, to such a degree that figures can hardly compute it. He has
rebuilt Paris, and has partly rebuilt every city in the State. He
condemns a whole street at a time, assesses the damages, pays them and
rebuilds superbly. Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the
original owner is given the first choice by the government at a stated
price before the speculator is permitted to purchase. But above all
things, he has taken the sole control of the Empire of France into his
hands, and made it a tolerably free land--for people who will not
attempt to go too far in meddling with government affairs. No country
offers greater security to life and property than France, and one has
all the freedom he wants, but no license--no license to interfere with
any body, or make any one uncomfortable.
As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch a dozen
abler men in a night.
The bands struck up, and the brilliant adventurer, Napoleon III., the
genius of Energy, Persistence, Enterprise; and the feeble Abdul-Aziz,
the genius of Ignorance, Bigotry and Indolence, prepared for the
Forward--March!
We saw the splendid review, we saw the white-moustached old Crimean
soldier, Canrobert, Marshal of France, we saw--well, we saw every
thing, and then we went home satisfied.@[te
Chapter XIV
We went to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame.--We had heard of it before.
It surprises me, sometimes, to think how much we do know, and how
intelligent we are. We recognized the brown old Gothic pile in a moment;
it was like the pictures. We stood at a little distance and changed
from one point of observation to another, and gazed long at its lofty
square towers and its rich front, clustered thick with stony, mutilated
saints who had been looking calmly down from their perches for ages.
The Patriarch of Jerusalem stood under them in the old days of chivalry
and romance, and preached the third Crusade, more than six hundred
years ago; and since that day they have stood there and looked quietly
down upon the most thrilling scenes, the grandest pageants, the most
extraordinary spectacles that have grieved or delighted Paris. These
battered and broken-nosed old fellows saw many and many a cavalcade of
mail-clad knights come marching home from Holy Land; they heard the
bells above them toll the signal for the St. Bartholomew's Massacre,
and they saw the slaughter that followed; later, they saw the Reign of
Terror, the carnage of the Revolution, the overthrow of a king, the
coronation of two Napoleons, the christening of the young prince that
lords it over a regiment of servants in the Tuileries to-day--and they
may possibly continue to stand there until they see the Napoleon
dynasty swept away and the banners of a great Republic floating above
its ruins. I wish these old parties could speak. They could tell a tale
worth the listening to.
They say that a pagan temple stood where Notre Dame now stands, in the
old Roman days, eighteen or twenty centuries ago--remains of it are
still preserved in Paris; and that a Christian church took its place
about A.D. 300; another took the place of that in A.D. 500; and that
the foundations of the present Cathedral were laid about A.D. 1100. The
ground ought to be measurably sacred by this time, one would think. One
portion of this noble old edifice is suggestive of the quaint fashions
of ancient times. It was built by Jean Sans-Peur, Duke of Burgundy, to
set his conscience at rest--he had assassinated the Duke of Orleans.
Alas! those good old times are gone, when a murderer could wipe the
stain from his name and soothe his troubles to sleep simply by getting
out his bricks and mortar and building an addition to a church.
The portals of the great western front are bisected by square pillars.
They took the central one away, in 1852, on the occasion of
thanksgivings for the reinstitution of the Presidential power--but
precious soon they had occasion to reconsider that motion and put it
back again! And they did.
We loitered through the grand aisles for an hour or two, staring up at
the rich stained glass windows embellished with blue and yellow and
crimson saints and martyrs, and trying to admire the numberless great
pictures in the chapels, and then we were admitted to the sacristy and
shown the magnificent robes which the Pope wore when he crowned
Napoleon I.; a wagon-load of solid gold and silver utensils used in the
great public processions and ceremonies of the church; some nails of
the true cross, a fragment of the cross itself, a part of the crown of
thorns. We had already seen a large piece of the true cross in a church
in the Azores, but no nails. They showed us likewise the bloody robe
which that Archbishop of Paris wore who exposed his sacred person and
braved the wrath of the insurgents of 1848, to mount the barricades and
hold aloft the olive branch of peace in the hope of stopping the
slaughter. His noble effort cost him his life. He was shot dead. They
showed us a cast of his face, taken after death, the bullet that killed
him, and the two vertebr;ae in which it lodged. These people have a
somewhat singular taste in the matter of relics. Ferguson told us that
the silver cross which the good Archbishop wore at his girdle was
seized and thrown into the Seine, where it lay embedded in the mud for
fifteen years, and then an angel appeared to a priest and told him
where to dive for it; he did dive for it and got it, and now it is
there on exhibition at Notre Dame, to be inspected by any body who
feels an interest in inanimate objects of miraculous intervention.
Next we went to visit the Morgue, that horrible receptacle for the dead
who die mysteriously and leave the manner of their taking off a dismal
secret. We stood before a grating and looked through into a room which
was hung all about with the clothing of dead men; coarse blouses,
water-soaked; the delicate garments of women and children; patrician
vestments, hacked and stabbed and stained with red; a hat that was
crushed and bloody. On a slanting stone lay a drowned man, naked,
swollen, purple; clasping the fragment of a broken bush with a grip
which death had so petrified that human strength could not unloose
it--mute witness of the last despairing effort to save the life that
was doomed beyond all help. A stream of water trickled ceaselessly over
the hideous face. We knew that the body and the clothing were there for
identification by friends, but still we wondered if any body could love
that repulsive object or grieve for its loss. We grew meditative and
wondered if, some forty years ago, when the mother of that ghastly
thing was dandling it upon her knee, and kissing it and petting it and
displaying it with satisfied pride to the passers-by, a prophetic
vision of this dread ending ever flitted through her brain. I half
feared that the mother, or the wife or a brother of the dead man might
come while we stood there, but nothing of the kind occurred. Men and
women came, and some looked eagerly in, and pressed their faces against
the bars; others glanced carelessly at the body, and turned away with a
disappointed look--people, I thought, who live upon strong excitements,
and who attend the exhibitions of the Morgue regularly, just as other
people go to see theatrical spectacles every night. When one of these
looked in and passed on, I could not help thinking--
One night we went to the celebrated Jardin Mabille, but only staid a
little while. We wanted to see some of this kind of Paris life,
however, and therefore, the next night we went to a similar place of
entertainment in a great garden in the suburb of Asni;aaeres. We went
to the railroad depot, toward evening, and Ferguson got tickets for a
second-class carriage. Such a perfect jam of people I have not often
seen--but there was no noise, no disorder, no rowdyism. Some of the
women and young girls that entered the train we knew to be of the
demi-monde, but others we were not at all sure about.
The girls and women in our carriage behaved themselves modestly and
becomingly, all the way out, except that they smoked. When we arrived
at the garden in Asni;aaeres, we paid a franc or two admission, and
entered a place which had flower-beds in it, and grass plats, and long,
curving rows of ornamental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded
bower convenient for eating ice-cream in. We moved along the sinuous
gravel walks, with the great concourse of girls and young men, and
suddenly a domed and 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.
Ferguson said an American--a New Yorker--kept the place, and was
carrying on quite a stirring opposition to the Jardin Mabille.
Crowds, composed of both sexes and nearly all ages, were frisking about
the garden or sitting in the open air in front of the 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
people were pretty closely packed together. And now I made a mistake
which any donkey might make, but a sensible man never. I committed an
error which I find myself repeating every day of my life.--Standing
right before a young lady, I said--
We took a walk, but my spirits were very, very sadly dampened. I did
not feel right comfortable for some time afterward. Why will people be
so stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of
ten thousand persons?
But Blondin came out shortly. He appeared on a stretched cable, far
away above the sea of tossing hats and handkerchiefs, and in the glare
of the hundreds of rockets that whizzed heavenward by him he looked
like a wee insect. He balanced his pole and walked the length of his
rope--two or three hundred feet; he came back and got a man and carried
him across; he returned to the 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 Roman 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 broad circular platform for
the dancers. I backed up against the wall of the temple, and waited.
Twenty sets formed, the music struck up, and then--I placed my hands
before my face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They
were dancing the renowned
That is the can-can. The idea of it is to dance as wildly, as noisily,
as furiously as you can; expose yourself as much as possible if you are
a woman; and kick as high as you can, no matter which sex you belong to.
There is no word of exaggeration in this. Any of the staid,
respectable, aged people who were there that night can testify to the
truth of that statement. There were a good many such people present. I
suppose French morality is not of that straight-laced description which
is shocked at trifles.
I moved aside and took a general view of the can-can. Shouts, laughter,
furious music, a bewildering chaos of darting and intermingling forms,
stormy jerking and snatching of gay dresses, bobbing heads, flying
arms, lightning-flashes of white-stockinged calves and dainty slippers
in the air, and then a grand final rush, riot, a terrific hubbub and a
wild stampede! Heavens! Nothing like it has been seen on earth since
trembling Tam O'Shanter saw the devil and the witches at their orgies
that stormy night in
We visited the Louvre, at a time when we had no silk purchases in view,
and looked at its miles of paintings by the old masters. Some of them
were beautiful, but at the same time they carried such evidences about
them of the cringing spirit of those great men that we found small
pleasure in examining them. Their nauseous adulation of princely
patrons was more prominent to me and chained my attention more surely
than the charms of color and expression which are claimed to be in the
pictures. Gratitude for kindnesses is well, but it seems to me that
some of those artists carried it so far that it ceased to be gratitude,
and became worship. If there is a plausible excuse for the worship of
men, then by all means let us forgive Rubens and his brethren.
But I will drop the subject, lest I say something about the old masters
that might as well be left unsaid.
Of course we drove in the Bois de Boulogne, that limitless park, with
its forests, its lakes, its cascades, and its broad avenues. There were
thousands upon thousands of vehicles abroad, and the scene was full of
life and gayety. There were very common hacks, with father and mother
and all the children in them; conspicuous little open carriages with
celebrated ladies of questionable reputation in them; there were Dukes
and Duchesses abroad, with gorgeous footmen perched behind, and equally
gorgeous outriders perched on each of the six horses; there were blue
and silver, and green and gold, and pink and black, and all sorts and
descriptions of stunning and startling liveries out, and I almost
yearned to be a flunkey myself, for the sake of the fine clothes.
But presently the Emperor came along and he out-shone them all. He was
preceded by a body guard of gentlemen on horseback in showy uniforms,
his carriage-horses (there appeared to be somewhere in the remote
neighborhood of a thousand of them,) were bestridden by gallant looking
fellows, also in stylish uniforms, and after the carriage followed
another detachment of body-guards. Every body got out of the way; every
body bowed to the Emperor and his friend the Sultan, and they went by
on a swinging trot and disappeared.
I will not describe the Bois de Boulogne. I can not do it. It is simply
a beautiful, cultivated, endless, wonderful wilderness. It is an
enchanting place. It is in Paris, now, one may say, but a crumbling old
cross in one portion of it reminds one that it was not always so. The
cross marks the spot where a celebrated troubadour was waylaid and
murdered in the fourteenth century. It was in this park that that
fellow with an unpronounceable name made the attempt upon the Russian
Czar's life last spring with a pistol. The bullet struck a tree.
Ferguson showed us the place. Now in America that interesting tree
would be chopped down or forgotten within the next five years, but it
will be treasured here. The guides will point it out to visitors for
the next eight hundred years, and when it decays and falls down they
will put up another there and go on with the same old story just the
same.@[te
Chapter XV
One of our pleasantest visits was to P;agere la Chaise, the national
burying-ground of France, the honored resting-place of some of her
greatest and best children, the last home of scores of illustrious men
and women who were born to no titles, but achieved fame by their own
energy and their own genius. It is a solemn city of winding streets,
and of miniature marble temples and mansions of the dead gleaming white
from out a wilderness of foliage and fresh flowers. Not every city is
so well peopled as this, or has so ample an area within its walls. Few
palaces exist in any city, that are so exquisite in design, so rich in
art, so costly in material, so graceful, so beautiful.
We had stood in the ancient church of St. Denis, where the marble
effigies of thirty generations of kings and queens lay stretched at
length upon the tombs, and the sensations invoked were startling and
novel; the curious armor, the obsolete costumes, the placid faces, the
hands placed palm to palm in eloquent supplication--it was a vision of
gray antiquity. It seemed curious enough to be standing face to face,
as it were, with old Dagobert I., and Clovis and Charlemagne, those
vague, colossal heroes, those shadows, those myths of a thousand years
ago! I touched their dust-covered faces with my finger, but Dagobert
was deader than the sixteen centuries that have passed over him, Clovis
slept well after his labor for Christ, and old Charlemagne went on
dreaming of his paladins, of bloody Roncesvalles, and gave no heed to
me.
The great names of P;agere la Chaise impress one, too, but differently.
There the suggestion brought constantly to his mind is, that this place
is sacred to a nobler royalty--the royalty of heart and brain. Every
faculty of mind, every noble trait of human nature, every high
occupation which men engage in seems represented by a famous name. The
effect is a curious medley. Davoust and Massena, who wrought in many a
battle-tragedy, are here, and so also is Rachel, of equal renown in
mimic tragedy on the stage. The Abb;aae Sicard sleeps here--the first
great teacher of the deaf and dumb--a man whose heart went out to every
unfortunate, and whose life was given to kindly offices in their
service; and not far off, in repose and peace at last, lies Marshal
Ney, whose stormy spirit knew no music like the bugle call to arms. The
man who originated public gas-lighting, and that other benefactor who
introduced the cultivation of the potato and thus blessed millions of
his starving countrymen, lie with the Prince of Masserano, and with
exiled queens and princes of Further India. Gay-Lussac the chemist,
Laplace the astronomer, Larrey the surgeon, de S;aaeze the advocate,
are here, and with them are Talma, Bellini, Rubini; de Balzac,
Beaumarchais, Beranger; Moli;agere and Lafontaine, and scores of other
men whose names and whose worthy labors are as familiar in the remote
by-places of civilization as are the historic deeds of the kings and
princes that sleep in the marble vaults of St. Denis.
But among the thousands and thousands of tombs in P;agere la Chaise,
there is one that no man, no woman, no youth of either sex, ever passes
by without stopping to examine. Every visitor has a sort of indistinct
idea of the history of its dead, and comprehends that homage is due
there, but not one in twenty thousand clearly remembers the story of
that tomb and its romantic occupants. This is the grave of Abelard and
Heloise--a grave which has been more revered, more widely known, more
written and sung about and wept over, for seven hundred years, than any
other in Christendom, save only that of the Saviour. All visitors
linger pensively about it; all young people capture and carry away
keepsakes and mementoes of it; all Parisian youths and maidens who are
disappointed in love come there to bail out when they are full of tears;
yea, many stricken lovers make pilgrimages to this shrine from distant
provinces to weep and wail and
Go when you will, you find somebody snuffling over that tomb. Go when
you will, you find it furnished with those bouquets and immortelles. Go
when you will, you find a gravel-train from Marseilles arriving to
supply the deficiencies caused by memento-cabbaging vandals whose
affections have miscarried.
Yet who really knows the story of Abelard and Heloise? Precious few
people. The names are perfectly familiar to every body, and that is
about all. With infinite pains I have acquired a knowledge of that
history, and I propose to narrate it here, partly for the honest
information of the public and partly to show that public that they have
been wasting a good deal of marketable sentiment very unnecessarily.
Story of Abelard and Heloise.
Heloise was born seven hundred and sixty-six years ago. She may have
had parents. There is no telling. She lived with her uncle Fulbert, a
canon of the cathedral of Paris. I do not know what a canon of a
cathedral is, but that is what he was. He was nothing more than a sort
of a mountain howitzer, likely, because they had no heavy artillery in
those days. Suffice it, then, that Heloise lived with her uncle the
howitzer, and was happy.--She spent the most of her childhood in the
convent of Argenteuil--never heard of Argenteuil before, but suppose
there was really such a place. She then returned to her uncle, the old
gun, or son of a gun, as the case may be, and he taught her to write
and speak Latin, which was the language of literature and polite
society at that period.
Just at this time, Pierre Abelard, who had already made himself widely
famous as a rhetorician, came to found a school of rhetoric in Paris.
The originality of his principles, his eloquence, and his great
physical strength and beauty created a profound sensation. He saw
Heloise, and was captivated by her blooming youth, her beauty and her
charming disposition. He wrote to her; she answered. He wrote again,
she answered again. He was now in love. He longed to know her--to speak
to her face to face.
His school was near Fulbert's house. He asked Fulbert to allow him to
call. The good old swivel saw here a rare opportunity: his niece, whom
he so much loved, would absorb knowledge from this man, and it would
not cost him a cent. Such was Fulbert--penurious.
Fulbert's first name is not mentioned by any author, which is
unfortunate. However, George W. Fulbert will answer for him as well as
any other. We will let him go at that. He asked Abelard to teach her.
Abelard was glad enough of the opportunity. He came often and staid
long. A letter of his shows in its very first sentence that he came
under that friendly roof like a cold-hearted villain as he was, with
the deliberate intention of debauching a confiding, innocent girl. This
is the letter:@
Versailles! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze, and stare, and try
to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not
the Garden of Eden--but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world
of beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an
exquisite dream. The scene thrills one like military music! A noble
palace, stretching its ornamented front block upon block away, till it
seemed that it would never end; a grand promenade before it, whereon
the armies of an empire might parade; all about it rainbows of flowers,
and colossal statues that were almost numberless, and yet seemed only
scattered over the ample space; broad flights of stone steps leading
down from the promenade to lower grounds of the park--stairways that
whole regiments might stand to arms upon and have room to spare; vast
fountains whose great bronze effigies discharged rivers of sparkling
water into the air and mingled a hundred curving jets together in forms
of matchless beauty; wide grass-carpeted avenues that branched hither
and thither in every direction and wandered to seemingly interminable
distances, walled all the way on either side with compact ranks of
leafy trees whose branches met above and formed arches as faultless and
as symmetrical as ever were carved in stone; and here and there were
glimpses of sylvan lakes with miniature ships glassed in their surfaces.
And every where--on the palace steps, and the great promenade, around
the fountains, among the trees, and far under the arches of the endless
avenues, hundreds and hundreds of people in gay costumes walked or ran
or danced, and gave to the fairy picture the life and animation which
was all of perfection it could have lacked.
It was worth a pilgrimage to see. Every thing is on so gigantic a scale.
Nothing is small--nothing is cheap. The statues are all large; the
palace is grand; the park covers a fair-sized county; the avenues are
interminable. All the distances and all the dimensions about Versailles
are vast. I used to think the pictures exaggerated these distances and
these dimensions beyond all reason, and that they made Versailles more
beautiful than it was possible for any place in the world to be. I know
now that the pictures never came up to the subject in any respect, and
that no painter could represent Versailles on canvas as beautiful as it
is in reality. I used to abuse Louis XIV. for spending two hundred
millions of dollars in creating this marvelous park, when bread was so
scarce with some of his subjects; but I have forgiven him now. He took
a tract of land sixty miles in circumference and set to work to make
this park and build this palace and a road to it from Paris. He kept
36,000 men employed daily on it, and the labor was so unhealthy that
they used to die and be hauled off by cart-loads every night. The wife
of a nobleman of the time speaks of this as an
I always thought ill of people at home, who trimmed their shrubbery
into pyramids, and squares, and spires, and all manner of unnatural
shapes, and when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great
park I began to feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing
and the wisdom of it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen
sickly trees into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a
dining-room, and then surely they look absurd enough. But here they
take two hundred thousand tall forest trees and set them in a double
row; allow no sign of leaf or branch to grow on the trunk lower down
than six feet above the ground; from that point the boughs begin to
project, and very gradually they extend outward further and further
till they meet overhead, and a faultless tunnel of foliage is formed.
The arch is mathematically precise. The effect is then very fine. They
make trees take fifty different shapes, and so these quaint effects are
infinitely varied and picturesque. The trees in no two avenues are
shaped alike, and consequently the eye is not fatigued with any thing
in the nature of monotonous uniformity. I will drop this subject now,
leaving it to others to determine how these people manage to make
endless ranks of lofty forest trees grow to just a certain thickness of
trunk (say a foot and two-thirds;) how they make them spring to
precisely the same height for miles; how they make them grow so close
together; how they compel one huge limb to spring from the same
identical spot on each tree and form the main sweep of the arch; and
how all these things are kept exactly in the same condition, and in the
same exquisite shapeliness and symmetry month after month and year
after year--for I have tried to reason out the problem, and have failed.
We walked through the great hall of sculpture and the one hundred and
fifty galleries of paintings in the palace of Versailles, and felt that
to be in such a place was useless unless one had a whole year at his
disposal. These pictures are all battle-scenes, and only one solitary
little canvas among them all treats of anything but great French
victories. We wandered, also, through the Grand Trianon and the Petit
Trianon, those monuments of royal prodigality, and with histories so
mournful--filled, as it is, with souvenirs of Napoleon the First, and
three dead Kings and as many Queens. In one sumptuous bed they had all
slept in succession, but no one occupies it now. In a large dining-room
stood the table at which Louis XIV. and his mistress, Madame Maintenon,
and after them Louis XV., and Pompadour, had sat at their meals naked
and unattended--for the table stood upon a trap-door, which descended
with it to regions below when it was necessary to replenish its dishes.
In a room of the Petit Trianon stood the furniture, just as poor Marie
Antoinette left it when the mob came and dragged her and the King to
Paris, never to return. Near at hand, in the stables, were prodigious
carriages that showed no color but gold--carriages used by former Kings
of France on state occasions, and never used now save when a kingly
head is to be crowned, or an imperial infant christened. And with them
were some curious sleighs, whose bodies were shaped like lions, swans,
tigers, etc.--vehicles that had once been handsome with pictured
designs and fine workmanship, but were dusty and decaying now. They had
their history. When Louis XIV. had finished the Grand Trianon, he told
Maintenon he had created a Paradise for her, and asked if she could
think of any thing now to wish for. He said he wished the Trianon to be
perfection--nothing less. She said she could think of but one thing--it
was summer, and it was balmy France--yet she would like well to
sleigh-ride in the leafy avenues of Versailles! The next morning found
miles and miles of grassy avenues spread thick with snowy salt and
sugar, and a procession of those quaint sleighs waiting to receive the
chief concubine of the gayest and most unprincipled court that France
has ever seen!
From sumptuous Versailles, with its palaces, its statues, its gardens
and its fountains, we journeyed back to Paris and sought its
antipodes--the Faubourg St. Antoine. Little, narrow streets; dirty
children blockading them; greasy, slovenly women capturing and spanking
them; filthy dens on first floors, with rag stores in them (the
heaviest business in the Faubourg is the chiffonier's;) other filthy
dens where whole suits of second and third-hand clothing are sold at
prices that would ruin any proprietor who did not steal his stock;
still other filthy dens where they sold groceries--sold them by the
half-pennyworth--five dollars would buy the man out, goodwill and all.
Up these little crooked streets they will murder a man for seven
dollars and dump the body in the Seine. And up some other of these
streets--most of them, I should say--live lorettes.
All through this Faubourg St. Antoine, misery, poverty, vice and crime
go hand in hand, and the evidences of it stare one in the face from
every side. Here the people live who begin the revolutions. Whenever
there is any thing of that kind to be done, they are always ready. They
take as much genuine pleasure in building a barricade as they do in
cutting a throat or shoving a friend into the Seine. It is these
savage-looking ruffians who storm the splendid halls of the Tuileries,
occasionally, and swarm into Versailles when a King is to be called to
account.
But they will build no more barricades, they will break no more
soldiers' heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of
all that. He is annihilating the crooked streets, and building in their
stead noble boulevards as straight as an arrow--avenues which a cannon
ball could traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more
irresistible than the flesh and bones of men--boulevards whose stately
edifices will never afford refuges and plotting-places for starving,
discontented revolution-breeders. Five of these great thorough-fares
radiate from one ample centre--a centre which is exceedingly well
adapted to the accommodation of heavy artillery. The mobs used to riot
there, but they must seek another rallying-place in future. And this
ingenious Napoleon paves the streets of his great cities with a smooth,
compact composition of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of
flag-stones--no more assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. I
can not feel friendly toward my quondam fellow-American, Napoleon III.,
especially at this time,* when in fancy I see his credulous victim,
Maximilian, lying stark and stiff in Mexico, and his maniac widow
watching eagerly from her French asylum for the form that will never
come--but I do admire his nerve, his calm self-reliance, his shrewd
good sense.
*July, 1867.
[te
Chapter XVII
We had a pleasant journey of it seaward again. We found that for the
three past nights our ship had been in a state of war. The first night
the sailors of a British ship, being happy with grog, came down on the
pier and challenged our sailors to a free fight. They accepted with
alacrity, repaired to the pier and gained--their share of a drawn
battle. Several bruised and bloody members of both parties were carried
off by the police, and imprisoned until the following morning. The next
night the British boys came again to renew the fight, but our men had
had strict orders to remain on board and out of sight. They did so, and
the besieging party grew noisy, and more and more abusive as the fact
became apparent (to them,) that our men were afraid to come out. They
went away, finally, with a closing burst of ridicule and offensive
epithets. The third night they came again, and were more obstreperous
than ever. They swaggered up and down the almost deserted pier, and
hurled curses, obscenity and stinging sarcasms at our crew. It was more
than human nature could bear. The executive officer ordered our men
ashore--with instructions not to fight. They charged the British and
gained a brilliant victory. I probably would not have mentioned this
war had it ended differently. But I travel to learn, and I still
remember that they picture no French defeats in the battle-galleries of
Versailles.
It was like home to us to step on board the comfortable ship again, and
smoke and lounge about her breezy decks. And yet it was not altogether
like home, either, because so many members of the family were away. We
missed some pleasant faces which we would rather have found at dinner,
and at night there were gaps in the euchre-parties which could not be
satisfactorily filled.
In due time the shores of Italy were sighted, and as we stood gazing
from the decks early in the bright summer morning, the stately city of
Genoa rose up out of the sea and flung back the sunlight from her
hundred palaces.
Here we rest, for the present--or rather, here we have been trying to
rest, for some little time, but we run about too much to accomplish a
great deal in that line.
I would like to remain here. I had rather not go any further. There may
be prettier women in Europe, but I doubt it. The population of Genoa is
120,000; two-thirds of these are women, I think, and at least
two-thirds of the women are beautiful. They are as dressy, and as
tasteful and as graceful as they could possibly be without being angels.
However, angels are not very dressy, I believe. At least the angels in
pictures are not--they wear nothing but wings. But these Genoese women
do look so charming. Most of the young demoiselles are robed in a cloud
of white from head to foot, though many trick themselves out more
elaborately. Nine-tenths of them wear nothing on their heads but a
filmy sort of veil, which falls down their backs like a white mist.
They are very fair, and many of them have blue eyes, but black and
dreamy dark brown ones are met with oftenest.
The ladies and gentlemen of Genoa have a pleasant fashion of
promenading in a large park on the top of a hill in the centre of the
city, from six till nine in the evening, and then eating ices in a
neighboring garden an hour or two longer. We went to the park on Sunday
evening. Two thousand persons were present, chiefly young ladies and
gentlemen. The gentlemen were dressed in the very latest Paris
fashions, and the robes of the ladies glinted among the trees like so
many snow-flakes. The multitude moved round and round the park in a
great procession. The bands played, and so did the fountains; the moon
and the gas lamps lit up the scene, and altogether it was a brilliant
and an animated picture. I scanned every female face that passed, and
it seemed to me that all were handsome. I never saw such a freshet of
loveliness before. I do not see how a man of only ordinary decision of
character could marry here, because, before he could get his mind made
up he would fall in love with somebody else.
Never smoke any Italian tobacco. Never do it on any account. It makes
me shudder to think what it must be made of. You can not throw an old
cigar
Now, they surely must chew up those old stubs, and dry and sell them
for smoking-tobacco. Therefore, give your custom to other than Italian
brands of the article.
We have visited several of the palaces--immense thick-walled piles,
with great stone staircases, tesselated marble pavements on the floors,
(sometimes they make a mosaic work, of intricate designs, wrought in
pebbles, or little fragments of marble laid in cement,) and grand
salons hung with pictures by Rubens, Guido, Titian, Paul Veronese, and
so on, and portraits of heads of the family, in plumed helmets and
gallant coats of mail, and patrician ladies, in stunning costumes of
centuries ago. But, of course, the folks were all out in the country
for the summer, and might not have known enough to ask us to dinner if
they had been at home, and so all the grand empty salons, with their
resounding pavements, their grim pictures of dead ancestors, and
tattered banners with the dust of bygone centuries upon them, seemed to
brood solemnly of death and the grave, and our spirits ebbed away, and
our cheerfulness passed from us. We never went up to the eleventh story.
We always began to suspect ghosts. There was always an
undertaker-looking servant along, too, who handed us a programme,
pointed to the picture that began the list of the salon he was in, and
then stood stiff and stark and unsmiling in his petrified livery till
we were ready to move on to the next chamber, whereupon he marched
sadly ahead and took up another malignantly respectful position as
before. I wasted so much time praying that the roof would fall in on
these dispiriting flunkeys that I had but little left to bestow upon
palace and pictures.
And besides, as in Paris, we had a guide. Perdition catch all the
guides. This one said he was the most gifted linguist in Genoa, as far
as English was concerned, and that only two persons in the city beside
himself could talk the language at all. He showed us the birthplace of
Christopher Columbus, and after we had reflected in silent awe before
it for fifteen minutes, he said it was not the birthplace of Columbus,
but of Columbus's grandmother! When we demanded an explanation of his
conduct he only shrugged his shoulders and answered in barbarous
Italian. I shall speak further of this guide in a future chapter. All
the information we got out of him we shall be able to carry along with
us, I think.
I have not been to church so often in a long time as I have in the last
few weeks. The people in these old lands seem to make churches their
specialty. Especially does this seem to be the case with the citizens
of Genoa. I think there is a church every three or four hundred yards
all over town. The streets are sprinkled from end to end with
shovel-hatted, long-robed, well-fed priests, and the church bells by
dozens are pealing all the day long, nearly. Every now and then one
comes across a friar of orders gray, with shaven head, long, coarse
robe, rope girdle and beads, and with feet cased in sandals or entirely
bare. These worthies suffer in the flesh, and do penance all their
lives, I suppose, but they look like consummate famine-breeders. They
are all fat and serene.
The old Cathedral of San Lorenzo is about as notable a building as we
have found in Genoa. It is vast, and has colonnades of noble pillars,
and a great organ, and the customary pomp of gilded moldings, pictures,
frescoed ceilings, and so forth. I can not describe it, of course--it
would require a good many pages to do that. But it is a curious place.
They said that half of it--from the front door half way down to the
altar--was a Jewish Synagogue before the Saviour was born, and that no
alteration had been made in it since that time. We doubted the
statement, but did it reluctantly. We would much rather have believed
it. The place looked in too perfect repair to be so ancient.
The main point of interest about the Cathedral is the little Chapel of
St. John the Baptist. They only allow women to enter it on one day in
the year, on account of the animosity they still cherish against the
sex because of the murder of the Saint to gratify a caprice of Herodias.
In this Chapel is a marble chest, in which, they told us, were the
ashes of St. John; and around it was wound a chain, which, they said,
had confined him when he was in prison. We did not desire to disbelieve
these statements, and yet we could not feel certain that they were
correct--partly because we could have broken that chain, and so could
St. John, and partly because we had seen St. John's ashes before, in
another Church. We could not bring ourselves to think St. John had two
sets of ashes.
They also showed us a portrait of the Madonna which was painted by St.
Luke, and it did not look half as old and smoky as some of the pictures
by Rubens. We could not help admiring the Apostle's modesty in never
once mentioning in his writings that he could paint.
But isn't this relic matter a little overdone? We find a piece of the
true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that
held it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have
seen as much as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns;
they have part of one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one,
also, in Notre Dame. And as for bones of St. Denis, I feel certain we
have seen enough of them to duplicate him, if necessary.
I only meant to write about the churches, but I keep wandering from the
subject. I could say that the Church of the Annunciation is a
wilderness of beautiful columns, of statues, gilded moldings, and
pictures almost countless, but that would give no one an entirely
perfect idea of the thing, and so where is the use? One family built
the whole edifice, and have got money left. There is where the mystery
lies. We had an idea at first that only a mint could have survived the
expense.
These people here live in the heaviest, highest, broadest, darkest,
solidest houses one can imagine. Each one might
The huge palaces of Genoa are each supposed to be occupied by one
family, but they could accommodate a hundred, I should think. They are
relics of the grandeur of Genoa's palmy days--the days when she was a
great commercial and maritime power several centuries ago. These
houses, solid marble palaces though they be, are in many cases of a
dull pinkish color, outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured
with Genoese battle-scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids and with
familiar illustrations from Grecian mythology. Where the paint has
yielded to age and exposure and is peeling off in flakes and patches,
the effect is not happy. A noseless Cupid, or a Jupiter with an eye
out, or a Venus with a fly-blister on her breast, are not attractive
features in a picture. Some of these painted walls reminded me somewhat
of the tall van, plastered with fanciful bills and posters, that
follows the band-wagon of a circus about a country village. I have not
read or heard that the outsides of the houses of any other European
city are frescoed in this way.
I can not conceive of such a thing as Genoa in ruins. Such massive
arches, such ponderous substructions as support these towering
broad-winged edifices, we have seldom seen before; and surely the great
blocks of stone of which these edifices are built can never decay;
walls that are as thick as an ordinary American doorway is high, can
not crumble.
The Republics of Genoa and Pisa were very powerful in the middle ages.
Their ships filled the Mediterranean, and they carried on an extensive
commerce with Constantinople and Syria. Their warehouses were the great
distributing depots from whence the costly merchandise of the East was
sent abroad over Europe. They were warlike little nations, and defied,
in those days, governments that overshadow them now as mountains
overshadow molehills. The Saracens captured and pillaged Genoa nine
hundred years ago, but during the following century Genoa and Pisa
entered into an offensive and defensive alliance and besieged the
Saracen colonies in Sardinia and the Balearic Isles with an obstinacy
that maintained its pristine vigor and held to its purpose for forty
long years. They were victorious at last, and divided their conquests
equably among their great patrician families. Descendants of some of
those proud families still inhabit the palaces of Genoa, and trace in
their own features a resemblance to the grim knights whose portraits
hang in their stately halls, and to pictured beauties with pouting lips
and merry eyes whose originals have been dust and ashes for many a dead
and forgotten century.
The hotel we live in belonged to one of those great orders of knights
of the Cross in the times of the Crusades, and its mailed sentinels
once kept watch and ward in its massive turrets and woke the echoes of
these halls and corridors with their iron heels.
But Genoa's greatness has degenerated into an unostentatious commerce
in velvets and silver filagree work. They say that each European town
has its specialty. These filagree things are Genoa's specialty. Her
smiths take silver ingots and work them up into all manner of graceful
and beautiful forms. They make bunches of flowers, from flakes and
wires of silver, that counterfeit the delicate creations the frost
weaves upon a window pane; and we were shown a minature silver temple
whose fluted columns, whose Corinthian capitals and rich entablatures,
whose spire, statues, bells, and ornate lavishness of sculpture were
wrought in polished silver, and with such matchless art that every
detail was a fascinating study, and the finished edifice a wonder of
beauty.
We are ready to move again, though we are not really tired, yet, of the
narrow passages of this old marble cave. Cave is a good word--when
speaking of Genoa under the stars. When we have been prowling at
midnight through the gloomy crevices they call streets, where no foot
falls but ours were echoing, where only ourselves were abroad, and
lights appeared only at long intervals and at a distance, and
mysteriously disappeared again, and the houses at our elbows seemed to
stretch upward farther than ever toward the heavens, the memory of a
cave I used to know at home was always in my mind, with its lofty
passages, its silence and solitude, its shrouding gloom, its sepulchral
echoes, its flitting lights, and more than all, its sudden revelations
of branching crevices and corridors where we least expected them.
We are not tired of the endless processions of cheerful, chattering
gossipers that throng these courts and streets all day long, either;
nor of the coarse-robed monks; nor of the
Our last sight was the cemetery, (a burial-place intended to
accommodate 60,000 bodies,) and we shall continue to remember it after
we shall have forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble collonaded
corridor extending around a great unoccupied square of ground; its
broad floor is marble, and on every slab is an inscription--for every
slab covers a corpse. On either side, as one walks down the middle of
the passage, are monuments, tombs, and sculptured figures that are
exquisitely wrought and are full of grace and beauty. They are new, and
snowy; every outline is perfect, every feature guiltless of mutilation,
flaw or blemish; and therefore, to us these far-reaching ranks of
bewitching forms are a hundred fold more lovely than the damaged and
dingy statuary they have saved from the wreck of ancient art and set up
in the galleries of Paris for the worship of the world.
Well provided with cigars and other necessaries of life, we are now
ready to take the cars for Milan.@[te
Chapter XVIII
All day long we sped through a mountainous country whose peaks were
bright with sunshine, whose hillsides were dotted with pretty villas
sitting in the midst of gardens and shrubbery, and whose deep ravines
were cool and shady, and looked ever so inviting from where we and the
birds were winging our flight through the sultry upper air.
We had plenty of chilly tunnels wherein to check our perspiration,
though. We timed one of them. We were twenty minutes passing through
it, going at the rate of thirty to thirty-five miles an hour.
Beyond Alessandria we passed the battle-field of Marengo.
Toward dusk we drew near Milan, and caught glimpses of the city and the
blue mountain peaks beyond. But we were not caring for these
things--they did not interest us in the least. We were in a fever of
impatience; we were dying to see the renowned Cathedral! We watched--in
this direction and that--all around--every where. We needed no one to
point it out--we did not wish any one to point it out--we would
recognize it, even in the desert of the great Sahara.
At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the amber
sunlight, rose slowly above the pigmy house-tops, as one sometimes
sees, in the far horizon, a gilded and pinnacled mass of cloud lift
itself above the waste of waves, at sea,--the Cathedral! We knew it in
a moment.
Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural
autocrat was our sole object of interest.
What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate,
so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in
the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might
vanish with a breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its
wilderness of spires were cut against the sky, and how richly their
shadows fell upon its snowy roof! It was a vision!--a miracle!--an
anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in marble!
Howsoever you look at the great Cathedral, it is noble, it is
beautiful! Wherever you stand in Milan, or within seven miles of Milan,
it is visible--and when it is visible, no other object can chain your
whole attention. Leave your eyes unfettered by your will but a single
instant and they will surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you
look for when you rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze
rests upon at night. Surely, it must be the princeliest creation that
ever brain of man conceived.
At nine o'clock in the morning we went and stood before this marble
colossus. The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a
bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been
so ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living
creatures--and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex,
that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest. On the
great steeple--surmounting the myriad of spires--inside of the
spires--over the doors, the windows--in nooks and corners--every where
that a niche or a perch can be found about the enormous building, from
summit to base, there is a marble statue, and every statue is a study
in itself! Raphael, Angelo, Canova--giants like these gave birth to the
designs, and their own pupils carved them. Every face is eloquent with
expression, and every attitude is full of grace. Away above, on the
lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in
the air, and through their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond. In
their midst the central steeple towers proudly up like the mainmast of
some great Indiaman among a fleet of coasters.
We wished to go aloft. The sacristan showed us a marble stairway (of
course it was marble, and of the purest and whitest--there is no other
stone, no brick, no wood, among its building materials,) and told us to
go up one hundred and eighty-two steps and stop till he came. It was
not necessary to say stop--we should have done that any how. We were
tired by the time we got there. This was the roof. Here, springing from
its broad marble flagstones, were the long files of spires, looking
very tall close at hand, but diminishing in the distance like the pipes
of an organ. We could see, now, that the statue on the top of each was
the size of a large man, though they all looked like dolls from the
street. We could see, also, that from the inside of each and every one
of these hollow spires, from sixteen to thirty-one beautiful marble
statues looked out upon the world below.
From the eaves to the comb of the roof stretched in endless succession
great curved marble beams, like the fore-and-aft braces of a steamboat,
and along each beam from end to end stood up a row of richly carved
flowers and fruits--each separate and distinct in kind, and over 15,000
species represented. At a little distance these rows seem to close
together like the ties of a railroad track, and then the mingling
together of the buds and blossoms of this marble garden forms a picture
that is very charming to the eye.
We descended and entered. Within the church, long rows of fluted
columns, like huge monuments, divided the building into broad aisles,
and on the figured pavement fell many a soft blush from the painted
windows above. I knew the church was very large, but I could not fully
appreciate its great size until I noticed that the men standing far
down by the altar looked like boys, and seemed to glide, rather than
walk. We loitered about gazing aloft at the monster windows all aglow
with brilliantly colored scenes in the lives of the Saviour and his
followers. Some of these pictures are mosaics, and so artistically are
their thousand particles of tinted glass or stone put together that the
work has all the smoothness and finish of a painting. We counted sixty
panes of glass in one window, and each pane was adorned with one of
these master achievements of genius and patience.
The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture which he said
was considered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since it was not
possible that any other artist, of any epoch, could have copied nature
with such faultless accuracy. The figure was that of a man without a
skin; with every vein, artery, muscle, every fibre and tendon and
tissue of the human frame, represented in minute detail. It looked
natural, because somehow it looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man
would be likely to look that way, unless his attention were occupied
with some other matter. It was a hideous thing, and yet there was a
fascination about it some where. I am very sorry I saw it, because I
shall always see it, now. I shall dream of it, sometimes. I shall dream
that it is resting its corded arms on the bed's head and looking down
on me with its dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between
the sheets with me and touching me with its exposed muscles and its
stringy cold legs.
It is hard to forget repulsive things. I remember yet how I ran off
from school once, when I was a boy, and then, pretty late at night,
concluded to climb into the window of my father's office and sleep on a
lounge, because I had a delicacy about going home and getting thrashed.
As I lay on the lounge and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I
fancied I could see a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched upon the
floor. A cold shiver went through me. I turned my face to the wall.
That did not answer. I was afraid that that thing would creep over and
seize me in the dark. I turned back and stared at it for minutes and
minutes--they seemed hours. It appeared to me that the lagging
moonlight never, never would get to it. I turned to the wall and
counted twenty, to pass the feverish time away. I looked--the pale
square was nearer. I turned again and counted fifty--it was almost
touching it. With desperate will I turned again and counted one
hundred, and faced about, all in a tremble. A white human hand lay in
the moonlight! Such an awful sinking at the heart--such a sudden gasp
for breath! I felt--I can not tell what I felt. When I recovered
strength enough, I faced the wall again. But no boy could have remained
so, with that mysterious hand behind him. I counted again, and
looked--the most of a naked arm was exposed. I put my hands over my
eyes and counted till I could stand it no longer, and then--the pallid
face of a man was there, with the corners of the mouth drawn down, and
the eyes fixed and glassy in death! I raised to a sitting posture and
glowered on that corpse till the light crept down the bare
breast,--line by line--inch by inch--past the nipple,--and then it
disclosed a ghastly stab!
I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in any sort of a
hurry, but I simply went--that is sufficient. I went out at the window,
and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the sash, but it
was handier to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it.--I
was not scared, but I was considerably agitated.
When I reached home, they whipped me, but I enjoyed it. It seemed
perfectly delightful. That man had been stabbed near the office that
afternoon, and they carried him in there to doctor him, but he only
lived an hour. I have slept in the same room with him often, since
then--in my dreams.
Now we will descend into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan
Cathedral, and receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been
silent and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years.
The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle. This was
the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a
man whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the
faint-hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and
wherever he found it. His heart, his hand and his purse were always
open. With his story in one's mind he can almost see his benignant
countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days
when the plague swept the city, brave where all others were cowards,
full of compassion where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts
by the instinct of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering
all, praying with all, helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a
time when parents forsook their children, the friend deserted the
friend, and the brother turned away from the sister while her pleadings
were still wailing in his ears.
This was good St. Charles Borrom;aaeo, Bishop of Milan. The people
idolized him; princes lavished uncounted treasures upon him. We stood
in his tomb. Near by was the sarcophagus, lighted by the dripping
candles. The walls were faced with bas-reliefs representing scenes in
his life done in massive silver. The priest put on a short white lace
garment over his black robe, crossed himself, bowed reverently, and
began to turn a windlass slowly. The sarcophagus separated in two
parts, lengthwise, and the lower part sank down and disclosed a coffin
of rock crystal as clear as the atmosphere. Within lay the body, robed
in costly habiliments covered with gold embroidery and starred with
scintillating gems. The decaying head was black with age, the dry skin
was drawn tight to the bones, the eyes were gone, there was a hole in
the temple and another in the cheek, and the skinny lips were parted as
in a ghastly smile! Over this dreadful face, its dust and decay, and
its mocking grin, hung a crown sown thick with flashing brilliants; and
upon the breast lay crosses and croziers of solid gold that were
splendid with emeralds and diamonds.
How poor, and cheap, and trivial these gew-gaws seemed in presence of
the solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of Death! Think of
Milton, Shakspeare, Washington, standing before a reverent world
tricked out in the glass beads, the brass ear-rings and tin trumpery of
the savages of the plains!
Dead Bartolom;aaeo preached his pregnant sermon, and its burden was:
You that worship the vanities of earth--you that long for worldly
honor, worldly wealth, worldly fame--behold their worth!
To us it seemed that so good a man, so kind a heart, so simple a
nature, deserved rest and peace in a grave sacred from the intrusion of
prying eyes, and believed that he himself would have preferred to have
it so, but peradventure our wisdom was at fault in this regard.
As we came out upon the floor of the church again, another priest
volunteered to show us the treasures of the church. What, more? The
furniture of the narrow chamber of death we had just visited, weighed
six millions of francs in ounces and carats alone, without a penny
thrown into the account for the costly workmanship bestowed upon them!
But we followed into a large room filled with tall wooden presses like
wardrobes. He threw them open, and behold, the cargoes of
The priests showed us two of St. Paul's fingers, and one of St. Peter's;
a bone of Judas Iscariot, (it was black,) and also bones of all the
other disciples; a handkerchief in which the Saviour had left the
impression of his face. Among the most precious of the relics were a
stone from the Holy Sepulchre, part of the crown of thorns, (they have
a whole one at Notre Dame,) a fragment of the purple robe worn by the
Saviour, a nail from the Cross, and a picture of the Virgin and Child
painted by the veritable hand of St. Luke. This is the second of St.
Luke's Virgins we have seen. Once a year all these holy relics are
carried in procession through the streets of Milan.
I like to revel in the dryest details of the great cathedral. The
building is five hundred feet long by one hundred and eighty wide, and
the principal steeple is in the neighborhood of four hundred feet high.
It has 7,148 marble statues, and will have upwards of three thousand
more when it is finished. In addition, it has one thousand five hundred
bas-reliefs. It has one hundred and thirty-six spires--twenty-one more
are to be added. Each spire is surmounted by a statue six and a half
feet high. Every thing about the church is marble, and all from the
same quarry; it was bequeathed to the Archbishopric for this purpose
centuries ago. So nothing but the mere workmanship costs; still that is
expensive--the bill foots up six hundred and eighty-four millions of
francs, thus far (considerably over a hundred millions of dollars,) and
it is estimated that it will take a hundred and twenty years yet to
finish the cathedral. It looks complete, but is far from being so. We
saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday, alongside of one which had
been standing these four hundred years, they said. There are four
staircases leading up to the main steeple, each of which cost a hundred
thousand dollars, with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn
them. Marco Compioni was the architect who designed the wonderful
structure more than five hundred years ago, and it took him forty-six
years to work out the plan and get it ready to hand over to the
builders. He is dead now. The building was begun a little less than
five hundred years ago, and the third generation hence will not see it
completed.
The building looks best by moonlight, because the older portions of it
being stained with age, contrast unpleasantly with the newer and whiter
portions. It seems somewhat too broad for its height, but may be
familiarity with it might dissipate this impression.
They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter's at
Rome. I can not understand how it can be second to any thing made by
human hands.
We bid it good-bye, now--possibly for all time. How surely, in some
future day, when the memory of it shall have lost its vividness, shall
we half believe we have seen it in a wonderful dream, but never with
waking eyes!@[te
Chapter XIX
Do you wis zo haut can be?
That was what the guide asked, when we were looking up at the bronze
horses on the Arch of Peace. It meant, do you wish to go up there? I
give it as a specimen of guide-English. These are the people that make
life a burthen to the tourist. Their tongues are never still. They talk
forever and forever, and that is the kind of billingsgate they use.
Inspiration itself could hardly comprehend them. If they would only
show you a masterpiece of art, or a venerable tomb, or a prison-house,
or a battle-field, hallowed by touching memories or historical
reminiscences, or grand traditions, and then step aside and hold still
for ten minutes and let you think, it would not be so bad. But they
interrupt every dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their
tiresome cackling. Sometimes when I have been standing before some
cherished old idol of mine that I remembered years and years ago in
pictures in the geography at school, I have thought I would give a
whole world if the human parrot at my side would suddenly perish where
he stood and leave me to gaze, and ponder, and worship.
No, we did not
We wished to go to the Ambrosian Library, and we did that also. We saw
a manuscript of Virgil, with annotations in the handwriting of
Petrarch, the gentleman who loved another man's Laura, and lavished
upon her all through life a love which was a clear waste of the raw
material. It was sound sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought both
parties fame, and created a fountain of commiseration for them in
sentimental breasts that is running yet. But who says a word in behalf
of poor Mr. Laura? (I do not know his other name.) Who glorifies him?
Who bedews him with tears? Who writes poetry about him? Nobody. How do
you suppose he liked the state of things that has given the world so
much pleasure? How did he enjoy having another man following his wife
every where and making her name a familiar word in every
garlic-exterminating mouth in Italy with his sonnets to her pre-empted
eyebrows? They got fame and sympathy--he got neither. This is a
peculiarly felicitous instance of what is called poetical justice. It
is all very fine; but it does not chime with my notions of right. It is
too one-sided--too ungenerous. Let the world go on fretting about Laura
and Petrarch if it will; but as for me, my tears and my lamentations
shall be lavished upon the unsung defendant.
We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady for whom I
have always entertained the highest respect, on account of her rare
histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid gold goblets made of
gilded wood, her high distinction as an operatic screamer, and the
facility with which she could order a sextuple funeral and get the
corpses ready for it. We saw one single coarse yellow hair from
Lucrezia's head, likewise. It awoke emotions, but we still live. In
this same library we saw some drawings by Michael Angelo (these
Italians call him Mickel Angelo,) and Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it
Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they
pronounce.) We reserve our opinion of these sketches.
In another building they showed us a fresco representing some lions and
other beasts drawing chariots; and they seemed to project so far from
the wall that we took them to be sculptures. The artist had shrewdly
heightened the delusion by painting dust on the creatures' backs, as if
it had fallen there naturally and properly. Smart fellow--if it be
smart to deceive strangers.
Elsewhere we saw a huge Roman amphitheatre, with its stone seats still
in good preservation. Modernized, it is now the scene of more peaceful
recreations than the exhibition of a party of wild beasts with
Christians for dinner. Part of the time, the Milanese use it for a race
track, and at other seasons they flood it with water and have spirited
yachting regattas there. The guide told us these things, and he would
hardly try so hazardous an experiment as the telling of a falsehood,
when it is all he can do to speak the truth in English without getting
the lock-jaw.
In another place we were shown a sort of summer arbor, with a fence
before it. We said that was nothing. We looked again, and saw, through
the arbor, an endless stretch of garden, and shrubbery, and grassy lawn.
We were perfectly willing to go in there and rest, but it could not be
done. It was only another delusion--a painting by some ingenious artist
with little charity in his heart for tired folk. The deception was
perfect. No one could have imagined the park was not real. We even
thought we smelled the flowers at first.
We got a carriage at twilight and drove in the shaded avenues with the
other nobility, and after dinner we took wine and ices in a fine garden
with the great public. The music was excellent, the flowers and
shrubbery were pleasant to the eye, the scene was vivacious, every body
was genteel and well-behaved, and the ladies were slightly moustached,
and handsomely dressed, but very homely.
We adjourned to a caf;aae and played billiards an hour, and I made six
or seven points by the doctor pocketing his ball, and he made as many
by my pocketing my ball. We came near making a carom sometimes, but not
the one we were trying to make. The table was of the usual European
style--cushions dead and twice as high as the balls; the cues in bad
repair. The natives play only a sort of pool on them. We have never
seen any body playing the French three-ball game yet, and I doubt if
there is any such game known in France, or that there lives any man mad
enough to try to play it on one of these European tables. We had to
stop playing, finally, because Dan got to sleeping fifteen minutes
between the counts and paying no attention to his marking.
Afterward we walked up and down one of the most popular streets for
some time, enjoying other people's comfort and wishing we could export
some of it to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts at home.
Just in this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe--comfort.
In America, we hurry--which is well; but when the day's work is done,
we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even
carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them
when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep.
We burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or
drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a
man's prime in Europe. When an acre of ground has produced long and
well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear
across the continent in the same coach he started in--the coach is
stabled somewhere on the plains and its heated machinery allowed to
cool for a few days; when a razor has seen long service and refuses to
hold an edge, the barber lays it away for a few weeks, and the edge
comes back of its own accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate
objects, but none upon ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation
of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf
occasionally and renew our edges!
I do envy these Europeans the comfort they take. When the work of the
day is done, they forget it. Some of them go, with wife and children,
to a beer hall, and sit quietly and genteelly drinking a mug or two of
ale and listening to music; others walk the streets, others drive in
the avenues; others assemble in the great ornamental squares in the
early evening to enjoy the sight and the fragrance of flowers and to
hear the military bands play--no European city being without its fine
military music at eventide; and yet others of the populace sit in the
open air in front of the refreshment houses and eat ices and drink mild
beverages that could not harm a child. They go to bed moderately early,
and sleep well. They are always quiet, always orderly, always cheerful,
comfortable, and appreciative of life and its manifold blessings. One
never sees a drunken man among them. The change that has come over our
little party is surprising. Day by day we lose some of our restlessness
and absorb some of the spirit of quietude and ease that is in the
tranquil atmosphere about us and in the demeanor of the people. We grow
wise apace. We begin to comprehend what life is for.
We have had a bath in Milan, in a public bath-house. They were going to
put all three of us in one bath-tub, but we objected. Each of us had an
Italian farm on his back. We could have felt affluent if we had been
officially surveyed and fenced in. We chose to have three bath-tubs,
and large ones--tubs suited to the dignity of aristocrats who had real
estate, and brought it with them. After we were stripped and had taken
the first chilly dash, we discovered that haunting atrocity that has
embittered our lives in so many cities and villages of Italy and
France--there was no soap. I called. A woman answered, and I barely had
time to throw myself against the door--she would have been in, in
another second. I said:
These words must have frightened her, for she skurried away very fast.
Dan's voice rose on the air:
The reply was Italian. Dan resumed:
I heard the doctor say, impressively:
Even this fluent discharge of Italian did not bring the soap at once,
but there was a good reason for it. There was not such an article about
the establishment. It is my belief that there never had been. They had
to send far up town, and to several different places before they
finally got it, so they said. We had to wait twenty or thirty minutes.
The same thing had occurred the evening before, at the hotel. I think I
have divined the reason for this state of things at last. The English
know how to travel comfortably, and they carry soap with them; other
foreigners do not use the article.
At every hotel we stop at we always have to send out for soap, at the
last moment, when we are grooming ourselves for dinner, and they put it
in the bill along with the candles and other nonsense. In Marseilles
they make half the fancy toilet soap we consume in America, but the
Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they
have obtained from books of travel, just as they have acquired an
uncertain notion of clean shirts, and the peculiarities of the gorilla,
and other curious matters. This reminds me of poor Blucher's note to
the landlord in Paris:
Blucher.
I remonstrated against the sending of this note, because it was so
mixed up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of
it; but Blucher said he guessed the old man could read the French of it
and average the rest.
Blucher's French is bad enough, but it is not much worse than the
English one finds in advertisements all over Italy every day. For
instance, observe the printed card of the hotel we shall probably stop
at on the shores of Lake Como:
How is that, for a specimen? In the hotel is a handsome little chapel
where an English clergyman is employed to preach to such of the guests
of the house as hail from England and America, and this fact is also
set forth in barbarous English in the same advertisement. Wouldn't you
have supposed that the adventurous linguist who framed the card would
have known enough to submit it to that clergyman before he sent it to
the printer?
Here, in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church, is the
mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the world--
We left milan by rail. The Cathedral six or seven miles behind
us--vast, dreamy, blueish snow-clad mountains twenty miles in front of
us,--these were the accented points in the scenery. The more immediate
scenery consisted of fields and farm-houses outside the car and a
monster-headed dwarf and a moustached woman inside it. These latter
were not show-people. Alas, deformity and female beards are too common
in Italy to attract attention.
We passed through a range of wild, picturesque hills, steep, wooded,
cone-shaped, with rugged crags projecting here and there, and with
dwellings and ruinous castles perched away up toward the drifting
clouds. We lunched at the curious old town of Como, at the foot of the
lake, and then took the small steamer and had an afternoon's pleasure
excursion to this place,--Bellaggio.
When we walked ashore, a party of policemen (people whose cocked hats
and showy uniforms would shame the finest uniform in the military
service of the United States,) put us into a little stone cell and
locked us in. We had the whole passenger list for company, but their
room would have been preferable, for there was no light, there were no
windows, no ventilation. It was close and hot. We were much crowded. It
was the Black Hole of Calcutta on a small scale. Presently a smoke rose
about our feet--a smoke that smelt of all the dead things of earth, of
all the putrefaction and corruption imaginable.
We were there five minutes, and when we got out it was hard to tell
which of us carried the vilest fragrance.
These miserable outcasts called that
Our hotel sits at the water's edge--at least its front garden does--and
we walk among the shrubbery and smoke at twilight; we look afar off at
Switzerland and the Alps, and feel an indolent willingness to look no
closer; we go down the steps and swim in the lake; we take a shapely
little boat and sail abroad among the reflections of the stars; lie on
the thwarts and listen to the distant laughter, the singing, the soft
melody of flutes and guitars that comes floating across the water from
pleasuring gondolas; we close the evening with exasperating billiards
on one of those same old execrable tables. A midnight luncheon in our
ample bed-chamber; a final smoke in its contracted veranda facing the
water, the gardens and the mountains; a summing up of the day's events.
Then to bed, with drowsy brains harassed with a mad panorama that mixes
up pictures of France, of Italy, of the ship, of the ocean, of home, in
grotesque and bewildering disorder. Then a melting away of familiar
faces, of cities and of tossing waves, into a great calm of
forgetfulness and peace.
After which, the nightmare.
Breakfast in the morning, and then the Lake.
I did not like it yesterday. I thought Lake Tahoe was much finer. I
have to confess now, however, that my judgment erred somewhat, though
not extravagantly. I always had an idea that Como was a vast basin of
water, like Tahoe, shut in by great mountains. Well, the border of huge
mountains is here, but the lake itself is not a basin. It is as crooked
as any brook, and only from one-quarter to two-thirds as wide as the
Mississippi. There is not a yard of low ground on either side of
it--nothing but endless chains of mountains that spring abruptly from
the water's edge, and tower to altitudes varying from a thousand to two
thousand feet. Their craggy sides are clothed with vegetation, and
white specks of houses peep out from the luxuriant foliage every where;
they are even perched upon jutting and picturesque pinnacles a thousand
feet above your head.
Again, for miles along the shores, handsome country seats, surrounded
by gardens and groves, sit fairly in the water, sometimes in nooks
carved by Nature out of the vine-hung precipices, and with no ingress
or egress save by boats. Some have great broad stone staircases leading
down to the water, with heavy stone balustrades ornamented with
statuary and fancifully adorned with creeping vines and bright-colored
flowers--for all the world like a drop-curtain in a theatre, and
lacking nothing but long-waisted, high-heeled women and plumed gallants
in silken tights coming down to go serenading in the splendid gondola
in waiting.
A great feature of Como's attractiveness is the multitude of pretty
houses and gardens that cluster upon its shores and on its mountain
sides. They look so snug and so homelike, and at eventide when every
thing seems to slumber, and the music of the vesper bells comes
stealing over the water, one almost believes that nowhere else than on
the Lake of Como can there be found such a paradise of tranquil repose.
From my window here in Bellaggio, I have a view of the other side of
the lake now, which is as beautiful as a picture. A scarred and
wrinkled precipice rises to a height of eighteen hundred feet; on a
tiny bench half way up its vast wall, sits a little snow-flake of a
church, no bigger than a martin-box, apparently; skirting the base of
the cliff are a hundred orange groves and gardens, flecked with
glimpses of the white dwellings that are buried in them; in front,
three or four gondolas lie idle upon the water--and in the burnished
mirror of the lake, mountain, chapel, houses, groves and boats are
counterfeited so brightly and so clearly that one scarce knows where
the reality leaves off and the reflection begins!
The surroundings of this picture are fine. A mile away, a grove-plumed
promontory juts far into the lake and glasses its palace in the blue
depths; in midstream a boat is cutting the shining surface and leaving
a long track behind, like a ray of light; the mountains beyond are
veiled in a dreamy purple haze; far in the opposite direction a tumbled
mass of domes and verdant slopes and valleys bars the lake, and here
indeed does distance lend enchantment to the view--for on this broad
canvas, sun and clouds and the richest of atmospheres have blended a
thousand tints together, and over its surface the filmy lights and
shadows drift, hour after hour, and glorify it with a beauty that seems
reflected out of Heaven itself. Beyond all question, this is the most
voluptuous scene we have yet looked upon.
Last night the scenery was striking and picturesque. On the other side
crags and trees and snowy houses were reflected in the lake with a
wonderful distinctness, and streams of light from many a distant window
shot far abroad over the still waters. On this side, near at hand,
great mansions, white with moonlight, glared out from the midst of
masses of foliage that lay black and shapeless in the shadows that fell
from the cliff above--and down in the margin of the lake every feature
of the weird vision was faithfully repeated.
To-day we have idled through a wonder of a garden attached to a ducal
estate--but enough of description is enough, I judge. I suspect that
this was the same place the gardener's son deceived the Lady of Lyons
with, but I do not know. You may have heard of the passage somewhere:
Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world,
Near a clear lake margined by fruits of gold
And whispering myrtles:
Glassing softest skies, cloudless,
Save with rare and roseate shadows;
A palace, lifting to eternal heaven its marbled walls,
From out a glossy bower of coolest foliage musical with birds.
W[cme voyaged by steamer down the Lago di Lecco, through wild mountain
scenery, and by hamlets and villas, and disembarked at the town of
Lecco. They said it was two hours, by carriage to the ancient city of
Bergamo, and that we would arrive there in good season for the railway
train. We got an open barouche and a wild, boisterous driver, and set
out. It was delightful. We had a fast team and a perfectly smooth road.
There were towering cliffs on our left, and the pretty Lago di Lecco on
our right, and every now and then it rained on us. Just before
starting, the driver picked up, in the street, a stump of a cigar an
inch long, and put it in his mouth. When he had carried it thus about
an hour, I thought it would be only Christian charity to give him a
light. I handed him my cigar, which I had just lit, and he put it in
his mouth and returned his stump to his pocket! I never saw a more
sociable man. At least I never saw a man who was more sociable on a
short acquaintance.
We saw interior Italy, now. The houses were of solid stone, and not
often in good repair. The peasants and their children were idle, as a
general thing, and the donkeys and chickens made themselves at home in
drawing-room and bed-chamber and were not molested. The drivers of each
and every one of the slow-moving market-carts we met were stretched in
the sun upon their merchandise, sound asleep. Every three or four
hundred yards, it seemed to me, we came upon the shrine of some saint
or other--a rude picture of him built into a huge cross or a stone
pillar by the road-side.--Some of the pictures of the Saviour were
curiosities in their way.[[[[[[[ They represented him stretched upon
the cross, his countenance distorted with agony. From the wounds of the
crown of thorns; from the pierced side; from the mutilated hands and
feet; from the scourged body--from every hand-breadth of his person
streams of blood were flowing! Such a gory, ghastly spectacle would
frighten the children out of their[[[[[[[ senses, I should think. There
were some unique auxiliaries to the painting which added to its
spirited effect. These were genuine wooden and iron implements, and
were prominently disposed round about the figure: a bundle of nails;
the hammer to drive them; the sponge; the reed that supported it; the
cup of vinegar; the ladder for the ascent of the cross; the spear that
pierced the Saviour's side. The crown of thorns was made of real
thorns, and was nailed to the sacred head. In some Italian
church-paintings, even by the old masters, the Saviour and the Virgin
wear silver or gilded crowns that are fastened to the pictured head
with nails. The effect is as grotesque as it is incongruous.
Here and there, on the fronts of roadside inns, we found huge, coarse
frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the shrines. It could not
have diminished their sufferings any to be so uncouthly represented. We
were in the heart and home of priestcraft--of a happy, cheerful,
contented ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and
everlasting unaspiring worthlessness. And we said fervently, It suits
these people precisely; let them enjoy it, along with the other
animals, and Heaven forbid that they be molested. We feel no malice
toward these fumigators.
We passed through the strangest, funniest, undreampt-of old towns,
wedded to the customs and steeped in the dreams of the elder ages, and
perfectly unaware that the world turns round! And perfectly
indifferent, too, as to whether it turns around or stands still. They
have nothing to do but eat and sleep and sleep and eat, and toil a
little when they can get a friend to stand by and keep them awake. They
are not paid for thinking--they are not paid to fret about the
world's[[[[[[[ concerns. They were not respectable people--they
were[[[[[[[ not worthy people--they were not learned and wise and
brilliant people--but in their breasts, all their stupid lives long,
resteth a peace that passeth understanding! How can men, calling
themselves men, consent to be so degraded and happy?
We whisked by many a gray old medieval castle, clad thick with ivy that
swung its green banners down from towers and turrets where once some
old Crusader's flag had floated. The driver pointed to one of these
ancient fortresses, and said, (I translate):
We said we could not see it at such a distance, but had no doubt it was
there.
the legend.
Well, then, all the world, at that time, was in a wild excitement about
the Holy Sepulchre. All the great feudal lords in Europe were pledging
their lands and pawning their plate to fit out men-at-arms so that they
might join the grand armies of Christendom and win renown in the Holy
Wars. The Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild
September morning, armed with battle-ax, portcullis and thundering
culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep
with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy.
He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her
young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and
buttresses of the fortress, and he galloped away with a happy heart.
He made a raid on a neighboring baron and completed his outfit with the
booty secured. He then razed the castle to the ground, massacred the
family and moved on. They were hardy fellows in the grand old days of
chivalry. Alas! those days will never come again.
Count Luigi grew high in fame in Holy Land. He plunged into the carnage
of a hundred battles, but his good Excalibur always brought him out
alive, albeit often sorely wounded. His face became browned by exposure
to the Syrian sun in long marches; he suffered hunger and thirst; he
pined in prisons, he languished in loathsome plague-hospitals. And many
and many a time he thought of his loved ones at home, and wondered if
all was well with them. But his heart said, Peace, is not thy brother
watching over thy household?
*__*__*__*__*__*__*
_Forty-two years waxed and waned; the good fight was won; Godfrey
reigned in Jerusalem--the Christian hosts reared the banner of the
cross above the Holy Sepulchre!
Twilight was approaching. Fifty harlequins, in flowing robes,
approached this castle wearily, for they were on foot, and the dust
upon their garments betokened that they had traveled far. They overtook
a peasant, and asked him if it were likely they could get food and a
hospitable bed there, for love of Christian charity, and if perchance,
a moral parlor entertainment might meet with generous countenance--
But heedless of the peasant's warning, the players moved straightway
toward the castle.
Word was brought to Count Leonardo that a company of mountebanks
besought his hospitality.
The robed and close-cowled harlequins entered. The grim Leonardo sate
in state at the head of his council board. Ranged up and down the hall
on either hand stood near a hundred men-at-arms.
The dame sprang toward the chief player.
She flung herself at his feet and clasped his knees.
Quicker than thought, quicker than the lightning's flash, fifty monkish
habits disappeared, and fifty knights in splendid armor stood revealed!
fifty falchions gleamed in air above the men-at-arms, and brighter,
fiercer than them all, flamed Excalibur aloft, and cleaving downward
struck the brutal Leo-[[[[[[[nardo's weapon from his grasp!
Count Luigi bound his usurping brother hand and foot. The practiced
knights from Palestine made holyday sport of carving the awkward
men-at-arms into chops and steaks. The victory was complete. Happiness
reigned. The knights all married the daughter. Joy! wassail! finis!
We reached the quaint old fortified city of Bergamo, the renowned in
history, some three-quarters of an hour before the train was ready to
start. The place has thirty or forty thousand inhabitants and is
remarkable for being the birthplace of harlequin. When we discovered
that, that legend of our driver took to itself a new interest in our
eyes.
Rested and refreshed, we took the rail happy and contented. I shall not
tarry to speak of the handsome Lago di Gardi; its stately castle that
holds in its stony bosom the secrets of an age so remote that even
tradition goeth not back to it; the imposing mountain scenery that
ennobles the landscape thereabouts; nor yet of ancient Padua or haughty
Verona; nor of their Montagues and Capulets, their famous balconies and
tombs of Juliet and Romeo et al., but hurry straight to the ancient
city of the sea, the widowed bride of the Adriatic. It was a long, long
ride. But toward evening, as we sat silent and hardly conscious of
where we were--subdued into that meditative calm that comes so surely
after a conversational storm--some one shouted--
And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great
city, with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist
of sunset.@[te
Chapter XXII
This venice, which was a haughty, invincible, magnificent Republic for
nearly fourteen hundred years; whose armies compelled the world's
applause whenever and wherever they battled; whose navies well nigh
held dominion of the seas, and whose merchant fleets whitened the
remotest oceans with their sails and loaded these piers with the
products of every clime, is fallen a prey to poverty, neglect and
melancholy decay. Six hundred years ago, Venice was the Autocrat of
Commerce; her mart was the great commercial centre, the
distributing-house from whence the enormous trade of the Orient was
spread abroad over the Western world. To-day her piers are deserted,
her warehouses are empty, her merchant fleets are vanished, her armies
and her navies are but memories. Her glory is departed, and with her
crumbling grandeur of wharves and palaces about her she sits among her
stagnant lagoons, forlorn and beggared, forgotten of the world. She
that in her palmy days commanded the commerce of a hemisphere and made
the weal or woe of nations with a beck of her puissant finger, is
become the humblest among the peoples of the earth,--a peddler of glass
beads for women, and trifling toys and trinkets for school-girls and
children.
The venerable Mother of the Republics is scarce a fit subject for
flippant speech or the idle gossipping of tourists. It seems a sort of
sacrilege to disturb the glamour of old romance that pictures her to us
softly from afar off as through a tinted mist, and curtains her ruin
and her desolation from our view. One ought, indeed, to turn away from
her rags, her poverty and her humiliation, and think of her only as she
was when she sunk the fleets of Charlemagne; when she humbled Frederick
Barbarossa or waved her victorious banners above the battlements of
Constantinople.
We reached Venice at eight in the evening, and entered a hearse
belonging to the Grand Hotel d'Europe. At any rate, it was more like a
hearse than any thing else, though to speak by the card, it was a
gondola. And this was the storied gondola of Venice!--the fairy boat in
which the princely cavaliers of the olden time were wont to cleave the
waters of the moonlit canals and look the eloquence of love into the
soft eyes of patrician beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken
doublet touched his guitar and sang as only gondoliers can sing! This
the famed gondola and this the gorgeous gondolier!--the one an inky,
rusty old canoe with a sable hearse-body clapped on to the middle of
it, and the other a mangy, barefooted guttersnipe with a portion of his
raiment on exhibition which should have been sacred from public
scrutiny. Presently, as he turned a corner and shot his hearse into a
dismal ditch between two long rows of towering, untenanted buildings,
the gay gondolier began to sing, true to the traditions of his race. I
stood it a little while. Then I said:
I began to feel that the old Venice of song and story had departed
forever. But I was too hasty. In a few minutes we swept gracefully out
into the Grand Canal, and under the mellow moonlight the Venice of
poetry and romance stood revealed. Right from the water's edge rose
long lines of stately palaces of marble; gondolas were gliding swiftly
hither and thither and disappearing suddenly through unsuspected gates
and alleys; ponderous stone bridges threw their shadows athwart the
glittering waves. There was life and motion everywhere, and yet
everywhere there was a hush, a stealthy sort of stillness, that was
suggestive of secret enterprises of bravoes and of lovers; and clad
half in moonbeams and half in mysterious shadows, the grim old mansions
of the Republic seemed to have an expression about them of having an
eye out for just such enterprises as these at that same moment. Music
came floating over the waters--Venice was complete.
It was a beautiful picture--very soft and dreamy and beautiful. But
what was this Venice to compare with the Venice of midnight? Nothing.
There was a f;afete--a grand f;afete in honor of some saint who had
been instrumental in checking the cholera three hundred years ago, and
all Venice was abroad on the water. It was no common affair, for the
Venetians did not know how soon they might need the saint's services
again, now that the cholera was spreading every where. So in one vast
space--say a third of a mile wide and two miles long--were collected
two thousand gondolas, and every one of them had from two to ten,
twenty and even thirty colored lanterns suspended about it, and from
four to a dozen occupants. Just as far as the eye could reach, these
painted lights were massed together--like a vast garden of many-colored
flowers, except that these blossoms were never still; they were
ceaselessly gliding in and out, and mingling together, and seducing you
into bewildering attempts to follow their mazy evolutions. Here and
there a strong red, green, or blue glare from a rocket that was
struggling to get away, splendidly illuminated all the boats around it.
Every gondola that swam by us, with its crescents and pyramids and
circles of colored lamps hung aloft, and lighting up the faces of the
young and the sweet-scented and lovely below, was a picture; and the
reflections of those lights, so long, so slender, so numberless, so
many-colored and so distorted and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture
likewise, and one that was enchantingly beautiful. Many and many a
party of young ladies and gentlemen had their state gondolas handsomely
decorated, and ate supper on board, bringing their swallow-tailed,
white-cravatted varlets to wait upon them, and having their tables
tricked out as if for a bridal supper. They had brought along the
costly globe lamps from their drawing-rooms, and the lace and silken
curtains from the same places, I suppose. And they had also brought
pianos and guitars, and they played and sang operas, while the plebeian
paper-lanterned gondolas from the suburbs and the back alleys crowded
around to stare and listen.
There was music every where--chorusses, string bands, brass bands,
flutes, every thing. I was so surrounded, walled in, with music,
magnificence and loveliness, that I became inspired with the spirit of
the scene, and sang one tune myself. However, when I observed that the
other gondolas had sailed away, and my gondolier was preparing to go
overboard, I stopped.
The f;afete was magnificent. They kept it up the whole night long, and
I never enjoyed myself better than I did while it lasted.
What a funny old city this Queen of the Adriatic is! Narrow streets,
vast, gloomy marble palaces, black with the corroding damps of
centuries, and all partly submerged; no dry land visible any where, and
no sidewalks worth mentioning; if you want to go to church, to the
theatre, or to the restaurant, you must call a gondola. It must be a
paradise for cripples, for verily a man has no use for legs here.
For a day or two the place looked so like an overflowed Arkansas town,
because of its currentless waters laving the very doorsteps of all the
houses, and the cluster of boats made fast under the windows, or
skimming in and out of the alleys and by-ways, that I could not get rid
of the impression that there was nothing the matter here but a spring
freshet, and that the river would fall in a few weeks and leave a dirty
high-water mark on the houses, and the streets full of mud and rubbish.
In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under the
charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered
sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once
more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago. It is
easy, then, in fancy, to people these silent canals with plumed
gallants and fair ladies--with Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals,
venturing loans upon the rich argosies of Venetian commerce--with
Othellos and Desdemonas, with Iagos and Roderigos--with noble fleets
and victorious legions returning from the wars. In the treacherous
sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and
commerceless--forgotten and utterly insignificant. But in the
moonlight, her fourteen centuries of greatness fling their glories
about her, and once more is she the princeliest among the nations of
the earth.
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt-sea weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.
No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,
Lead to her gates! The path lies o'er the sea,
Invisible: and from the land we went,
As to a floating city--steering in,
And gliding up her streets, as in a dream,
So smoothly, silently--by many a dome,
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statues ranged along an azure sky;
By many a pile, in more than Eastern pride,
Of old the residence of merchant kings;
The fronts of some, tho' time had shatter'd them,
Still glowing with the richest hues of art,
As tho' the wealth within them had run o'er.
What would one naturally wish to see first in Venice? The Bridge of
Sighs, of course--and next the Church and the Great Square of St. Mark,
the Bronze Horses, and the famous Lion of St. Mark.
We intended to go to the Bridge of Sighs, but happened into the Ducal
Palace first--a building which necessarily figures largely in Venetian
poetry and tradition. In the Senate Chamber of the ancient Republic we
wearied our eyes with staring at acres of historical paintings by
Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, but nothing struck us forcibly except the
one thing that strikes all strangers forcibly--a black square in the
midst of a gallery of portraits. In one long row, around the great
hall, were painted the portraits of the Doges of Venice (venerable
fellows, with flowing white beards, for of the three hundred Senators
eligible to the office, the oldest was usually chosen Doge,) and each
had its complimentary inscription attached--till you came to the place
that should have had Marino Faliero's picture in it, and that was blank
and black--blank, except that it bore a terse inscription, saying that
the conspirator had died for his crime. It seemed cruel to keep that
pitiless inscription still staring from the walls after the unhappy
wretch had been in his grave five hundred years.
At the head of the Giant's Staircase, where Marino Faliero was
beheaded, and where the Doges were crowned in ancient times, two small
slits in the stone wall were pointed out--two harmless, insignificant
orifices that would never attract a stranger's attention--yet these
were the terrible Lions' Mouths! The heads were gone (knocked off by
the French during their occupation of Venice,) but these were the
throats, down which went the anonymous accusation, thrust in secretly
at dead of night by an enemy, that doomed many an innocent man to walk
the Bridge of Sighs and descend into the dungeon which none entered and
hoped to see the sun again. This was in the old days when the
Patricians alone governed Venice--the common herd had no vote and no
voice. There were one thousand five hundred Patricians; from these,
three hundred Senators were chosen; from the Senators a Doge and a
Council of Ten were selected, and by secret ballot the Ten chose from
their own number a Council of Three. All these were Government spies,
then, and every spy was under surveillance himself--men spoke in
whispers in Venice, and no man trusted his neighbor--not always his own
brother. No man knew who the Council of Three were--not even the
Senate, not even the Doge; the members of that dread tribunal met at
night in a chamber to themselves, masked, and robed from head to foot
in scarlet cloaks, and did not even know each other, unless by voice.
It was their duty to judge heinous political crimes, and from their
sentence there was no appeal. A nod to the executioner was sufficient.
The doomed man was marched down a hall and out at a door-way into the
covered Bridge of Sighs, through it and into the dungeon and unto his
death. At no time in his transit was he visible to any save his
conductor. If a man had an enemy in those old days, the cleverest thing
he could do was to slip a note for the Council of Three into the Lion's
mouth, saying
We walked through the hall of the Council of Ten, and presently entered
the infernal den of the Council of Three.
The table around which they had sat was there still, and likewise the
stations where the masked inquisitors and executioners formerly stood,
frozen, upright and silent, till they received a bloody order, and
then, without a word, moved off, like the inexorable machines they
were, to carry it out. The frescoes on the walls were startlingly
suited to the place. In all the other saloons, the halls, the great
state chambers of the palace, the walls and ceilings were bright with
gilding, rich with elaborate carving, and resplendent with gallant
pictures of Venetian victories in war, and Venetian display in foreign
courts, and hallowed with portraits of the Virgin, the Savior of men,
and the holy saints that preached the Gospel of Peace upon earth--but
here, in dismal contrast, were none but pictures of death and dreadful
suffering!--not a living figure but was writhing in torture, not a dead
one but was smeared with blood, gashed with wounds, and distorted with
the agonies that had taken away its life!
From the palace to the gloomy prison is but a step--one might almost
jump across the narrow canal that intervenes. The ponderous stone
Bridge of Sighs crosses it at the second story--a bridge that is a
covered tunnel--you can not be seen when you walk in it. It is
partitioned lengthwise, and through one compartment walked such as bore
light sentences in ancient times, and through the other marched sadly
the wretches whom the Three had doomed to lingering misery and utter
oblivion in the dungeons, or to sudden and mysterious death. Down below
the level of the water, by the light of smoking torches, we were shown
the damp, thick-walled cells where many a proud patrician's life was
eaten away by the long-drawn miseries of solitary imprisonment--without
light, air, books; naked, unshaven, uncombed, covered with vermin; his
useless tongue forgetting its office, with none to speak to; the days
and nights of his life no longer marked, but merged into one eternal
eventless night; far away from all cheerful sounds, buried in the
silence of a tomb; forgotten by his helpless friends, and his fate a
dark mystery to them forever; losing his own memory at last, and
knowing no more who he was or how he came there; devouring the loaf of
bread and drinking the water that were thrust into the cell by unseen
hands, and troubling his worn spirit no more with hopes and fears and
doubts and longings to be free; ceasing to scratch vain prayers and
complainings on walls where none, not even himself, could see them, and
resigning himself to hopeless apathy, driveling childishness, lunacy!
Many and many a sorrowful story like this these stony walls could tell
if they could but speak.
In a little narrow corridor, near by, they showed us where many a
prisoner, after lying in the dungeons until he was forgotten by all
save his persecutors, was brought by masked executioners and garroted,
or sewed up in a sack, passed through a little window to a boat, at
dead of night, and taken to some remote spot and drowned.
They used to show to visitors the implements of torture wherewith the
Three were wont to worm secrets out of the accused--villainous machines
for crushing thumbs; the stocks where a prisoner sat immovable while
water fell drop by drop upon his head till the torture was more than
humanity could bear; and a devilish contrivance of steel, which
inclosed a prisoner's head like a shell, and crushed it slowly by means
of a screw. It bore the stains of blood that had trickled through its
joints long ago, and on one side it had a projection whereon the
torturer rested his elbow comfortably and bent down his ear to catch
the moanings of the sufferer perishing within.
Of course we went to see the venerable relic of the ancient glory of
Venice, with its pavements worn and broken by the passing feet of a
thousand years of plebeians and patricians--The Cathedral of St. Mark.
It is built entirely of precious marbles, brought from the
Orient--nothing in its composition is domestic. Its hoary traditions
make it an object of absorbing interest to even the most careless
stranger, and thus far it had interest for me; but no further. I could
not go into ecstacies over its coarse mosaics, its unlovely Byzantine
architecture, or its five hundred curious interior columns from as many
distant quarries. Every thing was worn out--every block of stone was
smooth and almost shapeless with the polishing hands and shoulders of
loungers who devoutly idled here in by-gone centuries and have died and
gone to the dev--no, simply died, I mean.
Under the altar repose the ashes of St. Mark--and Matthew, Luke and
John, too, for all I know. Venice reveres those relics above all things
earthly. For fourteen hundred years St. Mark has been her patron saint.
Every thing about the city seems to be named after him or so named as
to refer to him in some way--so named, or some purchase rigged in some
way to scrape a sort of hurrahing acquaintance with him. That seems to
be the idea. To be on good terms with St. Mark, seems to be the very
summit of Venetian ambition. They say St. Mark had a tame lion, and
used to travel with him--and every where that St. Mark went, the lion
was sure to go. It was his protector, his friend, hic librarian. And so
the Winged Lion of St. Mark, with the open Bible under his paw, is a
favorite emblem in the grand old city. It casts its shadow from the
most ancient pillar in Venice, in the Grand Square of St. Mark, upon
the throngs of free citizens below, and has so done for many a long
century. The winged lion is found every where--and doubtless here,
where the winged lion is, no harm can come.
St. Mark died at Alexandria, in Egypt. He was martyred, I think.
However, that has nothing to do with my legend. About the founding of
the city of Venice--say four hundred and fifty years after Christ--(for
Venice is much younger than any other Italian city,) a priest dreamed
that an angel told him that until the remains of St. Mark were brought
to Venice, the city could never rise to high distinction among the
nations; that the body must be captured, brought to the city, and a
magnificent church built over it; and that if ever the Venetians
allowed the Saint to be removed from his new resting-place, in that day
Venice would perish from off the face of the earth. The priest
proclaimed his dream, and forthwith Venice set about procuring the
corpse of St. Mark. One expedition after another tried and failed, but
the project was never abandoned during four hundred years. At last it
was secured by stratagem, in the year eight hundred and something. The
commander of a Venetian expedition disguised himself, stole the bones,
separated them, and packed them in vessels filled with lard. The
religion of Mahomet causes its devotees to abhor anything that is in
the nature of pork, and so when the Christian was stopped by the
officers at the gates of the city, they only glanced once into his
precious baskets, then turned up their noses at the unholy lard, and
let him go. The bones were buried in the vaults of the grand cathedral,
which had been waiting long years to receive them, and thus the safety
and the greatness of Venice were secured. And to this day there be
those in Venice who believe that if those holy ashes were stolen away,
the ancient city would vanish like a dream, and its foundations be
buried forever in the unremembering sea.@[te
Chapter XXIII
The venetian gondola is as free and graceful, in its gliding movement,
as a serpent. It is twenty or thirty feet long, and is narrow and deep,
like a canoe; its sharp bow and stern sweep upward from the water like
the horns of a crescent with the abruptness of the curve slightly
modified.
The bow is ornamented with a steel comb with a battle-ax attachment
which threatens to cut passing boats in two occasionally, but never
does. The gondola is painted black because in the zenith of Venetian
magnificence the gondolas became too gorgeous altogether, and the
Senate decreed that all such display must cease, and a solemn,
unembellished black be substituted. If the truth were known, it would
doubtless appear that rich plebeians grew too prominent in their
affectation of patrician show on the Grand Canal, and required a
wholesome snubbing. Reverence for the hallowed Past and its traditions
keeps the dismal fashion in force now that the compulsion exists no
longer. So let it remain. It is the color of mourning. Venice mourns.
The stern of the boat is decked over and the gondolier stands there. He
uses a single oar--a long blade, of course, for he stands nearly erect.
A wooden peg, a foot and a half high, with two slight crooks or curves
in one side of it and one in the other, projects above the starboard
gunwale. Against that peg the gondolier takes a purchase with his oar,
changing it at intervals to the other side of the peg or dropping it
into another of the crooks, as the steering of the craft may
demand--and how in the world he can back and fill, shoot straight
ahead, or flirt suddenly around a corner, and make the oar stay in
those insignificant notches, is a problem to me and a never diminishing
matter of interest. I am afraid I study the gondolier's marvelous skill
more than I do the sculptured palaces we glide among. He cuts a corner
so closely, now and then, or misses another gondola by such an
imperceptible hair-breadth that I feel myself
Sometimes we go flying down the great canals at such a gait that we can
get only the merest glimpses into front doors, and again, in obscure
alleys in the suburbs, we put on a solemnity suited to the silence, the
mildew, the stagnant waters, the clinging weeds, the deserted houses
and the general lifelessness of the place, and move to the spirit of
grave meditation.
The gondolier is a picturesque rascal for all he wears no satin
harness, no plumed bonnet, no silken tights. His attitude is stately;
he is lithe and supple; all his movements are full of grace. When his
long canoe, and his fine figure, towering from its high perch on the
stern, are cut against the evening sky, they make a picture that is
very novel and striking to a foreign eye.
We sit in the cushioned carriage-body of a cabin, with the curtains
drawn, and smoke, or read, or look out upon the passing boats, the
houses, the bridges, the people, and enjoy ourselves much more than we
could in a buggy jolting over our cobble-stone pavements at home. This
is the gentlest, pleasantest locomotion we have ever known.
But it seems queer--ever so queer--to see a boat doing duty as a
private carriage. We see business men come to the front door, step into
a gondola, instead of a street car, and go off down town to the
counting-room.
We see visiting young ladies stand on the stoop, and laugh, and kiss
good-bye, and flirt their fans and say
We see the ladies go out shopping, in the most natural way, and flit
from street to street and from store to store, just in the good old
fashion, except that they leave the gondola, instead of a private
carriage, waiting at the curbstone a couple of hours for them,--waiting
while they make the nice young clerks pull down tons and tons of silks
and velvets and moire antiques and those things; and then they buy a
paper of pins and go paddling away to confer the rest of their
disastrous patronage on some other firm. And they always have their
purchases sent home just in the good old way. Human nature is very much
the same all over the world; and it is so like my dear native home to
see a Venetian lady go into a store and buy ten cents' worth of blue
ribbon and have it sent home in a scow. Ah, it is these little touches
of nature that move one to tears in these far-off foreign lands.
We see little girls and boys go out in gondolas with their nurses, for
an airing. We see staid families, with prayer-book and beads, enter the
gondola dressed in their Sunday best, and float away to church. And at
midnight we see the theatre break up and discharge its swarm of
hilarious youth and beauty; we hear the cries of the
hackman-gondoliers, and behold the struggling crowd jump aboard, and
the black multitude of boats go skimming down the moonlit avenues; we
see them separate here and there, and disappear up divergent streets;
we hear the faint sounds of laughter and of shouted farewells floating
up out of the distance; and then, the strange pageant being gone, we
have lonely stretches of glittering water--of stately buildings--of
blotting shadows--of weird stone faces creeping into the moonlight--of
deserted bridges--of motionless boats at anchor. And over all broods
that mysterious stillness, that stealthy quiet, that befits so well
this old dreaming Venice.
We have been pretty much every where in our gondola. We have bought
beads and photographs in the stores, and wax matches in the Great
Square of St. Mark. The last remark suggests a digression. Every body
goes to this vast square in the evening. The military bands play in the
centre of it and countless couples of ladies and gentlemen promenade up
and down on either side, and platoons of them are constantly drifting
away toward the old Cathedral, and by the venerable column with the
Winged Lion of St. Mark on its top, and out to where the boats lie
moored; and other platoons are as constantly arriving from the gondolas
and joining the great throng. Between the promenaders and the
side-walks are seated hundreds and hundreds of people at small tables,
smoking and taking granita, (a first cousin to ice-cream;) on the
side-walks are more employing themselves in the same way. The shops in
the first floor of the tall rows of buildings that wall in three sides
of the square are brilliantly lighted, the air is filled with music and
merry voices, and altogether the scene is as bright and spirited and
full of cheerfulness as any man could desire. We enjoy it thoroughly.
Very many of the young women are exceedingly pretty and dress with rare
good taste. We are gradually and laboriously learning the ill-manners
of staring them unflinchingly in the face--not because such conduct is
agreeable to us, but because it is the custom of the country and they
say the girls like it. We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish
ways of all the different countries, so that we can
On this subject let me remark that there are Americans abroad in Italy
who have actually forgotten their mother tongue in three months--forgot
it in France. They can not even write their address in English in a
hotel register. I append these evidences, which I copied verbatim from
the register of a hotel in a certain Italian city:
Some of the Quaker City's passengers had arrived in Venice from
Switzerland and other lands before we left there, and others were
expected every day. We heard of no casualties among them, and no
sickness.
We were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we rattled through
a good deal of country by rail without caring to stop. I took few notes.
I find no mention of Bologna in my memorandum book, except that we
arrived there in good season, but saw none of the sausages for which
the place is so justly celebrated.
Pistoia awoke but a passing interest.
Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated the great
figure of David in the grand square, and the sculptured group they call
the Rape of the Sabines. We wandered through the endless collections of
paintings and statues of the Pitti and Ufizzi galleries, of course. I
make that statement in self-defense; there let it stop. I could not
rest under the imputation that I visited Florence and did not traverse
its weary miles of picture galleries. We tried indolently to recollect
something about the Guelphs and Ghibelines and the other historical
cut-throats whose quarrels and assassinations make up so large a share
of Florentine history, but the subject was not attractive. We had been
robbed of all the fine mountain scenery on our little journey by a
system of railroading that had three miles of tunnel to a hundred yards
of daylight, and we were not inclined to be sociable with Florence. We
had seen the spot, outside the city somewhere, where these people had
allowed the bones of Galileo to rest in unconsecrated ground for an age
because his great discovery that the world turned around was regarded
as a damning heresy by the church; and we know that long after the
world had accepted his theory and raised his name high in the list of
its great men, they had still let him rot there. That we had lived to
see his dust in honored sepulture in the church of Santa Croce we owed
to a society of literati, and not to Florence or her rulers. We saw
Dant;aae's tomb in that church, also, but we were glad to know that his
body was not in it; that the ungrateful city that had exiled him and
persecuted him would give much to have it there, but need not hope to
ever secure that high honor to herself. Medicis are good enough for
Florence. Let her plant Medicis and build grand monuments over them to
testify how gratefully she was wont to lick the hand that scourged her.
Magnanimous Florence! Her jewelry marts are filled with artists in
mosaic. Florentine mosaics are the choicest in all the world. Florence
loves to have that said. Florence is proud of it. Florence would foster
this specialty of hers. She is grateful to the artists that bring to
her this high credit and fill her coffers with foreign money, and so
she encourages them with pensions. With pensions! Think of the
lavishness of it. She knows that people who piece together the
beautiful trifles die early, because the labor is so confining, and so
exhausting to hand and brain, and so she has decreed that all these
people who reach the age of sixty shall have a pension after that! I
have not heard that any of them have called for their dividends yet.
One man did fight along till he was sixty, and started after his
pension, but it appeared that there had been a mistake of a year in his
family record, and so he gave it up and died.
These artists will take particles of stone or glass no larger than a
mustard seed, and piece them together on a sleeve button or a shirt
stud, so smoothly and with such nice adjustment of the delicate shades
of color the pieces bear, as to form a pigmy rose with stem, thorn,
leaves, petals complete, and all as softly and as truthfully tinted as
though Nature had builded it herself. They will counterfeit a fly, or a
high-toned bug, or the ruined Coliseum, within the cramped circle of a
breastpin, and do it so deftly and so neatly that any man might think a
master painted it.
I saw a little table in the great mosaic school in Florence--a little
trifle of a centre table--whose top was made of some sort of precious
polished stone, and in the stone was inlaid the figure of a flute, with
bell-mouth and a mazy complication of keys. No painting in the world
could have been softer or richer; no shading out of one tint into
another could have been more perfect; no work of art of any kind could
have been more faultless than this flute, and yet to count the
multitude of little fragments of stone of which they swore it was
formed would bankrupt any man's arithmetic! I do not think one could
have seen where two particles joined each other with eyes of ordinary
shrewdness. Certainly we could detect no such blemish. This table-top
cost the labor of one man for ten long years, so they said, and it was
for sale for thirty-five thousand dollars.
We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence,
to weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli, (I
suppose they are buried there, but it may be that they reside elsewhere
and rent their tombs to other parties--such being the fashion in
Italy,) and between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and
admire the Arno. It is popular to admire the Arno. It is a great
historical creek with four feet in the channel and some scows floating
around. It would be a very plausible river if they would pump some
water into it. They all call it a river, and they honestly think it is
a river, do these dark and bloody Florentines. They even help out the
delusion by building bridges over it. I do not see why they are too
good to wade.
How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter
prejudices sometimes! I might enter Florence under happier auspices a
month hence and find it all beautiful, all attractive. But I do not
care to think of it now, at all, nor of its roomy shops filled to the
ceiling with snowy marble and alabaster copies of all the celebrated
sculptures in Europe--copies so enchanting to the eye that I wonder how
they can really be shaped like the dingy petrified nightmares they are
the portraits of. I got lost in Florence at nine o'clock, one night,
and staid lost in that labyrinth of narrow streets and long rows of
vast buildings that look all alike, until toward three o'clock in the
morning. It was a pleasant night and at first there were a good many
people abroad, and there were cheerful lights about. Later, I grew
accustomed to prowling about mysterious drifts and tunnels and
astonishing and interesting myself with coming around corners expecting
to find the hotel staring me in the face, and not finding it doing any
thing of the kind. Later still, I felt tired. I soon felt remarkably
tired. But there was no one abroad, now--not even a policeman. I walked
till I was out of all patience, and very hot and thirsty. At last,
somewhere after one o'clock, I came unexpectedly to one of the city
gates. I knew then that I was very far from the hotel. The soldiers
thought I wanted to leave the city, and they sprang up and barred the
way with their muskets. I said:
It was all the Italian I knew, and I was not certain whether that was
Italian or French. The soldiers looked stupidly at each other and at
me, and shook their heads and took me into custody. I said I wanted to
go home. They did not understand me. They took me into the guard-house
and searched me, but they found no sedition on me. They found a small
piece of soap (we carry soap with us, now,) and I made them a present
of it, seeing that they regarded it as a curiosity. I continued to say
Hotel d'Europe, and they continued to shake their heads, until at last
a young soldier nodding in the corner roused up and said something. He
said he knew where the hotel was, I suppose, for the officer of the
guard sent him away with me. We walked a hundred or a hundred and fifty
miles, it appeared to me, and then he got lost. He turned this way and
that, and finally gave it up and signified that he was going to spend
the remainder of the morning trying to find the city gate again. At
that moment it struck me that there was something familiar about the
house over the way. It was the hotel!
It was a happy thing for me that there happened to be a soldier there
that knew even as much as he did; for they say that the policy of the
government is to change the soldiery from one place to another
constantly and from country to city, so that they can not become
acquainted with the people and grow lax in their duties and enter into
plots and conspiracies with friends. My experiences of Florence were
chiefly unpleasant. I will change the subject.
At Pisa we climbed up to the top of the strangest structure the world
has any knowledge of--the Leaning Tower. As every one knows, it is in
the neighborhood of one hundred and eighty feet high--and I beg to
observe that one hundred and eighty feet reach to about the height of
four ordinary three-story buildings piled one on top of the other, and
is a very considerable altitude for a tower of uniform thickness to
aspire to, even when it stands upright--yet this one leans more than
thirteen feet out of the perpendicular. It is seven hundred years old,
but neither history or tradition say whether it was built as it is,
purposely, or whether one of its sides has settled. There is no record
that it ever stood straight up. It is built of marble. It is an airy
and a beautiful structure, and each of its eight stories is encircled
by fluted columns, some of marble and some of granite, with Corinthian
capitals that were handsome when they were new. It is a bell tower, and
in its top hangs a chime of ancient bells. The winding staircase within
is dark, but one always knows which side of the tower he is on because
of his naturally gravitating from one side to the other of the
staircase with the rise or dip of the tower. Some of the stone steps
are foot-worn only on one end; others only on the other end; others
only in the middle. To look down into the tower from the top is like
looking down into a tilted well. A rope that hangs from the centre of
the top touches the wall before it reaches the bottom. Standing on the
summit, one does not feel altogether comfortable when he looks down
from the high side; but to crawl on your breast to the verge on the
lower side and try to stretch your neck out far enough to see the base
of the tower, makes your flesh creep, and convinces you for a single
moment in spite of all your philosophy, that the building is falling.
You handle yourself very carefully, all the time, under the silly
impression that if it is not falling, your trifling weight will start
it unless you are particular not to
The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe. It
is eight hundred years old. Its grandeur has outlived the high
commercial prosperity and the political importance that made it a
necessity, or rather a possibility. Surrounded by poverty, decay and
ruin, it conveys to us a more tangible impression of the former
greatness of Pisa than books could give us.
The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning Tower, is a
stately rotunda, of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure. In it
hangs the lamp whose measured swing suggested to Galileo the pendulum.
It looked an insignificant thing to have conferred upon the world of
science and mechanics such a mighty extension of their dominions as it
has. Pondering, in its suggestive presence, I seemed to see a crazy
universe of swinging disks, the toiling children of this sedate parent.
He appeared to have an intelligent expression about him of knowing that
he was not a lamp at all; that he was a Pendulum; a pendulum disguised,
for prodigious and inscrutable purposes of his own deep devising, and
not a common pendulum either, but the old original patriarchal
Pendulum--the Abraham Pendulum of the world.
This Baptistery is endowed with the most pleasing echo of all the
echoes we have read of. The guide sounded two sonorous notes, about
half an octave apart; the echo answered with the most enchanting, the
most melodious, the richest blending of sweet sounds that one can
imagine. It was like a long-drawn chord of a church organ, infinitely
softened by distance. I may be extravagant in this matter, but if this
be the case my ear is to blame--not my pen. I am describing a
memory--and one that will remain long with me.
The peculiar devotional spirit of the olden time, which placed a higher
confidence in outward forms of worship than in the watchful guarding of
the heart against sinful thoughts and the hands against sinful deeds,
and which believed in the protecting virtues of inanimate objects made
holy by contact with holy things, is illustrated in a striking manner
in one of the cemeteries of Pisa. The tombs are set in soil brought in
ships from the Holy Land ages ago. To be buried in such ground was
regarded by the ancient Pisans as being more potent for salvation than
many masses purchased of the church and the vowing of many candles to
the Virgin.
Pisa is believed to be about three thousand years old. It was one of
the twelve great cities of ancient Etruria, that commonwealth which has
left so many monuments in testimony of its extraordinary advancement,
and so little history of itself that is tangible and comprehensible. A
Pisan antiquarian gave me an ancient tear-jug which he averred was full
four thousand years old. It was found among the ruins of one of the
oldest of the Etruscan cities. He said it came from a tomb, and was
used by some bereaved family in that remote age when even the Pyramids
of Egypt were young, Damascus a village, Abraham a prattling infant and
ancient Troy not yet dreampt of, to receive the tears wept for some
lost idol of a household. It spoke to us in a language of its own; and
with a pathos more tender than any words might bring, its mute
eloquence swept down the long roll of the centuries with its tale of a
vacant chair, a familiar footstep missed from the threshold, a pleasant
voice gone from the chorus, a vanished form!--a tale which is always so
new to us, so startling, so terrible, so benumbing to the senses, and
behold how threadbare and old it is! No shrewdly-worded history could
have brought the myths and shadows of that old dreamy age before us
clothed with human flesh and warmed with human sympathies so vividly as
did this poor little unsentient vessel of pottery.
Pisa was a republic in the middle ages, with a government of her own,
armies and navies of her own and a great commerce. She was a warlike
power, and inscribed upon her banners many a brilliant fight with
Genoese and Turks. It is said that the city once numbered a population
of four hundred thousand; but her sceptre has passed from her grasp,
now, her ships and her armies are gone, her commerce is dead. Her
battle-flags bear the mold and the dust of centuries, her marts are
deserted, she has shrunken far within her crumbling walls, and her
great population has diminished to twenty thousand souls. She has but
one thing left to boast of, and that is not much, viz: she is the
second city of Tuscany.
We reached Leghorn in time to see all we wished to see of it long
before the city gates were closed for the evening, and then came on
board the ship.
We felt as though we had been away from home an age. We never entirely
appreciated, before, what a very pleasant den our state-room is; nor
how jolly it is to sit at dinner in one's own seat in one's own cabin,
and hold familiar conversation with friends in one's own language. Oh,
the rare happiness of comprehending every single word that is said, and
knowing that every word one says in return will be understood as well!
We would talk ourselves to death, now, only there are only about ten
passengers out of the sixty-five to talk to. The others are wandering,
we hardly know where. We shall not go ashore in Leghorn. We are
surfeited with Italian cities for the present, and much prefer to walk
the familiar quarter-deck and view this one from a distance.
The stupid magnates of this Leghorn government can not understand that
so large a steamer as ours could cross the broad Atlantic with no other
purpose than to indulge a party of ladies and gentlemen in a pleasure
excursion. It looks too improbable. It is suspicious, they think.
Something more important must be hidden behind it all. They can not
understand it, and they scorn the evidence of the ship's papers. They
have decided at last that we are a battalion of incendiary,
blood-thirsty Garibaldians in disguise! And in all seriousness they
have set a gun-boat to watch the vessel night and day, with orders to
close down on any revolutionary movement in a twinkling! Police boats
are on patrol duty about us all the time, and it is as much as a
sailor's liberty is worth to show himself in a red shirt. These
policemen follow the executive officer's boat from shore to ship and
from ship to shore and watch his dark maneuvres with a vigilant eye.
They will arrest him yet unless he assumes an expression of countenance
that shall have less of carnage, insurrection and sedition in it. A
visit paid in a friendly way to General Garibaldi yesterday (by cordial
invitation,) by some of our passengers, has gone far to confirm the
dread suspicions the government harbors toward us. It is thought the
friendly visit was only the cloak of a bloody conspiracy. These people
draw near and watch us when we bathe in the sea from the ship's side.
Do they think we are communing with a reserve force of rascals at the
bottom?
It is said that we shall probably be quarantined at Naples. Two or
three of us prefer not to run this risk. Therefore, when we are rested,
we propose to go in a French steamer to Civita Vecchia, and from thence
to Rome, and by rail to Naples. They do not quarantine the cars, no
matter where they got their passengers from.@[te
Chapter XXV
There are a good many things about this Italy which I do not
understand--and more especially I can not understand how a bankrupt
Government can have such palatial railroad depots and such marvels of
turnpikes. Why, these latter are as hard as adamant, as straight as a
line, as smooth as a floor, and as white as snow. When it is too dark
to see any other object, one can still see the white turnpikes of
France and Italy; and they are clean enough to eat from, without a
table-cloth. And yet no tolls are charged.
As for the railways--we have none like them. The cars slide as smoothly
along as if they were on runners. The depots are vast palaces of cut
marble, with stately colonnades of the same royal stone traversing them
from end to end, and with ample walls and ceilings richly decorated
with frescoes. The lofty gateways are graced with statues, and the
broad floors are all laid in polished flags of marble.
These things win me more than Italy's hundred galleries of priceless
art treasures, because I can understand the one and am not competent to
appreciate the other. In the turnpikes, the railways, the depots, and
the new boulevards of uniform houses in Florence and other cities here,
I see the genius of Louis Napoleon, or rather, I see the works of that
statesman imitated. But Louis has taken care that in France there shall
be a foundation for these improvements--money. He has always the
wherewithal to back up his projects; they strengthen France and never
weaken her. Her material prosperity is genuine. But here the case is
different. This country is bankrupt. There is no real foundation for
these great works. The prosperity they would seem to indicate is a
pretence. There is no money in the treasury, and so they enfeeble her
instead of strengthening. Italy has achieved the dearest wish of her
heart and become an independent State--and in so doing she has drawn an
elephant in the political lottery. She has nothing to feed it on.
Inexperienced in government, she plunged into all manner of useless
expenditure, and swamped her treasury almost in a day. She squandered
millions of francs on a navy which she did not need, and the first time
she took her new toy into action she got it knocked higher than
Gilderoy's kite--to use the language of the Pilgrims.
But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good. A year ago, when Italy
saw utter ruin staring her in the face and her greenbacks hardly worth
the paper they were printed on, her Parliament ventured upon a coup de
main that would have appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less
desperate circumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of
the Church! This in priest-ridden Italy! This in a land which has
groped in the midnight of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred
years! It was a rare good fortune for Italy, the stress of weather that
drove her to break from this prison-house.
They do not call it confiscating the church property. That would sound
too harshly yet. But it amounts to that. There are thousands of
churches in Italy, each with untold millions of treasures stored away
in its closets, and each with its battalion of priests to be supported.
And then there are the estates of the Church--league on league of the
richest lands and the noblest forests in all Italy--all yielding
immense revenues to the Church, and none paying a cent in taxes to the
State. In some great districts the Church owns all the property--lands,
watercourses, woods, mills and factories. They buy, they sell, they
manufacture, and since they pay no taxes, who can hope to compete with
them?
Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will yet seize
it in rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt. Something must be done to
feed a starving treasury, and there is no other resource in all
Italy--none but the riches of the Church. So the Government intends to
take to itself a great portion of the revenues arising from priestly
farms, factories, etc., and also intends to take possession of the
churches and carry them on, after its own fashion and upon its own
responsibility. In a few instances it will leave the establishments of
great pet churches undisturbed, but in all others only a handful of
priests will be retained to preach and pray, a few will be pensioned,
and the balance turned adrift.
Pray glance at some of these churches and their embellishments, and see
whether the Government is doing a righteous thing or not. In Venice,
to-day, a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are twelve
hundred priests. Heaven only knows how many there were before the
Parliament reduced their numbers. There was the great Jesuit Church.
Under the old regime it required sixty priests to engineer it--the
Government does it with five, now, and the others are discharged from
service. All about that church wretchedness and poverty abound. At its
door a dozen hats and bonnets were doffed to us, as many heads were
humbly bowed, and as many hands extended, appealing for
pennies--appealing with foreign words we could not understand, but
appealing mutely, with sad eyes, and sunken cheeks, and ragged raiment,
that no words were needed to translate. Then we passed within the great
doors, and it seemed that the riches of the world were before us! Huge
columns carved out of single masses of marble, and inlaid from top to
bottom with a hundred intricate figures wrought in costly verde antique;
pulpits of the same rich materials, whose draperies hung down in many
a pictured fold, the stony fabric counterfeiting the delicate work of
the loom; the grand altar brilliant with polished facings and
balustrades of oriental agate, jasper, verde antique, and other
precious stones, whose names, even, we seldom hear--and slabs of
priceless lapis lazuli lavished every where as recklessly as if the
church had owned a quarry of it. In the midst of all this magnificence,
the solid gold and silver furniture of the altar seemed cheap and
trivial. Even the floors and ceilings cost a princely fortune.
Now, where is the use of allowing all those riches to lie idle, while
half of that community hardly know, from day to day, how they are going
to keep body and soul together? And, where is the wisdom in permitting
hundreds upon hundreds of millions of francs to be locked up in the
useless trumpery of churches all over Italy, and the people ground to
death with taxation to uphold a perishing Government?
As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all
her energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up
of a vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her
citizens to accomplish it. She is to-day one vast museum of
magnificence and misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city
put together could hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her
hundred cathedrals. And for every beggar in America, Italy can show a
hundred--and rags and vermin to match. It is the wretchedest,
princeliest land on earth.
Look at the grand Duomo of Florence--a vast pile that has been sapping
the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly
finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but
when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too
striking, too suggestive, and I said,
Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that Cathedral.
And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body
I can think of. They have a grand mausoleum in Florence, which they
built to bury our Lord and Saviour and the Medici family in. It sounds
blasphemous, but it is true, and here they act blasphemy. The dead and
damned Medicis who cruelly tyrannized over Florence and were her curse
for over two hundred years, are salted away in a circle of costly
vaults, and in their midst the Holy Sepulchre was to have been set up.
The expedition sent to Jerusalem to seize it got into trouble and could
not accomplish the burglary, and so the centre of the mausoleum is
vacant now. They say the entire mausoleum was intended for the Holy
Sepulchre, and was only turned into a family burying place after the
Jerusalem expedition failed--but you will excuse me. Some of those
Medicis would have smuggled themselves in sure.--What they had not the
effrontery to do, was not worth doing. Why, they had their trivial,
forgotten exploits on land and sea pictured out in grand frescoes (as
did also the ancient Doges of Venice) with the Saviour and the Virgin
throwing bouquets to them out of the clouds, and the Deity himself
applauding from his throne in Heaven! And who painted these things?
Why, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Raphael--none other than the
world's idols, the
Andrea del Sarto glorified his princes in pictures that must save them
for ever from the oblivion they merited, and they let him starve.
Served him right. Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine
and Marie de Medicis seated in heaven and conversing familiarly with
the Virgin Mary and the angels, (to say nothing of higher personages,)
and yet my friends abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against
the old masters--because I fail sometimes to see the beauty that is in
their productions. I can not help but see it, now and then, but I keep
on protesting against the groveling spirit that could persuade those
masters to prostitute their noble talents to the adulation of such
monsters as the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes of two and
three hundred years ago, all the same.
I am told that the old masters had to do these shameful things for
bread, the princes and potentates being the only patrons of art. If a
grandly gifted man may drag his pride and his manhood in the dirt for
bread rather than starve with the nobility that is in him untainted,
the excuse is a valid one. It would excuse theft in Washingtons and
Wellingtons, and unchastity in women as well.
But somehow, I can not keep that Medici mausoleum out of my memory. It
is as large as a church; its pavement is rich enough for the pavement
of a King's palace; its great dome is gorgeous with frescoes; its walls
are made of--what? Marble?--plaster?--wood?--paper? No. Red
porphyry--verde antique--jasper--oriental
agate--alabaster--mother-of-pearl--chalcedony--red coral--lapis lazuli!
All the vast walls are made wholly of these precious stones, worked in,
and in and in together in elaborate patterns and figures, and polished
till they glow like great mirrors with the pictured splendors reflected
from the dome overhead. And before a statue of one of those dead
Medicis reposes a crown that blazes with diamonds and emeralds enough
to buy a ship-of-the-line, almost. These are the things the Government
has its evil eye upon, and a happy thing it will be for Italy when they
melt away in the public treasury.
And now--. However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and
destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of
vituperation.
Having eaten the friendless orphan--having driven away his
comrades--having grown calm and reflective at length--I now feel in a
kindlier mood. I feel that after talking so freely about the priests
and the churches, justice demands that if I know any thing good about
either I ought to say it. I have heard of many things that redound to
the credit of the priesthood, but the most notable matter that occurs
to me now is the devotion one of the mendicant orders showed during the
prevalence of the cholera last year. I speak of the Dominican
friars--men who wear a coarse, heavy brown robe and a cowl, in this hot
climate, and go barefoot. They live on alms altogether, I believe. They
must unquestionably love their religion, to suffer so much for it. When
the cholera was raging in Naples; when the people were dying by
hundreds and hundreds every day; when every concern for the public
welfare was swallowed up in selfish private interest, and every citizen
made the taking care of himself his sole object, these men banded
themselves together and went about nursing the sick and burying the
dead. Their noble efforts cost many of them their lives. They laid them
down cheerfully, and well they might. Creeds mathematically precise,
and hair-splitting niceties of doctrine, are absolutely necessary for
the salvation of some kinds of souls, but surely the charity, the
purity, the unselfishness that are in the hearts of men like these
would save their souls though they were bankrupt in the true
religion--which is ours.
One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Vecchia with
us in the little French steamer. There were only half a dozen of us in
the cabin. He belonged in the steerage. He was the life of the ship,
the bloody-minded son of the Inquisition! He and the leader of the
marine band of a French man-of-war played on the piano and sang opera
turn about; they sang duets together; they rigged impromptu theatrical
costumes and gave us extravagant farces and pantomimes. We got along
first-rate with the friar, and were excessively conversational, albeit
he could not understand what we said, and certainly he never uttered a
word that we could guess the meaning of.
This Civita Vecchia is the finest nest of dirt, vermin and ignorance we
have found yet, except that African perdition they call Tangier, which
is just like it. The people here live in alleys two yards wide, which
have a smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining. It is
well the alleys are not wider, because they hold as much smell now as a
person can stand, and of course, if they were wider they would hold
more, and then the people would die. These alleys are paved with stone,
and carpeted with deceased cats, and decayed rags, and decomposed
vegetable-tops, and remnants of old boots, all soaked with dish-water,
and the people sit around on stools and enjoy it. They are indolent, as
a general thing, and yet have few pastimes. They work two or three
hours at a time, but not hard, and then they knock off and catch flies.
This does not require any talent, because they only have to grab--if
they do not get the one they are after, they get another. It is all the
same to them. They have no partialities. Whichever one they get is the
one they want.
They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them arrogant.
They are very quiet, unpretending people. They have more of these kind
of things than other communities, but they do not boast.
They are very uncleanly--these people--in face, in person and dress.
When they see any body with a clean shirt on, it arouses their scorn.
The women wash clothes, half the day, at the public tanks in the
streets, but they are probably somebody else's. Or may be they keep one
set to wear and another to wash; because they never put on any that
have ever been washed. When they get done washing, they sit in the
alleys and nurse their cubs. They nurse one ash-cat at a time, and the
others scratch their backs against the door-post and are happy.
All this country belongs to the Papal States. They do not appear to
have any schools here, and only one billiard table. Their education is
at a very low stage. One portion of the men go into the military,
another into the priesthood, and the rest into the shoe-making business.
They keep up the passport system here, but so they do in Turkey. This
shows that the Papal States are as far advanced as Turkey. This fact
will be alone sufficient to silence the tongues of malignant
calumniators. I had to get my passport vised for Rome in Florence, and
then they would not let me come ashore here until a policeman had
examined it on the wharf and sent me a permit. They did not even dare
to let me take my passport in my hands for twelve hours, I looked so
formidable. They judged it best to let me cool down. They thought I
wanted to take the town, likely. Little did they know me. I wouldn't
have it. They examined my baggage at the depot. They took one of my
ablest jokes and read it over carefully twice and then read it
backwards. But it was too deep for them. They passed it around, and
every body speculated on it awhile, but it mastered them all.
It was no common joke. At length a veteran officer spelled it over
deliberately and shook his head three or four times and said that in
his opinion it was seditious. That was the first time I felt alarmed. I
immediately said I would explain the document, and they crowded around.
And so I explained and explained and explained, and they took notes of
all I said, but the more I explained the more they could not understand
it, and when they desisted at last, I could not even understand it
myself. They said they believed it was an incendiary document, leveled
at the government. I declared solemnly that it was not, but they only
shook their heads and would not be satisfied. Then they consulted a
good while; and finally they confiscated it. I was very sorry for this,
because I had worked a long time on that joke, and took a good deal of
pride in it, and now I suppose I shall never see it any more. I suppose
it will be sent up and filed away among the criminal archives of Rome,
and will always be regarded as a mysterious infernal machine which
would have blown up like a mine and scattered the good Pope all around,
but for a miraculous providential interference. And I suppose that all
the time I am in Rome the police will dog me about from place to place
because they think I am a dangerous character.
It is fearfully hot in Civita Vecchia. The streets are made very narrow
and the houses built very solid and heavy and high, as a protection
against the heat. This is the first Italian town I have seen which does
not appear to have a patron saint. I suppose no saint but the one that
went up in the chariot of fire could stand the climate.
There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathedral, with
eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do
not show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor
any smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d';oeuvres of Reubens
or Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they
haven't any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the
true cross. We are going to Rome. There is nothing to see here.@[te
Chapter XXVI
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells
a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can
bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others
have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before;
that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an
idea--to discover a great thought--an intellectual nugget, right under
the dust of a field that many a brain-plow had gone over before. To
find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find the way to make the
lightnings carry your messages. To be the first--that is the idea. To
do something, say something, see something, before any body else--these
are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other
pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.
Morse, with his first message, brought by his servant, the lightning;
Fulton, in that long-drawn century of suspense, when he placed his hand
upon the throttle-valve and lo, the steamboat moved; Jenner, when his
patient with the cow's virus in his blood, walked through the small-pox
hospitals unscathed; Howe, when the idea shot through his brain that
for a hundred and twenty generations the eye had been bored through the
wrong end of the needle; the nameless lord of art who laid down his
chisel in some old age that is forgotten, now, and gloated upon the
finished Laocoon; Daguerre, when he commanded the sun, riding in the
zenith, to print the landscape upon his insignificant silvered plate,
and he obeyed; Columbus, in the Pinta's shrouds, when he swung his hat
above a fabled sea and gazed abroad upon an unknown world! These are
the men who have really lived--who have actually comprehended what
pleasure is--who have crowded long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single
moment.
What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before
me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is
there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me
before it pass to others? What can I discover?--Nothing. Nothing
whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here. But if I were only a
Roman!--If, added to my own I could be gifted with modern Roman sloth,
modern Roman superstition, and modern Roman boundlessness of ignorance,
what bewildering worlds of unsuspected wonders I would discover! Ah, if
I were only a habitant of the Campagna five and twenty miles from Rome!
Then I would travel.
I would go to America, and see, and learn, and return to the Campagna
and stand before my countrymen an illustrious discoverer. I would say:
Of course we have been to the monster Church of St. Peter, frequently.
I knew its dimensions. I knew it was a prodigious structure. I knew it
was just about the length of the capitol at Washington--say seven
hundred and thirty feet. I knew it was three hundred and sixty-four
feet wide, and consequently wider than the capitol. I knew that the
cross on the top of the dome of the church was four hundred and
thirty-eight feet above the ground, and therefore about a hundred or
may be a hundred and twenty-five feet higher than the dome of the
capitol.--Thus I had one gauge. I wished to come as near forming a
correct idea of how it was going to look, as possible; I had a
curiosity to see how much I would err. I erred considerably. St.
Peter's did not look nearly so large as the capitol, and certainly not
a twentieth part as beautiful, from the outside.
When we reached the door, and stood fairly within the church, it was
impossible to comprehend that it was a very large building. I had to
cipher a comprehension of it. I had to ransack my memory for some more
similes. St. Peter's is bulky. Its height and size would represent two
of the Washington capitol set one on top of the other--if the capitol
were wider; or two blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary
buildings set one on top of the other. St. Peter's was that large, but
it could and would not look so. The trouble was that everything in it
and about it was on such a scale of uniform vastness that there were no
contrasts to judge by--none but the people, and I had not noticed them.
They were insects. The statues of children holding vases of holy water
were immense, according to the tables of figures, but so was every
thing else around them. The mosaic pictures in the dome were huge, and
were made of thousands and thousands of cubes of glass as large as the
end of my little finger, but those pictures looked smooth, and gaudy of
color, and in good proportion to the dome. Evidently they would not
answer to measure by. Away down toward the far end of the church (I
thought it was really clear at the far end, but discovered afterward
that it was in the centre, under the dome,) stood the thing they call
the baldacchino--a great bronze pyramidal frame-work like that which
upholds a mosquito bar. It only looked like a considerably magnified
bedstead--nothing more. Yet I knew it was a good deal more than half as
high as Niagara Falls. It was overshadowed by a dome so mighty that its
own height was snubbed. The four great square piers or pillars that
stand equidistant from each other in the church, and support the roof,
I could not work up to their real dimensions by any method of
comparison. I knew that the faces of each were about the width of a
very large dwelling-house front, (fifty or sixty feet,) and that they
were twice as high as an ordinary three-story dwelling, but still they
looked small. I tried all the different ways I could think of to compel
myself to understand how large St. Peter's was, but with small success.
The mosaic portrait of an Apostle who was writing with a pen six feet
long seemed only an ordinary Apostle.
But the people attracted my attention after a while. To stand in the
door of St. Peter's and look at men down toward its further extremity,
two blocks away, has a diminishing effect on them; surrounded by the
prodigious pictures and statues, and lost in the vast spaces, they look
very much smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the
open air. I
They have twelve small pillars, in St. Peter's, which came from
Solomon's Temple. They have, also--which was far more interesting to
me--a piece of the true cross, and some nails, and a part of the crown
of thorns.
Of course we ascended to the summit of the dome, and of course we also
went up into the gilt copper ball which is above it.--There was room
there for a dozen persons, with a little crowding, and it was as close
and hot as an oven. Some of those people who are so fond of writing
their names in prominent places had been there before us--a million or
two, I should think. From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every
notable object in Rome, from the Castle of St. Angelo to the Coliseum.
He can discern the seven hills upon which Rome is built. He can see the
Tiber, and the locality of the bridge which Horatius kept
I prefer not to describe St. Peter's. It has been done before. The
ashes of Peter, the disciple of the Saviour, repose in a crypt under
the baldacchino. We stood reverently in that place; so did we also in
the Mamertine Prison, where he was confined, where he converted the
soldiers, and where tradition says he caused a spring of water to flow
in order that he might baptize them. But when they showed us the print
of Peter's face in the hard stone of the prison wall and said he made
that by falling up against it, we doubted. And when, also, the monk at
the church of San Sebastian showed us a paving-stone with two great
footprints in it and said that Peter's feet made those, we lacked
confidence again. Such things do not impress one. The monk said that
angels came and liberated Peter from prison by night, and he started
away from Rome by the Appian Way. The Saviour met him and told him to
go back, which he did. Peter left those footprints in the stone upon
which he stood at the time. It was not stated how it was ever
discovered whose footprints they were, seeing the interview occurred
secretly and at night. The print of the face in the prison was that of
a man of common size; the footprints were those of a man ten or twelve
feet high. The discrepancy confirmed our unbelief.
We necessarily visited the Forum, where C;aesar was assassinated, and
also the Tarpeian Rock. We saw the Dying Gladiator at the Capitol, and
I think that even we appreciated that wonder of art; as much, perhaps,
as we did that fearful story wrought in marble, in the Vatican--the
Laocoon. And then the Coliseum.
Every body knows the picture of the Coliseum; every body recognizes at
once that
In America we make convicts useful at the same time that we punish them
for their crimes. We farm them out and compel them to earn money for
the State by making barrels and building roads. Thus we combine
business with retribution, and all things are lovely. But in ancient
Rome they combined religious duty with pleasure. Since it was necessary
that the new sect called Christians should be exterminated, the people
judged it wise to make this work profitable to the State at the same
time, and entertaining to the public. In addition to the gladiatorial
combats and other shows, they sometimes threw members of the hated sect
into the arena of the Coliseum and turned wild beasts in upon them. It
is estimated that seventy thousand Christians suffered martyrdom in
this place. This has made the Coliseum holy ground, in the eyes of the
followers of the Saviour. And well it might; for if the chain that
bound a saint, and the footprints a saint has left upon a stone he
chanced to stand upon, be holy, surely the spot where a man gave up his
life for his faith is holy.
Seventeen or eighteen centuries ago this Coliseum was the theatre of
Rome, and Rome was mistress of the world. Splendid pageants were
exhibited here, in presence of the Emperor, the great ministers of
State, the nobles, and vast audiences of citizens of smaller
consequence. Gladiators fought with gladiators and at times with
warrior prisoners from many a distant land. It was the theatre of
Rome--of the world--and the man of fashion who could not let fall in a
casual and unintentional manner something about
Glad was the contraband that had a seat in the pit at the Saturday
matinee, and happy the Roman street-boy who ate his peanuts and guyed
the gladiators from the dizzy gallery.
For me was reserved the high honor of discovering among the rubbish of
the ruined Coliseum the only playbill of that establishment now extant.
There was a suggestive smell of mint-drops about it still, a corner of
it had evidently been chewed, and on the margin, in choice Latin, these
words were written in a delicate female hand:@
So far, good. If any man has a right to feel proud of himself, and
satisfied, surely it is I. For I have written about the Coliseum, and
the gladiators, the martyrs, and the lions, and yet have never once
used the phrase
Butchered to make a Roman holyday sounds well for the first seventeen
or eighteen hundred thousand times one sees it in print, but after that
it begins to grow tiresome. I find it in all the books concerning
Rome--and here latterly it reminds me of Judge Oliver. Oliver was a
young lawyer, fresh from the schools, who had gone out to the deserts
of Nevada to begin life. He found that country, and our ways of life,
there, in those early days, different from life in New England or Paris.
But he put on a woollen shirt and strapped a navy revolver to his
person, took to the bacon and beans of the country, and determined to
do in Nevada as Nevada did. Oliver accepted the situation so completely
that although he must have sorrowed over many of his trials, he never
complained--that is, he never complained but once. He, two others, and
myself, started to the new silver mines in the Humboldt mountains--he
to be Probate Judge of Humboldt county, and we to mine. The distance
was two hundred miles. It was dead of winter. We bought a two-horse
wagon and put eighteen hundred pounds of bacon, flour, beans,
blasting-powder, picks and shovels in it; we bought two sorry-looking
Mexican
Then, for the first time in his life, I think, Oliver complained. He
said,
Then he resigned his judgeship and left Humboldt county.
In this connection I wish to say one word about Michael Angelo
Buonarotti. I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo--that
man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture--great
in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for
breakfast--for luncheon--for dinner--for tea--for supper--for between
meals. I like a change, occasionally. In Genoa, he designed every thing;
in Milan he or his pupils designed every thing; he designed the Lake
of Como; in Padua, Verona, Venice, Bologna, who did we ever hear of,
from guides, but Michael Angelo? In Florence, he painted every thing,
designed every thing, nearly, and what he did not design he used to sit
on a favorite stone and look at, and they showed us the stone. In Pisa
he designed every thing but the old shot-tower, and they would have
attributed that to him if it had not been so awfully out of the
perpendicular. He designed the piers of Leghorn and the custom house
regulations of Civita Vecchia. But, here--here it is frightful. He
designed St. Peter's; he designed the Pope; he designed the Pantheon,
the uniform of the Pope's soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the
Coliseum, the Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock, the Barberini Palace, St.
John Lateran, the Campagna, the Appian Way, the Seven Hills, the Baths
of Caracalla, the Claudian Aqueduct, the Cloaca Maxima--the eternal
bore designed the Eternal City, and unless all men and books do lie, he
painted every thing in it! Dan said the other day to the guide,
I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled
with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael
Angelo was dead.
But we have taken it out of this guide. He has marched us through miles
of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and
through miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has
shown us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough
to frescoe the heavens--pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with
him we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for
us--imbecility and idiotic questions. These creatures never
suspect--they have no idea of a sarcasm.
He shows us a figure and says:
We look at it indifferently and the doctor asks:
Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum. The doctor asks:
A stare from the guide.
Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again:
He grows so tired of that unceasing question sometimes, that he dreads
to show us any thing at all. The wretch has tried all the ways he can
think of to make us comprehend that Michael Angelo is only responsible
for the creation of a part of the world, but somehow he has not
succeeded yet. Relief for overtasked eyes and brain from study and
sight-seeing is necessary, or we shall become idiotic sure enough.
Therefore this guide must continue to suffer. If he does not enjoy it,
so much the worse for him. We do.
In this place I may as well jot down a chapter concerning those
necessary nuisances, European guides. Many a man has wished in his
heart he could do without his guide; but knowing he could not, has
wished he could get some amusement out of him as a remuneration for the
affliction of his society. We accomplished this latter matter, and if
our experience can be made useful to others they are welcome to it.
Guides know about enough English to tangle every thing up so that a man
can make neither head or tail of it. They know their story by
heart--the history of every statue, painting, cathedral or other wonder
they show you. They know it and tell it as a parrot would--and if you
interrupt, and throw them off the track, they have to go back and begin
over again. All their lives long, they are employed in showing strange
things to foreigners and listening to their bursts of admiration. It is
human nature to take delight in exciting admiration. It is what prompts
children to say
The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can keep his
countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more
imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives. It comes
natural to him.
The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because
Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion
before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he
had swallowed a spring mattrass. He was full of animation--full of
impatience. He said:
He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of
keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread
before us. The guide's eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the
parchment with his finger:
We looked indifferent--unconcerned. The doctor examined the document
very deliberately, during a painful pause.--Then he said, without any
show of interest:
Another deliberate examination.
Then the doctor laid the document down and said:
We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but he made one more
venture. He had something which he thought would overcome us. He said:
He brought us before the beautiful bust--for it was beautiful--and
sprang back and struck an attitude:
The doctor put up his eye-glass--procured for such occasions:
That joke was lost on the foreigner--guides can not master the
subtleties of the American joke.
We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yesterday we spent
three or four hours in the Vatican, again, that wonderful world of
curiosities. We came very near expressing interest, sometimes--even
admiration--it was very hard to keep from it. We succeeded though.
Nobody else ever did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was
bewildered--non-plussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up
extraordinary things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but it was
a failure; we never showed any interest in any thing. He had reserved
what he considered to be his greatest wonder till the last--a royal
Egyptian mummy, the best preserved in the world, perhaps. He took us
there. He felt so sure, this time, that some of his old enthusiasm came
back to him:
The eye-glass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever.
The doctor turned on him savagely:
We make it exceedingly interesting for this Frenchman. However, he has
paid us back, partly, without knowing it. He came to the hotel this
morning to ask if we were up, and he endeavored as well as he could to
describe us, so that the landlord would know which persons he meant. He
finished with the casual remark that we were lunatics. The observation
was so innocent and so honest that it amounted to a very good thing for
a guide to say.
There is one remark (already mentioned,) which never yet has failed to
disgust these guides. We use it always, when we can think of nothing
else to say. After they have exhausted their enthusiasm pointing out to
us and praising the beauties of some ancient bronze image or
broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence for five,
ten, fifteen minutes--as long as we can hold out, in fact--and then ask:
That conquers the serenest of them. It is not what they are looking
for--especially a new guide. Our Roman Ferguson is the most patient,
unsuspecting, long-suffering subject we have had yet. We shall be sorry
to part with him. We have enjoyed his society very much. We trust he
has enjoyed ours, but we are harassed with doubts.
We have been in the catacombs. It was like going down into a very deep
cellar, only it was a cellar which had no end to it. The narrow
passages are roughly hewn in the rock, and on each hand as you pass
along, the hollowed shelves are carved out, from three to fourteen deep;
each held a corpse once. There are names, and Christian symbols, and
prayers, or sentences expressive of Christian hopes, carved upon nearly
every sarcophagus. The dates belong away back in the dawn of the
Christian era, of course. Here, in these holes in the ground, the first
Christians sometimes burrowed to escape persecution. They crawled out
at night to get food, but remained under cover in the day time. The
priest told us that St. Sebastian lived under ground for some time
while he was being hunted; he went out one day, and the soldiery
discovered and shot him to death with arrows. Five or six of the early
Popes--those who reigned about sixteen hundred years ago--held their
papal courts and advised with their clergy in the bowels of the earth.
During seventeen years--from A.D. 235 to A.D. 252--the Popes did not
appear above ground. Four were raised to the great office during that
period. Four years apiece, or thereabouts. It is very suggestive of the
unhealthiness of underground graveyards as places of residence. One
Pope afterward spent his entire pontificate in the catacombs--eight
years. Another was discovered in them and murdered in the episcopal
chair. There was no satisfaction in being a Pope in those days. There
were too many annoyances. There are one hundred and sixty catacombs
under Rome, each with its maze of narrow passages crossing and
recrossing each other and each passage walled to the top with scooped
graves its entire length. A careful estimate makes the length of the
passages of all the catacombs combined foot up nine hundred miles, and
their graves number seven millions. We did not go through all the
passages of all the catacombs. We were very anxious to do it, and made
the necessary arrangements, but our too limited time obliged us to give
up the idea. So we only groped through the dismal labyrinth of St.
Callixtus, under the Church of St. Sebastian. In the various catacombs
are small chapels rudely hewn in the stones, and here the early
Christians often held their religious services by dim, ghostly lights.
Think of mass and a sermon away down in those tangled caverns under
ground!
In the catacombs were buried St. Cecilia, St. Agnes, and several other
of the most celebrated of the saints. In the catacomb of St. Callixtus,
St. Bridget used to remain long hours in holy contemplation, and St.
Charles Borrom;aaeo was wont to spend whole nights in prayer there. It
was also the scene of a very marvelous thing.
I find that grave statement in a book published in New York in 1858,
and written by
This author puts my credulity on its mettle every now and then. He
tells of one St. Joseph Calasanctius whose house in Rome he visited; he
visited only the house--the priest has been dead two hundred years. He
says the Virgin Mary appeared to this saint. Then he continues:@
From the sanguinary sports of the Holy Inquisition; the slaughter of
the Coliseum; and the dismal tombs of the Catacombs, I naturally pass
to the picturesque horrors of the Capuchin Convent. We stopped a moment
in a small chapel in the church to admire a picture of St. Michael
vanquishing Satan--a picture which is so beautiful that I can not but
think it belongs to the reviled
Here was a spectacle for sensitive nerves! Evidently the old masters
had been at work in this place. There were six divisions in the
apartment, and each division was ornamented with a style of decoration
peculiar to itself--and these decorations were in every instance formed
of human bones! There were shapely arches, built wholly of thigh bones;
there were startling pyramids, built wholly of grinning skulls; there
were quaint architectural structures of various kinds, built of shin
bones and the bones of the arm; on the wall were elaborate frescoes,
whose curving vines were made of knotted human vertebr;ae; whose
delicate tendrils were made of sinews and tendons; whose flowers were
formed of knee-caps and toe-nails. Every lasting portion of the human
frame was represented in these intricate designs (they were by Michael
Angelo, I think,) and there was a careful finish about the work, and an
attention to details that betrayed the artist's love of his labors as
well as his schooled ability. I asked the good-natured monk who
accompanied us, who did this? And he said,
He put his finger on a skull.
He touched another.
Then he took a skull and held it in his hand, and looked reflectively
upon it, after the manner of the grave-digger when he discourses of
Yorick.
This business-like way of illustrating a touching story of the heart by
laying the several fragments of the lover before us and naming them,
was as grotesque a performance, and as ghastly, as any I ever witnessed.
I hardly knew whether to smile or shudder. There are nerves and
muscles in our frames whose functions and whose methods of working it
seems a sort of sacrilege to describe by cold physiological names and
surgical technicalities, and the monk's talk suggested to me something
of this kind. Fancy a surgeon, with his nippers lifting tendons,
muscles and such things into view, out of the complex machinery of a
corpse, and observing,
I asked the monk if all the brethren up stairs expected to be put in
this place when they died. He answered quietly:
See what one can accustom himself to.--The reflection that he must some
day be taken apart like an engine or a clock, or like a house whose
owner is gone, and worked up into arches and pyramids and hideous
frescoes, did not distress this monk in the least. I thought he even
looked as if he were thinking, with complacent vanity, that his own
skull would look well on top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm
to the frescoes which possibly they lacked at present.
Here and there, in ornamental alcoves, stretched upon beds of bones,
lay dead and dried-up monks, with lank frames dressed in the black
robes one sees ordinarily upon priests. We examined one closely. The
skinny hands were clasped upon the breast; two lustreless tufts of hair
stuck to the skull; the skin was brown and sunken; it stretched tightly
over the cheek bones and made them stand out sharply; the crisp dead
eyes were deep in the sockets; the nostrils were painfully prominent,
the end of the nose being gone; the lips had shriveled away from the
yellow teeth: and brought down to us through the circling years, and
petrified there, was a weird laugh a full century old!
It was the jolliest laugh, but yet the most dreadful, that one can
imagine. Surely, I thought, it must have been a most extraordinary joke
this veteran produced with his latest breath, that he has not got done
laughing at it yet. At this moment I saw that the old instinct was
strong upon the boys, and I said we had better hurry to St. Peter's.
They were trying to keep from asking,
It makes me dizzy, to think of the Vatican--of its wilderness of
statues, paintings, and curiosities of every description and every age.
The
There is one thing I am certain of, though. With all the Michael
Angelos, the Raphaels, the Guidos and the other old masters, the
sublime history of Rome remains unpainted! They painted Virgins enough,
and popes enough and saintly scarecrows enough, to people Paradise,
almost, and these things are all they did paint.
They did paint, and they did carve in marble, one historical scene, and
one only, (of any great historical consequence.) And what was it and
why did they choose it, particularly? It was the Rape of the Sabines,
and they chose it for the legs and busts.
I like to look at statues, however, and I like to look at pictures,
also--even of monks looking up in sacred ecstacy, and monks looking
down in meditation, and monks skirmishing for something to eat--and
therefore I drop ill nature to thank the papal government for so
jealously guarding and so industriously gathering up these things; and
for permitting me, a stranger and not an entirely friendly one, to roam
at will and unmolested among them, charging me nothing, and only
requiring that I shall behave myself simply as well as I ought to
behave in any other man's house. I thank the Holy Father right
heartily, and I wish him long life and plenty of happiness.
The Popes have long been the patrons and preservers of art, just as our
new, practical Republic is the encourager and upholder of mechanics. In
their Vatican is stored up all that is curious and beautiful in art; in
our Patent Office is hoarded all that is curious or useful in mechanics.
When a man invents a new style of horse-collar or discovers a new and
superior method of telegraphing, our government issues a patent to him
that is worth a fortune; when a man digs up an ancient statue in the
Campagna, the Pope gives him a fortune in gold coin. We can make
something of a guess at a man's character by the style of nose he
carries on his face. The Vatican and the Patent Office are governmental
noses, and they bear a deal of character about them.
The guide showed us a colossal statue of Jupiter, in the Vatican, which
he said looked so damaged and rusty--so like the God of the
Vagabonds--because it had but recently been dug up in the Campagna. He
asked how much we supposed this Jupiter was worth? I replied, with
intelligent promptness, that he was probably worth about four
dollars--may be four and a half.
I wish here to mention an inscription I have seen, before I forget it:
This is in letters of gold around the apsis of a mosaic group at the
side of the scala santa, church of St. John Lateran, the Mother and
Mistress of all the Catholic churches of the world. The group
represents the Saviour, St. Peter, Pope Leo, St. Silvester, Constantine
and Charlemagne. Peter is giving the pallium to the Pope, and a
standard to Charlemagne. The Saviour is giving the keys to St.
Silvester, and a standard to Constantine. No prayer is offered to the
Saviour, who seems to be of little importance any where in Rome; but an
inscription below says,
In all seriousness--without meaning to be frivolous--without meaning to
be irreverent, and more than all, without meaning to be blasphemous,--I
state as my simple deduction from the things I have seen and the things
I have heard, that the Holy Personages rank thus in Rome:
First--
Second--The Deity.
Third--Peter.
Fourth--Some twelve or fifteen canonized Popes and martyrs.
Fifth--Jesus Christ the Saviour--(but always as an infant in arms.)
I may be wrong in this--my judgment errs often, just as is the case
with other men's--but it is my judgment, be it good or bad.
Just here I will mention something that seems curious to me. There are
no
Day after day and night after night we have wandered among the
crumbling wonders of Rome; day after day and night after night we have
fed upon the dust and decay of five-and-twenty centuries--have brooded
over them by day and dreampt of them by night till sometimes we seemed
moldering away ourselves, and growing defaced and cornerless, and
liable at any moment to fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in
the legs, and
But the surest way to stop writing about Rome is to stop. I wished to
write a real
The ship is lying here in the harbor of Naples--quarantined. She has
been here several days and will remain several more. We that came by
rail from Rome have escaped this misfortune. Of course no one is
allowed to go on board the ship, or come ashore from her. She is a
prison, now. The passengers probably spend the long, blazing days
looking out from under the awnings at Vesuvius and the beautiful
city--and in swearing. Think of ten days of this sort of pastime!--We
go out every day in a boat and request them to come ashore. It soothes
them. We lie ten steps from the ship and tell them how splendid the
city is; and how much better the hotel fare is here than any where else
in Europe; and how cool it is; and what frozen continents of ice cream
there are; and what a time we are having cavorting about the country
and sailing to the islands in the Bay. This tranquilizes them.
Ascent of Vesuvius.
I shall remember our trip to Vesuvius for many a day--partly because of
its sight-seeing experiences, but chiefly on account of the fatigue of
the journey. Two or three of us had been resting ourselves among the
tranquil and beautiful scenery of the island of Ischia, eighteen miles
out in the harbor, for two days; we called it
I said I knew nothing against the upper classes by personal observation.
I must recall it! I had forgotten. What I saw their bravest and their
fairest do last night, the lowest multitude that could be scraped up
out of the purlieus of Christendom would blush to do, I think. They
assembled by hundreds, and even thousands, in the great Theatre of San
Carlo, to do--what? Why, simply, to make fun of an old woman--to
deride, to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped, but whose
beauty is faded now and whose voice has lost its former richness. Every
body spoke of the rare sport there was to be. They said the theatre
would be crammed, because Frezzolini was going to sing. It was said she
could not sing well, now, but then the people liked to see her, anyhow.
And so we went. And every time the woman sang they hissed and
laughed--the whole magnificent house--and as soon as she left the stage
they called her on again with applause. Once or twice she was encored
five and six times in succession, and received with hisses when she
appeared, and discharged with hisses and laughter when she had
finished--then instantly encored and insulted again! And how the
high-born knaves enjoyed it! White-kidded gentlemen and ladies laughed
till the tears came, and clapped their hands in very ecstacy when that
unhappy old woman would come meekly out for the sixth time, with
uncomplaining patience, to meet a storm of hisses! It was the cruelest
exhibition--the most wanton, the most unfeeling. The singer would have
conquered an audience of American rowdies by her brave, unflinching
tranquillity (for she answered encore after encore, and smiled and
bowed pleasantly, and sang the best she possibly could, and went bowing
off, through all the jeers and hisses, without ever losing countenance
or temper:) and surely in any other land than Italy her sex and her
helplessness must have been an ample protection to her--she could have
needed no other. Think what a multitude of small souls were crowded
into that theatre last night. If the manager could have filled his
theatre with Neapolitan souls alone, without the bodies, he could not
have cleared less than ninety millions of dollars. What traits of
character must a man have to enable him to help three thousand
miscreants to hiss, and jeer, and laugh at one friendless old woman,
and shamefully humiliate her? He must have all the vile, mean traits
there are. My observation persuades me (I do not like to venture beyond
my own personal observation,) that the upper classes of Naples possess
those traits of character. Otherwise they may be very good people; I
can not say.
Ascent of Vesuvius--Continued.
In this city of Naples, they believe in and support one of the
wretchedest of all the religious impostures one can find in Italy--the
miraculous liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. Twice a year the
priests assemble all the people at the Cathedral, and get out this vial
of clotted blood and let them see it slowly dissolve and become
liquid--and every day for eight days, this dismal farce is repeated,
while the priests go among the crowd and collect money for the
exhibition. The first day, the blood liquefies in forty-seven
minutes--the church is crammed, then, and time must be allowed the
collectors to get around: after that it liquefies a little quicker and
a little quicker, every day, as the houses grow smaller, till on the
eighth day, with only a few dozens present to see the miracle, it
liquefies in four minutes.
And here, also, they used to have a grand procession, of priests,
citizens, soldiers, sailors, and the high dignitaries of the City
Government, once a year, to shave the head of a made-up Madonna--a
stuffed and painted image, like a milliner's dummy--whose hair
miraculously grew and restored itself every twelve months. They still
kept up this shaving procession as late as four or five years ago. It
was a source of great profit to the church that possessed the
remarkable effigy, and the ceremony of the public barbering of her was
always carried out with the greatest possible eclat and display--the
more the better, because the more excitement there was about it the
larger the crowds it drew and the heavier the revenues it produced--but
at last a day came when the Pope and his servants were unpopular in
Naples, and the City Government stopped the Madonna's annual show.
There we have two specimens of these Neapolitans--two of the silliest
possible frauds, which half the population religiously and faithfully
believed, and the other half either believed also or else said nothing
about, and thus lent themselves to the support of the imposture. I am
very well satisfied to think the whole population believed in those
poor, cheap miracles--a people who want two cents every time they bow
to you, and who abuse a woman, are capable of it, I think.
Ascent of Vesuvius--Continued.
These Neapolitans always ask four times as much money as they intend to
take, but if you give them what they first demand, they feel ashamed of
themselves for aiming so low, and immediately ask more. When money is
to be paid and received, there is always some vehement jawing and
gesticulating about it. One can not buy and pay for two cents' worth of
clams without trouble and a quarrel. One
Ascent of Vesuvius--Continued.
Well, as I was saying, we got our mules and horses, after an hour and a
half of bargaining with the population of Annunciation, and started
sleepily up the mountain, with a vagrant at each mule's tail who
pretended to be driving the brute along, but was really holding on and
getting himself dragged up instead. I made slow headway at first, but I
began to get dissatisfied at the idea of paying my minion five francs
to hold my mule back by the tail and keep him from going up the hill,
and so I discharged him. I got along faster then.
We had one magnificent picture of Naples from a high point on the
mountain side. We saw nothing but the gas lamps, of course--two-thirds
of a circle, skirting the great Bay--a necklace of diamonds glinting up
through the darkness from the remote distance--less brilliant than the
stars overhead, but more softly, richly beautiful--and over all the
great city the lights crossed and recrossed each other in many and many
a sparkling line and curve. And back of the town, far around and abroad
over the miles of level campagna, were scattered rows, and circles, and
clusters of lights, all glowing like so many gems, and marking where a
score of villages were sleeping. About this time, the fellow who was
hanging on to the tail of the horse in front of me and practicing all
sorts of unnecessary cruelty upon the animal, got kicked some fourteen
rods, and this incident, together with the fairy spectacle of the
lights far in the distance, made me serenely happy, and I was glad I
started to Vesuvius.
Ascent of Mount Vesuvius--Continued.
This subject will be excellent matter for a chapter, and tomorrow or
next day I will write it.@[te
Chapter XXX
Ascent of Vesuvius--Continued.
See naples and die.
But do not go within the walls and look at it in detail. That takes
away some of the romance of the thing. The people are filthy in their
habits, and this makes filthy streets and breeds disagreeable sights
and smells. There never was a community so prejudiced against the
cholera as these Neapolitans are. But they have good reason to be. The
cholera generally vanquishes a Neapolitan when it seizes him, because,
you understand, before the doctor can dig through the dirt and get at
the disease the man dies. The upper classes take a sea-bath every day,
and are pretty decent.
The streets are generally about wide enough for one wagon, and how they
do swarm with people! It is Broadway repeated in every street, in every
court, in every alley! Such masses, such throngs, such multitudes of
hurrying, bustling, struggling humanity! We never saw the like of it,
hardly even in New York, I think. There are seldom any sidewalks, and
when there are, they are not often wide enough to pass a man on without
caroming on him. So everybody walks in the street--and where the street
is wide enough, carriages are forever dashing along. Why a thousand
people are not run over and crippled every day is a mystery that no man
can solve.
But if there is an eighth wonder in the world, it must be the
dwelling-houses of Naples. I honestly believe a good majority of them
are a hundred feet high! And the solid brick walls are seven feet
through. You go up nine flights of stairs before you get to the
Ascent of Vesuvius--Continued.
Naples, with its immediate suburbs, contains six hundred and
twenty-five thousand inhabitants, but I am satisfied it covers no more
ground than an American city of one hundred and fifty thousand. It
reaches up into the air infinitely higher than three American cities,
though, and there is where the secret of it lies. I will observe here,
in passing, that the contrasts between opulence and poverty, and
magnificence and misery, are more frequent and more striking in Naples
than in Paris even. One must go to the Bois de Boulogne to see
fashionable dressing, splendid equipages and stunning liveries, and to
the Faubourg St. Antoine to see vice, misery, hunger, rags, dirt--but
in the thoroughfares of Naples these things are all mixed together.
Naked boys of nine years and the fancy-dressed children of luxury;
shreds and tatters, and brilliant uniforms; jackass-carts and
state-carriages; beggars, Princes and Bishops, jostle each other in
every street. At six o'clock every evening, all Naples turns out to
drive on the Riviere di Chiaja, (whatever that may mean;) and for two
hours one may stand there and see the motliest and the worst mixed
procession go by that ever eyes beheld. Princes (there are more Princes
than policemen in Naples--the city is infested with them)--Princes who
live up seven flights of stairs and don't own any principalities, will
keep a carriage and go hungry; and clerks, mechanics, milliners and
strumpets will go without their dinners and squander the money on a
hack-ride in the Chiaja; the rag-tag and rubbish of the city stack
themselves up, to the number of twenty or thirty, on a rickety little
go-cart hauled by a donkey not much bigger than a cat, and they drive
in the Chiaja; Dukes and bankers, in sumptuous carriages and with
gorgeous drivers and footmen, turn out, also, and so the furious
procession goes. For two hours rank and wealth, and obscurity and
poverty clatter along side by side in the wild procession, and then go
home serene, happy, covered with glory!
I was looking at a magnificent marble staircase in the King's palace,
the other day, which, it was said, cost five million francs, and I
suppose it did cost half a million, may be. I felt as if it must be a
fine thing to live in a country where there was such comfort and such
luxury as this. And then I stepped out musing, and almost walked over a
vagabond who was eating his dinner on the curbstone--a piece of bread
and a bunch of grapes. When I found that this mustang was clerking in a
fruit establishment (he had the establishment along with him in a
basket,) at two cents a day, and that he had no palace at home where he
lived, I lost some of my enthusiasm concerning the happiness of living
in Italy.
This naturally suggests to me a thought about wages here. Lieutenants
in the army get about a dollar a day, and common soldiers a couple of
cents. I only know one clerk--he gets four dollars a month. Printers
get six dollars and a half a month, but I have heard of a foreman who
gets thirteen. To be growing suddenly and violently rich, as this man
is, naturally makes him a bloated aristocrat. The airs he puts on are
insufferable.
And, speaking of wages, reminds me of prices of merchandise. In Paris
you pay twelve dollars a dozen for Jouvin's best kid gloves; gloves of
about as good quality sell here at three or four dollars a dozen. You
pay five and six dollars apiece for fine linen shirts in Paris; here
and in Leghorn you pay two and a half. In Marseilles you pay forty
dollars for a first-class dress coat made by a good tailor, but in
Leghorn you can get a full dress suit for the same money. Here you get
handsome business suits at from ten to twenty dollars, and in Leghorn
you can get an overcoat for fifteen dollars that would cost you seventy
in New York. Fine kid boots are worth eight dollars in Marseilles and
four dollars here. Lyons velvets rank higher in America than those of
Genoa. Yet the bulk of Lyons velvets you buy in the States are made in
Genoa and imported into Lyons, where they receive the Lyons stamp and
are then exported to America. You can buy enough velvet in Genoa for
twenty-five dollars to make a five hundred dollar cloak in New York--so
the ladies tell me. Of course these things bring me back, by a natural
and easy transition, to the
Ascent of Vesuvius--Continued.
And thus the wonderful Blue Grotto is suggested to me. It is situated
on the Island of Capri, twenty-two miles from Naples. We chartered a
little steamer and went out there. Of course, the police boarded us and
put us through a health examination, and inquired into our politics,
before they would let us land. The airs these little insect Governments
put on are in the last degree ridiculous. They even put a policeman on
board of our boat to keep an eye on us as long as we were in the Capri
dominions. They thought we wanted to steal the grotto, I suppose. It
was worth stealing. The entrance to the cave is four feet high and four
feet wide, and is in the face of a lofty perpendicular cliff--the
sea-wall. You enter in small boats--and a tight squeeze it is, too. You
can not go in at all when the tide is up. Once within, you find
yourself in an arched cavern about one hundred and sixty feet long, one
hundred and twenty wide, and about seventy high. How deep it is no man
knows. It goes down to the bottom of the ocean. The waters of this
placid subterranean lake are the brightest, loveliest blue that can be
imagined. They are as transparent as plate glass, and their coloring
would shame the richest sky that ever bent over Italy. No tint could be
more ravishing, no lustre more superb. Throw a stone into the water,
and the myriad of tiny bubbles that are created flash out a brilliant
glare like blue theatrical fires. Dip an oar, and its blade turns to
splendid frosted silver, tinted with blue. Let a man jump in, and
instantly he is cased in an armor more gorgeous than ever kingly
Crusader wore.
Then we went to Ischia, but I had already been to that island and tired
myself to death
Nero's Baths, the ruins of Bai;ae, the Temple of Serapis; Cum;ae, where
the Cum;aen Sybil interpreted the oracles, the Lake Agnano, with its
ancient submerged city still visible far down in its depths--these and
a hundred other points of interest we examined with critical
imbecility, but the Grotto of the Dog claimed our chief attention,
because we had heard and read so much about it. Every body has written
about the Grotto del Cane and its poisonous vapors, from Pliny down to
Smith, and every tourist has held a dog over its floor by the legs to
test the capabilities of the place. The dog dies in a minute and a
half--a chicken instantly. As a general thing, strangers who crawl in
there to sleep do not get up until they are called. And then they don't
either. The stranger that ventures to sleep there takes a permanent
contract. I longed to see this grotto. I resolved to take a dog and
hold him myself; suffocate him a little, and time him; suffocate him
some more and then finish him. We reached the grotto at about three in
the afternoon, and proceeded at once to make the experiments. But now,
an important difficulty presented itself. We had no dog.
Ascent of Vesuvius--Continued.
At the Hermitage we were about fifteen or eighteen hundred feet above
the sea, and thus far a portion of the ascent had been pretty abrupt.
For the next two miles the road was a mixture--sometimes the ascent was
abrupt and sometimes it was not: but one characteristic it possessed
all the time, without failure--without modification--it was all
uncompromisingly and unspeakably infamous. It was a rough, narrow
trail, and led over an old lava flow--a black ocean which was tumbled
into a thousand fantastic shapes--a wild chaos of ruin, desolation, and
barrenness--a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools,
of miniature mountains rent asunder--of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled
and twisted masses of blackness that mimicked branching roots, great
vines, trunks of trees, all interlaced and mingled together: and all
these weird shapes, all this turbulent panorama, all this stormy,
far-stretching waste of blackness, with its thrilling suggestiveness of
life, of action, of boiling, surging, furious motion, was
petrified!--all stricken dead and cold in the instant of its maddest
rioting!--fettered, paralyzed, and left to glower at heaven in impotent
rage for evermore!
Finally we stood in a level, narrow valley (a valley that had been
created by the terrific march of some old time irruption) and on either
hand towered the two steep peaks of Vesuvius. The one we had to
climb--the one that contains the active volcano--seemed about eight
hundred or one thousand feet high, and looked almost too
straight-up-and-down for any man to climb, and certainly no mule could
climb it with a man on his back. Four of these native pirates will
carry you to the top in a sedan chair, if you wish it, but suppose they
were to slip and let you fall,--is it likely that you would ever stop
rolling? Not this side of eternity, perhaps. We left the mules,
sharpened our finger-nails, and began the ascent I have been writing
about so long, at twenty minutes to six in the morning. The path led
straight up a rugged sweep of loose chunks of pumice-stone, and for
about every two steps forward we took, we slid back one. It was so
excessively steep that we had to stop, every fifty or sixty steps, and
rest a moment. To see our comrades, we had to look very nearly straight
up at those above us, and very nearly straight down at those below. We
stood on the summit at last--it had taken an hour and fifteen minutes
to make the trip.
What we saw there was simply a circular crater--a circular ditch, if
you please--about two hundred feet deep, and four or five hundred feet
wide, whose inner wall was about half a mile in circumference. In the
centre of the great circus ring thus formed, was a torn and ragged
upheaval a hundred feet high, all snowed over with a sulphur crust of
many and many a brilliant and beautiful color, and the ditch inclosed
this like the moat of a castle, or surrounded it as a little river does
a little island, if the simile is better. The sulphur coating of that
island was gaudy in the extreme--all mingled together in the richest
confusion were red, blue, brown, black, yellow, white--I do not know
that there was a color, or shade of a color, or combination of colors,
unrepresented--and when the sun burst through the morning mists and
fired this tinted magnificence, it topped imperial Vesuvius like a
jeweled crown!
The crater itself--the ditch--was not so variegated in coloring, but
yet, in its softness, richness, and unpretentious elegance, it was more
charming, more fascinating to the eye. There was nothing
The walls of the ditch were brilliant with yellow banks of sulphur and
with lava and pumice-stone of many colors. No fire was visible any
where, but gusts of sulphurous steam issued silently and invisibly from
a thousand little cracks and fissures in the crater, and were wafted to
our noses with every breeze. But so long as we kept our nostrils buried
in our handkerchiefs, there was small danger of suffocation.
Some of the boys thrust long slips of paper down into holes and set
them on fire, and so achieved the glory of lighting their cigars by the
flames of Vesuvius, and others cooked eggs over fissures in the rocks
and were happy.
The view from the summit would have been superb but for the fact that
the sun could only pierce the mists at long intervals. Thus the
glimpses we had of the grand panorama below were only fitful and
unsatisfactory.
The Descent.
The descent of the mountain was a labor of only four minutes. Instead
of stalking down the rugged path we ascended, we chose one which was
bedded knee-deep in loose ashes, and ploughed our way with prodigious
strides that would almost have shamed the performance of him of the
seven-league boots.
The Vesuvius of to-day is a very poor affair compared to the mighty
volcano of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, but I am glad I visited it.
It was well worth it.
It is said that during one of the grand eruptions of Vesuvius it
discharged massy rocks weighing many tons a thousand feet into the air,
its vast jets of smoke and steam ascended thirty miles toward the
firmament, and clouds of its ashes were wafted abroad and fell upon the
decks of ships seven hundred and fifty miles at sea! I will take the
ashes at a moderate discount, if any one will take the thirty miles of
smoke, but I do not feel able to take a commanding interest in the
whole story by myself.@[te
Chapter XXXI
The Buried City of Pompeii.
They pronounce it Pom-pay-e. I always had an idea that you went down
into Pompeii with torches, by the way of damp, dark stairways, just as
you do in silver mines, and traversed gloomy tunnels with lava overhead
and something on either hand like dilapidated prisons gouged out of the
solid earth, that faintly resembled houses. But you do nothing of the
kind. Fully one-half of the buried city, perhaps, is completely exhumed
and thrown open freely to the light of day; and there stand the long
rows of solidly-built brick houses (roofless) just as they stood
eighteen hundred years ago, hot with the flaming sun; and there lie
their floors, clean-swept, and not a bright fragment tarnished or
wanting of the labored mosaics that pictured them with the beasts, and
birds, and flowers which we copy in perishable carpets to-day; and
there are the Venuses, and Bacchuses, and Adonises, making love and
getting drunk in many-hued frescoes on the walls of saloon and
bed-chamber; and there are the narrow streets and narrower sidewalks,
paved with flags of good hard lava, the one deeply rutted with the
chariot-wheels, and the other with the passing feet of the Pompeiians
of by-gone centuries; and there are the bake-shops, the temples, the
halls of justice, the baths, the theatres--all clean-scraped and neat,
and suggesting nothing of the nature of a silver mine away down in the
bowels of the earth. The broken pillars lying about, the doorless
doorways and the crumbled tops of the wilderness of walls, were
wonderfully suggestive of the
No--Pompeii is no longer a buried city. It is a city of hundreds and
hundreds of roofless houses, and a tangled maze of streets where one
could easily get lost, without a guide, and have to sleep in some
ghostly palace that had known no living tenant since that awful
November night of eighteen centuries ago.
We passed through the gate which faces the Mediterranean, (called the <
q>Marine Gate,
Then we lounged through many and many a sumptuous private mansion which
we could not have entered without a formal invitation in
incomprehensible Latin, in the olden time, when the owners lived
there--and we probably wouldn't have got it. These people built their
houses a good deal alike. The floors were laid in fanciful figures
wrought in mosaics of many-colored marbles. At the threshold your eyes
fall upon a Latin sentence of welcome, sometimes, or a picture of a
dog, with the legend
It was a quaint and curious pastime, wandering through this old silent
city of the dead--lounging through utterly deserted streets where
thousands and thousands of human beings once bought and sold, and
walked and rode, and made the place resound with the noise and
confusion of traffic and pleasure. They were not lazy. They hurried in
those days. We had evidence of that. There was a temple on one corner,
and it was a shorter cut to go between the columns of that temple from
one street to the other than to go around--and behold that pathway had
been worn deep into the heavy flag-stone floor of the building by
generations of time-saving feet! They would not go around when it was
quicker to go through. We do that way in our cities.
Every where, you see things that make you wonder how old these old
houses were before the night of destruction came--things, too, which
bring back those long dead inhabitants and place them living before
your eyes. For instance: The steps (two feet thick--lava blocks) that
lead up out of the school, and the same kind of steps that lead up into
the dress circle of the principal theatre, are almost worn through! For
ages the boys hurried out of that school, and for ages their parents
hurried into that theatre, and the nervous feet that have been dust and
ashes for eighteen centuries have left their record for us to read
to-day. I imagined I could see crowds of gentlemen and ladies thronging
into the theatre, with tickets for secured seats in their hands, and on
the wall, I read the imaginary placard, in infamous grammar,
And so I turned away and went through shop after shop and store after
store, far down the long street of the merchants, and called for the
wares of Rome and the East, but the tradesmen were gone, the marts were
silent, and nothing was left but the broken jars all set in cement of
cinders and ashes: the wine and the oil that once had filled them were
gone with their owners.
In a bake-shop was a mill for grinding the grain, and the furnaces for
baking the bread: and they say that here, in the same furnaces, the
exhumers of Pompeii found nice, well baked loaves which the baker had
not found time to remove from the ovens the last time he left his shop,
because circumstances compelled him to leave in such a hurry.
In one house (the only building in Pompeii which no woman is now
allowed to enter,) were the small rooms and short beds of solid
masonry, just as they were in the old times, and on the walls were
pictures which looked almost as fresh as if they were painted
yesterday, but which no pen could have the hardihood to describe; and
here and there were Latin inscriptions--obscene scintillations of wit,
scratched by hands that possibly were uplifted to Heaven for succor in
the midst of a driving storm of fire before the night was done.
In one of the principal streets was a ponderous stone tank, and a
water-spout that supplied it, and where the tired, heated toilers from
the Campagna used to rest their right hands when they bent over to put
their lips to the spout, the thick stone was worn down to a broad
groove an inch or two deep. Think of the countless thousands of hands
that had pressed that spot in the ages that are gone, to so reduce a
stone that is as hard as iron!
They had a great public bulletin board in Pompeii--a place where
announcements for gladiatorial combats, elections, and such things,
were posted--not on perishable paper, but carved in enduring stone. One
lady, who, I take it, was rich and well brought up, advertised a
dwelling or so to rent, with baths and all the modern improvements, and
several hundred shops, stipulating that the dwellings should not be put
to immoral purposes. You can find out who lived in many a house in
Pompeii by the carved stone door-plates affixed to them: and in the
same way you can tell who they were that occupy the tombs. Every where
around are things that reveal to you something of the customs and
history of this forgotten people. But what would a volcano leave of an
American city, if it once rained its cinders on it? Hardly a sign or a
symbol to tell its story.
In one of these long Pompeiian halls the skeleton of a man was found,
with ten pieces of gold in one hand and a large key in the other. He
had seized his money and started toward the door, but the fiery tempest
caught him at the very threshold, and he sank down and died. One more
minute of precious time would have saved him. I saw the skeletons of a
man, a woman, and two young girls. The woman had her hands spread wide
apart, as if in mortal terror, and I imagined I could still trace upon
her shapeless face something of the expression of wild despair that
distorted it when the heavens rained fire in these streets, so many
ages ago. The girls and the man lay with their faces upon their arms,
as if they had tried to shield them from the enveloping cinders. In one
apartment eighteen skeletons were found, all in sitting postures, and
blackened places on the walls still mark their shapes and show their
attitudes, like shadows. One of them, a woman, still wore upon her
skeleton throat a necklace, with her name engraved upon it--Julie di
Diomede.
But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern
research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete
armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of
Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to that name its
glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till
the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could
not conquer.
We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write
of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he
so well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier--not a
policeman--and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid,--because the
warrior instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would
have staid, also--because he would have been asleep.
There are not half a dozen flights of stairs in Pompeii, and no other
evidences that the houses were more than one story high. The people did
not live in the clouds, as do the Venetians, the Genoese and
Neapolitans of to-day.
We came out from under the solemn mysteries of this city of the
Venerable Past--this city which perished, with all its old ways and its
quaint old fashions about it, remote centuries ago, when the Disciples
were preaching the new religion, which is as old as the hills to us
now--and went dreaming among the trees that grow over acres and acres
of its still buried streets and squares, till a shrill whistle and the
cry of
Compare the cheerful life and the sunshine of this day with the horrors
the younger Pliny saw here, the 9th of November, A.D. 79, when he was
so bravely striving to remove his mother out of reach of harm, while
she begged him, with all a mother's unselfishness, to leave her to
perish and save himself.@
Home, again! For the first time, in many weeks, the ship's entire
family met and shook hands on the quarter-deck. They had gathered from
many points of the compass and from many lands, but not one was missing;
there was no tale of sickness or death among the flock to dampen the
pleasure of the reunion. Once more there was a full audience on deck to
listen to the sailors' chorus as they got the anchor up, and to wave an
adieu to the land as we sped away from Naples. The seats were full at
dinner again, the domino parties were complete, and the life and bustle
on the upper deck in the fine moonlight at night was like old
times--old times that had been gone weeks only, but yet they were weeks
so crowded with incident, adventure and excitement, that they seemed
almost like years. There was no lack of cheerfulness on board the
Quaker City. For once, her title was a misnomer.
At seven in the evening, with the western horizon all golden from the
sunken sun, and specked with distant ships, the full moon sailing high
over head, the dark blue of the sea under foot, and a strange sort of
twilight affected by all these different lights and colors around us
and about us, we sighted superb Stromboli. With what majesty the
monarch held his lonely state above the level sea! Distance clothed him
in a purple gloom, and added a veil of shimmering mist that so softened
his rugged features that we seemed to see him through a web of silver
gauze. His torch was out; his fires were smoldering; a tall column of
smoke that rose up and lost itself in the growing moonlight was all the
sign he gave that he was a living Autocrat of the Sea and not the
spectre of a dead one.
At two in the morning we swept through the Straits of Messina, and so
bright was the moonlight that Italy on the one hand and Sicily on the
other seemed almost as distinctly visible as though we looked at them
from the middle of a street we were traversing. The city of Messina,
milk-white, and starred and spangled all over with gaslights, was a
fairy spectacle. A great party of us were on deck smoking and making a
noise, and waiting to see famous Scylla and Charybdis. And presently
the Oracle stepped out with his eternal spy-glass and squared himself
on the deck like another Colossus of Rhodes. It was a surprise to see
him abroad at such an hour. Nobody supposed he cared any thing about an
old fable like that of Scylla and Charybdis. One of the boys said:
And he closed up his glass and went below. The above is the ship story.
Its plausibility is marred a little by the fact that the Oracle was not
a biblical student, and did not spend much of his time instructing
himself about Scriptural localities.--They say the Oracle complains, in
this hot weather, lately, that the only beverage in the ship that is
passable, is the butter. He did not mean butter, of course, but
inasmuch as that article remains in a melted state now since we are out
of ice, it is fair to give him the credit of getting one long word in
the right place, anyhow, for once in his life. He said, in Rome, that
the Pope was a noble-looking old man, but he never did think much of
his Iliad.
We spent one pleasant day skirting along the Isles of Greece. They are
very mountainous. Their prevailing tints are gray and brown,
approaching to red. Little white villages surrounded by trees, nestle
in the valleys or roost upon the lofty perpendicular sea-walls.
We had one fine sunset--a rich carmine flush that suffused the western
sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea.--Fine sunsets seem to be
rare in this part of the world--or at least, striking ones. They are
soft, sensuous, lovely--they are exquisite, refined, effeminate, but we
have seen no sunsets here yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that
flame in the track of the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes.
But what were sunsets to us, with the wild excitement upon us of
approaching the most renowned of cities! What cared we for outward
visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a thousand other heroes of the
great Past were marching in ghostly procession through our fancies?
What were sunsets to us, who were about to live and breathe and walk in
actual Athens; yea, and go far down into the dead centuries and bid in
person for the slaves, Diogenes and Plato, in the public market-place,
or gossip with the neighbors about the siege of Troy or the splendid
deeds of Marathon? We scorned to consider sunsets.
We arrived, and entered the ancient harbor of the Pir;aeus at last. We
dropped anchor within half a mile of the village. Away off, across the
undulating Plain of Attica, could be seen a little square-topped hill
with a something on it, which our glasses soon discovered to be the
ruined edifices of the citadel of the Athenians, and most prominent
among them loomed the venerable Parthenon. So exquisitely clear and
pure is this wonderful atmosphere that every column of the noble
structure was discernible through the telescope, and even the smaller
ruins about it assumed some semblance of shape. This at a distance of
five or six miles. In the valley, near the Acropolis, (the
square-topped hill before spoken of,) Athens itself could be vaguely
made out with an ordinary lorgnette. Every body was anxious to get
ashore and visit these classic localities as quickly as possible. No
land we had yet seen had aroused such universal interest among the
passengers.
But bad news came. The commandant of the Pir;aeus came in his boat, and
said we must either depart or else get outside the harbor and remain
imprisoned in our ship, under rigid quarantine, for eleven days! So we
took up the anchor and moved outside, to lie a dozen hours or so,
taking in supplies, and then sail for Constantinople. It was the
bitterest disappointment we had yet experienced. To lie a whole day in
sight of the Acropolis, and yet be obliged to go away without visiting
Athens! Disappointment was hardly a strong enough word to describe the
circumstances.
All hands were on deck, all the afternoon, with books and maps and
glasses, trying to determine which
We inquired of every body who came near the ship, whether there were
guards in the Pir;aeus, whether they were strict, what the chances were
of capture should any of us slip ashore, and in case any of us made the
venture and were caught, what would be probably done to us? The answers
were discouraging: There was a strong guard or police force; the Pir;
aeus was a small town, and any stranger seen in it would surely attract
attention--capture would be certain. The commandant said the punishment
would be
At eleven o'clock at night, when most of the ship's company were abed,
four of us stole softly ashore in a small boat, a clouded moon favoring
the enterprise, and started two and two, and far apart, over a low
hill, intending to go clear around the Pir;aeus, out of the range of
its police. Picking our way so stealthily over that rocky, nettle-grown
eminence, made me feel a good deal as if I were on my way somewhere to
steal something. My immediate comrade and I talked in an undertone
about quarantine laws and their penalties, but we found nothing
cheering in the subject. I was posted. Only a few days before, I was
talking with our captain, and he mentioned the case of a man who swam
ashore from a quarantined ship somewhere, and got imprisoned six months
for it; and when he was in Genoa a few years ago, a captain of a
quarantined ship went in his boat to a departing ship, which was
already outside of the harbor, and put a letter on board to be taken to
his family, and the authorities imprisoned him three months for it, and
then conducted him and his ship fairly to sea, and warned him never to
show himself in that port again while he lived. This kind of
conversation did no good, further than to give a sort of dismal
interest to our quarantine-breaking expedition, and so we dropped it.
We made the entire circuit of the town without seeing any body but one
man, who stared at us curiously, but said nothing, and a dozen persons
asleep on the ground before their doors, whom we walked among and never
woke--but we woke up dogs enough, in all conscience--we always had one
or two barking at our heels, and several times we had as many as ten
and twelve at once. They made such a preposterous din that persons
aboard our ship said they could tell how we were progressing for a long
time, and where we were, by the barking of the dogs. The clouded moon
still favored us. When we had made the whole circuit, and were passing
among the houses on the further side of the town, the moon came out
splendidly, but we no longer feared the light. As we approached a well,
near a house, to get a drink, the owner merely glanced at us and went
within. He left the quiet, slumbering town at our mercy. I record it
here proudly, that we didn't do any thing to it.
Seeing no road, we took a tall hill to the left of the distant
Acropolis for a mark, and steered straight for it over all
obstructions, and over a little rougher piece of country than exists
any where else outside of the State of Nevada, perhaps. Part of the way
it was covered with small, loose stones--we trod on six at a time, and
they all rolled. Another part of it was dry, loose, newly-ploughed
ground. Still another part of it was a long stretch of low grape-vines,
which were tanglesome and troublesome, and which we took to be brambles.
The Attic Plain, barring the grape-vines, was a barren, desolate,
unpoetical waste--I wonder what it was in Greece's Age of Glory, five
hundred years before Christ?
In the neighborhood of one o'clock in the morning, when we were heated
with fast walking and parched with thirst, Denny exclaimed,
In ten minutes more we struck into a beautiful road, and unlike some
others we had stumbled upon at intervals, it led in the right direction.
We followed it. It was broad, and smooth, and white--handsome and in
perfect repair, and shaded on both sides for a mile or so with single
ranks of trees, and also with luxuriant vineyards. Twice we entered and
stole grapes, and the second time somebody shouted at us from some
invisible place. Whereupon we left again. We speculated in grapes no
more on that side of Athens.
Shortly we came upon an ancient stone aqueduct, built upon arches, and
from that time forth we had ruins all about us--we were approaching our
journey's end. We could not see the Acropolis now or the high hill,
either, and I wanted to follow the road till we were abreast of them,
but the others overruled me, and we toiled laboriously up the stony
hill immediately in our front--and from its summit saw another--climbed
it and saw another! It was an hour of exhausting work. Soon we came
upon a row of open graves, cut in the solid rock--(for a while one of
them served Socrates for a prison)--we passed around the shoulder of
the hill, and the citadel, in all its ruined magnificence, burst upon
us! We hurried across the ravine and up a winding road, and stood on
the old Acropolis, with the prodigious walls of the citadel towering
above our heads. We did not stop to inspect their massive blocks of
marble, or measure their height, or guess at their extraordinary
thickness, but passed at once through a great arched passage like a
railway tunnel, and went straight to the gate that leads to the ancient
temples. It was locked! So, after all, it seemed that we were not to
see the great Parthenon face to face. We sat down and held a council of
war. Result: the gate was only a flimsy structure of wood--we would
break it down. It seemed like desecration, but then we had traveled
far, and our necessities were urgent. We could not hunt up guides and
keepers--we must be on the ship before daylight. So we argued. This was
all very fine, but when we came to break the gate, we could not do it.
We moved around an angle of the wall and found a low bastion--eight
feet high without--ten or twelve within. Denny prepared to scale it,
and we got ready to follow. By dint of hard scrambling he finally
straddled the top, but some loose stones crumbled away and fell with a
crash into the court within. There was instantly a banging of doors and
a shout. Denny dropped from the wall in a twinkling, and we retreated
in disorder to the gate. Xerxes took that mighty citadel four hundred
and eighty years before Christ, when his five millions of soldiers and
camp-followers followed him to Greece, and if we four Americans could
have remained unmolested five minutes longer, we would have taken it
too.
The garrison had turned out--four Greeks. We clamored at the gate, and
they admitted us. ;obBribery and corruption.;cb
We crossed a large court, entered a great door, and stood upon a
pavement of purest white marble, deeply worn by foot-prints. Before us,
in the flooding moonlight, rose the noblest ruins we had ever looked
upon--the Propyl;ae; a small Temple of Minerva; the Temple of Hercules,
and the grand Parthenon. ;obWe got these names from the Greek guide,
who didn't seem to know more than seven men ought to know.;cb These
edifices were all built of the whitest Pentelic marble, but have a
pinkish stain upon them now. Where any part is broken, however, the
fracture looks like fine loaf sugar. Six caryatides, or marble women,
clad in flowing robes, support the portico of the Temple of Hercules,
but the porticos and colonnades of the other structures are formed of
massive Doric and Ionic pillars, whose flutings and capitals are still
measurably perfect, notwithstanding the centuries that have gone over
them and the sieges they have suffered. The Parthenon, originally, was
two hundred and twenty-six feet long, one hundred wide, and seventy
high, and had two rows of great columns, eight in each, at either end,
and single rows of seventeen each down the sides, and was one of the
most graceful and beautiful edifices ever erected.
Most of the Parthenon's imposing columns are still standing, but the
roof is gone. It was a perfect building two hundred and fifty years
ago, when a shell dropped into the Venetian magazine stored here, and
the explosion which followed wrecked and unroofed it. I remember but
little about the Parthenon, and I have put in one or two facts and
figures for the use of other people with short memories. Got them from
the guide-book.
As we wandered thoughtfully down the marble-paved length of this
stately temple, the scene about us was strangely impressive. Here and
there, in lavish profusion, were gleaming white statues of men and
women, propped against blocks of marble, some of them armless, some
without legs, others headless--but all looking mournful in the
moonlight, and startlingly human! They rose up and confronted the
midnight intruder on every side--they stared at him with stony eyes
from unlooked-for nooks and recesses; they peered at him over
fragmentary heaps far down the desolate corridors; they barred his way
in the midst of the broad forum, and solemnly pointed with handless
arms the way from the sacred fane; and through the roofless temple the
moon looked down, and banded the floor and darkened the scattered
fragments and broken statues with the slanting shadows of the columns.
What a world of ruined sculpture was about us! Set up in rows--stacked
up in piles--scattered broadcast over the wide area of the
Acropolis--were hundreds of crippled statues of all sizes and of the
most exquisite workmanship; and vast fragments of marble that once
belonged to the entablatures, covered with bas-reliefs representing
battles and sieges, ships of war with three and four tiers of oars,
pageants and processions--every thing one could think of. History says
that the temples of the Acropolis were filled with the noblest works of
Praxiteles and Phidias, and of many a great master in sculpture
besides--and surely these elegant fragments attest it.
We walked out into the grass-grown, fragment-strewn court beyond the
Parthenon. It startled us, every now and then, to see a stony white
face stare suddenly up at us out of the grass with its dead eyes. The
place seemed alive with ghosts. I half expected to see the Athenian
heroes of twenty centuries ago glide out of the shadows and steal into
the old temple they knew so well and regarded with such boundless pride.
The full moon was riding high in the cloudless heavens, now. We
sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty
battlements of the citadel, and looked down--a vision! And such a
vision! Athens by moonlight! The prophet that thought the splendors of
the New Jerusalem were revealed to him, surely saw this instead! It lay
in the level plain right under our feet--all spread abroad like a
picture--and we looked down upon it as we might have looked from a
balloon. We saw no semblance of a street, but every house, every
window, every clinging vine, every projection, was as distinct and
sharply marked as if the time were noon-day; and yet there was no
glare, no glitter, nothing harsh or repulsive--the noiseless city was
flooded with the mellowest light that ever streamed from the moon, and
seemed like some living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. On its
further side was a little temple, whose delicate pillars and ornate
front glowed with a rich lustre that chained the eye like a spell; and
nearer by, the palace of the king reared its creamy walls out of the
midst of a great garden of shrubbery that was flecked all over with a
random shower of amber lights--a spray of golden sparks that lost their
brightness in the glory of the moon, and glinted softly upon the sea of
dark foliage like the pallid stars of the milky-way. Overhead the
stately columns, majestic still in their ruin--under foot the dreaming
city--in the distance the silver sea--not on the broad earth is there
another picture half so beautiful!
As we turned and moved again through the temple, I wished that the
illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it
again and reveal themselves to our curious eyes--Plato, Aristotle,
Demosthenes, Socrates, Phocion, Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon,
Herodotus, Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a
constellation of celebrated names! But more than all, I wished that old
Diogenes, groping so patiently with his lantern, searching so zealously
for one solitary honest man in all the world, might meander along and
stumble on our party. I ought not to say it, may be, but still I
suppose he would have put out his light.
We left the Parthenon to keep its watch over old Athens, as it had kept
it for twenty-three hundred years, and went and stood outside the walls
of the citadel. In the distance was the ancient, but still almost
perfect Temple of Theseus, and close by, looking to the west, was the
Bema, from whence Demosthenes thundered his philippics and fired the
wavering patriotism of his countrymen. To the right was Mars Hill,
where the Areopagus sat in ancient times, and where St. Paul defined
his position, and below was the market-place where he
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
It occurred to us, after a while, that if we wanted to get home before
daylight betrayed us, we had better be moving. So we hurried away. When
far on our road, we had a parting view of the Parthenon, with the
moonlight streaming through its open colonnades and touching its
capitals with silver. As it looked then, solemn, grand, and beautiful,
it will always remain in our memories.
As we marched along, we began to get over our fears, and ceased to care
much about quarantine scouts or any body else. We grew bold and
reckless; and once, in a sudden burst of courage, I even threw a stone
at a dog. It was a pleasant reflection, though, that I did not hit him,
because his master might just possibly have been a policeman. Inspired
by this happy failure, my valor became utterly uncontrollable, and at
intervals I absolutely whistled, though on a moderate key. But boldness
breeds boldness, and shortly I plunged into a vineyard, in the full
light of the moon, and captured a gallon of superb grapes, not even
minding the presence of a peasant who rode by on a mule. Denny and
Birch followed my example. Now I had grapes enough for a dozen, but
then Jackson was all swollen up with courage, too, and he was obliged
to enter a vineyard presently. The first bunch he seized brought
trouble. A frowsy, bearded brigand sprang into the road with a shout,
and flourished a musket in the light of the moon! We sidled toward the
Pir;aeus--not running, you understand, but only advancing with celerity.
The brigand shouted again, but still we advanced. It was getting late,
and we had no time to fool away on every ass that wanted to drivel
Greek platitudes to us. We would just as soon have talked with him as
not if we had not been in a hurry. Presently Denny said,
We turned, and, sure enough, there they were--three fantastic pirates
armed with guns. We slackened our pace to let them come up, and in the
meantime I got out my cargo of grapes and dropped them firmly but
reluctantly into the shadows by the wayside. But I was not afraid. I
only felt that it was not right to steal grapes. And all the more so
when the owner was around--and not only around, but with his friends
around also. The villains came up and searched a bundle Dr. Birch had
in his hand, and scowled upon him when they found it had nothing in it
but some holy rocks from Mars Hill, and these were not contraband. They
evidently suspected him of playing some wretched fraud upon them, and
seemed half inclined to scalp the party. But finally they dismissed us
with a warning, couched in excellent Greek, I suppose, and dropped
tranquilly in our wake. When they had gone three hundred yards they
stopped, and we went on rejoiced. But behold, another armed rascal came
out of the shadows and took their place, and followed us two hundred
yards. Then he delivered us over to another miscreant, who emerged from
some mysterious place, and he in turn to another! For a mile and a half
our rear was guarded all the while by armed men. I never traveled in so
much state before in all my life.
It was a good while after that before we ventured to steal any more
grapes, and when we did we stirred up another troublesome brigand, and
then we ceased all further speculation in that line. I suppose that
fellow that rode by on the mule posted all the sentinels, from Athens
to the Pir;aeus, about us.
Every field on that long route was watched by an armed sentinel, some
of whom had fallen asleep, no doubt, but were on hand, nevertheless.
This shows what sort of a country modern Attica is--a community of
questionable characters. These men were not there to guard their
possessions against strangers, but against each other; for strangers
seldom visit Athens and the Pir;aeus, and when they do, they go in
day-light, and can buy all the grapes they want for a trifle. The
modern inhabitants are confiscators and falsifiers of high repute, if
gossip speaks truly concerning them, and I freely believe it does.
Just as the earliest tinges of the dawn flushed the eastern sky and
turned the pillared Parthenon to a broken harp hung in the pearly
horizon, we closed our thirteenth mile of weary, round-about marching,
and emerged upon the sea-shore abreast the ships, with our usual escort
of fifteen hundred Pir;aean dogs howling at our heels. We hailed a boat
that was two or three hundred yards from shore, and discovered in a
moment that it was a police-boat on the lookout for any
quarantine-breakers that might chance to be abroad. So we dodged--we
were used to that by this time--and when the scouts reached the spot we
had so lately occupied, we were absent. They cruised along the shore,
but in the wrong direction, and shortly our own boat issued from the
gloom and took us aboard. They had heard our signal on the ship. We
rowed noiselessly away, and before the police-boat came in sight again,
we were safe at home once more.
Four more of our passengers were anxious to visit Athens, and started
half an hour after we returned; but they had not been ashore five
minutes till the police discovered and chased them so hotly that they
barely escaped to their boat again, and that was all. They pursued the
enterprise no further.
We set sail for Constantinople to-day, but some of us little care for
that. We have seen all there was to see in the old city that had its
birth sixteen hundred years before Christ was born, and was an old town
before the foundations of Troy were laid--and saw it in its most
attractive aspect. Wherefore, why should we worry?
Two other passengers ran the blockade successfully last night. So we
learned this morning. They slipped away so quietly that they were not
missed from the ship for several hours. They had the hardihood to march
into the Pir;aeus in the early dusk and hire a carriage. They ran some
danger of adding two or three months' imprisonment to the other
novelties of their Holy Land Pleasure Excursion. I admire
*Quotation from the Pilgrims.
[te
Chapter XXXIII
From athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw
little but forbidding sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted
by three or four graceful columns of some ancient temple, lonely and
deserted--a fitting symbol of the desolation that has come upon all
Greece in these latter ages. We saw no ploughed fields, very few
villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and
hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert,
without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What
supports its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.
I suppose that ancient Greece and modern Greece compared, furnish the
most extravagant contrast to be found in history. George I., an infant
of eighteen, and a scraggy nest of foreign office holders, sit in the
places of Themistocles, Pericles, and the illustrious scholars and
generals of the Golden Age of Greece. The fleets that were the wonder
of the world when the Parthenon was new, are a beggarly handful of
fishing-smacks now, and the manly people that performed such miracles
of valor at Marathon are only a tribe of unconsidered slaves to-day.
The classic Illyssus has gone dry, and so have all the sources of
Grecian wealth and greatness. The nation numbers only eight hundred
thousand souls, and there is poverty and misery and mendacity enough
among them to furnish forty millions and be liberal about it. Under
King Otho the revenues of the State were five millions of
dollars--raised from a tax of one-tenth of all the agricultural
products of the land (which tenth the farmer had to bring to the royal
granaries on pack-mules any distance not exceeding six leagues) and
from extravagant taxes on trade and commerce. Out of that five millions
the small tyrant tried to keep an army of ten thousand men, pay all the
hundreds of useless Grand Equerries in Waiting, First Grooms of the
Bedchamber, Lord High Chancellors of the Exploded Exchequer, and all
the other absurdities which these puppy-kingdoms indulge in, in
imitation of the great monarchies; and in addition he set about
building a white marble palace to cost about five millions itself. The
result was, simply: ten into five goes no times and none over. All
these things could not be done with five millions, and Otho fell into
trouble.
The Greek throne, with its unpromising adjuncts of a ragged population
of ingenious rascals who were out of employment eight months in the
year because there was little for them to borrow and less to
confiscate, and a waste of barren hills and weed-grown deserts, went
begging for a good while. It was offered to one of Victoria's sons, and
afterwards to various other younger sons of royalty who had no thrones
and were out of business, but they all had the charity to decline the
dreary honor, and veneration enough for Greece's ancient greatness to
refuse to mock her sorrowful rags and dirt with a tinsel throne in this
day of her humiliation--till they came to this young Danish George, and
he took it. He has finished the splendid palace I saw in the radiant
moonlight the other night, and is doing many other things for the
salvation of Greece, they say.
We sailed through the barren Archipelago, and into the narrow channel
they sometimes call the Dardanelles and sometimes the Hellespont. This
part of the country is rich in historic reminiscences, and poor as
Sahara in every thing else. For instance, as we approached the
Dardanelles, we coasted along the Plains of Troy and past the mouth of
the Scamander; we saw where Troy had stood (in the distance,) and where
it does not stand now--a city that perished when the world was young.
The poor Trojans are all dead, now. They were born too late to see
Noah's ark, and died too soon to see our menagarie. We saw where
Agamemnon's fleets rendezvoused, and away inland a mountain which the
map said was Mount Ida. Within the Hellespont we saw where the original
first shoddy contract mentioned in history was carried out, and the
We had water batteries and forts on both sides of the Hellespont,
flying the crimson flag of Turkey, with its white crescent, and
occasionally a village, and sometimes a train of camels; we had all
these to look at till we entered the broad sea of Marmora, and then the
land soon fading from view, we resumed euchre and whist once more.
We dropped anchor in the mouth of the Golden Horn at daylight in the
morning. Only three or four of us were up to see the great Ottoman
capital. The passengers do not turn out at unseasonable hours, as they
used to, to get the earliest possible glimpse of strange foreign cities.
They are well over that. If we were lying in sight of the Pyramids of
Egypt, they would not come on deck until after breakfast, now-a-days.
The Golden Horn is a narrow arm of the sea, which branches from the
Bosporus (a sort of broad river which connects the Marmora and Black
Seas,) and, curving around, divides the city in the middle. Galata and
Pera are on one side of the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn; Stamboul
(ancient Byzantium) is upon the other. On the other bank of the
Bosporus is Scutari and other suburbs of Constantinople. This great
city contains a million inhabitants, but so narrow are its streets, and
so crowded together are its houses, that it does not cover much more
than half as much ground as New York City. Seen from the anchorage or
from a mile or so up the Bosporus, it is by far the handsomest city we
have seen. Its dense array of houses swells upward from the water's
edge, and spreads over the domes of many hills; and the gardens that
peep out here and there, the great globes of the mosques, and the
countless minarets that meet the eye every where, invest the metropolis
with the quaint Oriental aspect one dreams of when he reads books of
eastern travel. Constantinople makes a noble picture.
But its attractiveness begins and ends with its picturesqueness. From
the time one starts ashore till he gets back again, he execrates it.
The boat he goes in is admirably miscalculated for the service it is
built for. It is handsomely and neatly fitted up, but no man could
handle it well in the turbulent currents that sweep down the Bosporus
from the Black Sea, and few men could row it satisfactorily even in
still water. It is a long, light canoe (caique,) large at one end and
tapering to a knife blade at the other. They make that long sharp end
the bow, and you can imagine how these boiling currents spin it about.
It has two oars, and sometimes four, and no rudder. You start to go to
a given point and you run in fifty different directions before you get
there. First one oar is backing water, and then the other; it is seldom
that both are going ahead at once. This kind of boating is calculated
to drive an impatient man mad in a week. The boatmen are the
awkwardest, the stupidest, and the most unscientific on earth, without
question.
Ashore, it was--well, it was an eternal circus. People were thicker
than bees, in those narrow streets, and the men were dressed in all the
outrageous, outlandish, idolatrous, extravagant, thunder-and-lightning
costumes that ever a tailor with the delirium tremens and seven devils
could conceive of. There was no freak in dress too crazy to be indulged
in; no absurdity too absurd to be tolerated; no frenzy in ragged
diabolism too fantastic to be attempted. No two men were dressed alike.
It was a wild masquerade of all imaginable costumes--every struggling
throng in every street was a dissolving view of stunning contrasts.
Some patriarchs wore awful turbans, but the grand mass of the infidel
horde wore the fiery red skull-cap they call a fez. All the remainder
of the raiment they indulged in was utterly indescribable.
The shops here are mere coops, mere boxes, bath-rooms, closets--any
thing you please to call them--on the first floor. The Turks sit
cross-legged in them, and work and trade and smoke long pipes, and
smell like--like Turks. That covers the ground. Crowding the narrow
streets in front of them are beggars, who beg forever, yet never
collect any thing; and wonderful cripples, distorted out of all
semblance of humanity, almost; vagabonds driving laden asses; porters
carrying dry-goods boxes as large as cottages on their backs; peddlers
of grapes, hot corn, pumpkin seeds, and a hundred other things, yelling
like fiends; and sleeping happily, comfortably, serenely, among the
hurrying feet, are the famed dogs of Constantinople; drifting
noiselessly about are squads of Turkish women, draped from chin to feet
in flowing robes, and with snowy veils bound about their heads, that
disclose only the eyes and a vague, shadowy notion of their features.
Seen moving about, far away in the dim, arched aisles of the Great
Bazaar, they look as the shrouded dead must have looked when they
walked forth from their graves amid the storms and thunders and
earthquakes that burst upon Calvary that awful night of the Crucifixion.
A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to see
once--not oftener.
And then there was the goose-rancher--a fellow who drove a hundred
geese before him about the city, and tried to sell them. He had a pole
ten feet long, with a crook in the end of it, and occasionally a goose
would branch out from the flock and make a lively break around the
corner, with wings half lifted and neck stretched to its utmost. Did
the goose-merchant get excited? No. He took his pole and reached after
that goose with unspeakable sang froid--took a hitch round his neck,
and
If you want dwarfs--I mean just a few dwarfs for a curiosity--go to
Genoa. If you wish to buy them by the gross, for retail, go to Milan.
There are plenty of dwarfs all over Italy, but it did seem to me that
in Milan the crop was luxuriant. If you would see a fair average style
of assorted cripples, go to Naples, or travel through the Roman States.
But if you would see the very heart and home of cripples and human
monsters, both, go straight to Constantinople. A beggar in Naples who
can show a foot which has all run into one horrible toe, with one
shapeless nail on it, has a fortune--but such an exhibition as that
would not provoke any notice in Constantinople. The man would starve.
Who would pay any attention to attractions like his among the rare
monsters that throng the bridges of the Golden Horn and display their
deformities in the gutters of Stamboul? O, wretched impostor! How could
he stand against the three-legged woman, and the man with his eye in
his cheek? How would he blush in presence of the man with fingers on
his elbow? Where would he hide himself when the dwarf with seven
fingers on each hand, no upper lip, and his under-jaw gone, came down
in his majesty? Bismillah! The cripples of Europe are a delusion and a
fraud. The truly gifted flourish only in the by-ways of Pera and
Stamboul.
That three-legged woman lay on the bridge, with her stock in trade so
disposed as to command the most striking effect--one natural leg, and
two long, slender, twisted ones with feet on them like somebody else's
fore-arm. Then there was a man further along who had no eyes, and whose
face was the color of a fly-blown beefsteak, and wrinkled and twisted
like a lava-flow--and verily so tumbled and distorted were his features
that no man could tell the wart that served him for a nose from his
cheek-bones. In Stamboul was a man with a prodigious head, an
uncommonly long body, legs eight inches long and feet like snow-shoes.
He traveled on those feet and his hands, and was as sway-backed as if
the Colossus of Rhodes had been riding him. Ah, a beggar has to have
exceedingly good points to make a living in Constantinople. A
blue-faced man, who had nothing to offer except that he had been blown
up in a mine, would be regarded as a rank impostor, and a mere damaged
soldier on crutches would never make a cent. It would pay him to get a
piece of his head taken off, and cultivate a wen like a carpet sack.
The Mosque of St. Sophia is the chief lion of Constantinople. You must
get a firman and hurry there the first thing. We did that. We did not
get a firman, but we took along four or five francs apiece, which is
much the same thing.
I do not think much of the Mosque of St. Sophia. I suppose I lack
appreciation. We will let it go at that. It is the rustiest old barn in
heathendom. I believe all the interest that attaches to it comes from
the fact that it was built for a Christian church and then turned into
a mosque, without much alteration, by the Mohammedan conquerors of the
land. They made me take off my boots and walk into the place in my
stocking-feet. I caught cold, and got myself so stuck up with a
complication of gums, slime and general corruption, that I wore out
more than two thousand pair of boot-jacks getting my boots off that
night, and even then some Christian hide peeled off with them. I abate
not a single boot-jack.
St. Sophia is a colossal church, thirteen or fourteen hundred years
old, and unsightly enough to be very, very much older. Its immense dome
is said to be more wonderful than St. Peter's, but its dirt is much
more wonderful than its dome, though they never mention it. The church
has a hundred and seventy pillars in it, each a single piece, and all
of costly marbles of various kinds, but they came from ancient temples
at Baalbec, Heliopolis, Athens and Ephesus, and are battered, ugly and
repulsive. They were a thousand years old when this church was new, and
then the contrast must have been ghastly--if Justinian's architects did
not trim them any. The inside of the dome is figured all over with a
monstrous inscription in Turkish characters, wrought in gold mosaic,
that looks as glaring as a circus bill; the pavements and the marble
balustrades are all battered and dirty; the perspective is marred every
where by a web of ropes that depend from the dizzy height of the dome,
and suspend countless dingy, coarse oil lamps, and ostrich-eggs, six or
seven feet above the floor. Squatting and sitting in groups, here and
there and far and near, were ragged Turks reading books, hearing
sermons, or receiving lessons like children, and in fifty places were
more of the same sort bowing and straightening up, bowing again and
getting down to kiss the earth, muttering prayers the while, and
keeping up their gymnastics till they ought to have been tired, if they
were not.
Every where was dirt, and dust, and dinginess, and gloom; every where
were signs of a hoary antiquity, but with nothing touching or beautiful
about it; every where were those groups of fantastic pagans; overhead
the gaudy mosaics and the web of lamp-ropes--nowhere was there any
thing to win one's love or challenge his admiration.
The people who go into ecstacies over St. Sophia must surely get them
out of the guide-book (where every church is spoken of as being
We visited the Dancing Dervishes. There were twenty-one of them. They
wore a long, light-colored loose robe that hung to their heels. Each in
his turn went up to the priest (they were all within a large circular
railing) and bowed profoundly and then went spinning away deliriously
and took his appointed place in the circle, and continued to spin. When
all had spun themselves to their places, they were about five or six
feet apart--and so situated, the entire circle of spinning pagans spun
itself three separate times around the room. It took twenty-five
minutes to do it. They spun on the left foot, and kept themselves going
by passing the right rapidly before it and digging it against the waxed
floor. Some of them made incredible
They made no noise of any kind, and most of them tilted their heads
back and closed their eyes, entranced with a sort of devotional ecstacy.
There was a rude kind of music, part of the time, but the musicians
were not visible. None but spinners were allowed within the circle. A
man had to either spin or stay outside. It was about as barbarous an
exhibition as we have witnessed yet. Then sick persons came and lay
down, and beside them women laid their sick children (one a babe at the
breast,) and the patriarch of the Dervishes walked upon their bodies.
He was supposed to cure their diseases by trampling upon their breasts
or backs or standing on the back of their necks. This is well enough
for a people who think all their affairs are made or marred by viewless
spirits of the air--by giants, gnomes, and genii--and who still
believe, to this day, all the wild tales in the Arabian Nights. Even so
an intelligent missionary tells me.
We visited the Thousand and One Columns. I do not know what it was
originally intended for, but they said it was built for a reservoir. It
is situated in the centre of Constantinople. You go down a flight of
stone steps in the middle of a barren place, and there you are. You are
forty feet under ground, and in the midst of a perfect wilderness of
tall, slender, granite columns, of Byzantine architecture. Stand where
you would, or change your position as often as you pleased, you were
always a centre from which radiated a dozen long archways and
colonnades that lost themselves in distance and the sombre twilight of
the place. This old dried-up reservoir is occupied by a few ghostly
silk-spinners now, and one of them showed me a cross cut high up in one
of the pillars. I suppose he meant me to understand that the
institution was there before the Turkish occupation, and I thought he
made a remark to that effect; but he must have had an impediment in his
speech, for I did not understand him.
We took off our shoes and went into the marble mausoleum of the Sultan
Mahmoud, the neatest piece of architecture, inside, that I have seen
lately. Mahmoud's tomb was covered with a black velvet pall, which was
elaborately embroidered with silver; it stood within a fancy silver
railing; at the sides and corners were silver candlesticks that would
weigh more than a hundred pounds, and they supported candles as large
as a man's leg; on the top of the sarcophagus was a fez, with a
handsome diamond ornament upon it, which an attendant said cost a
hundred thousand pounds, and lied like a Turk when he said it.
Mahmoud's whole family were comfortably planted around him.
We went to the great Bazaar in Stamboul, of course, and I shall not
describe it further than to say it is a monstrous hive of little
shops--thousands, I should say--all under one roof, and cut up into
innumerable little blocks by narrow streets which are arched overhead.
One street is devoted to a particular kind of merchandise, another to
another, and so on. When you wish to buy a pair of shoes you have the
swing of the whole street--you do not have to walk yourself down
hunting stores in different localities. It is the same with silks,
antiquities, shawls, etc. The place is crowded with people all the
time, and as the gay-colored Eastern fabrics are lavishly displayed
before every shop, the great Bazaar of Stamboul is one of the sights
that are worth seeing. It is full of life, and stir, and business,
dirt, beggars, asses, yelling peddlers, porters, dervishes, high-born
Turkish female shoppers, Greeks, and weird-looking and weirdly dressed
Mohammedans from the mountains and the far provinces--and the only
solitary thing one does not smell when he is in the Great Bazaar, is
something which smells good.@[te
Chapter XXXIV
Mosques are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are plenty, but
morals and whiskey are scarce. The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to
drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say
the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy. It
makes our cheeks burn with shame to see such a thing permitted here in
Turkey. We do not mind it so much in Salt Lake, however.
Circassian and Georgian girls are still sold in Constantinople by their
parents, but not publicly. The great slave marts we have all read so
much about--where tender young girls were stripped for inspection, and
criticised and discussed just as if they were horses at an agricultural
fair--no longer exist. The exhibition and the sales are private now.
Stocks are up, just at present, partly because of a brisk demand
created by the recent return of the Sultan's suite from the courts of
Europe; partly on account of an unusual abundance of bread-stuffs,
which leaves holders untortured by hunger and enables them to hold back
for high prices; and partly because buyers are too weak to bear the
market, while sellers are amply prepared to bull it. Under these
circumstances, if the American metropolitan newspapers were published
here in Constantinople, their next commercial report would read about
as follows, I suppose:
slave girl market report.
I think the above would be about the style of the commercial report.
Prices are pretty high now, and holders firm; but, two or three years
ago, parents in a starving condition brought their young daughters down
here and sold them for even twenty and thirty dollars, when they could
do no better, simply to save themselves and the girls from dying of
want. It is sad to think of so distressing a thing as this, and I for
one am sincerely glad the prices are up again.
Commercial morals, especially, are bad. There is no gainsaying that.
Greek, Turkish and Armenian morals consist only in attending church
regularly on the appointed Sabbaths, and in breaking the ten
commandments all the balance of the week. It comes natural to them to
lie and cheat in the first place, and then they go on and improve on
nature until they arrive at perfection. In recommending his son to a
merchant as a valuable salesman, a father does not say he is a nice,
moral, upright boy, and goes to Sunday School and is honest, but he
says,
Every body lies and cheats--every body who is in business, at any rate.
Even foreigners soon have to come down to the custom of the country,
and they do not buy and sell long in Constantinople till they lie and
cheat like a Greek. I say like a Greek, because the Greeks are called
the worst transgressors in this line. Several Americans long resident
in Constantinople contend that most Turks are pretty trustworthy, but
few claim that the Greeks have any virtues that a man can discover--at
least without a fire assay.
I am half willing to believe that the celebrated dogs of Constantinople
have been misrepresented--slandered. I have always been led to suppose
that they were so thick in the streets that they blocked the way; that
they moved about in organized companies, platoons and regiments, and
took what they wanted by determined and ferocious assault; and that at
night they drowned all other sounds with their terrible howlings. The
dogs I see here can not be those I have read of.
I find them every where, but not in strong force. The most I have found
together has been about ten or twenty. And night or day a fair
proportion of them were sound asleep. Those that were not asleep always
looked as if they wanted to be. I never saw such utterly wretched,
starving, sad-visaged, broken-hearted looking curs in my life. It
seemed a grim satire to accuse such brutes as these of taking things by
force of arms. They hardly seemed to have strength enough or ambition
enough to walk across the street--I do not know that I have seen one
walk that far yet. They are mangy and bruised and mutilated, and often
you see one with the hair singed off him in such wide and well defined
tracts that he looks like a map of the new Territories. They are the
sorriest beasts that breathe--the most abject--the most pitiful. In
their faces is a settled expression of melancholy, an air of hopeless
despondency. The hairless patches on a scalded dog are preferred by the
fleas of Constantinople to a wider range on a healthier dog; and the
exposed places suit the fleas exactly. I saw a dog of this kind start
to nibble at a flea--a fly attracted his attention, and he made a
snatch at him; the flea called for him once more, and that forever
unsettled him; he looked sadly at his flea-pasture, then sadly looked
at his bald spot. Then he heaved a sigh and dropped his head resignedly
upon his paws. He was not equal to the situation.
The dogs sleep in the streets, all over the city. From one end of the
street to the other, I suppose they will average about eight or ten to
a block. Sometimes, of course, there are fifteen or twenty to a block.
They do not belong to any body, and they seem to have no close personal
friendships among each other. But they district the city themselves,
and the dogs of each district, whether it be half a block in extent, or
ten blocks, have to remain within its bounds. Woe to a dog if he
crosses the line! His neighbors would snatch the balance of his hair
off in a second. So it is said. But they don't look it.
They sleep in the streets these days. They are my compass--my guide.
When I see the dogs sleep placidly on, while men, sheep, geese, and all
moving things turn out and go around them, I know I am not in the great
street where the hotel is, and must go further. In the Grand Rue the
dogs have a sort of air of being on the lookout--an air born of being
obliged to get out of the way of many carriages every day--and that
expression one recognizes in a moment. It does not exist upon the face
of any dog without the confines of that street. All others sleep
placidly and keep no watch. They would not move, though the Sultan
himself passed by.
In one narrow street (but none of them are wide) I saw three dogs lying
coiled up, about a foot or two apart. End to end they lay, and so they
just bridged the street neatly, from gutter to gutter. A drove of a
hundred sheep came along. They stepped right over the dogs, the rear
crowding the front, impatient to get on. The dogs looked lazily up,
flinched a little when the impatient feet of the sheep touched their
raw backs--sighed, and lay peacefully down again. No talk could be
plainer than that. So some of the sheep jumped over them and others
scrambled between, occasionally chipping a leg with their sharp hoofs,
and when the whole flock had made the trip, the dogs sneezed a little,
in the cloud of dust, but never budged their bodies an inch. I thought
I was lazy, but I am a steam-engine compared to a Constantinople dog.
But was not that a singular scene for a city of a million inhabitants?
These dogs are the scavengers of the city. That is their official
position, and a hard one it is. However, it is their protection. But
for their usefulness in partially cleansing these terrible streets,
they would not be tolerated long. They eat any thing and every thing
that comes in their way, from melon rinds and spoiled grapes up through
all the grades and species of dirt and refuse to their own dead friends
and relatives--and yet they are always lean, always hungry, always
despondent. The people are loath to kill them--do not kill them, in
fact. The Turks have an innate antipathy to taking the life of any dumb
animal, it is said. But they do worse. They hang and kick and stone and
scald these wretched creatures to the very verge of death, and then
leave them to live and suffer.
Once a Sultan proposed to kill off all the dogs here, and did begin the
work--but the populace raised such a howl of horror about it that the
massacre was stayed. After a while, he proposed to remove them all to
an island in the Sea of Marmora. No objection was offered, and a
ship-load or so was taken away. But when it came to be known that
somehow or other the dogs never got to the island, but always fell
overboard in the night and perished, another howl was raised and the
transportation scheme was dropped.
So the dogs remain in peaceable possession of the streets. I do not say
that they do not howl at night, nor that they do not attack people who
have not a red fez on their heads. I only say that it would be mean for
me to accuse them of these unseemly things who have not seen them do
them with my own eyes or heard them with my own ears.
I was a little surprised to see Turks and Greeks playing newsboy right
here in the mysterious land where the giants and genii of the Arabian
Nights once dwelt--where winged horses and hydra-headed dragons guarded
enchanted castles--where Princes and Princesses flew through the air on
carpets that obeyed a mystic talisman--where cities whose houses were
made of precious stones sprang up in a night under the hand of the
magician, and where busy marts were suddenly stricken with a spell and
each citizen lay or sat, or stood with weapon raised or foot advanced,
just as he was, speechless and motionless, till time had told a hundred
years!
It was curious to see newsboys selling papers in so dreamy a land as
that. And, to say truly, it is comparatively a new thing here. The
selling of newspapers had its birth in Constantinople about a year ago,
and was a child of the Prussian and Austrian war.
There is one paper published here in the English language--The Levant
Herald--and there are generally a number of Greek and a few French
papers rising and falling, struggling up and falling again. Newspapers
are not popular with the Sultan's Government. They do not understand
journalism. The proverb says,
The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constantinople. Two
Greek papers and one French one were suppressed here within a few days
of each other. No victories of the Cretans are allowed to be printed.
From time to time the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various
editors that the Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and
although that editor knows better, he still has to print the notice.
The Levant Herald is too fond of speaking praisefully of Americans to
be popular with the Sultan, who does not relish our sympathy with the
Cretans, and therefore that paper has to be particularly circumspect in
order to keep out of trouble. Once the editor, forgetting the official
notice in his paper that the Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter
of a very different tenor, from the American Consul in Crete, and was
fined two hundred and fifty dollars for it. Shortly he printed another
from the same source and was imprisoned three months for his pains. I
think I could get the assistant editorship of the Levant Herald, but I
am going to try to worry along without it.
To suppress a paper here involves the ruin of the publisher, almost.
But in Naples I think they speculate on misfortunes of that kind.
Papers are suppressed there every day, and spring up the next day under
a new name. During the ten days or a fortnight we staid there one paper
was murdered and resurrected twice. The newsboys are smart there, just
as they are elsewhere. They take advantage of popular weaknesses. When
they find they are not likely to sell out, they approach a citizen
mysteriously, and say in a low voice--
There is only one English newspaper in Naples. It has seventy
subscribers. The publisher is getting rich very deliberately--very
deliberately indeed.
I never shall want another Turkish lunch. The cooking apparatus was in
the little lunch room, near the bazaar, and it was all open to the
street. The cook was slovenly, and so was the table, and it had no
cloth on it. The fellow took a mass of sausage-meat and coated it round
a wire and laid it on a charcoal fire to cook. When it was done, he
laid it aside and a dog walked sadly in and nipped it. He smelt it
first, and probably recognized the remains of a friend. The cook took
it away from him and laid it before us. Jack said,
When I think how I have been swindled by books of Oriental travel, I
want a tourist for breakfast. For years and years I have dreamed of the
wonders of the Turkish bath; for years and years I have promised myself
that I would yet enjoy one. Many and many a time, in fancy, I have lain
in the marble bath, and breathed the slumbrous fragrance of Eastern
spices that filled the air; then passed through a weird and complicated
system of pulling and hauling, and drenching and scrubbing, by a gang
of naked savages who loomed vast and vaguely through the steaming
mists, like demons; then rested for a while on a divan fit for a king;
then passed through another complex ordeal, and one more fearful than
the first; and, finally, swathed in soft fabrics, been conveyed to a
princely saloon and laid on a bed of eider down, where eunuchs,
gorgeous of costume, fanned me while I drowsed and dreamed, or
contentedly gazed at the rich hangings of the apartment, the soft
carpets, the sumptuous furniture, the pictures, and drank delicious
coffee, smoked the soothing narghili, and dropped, at the last, into
tranquil repose, lulled by sensuous odors from unseen censers, by the
gentle influence of the narghili's Persian tobacco, and by the music of
fountains that counterfeited the pattering of summer rain.
That was the picture, just as I got it from incendiary books of travel.
It was a poor, miserable imposture. The reality is no more like it than
the Five Points are like the Garden of Eden. They received me in a
great court, paved with marble slabs; around it were broad galleries,
one above another, carpeted with seedy matting, railed with unpainted
balustrades, and furnished with huge rickety chairs, cushioned with
rusty old mattresses, indented with impressions left by the forms of
nine successive generations of men who had reposed upon them. The place
was vast, naked, dreary; its court a barn, its galleries stalls for
human horses. The cadaverous, half nude varlets that served in the
establishment had nothing of poetry in their appearance, nothing of
romance, nothing of Oriental splendor. They shed no entrancing
odors--just the contrary. Their hungry eyes and their lank forms
continually suggested one glaring, unsentimental fact--they wanted what
they term in California
I went into one of the racks and undressed. An unclean starveling
wrapped a gaudy table-cloth about his loins, and hung a white rag over
my shoulders. If I had had a tub then, it would have come natural to me
to take in washing. I was then conducted down stairs into the wet,
slippery court, and the first things that attracted my attention were
my heels. My fall excited no comment. They expected it, no doubt. It
belonged in the list of softening, sensuous influences peculiar to this
home of Eastern luxury. It was softening enough, certainly, but its
application was not happy. They now gave me a pair of wooden
clogs--benches in miniature, with leather straps over them to confine
my feet (which they would have done, only I do not wear No. 13s.) These
things dangled uncomfortably by the straps when I lifted up my feet,
and came down in awkward and unexpected places when I put them on the
floor again, and sometimes turned sideways and wrenched my ankles out
of joint. However, it was all Oriental luxury, and I did what I could
to enjoy it.
They put me in another part of the barn and laid me on a stuffy sort of
pallet, which was not made of cloth of gold, or Persian shawls, but was
merely the unpretending sort of thing I have seen in the negro quarters
of Arkansas. There was nothing whatever in this dim marble prison but
five more of these biers. It was a very solemn place. I expected that
the spiced odors of Araby were going to steal over my senses now, but
they did not. A copper-colored skeleton, with a rag around him, brought
me a glass decanter of water, with a lighted tobacco pipe in the top of
it, and a pliant stem a yard long, with a brass mouth-piece to it.
It was the famous
This prison was filled with hot air. When I had got warmed up
sufficiently to prepare me for a still warmer temperature, they took me
where it was--into a marble room, wet, slippery and steamy, and laid me
out on a raised platform in the centre. It was very warm. Presently my
man sat me down by a tank of hot water, drenched me well, gloved his
hand with a coarse mitten, and began to polish me all over with it. I
began to smell disagreeably. The more he polished the worse I smelt. It
was alarming. I said to him:
He went on scrubbing, and paid no attention. I soon saw that he was
reducing my size. He bore hard on his mitten, and from under it rolled
little cylinders, like maccaroni. It could not be dirt, for it was too
white. He pared me down in this way for a long time. Finally I said:
He paid no attention at all.
After a while he brought a basin, some soap, and something that seemed
to be the tail of a horse. He made up a prodigious quantity of
soap-suds, deluged me with them from head to foot, without warning me
to shut my eyes, and then swabbed me viciously with the horse-tail.
Then he left me there, a snowy statue of lather, and went away. When I
got tired of waiting I went and hunted him up. He was propped against
the wall, in another room, asleep. I woke him. He was not disconcerted.
He took me back and flooded me with hot water, then turbaned my head,
swathed me with dry table-cloths, and conducted me to a latticed
chicken-coop in one of the galleries, and pointed to one of those
Arkansas beds. I mounted it, and vaguely expected the odors of Araby
again. They did not come.
The blank, unornamented coop had nothing about it of that oriental
voluptuousness one reads of so much. It was more suggestive of the
county hospital than any thing else. The skinny servitor brought a
narghili, and I got him to take it out again without wasting any time
about it. Then he brought the world-renowned Turkish coffee that poets
have sung so rapturously for many generations, and I seized upon it as
the last hope that was left of my old dreams of Eastern luxury. It was
another fraud. Of all the unchristian beverages that ever passed my
lips, Turkish coffee is the worst. The cup is small, it is smeared with
grounds; the coffee is black, thick, unsavory of smell, and execrable
in taste. The bottom of the cup has a muddy sediment in it half an inch
deep. This goes down your throat, and portions of it lodge by the way,
and produce a tickling aggravation that keeps you barking and coughing
for an hour.
Here endeth my experience of the celebrated Turkish bath, and here also
endeth my dream of the bliss the mortal revels in who passes through it.
It is a malignant swindle. The man who enjoys it is qualified to enjoy
any thing that is repulsive to sight or sense, and he that can invest
it with a charm of poetry is able to do the same with any thing else in
the world that is tedious, and wretched, and dismal, and nasty.@[te
Chapter XXXV
We left a dozen passengers in Constantinople, and sailed through the
beautiful Bosporus and far up into the Black Sea. We left them in the
clutches of the celebrated Turkish guide,
Sebastopol is probably the worst battered town in Russia or any where
else. But we ought to be pleased with it, nevertheless, for we have
been in no country yet where we have been so kindly received, and where
we felt that to be Americans was a sufficient vis;aae for our passports.
The moment the anchor was down, the Governor of the town immediately
dispatched an officer on board to inquire if he could be of any
assistance to us, and to invite us to make ourselves at home in
Sebastopol! If you know Russia, you know that this was a wild stretch
of hospitality. They are usually so suspicious of strangers that they
worry them excessively with the delays and aggravations incident to a
complicated passport system. Had we come from any other country we
could not have had permission to enter Sebastopol and leave again under
three days--but as it was, we were at liberty to go and come when and
where we pleased. Every body in Constantinople warned us to be very
careful about our passports, see that they were strictly en regle, and
never to mislay them for a moment: and they told us of numerous
instances of Englishmen and others who were delayed days, weeks, and
even months, in Sebastopol, on account of trifling informalities in
their passports, and for which they were not to blame. I had lost my
passport, and was traveling under my room-mate's, who stayed behind in
Constantinople to await our return. To read the description of him in
that passport and then look at me, any man could see that I was no more
like him than I am like Hercules. So I went into the harbor of
Sebastopol with fear and trembling--full of a vague, horrible
apprehension that I was going to be found out and hanged. But all that
time my true passport had been floating gallantly overhead--and behold
it was only our flag. They never asked us for any other.
We have had a great many Russian and English gentlemen and ladies on
board to-day, and the time has passed cheerfully away. They were all
happy-spirited people, and I never heard our mother tongue sound so
pleasantly as it did when it fell from those English lips in this
far-off land. I talked to the Russians a good deal, just to be
friendly, and they talked to me from the same motive; I am sure that
both enjoyed the conversation, but never a word of it either of us
understood. I did most of my talking to those English people though,
and I am sorry we can not carry some of them along with us.
We have gone whithersoever we chose, to-day, and have met with nothing
but the kindest attentions. Nobody inquired whether we had any
passports or not.
Several of the officers of the Government have suggested that we take
the ship to a little watering-place thirty miles from here, and pay the
Emperor of Russia a visit. He is rusticating there. These officers said
they would take it upon themselves to insure us a cordial reception.
They said if we would go, they would not only telegraph the Emperor,
but send a special courier overland to announce our coming. Our time is
so short, though, and more especially our coal is so nearly out, that
we judged it best to forego the rare pleasure of holding social
intercourse with an Emperor.
Ruined Pompeii is in good condition compared to Sebastopol. Here, you
may look in whatsoever direction you please, and your eye encounters
scarcely any thing but ruin, ruin, ruin!--fragments of houses, crumbled
walls, torn and ragged hills, devastation every where! It is as if a
mighty earthquake had spent all its terrible forces upon this one
little spot. For eighteen long months the storms of war beat upon the
helpless town, and left it at last the saddest wreck that ever the sun
has looked upon. Not one solitary house escaped unscathed--not one
remained habitable, even. Such utter and complete ruin one could hardly
conceive of. The houses had all been solid, dressed stone structures;
most of them were ploughed through and through by cannon
balls--unroofed and sliced down from eaves to foundation--and now a row
of them, half a mile long, looks merely like an endless procession of
battered chimneys. No semblance of a house remains in such as these.
Some of the larger buildings had corners knocked off; pillars cut in
two; cornices smashed; holes driven straight through the walls. Many of
these holes are as round and as cleanly cut as if they had been made
with an auger. Others are half pierced through, and the clean
impression is there in the rock, as smooth and as shapely as if it were
done in putty. Here and there a ball still sticks in a wall, and from
it iron tears trickle down and discolor the stone.
The battle-fields were pretty close together. The Malakoff tower is on
a hill which is right in the edge of the town. The Redan was within
rifle-shot of the Malakoff; Inkerman was a mile away; and Balaklava
removed but an hour's ride. The French trenches, by which they
approached and invested the Malakoff were carried so close under its
sloping sides that one might have stood by the Russian guns and tossed
a stone into them. Repeatedly, during three terrible days, they swarmed
up the little Malakoff hill, and were beaten back with terrible
slaughter. Finally, they captured the place, and drove the Russians
out, who then tried to retreat into the town, but the English had taken
the Redan, and shut them off with a wall of flame; there was nothing
for them to do but go back and retake the Malakoff or die under its
guns. They did go back; they took the Malakoff and retook it two or
three times, but their desperate valor could not avail, and they had to
give up at last.
These fearful fields, where such tempests of death used to rage, are
peaceful enough now; no sound is heard, hardly a living thing moves
about them, they are lonely and silent--their desolation is complete.
There was nothing else to do, and so every body went to hunting relics.
They have stocked the ship with them. They brought them from the
Malakoff, from the Redan, Inkerman, Balaklava--every where. They have
brought cannon balls, broken ramrods, fragments of shell--iron enough
to freight a sloop. Some have even brought bones--brought them
laboriously from great distances, and were grieved to hear the surgeon
pronounce them only bones of mules and oxen. I knew Blucher would not
lose an opportunity like this. He brought a sack full on board and was
going for another. I prevailed upon him not to go. He has already
turned his state-room into a museum of worthless trumpery, which he has
gathered up in his travels. He is labeling his trophies, now. I picked
up one a while ago, and found it marked
He only said:
This person gathers mementoes with a perfect recklessness, now-a-days;
mixes them all up together, and then serenely labels them without any
regard to truth, propriety, or even plausibility. I have found him
breaking a stone in two, and labeling half of it
Ever since we three or four fortunate ones made the midnight trip to
Athens, it has afforded him genuine satisfaction to give every body in
the ship a pebble from the Mars-hill where St. Paul preached. He got
all those pebbles on the seashore, abreast the ship, but professes to
have gathered them from one of our party. However, it is not of any use
for me to expose the deception--it affords him pleasure, and does no
harm to any body. He says he never expects to run out of mementoes of
St. Paul as long as he is in reach of a sand-bank. Well, he is no worse
than others. I notice that all travelers supply deficiencies in their
collections in the same way. I shall never have any confidence in such
things again while I live.@[te
Chapter XXXVI
We have got so far east, now--a hundred and fifty-five degrees of
longitude from San Francisco--that my watch can not
Odessa is about twenty hours' run from Sebastopol, and is the most
northerly port in the Black Sea. We came here to get coal, principally.
The city has a population of one hundred and thirty-three thousand, and
is growing faster than any other small city out of America. It is a
free port, and is the great grain mart of this particular part of the
world. Its roadstead is full of ships. Engineers are at work, now,
turning the open roadstead into a spacious artificial harbor. It is to
be almost inclosed by massive stone piers, one of which will extend
into the sea over three thousand feet in a straight line.
I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I
We were only to stay here a day and a night and take in coal; we
consulted the guide-books and were rejoiced to know that there were no
sights in Odessa to see; and so we had one good, untrammeled holyday on
our hands, with nothing to do but idle about the city and enjoy
ourselves. We sauntered through the markets and criticised the fearful
and wonderful costumes from the back country; examined the populace as
far as eyes could do it; and closed the entertainment with an ice-cream
debauch. We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we
are apt to dissipate to excess. We never cared any thing about
ice-cream at home, but we look upon it with a sort of idolatry now that
it is so scarce in these red-hot climates of the East.
We only found two pieces of statuary, and this was another blessing.
One was a bronze image of the Duc de Richelieu, grand-nephew of the
splendid Cardinal. It stood in a spacious, handsome promenade,
overlooking the sea, and from its base a vast flight of stone steps led
down to the harbor--two hundred of them, fifty feet long, and a wide
landing at the bottom of every twenty. It is a noble staircase, and
from a distance the people toiling up it looked like insects. I mention
this statue and this stairway because they have their story. Richelieu
founded Odessa--watched over it with paternal care--labored with a
fertile brain and a wise understanding for its best interests--spent
his fortune freely to the same end--endowed it with a sound prosperity,
and one which will yet make it one of the great cities of the Old
World--built this noble stairway with money from his own private
purse--and----. Well, the people for whom he had done so much, let him
walk down these same steps, one day, unattended, old, poor, without a
second coat to his back; and when, years afterwards, he died in
Sebastopol in poverty and neglect, they called a meeting, subscribed
liberally, and immediately erected this tasteful monument to his
memory, and named a great street after him. It reminds me of what
Robert Burns' mother said when they erected a stately monument to his
memory:
The people of Odessa have warmly recommended us to go and call on the
Emperor, as did the Sebastopolians. They have telegraphed his Majesty,
and he has signified his willingness to grant us an audience. So we are
getting up the anchors and preparing to sail to his watering-place.
What a scratching around there will be, now! what a holding of
important meetings and appointing of solemn committees!--and what a
furbishing up of claw-hammer coats and white silk neck-ties! As this
fearful ordeal we are about to pass through pictures itself to my fancy
in all its dread sublimity, I begin to feel my fierce desire to
converse with a genuine Emperor cooling down and passing away. What am
I to do with my hands? What am I to do with my feet? What in the world
am I to do with myself?@[te
Chapter XXXVII
We anchored here at Yalta, Russia, two or three days ago. To me the
place was a vision of the Sierras. The tall, gray mountains that back
it, their sides bristling with pines--cloven with ravines--here and
there a hoary rock towering into view--long, straight streaks sweeping
down from the summit to the sea, marking the passage of some avalanche
of former times--all these were as like what one sees in the Sierras as
if the one were a portrait of the other. The little village of Yalta
nestles at the foot of an amphitheatre which slopes backward and upward
to the wall of hills, and looks as if it might have sunk quietly down
to its present position from a higher elevation. This depression is
covered with the great parks and gardens of noblemen, and through the
mass of green foliage the bright colors of their palaces bud out here
and there like flowers. It is a beautiful spot.
We had the United States Consul on board--the Odessa Consul. We
assembled in the cabin and commanded him to tell us what we must do to
be saved, and tell us quickly. He made a speech. The first thing he
said fell like a blight on every hopeful spirit: he had never seen a
court reception. (Three groans for the Consul.) But he said he had seen
receptions at the Governor-General's in Odessa, and had often listened
to people's experiences of receptions at the Russian and other courts,
and believed he knew very well what sort of ordeal we were about to
essay. (Hope budded again.) He said we were many; the summer-palace was
small--a mere mansion; doubtless we should be received in summer
fashion--in the garden; we would stand in a row, all the gentlemen in
swallow-tail coats, white kids, and white neck-ties, and the ladies in
light-colored silks, or something of that kind; at the proper
moment--12 meridian--the Emperor, attended by his suite arrayed in
splendid uniforms, would appear and walk slowly along the line, bowing
to some, and saying two or three words to others. At the moment his
Majesty appeared, a universal, delighted, enthusiastic smile ought to
break out like a rash among the passengers--a smile of love, of
gratification, of admiration--and with one accord, the party must begin
to bow--not obsequiously, but respectfully, and with dignity; at the
end of fifteen minutes the Emperor would go in the house, and we could
run along home again. We felt immensely relieved. It seemed, in a
manner, easy. There was not a man in the party but believed that with a
little practice he could stand in a row, especially if there were
others along; there was not a man but believed he could bow without
tripping on his coat tail and breaking his neck; in a word, we came to
believe we were equal to any item in the performance except that
complicated smile. The Consul also said we ought to draft a little
address to the Emperor, and present it to one of his aides-de-camp, who
would forward it to him at the proper time. Therefore, five gentlemen
were appointed to prepare the document, and the fifty others went sadly
smiling about the ship--practicing. During the next twelve hours we had
the general appearance, somehow, of being at a funeral, where every
body was sorry the death had occurred, but glad it was over--where
every body was smiling, and yet brokenhearted.
A committee went ashore to wait on his Excellency the Governor-General,
and learn our fate. At the end of three hours of boding suspense, they
came back and said the Emperor would receive us at noon the next
day--would send carriages for us--would hear the address in person. The
Grand Duke Michael had sent to invite us to his palace also. Any man
could see that there was an intention here to show that Russia's
friendship for America was so genuine as to render even her private
citizens objects worthy of kindly attentions.
At the appointed hour we drove out three miles, and assembled in the
handsome garden in front of the Emperor's palace.
We formed a circle under the trees before the door, for there was no
one room in the house able to accommodate our three-score persons
comfortably, and in a few minutes the imperial family came out bowing
and smiling, and stood in our midst. A number of great dignitaries of
the Empire, in undress uniforms, came with them. With every bow, his
Majesty said a word of welcome. I copy these speeches. There is
character in them--Russian character--which is politeness itself, and
the genuine article. The French are polite, but it is often mere
ceremonious politeness. A Russian imbues his polite things with a
heartiness, both of phrase and expression, that compels belief in their
sincerity. As I was saying, the Czar punctuated his speeches with bows:
All took off their hats, and the Consul inflicted the address on him.
He bore it with unflinching fortitude; then took the rusty-looking
document and handed it to some great officer or other, to be filed away
among the archives of Russia--in the stove. He thanked us for the
address, and said he was very much pleased to see us, especially as
such friendly relations existed between Russia and the United States.
The Empress said the Americans were favorites in Russia, and she hoped
the Russians were similarly regarded in America. These were all the
speeches that were made, and I recommend them to parties who present
policemen with gold watches, as models of brevity and point. After this
the Empress went and talked sociably (for an Empress) with various
ladies around the circle; several gentlemen entered into a disjointed
general conversation with the Emperor; the Dukes and Princes, Admirals
and Maids of Honor dropped into free-and-easy chat with first one and
then another of our party, and whoever chose stepped forward and spoke
with the modest little Grand Duchess Marie, the Czar's daughter. She is
fourteen years old, light-haired, blue-eyed, unassuming and pretty.
Every body talks English.
The Emperor wore a cap, frock coat and pantaloons, all of some kind of
plain white drilling--cotton or linen--and sported no jewelry or any
insignia whatever of rank. No costume could be less ostentatious. He is
very tall and spare, and a determined-looking man, though a very
pleasant-looking one, nevertheless. It is easy to see that he is kind
and affectionate. There is something very noble in his expression when
his cap is off. There is none of that cunning in his eye that all of us
noticed in Louis Napoleon's.
The Empress and the little Grand Duchess wore simple suits of foulard
(or foulard silk, I don't know which is proper,) with a small blue spot
in it; the dresses were trimmed with blue; both ladies wore broad blue
sashes about their waists; linen collars and clerical ties of muslin;
low-crowned straw-hats trimmed with blue velvet; parasols and
flesh-colored gloves. The Grand Duchess had no heels on her shoes. I do
not know this of my own knowledge, but one of our ladies told me so. I
was not looking at her shoes. I was glad to observe that she wore her
own hair, plaited in thick braids against the back of her head, instead
of the uncomely thing they call a waterfall, which is about as much
like a waterfall as a canvas-covered ham is like a cataract. Taking the
kind expression that is in the Emperor's face and the gentleness that
is in his young daughter's into consideration, I wondered if it would
not tax the Czar's firmness to the utmost to condemn a supplicating
wretch to misery in the wastes of Siberia if she pleaded for him. Every
time their eyes met, I saw more and more what a tremendous power that
weak, diffident school-girl could wield if she chose to do it. Many and
many a time she might rule the Autocrat of Russia, whose lightest word
is law to seventy millions of human beings! She was only a girl, and
she looked like a thousand others I have seen, but never a girl
provoked such a novel and peculiar interest in me before. A strange,
new sensation is a rare thing in this hum-drum life, and I had it here.
There was nothing stale or worn out about the thoughts and feelings the
situation and the circumstances created. It seemed strange--stranger
than I can tell--to think that the central figure in the cluster of men
and women, chatting here under the trees like the most ordinary
individual in the land, was a man who could open his lips and ships
would fly through the waves, locomotives would speed over the plains,
couriers would hurry from village to village, a hundred telegraphs
would flash the word to the four corners of an Empire that stretches
its vast proportions over a seventh part of the habitable globe, and a
countless multitude of men would spring to do his bidding. I had a sort
of vague desire to examine his hands and see if they were of flesh and
blood, like other men's. Here was a man who could do this wonderful
thing, and yet if I chose I could knock him down. The case was plain,
but it seemed preposterous, nevertheless--as preposterous as trying to
knock down a mountain or wipe out a continent. If this man sprained his
ankle, a million miles of telegraph would carry the news over
mountains--valleys--uninhabited deserts--under the trackless sea--and
ten thousand newspapers would prate of it; if he were grievously ill,
all the nations would know it before the sun rose again; if he dropped
lifeless where he stood, his fall might shake the thrones of half a
world! If I could have stolen his coat, I would have done it. When I
meet a man like that, I want something to remember him by.
As a general thing, we have been shown through palaces by some
plush-legged filagreed flunkey or other, who charged a franc for it;
but after talking with the company half an hour, the Emperor of Russia
and his family conducted us all through their mansion themselves. They
made no charge. They seemed to take a real pleasure in it.
We spent half an hour idling through the palace, admiring the cosy
apartments and the rich but eminently home-like appointments of the
place, and then the Imperial family bade our party a kind good-bye, and
proceeded to count the spoons.
An invitation was extended to us to visit the palace of the eldest son,
the Crown Prince of Russia, which was near at hand. The young man was
absent, but the Dukes and Countesses and Princes went over the premises
with us as leisurely as was the case at the Emperor's, and conversation
continued as lively as ever.
It was a little after one o'clock, now. We drove to the Grand Duke
Michael's, a mile away, in response to his invitation, previously given.
We arrived in twenty minutes from the Emperor's. It is a lovely place.
The beautiful palace nestles among the grand old groves of the park,
the park sits in the lap of the picturesque crags and hills, and both
look out upon the breezy ocean. In the park are rustic seats, here and
there, in secluded nooks that are dark with shade; there are rivulets
of crystal water; there are lakelets, with inviting, grassy banks;
there are glimpses of sparkling cascades through openings in the
wilderness of foliage; there are streams of clear water gushing from
mimic knots on the trunks of forest trees; there are miniature marble
temples perched upon gray old crags; there are airy lookouts whence one
may gaze upon a broad expanse of landscape and ocean. The palace is
modeled after the choicest forms of Grecian architecture, and its wide
colonnades surround a central court that is banked with rare flowers
that fill the place with their fragrance, and in their midst springs a
fountain that cools the summer air, and may possibly breed mosquitoes,
but I do not think it does.
The Grand Duke and his Duchess came out, and the presentation
ceremonies were as simple as they had been at the Emperor's. In a few
minutes, conversation was under way, as before. The Empress appeared in
the verandah, and the little Grand Duchess came out into the crowd.
They had beaten us there. In a few minutes, the Emperor came himself on
horseback. It was very pleasant. You can appreciate it if you have ever
visited royalty and felt occasionally that possibly you might be
wearing out your welcome--though as a general thing, I believe, royalty
is not scrupulous about discharging you when it is done with you.
The Grand Duke is the third brother of the Emperor, is about
thirty-seven years old, perhaps, and is the princeliest figure in
Russia. He is even taller than the Czar, as straight as an Indian, and
bears himself like one of those gorgeous knights we read about in
romances of the Crusades. He looks like a great-hearted fellow who
would pitch an enemy into the river in a moment, and then jump in and
risk his life fishing him out again. The stories they tell of him show
him to be of a brave and generous nature. He must have been desirous of
proving that Americans were welcome guests in the imperial palaces of
Russia, because he rode all the way to Yalta and escorted our
procession to the Emperor's himself, and kept his aids scurrying about,
clearing the road and offering assistance wherever it could be needed.
We were rather familiar with him then, because we did not know who he
was. We recognized him now, and appreciated the friendly spirit that
prompted him to do us a favor that any other Grand Duke in the world
would have doubtless declined to do. He had plenty of servitors whom he
could have sent, but he chose to attend to the matter himself.
The Grand Duke was dressed in the handsome and showy uniform of a
Cossack officer. The Grand Duchess had on a white alpaca robe, with the
seams and gores trimmed with black barb lace, and a little gray hat
with a feather of the same color. She is young, rather pretty, modest
and unpretending, and full of winning politeness.
Our party walked all through the house, and then the nobility escorted
them all over the grounds, and finally brought them back to the palace
about half-past two o'clock to breakfast. They called it breakfast, but
we would have called it luncheon. It consisted of two kinds of wine;
tea, bread, cheese, and cold meats, and was served on the centre-tables
in the reception room and the verandahs--any where that was convenient;
there was no ceremony. It was a sort of picnic. I had heard before that
we were to breakfast there, but Blucher said he believed Baker's boy
had suggested it to his Imperial Highness. I think not--though it would
be like him. Baker's boy is the famine-breeder of the ship. He is
always hungry. They say he goes about the state-rooms when the
passengers are out, and eats up all the soap. And they say he eats
oakum. They say he will eat any thing he can get between meals, but he
prefers oakum. He does not like oakum for dinner, but he likes it for
a lunch, at odd hours, or any thing that way. It makes him very
disagreeable, because it makes his breath bad, and keeps his teeth all
stuck up with tar. Baker's boy may have suggested the breakfast, but I
hope he did not. It went off well, anyhow. The illustrious host moved
about from place to place, and helped to destroy the provisions and
keep the conversation lively, and the Grand Duchess talked with the
verandah parties and such as had satisfied their appetites and
straggled out from the reception room.
The Grand Duke's tea was delicious. They give one a lemon to squeeze
into it, or iced milk, if he prefers it. The former is best. This tea
is brought overland from China. It injures the article to transport it
by sea.
When it was time to go, we bade our distinguished hosts good-bye, and
they retired happy and contented to their apartments to count their
spoons.
We had spent the best part of half a day in the home of royalty, and
had been as cheerful and comfortable all the time as we could have been
in the ship. I would as soon have thought of being cheerful in
Abraham's bosom as in the palace of an Emperor. I supposed that
Emperors were terrible people. I thought they never did any thing but
wear magnificent crowns and red velvet dressing-gowns with dabs of wool
sewed on them in spots, and sit on thrones and scowl at the flunkies
and the people in the parquette, and order Dukes and Duchesses off to
execution. I find, however, that when one is so fortunate as to get
behind the scenes and see them at home and in the privacy of their
firesides, they are strangely like common mortals. They are pleasanter
to look upon then than they are in their theatrical aspect. It seems to
come as natural to them to dress and act like other people as it is to
put a friend's cedar pencil in your pocket when you are done using it.
But I can never have any confidence in the tinsel kings of the theatre
after this. It will be a great loss. I used to take such a thrilling
pleasure in them. But, hereafter, I will turn me sadly away and say;
When they swagger around the stage in jeweled crowns and splendid
robes, I shall feel bound to observe that all the Emperors that ever I
was personally acquainted with wore the commonest sort of clothes, and
did not swagger. And when they come on the stage attended by a vast
body-guard of supes in helmets and tin breastplates, it will be my duty
as well as my pleasure to inform the ignorant that no crowned head of
my acquaintance has a soldier any where about his house or his person.
Possibly it may be thought that our party tarried too long, or did
other improper things, but such was not the case. The company felt that
they were occupying an unusually responsible position--they were
representing the people of America, not the Government--and therefore
they were careful to do their best to perform their high mission with
credit.
On the other hand, the Imperial families, no doubt, considered that in
entertaining us they were more especially entertaining the people of
America than they could by showering attentions on a whole platoon of
ministers plenipotentiary; and therefore they gave to the event its
fullest significance, as an expression of good will and friendly
feeling toward the entire country. We took the kindnesses we received
as attentions thus directed, of course, and not to ourselves as a party.
That we felt a personal pride in being received as the representatives
of a nation, we do not deny; that we felt a national pride in the warm
cordiality of that reception, can not be doubted.
Our poet has been rigidly suppressed, from the time we let go the
anchor. When it was announced that we were going to visit the Emperor
of Russia, the fountains of his great deep were broken up, and he
rained ineffable bosh for four-and-twenty hours. Our original anxiety
as to what we were going to do with ourselves, was suddenly transformed
into anxiety about what we were going to do with our poet. The problem
was solved at last. Two alternatives were offered him--he must either
swear a dreadful oath that he would not issue a line of his poetry
while he was in the Czar's dominions, or else remain under guard on
board the ship until we were safe at Constantinople again. He fought
the dilemma long, but yielded at last. It was a great deliverance.
Perhaps the savage reader would like a specimen of his style. I do not
mean this term to be offensive. I only use it because
We returned to Constantinople, and after a day or two spent in
exhausting marches about the city and voyages up the Golden Horn in
caiques, we steamed away again. We passed through the Sea of Marmora
and the Dardanelles, and steered for a new land--a new one to us, at
least--Asia. We had as yet only acquired a bowing acquaintance with it,
through pleasure excursions to Scutari and the regions round about.@We
passed between Lemnos and Mytilene, and saw them as we had seen Elba
and the Balearic Isles--mere bulky shapes, with the softening mists of
distance upon them--whales in a fog, as it were. Then we held our
course southward, and began to
We inquired, and learned that the lions of Smyrna consisted of the
ruins of the ancient citadel, whose broken and prodigious battlements
frown upon the city from a lofty hill just in the edge of the town--the
Mount Pagus of Scripture, they call it; the site of that one of the
Seven Apocalyptic Churches of Asia which was located here in the first
century of the Christian era; and the grave and the place of martyrdom
of the venerable Polycarp, who suffered in Smyrna for his religion some
eighteen hundred years ago.
We took little donkeys and started. We saw Polycarp's tomb, and then
hurried on.
The
Several of us argued as well as we could that the
Riding through the town, we could see marks of the six Smyrnas that
have existed here and been burned up by fire or knocked down by
earthquakes. The hills and the rocks are rent asunder in places,
excavations expose great blocks of building-stone that have lain buried
for ages, and all the mean houses and walls of modern Smyrna along the
way are spotted white with broken pillars, capitals and fragments of
sculptured marble that once adorned the lordly palaces that were the
glory of the city in the olden time.
The ascent of the hill of the citadel is very steep, and we proceeded
rather slowly. But there were matters of interest about us. In one
place, five hundred feet above the sea, the perpendicular bank on the
upper side of the road was ten or fifteen feet high, and the cut
exposed three veins of oyster shells, just as we have seen quartz veins
exposed in the cutting of a road in Nevada or Montana. The veins were
about eighteen inches thick and two or three feet apart, and they
slanted along downward for a distance of thirty feet or more, and then
disappeared where the cut joined the road. Heaven only knows how far a
man might trace them by
notice:
They were such perfectly natural-looking leads that I could hardly keep
from
The hill might have been the bottom of the sea, once, and been lifted
up, with its oyster-beds, by an earthquake--but, then, how about the
crockery? And moreover, how about three oyster beds, one above another,
and thick strata of good honest earth between?
That theory will not do. It is just possible that this hill is Mount
Ararat, and that Noah's Ark rested here, and he ate oysters and threw
the shells overboard. But that will not do, either. There are the three
layers again and the solid earth between--and, besides, there were only
eight in Noah's family, and they could not have eaten all these oysters
in the two or three months they staid on top of that mountain. The
beasts--however, it is simply absurd to suppose he did not know any
more than to feed the beasts on oyster suppers.
It is painful--it is even humiliating--but I am reduced at last to one
slender theory: that the oysters climbed up there of their own accord.
But what object could they have had in view?--what did they want up
there? What could any oyster want to climb a hill for? To climb a hill
must necessarily be fatiguing and annoying exercise for an oyster. The
most natural conclusion would be that the oysters climbed up there to
look at the scenery. Yet when one comes to reflect upon the nature of
an oyster, it seems plain that he does not care for scenery. An oyster
has no taste for such things; he cares nothing for the beautiful. An
oyster is of a retiring disposition, and not lively--not even cheerful
above the average, and never enterprising. But above all, an oyster
does not take any interest in scenery--he scorns it. What have I
arrived at now? Simply at the point I started from, namely, those
oyster shells are there, in regular layers, five hundred feet above the
sea, and no man knows how they got there. I have hunted up the
guide-books, and the gist of what they say is this:
Twenty-five years ago, a multitude of people in America put on their
ascension robes, took a tearful leave of their friends, and made ready
to fly up into heaven at the first blast of the trumpet. But the angel
did not blow it. Miller's resurrection day was a failure. The
Millerites were disgusted. I did not suspect that there were Millers in
Asia Minor, but a gentleman tells me that they had it all set for the
world to come to an end in Smyrna one day about three years ago. There
was much buzzing and preparation for a long time previously, and it
culminated in a wild excitement at the appointed time. A vast number of
the populace ascended the citadel hill early in the morning, to get out
of the way of the general destruction, and many of the infatuated
closed up their shops and retired from all earthly business. But the
strange part of it was that about three in the afternoon, while this
gentleman and his friends were at dinner in the hotel, a terrific storm
of rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, broke forth and
continued with dire fury for two or three hours. It was a thing
unprecedented in Smyrna at that time of the year, and scared some of
the most skeptical. The streets ran rivers and the hotel floor was
flooded with water. The dinner had to be suspended. When the storm
finished and left every body drenched through and through, and
melancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists came down from the
mountain as dry as so many charity-sermons! They had been looking down
upon the fearful storm going on below, and really believed that their
proposed destruction of the world was proving a grand success.
A railway here in Asia--in the dreamy realm of the Orient--in the
fabled land of the Arabian Nights--is a strange thing to think of. And
yet they have one already, and are building another. The present one is
well built and well conducted, by an English Company, but is not doing
an immense amount of business. The first year it carried a good many
passengers, but its freight list only comprised eight hundred pounds of
figs!
It runs almost to the very gates of Ephesus--a town great in all ages
of the world--a city familiar to readers of the Bible, and one which
was as old as the very hills when the disciples of Christ preached in
its streets. It dates back to the shadowy ages of tradition, and was
the birthplace of gods renowned in Grecian mythology. The idea of a
locomotive tearing through such a place as this, and waking the
phantoms of its old days of romance out of their dreams of dead and
gone centuries, is curious enough.
We journey thither to-morrow to see the celebrated ruins.
[te
Chapter XL
This has been a stirring day. The Superintendent of the railway put a
train at our disposal, and did us the further kindness of accompanying
us to Ephesus and giving to us his watchful care. We brought sixty
scarcely perceptible donkeys in the freight cars, for we had much
ground to go over. We have seen some of the most grotesque costumes,
along the line of the railroad, that can be imagined. I am glad that no
possible combination of words could describe them, for I might then be
foolish enough to attempt it.
At ancient Ayassalook, in the midst of a forbidding desert, we came
upon long lines of ruined aqueducts, and other remnants of
architectural grandeur, that told us plainly enough we were nearing
what had been a metropolis, once. We left the train and mounted the
donkeys, along with our invited guests--pleasant young gentlemen from
the officers' list of an American man-of-war.
The little donkeys had saddles upon them which were made very high in
order that the rider's feet might not drag the ground. The preventative
did not work well in the cases of our tallest pilgrims, however. There
were no bridles--nothing but a single rope, tied to the bit. It was
purely ornamental, for the donkey cared nothing for it. If he were
drifting to starboard, you might put your helm down hard the other way,
if it were any satisfaction to you to do it, but he would continue to
drift to starboard all the same. There was only one process which could
be depended on, and that was to get down and lift his rear around until
his head pointed in the right direction, or take him under your arm and
carry him to a part of the road which he could not get out of without
climbing. The sun flamed down as hot as a furnace, and neck-scarfs,
veils and umbrellas seemed hardly any protection; they served only to
make the long procession look more than ever fantastic--for be it known
the ladies were all riding astride because they could not stay on the
shapeless saddles sidewise, the men were perspiring and out of temper,
their feet were banging against the rocks, the donkeys were capering in
every direction but the right one and being belabored with clubs for
it, and every now and then a broad umbrella would suddenly go down out
of the cavalcade, announcing to all that one more pilgrim had bitten
the dust. It was a wilder picture than those solitudes had seen for
many a day. No donkeys ever existed that were as hard to navigate as
these, I think, or that had so many vile, exasperating instincts.
Occasionally we grew so tired and breathless with fighting them that we
had to desist,--and immediately the donkey would come down to a
deliberate walk. This, with the fatigue, and the sun, would put a man
asleep; and as soon as the man was asleep, the donkey would lie down.
My donkey shall never see his boyhood's home again. He has lain down
once too often. He must die.
We all stood in the vast theatre of ancient Ephesus,--the stone-benched
amphitheatre I mean--and had our picture taken. We looked as proper
there as we would look any where, I suppose. We do not embellish the
general desolation of a desert much. We add what dignity we can to a
stately ruin with our green umbrellas and jackasses, but it is little.
However, we mean well.
I wish to say a brief word of the aspect of Ephesus.
On a high, steep hill, toward the sea, is a gray ruin of ponderous
blocks of marble, wherein, tradition says, St. Paul was imprisoned
eighteen centuries ago. From these old walls you have the finest view
of the desolate scene where once stood Ephesus, the proudest city of
ancient times, and whose Temple of Diana was so noble in design, and so
exquisite of workmanship, that it ranked high in the list of the Seven
Wonders of the World.
Behind you is the sea; in front is a level green valley, (a marsh, in
fact,) extending far away among the mountains; to the right of the
front view is the old citadel of Ayassalook, on a high hill; the ruined
Mosque of the Sultan Selim stands near it in the plain, (this is built
over the grave of St. John, and was formerly a Christian Church;)
further toward you is the hill of Pion, around whose front is clustered
all that remains of the ruins of Ephesus that still stand; divided from
it by a narrow valley is the long, rocky, rugged mountain of Coressus.
The scene is a pretty one, and yet desolate--for in that wide plain no
man can live, and in it is no human habitation. But for the crumbling
arches and monstrous piers and broken walls that rise from the foot of
the hill of Pion, one could not believe that in this place once stood a
city whose renown is older than tradition itself. It is incredible to
reflect that things as familiar all over the world to-day as household
words, belong in the history and in the shadowy legends of this silent,
mournful solitude. We speak of Apollo and of Diana--they were born here;
of the metamorphosis of Syrinx into a reed--it was done here; of the
great god Pan--he dwelt in the caves of this hill of Coressus; of the
Amazons--this was their best prized home; of Bacchus and Hercules--both
fought the warlike women here; of the Cyclops--they laid the ponderous
marble blocks of some of the ruins yonder; of Homer--this was one of
his many birthplaces; of Cimon of Athens; of Alcibiades, Lysander,
Agesilaus--they visited here; so did Alexander the Great; so did
Hannibal and Antiochus, Scipio, Lucullus and Sylla; Brutus, Cassius,
Pompey, Cicero, and Augustus; Antony was a judge in this place, and
left his seat in the open court, while the advocates were speaking, to
run after Cleopatra, who passed the door; from this city these two
sailed on pleasure excursions, in galleys with silver oars and perfumed
sails, and with companies of beautiful girls to serve them, and actors
and musicians to amuse them; in days that seem almost modern, so remote
are they from the early history of this city, Paul the Apostle preached
the new religion here, and so did John, and here it is supposed the
former was pitted against wild beasts, for in 1 Corinthians, xv. 32 he
says:@
When i last made a memorandum, we were at Ephesus. We are in Syria,
now, encamped in the mountains of Lebanon. The interregnum has been
long, both as to time and distance. We brought not a relic from
Ephesus! After gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and
breaking ornaments from the interior work of the Mosques: and after
bringing them at a cost of infinite trouble and fatigue, five miles on
muleback to the railway depot, a government officer compelled all who
had such things to disgorge! He had an order from Constantinople to
look out for our party, and see that we carried nothing off. It was a
wise, a just, and a well-deserved rebuke, but it created a sensation.
I never resist a temptation to plunder a stranger's premises without
feeling insufferably vain about it. This time I felt proud beyond
expression. I was serene in the midst of the scoldings that were heaped
upon the Ottoman government for its affront offered to a pleasuring
party of entirely respectable gentlemen and ladies. I said,
We are camped near Temnin-el-Foka--a name which the boys have
simplified a good deal, for the sake of convenience in spelling. They
call it Jacksonville. It sounds a little strangely, here in the Valley
of Lebanon, but it has the merit of being easier to remember than the
Arabic name.
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
We had a tedious ride of about five hours, in the sun, across the
Valley of Lebanon. It proved to be not quite so much of a garden as it
had seemed from the hill-sides. It was a desert, weed-grown waste,
littered thickly with stones the size of a man's fist. Here and there
the natives had scratched the ground and reared a sickly crop of grain,
but for the most part the valley was given up to a handful of
shepherds, whose flocks were doing what they honestly could to get a
living, but the chances were against them. We saw rude piles of stones
standing near the roadside, at intervals, and recognized the custom of
marking boundaries which obtained in Jacob's time. There were no walls,
no fences, no hedges--nothing to secure a man's possessions but these
random heaps of stones. The Israelites held them sacred in the old
patriarchal times, and these other Arabs, their lineal descendants, do
so likewise. An American, of ordinary intelligence, would soon widely
extend his property, at an outlay of mere manual labor, performed at
night, under so loose a system of fencing as this.
The plows these people use are simply a sharpened stick, such as
Abraham plowed with, and they still winnow their wheat as he did--they
pile it on the house-top, and then toss it by shovel-fulls into the air
until the wind has blown all the chaff away. They never invent any
thing, never learn any thing.
We had a fine race, of a mile, with an Arab perched on a camel. Some of
the horses were fast, and made very good time, but the camel scampered
by them without any very great effort. The yelling and shouting, and
whipping and galloping, of all parties interested, made it an
exhilarating, exciting, and particularly boisterous race.
At eleven o'clock, our eyes fell upon the walls and columns of Baalbec,
a noble ruin whose history is a sealed book. It has stood there for
thousands of years, the wonder and admiration of travelers; but who
built it, or when it was built, are questions that may never be
answered. One thing is very sure, though. Such grandeur of design, and
such grace of execution, as one sees in the temples of Baalbec, have
not been equaled or even approached in any work of men's hands that has
been built within twenty centuries past.
The great Temple of the Sun, the Temple of Jupiter, and several smaller
temples, are clustered together in the midst of one of these miserable
Syrian villages, and look strangely enough in such plebeian company.
These temples are built upon massive substructions that might support a
world, almost; the materials used are blocks of stone as large as an
omnibus--very few, if any of them, are smaller than a carpenter's tool
chest--and these substructions are traversed by tunnels of masonry
through which a train of cars might pass. With such foundations as
these, it is little wonder that Baalbec has lasted so long. The Temple
of the Sun is nearly three hundred feet long and one hundred and sixty
feet wide. It had fifty-four columns around it, but only six are
standing now--the others lie broken at its base, a confused and
picturesque heap. The six columns are perfect, as also are their bases,
Corinthian capitals and entablature--and six more shapely columns do
not exist. The columns and the entablature together are ninety feet
high--a prodigious altitude for shafts of stone to reach, truly--and
yet one only thinks of their beauty and symmetry when looking at them;
the pillars look slender and delicate, the entablature, with its
elaborate sculpture, looks like rich stucco-work. But when you have
gazed aloft till your eyes are weary, you glance at the great fragments
of pillars among which you are standing, and find that they are eight
feet through; and with them lie beautiful capitals apparently as large
as a small cottage; and also single slabs of stone, superbly
sculptured, that are four or five feet thick, and would completely
cover the floor of any ordinary parlor. You wonder where these
monstrous things came from, and it takes some little time to satisfy
yourself that the airy and graceful fabric that towers above your head
is made up of their mates. It seems too preposterous.
The Temple of Jupiter is a smaller ruin than the one I have been
speaking of, and yet is immense. It is in a tolerable state of
preservation. One row of nine columns stands almost uninjured. They are
sixty-five feet high and support a sort of porch or roof, which
connects them with the roof of the building. This porch-roof is
composed of tremendous slabs of stone, which are so finely sculptured
on the under side that the work looks like a fresco from below. One or
two of these slabs had fallen, and again I wondered if the gigantic
masses of carved stone that lay about me were no larger than those
above my head. Within the temple, the ornamentation was elaborate and
colossal. What a wonder of architectural beauty and grandeur this
edifice must have been when it was new! And what a noble picture it and
its statelier companion, with the chaos of mighty fragments scattered
about them, yet makes in the moonlight!
I can not conceive how those immense blocks of stone were ever hauled
from the quarries, or how they were ever raised to the dizzy heights
they occupy in the temples. And yet these sculptured blocks are trifles
in size compared with the rough-hewn blocks that form the wide verandah
or platform which surrounds the Great Temple. One stretch of that
platform, two hundred feet long, is composed of blocks of stone as
large, and some of them larger, than a street-car. They surmount a wall
about ten or twelve feet high. I thought those were large rocks, but
they sank into insignificance compared with those which formed another
section of the platform. These were three in number, and I thought that
each of them was about as long as three street cars placed end to end,
though of course they are a third wider and a third higher than a
street car. Perhaps two railway freight cars of the largest pattern,
placed end to end, might better represent their size. In combined
length these three stones stretch nearly two hundred feet; they are
thirteen feet square; two of them are sixty-four feet long each, and
the third is sixty-nine. They are built into the massive wall some
twenty feet above the ground. They are there, but how they got there is
the question. I have seen the hull of a steamboat that was smaller than
one of those stones. All these great walls are as exact and shapely as
the flimsy things we build of bricks in these days. A race of gods or
of giants must have inhabited Baalbec many a century ago. Men like the
men of our day could hardly rear such temples as these.
We went to the quarry from whence the stones of Baalbec were taken. It
was about a quarter of a mile off, and down hill. In a great pit lay
the mate of the largest stone in the ruins. It lay there just as the
giants of that old forgotten time had left it when they were called
hence--just as they had left it, to remain for thousands of years, an
eloquent rebuke unto such as are prone to think slightingly of the men
who lived before them. This enormous block lies there, squared and
ready for the builders' hands--a solid mass fourteen feet by seventeen,
and but a few inches less than seventy feet long! Two buggies could be
driven abreast of each other, on its surface, from one end of it to the
other, and leave room enough for a man or two to walk on either side.
One might swear that all the John Smiths and George Wilkinsons, and all
the other pitiful nobodies between Kingdom Come and Baalbec would
inscribe their poor little names upon the walls of Baalbec's
magnificent ruins, and would add the town, the county and the State
they came from--and swearing thus, be infallibly correct. It is a pity
some great ruin does not fall in and flatten out some of these
reptiles, and scare their kind out of ever giving their names to fame
upon any walls or monuments again, forever.
Properly, with the sorry relics we bestrode, it was a three days'
journey to Damascus. It was necessary that we should do it in less than
two. It was necessary because our three pilgrims would not travel on
the Sabbath day. We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day,
but there are times when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose
spirit is righteous, becomes a sin, and this was a case in point. We
pleaded for the tired, ill-treated horses, and tried to show that their
faithful service deserved kindness in return, and their hard lot
compassion. But when did ever self-righteousness know the sentiment of
pity? What were a few long hours added to the hardships of some
over-taxed brutes when weighed against the peril of those human souls?
It was not the most promising party to travel with and hope to gain a
higher veneration for religion through the example of its devotees. We
said the Saviour who pitied dumb beasts and taught that the ox must be
rescued from the mire even on the Sabbath day, would not have counseled
a forced march like this. We said the
We have given the pilgrims a good many examples that might benefit
them, but it is virtue thrown away. They have never heard a cross word
out of our lips toward each other--but they have quarreled once or
twice. We love to hear them at it, after they have been lecturing us.
The very first thing they did, coming ashore at Beirout, was to quarrel
in the boat. I have said I like them, and I do like them--but every
time they read me a scorcher of a lecture I mean to talk back in print.
Not content with doubling the legitimate stages, they switched off the
main road and went away out of the way to visit an absurd fountain
called Figia, because Baalam's ass had drank there once. So we
journeyed on, through the terrible hills and decerts and the roasting
sun, and then far into the night, seeking the honored pool of Baalam's
ass, the patron saint of all pilgrims like us. I find no entry but this
in my note-book:
The next day was an outrage upon men and horses both. It was another
thirteen-hour stretch (including an hour's
The last twenty-four hours we staid in Damascus I lay prostrate with a
violent attack of cholera, or cholera morbus, and therefore had a good
chance and a good excuse to lie there on that wide divan and take an
honest rest. I had nothing to do but listen to the pattering of the
fountains and take medicine and throw it up again. It was dangerous
recreation, but it was pleasanter than traveling in Syria. I had plenty
of snow from Mount Hermon, and as it would not stay on my stomach,
there was nothing to interfere with my eating it--there was always room
for more. I enjoyed myself very well. Syrian travel has its interesting
features, like travel in any other part of the world, and yet to break
your leg or have the cholera adds a welcome variety to it.
We left Damascus at noon and rode across the plain a couple of hours,
and then the party stopped a while in the shade of some fig-trees to
give me a chance to rest. It was the hottest day we had seen yet--the
sun-flames shot down like the shafts of fire that stream out before a
blow-pipe; the rays seemed to fall in a steady deluge on the head and
pass downward like rain from a roof. I imagined I could distinguish
between the floods of rays--I thought I could tell when each flood
struck my head, when it reached my shoulders, and when the next one
came. It was terrible. All the desert glared so fiercely that my eyes
were swimming in tears all the time. The boys had white umbrellas
heavily lined with dark green. They were a priceless blessing. I
thanked fortune that I had one, too, notwithstanding it was packed up
with the baggage and was ten miles ahead. It is madness to travel in
Syria without an umbrella. They told me in Beirout (these people who
always gorge you with advice) that it was madness to travel in Syria
without an umbrella. It was on this account that I got one.
But, honestly, I think an umbrella is a nuisance any where when its
business is to keep the sun off. No Arab wears a brim to his fez, or
uses an umbrella, or any thing to shade his eyes or his face, and he
always looks comfortable and proper in the sun. But of all the
ridiculous sights I ever have seen, our party of eight is the most
so--they do cut such an outlandish figure. They travel single file;
they all wear the endless white rag of Constantinople wrapped round and
round their hats and dangling down their backs; they all wear thick
green spectacles, with side-glasses to them; they all hold white
umbrellas, lined with green, over their heads; without exception their
stirrups are too short--they are the very worst gang of horsemen on
earth; their animals to a horse trot fearfully hard--and when they get
strung out one after the other; glaring straight ahead and breathless;
bouncing high and out of turn, all along the line; knees well up and
stiff, elbows flapping like a rooster's that is going to crow, and the
long file of umbrellas popping convulsively up and down--when one sees
this outrageous picture exposed to the light of day, he is amazed that
the gods don't get out their thunderbolts and destroy them off the face
of the earth! I do--I wonder at it. I wouldn't let any such caravan go
through a country of mine.
And when the sun drops below the horizon and the boys close their
umbrellas and put them under their arms, it is only a variation of the
picture, not a modification of its absurdity.
But may be you can not see the wild extravagance of my panorama. You
could if you were here. Here, you feel all the time just as if you were
living about the year 1200 before Christ--or back to the patriarchs--or
forward to the New Era. The scenery of the Bible is about you--the
customs of the patriarchs are around you--the same people, in the same
flowing robes, and in sandals, cross your path--the same long trains of
stately camels go and come--the same impressive religious solemnity and
silence rest upon the desert and the mountains that were upon them in
the remote ages of antiquity, and behold, intruding upon a scene like
this, comes this fantastic mob of green-spectacled Yanks, with their
flapping elbows and bobbing umbrellas! It is Daniel in the lion's den
with a green cotton umbrella under his arm, all over again.
My umbrella is with the baggage, and so are my green spectacles--and
there they shall stay. I will not use them. I will show some respect
for the eternal fitness of things. It will be bad enough to get
sun-struck, without looking ridiculous into the bargain. If I fall, let
me fall bearing about me the semblance of a Christian, at least.
Three of four hours out from Damascus we passed the spot where Saul was
so abruptly converted, and from this place we looked back over the
scorching desert, and had our last glimpse of beautiful Damascus,
decked in its robes of shining green. After nightfall we reached our
tents, just outside of the nasty Arab village of Jonesborough. Of
course the real name of the place is El something or other, but the
boys still refuse to recognize the Arab names or try to pronounce them.
When I say that that village is of the usual style, I mean to insinuate
that all Syrian villages within fifty miles of Damascus are alike--so
much alike that it would require more than human intelligence to tell
wherein one differed from another. A Syrian village is a hive of huts
one story high (the height of a man,) and as square as a dry-goods box;
it is mud-plastered all over, flat roof and all, and generally
whitewashed after a fashion. The same roof often extends over half the
town, covering many of the streets, which are generally about a yard
wide. When you ride through one of these villages at noonday, you first
meet a melancholy dog, that looks up at you and silently begs that you
won't run over him, but he does not offer to get out of the way; next
you meet a young boy without any clothes on, and he holds out his hand
and says
I would not have gone into this dissertation upon Syrian villages but
for the fact that Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter of Scriptural notoriety, is
buried in Jonesborough, and I wished the public to know about how he is
located. Like Homer, he is said to be buried in many other places, but
this is the only true and genuine place his ashes inhabit.
When the original tribes were dispersed, more than four thousand years
ago, Nimrod and a large party traveled three or four hundred miles, and
settled where the great city of Babylon afterwards stood. Nimrod built
that city. He also began to build the famous Tower of Babel, but
circumstances over which he had no control put it out of his power to
finish it. He ran it up eight stories high, however, and two of them
still stand, at this day--a colossal mass of brickwork, rent down the
centre by earthquakes, and seared and vitrified by the lightnings of an
angry God. But the vast ruin will still stand for ages, to shame the
puny labors of these modern generations of men. Its huge compartments
are tenanted by owls and lions, and old Nimrod lies neglected in this
wretched village, far from the scene of his grand enterprise.
We left Jonesborough very early in the morning, and rode forever and
forever and forever, it seemed to me, over parched deserts and rocky
hills, hungry, and with no water to drink. We had drained the
goat-skins dry in a little while. At noon we halted before the wretched
Arab town of El Yuba Dam, perched on the side of a mountain, but the
dragoman said if we applied there for water we would be attacked by the
whole tribe, for they did not love Christians. We had to journey on.
Two hours later we reached the foot of a tall isolated mountain, which
is crowned by the crumbling castle of Banias, the stateliest ruin of
that kind on earth, no doubt. It is a thousand feet long and two
hundred wide, all of the most symmetrical, and at the same time the
most ponderous masonry. The massive towers and bastions are more than
thirty feet high, and have been sixty. From the mountain's peak its
broken turrets rise above the groves of ancient oaks and olives, and
look wonderfully picturesque. It is of such high antiquity that no man
knows who built it or when it was built. It is utterly inaccessible,
except in one place, where a bridle-path winds upward among the solid
rocks to the old portcullis. The horses' hoofs have bored holes in
these rocks to the depth of six inches during the hundreds and hundreds
of years that the castle was garrisoned. We wandered for three hours
among the chambers and crypts and dungeons of the fortress, and trod
where the mailed heels of many a knightly Crusader had rang, and where
Phenician heroes had walked ages before them.@We wondered how such a
solid mass of masonry could be affected even by an earthquake, and
could not understand what agency had made Banias a ruin; but we found
the destroyer, after a while, and then our wonder was increased
ten-fold. Seeds had fallen in crevices in the vast walls; the seeds
had sprouted; the tender, insignificant sprouts had hardened; they grew
larger and larger, and by a steady, imperceptible pressure forced the
great stones apart, and now are bringing sure destruction upon a giant
work that has even mocked the earthquakes to scorn! Gnarled and twisted
trees spring from the old walls every where, and beautify and
overshadow the gray battlements with a wild luxuriance of foliage.
@@From these old towers we looked down upon a broad, far-reaching green
plain, glittering with the pools and rivulets which are the sources of
the sacred river Jordan. It was a grateful vision, after so much desert.
@And as the evening drew near, we clambered down the mountain, through
groves of the Biblical oaks of Bashan, (for we were just stepping over
the border and entering the long-sought Holy Land,) and at its extreme
foot, toward the wide valley, we entered this little execrable village
of Banias and camped in a great grove of olive trees near a torrent of
sparkling water whose banks are arrayed in fig-trees, pomegranates and
oleanders in full leaf. Barring the proximity of the village, it is a
sort of paradise.@@The very first thing one feels like doing when he
gets into camp, all burning up and dusty, is to hunt up a bath. We
followed the stream up to where it gushes out of the mountain side,
three hundred yards from the tents, and took a bath that was so icy
that if I did not know this was the main source of the sacred river, I
would expect harm to come of it. It was bathing at noonday in the
chilly source of the Abana,
About an hour's ride over a rough, rocky road, half flooded with water,
and through a forest of oaks of Bashan, brought us to Dan.
From a little mound here in the plain issues a broad stream of limpid
water and forms a large shallow pool, and then rushes furiously onward,
augmented in volume. This puddle is an important source of the Jordan.
Its banks, and those of the brook are respectably adorned with blooming
oleanders, but the unutterable beauty of the spot will not throw a
well-balanced man into convulsions, as the Syrian books of travel would
lead one to suppose.
From the spot I am speaking of, a cannon-ball would carry beyond the
confines of Holy Land and light upon profane ground three miles away.
We were only one little hour's travel within the borders of Holy
Land--we had hardly begun to appreciate yet that we were standing upon
any different sort of earth than that we had always been used to, and
yet see how the historic names began already to cluster!
Dan--Bashan--Lake Huleh--the Sources of Jordan--the Sea of Galilee.
They were all in sight but the last, and it was not far away. The
little township of Bashan was once the kingdom so famous in Scripture
for its bulls and its oaks. Lake Huleh is the Biblical
The small mound I have mentioned a while ago was once occupied by the
Phenician city of Laish. A party of filibusters from Zorah and Eschol
captured the place, and lived there in a free and easy way, worshiping
gods of their own manufacture and stealing idols from their neighbors
whenever they wore their own out. Jeroboam set up a golden calf here to
fascinate his people and keep them from making dangerous trips to
Jerusalem to worship, which might result in a return to their rightful
allegiance. With all respect for those ancient Israelites, I can not
overlook the fact that they were not always virtuous enough to
withstand the seductions of a golden calf. Human nature has not changed
much since then.
Some forty centuries ago the city of Sodom was pillaged by the Arab
princes of Mesopotamia, and among other prisoners they seized upon the
patriarch Lot and brought him here on their way to their own
possessions. They brought him to Dan, and father Abraham, who was
pursuing them, crept softly in at dead of night, among the whispering
oleanders and under the shadows of the stately oaks, and fell upon the
slumbering victors and startled them from their dreams with the clash
of steel. He recaptured Lot and all the other plunder.
We moved on. We were now in a green valley, five or six miles wide and
fifteen long. The streams which are called the sources of the Jordan
flow through it to Lake Huleh, a shallow pond three miles in diameter,
and from the southern extremity of the Lake the concentrated Jordan
flows out. The Lake is surrounded by a broad marsh, grown with reeds.
Between the marsh and the mountains which wall the valley is a
respectable strip of fertile land; at the end of the valley, toward
Dan, as much as half the land is solid and fertile, and watered by
Jordan's sources. There is enough of it to make a farm. It almost
warrants the enthusiasm of the spies of that rabble of adventurers who
captured Dan. They said:
Their enthusiasm was at least warranted by the fact that they had never
seen a country as good as this. There was enough of it for the ample
support of their six hundred men and their families, too.
When we got fairly down on the level part of the Danite farm, we came
to places where we could actually run our horses. It was a notable
circumstance.
We had been painfully clambering over interminable hills and rocks for
days together, and when we suddenly came upon this astonishing piece of
rockless plain, every man drove the spurs into his horse and sped away
with a velocity he could surely enjoy to the utmost, but could never
hope to comprehend in Syria.
Here were evidences of cultivation--a rare sight in this country--an
acre or two of rich soil studded with last season's dead corn-stalks of
the thickness of your thumb and very wide apart. But in such a land it
was a thrilling spectacle. Close to it was a stream, and on its banks a
great herd of curious-looking Syrian goats and sheep were gratefully
eating gravel. I do not state this as a petrified fact--I only suppose
they were eating gravel, because there did not appear to be any thing
else for them to eat. The shepherds that tended them were the very
pictures of Joseph and his brethren I have no doubt in the world. They
were tall, muscular, and very dark-skinned Bedouins, with inky black
beards. They had firm lips, unquailing eyes, and a kingly stateliness
of bearing. They wore the parti-colored half bonnet, half hood, with
fringed ends falling upon their shoulders, and the full, flowing robe
barred with broad black stripes--the dress one sees in all pictures of
the swarthy sons of the desert. These chaps would sell their younger
brothers if they had a chance, I think. They have the manners, the
customs, the dress, the occupation and the loose principles of the
ancient stock. ;obThey attacked our camp last night, and I bear them no
good will.;cb They had with them the pigmy jackasses one sees all over
Syria and remembers in all pictures of the
But really, here the man rides and carries the child, as a general
thing, and the woman walks. The customs have not changed since Joseph's
time. We would not have in our houses a picture representing Joseph
riding and Mary walking; we would see profanation in it, but a Syrian
Christian would not. I know that hereafter the picture I first spoke of
will look odd to me.
We could not stop to rest two or three hours out from our camp, of
course, albeit the brook was beside us. So we went on an hour longer.
We saw water, then, but nowhere in all the waste around was there a
foot of shade, and we were scorching to death.
Here you do not stop just when you please, but when you can. We found
water, but no shade. We traveled on and found a tree at last, but no
water. We rested and lunched, and came on to this place, Ain Mellahah
(the boys call it Baldwinsville.) It was a very short day's run, but
the dragoman does not want to go further, and has invented a plausible
lie about the country beyond this being infested by ferocious Arabs,
who would make sleeping in their midst a dangerous pastime. Well, they
ought to be dangerous. They carry a rusty old weather-beaten flintlock
gun, with a barrel that is longer than themselves; it has no sights on
it; it will not carry farther than a brickbat, and is not half so
certain. And the great sash they wear in many a fold around their
waists has two or three absurd old horse-pistols in it that are rusty
from eternal disuse--weapons that would hang fire just about long
enough for you to walk out of range, and then burst and blow the Arab's
head off. Exceedingly dangerous these sons of the desert are.
It used to make my blood run cold to read Wm. C. Grimes' hairbreadth
escapes from Bedouins, but I think I could read them now without a
tremor. He never said he was attacked by Bedouins, I believe, or was
ever treated uncivilly, but then in about every other chapter he
discovered them approaching, any how, and he had a blood-curdling
fashion of working up the peril; and of wondering how his relations far
away would feel could they see their poor wandering boy, with his weary
feet and his dim eyes, in such fearful danger; and of thinking for the
last time of the old homestead, and the dear old church, and the cow,
and those things; and of finally straightening his form to its utmost
height in the saddle, drawing his trusty revolver, and then dashing the
spurs into
About fifteen hundred years before Christ, this camp-ground of ours by
the Waters of Merom was the scene of one of Joshua's exterminating
battles. Jabin, King of Hazor, (up yonder above Dan,) called all the
shieks about him together, with their hosts, to make ready for Israel's
terrible General who was approaching.
But Joshua fell upon them and utterly destroyed them, root and branch.
That was his usual policy in war. He never left any chance for
newspaper controversies about who won the battle. He made this valley,
so quiet now, a reeking slaughter-pen.
Somewhere in this part of the country--I do not know exactly
where--Israel fought another bloody battle a hundred years later.
Deborah, the prophetess, told Barak to take ten thousand men and sally
forth against another King Jabin who had been doing something. Barak
came down from Mount Tabor, twenty or twenty-five miles from here, and
gave battle to Jabin's forces, who were in command of Sisera. Barak won
the fight, and while he was making the victory complete by the usual
method of exterminating the remnant of the defeated host, Sisera fled
away on foot, and when he was nearly exhausted by fatigue and thirst,
one Jael, a woman he seems to have been acquainted with, invited him to
come into her tent and rest himself. The weary soldier acceded readily
enough, and Jael put him to bed. He said he was very thirsty, and asked
his generous preserver to get him a cup of water. She brought him some
milk, and he drank of it gratefully and lay down again, to forget in
pleasant dreams his lost battle and his humbled pride. Presently when
he was asleep she came softly in with a hammer and drove a hideous
tent-pen down through his brain!
Stirring scenes like these occur in this valley no more. There is not a
solitary village throughout its whole extent--not for thirty miles in
either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin
tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles,
hereabouts, and not see ten human beings.
To this region one of the prophecies is applied:
No man can stand here by deserted Ain Mellahah and say the prophecy has
not been fulfilled.
In a verse from the Bible which I have quoted above, occurs the phrase <
q>all these kings.
It is seven in the morning, and as we are in the country, the grass
ought to be sparkling with dew, the flowers enriching the air with
their fragrance, and the birds singing in the trees. But alas, there is
no dew here, nor flowers, nor birds, nor trees. There is a plain and an
unshaded lake, and beyond them some barren mountains. The tents are
tumbling, the Arabs are quarreling like dogs and cats, as usual, the
campground is strewn with packages and bundles, the labor of packing
them upon the backs of the mules is progressing with great activity,
the horses are saddled, the umbrellas are out, and in ten minutes we
shall mount and the long procession will move again. The white city of
the Mellahah, resurrected for a moment out of the dead centuries, will
have disappeared again and left no sign.
*The railroad has been completed, since the above was written.
[te
Chapter XLVII
We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough,
but is given over wholly to weeds--a silent, mournful expanse, wherein
we saw only three persons--Arabs, with nothing on but a long coarse
shirt like the
In their pipes lingered no echo of the wonderful music the shepherd
forefathers heard in the Plains of Bethlehem what time the angels sang <
q>Peace on earth, good will to men.
Part of the ground we came over was not ground at all, but
rocks--cream-colored rocks, worn smooth, as if by water; with seldom an
edge or a corner on them, but scooped out, honey-combed, bored out with
eye-holes, and thus wrought into all manner of quaint shapes, among
which the uncouth imitation of skulls was frequent. Over this part of
the route were occasional remains of an old Roman road like the Appian
Way, whose paving-stones still clung to their places with Roman
tenacity.
Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchres and desolation, glided
in and out among the rocks or lay still and sunned themselves. Where
prosperity has reigned, and fallen; where glory has flamed, and gone
out; where beauty has dwelt, and passed away; where gladness was, and
sorrow is; where the pomp of life has been, and silence and death brood
in its high places, there this reptile makes his home, and mocks at
human vanity. His coat is the color of ashes: and ashes are the symbol
of hopes that have perished, of aspirations that came to nought, of
loves that are buried. If he could speak, he would say, Build temples:
I will lord it in their ruins; build palaces: I will inhabit them;
erect empires: I will inherit them; bury your beautiful: I will watch
the worms at their work; and you, who stand here and moralize over me:
I will crawl over your corpse at the last.
A few ants were in this desert place, but merely to spend the summer.
They brought their provisions from Ain Mellahah--eleven miles.
Jack is not very well to-day, it is easy to see; but boy as he is, he
is too much of a man to speak of it. He exposed himself to the sun too
much yesterday, but since it came of his earnest desire to learn, and
to make this journey as useful as the opportunities will allow, no one
seeks to discourage him by fault-finding. We missed him an hour from
the camp, and then found him some distance away, by the edge of a
brook, and with no umbrella to protect him from the fierce sun. If he
had been used to going without his umbrella, it would have been well
enough, of course; but he was not. He was just in the act of throwing a
clod at a mud-turtle which was sunning itself on a small log in the
brook. We said:
We asked him why, but he said it was no matter. We asked him why, once
or twice, as we walked back to the camp, but he still said it was no
matter. But late at night, when he was sitting in a thoughtful mood on
the bed, we asked him again and he said:
About ten in the morning we halted at Joseph's Pit. This is a ruined
Khan of the Middle Ages, in one of whose side courts is a great walled
and arched pit with water in it, and this pit, one tradition says, is
the one Joseph's brethren cast him into. A more authentic tradition,
aided by the geography of the country, places the pit in Dothan, some
two days' journey from here. However, since there are many who believe
in this present pit as the true one, it has its interest.
It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book
which is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is
certain that not many things within its lids may take rank above the
exquisite story of Joseph. Who taught those ancient writers their
simplicity of language, their felicity of expression, their pathos, and
above all, their faculty of sinking themselves entirely out of sight of
the reader and making the narrative stand out alone and seem to tell
itself? Shakspeare is always present when one reads his book; Macaulay
is present when we follow the march of his stately sentences; but the
Old Testament writers are hidden from view.
If the pit I have been speaking of is the right one, a scene transpired
there, long ages ago, which is familiar to us all in pictures. The sons
of Jacob had been pasturing their flocks near there. Their father grew
uneasy at their long absence, and sent Joseph, his favorite, to see if
any thing had gone wrong with them. He traveled six or seven days'
journey; he was only seventeen years old, and, boy like, he toiled
through that long stretch of the vilest, rockiest, dustiest country in
Asia, arrayed in the pride of his heart, his beautiful claw-hammer coat
of many colors. Joseph was the favorite, and that was one crime in the
eyes of his brethren; he had dreamed dreams, and interpreted them to
foreshadow his elevation far above all his family in the far future,
and that was another; he was dressed well and had doubtless displayed
the harmless vanity of youth in keeping the fact prominently before his
brothers. These were crimes his elders fretted over among themselves
and proposed to punish when the opportunity should offer. When they saw
him coming up from the Sea of Galilee, they recognized him and were
glad. They said,
Joseph became rich, distinguished, powerful--as the Bible expresses it,
Esau found Jacob rich, beloved by wives and children, and traveling in
state, with servants, herds of cattle and trains of camels--but he
himself was still the uncourted outcast this brother had made him.
After thirteen years of romantic mystery, the brethren who had wronged
Joseph, came, strangers in a strange land, hungry and humble, to buy
Just before we came to Joseph's Pit, we had
Therefore we tarried only a short time at the pit. We rested the horses
and ourselves, and felt for a few minutes the blessed shade of the
ancient buildings. We were out of water, but the two or three scowling
Arabs, with their long guns, who were idling about the place, said they
had none and that there was none in the vicinity. They knew there was a
little brackish water in the pit, but they venerated a place made
sacred by their ancestor's imprisonment too much to be willing to see
Christian dogs drink from it. But Ferguson tied rags and handkerchiefs
together till he made a rope long enough to lower a vessel to the
bottom, and we drank and then rode on; and in a short time we
dismounted on those shores which the feet of the Saviour have made holy
ground.
At noon we took a swim in the Sea of Galilee--a blessed privilege in
this roasting climate--and then lunched under a neglected old fig-tree
at the fountain they call Ain-et-Tin, a hundred yards from ruined
Capernaum. Every rivulet that gurgles out of the rocks and sands of
this part of the world is dubbed with the title of
During luncheon, the pilgrim enthusiasts of our party, who had been so
light-hearted and happy ever since they touched holy ground that they
did little but mutter incoherent rhapsodies, could scarcely eat, so
anxious were they to
In this frame of mind I followed, as fast as I could, the eager
footsteps of the pilgrims, and stood upon the shore of the lake, and
swelled, with hat and voice, the frantic hail they sent after the
Ferguson--(interpreting)--
One or two countenances fell. Then a pause.
I never shall know how it was--I shudder yet when I think how the place
is given to miracles--but in a single instant of time, as it seemed to
me, that ship was twenty paces from the shore, and speeding away like a
frightened thing! Eight crestfallen creatures stood upon the shore, and
O, to think of it! this--this--after all that overmastering ecstacy!
Oh, shameful, shameful ending, after such unseemly boasting! It was too
much like
Instantly there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp. The two
Napoleons were offered--more if necessary--and pilgrims and dragoman
shouted themselves hoarse with pleadings to the retreating boatmen to
come back. But they sailed serenely away and paid no further heed to
pilgrims who had dreamed all their lives of some day skimming over the
sacred waters of Galilee and listening to its hallowed story in the
whisperings of its waves, and had journeyed countless leagues to do it,
and--and then concluded that the fare was too high. Impertinent
Mohammedan Arabs, to think such things of gentlemen of another faith!
Well, there was nothing to do but just submit and forego the privilege
of voyaging on Genessaret, after coming half around the globe to taste
that pleasure. There was a time, when the Saviour taught here, that
boats were plenty among the fishermen of the coasts--but boats and
fishermen both are gone, now; and old Josephus had a fleet of
men-of-war in these waters eighteen centuries ago--a hundred and thirty
bold canoes--but they, also, have passed away and left no sign. They
battle here no more by sea, and the commercial marine of Galilee
numbers only two small ships, just of a pattern with the little skiffs
the disciples knew. One was lost to us for good--the other was miles
away and far out of hail. So we mounted the horses and rode grimly on
toward Magdala, cantering along in the edge of the water for want of
the means of passing over it.
How the pilgrims abused each other! Each said it was the other's fault,
and each in turn denied it. No word was spoken by the sinners--even the
mildest sarcasm might have been dangerous at such a time. Sinners that
have been kept down and had examples held up to them, and suffered
frequent lectures, and been so put upon in a moral way and in the
matter of going slow and being serious and bottling up slang, and so
crowded in regard to the matter of being proper and always and forever
behaving, that their lives have become a burden to them, would not lag
behind pilgrims at such a time as this, and wink furtively, and be
joyful, and commit other such crimes--because it would not occur to
them to do it. Otherwise they would. But they did do it, though--and it
did them a world of good to hear the pilgrims abuse each other, too. We
took an unworthy satisfaction in seeing them fall out, now and then,
because it showed that they were only poor human people like us, after
all.
So we all rode down to Magdala, while the gnashing of teeth waxed and
waned by turns, and harsh words troubled the holy calm of Galilee.
Lest any man think I mean to be ill-natured when I talk about our
pilgrims as I have been talking, I wish to say in all sincerity that I
do not. I would not listen to lectures from men I did not like and
could not respect; and none of these can say I ever took their lectures
unkindly, or was restive under the infliction, or failed to try to
profit by what they said to me. They are better men than I am; I can
say that honestly; they are good friends of mine, too--and besides, if
they did not wish to be stirred up occasionally in print, why in the
mischief did they travel with me? They knew me. They knew my liberal
way--that I like to give and take--when it is for me to give and other
people to take. When one of them threatened to leave me in Damascus
when I had the cholera, he had no real idea of doing it--I know his
passionate nature and the good impulses that underlie it. And did I not
overhear Church, another pilgrim, say he did not care who went or who
staid, he would stand by me till I walked out of Damascus on my own
feet or was carried out in a coffin, if it was a year? And do I not
include Church every time I abuse the pilgrims--and would I be likely
to speak ill-naturedly of him? I wish to stir them up and make them
healthy; that is all.
We had left Capernaum behind us. It was only a shapeless ruin. It bore
no semblance to a town, and had nothing about it to suggest that it had
ever been a town. But all desolate and unpeopled as it was, it was
illustrious ground. From it sprang that tree of Christianity whose
broad arms overshadow so many distant lands to-day. After Christ was
tempted of the devil in the desert, he came here and began his
teachings; and during the three or four years he lived afterward, this
place was his home almost altogether. He began to heal the sick, and
his fame soon spread so widely that sufferers came from Syria and
beyond Jordan, and even from Jerusalem, several days' journey away, to
be cured of their diseases. Here he healed the centurion's servant and
Peter's mother-in-law, and multitudes of the lame and the blind and
persons possessed of devils; and here, also, he raised Jairus's
daughter from the dead. He went into a ship with his disciples, and
when they roused him from sleep in the midst of a storm, he quieted the
winds and lulled the troubled sea to rest with his voice. He passed
over to the other side, a few miles away, and relieved two men of
devils, which passed into some swine. After his return he called
Matthew from the receipt of customs, performed some cures, and created
scandal by eating with publicans and sinners. Then he went healing and
teaching through Galilee, and even journeyed to Tyre and Sidon. He
chose the twelve disciples, and sent them abroad to preach the new
gospel. He worked miracles in Bethsaida and Chorazin--villages two or
three miles from Capernaum. It was near one of them that the miraculous
draft of fishes is supposed to have been taken, and it was in the
desert places near the other that he fed the thousands by the miracles
of the loaves and fishes. He cursed them both, and Capernaum also, for
not repenting, after all the great works he had done in their midst,
and prophesied against them. They are all in ruins, now--which is
gratifying to the pilgrims, for, as usual, they fit the eternal words
of gods to the evanescent things of this earth; Christ, it is more
probable, referred to the people, not their shabby villages of wigwams:
he said it would be sad for them at
Christ did few miracles in Nazareth, and staid but a little while. The
people said,
Capernaum lies close to the edge of the little sea, in a small plain
some five miles long and a mile or two wide, which is mildly adorned
with oleanders which look all the better contrasted with the bald hills
and the howling deserts which surround them, but they are not as
deliriously beautiful as the books paint them. If one be calm and
resolute he can look upon their comeliness and live.
One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our
observation is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which
sprang the now flourishing plant of Christianity. The longest journey
our Saviour ever performed was from here to Jerusalem--about one
hundred to one hundred and twenty miles. The next longest was from here
to Sidon--say about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide
apart--as American appreciation of distances would naturally
suggest--the places made most particularly celebrated by the presence
of Christ are nearly all right here in full view, and within
cannon-shot of Capernaum. Leaving out two or three short journeys of
the Saviour, he spent his life, preached his gospel, and performed his
miracles within a compass no larger than an ordinary county in the
United States. It is as much as I can do to comprehend this stupefying
fact. How it wears a man out to have to read up a hundred pages of
history every two or three miles--for verily the celebrated localities
of Palestine occur that close together. How wearily, how bewilderingly
they swarm about your path!
In due time we reached the ancient village of Magdala.@[te
Chapter XLVIII
Magdala is not a beautiful place. It is thoroughly Syrian, and that is
to say that it is thoroughly ugly, and cramped, squalid, uncomfortable,
and filthy--just the style of cities that have adorned the country
since Adam's time, as all writers have labored hard to prove, and have
succeeded. The streets of Magdala are any where from three to six feet
wide, and reeking with uncleanliness. The houses are from five to seven
feet high, and all built upon one arbitrary plan--the ungraceful form
of a dry-goods box. The sides are daubed with a smooth white plaster,
and tastefully frescoed aloft and alow with disks of camel-dung placed
there to dry. This gives the edifice the romantic appearance of having
been riddled with cannon-balls, and imparts to it a very warlike aspect.
When the artist has arranged his materials with an eye to just
proportion--the small and the large flakes in alternate rows, and
separated by carefully-considered intervals--I know of nothing more
cheerful to look upon than a spirited Syrian fresco. The flat,
plastered roof is garnished by picturesque stacks of fresco materials,
which, having become thoroughly dried and cured, are placed there where
it will be convenient. It is used for fuel. There is no timber of any
consequence in Palestine--none at all to waste upon fires--and neither
are there any mines of coal. If my description has been intelligible,
you will perceive, now, that a square, flat-roofed hovel, neatly
frescoed, with its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with
dried camel-refuse, gives to a landscape a feature that is exceedingly
festive and picturesque, especially if one is careful to remember to
stick in a cat wherever, about the premises, there is room for a cat to
sit. There are no windows to a Syrian hut, and no chimneys. When I used
to read that they let a bed-ridden man down through the roof of a house
in Capernaum to get him into the presence of the Saviour, I generally
had a three-story brick in my mind, and marveled that they did not
break his neck with the strange experiment. I perceive now, however,
that they might have taken him by the heels and thrown him clear over
the house without discommoding him very much. Palestine is not changed
any since those days, in manners, customs, architecture, or people.
As we rode into Magdala not a soul was visible. But the ring of the
horses' hoofs roused the stupid population, and they all came trooping
out--old men and old women, boys and girls, the blind, the crazy, and
the crippled, all in ragged, soiled and scanty raiment, and all abject
beggars by nature, instinct and education. How the vermin-tortured
vagabonds did swarm! How they showed their scars and sores, and
piteously pointed to their maimed and crooked limbs, and begged with
their pleading eyes for charity! We had invoked a spirit we could not
lay. They hung to the horses's tails, clung to their manes and the
stirrups, closed in on every side in scorn of dangerous hoofs--and out
of their infidel throats, with one accord, burst an agonizing and most
infernal chorus:
As we paid the bucksheesh out to sore-eyed children and brown, buxom
girls with repulsively tattooed lips and chins, we filed through the
town and by many an exquisite fresco, till we came to a
bramble-infested inclosure and a Roman-looking ruin which had been the
veritable dwelling of St. Mary Magdalene, the friend and follower of
Jesus. The guide believed it, and so did I. I could not well do
otherwise, with the house right there before my eyes as plain as day.
The pilgrims took down portions of the front wall for specimens, as is
their honored custom, and then we departed.
We are camped in this place, now, just within the city walls of
Tiberias. We went into the town before nightfall and looked at its
people--we cared nothing about its houses. Its people are best examined
at a distance. They are particularly uncomely Jews, Arabs, and negroes.
Squalor and poverty are the pride of Tiberias. The young women wear
their dower strung upon a strong wire that curves downward from the top
of the head to the jaw--Turkish silver coins which they have raked
together or inherited. Most of these maidens were not wealthy, but some
few had been very kindly dealt with by fortune. I saw heiresses there
worth, in their own right--worth, well, I suppose I might venture to
say, as much as nine dollars and a half. But such cases are rare. When
you come across one of these, she naturally puts on airs. She will not
ask for bucksheesh. She will not even permit of undue familiarity. She
assumes a crushing dignity and goes on serenely practicing with her
fine-tooth comb and quoting poetry just the same as if you were not
present at all. Some people can not stand prosperity.
They say that the long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking body-snatchers,
with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front
of each ear, are the old, familiar, self-righteous Pharisees we read of
in the Scriptures. Verily, they look it. Judging merely by their
general style, and without other evidence, one might easily suspect
that self-righteousness was their specialty.
From various authorities I have culled information concerning Tiberias.
It was built by Herod Antipas, the murderer of John the Baptist, and
named after the Emperor Tiberius. It is believed that it stands upon
the site of what must have been, ages ago, a city of considerable
architectural pretensions, judging by the fine porphyry pillars that
are scattered through Tiberias and down the lake shore southward. These
were fluted, once, and yet, although the stone is about as hard as
iron, the flutings are almost worn away. These pillars are small, and
doubtless the edifices they adorned were distinguished more for
elegance than grandeur. This modern town--Tiberias--is only mentioned
in the New Testament; never in the Old.
The Sanhedrim met here last, and for three hundred years Tiberias was
the metropolis of the Jews in Palestine. It is one of the four holy
cities of the Israelites, and is to them what Mecca is to the
Mohammedan and Jerusalem to the Christian. It has been the abiding
place of many learned and famous Jewish rabbins. They lie buried here,
and near them lie also twenty-five thousand of their faith who traveled
far to be near them while they lived and lie with them when they died.
The great Rabbi Ben Israel spent three years here in the early part of
the third century. He is dead, now.
The celebrated Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake Tahoe* by a
good deal--it is just about two-thirds as large. And when we come to
speak of beauty, this sea is no more to be compared to Tahoe than a
meridian of longitude is to a rainbow. The dim waters of this pool can
not suggest the limpid brilliancy of Tahoe; these low, shaven, yellow
hillocks of rocks and sand, so devoid of perspective, can not suggest
the grand peaks that compass Tahoe like a wall, and whose ribbed and
chasmed fronts are clad with stately pines that seem to grow small and
smaller as they climb, till one might fancy them reduced to weeds and
shrubs far upward, where they join the everlasting snows. Silence and
solitude brood over Tahoe; and silence and solitude brood also over
this lake of Genessaret. But the solitude of the one is as cheerful and
fascinating as the solitude of the other is dismal and repellant.
In the early morning one watches the silent battle of dawn and darkness
upon the waters of Tahoe with a placid interest; but when the shadows
sulk away and one by one the hidden beauties of the shore unfold
themselves in the full splendor of noon; when the still surface is
belted like a rainbow with broad bars of blue and green and white, half
the distance from circumference to centre; when, in the lazy summer
afternoon, he lies in a boat, far out to where the dead blue of the
deep water begins, and smokes the pipe of peace and idly winks at the
distant crags and patches of snow from under his cap-brim; when the
boat drifts shoreward to the white water, and he lolls over the gunwale
and gazes by the hour down through the crystal depths and notes the
colors of the pebbles and reviews the finny armies gliding in
procession a hundred feet below; when at night he sees moon and stars,
mountain ridges feathered with pines, jutting white capes, bold
promontories, grand sweeps of rugged scenery topped with bald,
glimmering peaks, all magnificently pictured in the polished mirror of
the lake, in richest, softest detail, the tranquil interest that was
born with the morning deepens and deepens, by sure degrees, till it
culminates at last in resistless fascination!
It is solitude, for birds and squirrels on the shore and fishes in the
water are all the creatures that are near to make it otherwise, but it
is not the sort of solitude to make one dreary. Come to Galilee for
that. If these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness,
that never, never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines,
and fade and faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of
Capernaum; this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six
funereal plumes of palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of
the miracle ran down into the sea, and doubtless thought it was better
to swallow a devil or two and get drowned into the bargain than have to
live longer in such a place; this cloudless, blistering sky; this
solemn, sailless, tintless lake, reposing within its rim of yellow
hills and low, steep banks, and looking just as expressionless and
unpoetical (when we leave its sublime history out of the question,) as
any metropolitan reservoir in Christendom--if these things are not food
for rock me to sleep, mother, none exist, I think.
But I should not offer the evidence for the prosecution and leave the
defense unheard. Wm. C. Grimes deposes as follows:--@
We took another swim in the Sea of Galilee at twilight yesterday, and
another at sunrise this morning. We have not sailed, but three swims
are equal to a sail, are they not? There were plenty of fish visible in
the water, but we have no outside aids in this pilgrimage but
We did not go to the ancient warm baths two miles below Tiberias. I had
no desire in the world to go there. This seemed a little strange, and
prompted me to try to discover what the cause of this unreasonable
indifference was. It turned out to be simply because Pliny mentions
them. I have conceived a sort of unwarrantable unfriendliness toward
Pliny and St. Paul, because it seems as if I can never ferret out a
place that I can have to myself. It always and eternally transpires
that St. Paul has been to that place, and Pliny has
In the early morning we mounted and started. And then a weird
apparition marched forth at the head of the procession--a pirate, I
thought, if ever a pirate dwelt upon land. It was a tall Arab, as
swarthy as an Indian; young--say thirty years of age. On his head he
had closely bound a gorgeous yellow and red striped silk scarf, whose
ends, lavishly fringed with tassels, hung down between his shoulders
and dallied with the wind. From his neck to his knees, in ample folds,
a robe swept down that was a very star-spangled banner of curved and
sinuous bars of black and white. Out of his back, somewhere,
apparently, the long stem of a chibouk projected, and reached far above
his right shoulder. Athwart his back, diagonally, and extending high
above his left shoulder, was an Arab gun of Saladin's time, that was
splendid with silver plating from stock clear up to the end of its
measureless stretch of barrel. About his waist was bound many and many
a yard of elaborately figured but sadly tarnished stuff that came from
sumptuous Persia, and among the baggy folds in front the sun-beams
glinted from a formidable battery of old brass-mounted horse-pistols
and the gilded hilts of blood-thirsty knives. There were holsters for
more pistols appended to the wonderful stack of long-haired goat-skins
and Persian carpets, which the man had been taught to regard in the
light of a saddle; and down among the pendulous rank of vast tassels
that swung from that saddle, and clanging against the iron shovel of a
stirrup that propped the warrior's knees up toward his chin, was a
crooked, silver-clad scimetar of such awful dimensions and such
implacable expression that no man might hope to look upon it and not
shudder. The fringed and bedizened prince whose privilege it is to ride
the pony and lead the elephant into a country village is poor and naked
compared to this chaos of paraphernalia, and the happy vanity of the
one is the very poverty of satisfaction compared to the majestic
serenity, the overwhelming complacency of the other.
The dragoman laughed--not at the facetiousness of the simile, for
verily, that guide or that courier or that dragoman never yet lived
upon earth who had in him the faintest appreciation of a joke, even
though that joke were so broad and so ponderous that if it fell on him
it would flatten him out like a postage stamp--the dragoman laughed,
and then, emboldened by some thought that was in his brain, no doubt,
proceeded to extremities and winked.
In straits like these, when a man laughs, it is encouraging; when he
winks, it is positively reassuring. He finally intimated that one guard
would be sufficient to protect us, but that that one was an absolute
necessity. It was because of the moral weight his awful panoply would
have with the Bedouins. Then I said we didn't want any guard at all. If
one fantastic vagabond could protect eight armed Christians and a pack
of Arab servants from all harm, surely that detachment could protect
themselves. He shook his head doubtfully. Then I said, just think of
how it looks--think of how it would read, to self-reliant Americans,
that we went sneaking through this deserted wilderness under the
protection of this masquerading Arab, who would break his neck getting
out of the country if a man that was a man ever started after him. It
was a mean, low, degrading position. Why were we ever told to bring
navy revolvers with us if we had to be protected at last by this
infamous star-spangled scum of the desert? These appeals were vain--the
dragoman only smiled and shook his head.
I rode to the front and struck up an acquaintance with King
Solomon-in-all-his-glory, and got him to show me his lingering eternity
of a gun. It had a rusty flint lock; it was ringed and barred and
plated with silver from end to end, but it was as desperately out of
the perpendicular as are the billiard cues of '49 that one finds yet in
service in the ancient mining camps of California. The muzzle was eaten
by the rust of centuries into a ragged filagree-work, like the end of a
burnt-out stove-pipe. I shut one eye and peered within--it was flaked
with iron rust like an old steamboat boiler. I borrowed the ponderous
pistols and snapped them. They were rusty inside, too--had not been
loaded for a generation. I went back, full of encouragement, and
reported to the guide, and asked him to discharge this dismantled
fortress. It came out, then. This fellow was a retainer of the Sheik of
Tiberias. He was a source of Government revenue. He was to the Empire
of Tiberias what the customs are to America. The Sheik imposed guards
upon travelers and charged them for it. It is a lucrative source of
emolument, and sometimes brings into the national treasury as much as
thirty-five or forty dollars a year.
I knew the warrior's secret now; I knew the hollow vanity of his rusty
trumpery, and despised his asinine complacency. I told on him, and with
reckless daring the cavalcade rode straight ahead into the perilous
solitudes of the desert, and scorned his frantic warnings of the
mutilation and death that hovered about them on every side.
Arrived at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the lake, (I ought
to mention that the lake lies six hundred feet below the level of the
Mediterranean--no traveler ever neglects to flourish that fragment of
news in his letters,) as bald and unthrilling a panorama as any land
can afford, perhaps, was spread out before us. Yet it was so crowded
with historical interest, that if all the pages that have been written
about it were spread upon its surface, they would flag it from horizon
to horizon like a pavement. Among the localities comprised in this
view, were Mount Hermon; the hills that border Cesarea Philippi, Dan,
the Sources of the Jordan and the Waters of Merom; Tiberias; the Sea of
Galilee; Joseph's Pit; Capernaum; Bethsaida; the supposed scenes of the
Sermon on the Mount, the feeding of the multitudes and the miraculous
draught of fishes; the declivity down which the swine ran to the sea;
the entrance and the exit of the Jordan; Safed,
We jogged along peacefully over the great caravan route from Damascus
to Jerusalem and Egypt, past Lubia and other Syrian hamlets, perched,
in the unvarying style, upon the summit of steep mounds and hills, and
fenced round about with giant cactuses, (the sign of worthless land,)
with prickly pears upon them like hams, and came at last to the
battle-field of Hattin.
It is a grand, irregular plateau, and looks as if it might have been
created for a battle-field. Here the peerless Saladin met the Christian
host some seven hundred years ago, and broke their power in Palestine
for all time to come. There had long been a truce between the opposing
forces, but according to the Guide-Book, Raynauld of Chatillon, Lord of
Kerak, broke it by plundering a Damascus caravan, and refusing to give
up either the merchants or their goods when Saladin demanded them. This
conduct of an insolent petty chieftain stung the Sultan to the quick,
and he swore that he would slaughter Raynauld with his own hand, no
matter how, or when, or where he found him. Both armies prepared for
war. Under the weak King of Jerusalem was the very flower of the
Christian chivalry. He foolishly compelled them to undergo a long,
exhausting march, in the scorching sun, and then, without water or
other refreshment, ordered them to encamp in this open plain. The
splendidly mounted masses of Moslem soldiers swept round the north end
of Genessaret, burning and destroying as they came, and pitched their
camp in front of the opposing lines. At dawn the terrific fight began.
Surrounded on all sides by the Sultan's swarming battalions, the
Christian Knights fought on without a hope for their lives. They fought
with desperate valor, but to no purpose; the odds of heat and numbers,
and consuming thirst, were too great against them. Towards the middle
of the day the bravest of their band cut their way through the Moslem
ranks and gained the summit of a little hill, and there, hour after
hour, they closed around the banner of the Cross, and beat back the
charging squadrons of the enemy.
But the doom of the Christian power was sealed. Sunset found Saladin
Lord of Palestine, the Christian chivalry strewn in heaps upon the
field, and the King of Jerusalem, the Grand Master of the Templars, and
Raynauld of Chatillon, captives in the Sultan's tent. Saladin treated
two of the prisoners with princely courtesy, and ordered refreshments
to be set before them. When the King handed an iced Sherbet to
Chatillon, the Sultan said,
It was hard to realize that this silent plain had once resounded with
martial music and trembled to the tramp of armed men. It was hard to
people this solitude with rushing columns of cavalry, and stir its
torpid pulses with the shouts of victors, the shrieks of the wounded,
and the flash of banner and steel above the surging billows of war. A
desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of
life and action.
We reached Tabor safely, and considerably in advance of that old
iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a human being on the whole
route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and
alone, a giant sentinel above the Plain of Esdraelon. It rises some
fourteen hundred feet above the surrounding level, a green, wooden
cone, symmetrical and full of grace--a prominent landmark, and one that
is exceedingly pleasant to eyes surfeited with the repulsive monotony
of desert Syria. We climbed the steep path to its summit, through
breezy glades of thorn and oak. The view presented from its highest
peak was almost beautiful. Below, was the broad, level plain of
Esdraelon, checkered with fields like a chess-board, and full as smooth
and level, seemingly; dotted about its borders with white, compact
villages, and faintly penciled, far and near, with the curving lines of
roads and trails. When it is robed in the fresh verdure of spring, it
must form a charming picture, even by itself. Skirting its southern
border rises
To glance at the salient features of this landscape through the
picturesque framework of a ragged and ruined stone window-arch of the
time of Christ, thus hiding from sight all that is unattractive, is to
secure to yourself a pleasure worth climbing the mountain to enjoy. One
must stand on his head to get the best effect in a fine sunset, and set
a landscape in a bold, strong framework that is very close at hand, to
bring out all its beauty. One learns this latter truth never more to
forget it, in that mimic land of enchantment, the wonderful garden of
my lord the Count Pallavicini, near Genoa. You go wandering for hours
among hills and wooded glens, artfully contrived to leave the
impression that Nature shaped them and not man; following winding paths
and coming suddenly upon leaping cascades and rustic bridges; finding
sylvan lakes where you expected them not; loitering through battered
medi;aeval castles in miniature that seem hoary with age and yet were
built a dozen years ago; meditating over ancient crumbling tombs, whose
marble columns were marred and broken purposely by the modern artist
that made them; stumbling unawares upon toy palaces, wrought of rare
and costly materials, and again upon a peasant's hut, whose dilapidated
furniture would never suggest that it was made so to order; sweeping
round and round in the midst of a forest on an enchanted wooden horse
that is moved by some invisible agency; traversing Roman roads and
passing under majestic triumphal arches; resting in quaint bowers where
unseen spirits discharge jets of water on you from every possible
direction, and where even the flowers you touch assail you with a
shower; boating on a subterranean lake among caverns and arches royally
draped with clustering stalactites, and passing out into open day upon
another lake, which is bordered with sloping banks of grass and gay
with patrician barges that swim at anchor in the shadow of a miniature
marble temple that rises out of the clear water and glasses its white
statues, its rich capitals and fluted columns in the tranquil depths.
So, from marvel to marvel you have drifted on, thinking all the time
that the one last seen must be the chiefest. And, verily, the chiefest
wonder is reserved until the last, but you do not see it until you step
ashore, and passing through a wilderness of rare flowers, collected
from every corner of the earth, you stand at the door of one more mimic
temple. Right in this place the artist taxed his genius to the utmost,
and fairly opened the gates of fairy land. You look through an
unpretending pane of glass, stained yellow; the first thing you see is
a mass of quivering foliage, ten short steps before you, in the midst
of which is a ragged opening like a gateway--a thing that is common
enough in nature, and not apt to excite suspicions of a deep human
design--and above the bottom of the gateway, project, in the most
careless way, a few broad tropic leaves and brilliant flowers. All of a
sudden, through this bright, bold gateway, you catch a glimpse of the
faintest, softest, richest picture that ever graced the dream of a
dying Saint, since John saw the New Jerusalem glimmering above the
clouds of Heaven. A broad sweep of sea, flecked with careening sails; a
sharp, jutting cape, and a lofty lighthouse on it; a sloping lawn
behind it; beyond, a portion of the old
There is nothing for it now but to come back to old Tabor, though the
subject is tiresome enough, and I can not stick to it for wandering off
to scenes that are pleasanter to remember. I think I will skip, any how.
There is nothing about Tabor (except we concede that it was the scene
of the Transfiguration,) but some gray old ruins, stacked up there in
all ages of the world from the days of stout Gideon and parties that
flourished thirty centuries ago to the fresh yesterday of Crusading
times. It has its Greek Convent, and the coffee there is good, but
never a splinter of the true cross or bone of a hallowed saint to
arrest the idle thoughts of worldlings and turn them into graver
channels. A Catholic church is nothing to me that has no relics.
The plain of Esdraelon--
Down at the foot of Tabor, and just at the edge of the storied Plain of
Esdraelon, is the insignificant village of Deburieh, where Deborah,
prophetess of Israel, lived. It is just like Magdala.
[te
Chapter L
We descended from Mount Tabor, crossed a deep ravine, and followed a
hilly, rocky road to Nazareth--distant two hours. All distances in the
East are measured by hours, not miles. A good horse will walk three
miles an hour over nearly any kind of a road; therefore, an hour, here,
always stands for three miles. This method of computation is bothersome
and annoying; and until one gets thoroughly accustomed to it, it
carries no intelligence to his mind until he has stopped and translated
the pagan hours into Christian miles, just as people do with the spoken
words of a foreign language they are acquainted with, but not
familiarly enough to catch the meaning in a moment. Distances traveled
by human feet are also estimated by hours and minutes, though I do not
know what the base of the calculation is. In Constantinople you ask,
Two hours from Tabor to Nazareth--and as it was an uncommonly narrow,
crooked trail, we necessarily met all the camel trains and jackass
caravans between Jericho and Jacksonville in that particular place and
nowhere else. The donkeys do not matter so much, because they are so
small that you can jump your horse over them if he is an animal of
spirit, but a camel is not jumpable. A camel is as tall as any ordinary
dwelling-house in Syria--which is to say a camel is from one to two,
and sometimes nearly three feet taller than a good-sized man. In this
part of the country his load is oftenest in the shape of colossal
sacks--one on each side. He and his cargo take up as much room as a
carriage. Think of meeting this style of obstruction in a narrow trail.
The camel would not turn out for a king. He stalks serenely along,
bringing his cushioned stilts forward with the long, regular swing of a
pendulum, and whatever is in the way must get out of the way peaceably,
or be wiped out forcibly by the bulky sacks. It was a tiresome ride to
us, and perfectly exhausting to the horses. We were compelled to jump
over upwards of eighteen hundred donkeys, and only one person in the
party was unseated less than sixty times by the camels. This seems like
a powerful statement, but the poet has said,
At Nazareth we camped in an olive grove near the Virgin Mary's
fountain, and that wonderful Arab
We entered the great Latin Convent which is built over the traditional
dwelling-place of the Holy Family. We went down a flight of fifteen
steps below the ground level, and stood in a small chapel tricked out
with tapestry hangings, silver lamps, and oil paintings. A spot marked
by a cross, in the marble floor, under the altar, was exhibited as the
place made forever holy by the feet of the Virgin when she stood up to
receive the message of the angel. So simple, so unpretending a
locality, to be the scene of so mighty an event! The very scene of the
Annunciation--an event which has been commemorated by splendid shrines
and august temples all over the civilized world, and one which the
princes of art have made it their loftiest ambition to picture worthily
on their canvas; a spot whose history is familiar to the very children
of every house, and city, and obscure hamlet of the furthest lands of
Christendom; a spot which myriads of men would toil across the breadth
of a world to see, would consider it a priceless privilege to look upon.
It was easy to think these thoughts. But it was not easy to bring
myself up to the magnitude of the situation. I could sit off several
thousand miles and imagine the angel appearing, with shadowy wings and
lustrous countenance, and note the glory that streamed downward upon
the Virgin's head while the message from the Throne of God fell upon
her ears--any one can do that, beyond the ocean, but few can do it here.
I saw the little recess from which the angel stepped, but could not
fill its void. The angels that I know are creatures of unstable
fancy--they will not fit in niches of substantial stone. Imagination
labors best in distant fields. I doubt if any man can stand in the
Grotto of the Annunciation and people with the phantom images of his
mind its too tangible walls of stone.
They showed us a broken granite pillar, depending from the roof, which
they said was hacked in two by the Moslem conquerors of Nazareth, in
the vain hope of pulling down the sanctuary. But the pillar remained
miraculously suspended in the air, and, unsupported itself, supported
then and still supports the roof. By dividing this statement up among
eight, it was found not difficult to believe it.
These gifted Latin monks never do any thing by halves. If they were to
show you the Brazen Serpent that was elevated in the wilderness, you
could depend upon it that they had on hand the pole it was elevated on
also, and even the hole it stood in. They have got the
We visited the places where Jesus worked for fifteen years as a
carpenter, and where he attempted to teach in the synagogue and was
driven out by a mob. Catholic chapels stand upon these sites and
protect the little fragments of the ancient walls which remain. Our
pilgrims broke off specimens. We visited, also, a new chapel, in the
midst of the town, which is built around a boulder some twelve feet
long by four feet thick; the priests discovered, a few years ago, that
the disciples had sat upon this rock to rest, once, when they had
walked up from Capernaum. They hastened to preserve the relic. Relics
are very good property. Travelers are expected to pay for seeing them,
and they do it cheerfully. We like the idea. One's conscience can never
be the worse for the knowledge that he has paid his way like a man. Our
pilgrims would have liked very well to get out their lampblack and
stencil-plates and paint their names on that rock, together with the
names of the villages they hail from in America, but the priests permit
nothing of that kind. To speak the strict truth, however, our party
seldom offend in that way, though we have men in the ship who never
lose an opportunity to do it. Our pilgrims' chief sin is their lust for
This
A pilgrim--the
Another pilgrim came along presently and said:
I said:
The third and last pilgrim moved by, before long, and he said:
The verdicts were all in. It was time, now, to look up the authorities
for all these opinions. I found this paragraph, which follows. Written
by whom? Wm. C. Grimes:
That is the kind of gruel which has been served out from Palestine for
ages. Commend me to Fennimore Cooper to find beauty in the Indians, and
to Grimes to find it in the Arabs. Arab men are often fine looking, but
Arab women are not. We can all believe that the Virgin Mary was
beautiful; it is not natural to think otherwise; but does it follow
that it is our duty to find beauty in these present women of Nazareth?
I love to quote from Grimes, because he is so dramatic. And because he
is so romantic. And because he seems to care but little whether he
tells the truth or not, so he scares the reader or excites his envy or
his admiration.
He went through this peaceful land with one hand forever on his
revolver, and the other on his pocket-handkerchief. Always, when he was
not on the point of crying over a holy place, he was on the point of
killing an Arab. More surprising things happened to him in Palestine
than ever happened to any traveler here or elsewhere since Munchausen
died.
At Beit Jin, where nobody had interfered with him, he crept out of his
tent at dead of night and shot at what he took to be an Arab lying on a
rock, some distance away, planning evil. The ball killed a wolf. Just
before he fired, he makes a dramatic picture of himself--as usual, to
scare the reader:
Reckless creature!
Riding toward Genessaret, they saw two Bedouins, and
In Samaria, he charged up a hill, in the face of a volley of stones; he
fired into the crowd of men who threw them. He says:
At Beitin he gave his whole band of Arab muleteers a piece of his mind,
and then--
Perfectly fearless, this man.
He rode down the perpendicular path in the rocks, from the Castle of
Banias to the oak grove, at a flying gallop, his horse striding
Behold him--always theatrical--looking at Jerusalem--this time, by an
oversight, with his hand off his pistol for once.
If Latin monks and Arabs cried, I know to a moral certainty that the
horses cried also, and so the picture is complete.
But when necessity demanded, he could be firm as adamant. In the
Lebanon Valley an Arab youth--a Christian; he is particular to explain
that Mohammedans do not steal--robbed him of a paltry ten dollars'
worth of powder and shot. He convicted him before a sheik and looked on
while he was punished by the terrible bastinado. Hear him:
But not he! The punishment was
He closes his picture with a rollicking burst of humor which contrasts
finely with the grief of the mother and her children.
One more paragraph:
He never bored but he struck water.
I am aware that this is a pretty voluminous notice of Mr. Grimes' book.
However, it is proper and legitimate to speak of it, for
*
[te
Chapter LI
Nazareth is wonderfully interesting because the town has an air about
it of being precisely as Jesus left it, and one finds himself saying,
all the time,
Further on in this quaint volume of rejected gospels is an epistle of
St. Clement to the Corinthians, which was used in the churches and
considered genuine fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. In it this
account of the fabled ph;oenix occurs:
Business is business, and there is nothing like punctuality, especially
in a ph;oenix.
The few chapters relating to the infancy of the Saviour contain many
things which seem frivolous and not worth preserving. A large part of
the remaining portions of the book read like good Scripture, however.
There is one verse that ought not to have been rejected, because it so
evidently prophetically refers to the general run of Congresses of the
United States:
I have set these extracts down, as I found them. Every where, among the
cathedrals of France and Italy, one finds traditions of personages that
do not figure in the Bible, and of miracles that are not mentioned in
its pages. But they are all in this Apocryphal New Testament, and
though they have been ruled out of our modern Bible, it is claimed that
they were accepted gospel twelve or fifteen centuries ago, and ranked
as high in credit as any. One needs to read this book before he visits
those venerable cathedrals, with their treasures of tabooed and
forgotten tradition.
They imposed another pirate upon us at Nazareth--another invincible
Arab guard. We took our last look at the city, clinging like a
whitewashed wasp's nest to the hill-side, and at eight o'clock in the
morning, departed. We dismounted and drove the horses down a
bridle-path which I think was fully as crooked as a corkscrew; which I
know to be as steep as the downward sweep of a rainbow, and which I
believe to be the worst piece of road in the geography, except one in
the Sandwich Islands, which I remember painfully, and possibly one or
two mountain trails in the Sierra Nevadas. Often, in this narrow path,
the horse had to poise himself nicely on a rude stone step and then
drop his fore-feet over the edge and down something more than half his
own height. This brought his nose near the ground, while his tail
pointed up toward the sky somewhere, and gave him the appearance of
preparing to stand on his head. A horse can not look dignified in this
position. We accomplished the long descent at last, and trotted across
the great Plain of Esdraelon.
Some of us will be shot before we finish this pilgrimage. The pilgrims
read
Arriving at the furthest verge of the Plain, we rode a little way up a
hill and found ourselves at Endor, famous for its witch. Her
descendants are there yet. They were the wildest horde of half-naked
savages we have found thus far. They swarmed out of mud bee-hives; out
of hovels of the dry-goods box pattern; out of gaping caves under
shelving rocks; out of crevices in the earth. In five minutes the dead
solitude and silence of the place were no more, and a begging,
screeching, shouting mob were struggling about the horses' feet and
blocking the way.
A spring trickles out of the rock in the gloomy recesses of the cavern,
and we were thirsty. The citizens of Endor objected to our going in
there. They do not mind dirt; they do not mind rags; they do not mind
vermin; they do not mind barbarous ignorance and savagery; they do not
mind a reasonable degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and
holy before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shudder
and grow almost pale at the idea of Christian lips polluting a spring
whose waters must descend into their sanctified gullets. We had no
wanton desire to wound even their feelings or trample upon their
prejudices, but we were out of water, thus early in the day, and were
burning up with thirst. It was at this time, and under these
circumstances, that I framed an aphorism which has already become
celebrated. I said:
We got away from the noisy wretches, finally, dropping them in squads
and couples as we filed over the hills--the aged first, the infants
next, the young girls further on; the strong men ran beside us a mile,
and only left when they had secured the last possible piastre in the
way of bucksheesh.
In an hour, we reached Nain, where Christ raised the widow's son to
life. Nain is Magdala on a small scale. It has no population of any
consequence. Within a hundred yards of it is the original graveyard,
for aught I know; the tombstones lie flat on the ground, which is
Jewish fashion in Syria. I believe the Moslems do not allow them to
have upright tombstones. A Moslem grave is usually roughly plastered
over and whitewashed, and has at one end an upright projection which is
shaped into exceedingly rude attempts at ornamentation. In the cities,
there is often no appearance of a grave at all; a tall, slender marble
tombstone, elaborately lettred, gilded and painted, marks the burial
place, and this is surmounted by a turban, so carved and shaped as to
signify the dead man's rank in life.
They showed a fragment of ancient wall which they said was one side of
the gate out of which the widow's dead son was being brought so many
centuries ago when Jesus met the procession:
A little mosque stands upon the spot which tradition says was occupied
by the widow's dwelling. Two or three aged Arabs sat about its door. We
entered, and the pilgrims broke specimens from the foundation walls,
though they had to touch, and even step, upon the
We descended to the Plain again, and halted a moment at a well--of
Abraham's time, no doubt. It was in a desert place. It was walled three
feet above ground with squared and heavy blocks of stone, after the
manner of Bible pictures. Around it some camels stood, and others knelt.
There was a group of sober little donkeys with naked, dusky children
clambering about them, or sitting astride their rumps, or pulling their
tails. Tawny, black-eyed, barefooted maids, arrayed in rags and adorned
with brazen armlets and pinchbeck ear-rings, were poising water-jars
upon their heads, or drawing water from the well. A flock of sheep
stood by, waiting for the shepherds to fill the hollowed stones with
water, so that they might drink--stones which, like those that walled
the well, were worn smooth and deeply creased by the chafing chins of a
hundred generations of thirsty animals. Picturesque Arabs sat upon the
ground, in groups, and solemnly smoked their long-stemmed chibouks.
Other Arabs were filling black hog-skins with water--skins which, well
filled, and distended with water till the short legs projected
painfully out of the proper line, looked like the corpses of hogs
bloated by drowning. Here was a grand Oriental picture which I had
worshiped a thousand times in soft, rich steel engravings! But in the
engraving there was no desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly
features; no sore eyes; no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the
countenances; no raw places on the donkeys' backs; no disagreeable
jabbering in unknown tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a
couple of tons of powder placed under the party and touched off would
heighten the effect and give to the scene a genuine interest and a
charm which it would always be pleasant to recall, even though a man
lived a thousand years.
Oriental scenes look best in steel engravings. I can not be imposed
upon any more by that picture of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. I
shall say to myself, You look fine, Madam, but your feet are not clean,
and you smell like a camel.
Presently a wild Arab in charge of a camel train recognized an old
friend in Ferguson, and they ran and fell upon each other's necks and
kissed each other's grimy, bearded faces upon both cheeks. It explained
instantly a something which had always seemed to me only a far-fetched
Oriental figure of speech. I refer to the circumstance of Christ's
rebuking a Pharisee, or some such character, and reminding him that
from him he had received no
We journeyed around the base of the mountain--
We found here a grove of lemon trees--cool, shady, hung with fruit. One
is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare, but to me this grove
seemed very beautiful. It was beautiful. I do not overestimate it. I
must always remember Shunem gratefully, as a place which gave to us
this leafy shelter after our long, hot ride. We lunched, rested,
chatted, smoked our pipes an hour, and then mounted and moved on.
As we trotted across the Plain of Jezreel, we met half a dozen Digger
Indians (Bedouins) with very long spears in their hands, cavorting
around on old crowbait horses, and spearing imaginary enemies;
whooping, and fluttering their rags in the wind, and carrying on in
every respect like a pack of hopeless lunatics. At last, here were the <
q>wild, free sons of the desert, speeding over the plain like the wind,
on their beautiful Arabian mares
Presently we came to a ruinous old town on a hill, the same being the
ancient Jezreel.
Ahab, King of Samaria, (this was a very vast kingdom, for those days,
and was very nearly half as large as Rhode Island) dwelt in the city of
Jezreel, which was his capital. Near him lived a man by the name of
Naboth, who had a vineyard. The King asked him for it, and when he
would not give it, offered to buy it. But Naboth refused to sell it. In
those days it was considered a sort of crime to part with one's
inheritance at any price--and even if a man did part with it, it
reverted to himself or his heirs again at the next jubilee year. So
this spoiled child of a King went and lay down on the bed with his face
to the wall, and grieved sorely. The Queen, a notorious character in
those days, and whose name is a by-word and a reproach even in these,
came in and asked him wherefore he sorrowed, and he told her. Jezebel
said she could secure the vineyard; and she went forth and forged
letters to the nobles and wise men, in the King's name, and ordered
them to proclaim a fast and set Naboth on high before the people, and
suborn two witnesses to swear that he had blasphemed. They did it, and
the people stoned the accused by the city wall, and he died. Then
Jezebel came and told the King, and said, Behold, Naboth is no
more--rise up and seize the vineyard. So Ahab seized the vineyard, and
went into it to possess it. But the Prophet Elijah came to him there
and read his fate to him, and the fate of Jezebel; and said that in the
place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, dogs should also lick his
blood--and he said, likewise, the dogs should eat Jezebel by the wall
of Jezreel. In the course of time, the King was killed in battle, and
when his chariot wheels were washed in the pool of Samaria, the dogs
licked the blood. In after years, Jehu, who was King of Israel, marched
down against Jezreel, by order of one of the Prophets, and administered
one of those convincing rebukes so common among the people of those
days: he killed many kings and their subjects, and as he came along he
saw Jezebel, painted and finely dressed, looking out of a window, and
ordered that she be thrown down to him. A servant did it, and Jehu's
horse trampled her under foot. Then Jehu went in and sat down to dinner;
and presently he said, Go and bury this cursed woman, for she is a
King's daughter. The spirit of charity came upon him too late, however,
for the prophecy had already been fulfilled--the dogs had eaten her,
and they
Ahab, the late King, had left a helpless family behind him, and Jehu
killed seventy of the orphan sons. Then he killed all the relatives,
and teachers, and servants and friends of the family, and rested from
his labors, until he was come near to Samaria, where he met forty-two
persons and asked them who they were; they said they were brothers of
the King of Judah. He killed them. When he got to Samaria, he said he
would show his zeal for the Lord; so he gathered all the priests and
people together that worshiped Baal, pretending that he was going to
adopt that worship and offer up a great sacrifice; and when they were
all shut up where they could not defend themselves, he caused every
person of them to be killed. Then Jehu, the good missionary, rested
from his labors once more.
We went back to the valley, and rode to the Fountain of Ain Jel;auud.
They call it the Fountain of Jezreel, usually. It is a pond about one
hundred feet square and four feet deep, with a stream of water
trickling into it from under an overhanging ledge of rocks. It is in
the midst of a great solitude. Here Gideon pitched his camp in the old
times; behind Shunem lay the
Gideon, with only three hundred men, surprised them in the night, and
stood by and looked on while they butchered each other until a hundred
and twenty thousand lay dead on the field.
We camped at Jenin before night, and got up and started again at one
o'clock in the morning. Somewhere towards daylight we passed the
locality where the best authenticated tradition locates the pit into
which Joseph's brethren threw him, and about noon, after passing over a
succession of mountain tops, clad with groves of fig and olive trees,
with the Mediterranean in sight some forty miles away, and going by
many ancient Biblical cities whose inhabitants glowered savagely upon
our Christian procession, and were seemingly inclined to practice on it
with stones, we came to the singularly terraced and unlovely hills that
betrayed that we were out of Galilee and into Samaria at last.
We climbed a high hill to visit the city of Samaria, where the woman
may have hailed from who conversed with Christ at Jacob's Well, and
from whence, no doubt, came also the celebrated Good Samaritan. Herod
the Great is said to have made a magnificant city of this place, and a
great number of coarse limestone columns, twenty feet high and two feet
through, that are almost guiltless of architectural grace of shape and
ornament, are pointed out by many authors as evidence of the fact. They
would not have been considered handsome in ancient Greece, however.
The inhabitants of this camp are particularly vicious, and stoned two
parties of our pilgrims a day or two ago who brought about the
difficulty by showing their revolvers when they did not intend to use
them--a thing which is deemed bad judgment in the Far West, and ought
certainly to be so considered any where. In the new Territories, when a
man puts his hand on a weapon, he knows that he must use it; he must
use it instantly or expect to be shot down where he stands. Those
pilgrims had been reading Grimes.
There was nothing for us to do in Samaria but buy handfuls of old Roman
coins at a franc a dozen, and look at a dilapidated church of the
Crusaders and a vault in it which once contained the body of John the
Baptist. This relic was long ago carried away to Genoa.
Samaria stood a disastrous siege, once, in the days of Elisha, at the
hands of the King of Syria. Provisions reached such a figure that
An incident recorded of that heavy time will give one a very good idea
of the distress that prevailed within these crumbling walls. As the
King was walking upon the battlements one day,
The prophet Elisha declared that within four and twenty hours the
prices of food should go down to nothing, almost, and it was so. The
Syrian army broke camp and fled, for some cause or other, the famine
was relieved from without, and many a shoddy speculator in dove's dung
and ass's meat was ruined.
We were glad to leave this hot and dusty old village and hurry on. At
two o'clock we stopped to lunch and rest at ancient Shechem, between
the historic Mounts of Gerizim and Ebal where in the old times the
books of the law, the curses and the blessings, were read from the
heights to the Jewish multitudes below.
[te
Chapter LII
The narrow canon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, is under
high cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is
well watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with
the barren hills that tower on either side. One of these hills is the
ancient Mount of Blessings and the other the Mount of Curses; and wise
men who seek for fulfillments of prophecy think they find here a wonder
of this kind--to wit, that the Mount of Blessings is strangely fertile
and its mate as strangely unproductive. We could not see that there was
really much difference between them in this respect, however.
Shechem is distinguished as one of the residences of the patriarch
Jacob, and as the seat of those tribes that cut themselves loose from
their brethren of Israel and propagated doctrines not in conformity
with those of the original Jewish creed. For thousands of years this
clan have dwelt in Shechem under strict tabu, and having little
commerce or fellowship with their fellow men of any religion or
nationality. For generations they have not numbered more than one or
two hundred, but they still adhere to their ancient faith and maintain
their ancient rites and ceremonies. Talk of family and old descent!
Princes and nobles pride themselves upon lineages they can trace back
some hundreds of years. What is this trifle to this handful of old
first families of Shechem, who can name their fathers straight back
without a flaw for thousands--straight back to a period so remote that
men reared in a country where the days of two hundred years ago are
called
Carefully preserved among the sacred archives of this curious community
is a MSS. copy of the ancient Jewish law, which is said to be the
oldest document on earth. It is written on vellum, and is some four or
five thousand years old. Nothing but bucksheesh can purchase a sight.
Its fame is somewhat dimmed in these latter days, because of the doubts
so many authors of Palestine travels have felt themselves privileged to
cast upon it. Speaking of this MSS. reminds me that I procured from the
high-priest of this ancient Samaritan community, at great expense, a
secret document of still higher antiquity and far more extraordinary
interest, which I propose to publish as soon as I have finished
translating it.
Joshua gave his dying injunction to the children of Israel at Shechem,
and buried a valuable treasure secretly under an oak tree there about
the same time. The superstitious Samaritans have always been afraid to
hunt for it. They believe it is guarded by fierce spirits invisible to
men.
About a mile and a half from Shechem we halted at the base of Mount
Ebal, before a little square area, inclosed by a high stone wall,
neatly whitewashed. Across one end of this inclosure is a tomb built
after the manner of the Moslems. It is the tomb of Joseph. No truth is
better authenticated than this.
When Joseph was dying he prophesied that exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt which occurred four hundred years afterwards. At the same time he
exacted of his people an oath that when they journeyed to the land of
Canaan, they would bear his bones with them and bury them in the
ancient inheritance of his fathers. The oath was kept.
Few tombs on earth command the veneration of so many races and men of
divers creeds as this of Joseph.
In this same
It was by this well that Jesus sat and talked with a woman of that
strange, antiquated Samaritan community I have been speaking of, and
told her of the mysterious water of life. As descendants of old English
nobles still cherish in the traditions of their houses how that this
king or that king tarried a day with some favored ancestor three
hundred years ago, no doubt the descendants of the woman of Samaria,
living there in Shechem, still refer with pardonable vanity to this
conversation of their ancestor, held some little time gone by, with the
Messiah of the Christians. It is not likely that they undervalue a
distinction such as this. Samaritan nature is human nature, and human
nature remembers contact with the illustrious, always.
For an offense done to the family honor, the sons of Jacob exterminated
all Shechem once.
We left Jacob's Well and traveled till eight in the evening, but rather
slowly, for we had been in the saddle nineteen hours, and the horses
were cruelly tired. We got so far ahead of the tents that we had to
camp in an Arab village, and sleep on the ground. We could have slept
in the largest of the houses; but there were some little drawbacks: it
was populous with vermin, it had a dirt floor, it was in no respect
cleanly, and there was a family of goats in the only bedroom, and two
donkeys in the parlor. Outside there were no inconveniences, except
that the dusky, ragged, earnest-eyed villagers of both sexes and all
ages grouped themselves on their haunches all around us, and discussed
us and criticised us with noisy tongues till midnight. We did not mind
the noise, being tired, but, doubtless, the reader is aware that it is
almost an impossible thing to go to sleep when you know that people are
looking at you. We went to bed at ten, and got up again at two and
started once more. Thus are people persecuted by dragomen, whose sole
ambition in life is to get ahead of each other.
About daylight we passed Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant rested
three hundred years, and at whose gates good old Eli fell down and
After a while we came to a shapeless mass of ruins, which still bears
the name of Beth-el. It was here that Jacob lay down and had that
superb vision of angels flitting up and down a ladder that reached from
the clouds to earth, and caught glimpses of their blessed home through
the open gates of Heaven.
The pilgrims took what was left of the hallowed ruin, and we pressed on
toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jerusalem.
The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and
bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became. There could not have
been more fragments of stone strewn broadcast over this part of the
world, if every ten square feet of the land had been occupied by a
separate and distinct stone-cutter's establishment for an age. There
was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus,
those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.
No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which
bounds the approaches to Jerusalem. The only difference between the
roads and the surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather
more rocks in the roads than in the surrounding country.
We passed Ramah, and Beroth, and on the right saw the tomb of the
prophet Samuel, perched high upon a commanding eminence. Still no
Jerusalem came in sight. We hurried on impatiently. We halted a moment
at the ancient Fountain of Beira, but its stones, worn deeply by the
chins of thirsty animals that are dead and gone centuries ago, had no
interest for us--we longed to see Jerusalem. We spurred up hill after
hill, and usually began to stretch our necks minutes before we got to
the top--but disappointment always followed:--more stupid hills
beyond--more unsightly landscape--no Holy City.
At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bits of wall and
crumbling arches began to line the way--we toiled up one more hill, and
every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high! Jerusalem!
Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid, massed
together and hooped with high gray walls, the venerable city gleamed in
the sun. So small! Why, it was no larger than an American village of
four thousand inhabitants, and no larger than an ordinary Syrian city
of thirty thousand. Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people.
We dismounted and looked, without speaking a dozen sentences, across
the wide intervening valley for an hour or more; and noted those
prominent features of the city that pictures make familiar to all men
from their school days till their death. We could recognize the Tower
of Hippicus, the Mosque of Omar, the Damascus Gate, the Mount of
Olives, the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the Tower of David, and the Garden
of Gethsemane--and dating from these landmarks could tell very nearly
the localities of many others we were not able to distinguish.
I record it here as a notable but not discreditable fact that not even
our pilgrims wept. I think there was no individual in the party whose
brain was not teeming with thoughts and images and memories invoked by
the grand history of the venerable city that lay before us, but still
among them all was no
There was no call for tears. Tears would have been out of place. The
thoughts Jerusalem suggests are full of poetry, sublimity, and more
than all, dignity. Such thoughts do not find their appropriate
expression in the emotions of the nursery.
Just after noon we entered these narrow, crooked streets, by the
ancient and the famed Damascus Gate, and now for several hours I have
been trying to comprehend that I am actually in the illustrious old
city where Solomon dwelt, where Abraham held converse with the Deity,
and where walls still stand that witnessed the spectacle of the
Crucifixion.
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Chapter LIII
A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely
around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one
understand how small it is. The appearance of the city is peculiar. It
is as knobby with countless little domes as a prison door is with
bolt-heads. Every house has from one to half a dozen of these white
plastered domes of stone, broad and low, sitting in the centre of, or
in a cluster upon, the flat roof. Wherefore, when one looks down from
an eminence, upon the compact mass of houses (so closely crowded
together, in fact, that there is no appearance of streets at all, and
so the city looks solid,) he sees the knobbiest town in the world,
except Constantinople. It looks as if it might be roofed, from centre
to circumference, with inverted saucers. The monotony of the view is
interrupted only by the great Mosque of Omar, the Tower of Hippicus,
and one or two other buildings that rise into commanding prominence.
The houses are generally two stories high, built strongly of masonry,
whitewashed or plastered outside, and have a cage of wooden
lattice-work projecting in front of every window. To reproduce a
Jerusalem street, it would only be necessary to up-end a chicken-coop
and hang it before each window in an alley of American houses.
The streets are roughly and badly paved with stone, and are tolerably
crooked--enough so to make each street appear to close together
constantly and come to an end about a hundred yards ahead of a pilgrim
as long as he chooses to walk in it. Projecting from the top of the
lower story of many of the houses is a very narrow porch-roof or shed,
without supports from below; and I have several times seen cats jump
across the street from one shed to the other when they were out calling.
The cats could have jumped double the distance without extraordinary
exertion. I mention these things to give an idea of how narrow the
streets are. Since a cat can jump across them without the least
inconvenience, it is hardly necessary to state that such streets are
too narrow for carriages. These vehicles can not navigate the Holy City.
The population of Jerusalem is composed of Moslems, Jews, Greeks,
Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a
handful of Protestants. One hundred of the latter sect are all that
dwell now in this birthplace of Christianity. The nice shades of
nationality comprised in the above list, and the languages spoken by
them, are altogether too numerous to mention. It seems to me that all
the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among
the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags,
wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate
the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself,
abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on
every hand, and they know but one word of but one language
apparently--the eternal
One naturally goes first to the Holy Sepulchre. It is right in the
city, near the western gate; it and the place of the Crucifixion, and,
in fact, every other place intimately connected with that tremendous
event, are ingeniously massed together and covered by one roof--the
dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Entering the building, through the midst of the usual assemblage of
beggars, one sees on his left a few Turkish guards--for Christians of
different sects will not only quarrel, but fight, also, in this sacred
place, if allowed to do it. Before you is a marble slab, which covers
the Stone of Unction, whereon the Saviour's body was laid to prepare it
for burial. It was found necessary to conceal the real stone in this
way in order to save it from destruction. Pilgrims were too much given
to chipping off pieces of it to carry home. Near by is a circular
railing which marks the spot where the Virgin stood when the Lord's
body was anointed.
Entering the great Rotunda, we stand before the most sacred locality in
Christendom--the grave of Jesus. It is in the centre of the church, and
immediately under the great dome. It is inclosed in a sort of little
temple of yellow and white stone, of fanciful design. Within the little
temple is a portion of the very stone which was rolled away from the
door of the Sepulchre, and on which the angel was sitting when Mary
came thither
All sects of Christians (except Protestants,) have chapels under the
roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and each must keep to itself
and not venture upon another's ground. It has been proven conclusively
that they can not worship together around the grave of the Saviour of
the World in peace. The chapel of the Syrians is not handsome; that of
the Copts is the humblest of them all. It is nothing but a dismal
cavern, roughly hewn in the living rock of the Hill of Calvary. In one
side of it two ancient tombs are hewn, which are claimed to be those in
which Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea were buried.
As we moved among the great piers and pillars of another part of the
church, we came upon a party of black-robed, animal-looking Italian
monks, with candles in their hands, who were chanting something in
Latin, and going through some kind of religious performance around a
disk of white marble let into the floor. It was there that the risen
Saviour appeared to Mary Magdalen in the likeness of a gardener. Near
by was a similar stone, shaped like a star--here the Magdalen herself
stood, at the same time. Monks were performing in this place also. They
perform every where--all over the vast building, and at all hours.
Their candles are always flitting about in the gloom, and making the
dim old church more dismal than there is any necessity that it should
be, even though it is a tomb.
We were shown the place where our Lord appeared to His mother after the
Resurrection. Here, also, a marble slab marks the place where St.
Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, found the crosses about
three hundred years after the Crucifixion. According to the legend,
this great discovery elicited extravagant demonstrations of joy. But
they were of short duration. The question intruded itself:
The priests tried to show us, through a small screen, a fragment of the
genuine Pillar of Flagellation, to which Christ was bound when they
scourged him. But we could not see it, because it was dark inside the
screen. However, a baton is kept here, which the pilgrim thrusts
through a hole in the screen, and then he no longer doubts that the
true Pillar of Flagellation is in there. He can not have any excuse to
doubt it, for he can feel it with the stick. He can feel it as
distinctly as he could feel any thing.
Not far from here was a niche where they used to preserve a piece of
the True Cross, but it is gone, now. This piece of the cross was
discovered in the sixteenth century. The Latin priests say it was
stolen away, long ago, by priests of another sect. That seems like a
hard statement to make, but we know very well that it was stolen,
because we have seen it ourselves in several of the cathedrals of Italy
and France.
But the relic that touched us most was the plain old sword of that
stout Crusader, Godfrey of Bulloigne--King Godfrey of Jerusalem. No
blade in Christendom wields such enchantment as this--no blade of all
that rust in the ancestral halls of Europe is able to invoke such
visions of romance in the brain of him who looks upon it--none that can
prate of such chivalric deeds or tell such brave tales of the warrior
days of old. It stirs within a man every memory of the Holy Wars that
has been sleeping in his brain for years, and peoples his thoughts with
mail-clad images, with marching armies, with battles and with sieges.
It speaks to him of Baldwin, and Tancred, the princely Saladin, and
great Richard of the Lion Heart. It was with just such blades as these
that these splendid heroes of romance used to segregate a man, so to
speak, and leave the half of him to fall one way and the other half the
other. This very sword has cloven hundreds of Saracen Knights from
crown to chin in those old times when Godfrey wielded it. It was
enchanted, then, by a genius that was under the command of King Solomon.
When danger approached its master's tent it always struck the shield
and clanged out a fierce alarm upon the startled ear of night. In times
of doubt, or in fog or darkness, if it were drawn from its sheath it
would point instantly toward the foe, and thus reveal the way--and it
would also attempt to start after them of its own accord. A Christian
could not be so disguised that it would not know him and refuse to hurt
him--nor a Moslem so disguised that it would not leap from its scabbard
and take his life. These statements are all well authenticated in many
legends that are among the most trustworthy legends the good old
Catholic monks preserve. I can never forget old Godfrey's sword, now. I
tried it on a Moslem, and clove him in twain like a doughnut. The
spirit of Grimes was upon me, and if I had had a graveyard I would have
destroyed all the infidels in Jerusalem. I wiped the blood off the old
sword and handed it back to the priest--I did not want the fresh gore
to obliterate those sacred spots that crimsoned its brightness one day
six hundred years ago and thus gave Godfrey warning that before the sun
went down his journey of life would end.
Still moving through the gloom of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we
came to a small chapel, hewn out of the rock--a place which has been
known as
The Greek Chapel is the most roomy, the richest and the showiest chapel
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its altar, like that of all the
Greek churches, is a lofty screen that extends clear across the chapel,
and is gorgeous with gilding and pictures. The numerous lamps that hang
before it are of gold and silver, and cost great sums.
But the feature of the place is a short column that rises from the
middle of the marble pavement of the chapel, and marks the exact centre
of the earth. The most reliable traditions tell us that this was known
to be the earth's centre, ages ago, and that when Christ was upon earth
he set all doubts upon the subject at rest forever, by stating with his
own lips that the tradition was correct. Remember, He said that that
particular column stood upon the centre of the world. If the centre of
the world changes, the column changes its position accordingly. This
column has moved three different times, of its own accord. This is
because, in great convulsions of nature, at three different times,
masses of the earth--whole ranges of mountains, probably--have flown
off into space, thus lessening the diameter of the earth, and changing
the exact locality of its centre by a point or two. This is a very
curious and interesting circumstance, and is a withering rebuke to
those philosophers who would make us believe that it is not possible
for any portion of the earth to fly off into space.
To satisfy himself that this spot was really the centre of the earth, a
sceptic once paid well for the privilege of ascending to the dome of
the church to see if the sun gave him a shadow at noon. He came down
perfectly convinced. The day was very cloudy and the sun threw no
shadows at all; but the man was satisfied that if the sun had come out
and made shadows it could not have made any for him. Proofs like these
are not to be set aside by the idle tongues of cavilers. To such as are
not bigoted, and are willing to be convinced, they carry a conviction
that nothing can ever shake.
If even greater proofs than those I have mentioned are wanted, to
satisfy the headstrong and the foolish that this is the genuine centre
of the earth, they are here. The greatest of them lies in the fact that
from under this very column was taken the dust from which Adam was made.
This can surely be regarded in the light of a settler. It is not
likely that the original first man would have been made from an
inferior quality of earth when it was entirely convenient to get first
quality from the world's centre. This will strike any reflecting mind
forcibly. That Adam was formed of dirt procured in this very spot is
amply proven by the fact that in six thousand years no man has ever
been able to prove that the dirt was not procured here whereof he was
made.
It is a singular circumstance that right under the roof of this same
great church, and not far away from that illustrious column, Adam
himself, the father of the human race, lies buried. There is no
question that he is actually buried in the grave which is pointed out
as his--there can be none--because it has never yet been proven that
that grave is not the grave in which he is buried.
The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers, far
away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover
the grave of a blood relation. True, a distant one, but still a
relation. The unerring instinct of nature thrilled its recognition. The
fountain of my filial affection was stirred to its profoundest depths,
and I gave way to tumultuous emotion. I leaned upon a pillar and burst
into tears. I deem it no shame to have wept over the grave of my poor
dead relative. Let him who would sneer at my emotion close this volume
here, for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings through
Holy Land. Noble old man--he did not live to see me--he did not live to
see his child. And I--I--alas, I did not live to see him. Weighed down
by sorrow and disappointment, he died before I was born--six thousand
brief summers before I was born. But let us try to bear it with
fortitude. Let us trust that he is better off, where he is. Let us take
comfort in the thought that his loss is our eternal gain.
The next place the guide took us to in the holy church was an altar
dedicated to the Roman soldier who was of the military guard that
attended at the crucifixion to keep order, and who--when the vail of
the Temple was rent in the awful darkness that followed; when the rock
of Golgotha was split asunder by an earthquake; when the artillery of
heaven thundered, and in the baleful glare of the lightnings the
shrouded dead flitted about the streets of Jerusalem--shook with fear
and said,
In this altar they used to keep one of the most curious relics that
human eyes ever looked upon--a thing that had power to fascinate the
beholder in some mysterious way and keep him gazing for hours together.
It was nothing less than the copper plate Pilate put upon the Saviour's
cross, and upon which he wrote,
We passed along a few steps and saw the altar built over the very spot
where the good Catholic priests say the soldiers divided the raiment of
the Saviour.
Then we went down into a cavern which cavilers say was once a cistern.
It is a chapel, now, however--the Chapel of St. Helena. It is fifty-one
feet long by forty-three wide. In it is a marble chair which Helena
used to sit in while she superintended her workmen when they were
digging and delving for the True Cross. In this place is an altar
dedicated to St. Dimas, the penitent thief. A new bronze statue is
here--a statue of St. Helena. It reminded us of poor Maximilian, so
lately shot. He presented it to this chapel when he was about to leave
for his throne in Mexico.
From the cistern we descended twelve steps into a large roughly-shaped
grotto, carved wholly out of the living rock. Helena blasted it out
when she was searching for the true cross. She had a laborious piece of
work, here, but it was richly rewarded. Out of this place she got the
crown of thorns, the nails of the cross, the true cross itself, and the
cross of the penitent thief. When she thought she had found every thing
and was about to stop, she was told in a dream to continue a day longer.
It was very fortunate. She did so, and found the cross of the other
thief.
The walls and roof of this grotto still weep bitter tears in memory of
the event that transpired on Calvary, and devout pilgrims groan and sob
when these sad tears fall upon them from the dripping rock. The monks
call this apartment the
Priests of any of the chapels and denominations in the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre can visit this sacred grotto to weep and pray and
worship the gentle Redeemer. Two different congregations are not
allowed to enter at the same time, however, because they always fight.
Still marching through the venerable Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
among chanting priests in coarse long robes and sandals; pilgrims of
all colors and many nationalities, in all sorts of strange costumes;
under dusky arches and by dingy piers and columns; through a sombre
cathedral gloom freighted with smoke and incense, and faintly starred
with scores of candles that appeared suddenly and as suddenly
disappeared, or drifted mysteriously hither and thither about the
distant aisles like ghostly jack-o'-lanterns--we came at last to a
small chapel which is called the
They showed us where the great Godfrey and his brother Baldwin, the
first Christian Kings of Jerusalem, once lay buried by that sacred
sepulchre they had fought so long and so valiantly to wrest from the
hands of the infidel. But the niches that had contained the ashes of
these renowned crusaders were empty. Even the coverings of their tombs
were gone--destroyed by devout members of the Greek Church, because
Godfrey and Baldwin were Latin princes, and had been reared in a
Christian faith whose creed differed in some unimportant respects from
theirs.
We passed on, and halted before the tomb of Melchisedek! You will
remember Melchisedek, no doubt; he was the King who came out and levied
a tribute on Abraham the time that he pursued Lot's captors to Dan, and
took all their property from them. That was about four thousand years
ago, and Melchisedek died shortly afterward. However, his tomb is in a
good state of preservation.
When one enters the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sepulchre itself
is the first thing he desires to see, and really is almost the first
thing he does see. The next thing he has a strong yearning to see is
the spot where the Saviour was crucified. But this they exhibit last.
It is the crowning glory of the place. One is grave and thoughtful when
he stands in the little Tomb of the Saviour--he could not well be
otherwise in such a place--but he has not the slightest possible belief
that ever the Lord lay there, and so the interest he feels in the spot
is very, very greatly marred by that reflection. He looks at the place
where Mary stood, in another part of the church, and where John stood,
and Mary Magdalen; where the mob derided the Lord; where the angel sat;
where the crown of thorns was found, and the true cross; where the
risen Saviour appeared--he looks at all these places with interest, but
with the same conviction he felt in the case of the Sepulchre, that
there is nothing genuine about them, and that they are imaginary holy
places created by the monks. But the place of the Crucifixion affects
him differently. He fully believes that he is looking upon the very
spot where the Saviour gave up his life. He remembers that Christ was
very celebrated, long before he came to Jerusalem; he knows that his
fame was so great that crowds followed him all the time; he is aware
that his entry into the city produced a stirring sensation, and that
his reception was a kind of ovation; he can not overlook the fact that
when he was crucified there were very many in Jerusalem who believed
that he was the true Son of God. To publicly execute such a personage
was sufficient in itself to make the locality of the execution a
memorable place for ages; added to this, the storm, the darkness, the
earthquake, the rending of the vail of the Temple, and the untimely
waking of the dead, were events calculated to fix the execution and the
scene of it in the memory of even the most thoughtless witness. Fathers
would tell their sons about the strange affair, and point out the spot;
the sons would transmit the story to their children, and thus a period
of three hundred years would easily be spanned*--at which time Helena
came and built a church upon Calvary to commemorate the death and
burial of the Lord and preserve the sacred place in the memories of men;
since that time there has always been a church there. It is not
possible that there can be any mistake about the locality of the
Crucifixion. Not half a dozen persons knew where they buried the
Saviour, perhaps, and a burial is not a startling event, any how;
therefore, we can be pardoned for unbelief in the Sepulchre, but not in
the place of the Crucifixion. Five hundred years hence there will be no
vestige of Bunker Hill Monument left, but America will still know where
the battle was fought and where Warren fell. The crucifixion of Christ
was too notable an event in Jerusalem, and the Hill of Calvary made too
celebrated by it, to be forgotten in the short space of three hundred
years. I climbed the stairway in the church which brings one to the top
of the small inclosed pinnacle of rock, and looked upon the place where
the true cross once stood, with a far more absorbing interest than I
had ever felt in any thing earthly before. I could not believe that the
three holes in the top of the rock were the actual ones the crosses
stood in, but I felt satisfied that those crosses had stood so near the
place now occupied by them, that the few feet of possible difference
were a matter of no consequence.
When one stands where the Saviour was crucified, he finds it all he can
do to keep it strictly before his mind that Christ was not crucified in
a Catholic Church. He must remind himself every now and then that the
great event transpired in the open air, and not in a gloomy,
candle-lighted cell in a little corner of a vast church, up-stairs--a
small cell all bejeweled and bespangled with flashy ornamentation, in
execrable taste.
Under a marble altar like a table, is a circular hole in the marble
floor, corresponding with the one just under it in which the true cross
stood. The first thing every one does is to kneel down and take a
candle and examine this hole. He does this strange prospecting with an
amount of gravity that can never be estimated or appreciated by a man
who has not seen the operation. Then he holds his candle before a
richly engraved picture of the Saviour, done on a massy slab of gold,
and wonderfully rayed and starred with diamonds, which hangs above the
hole within the altar, and his solemnity changes to lively admiration.
He rises and faces the finely wrought figures of the Saviour and the
malefactors uplifted upon their crosses behind the altar, and bright
with a metallic lustre of many colors. He turns next to the figures
close to them of the Virgin and Mary Magdalen; next to the rift in the
living rock made by the earthquake at the time of the Crucifixion, and
an extension of which he had seen before in the wall of one of the
grottoes below; he looks next at the show-case with a figure of the
Virgin in it, and is amazed at the princely fortune in precious gems
and jewelry that hangs so thickly about the form as to hide it like a
garment almost. All about the apartment the gaudy trappings of the
Greek Church offend the eye and keep the mind on the rack to remember
that this is the Place of the Crucifixion--Golgotha--the Mount of
Calvary. And the last thing he looks at is that which was also the
first--the place where the true cross stood. That will chain him to the
spot and compel him to look once more, and once again, after he has
satisfied all curiosity and lost all interest concerning the other
matters pertaining to the locality.
And so I close my chapter on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre--the most
sacred locality on earth to millions and millions of men, and women,
and children, the noble and the humble, bond and free. In its history
from the first, and in its tremendous associations, it is the most
illustrious edifice in Christendom. With all its clap-trap side-shows
and unseemly impostures of every kind, it is still grand, reverend,
venerable--for a god died there; for fifteen hundred years its shrines
have been wet with the tears of pilgrims from the earth's remotest
confines; for more than two hundred, the most gallant knights that ever
wielded sword wasted their lives away in a struggle to seize it and
hold it sacred from infidel pollution. Even in our own day a war, that
cost millions of treasure and rivers of blood, was fought because two
rival nations claimed the sole right to put a new dome upon it. History
is full of this old Church of the Holy Sepulchre--full of blood that
was shed because of the respect and the veneration in which men held
the last resting-place of the meek and lowly, the mild and gentle,
Prince of Peace!
*The thought is Mr. Prime's, not mine, and is full of good sense. I
borrowed it from his
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Chapter LIV
We were standing in a narrow street, by the Tower of Antonio.
We crossed a street, and came presently to the former residence of St.
Veronica. When the Saviour passed there, she came out, full of womanly
compassion, and spoke pitying words to him, undaunted by the hootings
and the threatenings of the mob, and wiped the perspiration from his
face with her handkerchief. We had heard so much of St. Veronica, and
seen her picture by so many masters, that it was like meeting an old
friend unexpectedly to come upon her ancient home in Jerusalem. The
strangest thing about the incident that has made her name so famous,
is, that when she wiped the perspiration away, the print of the
Saviour's face remained upon the handkerchief, a perfect portrait, and
so remains unto this day. We knew this, because we saw this
handkerchief in a cathedral in Paris, in another in Spain, and in two
others in Italy. In the Milan cathedral it costs five francs to see it,
and at St. Peter's, at Rome, it is almost impossible to see it at any
price. No tradition is so amply verified as this of St. Veronica and
her handkerchief.
At the next corner we saw a deep indention in the hard stone masonry of
the corner of a house, but might have gone heedlessly by it but that
the guide said it was made by the elbow of the Saviour, who stumbled
here and fell. Presently we came to just such another indention in a
stone wall. The guide said the Saviour fell here, also, and made this
depression with his elbow.
There were other places where the Lord fell, and others where he rested;
but one of the most curious landmarks of ancient history we found on
this morning walk through the crooked lanes that lead toward Calvary,
was a certain stone built into a house--a stone that was so seamed and
scarred that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the human face.
The projections that answered for cheeks were worn smooth by the
passionate kisses of generations of pilgrims from distant lands. We
asked
And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and abiding
interest--the veritable house where the unhappy wretch once lived who
has been celebrated in song and story for more than eighteen hundred
years as the Wandering Jew. On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he
stood in this old doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the
struggling mob that was approaching, and when the weary Saviour would
have sat down and rested him a moment, pushed him rudely away and said,
There is one thing he can not avoid; go where he will about the world,
he must never fail to report in Jerusalem every fiftieth year. Only a
year or two ago he was here for the thirty-seventh time since Jesus was
crucified on Calvary. They say that many old people, who are here now,
saw him then, and had seen him before. He looks always the same--old,
and withered, and hollow-eyed, and listless, save that there is about
him something which seems to suggest that he is looking for some one,
expecting some one--the friends of his youth, perhaps. But the most of
them are dead, now. He always pokes about the old streets looking
lonesome, making his mark on a wall here and there, and eyeing the
oldest buildings with a sort of friendly half interest; and he sheds a
few tears at the threshold of his ancient dwelling, and bitter, bitter
tears they are. Then he collects his rent and leaves again. He has been
seen standing near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on many a starlight
night, for he has cherished an idea for many centuries that if he could
only enter there, he could rest. But when he approaches, the doors slam
to with a crash, the earth trembles, and all the lights in Jerusalem
burn a ghastly blue! He does this every fifty years, just the same. It
is hopeless, but then it is hard to break habits one has been eighteen
hundred years accustomed to. The old tourist is far away on his
wanderings, now. How he must smile to see a pack of blockheads like us,
galloping about the world, and looking wise, and imagining we are
finding out a good deal about it! He must have a consuming contempt for
the ignorant, complacent asses that go skurrying about the world in
these railroading days and call it traveling.
When the guide pointed out where the Wandering Jew had left his
familiar mark upon a wall, I was filled with astonishment. It read:
All I have revealed about the Wandering Jew can be amply proven by
reference to our guide.
The mighty Mosque of Omar, and the paved court around it, occupy a
fourth part of Jerusalem. They are upon Mount Moriah, where King
Solomon's Temple stood. This Mosque is the holiest place the Mohammedan
knows, outside of Mecca. Up to within a year or two past, no Christian
could gain admission to it or its court for love or money. But the
prohibition has been removed, and we entered freely for bucksheesh.
I need not speak of the wonderful beauty and the exquisite grace and
symmetry that have made this Mosque so celebrated--because I did not
see them. One can not see such things at an instant glance--one
frequently only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman
is after considerable acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to
Niagara Falls, to majestic mountains and to mosques--especially to
mosques.
The great feature of the Mosque of Omar is the prodigious rock in the
centre of its rotunda. It was upon this rock that Abraham came so near
offering up his son Isaac--this, at least, is authentic--it is very
much more to be relied on than most of the traditions, at any rate. On
this rock, also, the angel stood and threatened Jerusalem, and David
persuaded him to spare the city. Mahomet was well acquainted with this
stone. From it he ascended to heaven. The stone tried to follow him,
and if the angel Gabriel had not happened by the merest good luck to be
there to seize it, it would have done it. Very few people have a grip
like Gabriel--the prints of his monstrous fingers, two inches deep, are
to be seen in that rock to-day.
This rock, large as it is, is suspended in the air. It does not touch
any thing at all. The guide said so. This is very wonderful. In the
place on it where Mahomet stood, he left his foot-prints in the solid
stone. I should judge that he wore about eighteens. But what I was
going to say, when I spoke of the rock being suspended, was, that in
the floor of the cavern under it they showed us a slab which they said
covered a hole which was a thing of extraordinary interest to all
Mohammedans, because that hole leads down to perdition, and every soul
that is transferred from thence to Heaven must pass up through this
orifice. Mahomet stands there and lifts them out by the hair. All
Mohammedans shave their heads, but they are careful to leave a lock of
hair for the Prophet to take hold of. Our guide observed that a good
Mohammedan would consider himself doomed to stay with the damned
forever if he were to lose his scalp-lock and die before it grew again.
The most of them that I have seen ought to stay with the damned, any
how, without reference to how they were barbered.
For several ages no woman has been allowed to enter the cavern where
that important hole is. The reason is that one of the sex was once
caught there blabbing every thing she knew about what was going on
above ground, to the rapscallions in the infernal regions down below.
She carried her gossiping to such an extreme that nothing could be kept
private--nothing could be done or said on earth but every body in
perdition knew all about it before the sun went down. It was about time
to suppress this woman's telegraph, and it was promptly done. Her
breath subsided about the same time.
The inside of the great mosque is very showy with variegated marble
walls and with windows and inscriptions of elaborate mosaic. The Turks
have their sacred relics, like the Catholics. The guide showed us the
veritable armor worn by the great son-in-law and successor of Mahomet,
and also the buckler of Mahomet's uncle. The great iron railing which
surrounds the rock was ornamented in one place with a thousand rags
tied to its open work. These are to remind Mahomet not to forget the
worshipers who placed them there. It is considered the next best thing
to tying threads around his finger by way of reminders.
Just outside the mosque is a miniature temple, which marks the spot
where David and Goliah used to sit and judge the people.*
Every where about the Mosque of Omar are portions of pillars, curiously
wrought altars, and fragments of elegantly carved marble--precious
remains of Solomon's Temple. These have been dug from all depths in the
soil and rubbish of Mount Moriah, and the Moslems have always shown a
disposition to preserve them with the utmost care. At that portion of
the ancient wall of Solomon's Temple which is called the Jew's Place of
Wailing, and where the Hebrews assemble every Friday to kiss the
venerated stones and weep over the fallen greatness of Zion, any one
can see a part of the unquestioned and undisputed Temple of Solomon,
the same consisting of three or four stones lying one upon the other,
each of which is about twice as long as a seven-octave piano, and about
as thick as such a piano is high. But, as I have remarked before, it is
only a year or two ago that the ancient edict prohibiting Christian
rubbish like ourselves to enter the Mosque of Omar and see the costly
marbles that once adorned the inner Temple was annulled. The designs
wrought upon these fragments are all quaint and peculiar, and so the
charm of novelty is added to the deep interest they naturally inspire.
One meets with these venerable scraps at every turn, especially in the
neighboring Mosque el Aksa, into whose inner walls a very large number
of them are carefully built for preservation. These pieces of stone,
stained and dusty with age, dimly hint at a grandeur we have all been
taught to regard as the princeliest ever seen on earth; and they call
up pictures of a pageant that is familiar to all imaginations--camels
laden with spices and treasure--beautiful slaves, presents for
Solomon's harem--a long cavalcade of richly caparisoned beasts and
warriors--and Sheba's Queen in the van of this vision of
Down in the hollow ground, underneath the olives and the orange-trees
that flourish in the court of the great Mosque, is a wilderness of
pillars--remains of the ancient Temple; they supported it. There are
ponderous archways down there, also, over which the destroying
We are surfeited with sights. Nothing has any fascination for us, now,
but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We have been there every day, and
have not grown tired of it; but we are weary of every thing else. The
sights are too many. They swarm about you at every step; no single foot
of ground in all Jerusalem or within its neighborhood seems to be
without a stirring and important history of its own. It is a very
relief to steal a walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to talk
unceasingly about every stone you step upon and drag you back ages and
ages to the day when it achieved celebrity.
It seems hardly real when I find myself leaning for a moment on a
ruined wall and looking listlessly down into the historic pool of
Bethesda. I did not think such things could be so crowded together as
to diminish their interest. But in serious truth, we have been drifting
about, for several days, using our eyes and our ears more from a sense
of duty than any higher and worthier reason. And too often we have been
glad when it was time to go home and be distressed no more about
illustrious localities.
Our pilgrims compress too much into one day. One can gorge sights to
repletion as well as sweetmeats. Since we breakfasted, this morning, we
have seen enough to have furnished us food for a year's reflection if
we could have seen the various objects in comfort and looked upon them
deliberately. We visited the pool of Hezekiah, where David saw Uriah's
wife coming from the bath and fell in love with her.
We went out of the city by the Jaffa gate, and of course were told many
things about its Tower of Hippicus.
We rode across the Valley of Hinnom, between two of the Pools of Gihon,
and by an aqueduct built by Solomon, which still conveys water to the
city. We ascended the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas received his
thirty pieces of silver, and we also lingered a moment under the tree a
venerable tradition says he hanged himself on.
We descended to the canon again, and then the guide began to give name
and history to every bank and boulder we came to:
We said we would dismount, and quench our thirst, and rest. We were
burning up with the heat. We were failing under the accumulated fatigue
of days and days of ceaseless marching. All were willing.
The Pool is a deep, walled ditch, through which a clear stream of water
runs, that comes from under Jerusalem somewhere, and passing through
the Fountain of the Virgin, or being supplied from it, reaches this
place by way of a tunnel of heavy masonry. The famous pool looked
exactly as it looked in Solomon's time, no doubt, and the same dusky,
Oriental women, came down in their old Oriental way, and carried off
jars of the water on their heads, just as they did three thousand years
ago, and just as they will do fifty thousand years hence if any of them
are still left on earth.
We went away from there and stopped at the Fountain of the Virgin. But
the water was not good, and there was no comfort or peace any where, on
account of the regiment of boys and girls and beggars that persecuted
us all the time for bucksheesh. The guide wanted us to give them some
money, and we did it; but when he went on to say that they were
starving to death we could not but feel that we had done a great sin in
throwing obstacles in the way of such a desirable consummation, and so
we tried to collect it back, but it could not be done.
We entered the Garden of Gethsemane, and we visited the Tomb of the
Virgin, both of which we had seen before. It is not meet that I should
speak of them now. A more fitting time will come.
I can not speak now of the Mount of Olives or its view of Jerusalem,
the Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab; nor of the Damascus Gate or the
tree that was planted by King Godfrey of Jerusalem. One ought to feel
pleasantly when he talks of these things. I can not say any thing about
the stone column that projects over Jehoshaphat from the Temple wall
like a cannon, except that the Moslems believe Mahomet will sit astride
of it when he comes to judge the world. It is a pity he could not judge
it from some roost of his own in Mecca, without trespassing on our holy
ground. Close by is the Golden Gate, in the Temple wall--a gate that
was an elegant piece of sculpture in the time of the Temple, and is
even so yet. From it, in ancient times, the Jewish High Priest turned
loose the scapegoat and let him flee to the wilderness and bear away
his twelve-month load of the sins of the people. If they were to turn
one loose now, he would not get as far as the Garden of Gethsemane,
till these miserable vagabonds here would gobble him up,* sins and all.
They wouldn't care. Mutton-chops and sin is good enough living for them.
The Moslems watch the Golden Gate with a jealous eye, and an anxious
one, for they have an honored tradition that when it falls, Islamism
will fall, and with it the Ottoman Empire. It did not grieve me any to
notice that the old gate was getting a little shaky.
We are at home again. We are exhausted. The sun has roasted us, almost.
We have full comfort in one reflection, however. Our experiences in
Europe have taught us that in time this fatigue will be forgotten; the
heat will be forgotten; the thirst, the tiresome volubility of the
guide, the persecutions of the beggars--and then, all that will be left
will be pleasant memories of Jerusalem, memories we shall call up with
always increasing interest as the years go by, memories which some day
will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that incumbers them
shall have faded out of our minds never again to return. School-boy
days are no happier than the days of after life, but we look back upon
them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school,
and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites
destroyed--because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of
that canonized epoch and remember only its orchard robberies, its
wooden sword pageants and its fishing holydays. We are satisfied. We
can wait. Our reward will come. To us, Jerusalem and to-day's
experiences will be an enchanted memory a year hence--a memory which
money could not buy from us.
*A pilgrim informs me that it was not David and Goliah, but David and
Saul. I stick to my own statement--the guide told me, and he ought to
know.
*Favorite pilgrim expression.
[te
Chapter LV
We cast up the account. It footed up pretty fairly. There was nothing
more at Jerusalem to be seen, except the traditional houses of Dives
and Lazarus of the parable, the Tombs of the Kings, and those of the
Judges; the spot where they stoned one of the disciples to death, and
beheaded another; the room and the table made celebrated by the Last
Supper; the fig-tree that Jesus withered; a number of historical places
about Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, and fifteen or twenty others
in different portions of the city itself.
We were approaching the end. Human nature asserted itself, now.
Overwork and consequent exhaustion began to have their natural effect.
They began to master the energies and dull the ardor of the party.
Perfectly secure now, against failing to accomplish any detail of the
pilgrimage, they felt like drawing in advance upon the holyday soon to
be placed to their credit. They grew a little lazy. They were late to
breakfast and sat long at dinner. Thirty or forty pilgrims had arrived
from the ship, by the short routes, and much swapping of gossip had to
be indulged in. And in hot afternoons, they showed a strong disposition
to lie on the cool divans in the hotel and smoke and talk about
pleasant experiences of a month or so gone by--for even thus early do
episodes of travel which were sometimes annoying, sometimes
exasperating and full as often of no consequence at all when they
transpired, begin to rise above the dead level of monotonous
reminiscences and become shapely landmarks in one's memory. The
fog-whistle, smothered among a million of trifling sounds, is not
noticed a block away, in the city, but the sailor hears it far at sea,
whither none of those thousands of trifling sounds can reach. When one
is in Rome, all the domes are alike; but when he has gone away twelve
miles, the city fades utterly from sight and leaves St. Peter's
swelling above the level plain like an anchored balloon. When one is
traveling in Europe, the daily incidents seem all alike; but when he
has placed them all two months and two thousand miles behind him, those
that were worthy of being remembered are prominent, and those that were
really insignificant have vanished. This disposition to smoke, and idle
and talk, was not well. It was plain that it must not be allowed to
gain ground. A diversion must be tried, or demoralization would ensue.
The Jordan, Jericho and the Dead Sea were suggested. The remainder of
Jerusalem must be left unvisited, for a little while. The journey was
approved at once. New life stirred in every pulse. In the
saddle--abroad on the plains--sleeping in beds bounded only by the
horizon: fancy was at work with these things in a moment.--It was
painful to note how readily these town-bred men had taken to the free
life of the camp and the desert. The nomadic instinct is a human
instinct; it was born with Adam and transmitted through the patriarchs,
and after thirty centuries of steady effort, civilization has not
educated it entirely out of us yet. It has a charm which, once tasted,
a man will yearn to taste again. The nomadic instinct can not be
educated out of an Indian at all.
The Jordan journey being approved, our dragoman was notified.
At nine in the morning the caravan was before the hotel door and we
were at breakfast. There was a commotion about the place. Rumors of war
and bloodshed were flying every where. The lawless Bedouins in the
Valley of the Jordan and the deserts down by the Dead Sea were up in
arms, and were going to destroy all comers. They had had a battle with
a troop of Turkish cavalry and defeated them; several men killed. They
had shut up the inhabitants of a village and a Turkish garrison in an
old fort near Jericho, and were besieging them. They had marched upon a
camp of our excursionists by the Jordan, and the pilgrims only saved
their lives by stealing away and flying to Jerusalem under whip and
spur in the darkness of the night. Another of our parties had been
fired on from an ambush and then attacked in the open day. Shots were
fired on both sides. Fortunately there was no bloodshed. We spoke with
the very pilgrim who had fired one of the shots, and learned from his
own lips how, in this imminent deadly peril, only the cool courage of
the pilgrims, their strength of numbers and imposing display of war
material, had saved them from utter destruction. It was reported that
the Consul had requested that no more of our pilgrims should go to the
Jordan while this state of things lasted; and further, that he was
unwilling that any more should go, at least without an unusually strong
military guard. Here was trouble. But with the horses at the door and
every body aware of what they were there for, what would you have done?
Acknowledged that you were afraid, and backed shamefully out? Hardly.
It would not be human nature, where there were so many women. You would
have done as we did: said you were not afraid of a million
Bedouins--and made your will and proposed quietly to yourself to take
up an unostentatious position in the rear of the procession.
I think we must all have determined upon the same line of tactics, for
it did seem as if we never would get to Jericho. I had a notoriously
slow horse, but somehow I could not keep him in the rear, to save my
neck. He was forever turning up in the lead. In such cases I trembled a
little, and got down to fix my saddle. But it was not of any use. The
others all got down to fix their saddles, too. I never saw such a time
with saddles. It was the first time any of them had got out of order in
three weeks, and now they had all broken down at once. I tried walking,
for exercise--I had not had enough in Jerusalem searching for holy
places. But it was a failure. The whole mob were suffering for
exercise, and it was not fifteen minutes till they were all on foot and
I had the lead again. It was very discouraging.
This was all after we got beyond Bethany. We stopped at the village of
Bethany, an hour out from Jerusalem. They showed us the tomb of Lazarus.
I had rather live in it than in any house in the town. And they showed
us also a large
We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top, of the Dead Sea, lying like
a blue shield in the plain of the Jordan, and now we were marching down
a close, flaming, rugged, desolate defile, where no living creature
could enjoy life, except, perhaps, a salamander. It was such a dreary,
repulsive, horrible solitude! It was the
Every man shrunk up and disappeared in his clothes like a mud-turtle.
My first impulse was to dash forward and destroy the Bedouins. My
second was to dash to the rear to see if there were any coming in that
direction. I acted on the latter impulse. So did all the others. If any
Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point of the compass, they
would have paid dearly for their rashness. We all remarked that,
afterwards. There would have been scenes of riot and bloodshed there
that no pen could describe. I know that, because each man told what he
would have done, individually; and such a medley of strange and
unheard-of inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of. One man
said he had calmly made up his mind to perish where he stood, if need
be, but never yield an inch; he was going to wait, with deadly
patience, till he could count the stripes upon the first Bedouin's
jacket, and then count them and let him have it. Another was going to
sit still till the first lance reached within an inch of his breast,
and then dodge it and seize it. I forbear to tell what he was going to
do to that Bedouin that owned it. It makes my blood run cold to think
of it. Another was going to scalp such Bedouins as fell to his share,
and take his bald-headed sons of the desert home with him alive for
trophies. But the wild-eyed pilgrim rhapsodist was silent. His orbs
gleamed with a deadly light, but his lips moved not. Anxiety grew, and
he was questioned. If he had got a Bedouin, what would he have done
with him--shot him? He smiled a smile of grim contempt and shook his
head. Would he have stabbed him? Another shake. Would he have quartered
him--flayed him? More shakes. Oh! horror, what would he have done?
Such was the awful sentence that thundered from his lips. What was
grammar to a desperado like that? I was glad in my heart that I had
been spared these scenes of malignant carnage. No Bedouins attacked our
terrible rear. And none attacked the front. The new-comers were only a
reinforcement of cadaverous Arabs, in shirts and bare legs, sent far
ahead of us to brandish rusty guns, and shout and brag, and carry on
like lunatics, and thus scare away all bands of marauding Bedouins that
might lurk about our path. What a shame it is that armed white
Christians must travel under guard of vermin like this as a protection
against the prowling vagabonds of the desert--those sanguinary outlaws
who are always going to do something desperate, but never do it. I may
as well mention here that on our whole trip we saw no Bedouins, and had
no more use for an Arab guard than we could have had for patent leather
boots and white kid gloves. The Bedouins that attacked the other
parties of pilgrims so fiercely were provided for the occasion by the
Arab guards of those parties, and shipped from Jerusalem for temporary
service as Bedouins. They met together in full view of the pilgrims,
after the battle, and took lunch, divided the bucksheesh extorted in
the season of danger, and then accompanied the cavalcade home to the
city! The nuisance of an Arab guard is one which is created by the
Sheiks and the Bedouins together, for mutual profit, it is said, and no
doubt there is a good deal of truth in it.
We visited the fountain the prophet Elisha sweetened (it is sweet yet;)
where he remained some time and was fed by the ravens.
Ancient Jericho is not very picturesque as a ruin. When Joshua marched
around it seven times, some three thousand years ago, and blew it down
with his trumpet, he did the work so well and so completely that he
hardly left enough of the city to cast a shadow. The curse pronounced
against the rebuilding of it, has never been removed. One King, holding
the curse in light estimation, made the attempt, but was stricken
sorely for his presumption. Its site will always remain unoccupied; and
yet it is one of the very best locations for a town we have seen in all
Palestine.
At two in the morning they routed us out of bed--another piece of
unwarranted cruelty--another stupid effort of our dragoman to get ahead
of a rival. It was not two hours to the Jordan. However, we were
dressed and under way before any one thought of looking to see what
time it was, and so we drowsed on through the chill night air and
dreamed of camp fires, warm beds, and other comfortable things.
There was no conversation. People do not talk when they are cold, and
wretched, and sleepy. We nodded in the saddle, at times, and woke up
with a start to find that the procession had disappeared in the gloom.
Then there was energy and attention to business until its dusky
outlines came in sight again. Occasionally the order was passed in a
low voice down the line:
We reached the famous river before four o'clock, and the night was so
black that we could have ridden into it without seeing it. Some of us
were in an unhappy frame of mind. We waited and waited for daylight,
but it did not come. Finally we went away in the dark and slept an hour
on the ground, in the bushes, and caught cold. It was a costly nap, on
that account, but otherwise it was a paying investment because it
brought unconsciousness of the dreary minutes and put us in a somewhat
fitter mood for a first glimpse of the sacred river.
With the first suspicion of dawn, every pilgrim took off his clothes
and waded into the dark torrent, singing:
And cast a wistful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.
We visited all the holy places about Jerusalem which we had left
unvisited when we journeyed to the Jordan, and then, about three
o'clock one afternoon, we fell into procession and marched out at the
stately Damascus gate, and the walls of Jerusalem shut us out forever.
We paused on the summit of a distant hill and took a final look and
made a final farewell to the venerable city which had been such a good
home to us.
For about four hours we traveled down hill constantly. We followed a
narrow bridle-path which traversed the beds of the mountain gorges, and
when we could we got out of the way of the long trains of laden camels
and asses, and when we could not we suffered the misery of being mashed
up against perpendicular walls of rock and having our legs bruised by
the passing freight. Jack was caught two or three times, and Dan and
Moult as often. One horse had a heavy fall on the slippery rocks, and
the others had narrow escapes. However, this was as good a road as we
had found in Palestine, and possibly even the best, and so there was
not much grumbling.
Sometimes, in the glens, we came upon luxuriant orchards of figs,
apricots, pomegranates, and such things, but oftener the scenery was
rugged, mountainous, verdureless and forbidding. Here and there, towers
were perched high up on acclivities which seemed almost inaccessible.
This fashion is as old as Palestine itself and was adopted in ancient
times for security against enemies.
We crossed the brook which furnished David the stone that killed
Goliah, and no doubt we looked upon the very ground whereon that noted
battle was fought. We passed by a picturesque old gothic ruin whose
stone pavements had rung to the armed heels of many a valorous
Crusader, and we rode through a piece of country which we were told
once knew Samson as a citizen.
We staid all night with the good monks at the convent of Ramleh, and in
the morning got up and galloped the horses a good part of the distance
from there to Jaffa, or Joppa, for the plain was as level as a floor
and free from stones, and besides this was our last march in Holy Land.
These two or three hours finished, we and the tired horses could have
rest and sleep as long as we wanted it. This was the plain of which
Joshua spoke when he said,
We came finally to the noble grove of orange-trees in which the
Oriental city of Jaffa lies buried; we passed through the walls, and
rode again down narrow streets and among swarms of animated rags, and
saw other sights and had other experiences we had long been familiar
with. We dismounted, for the last time, and out in the offing, riding
at anchor, we saw the ship! I put an exclamation point there because we
felt one when we saw the vessel. The long pilgrimage was ended, and
somehow we seemed to feel glad of it.
;obFor description of Jaffa, see Universal Gazetteer.;cb Simon the
Tanner formerly lived here. We went to his house. All the pilgrims
visit Simon the Tanner's house. Peter saw the vision of the beasts let
down in a sheet when he lay upon the roof of Simon the Tanner's house.
It was from Jaffa that Jonah sailed when he was told to go and prophesy
against Nineveh, and no doubt it was not far from the town that the
whale threw him up when he discovered that he had no ticket. Jonah was
disobedient, and of a fault-finding, complaining disposition, and
deserves to be lightly spoken of, almost. The timbers used in the
construction of Solomon's temple were floated to Jaffa in rafts, and
the narrow opening in the reef through which they passed to the shore
is not an inch wider or a shade less dangerous to navigate than it was
then. Such is the sleepy nature of the population Palestine's only good
sea-port has now and always had. Jaffa has a history and a stirring one.
It will not be discovered any where in this book. If the reader will
call at the circulating library and mention my name, he will be
furnished with books which will afford him the fullest information
concerning Jaffa.
So ends the pilgrimage. We ought to be glad that we did not make it for
the purpose of feasting our eyes upon fascinating aspects of nature,
for we should have been disappointed--at least at this season of the
year. A writer in
Which all of us will freely grant. But it truly is
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must
be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are
unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with
a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful
and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst
of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no
pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple
haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh,
every feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no
enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.
Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush
of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the
far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. I would like
much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem,
Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee--but even then these spots
would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a
limitless desolation.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a
curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where
Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now
floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over
whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and
dead--about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts
of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to
parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn;
about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the
Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of
fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a
moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than
three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and
their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they
once knew the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot
where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels
sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living
creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye.
Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all
its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of
Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting
Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory
of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is lifted above the spot
where, on that most memorable day in the annals of the world, they
reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets
once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their
ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and
its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin;=+
Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have
vanished from the earth, and the
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can
the curse of the Deity beautify a land?
Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and
tradition--it is dream-land.
[te
Chapter LVII
It was worth a kingdom to be at sea again. It was a relief to drop all
anxiety whatsoever--all questions as to where we should go; how long we
should stay; whether it were worth while to go or not; all anxieties
about the condition of the horses; all such questions as
We took off our blue woollen shirts, our spurs, and heavy boots, our
sanguinary revolvers and our buckskin-seated pantaloons, and got shaved
and came out in Christian costume once more. All but Jack, who changed
all other articles of his dress, but clung to his traveling pantaloons.
They still preserved their ample buckskin seat intact; and so his short
peajacket and his long, thin legs assisted to make him a picturesque
object whenever he stood on the forecastle looking abroad upon the
ocean over the bows. At such times his father's last injunction
suggested itself to me. He said:
It would have been worth any price if the father of this hopeful youth
could have stepped on board some time, and seen him standing high on
the fore-castle, pea-jacket, tasseled red fez, buckskin patch and
all,--placidly contemplating the ocean--a rare spectacle for any body's
drawing-room.
After a pleasant voyage and a good rest, we drew near to Egypt and out
of the mellowest of sunsets we saw the domes and minarets of Alexandria
rise into view. As soon as the anchor was down, Jack and I got a boat
and went ashore. It was night by this time, and the other passengers
were content to remain at home and visit ancient Egypt after breakfast.
It was the way they did at Constantinople. They took a lively interest
in new countries, but their school-boy impatience had worn off, and
they had learned that it was wisdom to take things easy and go along
comfortably--these old countries do not go away in the night; they stay
till after breakfast.
When we reached the pier we found an army of Egyptian boys with donkeys
no larger than themselves, waiting for passengers--for donkeys are the
omnibuses of Egypt. We preferred to walk, but we could not have our own
way. The boys crowded about us, clamored around us, and slewed their
donkeys exactly across our path, no matter which way we turned. They
were good-natured rascals, and so were the donkeys. We mounted, and the
boys ran behind us and kept the donkeys in a furious gallop, as is the
fashion at Damascus. I believe I would rather ride a donkey than any
beast in the world. He goes briskly, he puts on no airs, he is docile,
though opinionated. Satan himself could not scare him, and he is
convenient--very convenient. When you are tired riding you can rest
your feet on the ground and let him gallop from under you.
We found the hotel and secured rooms, and were happy to know that the
Prince of Wales had stopped there once. They had it every where on
signs. No other princes had stopped there since, till Jack and I came.
We went abroad through the town, then, and found it a city of huge
commercial buildings, and broad, handsome streets brilliant with
gas-light. By night it was a sort of reminiscence of Paris. But finally
Jack found an ice-cream saloon, and that closed investigations for that
evening. The weather was very hot, it had been many a day since Jack
had seen ice-cream, and so it was useless to talk of leaving the saloon
till it shut up.
In the morning the lost tribes of America came ashore and infested the
hotels and took possession of all the donkeys and other open barouches
that offered. They went in picturesque procession to the American
Consul's; to the great gardens; to Cleopatra's Needles; to Pompey's
Pillar; to the palace of the Viceroy of Egypt; to the Nile; to the
superb groves of date-palms. One of our most inveterate relic-hunters
had his hammer with him, and tried to break a fragment off the upright
Needle and could not do it; he tried the prostrate one and failed; he
borrowed a heavy sledge hammer from a mason and failed again. He tried
Pompey's Pillar, and this baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty
monolith were sphinxes of noble countenance, carved out of Egyptian
granite as hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of
five thousand years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter
battered at these persistently, and sweated profusely over his work. He
might as well have attempted to deface the moon. They regarded him
serenely with the stately smile they had worn so long, and which seemed
to say,
But I am forgetting the Jaffa Colonists. At Jaffa we had taken on board
some forty members of a very celebrated community. They were male and
female; babies, young boys and young girls; young married people, and
some who had passed a shade beyond the prime of life. I refer to the
The colony was a complete fiasco. I have already said that such as
could get away did so, from time to time. The prophet Adams--once an
actor, then several other things, afterward a Mormon and a missionary,
always an adventurer--remains at Jaffa with his handful of sorrowful
subjects. The forty we brought away with us were chiefly destitute,
though not all of them. They wished to get to Egypt. What might become
of them then they did not know and probably did not care--any thing to
get away from hated Jaffa. They had little to hope for. Because after
many appeals to the sympathies of New England, made by strangers of
Boston, through the newspapers, and after the establishment of an
office there for the reception of moneyed contributions for the Jaffa
colonists, One Dollar was subscribed. The consul-general for Egypt
showed me the newspaper paragraph which mentioned the circumstance and
mentioned also the discontinuance of the effort and the closing of the
office. It was evident that practical New England was not sorry to be
rid of such visionaries and was not in the least inclined to hire any
body to bring them back to her. Still, to get to Egypt, was something,
in the eyes of the unfortunate colonists, hopeless as the prospect
seemed of ever getting further.
Thus circumstanced, they landed at Alexandria from our ship. One of our
passengers, Mr. Moses S. Beach, of the New York Sun, inquired of the
consul-general what it would cost to send these people to their home in
Maine by the way of Liverpool, and he said fifteen hundred dollars in
gold would do it. Mr. Beach gave his check for the money and so the
troubles of the Jaffa colonists were at an end.*
Alexandria was too much like a European city to be novel, and we soon
tired of it. We took the cars and came up here to ancient Cairo, which
is an Oriental city and of the completest pattern. There is little
about it to disabuse one's mind of the error if he should take it into
his head that he was in the heart of Arabia. Stately camels and
dromedaries, swarthy Egyptians, and likewise Turks and black
Ethiopians, turbaned, sashed, and blazing in a rich variety of Oriental
costumes of all shades of flashy colors, are what one sees on every
hand crowding the narrow streets and the honeycombed bazaars. We are
stopping at Shepherd's Hotel, which is the worst on earth except the
one I stopped at once in a small town in the United States. It is
pleasant to read this sketch in my note-book, now, and know that I can
stand Shepherd's Hotel, sure, because I have been in one just like it
in America and survived:
I stopped at the Benton House. It used to be a good hotel, but that
proves nothing--I used to be a good boy, for that matter. Both of us
have lost character of late years. The Benton is not a good hotel. The
Benton lacks a very great deal of being a good hotel. Perdition is full
of better hotels than the Benton.
It was late at night when I got there, and I told the clerk I would
like plenty of lights, because I wanted to read an hour or two. When I
reached No. 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that was clad
in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and patched with
old scraps of oil cloth--a hall that sank under one's feet, and creaked
dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light--two inches of sallow,
sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that burned blue, and sputtered,
and got discouraged and went out. The porter lit it again, and I asked
if that was all the light the clerk sent. He said,
And he went off growling to himself and still wondering and wondering
over the unaccountable conduct of No. 15. The lamp was a good one, but
it revealed some disagreeable things--a bed in the suburbs of a desert
of room--a bed that had hills and valleys in it, and you'd have to
accommodate your body to the impression left in it by the man that
slept there last, before you could lie comfortably; a carpet that had
seen better days; a melancholy washstand in a remote corner, and a
dejected pitcher on it sorrowing over a broken nose; a looking-glass
split across the centre, which chopped your head off at the chin, and
made you look like some dreadful unfinished monster or other; the paper
peeling in shreds from the walls.
I sighed and said:
The porter said,
The genius of that porter was something wonderful. He put an armful of
books on the bed and said
But all the donkeys in Christendom, and most of the Egyptian boys, I
think, are at the door, and there is some noise going on, not to put it
in stronger language.--We are about starting to the illustrious
Pyramids of Egypt, and the donkeys for the voyage are under inspection.
I will go and select one before the choice animals are all taken.
*It was an unselfish act of benevolence; it was done without any
ostentation, and has never been mentioned in any newspaper, I think.
Therefore it is refreshing to learn now, several months after the above
narrative was written, that another man received all the credit of this
rescue of the colonists. Such is life.
[te
Chapter LVIII
The donkeys were all good, all handsome, all strong and in good
condition, all fast and all willing to prove it. They were the best we
had found any where, and the most recherche. I do not know what
recherche is, but that is what these donkeys were, anyhow. Some were of
a soft mouse-color, and the others were white, black, and vari-colored.
Some were close-shaven, all over, except that a tuft like a paint-brush
was left on the end of the tail. Others were so shaven in fanciful
landscape garden patterns, as to mark their bodies with curving lines,
which were bounded on one side by hair and on the other by the close
plush left by the shears. They had all been newly barbered, and were
exceedingly stylish. Several of the white ones were barred like zebras
with rainbow stripes of blue and red and yellow paint. These were
indescribably gorgeous. Dan and Jack selected from this lot because
they brought back Italian reminiscences of the
Somewhere along this route we had a few startling exhibitions of
Oriental simplicity. A girl apparently thirteen years of age came along
the great thoroughfare dressed like Eve before the fall. We would have
called her thirteen at home; but here girls who look thirteen are often
not more than nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of
superb build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However,
an hour's acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the
pilgrims to it, and then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily do
even the most startling novelties grow tame and spiritless to these
sight-surfeited wanderers.
Arrived at Old Cairo, the camp-followers took up the donkeys and
tumbled them bodily aboard a small boat with a lateen sail, and we
followed and got under way. The deck was closely packed with donkeys
and men; the two sailors had to climb over and under and through the
wedged mass to work the sails, and the steersman had to crowd four or
five donkeys out of the way when he wished to swing his tiller and put
his helm hard-down. But what were their troubles to us? We had nothing
to do; nothing to do but enjoy the trip; nothing to do but shove the
donkeys off our corns and look at the charming scenery of the Nile.
On the island at our right was the machine they call the Nilometer, a
stone-column whose business it is to mark the rise of the river and
prophecy whether it will reach only thirty-two feet and produce a
famine, or whether it will properly flood the land at forty and produce
plenty, or whether it will rise to forty-three and bring death and
destruction to flocks and crops--but how it does all this they could
not explain to us so that we could understand. On the same island is
still shown the spot where Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the
bulrushes. Near the spot we sailed from, the Holy Family dwelt when
they sojourned in Egypt till Herod should complete his slaughter of the
innocents. The same tree they rested under when they first arrived, was
there a short time ago, but the Viceroy of Egypt sent it to the Empress
Eugenie lately. He was just in time, otherwise our pilgrims would have
had it.
The Nile at this point is muddy, swift and turbid, and does not lack a
great deal of being as wide as the Mississippi.
We scrambled up the steep bank at the shabby town of Ghizeh, mounted
the donkeys again, and scampered away. For four or five miles the route
lay along a high embankment which they say is to be the bed of a
railway the Sultan means to build for no other reason than that when
the Empress of the French comes to visit him she can go to the Pyramids
in comfort. This is true Oriental hospitality. I am very glad it is our
privilege to have donkeys instead of cars.
At the distance of a few miles the Pyramids rising above the palms,
looked very clean-cut, very grand and imposing, and very soft and
filmy, as well. They swam in a rich haze that took from them all
suggestions of unfeeling stone, and made them seem only the airy
nothings of a dream--structures which might blossom into tiers of vague
arches, or ornate colonnades, may be, and change and change again, into
all graceful forms of architecture, while we looked, and then melt
deliciously away and blend with the tremulous atmosphere.
At the end of the levee we left the mules and went in a sail-boat
across an arm of the Nile or an overflow, and landed where the sands of
the Great Sahara left their embankment, as straight as a wall, along
the verge of the alluvial plain of the river. A laborious walk in the
flaming sun brought us to the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. It
was a fairy vision no longer. It was a corrugated, unsightly mountain
of stone. Each of its monstrous sides was a wide stairway which rose
upward, step above step, narrowing as it went, till it tapered to a
point far aloft in the air. Insect men and women--pilgrims from the
Quaker City--were creeping about its dizzy perches, and one little
black swarm were waving postage stamps from the airy
summit--handkerchiefs will be understood.
Of course we were besieged by a rabble of muscular Egyptians and Arabs
who wanted the contract of dragging us to the top--all tourists are. Of
course you could not hear your own voice for the din that was around
you. Of course the Sheiks said they were the only responsible parties;
that all contracts must be made with them, all moneys paid over to
them, and none exacted from us by any but themselves alone. Of course
they contracted that the varlets who dragged us up should not mention
bucksheesh once. For such is the usual routine. Of course we contracted
with them, paid them, were delivered into the hands of the draggers,
dragged up the Pyramids, and harried and be-deviled for bucksheesh from
the foundation clear to the summit. We paid it, too, for we were
purposely spread very far apart over the vast side of the Pyramid.
There was no help near if we called, and the Herculeses who dragged us
had a way of asking sweetly and flatteringly for bucksheesh, which was
seductive, and of looking fierce and threatening to throw us down the
precipice, which was persuasive and convincing.
Each step being full as high as a dinner-table; there being very, very
many of the steps; an Arab having hold of each of our arms and
springing upward from step to step and snatching us with them, forcing
us to lift our feet as high as our breasts every time, and do it
rapidly and keep it up till we were ready to faint, who shall say it is
not lively, exhilarating, lacerating, muscle-straining, bone-wrenching
and perfectly excruciating and exhausting pastime, climbing the
Pyramids? I beseeched the varlets not to twist all my joints asunder; I
iterated, reiterated, even swore to them that I did not wish to beat
any body to the top; did all I could to convince them that if I got
there the last of all I would feel blessed above men and grateful to
them forever; I begged them, prayed them, pleaded with them to let me
stop and rest a moment--only one little moment: and they only answered
with some more frightful springs, and an unenlisted volunteer behind
opened a bombardment of determined boosts with his head which
threatened to batter my whole political economy to wreck and ruin.
Twice, for one minute, they let me rest while they extorted bucksheesh,
and then continued their maniac flight up the Pyramid. They wished to
beat the other parties. It was nothing to them that I, a stranger, must
be sacrificed upon the altar of their unholy ambition. But in the midst
of sorrow, joy blooms. Even in this dark hour I had a sweet consolation.
For I knew that except these Mohammedans repented they would go
straight to perdition some day. And they never repent--they never
forsake their paganism. This thought calmed me, cheered me, and I sank
down, limp and exhausted, upon the summit, but happy, so happy and
serene within.
On the one hand, a mighty sea of yellow sand stretched away toward the
ends of the earth, solemn, silent, shorn of vegetation, its solitude
uncheered by any forms of creature life; on the other, the Eden of
Egypt was spread below us--a broad green floor, cloven by the sinuous
river, dotted with villages, its vast distances measured and marked by
the diminishing stature of receding clusters of palms. It lay asleep in
an enchanted atmosphere. There was no sound, no motion. Above the
date-plumes in the middle distance, swelled a domed and pinnacled mass,
glimmering through a tinted, exquisite mist; away toward the horizon a
dozen shapely pyramids watched over ruined Memphis: and at our feet the
bland impassible Sphynx looked out upon the picture from her throne in
the sands as placidly and pensively as she had looked upon its like
full fifty lagging centuries ago.
We suffered torture no pen can describe from the hungry appeals for
bucksheesh that gleamed from Arab eyes and poured incessantly from Arab
lips. Why try to call up the traditions of vanished Egyptian grandeur;
why try to fancy Egypt following dead Rameses to his tomb in the
Pyramid, or the long multitude of Israel departing over the desert
yonder? Why try to think at all? The thing was impossible. One must
bring his meditations cut and dried, or else cut and dry them afterward.
The traditional Arab proposed, in the traditional way, to run down
Cheops, cross the eighth of a mile of sand intervening between it and
the tall pyramid of Cephron, ascend to Cephron's summit and return to
us on the top of Cheops--all in nine minutes by the watch, and the
whole service to be rendered for a single dollar. In the first flush of
irritation, I said let the Arab and his exploits go to the mischief.
But stay. The upper third of Cephron was coated with dressed marble,
smooth as glass. A blessed thought entered my brain. He must infallibly
break his neck. Close the contract with dispatch, I said, and let him
go. He started. We watched. He went bounding down the vast broadside,
spring after spring, like an ibex. He grew small and smaller till he
became a bobbing pigmy, away down toward the bottom--then disappeared.
We turned and peered over the other side--forty seconds--eighty
seconds--a hundred--happiness, he is dead already!--two minutes--and a
quarter--
He started again. Made the trip again. Slipped on the smooth coating--I
almost had him. But an infamous crevice saved him. He was with us once
more--perfectly sound. Time, eight minutes, forty-six seconds.
I said to Dan,
Worse and worse. He won again. Time, eight minutes, forty-eight seconds.
I was out of all patience, now. I was desperate.--Money was no longer
of any consequence. I said,
I was in a fair way to win, now, for it was a dazzling opportunity for
an Arab. He pondered a moment, and would have done it, I think, but his
mother arrived, then, and interfered. Her tears moved me--I never can
look upon the tears of woman with indifference--and I said I would give
her a hundred to jump off, too.
But it was a failure. The Arabs are too high-priced in Egypt. They put
on airs unbecoming to such savages.
We descended, hot and out of humor. The dragoman lit candles, and we
all entered a hole near the base of the pyramid, attended by a crazy
rabble of Arabs who thrust their services upon us uninvited. They
dragged us up a long inclined chute, and dripped candle-grease all over
us. This chute was not more than twice as wide and high as a Saratoga
trunk, and was walled, roofed and floored with solid blocks of Egyptian
granite as wide as a wardrobe, twice as thick and three times as long.
We kept on climbing, through the oppressive gloom, till I thought we
ought to be nearing the top of the pyramid again, and then came to the <
q>Queen's Chamber,
We struggled out to the open air and the bright sunshine, and for the
space of thirty minutes received ragged Arabs by couples, dozens and
platoons, and paid them bucksheesh for services they swore and proved
by each other that they had rendered, but which we had not been aware
of before--and as each party was paid, they dropped into the rear of
the procession and in due time arrived again with a newly-invented
delinquent list for liquidation.
We lunched in the shade of the pyramid, and in the midst of this
encroaching and unwelcome company, and then Dan and Jack and I started
away for a walk. A howling swarm of beggars followed us--surrounded
us--almost headed us off. A sheik, in flowing white bournous and gaudy
head-gear, was with them. He wanted more bucksheesh. But we had adopted
a new code--it was millions for defense, but not a cent for bucksheesh.
I asked him if he could persuade the others to depart if we paid him.
He said yes--for ten francs. We accepted the contract, and said--
He swung his long staff round his head and three Arabs bit the dust. He
capered among the mob like a very maniac. His blows fell like hail, and
wherever one fell a subject went down. We had to hurry to the rescue
and tell him it was only necessary to damage them a little, he need not
kill them.--In two minutes we were alone with the sheik, and remained
so. The persuasive powers of this illiterate savage were remarkable.
Each side of the Pyramid of Cheops is about as long as the Capitol at
Washington, or the Sultan's new palace on the Bosporus, and is longer
than the greatest depth of St. Peter's at Rome--which is to say that
each side of Cheops extends seven hundred and some odd feet. It is
about seventy-five feet higher than the cross on St. Peter's. The first
time I ever went down the Mississippi, I thought the highest bluff on
the river between St. Louis and New Orleans--it was near Selma,
Missouri--was probably the highest mountain in the world. It is four
hundred and thirteen feet high. It still looms in my memory with
undiminished grandeur. I can still see the trees and bushes growing
smaller and smaller as I followed them up its huge slant with my eye,
till they became a feathery fringe on the distant summit. This
symmetrical Pyramid of Cheops--this solid mountain of stone reared by
the patient hands of men--this mighty tomb of a forgotten
monarch--dwarfs my cherished mountain. For it is four hundred and
eighty feet high. In still earlier years than those I have been
recalling, Holliday's Hill, in our town, was to me the noblest work of
God. It appeared to pierce the skies. It was nearly three hundred feet
high. In those days I pondered the subject much, but I never could
understand why it did not swathe its summit with never-failing clouds,
and crown its majestic brow with everlasting snows. I had heard that
such was the custom of great mountains in other parts of the world. I
remembered how I worked with another boy, at odd afternoons stolen from
study and paid for with stripes, to undermine and start from its bed an
immense boulder that rested upon the edge of that hill-top; I
remembered how, one Saturday afternoon, we gave three hours of honest
effort to the task, and saw at last that our reward was at hand; I
remembered how we sat down, then, and wiped the perspiration away, and
waited to let a picnic party get out of the way in the road below--and
then we started the boulder. It was splendid. It went crashing down the
hill-side, tearing up saplings, mowing bushes down like grass, ripping
and crushing and smashing every thing in its path--eternally splintered
and scattered a wood pile at the foot of the hill, and then sprang from
the high bank clear over a dray in the road--the negro glanced up once
and dodged--and the next second it made infinitesimal mince-meat of a
frame cooper-shop, and the coopers swarmed out like bees. Then we said
it was perfectly magnificent, and left. Because the coopers were
starting up the hill to inquire.
Still, that mountain, prodigious as it was, was nothing to the Pyramid
of Cheops. I could conjure up no comparison that would convey to my
mind a satisfactory comprehension of the magnitude of a pile of
monstrous stones that covered thirteen acres of ground and stretched
upward four hundred and eighty tiresome feet, and so I gave it up and
walked down to the Sphynx.
After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so
sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of
earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any
thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image
of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of
the landscape, yet looking at nothing--nothing but distance and vacancy.
It was looking over and beyond everything of the present, and far into
the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time--over lines of
century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and
nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away
toward the horizon of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of
departed ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the
nations whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched,
whose annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and
death, the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years.
It was the type of an attribute of man--of a faculty of his heart and
brain. It was Memory--Retrospection--wrought into visible, tangible
form. All who know what pathos there is in memories of days that are
accomplished and faces that have vanished--albeit only a trifling score
of years gone by--will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells
in these grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they
knew before History was born--before Tradition had being--things that
were, and forms that moved, in a vague era which even Poetry and
Romance scarce know of--and passed one by one away and left the stony
dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange new age, and uncomprehended
scenes.
The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude;
it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And there is
that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone, with
its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one
something of what he shall feel when he shall stand at last in the
awful presence of God.
There are some things which, for the credit of America, should be left
unsaid, perhaps; but these very things happen sometimes to be the very
things which, for the real benefit of Americans, ought to have
prominent notice. While we stood looking, a wart, or an excrescence of
some kind, appeared on the jaw of the Sphynx. We heard the familiar
clink of a hammer, and understood the case at once. One of our
well-meaning reptiles--I mean relic-hunters--had crawled up there and
was trying to break a
The Sphynx: a hundred and twenty-five feet long, sixty feet high, and a
hundred and two feet around the head, if I remember rightly--carved out
of one solid block of stone harder than any iron. The block must have
been as large as the Fifth Avenue Hotel before the usual waste (by the
necessities of sculpture) of a fourth or a half of the original mass
was begun. I only set down these figures and these remarks to suggest
the prodigious labor the carving of it so elegantly, so symmetrically,
so faultlessly, must have cost. This species of stone is so hard that
figures cut in it remain sharp and unmarred after exposure to the
weather for two or three thousand years. Now did it take a hundred
years of patient toil to carve the Sphynx? It seems probable.
Something interfered, and we did not visit the Red Sea and walk upon
the sands of Arabia. I shall not describe the great mosque of Mehemet
Ali, whose entire inner walls are built of polished and glistening
alabaster; I shall not tell how the little birds have built their nests
in the globes of the great chandeliers that hang in the mosque, and how
they fill the whole place with their music and are not afraid of any
body because their audacity is pardoned, their rights are respected,
and nobody is allowed to interfere with them, even though the mosque be
thus doomed to go unlighted; I certainly shall not tell the hackneyed
story of the massacre of the Mamelukes, because I am glad the lawless
rascals were massacred, and I do not wish to get up any sympathy in
their behalf; I shall not tell how that one solitary Mameluke jumped
his horse a hundred feet down from the battlements of the citadel and
escaped, because I do not think much of that--I could have done it
myself; I shall not tell of Joseph's well which he dug in the solid
rock of the citadel hill and which is still as good as new, nor how the
same mules he bought to draw up the water (with an endless chain) are
still at it yet and are getting tired of it, too; I shall not tell
about Joseph's granaries which he built to store the grain in, what
time the Egyptian brokers were
We were glad to have seen the land which was the mother of
civilization--which taught Greece her letters, and through Greece Rome,
and through Rome the world; the land which could have humanized and
civilized the hapless children of Israel, but allowed them to depart
out of her borders little better than savages. We were glad to have
seen that land which had an enlightened religion with future eternal
rewards and punishment in it, while even Israel's religion contained no
promise of a hereafter. We were glad to have seen that land which had
glass three thousand years before England had it, and could paint upon
it as none of us can paint now; that land which knew, three thousand
years ago, well nigh all of medicine and surgery which science has
discovered lately; which had all those curious surgical instruments
which science has invented recently; which had in high excellence a
thousand luxuries and necessities of an advanced civilization which we
have gradually contrived and accumulated in modern times and claimed as
things that were new under the sun; that had paper untold centuries
before we dreampt of it--and waterfalls before our women thought of
them; that had a perfect system of common schools so long before we
boasted of our achievements in that direction that it seems forever and
forever ago; that so embalmed the dead that flesh was made almost
immortal--which we can not do; that built temples which mock at
destroying time and smile grimly upon our lauded little prodigies of
architecture; that old land that knew all which we know now, perchance,
and more; that walked in the broad highway of civilization in the gray
dawn of creation, ages and ages before we were born; that left the
impress of exalted, cultivated Mind upon the eternal front of the
Sphynx to confound all scoffers who, when all her other proofs had
passed away, might seek to persuade the world that imperial Egypt, in
the days of her high renown, had groped in darkness.
*Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to
believe it. I can believe any thing.
[te
Chapter LIX
We were at sea now, for a very long voyage--we were to pass through the
entire length of the Levant; through the entire length of the
Mediterranean proper, also, and then cross the full width of the
Atlantic--a voyage of several weeks. We naturally settled down into a
very slow, stay-at-home manner of life, and resolved to be quiet,
exemplary people, and roam no more for twenty or thirty days. No more,
at least, than from stem to stern of the ship. It was a very
comfortable prospect, though, for we were tired and needed a long rest.
We were all lazy and satisfied, now, as the meager entries in my
note-book (that sure index, to me, of my condition,) prove. What a
stupid thing a note-book gets to be at sea, any way. Please observe the
style:@
Ten or eleven o'clock found us coming down to breakfast one morning in
Cadiz. They told us the ship had been lying at anchor in the harbor two
or three hours. It was time for us to bestir ourselves. The ship could
wait only a little while because of the quarantine. We were soon on
board, and within the hour the white city and the pleasant shores of
Spain sank down behind the waves and passed out of sight. We had seen
no land fade from view so regretfully.
It had long ago been decided in a noisy public meeting in the main
cabin that we could not go to Lisbon, because we must surely be
quarantined there. We did every thing by mass-meeting, in the good old
national way, from swapping off one empire for another on the programme
of the voyage down to complaining of the cookery and the scarcity of
napkins. I am reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery
made by a passenger. The coffee had been steadily growing more and more
execrable for the space of three weeks, till at last it had ceased to
be coffee altogether and had assumed the nature of mere discolored
water--so this person said. He said it was so weak that it was
transparent an inch in depth around the edge of the cup. As he
approached the table one morning he saw the transparent edge--by means
of his extraordinary vision--long before he got to his seat. He went
back and complained in a high-handed way to Capt. Duncan. He said the
coffee was disgraceful. The Captain showed his. It seemed tolerably
good. The incipient mutineer was more outraged than ever, then, at what
he denounced as the partiality shown the captain's table over the other
tables in the ship. He flourished back and got his cup and set it down
triumphantly, and said:
He smelt it--tasted it--smiled benignantly--then said:
The humbled mutineer smelt it, tasted it, and returned to his seat. He
had made an egregious ass of himself before the whole ship. He did it
no more. After that he took things as they came. That was me.
The old-fashioned ship-life had returned, now that we were no longer in
sight of land. For days and days it continued just the same, one day
being exactly like another, and, to me, every one of them pleasant. At
last we anchored in the open roadstead of Funchal, in the beautiful
islands we call the Madeiras.
The mountains looked surpassingly lovely, clad as they were in living
green; ribbed with lava ridges; flecked with white cottages; riven by
deep chasms purple with shade; the great slopes dashed with sunshine
and mottled with shadows flung from the drifting squadrons of the sky,
and the superb picture fitly crowned by towering peaks whose fronts
were swept by the trailing fringes of the clouds.
But we could not land. We staid all day and looked, we abused the man
who invented quarantine, we held half a dozen mass-meetings and crammed
them full of interrupted speeches, motions that fell still-born,
amendments that came to nought and resolutions that died from sheer
exhaustion in trying to get before the house. At night we set sail.
We averaged four mass-meetings a week for the voyage--we seemed always
in labor in this way, and yet so often fallaciously that whenever at
long intervals we were safely delivered of a resolution, it was cause
for public rejoicing, and we hoisted the flag and fired a salute.
Days passed--and nights; and then the beautiful Bermudas rose out of
the sea, we entered the tortuous channel, steamed hither and thither
among the bright summer islands, and rested at last under the flag of
England and were welcome. We were not a nightmare here, where were
civilization and intelligence in place of Spanish and Italian
superstition, dirt and dread of cholera. A few days among the breezy
groves, the flower gardens, the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of
blue water that went curving in and out, disappearing and anon again
appearing through jungle walls of brilliant foliage, restored the
energies dulled by long drowsing on the ocean, and fitted us for our
final cruise--our little run of a thousand miles to New
York--America--home.
We bade good-bye to
We sailed, and from that hour all idling ceased. Such another system of
overhauling, general littering of cabins and packing of trunks we had
not seen since we let go the anchor in the harbor of Beirout. Every
body was busy. Lists of all purchases had to be made out, and values
attached, to facilitate matters at the custom-house. Purchases bought
by bulk in partnership had to be equitably divided, outstanding debts
canceled, accounts compared, and trunks, boxes and packages labeled.
All day long the bustle and confusion continued.
And now came our first accident. A passenger was running through a
gangway, between decks, one stormy night, when he caught his foot in
the iron staple of a door that had been heedlessly left off a hatchway,
and the bones of his leg broke at the ancle. It was our first serious
misfortune. We had traveled much more than twenty thousand miles, by
land and sea, in many trying climates, without a single hurt, without a
serious case of sickness and without a death among five and sixty
passengers. Our good fortune had been wonderful. A sailor had jumped
overboard at Constantinople one night, and was seen no more, but it was
suspected that his object was to desert, and there was a slim chance,
at least, that he reached the shore. But the passenger list was
complete. There was no name missing from the register.
At last, one pleasant morning, we steamed up the harbor of New York,
all on deck, all dressed in Christian garb--by special order, for there
was a latent disposition in some quarters to come out as Turks--and
amid a waving of handkerchiefs from welcoming friends, the glad
pilgrims noted the shiver of the decks that told that ship and pier had
joined hands again and the long, strange cruise was over. Amen.@[te
Chapter LXI
In this place I will print an article which I wrote for the New York
Herald the night we arrived. I do it partly because my contract with my
publishers makes it compulsory; partly because it is a proper,
tolerably accurate, and exhaustive summing up of the cruise of the ship
and the performances of the pilgrims in foreign lands; and partly
because some of the passengers have abused me for writing it, and I
wish the public to see how thankless a task it is to put one's self to
trouble to glorify unappreciative people. I was charged with
return of the holy land excursionists--
the story of the cruise.
To the Editor of the Herald:
The steamer Quaker City has accomplished at last her extraordinary
voyage and returned to her old pier at the foot of Wall street. The
expedition was a success in some respects, in some it was not.
Originally it was advertised as a
The pilgrims played dominoes when too much Josephus or Robinson's Holy
Land Researches, or book-writing, made recreation necessary--for
dominoes is about as mild and sinless a game as any in the world,
perhaps, excepting always the ineffably insipid diversion they call
croquet, which is a game where you don't pocket any balls and don't
carom on any thing of any consequence, and when you are done nobody has
to pay, and there are no refreshments to saw off, and, consequently,
there isn't any satisfaction whatever about it--they played dominoes
till they were rested, and then they blackguarded each other privately
till prayer-time. When they were not seasick they were uncommonly
prompt when the dinner-gong sounded. Such was our daily life on board
the ship--solemnity, decorum, dinner, dominoes, devotions, slander. It
was not lively enough for a pleasure trip; but if we had only had a
corpse it would have made a noble funeral excursion. It is all over now;
but when I look back, the idea of these venerable fossils skipping
forth on a six months' picnic, seems exquisitely refreshing. The
advertised title of the expedition--
Wherever we went, in Europe, Asia, or Africa, we made a sensation, and,
I suppose I may add, created a famine. None of us had ever been any
where before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a wild
novelty to us, and we conducted ourselves in accordance with the
natural instincts that were in us, and trammeled ourselves with no
ceremonies, no conventionalities. We always took care to make it
understood that we were Americans--Americans! When we found that a good
many foreigners had hardly ever heard of America, and that a good many
more knew it only as a barbarous province away off somewhere, that had
lately been at war with somebody, we pitied the ignorance of the Old
World, but abated no jot of our importance. Many and many a simple
community in the Eastern hemisphere will remember for years the
incursion of the strange horde in the year of our Lord 1867, that
called themselves Americans, and seemed to imagine in some
unaccountable way that they had a right to be proud of it. We generally
created a famine, partly because the coffee on the Quaker City was
unendurable, and sometimes the more substantial fare was not strictly
first class; and partly because one naturally tires of sitting long at
the same board and eating from the same dishes.
The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They
looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of
America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They
noticed that we looked out for expenses, and got what we conveniently
could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from.
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to
them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand
their own language. One of our passengers said to a shopkeeper, in
reference to a proposed return to buy a pair of gloves,
The people stared at us every where, and we stared at them. We
generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with
them, because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we
crushed them. And yet we took kindly to the manners and customs, and
especially to the fashions of the various people we visited. When we
left the Azores, we wore awful capotes and used fine tooth
combs--successfully. When we came back from Tangier, in Africa, we were
topped with fezzes of the bloodiest hue, hung with tassels like an
Indian's scalp-lock. In France and Spain we attracted some attention in
these costumes. In Italy they naturally took us for distempered
Garibaldians, and set a gunboat to look for any thing significant in
our changes of uniform. We made Rome howl. We could have made any place
howl when we had all our clothes on. We got no fresh raiment in
Greece--they had but little there of any kind. But at Constantinople,
how we turned out! Turbans, scimetars, fezzes, horse-pistols, tunics,
sashes, baggy trowsers, yellow slippers--Oh, we were gorgeous! The
illustrious dogs of Constantinople barked their under jaws off, and
even then failed to do us justice. They are all dead by this time. They
could not go through such a run of business as we gave them and survive.
And then we went to see the Emperor of Russia. We just called on him as
comfortably as if we had known him a century or so, and when we had
finished our visit we variegated ourselves with selections from Russian
costumes and sailed away again more picturesque than ever. In Smyrna we
picked up camel's hair shawls and other dressy things from Persia; but
in Palestine--ah, in Palestine--our splendid career ended. They didn't
wear any clothes, there to speak of. We were satisfied, and stopped. We
made no experiments. We did not try their costume. But we astonished
the natives of that country. We astonished them with such
eccentricities of dress as we could muster. We prowled through the Holy
Land, from Cesarea Philippi to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, a weird
procession of pilgrims, gotten up regardless of expense, solemn,
gorgeous, green-spectacled, drowsing under blue umbrellas, and astride
of a sorrier lot of horses, camels and asses than those that came out
of Noah's ark, after eleven months of seasickness and short rations. If
ever those children of Israel in Palestine forget when Gideon's Band
went through there from America, they ought to be cursed once more and
finished. It was the rarest spectacle that ever astounded mortal eyes,
perhaps.
Well, we were at home in Palestine. It was easy to see that that was
the grand feature of the expedition. We had cared nothing much about
Europe. We galloped through the Louvre, the Pitti, the Ufizzi, the
Vatican--all the galleries--and through the pictured and frescoed
churches of Venice, Naples, and the cathedrals of Spain; some of us
said that certain of the great works of the old masters were glorious
creations of genius, (we found it out in the guide-book, though we got
hold of the wrong picture sometimes,) and the others said they were
disgraceful old daubs. We examined modern and ancient statuary with a
critical eye in Florence, Rome, or any where we found it, and praised
it if we saw fit, and if we didn't we said we preferred the wooden
Indians in front of the cigar stores of America. But the Holy Land
brought out all our enthusiasm. We fell into raptures by the barren
shores of Galilee; we pondered at Tabor and at Nazareth; we exploded
into poetry over the questionable loveliness of Esdraelon; we meditated
at Jezreel and Samaria over the missionary zeal of Jehu; we
rioted--fairly rioted among the holy places of Jerusalem; we bathed in
Jordan and the Dead Sea, reckless whether our accident-insurance
policies were extra-hazardous or not, and brought away so many jugs of
precious water from both places that all the country from Jericho to
the mountains of Moab will suffer from drouth this year, I think. Yet,
the pilgrimage part of the excursion was its pet feature--there is no
question about that. After dismal, smileless Palestine, beautiful Egypt
had few charms for us. We merely glanced at it and were ready for home.
They wouldn't let us land at Malta--quarantine; they would not let us
land in Sardinia; nor at Algiers, Africa; nor at Malaga, Spain, nor
Cadiz, nor at the Madeira islands. So we got offended at all foreigners
and turned our backs upon them and came home. I suppose we only stopped
at the Bermudas because they were in the programme. We did not care any
thing about any place at all. We wanted to go home. Homesickness was
abroad in the ship--it was epidemic. If the authorities of New York had
known how badly we had it, they would have quarantined us here.
The grand pilgrimage is over. Good-bye to it, and a pleasant memory to
it, I am able to say in all kindness. I bear no malice, no ill-will
toward any individual that was connected with it, either as passenger
or officer. Things I did not like at all yesterday I like very well
to-day, now that I am at home, and always hereafter I shall be able to
poke fun at the whole gang if the spirit so moves me to do, without
ever saying a malicious word. The expedition accomplished all that its
programme promised that it should accomplish, and we ought all to be
satisfied with the management of the matter, certainly. Bye-bye!
Mark Twain
I call that complimentary. It is complimentary; and yet I never have
received a word of thanks for it from the Hadjis; on the contrary I
speak nothing but the serious truth when I say that many of them even
took exceptions to the article. In endeavoring to please them I slaved
over that sketch for two hours, and had my labor for my pains. I never
will do a generous deed again.
[te
Conclusion
Nearly one year has flown since this notable pilgrimage was ended; and
as I sit here at home in San Francisco thinking, I am moved to confess
that day by day the mass of my memories of the excursion have grown
more and more pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of travel which
encumbered them flitted one by one out of my mind--and now, if the
Quaker City were weighing her anchor to sail away on the very same
cruise again, nothing could gratify me more than to be a passenger.
With the same captain and even the same pilgrims, the same sinners. I
was on excellent terms with eight or nine of the excursionists (they
are my staunch friends yet,) and was even on speaking terms with the
rest of the sixty-five. I have been at sea quite enough to know that
that was a very good average. Because a long sea-voyage not only brings
out all the mean traits one has, and exaggerates them, but raises up
others which he never suspected he possessed, and even creates new ones.
A twelve months' voyage at sea would make of an ordinary man a very
miracle of meanness. On the other hand, if a man has good qualities,
the spirit seldom moves him to exhibit them on shipboard, at least with
any sort of emphasis. Now I am satisfied that our pilgrims are pleasant
old people on shore; I am also satisfied that at sea on a second voyage
they would be pleasanter, somewhat, than they were on our grand
excursion, and so I say without hesitation that I would be glad enough
to sail with them again. I could at least enjoy life with my handful of
old friends. They could enjoy life with their cliques as
well--passengers invariably divide up into cliques, on all ships.
And I will say, here, that I would rather travel with an excursion
party of Methuselahs than have to be changing ships and comrades
constantly, as people do who travel in the ordinary way. Those latter
are always grieving over some other ship they have known and lost, and
over other comrades whom diverging routes have separated from them.
They learn to love a ship just in time to change it for another, and
they become attached to a pleasant traveling companion only to lose him.
They have that most dismal experience of being in a strange vessel,
among strange people who care nothing about them, and of undergoing the
customary bullying by strange officers and the insolence of strange
servants, repeated over and over again within the compass of every
month. They have also that other misery of packing and unpacking
trunks--of running the distressing gauntlet of custom-houses--of the
anxieties attendant upon getting a mass of baggage from point to point
on land in safety. I had rather sail with a whole brigade of patriarchs
than suffer so. We never packed our trunks but twice--when we sailed
from New York, and when we returned to it. Whenever we made a land
journey, we estimated how many days we should be gone and what amount
of clothing we should need, figured it down to a mathematical nicety,
packed a valise or two accordingly, and left the trunks on board. We
chose our comrades from among our old, tried friends, and started. We
were never dependent upon strangers for companionship. We often had
occasion to pity Americans whom we found traveling drearily among
strangers with no friends to exchange pains and pleasures with.
Whenever we were coming back from a land journey, our eyes sought one
thing in the distance first--the ship--and when we saw it riding at
anchor with the flag apeak, we felt as a returning wanderer feels when
he sees his home. When we stepped on board, our cares vanished, our
troubles were at an end--for the ship was home to us. We always had the
same familiar old state-room to go to, and feel safe and at peace and
comfortable again.
I have no fault to find with the manner in which our excursion was
conducted. Its programme was faithfully carried out--a thing which
surprised me, for great enterprises usually promise vastly more than
they perform. It would be well if such an excursion could be gotten up
every year and the system regularly inaugurated. Travel is fatal to
prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need
it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men
and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of
the earth all one's lifetime.
The Excursion is ended, and has passed to its place among the things
that were. But its varied scenes and its manifold incidents will linger
pleasantly in our memories for many a year to come. Always on the wing,
as we were, and merely pausing a moment to catch fitful glimpses of the
wonders of half a world, we could not hope to receive or retain vivid
impressions of all it was our fortune to see. Yet our holyday flight
has not been in vain--for above the confusion of vague recollections,
certain of its best prized pictures lift themselves and will still
continue perfect in tint and outline after their surroundings shall
have faded away.
We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of
Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again,
we hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw
majestic Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset
and swimming in a sea of rainbows. In fancy we shall see Milan again,
and her stately Cathedral with its marble wilderness of graceful spires.
And Padua--Verona--Como, jeweled with stars; and patrician Venice,
afloat on her stagnant flood--silent, desolate, haughty--scornful of
her humbled state--wrapping herself in memories of her lost fleets, of
battle and triumph, and all the pageantry of a glory that is departed.
We can not forget Florence--Naples--nor the foretaste of heaven that is
in the delicious atmosphere of Greece--and surely not Athens and the
broken temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome--nor the
green plain that compasses her round about, contrasting its brightness
with her gray decay--nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the
plain and clothe their looped and windowed raggedness with vines. We
shall remember St. Peter's: not as one sees it when he walks the
streets of Rome and fancies all her domes are just alike, but as he
sees it leagues away, when every meaner edifice has faded out of sight
and that one dome looms superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of
dignity and grace, strongly outlined as a mountain.
We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus--the colossal
magnificence of Baalbec--the Pyramids of Egypt--the prodigious form,
the benignant countenance of the Sphynx--Oriental Smyrna--sacred
Jerusalem--Damascus, the
@[te
Style
--Aristocratic Visitors--Munchausenizing<
/q> with Them--Closing Ceremonies 309
Oriental Splendor
Fraud--The Biblical Crown of Life
--Pilgrim
Prophecy-Savans--Sociable Armenian Girls--A Sweet Reminiscence--The
Camels are Coming, Ha-ha!
320
Seven Churches
--Remains
of the Six Smyrnas--Mysterious Oyster Mine--Oysters Seeking Scenery--A
Millerite Tradition--A Railroad Out of its Sphere 327
Shrill Note of Preparation
--Distress About Dragomans and
Transportation--The Long Route
Adopted--In Syria--Something
about Beirout--A Choice Specimen of a Greek Ferguson
--Outfits--Hideous Horseflesh--Pilgrim Style
--What of Aladdin's
Lamp? 340
Jacksonville,
in the Mountains of Lebanon--Breakfasting above a
Grand Panorama--The Vanished City--The
Jericho
--The Pilgrim's Progress--Bible
Scenes--Mount Hermon, Joshua's Battle-Fields, etc.--The Tomb of Noah--A
Most Unfortunate People 346
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 358
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 368
Free Son of The Desert
--Ancient
Jezreel--Jehu's Achievements--Samaria and its Famous Siege 427
First Family
on Earth--The Oldest Manuscript Extant--The Genuine Tomb of
Joseph--Jacob's Well--Shiloh--Camping with the Arabs--Jacob's
Ladder--More Desolation--Ramah, Boroth, the Tomb of Samuel, the
Fountain of Beira--Impatience--Approaching Jerusalem--The Holy City in
Sight--Noting its Prominent Features--Domiciled Within the Sacred Walls
439
The Joy of the Whole Earth
--Description of Jerusalem--Church of
the Holy Sepulchre--The Stone of Unction--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's 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. Dimas, the Penitent
Thief--The Late Emperor Maximilian's Contribution--Grotto wherein the
Crosses were Found, and the Nails, and the Crown of Thorns--Chapel of
the Mocking--Tomb of Melchizedek--Graves of Two Renowned Crusaders--The
Place of the
Sorrowful Way
--The Legend of St. Veronica's Handkerchief--An
Illustrious Stone--House of the Wandering Jew--The Tradition of the
Wanderer--Solomon's Temple--Mosque of Omar--Moslem Traditions--Women
not Admitted
--The Fate of a Gossip--Turkish Sacred Relics--Judgment
Seat of David and Saul--Genuine Precious Remains of Solomon's
Temple--Surfeited with Sights--The Pool of Siloam--The Garden of
Gethsemane and Other Sacred
Bedouins!
--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
Admitted--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 Famous Milk
Grotto--Tradition--Return to
Jerusalem--Exhausted 468
Home
as it is in a
Pleasure-Ship--Shaking Hands
with the Vessel--Jack in
Costume--His Father'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 Cairo--Shepheard's Hotel Contrasted with a Certain American
Hotel--Preparing for the Pyramids 487
Recherch;aae
Donkeys--A Wild Ride--Specimens of Egyptian
Modesty--Moses in the Bulrushes--Place where the Holy Family
Sojourned--Distant view of the Pyramids--A Nearer View--The
Ascent--Superb View 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 494
Our Friends the Bermudians
--Packing Trunks
for Home--Our First Accident--The Long Cruise Drawing to a Close--At
Home Amen 507
Big Dipper
they
were so tired of; and they were to see the ships of twenty navies--the
customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples--the great cities of
half a world--they were to hob-nob with nobility and hold friendly
converse with kings and princes, Grand Moguls, and the anointed lords
of mighty empires!
magnificent city of
palaces,
and visit the birth-place of Columbus, twelve miles off,
over a beautiful road built by Napoleon I. From this point, excursions
may be made to Milan, Lakes Como and Maggiore, or to Milan, Verona,
(famous for its extraordinary fortifications,) Padua, and Venice. Or,
if passengers desire to visit Parma (famous for Correggio's frescoes,)
and Bologna, they can by rail go on to Florence, and rejoin the steamer
at Leghorn, thus spending about three weeks amid the cities most famous
for art in Italy.
Leaning Tower,
and Lucca and its baths, and Roman amphitheatre; Florence, the most
remote, being distant by rail about sixty miles.
Scylla
on the
one hand and Charybdis
on the other, along the east coast of
Sicily, and in sight of Mount ;aEtna, along the south coast of Italy,
the west and south coast of Greece, in sight of ancient Crete, up
Athens Gulf, and into the Pir;aeus, Athens will be reached in two and a
half or three days. After tarrying here awhile, the Bay of Salamis will
be crossed, and a day given to Corinth, whence the voyage will be
continued to Constantinople, passing on the way through the Grecian
Archipelago, the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, and the mouth of the
Golden Horn, and arriving in about forty-eight hours from Athens.
I do not know a spot on the globe which so much astonishes
and delights upon first arrival as Madeira.
A stay of one or two
days will be made here, which, if time permits, may be extended, and
passing on through the islands, and probably in sight of the Peak of
Teneriffe, a southern track will be taken, and the Atlantic crossed
within the latitudes of the Northeast trade winds, where mild and
pleasant weather, and a smooth sea, can always be expected.
Quaker City
has been chartered for the occasion, and will leave New
York, June 8th. Letters have been issued by the government commending
the party to courtesies abroad.
our friends the Bermudians!
People in Europe desiring to join
the Excursion--contagious sickness to be avoided--boating at the
expense of the ship--physician on board--the circuit of the globe to be
made if the passengers unanimously desired it--the company to be
rigidly selected by a pitiless Committee on Applications
--the
vessel to be as rigidly selected by as pitiless a Committee on
Selecting Steamer.
Human nature could not withstand these
bewildering temptations. I hurried to the Treasurer's office and
deposited my ten per cent. I rejoiced to know that a few vacant
state-rooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal
examination into my character, by that bowelless committee, but I
referred to all the people of high standing I could think of in the
community who would be least likely to know any thing about me.
select.
Drummer Boy of the Potomac
deserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left!
battery of guns
from the Navy
Department, (as per advertisement,) to be used in answering royal
salutes; and the document furnished by the Secretary of the Navy, which
was to make Gen. Sherman and party
welcome guests in the courts
and camps of the old world, was still left to us, though both document
and battery, I think, were shorn of somewhat of their original august
proportions. However, had not we the seductive programme, still, with
its Paris, its Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and our
friends the Bermudians?
What did we care?@[te
Chapter II
select,
every day,
and banishing in sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we
were to have a little printing-press on board and issue a daily
newspaper of our own. I was glad to learn that our piano, our parlor
organ and our melodeon were to be the best instruments of the kind that
could be had in the market. I was proud to observe that among our
excursionists were three ministers of the gospel, eight doctors,
sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military and naval chieftains with
sounding titles, an ample crop of Professors
of various kinds,
and a gentleman who had Commissioner of the United States of America
to Europe, Asia, and Africa
thundering after his name in one awful
blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a back seat in
that ship, because of the uncommonly select material that would alone
be permitted to pass through the camel's eye of that committee on
credentials; I had schooled myself to expect an imposing array of
military and naval heroes, and to have to set that back seat still
further back in consequence of it, may be; but I state frankly that I
was all unprepared for this crusher.
Never mind, I'll hand it to you in Paris.
But I am not going to Paris.
How is--what did I understand you to say?
I said I am not going to Paris.
Not going to Paris! Not g--well then, where in the nation are you
going to?
Nowhere at all.
Not any where whatsoever?--not any place on earth but this?
Not any place at all but just this--stay here all summer.
It was a
lie--that is my opinion of it!
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 all this furniture, there was still room to turn around
in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with entire security to the cat.
However, the room was large, for a ship's state-room, and was in every
way satisfactory.
cast off!
--a sudden rush to the
gangways--a scampering ashore of visitors--a revolution of the wheels,
and we were off--the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up
from the dripping crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the
slippery decks; the flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the
battery of guns
spake not--the ammunition was out.
Outside
we
could see, ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must lie
still, in the calm harbor, till the storm should abate. Our passengers
hailed from fifteen States; only a few of them had ever been to sea
before; manifestly it would not do to pit them against a full-blown
tempest until they had got their sea-legs on. Toward evening the two
steam-tugs that had accompanied us with a rollicking champagne-party of
young New Yorkers on board who wished to bid farewell to one of our
number in due and ancient form, departed, and we were alone on the deep.
On deep five fathoms, and anchored fast to the bottom. And out in the
solemn rain, at that. This was pleasuring with a vengeance.
outside,
as we could plainly see with the glasses. We could not
properly begin a pleasure excursion on Sunday; we could not offer
untried stomachs to so pitiless a sea as that. We must lie still till
Monday. And we did. But we had repetitions of church and
prayer-meetings; and so, of course, we were just as eligibly situated
as we could have been any where.
Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day.
Oh, my!
and then
staggered away and fell over the coop of a skylight.
Calm yourself, Sir--There is no hurry. It is a fine day, Sir.
Oh, my!
and
reeled away.
Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day for pleasuring. You were about
to say--
Oh, my!
Oh, my!
Oh, my
rather bad.
Come, now, that won't answer. Read the sign up there--No smoking
abaft the wheel!
Ah, ah--hands off! Come out of that!
Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant
voice?
It's Capt. Bursley--executive officer--sailing-master.
Now say--my friend--don't you know any better than to be whittling
the ship all to pieces that way? You ought to know better than that.
Who is that smooth-faced animated outrage yonder in the fine
clothes?
That's Capt. L****, the owner of the ship--he's one of the main
bosses.
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 said, deprecatingly:
I'll have to get you to give that to me, Sir. If there's any 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 that instrument. If you
want any figuring done--Aye-aye, Sir!
Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sanctimonious
countenance?
It's Capt. Jones, Sir--the chief mate.
Well. This goes clear away ahead of any thing I ever heard of before.
Do you--now I ask you as a man and a brother--do you think I could
venture to throw a rock here in any given direction without hitting a
captain of this ship?
Well, Sir, I don't know--I think likely you'd fetch the captain of
the watch, may be, because he's a-standing right yonder in the way.
seven bells;<
/q> 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.
for'rard
--for'rard of the
chicken-coops and the cattle--we had what was called horse-billiards.
Horse-billiards is a fine game. It affords good, active exercise,
hilarity, and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of hop-scotch
and 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 three or four steps, with some broad wooden disks before you
on the deck, and these you send forward with a vigorous thrust of a
long crutch. If a disk stops on a chalk line, it does not count 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 stationary floor, but with us, to
play it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling of the
ship to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for a
heel to the right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was
that that disk missed the whole hop-scotch plan a yard or two, and then
there was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.
Synagogue.
The devotions consisted only of two hymns
from the Plymouth Collection,
and a short prayer, and seldom
occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accompanied by
parlor organ music when the sea was smooth enough to allow a performer
to sit at the instrument without being lashed to his chair.
Oh, I'm coming along bully!
(he was a little given to slang, in
his happier moods,) I wrote ten pages in my journal last night--and
you know I wrote nine the night before, and twelve the night before
that. Why it's only fun!
What do you find to put in it, Jack?
Oh, every thing. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how
many miles we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino-games I
beat, and horse-billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the
text of the sermon, Sundays; (because that'll tell at home, you know,)
and the ships we saluted and what nation they were; and which way the
wind was, and whether there was a heavy sea, and what sail we carried,
though we don't ever carry any, principally, going against a head wind
always--wonder what is the reason of that?--and how many lies Moult has
told--Oh, every thing! I've got every thing down. My father told me to
keep that journal. Father wouldn't take a thousand dollars for it when
I get it done.
No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars--when you
get it done.
Do you?--no, but do you think it will, though?
Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars--when
you get it done. May be, more.
Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain't no slouch of a journal.
slouch of a journal.
One
night in Paris, after a hard day's toil in sight-seeing, I said:
Now I'll go and stroll around the caf;aaes awhile, Jack, and give
you a chance to write up your journal, old fellow.
Well, no, you needn't mind. I think I won't run that journal any
more. It is awful tedious. Do you know--I reckon I'm as much as four
thousand pages behind hand. I haven't got any France in it at all.
First I thought I'd leave France out and start fresh. But that wouldn't
do, would it? The governor would say, `Hello, here--didn't see any
thing in France?' That cat wouldn't fight, you know. First I thought
I'd copy France out of the guide-book, like old Badger in the for'rard
cabin who's writing a book, but there's more than three hundred pages
of it. Oh, I don't think a journal's any use--do you? They're only a
bother, ain't they?
Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a journal
properly kept, is worth a thousand dollars,--when you've got it done.<
/q>
@@You
would think that those men had an astonishing talent for seeing things
that had already passed away. It was what I thought when I stood before
the Last Supper and heard men apostrophizing wonders, and beauties and
perfections which had faded out of the picture and gone, a hundred
years before they were born. We can imagine the beauty that was once in
an aged face; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps; but we
can not absolutely see these things when they are not there. I am
willing to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon
the Last Supper and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left,
supply a tint that has faded away, restore an expression that is gone;
patch, and color, and add, to the dull canvas until at last its figures
shall stand before him aglow with the life, the feeling, the freshness,
yea, with all the noble beauty that was theirs when first they came
from the hand of the master. But I can not work this miracle. Can those
other uninspired visitors do it, or do they only happily imagine they
do?@@After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last
Supper was a very miracle of art once. But it was three hundred years
ago.@@It vexes me to hear people talk so glibly of A thousand!--well I should think so. I wouldn't finish it for a
million.
open his
performance in the after cabin at `two bells,' (9, p. m.,) and show the
passengers where they shall eventually arrive
--which was all very
well, but by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out upon
the canvas was a view of Greenwood Cemetery!
O Something-Or-Other How Sweet it is to Know
that he's his What's-his-Name,
(I do not remember the exact title
of it, but it was very plaintive, and full of sentiment;) Albert played
that pretty much all the time, until we contracted with him to restrain
himself. But nobody ever sang by moonlight on the upper deck, and the
congregational singing at church and prayers was not of a superior
order of architecture. I put up with it as long as I could, and then
joined in and tried to improve it, but this encouraged young George to
join in too, and that made a failure of it; because George's voice was
just turning,
and when he was singing a dismal sort of base, it
was apt to fly off the handle and startle every body with a most
discordant cackle on the upper notes. George didn't know the tunes,
either, which was also a drawback to his performances. I said:
Come, now, George, don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It
will provoke remark. Just stick to `Coronation,' like the others. It is
a good tune--you can't improve it any, just off-hand, in this way.
Why I'm not trying to improve it--and I am singing like the
others--just as it is in the notes.
There they are, down there every night at eight bells, praying for
fair winds--when they know as well as I do that this is the only ship
going east this time of the year, but there's a thousand coming
west--what's a fair wind for us is a head wind to them--the Almighty's
blowing a fair wind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to
turn it clear around so as to accommodate one,--and she a steamship at
that! It ain't good sense, it ain't good reason, it ain't good
Christianity, it ain't common human charity. Avast with such nonsense!<
/q>@[te
Chapter V
by and large,
as the sailors say, we had a pleasant
ten days' run from New York to the Azores islands--not a fast run, for
the distance is only twenty-four hundred miles--but a right pleasant
one, in the main. True, we had head-winds all the time, and several
stormy experiences which sent fifty per cent. of the passengers to bed,
sick, and made the ship look dismal and deserted--stormy experiences
that all will remember who weathered them on the tumbling deck, and
caught the vast sheets of spray that every now and then sprang high in
air from the weather bow and swept the ship like a thunder-shower; but
for the most part we had balmy summer weather, and nights that were
even finer than the days. We had the phenomenon of a full moon located
just in the same spot in the heavens at the same hour every night. The
reason of this singular conduct on the part of the moon did not occur
to us at first, but it did afterward when we reflected that we were
gaining about twenty minutes every day, because we were going east so
fast--we gained just about enough every day to keep along with the moon.
It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had left behind us, but
to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place, and remained always the
same.
ship-time.
He was proud of his new watch at first, and used to drag it out
promptly when eight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a
while as if he were losing confidence in it. Seven days out from New
York he came on deck, and said with great decision:
This thing's a swindle!
What's a swindle?
Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois--gave $150 for
her--and I thought she was good. And, by George, she is good on shore,
but somehow she don't keep up her lick here on the water--gets seasick,
may be. She skips; she runs along regular enough till half-past eleven,
and then, all of a sudden, she lets down. I've set that old regulator
up faster and faster, till I've shoved it clear around, but it don't do
any good; she just distances every watch in the ship, and clatters
along in a way that's astonishing till it is noon, but them eight bells
always gets in about ten minutes ahead of her any way. I don't know
what to do with her now. She's doing all she can--she's going her best
gait, but it won't save her. Now, don't you know, there ain't a watch
in the ship that's making better time than she is: but what does it
signify? When you hear them eight bells you'll find her just about ten
minutes short of her score, sure.
on its best gait,
and so nothing was left him but to
fold his hands and see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the
captain, and he explained to him the mystery of ship-time,
and
set his troubled mind at rest. This young man asked a great many
questions about seasickness before we left, and wanted to know what its
characteristics were, and how he was to tell when he had it. He found
out.
`Ten dinners, at 600 reis, 6,000 reis!' Ruin and desolation!
`Twenty-five cigars, at 100 reis, 2,500 reis!' Oh, my sainted
mother!
`Eleven bottles of wine, at 1,200 reis, 13,200 reis!' Be with us
all!
`Total, twenty one thousand seven hundred reis!' The suffering
Moses!--there ain't money enough in the ship to pay that bill!
Go--leave me to my misery, boys, I am a ruined community.
Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'll never, never stand
it. Here's a hundred and fifty dollars, Sir, and it's all you'll
get--I'll swim in blood, before I'll pay a cent more.
Sekki-yah!
and kept up a din and a racket that was worse than
Bedlam itself. These rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they were
always up to time--they can outrun and outlast a donkey. Altogether
ours was a lively and a picturesque procession, and drew crowded
audiences to the balconies wherever we went.
Now, that's enough, you know; you go slow here-after.
But the fellow knew no English and did not understand, so he simply
said, Sekki-yah!
and the donkey was off again like a shot. He
turned a corner suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak
truly, every mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was
piled up in a heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is
of little more consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all
stood still after the catastrophe, and waited for their dismembered
saddles to be patched up and put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher was
pretty angry, and wanted to swear, but every time he opened his mouth
his animal did so also, and let off a series of brays that drowned all
other sounds.
Sekki-yah,
and
singing John Brown's Body
in ruinous English.
clouds
and boisterously performing at dominoes in
the smoking room at night.
Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast?--It's
one of them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say--and there's the ultimate
one alongside of it.
The ultimate one--that is a good word--but the Pillars are not both
on the same side of the strait.
(I saw he had been deceived by a
carelessly written sentence in the Guide Book.)
Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it
that way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don't say nothing
about it,--just shirks it complete--Gibbons always done that when he
got stuck--but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, 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
be on the same side.
Ode to the Ocean in a Storm
in one half-hour, and an
Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the Ship
in the next,
the transition was considered to be rather abrupt; but when he sends an
invoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal and another to the
commander-in-chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar, with the
compliments of the Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the
passengers.
Interrogation Point,
and this by constant use has become
shortened to Interrogation.
He has distinguished himself twice
already. In Fayal they pointed out a hill and told him it was eight
hundred 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 useful hint from this remark which a thoughtful old pilgrim made:
Well, yes, it is a little remarkable--singular tunnel
altogether--stands up out of the top of the hill about two hundred
feet, and one end of it sticks out of the hill about nine hundred!
Oh, it is just right!
--yet I knew it was no such thing.
Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves--but some
gentlemen are so awkward about putting them on.
Ah, you have had experience!
;obA rip down the back of the hand.;
cb They are just right for you--your hand is very small--if they
tear you need not pay for them.
;obA rent across the middle.;cb
I can always tell when a gentleman understands putting on kid gloves.
There is a grace about it that only comes with long practice.
;
obThe 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.;cb
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.
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!
Some gentlemen don't know how to put on kid gloves at all; but some
do.
But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on
kid gloves.
Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very
long practice.
Yes, indeed, I've noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like
he was dragging a cat out of an ash-hole by the tail, he understands
putting on kid gloves; he's had ex--
Boys, enough of a thing's enough! You think you are very smart, I
suppose, but I don't. And if you go and tell any of those old gossips
in the ship about this thing, I'll never forgive you for it; that's all.
We are the Canaanites. We are they that have been driven out of the
land of Canaan by the Jewish robber, Joshua.
swamped the bank; had bought eleven
quarts of coin, and the head of the firm had gone on the street to
negotiate for the balance of the change.
I bought nearly half a
pint of their money for a shilling myself. I am not proud on account of
having so much money, though. I care nothing for wealth.
Hi-hi!
from our camp-followers, and a loud Halt!
from an English gentleman in the party checked the adventurer, and
then we were informed that so dire a profanation is it for a Christian
dog to set foot upon the sacred threshold of a Moorish mosque, that no
amount of purification can ever make it fit for the faithful to pray in
again. Had Blucher succeeded in entering the place, he would no doubt
have been chased through the town and stoned; and the time has been,
and not many years ago either, when a Christian would have been most
ruthlessly slaughtered, if captured in a mosque. We caught a glimpse of
the handsome 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.
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!
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.
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 that the law provides no adequate punishment for it, they make
him Consul-General to Tangier.
Well, that's gorgis, ain't it! They don't have none of them
things in our parts, do they? I consider that them effects is on
account of the superior refragability, as you may say, of the sun's
diramic combination with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of
Jubiter. What should you think?
Oh, go to bed!
Dan said that, and went away.
Oh, yes, it's all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an
argument which another man can't answer. Dan don't never stand any
chance in an argument with me. And he knows it, too. What should you
say, Jack?
Now doctor, don't you come bothering around me with that dictionary
bosh. I don't do you any harm, do I? Then you let me alone.
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. May be the Poet
Lariat ain't satisfied with them deductions?
'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
awfullest slush 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 intellect onto
things that's some value? Gibbons, and Hippocratus, and Sarcophagus,
and all them old ancient philosophers was down on poets--
Doctor,
I said, you are going to invent authorities, now, and
I'll leave you, too. I always enjoy your conversation, notwithstanding
the luxuriance of your syllables, when the philosophy you offer rests
on your own responsibility; but when you begin to soar--when you begin
to support it with the evidence of authorities who are the creations of
your own fancy, I lose confidence.
Reader,
who rose up and read that same old Declaration of
Independence which we have all listened to so often without paying any
attention to what it said; and after that the President piped the
Orator of the Day to quarters and he made that same old speech about
our national greatness which we so religiously believe and so fervently
applaud. Now came the choir into court again, with the complaining
instruments, and assaulted Hail Columbia; and when victory hung
wavering in the scale, George returned with his dreadful wild-goose
stop turned on and the choir won of course. A minister pronounced the
benediction, and the patriotic little gathering disbanded. The Fourth
of July was safe, as far as the Mediterranean was concerned.
Ladies and Gentlemen:--May we all live to a green old age, and be
prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne.
Oh, go to the pier, you old fool--that's where we want to go!
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.
There, now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the douain. Means
he is going to the hotel. Oh, certainly--we don't know the French
language.
Avez vous du vin?
Avez-vous du--vin!
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!
Bless you, why didn't you speak English before?--I don't know any
thing about your plagued French!
Merci, Monsieur,
and so it was a blighting triumph over the
disaffected member, any way. He was restive under these victories and
often asked:
What did that pirate say?
Why, he told us which way to go, to find the Grand Casino.
Yes, but what did he say?
Oh, it don't matter what he said--we understood him. These are
educated people--not like that absurd boatman.
Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction
that goes some where--for we've been going around in a circle for an
hour--I've passed this same old drug store seven times.
nub
of it, and then a word drops in that no man
can translate, and that story is ruined. An embankment fell on some
Frenchmen yesterday, and the papers are full of it to-day--but whether
those sufferers were killed, or crippled, or bruised, or only scared,
is more than I can possibly make out, and yet I would just give any
thing to know.
I never dine without wine, sir,
(which
was a pitiful falsehood,) and looked around upon the company to bask in
the admiration he expected to find in their faces. All these airs in a
land where they would as soon expect to leave the soup out of the bill
of fare as the wine!--in a land where wine is nearly as common among
all ranks as water! This fellow said: I am a free-born sovereign,
sir, an American, sir, and I want every body to know it!
He did not
mention that he was a lineal descendant of Balaam's ass; but every body
knew that without his telling it.
Defile not Heaven's anointed with unsanctified hands.
We did not
know his name, and so we called him The Pilgrim.
Dan said:
All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection.
Monte Christo.
It was here that the brave Abb;aae wrote a book with his own blood;
with a pen made of a piece of iron hoop, and by the light of a lamp
made out of shreds of cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food;
and then dug through the thick wall with some trifling instrument which
he wrought himself out of a stray piece of iron or table cutlery, and
freed Dant;aaes from his chains. It was a pity that so many weeks of
dreary labor should have come to naught at last.
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 beyond all question who the Iron Mask was, and what his
history had been, and why this most unusual punishment had been meted
out to him. Mystery! That was the charm. That speechless tongue, those
prisoned features, that heart so freighted with unspoken troubles, and
that breast so oppressed with its piteous secret, had been here. These
dank walls had known the man whose dolorous story is a sealed book
forever! There was fascination in the spot.@[te
Chapter XII
--thy
cornfields green, and sunny vines,@@O pleasant land of France!
@And
it is a pleasant land. No word describes it so felicitously as that one.
They say there is no word for home
in the French language.
Well, considering that they have the article itself in such an
attractive aspect, they ought to manage to get along without the word.
Let us not waste too much pity on homeless
France. I have
observed that Frenchmen abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going
back to France some time or other. I am not surprised at it now.@@We
are not infatuated with these French railway cars, though. We took
first class passage, not because we wished to attract attention by
doing a thing which is uncommon in Europe, but because we could make
our journey quicker by so doing. It is hard to make railroading
pleasant, in any country. It is too tedious. Stage-coaching is
infinitely more delightful. Once I crossed the plains and deserts and
mountains of the West, in a stage-coach, from the Missouri line to
California, and since then all my pleasure trips must be measured to
that rare holiday frolic. Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and
rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and never a weary moment,
never a lapse of interest! The first seven hundred miles a level
continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer and smoother than any
sea, and figured with designs fitted to its magnitude--the shadows of
the clouds. Here were no scenes but summer scenes, and no disposition
inspired by them but to lie at full length on the mail sacks, in the
grateful breeze, and dreamily smoke the pipe of peace--what other,
where all was repose and contentment? In cool mornings, before the sun
was fairly up, it was worth a lifetime of city toiling and moiling, to
perch in the foretop with the driver and see the six mustangs scamper
under the sharp snapping of a whip that never touched them; to scan the
blue distances of a world that knew no lords but us; to cleave the wind
with uncovered head and feel the sluggish pulses rousing to the spirit
of a speed that pretended to the resistless rush of a typhoon! Then
thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of limitless panoramas of
bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of pinnacled cathedrals, of
massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal rocks and splendid
with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy altitudes among
fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where thunders and
lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and the
storm-clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces!@@But
I forgot. I am in elegant France, now, and not skurrying through the
great South Pass and the Wind River Mountains, among antelopes and
buffaloes, and painted Indians on the war path. It is not meet that I
should make too disparaging comparisons between hum-drum travel on a
railway 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 pilgrimage between New
York and St. Louis. Of course our trip through France was not really
tedious, because all its scenes and experiences were new and strange;
but as Dan says, it had its discrepancies.
@@The cars are built
in compartments that hold eight persons each. Each compartment is
partially subdivided, and so there are two tolerably distinct parties
of four in it. Four face the other four. The seats and backs are
thickly padded and cushioned and are very comfortable; you can smoke,
if you wish; there are no bothersome peddlers; you are saved the
infliction of a multitude of disagreeable fellow-passengers. So far, so
well. But then the conductor locks you in when the train starts; there
is no water to drink, in the car; there is no heating apparatus for
night travel; if a drunken rowdy should get in, you could not remove a
matter of twenty seats from him, or enter another car; but above all,
if you are worn out and must sleep, you must sit up and do it in naps,
with cramped legs and in a torturing misery that leaves you withered
and lifeless the next day--for behold they have not that culmination of
all charity and human kindness, a sleeping car, in all France. I prefer
the American system. It has not so many grievous discrepancies.
@@In France, all is clockwork, all is order. They make no mistakes.
Every third man wears a uniform, and whether he be a Marshal of the
Empire or a brakeman, he is ready and perfectly willing to answer all
your questions with tireless politeness, ready to tell you which car to
take, yea, and ready to go and put you into it to make sure that you
shall not go astray. You 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 you. Once on
board, the train will not start till your ticket has been
examined--till every passenger's ticket has been inspected. This is
chiefly for your own good. If by any possibility you have managed to
take the wrong train, you will be handed over to a polite official who
will take you whither you belong, and bestow you with many an affable
bow. Your ticket will be inspected every now and then along the route,
and when it is time to change cars you will know it. You are in the
hands of officials who zealously study your welfare and your interest,
instead of turning their talents to the invention of new methods of
discommoding and snubbing you, as is very often the main employment of
that exceedingly self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of
America.@@But the happiest regulation in French railway government,
is--thirty minutes to dinner! No five-minute boltings of flabby rolls,
muddy coffee, questionable eggs, gutta-percha beef, and pies whose
conception and execution are a dark and bloody mystery to all save the
cook that created them! No; we sat calmly down--it was in old Dijon,
which is so easy to spell and so impossible to pronounce, except when
you civilize it and call it Demijohn--and poured out rich Burgundian
wines and munched calmly through a long table d'hote bill of fare,
snail-patties, delicious fruits and all, then paid the trifle it cost
and stepped happily aboard the train again, without once cursing the
railroad company. A rare experience, and one to be treasured forever.
@@They say they do not have accidents on these French roads, and I
think it must be true. If I remember rightly, we passed high above
wagon roads, or through tunnels under them, but never crossed them on
their own level. About every quarter of a mile, it seemed to me, a man
came out and held up a club till the train went by, to signify that
every thing was safe ahead. Switches were changed a mile in advance, by
pulling a wire rope that passed along the ground by the rail, from
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 shuddered at by railroad officials for many a day thereafter. No
blame attached to the officers
--that lying and disaster-breeding
verdict so common to our soft-hearted juries, is seldom rendered in
France. If the trouble occurred in the conductor's department, that
officer must suffer 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, and we believe them
because they are pleasant things to believe, and because they are
plausible and savor of the rigid subjection to law and order which we
behold about us 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 throttle-valves, and how they do brag,
and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth!
Their central idea, their grand aim, is to subjugate you, keep you
down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the blaze of their
cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you know any thing. They sneer at
your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your
treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your
traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities; they deride
your most trusted authors and demolish the fair images they have set up
for your willing worship with the pitiless ferocity of the fanatic
iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their
witless platitudes; for their supernatural ability to bore; for their
delightful asinine vanity; for their luxuriant fertility of imagination;
for their startling, their brilliant, their overwhelming
mendacity!@@By Lyons and the Saone (where we saw the lady of Lyons and
thought little of her comeliness;) by Villa Franca, Tonnere, venerable
Sens, Melun, Fontainebleau, and scores of other beautiful cities, we
swept, always noting the absence of hog-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 surface--we bowled along, hour after hour, that brilliant
summer day, and as nightfall approached we entered a wilderness of
odorous flowers and shrubbery, sped through it, and then, excited,
delighted, and half persuaded that we were only the sport of a
beautiful dream, lo, we stood in magnificent Paris!@@What excellent
order they kept about that vast depot! There was no frantic crowding
and jostling, no shouting and swearing, and no swaggering intrusion of
services by rowdy hackmen. These latter gentry stood outside--stood
quietly by their long line of vehicles and said never a word. A kind of
hackman-general seemed to have the whole matter of transportation in
his hands. He politely received the passengers and ushered them to the
kind of conveyance they wanted, and told the driver where to deliver
them. There was no talking back,
no dissatisfaction about
overcharging, no grumbling about 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 Rue de Rivoli
on
the street corner; we knew the genuine vast palace of the Louvre as
well as we knew its picture; when we passed by the Column of July we
needed no one to tell us what it was, or to remind us that on its site
once stood the grim Bastile, that grave of human hopes and happiness,
that dismal prison-house within whose dungeons so many young faces put
on the wrinkles of age, so many proud spirits grew humble, so many
brave hearts broke.@@We secured rooms at the hotel, or rather, we had
three beds put into one room, so that we might be together, and then we
went out to a restaurant, just after 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, the waiters so
polite, and the coming and departing company so moustached, so frisky,
so affable, so fearfully and wonderfully Frenchy! All the surroundings
were gay and enlivening. Two hundred people sat at little tables on the
sidewalk, sipping wine and coffee; the streets were thronged with light
vehicles and with joyous pleasure seekers; there was music in the air,
life and action all about us, and a conflagration of gaslight 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 the rack with questions
framed in the incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and
while they writhed, we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified
them, with their own vile verbs and participles.@@We noticed that in
the jewelry stores they had some of the articles marked gold,
and some labeled imitation.
We wondered at this extravagance of
honesty, and inquired into the matter. We were informed that inasmuch
as most people are not able to tell false gold from the genuine
article, the government compels jewelers to have their gold work
assayed and stamped officially according to its fineness, and their
imitation work duly labeled with the sign of its falsity. They told us
the jewelers would not dare to violate this law, and that whatever a
stranger bought in one of their stores might be depended upon as being
strictly what it was represented to be.--Verily, a wonderful land is
France!@@Then we hunted for a barber-shop. From earliest infancy it had
been a cherished ambition of mine to be shaved some day in a palatial
barber-shop 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 perfumes of Araby to intoxicate
my senses, and the slumbrous drone of distant noises to soothe me to
sleep. At the end of an hour I would wake up regretfully and find my
face as smooth and as soft as an infant's. Departing, I would lift my
hands above that barber's head and say, Heaven bless you, my son!
@@So we searched high and low, for a matter of two hours, but never a
barber-shop could we see. We saw only wig-making establishments, with
shocks of dead and repulsive hair bound upon the heads of painted waxen
brigands who stared out from glass boxes upon the passer-by, with their
stony eyes, and scared him with the ghostly white of their countenances.
We shunned these signs for a time, but finally we concluded that the
wig-makers must of necessity be the barbers as well, since we could
find no single legitimate representative of the fraternity. We entered
and asked, and found that it was even so.@@I said I wanted to be shaved.
The barber inquired where my room was. I said, never mind where my
room was, I wanted to be shaved--there, on the spot. The doctor said he
would be shaved also. Then there was an excitement among those two
barbers! There was a wild consultation, and afterwards a hurrying to
and fro and a feverish gathering up of razors from obscure places and a
ransacking for soap. Next they took us into a little mean, shabby back
room; they got two ordinary sitting-room chairs and placed us in them,
with our coats on. My old, old dream of bliss vanished into thin
air!@@I sat bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the
wig-making villains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and
finished by plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I expelled the
nasty stuff with a strong English expletive and said, Foreigner,
beware!
Then this outlaw strapped his razor on his boot, hovered
over me ominously for six fearful seconds, and then swooped down upon
me like the genius of destruction. The first rake of his razor loosened
the very hide from my face and lifted me out of the chair. I stormed
and raved, and the other boys enjoyed it. Their beards are not strong
and thick. Let us draw the curtain over this harrowing scene. Suffice
it that I submitted, and went through with the cruel infliction of a
shave by a French barber; tears of exquisite agony coursed down my
cheeks, now and then, but I survived. Then the incipient assassin held
a basin of water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face,
and into my bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense
of washing away the soap and blood. He dried my features with a towel,
and was going to comb my hair; but I asked to be excused. I said, with
withering irony, that it was sufficient to be skinned--I declined to be
scalped.@@I went away from there with my handkerchief about my face,
and never, never, never desired to dream of palatial Parisian
barber-shops any more. The truth is, as I believe I have since found
out, that they have no barber shops worthy of the name, in Paris--and
no barbers, either, for that matter. The impostor who does duty as a
barber, brings his pans and 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 impossible scratches,
that were perfectly bewildering. We had played at Gibraltar with balls
the size of a walnut, on a table like a public square--and in both
instances we achieved far more aggravation than amusement. We expected
to fare better here, but we were mistaken. The cushions were a good
deal higher than the balls, and as the balls had a fashion of always
stopping under the cushions, we accomplished very little in the way of
caroms. The cushions were hard and unelastic, and the cues were so
crooked that in making a shot you had to allow for the curve or you
would infallibly put the English
on the wrong side of the 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 caf;aaes and took supper and tested
the wines of the country, as we had been instructed to do, and found
them harmless and unexciting. They might have been exciting, however,
if we had chosen to drink a sufficiency of them.@@To close our first
day in Paris cheerfully and pleasantly, we now sought our grand room in
the Grand Hotel du Louvre and climbed into our sumptuous bed, to read
and smoke--but alas!@@It was pitiful,@@In a whole city-full,@@Gas we
had none.@@No gas to read by--nothing but dismal candles. It was a
shame. We tried to map out excursions for the morrow; we puzzled over
French Guides to Paris;
we talked disjointedly, in a vain
endeavor to make head or tail of the wild chaos of the day's sights and
experiences; we subsided to indolent smoking; we gaped and yawned, and
stretched--then feebly wondered if we were really and truly in renowned
Paris, and drifted drowsily away into that vast mysterious void which
men call sleep.@@*They go on the principle that it is better that one
innocent man should suffer than five hundred.@@@@[te
Chapter XIII
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.
speaky
the English quite as pairfaitemaw
as he had
pretended he could.
Billfinger! Oh, carry me home to die!
aside
from Dan. The atrocious name grated harshly on
my ear, too. The most of us can learn to forgive, and even to like, a
countenance that strikes us unpleasantly at first, but few of us, I
fancy, become reconciled to a jarring name so easily. I was almost
sorry we had hired this man, his name was so unbearable. However, no
matter. We were impatient to start. Billfinger stepped to the door to
call a carriage, and then the doctor said:
Well, the guide goes with the barber-shop, with the billiard-table,
with the gasless room, and may be with many another pretty romance of
Paris. I expected to have a guide named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand
de la Chartreuse, or something that would sound grand in letters to the
villagers at home; but to think of a Frenchman by the name of
Billfinger! Oh! this is absurd, you know. This will never do. We can't
say Billfinger; it is nauseating. Name him over again: what had we
better call him? Alexis du Caulain-court?
Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville,
I suggested.
Call him Ferguson,
said Dan.
discrepancy
about him. He was always wanting us
to buy things. On the shallowest pretenses, he would inveigle us into
shirt stores, boot stores, tailor shops, glove shops--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 minutes, the carriage stopped.
What's this?
Zis is ze finest silk magazin in Paris--ze most celebrate.
What did you come here for? We told you to take us to the palace of
the Louvre.
I suppose ze gentleman say he wish to buy some silk.
You are not required to `suppose' things for the party, Ferguson. We
do not wish to tax your energies too much. We will bear some of the
burden and heat of the day ourselves. We will endeavor to do such
`supposing' as is really necessary to be done. Drive on.
So spake
the doctor.
Ah, the palace of the Louvre: beautiful, beautiful edifice! Does the
Emperor Napoleon live here now, Ferguson?
Ah, doctor! you do jest; zis is not ze palace; we come there
directly. But since we pass right by zis store, where is such beautiful
silk--
Ah! I see, I see. I meant to have told you that we did not wish to
purchase any silks to-day; but in my absent-mindedness I forgot it. I
also meant to tell you we wished to go directly to the Louvre; but I
forgot that also. However, we will go there now. Pardon my seeming
carelessness, Ferguson. Drive on.
At last! How imposing the Louvre is, and yet how small! how
exquisitely fashioned! how charmingly situated!--Venerable, venerable
pile--
Pairdon, doctor, zis is not ze Louvre--it is--
What is it?
I have ze idea--it come to me in a moment--zat ze silk in zis
magazin--
Ferguson, how heedless I am. I fully intended to tell you that we
did not wish to buy any silks to-day, and I also intended to tell you
that we yearned to go immediately to the palace of the Louvre, but
enjoying the happiness of seeing you devour four breakfasts this
morning has so filled me with pleasurable emotions that I neglect the
commonest interests of the time. However, we will proceed now to the
Louvre, Ferguson.
But doctor,
(excitedly,) it will take not a minute--not but
one small minute! Ze gentleman need not to buy if he not wish to--but
only look at ze silk--look at ze beautiful fabric.
;obThen
pleadingly.;cb Sair--just only one leetle moment!
Confound the idiot! I don't want to see any silks to-day,
and I won't look at them. Drive on.
We need no silks now, Ferguson. Our hearts yearn for
the Louvre. Let us journey on--let us journey on.
But doctor! it is only one moment--one leetle moment. And ze time
will be save--entirely save! Because zere is nothing to see, now--it is
too late. It want ten minute to four and ze Louvre close at four--only
one leetle moment, doctor!
A
mutton-roast to-day, or will you have a nice porter-house steak?
Now this don't afford you any satisfaction--a party with his head
shot off is what you need.
Well!
I said. How is this?
It nearly took my breath away.
Dan, just look at this girl, how beautiful she is!
I thank you more for the evident sincerity of the compliment, sir,
than for the extraordinary publicity you have given to it!
This in
good, pure English.
Can-can.
A handsome girl in the set
before me tripped forward lightly to meet the opposite
gentleman--tripped back again, grasped her dresses vigorously on both
sides with her hands, raised them pretty high, danced an extraordinary
jig that had more activity and exposure about it than any jig I ever
saw before, and then, drawing her clothes still higher, she advanced
gaily to the centre and launched a vicious kick full at her vis-a-vis
that must infallibly have removed his nose if he had been seven feet
high. It was a mercy he was only six.
Alloway's auld haunted kirk.
grit
their teeth over their heavy
sorrows, and to purchase the sympathies of the chastened spirits of
that tomb with offerings of immortelles and budding flowers.
I can not cease to be astonished at the simplicity of
Fulbert; I was as much surprised as if he had placed a lamb in the
power of a hungry wolf. Heloise and I, under pretext of study, gave
ourselves up wholly to love, and the solitude that love seeks our
studies procured for us. Books were open before us, but we spoke
oftener of love than philosophy, and kisses came more readily from our
lips than words.
@And so, exulting over an honorable confidence
which to his degraded instinct was a ludicrous simplicity,
this
unmanly Abelard seduced the niece of the man whose guest he was. Paris
found it out. Fulbert was told of it--told often--but refused to
believe it. He could not comprehend how a man could be so depraved as
to use the sacred protection and security of hospitality as a means for
the commission of such a crime as that. But when he heard the rowdies
in the streets singing the love-songs of Abelard to Heloise, the case
was too plain--love-songs come not properly within the teachings of
rhetoric and philosophy.@@He drove Abelard from his house. Abelard
returned secretly and carried Heloise away to Palais, in Brittany, his
native country. Here, shortly afterward, she bore a son, who, from his
rare beauty, was surnamed Astrolabe--William G. The girl's flight
enraged Fulbert, and he longed for vengeance, but feared to strike lest
retaliation visit Heloise--for he still loved her tenderly. At length
Abelard offered to marry Heloise--but on a shameful condition: that the
marriage should be kept secret from the world, to the end that (while
her good name remained a wreck, as before,) his priestly reputation
might be kept untarnished. It was like that miscreant. Fulbert saw his
opportunity and consented. He would see the parties married, and then
violate the confidence of the man who had taught him that trick; he
would divulge the secret and so remove somewhat of the obloquy that
attached to his niece's fame. But the niece suspected his scheme. She
refused the marriage, at first; she said Fulbert would betray the
secret to save her, and besides, she did not wish to drag down a lover
who was so gifted, so honored by the world, and who had such a splendid
career before him. It was noble, self-sacrificing love, and
characteristic of the pure-souled Heloise, but it was not good sense.
@@But she was overruled, and the private marriage took place. Now for
Fulbert! The heart so wounded should be healed at last; the proud
spirit so tortured should find rest again; the humbled head should be
lifted up once more. He proclaimed the marriage in the high places of
the city, and rejoiced that dishonor had departed from his house. But
lo! Abelard denied the marriage! Heloise denied it! The people, knowing
the former circumstances, might have believed Fulbert, had only Abelard
denied it, but when the person chiefly interested--the girl
herself--denied it, they laughed despairing Fulbert to scorn.@@The poor
canon of the cathedral of Paris was spiked again. The last hope of
repairing the wrong that had been done his house was gone. What next?
Human nature suggested revenge. He compassed it. The historian says:@
Ruffians, hired by Fulbert, fell upon Abelard by night, and inflicted
upon him a terrible and nameless mutilation.
@I am seeking the last
resting-place of those ruffians.
When I find it I shall shed
some tears on it, and stack up some bouquets and immortelles and cart
away from it some gravel whereby to remember that howsoever blotted by
crime their lives may have been, these ruffians did one just deed, at
any rate, albeit it was not warranted by the strict letter of the law.
@@Heloise entered a convent and gave good-bye to the world and its
pleasures for all time. For twelve years she never heard of
Abelard--never even heard his name mentioned. She had become prioress
of Argenteuil, and led a life of complete seclusion. She happened one
day to see a letter written by him, in which he narrated his own
history. She cried over it, and wrote him. He answered, addressing her
as his sister in Christ.
They continued to correspond, she in
the unweighed language of unwavering affection, he in the chilly
phraseology of the polished rhetorician. She poured out her heart in
passionate, disjointed sentences; he replied with finished essays,
divided deliberately into heads and sub-heads, premises and argument.
She showered upon him the tenderest epithets that love could devise, he
addressed her from the North Pole of his frozen heart as the Spouse
of Christ!
The abandoned villain!@@On account of her too easy
government of her nuns, some disreputable irregularities were
discovered among them, and the Abbot of St. Denis broke up her
establishment. Abelard was the official head of the monastery of St.
Gildas de Ruys, at that time, and when he heard of her homeless
condition a sentiment of pity was aroused in his breast (it is a wonder
the unfamiliar emotion did not blow his head off,) and he placed her
and her troop in the little oratory of the Paraclete, a religious
establishment which he had founded. She had many privations and
sufferings to undergo at first, but her worth and her gentle
disposition won influential friends for her, and she built up a wealthy
and flourishing nunnery. She became a great favorite with the heads of
the church, and also the people, though she seldom appeared in public.
She rapidly advanced in esteem, in good report and in usefulness, and
Abelard as rapidly lost ground. The Pope so honored her that he made
her the head of her order. Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and
ranking as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute, and
distrustful of his powers. He only needed a great misfortune to topple
him from the high position he held in the world of intellectual
excellence, and it came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle
St. Bernard in debate and crush him, he stood up in the presence of a
royal and illustrious assemblage, and when his antagonist had finished
he looked about him, and stammered a commencement; but his courage
failed him, the cunning of his tongue was gone: with his speech
unspoken, he trembled and sat down, a disgraced and vanquished champion.
@@He died a nobody, and was buried at Cluny, A. D., 1144. They removed
his body to the Paraclete afterward, and when Heloise died, twenty
years later, they buried her with him, in accordance with her last wish.
He died at the ripe age of 64, and she at 63. After the bodies had
remained entombed three hundred years, they were removed once more.
They were removed again in 1800, and finally, seventeen years
afterward, they were taken up and transferred to P;agere la Chaise,
where they will remain in peace and quiet until it comes time for them
to get up and move again.@@History is silent concerning the last acts
of the mountain howitzer. Let the world say what it will about him, I,
at least, shall always respect the memory and sorrow for the abused
trust, and the broken heart, and the troubled spirit of the old
smooth-bore. Rest and repose be his!@@Such is the story of Abelard and
Heloise. Such is the history that Lamartine has shed such cataracts of
tears over. But that man never could come within the influence of a
subject in the least pathetic without overflowing his banks. He ought
to be dammed--or leveed, I should more properly say. Such is the
history--not as it is usually told, but as it is when stripped of the
nauseous sentimentality that would enshrine for our loving worship a
dastardly seducer like Pierre Abelard. I have not a word to say against
the misused, faithful girl, and would not withhold from her grave a
single one of those simple tributes which blighted youths and maidens
offer to her memory, but I am sorry enough that I have not time and
opportunity to write four or five volumes of my opinion of her friend
the founder of the Parachute, or the Paraclete, or whatever it was.
@@The tons of sentiment I have wasted on that unprincipled humbug, in
my ignorance! I shall throttle down my emotions hereafter, about this
sort of people, until I have read them up and know whether they are
entitled to any tearful attentions or not. I wish I had my immortelles
back, now, and that bunch of radishes.@@In Paris we often saw in shop
windows the sign, English Spoken Here,
just as one sees in the
windows at home the sign, Ici on parle francaise.
We always
invaded these places at once--and invariably received the information,
framed in faultless French, that the clerk who did the English for the
establishment had just gone to dinner and would be back in an
hour--would Monsieur buy something? We wondered why those parties
happened to take their dinners at such erratic and extraordinary hours,
for we never called at a time when an exemplary Christian would be in
the least likely to be abroad on such an errand. The truth was, it was
a base fraud--a snare to trap the unwary--chaff to catch fledglings
with. They had no English-murdering clerk. They trusted to the sign to
inveigle foreigners into their lairs, and trusted to their own
blandishments to keep them there till they bought something.@@We
ferreted out another French imposition--a frequent sign to this effect:
All Manner of American Drinks Artistically Prepared Here.
We
procured the services of a gentleman experienced in the nomenclature of
the American bar, and moved upon the works of one of these impostors. A
bowing, aproned Frenchman skipped forward and said:@@Que voulez les
messieurs?
I do not know what Que voulez les messieurs means, but
such was his remark.@@Our General said, We will take a
whisky-straight.
@@;obA stare from the Frenchman.;cb@@Well, if
you don't know what that is, give us a champagne cock-tail.
@@;obA
stare and a shrug.;cb@@Well, then, give us a sherry cobbler.
@@The Frenchman was checkmated. This was all Greek to him.@@Give us
a brandy smash!
@@The Frenchman began to back away, suspicious of
the ominous vigor of the last order--began to back away, shrugging his
shoulders and spreading his hands apologetically.@@The General followed
him up and gained a complete victory. The uneducated foreigner could
not even furnish a Santa Cruz Punch, an Eye-Opener, a Stone-Fence, or
an Earthquake. It was plain that he was a wicked impostor.@@An
acquaintance of mine said, the other day, that he was doubtless the
only American visitor to the Exposition who had had the high honor of
being escorted by the Emperor's body guard. I said with unobtrusive
frankness that I was astonished that such a long-legged, lantern-jawed,
unprepossessing looking spectre as he should be singled out for a
distinction like that, and asked how it came about. He said he had
attended a great military review in the Champ de Mars, some time ago,
and while the multitude about him was growing thicker and thicker every
moment, he observed an open space inside the railing. He left his
carriage and went into it. He was the only person there, and so he had
plenty of room, and the situation being central, he could see all the
preparations going on about the field. By and by there was a sound of
music, and soon the Emperor of the French and the Emperor of Austria,
escorted by the famous Cent Gardes, entered the inclosure. They seemed
not to observe him, but directly, in response to a sign from the
commander of the Guard, a young lieutenant came toward him with a file
of his men following, halted, raised his hand and gave the military
salute, and then said in a low voice that he was sorry to have to
disturb a stranger and a gentleman, but the place was sacred to royalty.
Then this New Jersey phantom rose up and bowed and begged pardon, then
with the officer beside him, the file of men marching behind him, and
with every mark of respect, he was escorted to his carriage by the
imperial Cent Gardes! The officer saluted again and fell back, the New
Jersey sprite bowed in return and had presence of mind enough to
pretend that he had simply called on a matter of private business with
those emperors, and so waved them an adieu, and drove from the
field!@@Imagine a poor Frenchman ignorantly intruding upon a public
rostrum sacred to some six-penny dignitary in America. The police would
scare him to death, first, with a storm of their elegant blasphemy, and
then pull him to pieces getting him away from there. We are measurably
superior to the French in some things, but they are immeasurably our
betters in others.@@Enough of Paris for the present. We have done our
whole duty by it. We have seen the Tuileries, the Napoleon Column, the
Madeleine, that wonder of wonders the tomb of Napoleon, all the great
churches and museums, libraries, imperial palaces, and sculpture and
picture galleries, the Pantheon, Jardin des Plantes, the opera, the
circus, the Legislative Body, the billiard-rooms, the barbers, the
grisettes--@@Ah, the grisettes! I had almost forgotten. They are
another romantic fraud. They were (if you let the books of travel tell
it,) always so beautiful--so neat and trim, so graceful--so naive and
trusting--so gentle, so winning--so faithful to their shop duties, so
irresistible to buyers in their prattling importunity--so devoted to
their poverty-stricken students of the Latin Quarter--so light hearted
and happy on their Sunday picnics in the suburbs--and oh, so
charmingly, so delightfully immoral!@@Stuff! For three or four days I
was constantly saying:@@Quick, Ferguson! is that a grisette?
@@And he always said No.
@@He comprehended, at last, that I
wanted to see a grisette. Then he showed me dozens of them. They were
like nearly all the Frenchwomen I ever saw--homely. They had large
hands, large feet, large mouths; they had pug noses as a general thing,
and mustaches that not even good breeding could overlook; they combed
their hair straight back without parting; they were ill-shaped, they
were not winning, they were not graceful; I knew by their looks that
they ate garlic and onions; and lastly and finally, to my thinking it
would be base flattery to call them immoral.@@Aroint thee, wench! I
sorrow for the vagabond student of the Latin Quarter now, even more
than formerly I envied him. Thus topples to earth another idol of my
infancy.@@We have seen every thing, and to-morrow we go to Versailles.
We shall see Paris only for a little while as we come back to take up
our line of march for the ship, and so I may as well bid the beautiful
city a regretful farewell. We shall travel many thousands of miles
after we leave here, and visit many great cities, but we shall find
none so enchanting as this.@@Some of our party have gone to England,
intending to take a roundabout course and rejoin the vessel at Leghorn
or Naples, several weeks hence. We came near going to Geneva, but have
concluded to return to Marseilles and go up through Italy from Genoa.
@@I will conclude this chapter with a remark that I am sincerely proud
to be able to make--and glad, as well, that my comrades cordially
indorse it, to wit: by far the handsomest women we have seen in France
were born and reared in America.@@I feel, now, like a man who has
redeemed a failing reputation and shed lustre upon a dimmed escutcheon,
by a single just deed done at the eleventh hour.@@Let the curtain fall,
to slow music.@[te
Chapter XVI
inconvenience,
but naively remarks that it does not seem worthy of attention in the
happy state of tranquillity we now enjoy.
Moult.
was in England, Jack in
Switzerland, Charley in Spain. Blucher was gone, none could tell where.
But we were at sea again, and we had the stars and the ocean to look
at, and plenty of room to meditate in.
stub
down any where, but some vagabond will pounce upon it
on the instant. I like to smoke a good deal, but it wounds my
sensibilities to see one of these stub-hunters watching me out of the
corners of his hungry eyes and calculating how long my cigar will be
likely to last. It reminded me too painfully of that San Francisco
undertaker who used to go to sick-beds with his watch in his hand and
time the corpse. One of these stub-hunters followed us all over the
park last night, and we never had a smoke that was worth any thing. We
were always moved to appease him with the stub before the cigar was
half gone, because he looked so viciously anxious. He regarded us as
his own legitimate prey, by right of discovery, I think, because he
drove off several other professionals who wanted to take stock in us.
The Superb
and the City of Palaces
are names which Genoa
has held for centuries. She is full of palaces, certainly, and the
palaces are sumptuous inside, but they are very rusty without, and make
no pretensions to architectural magnificence. Genoa, the Superb,
would be a felicitous title if it referred to the women.
laugh a siege to
scorn.
A hundred feet front and a hundred high is about the style,
and you go up three flights of stairs before you begin to come upon
signs of occupancy. Every thing is stone, and stone of the
heaviest--floors, stairways, mantels, benches--every thing. The walls
are four to five feet thick. The streets generally are four or five to
eight feet wide and as crooked as a corkscrew. You go along one of
these gloomy cracks, and look up and behold the sky like a mere ribbon
of light, far above your head, where the tops of the tall houses on
either side of the street bend almost together. You feel as if you were
at the bottom of some tremendous abyss, with all the world far above
you. You wind in and out and here and there, in the most mysterious
way, and have no more idea of the points of the compass than if you
were a blind man. You can never persuade yourself that these are
actually streets, and the frowning, dingy, monstrous houses dwellings,
till you see one of these beautiful, prettily dressed women emerge from
them--see her emerge from a dark, dreary-looking den that looks dungeon
all over, from the ground away half-way up to heaven. And then you
wonder that such a charming moth could come from such a forbidding
shell as that. The streets are wisely made narrow and the houses heavy
and thick and stony, in order that the people may be cool in this
roasting climate. And they are cool, and stay so. And while I think of
it--the men wear hats and have very dark complexions, but the women
wear no head-gear but a flimsy veil like a gossamer's web, and yet are
exceedingly fair as a general thing. Singular, isn't it?
Asti
wines, which that
old doctor (whom we call the Oracle,) with customary felicity in the
matter of getting every thing wrong, misterms nasty.
But we must
go, nevertheless.
crude
bullion
of the assay offices of Nevada faded out of my memory.
There were Virgins and bishops there, above their natural size, made of
solid silver, each worth, by weight, from eight hundred thousand to two
millions of francs, and bearing gemmed books in their hands worth
eighty thousand; there were bas-reliefs that weighed six hundred
pounds, carved in solid silver; croziers and crosses, and candlesticks
six and eight feet high, all of virgin gold, and brilliant with
precious stones; and beside these were all manner of cups and vases,
and such things, rich in proportion. It was an Aladdin's palace. The
treasures here, by simple weight, without counting workmanship, were
valued at fifty millions of francs! If I could get the custody of them
for a while, I fear me the market price of silver bishops would advance
shortly, on account of their exceeding scarcity in the Cathedral of
Milan.
wis zo haut can be.
We wished to go to La Scala,
the largest theatre in the world, I think they call it. We did so. It
was a large place. Seven separate and distinct masses of humanity--six
great circles and a monster parquette.
Beware, woman! Go away from here--go away, now, or it will be the
worse for you. I am an unprotected male, but I will preserve my honor
at the peril of my life!
Oh, bring some soap, why don't you!
Soap, you know--soap. That is what I want--soap. S-o-a-p, soap;
s-o-p-e, soap; s-o-u-p, soap. Hurry up! I don't know how you Irish
spell it, but I want it. Spell it to suit yourself, but fetch it. I'm
freezing.
Dan, how often have we told you that these foreigners can not
understand English? Why will you not depend upon us? Why will you not
tell us what you want, and let us ask for it in the language of the
country? It would save us a great deal of the humiliation your
reprehensible ignorance causes us. I will address this person in his
mother tongue: `Here, cospetto! corpo di Bacco! Sacramento!
Solferino!--Soap, you son of a gun!' Dan, if you would let us talk for
you, you would never expose your ignorant vulgarity.
Paris, le 7 Juillet.
@@Monsieur le Landlord--Sir: Pourquoi don't you mettez some savon in
your bed-chambers? Est-ce que vous pensez I will steal it? La nuit pass;
aaee you charged me pour deux chandelles when I only had one; hier vous
avez charged me avec glace when I had none at all; tout les jours you
are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play
this savon dodge on me twice. Savon is a necessary de la vie to any
body but a Frenchman, et je l'aurai hors de cet h;afotel or make
trouble. You hear me. Allons.
notish.
This hotel which the best it is in Italy and most superb, is
handsome locate on the best situation of the lake, with the most
splendid view near the Villas Melzy, to the King of Belgian, and
Serbelloni. This hotel have recently enlarge, do offer all commodities
on moderate price, at the strangers gentlemen who whish spend the
seasons on the Lake Como.
The
Last Supper,
by Leonardo da Vinci. We are not infallible judges of
pictures, but of course we went there to see this wonderful painting,
once so beautiful, always so worshipped by masters in art, and forever
to be famous in song and story. And the first thing that occurred was
the infliction on us of a placard fairly reeking with wretched English.
Take a morsel of it:@Bartholomew (that is the first figure on the
left hand side at the spectator,) uncertain and doubtful about what he
thinks to have heard, and upon which he wants to be assured by himself
at Christ and by no others.
@Good, isn't it? And then Peter is
described as argumenting in a threatening and angrily condition at
Judas Iscariot.
@@This paragraph recalls the picture. The Last
Supper
is painted on the dilapidated wall of what was a little
chapel attached to the main church in ancient times, I suppose. It is
battered and scarred in every direction, and stained and discolored by
time, and Napoleon's horses kicked the legs off most the disciples when
they (the horses, not the disciples,) were stabled there more than half
a century ago.@@I recognized the old picture in a moment--the Saviour
with bowed head seated at the centre of a long, rough table with
scattering fruits and dishes upon it, and six disciples on either side
in their long robes, talking to each other--the picture from which all
engravings and all copies have been made for three centuries. Perhaps
no living man has ever known an attempt to paint the Lord's Supper
differently. The world seems to have become settled in the belief, long
ago, that it is not possible for human genius to outdo this creation of
Da Vinci's. I suppose painters will go on copying it as long as any of
the original is left visible to the eye. There were a dozen easels in
the room, and as many artists transferring the great picture to their
canvases. Fifty proofs of steel engravings and lithographs were
scattered around, too. And as usual, I could not help noticing how
superior the copies were to the original, that is, to my inexperienced
eye. Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a Michael Angelo, a
Caracci, or a Da Vinci (and we see them every day,) you find artists
copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. May be the
originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now.@@This
picture is about thirty feet long, and ten or twelve high, I should
think, and the figures are at least life size. It is one of the largest
paintings in Europe.@@The colors are dimmed with age; the countenances
are scaled and marred, and nearly all expression is gone from them; the
hair is a dead blur upon the wall, and there is no life in the eyes.
Only the attitudes are certain.@@People come here from all parts of the
world, and glorify this masterpiece. They stand entranced before it
with bated breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in
the catchy ejaculations of rapture:@@O, wonderful!
@@Such
expression!
@@Such grace of attitude!
@@Such dignity!
@@<
q>Such faultless drawing!Such matchless coloring!
@@Such
feeling!
@@What delicacy of touch!
@@What sublimity of
conception!
@@A vision! a vision!
@@I only envy these people;
I envy them their honest admiration, if it be honest--their delight, if
they feel delight. I harbor no animosity toward any of them. But at the
same time the thought will intrude itself upon me, How can they see
what is not visible? What would you think of a man who looked at some
decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra, and said: What
matchless beauty! What soul! What expression!
What would you think
of a man who gazed upon a dingy, foggy sunset, and said: What
sublimity! what feeling! what richness of coloring!
What would you
think of a man who stared in ecstacy upon a desert of stumps and said: <
q>Oh, my soul, my beating heart, what a noble forest is here!feeling,
expression,
tone,
and those other easily acquired and
inexpensive technicalities of art that make such a fine show in
conversations concerning pictures. There is not one man in seventy-five
hundred that can tell what a pictured face is intended to express.
There is not one man in five hundred that can go into a court-room and
be sure that he will not mistake some harmless innocent of a juryman
for the black-hearted assassin on trial. Yet such people talk of
character
and presume to interpret expression
in pictures.
There is an old story that Matthews, the actor, was once lauding the
ability of the human face to express the passions and emotions hidden
in the breast. He said the countenance could disclose what was passing
in the heart plainer than the tongue could.@@Now,
he said,
observe my face--what does it express?
@@Despair!
@@Bah, it
expresses peaceful resignation! What does this express?
@@Rage!<
/q>@@
Stuff! it means terror! This!
@@Imbecility!
@@Fool!
It is smothered ferocity! Now this!
@@Joy!
@@Oh, perdition!
Any ass can see it means insanity!
@@Expression! People coolly
pretend to read it who would think themselves presumptuous if they
pretended to interpret the hieroglyphics on the obelisks of Luxor--yet
they are fully as competent to do the one thing as the other. I have
heard two very intelligent critics speak of Murillo's Immaculate
Conception (now in the museum at Seville,) within the past few days.
One said:@@Oh, the Virgin's face is full of the ecstasy of a joy
that is complete--that leaves nothing more to be desired on earth!
@@The other said:@@Ah, that wonderful face is so humble, so
pleading--it says as plainly as words could say it: `I fear; I tremble;
I am unworthy. But Thy will be done; sustain Thou Thy servant!'
@@The reader can see the picture in any drawing-room; it can be easily
recognized: the Virgin (the only young and really beautiful Virgin that
was ever painted by one of the old masters, some of us think,) stands
in the crescent of the new moon, with a multitude of cherubs hovering
about her, and more coming; her hands are crossed upon her breast, and
upon her uplifted countenance falls a glory out of the heavens. The
reader may amuse himself, if he chooses, in trying to determine which
of these gentlemen read the Virgin's expression
aright, or if
either of them did it.@@Any one who is acquainted with the old masters
will comprehend how much the Last Supper is damaged when I say that the
spectator can not really tell, now, whether the disciples are Hebrews
or Italians. These ancient painters never succeeded in denationalizing
themselves. The Italian artists painted Italian Virgins, the Dutch
painted Dutch Virgins, the Virgins of the French painters were
Frenchwomen--none of them ever put into the face of the Madonna that
indescribable something which proclaims the Jewess, whether you find
her in New York, in Constantinople, in Paris, Jerusalem, or in the
Empire of Morocco. I saw in the Sandwich Islands, once, a picture,
copied by a talented German artist from an engraving in one of the
American illustrated papers. It was an allegory, representing Mr. Davis
in the act of signing a secession act or some such document. Over him
hovered the ghost of Washington in warning attitude, and in the
background a troop of shadowy soldiers in Continental uniform were
limping with shoeless, bandaged feet through a driving snow-storm.
Valley Forge was suggested, of course. The copy seemed accurate, and
yet there was a discrepancy somewhere. After a long examination I
discovered what it was--the shadowy soldiers were all Germans! Jeff.
Davis was a German! even the hovering ghost was a German ghost! The
artist had unconsciously worked his nationality into the picture. To
tell the truth, I am getting a little perplexed about John the Baptist
and his portraits. In France I finally grew reconciled to him as a
Frenchman; here he is unquestionably an Italian. What next? Can it be
possible that the painters make John the Baptist a Spaniard in Madrid
and an Irishman in Dublin?@@We took an open barouche and drove two
miles out of Milan to see ze echo,
as the guide expressed it.
The road was smooth, it was bordered by trees, fields, and grassy
meadows, and the soft air was filled with the odor of flowers. Troops
of picturesque peasant girls, coming from work, hooted at us, shouted
at us, made all manner of game of us, and entirely delighted me. My
long-cherished judgment was confirmed. I always did think those frowsy,
romantic, unwashed peasant girls I had read so much about in poetry
were a glaring fraud.@@We enjoyed our jaunt. It was an exhilarating
relief from tiresome sight-seeing.@@We distressed ourselves very little
about the astonishing echo the guide talked so much about. We were
growing accustomed to encomiums on wonders that too often proved no
wonders at all. And so we were most happily disappointed to find in the
sequel that the guide had even failed to rise to the magnitude of his
subject.@@We arrived at a tumble-down old rookery called the Palazzo
Simonetti--a massive hewn-stone affair occupied by a family of ragged
Italians. A good-looking young girl conducted us to a window on the
second floor which looked out on a court walled on three sides by tall
buildings. She put her head out at the window and shouted. The echo
answered more times than we could count. She took a speaking trumpet
and through it she shouted, sharp and quick, a single@@Ha!
The
echo answered:@@Ha!------ha!----ha!--=-=-=-=---ha!--ha!-ha! ha!
h-a-a-a-a-a!
and finally went off into a rollicking convulsion of
the jolliest laughter that could be imagined. It was so joyful--so long
continued--so perfectly cordial and hearty, that every body was forced
to join in. There was no resisting it.@@Then the girl took a gun and
fired it. We stood ready to count the astonishing clatter of
reverberations. We could not say one, two, three, fast enough, but we
could dot our note-books with our pencil points almost rapidly enough
to take down a sort of short-hand report of the result. My page
revealed the following account. I could not keep up, but I did as well
as I could:@@I set down fifty-two distinct repetitions, and then the
echo got the advantage of me. The doctor set down sixty-four, and
thenceforth the echo moved too fast for him, also. After the separate
concussions could no longer be noted, the reverberations dwindled to a
wild, long-sustained clatter of sounds such as a watchman's rattle
produces. It is likely that this is the most remarkable echo in the
world.@@The doctor, in jest, offered to kiss the young girl, and was
taken a little aback when she said he might for a franc! The commonest
gallantry compelled him to stand by his offer, and so he paid the franc
and took the kiss. She was a philosopher. She said a franc was a good
thing to have, and she did not care any thing for one paltry kiss,
because she had a million left. Then our comrade, always a shrewd
business man, offered to take the whole cargo at thirty days, but that
little financial scheme was a failure.@@@@@@@Fifty-two distinct
repetitions.@@@@[te
Chapter XX
fumigating
us, and the term
was a tame one indeed. They fumigated us to guard themselves against
the cholera, though we hailed from no infected port. We had left the
cholera far behind us all the time. However, they must keep epidemics
away somehow or other, and fumigation is cheaper than soap. They must
either wash themselves or fumigate other people. Some of the lower
classes had rather die than wash, but the fumigation of strangers
causes them no pangs. They need no fumigation themselves. Their habits
make it unnecessary. They carry their preventive with them; they sweat
and fumigate all the day long. I trust I am a humble and a consistent
Christian. I try to do what is right. I know it is my duty to pray
for them that despitefully use me;
and therefore, hard as it is, I
shall still try to pray for these fumigating, maccaroni-stuffing organ
grinders.
A deep vale,
@That
is all very well, except the clear
part of the lake. It
certainly is clearer than a great many lakes, but how dull its waters
are compared with the wonderful transparence of Lake Tahoe! I speak of
the north shore of Tahoe, where one can count the scales on a trout at
a depth of a hundred and eighty feet. I have tried to get this
statement off at par here, but with no success; so I have been obliged
to negotiate it at fifty per cent discount. At this rate I find some
takers; perhaps the reader will receive it on the same terms--ninety
feet instead of one hundred and eighty. But let it be remembered that
those are forced terms--Sheriff's sale prices. As far as I am privately
concerned, I abate not a jot of the original assertion that in those
strangely magnifying waters one may count the scales on a trout (a
trout of the large kind,) at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet--may
see every pebble on the bottom--might even count a paper of dray-pins.
People talk of the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco,
but in my own experience I know they can not compare with those I am
speaking of. I have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a measured depth
of eighty-four feet I have seen them put their noses to the bait and I
could see their gills open and shut. I could hardly have seen the trout
themselves at that distance in the open air.@@As I go back in spirit
and recall that noble sea, reposing among the snow-peaks six thousand
feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong upon me again that
Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in that august
presence.@@Sorrow and misfortune overtake the Legislature that still
from year to year permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cognomen!
Tahoe! It suggests no crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no
sublimity. Tahoe for a sea in the clouds: a sea that has character, and
asserts it in solemn calms, at times, at times in savage storms; a sea,
whose royal seclusion is guarded by a cordon of sentinel peaks that
lift their frosty fronts nine thousand feet above the level world; a
sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose belongings are all
beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity!@@Tahoe means
grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and suggestive
of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute--possibly it is Digger. I am
satisfied it was named by the Diggers--those degraded savages who roast
their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones with
tar, and gaum
it thick all over their heads and foreheads and
ears, and go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These
are the gentry that named the Lake.@@People say that Tahoe means
Silver Lake
--Limpid Water
--Falling Leaf.
Bosh. It
means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger tribe--and of
the Pi-utes as well. It isn't worth while, in these practical times,
for people to talk about Indian poetry--there never was any in
them--except in the Fennimore Cooper Indians. But they are an extinct
tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have camped with
the Indians; I have been on the war-path with them, taken part in the
chase with them--for grasshoppers; helped them steal cattle; I have
roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would gladly
eat the whole race if I had a chance.@@But I am growing unreliable. I
will return to my comparison of the Lakes. Como is a little deeper than
Tahoe, if people here tell the truth. They say it is eighteen hundred
feet deep at this point, but it does not look a dead enough blue for
that. Tahoe is one thousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep in
the centre, by the State Geologist's measurement. They say the great
peak opposite this town is five thousand feet high: but I feel sure
that three thousand feet of that statement is a good honest lie. The
lake is a mile wide, here, and maintains about that width from this
point to its northern extremity--which is distant sixteen miles: from
here to its southern extremity--say fifteen miles--it is not over half
a mile wide in any place, I should think. Its snow-clad mountains one
hears so much about are only seen occasionally, and then in the
distance, the Alps. Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles wide, and its
mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits are never free from
snow the year round. One thing about it is very strange: it never has
even a skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same range
of mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over in
winter.@@It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way
places and compare notes with him. We have found one of ours here--an
old soldier of the war, who is seeking bloodless adventures and rest
from his campaigns, in these sunny lands.*@@@@*Col. J. Heron Foster,
editor of a Pittsburgh journal, and a most estimable gentleman. As
these sheets are being prepared for the press, I am pained to learn of
his decease shortly after his return home.--M. T.@@[te
Chapter XXI
Do you see that great iron hook that projects from the wall just
under the highest window in the ruined tower?
Well,
he said, there is a legend connected with that iron
hook. Nearly seven hundred years ago, that castle was the property of
the noble Count Luigi Gennaro Guido Alphonso di Genova--
What was his other name?
said Dan.
He had no other name. The name I have spoken was all the name he had.
He was the son of--
Poor but honest parents--that is all right--never mind the
particulars--go on with the legend.
for,
said they, this exhibition hath no feature that could
offend the most fastidious taste.
Marry,
quoth the peasant, an' it please your worships, ye had
better journey many a good rood hence with your juggling circus than
trust your bones in yonder castle.
How now, sirrah!
exclaimed the chief monk, explain thy ribald
speech, or by'r Lady it shall go hard with thee.
Peace, good mountebank, I did but utter the truth that was in my
heart. San Paolo be my witness that did ye but find the stout Count
Leonardo in his cups, sheer from the castle's topmost battlements would
he hurl ye all! Alack-a-day, the good Lord Luigi reigns not here in
these sad times.
The good Lord Luigi?
Aye, none other, please your worship. In his day, the poor rejoiced
in plenty and the rich he did oppress; taxes were not known, the
fathers of the church waxed fat upon his bounty; travelers went and
came, with none to interfere; and whosoever would, might tarry in his
halls in cordial welcome, and eat his bread and drink his wine, withal.
But woe is me! some two and forty years agone the good count rode hence
to fight for Holy Cross, and many a year hath flown since word or token
have we had of him. Men say his bones lie bleaching in the fields of
Palestine.
And now?
Now! God 'a mercy, the cruel Leonardo lords it in the castle. He
wrings taxes from the poor; he robs all travelers that journey by his
gates; he spends his days in feuds and murders, and his nights in revel
and debauch; he roasts the fathers of the church upon his kitchen
spits, and enjoyeth the same, calling it pastime. These thirty years
Luigi's countess hath not been seen by any he in all this land, and
many whisper that she pines in the dungeons of the castle for that she
will not wed with Leonardo, saying her dear lord still liveth and that
she will die ere she prove false to him. They whisper likewise that her
daughter is a prisoner as well. Nay, good jugglers, seek ye refreshment
other wheres. 'Twere better that ye perished in a Christian way than
that ye plunged from off yon dizzy tower. Give ye good-day.
God keep ye, gentle knave--farewell.
'Tis well. Dispose of them in the customary manner. Yet stay! I
have need of them. Let them come hither. Later, cast them from the
battlements--or--how many priests have ye on hand?
The day's results are meagre, good my lord. An abbot and a dozen
beggarly friars is all we have.
Hell and furies! Is the estate going to seed? Send hither the
mountebanks. Afterward, broil them with the priests.
Ha, villains!
quoth the count. What can ye do to earn the
hospitality ye crave.
Dread lord and mighty, crowded audiences have greeted our humble
efforts with rapturous applause. Among our body count we the versatile
and talented Ugolino; the justly celebrated Rodolpho; the gifted and
accomplished Roderigo; the management have spared neither pains nor
expense--
S'death! what can ye do? Curb thy prating tongue.
Good my lord, in acrobatic feats, in practice with the dumb-bells,
in balancing and ground and lofty tumbling are we versed--and sith your
highness asketh me, I venture here to publish that in the truly
marvelous and entertaining Zampillaerostation--
Gag him! throttle him! Body of Bacchus! am I a dog that[[[[[[[ I am
to be assailed with polysyllabled blasphemy like to this? But hold!
Lucretia, Isabel, stand forth! Sirrah, behold this dame, this weeping
wench. The first I marry, within the hour; the other shall dry her
tears or feed the vultures. Thou and thy vagabonds shall crown the
wedding with thy merry-makings. Fetch hither the priest!
O, save me!
she cried; save me from a fate far worse than
death! Behold these sad eyes, these sunken cheeks, this withered frame!
See thou the wreck this fiend hath made, and let thy heart be moved
with pity! Look upon this damosel; note her wasted form, her halting
step, her bloomless cheeks where youth should blush and happiness exult
in smiles! Hear us and have compassion. This monster was my husband's
brother. He who should have been our shield against all harm, hath kept
us shut within the noisome caverns of his donjon-keep for lo these
thirty years. And for what crime? None other than that I would not
belie my troth, root out my strong love for him who marches with the
legions of the cross in Holy Land, (for O, he is not dead!) and wed
with him! Save us, O, save thy persecuted suppliants!
Ha!-ha!-ha!
shouted the brutal Leonardo. Priest, to thy work!<
/q> and he dragged the weeping dame from her refuge.
Say, once for
all, will you be mine?--for by my halidome, that breath that uttereth
thy refusal shall be thy last on earth!
Ne-ver!
Then die!
and the sword leaped from its scabbard.
A Luigi to the rescue! Whoop!
A Leonardo! tare an ouns!
Oh, God, Oh, God, my husband!
Oh, God, Oh, God, my wife!
My father!
My precious!
;obTableau.;cb
But what did they do with the wicked brother?
Oh nothing--only hanged him on that iron hook I was speaking of. By
the chin.
As how?
Passed it up through his gills into his mouth.
Leave him there?
Couple of years.
Ah--is--is he dead?
Six hundred and fifty years ago, or such a matter.
Splendid legend--splendid lie--drive on.
Venice!
Now, here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I'm a pilgrim, and I'm
a stranger, but I am not going to have my feelings lacerated by any
such caterwauling as that. If that goes on, one of us has got to take
water. It is enough that my cherished dreams of Venice have been
blighted forever as to the romantic gondola and the gorgeous gondolier;
this system of destruction shall go no farther; I will accept the
hearse, under protest, and you may fly your flag of truce in peace, but
here I register a dark and bloody oath that you shan't sing. Another
yelp, and overboard you go.
There is a glorious city in the sea;
This man is plotting against the Government.
If
the awful Three found no proof, ten to one they would drown him anyhow,
because he was a deep rascal, since his plots were unsolvable. Masked
judges and masked executioners, with unlimited power, and no appeal
from their judgments, in that hard, cruel age, were not likely to be
lenient with men they suspected yet could not convict.
scrooching,
as the
children say, just as one does when a buggy wheel grazes his elbow. But
he makes all his calculations with the nicest precision, and goes
darting in and out among a Broadway confusion of busy craft with the
easy confidence of the educated hackman. He never makes a mistake.
Come soon--now do--you've
been just as mean as ever you can be--mother's dying to see you--and
we've moved into the new house, O such a love of a place!--so
convenient to the postoffice and the church, and the Young Men's
Christian Association; and we do have such fishing, and such carrying
on, and such swimming-matches in the back yard--Oh, you must come--no
distance at all, and if you go down through by St. Mark's and the
Bridge of Sighs, and cut through the alley and come up by the church of
Santa Maria dei Frari, and into the Grand Canal, there isn't a bit of
current--now do come, Sally Maria--by-bye!
and then the little
humbug trips down the steps, jumps into the gondola, says, under her
breath, Disagreeable old thing, I hope she won't!
goes skimming
away, round the corner; and the other girl slams the street door and
says, Well, that infliction's over, any way,--but I suppose I've got
to go and see her--tiresome stuck-up thing!
Human nature appears to
be just the same, all over the world. We see the diffident young man,
mild of moustache, affluent of hair, indigent of brain, elegant of
costume, drive up to her father's mansion, tell his hackman to bail out
and wait, start fearfully up the steps and meet the old gentleman
right on the threshold!--hear him ask what street the new British Bank
is in--as if that were what he came for--and then bounce into his boat
and skurry away with his coward heart in his boots!--see him come
sneaking around the corner again, directly, with a crack of the curtain
open toward the old gentleman's disappearing gondola, and out scampers
his Susan with a flock of little Italian endearments fluttering from
her lips, and goes to drive with him in the watery avenues down toward
the Rialto.
show off
and
astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our
untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't
shake off. All our passengers are paying strict attention to this
thing, with the end in view which I have mentioned. The gentle reader
will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he
goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle
reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate
ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the
cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight
to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels.
John P. Whitcomb, Etats Unis.
Wm. L. Ainsworth, travailleur (he meant traveler, I suppose,) Etats
Unis.
George P. Morton et fils, d'Amerique.
Lloyd B. Williams, et trois amis, ville de Boston, Amerique.
J. Ellsworth Baker, tout de suite de France, place de naissance
Amerique, destination la Grand Bretagne.
@I love this sort of people.
A lady passenger of ours tells of a fellow-citizen of hers who spent
eight weeks in Paris and then returned home and addressed his dearest
old bosom friend Herbert as Mr. Er-bare!
He apologized, though,
and said, 'Pon my soul it is aggravating, but I cahn't help it--I
have got so used to speaking nothing but French, my dear Erbare--damme
there it goes again!--got so used to French pronunciation that I cahn't
get rid of it--it is positively annoying, I assure you.
This
entertaining idiot, whose name was Gordon, allowed himself to be hailed
three times in the street before he paid any attention, and then begged
a thousand pardons and said he had grown so accustomed to hearing
himself addressed as M'sieu Gor-r-dong,
with a roll to the r,
that he had forgotten the legitimate sound of his name! He wore a rose
in his button-hole; he gave the French salutation--two flips of the
hand in front of the face; he called Paris Pair-ree in ordinary English
conversation; he carried envelopes bearing foreign postmarks protruding
from his breast-pocket; he cultivated a moustache and imperial, and did
what else he could to suggest to the beholder his pet fancy that he
resembled Louis Napoleon--and in a spirit of thankfulness which is
entirely unaccountable, considering the slim foundation there was for
it, he praised his Maker that he was as he was, and went on enjoying
his little life just the same as if he really had been deliberately
designed and erected by the great Architect of the Universe.@@Think of
our Whitcombs, and our Ainsworths and our Williamses writing themselves
down in dilapidated French in foreign hotel registers! We laugh at
Englishmen, when we are at home, for sticking so sturdily to their
national ways and customs, but we look back upon it from abroad very
forgivingly. It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his
nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is
pitiable to see him making of himself a thing that is neither male nor
female, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl--a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite
Frenchman!@@Among a long list of churches, art galleries, and such
things, visited by us in Venice, I shall mention only one--the church
of Santa Maria dei Frari. It is about five hundred years old, I
believe, and stands on twelve hundred thousand piles. In it lie the
body of Canova and the heart of Titian, under magnificent monuments.
Titian died at the age of almost one hundred years. A plague which
swept away fifty thousand lives was raging at the time, and there is
notable evidence of the reverence in which the great painter was held,
in the fact that to him alone the state permitted a public funeral in
all that season of terror and death.@@In this church, also, is a
monument to the doge Foscari, whose name a once resident of Venice,
Lord Byron, has made permanently famous.@@The monument to the doge
Giovanni Pesaro, in this church, is a curiosity in the way of mortuary
adornment. It is eighty feet high and is fronted like some fantastic
pagan temple. Against it stand four colossal Nubians, as black as
night, dressed in white marble garments. The black legs are bare, and
through rents in sleeves and breeches, the skin, of shiny black marble,
shows. The artist was as ingenious as his funeral designs were absurd.
There are two bronze skeletons bearing scrolls, and two great dragons
uphold the sarcophagus. On high, amid all this grotesqueness, sits the
departed doge.@@In the conventual buildings attached to this church are
the state archives of Venice. We did not see them, but they are said to
number millions of documents. They are the records of centuries of
the most watchful, observant and suspicious government that ever
existed--in which every thing was written down and nothing spoken out.<
/q> They fill nearly three hundred rooms. Among them are manuscripts
from the archives of nearly two thousand families, monasteries and
convents. The secret history of Venice for a thousand years is
here--its plots, its hidden trials, its assassinations, its commissions
of hireling spies and masked bravoes--food, ready to hand, for a world
of dark and mysterious romances.@@Yes, I think we have seen all of
Venice. We have seen, in these old churches, a profusion of costly and
elaborate sepulchre ornamentation such as we never dreampt of before.
We have stood in the dim religious light of these hoary sanctuaries, in
the midst of long ranks of dusty monuments and effigies of the great
dead of Venice, until we seemed drifting back, back, back, into the
solemn past, and looking upon the scenes and mingling with the peoples
of a remote antiquity. We have been in a half-waking sort of dream all
the time. I do not know how else to describe the feeling. A part of our
being has remained still in the nineteenth century, while another part
of it has seemed in some unaccountable way walking among the phantoms
of the tenth.@@We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary
with looking at them and refuse to find interest in them any longer.
And what wonder, when there are twelve hundred pictures by Palma the
Younger in Venice and fifteen hundred by Tintoretto? And behold there
are Titians and the works of other artists in proportion. We have seen
Titian's celebrated Cain and Abel, his David and Goliah, his Abraham's
Sacrifice. We have seen Tintoretto's monster picture, which is
seventy-four feet long and I do not know how many feet high, and
thought it a very commodious picture. We have seen pictures of martyrs
enough, and saints enough, to regenerate the world. I ought not to
confess it, but still, since one has no opportunity in America to
acquire a critical judgment in art, and since I could not hope to
become educated in it in Europe in a few short weeks, I may therefore
as well acknowledge with such apologies as may be due, that to me it
seemed that when I had seen one of these martyrs I had seen them all.
They all have a marked family resemblance to each other, they dress
alike, in coarse monkish robes and sandals, they are all bald headed,
they all stand in about the same attitude, and without exception they
are gazing heavenward with countenances which the Ainsworths, the
Mortons and the Williamses, et fils, inform me are full of
expression.
To me there is nothing tangible about these imaginary
portraits, nothing that I can grasp and take a living interest in. If
great Titian had only been gifted with prophecy, and had skipped a
martyr, and gone over to England and painted a portrait of Shakspeare,
even as a youth, which we could all have confidence in now, the world
down to the latest generations would have forgiven him the lost martyr
in the rescued seer. I think posterity could have spared one more
martyr for the sake of a great historical picture of Titian's time and
painted by his brush--such as Columbus returning in chains from the
discovery of a world, for instance. The old masters did paint some
Venetian historical pictures, and these we did not tire of looking at,
notwithstanding representations of the formal introduction of defunct
doges to the Virgin Mary in regions beyond the clouds clashed rather
harshly with the proprieties, it seemed to us.@@But humble as we are,
and unpretending, in the matter of art, our researches among the
painted monks and martyrs have not been wholly in vain. We have striven
hard to learn. We have had some success. We have mastered some things,
possibly of trifling import in the eyes of the learned, but to us they
give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our little acquirements as
do others who have learned far more, and we love to display them full
as well. When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking
tranquilly up to heaven, we know that that is St. Mark. When we see a
monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to
think of a word, we know that that is St. Matthew. When we see a monk
sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull
beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome.
Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter of
baggage. When we see a party looking tranquilly up to heaven,
unconscious that his body is shot through and through with arrows, we
know that that is St. Sebastian. When we see other monks looking
tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who
those parties are. We do this because we humbly wish to learn. We have
seen thirteen thousand St. Jeromes, and twenty-two thousand St. Marks,
and sixteen thousand St. Matthews, and sixty thousand St. Sebastians,
and four millions of assorted monks, undesignated, and we feel
encouraged to believe that when we have seen some more of these various
pictures, and had a larger experience, we shall begin to take an
absorbing interest in them like our cultivated countrymen from Amerique.
@@Now it does give me real pain to speak in this almost unappreciative
way of the old masters and their martyrs, because good friends of mine
in the ship--friends who do thoroughly and conscientiously appreciate
them and are in every way competent to discriminate between good
pictures and inferior ones--have urged me for my own sake not to make
public the fact that I lack this appreciation and this critical
discrimination myself. I believe that what I have written and may still
write about pictures will give them pain, and I am honestly sorry for
it. I even promised that I would hide my uncouth sentiments in my own
breast. But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself
for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical
organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was
given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the organ
which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not.
I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly
developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity. I certainly
meant to keep that promise, but I find I can not do it. It is
impossible to travel through Italy without speaking of pictures, and
can I see them through others' eyes?@@If I did not so delight in the
grand pictures that are spread before me every day of my life by that
monarch of all the old masters, Nature, I should come to believe,
sometimes, that I had in me no appreciation of the beautiful,
whatsoever.@@It seems to me that whenever I glory to think that for
once I have discovered an ancient painting that is beautiful and worthy
of all praise, the pleasure it gives me is an infallible proof that it
is not a beautiful picture and not in any wise worthy of commendation.
This very thing has occurred more times than I can mention, in Venice.
In every single instance the guide has crushed out my swelling
enthusiasm with the remark:@@It is nothing--it is of the Renaissance.
@@I did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was, and so
always I had to simply say,@@Ah! so it is--I had not observed it
before.
@@I could not bear to be ignorant before a cultivated negro,
the offspring of a South Carolina slave. But it occurred too often for
even my self-complacency, did that exasperating It is nothing--it is
of the Renaissance.
I said at last:@@Who is this Renaissance?
Where did he come from? Who gave him permission to cram the Republic
with his execrable daubs?
@@We learned, then, that Renaissance was
not a man; that renaissance was a term used to signify what was at best
but an imperfect rejuvenation of art. The guide said that after
Titian's time and the time of the other great names we had grown so
familiar with, high art declined; then it partially rose again--an
inferior sort of painters sprang up, and these shabby pictures were the
work of their hands. Then I said, in my heat, that I wished to
goodness high art had declined five hundred years sooner.
The
Renaissance pictures suit me very well, though sooth to say its school
were too much given to painting real men and did not indulge enough in
martyrs.@@The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had yet
who knew any thing. He was born in South Carolina, of slave parents.
They came to Venice while he was an infant. He has grown up here. He is
well educated. He reads, writes, and speaks English, Italian, Spanish,
and French, with perfect facility; is a worshipper of art and
thoroughly conversant with it; knows the history of Venice by heart and
never tires of talking of her illustrious career. He dresses better
than any of us, I think, and is daintily polite. Negroes are deemed as
good as white people, in Venice, and so this man feels no desire to go
back to his native land. His judgment is correct.@@I have had another
shave. I was writing in our front room this afternoon and trying hard
to keep my attention on my work and refrain from looking out upon the
canal. I was resisting the soft influences of the climate as well as I
could, and endeavoring to overcome the desire to be indolent and happy.
The boys sent for a barber. They asked me if I would be shaved. I
reminded them of my tortures in Genoa, Milan, Como; of my declaration
that I would suffer no more on Italian soil. I said Not any for me,
if you please.
@@I wrote on. The barber began on the doctor. I heard
him say:@@Dan, this is the easiest shave I have had since we left
the ship.
@@He said again, presently:@@Why Dan, a man could go to
sleep with this man shaving him.
@@Dan took the chair. Then he said:
@@Why this is Titian. This is one of the old masters.
@@I wrote
on. Directly Dan said:@@Doctor, it is perfect luxury. The ship's
barber isn't any thing to him.
@@My rough beard was distressing me
beyond measure. The barber was rolling up his apparatus. The temptation
was too strong. I said:@@Hold on, please. Shave me also.
@@I sat
down in the chair and closed my eyes. The barber soaped my face, and
then took his razor and gave me a rake that well nigh threw me into
convulsions. I jumped out of the chair: Dan and the doctor were both
wiping blood off their faces and laughing.@@I said it was a mean,
disgraceful fraud.@@They said that the misery of this shave had gone so
far beyond anything they had ever experienced before, that they could
not bear the idea of losing such a chance of hearing a cordial opinion
from me on the subject. @@It was shameful. But there was no help for
it. The skinning was begun and had to be finished. The tears flowed
with every rake, and so did the fervent execrations. The barber grew
confused, and brought blood every time. I think the boys enjoyed it
better than any thing they have seen or heard since they left home.@@We
have seen the Campanile, and Byron's house and Balbi's the geographer,
and the palaces of all the ancient dukes and doges of Venice, and we
have seen their effeminate descendants airing their nobility in
fashionable French attire in the Grand Square of St. Mark, and eating
ices and drinking cheap wines, instead of wearing gallant coats of mail
and destroying fleets and armies as their great ancestors did in the
days of Venetian glory. We have seen no bravoes with poisoned
stilettos, no masks, no wild carnival; but we have seen the ancient
pride of Venice, the grim Bronze Horses that figure in a thousand
legends. Venice may well cherish them, for they are the only horses she
ever had. It is said there are hundreds of people in this curious city
who never have seen a living horse in their lives. It is entirely true,
no doubt.@@And so, having satisfied ourselves, we depart to-morrow, and
leave the venerable Queen of the Republics to summon her vanished
ships, and marshal her shadowy armies, and know again in dreams the
pride of her old renown.@[te
Chapter XXIV
Hotel d'Europe!
bear down
on it.
O, sons of classic Italy, is
the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly
dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob
your church?
old masters.
I saw there a country which has no overshadowing Mother Church, and
yet the people survive. I saw a government which never was protected by
foreign soldiers at a cost greater than that required to carry on the
government itself. I saw common men and common women who could read; I
even saw small children of common country people reading from books; if
I dared think you would believe it, I would say they could write, also.
In the cities I saw people drinking a delicious beverage made of chalk
and water, but never once saw goats driven through their Broadway or
their Pennsylvania Avenue or their Montgomery street and milked at the
doors of the houses. I saw real glass windows in the houses of even the
commonest people. Some of the houses are not of stone, nor yet of
bricks; I solemnly swear they are made of wood. Houses there will take
fire and burn, sometimes--actually burn entirely down, and not leave a
single vestige behind. I could state that for a truth, upon my
death-bed. And as a proof that the circumstance is not rare, I aver
that they have a thing which they call a fire-engine, which vomits
forth great streams of water, and is kept always in readiness, by night
and by day, to rush to houses that are burning. You would think one
engine would be sufficient, but some great cities have a hundred; they
keep men hired, and pay them by the month to do nothing but put out
fires. For a certain sum of money other men will insure that your house
shall not burn down; and if it burns they will pay you for it. There
are hundreds and thousands of schools, and any body may go and learn to
be wise, like a priest. In that singular country if a rich man dies a
sinner, he is damned; he can not buy salvation with money for masses.
There is really not much use in being rich, there. Not much use as far
as the other world is concerned, but much, very much use, as concerns
this; because there, if a man be rich, he is very greatly honored, and
can become a legislator, a governor, a general, a senator, no matter
how ignorant an ass he is--just as in our beloved Italy the nobles hold
all the great places, even though sometimes they are born noble idiots.
There, if a man be rich, they give him costly presents, they ask him to
feasts, they invite him to drink complicated beverages; but if he be
poor and in debt, they require him to do that which they term to
settle.
The women put on a different dress almost every day; the
dress is usually fine, but absurd in shape; the very shape and fashion
of it changes twice in a hundred years; and did I but covet to be
called an extravagant falsifier, I would say it changed even oftener.
Hair does not grow upon the American women's heads; it is made for them
by cunning workmen in the shops, and is curled and frizzled into
scandalous and ungodly forms. Some persons wear eyes of glass which
they see through with facility perhaps, else they would not use them;
and in the mouths of some are teeth made by the sacrilegious hand of
man. The dress of the men is laughably grotesque. They carry no musket
in ordinary life, nor no long-pointed pole; they wear no wide
green-lined cloak; they wear no peaked black felt hat, no leather
gaiters reaching to the knee, no goat-skin breeches with the hair side
out, no hob-nailed shoes, no prodigious spurs. They wear a conical hat
termed a nail-kag;
a coat of saddest black; a shirt which shows
dirt so easily that it has to be changed every month, and is very
troublesome; things called pantaloons, which are held up by shoulder
straps, and on their feet they wear boots which are ridiculous in
pattern and can stand no wear. Yet dressed in this fantastic garb,
these people laughed at my costume. In that country, books are so
common that it is really no curiosity to see one. Newspapers also. They
have a great machine which prints such things by thousands every hour.
I saw common men, there--men who were neither priests nor
princes--who yet absolutely owned the land they tilled. It was not
rented from the church, nor from the nobles. I am ready to take my oath
of this. In that country you might fall from a third story window three
several times, and not mash either a soldier or a priest.--The scarcity
of such people is astonishing. In the cities you will see a dozen
civilians for every soldier, and as many for every priest or preacher.
Jews, there, are treated just like human beings, instead of dogs. They
can work at any business they please; they can sell brand new goods if
they want to; they can keep drug-stores; they can practice medicine
among Christians; they can even shake hands with Christians if they
choose; they can associate with them, just the same as one human being
does with another human being; they don't have to stay shut up in one
corner of the towns; they can live in any part of a town they like best;
it is said they even have the privilege of buying land and houses, and
owning them themselves, though I doubt that, myself; they never have
had to run races naked through the public streets, against jackasses,
to please the people in carnival time; there they never have been
driven by the soldiers into a church every Sunday for hundreds of years
to hear themselves and their religion especially and particularly
cursed; at this very day, in that curious country, a Jew is allowed to
vote, hold office, yea, get up on a rostrum in the public street and
express his opinion of the government if the government don't suit him!
Ah, it is wonderful. The common people there know a great deal; they
even have the effrontery to complain if they are not properly governed,
and to take hold and help conduct the government themselves; if they
had laws like ours, which give one dollar of every three a crop
produces to the government for taxes, they would have that law altered:
instead of paying thirty-three dollars in taxes, out of every one
hundred they receive, they complain if they have to pay seven. They are
curious people. They do not know when they are well off. Mendicant
priests do not prowl among them with baskets begging for the church and
eating up their substance. One hardly ever sees a minister of the
gospel going around there in his bare feet, with a basket, begging for
subsistence. In that country the preachers are not like our mendicant
orders of friars--they have two or three suits of clothing, and they
wash sometimes. In that land are mountains far higher than the Alban
mountains; the vast Roman Campagna, a hundred miles long and full forty
broad, is really small compared to the United States of America; the
Tiber, that celebrated river of ours, which stretches its mighty course
almost two hundred miles, and which a lad can scarcely throw a stone
across at Rome, is not so long, nor yet so wide, as the American
Mississippi--nor yet the Ohio, nor even the Hudson. In America the
people are absolutely wiser and know much more than their grandfathers
did. They do not plow with a sharpened stick, nor yet with a
three-cornered block of wood that merely scratches the top of the
ground. We do that because our fathers did, three thousand years ago, I
suppose. But those people have no holy reverence for their ancestors.
They plow with a plow that is a sharp, curved blade of iron, and it
cuts into the earth full five inches. And this is not all. They cut
their grain with a horrid machine that mows down whole fields in a day.
If I dared, I would say that sometimes they use a blasphemous plow that
works by fire and vapor and tears up an acre of ground in a single
hour--but--but--I see by your looks that you do not believe the things
I am telling you. Alas, my character is ruined, and I am a branded
speaker of untruths!
averaged
a man as he passed me and watched him as he
drifted far down by the baldacchino and beyond--watched him dwindle to
an insignificant school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent
throng of human pigmies gliding about him, I lost him. The church had
lately been decorated, on the occasion of a great ceremony in honor of
St. Peter, and men were engaged, now, in removing the flowers and gilt
paper from the walls and pillars. As no ladders could reach the great
heights, the men swung themselves down from balustrades and the
capitals of pilasters by ropes, to do this work. The upper gallery
which encircles the inner sweep of the dome is two hundred and forty
feet above the floor of the church--very few steeples in America could
reach up to it. Visitors always go up there to look down into the
church because one gets the best idea of some of the heights and
distances from that point. While we stood on the floor one of the
workmen swung loose from that gallery at the end of a long rope. I had
not supposed, before, that a man could look so much like a spider. He
was insignificant in size, and his rope seemed only a thread. Seeing
that he took up so little space, I could believe the story, then, that
ten thousand troops went to St. Peter's, once, to hear mass, and their
commanding officer came afterward, and not finding them, supposed they
had not yet arrived. But they were in the church, nevertheless--they
were in one of the transepts. Nearly fifty thousand persons assembled
in St. Peter's to hear the publishing of the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception. It is estimated that the floor of the church affords
standing room for--for a large number of people; I have forgotten the
exact figures. But it is no matter--it is near enough.
in the
brave days of old
when Lars Porsena attempted to cross it with his
invading host. He can see the spot where the Horatii and the Curatii
fought their famous battle. He can see the broad green Campagna,
stretching away toward the mountains, with its scattered arches and
broken aqueducts of the olden time, so picturesque in their gray ruin,
and so daintily festooned with vines. He can see the Alban Mountains,
the Appenines, the Sabine Hills, and the blue Mediterranean. He can see
a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more
illustrious in history than any other in Europe.--About his feet is
spread the remnant of a city that once had a population of four million
souls; and among its massed edifices stand the ruins of temples,
columns, and triumphal arches that knew the C;aesars, and the noonday
of Roman splendor; and close by them, in unimpaired strength, is a
drain of arched and heavy masonry that belonged to that older city
which stood here before Romulus and Remus were born or Rome thought of.
The Appian Way is here yet, and looking much as it did, perhaps, when
the triumphal processions of the Emperors moved over it in other days
bringing fettered princes from the confines of the earth. We can not
see the long array of chariots and mail-clad men laden with the spoils
of conquest, but we can imagine the pageant, after a fashion. We look
out upon many objects of interest from the dome of St. Peter's; and
last of all, almost at our feet, our eyes rest upon the building which
was once the Inquisition. How times changed, between the older ages and
the new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago, the ignorant men of
Rome were wont to put Christians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder,
and turn the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It was for a lesson
as well. It was to teach the people to abhor and fear the new doctrine
the followers of Christ were teaching. The beasts tore the victims limb
from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling of an
eye. But when the Christians came into power, when the holy Mother
Church became mistress of the barbarians, she taught them the error of
their ways by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant
Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle and
so merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him;
and they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor
him--first by twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by
nipping their flesh with pincers--red-hot ones, because they are the
most comfortable in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little,
and finally by roasting them in public. They always convinced those
barbarians. The true religion, properly administered, as the good
Mother Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing. It is
wonderfully persuasive, also. There is a great difference between
feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in
an Inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of
enlightened, civilized people. It is a great pity the playful
Inquisition is no more.
looped and windowed
band-box with a side bitten out.
Being rather isolated, it shows to better advantage than any other of
the monuments of ancient Rome. Even the beautiful Pantheon, whose pagan
altars uphold the cross, now, and whose Venus, tricked out in
consecrated gimcracks, does reluctant duty as a Virgin Mary to-day, is
built about with shabby houses and its stateliness sadly marred. But
the monarch of all European ruins, the Coliseum, maintains that reserve
and that royal seclusion which is proper to majesty. Weeds and flowers
spring from its massy arches and its circling seats, and vines hang
their fringes from its lofty walls. An impressive silence broods over
the monstrous structure where such multitudes of men and women were
wont to assemble in other days. The butterflies have taken the places
of the queens of fashion and beauty of eighteen centuries ago, and the
lizards sun themselves in the sacred seat of the Emperor. More vividly
than all the written histories, the Coliseum tells the story of Rome's
grandeur and Rome's decay. It is the worthiest type of both that exists.
Moving about the Rome of to-day, we might find it hard to believe in
her old magnificence and her millions of population; but with this
stubborn evidence before us that she was obliged to have a theatre with
sitting room for eighty thousand persons and standing room for twenty
thousand more, to accommodate such of her citizens as required
amusement, we find belief less difficult. The Coliseum is over one
thousand six hundred feet long, seven hundred and fifty wide, and one
hundred and sixty-five high. Its shape is oval.
my private box at
the Coliseum
could not move in the first circles. When the
clothing-store merchant wished to consume the corner grocery man with
envy, he bought secured seats in the front row and let the thing be
known. When the irresistible dry goods clerk wished to blight and
destroy, according to his native instinct, he got himself up regardless
of expense and took some other fellow's young lady to the Coliseum, and
then accented the affront by cramming her with ice cream between the
acts, or by approaching the cage and stirring up the martyrs with his
whalebone cane for her edification. The Roman swell was in his true
element only when he stood up against a pillar and fingered his
moustache unconscious of the ladies; when he viewed the bloody combats
through an opera-glass two inches long; when he excited the envy of
provincials by criticisms which showed that he had been to the Coliseum
many and many a time and was long ago over the novelty of it; when he
turned away with a yawn at last and said,
He a star! handles his sword like an apprentice brigand! he'll do
for the country, maybe, but he don't answer for the metropolis!
Meet me on the
Tarpeian Rock to-morrow evening, dear, at sharp seven. Mother will be
absent on a visit to her friends in the Sabine Hills.@@Claudia.
@@Ah, where is that lucky youth to-day, and where the little hand that
wrote those dainty lines! Dust and ashes these seventeen hundred
years!@@Thus reads the bill:@@ROMAN COLISEUM.@@UNPARALLELED
ATTRACTION!@@new properties! new lions! new gladiators!@@Engagement of
the renowned@@marcus marcellus valerian!@@for six nights only!@@The
management beg leave to offer to the public an entertainment surpassing
in magnificence any thing that has heretofore been attempted on any
stage. No expense has been spared to make the opening season one which
shall be worthy the generous patronage which the management feel sure
will crown their efforts. The management beg leave to state that they
have succeeded in securing the services of a@@galaxy of talent!@@such
as has not been beheld in Rome before.@@The performance will commence
this evening with a@@grand broadsword combat!@@between two young and
promising amateurs and a celebrated Parthian gladiator who has just
arrived a prisoner from the Camp of Verus.@@This will be followed by a
grand moral@@battle-ax engagement!@@between the renowned Valerian (with
one hand tied behind him,) and two gigantic savages from Britain.
@@After which the renowned Valerian (if he survive,) will fight with
the broadsword,@@left-handed!@@against six Sophomores and a Freshman
from the Gladiatorial College!@@A long series of brilliant engagements
will follow, in which the finest talent of the Empire will take part.
@@After which the celebrated Infant Prodigy known as@@the young
achilles,
@@will engage four tiger whelps in combat, armed with no
other weapon than his little spear!@@The whole to conclude with a
chaste and elegant@@general slaughter!@@In which thirteen African Lions
and twenty-two Barbarian Prisoners will war with each other until all
are exterminated.@@box office now open.@@@@Dress Circle One Dollar;
Children and Servants half price.@@An efficient police force will be on
hand to preserve order and keep the wild beasts from leaping the
railings and discommoding the audience.@@Doors open at 7: performance
begins at 8.@@Positively no Free List.@@Diodorus Job Press.@@It was as
singular as it was gratifying that I was also so fortunate as to find
among the rubbish of the arena, a stained and mutilated copy of the
Roman Daily Battle-Ax, containing a critique upon this very performance.
It comes to hand too late by many centuries to rank as news, and
therefore I translate and publish it simply to show how very little the
general style and phraseology of dramatic criticism has altered in the
ages that have dragged their slow length along since the carriers laid
this one damp and fresh before their Roman patrons:@@The Opening
Season.--Coliseum.--Notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather,
quite a respectable number of the rank and fashion of the city
assembled last night to witness the debut upon metropolitan boards of
the young tragedian who has of late been winning such golden opinions
in the amphitheatres of the provinces. Some sixty thousand persons were
present, and but for the fact that the streets were almost impassable,
it is fair to presume that the house would have been full. His august
Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied the imperial box, and was the
cynosure of all eyes. Many illustrious nobles and generals of the
Empire graced the occasion with their presence, and not the least among
them was the young patrician lieutenant whose laurels, won in the ranks
of the
Thundering Legion,
are still so green upon his brow. The
cheer which greeted his entrance was heard beyond the Tiber!@@The
late repairs and decorations add both to the comeliness and the comfort
of the Coliseum. The new cushions are a great improvement upon the hard
marble seats we have been so long accustomed to. The present management
deserve well of the public. They have restored to the Coliseum the
gilding, the rich upholstery and the uniform magnificence which old
Coliseum frequenters tell us Rome was so proud of fifty years ago.@@
The opening scene last night--the broadsword combat between two young
amateurs and a famous Parthian gladiator who was sent here a
prisoner--was very fine. The elder of the two young gentlemen handled
his weapon with a grace that marked the possession of extraordinary
talent. His feint of thrusting, followed instantly by a happily
delivered blow which unhelmeted the Parthian, was received with hearty
applause. He was not thoroughly up in the backhanded stroke, but it was
very gratifying to his numerous friends to know that, in time, practice
would have overcome this defect. However, he was killed. His sisters,
who were present, expressed considerable regret. His mother left the
Coliseum. The other youth maintained the contest with such spirit as to
call forth enthusiastic bursts of applause. When at last he fell a
corpse, his aged mother ran screaming, with hair disheveled and tears
streaming from her eyes, and swooned away just as her hands were
clutching at the railings of the arena. She was promptly removed by the
police. Under the circumstances the woman's conduct was pardonable,
perhaps, but we suggest that such exhibitions interfere with the
decorum which should be preserved during the performances, and are
highly improper in the presence of the Emperor. The Parthian prisoner
fought bravely and well; and well he might, for he was fighting for
both life and liberty. His wife and children were there to nerve his
arm with their love, and to remind him of the old home he should see
again if he conquered. When his second assailant fell, the woman
clasped her children to her breast and wept for joy. But it was only a
transient happiness. The captive staggered toward her and she saw that
the liberty he had earned was earned too late. He was wounded unto
death. Thus the first act closed in a manner which was entirely
satisfactory. The manager was called before the curtain and returned
his thanks for the honor done him, in a speech which was replete with
wit and humor, and closed by hoping that his humble efforts to afford
cheerful and instructive entertainment would continue to meet with the
approbation of the Roman public.@@
The star now appeared, and was
received with vociferous applause and the simultaneous waving of sixty
thousand handkerchiefs. Marcus Marcellus Valerian (stage name--his real
name is Smith,) is a splendid specimen of physical development, and an
artist of rare merit. His management of the battle-ax is wonderful. His
gayety and his playfulness are irresistible, in his comic parts, and
yet they are inferior to his sublime conceptions in the grave realm of
tragedy. When his ax was describing fiery circles about the heads of
the bewildered barbarians, in exact time with his springing body and
his prancing legs, the audience gave way to uncontrollable bursts of
laughter; but when the back of his weapon broke the skull of one and
almost in the same instant its edge clove the other's body in twain,
the howl of enthusiastic applause that shook the building, was the
acknowledgment of a critical assemblage that he was a master of the
noblest department of his profession. If he has a fault, (and we are
sorry to even intimate that he has,) it is that of glancing at the
audience, in the midst of the most exciting moments of the performance,
as if seeking admiration. The pausing in a fight to bow when bouquets
are thrown to him is also in bad taste. In the great left-handed combat
he appeared to be looking at the audience half the time, instead of
carving his adversaries; and when he had slain all the sophomores and
was dallying with the freshman, he stooped and snatched a bouquet as it
fell, and offered it to his adversary at a time when a blow was
descending which promised favorably to be his death-warrant. Such
levity is proper enough in the provinces, we make no doubt, but it ill
suits the dignity of the metropolis. We trust our young friend will
take these remarks in good part, for we mean them solely for his
benefit. All who know us are aware that although we are at times justly
severe upon tigers and martyrs, we never intentionally offend
gladiators.@@
) and by the rusty, broken image of Minerva, still
keeping tireless watch and ward over the possessions it was powerless
to save, and went up a long street and stood in the broad court of the
Forum of Justice. The floor was level and clean, and up and down either
side was a noble colonnade of broken pillars, with their beautiful
Ionic and Corinthian columns scattered about them. At the upper end
were the vacant seats of the Judges, and behind them we descended into
a dungeon where the ashes and cinders had found two prisoners chained
on that memorable November night, and tortured them to death. How they
must have tugged at the pitiless fetters as the fierce fires surged
around them!
The Infant Prodigy performed wonders. He overcame his
four tiger whelps with ease, and with no other hurt than the loss of a
portion of his scalp. The General Slaughter was rendered with a
faithfulness to details which reflects the highest credit upon the late
participants in it.@@
Well, I do not know that one would necessarily
die after merely seeing it, but to attempt to live there might turn out
a little differently. To see Naples as we saw it in the early dawn from
far up on the side of Vesuvius, is to see a picture of wonderful beauty.
At that distance its dingy buildings looked white--and so, rank on
rank of balconies, windows and roofs, they piled themselves up from the
blue ocean till the colossal castle of St. Elmo topped the grand white
pyramid and gave the picture symmetry, emphasis and completeness. And
when its lilies turned to roses--when it blushed under the sun's first
kiss--it was beautiful beyond all description. One might well say,
then, Upon the whole, last night's performances shed
honor not only upon the management but upon the city that encourages
and sustains such wholesome and instructive entertainments. We would
simply suggest that the practice of vulgar young boys in the gallery of
shying peanuts and paper pellets at the tigers, and saying
--and when he got them, he handed the hackman half a franc, and he
immediately asked for two cents to buy a drink with. It may be thought
that I am prejudiced. Perhaps I am. I would be ashamed of myself if I
were not.
Hi-yi!
and manifesting approbation or dissatisfaction by such observations as
Bully for the lion!
Go it, Gladdy!
Boots!
Speech!
Take a walk round the block!
and so on, are
extremely reprehensible, when the Emperor is present, and ought to be
stopped by the police. Several times last night, when the
supernumeraries entered the arena to drag out the bodies, the young
ruffians in the gallery shouted, Supe! supe!
and also, Oh,
what a coat!
and Why don't you pad them shanks?
and made use
of various other remarks expressive of derision. These things are very
annoying to the audience.@@A matinee for the little folks is
promised for this afternoon, on which occasion several martyrs will be
eaten by the tigers. The regular performance will continue every night
till further notice. Material change of programme every evening.
Benefit of Valerian, Tuesday, 29th, if he lives.
@I have been a
dramatic critic myself, in my time, and I was often surprised to notice
how much more I knew about Hamlet than Forrest did; and it gratifies me
to observe, now, how much better my brethren of ancient times knew how
a broad-sword battle ought to be fought than the gladiators.@[te
Chapter XXVII
butchered to make a Roman holyday.
I am the only
free white man of mature age, who has accomplished this since Byron
originated the expression.
plugs,
with the hair turned the wrong way and more
corners on their bodies than there are on the mosque of Omar; we
hitched up and started. It was a dreadful trip. But Oliver did not
complain. The horses dragged the wagon two miles from town and then
gave out. Then we three pushed the wagon seven miles, and Oliver moved
ahead and pulled the horses after him by the bits. We complained, but
Oliver did not. The ground was frozen, and it froze our backs while we
slept; the wind swept across our faces and froze our noses. Oliver did
not complain. Five days of pushing the wagon by day and freezing by
night brought us to the bad part of the journey--the Forty Mile Desert,
or the Great American Desert, if you please. Still, this
mildest-mannered man that ever was, had not complained. We started
across at eight in the morning, pushing through sand that had no bottom;
toiling all day long by the wrecks of a thousand wagons, the skeletons
of ten thousand oxen; by wagon-tires enough to hoop the Washington
Monument to the top, and ox-chains enough to girdle Long Island; by
human graves; with our throats parched always, with thirst; lips
bleeding from the alkali dust; hungry, perspiring, and very, very
weary--so weary that when we dropped in the sand every fifty yards to
rest the horses, we could hardly keep from going to sleep--no
complaints from Oliver: none the next morning at three o'clock, when we
got across, tired to death. Awakened two or three nights afterward at
midnight, in a narrow canon, by the snow falling on our faces, and
appalled at the imminent danger of being snowed in,
we harnessed
up and pushed on till eight in the morning, passed the Divide
and knew we were saved. No complaints. Fifteen days of hardship and
fatigue brought us to the end of the two hundred miles, and the Judge
had not complained. We wondered if any thing could exasperate him. We
built a Humboldt house. It is done in this way. You dig a square in the
steep base of the mountain, and set up two uprights and top them with
two joists. Then you stretch a great sheet of cotton domestic
from the point where the joists join the hill-side down over the joists
to the ground; this makes the roof and the front of the mansion; the
sides and back are the dirt walls your digging has left. A chimney is
easily made by turning up one corner of the roof. Oliver was sitting
alone in this dismal den, one night, by a sage-brush fire, writing
poetry; he was very fond of digging poetry out of himself--or blasting
it out when it came hard. He heard an animal's footsteps close to the
roof; a stone or two and some dirt came through and fell by him. He
grew uneasy and said Hi!--clear out from there, can't you!
--from
time to time. But by and by he fell asleep where he sat, and pretty
soon a mule fell down the chimney! The fire flew in every direction,
and Oliver went over backwards. About ten nights after that, he
recovered confidence enough to go to writing poetry again. Again he
dozed off to sleep, and again a mule fell down the chimney. This time,
about half of that side of the house came in with the mule. Struggling
to get up, the mule kicked the candle out and smashed most of the
kitchen furniture, and raised considerable dust. These violent
awakenings must have been annoying to Oliver, but he never complained.
He moved to a mansion on the opposite side of the canon, because he had
noticed the mules did not go there. One night about eight o'clock he
was endeavoring to finish his poem, when a stone rolled in--then a hoof
appeared below the canvas--then part of a cow--the after part. He
leaned back in dread, and shouted Hooy! hooy! get out of this!
and the cow struggled manfully--lost ground steadily--dirt and dust
streamed down, and before Oliver could get well away, the entire cow
crashed through on to the table and made a shapeless wreck of every
thing!
This thing is growing monotonous!
Butchered
to make a Roman holyday
has grown monotonous to me.
Enough, enough, enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the
Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!
Statoo brunzo.
(Bronze statue.)
By Michael Angelo?<
/q>
is good, the No--not know who.
Michael
Angelo?
No--thousan' year before he is born.
Michael Angelo?
Oh, mon dieu, genteelmen! Zis is two thousan' year before he is
born!
smart
things, and do absurd ones, and in other
ways show off
when company is present. It is what makes gossips
turn out in rain and storm to go and be the first to tell a startling
bit of news. Think, then, what a passion it becomes with a guide, whose
privilege it is, every day, to show to strangers wonders that throw
them into perfect ecstasies of admiration! He gets so that he could not
by any possibility live in a soberer atmosphere. After we discovered
this, we never went into ecstacies any more--we never admired any
thing--we never showed any but impassible faces and stupid indifference
in the presence of the sublimest wonders a guide had to display. We had
found their weak point. We have made good use of it ever since. We have
made some of those people savage, at times, but we have never lost our
own serenity.
Come wis me, genteelmen!--come! I show you ze letter writing by
Christopher Colombo!--write it himself!--write it wis his own
hand!--come!
What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so! See! hand-writing
Christopher Colombo!--write it himself!
Ah--Ferguson--what--what did you say was the name of the party who
wrote this?
Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!
Ah--did he write it himself, or--or how?
He write it himself!--Christopher Colombo! he's own hand-writing,
write by himself!
Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could
write better than that.
But zis is ze great Christo--
I don't care who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw. Now you
musn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not
fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of
real merit, trot them out!--and if you haven't, drive on!
Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me! I show you beautiful, O,
magnificent bust Christopher Colombo!--splendid, grand, magnificent!
Ah, look, genteelmen!--beautiful, grand,--bust Christopher
Colombo!--beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal!
Ah--what did you say this gentleman's name was?
Christopher Colombo!--ze great Christopher Colombo!
Christopher Colombo--the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did
he do?
Discover America!--discover America, Oh, ze devil!
Discover America. No--that statement will hardly wash. We are just
from America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher
Colombo--pleasant name--is--is he dead?
Oh, corpo di Baccho!--three hundred year!
What did he die of?
I do not know!--I can not tell.
Small-pox, think?
I do not know, genteelmen!--I do not know what he die of!
Measles, likely?
May be--may be--I do not know--I think he die of somethings.
Parents living?
Im-posseeble!
Ah--which is the bust and which is the pedestal?
Santa Maria!--zis ze bust!--zis ze pedestal!
Ah, I see, I see--happy combination--very happy combination, indeed.
Is--is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?
See, genteelmen!--Mummy! Mummy!
Ah,--Ferguson--what did I understand you to say the gentleman's name
was?
Name?--he got no name!--Mummy!--'Gyptian mummy!
Yes, yes. Born here?
No! 'Gyptian mummy!
Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?
No!--not Frenchman, not Roman!--born in Egypta!
Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. Foreign locality,
likely. Mummy--mummy. How calm he is--how self-possessed. Is, ah--is he
dead?
Oh, sacre bleu, been dead three thousan' year!
Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this! Playing us for
Chinamen because we are strangers and trying to learn! Trying to impose
your vile second-hand carcasses on us!--thunder and lightning, I've a
notion to--to--if you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!--or by
George we'll brain you!
Is--is he dead?
Here the heart of St. Philip Neri was so inflamed with divine love
as to burst his ribs.
Rev. William H. Neligan, LL.D., M. A., Trinity
College, Dublin; Member of the Arch;aeological Society of Great Britain.
Therefore, I believe it. Otherwise, I could not. Under other
circumstances I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had
for dinner.
His
tongue and his heart, which were found after nearly a century to be
whole, when the body was disinterred before his canonization, are still
preserved in a glass case, and after two centuries the heart is still
whole. When the French troops came to Rome, and when Pius VII. was
carried away prisoner, blood dropped from it.
@To read that in a
book written by a monk far back in the Middle Ages, would surprise no
one; it would sound natural and proper; but when it is seriously stated
in the middle of the nineteenth century, by a man of finished
education, an LL.D., M.A., and an Arch;aeological magnate, it sounds
strangely enough. Still, I would gladly change my unbelief for
Neligan's faith, and let him make the conditions as hard as he pleased.
@@The old gentleman's undoubting, unquestioning simplicity has a rare
freshness about it in these matter-of-fact railroading and telegraphing
days. Hear him, concerning the church of Ara C;oeli:@@In the roof of
the church, directly above the high altar, is engraved, `Regina C;oeli
laetare Alleluia.' In the sixth century Rome was visited by a fearful
pestilence. Gregory the Great urged the people to do penance, and a
general procession was formed. It was to proceed from Ara C;oeli to St.
Peter's. As it passed before the mole of Adrian, now the Castle of St.
Angelo, the sound of heavenly voices was heard singing (it was Easter
morn,) `Regina C;oeli, laetare! alleluia! quia quem meruisti portare,
alleluia! resurrexit sicut dixit; alleluia!' The Pontiff, carrying in
his hands the portrait of the Virgin, (which is over the high altar and
is said to have been painted by St. Luke,) answered, with the
astonished people, `Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia!' At the same time an
angel was seen to put up a sword in a scabbard, and the pestilence
ceased on the same day. There are four circumstances which confirm*
this miracle: the annual procession which takes place in the western
church on the feast of St. Mark; the statue of St. Michael, placed on
the mole of Adrian, which has since that time been called the Castle of
St. Angelo; the antiphon Regina C;oeli, which the Catholic church sings
during paschal time; and the inscription in the church.
@@@*The
italics are mine.--M.T.@@[te
Chapter XXVIII
Renaissance,
notwithstanding I
believe they told us one of the ancient old masters painted it--and
then we descended into the vast vault underneath.
We did it
--meaning
himself and his brethren up stairs. I could see that the old friar took
a high pride in his curious show. We made him talkative by exhibiting
an interest we never betrayed to guides.
Who were these people?
We--up stairs--Monks of the Capuchin order--my brethren.
How many departed monks were required to upholster these six
parlors?
These are the bones of four thousand.
It took a long time to get enough?
Many, many centuries.
Their different parts are well separated--skulls in one room, legs
in another, ribs in another--there would be stirring times here for a
while if the last trump should blow. Some of the brethren might get
hold of the wrong leg, in the confusion, and the wrong skull, and find
themselves limping, and looking through eyes that were wider apart or
closer together than they were used to. You can not tell any of these
parties apart, I suppose?
Oh, yes, I know many of them.
This was Brother Anselmo--dead three
hundred years--a good man.
This was Brother Alexander--dead two hundred and
eighty years. This was Brother Carlo--dead about as long.
This,
he said, was Brother Thomas. He was a young prince, the
scion of a proud house that traced its lineage back to the grand old
days of Rome well nigh two thousand years ago. He loved beneath his
estate. His family persecuted him; persecuted the girl, as well. They
drove her from Rome; he followed; he sought her far and wide; he found
no trace of her. He came back and offered his broken heart at our altar
and his weary life to the service of God. But look you. Shortly his
father died, and likewise his mother. The girl returned, rejoicing. She
sought every where for him whose eyes had used to look tenderly into
hers out of this poor skull, but she could not find him. At last, in
this coarse garb we wear, she recognized him in the street. He knew her.
It was too late. He fell where he stood. They took him up and brought
him here. He never spoke afterward. Within the week he died. You can
see the color of his hair--faded, somewhat--by this thin shred that
clings still to the temple. This,
;obtaking up a thigh bone,;cb
was his. The veins of this leaf in the decorations over your head, were
his finger-joints, a hundred and fifty years ago.
Now this little nerve quivers--the vibration
is imparted to this muscle--from here it is passed to this fibrous
substance; here its ingredients are separated by the chemical action of
the blood--one part goes to the heart and thrills it with what is
popularly termed emotion, another part follows this nerve to the brain
and communicates intelligence of a startling character--the third part
glides along this passage and touches the spring connected with the
fluid receptacles that lie in the rear of the eye. Thus, by this simple
and beautiful process, the party is informed that his mother is dead,
and he weeps.
Horrible!
We must all lie here at last.
Is--is he dead?
old masters
(especially in sculpture,) fairly swarm, there.
I can not write about the Vatican. I think I shall never remember any
thing I saw there distinctly but the mummies, and the Transfiguration,
by Raphael, and some other things it is not necessary to mention now. I
shall remember the Transfiguration partly because it was placed in a
room almost by itself; partly because it is acknowledged by all to be
the first oil painting in the world; and partly because it was
wonderfully beautiful. The colors are fresh and rich, the
expression,
I am told, is fine, the feeling
is lively, the <
q>tonedepth
is profound, and the width is
about four and a half feet, I should judge. It is a picture that really
holds one's attention; its beauty is fascinating. It is fine enough to
be a Renaissance. A remark I made a while ago suggests a thought--and a
hope. Is it not possible that the reason I find such charms in this
picture is because it is out of the crazy chaos of the galleries? If
some of the others were set apart, might not they be beautiful? If this
were set in the midst of the tempest of pictures one finds in the vast
galleries of the Roman palaces, would I think it so handsome? If, up to
this time, I had seen only one old master
in each palace,
instead of acres and acres of walls and ceilings fairly papered with
them, might I not have a more civilized opinion of the old masters than
I have now? I think so. When I was a school-boy and was to have a new
knife, I could not make up my mind as to which was the prettiest in the
show-case, and I did not think any of them were particularly pretty;
and so I chose with a heavy heart. But when I looked at my purchase, at
home, where no glittering blades came into competition with it, I was
astonished to see how handsome it was. To this day my new hats look
better out of the shop than they did in it with other new hats. It
begins to dawn upon me, now, that possibly, what I have been taking for
uniform ugliness in the galleries may be uniform beauty after all. I
honestly hope it is, to others, but certainly it is not to me. Perhaps
the reason I used to enjoy going to the Academy of Fine Arts in New
York was because there were but a few hundred paintings in it, and it
did not surfeit me to go through the list. I suppose the Academy was
bacon and beans in the Forty-Mile Desert, and a European gallery is a
state dinner of thirteen courses. One leaves no sign after him of the
one dish, but the thirteen frighten away his appetite and give him no
satisfaction.
Nero fiddling o'er
burning Rome,
the assassination of C;aesar, the stirring spectacle
of a hundred thousand people bending forward with rapt interest, in the
Coliseum, to see two skillful gladiators hacking away each others'
lives, a tiger springing upon a kneeling martyr--these and a thousand
other matters which we read of with a living interest, must be sought
for only in books--not among the rubbish left by the old masters--who
are no more, I have the satisfaction of informing the public.
A hundred thousand dollars!
Ferguson said. Ferguson said, further, that the Pope permits no ancient
work of this kind to leave his dominions. He appoints a commission to
examine discoveries like this and report upon the value; then the Pope
pays the discoverer one-half of that assessed value and takes the
statue. He said this Jupiter was dug from a field which had just been
bought for thirty-six thousand dollars, so the first crop was a good
one for the new farmer. I do not know whether Ferguson always tells the
truth or not, but I suppose he does. I know that an exorbitant export
duty is exacted upon all pictures painted by the old masters, in order
to discourage the sale of those in the private collections. I am
satisfied, also, that genuine old masters hardly exist at all, in
America, because the cheapest and most insignificant of them are valued
at the price of a fine farm. I proposed to buy a small trifle of a
Raphael, myself, but the price of it was eighty thousand dollars, the
export duty would have made it considerably over a hundred, and so I
studied on it awhile and concluded not to take it.
Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth to men of good will!
It is not good scripture, but it is sound Catholic and human nature.
Blessed Peter, give life to Pope Leo and
victory to King Charles.
It does not say, Intercede for us,
through the Saviour, with the Father, for this boon,
but Blessed
Peter, give it us.
The Mother of God
--otherwise the Virgin Mary.
Christ's Churches
in Rome, and no Churches of the Holy
Ghost,
that I can discover. There are some four hundred churches,
but about a fourth of them seem to be named for the Madonna and St.
Peter. There are so many named for Mary that they have to be
distinguished by all sorts of affixes, if I understand the matter
rightly. Then we have churches of St. Louis; St. Augustine; St. Agnes;
St. Calixtus; St. Lorenzo in Lucina; St. Lorenzo in Damaso; St. Cecilia;
St. Athanasius; St. Philip Neri; St. Catherine, St. Dominico, and a
multitude of lesser saints whose names are not familiar in the
world--and away down, clear out of the list of the churches, comes a
couple of hospitals: one of them is named for the Saviour and the other
for the Holy Ghost!
restored
with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong
and dated wrong, and set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about
and vandals to scribble their names on forever and forevermore.
guide-book
chapter on this fascinating city, but I
could not do it, because I have felt all the time like a boy in a
candy-shop--there was every thing to choose from, and yet no choice. I
have drifted along hopelessly for a hundred pages of manuscript without
knowing where to commence. I will not commence at all. Our passports
have been examined. We will go to Naples.@[te
Chapter XXIX
resting,
but I do
not remember now what the resting consisted of, for when we got back to
Naples we had not slept for forty-eight hours. We were just about to go
to bed early in the evening, and catch up on some of the sleep we had
lost, when we heard of this Vesuvius expedition. There was to be eight
of us in the party, and we were to leave Naples at midnight. We laid in
some provisions for the trip, engaged carriages to take us to
Annunciation, and then moved about the city, to keep awake, till twelve.
We got away punctually, and in the course of an hour and a half
arrived at the town of Annunciation. Annunciation is the very last
place under the sun. In other towns in Italy the people lie around
quietly and wait for you to ask them a question or do some overt act
that can be charged for--but in Annunciation they have lost even that
fragment of delicacy; they seize a lady's shawl from a chair and hand
it to her and charge a penny; they open a carriage door, and charge for
it--shut it when you get out, and charge for it; they help you to take
off a duster--two cents; brush your clothes and make them worse than
they were before--two cents; smile upon you--two cents; bow, with a
lick-spittle smirk, hat in hand--two cents; they volunteer all
information, such as that the mules will arrive presently--two
cents--warm day, sir--two cents--take you four hours to make the
ascent--two cents. And so they go. They crowd you--infest you--swarm
about you, and sweat and smell offensively, and look sneaking and mean,
and obsequious. There is no office too degrading for them to perform,
for money. I have had no opportunity to find out any thing about the
upper classes by my own observation, but from what I hear said about
them I judge that what they lack in one or two of the bad traits the
canaille have, they make up in one or two others that are worse. How
the people beg!--many of them very well dressed, too.
course,
in a two-horse
carriage, costs a franc--that is law--but the hackman always demands
more, on some pretence or other, and if he gets it he makes a new
demand. It is said that a stranger took a one-horse carriage for a
course--tariff, half a franc. He gave the man five francs, by way of
experiment. He demanded more, and received another franc. Again he
demanded more, and got a franc--demanded more, and it was refused. He
grew vehement--was again refused, and became noisy. The stranger said, <
q>Well, give me the seven francs again, and I will see what I can doSee Naples and die.
The frame of the picture was charming,
itself. In front, the smooth sea--a vast mosaic of many colors; the
lofty islands swimming in a dreamy haze in the distance; at our end of
the city the stately double peak of Vesuvius, and its strong black ribs
and seams of lava stretching down to the limitless level campagna--a
green carpet that enchants the eye and leads it on and on, past
clusters of trees, and isolated houses, and snowy villages, until it
shreds out in a fringe of mist and general vagueness far away. It is
from the Hermitage, there on the side of Vesuvius, that one should
see Naples and die.
first
floor. No, not nine, but there or thereabouts. There is a
little bird-cage of an iron railing in front of every window clear away
up, up, up, among the eternal clouds, where the roof is, and there is
always somebody looking out of every window--people of ordinary size
looking out from the first floor, people a shade smaller from the
second, people that look a little smaller yet from the third--and from
thence upward they grow smaller and smaller by a regularly graduated
diminution, till the folks in the topmost windows seem more like birds
in an uncommonly tall martin-box than any thing else. The perspective
of one of these narrow cracks of streets, with its rows of tall houses
stretching away till they come together in the distance like railway
tracks; its clothes-lines crossing over at all altitudes and waving
their bannered raggedness over the swarms of people below; and the
white-dressed women perched in balcony railings all the way from the
pavement up to the heavens--a perspective like that is really worth
going into Neapolitan details to see.
resting
a couple of days and studying human
villainy, with the landlord of the Grande Sentinelle for a model. So we
went to Procida, and from thence to Pozzuoli, where St. Paul landed
after he sailed from Samos. I landed at precisely the same spot where
St. Paul landed, and so did Dan and the others. It was a remarkable
coincidence. St. Paul preached to these people seven days before he
started to Rome.
loud
about its well-bred and well-dressed look. Beautiful? One could stand
and look down upon it for a week without getting tired of it. It had
the semblance of a pleasant meadow, whose slender grasses and whose
velvety mosses were frosted with a shining dust, and tinted with palest
green that deepened gradually to the darkest hue of the orange leaf,
and deepened yet again into gravest brown, then faded into orange, then
into brightest gold, and culminated in the delicate pink of a new-blown
rose. Where portions of the meadow had sunk, and where other portions
had been broken up like an ice-floe, the cavernous openings of the one,
and the ragged upturned edges exposed by the other, were hung with a
lace-work of soft-tinted crystals of sulphur that changed their
deformities into quaint shapes and figures that were full of grace and
beauty.
burnt district
in one of our
cities, and if there had been any charred timbers, shattered windows,
heaps of debris, and general blackness and smokiness about the place,
the resemblance would have been perfect. But no--the sun shines as
brightly down on old Pompeii to-day as it did when Christ was born in
Bethlehem, and its streets are cleaner a hundred times than ever
Pompeiian saw them in her prime. I know whereof I speak--for in the
great, chief thoroughfares (Merchant street and the Street of Fortune)
have I not seen with my own eyes how for two hundred years at least the
pavements were not repaired!--how ruts five and even ten inches deep
were worn into the thick flag-stones by the chariot-wheels of
generations of swindled tax-payers? And do I not know by these signs
that Street Commissioners of Pompeii never attended to their business,
and that if they never mended the pavements they never cleaned them?
And, besides, is it not the inborn nature of Street Commissioners to
avoid their duty whenever they get a chance? I wish I knew the name of
the last one that held office in Pompeii so that I could give him a
blast. I speak with feeling on this subject, because I caught my foot
in one of those ruts, and the sadness that came over me when I saw the
first poor skeleton, with ashes and lava sticking to it, was tempered
by the reflection that may be that party was the Street Commissioner.
Beware of the Dog,
and sometimes a picture
of a bear or a faun with no inscription at all. Then you enter a sort
of vestibule, where they used to keep the hat-rack, I suppose; next a
room with a large marble basin in the midst and the pipes of a fountain;
on either side are bed-rooms; beyond the fountain is a reception-room,
then a little garden, dining-room, and so forth and so on. The floors
were all mosaic, the walls were stuccoed, or frescoed, or ornamented
with bas-reliefs, and here and there were statues, large and small, and
little fish-pools, and cascades of sparkling water that sprang from
secret places in the colonnade of handsome pillars that surrounded the
court, and kept the flower-beds fresh and the air cool. Those
Pompeiians were very luxurious in their tastes and habits. The most
exquisite bronzes we have seen in Europe, came from the exhumed cities
of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and also the finest cameos and the most
delicate engravings on precious stones; their pictures, eighteen or
nineteen centuries old, are often much more pleasing than the
celebrated rubbish of the old masters of three centuries ago. They were
well up in art. From the creation of these works of the first, clear up
to the eleventh century, art seems hardly to have existed at all--at
least no remnants of it are left--and it was curious to see how far (in
some things, at any rate,) these old time pagans excelled the remote
generations of masters that came after them. The pride of the world in
sculptures seem to be the Laocoon and the Dying Gladiator, in Rome.
They are as old as Pompeii, were dug from the earth like Pompeii; but
their exact age or who made them can only be conjectured. But worn, and
cracked, without a history, and with the blemishing stains of
numberless centuries upon them, they still mutely mock at all efforts
to rival their perfections.
Positively No Free List, Except Members of the Press!
Hanging about
the doorway (I fancied,) were slouchy Pompeiian street-boys uttering
slang and profanity, and keeping a wary eye out for checks. I entered
the theatre, and sat down in one of the long rows of stone benches in
the dress circle, and looked at the place for the orchestra, and the
ruined stage, and around at the wide sweep of empty boxes, and thought
to myself, This house won't pay.
I tried to imagine the music in
full blast, the leader of the orchestra beating time, and the
versatile
So-and-So (who had just returned from a most
successful tour in the provinces to play his last and farewell
engagement of positively six nights only, in Pompeii, previous to his
departure for Herculaneum,
) charging around the stage and piling
the agony mountains high--but I could not do it with such a house
as that; those empty benches tied my fancy down to dull reality. I
said, these people that ought to be here have been dead, and still, and
moldering to dust for ages and ages, and will never care for the
trifles and follies of life any more for ever--Owing to
circumstances, etc., etc., there will not be any performance to-night.<
/q> Close down the curtain. Put out the lights.
All aboard--last train for Naples!
woke me up and
reminded me that I belonged in the nineteenth century, and was not a
dusty mummy, caked with ashes and cinders, eighteen hundred years old.
The transition was startling. The idea of a railroad train actually
running to old dead Pompeii, and whistling irreverently, and calling
for passengers in the most bustling and business-like way, was as
strange a thing as one could imagine, and as unpoetical and
disagreeable as it was strange.
By this time the murky darkness had so
increased that one might have believed himself abroad in a black and
moonless night, or in a chamber where all the lights had been
extinguished. On every hand was heard the complaints of women, the
wailing of children, and the cries of men. One called his father,
another his son, and another his wife, and only by their voices could
they know each other. Many in their despair begged that death would
come and end their distress.@@
Some implored the gods to succor them,
and some believed that this night was the last, the eternal night which
should engulf the universe!@@
Even so it seemed to me--and I consoled
myself for the coming death with the reflection: Behold, the World is
passing away!
@@After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of
Bai;ae, of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks of
battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of
the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a force it never had before: the
unsubstantial, unlasting character of fame. Men lived long lives, in
the olden time, and struggled feverishly through them, toiling like
slaves, in oratory, in generalship, or in literature, and then laid
them down and died, happy in the possession of an enduring history and
a deathless name. Well, twenty little centuries flutter away, and what
is left of these things? A crazy inscription on a block of stone, which
snuffy antiquaries bother over and tangle up and make nothing out of
but a bare name (which they spell wrong)--no history, no tradition, no
poetry--nothing that can give it even a passing interest. What may be
left of General Grant's great name forty centuries hence? This--in the
Encyclopedia for A. D. 5868, possibly:@Uriah S. (or Z.)
Graunt--popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec provinces of the
United States of British America. Some authors say flourished about A.
D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a contemporary
of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished about A. D. 1328, some
three centuries after the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote
`Rock me to Sleep, Mother.'
@@These thoughts sadden me. I will to
bed.@[te
Chapter XXXII
Hello, doctor, what are you doing up here at this time of
night?--What do you want to see this place for?
What do I want to see this place for? Young man, little do you know
me, or you wouldn't ask such a question. I wish to see all the places
that's mentioned in the Bible.
Stuff--this place isn't mentioned in the Bible.
It ain't mentioned in the Bible!--this place ain't--well now, what
place is this, since you know so much about it?
Why it's Scylla and Charybdis.
Scylla and Cha--confound it, I thought it was Sodom and Gomorrah!
narrow rocky ridge
was the
Areopagus, which sloping hill the Pnyx, which elevation the Museum
Hill, and so on. And we got things confused. Discussion became heated,
and party spirit ran high. Church members were gazing with emotion upon
a hill which they said was the one St. Paul preached from, and another
faction claimed that that hill was Hymettus, and another that it was
Pentelicon! After all the trouble, we could be certain of only one
thing--the square-topped hill was the Acropolis, and the grand ruin
that crowned it was the Parthenon, whose picture we knew in infancy in
the school books.
heavy;
when asked how heavy?
he said it would be
very severe
--that was all we could get out of him.
Why,
these weeds are grape-vines!
and in five minutes we had a score of
bunches of large, white, delicious grapes, and were reaching down for
more when a dark shape rose mysteriously up out of the shadows beside
us and said Ho!
And so we left.
disputed daily<
/q> with the gossip-loving Athenians. We climbed the stone steps St.
Paul ascended, and stood in the square-cut place he stood in, and tried
to recollect the Bible account of the matter--but for certain reasons,
I could not recall the words. I have found them since:
Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in
him, when he saw the city wholly given up to idolatry.
Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the
devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.
And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we
know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is?
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars hill, and said, Ye men of
Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious;
For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with
this inscription: To the Unknown God. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you.
--Acts, ch. xvii.
Those
fellows are following us!
cheek.
* But they went and came safely, and never walked a step.
parties of the second part
gently rebuked by Xerxes. I speak of the
famous bridge of boats which Xerxes ordered to be built over the
narrowest part of the Hellespont (where it is only two or three miles
wide.) A moderate gale destroyed the flimsy structure, and the King,
thinking that to publicly rebuke the contractors might have a good
effect on the next set, called them out before the army and had them
beheaded. In the next ten minutes he let a new contract for the bridge.
It has been observed by ancient writers that the second bridge was a
very good bridge. Xerxes crossed his host of five millions of men on
it, and if it had not been purposely destroyed, it would probably have
been there yet. If our Government would rebuke some of our shoddy
contractors occasionally, it might work much good. In the Hellespont we
saw where Leander and Lord Byron swam across, the one to see her upon
whom his soul's affections were fixed with a devotion that only death
could impair, and the other merely for a flyer, as Jack says. We had
two noted tombs near us, too. On one shore slept Ajax, and on the other
Hecuba.
yanked
him back to his place in the flock without an effort.
He steered his geese with that stick as easily as another man would
steer a yawl. A few hours afterward we saw him sitting on a stone at a
corner, in the midst of the turmoil, sound asleep in the sun, with his
geese squatting around him, or dodging out of the way of asses and men.
We came by again, within the hour, and he was taking account of stock,
to see whether any of his flock had strayed or been stolen. The way he
did it was unique. He put the end of his stick within six or eight
inches of a stone wall, and made the geese march in single file between
it and the wall. He counted them as they went by. There was no dodging
that arrangement.
considered by good judges to be the most marvelous structure, in many
respects, that the world has ever seen.
) Or else they are those old
connoisseurs from the wilds of New Jersey who laboriously learn the
difference between a fresco and a fire-plug and from that day forward
feel privileged to void their critical bathos on painting, sculpture
and architecture forever more.
time.
Most of them spun
around forty times in a minute, and one artist averaged about sixty-one
times a minute, and kept it up during the whole twenty-five. His robe
filled with air and stood out all around him like a balloon.
Best brands Circassians, crop of 1850, ;bp200; 1852, ;bp250; 1854, ;
bp300. Best brands Georgian, none in market; second quality, 1851, ;
bp180. Nineteen fair to middling Wallachian girls offered at ;bp130 ;ca
150, but no takers; sixteen prime A 1 sold in small lots to close
out--terms private.
has been removed from Ephesus. Her light has been put
out. Pilgrims, always prone to find prophecies in the Bible, and often
where none exist, speak cheerfully and complacently of poor, ruined
Ephesus as the victim of prophecy. And yet there is no sentence that
promises, without due qualification, the destruction of the city. The
words are:@Sales of one lot Circassians, prime to good, 1852 to 1854, at ;bp240
;ca 242 1/2, buyer 30; one forty-niner--damaged--at ;bp23, seller ten,
no deposit. Several Georgians, fancy brands, 1852, changed hands to
fill orders. The Georgians now on hand are mostly last year's crop,
which was unusually poor. The new crop is a little backward, but will
be coming in shortly. As regards its quantity and quality, the accounts
are most encouraging. In this connection we can safely say, also, that
the new crop of Circassians is looking extremely well. His Majesty the
Sultan has already sent in large orders for his new harem, which will
be finished within a fortnight, and this has naturally strengthened the
market and given Circassian stock a strong upward tendency. Taking
advantage of the inflated market, many of our shrewdest operators are
selling short. There are hints of a
transformed into graceless ladies and uncouth
pilgrims, by rude travesties upon waterfalls, hoopskirts, white kid
gloves and swallow-tail coats, moved solemnly up the companion way, and
bowing low, began a system of complicated and extraordinary smiling
which few monarchs could look upon and live. Then the mock consul, a
slush-plastered deck-sweep, drew out a soiled fragment of paper and
proceeded to read, laboriously@corner
on Wallachians.
There is nothing new in Nubians. Slow sale.
@The
third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally in
a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing
a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a
dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the
flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and
Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare
tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting <
q>watch below,Eunuchs--None offering; however, large cargoes are expected from
Egypt to-day.
This boy is worth his weight in broad pieces of a hundred--for
behold, he will cheat whomsoever hath dealings with him, and from the
Euxine to the waters of Marmora there abideth not so gifted a liar!
How is that for a recommendation? The Missionaries tell me that they
hear encomiums like that passed upon people every day. They say of a
person they admire, Ah, he is a charming swindler, and a most
exquisite liar!
The unknown is always great.
To
the court, the newspaper is a mysterious and rascally institution. They
know what a pestilence is, because they have one occasionally that
thins the people out at the rate of two thousand a day, and they regard
a newspaper as a mild form of pestilence. When it goes astray, they
suppress it--pounce upon it without warning, and throttle it. When it
don't go astray for a long time, they get suspicious and throttle it
anyhow, because they think it is hatching deviltry. Imagine the Grand
Vizier in solemn council with the magnates of the realm, spelling his
way through the hated newspaper, and finally delivering his profound
decision: This thing means mischief--it is too darkly, too
suspiciously inoffensive--suppress it! Warn the publisher that we can
not have this sort of thing: put the editor in prison!
Last copy, sir: double price;
paper just been suppressed!
The man buys it, of course, and finds
nothing in it. They do say--I do not vouch for it--but they do say that
men sometimes print a vast edition of a paper, with a ferociously
seditious article in it, distribute it quickly among the newsboys, and
clear out till the Government's indignation cools. It pays well.
Confiscation don't amount to any thing. The type and presses are not
worth taking care of.
I pass
--he
plays euchre sometimes--and we all passed in turn. Then the cook baked
a broad, flat, wheaten cake, greased it well with the sausage, and
started towards us with it. It dropped in the dirt, and he picked it up
and polished it on his breeches, and laid it before us. Jack said, I
pass.
We all passed. He put some eggs in a frying pan, and stood
pensively prying slabs of meat from between his teeth with a fork. Then
he used the fork to turn the eggs with--and brought them along. Jack
said Pass again.
All followed suit. We did not know what to do,
and so we ordered a new ration of sausage. The cook got out his wire,
apportioned a proper amount of sausage-meat, spat it on his hands and
fell to work! This time, with one accord, we all passed out. We paid
and left. That is all I learned about Turkish lunches. A Turkish lunch
is good, no doubt, but it has its little drawbacks.
a square meal.
narghili
of the East--the thing the Grand Turk
smokes in the pictures. This began to look like luxury. I took one
blast at it, and it was sufficient; the smoke went in a great volume
down into my stomach, my lungs, even into the uttermost parts of my
frame. I exploded one mighty cough, and it was as if Vesuvius had let
go. For the next five minutes I smoked at every pore, like a frame
house that is on fire on the inside. Not any more narghili for me. The
smoke had a vile taste, and the taste of a thousand infidel tongues
that remained on that brass mouthpiece was viler still. I was getting
discouraged. Whenever, hereafter, I see the cross-legged Grand Turk
smoking his narghili, in pretended bliss, on the outside of a paper of
Connecticut tobacco, I shall know him for the shameless humbug he is.
I perceive that I am pretty far gone. It is plain that I ought to be
buried without any unnecessary delay. Perhaps you had better go after
my friends at once, because the weather is warm, and I can not `keep'
long.
It is a tedious process. It will take hours to trim me to the size
you want me; I will wait; go and borrow a jack-plane.
Far-away Moses,
who
will seduce them into buying a ship-load of ottar of roses, splendid
Turkish vestments, and all manner of curious things they can never have
any use for. Murray's invaluable guide-books have mentioned Far-away
Moses' name, and he is a made man. He rejoices daily in the fact that
he is a recognized celebrity. However, we can not alter our established
customs to please the whims of guides; we can not show partialities
this late in the day. Therefore, ignoring this fellow's brilliant fame,
and ignoring the fanciful name he takes such pride in, we called him
Ferguson, just as we had done with all other guides. It has kept him in
a state of smothered exasperation all the time. Yet we meant him no
harm. After he has gotten himself up regardless of expense, in showy,
baggy trowsers, yellow, pointed slippers, fiery fez, silken jacket of
blue, voluminous waist-sash of fancy Persian stuff filled with a
battery of silver-mounted horse-pistols, and has strapped on his
terrible scimetar, he considers it an unspeakable humiliation to be
called Ferguson. It can not be helped. All guides are Fergusons to us.
We can not master their dreadful foreign names.
Fragment of a Russian
General.
I carried it out to get a better light upon it--it was
nothing but a couple of teeth and part of the jaw-bone of a horse. I
said with some asperity:
Fragment of a Russian General! This is absurd. Are you never going
to learn any sense?
Go slow--the old woman won't know any different.
;
obHis aunt.;cb
Chunk busted from
the pulpit of Demosthenes,
and the other half Darnick from the
Tomb of Abelard and Heloise.
I have known him to gather up a
handful of pebbles by the roadside, and bring them on board ship and
label them as coming from twenty celebrated localities five hundred
miles apart. I remonstrate against these outrages upon reason and
truth, of course, but it does no good. I get the same tranquil,
unanswerable reply every time:
It don't signify--the old woman won't know any different.
keep the hang
of the time any more. It has grown discouraged, and stopped. I think
it did a wise thing. The difference in time between Sebastopol and the
Pacific coast is enormous. When it is six o'clock in the morning here,
it is somewhere about week before last in California. We are excusable
for getting a little tangled as to time. These distractions and
distresses about the time have worried me so much that I was afraid my
mind was so much affected that I never would have any appreciation of
time again; but when I noticed how handy I was yet about comprehending
when it was dinner-time, a blessed tranquillity settled down upon me,
and I am tortured with doubts and fears no more.
raised the hill
and stood in Odessa for the first time. It looked
just like an American city; fine, broad streets, and straight as well;
low houses, (two or three stories,) wide, neat, and free from any
quaintness of architectural ornamentation; locust trees bordering the
sidewalks (they call them acacias;) a stirring, business-look about the
streets and the stores; fast walkers; a familiar new look about the
houses and every thing; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust
that was so like a message from our own dear native land that we could
hardly refrain from shedding a few grateful tears and execrations in
the old time-honored American way. Look up the street or down the
street, this way or that way, we saw only America! There was not one
thing to remind us that we were in Russia. We walked for some little
distance, reveling in this home vision, and then we came upon a church
and a hack-driver, and presto! the illusion vanished! The church had a
slender-spired dome that rounded inward at its base, and looked like a
turnip turned upside down, and the hackman seemed to be dressed in a
long petticoat without any hoops. These things were essentially
foreign, and so were the carriages--but every body knows about these
things, and there is no occasion for my describing them.
Ah, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and they hae gi'en ye a
stane.
Good morning--I am glad to see you--I am gratified--I am
delighted--I am happy to receive you!
This does not answer--this isn't the style of king that I am
acquainted with.
the gentle
reader
has been used so often that any change from it can not but
be refreshing:@Save us and sanctify us, and finally, then,@@See good
provisions we enjoy while we journey to@@Jerusalem.@@For so man
proposes, which it is most true,@@And time will wait for none, nor for
us too.
@@The sea has been unusually rough all day. However, we have
had a lively time of it, anyhow. We have had quite a run of visitors.
The Governor-General came, and we received him with a salute of nine
guns. He brought his family with him. I observed that carpets were
spread from the pier-head to his carriage for him to walk on, though I
have seen him walk there without any carpet when he was not on business.
I thought may be he had what the accidental insurance people might
call an extra-hazardous polish (policy
--joke, but not above
mediocrity,) on his boots, and wished to protect them, but I examined
and could not see that they were blacked any better than usual. It may
have been that he had forgotten his carpet, before, but he did not have
it with him, anyhow. He was an exceedingly pleasant old gentleman; we
all liked him, especially Blucher. When he went away, Blucher invited
him to come again and fetch his carpet along.@@Prince Dolgorouki and a
Grand Admiral or two, whom we had seen yesterday at the reception, came
on board also. I was a little distant with these parties, at first,
because when I have been visiting Emperors I do not like to be too
familiar with people I only know by reputation, and whose moral
characters and standing in society I can not be thoroughly acquainted
with. I judged it best to be a little offish, at first. I said to
myself, Princes and Counts and Grand Admirals are very well, but they
are not Emperors, and one can not be too particular about who he
associates with.@@Baron Wrangel came, also. He used to be Russian
Ambassador at Washington. I told him I had an uncle who fell down a
shaft and broke himself in two, as much as a year before that. That was
a falsehood, but then I was not going to let any man eclipse me on
surprising adventures, merely for the want of a little invention. The
Baron is a fine man, and is said to stand high in the Emperor's
confidence and esteem.@@Baron Ungern-Sternberg, a boisterous,
whole-souled old nobleman, came with the rest. He is a man of progress
and enterprise--a representative man of the age. He is the Chief
Director of the railway system of Russia--a sort of railroad king. In
his line he is making things move along in this country. He has
traveled extensively in America. He says he has tried convict labor on
his railroads, and with perfect success. He says the convicts work
well, and are quiet and peaceable. He observed that he employs nearly
ten thousand of them now. This appeared to be another call on my
resources. I was equal to the emergency. I said we had eighty thousand
convicts employed on the railways in America--all of them under
sentence of death for murder in the first degree. That closed him out.
@@We had General Todtleben (the famous defender of Sebastopol, during
the siege,) and many inferior army and also navy officers, and a number
of unofficial Russian ladies and gentlemen. Naturally, a champagne
luncheon was in order, and was accomplished without loss of life.
Toasts and jokes were discharged freely, but no speeches were made save
one thanking the Emperor and the Grand Duke, through the
Governor-General, for our hospitable reception, and one by the
Governor-General in reply, in which he returned the Emperor's thanks
for 42speech, etc., etc.@[te
Chapter XXXVIII
read up
celebrated Smyrna.@At all
hours of the day and night the sailors in the forecastle amused
themselves and aggravated us by burlesquing our visit to royalty. The
opening paragraph of our Address to the Emperor was framed as follows:@<
q>We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for
recreation--and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state--and,
therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before
your Majesty, save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments
to the lord of a realm, which, through good and through evil report,
has been the steadfast friend of the land we love so well.To His Imperial Majesty, Alexander II.
, Emperor of Russia:@
@--We are a handful of private citizens of
America, traveling simply for recreation,--and unostentatiously, as
becomes our unofficial state--and therefore, we have no excuse to
tender for presenting ourselves before your Majesty--
@The Emperor--<
q>Then what the devil did you come for?Save the desire of
offering our grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a realm which--
@The Emperor--Oh, d--n the Address!--read it to the police.
Chamberlain, take these people over to my brother, the Grand Duke's,
and give them a square meal. Adieu! I am happy--I am gratified--I am
delighted--I am bored. Adieu, adieu--vamos the ranch! The First Groom
of the Palace will proceed to count the portable articles of value
belonging to the premises.
@The farce then closed, to be repeated
again with every change of the watches, and embellished with new and
still more extravagant inventions of pomp and conversation.@At all
times of the day and night the phraseology of that tiresome address
fell upon our ears. Grimy sailors came down out of the foretop placidly
announcing themselves as a handful of private citizens of America,
traveling simply for recreation and unostentatiously,
etc.; the
coal passers moved to their duties in the profound depths of the ship,
explaining the blackness of their faces and their uncouthness of dress,
with the reminder that they were a handful of private citizens,
traveling simply for recreation,
etc., and when the cry rang
through the vessel at midnight: Eight bells!--larboard watch, turn
out!
the larboard watch came gaping and stretching out of their
den, with the everlasting formula: Aye-aye, sir! We are a handful of
private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation, and
unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state!
@As I was a
member of the committee, and helped to frame the Address, these
sarcasms came home to me. I never heard a sailor proclaiming himself as
a handful of American citizens traveling for recreation, but I wished
he might trip and fall overboard, and so reduce his handful by one
individual, at least. I never was so tired of any one phrase as the
sailors made me of the opening sentence of the Address to the Emperor
of Russia.@This seaport of Smyrna, our first notable acquaintance in
Asia, is a closely packed city of one hundred and thirty thousand
inhabitants, and, like Constantinople, it has no outskirts. It is as
closely packed at its outer edges as it is in the centre, and then the
habitations leave suddenly off and the plain beyond seems houseless. It
is just like any other Oriental city. That is to say, its Moslem houses
are heavy and dark, and as comfortless as so many tombs; its streets
are crooked, rudely and roughly paved, and as narrow as an ordinary
staircase; the streets uniformly carry a man to any other place than
the one he wants to go to, and surprise him by landing him in the most
unexpected localities; business is chiefly carried on in great covered
bazaars, celled like a honeycomb with innumerable shops no larger than
a common closet, and the whole hive cut up into a maze of alleys about
wide enough to accommodate a laden camel, and well calculated to
confuse a stranger and eventually lose him; every where there is dirt,
every where there are fleas, every where there are lean, broken-hearted
dogs; every alley is thronged with people; wherever you look, your eye
rests upon a wild masquerade of extravagant costumes; the workshops are
all open to the streets, and the workmen visible; all manner of sounds
assail the ear, and over them all rings out the muezzin's cry from some
tall minaret, calling the faithful vagabonds to prayer; and superior to
the call to prayer, the noises in the streets, the interest of the
costumes--superior to every thing, and claiming the bulk of attention
first, last, and all the time--is a combination of Mohammedan stenches,
to which the smell of even a Chinese quarter would be as pleasant as
the roasting odors of the fatted calf to the nostrils of the returning
Prodigal. Such is Oriental luxury--such is Oriental splendor! We read
about it all our days, but we comprehend it not until we see it. Smyrna
is a very old city. Its name occurs several times in the Bible, one or
two of the disciples of Christ visited it, and here was located one of
the original seven apocalyptic churches spoken of in Revelations. These
churches were symbolized in the Scriptures as candlesticks, and on
certain conditions there was a sort of implied promise that Smyrna
should be endowed with a crown of life.
She was to be
faithful unto death
--those were the terms. She has not kept up her
faith straight along, but the pilgrims that wander hither consider that
she has come near enough to it to save her, and so they point to the
fact that Smyrna to-day wears her crown of life, and is a great city,
with a great commerce and full of energy, while the cities wherein were
located the other six churches, and to which no crown of life was
promised, have vanished from the earth. So Smyrna really still
possesses her crown of life, in a business point of view. Her career,
for eighteen centuries, has been a chequered one, and she has been
under the rule of princes of many creeds, yet there has been no season
during all that time, as far as we know, (and during such seasons as
she was inhabited at all,) that she has been without her little
community of Christians faithful unto death.
Hers was the only
church against which no threats were implied in the Revelations, and
the only one which survived.@With Ephesus, forty miles from here, where
was located another of the seven churches, the case was different. The <
q>candlestickRemember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen and
repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly,
and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.<
/q>@That is all; the other verses are singularly complimentary to
Ephesus. The threat is qualified. There is no history to show that she
did not repent. But the cruelest habit the modern prophecy-savans have,
is that one of coolly and arbitrarily fitting the prophetic shirt on to
the wrong man. They do it without regard to rhyme or reason. Both the
cases I have just mentioned are instances in point. Those
prophecies<
/q> are distinctly leveled at the
@Such things have a
bad influence. They provoke worldly men into using light conversation
concerning sacred subjects. Thick-headed commentators upon the Bible,
and stupid preachers and teachers, work more damage to religion than
sensible, cool-brained clergymen can fight away again, toil as they may.
It is not good judgment to fit a crown of life upon a city which has
been destroyed six times. That other class of wiseacres who twist
prophecy in such a manner as to make it promise the destruction and
desolation of the same city, use judgment just as bad, since the city
is in a very flourishing condition now, unhappily for them. These
things put arguments into the mouth of infidelity.@A portion of the
city is pretty exclusively Turkish; the Jews have a quarter to
themselves; the Franks another quarter; so, also, with the Armenians.
The Armenians, of course, are Christians. Their houses are large,
clean, airy, handsomely paved with black and white squares of marble,
and in the centre of many of them is a square court, which has in it a
luxuriant flower-garden and a sparkling fountain; the doors of all the
rooms open on this. A very wide hall leads to the street door, and in
this the women sit, the most of the day. In the cool of the evening
they dress up in their best raiment and show themselves at the door.
They are all comely of countenance, and exceedingly neat and cleanly;
they look as if they were just out of a band-box. Some of the young
ladies--many of them, I may say--are even very beautiful; they average
a shade better than American girls--which treasonable words I pray may
be forgiven me. They are very sociable, and will smile back when a
stranger smiles at them, bow back when he bows, and talk back if he
speaks to them. No introduction is required. An hour's chat at the door
with a pretty girl one never saw before, is easily obtained, and is
very pleasant. I have tried it. I could not talk any thing but
English, and the girl knew nothing but Greek, or Armenian, or some such
barbarous tongue, but we got along very well. I find that in cases like
these, the fact that you can not comprehend each other isn't much of a
drawback. In that Russian town of Yalta I danced an astonishing sort
of dance an hour long, and one I had not heard of before, with a very
pretty girl, and we talked incessantly, and laughed exhaustingly, and
neither one ever knew what the other was driving at. But it was
splendid. There were twenty people in the set, and the dance was very
lively and complicated. It was complicated enough without me--with me
it was more so. I threw in a figure now and then that surprised those
Russians. But I have never ceased to think of that girl. I have written
to her, but I can not direct the epistle because her name is one of
those nine-jointed Russian affairs, and there are not letters enough in
our alphabet to hold out. I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce
it when I am awake, but I make a stagger at it in my dreams, and get up
with the lockjaw in the morning. I am fading. I do not take my meals
now, with any sort of regularity. Her dear name haunts me still in my
dreams. It is awful on teeth. It never comes out of my mouth but it
fetches an old snag along with it. And then the lockjaw closes down and
nips off a couple of the last syllables--but they taste good.@Coming
through the Dardanelles, we saw camel trains on shore with the glasses,
but we were never close to one till we got to Smyrna. These camels are
very much larger than the scrawny specimens one sees in the menagerie.
They stride along these streets, in single file, a dozen in a train,
with heavy loads on their backs, and a fancy-looking negro in Turkish
costume, or an Arab, preceding them on a little donkey and completely
overshadowed and rendered insignificant by the huge beasts. To see a
camel train laden with the spices of Arabia and the rare fabrics of
Persia come marching through the narrow alleys of the bazaar, among
porters with their burdens, money-changers, lamp-merchants, Alnaschars
in the glassware business, portly cross-legged Turks smoking the famous
narghili, and the crowds drifting to and fro in the fanciful costumes
of the East, is a genuine revelation of the Orient. The picture lacks
nothing. It casts you back at once into your forgotten boyhood, and
again you dream over the wonders of the Arabian Nights; again your
companions are princes, your lord is the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, and
your servants are terrific giants and genii that come with smoke and
lightning and thunder, and go as a storm goes when they depart!@[te
Chapter XXXIX
churches of Ephesus, Smyrna,
etc., and yet the pilgrims invariably make them refer to the cities
instead. No crown of life is promised to the town of Smyrna and its
commerce, but to the handful of Christians who formed its church.
If they were faithful unto death,
they have their crown
now--but no amount of faithfulness and legal shrewdness combined could
legitimately drag the city into a participation in the promises of the
prophecy. The stately language of the Bible refers to a crown of life
whose lustre will reflect the day-beams of the endless ages of
eternity, not the butterfly existence of a city built by men's hands,
which must pass to dust with the builders and be forgotten even in the
mere handful of centuries vouchsafed to the solid world itself between
its cradle and its grave.@The fashion of delving out fulfillments of
prophecy where that prophecy consists of mere ifs,
trenches upon
the absurd. Suppose, a thousand years from now, a malarious swamp
builds itself up in the shallow harbor of Smyrna, or something else
kills the town; and suppose, also, that within that time the swamp that
has filled the renowned harbor of Ephesus and rendered her ancient site
deadly and uninhabitable to-day, becomes hard and healthy ground;
suppose the natural consequence ensues, to wit: that Smyrna becomes a
melancholy ruin, and Ephesus is rebuilt. What would the prophecy-savans
say? They would coolly skip over our age of the world, and say:
Smyrna was not faithful unto death, and so her crown of life was denied
her; Ephesus repented, and lo! her candlestick was not removed. Behold
these evidences! How wonderful is prophecy!
@Smyrna has been utterly
destroyed six times. If her crown of life had been an insurance policy,
she would have had an opportunity to collect on it the first time she
fell. But she holds it on sufferance and by a complimentary
construction of language which does not refer to her. Six different
times, however, I suppose some infatuated prophecy-enthusiast blundered
along and said, to the infinite disgust of Smyrna and the Smyrniotes: <
q>In sooth, here is astounding fulfillment of prophecy! Smyrna hath not
been faithful unto death, and behold her crown of life is vanished from
her head. Verily, these things be astonishing!Seven Churches
--thus they abbreviate it--came next on the
list. We rode there--about a mile and a half in the sweltering sun--and
visited a little Greek church which they said was built upon the
ancient site; and we paid a small fee, and the holy attendant gave each
of us a little wax candle as a remembrancer of the place, and I put
mine in my hat and the sun melted it and the grease all ran down the
back of my neck; and so now I have not any thing left but the wick, and
it is a sorry and a wilted-looking wick at that.
church
mentioned in the Bible meant a party of Christians, and not a building;
that the Bible spoke of them as being very poor--so poor, I thought,
and so subject to persecution (as per Polycarp's martyrdom) that in the
first place they probably could not have afforded a church edifice, and
in the second would not have dared to build it in the open light of day
if they could; and finally, that if they had had the privilege of
building it, common judgment would have suggested that they build it
somewhere near the town. But the elders of the ship's family ruled us
down and scouted our evidences. However, retribution came to them
afterward. They found that they had been led astray and had gone to the
wrong place; they discovered that the accepted site is in the city.
stripping.
They were clean, nice oyster
shells, large, and just like any other oyster shells. They were thickly
massed together, and none were scattered above or below the veins. Each
one was a well-defined lead by itself, and without a spur. My first
instinct was to set up the usual--
We, the undersigned, claim five claims of two hundred feet each,
(and one for discovery,) on this ledge or lode of oyster-shells, with
all its dips, spurs, angles, variations and sinuosities, and fifty feet
on each side of the same, to work it, etc., etc., according to the
mining laws of Smyrna.
taking them up.
Among the oyster-shells were mixed many
fragments of ancient, broken crockery ware. Now how did those masses of
oyster-shells get there? I can not determine. Broken crockery and
oyster-shells are suggestive of restaurants--but then they could have
had no such places away up there on that mountain side in our time,
because nobody has lived up there. A restaurant would not pay in such a
stony, forbidding, desolate place. And besides, there were no champagne
corks among the shells. If there ever was a restaurant there, it must
have been in Smyrna's palmy days, when the hills were covered with
palaces. I could believe in one restaurant, on those terms; but then
how about the three? Did they have restaurants there at three different
periods of the world?--because there are two or three feet of solid
earth between the oyster leads. Evidently, the restaurant solution will
not answer.
They are there,
but how they got there is a mystery.
If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at
Ephesus,
&c., when many men still lived who had seen the Christ;
here Mary Magdalen died, and here the Virgin Mary ended her days with
John, albeit Rome has since judged it best to locate her grave
elsewhere; six or seven hundred years ago--almost yesterday, as it
were--troops of mail-clad Crusaders thronged the streets; and to come
down to trifles, we speak of meandering streams, and find a new
interest in a common word when we discover that the crooked river
Meander, in yonder valley, gave it to our dictionary. It makes me feel
as old as these dreary hills to look down upon these moss-hung ruins,
this historic desolation. One may read the Scriptures and believe, but
he can not go and stand yonder in the ruined theatre and in imagination
people it again with the vanished multitudes who mobbed Paul's comrades
there and shouted, with one voice, Great is Diana of the Ephesians!<
/q> The idea of a shout in such a solitude as this almost makes one
shudder.@@It was a wonderful city, this Ephesus. Go where you will
about these broad plains, you find the most exquisitely sculptured
marble fragments scattered thick among the dust and weeds; and
protruding from the ground, or lying prone upon it, are beautiful
fluted columns of porphyry and all precious marbles; and at every step
you find elegantly carved capitals and massive bases, and polished
tablets engraved with Greek inscriptions. It is a world of precious
relics, a wilderness of marred and mutilated gems. And yet what are
these things to the wonders that lie buried here under the ground? At
Constantinople, at Pisa, in the cities of Spain, are great mosques and
cathedrals, whose grandest columns came from the temples and palaces of
Ephesus, and yet one has only to scratch the ground here to match them.
We shall never know what magnificence is, until this imperial city is
laid bare to the sun.@@The finest piece of sculpture we have yet seen
and the one that impressed us most, (for we do not know much about art
and can not easily work up ourselves into ecstacies over it,) is one
that lies in this old theatre of Ephesus which St. Paul's riot has made
so celebrated. It is only the headless body of a man, clad in a coat of
mail, with a Medusa head upon the breast-plate, but we feel persuaded
that such dignity and such majesty were never thrown into a form of
stone before.@@What builders they were, these men of antiquity! The
massive arches of some of these ruins rest upon piers that are fifteen
feet square and built entirely of solid blocks of marble, some of which
are as large as a Saratoga trunk, and some the size of a boarding-house
sofa. They are not shells or shafts of stone filled inside with
rubbish, but the whole pier is a mass of solid masonry. Vast arches,
that may have been the gates of the city, are built in the same way.
They have braved the storms and sieges of three thousand years, and
have been shaken by many an earthquake, but still they stand. When they
dig alongside of them, they find ranges of ponderous masonry that are
as perfect in every detail as they were the day those old Cyclopian
giants finished them. An English Company is going to excavate
Ephesus--and then!@@And now am I reminded of--@@the legend of the seven
sleepers.@@In the Mount of Pion, yonder, is the Cave of the Seven
Sleepers. Once upon a time, about fifteen hundred years ago, seven
young men lived near each other in Ephesus, who belonged to the
despised sect of the Christians. It came to pass that the good King
Maximilianus, (I am telling this story for nice little boys and girls,)
it came to pass, I say, that the good King Maximilianus fell to
persecuting the Christians, and as time rolled on he made it very warm
for them. So the seven young men said one to the other, let us get up
and travel. And they got up and traveled. They tarried not to bid their
fathers and mothers good-bye, or any friend they knew. They only took
certain moneys which their parents had, and garments that belonged unto
their friends, whereby they might remember them when far away; and they
took also the dog Ketmehr, which was the property of their neighbor
Malchus, because the beast did run his head into a noose which one of
the young men was carrying carelessly, and they had not time to release
him; and they took also certain chickens that seemed lonely in the
neighboring coops, and likewise some bottles of curious liquors that
stood near the grocer's window; and then they departed from the city.
By-and-by they came to a marvelous cave in the Hill of Pion and entered
into it and feasted, and presently they hurried on again. But they
forgot the bottles of curious liquors, and left them behind. They
traveled in many lands, and had many strange adventures. They were
virtuous young men, and lost no opportunity that fell in their way to
make their livelihood. Their motto was in these words, namely,
and every way, and on a horse that is tired and
lame, and yet must be whipped and spurred with hardly a moment's
cessation all day long, till the blood comes from his side, and your
conscience hurts you every time you strike, if you are half a man,--it
is a journey to be remembered in bitterness of spirit and execrated
with emphasis for a liberal division of a man's lifetime.@[te
Chapter XLIV
Procrastination is the thief of time.
And so, whenever they did
come upon a man who was alone, they said, Behold, this person hath the
wherewithal--let us go through him. And they went through him. At the
end of five years they had waxed tired of travel and adventure, and
longed to revisit their old home again and hear the voices and see the
faces that were dear unto their youth. Therefore they went through such
parties as fell in their way where they sojourned at that time, and
journeyed back toward Ephesus again. For the good King Maximilianus was
become converted unto the new faith, and the Christians rejoiced
because they were no longer persecuted. One day as the sun went down,
they came to the cave in the Mount of Pion, and they said, each to his
fellow, Let us sleep here, and go and feast and make merry with our
friends when the morning cometh. And each of the seven lifted up his
voice and said, It is a whiz. So they went in, and lo, where they had
put them, there lay the bottles of strange liquors, and they judged
that age had not impaired their excellence. Wherein the wanderers were
right, and the heads of the same were level. So each of the young men
drank six bottles, and behold they felt very tired, then, and lay down
and slept soundly.@@When they awoke, one of them, Johannes--surnamed
Smithianus--said, We are naked. And it was so. Their raiment was all
gone, and the money which they had gotten from a stranger whom they had
proceeded through as they approached the city, was lying upon the
ground, corroded and rusted and defaced. Likewise the dog Ketmehr was
gone, and nothing save the brass that was upon his collar remained.
They wondered much at these things. But they took the money, and they
wrapped about their bodies some leaves, and came up to the top of the
hill. Then were they perplexed. The wonderful temple of Diana was gone;
many grand edifices they had never seen before stood in the city; men
in strange garbs moved about the streets, and every thing was changed.
@@Johannes said, It hardly seems like Ephesus. Yet here is the great
gymnasium; here is the mighty theatre, wherein I have seen seventy
thousand men assembled; here is the Agora; there is the font where the
sainted John the Baptist immersed the converts; yonder is the prison of
the good St. Paul, where we all did use to go to touch the ancient
chains that bound him and be cured of our distempers; I see the tomb of
the disciple Luke, and afar off is the church wherein repose the ashes
of the holy John, where the Christians of Ephesus go twice a year to
gather the dust from the tomb, which is able to make bodies whole again
that are corrupted by disease, and cleanse the soul from sin; but see
how the wharves encroach upon the sea, and what multitudes of ships are
anchored in the bay; see, also, how the city hath stretched abroad, far
over the valley behind Pion, and even unto the walls of Ayassalook; and
lo, all the hills are white with palaces and ribbed with colonnades of
marble. How mighty is Ephesus become!@@And wondering at what their eyes
had seen, they went down into the city and purchased garments and
clothed themselves. And when they would have passed on, the merchant
bit the coins which they had given him, with his teeth, and turned them
about and looked curiously upon them, and cast them upon his counter,
and listened if they rang; and then he said, These be bogus. And they
said, Depart thou to Hades, and went their way. When they were come to
their houses, they recognized them, albeit they seemed old and mean;
and they rejoiced, and were glad. They ran to the doors, and knocked,
and strangers opened, and looked inquiringly upon them. And they said,
with great excitement, while their hearts beat high, and the color in
their faces came and went, Where is my father? Where is my mother?
Where are Dionysius and Serapion, and Pericles, and Decius? And the
strangers that opened said, We know not these. The Seven said, How, you
know them not? How long have ye dwelt here, and whither are they gone
that dwelt here before ye? And the strangers said, Ye play upon us with
a jest, young men; we and our fathers have sojourned under these roofs
these six generations; the names ye utter rot upon the tombs, and they
that bore them have run their brief race, have laughed and sung, have
borne the sorrows and the weariness that were allotted them, and are at
rest; for nine-score years the summers have come and gone, and the
autumn leaves have fallen, since the roses faded out of their cheeks
and they laid them to sleep with the dead.@@Then the seven young men
turned them away from their homes, and the strangers shut the doors
upon them. The wanderers marveled greatly, and looked into the faces of
all they met, as hoping to find one that they knew; but all were
strange, and passed them by and spake no friendly word. They were sore
distressed and sad. Presently they spake unto a citizen and said, Who
is King in Ephesus? And the citizen answered and said, Whence come ye
that ye know not that great Laertius reigns in Ephesus? They looked one
at the other, greatly perplexed, and presently asked again, Where,
then, is the good King Maximilianus? The citizen moved him apart, as
one who is afraid, and said, Verily these men be mad, and dream dreams,
else would they know that the King whereof they speak is dead above two
hundred years agone.@@Then the scales fell from the eyes of the Seven,
and one said, Alas, that we drank of the curious liquors. They have
made us weary, and in dreamless sleep these two long centuries have we
lain. Our homes are desolate, our friends are dead. Behold, the jig is
up--let us die. And that same day went they forth and laid them down
and died. And in that self-same day, likewise, the Seven-up did cease
in Ephesus, for that the Seven that were up were down again, and
departed and dead withal. And the names that be upon their tombs, even
unto this time, are Johannes Smithianus, Trumps, Gift, High, and Low,
Jack, and The Game. And with the sleepers lie also the bottles wherein
were once the curious liquors; and upon them is writ, in ancient
letters, such words as these--names of heathen gods of olden time,
perchance: Rumpunch, Jinsling, Egnog.@@Such is the story of the Seven
Sleepers, (with slight variations,) and I know it is true, because I
have seen the cave myself.@@Really, so firm a faith had the ancients in
this legend, that as late as eight or nine hundred years ago, learned
travelers held it in superstitious fear. Two of them record that they
ventured into it, but ran quickly out again, not daring to tarry lest
they should fall asleep and outlive their great grandchildren a century
or so. Even at this day the ignorant denizens of the neighboring
country prefer not to sleep in it.@[te
Chapter XLI
We that
have free souls, it touches us not.
The shoe not only pinched our
party, but it pinched hard; a principal sufferer discovered that the
imperial order was inclosed in an envelop bearing the seal of the
British Embassy at Constantinople, and therefore must have been
inspired by the representative of the Queen. This was bad--very bad.
Coming solely from the Ottomans, it might have signified only Ottoman
hatred of Christians, and a vulgar ignorance as to genteel methods of
expressing it; but coming from the Christianized, educated, politic
British legation, it simply intimated that we were a sort of gentlemen
and ladies who would bear watching! So the party regarded it, and were
incensed accordingly. The truth doubtless was, that the same
precautions would have been taken against any travelers, because the
English Company who have acquired the right to excavate Ephesus, and
have paid a great sum for that right, need to be protected, and deserve
to be. They can not afford to run the risk of having their hospitality
abused by travelers, especially since travelers are such notorious
scorners of honest behavior.@We sailed from Smyrna, in the wildest
spirit of expectancy, for the chief feature, the grand goal of the
expedition, was near at hand--we were approaching the Holy Land! Such a
burrowing into the hold for trunks that had lain buried for weeks, yes
for months; such a hurrying to and fro above decks and below; such a
riotous system of packing and unpacking; such a littering up of the
cabins with shirts and skirts, and indescribable and unclassable odds
and ends; such a making up of bundles, and setting apart of umbrellas,
green spectacles and thick veils; such a critical inspection of saddles
and bridles that had never yet touched horses; such a cleaning and
loading of revolvers and examining of bowie knives; such a half-soling
of the seats of pantaloons with serviceable buckskin; then such a
poring over ancient maps; such a reading up of Bibles and Palestine
travels; such a marking out of routes; such exasperating efforts to
divide up the company into little bands of congenial spirits who might
make the long and arduous journey without quarreling; and morning, noon
and night, such mass-meetings in the cabins, such speech-making, such
sage suggesting, such worrying and quarreling, and such a general
raising of the very mischief, was never seen in the ship before!@But it
is all over now. We are cut up into parpies of six or eight, and by
this time are scattered far and wide. Ours is the only one, however,
that is venturing on what is called the long trip
--that is, out
into Syria, by Baalbec to Damascus, and thence down through the full
length of Palestine. It would be a tedious, and also a too risky
journey, at this hot season of the year, for any but strong, healthy
men, accustomed somewhat to fatigue and rough life in the open air. The
other parties will take shorter journeys.@For the last two months we
have been in a worry about one portion of this Holy Land pilgrimage. I
refer to transportation service. We knew very well that Palestine was a
country which did not do a large passenger business, and every man we
came across who knew any thing about it gave us to understand that not
half of our party would be able to get dragomen and animals. At
Constantinople every body fell to telegraphing the American Consuls at
Alexandria and Beirout to give notice that we wanted dragomen and
transportation. We were desperate--would take horses, jackasses,
cameleopards, kangaroos--anything. At Smyrna, more telegraphing was
done, to the same end. Also, fearing for the worst, we telegraphed for
a large number of seats in the diligence for Damascus, and horses for
the ruins of Baalbec.@As might have been expected, a notion got abroad
in Syria and Egypt that the whole population of the Province of America
(the Turks consider us a trifling little province in some unvisited
corner of the world,) were coming to the Holy Land--and so, when we got
to Beirout yesterday, we found the place full of dragomen and their
outfits. We had all intended to go by diligence to Damascus, and
switch off to Baalbec as we went along--because we expected to rejoin
the ship, go to Mount Carmel, and take to the woods from there.
However, when our own private party of eight found that it was
possible, and proper enough, to make the long trip,
we adopted
that programme. We have never been much trouble to a Consul before, but
we have been a fearful nuisance to our Consul at Beirout. I mention
this because I can not help admiring his patience, his industry, and
his accommodating spirit. I mention it also, because I think some of
our ship's company did not give him as full credit for his excellent
services as he deserved. @Well, out of our eight, three were selected
to attend to all business connected with the expedition. The rest of us
had nothing to do but look at the beautiful city of Beirout, with its
bright, new houses nestled among a wilderness of green shrubbery spread
abroad over an upland that sloped gently down to the sea; and also at
the mountains of Lebanon that environ it; and likewise to bathe in the
transparent blue water that rolled its billows about the ship (we did
not know there were sharks there.) We had also to range up and down
through the town and look at the costumes. These are picturesque and
fanciful, but not so varied as at Constantinople and Smyrna; the women
of Beirout add an agony--in the two former cities the sex wear a thin
veil which one can see through (and they often expose their ancles,)
but at Beirout they cover their entire faces with dark-colored or black
veils, so that they look like mummies, and then expose their breasts to
the public. A young gentleman (I believe he was a Greek,) volunteered
to show us around the city, and said it would afford him great
pleasure, because he was studying English and wanted practice in that
language. When we had finished the rounds, however, he called for
remuneration--said he hoped the gentlemen would give him a trifle in
the way of a few piastres (equivalent to a few five cent pieces.) We
did so. The Consul was surprised when he heard it, and said he knew the
young fellow's family very well, and that they were an old and highly
respectable family and worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars! Some
people, so situated, would have been ashamed of the berth he had with
us and his manner of crawling into it.@@At the appointed time our
business committee reported, and said all things were in
readiness--that we were to start to-day, with horses, pack animals, and
tents, and go to Baalbec, Damascus, the Sea of Tiberias, and thence
southward by the way of the scene of Jacob's Dream and other notable
Bible localities to Jerusalem--from thence probably to the Dead Sea,
but possibly not--and then strike for the ocean and rejoin the ship
three or four weeks hence at Joppa; terms, five dollars a day apiece,
in gold, and every thing to be furnished by the dragoman. They said we
would live as well as at a hotel. I had read something like that
before, and did not shame my judgment by believing a word of it. I said
nothing, however, but packed up a blanket and a shawl to sleep in,
pipes and tobacco, two or three woollen shirts, a portfolio, a
guide-book, and a Bible. I also took along a towel and a cake of soap,
to inspire respect in the Arabs, who would take me for a king in
disguise.@We were to select our horses at 3 p. m. At that hour
Abraham, the dragoman, marshaled them before us. With all solemnity I
set it down here, that those horses were the hardest lot I ever did
come across, and their accoutrements were in exquisite keeping with
their style. One brute had an eye out; another had his tail sawed off
close, like a rabbit, and was proud of it; another had a bony ridge
running from his neck to his tail, like one of those ruined aqueducts
one sees about Rome, and had a neck on him like a bowsprit; they all
limped, and had sore backs, and likewise raw places and old scales
scattered about their persons like brass nails in a hair trunk; their
gaits were marvelous to contemplate, and replete with variety--under
way the procession looked like a fleet in a storm. It was fearful.
Blucher shook his head and said:@That dragon is going to get himself
into trouble fetching these old crates out of the hospital the way they
are, unless he has got a permit.
@I said nothing. The display was
exactly according to the guide-book, and were we not traveling by the
guide-book? I selected a certain horse because I thought I saw him shy,
and I thought that a horse that had spirit enough to shy was not to be
despised.@At 6 o'clock p.m., we came to a halt here on the breezy
summit of a shapely mountain overlooking the sea, and the handsome
valley where dwelt some of those enterprising Ph;oenicians of ancient
times we read so much about; all around us are what were once the
dominions of Hiram, King of Tyre, who furnished timber from the cedars
of these Labanon hills to build portions of King Solomon's Temple with.
@Shortly after six, our pack train arrived. I had not seen it before,
and a good right I had to be astonished. We had nineteen serving men
and twenty-six pack mules! It was a perfect caravan. It looked like
one, too, as it wound among the rocks. I wondered what in the very
mischief we wanted with such a vast turn-out as that, for eight men. I
wondered awhile, but soon I began to long for a tin plate, and some
bacon and beans. I had camped out many and many a time before, and knew
just what was coming. I went off, without waiting for serving men, and
unsaddled my horse, and washed such portions of his ribs and his spine
as projected through his hide, and when I came back, behold five
stately circus tents were up--tents that were brilliant, within, with
blue, and gold, and crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I
was speechless. Then they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set
them up in the tents; they put a soft mattress and pillows and good
blankets and two snow-white sheets on each bed. Next, they rigged a
table about the centre-pole, and on it placed pewter pitchers, basins,
soap, and the whitest of towels--one set for each man; they pointed to
pockets in the tent, and said we could put our small trifles in them
for convenience, and if we needed pins or such things, they were
sticking every where. Then came the finishing touch--they spread
carpets on the floor! I simply said, If you call this camping out,
all right--but it isn't the style I am used to; my little baggage that
I brought along is at a discount.
@It grew dark, and they put
candles on the tables--candles set in bright, new, brazen candlesticks.
And soon the bell--a genuine, simon-pure bell--rang, and we were
invited to the saloon.
I had thought before that we had a tent
or so too many, but now here was one, at least, provided for; it was to
be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the others, it was high
enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was very handsome and
clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of a place. A table for
eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and napkins whose
whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we were used
to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks, soup-plates,
dinner-plates--every thing, in the handsomest kind of style. It was
wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those stately fellows in
baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a dinner which consisted
of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose, potatoes, bread, tea,
pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands were better cooked
than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a finer appearance,
with its large German silver candlesticks and other finery, than any
table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that polite
dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole affair,
on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for a very
long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future!@It is
midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning.@They call this
camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to be a pilgrim to
the Holy Land.@[te
Chapter XLII
come like spirits, so depart.
The night shall be filled with music,
@I slept very soundly last night, yet
when the dragoman's bell rang at half-past five this morning and the
cry went abroad of Ten minutes to dress for breakfast!
I heard
both. It surprised me, because I have not heard the breakfast gong in
the ship for a month, and whenever we have had occasion to fire a
salute at daylight, I have only found it out in the course of
conversation afterward. However, camping out, even though it be in a
gorgeous tent, makes one fresh and lively in the morning--especially if
the air you are breathing is the cool, fresh air of the mountains.@@I
was dressed within the ten minutes, and came out. The saloon tent had
been stripped of its sides, and had nothing left but its roof; so when
we sat down to table we could look out over a noble panorama of
mountain, sea and hazy valley. And sitting thus, the sun rose slowly up
and suffused the picture with a world of rich coloring.@@Hot mutton
chops, fried chicken, omelettes, fried potatoes and coffee--all
excellent. This was the bill of fare. It was sauced with a savage
appetite purchased by hard riding the day before, and refreshing sleep
in a pure atmosphere. As I called for a second cup of coffee, I glanced
over my shoulder, and behold our white village was gone--the splendid
tents had vanished like magic! It was wonderful how quickly those Arabs
had folded their tents;
and it was wonderful, also, how quickly
they had gathered the thousand odds and ends of the camp together and
disappeared with them.@@By half-past six we were under way, and all the
Syrian world seemed to be under way also. The road was filled with mule
trains and long processions of camels. This reminds me that we have
been trying for some time to think what a camel looks like, and now we
have made it out. When he is down on all his knees, flat on his breast
to receive his load, he looks something like a goose swimming; and when
he is upright he looks like an ostrich with an extra set of legs.
Camels are not beautiful, and their long under lip gives them an
exceedingly gallus
* expression. They have immense, flat, forked
cushions of feet, that make a track in the dust like a pie with a slice
cut out of it. They are not particular about their diet. They would eat
a tombstone if they could bite it. A thistle grows about here which
has needles on it that would pierce through leather, I think; if one
touches you, you can find relief in nothing but profanity. The camels
eat these. They show by their actions that they enjoy them. I suppose
it would be a real treat to a camel to have a keg of nails for supper.
@@While I am speaking of animals, I will mention that I have a horse
now by the name of Jericho.
He is a mare. I have seen remarkable
horses before, but none so remarkable as this. I wanted a horse that
could shy, and this one fills the bill. I had an idea that shying
indicated spirit. If I was correct, I have got the most spirited horse
on earth. He shies at every thing he comes across, with the utmost
impartiality. He appears to have a mortal dread of telegraph poles,
especially; and it is fortunate that these are on both sides of the
road, because as it is now, I never fall off twice in succession on the
same side. If I fell on the same side always, it would get to be
monotonous after a while. This creature has scared at every thing he
has seen to-day, except a haystack. He walked up to that with an
intrepidity and a recklessness that were astonishing. And it would fill
any one with admiration to see how he preserves his self-possession in
the presence of a barley sack. This dare-devil bravery will be the
death of this horse some day.@@He is not particularly fast, but I think
he will get me through the Holy Land. He has only one fault. His tail
has been chopped off or else he has sat down on it too hard, some time
or other, and he has to fight the flies with his heels. This is all
very well, but when he tries to kick a fly off the top of his head with
his hind foot, it is too much variety. He is going to get himself into
trouble that way some day. He reaches around and bites my legs too. I
do not care particularly about that, only I do not like to see a horse
too sociable.@@I think the owner of this prize had a wrong opinion
about him. He had an idea that he was one of those fiery, untamed
steeds, but he is not of that character. I know the Arab had this idea,
because when he brought the horse out for inspection in Beirout, he
kept jerking at the bridle and shouting in Arabic, Ho! will you? Do
you want to run away, you ferocious beast, and break your neck?
when all the time the horse was not doing any thing in the world, and
only looked like he wanted to lean up against something and think.
Whenever he is not shying at things, or reaching after a fly, he wants
to do that yet. How it would surprise his owner to know this.@@We have
been in a historical section of country all day. At noon we camped
three hours and took luncheon at Mekseh, near the junction of the
Lebanon Mountains and the Jebel el Kuneiyiseh, and looked down into the
immense, level, garden-like Valley of Lebanon. To-night we are camping
near the same valley, and have a very wide sweep of it in view. We can
see the long, whale-backed ridge of Mount Hermon projecting above the
eastern hills. The dews of Hermon
are falling upon us now, and
the tents are almost soaked with them.@@Over the way from us, and
higher up the valley, we can discern, through the glasses, the faint
outlines of the wonderful ruins of Baalbec, the supposed Baal-Gad of
Scripture. Joshua, and another person, were the two spies who were sent
into this land of Canaan by the children of Israel to report upon its
character--I mean they were the spies who reported favorably. They took
back with them some specimens of the grapes of this country, and in the
children's picture-books they are always represented as bearing one
monstrous bunch swung to a pole between them, a respectable load for a
pack-train. The Sunday-school books exaggerated it a little. The grapes
are most excellent to this day, but the bunches are not as large as
those in the pictures. I was surprised and hurt when I saw them,
because those colossal bunches of grapes were one of my most cherished
juvenile traditions.@@Joshua reported favorably, and the children of
Israel journeyed on, with Moses at the head of the general government,
and Joshua in command of the army of six hundred thousand fighting men.
Of women and children and civilians there was a countless swarm. Of all
that mighty host, none but the two faithful spies ever lived to set
their feet in the Promised Land. They and their descendants wandered
forty years in the desert, and then Moses, the gifted warrior, poet,
statesman and philosopher, went up into Pisgah and met his mysterious
fate. Where he was buried no man knows--for@@* * * no man dug that
sepulchre,@@And no man saw it e'er--@@For the Sons of God upturned the
sod@@And laid the dead man there!
@Then Joshua began his terrible
raid, and from Jericho clear to this Baal-Gad, he swept the land like
the Genius of Destruction. He slaughtered the people, laid waste their
soil, and razed their cities to the ground. He wasted thirty-one kings
also. One may call it that, though really it can hardly be called
wasting them, because there were always plenty of kings in those days,
and to spare. At any rate, he destroyed thirty-one kings, and divided
up their realms among his Israelites. He divided up this valley
stretched out here before us, and so it was once Jewish territory. The
Jews have long since disappeared from it, however.@@Back yonder, an
hour's journey from here, we passed through an Arab village of stone
dry-goods boxes (they look like that,) where Noah's tomb lies under
lock and key. ;obNoah built the ark.;cb Over these old hills and
valleys the ark that contained all that was left of a vanished world
once floated.@@I make no apology for detailing the above information.
It will be news to some of my readers, at any rate.@@Noah's tomb is
built of stone, and is covered with a long stone building. Bucksheesh
let us in. The building had to be long, because the grave of the
honored old navigator is two hundred and ten feet long itself! It is
only about four feet high, though. He must have cast a shadow like a
lightning-rod. The proof that this is the genuine spot where Noah was
buried can only be doubted by uncommonly incredulous people. The
evidence is pretty straight. Shem, the son of Noah, was present at the
burial, and showed the place to his descendants, who transmitted the
knowledge to their descendants, and the lineal descendants of these
introduced themselves to us to-day. It was pleasant to make the
acquaintance of members of so respectable a family. It was a thing to
be proud of. It was the next thing to being acquainted with Noah
himself.@@Noah's memorable voyage will always possess a living interest
for me, henceforward.@@If ever an oppressed race exisistance and
therefore at a much slower rate than it@@@@[te
Chapter XLIII
long trip
was exhausting
and therefore dangerous in the blistering heats of summer, even when
the ordinary days' stages were traversed, and if we persisted in this
hard march, some of us might be stricken down with the fevers of the
country in consequence of it. Nothing could move the pilgrims. They
must press on. Men might die, horses might die, but they must enter
upon holy soil next week, with no Sabbath-breaking stain upon them.
Thus they were willing to commit a sin against the spirit of religious
law, in order that they might preserve the letter of it. It was not
worth while to tell them the letter kills.
I am talking now
about personal friends; men whom I like; men who are good citizens; who
are honorable, upright, conscientious; but whose idea of the Saviour's
religion seems to me distorted. They lecture our shortcomings
unsparingly, and every night they call us together and read to us
chapters from the Testament that are full of gentleness, of charity,
and of tender mercy; and then all the next day they stick to their
saddles clear up to the summits of these rugged mountains, and clear
down again. Apply the Testament's gentleness, and charity, and tender
mercy to a toiling, worn and weary horse?--Nonsense--these are for
God's human creatures, not His dumb ones. What the pilgrims choose to
do, respect for their almost sacred character demands that I should
allow to pass--but I would so like to catch any other member of the
party riding his horse up one of these exhausting hills once!
Rode to-day, altogether, thirteen hours, through deserts, partly,
and partly over barren, unsightly hills, and latterly through wild,
rocky scenery, and camped at about eleven o'clock at night on the banks
of a limpid stream, near a Syrian village. Do not know its name--do not
wish to know it--want to go to bed. Two horses lame (mine and Jack's)
and the others worn out. Jack and I walked three or four miles, over
the hills, and led the horses. Fun--but of a mild type.
@Twelve or
thirteen hours in the saddle, even in a Christian land and a Christian
climate, and on a good horse, is a tiresome journey; but in an oven
like Syria, in a ragged spoon of a saddle that slips fore-and-aft, and <
q>thort-ships,nooning.
) It was over
the barrenest chalk-hills and through the baldest canons that even
Syria can show. The heat quivered in the air every where. In the canons
we almost smothered in the baking atmosphere. On high ground, the
reflection from the chalk-hills was blinding. It was cruel to urge the
crippled horses, but it had to be done in order to make Damascus
Saturday night. We saw ancient tombs and temples of fanciful
architecture carved out of the solid rock high up in the face of
precipices above our heads, but we had neither time nor strength to
climb up there and examine them. The terse language of my note-book
will answer for the rest of this day's experiences:
Broke camp at 7 a.m., and made a ghastly trip through the Zeb Dana
valley and the rough mountains--horses limping and that Arab
screech-owl that does most of the singing and carries the water-skins,
always a thousand miles ahead, of course, and no water to drink--will
he never die? Beautiful stream in a chasm, lined thick with
pomegranate, fig, olive and quince orchards, and nooned an hour at the
celebrated Baalam's Ass Fountain of Figia, second in size in Syria, and
the coldest water out of Siberia--guide-books do not say Baalam's ass
ever drank there--somebody been imposing on the pilgrims, may be.
Bathed in it--Jack and I. Only a second--ice-water. It is the principal
source of the Abana river--only one-half mile down to where it joins.
Beautiful place--giant trees all around--so shady and cool, if one
could keep awake--vast stream gushes straight out from under the
mountain in a torrent. Over it is a very ancient ruin, with no known
history--supposed to have been for the worship of the deity of the
fountain or Baalam's ass or somebody. Wretched nest of human vermin
about the fountain--rags, dirt, sunken cheeks, pallor of sickness,
sores, projecting bones, dull, aching misery in their eyes and ravenous
hunger speaking from every eloquent fibre and muscle from head to foot.
How they sprang upon a bone, how they crunched the bread we gave them!
Such as these to swarm about one and watch every bite he takes, with
greedy looks, and swallow unconsciously every time he swallows, as if
they half fancied the precious morsel went down their own
throats--hurry up the caravan!--I never shall enjoy a meal in this
distressful country. To think of eating three times every day under
such circumstances for three weeks yet--it is worse punishment than
riding all day in the sun. There are sixteen starving babies from one
to six years old in the party, and their legs are no larger than broom
handles. Left the fountain at 1 p.m. (the fountain took us at least two
hours out of our way,) and reached Mahomet's lookout perch, over
Damascus, in time to get a good long look before it was necessary to
move on. Tired? Ask of the winds that far away with fragments strewed
the sea.
@As the glare of day mellowed into twilight, we looked down
upon a picture which is celebrated all over the world. I think I have
read about four hundred times that when Mahomet was a simple
camel-driver he reached this point and looked down upon Damascus for
the first time, and then made a certain renowned remark. He said man
could enter only one paradise; he preferred to go to the one above. So
he sat down there and feasted his eyes upon the earthly paradise of
Damascus, and then went away without entering its gates. They have
erected a tower on the hill to mark the spot where he stood.@@Damascus
is beautiful from the mountain. It is beautiful even to foreigners
accustomed to luxuriant vegetation, and I can easily understand how
unspeakably beautiful it must be to eyes that are only used to the
God-forsaken barrenness and desolation of Syria. I should think a
Syrian would go wild with ecstacy when such a picture bursts upon him
for the first time.@@From his high perch, one sees before him and below
him, a wall of dreary mountains, shorn of vegetation, glaring fiercely
in the sun; it fences in a level desert of yellow sand, smooth as
velvet and threaded far away with fine lines that stand for roads, and
dotted with creeping mites we know are camel-trains and journeying men;
right in the midst of the desert is spread a billowy expanse of green
foliage; and nestling in its heart sits the great white city, like an
island of pearls and opals gleaming out of a sea of emeralds. This is
the picture you see spread far below you, with distance to soften it,
the sun to glorify it, strong contrasts to heighten the effects, and
over it and about it a drowsing air of repose to spiritualize it and
make it seem rather a beautiful estray from the mysterious worlds we
visit in dreams than a substantial tenant of our coarse, dull globe.
And when you think of the leagues of blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky,
sun-burnt, ugly, dreary, infamous country you have ridden over to get
here, you think it is the most beautiful, beautiful picture that ever
human eyes rested upon in all the broad universe! If I were to go to
Damascus again, I would camp on Mahomet's hill about a week, and then
go away. There is no need to go inside the walls. The Prophet was wise
without knowing it when he decided not to go down into the paradise of
Damascus.@@There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden
which Damascus stands in was the Garden of Eden, and modern writers
have gathered up many chapters of evidence tending to show that it
really was the Garden of Eden, and that the rivers Pharpar and Abana
are the two rivers
that watered Adam's Paradise. It may be so,
but it is not paradise now, and one would be as happy outside of it as
he would be likely to be within. It is so crooked and cramped and dirty
that one can not realize that he is in the splendid city he saw from
the hill-top. The gardens are hidden by high mud-walls, and the
paradise is become a very sink of pollution and uncomeliness. Damascus
has plenty of clear, pure water in it, though, and this is enough, of
itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful and blessed. Water is scarce
in blistered Syria. We run railways by our large cities in America; in
Syria they curve the roads so as to make them run by the meagre little
puddles they call fountains,
and which are not found oftener on
a journey than every four hours. But the rivers
of Pharpar and
Abana of Scripture (mere creeks,) run through Damascus, and so every
house and every garden have their sparkling fountains and rivulets of
water. With her forest of foliage and her abundance of water, Damascus
must be a wonder of wonders to the Bedouin from the deserts. Damascus
is simply an oasis--that is what it is. For four thousand years its
waters have not gone dry or its fertility failed. Now we can understand
why the city has existed so long. It could not die. So long as its
waters remain to it away out there in the midst of that howling desert,
so long will Damascus live to bless the sight of the tired and thirsty
wayfarer.@@Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the
breath of spring, blooming as thine own rose-bud, and fragrant as thine
own orange flower, O Damascus, pearl of the East!
@Damascus dates
back anterior to the days of Abraham, and is the oldest city in the
world. It was founded by Uz, the grandson of Noah. The early history
of Damascus is shrouded in the mists of a hoary antiquity.
Leave
the matters written of in the first eleven chapters of the Old
Testament out, and no recorded event has occurred in the world but
Damascus was in existence to receive the news of it. Go back as far as
you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus. In the
writings of every century for more than four thousand years, its name
has been mentioned and its praises sung. To Damascus, years are only
moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time,
not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise,
and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw
the foundations of Baalbec, and Thebes, and Ephesus laid; she saw these
villages grow into mighty cities, and amaze the world with their
grandeur--and she has lived to see them desolate, deserted, and given
over to the owls and the bats. She saw the Israelitish empire exalted,
and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise, and flourish two
thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she saw it
overshadow the world with its power; she saw it perish. The few
hundreds of years of Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were, to
grave old Damascus, only a trifling scintillation hardly worth
remembering. Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and
still she lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand
empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies.
Though another claims the name, old Damascus is by right the Eternal
City.@@We reached the city gates just at sundown. They do say that one
can get into any walled city of Syria, after night, for bucksheesh,
except Damascus. But Damascus, with its four thousand years of
respectability in the world, has many old fogy notions. There are no
street lamps there, and the law compels all who go abroad at night to
carry lanterns, just as was the case in old days, when heroes and
heroines of the Arabian Nights walked the streets of Damascus, or flew
away toward Bagdad on enchanted carpets.@@It was fairly dark a few
minutes after we got within the wall, and we rode long distances
through wonderfully crooked streets, eight to ten feet wide, and shut
in on either side by the high mud-walls of the gardens. At last we got
to where lanterns could be seen flitting about here and there, and knew
we were in the midst of the curious old city. In a little narrow
street, crowded with our pack-mules and with a swarm of uncouth Arabs,
we alighted, and through a kind of a hole in the wall entered the hotel.
We stood in a great flagged court, with flowers and citron trees about
us, and a huge tank in the centre that was receiving the waters of many
pipes. We crossed the court and entered the rooms prepared to receive
four of us. In a large marble-paved recess between the two rooms was a
tank of clear, cool water, which was kept running over all the time by
the streams that were pouring into it from half a dozen pipes. Nothing,
in this scorching, desolate land could look so refreshing as this pure
water flashing in the lamp-light; nothing could look so beautiful,
nothing could sound so delicious as this mimic rain to ears long
unaccustomed to sounds of such a nature. Our rooms were large,
comfortably furnished, and even had their floors clothed with soft,
cheerful-tinted carpets. It was a pleasant thing to see a carpet again,
for if there is any thing drearier than the tomb-like, stone-paved
parlors and bed-rooms of Europe and Asia, I do not know what it is.
They make one think of the grave all the time. A very broad, gaily
caparisoned divan, some twelve or fourteen feet long, extended across
one side of each room, and opposite were single beds with spring
mattrasses. There were great looking-glasses and marble-top tables. All
this luxury was as grateful to systems and senses worn out with an
exhausting day's travel, as it was unexpected--for one can not tell
what to expect in a Turkish city of even a quarter of a million
inhabitants.@@I do not know, but I think they used that tank between
the rooms to draw drinking water from; that did not occur to me,
however, until I had dipped my baking head far down into its cool
depths. I thought of it then, and superb as the bath was, I was sorry I
had taken it, and was about to go and explain to the landlord. But a
finely curled and scented poodle dog frisked up and nipped the calf of
my leg just then, and before I had time to think, I had soused him to
the bottom of the tank, and when I saw a servant coming with a pitcher
I went off and left the pup trying to climb out and not succeeding very
well. Satisfied revenge was all I needed to make me perfectly happy,
and when I walked in to supper that first night in Damascus I was in
that condition. We lay on those divans a long time, after supper,
smoking narghilies and long-stemmed chibouks, and talking about the
dreadful ride of the day, and I knew then what I had sometimes known
before--that it is worth while to get tired out, because one so enjoys
resting afterward.@@In the morning we sent for donkeys. It is worthy of
note that we had to send for these things. I said Damascus was an old
fossil, and she is. Any where else we would have been assailed by a
clamorous army of donkey-drivers, guides, peddlers and beggars--but in
Damascus they so hate the very sight of a foreign Christian that they
want no intercourse whatever with him; only a year or two ago, his
person was not always safe in Damascus streets. It is the most
fanatical Mohammedan purgatory out of Arabia. Where you see one green
turban of a Hadji elsewhere (the honored sign that my lord has made the
pilgrimage to Mecca,) I think you will see a dozen in Damascus. The
Damascenes are the ugliest, wickedest looking villains we have seen.
All the veiled women we had seen yet, nearly, left their eyes exposed,
but numbers of these in Damascus completely hid the face under a
close-drawn black veil that made the woman look like a mummy. If ever
we caught an eye exposed it was quickly hidden from our contaminating
Christian vision; the beggars actually passed us by without demanding
bucksheesh; the merchants in the bazaars did not hold up their goods
and cry out eagerly, Hey, John!
or Look this, Howajji!
On
the contrary, they only scowled at us and said never a word.@@The
narrow streets swarmed like a hive with men and women in strange
Oriental costumes, and our small donkeys knocked them right and left as
we plowed through them, urged on by the merciless donkey-boys. These
persecutors run after the animals, shouting and goading them for hours
together; they keep the donkey in a gallop always, yet never get tired
themselves or fall behind. The donkeys fell down and spilt us over
their heads occasionally, but there was nothing for it but to mount and
hurry on again. We were banged against sharp corners, loaded porters,
camels, and citizens generally; and we were so taken up with looking
out for collisions and casualties that we had no chance to look about
us at all. We rode half through the city and through the famous
street which is called Straight
without seeing any thing, hardly.
Our bones were nearly knocked out of joint, we were wild with
excitement, and our sides ached with the jolting we had suffered. I do
not like riding in the Damascus street-cars.@@We were on our way to the
reputed houses of Judas and Ananias. About eighteen or nineteen hundred
years ago, Saul, a native of Tarsus, was particularly bitter against
the new sect called Christians, and he left Jerusalem and started
across the country on a furious crusade against them. He went forth
breathing threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.<
/q>@@
And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there
shined round about him a light from heaven:@@
And he fell to the
earth and heard a voice saying unto him, `Saul, Saul, why persecutest
thou me?'@@
to preach the gospel of peace. However, in
obedience to orders, he went into the And when he knew that it was Jesus that spoke to him he
trembled, and was astonished, and said, `Lord, what wilt thou have me
to do?'
@@He was told to arise and go into the ancient city and one
would tell him what to do. In the meantime his soldiers stood
speechless and awe-stricken, for they heard the mysterious voice but
saw no man. Saul rose up and found that that fierce supernatural light
had destroyed his sight, and he was blind, so they led him by the
hand and brought him to Damascus.
He was converted.@@Saul lay three
days, blind, in the house of Judas, and during that time he neither ate
nor drank.@@There came a voice to a citizen of Damascus, named Ananias,
saying, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and
inquire at the house of Judas, for one called Saul, of Tarsus; for
behold, he prayeth.
@@Ananias did not wish to go at first, for he
had heard of Saul before, and he had his doubts about that style of a <
q>chosen vesselstreet called Straight
(how he ever found his way into it, and after he did, how he ever found
his way out of it again, are mysteries only to be accounted for by the
fact that he was acting under Divine inspiration.) He found Paul and
restored him, and ordained him a preacher; and from this old house we
had hunted up in the street which is miscalled Straight, he had started
out on that bold missionary career which he prosecuted till his death.
It was not the house of the disciple who sold the Master for thirty
pieces of silver. I make this explanation in justice to Judas, who was
a far different sort of man from the person just referred to. A very
different style of man, and lived in a very good house. It is a pity we
do not know more about him.@@I have given, in the above paragraphs,
some more information for people who will not read Bible history until
they are defrauded into it by some such method as this. I hope that no
friend of progress and education will obstruct or interfere with my
peculiar mission.@@The street called Straight is straighter than a
corkscrew, but not as straight as a rainbow. St. Luke is careful not to
commit himself; he does not say it is the street which is straight, but
the street which is called Straight.
It is a fine piece of irony;
it is the only facetious remark in the Bible, I believe. We traversed
the street called Straight a good way, and then turned off and called
at the reputed house of Ananias. There is small question that a part of
the original house is there still; it is an old room twelve or fifteen
feet under ground, and its masonry is evidently ancient. If Ananias did
not live there in St. Paul's time, somebody else did, which is just as
well. I took a drink out of Ananias' well, and singularly enough, the
water was just as fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday.@@We went
out toward the north end of the city to see the place where the
disciples let Paul down over the Damascus wall at dead of night--for he
preached Christ so fearlessly in Damascus that the people sought to
kill him, just as they would to-day for the same offense, and he had to
escape and flee to Jerusalem.@@Then we called at the tomb of Mahomet's
children and at a tomb which purported to be that of St. George who
killed the dragon, and so on out to the hollow place under a rock where
Paul hid during his flight till his pursuers gave him up; and to the
mausoleum of the five thousand Christians who were massacred in
Damascus in 1861 by the Turks. They say those narrow streets ran blood
for several days, and that men, women and children were butchered
indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all through the Christian
quarter; they say, further, that the stench was dreadful. All the
Christians who could get away fled from the city, and the Mohammedans
would not defile their hands by burying the infidel dogs.
The
thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and Anti-Lebanon,
and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians were massacred
and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a Christian in
Damascus!--and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well. And how they
will pay for it when Russia turns her guns upon them again!@@It is
soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for interposing to
save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so richly deserved
for a thousand years. It hurts my vanity to see these pagans refuse to
eat of food that has been cooked for us; or to eat from a dish we have
eaten from; or to drink from a goatskin which we have polluted with our
Christian lips, except by filtering the water through a rag which they
put over the mouth of it or through a sponge! I never disliked a
Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is
ready to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find
it good breeding or good judgment to interfere.@@In Damascus they think
there are no such rivers in all the world as their little Abana and
Pharpar. The Damascenes have always thought that way. In 2 Kings,
chapter v., Naaman boasts extravagantly about them. That was three
thousand years ago. He says: Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of
Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them
and be clean?
But some of my readers have forgotten who Naaman was,
long ago. Naaman was the commander of the Syrian armies. He was the
favorite of the king and lived in great state. He was a mighty man
of valor, but he was a leper.
Strangely enough, the house they
point out to you now as his, has been turned into a leper hospital, and
the inmates expose their horrid deformities and hold up their hands and
beg for bucksheesh when a stranger enters.@@One can not appreciate the
horror of this disease until he looks upon it in all its ghastliness,
in Naaman's ancient dwelling in Damascus. Bones all twisted out of
shape, great knots protruding from face and body, joints decaying and
dropping away--horrible!@@@~@[te
Chapter XLV
Bucksheesh!
--he don't really expect a cent, but then he
learned to say that before he learned to say mother, and now he can not
break himself of it; next you meet a woman with a black veil drawn
closely over her face, and her bust exposed; finally, you come to
several sore-eyed children and children in all stages of mutilation and
decay; and sitting humbly in the dust, and all fringed with filthy
rags, is a poor devil whose arms and legs are gnarled and twisted like
grape-vines. These are all the people you are likely to see. The
balance of the population are asleep within doors, or abroad tending
goats in the plains and on the hill-sides. The village is built on some
consumptive little water-course, and about it is a little fresh-looking
vegetation. Beyond this charmed circle, for miles on every side,
stretches a weary desert of sand and gravel, which produces a gray
bunchy shrub like sage-brush. A Syrian village is the sorriest sight in
the world, and its surroundings are eminently in keeping with it.
River of Damascus,
that gave me the
cholera, so Dr. B. said.However, it generally does give me the cholera
to take a bath.@@The incorrigible pilgrims have come in with their
pockets full of specimens broken from the ruins. I wish this vandalism
could be stopped. They broke off fragments from Noah's tomb; from the
exquisite sculptures of the temples of Baalbec; from the houses of
Judas and Ananias, in Damascus; from the tomb of Nimrod the Mighty
Hunter in Jonesborough; from the worn Greek and Roman inscriptions set
in the hoary walls of the Castle of Banias; and now they have been
hacking and chipping these old arches here that Jesus looked upon in
the flesh. Heaven protect the Sepulchre when this tribe invades
Jerusalem!@The ruins here are not very interesting. There are the
massive walls of a great square building that was once the citadel;
there are many ponderous old arches that are so smothered with debris
that they barely project above the ground; there are heavy-walled
sewers through which the crystal brook of which Jordan is born still
runs; in the hill-side are the substructions of a costly marble temple
that Herod the Great built here--patches of its handsome mosaic floors
still remain; there is a quaint old stone bridge that was here before
Herod's time, may be; scattered every where, in the paths and in the
woods, are Corinthian capitals, broken porphyry pillars, and little
fragments of sculpture; and up yonder in the precipice where the
fountain gushes out, are well-worn Greek inscriptions over niches in
the rock where in ancient times the Greeks, and after them the Romans,
worshipped the sylvan god Pan. But trees and bushes grow above many of
these ruins now; the miserable huts of a little crew of filthy Arabs
are perched upon the broken masonry of antiquity, the whole place has a
sleepy, stupid, rural look about it, and one can hardly bring himself
to believe that a busy, substantially built city once existed here,
even two thousand years ago. The place was nevertheless the scene of an
event whose effects have added page after page and volume after volume
to the world's history. For in this place Christ stood when he said to
Peter:@@Thou art Peter; and upon this rock will I build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give
unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose
on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
@On those little sentences have
been built up the mighty edifice of the Church of Rome; in them lie the
authority for the imperial power of the Popes over temporal affairs,
and their godlike power to curse a soul or wash it white from sin. To
sustain the position of the only true Church,
which Rome claims
was thus conferred upon her, she has fought and labored and struggled
for many a century, and will continue to keep herself busy in the same
work to the end of time. The memorable words I have quoted give to this
ruined city about all the interest it possesses to people of the
present day.@@It seems curious enough to us to be standing on ground
that was once actually pressed by the feet of the Saviour. The
situation is suggestive of a reality and a tangibility that seem at
variance with the vagueness and mystery and ghostliness that one
naturally attaches to the character of a god. I can not comprehend yet
that I am sitting where a god has stood, and looking upon the brook and
the mountains which that god looked upon, and am surrounded by dusky
men and women whose ancestors saw him, and even talked with him, face
to face, and carelessly, just as they would have done with any other
stranger. I can not comprehend this; the gods of my understanding have
been always hidden in clouds and very far away.@@This morning, during
breakfast, the usual assemblage of squalid humanity sat patiently
without the charmed circle of the camp and waited for such crumbs as
pity might bestow upon their misery. There were old and young,
brown-skinned and yellow. Some of the men were tall and stalwart, (for
one hardly sees any where such splendid-looking men as here in the
East,) but all the women and children looked worn and sad, and
distressed with hunger. They reminded me much of Indians, did these
people. They had but little clothing, but such as they had was fanciful
in character and fantastic in its arrangement. Any little absurd gewgaw
or gimcrack they had they disposed in such a way as to make it attract
attention most readily. They sat in silence, and with tireless patience
watched our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness
which is so truly Indian, and which makes a white man so nervous and
uncomfortable and savage that he wants to exterminate the whole tribe.
@@These people about us had other peculiarities, which I have noticed
in the noble red man, too: they were infested with vermin, and the dirt
had caked on them till it amounted to bark.@@The little children were
in a pitiable condition--they all had sore eyes, and were otherwise
afflicted in various ways. They say that hardly a native child in all
the East is free from sore eyes, and that thousands of them go blind of
one eye or both every year. I think this must be so, for I see plenty
of blind people every day, and I do not remember seeing any children
that hadn't sore eyes. And, would you suppose that an American mother
could sit for an hour, with her child in her arms, and let a hundred
flies roost upon its eyes all that time undisturbed? I see that every
day. It makes my flesh creep. Yesterday we met a woman riding on a
little jackass, and she had a little child in her arms; honestly, I
thought the child had goggles on as we approached, and I wondered how
its mother could afford so much style. But when we drew near, we saw
that the goggles were nothing but a camp meeting of flies assembled
around each of the child's eyes, and at the same time there was a
detachment prospecting its nose. The flies were happy, the child was
contented, and so the mother did not interfere.@@As soon as the tribe
found out that we had a doctor in our party, they began to flock in
from all quarters. Dr. B., in the charity of his nature, had taken a
child from a woman who sat near by, and put some sort of a wash upon
its diseased eyes. That woman went off and started the whole nation,
and it was a sight to see them swarm! The lame, the halt, the blind,
the leprous--all the distempers that are bred of indolence, dirt, and
iniquity--were represented in the Congress in ten minutes, and still
they came! Every woman that had a sick baby brought it along, and every
woman that hadn't, borrowed one. What reverent and what worshiping
looks they bent upon that dread, mysterious power, the Doctor! They
watched him take his phials out; they watched him measure the particles
of white powder; they watched him add drops of one precious liquid, and
drops of another; they lost not the slightest movement; their eyes were
riveted upon him with a fascination that nothing could distract. I
believe they thought he was gifted like a god. When each individual got
his portion of medicine, his eyes were radiant with
joy--notwithstanding by nature they are a thankless and impassive
race--and upon his face was written the unquestioning faith that
nothing on earth could prevent the patient from getting well now.
@@Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious,
disease-tortured creatures: He healed the sick. They flocked to our
poor human doctor this morning when the fame of what he had done to the
sick child went abroad in the land, and they worshiped him with their
eyes while they did not know as yet whether there was virtue in his
simples or not. The ancestors of these--people precisely like them in
color, dress, manners, customs, simplicity--flocked in vast multitudes
after Christ, and when they saw Him make the afflicted whole with a
word, it is no wonder they worshiped Him. No wonder His deeds were the
talk of the nation. No wonder the multitude that followed Him was so
great that at one time--thirty miles from here--they had to let a sick
man down through the roof because no approach could be made to the door;
no wonder His audiences were so great at Galilee that He had to preach
from a ship removed a little distance from the shore; no wonder that
even in the desert places about Bethsaida, five thousand invaded His
solitude, and He had to feed them by a miracle or else see them suffer
for their confiding faith and devotion; no wonder when there was a
great commotion in a city in those days, one neighbor explained it to
another in words to this effect: They say that Jesus of Nazareth is
come!
@Well, as I was saying, the doctor distributed medicine as
long as he had any to distribute, and his reputation is mighty in
Galilee this day. Among his patients was the child of the Shiek's
daughter--for even this poor, ragged handful of sores and sin has its
royal Shiek--a poor old mummy that looked as if he would be more at
home in a poor-house than in the Chief Magistracy of this tribe of
hopeless, shirtless savages. The princess--I mean the Shiek's
daughter--was only thirteen or fourteen years old, and had a very sweet
face and a pretty one. She was the only Syrian female we have seen yet
who was not so sinfully ugly that she couldn't smile after ten o'clock
Saturday night without breaking the Sabbath. Her child was a hard
specimen, though--there wasn't enough of it to make a pie, and the poor
little thing looked so pleadingly up at all who came near it (as if it
had an idea that now was its chance or never,) that we were filled with
compassion which was genuine and not put on.@@But this last new horse I
have got is trying to break his neck over the tent-ropes, and I shall
have to go out and anchor him. Jericho and I have parted company. The
new horse is not much to boast of, I think. One of his hind legs bends
the wrong way, and the other one is as straight and stiff as a
tent-pole. Most of his teeth are gone, and he is as blind as a bat. His
nose has been broken at some time or other, and is arched like a
culvert now. His under lip hangs down like a camel's, and his ears are
chopped off close to his head. I had some trouble at first to find a
name for him, but I finally concluded to call him Baalbec, because he
is such a magnificent ruin. I can not keep from talking about my
horses, because I have a very long and tedious journey before me, and
they naturally occupy my thoughts about as much as matters of
apparently much greater importance.@@We satisfied our pilgrims by
making those hard rides from Baalbec to Damascus, but Dan's horse and
Jack's were so crippled we had to leave them behind and get fresh
animals for them. The dragoman says Jack's horse died. I swapped horses
with Mohammed, the kingly-looking Egyptian who is our Ferguson's
lieutenant. By Ferguson I mean our dragoman Abraham, of course. I did
not take this horse on account of his personal appearance, but because
I have not seen his back. I do not wish to see it. I have seen the
backs of all the other horses, and found most of them covered with
dreadful saddleboils which I know have not been washed or doctored for
years. The idea of riding all day long over such ghastly inquisitions
of torture is sickening. My horse must be like the others, but I have
at least the consolation of not knowing it to be so.@I hope that in
future I may be spared any more sentimental praises of the Arab's
idolatry of his horse. In boyhood I longed to be an Arab of the desert
and have a beautiful mare, and call her Selim or Benjamin or Mohammed,
and feed her with my own hands, and let her come into the tent, and
teach her to caress me and look fondly upon me with her great tender
eyes; and I wished that a stranger might come at such a time and offer
me a hundred thousand dollars for her, so that I could do like the
other Arabs--hesitate, yearn for the money, but overcome by my love for
my mare, at last say, Part with thee, my beautiful one! Never with
my life! Away, tempter, I scorn thy gold!
and then bound into the
saddle and speed over the desert like the wind!@@But I recall those
aspirations. If these Arabs be like the other Arabs, their love for
their beautiful mares is a fraud. These of my acquaintance have no love
for their horses, no sentiment of pity for them, and no knowledge of
how to treat them or care for them. The Syrian saddle-blanket is a
quilted mattrass two or three inches thick. It is never removed from
the horse, day or night. It gets full of dirt and hair, and becomes
soaked with sweat. It is bound to breed sores. These pirates never
think of washing a horse's back. They do not shelter the horses in the
tents, either; they must stay out and take the weather as it comes.
Look at poor cropped and dilapidated Baalbec,
and weep for the
sentiment that has been wasted upon the Selims of romance!@[te
Chapter XLVI
Waters of
Merom.
Dan was the northern and Beersheba the southern limit of
Palestine--hence the expression from Dan to Beersheba.
It is
equivalent to our phrases from Maine to Texas
--from Baltimore
to San Francisco.
Our expression and that of the Israelites both
mean the same--great distance. With their slow camels and asses, it was
about a seven days' journey from Dan to Beersheba--say a hundred and
fifty or sixty miles--it was the entire length of their country, and
was not to be undertaken without great preparation and much ceremony.
When the Prodigal traveled to a far country,
it is not likely
that he went more than eighty or ninety miles. Palestine is only from
forty to sixty miles wide. The State of Missouri could be split into
three Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for part
of another--possibly a whole one. From Baltimore to San Francisco is
several thousand miles, but it will be only a seven days' journey in
the cars when I am two or three years older.* If I live I shall
necessarily have to go across the continent every now and then in those
cars, but one journey from Dan to Beersheba will be sufficient, no
doubt. It must be the most trying of the two. Therefore, if we chance
to discover that from Dan to Beersheba seemed a mighty stretch of
country to the Israelites, let us not be airy with them, but reflect
that it was and is a mighty stretch when one can not traverse it by
rail.
We have seen the land, and behold it is
very good. * * * A place where there is no want of any thing that is in
the earth.
Flight into Egypt,
where Mary and the Young Child are riding and Joseph is walking
alongside, towering high above the little donkey's shoulders.
Like unto the shadow
of a great rock in a weary land.
Nothing in the Bible is more
beautiful than that, and surely there is no place we have wandered to
that is able to give it such touching expression as this blistering,
naked, treeless land.
Mohammed
and sweeping down upon the ferocious enemy
determined to sell his life as dearly as possible. True the Bedouins
never did any thing to him when he arrived, and never had any intention
of doing any thing to him in the first place, and wondered what in the
mischief he was making all that to-do about; but still I could not
divest myself of the idea, somehow, that a frightful peril had been
escaped through that man's dare-devil bravery, and so I never could
read about Wm. C. Grimes' Bedouins and sleep comfortably afterward. But
I believe the Bedouins to be a fraud, now. I have seen the monster, and
I can outrun him. I shall never be afraid of his daring to stand behind
his own gun and discharge it.
And when all these Kings were met together, they came and pitched
together by the Waters of Merom, to fight against Israel.
And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people,
even as the sand that is upon the sea-shore for multitude,
etc.
For he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.
Such is the
touching language of the Bible. The Song of Deborah and Barak
praises Jael for the memorable service she had rendered, in an exultant
strain:
Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be,
blessed shall she be above women in the tent.
He asked for water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter
in a lordly dish.
She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's
hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head
when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.
It attracted my attention in a moment, because
it carries to my mind such a vastly different significance from what it
always did at home. I can see easily enough that if I wish to profit by
this tour and come to a correct understanding of the matters of
interest connected with it, I must studiously and faithfully unlearn a
great many things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine. I must
begin a system of reduction. Like my grapes which the spies bore out of
the Promised Land, I have got every thing in Palestine on too large a
scale. Some of my ideas were wild enough. The word Palestine always
brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the
United States. I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it
was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a
history. I think I was a little surprised to find that the grand Sultan
of Turkey was a man of only ordinary size. I must try to reduce my
ideas of Palestine to a more reasonable shape. One gets large
impressions in boyhood, sometimes, which he has to fight against all
his life. At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he
fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.
I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies which dwell
therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the
heathen, and I will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be
desolate and your cities waste.
All these kings.
When I used to read that in Sunday
School, it suggested to me the several kings of such countries as
England, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, etc., arrayed in splendid
robes ablaze with jewels, marching in grave procession, with sceptres
of gold in their hands and flashing crowns upon their heads. But here
in Ain Mellahah, after coming through Syria, and after giving serious
study to the character and customs of the country, the phrase all
these kings
loses its grandeur. It suggests only a parcel of petty
chiefs--ill-clad and ill-conditioned savages much like our Indians, who
lived in full sight of each other and whose kingdoms
were large
when they were five miles square and contained two thousand souls. The
combined monarchies of the thirty kings
destroyed by Joshua on
one of his famous campaigns, only covered an area about equal to four
of our counties of ordinary size. The poor old sheik we saw at Cesarea
Philippi with his ragged band of a hundred followers, would have been
called a king
in those ancient times.
tow-linen
shirts which used to form the only
summer garment of little negro boys on Southern plantations. Shepherds
they were, and they charmed their flocks with the traditional
shepherd's pipe--a reed instrument that made music as exquisitely
infernal as these same Arabs create when they sing.
Don't do that, Jack. What do you want to harm him for? What has he
done?
Well, then, I won't kill him, but I ought to, because he is a fraud.<
/q>
Well, it don't matter; I don't mind it now, but I did not like it
to-day, you know, because I don't tell any thing that isn't so, and I
don't think the Colonel ought to, either. But he did; he told us at
prayers in the Pilgrims' tent, last night, and he seemed as if he was
reading it out of the Bible, too, about this country flowing with milk
and honey, and about the voice of the turtle being heard in the land. I
thought that was drawing it a little strong, about the turtles, any
how, but I asked Mr. Church if it was so, and he said it was, and what
Mr. Church tells me, I believe. But I sat there and watched that turtle
nearly an hour to-day, and I almost burned up in the sun; but I never
heard him sing. I believe I sweated a double handful of sweat--I know I
did--because it got in my eyes, and it was running down over my nose
all the time; and you know my pants are tighter than any body
else's--Paris foolishness--and the buckskin seat of them got wet with
sweat, and then got dry again and began to draw up and pinch and tear
loose--it was awful--but I never heard him sing. Finally I said, This
is a fraud--that is what it is, it is a fraud--and if I had had any
sense I might have known a cursed mud-turtle couldn't sing. And then I
said, I don't wish to be hard on this fellow, and I will just give him
ten minutes to commence; ten minutes--and then if he don't, down goes
his building. But he didn't commence, you know. I had staid there all
that time, thinking may be he might, pretty soon, because he kept on
raising his head up and letting it down, and drawing the skin over his
eyes for a minute and then opening them out again, as if he was trying
to study up something to sing, but just as the ten minutes were up and
I was all beat out and blistered, he laid his blamed head down on a
knot and went fast asleep.
It was a little hard, after you had waited so long.
I should think so. I said, Well, if you won't sing, you shan't
sleep, any way; and if you fellows had let me alone I would have made
him shin out of Galilee quicker than any turtle ever did yet. But it
isn't any matter now--let it go. The skin is all off the back of my
neck.
Lo, here is this dreamer--let us kill him.
But
Reuben pleaded for his life, and they spared it. But they seized the
boy, and stripped the hated coat from his back and pushed him into the
pit. They intended to let him die there, but Reuben intended to
liberate him secretly. However, while Reuben was away for a little
while, the brethren sold Joseph to some Ishmaelitish merchants who were
journeying towards Egypt. Such is the history of the pit. And the
self-same pit is there in that place, even to this day; and there it
will remain until the next detachment of image-breakers and
tomb-desecraters arrives from the Quaker City excursion, and they will
infallibly dig it up and carry it away with them. For behold in them is
no reverence for the solemn monuments of the past, and whithersoever
they go they destroy and spare not.
lord over all the land of Egypt.
Joseph was the real king, the
strength, the brain of the monarchy, though Pharaoh held the title.
Joseph is one of the truly great men of the Old Testament. And he was
the noblest and the manliest, save Esau. Why shall we not say a good
word for the princely Bedouin? The only crime that can be brought
against him is that he was unfortunate. Why must every body praise
Joseph's great-hearted generosity to his cruel brethren, without stint
of fervent language, and fling only a reluctant bone of praise to Esau
for his still sublimer generosity to the brother who had wronged him?
Jacob took advantage of Esau's consuming hunger to rob him of his
birthright and the great honor and consideration that belonged to the
position; by treachery and falsehood he robbed him of his father's
blessing; he made of him a stranger in his home, and a wanderer. Yet
after twenty years had passed away and Jacob met Esau and fell at his
feet quaking with fear and begging piteously to be spared the
punishment he knew he deserved, what did that magnificent savage do? He
fell upon his neck and embraced him! When Jacob--who was incapable of
comprehending nobility of character--still doubting, still fearing,
insisted upon finding grace with my lord
by the bribe of a
present of cattle, what did the gorgeous son of the desert say?
Nay, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself!
a little food;
and being summoned to a palace, charged with crime,
they beheld in its owner their wronged brother; they were trembling
beggars--he, the lord of a mighty empire! What Joseph that ever lived
would have thrown away such a chance to show off?
Who stands
first--outcast Esau forgiving Jacob in prosperity, or Joseph on a
king's throne forgiving the ragged tremblers whose happy rascality
placed him there?
raised
a hill, and
there, a few miles before us, with not a tree or a shrub to interrupt
the view, lay a vision which millions of worshipers in the far lands of
the earth would give half their possessions to see--the sacred Sea of
Galilee!
fountain,
and
people familiar with the Hudson, the great lakes and the Mississippi
fall into transports of admiration over them, and exhaust their powers
of composition in writing their praises. If all the poetry and nonsense
that have been discharged upon the fountains and the bland scenery of
this region were collected in a book, it would make a most valuable
volume to burn.
take shipping
and sail in very person upon
the waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles. Their anxiety
grew and their excitement augmented with every fleeting moment, until
my fears were aroused and I began to have misgivings that in their
present condition they might break recklessly loose from all
considerations of prudence and buy a whole fleet of ships to sail in
instead of hiring a single one for an hour, as quiet folk are wont to
do. I trembled to think of the ruined purses this day's performances
might result in. I could not help reflecting bodingly upon the
intemperate zeal with which middle-aged men are apt to surfeit
themselves upon a seductive folly which they have tasted for the first
time. And yet I did not feel that I had a right to be surprised at the
state of things which was giving me so much concern. These men had been
taught from infancy to revere, almost to worship, the holy places
whereon their happy eyes were resting now. For many and many a year
this very picture had visited their thoughts by day and floated through
their dreams by night. To stand before it in the flesh--to see it as
they saw it now--to sail upon the hallowed sea, and kiss the holy soil
that compassed it about: these were aspirations they had cherished
while a generation dragged its lagging seasons by and left its furrows
in their faces and its frosts upon their hair. To look upon this
picture, and sail upon this sea, they had forsaken home and its idols
and journeyed thousands and thousands of miles, in weariness and
tribulation. What wonder that the sordid lights of work-day prudence
should pale before the glory of a hope like theirs in the full splendor
of its fruition? Let them squander millions! I said--who speaks of
money at a time like this?
ship
that was speeding by. It was a success. The toilers of the sea
ran in and beached their barque. Joy sat upon every countenance.
How much?--ask him how much, Ferguson!--how much to take us
all--eight of us, and you--to Bethsaida, yonder, and to the mouth of
Jordan, and to the place where the swine ran down into the
sea--quick!--and we want to coast around every where--every where!--all
day long!--I could sail a year in these waters!--and tell him we'll
stop at Magdala and finish at Tiberias!--ask him how much?--any
thing--any thing whatever!--tell him we don't care what the expense is!<
/q> ;obI said to myself, I knew how it would be.;cb
He says two Napoleons--eight dollars.
Too much!--we'll give him one!
Ho! let me at him!
followed by a prudent Two of you
hold him--one can hold me!
the day of judgment
--and
what business have mud-hovels at the Day of Judgment? it would not
affect the prophecy in the least--it would neither prove it or disprove
it--if these towns were splendid cities now instead of the almost
vanished ruins they are. Christ visited Magdala, which is near by
Capernaum, and he also visited Cesarea Philippi. He went up to his old
home at Nazareth, and saw his brothers Joses, and Judas, and James, and
Simon--those persons who, being own brothers to Jesus Christ, one would
expect to hear mentioned sometimes, yet who ever saw their names in a
newspaper or heard them from a pulpit? Who ever inquires what manner of
youths they were; and whether they slept with Jesus, played with him
and romped about him; quarreled with him concerning toys and trifles;
struck him in anger, not suspecting what he was? Who ever wonders what
they thought when they saw him come back to Nazareth a celebrity, and
looked long at his unfamiliar face to make sure, and then said, It
is Jesus?
Who wonders what passed in their minds when they saw this
brother, (who was only a brother to them, however much he might be to
others a mysterious stranger who was a god and had stood face to face
with God above the clouds,) doing strange miracles with crowds of
astonished people for witnesses? Who wonders if the brothers of Jesus
asked him to come home with them, and said his mother and his sisters
were grieved at his long absence, and would be wild with delight to see
his face again? Who ever gives a thought to the sisters of Jesus at
all?--yet he had sisters; and memories of them must have stolen into
his mind often when he was ill-treated among strangers; when he was
homeless and said he had not where to lay his head; when all deserted
him, even Peter, and he stood alone among his enemies.
This the Son of God! Why, his father is nothing but a
carpenter. We know the family. We see them every day. Are not his
brothers named so and so, and his sisters so and so, and is not his
mother the person they call Mary? This is absurd.
He did not curse
his home, but he shook its dust from his feet and went away.
Howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! howajji,
bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh!
I never was in a storm like
that before.
We had taken
ship to go over to the other side. The sea was not more than six miles
wide. Of the beauty of the scene, however, I can not say enough, nor
can I imagine where those travelers carried their eyes who have
described the scenery of the lake as tame or uninteresting. The first
great characteristic of it is the deep basin in which it lies. This is
from three to four hundred feet deep on all sides except at the lower
end, and the sharp slope of the banks, which are all of the richest
green, is broken and diversified by the w;afadys and water-courses
which work their way down through the sides of the basin, forming dark
chasms or light sunny valleys. Near Tiberias these banks are rocky, and
ancient sepulchres open in them, with their doors toward the water.
They selected grand spots, as did the Egyptians of old, for burial
places, as if they designed that when the voice of God should reach the
sleepers, they should walk forth and open their eyes on scenes of
glorious beauty. On the east, the wild and desolate mountains contrast
finely with the deep blue lake; and toward the north, sublime and
majestic, Hermon looks down on the sea, lifting his white crown to
heaven with the pride of a hill that has seen the departing footsteps
of a hundred generations. On the north-east shore of the sea was a
single tree, and this is the only tree of any size visible from the
water of the lake, except a few lonely palms in the city of Tiberias,
and by its solitary position attracts more attention than would a
forest. The whole appearance of the scene is precisely what we would
expect and desire the scenery of Genessaret to be, grand beauty, but
quiet calm. The very mountains are calm.
@It is an ingeniously
written description, and well calculated to deceive. But if the paint
and the ribbons and the flowers be stripped from it, a skeleton will be
found beneath.@@So stripped, there remains a lake six miles wide and
neutral in color; with steep green banks, unrelieved by shrubbery; at
one end bare, unsightly rocks, with (almost invisible) holes in them of
no consequence to the picture; eastward, wild and desolate mountains;
(low, desolate hills, he should have said;) in the north, a
mountain called Hermon, with snow on it; peculiarity of the picture,
calmness;
its prominent feature, one tree.@@No ingenuity could make
such a picture beautiful--to one's actual vision.@@I claim the right to
correct misstatements, and have so corrected the color of the water in
the above recapitulation. The waters of Genessaret are of an
exceedingly mild blue, even from a high elevation and a distance of
five miles. Close at hand (the witness was sailing on the lake,) it is
hardly proper to call them blue at all, much less deep
blue. I
wish to state, also, not as a correction, but as matter of opinion,
that Mount Hermon is not a striking or picturesque mountain by any
means, being too near the height of its immediate neighbors to be so.
That is all. I do not object to the witness dragging a mountain
forty-five miles to help the scenery under consideration, because it is
entirely proper to do it, and besides, the picture needs it.@@C. W.
E.,
(of Life in the Holy Land,
) deposes as follows:--@A
beautiful sea lies unbosomed among the Galilean hills, in the midst of
that land once possessed by Zebulon and Naphtali, Asher and Dan. The
azure of the sky penetrates the depths of the lake, and the waters are
sweet and cool. On the west, stretch broad fertile plains; on the north
the rocky shores rise step by step until in the far distance tower the
snowy heights of Hermon; on the east through a misty veil are seen the
high plains of Perea, which stretch away in rugged mountains leading
the mind by varied paths toward Jerusalem the Holy. Flowers bloom in
this terrestrial paradise, once beautiful and verdant with waving trees;
singing birds enchant the ear; the turtle-dove soothes with its soft
note; the crested lark sends up its song toward heaven, and the grave
and stately stork inspires the mind with thought, and leads it on to
meditation and repose. Life here was once idyllic, charming; here were
once no rich, no poor, no high, no low. It was a world of ease,
simplicity, and beauty; now it is a scene of desolation and misery.
@This is not an ingenious picture. It is the worst I ever saw. It
describes in elaborate detail what it terms a terrestrial paradise,<
/q> and closes with the startling information that this paradise is
a scene of desolation and misery.
@@I have given two fair, average
specimens of the character of the testimony offered by the majority of
the writers who visit this region. One says, Of the beauty of the
scene I can not say enough,
and then proceeds to cover up with a
woof of glittering sentences a thing which, when stripped for
inspection, proves to be only an unobtrusive basin of water, some
mountainous desolation, and one tree. The other, after a conscientious
effort to build a terrestrial paradise out of the same materials, with
the addition of a grave and stately stork,
spoils it all by
blundering upon the ghastly truth at the last.@@Nearly every book
concerning Galilee and its lake describes the scenery as beautiful.
No--not always so straightforward as that. Sometimes the impression
intentionally conveyed is that it is beautiful, at the same time that
the author is careful not to say that it is, in plain Saxon. But a
careful analysis of these descriptions will show that the materials of
which they are formed are not individually beautiful and can not be
wrought into combinations that are beautiful. The veneration and the
affection which some of these men felt for the scenes they were
speaking of, heated their fancies and biased their judgment; but the
pleasant falsities they wrote were full of honest sincerity, at any
rate. Others wrote as they did, because they feared it would be
unpopular to write otherwise. Others were hypocrites and deliberately
meant to deceive. Any of them would say in a moment, if asked, that it
was always right and always best to tell the truth. They would say
that, at any rate, if they did not perceive the drift of the question.
@@But why should not the truth be spoken of this region? Is the truth
harmful? Has it ever needed to hide its face? God made the Sea of
Galilee and its surroundings as they are. Is it the province of Mr.
Grimes to improve upon the work?@@I am sure, from the tenor of books I
have read, that many who have visited this land in years gone by, were
Presbyterians, and came seeking evidences in support of their
particular creed; they found a Presbyterian Palestine, and they had
already made up their minds to find no other, though possibly they did
not know it, being blinded by their zeal. Others were Baptists, seeking
Baptist evidences and a Baptist Palestine. Others were Catholics,
Methodists, Episcopalians, seeking evidences indorsing their several
creeds, and a Catholic, a Methodist, an Episcopalian Palestine. Honest
as these men's intentions may have been, they were full of partialities
and prejudices, they entered the country with their verdicts already
prepared, and they could no more write dispassionately and impartially
about it than they could about their own wives and children. Our
pilgrims have brought their verdicts with them. They have shown it in
their conversation ever since we left Beirout. I can almost tell, in
set phrase, what they will say when they see Tabor, Nazareth, Jericho
and Jerusalem--because I have the books they will smouch
their
ideas from. These authors write pictures and frame rhapsodies, and
lesser men follow and see with the author's eyes instead of their own,
and speak with his tongue. What the pilgrims said at Cesarea Philippi
surprised me with its wisdom. I found it afterwards in Robinson. What
they said when Genessaret burst upon their vision, charmed me with its
grace. I find it in Mr. Thompson's Land and the Book.
They have
spoken often, in happily worded language which never varied, of how
they mean to lay their weary heads upon a stone at Bethel, as Jacob
did, and close their dim eyes, and dream, perchance, of angels
descending out of heaven on a ladder. It was very pretty. But I have
recognized the weary head and the dim eyes, finally. They borrowed the
idea--and the words--and the construction--and the punctuation--from
Grimes. The pilgrims will tell of Palestine, when they get home, not as
it appeared to them, but as it appeared to Thompson and Robinson and
Grimes--with the tints varied to suit each pilgrim's creed.@@Pilgrims,
sinners and Arabs are all abed, now, and the camp is still. Labor in
loneliness is irksome. Since I made my last few notes, I have been
sitting outside the tent for half an hour. Night is the time to see
Galilee. Genessaret under these lustrous stars, has nothing repulsive
about it. Genessaret with the glittering reflections of the
constellations flecking its surface, almost makes me regret that I ever
saw the rude glare of the day upon it. Its history and its associations
are its chiefest charm, in any eyes, and the spells they weave are
feeble in the searching light of the sun. Then, we scarcely feel the
fetters. Our thoughts wander constantly to the practical concerns of
life, and refuse to dwell upon things that seem vague and unreal. But
when the day is done, even the most unimpressible must yield to the
dreamy influences of this tranquil starlight. The old traditions of the
place steal upon his memory and haunt his reveries, and then his fancy
clothes all sights and sounds with the supernatural. In the lapping of
the waves upon the beach, he hears the dip of ghostly oars; in the
secret noises of the night he hears spirit voices; in the soft sweep of
the breeze, the rush of invisible wings. Phantom ships are on the sea,
the dead of twenty centuries come forth from the tombs, and in the
dirges of the night wind the songs of old forgotten ages find utterance
again.@@In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad
compass of the heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet
for the birth of a religion able to save a world; and meet for the
stately Figure appointed to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high
decrees. But in the sunlight, one says: Is it for the deeds which were
done and the words which were spoken in this little acre of rocks and
sand eighteen centuries gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in the
remote islands of the sea and far and wide over continents that clasp
the circumference of the huge globe?@@One can comprehend it only when
night has hidden all incongruities and created a theatre proper for so
grand a drama.@@*I measure all lakes by Tahoe, partly because I am far
more familiar with it than with any other, and partly because I have
such a high admiration for it and such a world of pleasant
recollections of it, that it is very nearly impossible for me to speak
of lakes and not mention it.@@[te
Chapter XLIX
Tent
Life in the Holy Land,
The Land and the Book,
and other
literature of like description--no fishing-tackle. There were no fish
to be had in the village of Tiberias. True, we saw two or three
vagabonds mending their nets, but never trying to catch any thing with
them.
mentioned
it.
Who is this? What is this?
That was the trembling inquiry all
down the line.
Our guard! From Galilee to the birthplace of the Saviour, the
country is infested with fierce Bedouins, whose sole happiness it is,
in this life, to cut and stab and mangle and murder unoffending
Christians. Allah be with us!
Then hire a regiment! Would you send us out among these desperate
hordes, with no salvation in our utmost need but this old turret?
the city set upon a
hill,
one of the four holy cities of the Jews, and the place where
they believe the real Messiah will appear when he comes to redeem the
world; part of the battle-field of Hattin, where the knightly Crusaders
fought their last fight, and in a blaze of glory passed from the stage
and ended their splendid career forever; Mount Tabor, the traditional
scene of the Lord's Transfiguration. And down toward the southeast lay
a landscape that suggested to my mind a quotation (imperfectly
remembered, no doubt:)
The Ephraimites, not being called upon to share in the rich spoils
of the Ammonitish war, assembled a mighty host to fight against Jeptha,
Judge of Israel; who, being apprised of their approach, gathered
together the men of Israel and gave them battle and put them to flight.
To make his victory the more secure, he stationed guards at the
different fords and passages of the Jordan, with instructions to let
none pass who could not say Shibboleth. The Ephraimites, being of a
different tribe, could not frame to pronounce the word aright, but
called it Sibboleth, which proved them enemies and cost them their
lives; wherefore, forty and two thousand fell at the different fords
and passages of the Jordan that day.
It is thou that givest it to him, not I.<
/q> He remembered his oath, and slaughtered the hapless Knight of
Chatillon with his own hand.
Little Hermon,
over whose summit a glimpse of
Gilboa is caught. Nain, famous for the raising of the widow's son, and
Endor, as famous for the performances of her witch, are in view. To the
eastward lies the Valley of the Jordan and beyond it the mountains of
Gilead. Westward is Mount Carmel. Hermon in the north--the table-lands
of Bashan--Safed, the holy city, gleaming white upon a tall spur of the
mountains of Lebanon--a steel-blue corner of the Sea of
Galilee--saddle-peaked Hattin, traditional Mount of Beatitudes
and mute witness of the last brave fight of the Crusading host for Holy
Cross--these fill up the picture.
city of palaces,
with
its parks and hills and stately mansions; beyond these, a prodigious
mountain, with its strong outlines sharply cut against ocean and sky;
and over all, vagrant shreds and flakes of cloud, floating in a sea of
gold. The ocean is gold, the city is gold, the meadow, the mountain,
the sky--every thing is golden--rich, and mellow, and dreamy as a
vision of Paradise. No artist could put upon canvas its entrancing
beauty, and yet, without the yellow glass, and the carefully contrived
accident of a framework that cast it into enchanted distance and shut
out from it all unattractive features, it was not a picture to fall
into ecstacies over. Such is life, and the trail of the serpent is over
us all.
the battle-field of the nations
--only
sets one to dreaming of Joshua, and Benhadad, and Saul, and Gideon;
Tamerlane, Tancred, C;oeur de Lion, and Saladin; the warrior Kings of
Persia, Egypt's heroes, and Napoleon--for they all fought here. If the
magic of the moonlight could summon from the graves of forgotten
centuries and many lands the countless myriads that have battled on
this wide, far-reaching floor, and array them in the thousand strange
costumes of their hundred nationalities, and send the vast host
sweeping down the plain, splendid with plumes and banners and
glittering lances, I could stay here an age to see the phantom pageant.
But the magic of the moonlight is a vanity and a fraud; and whoso
putteth his trust in it shall suffer sorrow and disappointment.
How far is it to the Consulate?
and they answer, About ten
minutes.
How far is it to the Lloyds' Agency?
Quarter of
an hour.
How far is it to the lower bridge?
Four minutes.<
/q> I can not be positive about it, but I think that there, when a man
orders a pair of pantaloons, he says he wants them a quarter of a
minute in the legs and nine seconds around the waist.
Things are not what
they seem.
I can not think of any thing, now, more certain to make
one shudder, than to have a soft-footed camel sneak up behind him and
touch him on the ear with its cold, flabby under-lip. A camel did this
for one of the boys, who was drooping over his saddle in a brown study.
He glanced up and saw the majestic apparition hovering above him, and
made frantic efforts to get out of the way, but the camel reached out
and bit him on the shoulder before he accomplished it. This was the
only pleasant incident of the journey.
guard
came to collect some
bucksheesh for his services
in following us from Tiberias and
warding off invisible dangers with the terrors of his armament. The
dragoman had paid his master, but that counted as nothing--if you hire
a man to sneeze for you, here, and another man chooses to help him, you
have got to pay both. They do nothing whatever without pay. How it must
have surprised these people to hear the way of salvation offered to
them without money and without price.
If the manners, the people
or the customs of this country have changed since the Saviour's time,
the figures and metaphors of the Bible are not the evidences to prove
it by.
Grotto
of
the Annunciation here; and just as convenient to it as one's throat is
to his mouth, they have also the Virgin's Kitchen, and even her
sitting-room, where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour play with
Hebrew toys eighteen hundred years ago. All under one roof, and all
clean, spacious, comfortable grottoes.
It seems curious that
personages intimately connected with the Holy Family always lived in
grottoes--in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus--and yet
nobody else in their day and generation thought of doing any thing of
the kind. If they ever did, their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose
we ought to wonder at the peculiar marvel of the preservation of these
I speak of. When the Virgin fled from Herod's wrath, she hid in a
grotto in Bethlehem, and the same is there to this day. The slaughter
of the innocents in Bethlehem was done in a grotto; the Saviour was
born in a grotto--both are shown to pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly
strange that these tremendous events all happened in grottoes--and
exceedingly fortunate, likewise, because the strongest houses must
crumble to ruin in time, but a grotto in the living rock will last
forever. It is an imposture--this grotto stuff--but it is one that all
men ought to thank the Catholics for. Wherever they ferret out a lost
locality made holy by some Scriptural event, they straightway build a
massive--almost imperishable--church there, and preserve the memory of
that locality for the gratification of future generations. If it had
been left to Protestants to do this most worthy work, we would not even
know where Jerusalem is to-day, and the man who could go and put his
finger on Nazareth would be too wise for this world. The world owes the
Catholics its good will even for the happy rascality of hewing out
these bogus grottoes in the rock; for it is infinitely more
satisfactory to look at a grotto, where people have faithfully believed
for centuries that the Virgin once lived, than to have to imagine a
dwelling-place for her somewhere, any where, nowhere, loose and at
large all over this town of Nazareth. There is too large a scope of
country. The imagination can not work. There is no one particular spot
to chain your eye, rivet your interest, and make you think. The memory
of the Pilgrims can not perish while Plymouth Rock remains to us. The
old monks are wise. They know how to drive a stake through a pleasant
tradition that will hold it to its place forever.
specimens.
I suppose that by this time they know the dimensions
of that rock to an inch, and its weight to a ton; and I do not hesitate
to charge that they will go back there to-night and try to carry it off.
Fountain of the Virgin
is the one which tradition says Mary
used to get water from, twenty times a day, when she was a girl, and
bear it away in a jar upon her head. The water streams through faucets
in the face of a wall of ancient masonry which stands removed from the
houses of the village. The young girls of Nazareth still collect about
it by the dozen and keep up a riotous laughter and sky-larking. The
Nazarene girls are homely. Some of them have large, lustrous eyes, but
none of them have pretty faces. These girls wear a single garment,
usually, and it is loose, shapeless, of undecided color; it is
generally out of repair, too. They wear, from crown to jaw, curious
strings of old coins, after the manner of the belles of Tiberias, and
brass jewelry upon their wrists and in their ears. They wear no shoes
and stockings. They are the most human girls we have found in the
country yet, and the best natured. But there is no question that these
picturesque maidens sadly lack comeliness.
Enthusiast
--said: See that tall, graceful
girl! look at the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance!
Observe that tall,
graceful girl; what queenly Madonna-like gracefulness of beauty is in
her countenance.
She is not tall, she is short; she is not beautiful, she is
homely; she is graceful enough, I grant, but she is rather boisterous.<
/q>
Ah,
what a tall, graceful girl! what Madonna-like gracefulness of queenly
beauty!
After we were in the saddle, we rode down to the spring to have a
last look at the women of Nazareth, who were, as a class, much the
prettiest that we had seen in the East. As we approached the crowd a
tall girl of nineteen advanced toward Miriam and offered her a cup of
water. Her movement was graceful and queenly. We exclaimed on the spot
at the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance. Whitely was suddenly
thirsty, and begged for water, and drank it slowly, with his eyes over
the top of the cup, fixed on her large black eyes, which gazed on him
quite as curiously as he on her. Then Moreright wanted water. She gave
it to him and he managed to spill it so as to ask for another cup, and
by the time she came to me she saw through the operation; her eyes were
full of fun as she looked at me. I laughed outright, and she joined me
in as gay a shout as ever country maiden in old Orange county. I wished
for a picture of her. A Madonna, whose face was a portrait of that
beautiful Nazareth girl, would be a `thing of beauty' and `a joy
forever.'
Was it imagination, or did I see a moving object on the surface of
the rock? If it were a man, why did he not now drop me? He had a
beautiful shot as I stood out in my black boornoose against the white
tent. I had the sensation of an entering bullet in my throat, breast,
brain.
we looked to
our pistols and loosened them quietly in our shawls,
etc. Always
cool.
I never lost an opportunity of impressing the Arabs with the
perfection of American and English weapons, and the danger of attacking
any one of the armed Franks. I think the lesson of that ball not lost.<
/q>
I contented myself with a solemn assurance that if there occurred
another instance of disobedience to orders, I would thrash the
responsible party as he never dreamed of being thrashed, and if I could
not find who was responsible, I would whip them all, from first to
last, whether there was a governor at hand to do it or I had to do it
myself.
thirty feet
at every bound. I stand prepared to bring thirty
reliable witnesses to prove that Putnam's famous feat at Horseneck was
insignificant compared to this.
I stood in the road, my hand on my horse's neck, and with my dim
eyes sought to trace the outlines of the holy places which I had long
before fixed in my mind, but the fast-flowing tears forbade my
succeeding. There were our Mohammedan servants, a Latin monk, two
Armenians and a Jew in our cortege, and all alike gazed with
overflowing eyes.
He (Mousa) was on his back in a twinkling, howling, shouting,
screaming, but he was carried out to the piazza before the door, where
we could see the operation, and laid face down. One man sat on his back
and one on his legs, the latter holding up his feet, while a third laid
on the bare soles a rhinoceros-hide koorbash* that whizzed through the
air at every stroke. Poor Moreright was in agony, and Nama and Nama the
Second (mother and sister of Mousa,) were on their faces begging and
wailing, now embracing my knees and now Whitely's, while the brother,
outside, made the air ring with cries louder than Mousa's. Even Yusef
came and asked me on his knees to relent, and last of all, Betuni--the
rascal had lost a feed-bag in their house and had been loudest in his
denunciations that morning--besought the Howajji to have mercy on the
fellow.
suspended,
at the fifteenth blow,
to hear the confession. Then Grimes and his party rode away, and left
the entire Christian family to be fined and as severely punished as the
Mohammedan sheik should deem proper.
As I mounted, Yusef once more begged me to interfere and have mercy
on them, but I looked around at the dark faces of the crowd, and I
couldn't find one drop of pity in my heart for them.
Then once more I bowed my head. It is no shame to have wept in
Palestine. I wept, when I saw Jerusalem, I wept when I lay in the
starlight at Bethlehem, I wept on the blessed shores of Galilee. My
hand was no less firm on the rein, my finger did not tremble on the
trigger of my pistol when I rode with it in my right hand along the
shore of the blue sea
(weeping.) My eye was not dimmed by those
tears nor my heart in aught weakened. Let him who would sneer at my
emotion close this volume here, for he will find little to his taste in
my journeyings through Holy Land.
Nomadic
Life in Palestine
is a representative book--the representative of a
class of Palestine books--and a criticism upon it will serve for a
criticism upon them all. And since I am treating it in the
comprehensive capacity of a representative book, I have taken the
liberty of giving to both book and author fictitious names. Perhaps it
is in better taste, any how, to do this.
A Koorbash is Arabic for cowhide, the cow being a rhinoceros. It is
the most cruel whip known to fame. Heavy as lead, and flexible as
India-rubber, usually about forty inches long and tapering gradually
from an inch in diameter to a point, it administers a blow which leaves
its mark for time.
--Scow Life in Egypt, by the same author.
The boy Jesus has stood in this doorway--has played in
that street--has touched these stones with his hands--has rambled over
these chalky hills.
Whoever shall write the Boyhood of Jesus
ingeniously, will make a book which will possess a vivid interest for
young and old alike. I judge so from the greater interest we found in
Nazareth than any of our speculations upon Capernaum and the Sea of
Galilee gave rise to. It was not possible, standing by the Sea of
Galilee, to frame more than a vague, far-away idea of the majestic
Personage who walked upon the crested waves as if they had been solid
earth, and who touched the dead and they rose up and spoke. I read
among my notes, now, with a new interest, some sentences from an
edition of 1621 of the Apocryphal New Testament. ;obExtract.;cb
Christ, kissed by a bride made dumb by sorcerers, cures her. A
leprous girl cured by the water in which the infant Christ was washed,
and becomes the servant of Joseph and Mary. The leprous son of a Prince
cured in like manner.
A young man who had been bewitched and turned into a mule,
miraculously cured by the infant Saviour being put on his back, and is
married to the girl who had been cured of leprosy. Whereupon the
bystanders praise God.
Chapter 16. Christ miraculously widens or contracts gates,
milk-pails, sieves or boxes, not properly made by Joseph, he not being
skillful at his carpenter's trade. The King of Jerusalem gives Joseph
an order for a throne. Joseph works on it for two years and makes it
two spans too short. The King being angry with him, Jesus comforts
him--commands him to pull one side of the throne while he pulls the
other, and brings it to its proper dimensions.
Chapter 19. Jesus, charged with throwing a boy from the roof of a
house, miraculously causes the dead boy to speak and acquit him;
fetches water for his mother, breaks the pitcher and miraculously
gathers the water in his mantle and brings it home.
Sent to a schoolmaster, refuses to tell his letters, and the
schoolmaster going to whip him, his hand withers.
1. Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection, which is
seen in the Eastern countries, that is to say, in Arabia.
2. There is a certain bird called a ph;oenix. Of this there is never
but one at a time, and that lives five hundred years. And when the time
of its dissolution draws near, that it must die, it makes itself a nest
of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when its time
is fulfilled, it enters and dies.
3. But its flesh, putrefying, breeds a certain worm, which, being
nourished by the juice of the dead bird, brings forth feathers; and
when it is grown to a perfect state, it takes up the nest in which the
bones of its parent lie, and carries it from Arabia into Egypt, to a
city called Heliopolis:
4. And flying in open day in the sight of all men, lays it upon the
altar of the sun, and so returns from whence it came.
5. The priests then search into the records of the time, and find
that it returned precisely at the end of five hundred years.
199. They carry themselves high, and as prudent men; and though they
are fools, yet would seem to be teachers.
Nomadic Life
and keep themselves in a constant state of
Quixotic heroism. They have their hands on their pistols all the time,
and every now and then, when you least expect it, they snatch them out
and take aim at Bedouins who are not visible, and draw their knives and
make savage passes at other Bedouins who do not exist. I am in deadly
peril always, for these spasms are sudden and irregular, and of course
I can not tell when to be getting out of the way. If I am accidentally
murdered, some time, during one of these romantic frenzies of the
pilgrims, Mr. Grimes must be rigidly held to answer as an accessory
before the fact. If the pilgrims would take deliberate aim and shoot at
a man, it would be all right and proper--because that man would not be
in any danger; but these random assaults are what I object to. I do not
wish to see any more places like Esdraelon, where the ground is level
and people can gallop. It puts melodramatic nonsense into the pilgrims'
heads. All at once, when one is jogging along stupidly in the sun, and
thinking about something ever so far away, here they come, at a stormy
gallop, spurring and whooping at those ridgy old sore-backed plugs till
their heels fly higher than their heads, and as they whiz by, out comes
a little potato-gun of a revolver, there is a startling little pop, and
a small pellet goes singing through the air. Now that I have begun this
pilgrimage, I intend to go through with it, though sooth to say,
nothing but the most desperate valor has kept me to my purpose up to
the present time. I do not mind Bedouins,--I am not afraid of them;
because neither Bedouins nor ordinary Arabs have shown any disposition
to harm us, but I do feel afraid of my own comrades.
Bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh! howajji,
bucksheesh!
It was Magdala over again, only here the glare from the
infidel eyes was fierce and full of hate. The population numbers two
hundred and fifty, and more than half the citizens live in caves in the
rock. Dirt, degradation and savagery are Endor's specialty. We say no
more about Magdala and Deburieh now. Endor heads the list. It is worse
than any Indian campoodie. The hill is barren, rocky, and forbidding.
No sprig of grass is visible, and only one tree. This is a fig-tree,
which maintains a precarious footing among the rocks at the mouth of
the dismal cavern once occupied by the veritable Witch of Endor. In
this cavern, tradition says, Saul, the King, sat at midnight, and
stared and trembled, while the earth shook, the thunders crashed among
the hills, and out of the midst of fire and smoke the spirit of the
dead prophet rose up and confronted him. Saul had crept to this place
in the darkness, while his army slept, to learn what fate awaited him
in the morrow's battle. He went away a sad man, to meet disgrace and
death.
Necessity knows no law.
We went in and drank.
Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold there was a
dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow:
and much people of the city was with her.
And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said, Weep
not.
And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still.
And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, arise.
and shortly to the Chamber of the King. These
large apartments were tombs. The walls were built of monstrous masses
of smoothed granite, neatly joined together. Some of them were nearly
as large square as an ordinary parlor. A great stone sarcophagus like a
bath-tub stood in the centre of the King's Chamber. Around it were
gathered a picturesque group of Arab savages and soiled and tattered
pilgrims, who held their candles aloft in the gloom while they
chattered, and the winking blurs of light shed a dim glory down upon
one of the irrepressible memento-seekers who was pecking at the
venerable sarcophagus with his sacrilegious hammer.
And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered
him to his mother.
we had read so much about and
longed so much to see! Here were the And there came a fear on all. And they glorified God, saying, That a
great prophet is risen up among us; and That God hath visited his
people.
praying carpets
to do it. It was almost the same as breaking pieces from the hearts of
those old Arabs. To step rudely upon the sacred praying mats, with
booted feet--a thing not done by any Arab--was to inflict pain upon men
who had not offended us in any way. Suppose a party of armed foreigners
were to enter a village church in America and break ornaments from the
altar railings for curiosities, and climb up and walk upon the Bible
and the pulpit cushions? However, the cases are different. One is the
profanation of a temple of our faith--the other only the profanation of
a pagan one.
kiss of welcome.
It did not seem
reasonable to me that men should kiss each other, but I am aware, now,
that they did. There was reason in it, too. The custom was natural and
proper; because people must kiss, and a man would not be likely to kiss
one of the women of this country of his own free will and accord. One
must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that
never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a
meaning.
Little Hermon,
--past the old Crusaders' castle of El Fuleh, and arrived at Shunem.
This was another Magdala, to a fraction, frescoes and all. Here,
tradition says, the prophet Samuel was born, and here the Shunamite
woman built a little house upon the city wall for the accommodation of
the prophet Elisha. Elisha asked her what she expected in return. It
was a perfectly natural question, for these people are and were in the
habit of proffering favors and services and then expecting and begging
for pay. Elisha knew them well. He could not comprehend that any body
should build for him that humble little chamber for the mere sake of
old friendship, and with no selfish motive whatever. It used to seem a
very impolite, not to say a rude question, for Elisha to ask the woman,
but it does not seem so to me now. The woman said she expected nothing.
Then for her goodness and her unselfishness, he rejoiced her heart with
the news that she should bear a son. It was a high reward--but she
would not have thanked him for a daughter--daughters have always been
unpopular here. The son was born, grew, waxed strong, died. Elisha
restored him to life in Shunem.
picturesque costumes!
This
was the gallant spectacle!
Tatterdemalion vagrants--cheap
braggadocio--Arabian mares
spined and necked like the
ichthyosaurus in the museum, and humped and cornered like a dromedary!
To glance at the genuine son of the desert is to take the romance out
of him forever--to behold his steed is to long in charity to strip his
harness off and let him fall to pieces.
found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the
palms of her hands.
Midianites, the Amalekites, and the
Children of the East,
who were as grasshoppers for multitude;
both they and their camels were without number, as the sand by the
sea-side for multitude.
Which means that there were one hundred and
thirty-five thousand men, and that they had transportation service
accordingly.
an
ass' head was sold for eighty pieces of silver and the fourth part of a
cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver.
a woman cried out,
saying, Help, my lord, O King! And the King said, What aileth thee? and
she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat
him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and
did eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we
may eat him; and she hath hid her son.
ancient
times grow dazed and bewildered when they try to
comprehend it! Here is respectability for you--here is family
--here is high descent worth talking about. This sad, proud remnant of
a once mighty community still hold themselves aloof from all the world;
they still live as their fathers lived, labor as their fathers labored,
think as they did, feel as they did, worship in the same place, in
sight of the same landmarks, and in the same quaint, patriarchal way
their ancestors did more than thirty centuries ago. I found myself
gazing at any straggling scion of this strange race with a riveted
fascination, just as one would stare at a living mastodon, or a
megatherium that had moved in the grey dawn of creation and seen the
wonders of that mysterious world that was before the flood.
And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out
of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob
bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces
of silver.
Samaritan and Jew, Moslem and
Christian alike, revere it, and honor it with their visits. The tomb of
Joseph, the dutiful son, the affectionate, forgiving brother, the
virtuous man, the wise Prince and ruler. Egypt felt his influence--the
world knows his history.
parcel of ground
which Jacob bought of the sons of
Hamor for a hundred pieces of silver, is Jacob's celebrated well. It is
cut in the solid rock, and is nine feet square and ninety feet deep.
The name of this unpretending hole in the ground, which one might pass
by and take no notice of, is as familiar as household words to even the
children and the peasants of many a far-off country. It is more famous
than the Parthenon; it is older than the Pyramids.
brake his neck
when the messenger, riding hard from the battle,
told him of the defeat of his people, the death of his sons, and, more
than all, the capture of Israel's pride, her hope, her refuge, the
ancient Ark her forefathers brought with them out of Egypt. It is
little wonder that under circumstances like these he fell down and
brake his neck. But Shiloh had no charms for us. We were so cold that
there was no comfort but in motion, and so drowsy we could hardly sit
upon the horses.
voice of them that wept.
bucksheesh.
To see the numbers of
maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that throng the holy places and
obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come
again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any
moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and
dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.
at early dawn.
Stooping low, we enter the
vault--the Sepulchre itself. It is only about six feet by seven, and
the stone couch on which the dead Saviour lay extends from end to end
of the apartment and occupies half its width. It is covered with a
marble slab which has been much worn by the lips of pilgrims. This slab
serves as an altar, now. Over it hang some fifty gold and silver lamps,
which are kept always burning, and the place is otherwise scandalized
by trumpery gewgaws and tawdry ornamentation.
Which
bore the blessed Saviour, and which the thieves?
To be in doubt, in
so mighty a matter as this--to be uncertain which one to adore--was a
grievous misfortune. It turned the public joy to sorrow. But when lived
there a holy priest who could not set so simple a trouble as this at
rest? One of these soon hit upon a plan that would be a certain test. A
noble lady lay very ill in Jerusalem. The wise priests ordered that the
three crosses be taken to her bedside one at a time. It was done. When
her eyes fell upon the first one, she uttered a scream that was heard
beyond the Damascus Gate, and even upon the Mount of Olives, it was
said, and then fell back in a deadly swoon. They recovered her and
brought the second cross. Instantly she went into fearful convulsions,
and it was with the greatest difficulty that six strong men could hold
her. They were afraid, now, to bring in the third cross. They began to
fear that possibly they had fallen upon the wrong crosses, and that the
true cross was not with this number at all. However, as the woman
seemed likely to die with the convulsions that were tearing her, they
concluded that the third could do no more than put her out of her
misery with a happy dispatch. So they brought it, and behold, a
miracle! The woman sprang from her bed, smiling and joyful, and
perfectly restored to health. When we listen to evidence like this, we
can not but believe. We would be ashamed to doubt, and properly, too.
Even the very part of Jerusalem where this all occurred is there yet.
So there is really no room for doubt.
The Prison of Our Lord
for many centuries. Tradition
says that here the Saviour was confined just previously to the
crucifixion. Under an altar by the door was a pair of stone stocks for
human legs. These things are called the Bonds of Christ,
and the
use they were once put to has given them the name they now bear.
Surely this was the Son of God!
Where this altar
stands now, that Roman soldier stood then, in full view of the
crucified Saviour--in full sight and hearing of all the marvels that
were transpiring far and wide about the circumference of the Hill of
Calvary. And in this self-same spot the priests of the Temple beheaded
him for those blasphemous words he had spoken.
This is the King of the Jews.
I
think St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, found this wonderful
memento when she was here in the third century. She traveled all over
Palestine, and was always fortunate. Whenever the good old enthusiast
found a thing mentioned in her Bible, Old or New, she would go and
search for that thing, and never stop until she found it. If it was
Adam, she would find Adam; if it was the Ark, she would find the Ark;
if it was Goliah, or Joshua, she would find them. She found the
inscription here that I was speaking of, I think. She found it in this
very spot, close to where the martyred Roman soldier stood. That copper
plate is in one of the churches in Rome, now. Any one can see it there.
The inscription is very distinct.
Chapel of the Invention of the Cross
--a
name which is unfortunate, because it leads the ignorant to imagine
that a tacit acknowledgment is thus made that the tradition that Helena
found the true cross here is a fiction--an invention. It is a happiness
to know, however, that intelligent people do not doubt the story in any
of its particulars.
Chapel of the Mocking.
Under
the altar was a fragment of a marble column; this was the seat Christ
sat on when he was reviled, and mockingly made King, crowned with a
crown of thorns and sceptred with a reed. It was here that they
blindfolded him and struck him, and said in derision, Prophesy who
it is that smote thee.
The tradition that this is the identical
spot of the mocking is a very ancient one. The guide said that Saewulf
was the first to mention it. I do not know Saewulf, but still, I can
not well refuse to receive his evidence--none of us can.
Tent Life.
--M. T.
On
these stones that are crumbling away,
the guide said, the
Saviour sat and rested before taking up the cross. This is the
beginning of the Sorrowful Way, or the Way of Grief.
The party took
note of the sacred spot, and moved on. We passed under the Ecce Homo
Arch,
and saw the very window from which Pilate's wife warned her
husband to have nothing to do with the persecution of the Just Man.
This window is in an excellent state of preservation, considering its
great age. They showed us where Jesus rested the second time, and where
the mob refused to give him up, and said, Let his blood be upon our
heads, and upon our children's children forever.
The French
Catholics are building a church on this spot, and with their usual
veneration for historical relics, are incorporating into the new such
scraps of ancient walls as they have found there. Further on, we saw
the spot where the fainting Saviour fell under the weight of his cross.
A great granite column of some ancient temple lay there at the time,
and the heavy cross struck it such a blow that it broke in two in the
middle. Such was the guide's story when he halted us before the broken
column.
Why?
The guide said it was because this was one of the
very stones of Jerusalem
that Christ mentioned when he was reproved
for permitting the people to cry Hosannah!
when he made his
memorable entry into the city upon an ass. One of the pilgrims said,
But there is no evidence that the stones did cry out--Christ said that
if the people stopped from shouting Hosannah, the very stones would do
it.
The guide was perfectly serene. He said, calmly, This is one
of the stones that would have cried out.
It was of little use to
try to shake this fellow's simple faith--it was easy to see that.
Move on!
The Lord said, Move on, thou, likewise,
and the
command has never been revoked from that day to this. All men know how
that the miscreant upon whose head that just curse fell has roamed up
and down the wide world, for ages and ages, seeking rest and never
finding it--courting death but always in vain--longing to stop, in
city, in wilderness, in desert solitudes, yet hearing always that
relentless warning to march--march on! They say--do these hoary
traditions--that when Titus sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered eleven
hundred thousand Jews in her streets and by-ways, the Wandering Jew was
seen always in the thickest of the fight, and that when battle-axes
gleamed in the air, he bowed his head beneath them; when swords flashed
their deadly lightnings, he sprang in their way; he bared his breast to
whizzing javelins, to hissing arrows, to any and to every weapon that
promised death and forgetfulness, and rest. But it was useless--he
walked forth out of the carnage without a wound. And it is said that
five hundred years afterward he followed Mahomet when he carried
destruction to the cities of Arabia, and then turned against him,
hoping in this way to win the death of a traitor. His calculations were
wrong again. No quarter was given to any living creature but one, and
that was the only one of all the host that did not want it. He sought
death five hundred years later, in the wars of the Crusades, and
offered himself to famine and pestilence at Ascalon. He escaped
again--he could not die. These repeated annoyances could have at last
but one effect--they shook his confidence. Since then the Wandering Jew
has carried on a kind of desultory toying with the most promising of
the aids and implements of destruction, but with small hope, as a
general thing. He has speculated some in cholera and railroads, and has
taken almost a lively interest in infernal machines and patent
medicines. He is old, now, and grave, as becomes an age like his; he
indulges in no light amusements save that he goes sometimes to
executions, and is fond of funerals.
S.T.--1860--X.
Oriental
magnificence.
These elegant fragments bear a richer interest than
the solemn vastness of the stones the Jews kiss in the Place of Wailing
can ever have for the heedless sinner.
plough
of prophecy passed harmless. It is pleasant to know we are
disappointed, in that we never dreamed we might see portions of the
actual Temple of Solomon, and yet experience no shadow of suspicion
that they were a monkish humbug and a fraud.
This was the Field
of Blood; these cuttings in the rocks were shrines and temples of
Moloch; here they sacrificed children; yonder is the Zion Gate; the
Tyropean Valley; the Hill of Ophel; here is the junction of the Valley
of Jehoshaphat--on your right is the Well of Job.
We turned up
Jehoshaphat. The recital went on. This is the Mount of Olives; this
is the Hill of Offense; the nest of huts is the Village of Siloam;
here, yonder, every where, is the King's Garden; under this great tree
Zacharias, the high priest, was murdered; yonder is Mount Moriah and
the Temple wall; the tomb of Absalom; the tomb of St. James; the tomb
of Zacharias; beyond, are the Garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of the
Virgin Mary; here is the Pool of Siloam, and--
Fountain of Lazarus,
and in the centre of the
village the ancient dwelling of Lazarus. Lazarus appears to have been a
man of property. The legends of the Sunday Schools do him great
injustice; they give one the impression that he was poor. It is because
they get him confused with that Lazarus who had no merit but his
virtue, and virtue never has been as respectable as money. The house of
Lazarus is a three-story edifice, of stone masonry, but the accumulated
rubbish of ages has buried all of it but the upper story. We took
candles and descended to the dismal cell-like chambers where Jesus sat
at meat with Martha and Mary, and conversed with them about their
brother. We could not but look upon these old dingy apartments with a
more than common interest.
wilderness
where John
preached, with camel's hair about his loins--raiment enough--but he
never could have got his locusts and wild honey here. We were moping
along down through this dreadful place, every man in the rear. Our
guards--two gorgeous young Arab sheiks, with cargoes of swords, guns,
pistols and daggers on board--were loafing ahead.
Bedouins!
Eat him!
Close up--close up! Bedouins lurk here,
every where!
What an exquisite shudder it sent shivering along
one's spine!
On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
@But they did not sing long. The water was
so fearfully cold that they were obliged to stop singing and scamper
out again. Then they stood on the bank shivering, and so chagrined and
so grieved, that they merited honest compassion. Because another dream,
another cherished hope, had failed. They had promised themselves all
along that they would cross the Jordan where the Israelites crossed it
when they entered Canaan from their long pilgrimage in the desert. They
would cross where the twelve stones were placed in memory of that great
event. While they did it they would picture to themselves that vast
army of pilgrims marching through the cloven waters, bearing the
hallowed ark of the covenant and shouting hosannahs, and singing songs
of thanksgiving and praise. Each had promised himself that he would be
the first to cross. They were at the goal of their hopes at last, but
the current was too swift, the water was too cold!@@It was then that
Jack did them a service. With that engaging recklessness of
consequences which is natural to youth, and so proper and so seemly, as
well, he went and led the way across the Jordan, and all was happiness
again. Every individual waded over, then, and stood upon the further
bank. The water was not quite breast deep, any where. If it had been
more, we could hardly have accomplished the feat, for the strong
current would have swept us down the stream, and we would have been
exhausted and drowned before reaching a place where we could make a
landing. The main object compassed, the drooping, miserable party sat
down to wait for the sun again, for all wanted to see the water as well
as feel it. But it was too cold a pastime. Some cans were filled from
the holy river, some canes cut from its banks, and then we mounted and
rode reluctantly away to keep from freezing to death. So we saw the
Jordan very dimly. The thickets of bushes that bordered its banks threw
their shadows across its shallow, turbulent waters (stormy,
the
hymn makes them, which is rather a complimentary stretch of fancy,) and
we could not judge of the width of the stream by the eye. We knew by
our wading experience, however, that many streets in America are double
as wide as the Jordan.@@Daylight came, soon after we got under way, and
in the course of an hour or two we reached the Dead Sea. Nothing grows
in the flat, burning desert around it but weeds and the Dead Sea apple
the poets say is beautiful to the eye, but crumbles to ashes and dust
when you break it. Such as we found were not handsome, but they were
bitter to the taste. They yielded no dust. It was because they were not
ripe, perhaps.@@The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the
sun, around the Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living
creature upon it or about its borders to cheer the eye. It is a
scorching, arid, repulsive solitude. A silence broods over the scene
that is depressing to the spirits. It makes one think of funerals and
death.@@The Dead Sea is small. Its waters are very clear, and it has a
pebbly bottom and is shallow for some distance out from the shores. It
yields quantities of asphaltum; fragments of it lie all about its banks;
this stuff gives the place something of an unpleasant smell.@@All our
reading had taught us to expect that the first plunge into the Dead Sea
would be attended with distressing results--our bodies would feel as if
they were suddenly pierced by millions of red-hot needles; the dreadful
smarting would continue for hours; we might even look to be blistered
from head to foot, and suffer miserably for many days. We were
disappointed. Our eight sprang in at the same time that another party
of pilgrims did, and nobody screamed once. None of them ever did
complain of any thing more than a slight pricking sensation in places
where their skin was abraded, and then only for a short time. My face
smarted for a couple of hours, but it was partly because I got it badly
sun-burned while I was bathing, and staid in so long that it became
plastered over with salt.@@No, the water did not blister us; it did not
cover us with a slimy ooze and confer upon us an atrocious fragrance;
it was not very slimy; and I could not discover that we smelt really
any worse than we have always smelt since we have been in Palestine. It
was only a different kind of smell, but not conspicuous on that
account, because we have a great deal of variety in that respect. We
didn't smell, there on the Jordan, the same as we do in Jerusalem; and
we don't smell in Jerusalem just as we did in Nazareth, or Tiberias, or
Cesarea Philippi, or any of those other ruinous ancient towns in
Galilee. No, we change all the time, and generally for the worse. We do
our own washing.@@It was a funny bath. We could not sink. One could
stretch himself at full length on his back, with his arms on his
breast, and all of his body above a line drawn from the corner of his
jaw past the middle of his side, the middle of his leg and through his
ancle bone, would remain out of water. He could lift his head clear
out, if he chose. No position can be retained long; you lose your
balance and whirl over, first on your back and then on your face, and
so on. You can lie comfortably, on your back, with your head out, and
your legs out from your knees down, by steadying yourself with your
hands. You can sit, with your knees drawn up to your chin and your arms
clasped around them, but you are bound to turn over presently, because
you are top-heavy in that position. You can stand up straight in water
that is over your head, and from the middle of your breast upward you
will not be wet. But you can not remain so. The water will soon float
your feet to the surface. You can not swim on your back and make any
progress of any consequence, because your feet stick away above the
surface, and there is nothing to propel yourself with but your heels.
If you swim on your face, you kick up the water like a stern-wheel boat.
You make no headway. A horse is so top-heavy that he can neither swim
nor stand up in the Dead Sea. He turns over on his side at once. Some
of us bathed for more than an hour, and then came out coated with salt
till we shone like icicles. We scrubbed it off with a coarse towel and
rode off with a splendid brand-new smell, though it was one which was
not any more disagreeable than those we have been for several weeks
enjoying. It was the variegated villainy and novelty of it that charmed
us. Salt crystals glitter in the sun about the shores of the lake. In
places they coat the ground like a brilliant crust of ice.@@When I was
a boy I somehow got the impression that the river Jordan was four
thousand miles long and thirty-five miles wide. It is only ninety miles
long, and so crooked that a man does not know which side of it he is on
half the time. In going ninety miles it does not get over more than
fifty miles of ground. It is not any wider than Broadway in New York.
There is the Sea of Galilee and this Dead Sea--neither of them twenty
miles long or thirteen wide. And yet when I was in Sunday School I
thought they were sixty thousand miles in diameter.@@Travel and
experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most cherished
traditions of our boyhood. Well, let them go. I have already seen the
Empire of King Solomon diminish to the size of the State of
Pennsylvania; I suppose I can bear the reduction of the seas and the
river.@@We looked every where, as we passed along, but never saw grain
or crystal of Lot's wife. It was a great disappointment. For many and
many a year we had known her sad story, and taken that interest in her
which misfortune always inspires. But she was gone. Her picturesque
form no longer looms above the desert of the Dead Sea to remind the
tourist of the doom that fell upon the lost cities.@@I can not describe
the hideous afternoon's ride from the Dead Sea to Mars Saba. It
oppresses me yet, to think of it. The sun so pelted us that the tears
ran down our cheeks once or twice. The ghastly, treeless, grassless,
breathless canons smothered us as if we had been in an oven. The sun
had positive weight to it, I think. Not a man could sit erect under it.
All drooped low in the saddles. John preached in this Wilderness!
It must have been exhausting work. What a very heaven the massy towers
and ramparts of vast Mars Saba looked to us when we caught a first
glimpse of them!@@We staid at this great convent all night, guests of
the hospitable priests. Mars Saba, perched upon a crag, a human nest
stuck high up against a perpendicular mountain wall, is a world of
grand masonry that rises, terrace upon terrace away above your head,
like the terraced and retreating colonnades one sees in fanciful
pictures of Belshazzar's Feast and the palaces of the ancient Pharaohs.
No other human dwelling is near. It was founded many ages ago by a holy
recluse who lived at first in a cave in the rock--a cave which is
inclosed in the convent walls, now, and was reverently shown to us by
the priests. This recluse, by his rigorous torturing of his flesh, his
diet of bread and water, his utter withdrawal from all society and from
the vanities of the world, and his constant prayer and saintly
contemplation of a skull, inspired an emulation that brought about him
many disciples. The precipice on the opposite side of the canon is well
perforated with the small holes they dug in the rock to live in. The
present occupants of Mars Saba, about seventy in number, are all
hermits. They wear a coarse robe, an ugly, brimless stove-pipe of a
hat, and go without shoes. They eat nothing whatever but bread and salt;
they drink nothing but water. As long as they live they can never go
outside the walls, or look upon a woman--for no woman is permitted to
enter Mars Saba, upon any pretext whatsoever.@@Some of those men have
been shut up there for thirty years. In all that dreary time they have
not heard the laughter of a child or the blessed voice of a woman; they
have seen no human tears, no human smiles; they have known no human
joys, no wholesome human sorrows. In their hearts are no memories of
the past, in their brains no dreams of the future. All that is lovable,
beautiful, worthy, they have put far away from them; against all things
that are pleasant to look upon, and all sounds that are music to the
ear, they have barred their massive doors and reared their relentless
walls of stone forever. They have banished the tender grace of life and
left only the sapped and skinny mockery. Their lips are lips that never
kiss and never sing; their hearts are hearts that never hate and never
love; their breasts are breasts that never swell with the sentiment,
I have a country and a flag.
They are dead men who walk.@@I set
down these first thoughts because they are natural--not because they
are just or because it is right to set them down. It is easy for
book-makers to say I thought so and so as I looked upon such and
such a scene
--when the truth is, they thought all those fine things
afterwards. One's first thought is not likely to be strictly accurate,
yet it is no crime to think it and none to write it down, subject to
modification by later experience. These hermits are dead men, in
several respects, but not in all; and it is not proper, that, thinking
ill of them at first, I should go on doing so, or, speaking ill of them
I should reiterate the words and stick to them. No, they treated us too
kindly for that. There is something human about them somewhere. They
knew we were foreigners and Protestants, and not likely to feel
admiration or much friendliness toward them. But their large charity
was above considering such things. They simply saw in us men who were
hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and that was sufficient. They opened
their doors and gave us welcome. They asked no questions, and they made
no self-righteous display of their hospitality. They fished for no
compliments. They moved quietly about, setting the table for us, making
the beds, and bringing water to wash in, and paid no heed when we said
it was wrong for them to do that when we had men whose business it was
to perform such offices. We fared most comfortably, and sat late at
dinner. We walked all over the building with the hermits afterward, and
then sat on the lofty battlements and smoked while we enjoyed the cool
air, the wild scenery and the sunset. One or two chose cosy bed-rooms
to sleep in, but the nomadic instinct prompted the rest to sleep on the
broad divan that extended around the great hall, because it seemed like
sleeping out of doors, and so was more cheery and inviting. It was a
royal rest we had.@@When we got up to breakfast in the morning, we were
new men. For all this hospitality no strict charge was made. We could
give something if we chose; we need give nothing, if we were poor or if
we were stingy. The pauper and the miser are as free as any in the
Catholic Convents of Palestine. I have been educated to enmity toward
every thing that is Catholic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I
find it much easier to discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits.
But there is one thing I feel no disposition to overlook, and no
disposition to forget: and that is, the honest gratitude I and all
pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers in Palestine. Their doors are
always open, and there is always a welcome for any worthy man who
comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in purple. The Catholic
Convents are a priceless blessing to the poor. A pilgrim without money,
whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, can travel the length and
breadth of Palestine, and in the midst of her desert wastes find
wholesome food and a clean bed every night, in these buildings.
Pilgrims in better circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and
the fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Convent.
Without these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine would be a
pleasure which none but the strongest men could dare to undertake. Our
party, pilgrims and all, will always be ready and always willing, to
touch glasses and drink health, prosperity and long life to the Convent
Fathers of Palestine.@@So, rested and refreshed, we fell into line and
filed away over the barren mountains of Judea, and along rocky ridges
and through sterile gorges, where eternal silence and solitude reigned.
Even the scattering groups of armed shepherds we met the afternoon
before, tending their flocks of long-haired goats, were wanting here.
We saw but two living creatures. They were gazelles, of soft-eyed
notoriety. They looked like very young kids, but they annihilated
distance like an express train. I have not seen animals that moved
faster, unless I might say it of the antelopes of our own great plains.
@@At nine or ten in the morning we reached the Plain of the Shepherds,
and stood in a walled garden of olives where the shepherds were
watching their flocks by night, eighteen centuries ago, when the
multitude of angels brought them the tidings that the Saviour was born.
A quarter of a mile away was Bethlehem of Judea, and the pilgrims took
some of the stone wall and hurried on.@@The Plain of the Shepherds is a
desert, paved with loose stones, void of vegetation, glaring in the
fierce sun. Only the music of the angels it knew once could charm its
shrubs and flowers to life again and restore its vanished beauty. No
less potent enchantment could avail to work this miracle.@@In the huge
Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built fifteen hundred years ago
by the inveterate St. Helena, they took us below ground, and into a
grotto cut in the living rock. This was the manger
where Christ
was born. A silver star set in the floor bears a Latin inscription to
that effect. It is polished with the kisses of many generations of
worshiping pilgrims. The grotto was tricked out in the usual tasteless
style observable in all the holy places of Palestine. As in the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, envy and uncharitableness were apparent here.
The priests and the members of the Greek and Latin Churches can not
come by the same corridor to kneel in the sacred birthplace of the
Redeemer, but are compelled to approach and retire by different
avenues, lest they quarrel and fight on this holiest ground on earth.
@@I have no meditations,
suggested by this spot where the very
first Merry Christmas!
was uttered in all the world, and from
whence the friend of my childhood, Santa Claus, departed on his first
journey, to gladden and continue to gladden roaring firesides on wintry
mornings in many a distant land forever and forever. I touch, with
reverent finger, the actual spot where the infant Jesus lay, but I
think--nothing.@@You can not think in this place any more than you can
in any other in Palestine that would be likely to inspire reflection.
Beggars, cripples and monks compass you about, and make you think only
of bucksheesh when you would rather think of something more in keeping
with the character of the spot.@@I was glad to get away, and glad when
we had walked through the grottoes where Eusebius wrote, and Jerome
fasted, and Joseph prepared for the flight into Egypt, and the dozen
other distinguished grottoes, and knew we were done. The Church of the
Nativity is almost as well packed with exceeding holy places as the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself. They even have in it a grotto
wherein twenty thousand children were slaughtered by Herod when he was
seeking the life of the infant Saviour.@@We went to the Milk Grotto, of
course--a cavern where Mary hid herself for a while before the flight
into Egypt. Its walls were black before she entered, but in suckling
the Child, a drop of her milk fell upon the floor and instantly changed
the darkness of the walls to its own snowy hue. We took many little
fragments of stone from here, because it is well known in all the East
that a barren woman hath need only to touch her lips to one of these
and her failing will depart from her. We took many specimens, to the
end that we might confer happiness upon certain households that we wot
of.@@We got away from Bethlehem and its troops of beggars and
relic-peddlers in the afternoon, and after spending some little time at
Rachel's tomb, hurried to Jerusalem as fast as possible. I never was so
glad to get home again before. I never have enjoyed rest as I have
enjoyed it during these last few hours. The journey to the Dead Sea,
the Jordan and Bethlehem was short, but it was an exhausting one. Such
roasting heat, such oppressive solitude, and such dismal desolation can
not surely exist elsewhere on earth. And such fatigue!@@The commonest
sagacity warns me that I ought to tell the customary pleasant lie, and
say I tore myself reluctantly away from every noted place in Palestine.
Every body tells that, but with as little ostentation as I may, I doubt
the word of every he who tells it. I could take a dreadful oath that I
have never heard any one of our forty pilgrims say any thing of the
sort, and they are as worthy and as sincerely devout as any that come
here. They will say it when they get home, fast enough, but why should
they not? They do not wish to array themselves against all the
Lamartines and Grimeses in the world. It does not stand to reason that
men are reluctant to leave places where the very life is almost
badgered out of them by importunate swarms of beggars and peddlers who
hang in strings to one's sleeves and coat-tails and shriek and shout in
his ears and horrify his vision with the ghastly sores and
malformations they exhibit. One is glad to get away. I have heard
shameless people say they were glad to get away from Ladies' Festivals
where they were importuned to buy by bevies of lovely young ladies.
Transform those houris into dusky hags and ragged savages, and replace
their rounded forms with shrunken and knotted distortions, their soft
hands with scarred and hideous deformities, and the persuasive music of
their voices with the discordant din of a hated language, and then see
how much lingering reluctance to leave could be mustered. No, it is the
neat thing to say you were reluctant, and then append the profound
thoughts that struggled for utterance,
in your brain; but it is
the true thing to say you were not reluctant, and found it impossible
to think at all--though in good sooth it is not respectable to say it,
and not poetical, either.@@We do not think, in the holy places; we
think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the noise, and the
confusion are gone, and in fancy we revisit alone, the solemn monuments
of the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that has passed
away.@[te
Chapter LVI
Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou
moon in the valley of Ajalon.
As we drew near to Jaffa, the boys
spurred up the horses and indulged in the excitement of an actual
race--an experience we had hardly had since we raced on donkeys in the
Azores islands.
Life in the Holy Land
observes:
Monotonous and uninviting as much of the Holy Land will appear to
persons accustomed to the almost constant verdure of flowers, ample
streams and varied surface of our own country, we must remember that
its aspect to the Israelites after the weary march of forty years
through the desert must have been very different.
monotonous and
uninviting,
and there is no sufficient reason for describing it as
being otherwise.
desert places
round about them
where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate the
miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited
only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
Shall we
ever get to water?
Shall we ever lunch?
Ferguson, how
many more million miles have we got to creep under this awful sun
before we camp?
It was a relief to cast all these torturing little
anxieties far away--ropes of steel they were, and every one with a
separate and distinct strain on it--and feel the temporary contentment
that is born of the banishment of all care and responsibility. We did
not look at the compass: we did not care, now, where the ship went to,
so that she went out of sight of land as quickly as possible. When I
travel again, I wish to go in a pleasure ship. No amount of money could
have purchased for us, in a strange vessel and among unfamiliar faces,
the perfect satisfaction and the sense of being at home again which we
experienced when we stepped on board the Quaker City,
--our own
ship--after this wearisome pilgrimage. It is a something we have felt
always when we returned to her, and a something we had no desire to
sell.
Jack, my boy, you are about to go among a brilliant company of
gentlemen and ladies, who are refined and cultivated, and thoroughly
accomplished in the manners and customs of good society. Listen to
their conversation, study their habits of life, and learn. Be polite
and obliging to all, and considerate towards every one's opinions,
failings and prejudices. Command the just respect of all your
fellow-voyagers, even though you fail to win their friendly regard. And
Jack--don't you ever dare, while you live, appear in public on those
decks in fair weather, in a costume unbecoming your mother's
drawing-room!
Peck away, poor insect; we were not made to fear such as you;
in ten-score dragging ages we have seen more of your kind than there
are sands at your feet: have they left a blemish upon us?
Adams Jaffa Colony.
Others had deserted before. We left in Jaffa Mr.
Adams, his wife, and fifteen unfortunates who not only had no money
but did not know where to turn or whither to go. Such was the statement
made to us. Our forty were miserable enough in the first place, and
they lay about the decks seasick all the voyage, which about completed
their misery, I take it. However, one or two young men remained
upright, and by constant persecution we wormed out of them some little
information. They gave it reluctantly and in a very fragmentary
condition, for, having been shamefully humbugged by their prophet, they
felt humiliated and unhappy. In such circumstances people do not like
to talk.
Oh no, I've got
another one here,
and he produced another couple of inches of
tallow candle. I said, Light them both--I'll have to have one to see
the other by.
He did it, but the result was drearier than darkness
itself. He was a cheery, accommodating rascal. He said he would go
somewheres
and steal a lamp. I abetted and encouraged him in his
criminal design. I heard the landlord get after him in the hall ten
minutes afterward.
Where are you going with that lamp?
Fifteen wants it, sir.
Fifteen! why he's got a double lot of candles--does the man want to
illuminate the house?--does he want to get up a torch-light
procession?--what is he up to, any how?
He don't like them candles--says he wants a lamp.
Why what in the nation does--why I never heard of such a thing? What
on earth can he want with that lamp?
Well, he only wants to read--that's what he says.
Wants to read, does he?--ain't satisfied with a thousand candles,
but has to have a lamp!--I do wonder what the devil that fellow wants
that lamp for? Take him another candle, and then if----
But he wants the lamp--says he'll burn the d--d old house down if he
don't get a lamp!
(a remark which I never made.)
I'd like to see him at it once. Well, you take it along--but I swear
it beats my time, though--and see if you can't find out what in the
very nation he wants with that lamp.
This is charming; and now don't you think you
could get me something to read?
Oh, certainly; the old man's got dead loads of
books;
and he was gone before I could tell him what sort of
literature I would rather have. And yet his countenance expressed the
utmost confidence in his ability to execute the commission with credit
to himself. The old man made a descent on him.
What are you going to do with that pile of books?
Fifteen wants 'em, sir.
Fifteen, is it? He'll want a warming-pan, next--he'll want a nurse!
Take him every thing there is in the house--take him the
bar-keeper--take him the baggage-wagon--take him a chamber-maid!
Confound me, I never saw any thing like it. What did he say he wants
with those books?
Wants to read 'em, like enough; it ain't likely he wants to eat 'em,
I don't reckon.
Wants to read 'em--wants to read 'em this time of night, the
infernal lunatic! Well, he can't have them.
But he says he's mor'ly bound to have 'em; he says he'll just go
a-rairin' and a-chargin' through this house and raise more----well,
there's no tellin' what he won't do if he don't get 'em; because he's
drunk and crazy and desperate, and nothing'll soothe him down but them
cussed books.
;obI had not made any threats, and was not in the
condition ascribed to me by the porter.;cb
Well, go on; but I will be around when he goes to rairing and
charging, and the first rair he makes I'll make him rair out of the
window.
And then the old gentleman went off, growling as before.
Good night
as confidently as if he
knew perfectly well that those books were exactly my style of reading
matter. And well he might. His selection covered the whole range of
legitimate literature. It comprised The Great Consummation,
by
Rev. Dr. Cummings--theology; Revised Statutes of the State of
Missouri
--law; The Complete Horse-Doctor
--medicine; The
Toilers of the Sea,
by Victor Hugo--romance; The works of
William Shakspeare
--poetry. I shall never cease to admire the tact
and the intelligence of that gifted porter.
old masters.
The
saddles were the high, stuffy, frog-shaped things we had known in
Ephesus and Smyrna. The donkey-boys were lively young Egyptian rascals
who could follow a donkey and keep him in a canter half a day without
tiring. We had plenty of spectators when we mounted, for the hotel was
full of English people bound overland to India and officers getting
ready for the African campaign against the Abyssinian King Theodorus.
We were not a very large party, but as we charged through the streets
of the great metropolis, we made noise for five hundred, and displayed
activity and created excitement in proportion. Nobody can steer a
donkey, and some collided with camels, dervishes, effendis, asses,
beggars and every thing else that offered to the donkeys a reasonable
chance for a collision. When we turned into the broad avenue that leads
out of the city toward Old Cairo, there was plenty of room. The walls
of stately date-palms that fenced the gardens and bordered the way,
threw their shadows down and made the air cool and bracing. We rose to
the spirit of the time and the race became a wild rout, a stampede, a
terrific panic. I wish to live to enjoy it again.
There he goes!
Too true--it was too true. He was very
small, now. Gradually, but surely, he overcame the level ground. He
began to spring and climb again. Up, up, up--at last he reached the
smooth coating--now for it. But he clung to it with toes and fingers,
like a fly. He crawled this way and that--away to the right, slanting
upward--away to the left, still slanting upward--and stood at last, a
black peg on the summit, and waved his pigmy scarf! Then he crept
downward to the raw steps again, then picked up his agile heels and
flew. We lost him presently. But presently again we saw him under us,
mounting with undiminished energy. Shortly he bounded into our midst
with a gallant war-whoop. Time, eight minutes, forty-one seconds. He
had won. His bones were intact. It was a failure. I reflected. I said
to myself, he is tired, and must grow dizzy. I will risk another dollar
on him.
Lend me a dollar--I can beat this game, yet.
Sirrah, I will give you a hundred
dollars to jump off this pyramid head first. If you do not like the
terms, name your bet. I scorn to stand on expenses now. I will stay
right here and risk money on you as long as Dan has got a cent.
Now persuade your vassals to fall back.
specimen
from the face of this the most
majestic creation the hand of man has wrought. But the great image
contemplated the dead ages as calmly as ever, unconscious of the small
insect that was fretting at its jaw. Egyptian granite that has defied
the storms and earthquakes of all time has nothing to fear from the
tack-hammers of ignorant excursionists--highwaymen like this specimen.
He failed in his enterprise. We sent a sheik to arrest him if he had
the authority, or to warn him, if he had not, that by the laws of Egypt
the crime he was attempting to commit was punishable with imprisonment
or the bastinado. Then he desisted and went away.
selling short,
unwitting that
there would be no corn in all the land when it should be time for them
to deliver; I shall not tell any thing about the strange, strange city
of Cairo, because it is only a repetition, a good deal intensified and
exaggerated, of the Oriental cities I have already spoken of; I shall
not tell of the Great Caravan which leaves for Mecca every year, for I
did not see it; nor of the fashion the people have of prostrating
themselves and so forming a long human pavement to be ridden over by
the chief of the expedition on its return, to the end that their
salvation may be thus secured, for I did not see that either; I shall
not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway--I shall
only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of
mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the
graveyard for that purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane
engineer call out pettishly, D--n these plebeians, they don't burn
worth a cent--pass out a King;
* I shall not tell of the groups of
mud cones stuck like wasps' nests upon a thousand mounds above high
water-mark the length and breadth of Egypt--villages of the lower
classes; I shall not speak of the boundless sweep of level plain, green
with luxuriant grain, that gladdens the eye as far as it can pierce
through the soft, rich atmosphere of Egypt; I shall not speak of the
vision of the Pyramids seen at a distance of five and twenty miles, for
the picture is too ethereal to be limned by an uninspired pen; I shall
not tell of the crowds of dusky women who flocked to the cars when they
stopped a moment at a station, to sell us a drink of water or a ruddy,
juicy pomegranate; I shall not tell of the motley multitudes and wild
costumes that graced a fair we found in full blast at another barbarous
station; I shall not tell how we feasted on fresh dates and enjoyed the
pleasant landscape all through the flying journey; nor how we thundered
into Alexandria, at last, swarmed out of the cars, rowed aboard the
ship, left a comrade behind, (who was to return to Europe, thence
home,) raised the anchor, and turned our bows homeward finally and
forever from the long voyage; nor how, as the mellow sun went down upon
the oldest land on earth, Jack and Moult assembled in solemn state in
the smoking-room and mourned over the lost comrade the whole night
long, and would not be comforted. I shall not speak a word of any of
these things, or write a line. They shall be as a sealed book. I do not
know what a sealed book is, because I never saw one, but a sealed book
is the expression to use in this connection, because it is popular.
Sunday--Services, as usual, at four bells. Services at night,
also. No cards.@@
Monday--Beautiful day, but rained hard. The cattle
purchased at Alexandria for beef ought to be shingled. Or else fattened.
The water stands in deep puddles in the depressions forward of their
after shoulders. Also here and there all over their backs. It is well
they are not cows--it would soak in and ruin the milk. The poor devil
eagle* from Syria looks miserable and droopy in the rain, perched on
the forward capstan. He appears to have his own opinion of a sea
voyage, and if it were put into language and the language solidified,
it would probably essentially dam the widest river in the world.@@
Tuesday--Somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Malta. Can not
stop there. Cholera. Weather very stormy. Many passengers seasick and
invisible.@@
Wednesday--Weather still very savage. Storm blew two
land birds to sea, and they came on board. A hawk was blown off, also.
He circled round and round the ship, wanting to light, but afraid of
the people. He was so tired, though, that he had to light, at last, or
perish. He stopped in the foretop, repeatedly, and was as often blown
away by the wind. At last Harry caught him. Sea full of flying-fish.
They rise in flocks of three hundred and flash along above the tops of
the waves a distance of two or three hundred feet, then fall and
disappear.@@
Thursday--Anchored off Algiers, Africa. Beautiful city,
beautiful green hilly landscape behind it. Staid half a day and left.
Not permitted to land, though we showed a clean bill of health. They
were afraid of Egyptian plague and cholera.@@
Friday--Morning,
dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading the deck.
Afterwards, charades.@@
Saturday--Morning, dominoes. Afternoon,
dominoes. Evening, promenading the decks. Afterwards, dominoes.@@
Sunday--Morning service, four bells. Evening service, eight bells.
Monotony till midnight.--Whereupon, dominoes.@@
Monday--Morning,
dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening, promenading the decks.
Afterward, charades and a lecture from Dr. C. Dominoes.@@
No
date--Anchored off the picturesque city of Cagliari, Sardinia. Staid
till midnight, but not permitted to land by these infamous foreigners.
They smell inodorously--they do not wash--they dare not risk cholera.@@<
q>Thursday--Anchored off the beautiful cathedral city of Malaga, Spain.
--Went ashore in the captain's boat--not ashore, either, for they would
not let us land. Quarantine. Shipped my newspaper correspondence, which
they took with tongs, dipped it in sea water, clipped it full of holes,
and then fumigated it with villainous vapors till it smelt like a
Spaniard. Inquired about chances to run the blockade and visit the
Alhambra at Granada. Too risky--they might hang a body. Set
sail--middle of afternoon.@@
And so on, and so on, and so forth, for
several days. Finally, anchored off Gibraltar, which looks familiar and
home-like.
@It reminds me of the journal I opened with the New Year,
once, when I was a boy and a confiding and a willing prey to those
impossible schemes of reform which well-meaning old maids and
grandmothers set for the feet of unwary youths at that season of the
year--setting oversized tasks for them, which, necessarily failing, as
infallibly weaken the boy's strength of will, diminish his confidence
in himself and injure his chances of success in life. Please accept of
an extract:@@Monday--Got up, washed, went to bed.@@
Tuesday--Got
up, washed, went to bed.@@
Wednesday--Got up, washed, went to bed.@@<
q>Thursday--Got up, washed, went to bed.@@
Friday--Got up, washed,
went to bed.@@
Next Friday--Got up, washed, went to bed.@@
Friday
fortnight--Got up, washed, went to bed.@@
In fact, I demurred for a while, because I did not feel
like writing compliments then, and therefore was afraid to speak of the
cruise lest I might be betrayed into using other than complimentary
language. However, I reflected that it would be a just and righteous
thing to go down and write a kind word for the Hadjis--Hadjis are
people who have made the pilgrimage--because parties not interested
could not do it so feelingly as I, a fellow-Hadji, and so I penned the
valedictory. I have read it, and read it again; and if there is a
sentence in it that is not fulsomely complimentary to captain, ship and
passengers, I can not find it. If it is not a chapter that any company
might be proud to have a body write about them, my judgment is fit for
nothing. With these remarks I confidently submit it to the unprejudiced
judgment of the reader:
Following month--Got up,
washed, went to bed.
@@I stopped, then, discouraged. Startling
events appeared to be too rare, in my career, to render a diary
necessary. I still reflect with pride, however, that even at that early
age I washed when I got up. That journal finished me. I never have had
the nerve to keep one since. My loss of confidence in myself in that
line was permanent.@@The ship had to stay a week or more at Gibraltar
to take in coal for the home voyage.@@It would be very tiresome staying
here, and so four of us ran the quarantine blockade and spent seven
delightful days in Seville, Cordova, Cadiz, and wandering through the
pleasant rural scenery of Andalusia, the garden of Old Spain. The
experiences of that cheery week were too varied and numerous for a
short chapter and I have not room for a long one. Therefore I shall
leave them all out.@@*Afterwards presented to the Central Park.@@[te
Chapter LX
Just try that mixture once, Captain Duncan.
It is inferior--for coffee--but it is pretty fair tea.
our friends the Bermudians,
as our programme
hath it--the majority of those we were most intimate with were
negroes--and courted the great deep again. I said the majority. We knew
more negroes than white people, because we had a deal of washing to be
done, but we made some most excellent friends among the whites, whom it
will be a pleasant duty to hold long in grateful remembrance.
rushing
into print
with these compliments. I did not rush. I had written
news letters to the Herald sometimes, but yet when I visited the office
that day I did not say any thing about writing a valedictory. I did go
to the Tribune office to see if such an article was wanted, because I
belonged on the regular staff of that paper and it was simply a duty to
do it. The managing editor was absent, and so I thought no more about
it. At night when the Herald's request came for an article, I did not <
q>rush.pleasure excursion.
Well,
perhaps, it was a pleasure excursion, but certainly it did not look
like one; certainly it did not act like one. Any body's and every
body's notion of a pleasure excursion is that the parties to it will of
a necessity be young and giddy and somewhat boisterous. They will dance
a good deal, sing a good deal, make love, but sermonize very little.
Any body's and every body's notion of a well conducted funeral is that
there must be a hearse and a corpse, and chief mourners and mourners by
courtesy, many old people, much solemnity, no levity, and a prayer and
a sermon withal. Three-fourths of the Quaker City's passengers were
between forty and seventy years of age! There was a picnic crowd for
you! It may be supposed that the other fourth was composed of young
girls. But it was not. It was chiefly composed of rusty old bachelors
and a child of six years. Let us average the ages of the Quaker City's
pilgrims and set the figure down as fifty years. Is any man insane
enough to imagine that this picnic of patriarchs sang, made love,
danced, laughed, told anecdotes, dealt in ungodly levity? In my
experience they sinned little in these matters. No doubt it was
presumed here at home that these frolicsome veterans laughed and sang
and romped all day, and day after day, and kept up a noisy excitement
from one end of the ship to the other; and that they played blind-man's
buff or danced quadrilles and waltzes on moon-light evenings on the
quarter-deck; and that at odd moments of unoccupied time they jotted a
laconic item or two in the journals they opened on such an elaborate
plan when they left home, and then skurried off to their whist and
euchre labors under the cabin lamps. If these things were presumed, the
presumption was at fault. The venerable excursionists were not gay and
frisky. They played no blind-man's buff; they dealt not in whist; they
shirked not the irksome journal, for alas! most of them were even
writing books. They never romped, they talked but little, they never
sang, save in the nightly prayer-meeting. The pleasure ship was a
synagogue, and the pleasure trip was a funeral excursion without a
corpse. (There is nothing exhilarating about a funeral excursion
without a corpse.) A free, hearty laugh was a sound that was not heard
oftener than once in seven days about those decks or in those cabins,
and when it was heard it met with precious little sympathy. The
excursionists danced, on three separate evenings, long, long ago, (it
seems an age,) quadrilles, of a single set, made up of three ladies and
five gentlemen, (the latter with handkerchiefs around their arms to
signify their sex,) who timed their feet to the solemn wheezing of a
melodeon; but even this melancholy orgie was voted to be sinful, and
dancing was discontinued.
The Grand Holy Land Pleasure
Excursion
--was a misnomer. The Grand Holy Land Funeral
Procession
would have been better--much better.
Allong
restay trankeel--may be ve coom Moonday;
and would you believe it,
that shop-keeper, a born Frenchman, had to ask what it was that had
been said. Sometimes it seems to me, somehow, that there must be a
difference between Parisian French and Quaker City French.
Pearl of the East,
the pride of Syria,
the fabled Garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian
Nights, the oldest metropolis on earth, the one city in all the world
that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on while
the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to life,
enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp, and then vanished and
been forgotten!