'\n\r\n\r\nTHE INNOCENTS ABROAD\r\n\r\nby Mark Twain\r\n\r\n\r\n[From an 1869--1st Edition]\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n CONTENTS\r\n\r\n\r\n CHAPTER I.\r\nPopular Talk of the Excursion--Programme of the Trip--Duly Ticketed for\r\nthe Excursion--Defection of the Celebrities\r\n\r\n CHAPTER II.\r\nGrand Preparations--An Imposing Dignitary--The European Exodus--\r\nMr. Blucher\'s Opinion--Stateroom No. 10--The Assembling of the Clans--\r\nAt Sea at Last\r\n\r\n CHAPTER III.\r\n\"Averaging\" the Passengers--Far, far at Sea.--Tribulation among the\r\nPatriarchs--Seeking Amusement under Difficulties--Five Captains in the\r\nShip\r\n\r\n CHAPTER IV.\r\nThe Pilgrims Becoming Domesticated--Pilgrim Life at Sea--\"Horse-\r\nBilliards\"--The \"Synagogue\"--The Writing School--Jack\'s \"Journal\"--\r\nThe \"Q. C. Club\"--The Magic Lantern--State Ball on Deck--Mock Trials--\r\nCharades--Pilgrim Solemnity--Slow Music--The Executive Officer Delivers\r\nan Opinion\r\n\r\n CHAPTER V.\r\nSummer in Mid-Atlantic--An Eccentric Moon--Mr. Blucher Loses Confidence\r\n--The Mystery of \"Ship Time\"--The Denizens of the Deep--\"Land Hoh\"--\r\nThe First Landing on a Foreign Shore--Sensation among the Natives--\r\nSomething about the Azores Islands--Blucher\'s Disastrous Dinner--\r\nThe Happy Result\r\n\r\n CHAPTER VI.\r\nSolid Information--A Fossil Community--Curious Ways and Customs--Jesuit\r\nHumbuggery--Fantastic Pilgrimizing--Origin of the Russ Pavement--\r\nSquaring Accounts with the Fossils--At Sea Again\r\n\r\n CHAPTER VII.\r\nA Tempest at Night--Spain and Africa on Exhibition--Greeting a Majestic\r\nStranger--The Pillars of Hercules--The Rock of Gibraltar--Tiresome\r\nRepetition--\"The Queen\'s Chair\"--Serenity Conquered--Curiosities of\r\nthe Secret Caverns--Personnel of Gibraltar--Some Odd Characters--A\r\nPrivate Frolic in Africa--Bearding a Moorish Garrison (without loss of\r\nlife)--Vanity Rebuked--Disembarking in the Empire of Morocco\r\n\r\n CHAPTER VIII.\r\nThe Ancient City of Tangier, Morocco--Strange Sights--A Cradle of\r\nAntiquity--We become Wealthy--How they Rob the Mail in Africa--The Danger\r\nof being Opulent in Morocco\r\n\r\n CHAPTER IX.\r\nA Pilgrim--in Deadly Peril--How they Mended the Clock--Moorish\r\nPunishments for Crime--Marriage Customs--Looking Several ways for Sunday\r\n--Shrewd, Practice of Mohammedan Pilgrims--Reverence for Cats--Bliss of\r\nbeing a Consul-General\r\n\r\n CHAPTER X.\r\nFourth of July at Sea--Mediterranean Sunset--The \"Oracle\" is Delivered\r\nof an Opinion--Celebration Ceremonies--The Captain\'s Speech--France in\r\nSight--The Ignorant Native--In Marseilles--Another Blunder--Lost in\r\nthe Great City--Found Again--A Frenchy Scene\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XI.\r\nGetting used to it--No Soap--Bill of Fare, Table d\'hote--\"An American\r\nSir\"--A Curious Discovery--The \"Pilgrim\" Bird--Strange Companionship--\r\nA Grave of the Living--A Long Captivity--Some of Dumas\' Heroes--Dungeon\r\nof the Famous \"Iron Mask.\"\r\n\r\n CHAPTXR XII.\r\nA Holiday Flight through France--Summer Garb of the Landscape--Abroad\r\non the Great Plains--Peculiarities of French Cars--French Politeness\r\nAmerican Railway Officials--\"Twenty Mnutes to Dinner!\"--Why there\r\nare no Accidents--The \"Old Travellers\"--Still on the Wing--Paris at\r\nLast----French Order and Quiet--Place of the Bastile--Seeing the Sights--\r\nA Barbarous Atrocity--Absurd Billiards\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XIII.\r\nMore Trouble--Monsieur Billfinger--Re-Christening the Frenchman--In the\r\nClutches of a Paris Guide--The International Exposition--Fine Military\r\nReview--Glimpse of the Emperor Napoleon and the Sultan of Turkey\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XIV.\r\nThe Venerable Cathedral of Notre-Dame--Jean Sanspeur\'s Addition--\r\nTreasures and Sacred Relics--The Legend of the Cross--The Morgue--The\r\nOutrageious \'Can-Can\'--Blondin Aflame--The Louvre Palace--The Great Park\r\n--Showy Pageantry--Preservation of Noted Things\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XV.\r\nFrench National Burying--Ground--Among the Great Dead--The Shrine of\r\nDisappointed Love--The Story of Abelard and Heloise--\"English Spoken\r\nHere\"--\"American Drinks Compounded Here\"--Imperial Honors to an\r\nAmerican--The Over-estimated Grisette--Departure from Paris--A Deliberate\r\nOpinion Concerning the Comeliness of American Women\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XVI.\r\nVersailles--Paradise Regained--A Wonderful Park--Paradise Lost--\r\nNapoleonic Strategy\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XVII.\r\nWar--The American Forces Victorious--\" Home Again\"--Italy in Sight\r\nThe \"City of Palaces\"--Beauty of the Genoese Women--The \"Stub-Hunters\"--\r\nAmong the Palaces--Gifted Guide--Church Magnificence--\"Women not\r\nAdmitted\"--How the Genoese Live--Massive Architecture--A Scrap of Ancient\r\nHistory--Graves for 60,000\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XVIII.\r\nFlying Through Italy--Marengo--First Glimpse of the Famous Cathedral--\r\nDescription of some of its Wonders--A Horror Carved in Stone----An\r\nUnpleasant Adventure--A Good Man--A Sermon from the Tomb--Tons of Gold\r\nand Silver--Some More Holy Relics--Solomon\'s Temple\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XIX\r\n\"Do You Wiz zo Haut can be?\"--La Scala--Petrarch and Laura--Lucrezia\r\nBorgia--Ingenious Frescoes--Ancient Roman Amphitheatre--A Clever\r\nDelusion--Distressing Billiards--The Chief Charm of European Life--An\r\nItalian Bath--Wanted: Soap--Crippled French--Mutilated English--The Most\r\nCelebrated Painting in the World--Amateur Raptures--Uninspired Critics--\r\nAnecdote--A Wonderful Echo--A Kiss for a Franc\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XX\r\nRural Italy by Rail--Fumigated, According to Law--The Sorrowing\r\nEnglishman--Night by the Lake of Como--The Famous Lake--Its Scenery--\r\nComo compared with Tahoe--Meeting a Shipmate\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXI.\r\nThe Pretty Lago di Lecco--A Carriage Drive in the Country--Astonishing\r\nSociability in a Coachman--Sleepy Land--Bloody Shrines--The Heart and\r\nHome of Priestcraft--A Thrilling Mediaeval Romance--The Birthplace of\r\nHarlequin--Approaching Venice\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXII.\r\nNight in Venice--The \"Gay Gondolier\"--The Grand Fete by Moonlight--\r\nThe Notable Sights of Venice--The Mother of the Republics Desolate\r\n\r\n CHANTER XXIII.\r\nThe Famous Gondola--The Gondola in an Unromantic Aspect--The Great Square\r\nof St. Mark and the Winged Lion--Snobs, at Home and Abroad--Sepulchres of\r\nthe Great Dead--A Tilt at the \"Old Masters\"--A Contraband Guide--\r\nThe Conspiracy--Moving Again\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXIV.\r\nDown Through Italy by Rail--Idling in Florence--Dante and Galileo--An\r\nUngrateful City--Dazzling Generosity--Wonderful Mosaics--The Historical\r\nArno--Lost Again--Found Again, but no Fatted Calf Ready--The Leaning\r\nTower of Pisa--The Ancient Duomo--The Old Original First Pendulum that\r\nEver Swung--An Enchanting Echo--A New Holy Sepulchre--A Relic of\r\nAntiquity--A Fallen Republic--At Leghorn--At Home Again, and Satisfied,\r\non Board the Ship--Our Vessel an Object of Grave Suspicion--Garibaldi\r\nVisited--Threats of Quarantine\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXV.\r\nThe Works of Bankruptcy--Railway Grandeur--How to Fill an Empty\r\nTreasury--The Sumptuousness of Mother Church--Ecclesiastical Splendor--\r\nMagnificence and Misery--General Execration--More Magnificence\r\nA Good Word for the Priests--Civita Vecchia the Dismal--Off for Rome\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXVI.\r\nThe Modern Roman on His Travels--The Grandeur of St. Peter\'s--Holy Relics\r\n--Grand View from the Dome--The Holy Inquisition--Interesting Old Monkish\r\nFrauds--The Ruined Coliseum--The Coliseum in the Days of its Prime--\r\nAncient Playbill of a Coliseum Performance--A Roman Newspaper Criticism\r\n1700 Years Old\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXVII.\r\n\"Butchered to Make a Roman Holiday\"--The Man who Never Complained--\r\nAn Exasperating Subject--Asinine Guides--The Roman Catacombs\r\nThe Saint Whose Fervor Burst his Ribs--The Miracle of the Bleeding Heart\r\n--The Legend of Ara Coeli\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXVIII.\r\nPicturesque Horrors--The Legend of Brother Thomas--Sorrow Scientifically\r\nAnalyzed--A Festive Company of the Dead--The Great Vatican Museum\r\nArtist Sins of Omission--The Rape of the Sabines--Papal Protection of\r\nArt--High Price of \"Old Masters\"--Improved Scripture--Scale of Rank\r\nof the Holy Personages in Rome--Scale of Honors Accorded Them---\r\nFossilizing--Away for Naples\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXIX.\r\nNaples--In Quarantine at Last--Annunciation--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius--A\r\nTwo Cent Community--The Black Side of Neapolitan Character--Monkish\r\nMiracles--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--The Stranger and the\r\nHackman--Night View of Naples from the Mountain-side---Ascent of Mount\r\nVesuvius Continued\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXX.\r\nAscent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--Beautiful View at Dawn--Less\r\nBeautiful in the Back Streets--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued--Dwellings a\r\nHundred Feet High--A Motley Procession--Bill of Fare for a Peddler\'s\r\nBreakfast--Princely Salaries--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued--An Average of\r\nPrices--The wonderful \"Blue Grotto\"--Visit to Celebrated Localities in\r\nthe Bay of Naples--The Poisoned \"Grotto of the Dog\"--A Petrified Sea of\r\nLava--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--The Summit Reached--Description\r\nof the Crater--Descent of Vesuvius\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXI.\r\nThe Buried City of Pompeii--How Dwellings Appear that have been\r\nUnoccupied for Eighteen hundred years--The Judgment Seat--Desolation--The\r\nFootprints of the Departed--\"No Women Admitted\"--Theatres, Bakeshops,\r\nSchools--Skeletons preserved by the Ashes and Cinders--The Brave Martyr\r\nto Duty--Rip Van Winkle--The Perishable Nature of Fame\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXII.\r\nAt Sea Once More--The Pilgrims all Well--Superb Stromboli--Sicily by\r\nMoonlight--Scylla and Charybdis--The \"Oracle\" at Fault--Skirting the\r\nIsles of Greece Ancient Athens--Blockaded by Quarantine and Refused\r\nPermission to Enter--Running the Blockade--A Bloodless Midnight\r\nAdventure--Turning Robbers from Necessity--Attempt to Carry the Acropolis\r\nby Storm--We Fail--Among the Glories of the Past--A World of Ruined\r\nSculpture--A Fairy Vision--Famous Localities--Retreating in Good Order\r\n--Captured by the Guards--Travelling in Military State--Safe on Board\r\nAgain\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXIII.\r\nModern Greece--Fallen Greatness--Sailing Through the Archipelago and the\r\nDardanelles--Footprints of History--The First Shoddy Contractor of whom\r\nHistory gives any Account--Anchored Before Constantinople--Fantastic\r\nFashions--The Ingenious Goose-Rancher--Marvelous Cripples--The Great\r\nMosque--The Thousand and One Columns--The Grand Bazaar of Stamboul\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXIV.\r\nScarcity of Morals and Whiskey--Slave-Girl Market Report--Commercial\r\nMorality at a Discount--The Slandered Dogs of Constantinople--\r\nQuestionable Delights of Newspaperdom in Turkey--Ingenious Italian\r\nJournalism--No More Turkish Lunches Desired--The Turkish Bath Fraud--\r\nThe Narghileh Fraud--Jackplaned by a Native--The Turkish Coffee Fraud\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXV.\r\nSailing Through the Bosporus and the Black Sea--\"Far-Away Moses\"--\r\nMelancholy Sebastopol--Hospitably Received in Russia--Pleasant English\r\nPeople--Desperate Fighting--Relic Hunting--How Travellers Form \"Cabinets\"\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXVI.\r\nNine Thousand Miles East--Imitation American Town in Russia--Gratitude\r\nthat Came Too Late--To Visit the Autocrat of All the Russias\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXVII.\r\nSummer Home of Royalty--Practising for the Dread Ordeal--Committee on\r\nImperial Address--Reception by the Emperor and Family--Dresses of the\r\nImperial Party--Concentrated Power--Counting the Spoons--At the Grand\r\nDuke\'s--A Charming Villa--A Knightly Figure--The Grand Duchess--A Grand\r\nDucal Breakfast--Baker\'s Boy, the Famine-Breeder--Theatrical Monarchs a\r\nFraud--Saved as by Fire--The Governor--General\'s Visit to the Ship--\r\nOfficial \"Style\"--Aristocratic Visitors--\"Munchausenizing\" with Them--\r\nClosing Ceremonies\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXVIII.\r\nReturn to Constantinople--We Sail for Asia--The Sailors Burlesque the\r\nImperial Visitors--Ancient Smyrna--The \"Oriental Splendor\" Fraud--\r\nThe \"Biblical Crown of Life\"--Pilgrim Prophecy-Savans--Sociable\r\nArmenian Girls--A Sweet Reminiscence--\"The Camels are Coming, Ha-ha!\"\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XXXIX.\r\nSmyrna\'s Lions--The Martyr Polycarp--The \"Seven Churches\"--Remains of the\r\nSix Smyrnas--Mysterious Oyster Mine Oysters--Seeking Scenery--A Millerite\r\nTradition--A Railroad Out of its Sphere\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XL.\r\nJourneying Toward Ancient Ephesus--Ancient Ayassalook--The Villanous\r\nDonkey--A Fantastic Procession--Bygone Magnificence--Fragments of\r\nHistory--The Legend of the Seven Sleepers\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLI.\r\nVandalism Prohibited--Angry Pilgrims--Approaching Holy Land!--The \"Shrill\r\nNote of Preparation\"--Distress About Dragomans and Transportation--\r\nThe \"Long Route\" Adopted--In Syria--Something about Beirout--A Choice\r\nSpecimen of a Greek \"Ferguson\"--Outfits--Hideous Horseflesh--Pilgrim\r\n\"Style\"--What of Aladdin\'s Lamp?\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLII.\r\n\"Jacksonville,\" in the Mountains of Lebanon--Breakfasting above a Grand\r\nPanorama--The Vanished City--The Peculiar Steed, \"Jericho\"--The Pilgrims\r\nProgress--Bible Scenes--Mount Hermon, Joshua\'s Battle Fields, etc.--\r\nThe Tomb of Noah--A Most Unfortunate People\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLIII.\r\nPatriarchal Customs--Magnificent Baalbec--Description of the Ruins--\r\nScribbling Smiths and Joneses--Pilgrim Fidelity to the Letter of the Law\r\n--The Revered Fountain of Baalam\'s Ass\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLIV.\r\nExtracts from Note-Book--Mahomet\'s Paradise and the Bible\'s--Beautiful\r\nDamascus the Oldest City on Earth--Oriental Scenes within the Curious Old\r\nCity--Damascus Street Car--The Story of St. Paul--The \"Street called\r\nStraight\"--Mahomet\'s Tomb and St. George\'s--The Christian Massacre--\r\nMohammedan Dread of Pollution--The House of Naaman--\r\nThe Horrors of Leprosy\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLV.\r\nThe Cholera by way of Variety--Hot--Another Outlandish Procession--Pen\r\nand-Ink Photograph of \"Jonesborough,\" Syria--Tomb of Nimrod, the Mighty\r\nHunter--The Stateliest Ruin of All--Stepping over the Borders of Holy-\r\nLand--Bathing in the Sources of Jordan--More \"Specimen\" Hunting--Ruins of\r\nCesarea--Philippi--\"On This Rock Will I Build my Church\"--The People the\r\nDisciples Knew--The Noble Steed \"Baalbec\"--Sentimental Horse Idolatry of\r\nthe Arabs\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLVI.\r\nDan--Bashan--Genessaret--A Notable Panorama--Smallness of Palestine--\r\nScraps of History--Character of the Country--Bedouin Shepherds--Glimpses\r\nof the Hoary Past--Mr. Grimes\'s Bedouins--A Battle--Ground of Joshua--\r\nThat Soldier\'s Manner of Fighting--Barak\'s Battle--The Necessity of\r\nUnlearning Some Things--Desolation\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLVII.\r\n\"Jack\'s Adventure\"--Joseph\'s Pit--The Story of Joseph--Joseph\'s\r\nMagnanimity and Esau\'s--The Sacred Lake of Genessaret--Enthusiasm of the\r\nPilgrims--Why We did not Sail on Galilee--About Capernaum--Concerning the\r\nSaviour\'s Brothers and Sisters--Journeying toward Magdela\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLVIII.\r\nCurious Specimens of Art and Architecture--Public Reception of the\r\nPilgrims--Mary Magdalen\'s House--Tiberias and its Queer Inhabitants--\r\nThe Sacred Sea of Galilee--Galilee by Night\r\n\r\n CHAPTER XLIX.\r\nThe Ancient Baths--Ye Apparition--A Distinguished Panorama--The Last\r\nBattle of the Crusades--The Story of the Lord of Kerak--Mount Tabor--\r\nWhat one Sees from its Top--Memory of a Wonderful Garden--The House of\r\nDeborah the Prophetess\r\n\r\n CHAPTER L.\r\nToward Nazareth--Bitten By a Camel--Grotto of the Annunciation, Nazareth\r\n--Noted Grottoes in General--Joseph\'s Workshop--A Sacred Bowlder--\r\nThe Fountain of the Virgin--Questionable Female Beauty--\r\nLiterary Curiosities\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LI.\r\nBoyhood of the Saviour--Unseemly Antics of Sober Pilgrims--Home of the\r\nWitch of Endor--Nain--Profanation--A Popular Oriental Picture--Biblical\r\nMetaphors Becoming steadily More Intelligible--The Shuuem Miracle--\r\nThe \"Free Son of The Desert\"--Ancient Jezrael--Jehu\'s Achievements--\r\nSamaria and its Famous Siege\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LII\r\nCurious Remnant of the Past--Shechem--The Oldest \"First Family\" on Earth\r\n--The Oldest Manuscript Extant--The Genuine Tomb of Joseph--Jacob\'s Well\r\n--Shiloh--Camping with the Arabs--Jacob\'s Ladder--More Desolation--\r\nRamah, Beroth, the Tomb of Samuel, The Fountain of Beira--Impatience--\r\nApproaching Jerusalem--The Holy City in Sight--Noting Its Prominent\r\nFeatures--Domiciled Within the Sacred Walls\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LIII.\r\n\"The Joy of the Whole Earth\"--Description of Jerusalem--Church of the\r\nHoly Sepulchre--The Stone of Unction--The Grave of Jesus--Graves of\r\nNicodemus and Joseph of Armattea--Places of the Apparition--The Finding\r\nof the There Crosses----The Legend--Monkish Impostures--The Pillar of\r\nFlagellation--The Place of a Relic--Godfrey\'s Sword--\"The Bonds of\r\nChrist\"--\"The Center of the Earth\"--Place whence the Dust was taken of\r\nwhich Adam was Made--Grave of Adam--The Martyred Soldier--The Copper\r\nPlate that was on the Cross--The Good St. Helena--Place of the Division\r\nof the Garments--St. Dimas, the Penitent Thief--The Late Emperor\r\nMaximilian\'s Contribution--Grotto wherein the Crosses were Found, and the\r\nNails, and the Crown of Thorns--Chapel of the Mocking--Tomb of\r\nMelchizedek--Graves of Two Renowned Crusaders--The Place of the\r\nCrucifixion\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LIV.\r\nThe \"Sorrowful Way\"--The Legend of St. Veronica\'s Handkerchief--\r\nAn Illustrious Stone--House of the Wandering Jew--The Tradition of the\r\nWanderer--Solomon\'s Temple--Mosque of Omar--Moslem Traditions--\"Women not\r\nAdmitted\"--The Fate of a Gossip--Turkish Sacred Relics--Judgment Seat of\r\nDavid and Saul--Genuine Precious Remains of Solomon\'s Temple--Surfeited\r\nwith Sights--The Pool of Siloam--The Garden of Gethsemane and Other\r\nSacred Localities\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LV.\r\nRebellion in the Camp--Charms of Nomadic Life--Dismal Rumors--En Route\r\nfor Jericho and The Dead Sea--Pilgrim Strategy--Bethany and the Dwelling\r\nof Lazarus--\"Bedouins!\"--Ancient Jericho--Misery--The Night March--\r\nThe Dead Sea--An Idea of What a \"Wilderness\" in Palestine is--The Holy\r\nhermits of Mars Saba--Good St. Saba--Women not Admitted--Buried from the\r\nWorld for all Time--Unselfish Catholic Benevolence--Gazelles--The Plain\r\nof the Shepherds--Birthplace of the Saviour, Bethlehem--Church of the\r\nNativity--Its Hundred Holy Places--The Famous \"Milk\" Grotto--Tradition--\r\nReturn to Jerusalem--Exhausted\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LVI.\r\nDeparture from Jerusalem--Samson--The Plain of Sharon--Arrival at Joppa--\r\nHorse of Simon the Tanner--The Long Pilgrimage Ended--Character of\r\nPalestine Scenery--The Curse\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LVII.\r\nThe Happiness of being at Sea once more--\"Home\" as it is in a Pleasure\r\nShip--\"Shaking Hands\" with the Vessel--Jack in Costume--His Father\'s\r\nParting Advice--Approaching Egypt--Ashore in Alexandria--A Deserved\r\nCompliment for the Donkeys--Invasion of the Lost Tribes of America--End\r\nof the Celebrated \"Jaffa Colony\"--Scenes in Grand Cairo--Shepheard\'s\r\nHotel Contrasted with a Certain American Hotel--Preparing for the\r\nPyramids\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LVIII.\r\n\"Recherche\" Donkeys--A Wild Ride--Specimens of Egyptian Modesty--Moses in\r\nthe Bulrushes--Place where the Holy Family Sojourned--Distant view of the\r\nPyramids--A Nearer View--The Ascent--Superb View from the top of the\r\nPyramid--\"Backsheesh! Backsheesh!\"--An Arab Exploit--In the Bowels of the\r\nPyramid--Strategy--Reminiscence of \"Holiday\'s Hill\"--Boyish Exploit--The\r\nMajestic Sphynx--Things the Author will not Tell--Grand Old Egypt\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LIX.\r\nGoing Home--A Demoralized Note-Book--A Boy\'s Diary--Mere Mention of Old\r\nSpain--Departure from Cadiz--A Deserved Rebuke--The Beautiful Madeiras\r\n--Tabooed--In the Delightful Bermudas--An English Welcome--Good-by to\r\n\"Our Friends the Bermudians\"--Packing Trunks for Home--Our First\r\nAccident--The Long Cruise Drawing to a Close--At Home--Amen\r\n\r\n CHAPTER LX.\r\nThankless Devotion--A Newspaper Valedictory--Conclusion\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n PREFACE\r\n\r\nThis book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a\r\nsolemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that\r\nprofundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper\r\nto works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet notwithstanding it\r\nis only a record of a pic-nic, it has a purpose, which is to suggest to\r\nthe reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked\r\nat them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in\r\nthose countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how\r\nhe ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea--other books do\r\nthat, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need.\r\n\r\nI offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of travel-\r\nwriting that may be charged against me--for I think I have seen with\r\nimpartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least honestly, whether\r\nwisely or not.\r\n\r\nIn this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for the\r\nDaily Alta California, of San Francisco, the proprietors of that journal\r\nhaving waived their rights and given me the necessary permission. I have\r\nalso inserted portions of several letters written for the New York\r\nTribune and the New York Herald.\r\n\r\nTHE AUTHOR.\r\nSAN FRANCISCO.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER I.\r\n\r\nFor months the great pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land was\r\nchatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America and discussed at\r\ncountless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of excursions--its like\r\nhad not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which\r\nattractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic\r\nscale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam\r\nferry--boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up\r\nsome obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves\r\nout with a long summer day\'s laborious frolicking under the impression\r\nthat it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying\r\nand cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond the broad ocean in\r\nmany a strange clime and in many a land renowned in history! They were to\r\nsail for months over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean;\r\nthey were to scamper about the decks by day, filling the ship with shouts\r\nand laughter--or read novels and poetry in the shade of the smokestacks,\r\nor watch for the jelly-fish and the nautilus over the side, and the\r\nshark, the whale, and other strange monsters of the deep; and at night\r\nthey were to dance in the open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a\r\nballroom that stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the\r\nbending heavens and lighted by no meaner lamps than the stars and the\r\nmagnificent moon--dance, and promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make\r\nlove, and search the skies for constellations that never associate with\r\nthe \"Big Dipper\" they were so tired of; and they were to see the ships of\r\ntwenty navies--the customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples--the\r\ngreat cities of half a world--they were to hob-nob with nobility and hold\r\nfriendly converse with kings and princes, grand moguls, and the anointed\r\nlords of mighty empires! It was a brave conception; it was the offspring\r\nof a most ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed\r\nit: the bold originality, the extraordinary character, the seductive\r\nnature, and the vastness of the enterprise provoked comment everywhere\r\nand advertised it in every household in the land. Who could read the\r\nprogram of the excursion without longing to make one of the party? I will\r\ninsert it here. It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this book,\r\nnothing could be better:\r\n\r\n EXCURSION TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT,\r\n THE CRIMEA, GREECE, AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS OF INTEREST.\r\n BROOKLYN, February 1st, 1867\r\n\r\n The undersigned will make an excursion as above during the coming\r\n season, and begs to submit to you the following programme:\r\n\r\n A first-class steamer, to be under his own command, and capable of\r\n accommodating at least one hundred and fifty cabin passengers, will\r\n be selected, in which will be taken a select company, numbering not\r\n more than three-fourths of the ship\'s capacity. There is good\r\n reason to believe that this company can be easily made up in this\r\n immediate vicinity, of mutual friends and acquaintances.\r\n\r\n The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort,\r\n including library and musical instruments.\r\n\r\n An experienced physician will be on board.\r\n\r\n Leaving New York about June 1st, a middle and pleasant route will\r\n be taken across the Atlantic, and passing through the group of\r\n Azores, St. Michael will be reached in about ten days. A day or two\r\n will be spent here, enjoying the fruit and wild scenery of these\r\n islands, and the voyage continued, and Gibraltar reached in three or\r\n four days.\r\n\r\n A day or two will be spent here in looking over the wonderful\r\n subterraneous fortifications, permission to visit these galleries\r\n being readily obtained.\r\n\r\n From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and France,\r\n Marseilles will be reached in three days. Here ample time will be\r\n given not only to look over the city, which was founded six hundred\r\n years before the Christian era, and its artificial port, the finest\r\n of the kind in the Mediterranean, but to visit Paris during the\r\n Great Exhibition; and the beautiful city of Lyons, lying\r\n intermediate, from the heights of which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc\r\n and the Alps can be distinctly seen. Passengers who may wish to\r\n extend the time at Paris can do so, and, passing down through\r\n Switzerland, rejoin the steamer at Genoa.\r\n\r\n From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The excursionists\r\n will have an opportunity to look over this, the \"magnificent city of\r\n palaces,\" and visit the birthplace of Columbus, twelve miles off,\r\n over a beautiful road built by Napoleon I. From this point,\r\n excursions may be made to Milan, Lakes Como and Maggiore, or to\r\n Milan, Verona (famous for its extraordinary fortifications), Padua,\r\n and Venice. Or, if passengers desire to visit Parma (famous for\r\n Correggio\'s frescoes) and Bologna, they can by rail go on to\r\n Florence, and rejoin the steamer at Leghorn, thus spending about\r\n three weeks amid the cities most famous for art in Italy.\r\n\r\n From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the coast in one\r\n night, and time appropriated to this point in which to visit\r\n Florence, its palaces and galleries; Pisa, its cathedral and\r\n \"Leaning Tower,\" and Lucca and its baths, and Roman amphitheater;\r\n Florence, the most remote, being distant by rail about sixty miles.\r\n\r\n From Leghorn to Naples (calling at Civita Vecchia to land any who\r\n may prefer to go to Rome from that point), the distance will be made\r\n in about thirty-six hours; the route will lay along the coast of\r\n Italy, close by Caprera, Elba, and Corsica. Arrangements have been\r\n made to take on board at Leghorn a pilot for Caprera, and, if\r\n practicable, a call will be made there to visit the home of\r\n Garibaldi.\r\n\r\n Rome [by rail], Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Vergil\'s tomb, and\r\n possibly the ruins of Paestum can be visited, as well as the\r\n beautiful surroundings of Naples and its charming bay.\r\n\r\n The next point of interest will be Palermo, the most beautiful\r\n city of Sicily, which will be reached in one night from Naples. A\r\n day will be spent here, and leaving in the evening, the course will\r\n be taken towards Athens.\r\n\r\n Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through the\r\n group of Aeolian Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania, both\r\n active volcanoes, through the Straits of Messina, with \"Scylla\" on\r\n the one hand and \"Charybdis\" on the other, along the east coast of\r\n Sicily, and in sight of Mount Etna, along the south coast of Italy,\r\n the west and south coast of Greece, in sight of ancient Crete, up\r\n Athens Gulf, and into the Piraeus, Athens will be reached in two and\r\n a half or three days. After tarrying here awhile, the Bay of\r\n Salamis will be crossed, and a day given to Corinth, whence the\r\n voyage will be continued to Constantinople, passing on the way\r\n through the Grecian Archipelago, the Dardanelles, the Sea of\r\n Marmora, and the mouth of the Golden Horn, and arriving in about\r\n forty-eight hours from Athens.\r\n\r\n After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out through\r\n the beautiful Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to Sebastopol and\r\n Balaklava, a run of about twenty-four hours. Here it is proposed to\r\n remain two days, visiting the harbors, fortifications, and\r\n battlefields of the Crimea; thence back through the Bosphorus,\r\n touching at Constantinople to take in any who may have preferred to\r\n remain there; down through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles,\r\n along the coasts of ancient Troy and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which\r\n will be reached in two or two and a half days from Constantinople.\r\n A sufficient stay will be made here to give opportunity of visiting\r\n Ephesus, fifty miles distant by rail.\r\n\r\n From Smyrna towards the Holy Land the course will lay through the\r\n Grecian Archipelago, close by the Isle of Patmos, along the coast\r\n of Asia, ancient Pamphylia, and the Isle of Cyprus. Beirut will be\r\n reached in three days. At Beirut time will be given to visit\r\n Damascus; after which the steamer will proceed to Joppa.\r\n\r\n From Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias,\r\n Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem, and other points of interest in the\r\n Holy Land can be visited, and here those who may have preferred to\r\n make the journey from Beirut through the country, passing through\r\n Damascus, Galilee, Capernaum, Samaria, and by the River Jordan and\r\n Sea of Tiberias, can rejoin the steamer.\r\n\r\n Leaving Joppa, the next point of interest to visit will be\r\n Alexandria, which will be reached in twenty-four hours. The ruins\r\n of Caesar\'s Palace, Pompey\'s Pillar, Cleopatra\'s Needle, the\r\n Catacombs, and ruins of ancient Alexandria will be found worth the\r\n visit. The journey to Cairo, one hundred and thirty miles by rail,\r\n can be made in a few hours, and from which can be visited the site\r\n of ancient Memphis, Joseph\'s Granaries, and the Pyramids.\r\n\r\n From Alexandria the route will be taken homeward, calling at\r\n Malta, Cagliari (in Sardinia), and Palma (in Majorca), all\r\n magnificent harbors, with charming scenery, and abounding in fruits.\r\n\r\n A day or two will be spent at each place, and leaving Parma in the\r\n evening, Valencia in Spain will be reached the next morning. A few\r\n days will be spent in this, the finest city of Spain.\r\n\r\n From Valencia, the homeward course will be continued, skirting\r\n along the coast of Spain. Alicant, Carthagena, Palos, and Malaga\r\n will be passed but a mile or two distant, and Gibraltar reached in\r\n about twenty-four hours.\r\n\r\n A stay of one day will be made here, and the voyage continued to\r\n Madeira, which will be reached in about three days. Captain\r\n Marryatt writes: \"I do not know a spot on the globe which so much\r\n astonishes and delights upon first arrival as Madeira.\" A stay of\r\n one or two days will be made here, which, if time permits, may be\r\n extended, and passing on through the islands, and probably in sight\r\n of the Peak of Teneriffe, a southern track will be taken, and the\r\n Atlantic crossed within the latitudes of the northeast trade winds,\r\n where mild and pleasant weather, and a smooth sea, can always be\r\n expected.\r\n\r\n A call will be made at Bermuda, which lies directly in this route\r\n homeward, and will be reached in about ten days from Madeira, and\r\n after spending a short time with our friends the Bermudians, the\r\n final departure will be made for home, which will be reached in\r\n about three days.\r\n\r\n Already, applications have been received from parties in Europe\r\n wishing to join the Excursion there.\r\n\r\n The ship will at all times be a home, where the excursionists, if\r\n sick, will be surrounded by kind friends, and have all possible\r\n comfort and sympathy.\r\n\r\n Should contagious sickness exist in any of the ports named in the\r\n program, such ports will be passed, and others of interest\r\n substituted.\r\n\r\n The price of passage is fixed at $1,250, currency, for each adult\r\n passenger. Choice of rooms and of seats at the tables apportioned\r\n in the order in which passages are engaged; and no passage\r\n considered engaged until ten percent of the passage money is\r\n deposited with the treasurer.\r\n\r\n Passengers can remain on board of the steamer, at all ports, if\r\n they desire, without additional expense, and all boating at the\r\n expense of the ship.\r\n\r\n All passages must be paid for when taken, in order that the most\r\n perfect arrangements be made for starting at the appointed time.\r\n\r\n Applications for passage must be approved by the committee before\r\n tickets are issued, and can be made to the undersigned.\r\n\r\n Articles of interest or curiosity, procured by the passengers\r\n during the voyage, may be brought home in the steamer free of\r\n charge.\r\n\r\n Five dollars per day, in gold, it is believed, will be a fair\r\n calculation to make for all traveling expenses onshore and at the\r\n various points where passengers may wish to leave the steamer for\r\n days at a time.\r\n\r\n The trip can be extended, and the route changed, by unanimous vote\r\n of the passengers.\r\n\r\n CHAS. C. DUNCAN, 117 WALL STREET, NEW YORK R. R. G******,\r\n Treasurer\r\n\r\n Committee on Applications J. T. H*****, ESQ. R. R. G*****,\r\n ESQ. C. C. Duncan\r\n\r\n Committee on Selecting Steamer CAPT. W. W. S* * * *, Surveyor\r\n for Board of Underwriters\r\n\r\n C. W. C******, Consulting Engineer for U.S. and Canada J. T.\r\n H*****, Esq. C. C. DUNCAN\r\n\r\n P.S.--The very beautiful and substantial side-wheel steamship\r\n \"Quaker City\" has been chartered for the occasion, and will leave\r\n New York June 8th. Letters have been issued by the government\r\n commending the party to courtesies abroad.\r\n\r\nWhat was there lacking about that program to make it perfectly\r\nirresistible? Nothing that any finite mind could discover. Paris,\r\nEngland, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy--Garibaldi! The Grecian\r\nArchipelago! Vesuvius! Constantinople! Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt and\r\n\"our friends the Bermudians\"! People in Europe desiring to join the\r\nexcursion--contagious sickness to be avoided--boating at the expense of\r\nthe ship--physician on board--the circuit of the globe to be made if the\r\npassengers unanimously desired it--the company to be rigidly selected by\r\na pitiless \"Committee on Applications\"--the vessel to be as rigidly\r\nselected by as pitiless a \"Committee on Selecting Steamer.\" Human nature\r\ncould not withstand these bewildering temptations. I hurried to the\r\ntreasurer\'s office and deposited my ten percent. I rejoiced to know that\r\na few vacant staterooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal\r\nexamination into my character by that bowelless committee, but I referred\r\nto all the people of high standing I could think of in the community who\r\nwould be least likely to know anything about me.\r\n\r\nShortly a supplementary program was issued which set forth that the\r\nPlymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. I then\r\npaid the balance of my passage money.\r\n\r\nI was provided with a receipt and duly and officially accepted as an\r\nexcursionist. There was happiness in that but it was tame compared to\r\nthe novelty of being \"select.\"\r\n\r\nThis supplementary program also instructed the excursionists to provide\r\nthemselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the ship, with\r\nsaddles for Syrian travel, green spectacles and umbrellas, veils for\r\nEgypt, and substantial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing in the Holy\r\nLand. Furthermore, it was suggested that although the ship\'s library\r\nwould afford a fair amount of reading matter, it would still be well if\r\neach passenger would provide himself with a few guidebooks, a Bible, and\r\nsome standard works of travel. A list was appended, which consisted\r\nchiefly of books relating to the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part\r\nof the excursion and seemed to be its main feature.\r\n\r\nReverend Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition, but\r\nurgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other\r\npassengers who could have been spared better and would have been spared\r\nmore willingly. Lieutenant General Sherman was to have been of the party\r\nalso, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular\r\nactress had entered her name on the ship\'s books, but something\r\ninterfered and she couldn\'t go. The \"Drummer Boy of the Potomac\"\r\ndeserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left!\r\n\r\nHowever, we were to have a \"battery of guns\" from the Navy Department (as\r\nper advertisement) to be used in answering royal salutes; and the\r\ndocument furnished by the Secretary of the Navy, which was to make\r\n\"General Sherman and party\" welcome guests in the courts and camps of the\r\nold world, was still left to us, though both document and battery, I\r\nthink, were shorn of somewhat of their original august proportions.\r\nHowever, had not we the seductive program still, with its Paris, its\r\nConstantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and \"our friends the\r\nBermudians?\" What did we care?\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER II.\r\n\r\nOccasionally, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall Street\r\nto inquire how the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was coming\r\non, how additions to the passenger list were averaging, how many people\r\nthe committee were decreeing not \"select\" every day and banishing in\r\nsorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we were to have a little\r\nprinting press on board and issue a daily newspaper of our own. I was\r\nglad to learn that our piano, our parlor organ, and our melodeon were to\r\nbe the best instruments of the kind that could be had in the market. I\r\nwas proud to observe that among our excursionists were three ministers of\r\nthe gospel, eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military\r\nand naval chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop of \"Professors\"\r\nof various kinds, and a gentleman who had \"COMMISSIONER OF THE UNITED\r\nSTATES OF AMERICA TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA\" thundering after his name\r\nin one awful blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a\r\nback seat in that ship because of the uncommonly select material that\r\nwould alone be permitted to pass through the camel\'s eye of that\r\ncommittee on credentials; I had schooled myself to expect an imposing\r\narray of military and naval heroes and to have to set that back seat\r\nstill further back in consequence of it maybe; but I state frankly that I\r\nwas all unprepared for this crusher.\r\n\r\nI fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said\r\nthat if that potentate must go over in our ship, why, I supposed he must\r\n--but that to my thinking, when the United States considered it necessary\r\nto send a dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean, it would be in\r\nbetter taste, and safer, to take him apart and cart him over in sections\r\nin several ships.\r\n\r\nAh, if I had only known then that he was only a common mortal, and that\r\nhis mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the collecting of\r\nseeds and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar bullfrogs\r\nfor that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil the Smithsonian\r\nInstitute, I would have felt so much relieved.\r\n\r\nDuring that memorable month I basked in the happiness of being for once\r\nin my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement. Everybody\r\nwas going to Europe--I, too, was going to Europe. Everybody was going to\r\nthe famous Paris Exposition--I, too, was going to the Paris Exposition.\r\nThe steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the various ports of\r\nthe country at the rate of four or five thousand a week in the aggregate.\r\nIf I met a dozen individuals during that month who were not going to\r\nEurope shortly, I have no distinct remembrance of it now. I walked about\r\nthe city a good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, who was booked for the\r\nexcursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophisticated,\r\ncompanionable; but he was not a man to set the river on fire. He had the\r\nmost extraordinary notions about this European exodus and came at last to\r\nconsider the whole nation as packing up for emigration to France. We\r\nstepped into a store on Broadway one day, where he bought a handkerchief,\r\nand when the man could not make change, Mr. B. said:\r\n\r\n\"Never mind, I\'ll hand it to you in Paris.\"\r\n\r\n\"But I am not going to Paris.\"\r\n\r\n\"How is--what did I understand you to say?\"\r\n\r\n\"I said I am not going to Paris.\"\r\n\r\n\"Not going to Paris! Not g---- well, then, where in the nation are you\r\ngoing to?\"\r\n\r\n\"Nowhere at all.\"\r\n\r\n\"Not anywhere whatsoever?--not any place on earth but this?\"\r\n\r\n\"Not any place at all but just this--stay here all summer.\"\r\n\r\nMy comrade took his purchase and walked out of the store without a word--\r\nwalked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Up the street\r\napiece he broke silence and said impressively: \"It was a lie--that is my\r\nopinion of it!\"\r\n\r\nIn the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her passengers.\r\nI was introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my roommate, and\r\nfound him to be intelligent, cheerful of spirit, unselfish, full of\r\ngenerous impulses, patient, considerate, and wonderfully good-natured.\r\nNot any passenger that sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his\r\nendorsement of what I have just said. We selected a stateroom forward of\r\nthe wheel, on the starboard side, \"below decks.\" It bad two berths in\r\nit, a dismal dead-light, a sink with a washbowl in it, and a long,\r\nsumptuously cushioned locker, which was to do service as a sofa--partly--\r\nand partly as a hiding place for our things. Notwithstanding all this\r\nfurniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat\r\nin, at least with entire security to the cat. However, the room was\r\nlarge, for a ship\'s stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory.\r\n\r\nThe vessel was appointed to sail on a certain Saturday early in June.\r\n\r\nA little after noon on that distinguished Saturday I reached the ship and\r\nwent on board. All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen that remark\r\nbefore somewhere.] The pier was crowded with carriages and men;\r\npassengers were arriving and hurrying on board; the vessel\'s decks were\r\nencumbered with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists, arrayed in\r\nunattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain\r\nand looking as droopy and woebegone as so many molting chickens. The\r\ngallant flag was up, but it was under the spell, too, and hung limp and\r\ndisheartened by the mast. Altogether, it was the bluest, bluest\r\nspectacle! It was a pleasure excursion--there was no gainsaying that,\r\nbecause the program said so--it was so nominated in the bond--but it\r\nsurely hadn\'t the general aspect of one.\r\n\r\nFinally, above the banging, and rumbling, and shouting, and hissing of\r\nsteam rang the order to \"cast off!\"--a sudden rush to the gangways--a\r\nscampering ashore of visitors-a revolution of the wheels, and we were\r\noff--the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the\r\ndripping crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the slippery\r\ndecks; the flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the \"battery of guns\"\r\nspake not--the ammunition was out.\r\n\r\nWe steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor. It was\r\nstill raining. And not only raining, but storming. \"Outside\" we could\r\nsee, ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must lie still,\r\nin the calm harbor, till the storm should abate. Our passengers hailed\r\nfrom fifteen states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before;\r\nmanifestly it would not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until\r\nthey had got their sea-legs on. Toward evening the two steam tugs that\r\nhad accompanied us with a rollicking champagne-party of young New Yorkers\r\non board who wished to bid farewell to one of our number in due and\r\nancient form departed, and we were alone on the deep. On deep five\r\nfathoms, and anchored fast to the bottom. And out in the solemn rain, at\r\nthat. This was pleasuring with a vengeance.\r\n\r\nIt was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for prayer meeting.\r\nThe first Saturday night of any other pleasure excursion might have been\r\ndevoted to whist and dancing; but I submit it to the unprejudiced mind if\r\nit would have been in good taste for us to engage in such frivolities,\r\nconsidering what we had gone through and the frame of mind we were in.\r\nWe would have shone at a wake, but not at anything more festive.\r\n\r\nHowever, there is always a cheering influence about the sea; and in my\r\nberth that night, rocked by the measured swell of the waves and lulled by\r\nthe murmur of the distant surf, I soon passed tranquilly out of all\r\nconsciousness of the dreary experiences of the day and damaging\r\npremonitions of the future.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER III.\r\n\r\nAll day Sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a great deal, but the\r\nsea had not. It was still piling its frothy hills high in air \"outside,\"\r\nas we could plainly see with the glasses. We could not properly begin a\r\npleasure excursion on Sunday; we could not offer untried stomachs to so\r\npitiless a sea as that. We must lie still till Monday. And we did. But\r\nwe had repetitions of church and prayer-meetings; and so, of course, we\r\nwere just as eligibly situated as we could have been any where.\r\n\r\nI was up early that Sabbath morning and was early to breakfast. I felt a\r\nperfectly natural desire to have a good, long, unprejudiced look at the\r\npassengers at a time when they should be free from self-consciousness--\r\nwhich is at breakfast, when such a moment occurs in the lives of human\r\nbeings at all.\r\n\r\nI was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people--I might almost\r\nsay, so many venerable people. A glance at the long lines of heads was\r\napt to make one think it was all gray. But it was not. There was a\r\ntolerably fair sprinkling of young folks, and another fair sprinkling of\r\ngentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither\r\nactually old or absolutely young.\r\n\r\nThe next morning we weighed anchor and went to sea. It was a great\r\nhappiness to get away after this dragging, dispiriting delay. I thought\r\nthere never was such gladness in the air before, such brightness in the\r\nsun, such beauty in the sea. I was satisfied with the picnic then and\r\nwith all its belongings. All my malicious instincts were dead within me;\r\nand as America faded out of sight, I think a spirit of charity rose up in\r\ntheir place that was as boundless, for the time being, as the broad ocean\r\nthat was heaving its billows about us. I wished to express my feelings--\r\nI wished to lift up my voice and sing; but I did not know anything to\r\nsing, and so I was obliged to give up the idea. It was no loss to the\r\nship, though, perhaps.\r\n\r\nIt was breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One could\r\nnot promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit was\r\ntaking a deadly aim at the sun in midheaven, and at the next it was\r\ntrying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird\r\nsensation it is to feel the stem of a ship sinking swiftly from under you\r\nand see the bow climbing high away among the clouds! One\'s safest course\r\nthat day was to clasp a railing and hang on; walking was too precarious a\r\npastime.\r\n\r\nBy some happy fortune I was not seasick.--That was a thing to be proud\r\nof. I had not always escaped before. If there is one thing in the world\r\nthat will make a man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to\r\nhave his stomach behave itself, the first day it sea, when nearly all his\r\ncomrades are seasick. Soon a venerable fossil, shawled to the chin and\r\nbandaged like a mummy, appeared at the door of the after deck-house, and\r\nthe next lurch of the ship shot him into my arms. I said:\r\n\r\n\"Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day.\"\r\n\r\nHe put his hand on his stomach and said, \"Oh, my!\" and then staggered\r\naway and fell over the coop of a skylight.\r\n\r\nPresently another old gentleman was projected from the same door with\r\ngreat violence. I said:\r\n\r\n\"Calm yourself, Sir--There is no hurry. It is a fine day, Sir.\"\r\n\r\nHe, also, put his hand on his stomach and said \"Oh, my!\" and reeled away.\r\n\r\nIn a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly from the same\r\ndoor, clawing at the air for a saving support. I said:\r\n\r\n\"Good morning, Sir. It is a fine day for pleasuring. You were about to\r\nsay--\"\r\n\r\n\"Oh, my!\"\r\n\r\nI thought so. I anticipated him, anyhow. I stayed there and was\r\nbombarded with old gentlemen for an hour, perhaps; and all I got out of\r\nany of them was \"Oh, my!\"\r\n\r\nI went away then in a thoughtful mood. I said, this is a good pleasure\r\nexcursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but still they\r\nare sociable. I like those old people, but somehow they all seem to have\r\nthe \"Oh, my\" rather bad.\r\n\r\nI knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was glad\r\nof it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves.\r\nPlaying whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant;\r\nwalking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the\r\nbreezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but\r\nthese are all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing\r\npeople suffering the miseries of seasickness.\r\n\r\nI picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon. At one time\r\nI was climbing up the quarterdeck when the vessel\'s stem was in the sky;\r\nI was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable. Somebody\r\nejaculated:\r\n\r\n\"Come, now, that won\'t answer. Read the sign up there--NO SMOKING ABAFT\r\nTHE WHEEL!\"\r\n\r\nIt was Captain Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went forward, of\r\ncourse. I saw a long spyglass lying on a desk in one of the upper-deck\r\nstate-rooms back of the pilot-house and reached after it--there was a\r\nship in the distance.\r\n\r\n\"Ah, ah--hands off! Come out of that!\"\r\n\r\nI came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep--but in a low voice:\r\n\r\n\"Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant\r\nvoice?\"\r\n\r\n\"It\'s Captain Bursley--executive officer--sailing master.\"\r\n\r\nI loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to do,\r\nfell to carving a railing with my knife. Somebody said, in an\r\ninsinuating, admonitory voice:\r\n\r\n\"Now, say--my friend--don\'t you know any better than to be whittling the\r\nship all to pieces that way? You ought to know better than that.\"\r\n\r\nI went back and found the deck sweep.\r\n\r\n\"Who is that smooth-faced, animated outrage yonder in the fine clothes?\"\r\n\r\n\"That\'s Captain L****, the owner of the ship--he\'s one of the main\r\nbosses.\"\r\n\r\nIn the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the\r\npilot-house and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they\r\n\"take the sun\" through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel\r\nthrough it. I had hardly got it to my eye when someone touched me on the\r\nshoulder and said deprecatingly:\r\n\r\n\"I\'ll have to get you to give that to me, Sir. If there\'s anything you\'d\r\nlike to know about taking the sun, I\'d as soon tell you as not--but I\r\ndon\'t like to trust anybody with that instrument. If you want any\r\nfiguring done--Aye, aye, sir!\"\r\n\r\nHe was gone to answer a call from the other side. I sought the\r\ndeck-sweep.\r\n\r\n\"Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sanctimonious\r\ncountenance?\"\r\n\r\n\"It\'s Captain Jones, sir--the chief mate.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well. This goes clear away ahead of anything I ever heard of before.\r\nDo you--now I ask you as a man and a brother--do you think I could\r\nventure to throw a rock here in any given direction without hitting a\r\ncaptain of this ship?\"\r\n\r\n\"Well, sir, I don\'t know--I think likely you\'d fetch the captain of the\r\nwatch may be, because he\'s a-standing right yonder in the way.\"\r\n\r\nI went below--meditating and a little downhearted. I thought, if five\r\ncooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a pleasure\r\nexcursion.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER IV.\r\n\r\nWe plowed along bravely for a week or more, and without any conflict of\r\njurisdiction among the captains worth mentioning. The passengers soon\r\nlearned to accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, and life in\r\nthe ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the routine of a\r\nbarrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it was not entirely so by\r\nany means--but there was a good deal of sameness about it. As is always\r\nthe fashion at sea, the passengers shortly began to pick up sailor terms\r\n--a sign that they were beginning to feel at home. Half-past six was no\r\nlonger half-past six to these pilgrims from New England, the South, and\r\nthe Mississippi Valley, it was \"seven bells\"; eight, twelve, and four\r\no\'clock were \"eight bells\"; the captain did not take the longitude at\r\nnine o\'clock, but at \"two bells.\" They spoke glibly of the \"after\r\ncabin,\" the \"for\'rard cabin,\" \"port and starboard\" and the \"fo\'castle.\"\r\n\r\nAt seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for\r\nsuch as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people\r\nwalked arm-in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine\r\nsummer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves\r\nup in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and\r\nlooked wretched. From eleven o\'clock until luncheon, and from luncheon\r\nuntil dinner at six in the evening, the employments and amusements were\r\nvarious. Some reading was done, and much smoking and sewing, though not\r\nby the same parties; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked\r\nafter and wondered at; strange ships had to be scrutinized through\r\nopera-glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning them; and more\r\nthan that, everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was\r\nrun up and politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of\r\nthose strangers; in the smoking room there were always parties of\r\ngentlemen playing euchre, draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes,\r\nthat delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck, \"for\'rard\"--\r\nfor\'rard of the chicken-coops and the cattle--we had what was called\r\n\"horse billiards.\" Horse billiards is a fine game. It affords good,\r\nactive exercise, hilarity, and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of\r\n\"hop-scotch\" and shuffleboard played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch\r\ndiagram is marked out on the deck with chalk, and each compartment\r\nnumbered. You stand off three or four steps, with some broad wooden\r\ndisks before you on the deck, and these you send forward with a vigorous\r\nthrust of a long crutch. If a disk stops on a chalk line, it does not\r\ncount anything. If it stops in division No. 7, it counts 7; in 5, it\r\ncounts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play at a time. That\r\ngame would be very simple played on a stationary floor, but with us, to\r\nplay it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling of the\r\nship to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for a\r\nheel to the right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was\r\nthat that disk missed the whole hopscotch plan a yard or two, and then\r\nthere was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.\r\n\r\nWhen it rained the passengers had to stay in the house, of course--or at\r\nleast the cabins--and amuse themselves with games, reading, looking out\r\nof the windows at the very familiar billows, and talking gossip.\r\n\r\nBy 7 o\'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour\'s promenade\r\non the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a large majority of\r\nthe party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a handsome saloon fifty or\r\nsixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the\r\n\"Synagogue.\" The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the Plymouth\r\nCollection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen\r\nminutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when the sea\r\nwas smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without\r\nbeing lashed to his chair.\r\n\r\nAfter prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a writing\r\nschool. The like of that picture was never seen in a ship before.\r\nBehind the long dining tables on either side of the saloon, and scattered\r\nfrom one end to the other of the latter, some twenty or thirty gentlemen\r\nand ladies sat them down under the swaying lamps and for two or three\r\nhours wrote diligently in their journals. Alas! that journals so\r\nvoluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as\r\nmost of them did! I doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host\r\nbut can show a hundred fair pages of journal concerning the first twenty\r\ndays\' voyaging in the Quaker City, and I am morally certain that not ten\r\nof the party can show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty\r\nthousand miles of voyaging! At certain periods it becomes the dearest\r\nambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a\r\nbook; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him\r\nthe notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world,\r\nand the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find\r\nout that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance,\r\ndevotion to duty for duty\'s sake, and invincible determination may hope\r\nto venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal\r\nand not sustain a shameful defeat.\r\n\r\nOne of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head\r\nfull of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in\r\nthe way of length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress\r\nevery morning in the most glowing and spirited way, and say:\r\n\r\n\"Oh, I\'m coming along bully!\" (he was a little given to slang in his\r\nhappier moods.) \"I wrote ten pages in my journal last night--and you\r\nknow I wrote nine the night before and twelve the night before that.\r\nWhy, it\'s only fun!\"\r\n\r\n\"What do you find to put in it, Jack?\"\r\n\r\n\"Oh, everything. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how many\r\nmiles we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games I beat and\r\nhorse billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the text of the\r\nsermon Sundays (because that\'ll tell at home, you know); and the ships we\r\nsaluted and what nation they were; and which way the wind was, and\r\nwhether there was a heavy sea, and what sail we carried, though we don\'t\r\never carry any, principally, going against a head wind always--wonder\r\nwhat is the reason of that?--and how many lies Moult has told--Oh, every\r\nthing! I\'ve got everything down. My father told me to keep that\r\njournal. Father wouldn\'t take a thousand dollars for it when I get it\r\ndone.\"\r\n\r\n\"No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars--when you get it\r\ndone.\"\r\n\r\n\"Do you?--no, but do you think it will, though?\r\n\r\n\"Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars--when you\r\nget it done. May be more.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain\'t no slouch of a journal.\"\r\n\r\nBut it shortly became a most lamentable \"slouch of a journal.\" One night\r\nin Paris, after a hard day\'s toil in sightseeing, I said:\r\n\r\n\"Now I\'ll go and stroll around the cafes awhile, Jack, and give you a\r\nchance to write up your journal, old fellow.\"\r\n\r\nHis countenance lost its fire. He said:\r\n\r\n\"Well, no, you needn\'t mind. I think I won\'t run that journal anymore.\r\nIt is awful tedious. Do you know--I reckon I\'m as much as four thousand\r\npages behind hand. I haven\'t got any France in it at all. First I\r\nthought I\'d leave France out and start fresh. But that wouldn\'t do,\r\nwould it? The governor would say, \'Hello, here--didn\'t see anything in\r\nFrance? That cat wouldn\'t fight, you know. First I thought I\'d copy\r\nFrance out of the guide-book, like old Badger in the for\'rard cabin,\r\nwho\'s writing a book, but there\'s more than three hundred pages of it.\r\nOh, I don\'t think a journal\'s any use--do you? They\'re only a bother,\r\nain\'t they?\"\r\n\r\n\"Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn\'t of much use, but a journal\r\nproperly kept is worth a thousand dollars--when you\'ve got it done.\"\r\n\r\n\"A thousand!--well, I should think so. I wouldn\'t finish it for a\r\nmillion.\"\r\n\r\nHis experience was only the experience of the majority of that\r\nindustrious night school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a\r\nheartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to\r\nkeep a journal a year.\r\n\r\nA good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists amused\r\nand satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which met in\r\nthe writing school after prayers and read aloud about the countries we\r\nwere approaching and discussed the information so obtained.\r\n\r\nSeveral times the photographer of the expedition brought out his\r\ntransparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic-lantern exhibition.\r\nHis views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two\r\nhome pictures among them. He advertised that he would \"open his\r\nperformance in the after cabin at \'two bells\' (nine P.M.) and show the\r\npassengers where they shall eventually arrive\"--which was all very well,\r\nbut by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out upon the canvas\r\nwas a view of Greenwood Cemetery!\r\n\r\nOn several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the\r\nawnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by\r\nhanging a number of ship\'s lanterns to the stanchions. Our music\r\nconsisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little\r\nasthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong,\r\na clarinet which was a little unreliable on the high keys and rather\r\nmelancholy on the low ones, and a disreputable accordion that had a leak\r\nsomewhere and breathed louder than it squawked--a more elegant term does\r\nnot occur to me just now. However, the dancing was infinitely worse than\r\nthe music. When the ship rolled to starboard the whole platoon of\r\ndancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in mass\r\nat the rail; and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to\r\nport with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun around\r\nprecariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down\r\nto the rail as if they meant to go overboard. The Virginia reel, as\r\nperformed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine reel about it than\r\nany reel I ever saw before, and was as full of interest to the spectator\r\nas it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth escapes to the\r\nparticipant. We gave up dancing, finally.\r\n\r\nWe celebrated a lady\'s birthday anniversary with toasts, speeches, a\r\npoem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea\r\nthat hadn\'t a mock trial on board. The purser was accused of stealing an\r\novercoat from stateroom No. 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks, a\r\ncrier of the court, constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and for\r\nthe defendant; witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much\r\nchallenging. The witnesses were stupid and unreliable and contradictory,\r\nas witnesses always are. The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and\r\nvindictively abusive of each other, as was characteristic and proper.\r\nThe case was at last submitted and duly finished by the judge with an\r\nabsurd decision and a ridiculous sentence.\r\n\r\nThe acting of charades was tried on several evenings by the young\r\ngentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished\r\nsuccess of all the amusement experiments.\r\n\r\nAn attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a failure.\r\nThere was no oratorical talent in the ship.\r\n\r\nWe all enjoyed ourselves--I think I can safely say that, but it was in a\r\nrather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we played the\r\nflute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was\r\nof it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune\r\n--how well I remember it--I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We\r\nnever played either the melodeon or the organ except at devotions--but I\r\nam too fast: young Albert did know part of a tune something about\r\n\"O Something-Or-Other How Sweet It Is to Know That He\'s His What\'s-his-\r\nName\" (I do not remember the exact title of it, but it was very plaintive\r\nand full of sentiment); Albert played that pretty much all the time until\r\nwe contracted with him to restrain himself. But nobody ever sang by\r\nmoonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational singing at church and\r\nprayers was not of a superior order of architecture. I put up with it as\r\nlong as I could and then joined in and tried to improve it, but this\r\nencouraged young George to join in too, and that made a failure of it;\r\nbecause George\'s voice was just \"turning,\" and when he was singing a\r\ndismal sort of bass it was apt to fly off the handle and startle\r\neverybody with a most discordant cackle on the upper notes. George\r\ndidn\'t know the tunes, either, which was also a drawback to his\r\nperformances. I said:\r\n\r\n\"Come, now, George, don\'t improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will\r\nprovoke remark. Just stick to \'Coronation,\' like the others. It is a\r\ngood tune--you can\'t improve it any, just off-hand, in this way.\"\r\n\r\n\"Why, I\'m not trying to improve it--and I am singing like the others--\r\njust as it is in the notes.\"\r\n\r\nAnd he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame but\r\nhimself when his voice caught on the center occasionally and gave him the\r\nlockjaw.\r\n\r\nThere were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing\r\nhead-winds to our distressing choir-music. There were those who said\r\nopenly that it was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music going\r\non, even when it was at its best; and that to exaggerate the crime by\r\nletting George help was simply flying in the face of Providence. These\r\nsaid that the choir would keep up their lacerating attempts at melody\r\nuntil they would bring down a storm some day that would sink the ship.\r\n\r\nThere were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said the\r\npilgrims had no charity:\r\n\r\n\"There they are, down there every night at eight bells, praying for fair\r\nwinds--when they know as well as I do that this is the only ship going\r\neast this time of the year, but there\'s a thousand coming west--what\'s a\r\nfair wind for us is a head wind to them--the Almighty\'s blowing a fair\r\nwind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear\r\naround so as to accommodate one--and she a steamship at that! It ain\'t\r\ngood sense, it ain\'t good reason, it ain\'t good Christianity, it ain\'t\r\ncommon human charity. Avast with such nonsense!\"\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER V.\r\n\r\nTaking it \"by and large,\" as the sailors say, we had a pleasant ten days\'\r\nrun from New York to the Azores islands--not a fast run, for the distance\r\nis only twenty-four hundred miles, but a right pleasant one in the main.\r\nTrue, we had head winds all the time, and several stormy experiences\r\nwhich sent fifty percent of the passengers to bed sick and made the ship\r\nlook dismal and deserted--stormy experiences that all will remember who\r\nweathered them on the tumbling deck and caught the vast sheets of spray\r\nthat every now and then sprang high in air from the weather bow and swept\r\nthe ship like a thunder-shower; but for the most part we had balmy summer\r\nweather and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the\r\nphenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at\r\nthe same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the\r\npart of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when\r\nwe reflected that we were gaining about twenty minutes every day because\r\nwe were going east so fast--we gained just about enough every day to keep\r\nalong with the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had\r\nleft behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place and\r\nremained always the same.\r\n\r\nYoung Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West and is on his first voyage,\r\nwas a good deal worried by the constantly changing \"ship time.\" He was\r\nproud of his new watch at first and used to drag it out promptly when\r\neight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he\r\nwere losing confidence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on\r\ndeck and said with great decision:\r\n\r\n\"This thing\'s a swindle!\"\r\n\r\n\"What\'s a swindle?\"\r\n\r\n\"Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois--gave $150 for her--and I\r\nthought she was good. And, by George, she is good onshore, but somehow\r\nshe don\'t keep up her lick here on the water--gets seasick may be. She\r\nskips; she runs along regular enough till half-past eleven, and then, all\r\nof a sudden, she lets down. I\'ve set that old regulator up faster and\r\nfaster, till I\'ve shoved it clear around, but it don\'t do any good; she\r\njust distances every watch in the ship, and clatters along in a way\r\nthat\'s astonishing till it is noon, but them eight bells always gets in\r\nabout ten minutes ahead of her anyway. I don\'t know what to do with her\r\nnow. She\'s doing all she can--she\'s going her best gait, but it won\'t\r\nsave her. Now, don\'t you know, there ain\'t a watch in the ship that\'s\r\nmaking better time than she is, but what does it signify? When you hear\r\nthem eight bells you\'ll find her just about ten minutes short of her\r\nscore sure.\"\r\n\r\nThe ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was\r\ntrying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he\r\nhad said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the\r\nwatch was \"on its best gait,\" and so nothing was left him but to fold his\r\nhands and see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the captain, and he\r\nexplained to him the mystery of \"ship time\" and set his troubled mind at\r\nrest. This young man asked a great many questions about seasickness\r\nbefore we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were and how\r\nhe was to tell when he had it. He found out.\r\n\r\nWe saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, &c., of course, and by and\r\nby large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular list\r\nof sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant carmine\r\ncolor. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly that\r\nspreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot\r\nor two long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an\r\naccomplished sailor and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when\r\na storm threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely\r\nand goes down when a gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in\r\ngood sailing order by turning over and dipping it in the water for a\r\nmoment. Seamen say the nautilus is only found in these waters between\r\nthe 35th and 45th parallels of latitude.\r\n\r\nAt three o\'clock on the morning of the twenty-first of June, we were\r\nawakened and notified that the Azores islands were in sight. I said I\r\ndid not take any interest in islands at three o\'clock in the morning.\r\nBut another persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally\r\nbelieving that the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in\r\npeace, I got up and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half\r\no\'clock now, and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were huddled\r\nabout the smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all were\r\nwrapped in wintry costumes and looking sleepy and unhappy in the pitiless\r\ngale and the drenching spray.\r\n\r\nThe island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud\r\nstanding up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon\r\nit the sun came out and made it a beautiful picture--a mass of green\r\nfarms and meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred feet and\r\nmingled its upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with sharp,\r\nsteep ridges and cloven with narrow canyons, and here and there on the\r\nheights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic battlements and\r\ncastles; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts of sunlight, that\r\npainted summit, and slope and glen, with bands of fire, and left belts of\r\nsomber shade between. It was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole\r\nexiled to a summer land!\r\n\r\nWe skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore, and\r\nall the opera glasses in the ship were called into requisition to settle\r\ndisputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of trees or\r\ngroves of weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea were\r\nreally villages or only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries. Finally\r\nwe stood to sea and bore away for San Miguel, and Flores shortly became a\r\ndome of mud again and sank down among the mists, and disappeared. But to\r\nmany a seasick passenger it was good to see the green hills again, and\r\nall were more cheerful after this episode than anybody could have\r\nexpected them to be, considering how sinfully early they had gotten up.\r\n\r\nBut we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm came up\r\nabout noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel that common sense\r\ndictated a run for shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest island\r\nof the group--Fayal (the people there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the\r\naccent on the first syllable). We anchored in the open roadstead of\r\nHorta, half a mile from the shore. The town has eight thousand to ten\r\nthousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of\r\nfresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more\r\nattractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are\r\nthree hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear\r\nto their summits--not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every\r\nacre is cut up into little square inclosures by stone walls, whose duty\r\nit is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales that\r\nblow there. These hundreds of green squares, marked by their black lava\r\nwalls, make the hills look like vast checkerboards.\r\n\r\nThe islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has Portuguese\r\ncharacteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of swarthy,\r\nnoisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese boatmen, with\r\nbrass rings in their ears and fraud in their hearts, climbed the ship\'s\r\nsides, and various parties of us contracted with them to take us ashore\r\nat so much a head, silver coin of any country. We landed under the walls\r\nof a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve-and-thirty-two-pounders,\r\nwhich Horta considered a most formidable institution, but if we were ever\r\nto get after it with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to\r\nmove it out in the country if they wanted it where they could go and find\r\nit again when they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one--men\r\nand women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed and\r\nunclean, and by instinct, education, and profession beggars. They\r\ntrooped after us, and never more while we tarried in Fayal did we get rid\r\nof them. We walked up the middle of the principal street, and these\r\nvermin surrounded us on all sides and glared upon us; and every moment\r\nexcited couples shot ahead of the procession to get a good look back,\r\njust as village boys do when they accompany the elephant on his\r\nadvertising trip from street to street. It was very flattering to me to\r\nbe part of the material for such a sensation. Here and there in the\r\ndoorways we saw women with fashionable Portuguese hoods on. This hood is\r\nof thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a\r\nmarvel of ugliness. It stands up high and spreads far abroad, and is\r\nunfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman\'s head is\r\nhidden away in it like the man\'s who prompts the singers from his tin\r\nshed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about\r\nthis monstrous capote, as they call it--it is just a plain, ugly dead-\r\nblue mass of sail, and a woman can\'t go within eight points of the wind\r\nwith one of them on; she has to go before the wind or not at all. The\r\ngeneral style of the capote is the same in all the islands, and will\r\nremain so for the next ten thousand years, but each island shapes its\r\ncapotes just enough differently from the others to enable an observer to\r\ntell at a glance what particular island a lady hails from.\r\n\r\nThe Portuguese pennies, or reis (pronounced rays), are prodigious. It\r\ntakes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial estimates are\r\nmade in reis. We did not know this until after we had found it out\r\nthrough Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so grateful to be on\r\nsolid land once more that he wanted to give a feast--said he had heard it\r\nwas a cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He invited\r\nnine of us, and we ate an excellent dinner at the principal hotel. In\r\nthe midst of the jollity produced by good cigars, good wine, and passable\r\nanecdotes, the landlord presented his bill. Blucher glanced at it and\r\nhis countenance fell. He took another look to assure himself that his\r\nsenses had not deceived him and then read the items aloud, in a faltering\r\nvoice, while the roses in his cheeks turned to ashes:\r\n\r\n\"\'Ten dinners, at 600 reis, 6,000 reis!\' Ruin and desolation!\r\n\r\n\"\'Twenty-five cigars, at 100 reis, 2,500 reis!\' Oh, my sainted mother!\r\n\r\n\"\'Eleven bottles of wine, at 1,200 reis, 13,200 reis!\' Be with us all!\r\n\r\n\"\'TOTAL, TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED REIS!\' The suffering Moses!\r\nThere ain\'t money enough in the ship to pay that bill! Go--leave me to\r\nmy misery, boys, I am a ruined community.\"\r\n\r\nI think it was the blankest-looking party I ever saw. Nobody could say a\r\nword. It was as if every soul had been stricken dumb. Wine glasses\r\ndescended slowly to the table, their contents untasted. Cigars dropped\r\nunnoticed from nerveless fingers. Each man sought his neighbor\'s eye,\r\nbut found in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At last the fearful\r\nsilence was broken. The shadow of a desperate resolve settled upon\r\nBlucher\'s countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and said:\r\n\r\n\"Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I\'ll never, never stand it.\r\nHere\'s a hundred and fifty dollars, Sir, and it\'s all you\'ll get--I\'ll\r\nswim in blood before I\'ll pay a cent more.\"\r\n\r\nOur spirits rose and the landlord\'s fell--at least we thought so; he was\r\nconfused, at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word that\r\nhad been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to Blucher\r\nseveral times and then went out. He must have visited an American, for\r\nwhen he returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language\r\nthat a Christian could understand--thus:\r\n\r\n10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or . . .$6.00\r\n\r\n25 cigars, 2,500 reis, or . . . 2.50\r\n\r\n11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or 13.20\r\n\r\nTotal 21,700 reis, or . . . . $21.70\r\n\r\nHappiness reigned once more in Blucher\'s dinner party. More refreshments\r\nwere ordered.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER VI.\r\n\r\nI think the Azores must be very little known in America. Out of our\r\nwhole ship\'s company there was not a solitary individual who knew\r\nanything whatever about them. Some of the party, well read concerning\r\nmost other lands, had no other information about the Azores than that\r\nthey were a group of nine or ten small islands far out in the Atlantic,\r\nsomething more than halfway between New York and Gibraltar. That was\r\nall. These considerations move me to put in a paragraph of dry facts\r\njust here.\r\n\r\nThe community is eminently Portuguese--that is to say, it is slow, poor,\r\nshiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by the\r\nKing of Portugal, and also a military governor, who can assume supreme\r\ncontrol and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The islands\r\ncontain a population of about 200,000, almost entirely Portuguese.\r\nEverything is staid and settled, for the country was one hundred years\r\nold when Columbus discovered America. The principal crop is corn, and\r\nthey raise it and grind it just as their great-great-great-grandfathers\r\ndid. They plow with a board slightly shod with iron; their trifling\r\nlittle harrows are drawn by men and women; small windmills grind the\r\ncorn, ten bushels a day, and there is one assistant superintendent to\r\nfeed the mill and a general superintendent to stand by and keep him from\r\ngoing to sleep. When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys and\r\nactually turn the whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are\r\nin proper position, instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could\r\nbe moved instead of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after\r\nthe fashion prevalent in the time of Methuselah. There is not a\r\nwheelbarrow in the land--they carry everything on their heads, or on\r\ndonkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of\r\nwood and whose axles turn with the wheel. There is not a modern plow in\r\nthe islands or a threshing machine. All attempts to introduce them have\r\nfailed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to\r\nshield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did\r\nbefore him. The climate is mild; they never have snow or ice, and I saw\r\nno chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women, and children of\r\na family all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged\r\nby vermin, and are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the stranger,\r\nand are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their\r\ndead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys\r\nthey eat and sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese in the camp\r\nare the half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the\r\nsoldiers of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to\r\ntwenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as\r\nmuch. They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this makes\r\nthem rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the islands, and an\r\nexcellent wine was made and exported. But a disease killed all the vines\r\nfifteen years ago, and since that time no wine has been made. The\r\nislands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is necessarily very\r\nrich. Nearly every foot of ground is under cultivation, and two or three\r\ncrops a year of each article are produced, but nothing is exported save a\r\nfew oranges--chiefly to England. Nobody comes here, and nobody goes\r\naway. News is a thing unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion\r\nequally unknown. A Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our\r\ncivil war was over. Because, he said, somebody had told him it was--or\r\nat least it ran in his mind that somebody had told him something like\r\nthat! And when a passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the\r\nTribune, the Herald, and Times, he was surprised to find later news in\r\nthem from Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly steamer.\r\nHe was told that it came by cable. He said he knew they had tried to lay\r\na cable ten years ago, but it had been in his mind somehow that they\r\nhadn\'t succeeded!\r\n\r\nIt is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We\r\nvisited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old and found in it a\r\npiece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was crucified. It\r\nwas polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of preservation as if\r\nthe dread tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of eighteen\r\ncenturies ago. But these confiding people believe in that piece of wood\r\nunhesitatingly.\r\n\r\nIn a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid silver--at\r\nleast they call it so, and I think myself it would go a couple of hundred\r\nto the ton (to speak after the fashion of the silver miners)--and before\r\nit is kept forever burning a small lamp. A devout lady who died, left\r\nmoney and contracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul, and\r\nalso stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always, day and\r\nnight. She did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very\r\nsmall lamp and a very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I\r\nthink, if it went out altogether.\r\n\r\nThe great altar of the cathedral and also three or four minor ones are a\r\nperfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm of\r\nrusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree work, some\r\non one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and\r\nsome with two or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left\r\nto blow--all of them crippled and discouraged, and fitter subjects for\r\nthe hospital than the cathedral.\r\n\r\nThe walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures\r\nof almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful\r\ncostumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or\r\nsomebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story. The old\r\nfather, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told us\r\nif he could have risen. But he didn\'t.\r\n\r\nAs we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little donkeys\r\nready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least.\r\nThey consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, and\r\nthis furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups,\r\nbut really such supports were not needed--to use such a saddle was the\r\nnext thing to riding a dinner table--there was ample support clear out to\r\none\'s knee joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese muleteers crowded around\r\nus, offering their beasts at half a dollar an hour--more rascality to the\r\nstranger, for the market price is sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us\r\nmounted the ungainly affairs and submitted to the indignity of making a\r\nridiculous spectacle of ourselves through the principal streets of a town\r\nof 10,000 inhabitants.\r\n\r\nWe started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a stampede,\r\nand made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were\r\nnecessary. There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers\r\nbeside, and they banged the donkeys with their goad sticks, and pricked\r\nthem with their spikes, and shouted something that sounded like \"Sekki-\r\nyah!\" and kept up a din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam itself.\r\nThese rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they were always up to\r\ntime--they can outrun and outlast a donkey. Altogether, ours was a\r\nlively and a picturesque procession, and drew crowded audiences to the\r\nbalconies wherever we went.\r\n\r\nBlucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered\r\nzigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher\r\nagainst carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with high\r\nstone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and\r\nthen on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally came to the\r\nhouse he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off at\r\nthe doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to the muleteer, \"Now,\r\nthat\'s enough, you know; you go slow hereafter.\"\r\n\r\nBut the fellow knew no English and did not understand, so he simply said,\r\n\"Sekki-yah!\" and the donkey was off again like a shot. He turned a comer\r\nsuddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every\r\nmule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a\r\nheap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more\r\nconsequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after\r\nthe catastrophe and waited for their dismembered saddles to be patched up\r\nand put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry and wanted\r\nto swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so also and\r\nlet off a series of brays that drowned all other sounds.\r\n\r\nIt was fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful\r\ncanyons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a fresh,\r\nnew, exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn\r\nand threadbare home pleasures.\r\n\r\nThe roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an island with\r\nonly a handful of people in it--25,000--and yet such fine roads do not\r\nexist in the United States outside of Central Park. Everywhere you go,\r\nin any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare,\r\njust sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters\r\nneatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like\r\nBroadway. They talk much of the Russ pavement in New York, and call it a\r\nnew invention--yet here they have been using it in this remote little\r\nisle of the sea for two hundred years! Every street in Horta is\r\nhandsomely paved with the heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and\r\ntrue as a floor--not marred by holes like Broadway. And every road is\r\nfenced in by tall, solid lava walls, which will last a thousand years in\r\nthis land where frost is unknown. They are very thick, and are often\r\nplastered and whitewashed and capped with projecting slabs of cut stone.\r\nTrees from gardens above hang their swaying tendrils down, and contrast\r\ntheir bright green with the whitewash or the black lava of the walls and\r\nmake them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch across these narrow\r\nroadways sometimes and so shut out the sun that you seem to be riding\r\nthrough a tunnel. The pavements, the roads, and the bridges are all\r\ngovernment work.\r\n\r\nThe bridges are of a single span--a single arch--of cut stone, without a\r\nsupport, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebblework.\r\nEverywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them tasteful and\r\nhandsome--and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those marvelous\r\npavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever roads\r\nand streets and the outsides of houses were perfectly free from any sign\r\nor semblance of dirt, or dust, or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it\r\nis Horta, it is Fayal. The lower classes of the people, in their persons\r\nand their domiciles, are not clean--but there it stops--the town and the\r\nisland are miracles of cleanliness.\r\n\r\nWe arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion, and the\r\nirrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through the main street,\r\ngoading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting \"Sekki-yah,\" and singing\r\n\"John Brown\'s Body\" in ruinous English.\r\n\r\nWhen we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and jawing\r\nand swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us was nearly\r\ndeafening. One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the use of his\r\ndonkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up, another a\r\nquarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen guides presented\r\nbills for showing us the way through the town and its environs; and every\r\nvagrant of them was more vociferous, and more vehement and more frantic\r\nin gesture than his neighbor. We paid one guide and paid for one\r\nmuleteer to each donkey.\r\n\r\nThe mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed along the\r\nshore of the island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up\r\nwith one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7,613 feet,\r\nand thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island adrift in a\r\nfog!\r\n\r\nWe got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc., in these\r\nAzores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here to write Patent\r\nOffice reports.\r\n\r\nWe are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six days\r\nout from the Azores.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER VII.\r\n\r\nA week of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea; a week of\r\nseasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely quarterdecks drenched with\r\nspray--spray so ambitious that it even coated the smokestacks thick with\r\na white crust of salt to their very tops; a week of shivering in the\r\nshelter of the lifeboats and deckhouses by day and blowing suffocating\r\n\"clouds\" and boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking room at\r\nnight.\r\n\r\nAnd the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no\r\nthunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling\r\nof the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters.\r\nBut the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven--then paused\r\nan instant that seemed a century and plunged headlong down again, as from\r\na precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The\r\nblackness of darkness was everywhere. At long intervals a flash of\r\nlightning clove it with a quivering line of fire that revealed a heaving\r\nworld of water where was nothing before, kindled the dusky cordage to\r\nglittering silver, and lit up the faces of the men with a ghastly luster!\r\n\r\nFear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds and\r\nthe spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and\r\nit seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and\r\nsee the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral\r\ncabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on\r\nthe ocean. And once out--once where they could see the ship struggling\r\nin the strong grasp of the storm--once where they could hear the shriek\r\nof the winds and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic\r\npicture the lightnings disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce\r\nfascination they could not resist, and so remained. It was a wild night\r\n--and a very, very long one.\r\n\r\nEverybody was sent scampering to the deck at seven o\'clock this lovely\r\nmorning of the thirtieth of June with the glad news that land was in\r\nsight! It was a rare thing and a joyful, to see all the ship\'s family\r\nabroad once more, albeit the happiness that sat upon every countenance\r\ncould only partly conceal the ravages which that long siege of storms had\r\nwrought there. But dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks\r\nflushed again, and frames weakened by sickness gathered new life from the\r\nquickening influences of the bright, fresh morning. Yea, and from a\r\nstill more potent influence: the worn castaways were to see the blessed\r\nland again!--and to see it was to bring back that motherland that was in\r\nall their thoughts.\r\n\r\nWithin the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar, the tall\r\nyellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their bases veiled in\r\na blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds--the same being according\r\nto Scripture, which says that \"clouds and darkness are over the land.\"\r\nThe words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I believe.\r\nOn our left were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The strait is\r\nonly thirteen miles wide in its narrowest part.\r\n\r\nAt short intervals along the Spanish shore were quaint-looking old stone\r\ntowers--Moorish, we thought--but learned better afterwards. In former\r\ntimes the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish Main in their\r\nboats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in\r\nand capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they\r\ncould find. It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The\r\nSpaniards built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a\r\nsharper lookout on the Moroccan speculators.\r\n\r\nThe picture on the other hand was very beautiful to eyes weary of the\r\nchangeless sea, and by and by the ship\'s company grew wonderfully\r\ncheerful. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the\r\nlowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture burst upon us and chained\r\nevery eye like a magnet--a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till\r\nshe was one towering mass of bellying sail! She came speeding over the\r\nsea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was\r\nfor the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed she swept superbly by\r\nand flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze! Quicker than thought,\r\nhats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was\r\nbeautiful before--she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then\r\nfor the first time how tame a sight his country\'s flag is at home\r\ncompared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision\r\nof home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a\r\nvery river of sluggish blood!\r\n\r\nWe were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and already the\r\nAfrican one, \"Ape\'s Hill,\" a grand old mountain with summit streaked with\r\ngranite ledges, was in sight. The other, the great Rock of Gibraltar,\r\nwas yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the\r\nhead of navigation and the end of the world. The information the\r\nancients didn\'t have was very voluminous. Even the prophets wrote book\r\nafter book and epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted at the\r\nexistence of a great continent on our side of the water; yet they must\r\nhave known it was there, I should think.\r\n\r\nIn a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing seemingly\r\nin the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on all sides by\r\nthe sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no tedious traveled\r\nparrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could not be two rocks like\r\nthat in one kingdom.\r\n\r\nThe Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say, by\r\n1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base. One\r\nside and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as the\r\nside of a house, the other end is irregular and the other side is a steep\r\nslant which an army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of\r\nthis slant is the walled town of Gibraltar--or rather the town occupies\r\npart of the slant. Everywhere--on hillside, in the precipice, by the\r\nsea, on the heights--everywhere you choose to look, Gibraltar is clad\r\nwith masonry and bristling with guns. It makes a striking and lively\r\npicture from whatsoever point you contemplate it. It is pushed out into\r\nthe sea on the end of a flat, narrow strip of land, and is suggestive of\r\na \"gob\" of mud on the end of a shingle. A few hundred yards of this flat\r\nground at its base belongs to the English, and then, extending across the\r\nstrip from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of\r\na mile, comes the \"Neutral Ground,\" a space two or three hundred yards\r\nwide, which is free to both parties.\r\n\r\n\"Are you going through Spain to Paris?\" That question was bandied about\r\nthe ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never\r\ncould get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again or more\r\ntired of answering, \"I don\'t know.\" At the last moment six or seven had\r\nsufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did\r\ngo, and I felt a sense of relief at once--it was forever too late now and\r\nI could make up my mind at my leisure not to go. I must have a\r\nprodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to\r\nmake it up.\r\n\r\nBut behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten rid\r\nof the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another--a\r\ntiresome repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing about\r\nit, even in the first place: \"That high hill yonder is called the Queen\'s\r\nChair; it is because one of the queens of Spain placed her chair there\r\nwhen the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she\r\nwould never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the\r\nfortresses. If the English hadn\'t been gallant enough to lower the flag\r\nfor a few hours one day, she\'d have had to break her oath or die up\r\nthere.\"\r\n\r\nWe rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the\r\nsubterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These\r\ngalleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in\r\nthem great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six\r\nhundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean\r\nwork, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery\r\nguns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but they might\r\nas well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the\r\nperpendicular wall of the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford\r\nsuperb views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was\r\nhollowed out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and\r\nwhose windows were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far\r\naway, and a soldier said:\r\n\r\n\"That high hill yonder is called the Queen\'s Chair; it is because a queen\r\nof Spain placed her chair there once when the French and Spanish troops\r\nwere besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot\r\ntill the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English\r\nhadn\'t been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day,\r\nshe\'d have had to break her oath or die up there.\"\r\n\r\nOn the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no doubt\r\nthe mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was\r\ngood, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it. The view from\r\nthe narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels seeming like the\r\ntiniest little toy boats were turned into noble ships by the telescopes,\r\nand other vessels that were fifty miles away and even sixty, they said,\r\nand invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distinguished through\r\nthose same telescopes. Below, on one side, we looked down upon an\r\nendless mass of batteries and on the other straight down to the sea.\r\n\r\nWhile I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my\r\nbaking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to\r\nanother party came up and said:\r\n\r\n\"Senor, that high hill yonder is called the Queen\'s Chair--\"\r\n\r\n\"Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me. Don\'t\r\n--now don\'t inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me anymore today!\"\r\n\r\nThere--I had used strong language after promising I would never do so\r\nagain; but the provocation was more than human nature could bear. If you\r\nhad been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa\r\nand the blue Mediterranean spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze\r\nand enjoy and surfeit yourself in its beauty in silence, you might have\r\neven burst into stronger language than I did.\r\n\r\nGibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them of nearly four\r\nyears\' duration (it failed), and the English only captured it by\r\nstratagem. The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying so\r\nimpossible a project as the taking it by assault--and yet it has been\r\ntried more than once.\r\n\r\nThe Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old\r\ncastle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town,\r\nwith moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in\r\nbattles and sieges that are forgotten now. A secret chamber in the rock\r\nbehind it was discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of\r\nexquisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that\r\nantiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman.\r\nRoman armor and Roman relics of various kinds have been found in a cave\r\nin the sea extremity of Gibraltar; history says Rome held this part of\r\nthe country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the\r\nstatement.\r\n\r\nIn that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony\r\ncoating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived\r\nbefore the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may be\r\ntrue--it looks reasonable enough--but as long as those parties can\'t vote\r\nanymore, the matter can be of no great public interest. In this cave\r\nlikewise are found skeletons and fossils of animals that exist in every\r\npart of Africa, yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any\r\nportion of Spain save this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that\r\nthe channel between Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the\r\nlow, neutral neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was\r\nonce ocean, and of course that these African animals, being over at\r\nGibraltar (after rock, perhaps--there is plenty there), got closed out\r\nwhen the great change occurred. The hills in Africa, across the channel,\r\nare full of apes, and there are now and always have been apes on the rock\r\nof Gibraltar--but not elsewhere in Spain! The subject is an interesting\r\none.\r\n\r\nThere is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and so\r\nuniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress\r\ncostumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed\r\nHighlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and\r\nveiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and\r\nturbaned, sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and long-\r\nrobed, bare-legged, ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetuan and Tangier,\r\nsome brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink--and Jews from\r\nall around, in gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they are in\r\npictures and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years ago, no\r\ndoubt. You can easily understand that a tribe (somehow our pilgrims\r\nsuggest that expression, because they march in a straggling procession\r\nthrough these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of complacency\r\nand independence about them) like ours, made up from fifteen or sixteen\r\nstates of the Union, found enough to stare at in this shifting panorama\r\nof fashion today.\r\n\r\nSpeaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people among\r\nus who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the Oracle in\r\nthat list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who\r\neats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have\r\nany right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think\r\nof a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of\r\nany long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will\r\nserenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up\r\ncomplacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally\r\nwhen cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has\r\nbeen there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken\r\narguments, only with the big words all tangled, and play them in your\r\nvery teeth as original with himself. He reads a chapter in the\r\nguidebooks, mixes the facts all up, with his bad memory, and then goes\r\noff to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom which has been\r\nfestering in his brain for years and which he gathered in college from\r\nerudite authors who are dead now and out of print. This morning at\r\nbreakfast he pointed out of the window and said:\r\n\r\n\"Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast? It\'s one of\r\nthem Pillows of Herkewls, I should say--and there\'s the ultimate one\r\nalongside of it.\"\r\n\r\n\"The ultimate one--that is a good word--but the pillars are not both on\r\nthe same side of the strait.\" (I saw he had been deceived by a\r\ncarelessly written sentence in the guidebook.)\r\n\r\n\"Well, it ain\'t for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it that\r\nway, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don\'t say nothing about\r\nit--just shirks it complete--Gibbons always done that when he got stuck--\r\nbut there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, be says that they was\r\nboth on the same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and\r\nLangomarganbl----\"\r\n\r\n\"Oh, that will do--that\'s enough. If you have got your hand in for\r\ninventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say--let them be\r\non the same side.\"\r\n\r\nWe don\'t mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the\r\nOracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising\r\nidiot on board, and they do distress the company. The one gives copies\r\nof his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch--to\r\nanybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly\r\nmeant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwithstanding when he\r\nwrote an \"Ode to the Ocean in a Storm\" in one half hour, and an\r\n\"Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the Ship\" in the next, the\r\ntransition was considered to be rather abrupt; but when he sends an\r\ninvoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal and another to the commander\r\nin chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar with the compliments of the\r\nLaureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers.\r\n\r\nThe other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not bright,\r\nnot learned, and not wise. He will be, though, someday if he recollects\r\nthe answers to all his questions. He is known about the ship as the\r\n\"Interrogation Point,\" and this by constant use has become shortened to\r\n\"Interrogation.\" He has distinguished himself twice already. In Fayal\r\nthey pointed out a hill and told him it was 800 feet high and 1,100 feet\r\nlong. And they told him there was a tunnel 2,000 feet long and 1,000\r\nfeet high running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He\r\nrepeated it to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes.\r\nFinally, he took a useful hint from this remark, which a thoughtful old\r\npilgrim made:\r\n\r\n\"Well, yes, it is a little remarkable--singular tunnel altogether--stands\r\nup out of the top of the hill about two hundred feet, and one end of it\r\nsticks out of the hill about nine hundred!\"\r\n\r\nHere in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers and badgers\r\nthem with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can perform! He\r\ntold one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock\r\nGibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea!\r\n\r\nAt this present moment half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure\r\nexcursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half the list of\r\nwhite passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish\r\ntown of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than\r\nthat we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do otherwise who speeds over\r\nthese sparkling waters and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny\r\nland. Care cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction.\r\n\r\nWe even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of Malabat\r\n(a stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco) without a twinge of fear.\r\nThe whole garrison turned out under arms and assumed a threatening\r\nattitude--yet still we did not fear. The entire garrison marched and\r\ncounter-marched within the rampart, in full view--yet notwithstanding\r\neven this, we never flinched.\r\n\r\nI suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the\r\ngarrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben\r\nSancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to\r\nhelp him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and\r\nhe was competent to do that, had done it two years already. That was\r\nevidence which one could not well refute. There is nothing like\r\nreputation.\r\n\r\nEvery now and then my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes\r\nitself upon me. Dan and the ship\'s surgeon and I had been up to the\r\ngreat square, listening to the music of the fine military bands and\r\ncontemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and at\r\nnine o\'clock were on our way to the theater, when we met the General, the\r\nJudge, the Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of the United\r\nStates of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, who had been to the Club\r\nHouse to register their several titles and impoverish the bill of fare;\r\nand they told us to go over to the little variety store near the Hall of\r\nJustice and buy some kid gloves. They said they were elegant and very\r\nmoderate in price. It seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid\r\ngloves, and we acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the\r\nstore offered me a pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she\r\nsaid they would look very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched\r\nme tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem\r\nrather a comely member. I tried a glove on my left and blushed a little.\r\nManifestly the size was too small for me. But I felt gratified when she\r\nsaid:\r\n\r\n\"Oh, it is just right!\" Yet I knew it was no such thing.\r\n\r\nI tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said:\r\n\r\n\"Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves--but some gentlemen\r\nare so awkward about putting them on.\"\r\n\r\nIt was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on\r\nthe buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove\r\nfrom the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand--and tried to hide\r\nthe rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to\r\ndeserve them or die:\r\n\r\n\"Ah, you have had experience! [A rip down the back of the hand.] They\r\nare just right for you--your hand is very small--if they tear you need\r\nnot pay for them. [A rent across the middle.] I can always tell when a\r\ngentleman understands putting on kid gloves. There is a grace about it\r\nthat only comes with long practice.\" The whole after-guard of the glove\r\n\"fetched away,\" as the sailors say, the fabric parted across the\r\nknuckles, and nothing was left but a melancholy ruin.\r\n\r\nI was too much flattered to make an exposure and throw the merchandise on\r\nthe angel\'s hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still happy; but I\r\nhated the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in the\r\nproceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean\r\nwhen I said cheerfully:\r\n\r\n\"This one does very well; it fits elegantly. I like a glove that fits.\r\nNo, never mind, ma\'am, never mind; I\'ll put the other on in the street.\r\nIt is warm here.\"\r\n\r\nIt was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill,\r\nand as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light\r\nin the woman\'s eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from\r\nthe street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other,\r\nI said to myself with withering sarcasm, \"Oh, certainly; you know how to\r\nput on kid gloves, don\'t you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be\r\nflattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the\r\ntrouble to do it!\"\r\n\r\nThe silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally Dan said musingly:\r\n\r\n\"Some gentlemen don\'t know how to put on kid gloves at all, but some do.\"\r\n\r\nAnd the doctor said (to the moon, I thought):\r\n\r\n\"But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on kid\r\ngloves.\"\r\n\r\nDan soliloquized after a pause:\r\n\r\n\"Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very long\r\npractice.\"\r\n\r\n\"Yes, indeed, I\'ve noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like he\r\nwas dragging a cat out of an ash hole by the tail, he understands putting\r\non kid gloves; he\'s had ex--\"\r\n\r\n\"Boys, enough of a thing\'s enough! You think you are very smart, I\r\nsuppose, but I don\'t. And if you go and tell any of those old gossips in\r\nthe ship about this thing, I\'ll never forgive you for it; that\'s all.\"\r\n\r\nThey let me alone then for the time being. We always let each other\r\nalone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had\r\nbought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together\r\nthis morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with\r\nbroad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public\r\nexhibition. We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take\r\nher in. She did that for us.\r\n\r\nTangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us\r\nashore on their backs from the small boats.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER VIII.\r\n\r\nThis is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it--\r\nthese dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well\r\nenough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present.\r\nTangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we\r\nhave found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always\r\nwith things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and\r\nso the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted\r\nsomething thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign--foreign from top to\r\nbottom--foreign from center to circumference--foreign inside and outside\r\nand all around--nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness--\r\nnothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun.\r\nAnd lo! In Tangier we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing\r\nthat ever we have seen save in pictures--and we always mistrusted the\r\npictures before. We cannot anymore. The pictures used to seem\r\nexaggerations--they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But\r\nbehold, they were not wild enough--they were not fanciful enough--they\r\nhave not told half the story. Tangier is a foreign land if ever there\r\nwas one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save\r\nThe Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of\r\nhumanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city enclosed in\r\na massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the\r\nhouses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone,\r\nplastered outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on top, no\r\ncornices, whitewashed all over--a crowded city of snowy tombs! And the\r\ndoors are arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the\r\nfloors are laid in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated, many-colored\r\nporcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad\r\nbricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of\r\nJewish dwellings) save divans--what there is in Moorish ones no man may\r\nknow; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the\r\nstreets are oriental--some of them three feet wide, some six, but only\r\ntwo that are over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of them by\r\nextending his body across them. Isn\'t it an oriental picture?\r\n\r\nThere are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors proud\r\nof a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews whose fathers\r\nfled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians from the\r\nmountains--born cut-throats--and original, genuine Negroes as black as\r\nMoses; and howling dervishes and a hundred breeds of Arabs--all sorts and\r\ndescriptions of people that are foreign and curious to look upon.\r\n\r\nAnd their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a bronzed\r\nMoor in a prodigious white turban, cur