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TO my most patient reader and most charitable critic, my aged Mother, this volume is affectionately inscribed.

BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM

By BRANDER MATTHEWS Professor of Literature in Columbia University

|T is a common delusion of those who discuss con- * temporary literature that there is such an entity as the ** reading public,*' possessed of a certain uni- formity of taste. There is not one public ; there are many publics, — as many in fact as there are different kinds of taste ; and the extent of an author's popu- larity is in proportion to the number of these separate publics he may chance to please. Scott, for ex- ample, appealed not only to those who relished romance and enjoyed excitement, but also to those who appreciated his honest portrayal of sturdy char- acters, Thackeray is preferred by ambitious youth who are insidiously flattered by his tacit compliment? to their knowledge of the world, by the disenchanted who cannot help seeing the petty meannesses of soci- ety, and by the less sophisticated in whom sentiment

vi Biographical Criticism

has not gone to seed in sentimentality. Dickens in his own day bid for the approval of those who liked broad caricature (and were therefore pleased with Stiggins and Chadband), of those who fed greedily on plentiful pathos (and were therefore delighted with the deathbeds of Smike and Paul Dombey and Little Nell) and also of those who asked for unex- pected adventure (and were therefore glad to dis- entangle the melodramatic intrigues of Ralph Nickleby).

In like manner the American author who has chosen to call himself Mark Twain has attained to an immense popularity because the qualities he pos- sesses in a high degree appeal to so many and so widely varied publics, — first of all, no doubt, to the public that revels in hearty and robust fun, but also to the public which is glad to be swept along by the full current of adventure, which is sincerely touched by manly pathos, which is satisfied by vigorous and exact portrayal of character, and which respects shrewdness and wisdom and sanity and a healthy hatred of pretense and affectation and sham. Per- haps no one book of Mark Twain's — with the pos- sible exception of * Huckleberry Finn * — is equally a favorite with all his readers ; and perhaps some of his best characteristics are absent from his earlier

Biographical Criticism ?ii

books or but doubtfully latent in them Mark Twain is many-sided ; and he has ripened in knowl- edge and in power since he first attracted attention as a wild Western funny man. As he has grown older he has reflected more ; he has both broadened and deepened. The writer of *' comic copy " for a mining-camp newspaper has developed into a liberal humorist, handling life seriously and making his readers think as he makes them laugh, until to-day Mark Twain has perhaps the largest audience of any author now using the English language. To trace the stages of this evolution and to count the steps whereby the sage-brush reporter has risen to the rank of a writer of world-wide celebrity, is as interesting as it is instructive.

I.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born November 30, 1835, ^t Florida, Missouri. His father was a merchant who had come from Tennessee and who removed soon after his son's birth to Hannibal, a little town on the Mississippi. What Hannibal was like and what were the circumstances of Mr. Clem- ens's boyhood we can see for ourselves in the con- vincing pages of * Tom Sawyer.* Mr. Hov/ells has called Hannibal ** a loafing, out-at-elbows, down-at- the-heels, slave-holding Mississippi town;*' and

¥iilJ Biographical Criticism

Mr. Clemens was himself a slave owner, who silently abhorred slavery.

When the future author was but twelve his father died, and the son had to get his education as best he could. Of actual schooling he got little and of book-learning still less ; but life itself is not a bad teacher for a boy who wants to study, and young Clemens did not waste his chances. He spent three years in the printing office of the little local paper, — for, like not a few others on the list of American authors that stretches from Benjamin Franklin to William Dean Howells, he began his connection with literature by setting type. As a journeyman printer the lad wandered from town to town and rambled even as far east as New York.

When he was seventeen he went back to the home of his boyhood resolved to become a pilot on the Mississippi. How he learnt the river he has told us in * Life on the Mississippi,* wherein his adven- tures, his experiences, and his impressions while he was a cub-pilot are recorded with a combination of precise veracity and abundant humor which makes the earlier chapters of that marvelous book a most masterly fragment of autobiography. The life of a pilot was full of interest and excitement and oppor- Itinity, and what young Clemens saw and heard and

Biographical Criticism isi

divined during the years when he was going up and down the mighty river we may read in the pages of Huckleberry Finn ' and * Pudd'nhead Wilson/ But toward the end of the fifties the railroads began to rob the river of its supremacy as a carrier ; and in the beginning of the sixties the civil war broke out and the Mississippi no longer went unvexed to the sea. The skill, slowly and laboriously acquired, was suddenly rendered useless, and at twenty-five the young man found himself bereft of his calling. As a border state, Missouri was sending her sons into the armies of the Union and into the armies of the Con- federacy, while many a man stood doubting, not knowing which way to turn* The ex-pilot has given us the record of his very brief and inglorious service as a soldier of the South. When this escapade was swiftly ended, he went to the Northwest with his brother, who had been appointed Lieutenant-Gov- ernor of Nevada. Thus the man who had been born on the borderland of North and South, who had gone East as a jour-printer, who had been again and again up and down the Mississippi, now went West while he was still plastic and impressionable ; and he had thus another chance to increase that intimate knowledge of American life and American character which is one of the most precious of his possessions.

X Biographical Criticism

While still on the river he had written a satiric letter or two signed ** Mark Twain" — taking the name from a call of the man who heaves the lead and who cries ** By the mark, three,'* ** Mark twain," and so on. In Nevada he went to the mines and lived the life he has described in * Rough- ing It,' but when he failed to ** strike it rich," he naturally drifted into journalism and back into a newspaper office again. The Virginia City Enter^ prise was not overmanned, and the newcomer did all sorts of odd jobs, finding time now and then to write a sketch which seemed important enough to permit of his signature. The name of Mark Twain soon began to be known to those who were curious in newspaper humor. After a while he was drawn across the mountains to San Francisco, where he found casual employment on the Morning Cally and where he joined himself to a little group of aspiring literators which Included Mr. Bret Harte, Mr. Noah Brooks, Mr. Charles Henry Webb, and Mr. Charles Warren Stoddard.

It was in 1867 that Mr. Webb published Mark Twain's first book, ' The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras * ; and it was in 1 867 that the proprie- tors of the Alta California supplied him with the funds necessary to enable him to become one of the

Biographical Criticism zi

passengers on the steamer Quaker Cityt which had been chartered to take a select party on what is now known as the Mediterranean trip. The weekly let- ters, in which he set forth what befel him on this journey, were printed in the Alta Sunday after Sun- day, and were copied freely by the other Californian papers. These letters served as the foundation of a book published in 1 869 and called * The Innocents Abroad,* a book which instantly brought to the author celebrity and cash.

Both of these valuable aids to ambition were In- creased by his next step, his appearance on the lecture platform, Mr, Noah Brooks, who was present at his first attempt, has recorded that Mark Twain's ** method as a lecturer was distinctly unique and novel. His slow, deliberate drawl, the anxious and perturbed expression of his visage, the appar- ently painful effort with which he framed his sen- tences, the surprise that spread over his face when the audience roared with delight or rapturously ap- plauded the finer passages of his word-painting, were unlike anything of the kind they had ever known." In the thirty years since that first appearance the method has not changed, although it has probabJy matured. Mark Twain is one of the most effective of platform-speakers and one of the most artistic,

xii Biog)iaphical Criticism

with an art of his own which is very individual and very elaborate in spite of its seeming simplicity.

Although he succeeded abundantly as a lecturer, and although he was the author of the most widely- circulated book of the decade, Mark Twain still thought of himself only as a journalist; and when he gave up the West for the East he became an editor of the Buffalo Express^ in which he had bought an interest. In 1 870 he married ; and it is perhaps not indiscreet to remark that his was another ot those happy unions of which there have been so many in the annals of American authorship- In 1 87 1 he removed to Hartford, where his home has been ever since ; and at the same time he gave up newspaper workc

In 1872 he wrote * Roughing It,* and in the following year came his first sustained attempt at fiction i ' The Gilded Age,* written in collabora- tion with Mr, Charles Dudley Warner, The charac- ter of Colonel Mulberry Sellers Mark Twain soon took out of this book to make it the central figure of a play, which the late John T. Raymond acted hundreds of times throughout the United States, the playgoing public pardoning the inexpertness of the dramatist in favor of the delicious humor and the compelling veracity with which the chief character

Biographical Criticism xiii

was presented. So universal was this type and sc broadly recognizable its traits that there were few towns wherein the play was presented in which some- one did not accost the actor who impersonated the ever-hopeful schemer to declare, ** I'm the original oi Sellers f Didn't Mark ever tell you? Well, he took the Colo7iel from me ! "

Encouraged by the welcome accorded to this first attempt at fiction, Mark Twain turned to the days of his boyhood and wrote *Tom Sawyer,* pub- lished in 1875. He also collected his sketches, scat- tered here and there in newspapers and magazines Toward the end of the seventies he went to Europe again with his family ; and the result of this journey is recorded in *A Tramp Abroad,* published ii? 1880. Another volume of sketches, * The Stolen White Elephant,* was put forth in 1882; and in the same year Mark Twain first came forward as a his- torical novelist — if * The Prince and the Pauper' can fairly be called a historical novel. The year after, he sent forth the volume describing his * Life on the Mississippi * ; and in 1884 he followed this with the story in which that life has been crystallized forever, •Huckleberry Finn,* the finest of his books, the deepest in its insight, and the widest in its appeal.

This Odyssey of the Mississippi was published by

xiv Biographical Criticism

a new firm, in which the author was a chief part- ner, just as Sir Walter Scott had been an associate of Ballantyne and Constable. There was at first a period of prosperity in which the house issued the * Personal Memoirs ' of Grant, giving his widow checks for $350,000 in 1886, and in which Mark Twain himself published * A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court,* a volume of ' Merry Tales,* and a story called * The American Claimant,* wherein Colonel fellers XQdi^'^cdss, Then there came a succession of hard years ; and at last the publishing house in which Mark Twain was a partner failed, as the publishing house in which Walter Scott was a partner had formerly failed. The author of * Huckleberry Finn * was past sixty when he found himself suddenly saddled with a load of debt, just as the author of 'Waverley* had been burdened full threescore years earlier; and Mark Twain stood up stoutly under it as Scott had done before him. More fortunate than the Scotchman, the American has lived to pay the debt in full.

Since the disheartening crash came, he has given to the public a third Mississippi River tale, * Pud* d'nhead Wilson,* issued in 1894; and a third his- torical novel * Joan of Arc,* a reverent and sym- pathetic study of the bravest figure in all French

Biographical Criticism xv

history, printed anonymously in Harper's Magazine and then in a volume acknowledged by the author in 1896. As one of the results of a lecturing tour around the world he has prepared another volume of travels, * Following the Equator,* published toward the end of 1897c Mention must also be made of a fantastic tale called *Tom Sawyer Abroad,* sent forth in 1894, of a volume of sketches, *The Mil- lion Pound Bank-Note,* assembled in 1893, and also of a collection of literary essays, * How to Tell a Story,* published in 1897.

This is but the barest outline of Mark Twain's life, — such a brief summary as we must have before us if we wish to consider the conditions under which the author has developed and the stages of his growth. It will serve, however, to show how various have been his forms of activit>' — printer, pilot, miner, journalist, traveler, lecturer, novelist, publisher — and to suggest the width of his experience of life,

II

A hum.orist is often without honor in his own country. Perhaps this is partly because humor is likely to be familiar, and familiarity breeds contempt, Perhaps it is partly because (for some strange reason) we tend to despise those who make us

xvi BiOgraphial Criticism

laugh f while we respect those who make us weep — forgetting that there are formulas for forcing tears quite as facile as the formulas for forcing smiles. Whatever the reason, the fact is indisputable that the humorist must pay the penalty of his humor; he must run the risk of being tolerated as a mere fun- maker, not to be taken seriously, and unworthy of critical consideration. This penalty is being paid now by Mark Twain. In many of the discussions of American literature he is dismissed as though he were only a competitor of his predecessors, Artemus Ward and John Phoenix, instead of being, what he is really, a writer who is to be classed — at whatever interval only time may decide — rather with Cervantes and Moli^re.

Like the heroines of the problem-plays of the modern theater, Mark Twain has had to live down his past. His earlier writing gave but little promise of the enduring qualities obvious enough in his later works. Mr. Noah Brooks has told us how he was advised if he wished to ** see genuine specimens of American humor, frolicsome, extravagant, and auda- cious,** to look up the sketches which the then almost unknown Mark Twain was printing in a Nevada news- paper. The humor of Mark Twain is still American, still frolicsome, extravagant, and audacious; but it

Biographical Criticism xvii

is riper now and richer, and it has taken unto itself other qualities existing only in germ in these first- lings of his muse. The sketches in * The Jumping Frog * and the letters which made up * The Inno- cents Abroad * are ** comic copy,*' as the phrase is in newspaper offices — comic copy not altogether unlike what John Phoenix had written and Artemus Ward, better indeed than the work of these news- paper humorists (for Mark Twain had it in him to de velop as they did not), but not essentially dissimilar And in the eyes of many who do not think fot themselves, Mark Twain is only the author of these genuine specimens of American humor. For whcB. the public has once made up its mind about any man's work, it does not relish any attempt to forct it to unmake this opinion and to remake it Like other juries, it does not like to be ordered to recon sider its verdict as contrary to the facts of the case It IS always sluggish in beginning the necessary read justment, and not only sluggish, but somewhat grudging. Naturally it cannot help seeing the later works of a popular writer from the point of view it had to take to enjoy his earlier writings. And thus the author of * Huckleberry Finn * and ' Joan ol Arc ' is forced to Day a high price for the earlv and abundant popularity of * The Innocents Abroad.

xviii Biographical Criticism

No doubt, a few of his earlier sketches were inex- pensive in their elements; made of materials worn threadbare by generations of earlier funny men, they were sometimes cut in the pattern of his predeces- sors. No doubt, some of the earliest of all were crude and highly colored, and may even be called forced, not to say violent. No doubt, also, they did not suggest the seriousness and the melancholy which always must underlie the deepest humor, as we find it in Cervantes and Moli^re, in Swift and in Lowell. But even a careless reader, skipping through the book in idle amusement, ought to have been able to see in * The Innocents Abroad,* that the writer of that liveliest of books of travel was no mere merryandrew, grinning through a horse-collar to make sport for the groundlings ; but a sincere ob- server of life, seeing through his own eyes and set- ting down what he saw with abundant humor, of course, but also with profound respect for the eternal verities.

George Eliot in one of her essays calls those who parody lofty themes *'debasers of the moral cur- rency/* Mark Twain is always an advocate of the sterling ethical standard. He is ready to overwhelm an affectation with irresistible laughter, but he never ;acks reverence for the things that really deserve

Biogtaphical Criticism xix

reverence. It is not at the Old Masters that he scoffs in Italy, but rather at those who pay lip-ser- vice to things which they neither enjoy nor under- stand. For a ruin or a painting or a legend that does not seem to him to deserve the appreciation in which it is held he refuses to affect an admiration he does not feel; he cannot help being honest — he was born so. For meanness of all kinds he has a burning contempt; and on Abelard he pours out the vials of his wrath. He has a quick eye for all humbugs and a scorching scorn for them ; but there is no attempt at being funny in the manner of the cockney comedians when he stands in the awful presence of the Sphinx. He is not taken in by the glamour of Palestine ; he does not lose his head there; he keeps his feet; but he knows that he is standing on holy ground ; and there is never a hint of irreverence in his attitude,

• A Tramp Abroad * is a better book than * The Innocents Abroad * ; it is quite as laughter-provok- ing, and its manner is far more restrained. Mark Twain was then master of his method, sure of him- self, secure of his popularity ; and he could do his best and spare no pains to be certain that it was his best. Perhaps there is a slight falling off in * Fol- lowing the Equator ' ; a trace of fatigue, of weari-

B*

aa Biographical Criticism

ness, of disenchantment. But the last book of travels has passages as broadly humorous as any of the first; and it proves the author's possession of a pithy shrewdness not to be suspected from a perusal of its earliest predecessor. The first book was the work of a young fellow rejoicing in his own fun and resolved to make his readers laugh with him or at him ; the latest book is the work of an older man, who has found that life is not all laughter, but whose eye is as clear as ever and whose tongue is as plain- spoken.

These three books of travel are like all other books of travel in that they relate in the first person what the author went forth to see. Autobiographic also are * Roughing It * and * Life on the Mississippi/ and they have always seemed to me better books than the more widely circulated travels. They are better because they are the result of a more intimate knowledge of the material dealt with. Every traveler is of necessity but a bird of passage ; he is a mere carpet-bagger; his acquaintance with the countries he visits is external only ; and this acquaintanceship is made only when he is a full-grown man. But Mark Twain's knowledge of the Mississippi was ac- quired in his youth; it was not purchased with a price ; it was his birthright ; and it was internal and

Biographicai Criticism x«

completCc And his knowledge ot the minhig-camp was achieved in early manhood when the mind ia open and sensitive to every new impression. There is in both these books a fidelity to the inner truths a certainty of touch, a sweep of vision, not to be found in the three books of travels. For my own part I have long thought that Mark Twain could securely rest his right to survive as an author or: those opening chapters in * Life on the Mississippi ^ in which he makes clear the difficulties, the seeming impossibilities, that fronted those who wished to learn the river. These chapters are bold and bril- liant ; and they picture for us forever a period and 3 set of conditions^ singularly interesting and splen didly varied, that otherwise would have had tc forego all adequate record

m.

It is highly probable that when an author reveals the power of evoking viev/s of places and of calling up portraits of people such as Mark Twain showed m * Life on the Mississippi,* and when he has the masculine grasp of reality Mark Twain made evident in Roughing It,' he must needs sooner or later turn from mere fact to avowed fiction and become a< story-teller. The iong stones 'vhicb Mark Twam has written fall into two divisions, ~ first, those of

zzii Biographical Criticism

which the scene is laid in the present, in reality* and mostly in the Mississippi Valley, and second, those of which the scene is laid in the past, in fantasy mostly, and in Europe.

As my own liking is a little less for the latter group, there is no need for me now to linger over them. In writing these tales of the past Mark Twain was making up stories in his head ; personally I pre- fer the tales of his in which he has his foot firm on reality. *The Prince and the Pauper* has the essence of boyhood in it ; it has variety and vigor ; it has abundant humor and plentiful pathos ; and yet I for one w^ould give the whole of it for the single chapter in which Tom Sawyer lets the contract for whitewashing his aunt's fence.

Mr. Howells has declared that there are two kinds of fiction he likes almost equally well, — *'a real giovel and a pure romance; *' and he joyfully accepts A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court ' as "'one of the greatest romances ever imagined." It is a humorous romance overflowing with stalwart fun; and it is not irreverent but iconoclastic, in that it breaks not a few disestablished idols. It is in- tensely American and intensely nineteenth century and intensely democratic — in the best sense of that abused adjective. The British critics were greatly

Biographical Criticism xxiii

displeased with the book; — and we are reminded of the fact that the Spanish still somewhat resent * Don Quixote ' because it brings out too truthfully the fatal gap in the Spanish character between the ideal and the real. So much of the feudal still survives in British society that Mark Twain*s merry and eluci- dating assault on the past seemed to some almost an insult to the present.

But no critic, British or American, has ventured to discover any irreverence in * Joan of Arc,* wherein indeed the tone is almost devout and the humor almost too much subdued. Perhaps it is my own distrust of the so-called historical novel, my own dis- belief that it can ever be anything but an inferior form of art, which makes me care less for this worthy effort to honor a noble figure. And elevated and dignified as is the ' Joan of Arc,* I do not think that it shows us Mark Twain at his best ; although it has many a passage that only he could have written, it is perhaps the least characteristic of his works. Yet it may well be that the certain measure of success he has achieved in handling a subject so lofty and so serious, will help to open the eyes of the public to see the solid merits of his other stories, in which his humor has fuller play and in which his natural gifts are more abundantly displayed.

sxiv B:ographica; Criticism

Oi these other stories three are " real novels,*' to wse Mr. Howelis's phrase; they are novels as real as any in any literature. * Tom Sawyer * and * Huckleberry Finn ' and ' Pudd*nhead Wilson * are invaluable contributions to American literature -—for American literature is nothing if it is not a 'true picture of American life and if it does not help tis to understand ourselves. ' Huckleberry Finn * is a very amusing volume, and a generation has read Its pages and laughed over it immoderately ; but it is very much more than a funny book; it is a marvelously accurate portrayal of a whole civilization. Mr. Ormsby, in an essay which accompanies his translation of ' Don Quixote,* has pointed out that for a full century after its publication that greatest of novels was enjoyed chiefly as a tale of humorous mis- adventure, and that three generations had laughed over it before anybody suspected that it was more than a mere funny book. It is perhaps rather with the picaresque romances of Spain that * Huckleberry Finn * is to be compared than with the masterpiece of Cervantes ; but I do not think it will be a century or take three generations before we Americans gen- erally discover how great a book * Huckleberry Finn * really is, how keen Its vision of character, how close its observation of life, how sound its

Biographical Criticism xxy

philosophy, and how it records for us once and for all certain phases of Southwestern society which it is most important for us to perceive and to understand. The influence of slavery, the prevalence of feuds, the conditions and the circumstances that make lynching possible —■ all these things are set before us clearly and without comment. It is for us to draw our own moral, each for himself, as we do when we see Shakespeare acted.

• Huckleberry Finn,' in its art, for one thing, and also in its broader range, is superior to ' Tom Sawyer* and to * Pudd'nhead Wilson,* fine as both these are In their several ways. In no book in our language, to my mind, has the boy, simply as a boy, been better realized than in *Tom Sawyer.* In some respects * Pudd'nhead Wilson * is the most dra- matic of Mark Twain's longer stories, and also the most ingenious ; like * Tom Sawyer * and * Huckle- berry Finn,' it has the full flavor of the Mississippi River, on which its author spent his own boyhood; and from contact with the soil of which he alwayfj rises reinvigo rated.

It is by these three stories, and especially by ' Huckleberry Finn," that Mark Twain is likely to live longest. Nowhere else is the life of the Missis- sippi Valley so truthfully recorded Nowhere elsf^

xxvi Biographical Criticism

can we find a gallery of Southwestern characters as varied and as veracious as those Huck Finn met in his wanderings. The histories of literature all praise the * Gil Bias * of Le Sage for its amusing adven- tures, its natural characters, its pleasant humor, and its insight into human frailty ; and the praise is de- served. But in every one of these qualities * Huckle- berry Finn' is superior to 'Gil Bias.* Le Sage set the model of the picaresque novel, and Mark Twain followed his example; but the American book is richer than the French — deeper, finer, stronger. It would be hard to find in any language better specimens of pure narrative, better examples of the power of telling a story and of calling up action so that the reader cannot help but see it, than Mark Twain's account of the Shepherdson-Granger- ford feud, and his description of the shooting of Boggs by Sherburn and of the foiled attempt to lynch Sherburn afterward.

These scenes, fine as they are, vivid, powerful, and most artistic in their restraint, can be matched in the two other books. In * Tom Sawyer * they can be paralleled by the chapter in which the boy and the girl are lost in the cave, and Tom, seeing a gleam of light in the distance, discovers that it is a candle carried by Indian Joe, the one enemy he has in the

Biographical Criticism xxvt

world. In ' Pudd'nhead Wilson * the great passages of ' Huckleberry Finn ' are rivaled by that most pathetic account of the weak son willing to sell his own mother as a slave ** down the river. ** Although no one of the books is sustained throughout on this high level, and although, in truth, there are in each of them passages here and there that we could wish away (because they are not worthy of the association in which we find them), I have no hesitation in express- ing here my own conviction that the man who has given us four scenes like these is to be compared with the masters of literature ; and that he can abide the comparison with equanimity.

Perhaps 1 myself prefer these three Mississippi

Valley books above all Mark Twain's other writings (although with no lack of affection for those also) partly because these have the most of the flavor of the soil about them. After veracity and the sense of the universal, what I best relish in literature is this native aroma, pungent, homely, and abiding. Yet I feel sure that I should not rate him so high if he were the author of these three books only. They are the best of him, but the others are good also, and good in a different way. Other writers have

KsviH Biographicai Ciriticism

given ti£ this local colosr more or kss artistically, more or less convincingly^ one New England and anothex New York^ a third Virginia, and a fourth ^Georgia.: and a fifth Wisconsin ; but who so well as Mark Twain has given us the full spectrum of the Union? With all his exactness in reproducing the Mississippi; Valley, Mark Twain is not sectional in hx3 outlook ; he Is national alwayse He is not narrow ; lie m not Western or Eastern ; he is American with E certain largeness and boldness and freedom and cer- tainty that we like to think 6i as befitting a country 'm vast as ours and a people so independent

Xn Mark Twain we have ''the national spirit as ^$een wj.th our own eyes/' declared Mr, Howells; andp from more points of view than one, Mark Twain seems to me to be the very embodiment of Ameri- canism Self-educated in the hard school of life, he has gone on broadening his outlook as he has grown older. Spending many years abroad, he has come to understand other nationalities, without enfeebling his own native faiths Combining a mastery of the commonplace with an imaginative faculty, he is a practical idealist. No respecter of persons, he has a tender regard for his fellow maUo Irreverent toward all outworn superstitions, he has ever revealed the deepest respect for all things truly worthy of rever-

Biographical Crmcism xxin

ence. Unwilling to take pay in words, he is im- patient always to get at the root of the matter, to pierce to the center, to see tlie thing as it is. He has a habit of standing upright, of thinking for him- self, and of hitting hard at whatsoever seems to him hateful and mean : but at the core of him there is genuine gentleness and honest sympathy, brave humanity and sweet kindliness. Perhaps it is boast- ful for us to think that these characteristics which we see in Mark Twain are characteristics also of the American people as a whole ; but it is pleasant to think so.

Mark Twain has the very marrow of Americanism. He is as intensely and as typically American as Franklin or Emerson or Hawthorne. He has not a little of the shrewd common sense and the homely and unliterary directness of Franklin. He is not without a share of the aspiration and the elevation of Emerson ; and he has a philosophy of his own as optimistic as Emerson*s. He possesses also some- what of Hawthorne's interest in ethical problems with something of the same power of getting at the heart of them ; he, too, has written his parables and apologues wherein the moral is obvious and an- obtruded. He is uncompromisingly honest; and to conscience is as rugged as his style sometimes is.

'3

XXX Biographical Criticism

No American author has to-day at his command a style more nervous, more varied, more flexible, or more various than Mark Twain's. His colloquial ease should not hide from us his mastery of all the devices of rhetoric. He may seem to disobey the letter of the law sometimes, but he is always obedient to the spirit. He never speaks unless he has some- thing to say; and then he says it tersely, sharply, with a freshness of epithet and an individuality of phrase, always accurate however unacademic. His vocabulary is enormous, and it is deficient only in the dead words; his language is alive always, and actually tingling with vitality. He rejoices in the daring noun and in the audacious adjective. His in- stinct for the exact word is not always unerring, and now and again he has failed to exercise it ; but there is in his prose none of the flatting and sharping he censured in Fenimore Cooper's. His style has none of the cold perfection of an antique statue ; it is too modern and too American for that, and too com- pletely the expression of the man himself, sincere and straightforward. It is not free from slang, although this is far less frequent than one might ex- pect; but it does its work swiftly and cleanly. And It is capable of immense variety. Consider the tale of the BIu^ Jay in * A Tramp Abroad/ wherein the

Biographical Criticism xxxi

humor is sustained by unstated pathos ; what could be better told than this, with every word the right word and in the right place? And take Huck Finn's description of the storm when he was alone on the island, which is in dialect, which will not parse, which bristles with double negatives, but which none the less is one of the finest passages of descriptive prose in all American literature.

V.

After all, it is as a humorist pure and simple that Mark Twain is best known and best beloved. In the preceding pages I have tried to point out the several ways in which he transcends humor, as the word is commonly restricted, and to show that he is no mere fun-maker. But he is a fun-maker beyond all question, and he has made millions laugh as no other man of our century has done. The laughter he has aroused is wholesome and self-respecting; it clears the atmosphere. For this we cannot but be grateful. As Lowell said, " let us not be ashamed to confess that, if we find the tragedy a bore, we take the profoundest satisfaction in the farce. It is a mark of sanity." There is no laughter in Don Quixote^ the noble enthusiast whose wits are un- settled ; and there is little on the lips of Alceste the 3

^xm Biographical Criticism

misanthrope of Moli^re; but for both of them life would have been easier had they known how to laugh, Cervantes himself, and Moli^re also, found relief in laughter for their melancholy ; and it was the sense of humor which kept them tolerantly inter- ested in the spectacle of humanity, although life had pressed hardly on them both. On Mark Twain also life has left its scars; but he has bound up his wounds and battled forward with a stout heart, as Cervantes did, and Moli^re. It was Moli^re who declared that it was a strange business to undertake to make people laugh; but even now, after two centuries, when the best of Moli^re's plays are acted^ mirth breaks out again and laughter overflows..

It would be doing Mark Twain a disservice to liken him to Moli^re, the greatest comic dramatist of all time ; and yet there is more than one point of sim« ilarity. Just as Mark Twain began by writing comic copy which contained no prophecy of a master- piece like ' Huckleberry Finn/ so Moli^re was at first the author only of semi-acrobatic farces on the Italian model in no wise presaging * Tartuffe * and • The Misanthrope/ Just as Moli^re succeeded first of all in pleasing the broad public that likes robust fun, and then slowly and step by step developed into a dramatist who set on the stage enduring figures

Biographical Criticism xxxiii

plucked out of the abounding h'fe about him, so also has Mark Twain grown, ascending from The Jumping Frog * to ' Huckleberry Finn,* as comic as its elder brother and as laughter-provoking, but charged also with meaning and with philosophy. And like Moliere again, Mark Twain has kept solid hold of the material world ; his doctrine is not of the earth earthy, but it is never sublimated into senti- mentality. He sympathizes with the spiritual side of humanity, while never ignoring the sensual. Like Moliere, Mark Twain takes his stand on com- mon sense and thinks scorn of affectation of every sort. He understands sinners and strugglers and weaklings ; and he is not harsh with them, reserving his scorching hatred for hypocrites and pretenders and frauds.

At how long an interval Mark Twain shall be rated after Moliere and Cervantes it is for the future to declare. All that we can see clearly now is that it is with them that he is to be classed, — with Moliere and Cervantes, with Chaucer and Fielding, humorists all of them, and all of them manly men.

PREFACE

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

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

In this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for the Daily Alta California^ of San Fran-

( xxxvii)

Preface

rtisco, the proprietors of that journal having waived their rights and given me the necessary permission,

I have also inserted portions of several letters written for the New York Tribune and the New York Herald,

THE AUTHOR.

San Francisco

ILLUSTRATIONS

PORTRAITS, 1853, 1868 Frontispiece

THE DAME LOOKED PERPLEXED . Peter NeweU . . 139 ♦'IS HE DEAD?" • • . . . Peter NeweU . . 372

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. FcpuIarTalk of the Excursion — Programme of the Trip — Duly Ticketed for the Excursion — Defection of the Celebrities . . 45

CHAPTER II. Grand Preparations — An Imposing Dignitary — The European Exodus — ^Mr. Blucher's Opinion — Stateroom No. 10 —The Assembling of the Qans — At Sea at Last ...«.»• 54

CHAPTER III. ** Averaging" the Passengers — "Far, far at Sea" — Tribulation among the Patriarchs — Seeking Amusement under Difficulties ; — Five Captains in the Ship . . . . ^ o . , . . 60

CHAPTER IV. Pflgrim Life at Sea — The " Synagogue " — Jack's ** Journal " — ■ The "Q. C. Qub" —State Ball on Deck — Mock Trials — Pilgrim Solemni^ — Executive Officer Dehvers an Opinion . 66

CHAPTER V. An Eccentric Moon — The Mystery of "ShipThne" — The Deni- zens of the Deep — The First Landing on a Foreign Shore — The Azores Islands — Blucher's Disastrous Dinner , , ^ ^ J^

CHAPTER VI.' A Fossil Community — Curious Ways and Customs ^ — Jesuit Hum* buggery — Fantastic Pilgrimizing — Origin of the Russ Pave- ment— Squaring Accounts with the Fossils — At Sea Again ^ 86

(sli)

Contents

CHAPTER VII. Spain and Africa on Exhibition — The Pillars of Hercules — The Rock of Gibraltar— *' The Queen's Chair "— A Private Frolic in Africa — Disembarking in the Empire of Morocco • • . 95

CHAPTER Vni. The Ancient City of Tangier, Morocco — Strange Sights — A Cradle of Antiquity — We Become Wealthy — How They Rob the Mail in Africa— -Danger of being Opulent in Morocco 1 13

CHAPTER IX. A Pilgrim in Deadly Peril — How They Mended the Qock — Moorish Punishments for Crime — Shrewdness of Mohamme- dan Pilgrims — Reverence for Cats — Bliss of being a Consul- General »«.o. .•.•.•«...., 121

CHAPTfiR X. A Mediterranean Sunset — The "Oracle" is Delivered of an Opin- ion — France in Sight — The Ignorant Native — In Marseilles — Lost in the Great City — A Frenchy Scene o • •> . * 1 30

CHAPTER XI. Getting "Used to it"-— No Soap— Table d'hote — A Curious Discovery — The "Pilgrim" Bird — A Long Captivity — Some of Dumas' Heroes — Dungeon of the Famous " Iron Mask " 140

CHAPTER XII. A Holiday Flight through France — Peculiarities of French Cars — Why there are no Accidents — The " Old Travelers "*— Still an the Wing — Paris at Last — Seeing the Sights . • . .148

CHAPTER XIII. Monsieur Billfinger — Re-christening the Frenchman — In the Clutches of a Paris Guide — The International Exposition — Military Review — Napoleon and the Sultan of Turkey • • .163

CHAPTER XIV. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame — Treasures and Sacred Relics — The Morgue — The Outrageous Can-can — The Louvre Pal- ace— The Great Park — Preservation of Noted Things . . -277

Contents

CHAPTER XV.

French National Burying-ground — The Story of Abelard and Heloise — '* English Spoken Here " — Imperial Honors to an American— The Over-estimated Grisette — Leaving Paris . • |88

CHAPTER XVI.

Versailles — Paradise Regained — A Wonderful Park — Paradise Lost — Napoleonic Strategy .««•>•><««• 204

CHAPTER XVII.

Italy in Sight — The " City of Palaces " — Beauty of the Genoese Women — Gifted Guide — Church Magnificence — How the Genoese Live — Massive Architecture — Graves for 60,000 • 21 x

CHAPTER XVIII.

Flying through Italy — Marengo — Some Wonders of the Famous Cathedral — An Unpleasant Adventure — Tons of Golrl and Silver — Holy Relics — Solomon's Temple Rivaled ^ • ■> 225

CHAPTER XIX.

La Scala — Ingenious Frescoes — Ancient Roman Amphitheater — The Chief Charm of European Life — An Italian Bath — The Most Celebrated Paintmg in the World — A Kiss for a Franc • 237

CHAPTER XX.

Rural Italy by Rail — Fumigated, According to Law — The Sor* rowing Englishman — The Famous Lake Como — Its Scenery — Como Compared with Tahoe — Meeting a Shipmate . . 256

CHAPTER XXI.

The Pretty Lago di Lecco — A Carriage Drive in the Country — A Sleepy Land — Bloody Shrines — The Heart and Home of Priestcraft -— Birthplace of Harlequin — Approaching Venice . 266

CHAPTER XXII.

Night in Venice —The ♦* Gay Gondolier *» — The Grand Fete by Moonlight — The Notable Sights of Venice — The Mother of the Republics Desolate c . o . . . r. o o -. ^ 0 278

Contents

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Famous Gondola — Great Square of St. Mark and Winged Lion — Snobs, at Home and Abroad — Sepulchres of the Great Dead —A Tilt at the " Old Masters " — Moving Again • . 293

CHAPTER XXIV.

rhrough Italy by Rail — Idling in Florence — Wonderful Mossdcs — Tower of Pisa — Ancient Duomo — The Original Pendulmn — A New Holy Sepulchre — Leghorn — Gen. Garibaldi • . . 312

CHAFrER XXV.

Railway Grandeur — The oumptuousness of Mother Church — Mag- nificence and Misery— General Execration— A Good Word for the Priests — Civjta Vecchia the Dismal — Off for Rome . 325

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Grandeu* of IL Peter's — Holy Relics — Grand View from the Dome — llic Holy Inquisition — Monkish Frauds — The Coli- sewi>— Apcient Plav-bill of a Coliseum Performance . » • 338

CHAPTER XXVII.

*• Sutche^^ to Make a Roman Holiday " — An Exasperating Sub- iect— Asinine Guides — The Roman Catacombs — The Saint ytbo Buist his Kibs — Miracle of the Bleeding Heart . . • 3^1

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

\

CHAPTER L

rR months the great Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land was chatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America, and dis- cussed at countless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of excursions — its like had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which attrac- tive novelties always command. It was to be a pic- nic on a gigantic scale. The participants in it, in- stead 01 freighting an ungainly steam ferry-boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and pad« dling up some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out with a long summer day*s laborious frolicking under the impres- sion that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying and cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond tlie broad ocean, m many a strange clime and in many a land renowned in history ! They were to sail for months over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean ; they were to scamper about the decks by day, filling the ship with shouts and laughter — or read novels and poetry in the shade of the smoke-stacks, or watch 4 (45)

46 The innocents Abroad

for the jelly-fish and the nautilus, over the side, and the shark, the whale, and other strange monsters of the deep ; and at night they were to dance in the open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a ball- room that stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bending heavens and lighted by no meaner lamps than the stars and tlie magnificent moon — dance, and promenade, and smoke, and smg, and make love, and search the skies for con- stellations that never associate with the **Big Dipper'* they were so tired of : and they were to see the ships of twenty navies — the customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples — the great cities of half a world — they were to hobnob with nobility and hold friendly converse with kings and princeSf Grand Moguls, and the anointed lords of mighty empires !

It was a brave conception ; it was the offspring of a most ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed it: the bold originality, the extraor- dinary character, the seductive nature, and the vastness of the enterprise provoked comment every- where and advertised it in every household in the land. Who could read the program of the excur- sion without longing to make one of the party? I will insert it here. It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this book, nothing could be betters

The Innocents Abroad 47

EXCURSION TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT, THE CRIMEA, GREECE, AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS OF INTEREST.

Brooklyn, February jst, 1867,

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

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

The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort, includ- ing library and musical instruments.

An experienced physician will be on board.

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

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

From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and France, Marseilles will be reached in three days. Here ample time will be given not only to look over the city, which was founded six hundred years before the Christian era, and its artificial port, the finest of the kind in the Mediterranean, but to visit Paris during the Great Exhibition ; and the beautiful city of Lyons, lying intermediate, from the heights of which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc and the Alps can be distinctly seen. Passengers who may wish to extend the time at Paris can do so, and, passing dovm through Switzerland, rejoin the steamer at Genoa.

From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The excursionists will have an opportunity to look over this, the ''magnificent city of palaces," and visit the birthplace of Columbus, twelve miles off, over a beautiful road built by Napoleon I. From this point, excursions may be made to Milan, Lakes Como and Maggiore, or to Milan, Verona (famous for its extraordinary fortifications), Padua, and Venice. Or, i! passengers desire to visit Pal.taa (famous for Correggio's frescoes) and

48 The Innocents Abroad

Bologna, they can by rail go on to Florence, and rejoin the steamer at Leghorn, thus spending about three weeks amid the cities most famous for art in Italy.

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

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

Rome (by rail), Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Virgil's tomb, and possibly, the ruins of Psestum, can be visited, as well as the beauti- ful surroundings of Naples and its charming bay.

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

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

After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out through the beautiful Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to Sebastopol and Balaklava, a run of about twenty-four hours. Here it is proposed to remain two days, visiting the harbors, fortifications, and battlefields of the Crimea ; thence back through the Bosphorus, touching at Constantinople to take i-"^ any who may have preferred to remain there ; down through the Sea

The Innocents Abroad 49

of Marmora and the Dardanelles, along the coasts of ancient Troy and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which will be reached in two or two and a half days from Constantinople. A sufficient stay will be made here to give opportunity of visiting Ephesus, fifty miles distant by rail.

From Smyrna towards the Holy Land the course will lay through the Grecian Archipelago, close by the Isle of Patmos, along the coast of Asia, ancient Pamphylia, and the Isle of Cyprus. Beirout will be reached in three days. At Beirout time will be given to visit Damascus ; after which the steamer will proceed to Joppa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.

50 The Innocents A'oroad

of the Northeast trade winds, where mild and pleasant weather and a smooth sea can always be expected.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAS. C, DUNCAN,

1 1 7 Wall Street, New York. R. R. G*»****, Treasurer.

Committee on Applications. J. T. H******, Esq., R. R. G******, Esq., C. C. DUNCAN.

The Innocents Abroad 51

Committee on selecting Steamer. Opt. W. W. S******, Surveyor for Board of Underwriters. C. W. C******, Consulting Engineer for U, S, and Cdttada^ J. T. H******, Esq. C. C. DUNCAN.

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

What was there lacking about that program, to make it perfectly irresistible? Nothing, that any finite mind could discover. Paris, England, Scot- land, Switzerland, Italy — Garibaldi! The Grecian archipelago ! Vesuvius ! Constantinople ! Smyrna ! The Holy Land ! Egypt and ** our friends the Ber- mudians " ! People in Europe desiring to join the Excursion — contagious sickness to be avoided — boating at the expense of the ship — physician on board — the circuit of the globe to be made if the passengers unanimously desired it — the company to be rigidly selected by a pitiless ** Committee on Applications" — the vessel to be as rigidly selected by as pitiless a ** Committee on Selecting Steamer.*' Human nature could not withstand these bewildering temptations. I hurried to the Treasurer's office and deposited my ten per cent. I rejoiced to know that a few vacant staterooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal examination into my character, by that bowelless committee, but I referred to all the people of high standing I could think of in the com-

52 The Innocents Abroad

munity who would be least likely to know anything about me.

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

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

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

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was to have accom- panied the expedition, but urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other passengers who could have been spared better, and would have been spared more willingly. Lieutenant-General Sherman was to have been of the party, also.

The Innocents Abroad 53

but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular actress had entered her name on the ship's books, but something interfered, and she couldn't go. The ** Drummer Boy of the Potomac " deserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left!

However, we were to have a ** battery of guns'* from the Navy Department (as per advertisement), to be used in answering royal salutes ; and the docu- ment furnished by the Secretary of the Navy, which was to make *' General Sherman and party" wel- come guests in the courts and camps of the old world, was still left to us, though both document and battery, I think, were shorn of somewhat of their original august proportions. However, had not we the seductive program, still, with its Paris, its Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and * ' our friends the Bermudians ' ' ? What did we care ?

CHAPTER II.

OCCASIONALLY, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall Street to inquhe how the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was com- ing on ; how additions to the passenger list were aver- aging; how many people the committee were de- creeing not ** select,*' every day, and banishing in sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we were to have a little printing-press on board and issue a daily newspaper of our own. I was glad to learn that our piano, our parlor organ, and our melodeon were to be the best instruments of the kind that could be had in the market. I was proud to observe that among our excursionists were three ministers of the gospel, eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military and naval chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop of ** Professors *' of various kinds, and a gentleman who had *' COM- MISSIONER OF THE United States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa*' thundering after his name in one awful blast ! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a back seat in that ship, be- cause of the uncommonly select material that would

(f54>

The Innocents Abroad 55

alone be permitted to pass through the camel's eye of that committee on credentials; I had schooled myself to expect an imposing array of military and naval heroes, and to have to set that back seat still further back in consequence of it, may be; but I state frankly that I was all unprepared for this crusher.

I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said that if that potentate must go over in our ship, why, I supposed he must — but that to my thinking, when the United States consid- ered it necessary to send a dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean, it would be in better taste, and safer, to take him apart and cart him over in sections, in several ships.

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

During that memorable month I basked in the hap- piness of being for once in my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement. Everybody was going to Europe — I, too, was going to Europe. Everybody was going to the famous Paris Exposition — I, too, was going to the Paris Exposition. The steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the various ports of the country at the rate of four or

56 The innocents Abroad

five thousand a week, in the aggregate. If I met a dozen individuals, during that month, who were not going to Europe shortly, I have no distinct remem- brance of it now, I walked about the city a good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, who was booked for the excursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophisticated, companionable; but he was not a man to set the river on fire. He had the most ex- traordinary notions about this European exodus, and came at last to consider the whole nation as packing up for emigration to France. We stepped into a store in Broadway, one day, where he bought a handkerchief, and when the man could not make change, Mr. B. said :

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

** But I am not going to Paris,"

** How is — what did I understand you to say? ''

** I said I am not going to Paris.'*

** Not going to Paris f Not g — well then., where in the nation are you going to? "

'* Nowhere at all."

** Not anywhere whatsoever? — not anyplace on earth but this?"

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

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

The Innocents Abroad 57

In the fullness of time the ship was ready to re- ceive her passengers. I was introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my room-mate, and found him to be intelligent, cheerful of spirit, un- selfish, full of generous impulses, patient, consider- ate, and wonderfully good-natured. Not any passenger that sailed in the Quaker City will with- hold his endorsement of what I have just said. We selected a stateroom forward of the wheel, on the starboard side, *' below decks.** It had two berths in it, a dismal dead-light, a sink with a wash-bowl in it, and a long sumptuously cushioned locker, which was to do service as a sofa — partly, and partly as a hiding place for our things. Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat in, at least with entire security to the cat. However, the room was large, for a ship*s stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory.

The vessel was appointed to sail on a certain Sat-i urday early in June.

A little after noon, on that distinguished Saturday, 3 reached the ship and went on board. All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen that remark be- fore, somewhere.] The pier was crowded with car- riages and men ; passengers were arriving and hurry- ing on board ; the vessel's decks were encumbered with trunks and valises ; groups of excursionists, arrayed in unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain and looking as droopv and woe-begone as so many molting chick°

58 The Innocents Abroad

ens The gallant flag was up, but it was under the spell, too, and hung limp and disheartened by the mast. Altogether, it was the bluest, bluest spectacle ! It was a pleasure excursion — there was no gainsay- ing that, because the program said so — it was so nominated in the bond — but it surely hadn't the general aspect of one.

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

We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor It was still raining. And not only raining, but storming. '* Outside** we could see, ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must lie still, in the calm harbor, till the storm should abate. Our passengers hailed from fifteen states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before; manifestly it would not do to pit them against a full- blown tempest until they had got their sea-legs on. Towards evening the two steam tugs that had accom- panied us with a rollicking champagne party of young New Yorkers on board who wished to bid farewell to one of our number in due and ancient form, de-

The Innocents Abroad 59

parted, and we were alone on the deep. On deep five fathoms, and anchored fast to the bottom. And out in the solemn rain, at that. This was pleasure ing with a vengeance.

It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for prayer-meeting. The first Saturday night of any other pleasure excursion might have been devoted to whist and dancing ; but I submit it to the unpreju- diced mind if it would have been in good taste for us to engage in such frivolities, considering what we had gone through and the frame of mind we were in. We would have shone at a wake, but not at anything more festive.

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

CHAPTER III.

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

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

I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly peo- ple— I might almost say, so many venerable people. A glance at the long lines of heads was apt to make one think it was all gray. But it was not. There was a tolerably fair sprinkling of yojmg folks, and

<6o>

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another fair sprinkling of gentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither actually old or absolutely young.

The next morning, we weighed anchor and went to sea. It was a great happiness to get away, after this dragging, dispiriting delay. I thought there never was such gladness in the air before, such brightness in the sun, such beauty in the sea. I was satisfied with the picnic, then, and with all its belong- ings. All my malicious instincts were dead within me ; and as America faded out of sight, I think a spirit of charity rose up in their place that was as bound- less, for the time being, as the broad ocean that was heaving its billows about us. I wished to express my feelings — I wished to lift up my voice and sing, but I did not know anything to sing, and so I was obliged to give up the idea. It was no loss to the ship though, perhaps.

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

By some happy fortune I was not seasick That

6a The iKmocents Abroad

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

'* Good morning, sir. It is a line day.**

He put his hand on his stomach and said, **0/if my!** and then staggered away and fell over the coop of a skylight.

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

" Calm yourself, sir — There is no hurry. It is a fine day, sir.**

He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said '^OA, my! ** and reeled away.

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

** Good morning, sir. It is a fine day for pleasur- ing. You were about to say **

*' O/i, my!**

I thought so. I anticipated Mm, anyhow. I stayed there and was bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour, perhaps ; and all I got out of any of them was ** 0/i^ myV*

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I went away, then, in a thoughtful mood I said.- this is a good pleasure excursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but still they are sociable. I like those old people, but somehow they all seem to have the ** Oh, my '* rather bad

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

I picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon. At one time I was climbing up the quarter-deck when the vessel's stern was in the sky; I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfort- able. Somebody ejaculated :

** Come, now, that won't answer o Read the sign up there — No SMOKING ABAFT THE WHEEL!"

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

•• Ah, ah — hands off! Come out of that!*'

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

64 The Innocents Abroad

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

**It's Captain Bursley — executive officer — -sail' ing master.**

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

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

I went back and found the deck-sweep :

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

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

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

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

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

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

*' It's Captain Jones, sir — the chief mate.**

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

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

I went below — meditating, and a little down- hearted. I thought, if five cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a pleasure ex- cursiorio 5

CHAPTER IV.

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

At seven bells the first gong rang ; at eight there was breakfast, for such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people walked arm

(66)

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in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves up in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until luncheon, and from luncheon until dinner at six in the evening, the employments and amusements were various. Some reading was done ; and much smoking and sewing, though not by the same parties ; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked after and wondered at ; strange ships had to be scrutinized through opera-glasses, and sage de- cisions arrived at concerning them ; and more than that, everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was run up and politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of those strangers ; in the smoking-room there were always parties of gentlemen playing euchre, draughts, and dominoes, especially dominoes, that delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck, ** for'rard " — for'rard of the chicken coops and the cattle — we had what was called ** horse-billiards.'* Horse-billiards is a fine game. It affords good, active exercise, hilarityp and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of ** hop-scotch" and shuffle-board played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch diagram is marked out on the deck with chalk, and each compartment num- bered. You stand off three or four steps, with some broad wooden disks before you on the deck, and these you send forward with a vigorous thrust of a

68 The Innocents Abroad

long crutch. If a disk stops on a chalk line, it does not count anything. If it stops in division No. 7, it counts 7; in 5, it counts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play at a time. That game would be very simple, played on a stationary floor, but with us, to play it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling of the ship to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for a heel to the right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was that that disk missed the whole hop-scotch plan a yard or two, and then there was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.

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

By 7 o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour's promenade on the upper deck fol- lowed ; then the gong sounded and a large majority of the party repaired to the after cabin (upper) a handsome saloon fifty or sixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the ** Syna- gogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the ** Plymouth Collection,'* and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor organ music when the sea was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without being lashed to his chair.

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

One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid 70ung fellow with a head full of good sense, and a

fO The Innocents Abroad

pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in the way of length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress every morning in the most glow- ing and spirited way, and say :

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

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

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

*• No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thou- sand dollars — when you get it done.*'

**Do you? — no, but do you think it will, though?*'

* Yes, it will be worth at least as much as 9

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thousand dollars — when you get it done. Maybe^ more.'*

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

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

** Now I'll go and stroll around the caf^s awhile. Jack, and give you a chance to write up your jour- nal, old fellow.'*

His countenance lost its fire. He said :

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

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

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

His experience was only the experience of th*'

72 rhe Innocents Abroad

majority of that industrious night-school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a heartless and malig- nant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.

A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists amused and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which met in the writing-school after prayers and read aloud about the countries we were approaching, and discussed the information so obtained.

Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic lantern exhibition. His views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two home pictures among them. He advertised that he would '* open his performance in the after cabin at * two bells' (9 p. m.), and show the passengers where they shall eventually arrive ' ' — which was all very well, but by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out upon the canvas was a view of Greenwood Cemetery!

On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the awnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by hanging a number of ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music consisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little asthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong ; a clarinet which was a little unreliable on the high keys and rather melancholy on the low ones; and a disrepu-

The innocents Abroad 73

table accordion that had a leak somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked — a more elegant term does not occur to me just now. However, the dancing was infinitely worse than the music. When the ship rolled to starboard the whole platoon of dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in mass at the rail; and when it rolled to port, they went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun around precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went skurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go overboard. The Virginia reelj as performed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw be- fore, and was as full of interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth es- capes to the participant. We gave up dancing, finally.

We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary, with toasts, speeches, a poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea that hadn't a mock trial on board. The purser was ac- cused of stealing an overcoat from stateroom No„ 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks, a crier of the court, constables, sheriffs; counsel for the state and for the defendant; witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much challengingo The witnesses were stupid and unreliable and contradic- tory, as witnesses always arCo The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and vindictively abusive of

74 The Innocents Abroad

each other, as was characteristic and proper. The case was at last submitted, and duly finished by the judge with an absurd decision and a ridiculous sentence.

The acting of charades was tried, on several even- ings, by the young gentlemen and ladies, in the cabinsj and proved the most distinguished success of all the amusement experimentSo

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

We all enjoyed ourselves — I think I can safely say that, but it was in a rather quiet way. We very^ very seldom played the piano ; we played the flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was of it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune — how well I remember it — I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We never played either the melodeon or the organ, except at devotions — but I am too fast; young Albert did know part of a tune — something about ** O Something-Or-Other How Sweet it is to Know that he's his What*s-his-Name'* (I do not remember the exact title of it, but it was very plain- tive, and full of sentiment), Albert played that pretty much all the time, until we contracted with him to restrain himself. But nobody ever sang by moonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational singing at church and prayers was not of a superior order of architecture. J. put up with it as long as J

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could, and then joined in and tried to improve it, but this encouraged young George to join in, too, and that made a failure of it; because George's voice was just ** turning," and when he was singing a dismal sort of bass, it was apt to fly off the handle and startle everybody with a most discordant cackle on the upper notes. George didn't know the tunes, either, which was also a drawback to his perform- ances. I said:

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

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

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

There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing head winds to our distress- ing choir music. There were those who said openly that it was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music going on, even when it was at its best; and that to exaggerate the crime by letting George help, was simply flying in the face of Providence. These said that the choir would keep up their lacer- ating attempts at melody until they would bring down a storm some day that would sink the ship.

76 The Innocents Abroad

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

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

CHAPTER V.

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

78 The Innocents Abroad

every day to keep along with the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had left behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place, and remained always the same.

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

**This thing's a swindle!"

"What's a swindle?"

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

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n

i^ut what does it signify? When you hear thera eight bells you'll find her just about ten minutes short of her score, sure."

The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would gOp and the watch was ** on its best gait," and so noth- ing was left him but to fold his hands and see the ship beat the racec We sent him to the captain, and he explained to him the mystery of **ship time," and set his troubled mind at rest. This young man asked a great many questions about seasickness before we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were, and how he was to tell when he had it. He found out.

We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, etc., of course, and by and by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular list of sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant carmine color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly, that spreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot or two long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an accomplished sailor, and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when a storm threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely and goes down when a gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in good sailing '>rder by turning over and dipping it in the water fpf

80 The )(nnocents Abroad

a moment. Seamen say the nautilus is only found in these waters between the 35 th and 45 th parallels of latitude.

At three o'clock on the morning of the 21st of June we were awakened and notified that the Azores islands were in sighto I said I did not take any interest in islands at three o'clock in the morn- ing. But another persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally believing that the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in peace, I got up and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half o'clock now, and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were huddled about the smoke stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all were wrapped in wintry costumes, and looking sleepy and unhappy in the pitiless gale and the drenching spray.

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

The Innocents Abroad ' 3i

shade between. It was the aurora boreah's of the frozen pole exiled to a summer land !

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

But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm came up about noon that so tossed and pitched the ves?el that common sense dictated a run fcr shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest island of the group — Fayal (the people there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the accent on the first syllable). We anchored in the open roadstead of Horta, half a mile from the shore. The town has eight thousand to ten thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphi- theater of hills which are three hundred to sevea 6*

82 tlie Innocents Abroad

hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear to their summits — not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every acre is cut up into little square in- closures by stone walls, whose duty it is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales that blow there. These hundreds of green squares, marked by their black lava walls, make the hills look like, vast checker-boards.

The islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has Portuguese characteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of swarthy, noisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese boatmen, with brass rings in their ears, and fraud in their hearts, climbed the ship's sides, and various parties of us contracted with them to take us ashore at so much a head, silver coin of any country. We landed under the walls of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve and thirty- two pounders, which Horta considered a most formidable institution, but if we were ever to get after it with one of our tur- reted monitors, they would have to move it out in the country if they wanted it where they could go and find it again when they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one — men and women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, un- combed and unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession, beggars. They trooped after us, and never more, while we tarried in Fayal, did we get rid of them. We walked up the middle of the prin- cipal streets and these vermin surrounded us on all

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sides, and glared upon us; and every moment ex- cited couples shot ahead of the procession to get a good look back, just as village boys do when they accompany the elephant on his advertising trip from street to street. It was very flattering to me to be part of the material for such a sensation. Here and there in the doorways we saw women, with fashion- able Portuguese hoods on. This hood is of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness. It stands up high, and spreads far abroad, and is unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is hidden away in it like the man's who prompts the singers from his tin shed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about this monstrous capote^ as they call it — it is just a plain, ugly dead-blue mass of sail, and a woman can't go within eight points of the wind with one of them on ; she has to go before the wind or not at all. The general style of the capote is the same in all the islands, and will remain so for the next ten thousand years, but each island shapes its capotes just enough differently from the others to enable an observer to tell at a glance what particular island a lady hails from.

The Portuguese pennies or reis (pronounced rays) are prodigious. It takes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial estimates are made in reis. We did not know this until after we had found it out through Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so grateful to be on solid land once more, tha^

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he wanted to give a feast — said he had heard it was a cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He invited nine of us, and we ate an ex- cellent dinner at the principal hotel. In the midst of the jollity produced by good cigars, good wine, and passable anecdotes, the landlord presented his bill, Blucher glanced at it and his countenance fell. He took another look to assure himself that his senses had not deceived him, and then read the items aloud, in a faltering voice, while the roses in his cheeks turned to ashes:

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

*** Twenty-five cigars, at lOO reis, 2,500 reis!' Oh, my sainted mother!'*

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

*** Total, TWENTY-ONE thousand seven hun- dred reis!* The suffering Moses! — there ain't money enough in the ship to pay that bill ! Go — leave me to my misery, boys, I am a ruined com- munityc**

I think it was the blankest looking party I ever saw. Nobody could say a word. It was as if every soul had been stricken dumb. Wine glasses de- scended slov/ly to the table, their contents untasted. Cigars dropped unnoticed from nerveless fingers. Each man sought his neighbor's eye, but found in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At last the ^fearful silence was broken < The shadow of a des

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perate resolve settled upon Blucher*s countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and said:

^* Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'D. never, never stand it. Here's a hundred and iifty dollars, sir, and it's all you'll get — I'll swim in blood, before I'll pay a cent more."

Our spirits rose and the landlord's fell — at least we thought so ; he was confused at any rate, not- withstanding he had not understood a word that had been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to Blucher several times, and then went out. He must have visited an American, for, when he returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language that a Christian could understand — thus:

10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or . ♦ . . $6.00

25 cigars, 2,500 reis, or . • • , 2.50 .

11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or • • • 13.20

Total 21,700 reis, or . • . , . $21.70

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

CHAPTER VL

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

The community is eminently Portuguese — that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by the King of Portugal; and also a military governor, who can assume supreme control and suspend the civil gov- ernment at his pleasure. The islands contain a population of about 200,000, almost entirely Portu- guese. Everything is staid and settled, for the country was one hundred years old when Columbus discovered America. The principal crop is corn, and they raise it and grind it just as their great-great-

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great-grandfathers did. They plow with a board slightly shod with iron ; their trifling little harrows are drawn by men and women; small windmills grind the corn, ten bushels a day, and there is one assistant superintendent to feed the mill and a gen- eral superintendent to stand by and keep him from going to sleep. When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys, and actually turn the whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are in proper position, instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could be moved instead of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after the fashion pre- valent in the time of Methuselah. There is not a wheelbarrow in the land — they carry everything on their heads, or on donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of wood and whose axles turn with the wheel. There is not a modern plow in the islands, or a threshing-machine., All attempts to introduce them have failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before him. The climate is mild ; they never have snow or ice, and I saw no chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women, and children of a family, all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged by vermin, and are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the stranger, and are desper- ately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their dead. The latter trait shows how littie better

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they are than the donkeys they eat and sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese in the camp are the half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the soldiers of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to twenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as much. They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this makes them rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the islands, and an excellent wine was made and exported. But a disease killed all the vines fifteen years ago, and since that time no wine has been made. The islands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is necessarily very rich. Nearly every foot of ground is under cultivation, and two or three crops a year of each article are produced, but nothing is exported save a few oranges- — chiefly to England. Nobody comes here, and nobody goes away. News is a thing unknown in FayaL A thirst for it is a passion equally un- known. A Portuguese of average intelligence in- quired if our civil war v/as over? because, he said, somebody had told him it was — or, at least, it ran in his mind, that somebody had told him something like that! And when a passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the Tribune^ the Herald, and TimeSy he was surprised to find later news in them from Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly steamer. He was told that it came by cable. He said he knew they had tried to lay a cable ten years ago?, but it had

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been In his mind, somehow, that they hadn't succeeded !

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

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

The great altar of the cathedral, and also three or four minor ones, are a perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm of rusty,, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filigree work, some on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and some with two

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or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left to blow — -all of them crippled and dis- couraged, and fitter subjects for the hospital than the cathedral.

The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures of almost life size, very elegantly wrought, and dressed in the fanciful cos- tumes of two centuries agOc The design was a his- tory of something or somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the storyc The old father, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told us if he could have risen. But he didn't,^

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

We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or i

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canter, but a stampede, and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were necessary. There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers beside, and they banged the donkeys with their goad-sticks, and pricked them with their spikes, and shouted something that sounded Hke *' Sekki-yah /" and kept up a din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam itself. These rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they were always up to time — they can outrun and outlast a donkey. Altogether ours was a lively and picturesque pro- cession, and drew crowded audiences to the balconies wherever we went.

Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered zigzag across the road and the others ran into him ; he scraped Blucher against carts and the corners of houses ; the road was fenced in with high stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and then on the other, but never once took the middle ; he finally came to the house he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off at the doorway. After re- mounting, Blucher said to the muleteer, ** Now, that's enough, you know; you go slow hereafter." But the fellow knew no English and did not under- stand, so he simply said, *'*' Sekki-yah T* and the donkey was off again like a shot. He turned a corner suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in ?

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heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after the catastrophe, and waited for their dismembered sad- dles to be patched up and put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry, and wanted to swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so also, and let off a series of brays that drowned all other sounds.

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

The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an island with only a handful of people in it — 25,000 — and yet such fine roads do not exist in the United States outside of Central Park. Every- where you go, in any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare, just sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters neatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or com- pactly paved ones like Broadway, They talk much of the Russ pavement in New York, and call it a new invention — yet here they have been using it in this remote little isle of the sea for two hundred years ! Every street in Horta is handsomely -paved with the heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and true as a floor— -not marred by holes like Broadway And every road is fenced in by tall,

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solid lava walls, which will last a thousand years in this land where frost is unknown. They are very thick, and are often plastered and whitewashed, and capped with projecting slabs of cut stone. Trees from gardens above hang their swaying tendril? down, and contrast their bright green with the white- wash or the black lava of the walls, and make them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch across these narrow roadways sometimes, and so shut out the sun that you seem to be riding through a tunnel. The pavements, the roads, and the bridges are all government work.

The bridges are of a single span — a single arch — of cut stone, without a support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebble work. Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, — and all of them tasteful and handsome — and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those marvelous pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever roads and streets, and the outsides of houses, were perfectly free from any sign or semblance of dirt or dust or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it is Horta, it is Fayal. The lower classes of the people, in their persons and their domiciles, are not clean — but there it stops — the town and the island are miracles of cleanliness.

We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion, and the irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through the main street, goading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting " Sekki-yah^**

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and singing **John Brown's Body** in ruinous English.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII.

SWEEK of buffeting a tempestuous and relent- less sea ; a week of seasickness and deserted cabins ; of lonely quarter-decks drenched with spray — spray so ambitious that it even coated the smoke stacks thick with a white crust of salt to their very tops ; a week of shivering in the shelter of the life- boats and deck-houses by day, and blowing suffo- cating "clouds" and boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking-room at night.

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

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and lit up the faces of the men with a ghastly luster !

Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoid- ing the night winds and the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on the ocean. And once out — once where they could see the ship struggling in the strong grasp of the storm — once where they could hear the shriek of the winds, and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic picture the lightnings dis- closed, they were prisoners to a fierce fascination they could not resist, and so remained. It was a wild night — -and a very, very long one.

Everybody was sent scampering to the deck at seven o'clock this lovely morning of the 30th of June with the glad news that land was in sight ! It was a rare thing and a joyful, to see all the ship's family abroad once more, albeit the happiness that sat upon every countenance could only partly con- ceal the ravages which that long siege of storms had wrought there. But dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks flushed again, and frames weakened by sickness gathered new life from the quickening influences of the bright, fresh morning. Yea, and from a still more potent influence: the worn castaways were to see the blessed land again !

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— and to see it was to bring back that mother-land that was in all their thoughts.

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

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

The picture, on the other hand, was very beauti- ful to eyes weary of the changeless sea, and by and by the ship's company grew wonderfully cheerful. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the low^lands robed in misty gloom, a finer picture burst upon us and chained every eye like a magnet — a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas

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till she was one towering mass of bellying sail ! She came speeding over the sea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was for the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed, she swept superbly by and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze ! Quicker than thought, hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up ! She was beautiful before — she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then for the first time how tame a sight his country's flag is at home compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood !

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

In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing seemingly in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on all sides by the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no

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tedious traveled parrot to tell us it was Gibraltarc There could not be two rocks like that in one king- dom.

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

** Are you going through Spain to Paris?" That question was bandied about the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again, or more tired of answering, ** I don't know.*'

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At the last moment six or seven had sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did go, and I felt a sense of relief at once — it was forever too late, now, and I could make up my mind at my leisure, not to go. I must have a pro- digious quantity of mind ; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.

But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. IVe had no sooner gotten rid of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another — a tire- some repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing about it, even in the first place: **That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because one of the queens of Spain placed her chair there when the French and Spanish troops were be- sieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day, she'd have had to break her oath or die up there."

We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These gal- leries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in them great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery guns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but

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they might as well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the perpendicular wall oi the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford superb views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was hollowed out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and whose windows were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far away, and a soldier said :

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

On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no doubt the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it. The view from the narrow ledge was magnifi- cent; from it vessels seeming like the tiniest little toy boats, were turned into noble ships by the tele- scopes ; and other vessels that were fifty miles away, and even sixty, they said, and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distinguished through those same telescopes. Below, on one side, we looked down upon an endless mass of batteries, and on the other straight down to the sea.

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

**Senor, that high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair '*

** Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me. Don*t — now don't inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me any more to- day!'*

There — I had used strong language, after prom- ising I would never do , so again ; but the provoca- tion was more than human nature could bear. If you had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa and the blue Mediter- ranean spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze, and enjoy, and surfeit yourself with its beauty in silence, you might have even burst into stronger language than I did.

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

The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town, with moss- grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in battles and sieges that are forgotten now.

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A secret chamber, in the rock behind it, was dis- covered some time ago, which contained a sword of exquisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman. Roman armor and Roman relics, of various kinds, have been found in a cave in the sea extremity of Gibraltar ; history says Rome held this part of the country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the statement.

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

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Gibraltar — but not elsewhere in Spain ! The sub- ject is an interesting one.

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

Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people among us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the Oracle in that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an inno« cent old ass who eats for four and looks wiser than the v/hole Academy of France would have any right

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to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of any long word he uses, or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject, and back it up complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has been there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken arguments, only with the big words all tangled, and play them in your very teeth as original with himself. He reads a chapter in the guide books, mixes the facts all up, with his bad memory, and then goes off to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom which has been festering in his brain for years, and which he gathered in college from erudite authors who are dead now and out of print. This morning at break- fast he pointed out of the window, and said :

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

* * The ultimate one — that is a good word — but the Pillars are not both on the same side of the strait." (I saw he had been deceived by a care- lessly written sentence in the Guide Book.)

**Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it that way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don't say nothing about

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it, — just shirks it complete — Gibbons always done that when he got stuck — but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, he says that they was both on the same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and Langomarganbl "

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

We don't mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the Oracle very easily ; but we have a poet and a good-natiired, enterprising idiot on board, and they do distress the company. The one gives copies of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch, — to anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly meant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwithstanding when he wrote an ** Ode to the Ocean in a Storm" in one half-hour, and an ''Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the Ship " in the next, the transition was considered to be rather abrupt ; but when he sends an invoice of rhymes to the governor of Fayal and another to the commander-in-chief and other dignitaries in Gib- raltar, with the compliments of the Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers.

The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not bright, not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, some day, if he recollects the answers to all his questions. He is known about

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the ship as the "Interrogation Point," and this by constant use has become shortened to "Interroga- tion." He has distinguished himself twice already. In Fayal they pointed out a hill and told him it was eight hundred feet high and eleven hundred feet long. And they told him there was a tunnel two thousand feet long and one thousand feet high run- ning through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He repeated it to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes. Finally, he took a useful hint from this remark which a thoughtful old pilgrim made:

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

Here in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers and badgers them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can perform. He told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock Gibraltar into the Mediter- ranean sea!

At this present moment, half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half the list of white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than that we are enjo)dng ourselves. One cannot do other- wise who speeds over these sparkling waters, and

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breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny land. Care cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction.

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

I suppose we really d9 not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to help him ; but they said no ; he had nothing to do but hold the place, and he was competent to do that; had done it two years already. That was evidence which one could not <vell refute. There is nothing like reputation.

Every now and then, my glove purchase in Gib- raltar last night intrudes itself upon me. Dan and the ship's surgeon and I had been up to the great square, listening to the music of the fine military bands, and contemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and, at 9 o'clock, were on our way to the theater, when we met the General, the Judge, the Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of the United States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, who had been

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to the Club House, to register their several titles and impoverish the bill of fare ; and they told us to go over to the little variety store, near the Hall of Justice, and buy some kid gloves. They said they were elegant, and very moderate in price. It seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid gloves, and we acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the store offered me a pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she said they would look very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched me tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem rather a comely member. I tried a glove on my left, and blushed a little. Manifestly i;he size A^as too small for me. But I felt gratified when she said :

•* Oh, it is just right!" — yet I knew it was no such thing.

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

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

It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on the buckskin article perfectly, I made another effort, and tore the glove from the base of the thumb into the paln^ot the hand — and tried to hide the rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve them or die :

** Ah, you have had experience!'* [A rip down

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

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

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

It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill, and as I passed out with a fascinating bow, I thought I detected a light in the woman's eye that was gently ironical ; and when I looked back from the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, I said to myself, with withering sarcasm, ** Oh, certainly; you know how to put on kid gloves, don't you?- — a self- complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your

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senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the trouble to do it!"

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

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

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

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

Dan soliloquized, after a pause:

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII.

'"pHIS IS royal ! Let those who went up through 1 Spain make the best of it — these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present. Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but alv/ays with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign — foreign from top to bottom — foreign from center to circumference — foreign inside and outside and all around — nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness — nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo ! in Tangier we have found it. Here is not the slight- est thing that ever we have seen save in pictures — and we always mistrusted the pictures before. We can not any more. The pictures used to seem ex- aggerations — they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But behold, they were not wild enough — 8. (113)

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they were not fanciful enough — they have not told half the story, Tangier is a foreign land if ever there was one ; and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save the Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city inclosed in a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the houses nearly are one and two story ; made of thick walls of stone ; plastered outside ; square as a dry-goods box ; flat as a floor on top ; no cornices ; white- washed all over — a crowded city of snowy tombs ! And the doors are arched with a peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures ; the floors are laid in vari- colored diamond flags ; in tessellated many-colored porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad bricks that time cannot wear ; there is no furniture in the rooms (of Jewish dwel- lings) save divans — what there is in Moorish ones no man may know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the streets are ori- ental— some of them three feet wide, some six, but only two that are over a dozen ; a man can blockade the most of them by extending his body across them. Isn't it an oriental picture?

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

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

And their dresses are strange beyond all descrip- tion. Here is a bronzed Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket, gold and crim- son sash of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist, trowsers that only come a little below his knee, and yet have twenty yards of stuff in them, ornamented scimetar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow slippers, and gun of preposterous length — a mere soldier ! — I thought he was the Emperor at least. And here are aged Moors with flowing white beards, and long white robes with vast cowls; and Bedouins with long, cowled, striped cloaks, and negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven, except a kinky scalp-lock back of the ear, or rather up on the after corner of the skull, and all sorts of bar- barians in all sorts of weird costumes, and all more or less ragged. And here are Moorish women who are enveloped from head to foot in coarse white robes and whose sex can only be determined by the fact that they only leave one eye visible, and never look at men of their own race, or are looked at by them in public. Here are five thousand Jews in blue gaberdines, sashes about their waists, slippers upon their feet, little skull-caps upon the backs of their heads, hair combed down on the forehead, and cut straight across the middle of it from side to side —

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the self-same fashion their Tangier ancestors have worn for I don*t know how many bewildermg cen- turies. Their feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked alike. They all resemble each other so much that one could almost believe they were of one family. Their women are plump and pretty, and do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree comforting.

What a funny old town it is ! It seems like pro- fanation to laugh and jest and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only the stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet are suited to a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall that was old when Columbus discovered America; was old when Peter the Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first Crusade ; was old when Charlemagne and his paladins be- leaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden time ; was old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth ; stood where it stands to-day when the lips of Memnon were vocal, and men bought and sold in the streets of ancient Thebes I

The Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the English, Moors, Romans, all have battled for Tangier — all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged, oriental- looking negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling his goat-skin with water from a stained %j[id battered fountain built by the Romans twelve

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hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the infant Saviour in the Virgin's arms have stood upon it, may be.

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

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

**We are the Canaanites. We are they that have been driven out of the land of Canaan by the Jewish robber, Joshua."

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

Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion-skin, landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he met Anytus, the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the fashion among gen- tlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called

118 The Innocents Abroad

Tingis, then) lived in the rudest possible huts, and dressed in skins and carried clubs, and were as sav- age as the wild beasts they were constantly obliged to war with. But they were a gentlemanly race, and did no work. They lived on the natural pro- ducts of the land. Their king's country residence was at the famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the coast from here. The garden, with Its golden apples (oranges), is gone now — no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times, and agree that he was an enterprising and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good, bona fide god, because that would be unconstitu* tional.

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

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

The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an ordinary shower-bath in a civilized land. The Mohammedan merchant, tinman, shoemaker, or ven- der of trifles, sits cross-legged on the floor, and

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reaches after any article you may want to buy. You can rent a whoie block of these pigeon-holes for fifty dollars a month. The market people crowd the market-place with their baskets of figs, dates, melons, apricots, etc., and among them file trains of laden asses, not much larger, if any, than a Newfoundland dog. The scene is lively, is picturesque, and smells like a police court. The Jewish money-changers have their dens close at hand ; and all day long are counting bronze coins and transferring them from one bushel basket to another. They don't coin much money now-a-days, I think. I saw none but what was dated four or five hundred years back, and was badly worn and battered. These coins are not very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have money suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said he had ** swamped the bank; had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head of the firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the change.** I bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shil- ling myself. I am not proud on account of having so much money, though. I care nothing for wealth. The Moors have some small silver coins, and also some silver slugs worth a dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce — so much so that when poor ragged Arabs see one they beg to be allowed to kiss it. They have also a small gold coin worth two dol- lars. And that reminds me of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers carry

1^0 The Innocents Abroad

letters through the country, and charge a liberal postage. Every now and then they fall into the hands of marauding bands and get robbed. There- fore, warned by experience, as soon as they have collected two dollars' worth of money they exchange it for one of those little gold pieces, and when rob- bers come upon them, swallow it. The stratagem was good while it was unsuspected, but after that the marauders simply gave the sagacious United States mail an emetic and sat down to wait.

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

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

CHAPTER IX.

ABOUT the first adventure we had yesterday after- noon, after landing here, came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just mounted some mules and asses, and started out under the guardian- ship of the stately, the princely, the magnificent Hadji Mohammed Lamarty (may his tribe increase !), when we came upon a fine Moorish mosque, with tall tower, rich with checker-work of many-colored por- celain, and every part and portion of the edifice adorned with the quaint architecture of the Alham- bra, and Blucher started to ride into the open door- way. A startling '*Hi-hi ! '* from our camp follow- ers, and a loud '* Halt! " from an English gentle- man in the party, checked the adventurer, and then we were informed that so dire a profanation is it for a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred threshold of a Moorish mosque, that no amount of purification can ever make it fit for the faithful to pray in again. Had Blucher succeeded in entering the place, he would no doubt have been chased through the town and stoned ; and the time has been, and not many years ago either, when a Christian would have been

(121)

122 The Innocents Abroad

most ruthlessly slaughtered, if captured in a mosque. We caught a glimpse of the handsome tessellated pavements within, and of the devotees performing their ablutions at the fountains; but even that we took that glimpse was a thing not relished by the Moorish bystanders.

Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order. The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been long since there was an artificer among them capable of curing so delicate a patient as a debilitated clock. The great men of the city met in solemn conclave to con- sider how the difficulty was to be met. They dis- cussed the matter thoroughly but arrived at no solu- tion. Finally, a patriarch arose and said :

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

And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the inside of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his natural character. We visited the jail, and found Moorish prisoners making mats and baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of civilization.) Murder is punished with death. A short time ago three mur

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123

derers were taken beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are not good, and neither are Moorish marksmen. In this instance, they set up the poor criminals at long range, like so many targets, and practiced on them — kept them hopping about and dodging bullets for half an hour before they man- aged to drive the center.

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

Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it. There are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting in dim parlors, no lovers* quarrels and reconciliations — no nothing that is proper to approaching matrimony. The young man takes the girl his father selects for him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees her for the first time. If, after due acquaintance, she suits him, he retains her; but if he suspects hef purity, he bundles her back to her father; if he finds her diseased, the same; or if, after just and reason

124 The Innocents Abroad

able time is allowed her, she neglects to bear chil- dren, back she goes to the home of her childhood.

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

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

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

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

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

They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Mohammedan's comes on Friday, the Jew's on Saturday, and that of the Christian Consuls on Sun- day. The Jews are the most radical. The Moor

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goes to his mosque about noon on his Sabbath, as on any other day, removes his shoes at the door, performs his ablutions, makes his salaams, pressing his forehead to the pavement time and again, says his prayers, and goes back to his work.

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

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

Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together the ten dollars their steamer passage costs; and when one of them gets back he

126 'fhe Knnocents Abroad

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

Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is, that Spain sends her heaviest ships of war and her loudest guns to astonish these Moslems; while America, and other nations, send only a little contemptible tub of a gunboat occasionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn by what they see ; not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish minister makes a de- mand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be just or not.

Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a disputed piece of property opposite Gib- raltar, and captured the citv of Tetouan. She com*

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

When we went to call on our American Consul- general, to-day, I noticed that all possible games for parlor amusement seemed to be represented on his center-tables. I thought that hinted at lonesome- ?iess. The idea was correct. His is the only American family in Ta/igier, There are many

128 The Innocents Abroad

foreign Consuls in this place ; but much visiting is not indulged in. Tangier is clear out of the world, and what is the use of visiting when people have nothing on earth to talk about? There is none. So each consul's family stays at home chiefly, and amuses itself as best it can. Tangier is full of inter- est for one day, but after that it is a weary prison. The consul-general has been here five years, and has got enough of it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His family seize upon their letters and papers when the mail arrives, read them over and over again for two days or three, talk them over and over again for two or three more, till they wear them out, and after that, for days together, they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades of centuries have scarcely changed, and say never a single word ! They have literally nothing whatever to talk about. The arrival of an American man-of-war is a godsend to them. * * Oh, solitude, where are the charms which sages have seen in thy face?" It is the completest exile that I can conceive of. I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law pro- vides no adequate punishment for it, they make him consul-general to Tangier.

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

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

9

CHAPTER X.

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

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

He said: **Well, that's gorgis, ain*t it! They don't have none of them things in our parts, do they? I consider that them effects is on account of the superior refragability, as you may say, of the

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sun's diramic combination with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of Jubiter. What should you think?"

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

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

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

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

The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme, and went below.

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

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all them old ancient philosophers, was down on poets '*

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

That was the way to flatter the doctor. He con- sidered it a sort of acknowledgment on my part of a fear to argue with him. He was always persecuting the passengers with abstruse propositions framed in language that no man could understand, and they endured the exquisite torture a minute or two and then abandoned the field. A triumph like this, over half a dozen antagonists, was sufficient for one day; from that time forward he would patrol the decks beaming blandly upon all comers, and so tranquilly, blissfully happy !

But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got cur information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent aloft, except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the ship below, and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday ap- pearance. During the morning, meetings were held jmd all manner of committees set to work on the

1lie Iniidcents Abroad 13}

celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon the ship*^ company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings ; the flute, the asthmatic melodeon, and the consump- tive clarinet, crippled the Star Spangled Banner, the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and "slaughtered it. Nobody mourned.

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

At dinner in the evening, a well-written original poem was recited with spirit by one of the ship's captains, and thirteen regular toasts were washed down with several baskets of champagne. The

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speeches were bad — execrable, almost without ex- ception. In fact, without any exception, but one. Captain Duncan made a good speech ; he made the only good speech of the evening. He said:

•' Ladies and Gentlemen; — May we all live to a green old age, and be prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne."

It was regarded as a very able effort.

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

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

There were no stages out, and we could not get on the pier from the ship. It was annoying. We were full of enthusiasm — we wanted to see France ! Just at nightfall our party of three contracted with a waterman for the privilege of using his boat as a bridge — its stern was at our companion ladder and its bow touched the pier. We got in and the fellow backed out into the harbor. I told him in French that all we wanted was to walk over his thwarts and

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step ashore, and asked him what he went away out there for? He said he could not understand me. I repeated. Still, he could not understand. He ap- peared to be very ignorant of French. The doctor tried him, but he could not understand the doctor* I asked this boatman to explain his conduct, which he did; and then I couldn't understand him, Dan said:

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

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

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

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

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

This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further criticism from the disaffected mem- ber. We coasted past the sharp bows of a navy of

.-'^

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great steamships, and stopped at last at a govern- ment building on a stone pier. It was easy to re- member then that the doiiain was the custom-house, and not the hotel. We did not mention it, how- ever. With winning French politeness, the officers merely opened and closed our satchels, declined to examine our passports, and sent us on our way. We stopped at the first cafe we came to, and en- tered. An old woman seated us at a table and waited for orders. The doctor said :

'* Avez-vous du vin?'*

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

* * Avez-vous du — vin ! ' *

The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said : '^

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

** Madame, avez-vous du vin — ou fromage — pain — pickled pigs' feet — beurre — des oefs — du beuf — horseradish, sour-crout, hog and hominy — anything, a7iythi7ig in the world that can stay a Christian stomach!'*

She said :

** Bless you, why didn't you speak English be- fore?— I don't know anything about your plagued French!'*

The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member

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

We set out to find the center of the city. In- quiring the direction every now and then. We never did succeed in making anybody understand just exactly what we wanted, and neither did we ever succeed in comprehending just exactly what they said in reply — but then they always pointed — they always did that, and we bowed politely and said **MercI, Monsieur,'* and so It was a blighting triumph over the disaffected member, anyway. He was restive under these victories and often asked :

•• What did that pirate say?"

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

*' Yes, but what did he say f"

"Oh, it don't matter what he said — ze/^ under-

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stood him. These are educated people — not like that absurd boatman/'

*• Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction that goes somewhere — for we've been going around in a circle for an hour — I've passed this same old drug store seven times.**

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

A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets, bordered by blocks of vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone,— -every house and every block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks for a mile, and all brilliantly lighted,— brought us at last to the principal thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing constellations of gas-burners, gaily-dressed men and women thronging the sidewalks — hurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation, and laughter everywhere 1 We found the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, and wrote down who we were, where we were born, what our occupations were, the place we came from last, whether we were married or single, how we liked it, how old we were, where we were bound for and when we expected to get there, and a great deal of information of similar importance — all for the benefit of the landlord and the secret

«

*l

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police. We hired a guide and began the business of sight-seeing immediately. That first night on French soil was a stirring one. I cannot think of half the places we went to, or what we particularly saw; we ha3 no disposition to examine carefully into any- thing at all — we only wanted to glance and go - — to move, keep moving! The spirit of the country was upon us. We sat down, finally, at a late hour, in the great Casino, and called for unstinted cham- pagne. It is so easy to be bloated aristocrats where it costs nothing of consequence ! There were about five hundred people in that dazzling place, I sup- pose, though the walls being papered entirely with mirrors, so to speak, one could not really tell but that there were a hundred thousand. Young, daintily-dressed exquisites and young, stylishly- dressed women, and also old gentlemen and old ladies, sat in couples and groups about innumerable marble-topped tables, and ate fancy suppers, drank wine, and kept up a chattering din of conversation that was dazing to the senses. There was a stage at the far end, and a large orchestra; and every now and then actors and actresses in preposterous comic dresses came out and sang the most extravagantly funny songs, to judge by their absurd actions ; but that audience merely suspended its chatter, stared cynically, and never once smiled, never once ap- plauded ! I had always thought that Frenchmen were ready to laugh at anything.

CHAPTER XI.

WE are getting forelgnized rapidly, and with facility. We are getting reconciled to halls and bed-chambers with unhomelike stone floors, and no carpets — floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness that Is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, noiseless waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about your back and your elbows like butterflieSj quick to comprehend orders, quick to fill them; thankful for a gratuity without regard to the amount ; and always polite — never otherwise than polite. That is the strangest curiosity yet — a really polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. W^e are getting used to driving right into the central court of the hotel, in the midst of a fragrant circle of vines and flov/ers, and in the midst, also, of parties of gentle- men sitting quietly reading the paper and smoking. We are getting used to ice frozen by artificial process in ordinary bottles — the only kind of ice they have herCc We are getting used to all these things ; but we are not getting used to carrying our own soap. We are sufficiently civilized to carry our own combs

(140)

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and tooth-brushes ; but this thing of having to ring for soap every time we wash is new to us, and not pleasant at all. We think of it just after we get our heads and faces thoroughly wet, or just when we think we have been in the bath-tub long enough, and then, of course, an annoying delay follows. These Marseillaise make Marseillaise hymns, and Marseilles vests, and Marseilles soap for all the world; but they never sing their hymns, or wear their vests, or wash with their soap themselves.

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

142 The innocents Abroad

those sufferers were killed, or crippled, or bruised, or only scared, is more than I can possibly make out, and yet I would just give anything to know.

We were troubled a little at dinner to-day, by the conduct of an American, who talked very loudly and coarsely, and laughed boisterously where all others were so quiet and well-behaved. He ordered wine with a royal flourish, and said: ** I never dine without wine, sir " (which was a pitiful falsehood), and looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected to find in their faces. All these airs in a land where they would as soon expect to leave the soup out of the bill of fare as the wine ! — in a land where wine is nearly as com- mon among all ranks as water ! This fellow said : ** I am a free-born sovereign, sir, an American, sir, and I want everybody to know it ! ' * He did not mention that he was a lineal descendant of Balaam's ass; but everybody knew that without his telling it.

We have driven in the Prado — that superb avenue bordered with patrician mansions and noble shade trees — and have visited the Chateau Bor61y and its curious museum. They showed us a miniature cemetery there — a copy of the first graveyard that was ever in Marseilles, no doubt. The delicate little skeletons were lying in broken vaults, and had their household gods and kitchen utensils with them. The original of this cemetery was dug up in the principal street of the city a few years ago. It had remained there, only twelve feet under ground, for

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a matter of twenty-five hundred years, or there- abouts, Romulus was here before he built Rome^ and thought something of founding a city on this spot, but gave up the idea He may have been personally acquainted with some of these Phoenicians whose skeletons we have been examining

In the great Zoological Gardens we found speci- mens of all the animals the world produces, I think, mcluding a dromedary^ a monkey ornamented with tufts of brilliant blue and carmine hair — -a very gorgeous monkey he was — a hippopotamus from the Nile, and a sort of tall, long-legged bird with a beak like a powder-horn, and close-fitting wings like the tails of a dress-coat This fellow stood up with his eyes shut and his shoulders stooped forward a little, and looked as if he had his hands under his coat-tails. Such tranquil stupidity, such supernatural gravity, such self-righteousness^ and such ineffable self-complacency as were in the countenance and attitude of that gray-bodied ^ dark- winged, bald headed, and preposterously uncomely bird ! He was so ungainly, so pimply about the headj, so scaly about the legs; yet so serene, so unspeakably satis fied! He was the most comical-looking creature that can be imagined. It was good to hear Dan and the doctor laugh - — such natural and such enjoyable laughter had not been heard among our excursionists since our ship sailed away from America. This bird was a godsend to us, and I should be an ingrate if I forgfot ^o make honorable mention of him ''n these

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pages. Ours was a pleasure excursion; therefore we stayed with that bird an hour, and made the most of him. We stirred him up occasionally, but he only unclosed an eye and slowly closed it again, abating no jot of his stately piety of demeanor or his tremendous seriousness. He only seemed to say, ** Defile not Heaven's anointed with unsanctified hands." We did not know his name, and so we called him **The Pilgrim.** Dan said:

*' All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection." The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a common cat ! This cat had a fashion of climbing up the elephant's hind legs, and roosting on his back. She would sit up there, with her paws curved under her breast, and sleep in the sun half the after- noon. It used to annoy the elephant at first, and he would reach up and take her down, but she would go aft and climb up again. She persisted until she finally conquered the elephant's prejudices, and now they are inseparable friends. The cat plays about her comrade's forefeet or his trunk often, until dogs approach, and then she goes aloft out of danger. The elephant has annihilated several dogs lately, that pressed his companion too closely. We hired a sailboat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the small islands in the harbor to visit the Castle d'If. This ancient fortress has a melancholy history. It has been used as a prison for political offenders for two or three hundred yearSji and its dungeon walls are scarred with the

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rudely-carved names of many and many a captive who fretted his Hfe away here, and left no record of himself but these sad epitaphs wrought with his own hands. How thick the names were! And their long-departed owners seemed to throng the gloomy cells and corridors with their phantom shapes. We loitered through dungeon after dungeon, away down into the living rock below the level of the sea, it seemed. Names everywhere ! — some plebeian, some noble, some even princely. Plebeian^ prince, and noble, had one solicitude in common — they would not be forgotten ! They could suffer solitude, inac- tivity, and the horrors of a silence that no sound ever disturbed ; but they could not bear the thought of being utterly forgotten by the world. Hence the carved names. In one cell, where a little light penetrated, a man had lived twenty-seven years without seeing the face of a human being — lived in filth and wretchedness, with no companionship but his own thoughts, and they were sorrowful enough, and hopeless enough, no doubt. Whatever his jailers considered that he needed was conveyed to his cell by night, through a wicket. This man carved the walls of his prison-house from floor to roof with all manner of figures of men and animals^ grouped in intricate designs. He had toiled there year after year, at his self-appointed task, while in- fants grew to boyhood — to vigorous youth -— idled through school and college — acquired a professioD - claimed man's mature estate — married anc: 10.

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

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

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

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They showed us the noisome cell where the cele- brated **Iron Mask'* — that ill-starred brother of a hard-hearted king of France — was confined for a season, before he was sent to hide the strange mys- tery of his life from the curious in the dungeons of St. Marguerite. The place had a far greater interest for us than it could have had if we had known be- yond all question who the Iron Mask was, and what his history had been, and why this most unusual punishment had been meted out to him. Mystery I That was the charm. That speechless tongue, those prisoned features, that heart so freighted with un- spoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed with its piteous secret, had been here. These dank walls had known the man whose dolorous story is ? sealed book forever ! There was fascination in th< spot.

CHAPTER XII.

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

We had such glimxpses of the Rhone gliding along

1*8

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

We knew, then, what the poet meant, when he sang of —

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

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

We are not infatuated with these French railway cars, though. We took first-class passage, not be- cause we wished to attract attention by doing a thing which is uncommon in Europe, but because we could make our journey quicker by so doings It is hard to make railroading pleasant, in any country. It is too tedious. Stage-coaching is infinitely more delightful. Once I crossed the plains and deserts and mountains of the West, in a stage-coach ^ from

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the Missouri h'ne to California, and since then all my pleasure-trips must be measured to that rare holiday frolice Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and never a weary moment, never a lapse of interest ! The first seven hundred miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer and smoother than any sea, and figured with designs fitted to its magni- tude— the shadows of the clouds. Here were no scenes but summer scenes, and no disposition in- spired by them but to lie at full length on the mail sacks, in the grateful breeze, and dreamily smoke the pipe of peace — what other, where all was repose and contentment? In cool mornings, before the sun was fairly up, it was worth a lifetime of city toiling and moiling, to perch in the foretop with the driver and see the six mustangs scamper under the sharp snapping of a whip that never touched them ; to scan the blue distances of a world that knew no lords but us ; to cleave the wind with uncovered head and feel the sluggish pulses rousing to the spirit of a speed that pretended to the resistless rush of a typhoon ! Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of limitless panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of pinnacled cathe- drals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where thunders and lightnings and tempests warred mag-

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nificently at our feet and the storm-clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces !

But I forgot. I am in elegant France, now, and not skurrying through the great South Pass and the Wind River Mountains, among antelopes and buffa- loes, and painted Indians on the warpath. It is not meet that I should make too disparaging com- parisons between humdrum travel on a railway and that royal summer flight across a continent in a stage-coach. I meant, in the beginning, to say that railway journeying is tedious and tiresome, and so it is — though, at the time, I was thinking particularly of a dismal fifty-hour pilgrimage between New York and St. Louis. Of course our trip through France was not really tedious, because all its scenes and experiences were new and strange ; but as Dan says^ it had its ** discrepancies.*'

The cars are built in compartments that hold eight persons each. Each compartment is partially sub- divided, and so there are two tolerably distinct parties of four in it. Four face the other four The seats and backs are thickly padded and cush- ioned, and are very comfortable; you can smoke, if you wish; there are no bothersome peddlers; you are saved the infliction of a multitude of disagree- able fellow-passengers. So far, so well. But then the conductor locks you in when the train starts ; there is no water to drink in the car; there is no heating apparatus for night travel; if a drunken rowdy should get in, you could not remove a mattef

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of twenty seats from him, or enter another car; but, above all, if you are worn out and must sleep, you must sit up and do it in naps, with cramped legs and in a torturing misery that leaves you withered and lifeless the next day — for behold, they have not that culmination of all charity and human kindness, a sleeping car, in all France. I prefer the American system. It has not so many grievous ** discrepan- cies.'*

In France, all is clockwork, all is order. They make no mistakes. Every third man wears a uni- form, and whether he be a marshal of the empire or a brakeman, he is ready and perfectly willing to answer all your questions with tireless politeness, ready to tell you which car to take, yea, and ready to go and put you into it to make sure that you shall not go astray. You cannot pass into the waiting- room of the depot till you have secured your ticket, and you cannot pass from its only exit till the train is at its threshold to receive you. Once on board, the train will not start till your ticket has been ex- amined— till every passenger's ticket has been in- spected. This is chiefly for your own good. If by any possibility you have managed to take the wrong train, you will be handed over to a polite official who will take you whither you belong, and bestow you with many an affable bow. Your ticket will be inspected every now and then along the routCj and when it is time to change cars you will ^Jiow it. You are in the hands of officials who

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zealously study your welfare and your niterest, m stead of turning their talents to the invention ot new methods of discommoding and snubbing you, as is very often the main employment of that exceedingly self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of America.

But the happiest regulation in French railway government, is — thirty minutes to dinner 1 No five- minute boltings of flabby rolls, muddy coffee, ques- tionable eggs, gutta-percha beef, and pies whose conception and execution are a dark and bloody mystery to all save the cook who created them? No; we sat calmly down — it was in old DijoUp which is so easy to spell and so impossible to pro- nounce, except when you civilize it and call it Demijohn — and poured out rich Burgundian wines and munched calmly through <