i>;?i»b.'<«£%£%f^8^:%£«i:ww:^^^ r'>*P^. i^^-^^ , r\l THE MEDITERRANEAN The MEDITERRANEAN Its Storied Cities and Venerable Ruins By T. G. Bonney, E. A. R. Ball, H. D. Traill, Grant Allen, Arthur Griffiths and Robert Brown I Illustrated with Photogravures NEW YORK Barnes ipott d Company 1902 %' -^ A' CONTENTS PAGE I. THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, . . . . i Portals of the ancient world — Bay of Tangier at sunrise — Tarifa — The Rock of Gibraltar — Wonders of its fortifications — After- noon promenade in the Alameda Gardens — Ascending the Rock — View from the highest point — The Great Siege — Ceuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the Moorish coast — The rock of many names. IL ALGIERS, 28 " A Pearl set in Emeralds " — Two distinct towns; one ancient, one modern — The Great Mosque — A Mohammedan religious fes- tival — Oriental life in perfection — The road to Mustapha Supd- rieur — A true Moorish villa described — Women praying to a sacred tree — Excessive rainfall. III. MALAGA, 42 A nearly perfect climate — Continuous existence of thirty cen- turies — Granada and the world-renowned Alhambra — Systems of irrigation — Vineyards the chief source of wealth — Esparto grass — The famous Cape de Gatt — The highest peak of the Sierra Nevada— Last view of Granada. IV. BARCELONA, 61 The flower market of the Rambla — Streets of the old town — The Cathedral of Barcelona — Description of the Columbus monu- ment — All Saints' Day in Spain — Mont Tibidaho — Diverse cen- ters of intellectual activity — Ancient history — Philanthropic and charitable institutions. V. MARSEILLES, 94 Its Greek founders and early history — Superb view from the sea ^The Cannebiere — The Prado and Chemin de la Corniche — Chateau d'lf and Monte-Cristo ^ Influence of the Greeks in Marseilles — Ravages by plague and pestilence — Treasures of the Palais des Arts — The Chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde — The new Marseilles and its future. VI. NICE, 124 The Queen of the Riviera — The Port of Limpia — Castle Hill — Promenade des Anglais — The Carnival and Battle of Flowers — Place Massdna, the center of business — Beauty of the suburbs vi CONTENTS PAGE — The road to Monte Carlo — The quaintly picturesque town of Villefranche — Aspects of Nice and its environs. VII. THE RIVIERA, 145 In the days of the Doges — Origin of the name — The blue bay of Cannes — Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat — Historical asso- ciations — The Rue L'Antibes — The rock of Monaco — " Notre Dame de la Roulette " — From Monte Carlo to Mentone — San Remo — A romantic railway. VIII. GENOA, 160 Early history — Old fortifications — The rival of Venice — Changes of twenty-five years — From the parapet of the Corso — The lower town — The Genoese palazzi — Monument to Christopher Colum- bus — The old Dogana — Memorials in the Campo Santo — The Bay of Spezzia — The Isola Palmeria — Harbor scenes. IX. THE TUSCAN COAST, 192 Shelley's last months at Lerici — Story of his death — Carrara and its marble quarries — Pisa — Its grand group of ecclesiastical buildings — The cloisters of the Campo Santo — Napoleon's life on Elba — Origin of the Etruscans — The ruins of Tarquinii — Civita Vecchia, the old port of Rome — Ostia. X. VENICE, 220 Its early days — The Grand Canal and its palaces — Piazza of St. Mark- — A Venetian funeral — The long line of islands — Venetian glass — Torcello, the ancient Altinum — Its two unique churches. XI. ALEXANDRIA, 234 The bleak and barren shores of the Nile Delta— Peculiar shape of the city — Strange and varied picture of Alexandrian street life — The Place Mehemet AH — Glorious panorama from the Cairo citadel — Pompey's Pillar — The Battle of the Nile — Dis- covery of the famous inscribed stone at Rosetta — Port Said and the Suez Canal. XII. MALTA, 267 " England's Eye in the Mediterranean " — Vast systems of forti- fications — Sentinels and martial music — The Strada Reale of Valletta— Church of St. John— St. Elmo— The Military Hos- pital, the " very glory of Malta " — Citta Vecchia — Saint Paul and his voyages. CONTENTS vii PAGE XIII. SICILY, 295 Scylla and Charybdis — Messina, the chief commercial center of Sicily — The magnificent ruins of the Greek Theater at Taor- mina — Omniprescence of Mt. Etna — Approach to Syracuse — The famous Latomia del Paradise — Girgenti, the City of Tem- ples — Railway route to Palermo — Mosaics — Cathedral and Abbey of Monreale — Monte Pellegrino at the hour of sunset. XIV. NAPLES, 325 The Bay of Naples — Vesuvius — Characteristic scenes of street life— The al fresco restaurants— Chapel of St. J anuarius— Vir- gil's Tomb — Capri, the Mecca of artists and lovers of the picturesque — The Emperor Tiberius — Description of the Blue Grotto — The coast-road from Castellamare to Sorrento — Amalfi —Sorrento, " the village of flowers and the flower of villages " — The Temples of Paestum. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Capri. — The Marina Grande ...... Frojitispiece PAGE Gibraltar. — View from the Old Mole 14 Algiers. — Government Square and the Street, La Marine . . 28 Algiers. — Interior of the Governor's Palace . . . , .36 Malaga. — General View from Castle . . . . . .52 Barcelona. — View of Harbor 70 Marseilles. — Panorama of the Old Port 98 Nice. — Promenade des Anglais ....... 132 The Riviera. — San Remo 158 Genoa. — The Doria Palace — Garden and Doorway , . .172 The Tuscan Coast. — Pisa — Cathedral Square and Monuments . ig8 Venice. — The Piazza of St. Mark . 226 Alexandria. — General View of the City . , . , . 240 Alexandria. — Scene on Canal ....... 260 Malta. — General View ......... 274 Sicily. — View of Taormina and Mt. Etna ..... 298 Naples. — Panorama from Virgil's Tomb ..... 334 The Mediterranean I THE PILLARS OF HERCULES Portals of the ancient world — Bay of Tangier at sunrise — Tarifa — The Rock of Gibraltar — Wonders of its fortifications — Afternoon promenade in the Alameda Gardens — Ascending the Rock — View from the highest point — The Great Siege — Ceuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the Moorish coast — The rock of many names. THE " Pillars of Hercules ! " The portals of the Ancient World! To how many a traveller just beginning to tire of his week on the Atlantic, or but slowly recovering, it may be, in his tranquil voyage along the coasts of Portugal and Southern Spain, from the effects of thirty unquiet hours in the Bay of Biscay, has the nearing view of this mighty landmark of history brought a message of new life ! That dis- tant point ahead, at which the narrowing waters of the Strait that bears him disappear entirely within the clasp of the embracing shores, is for many such a traveller the beginning of romance. He gazes upon it from the west- ward with some dim reflection of that mysterious awe with which antiquity looked upon it from the East. The 2 THE MEDITERRANEAN progress of the ages has, in fact, transposed the center of human interest and the human point of view. Now, as in the Homeric era, the Pillars of Hercules form the gateway of a world of wonder; but for us of to-day it is within and not without those portals that that world of wonder lies. To the eye of modern poetry the At- lantic and Mediterranean have changed places. In the waste of waters stretching westward from the rock of Calpe and its sister headland, the Greek of the age of Homer found his region of immemorial poetic legend and venerable religious myth, and peopled it with the gods and heroes of his traditional creed. Here, on the bosom of the wide-winding river Oceanus, lay the Islands of the Blest — that abode of eternal beauty and calm, where " the life of mortals is most easy," where " there is neither snow nor winter nor much rain, but ocean is ever sending up the shrilly breezes of Zephyrus to re- fresh man." But for us moderns who have explored this mighty " river Oceanus," this unknown and mysteri- ous Atlantic to its farthest recesses, the glamor of its mystery has passed away for ever; and it is eastward and not westward, through the " Pillars of Hercules," that we now set our sails in search of the region of romance. It is to the basin of the Mediterranean — fringed with storied cities and venerable ruins, with the crumbling sanctuaries of a creed which has passed away, and the monuments of an art which is imperishable — that man turns to-day. The genius of civilization has jour- neyed far to the westward, and has passed through strange experiences ; it returns with new reverence and a deeper awe to that enclave of mid-Europe which con- tains its birthplace, and which is hallowed with the mem- ories of its glorious youth. The grand cliff-portal PHAROS OF TARIFA 3 which we are approaching is the entrance, the thoughtful traveller will always feel, to a region eternally sacred in the history of man ; to lands which gave birth to im- mortal models of literature and unerring canons of philosophic truth; to shrines and temples which guard the ashes of those " dead but sceptered sovereigns " who " rule our spirits from their urns." As our vessel steams onward through the rapidly narrowing Straits, the eye falls upon a picturesque ir- regular cluster of buildings on the Spanish shore, where- from juts forth a rocky tongue of land surmounted by a tower. It is the Pharos of Tarifa, and in another half hour we are close enough to distinguish the exact out- lines of the ancient and famous city named of Tarif Ibn Malek, the first Berber sheikh who landed in Spain, and itself, it is said — though some etymologists look askance at the derivation — the name-mother of a word which is little less terrible to the modern trader than was this pirate's nest itself to his predecessor of old times. The arms of Tarifa are a castle on waves, with a key at the window, and the device is not unaptly symbolical of her mediaeval history, when her possessors played janitors of the Strait, and merrily levied blackmail — the irregular tariff of those days — upon any vessel which desired to pass. The little town itself is picturesquely situated in the deepest embrace of the curving Strait, and the view looking westward — with the lighthouse rising sharp and sheer against the sky, from the jutting cluster of rock and building about its base, while dimly to the left in the farther distance lie the mountains of the African coast, descending there so cunningly behind the curve that the two continents seem to touch and connect the channel into a lake — is well worth attentive stud v. An 4 THE MEDITERRANEAN interesting spot, too, is Tarifa, as well as a picturesque — interesting at least to all who are interested either in the earlier or the later fortunes of post-Roman Europe. It played its part, as did most other places, on this com- mon battle-ground of Aryan and Semite, in the secular struggle between European Christendom and the Mo- hammedan East. And again, centuries later, it was heard of in the briefer but more catastrophic struggle of the Napoleonic wars. From the day when Alonzo Perez de Guzman threw his dagger down from its battle- ments in disdainful defiance of the threat to murder his son, dragged bound before him beneath its walls by traitors, it is a " far cry " to the day when Colonel Gough of the 87th (the "Eagle-Catchers") beat ofif Marshal Victor's besieging army of 1,800 strong, and relieved General Campbell and his gallant little garrison; but Tarifa has seen them both, and it is worth a visit not only for the sake of the ride from it over the mountains to Algeciras and Gibraltar, but for its historical asso- ciations also, and for its old-world charm. We have taken it, as we propose also to take Tangier, a little out of its turn ; for the voyaging visitor to Gibral- tar is not very likely to take either of these two places on his way. It is more probable that he will visit them, the one by land and the other by sea, from the Rock itself. But Tangier in particular it is impossible to pass without a strong desire to make its acquaintance straight- way ; so many are the attractions which draw the trav- eller to this some-time appanage of the British Crown, this African pied a terre, which but for the insensate feuds and factions of the Restoration period might be England's to-day. There are few more enchanting sights than that of the Bay of Tangier as it appears at sun- TANGIER 5 rise to the traveller whose steamer has dropped down the Straits in the afternoon and evening hours of the previous day and cast anchor after nightfall at the nearest point off shore to which a vessel of any draught can approach. Nowhere in the world does a nook of such sweet tranquillity receive, and for a season, quiet, the hurrying waters of so restless a sea. Half a mile or so out towards the center of the Strait, a steamer from Gibraltar has to plough its way through the surface currents which speed continually from the Atlantic to- wards the Pillars of Hercules and the Mediterranean beyond. Here, under the reddening daybreak, all is calm. The blue waters of the bay, now softly flushing at the approach of sunrise, break lazily in mimic waves and " tender curving lines of creamy spray " upon the shi- ning beach. To the right lies the city, spectral in the dawn, save where the delicate pale ivory of some of its higher houses is warming into faintest rose; while over all, over sea and shore and city, is the immersing crystal atmosphere of Africa, in which every rock, every ripple, every housetop, stands out as sharp and clear as the filigree work of winter on a frosted pane. Nothing in Tangier, it must be honestly admitted, will compare with the approach to it by its incomparable bay. In another sense, too, there is nothing here or else- where which exactly resembles this " approach," since its last stage of all has to be performed alike for man and woman — unless man is prepared to wade knee-deep in the clear blue water — on the back of a sturdy Moor. Once landed, he will find that the picturesqueness of Tangier, like that of most Eastern cities, diminishes rather than increases on a nearer view. A walk through its main street yields nothing particularly worthy of 6 THE MEDITERRANEAN note, unless it be the minaret of the Djama-el-Kebir, the principal mosque of the city. The point to which every visitor to Tangier directs his steps, or has them directed for him, is the Bab-el-Sok, the gate of the market place, where the scene to be witnessed at early morning presents an unequaled picture of Oriental life. . Crouching camels with their loads of dates, chaffering traders, chattering women, sly and servile looking Jews from the city, fierce-eyed, heavily armed children of the desert, rough-coated horses, and the lank-sided mules, withered crones squatting in groups by the wayside, tripping damsels ogling over the yashmak as they pass, and the whole enveloped in a blinding, bewildering, chok- ing cloud of such dust as only Africa, " arida nutrix," can produce — such dust as would make the pulverulent particles of the dryest of turnpikes in the hottest of sum- mers, and under the most parching of east winds, appear by comparison moist and cool, and no more than pleas- ingly titillatory of the mouth and nostrils — let the reader picture to himself such a scene with such accessories, and he will know what spectacle awaits him at early morn- ing at the Bab-el-Sok of Tangier. But we must resume our journey eastward towards the famous " Rock." There at last it is ! There " dawns Gibraltar grand and gray," though Mr. Browning strains poetic license very hard in making it visible even " in the dimmest north-east distance," to a poet who was at that moment observing how " sunset ran one glorious blood-red recking into Cadiz Bay." We, at any rate, are far enough away from Cadiz before it dawns upon us in all its Titanic majesty of outline ; grand, of course, with the grandeur of Nature, and yet with a certain strange air of human menace as of some piece of At- THE ROCK 7 lantean ordnance planted and pointed by the hand of man. This " armamental " appearance of the Rock — a look visible, or at any rate imaginable in it, long before we have approached it closely enough to discern its actual fortifications, still less its artillery — is much enhanced by the dead flatness of the land from which its western wall arises sheer, and with which by consequence it seems to have no closer physical connection than has a gun-carriage with the parade ground on which it stands. As we draw nearer this effect increases in intensity. The surrounding country seems to sink and recede around it, and the Rock appears to tower ever higher and higher, and to survey the Strait and the two continents, divided by it with a more and more formidable frown. As we approach the port, however, this impression gives place to another, and the Rock, losing somewhat of its " natural- fortress " air, begins to assume that resemblance to a couchant lion which has been so often noticed in it. Yet alas ! for the so-called famous " leonine aspect " of the famous height, or alas ! at least for the capricious work- ings of the human imagination ! For while to the com- piler of one well-reputed guidebook, the outlines of Gibraltar seem " like those of a lion asleep, and whose head, somewhat truncated, is turned towards Africa as if with a dreamy and steadfast deep attention ; " to an- other and later observer the lion appears to have " his kingly head turned towards Spain, as if in defiance of his former master, ever}^ feature having the character of leonine majesty and power! " The truth is, of course, that the Rock assumes entirely different aspects, accord- ing as it is looked at from dift'erent points of view. There is certainly a point from which Gibraltar may be made, bv the exercise of a little of Polonius's imagination, to 8 THE MEDITERRANEAN resemble some couchant animal with its head turned towards Africa — though " a head somewhat truncated," is as odd a phrase as a " body som.ewhat decapitated " — and contemplating that continent with what we may fancy, if we choose, to be " dreamy and steadfast atten- tion." But the resemblance is, at best, but a slender one, and a far-fetched. The really and strikingly leonine aspect of Gibraltar is undoubtedly that which it presents to the observer as he is steaming towards the Rock from the west, but has not yet come into full view of the slope on which the town is situated. No one can possibly mistake the lion then. His head is distinctly turned to- wards Spain, and what is more, he has a foot stretched out towards the mainland, as though in token of his mighty grasp upon the soil. Viewed, however, from the neutral ground, this Protean clifif takes on a new shape altogether, and no one would suppose that the lines cf that sheer precipice, towering up into a jagged pin- nacle, could appear from any quarter to melt into the blunt and massive curves which mark the head and shoulders of the King of Beasts. At last, however, we are in the harbor, and are about to land. To land ! How little does that phrase convey to the inexperienced in sea travel, or to those whose voyages have begun and ended in stepping from a land- ing-stage on to a gangway, and from a gangway on to a deck, and vice-versa! And how much does it mean for him to whom it comes fraught with recollections of steep descents, of heaving seas, of tossing cock-boats, perhaps of dripping garments, certainly of swindling boatmen ! There are disembarkations in which you come in for them all ; but not at Gibraltar, at least under normal circumstances. The waters of the port are placid, GIBRALTAR 9 and from most of the many fine vessels that touch there you descend by a ladder, of as agreeable an inclination as an ordinary flight of stairs. All you have to fear is the insidious bilingual boatman, who, unless you strictly covenant with him before entering his boat, will have you at his mercy. It is true that he has a tariff, and that you might imagine that the offense of exceeding it would be punished in a place like Gibraltar by imme- diate court-martial and execution ; but the traveller should not rely upon this. There is a deplorable relaxation of the bonds of discipline all over the world. Moreover, it is wise to agree with the boatmen for a certain fixed sum, as a salutary check upon undue liberality. Most steamers anchor at a considerable distance from the shore, and on a hot day one might be tempted by false sentiment to give the boatman an excessive fee. Your hosts at Gibraltar — " spoiling " as they always are for the sight of new civilian faces — show themselves determined from the first to make you at home. Private Thomas Atkins on sentry duty grins broad welcome to you from the Mole. The official to whom you have to give account of yourself and your belongings greets you with a pleasant smile, and, while your French or Spanish fellow-traveller is strictly interrogated as to his identity, profession, purpose of visit, &c., your Eng- lish party is passed easily and promptly in, as men " at home " upon the soil which they are treading. Fortunate is it, if a little bewildering, for the visitor to arrive at midday, for before he has made his way from the land- ing-place to his hotel he will have seen a sight which has few if any parallels in the world. Gibraltar has its nar- row, quiet, sleepy allevs. as have all Southern towns ; and any one who confined himself to strolling through and lo THE MEDITERRANEAN along these, and avoiding the main thoroughfare, might never discover tlie strangely cosmopoHtan character of the place. He must walk up Waterport Street at midday in order to see what Gibraltar really is — a conflux ot nations, a mart of races, an Exchange for all the multi- tudinous varieties of the human product. Europe, Asia, and Africa meet and jostle in this singular highway. Tall, stately, slow-pacing Moors from the north-west coast ; white-turbaned Turks from the eastern gate of the Mediterranean; thick-lipped, and woolly-headed negroids from the African interior; quick-eyed, gesticulating Le- vantine Greeks ; gabardined Jews, and black-wimpled Jewesses ; Spanish smugglers, and Spanish sailors ; " rock-scorpions," and red-coated English soldiers — all these compose, without completing, the motley moving crowd that throngs the main street of Gibraltar in the forenoon, and gathers densest of all in the market near Commercial Square. It is hardly then as a fortress, but rather as a great entrepot of trafflc, that Gibraltar first presents itself to the newly-landed visitor. He is now too close beneath its frowning batteries and dominating walls of rock to feel their strength and menace so impressive as at a distance; and the flowing tide of many-colored life around him overpowers the senses and the imagination alike. He has to seek the outskirts of the town on either side in order to get the great Rock again, either physically or morally, into proper focus. And even before he sets out to try its height and steepness by the ancient, if un- scientific, process of climbing it — nay, before he even proceeds to explore under proper guidance its mighty elements of military strength — ^he will discover perhaps that sternness is not its onlv feature. Let him stroll THE FORTIFICATIONS n round in the direction of the race-course to the north of the Rock, and across the parade-ground, which hes be- tween the town and the larger area on which the reviews and field-day evolutions take place, and he will not com- plain of Gibraltar as wanting in the picturesque. The bold cliff, beneath which stands a Spanish cafe, descends in broken and irregular, but striking, lines to the plain, and it is fringed luxuriantly from stair to stair with the vegetation of the South. Marching and counter-march- ing under the shadow of this lofty wall, the soldiers show from a little distance like the tin toys of the nursery, and one knows not whether to think most of the physical insignificance of man beside the brute bulk of Nature, or of the moral — or immoral — power which has enabled him to press into his service even the vast Rock which stands there beetling and lowering over him, and to turn the blind giant into a sort of Titanic man-at-arms. Such reflections as these, however, would probably whet a visitor's desire to explore the fortifications with- out delay; and the time for that is not yet. The town and its buildings have first to be inspected ; the life of the place, both in its military and — such as there is of it — its civil aspect, must be studied ; though this, truth to tell, will not engage even the minutest observer very long. Gibraltar is not famous for its shops, or remarkable, in- deed, as a place to buy anything, except tobacco, which, as the Spanish Exchequer knows to its cost (and the Spanish Customs' officials on the frontier too, it is to be feared, their advantage), is both cheap and good. Busi- ness, however, of all descriptions is fairly active, as might be expected, when we recollect that the town is pretty populous for its size, and numbers some 20,000 inhabi- tants, in addition to its garrison of from 5,000 to 6,000 12 THE MEDITERRANEAN men. With all its civil activity, however, the visitor is scarcely likely to forget — for any length of time — that he is in a " place of arms." Not to speak of the shocks communicated to his unaccustomed nerves by morning and evening gun-fire ; not to speak of the thrilling fan- fare of the bugles, executed as only the bugler of a crack English regiment can execute it, and echoed and re- echoed to and fro, from face to face of the Rock, there is an indefinable air of stern order, of rigid discipline, of authority whose word is law, pervading everything. As the day wears on toward the evening this aspect of things becomes more and more unmistakable ; and in the neighborhood of the gates, towards the hour of gun- fire, you may see residents hastening in, and non-resi- dents quickening the steps of their departure, lest the boom of the fatal cannon-clock should confine or exclude them for the night. After the closing of the gates it is still permitted for a few hours to perambulate the streets ; but at midnight this privilege also ceases, and no one is allowed out of doors without a night-pass. On the 31st of December a little extra indulgence is allowed. One of the military bands will perhaps parade the main thoroughfare discoursing the sweet strains of " Auld Lang Syne," and the civil population are allowed to " see the old year out and the new year in." But a timid and respectful cheer is their sole contribution to the cere- mony, and at about 12.15 they are marched off again to bed : such and so vigilant are the precautions against treachery within the walls, or surprise from without. In Gibraltar, undoubtedly, you experience something of the sensations of men who are living in a state of siege, or of those Knights of Branksome who ate and drank in THE ALAMEDA 13 armor, and lay down to rest with corslet laced, and with the buckler for a pillow. The lions of the town itself, as distinguished from the wonders of its fortifications, are few in number. The Cathedral, the Garrison Library, Government House, the Alameda Gardens, the drive to Europa Point exhaust the list ; and there is but one of these which is likely to invite — unless for some special purpose or other — a repetition of the visit. In the Alameda, however, a visitor may spend many a pleasant hour, and — if the peace and beauty of a hillside garden, with the charms of subtropical vege- tation in abundance near at hand, and noble views of coast and sea in the distance allure him — he assuredly will. Gibraltar is immensely proud of its promenade, and it has good reason to be so. From the point of view of Nature and of Art the Alameda is an equal success. General Don, who planned and laid it out some three- quarters of a century ago, unquestionably earned a title to the same sort of tribute as was bestowed upon a famous military predecessor. Marshal Wade. Anyone who had " seen " the Alameda " before it was made," might well have " lifted up his hands and blessed " the gallant officer who had converted " the Red Sands," as the arid desert once occupying this spot was called, into the paradise of geranium-trees which has taken its place. Its monu- ments to Elliot and Wellington are not ideal : the mysteri- ous curse pronounced upon English statuary appears to follow it even beyond seas ; but the execution of the effi- gies of these national heroes may, perhaps, be forgotten in the interest attaching to their subjects. The residents at any rate, whether civil or military, are inured to these efforts of the sculptor's art, and have long since ceased 14 THE MEDITERRANEAN to repine. And the afternoon promenade in these gardens •^with the English officers and their wives and daugh- ters, Enghsh nursemaids and their charges, tourists of both sexes and all ages, and the whole surrounded by a polyglot and polychromatic crowd of Oriental listeners to the military band — is a sight well worth seeing and not readily to be forgotten. But we must pursue our tour round the peninsula of the Rock ; and leaving the new Mole on our right, and farther on the little land-locked basin of Rosia Bay, we pass the height of Buena Vista, crowned with its bar- racks, and so on to the apex of the promontory, Europa Point. Here are more barracks and, here on Europa Flats, another open and level space for recreation and military exercises beneath the cliff wall. Doubling the point, and returning for a short distance along the eastern side of the promontory, we come to the Governor's Cot- tage, a cool summer retreat nestling close to the Rock, and virtually marking the limits of our exploration. For a little way beyond this the cliff rises inaccessible, the road ends, and we must retrace our steps. So far as walking or driving along the flat is concerned, the visitor who has reached the point may allege, with a certain kind of superficial accuracy, that he has " done Gibraltar." No wonder that the seasoned globe-trotter from across the Atlantic thinks nothing of taking Calpe in his stride. To those, however, who visit Gibraltar in a historic spirit, it is not to be " done " by any means so speedily as this. Indeed, it would be more correct to say that the work of a visitor of this order is hardly yet begun. For he will have come to Gibraltar not mainly to stroll on a sunny promenade, or to enjoy a shady drive round the seaward slopes of a Spanish headland, or even to feast THE MOORISH CASTLE 15 his eyes on the glow of Southern color and the pic- turesque varieties of Southern life ; but to inspect a great world-fortress, reared almost impregnable by the hand of Nature, and raised into absolute impregnability by the art of man ; a spot made memorable from the very dawn of the modern period by the rivalries of nations, and famous for all time by one of the most heroic exploits recorded in the annals of the human race. To such an one, we say, the name of Gibraltar stands before and beyond everything for the Rock of the Great Siege; and he can no more think of it in the light of a Mediter- ranean watering-place, with a romantic, if somewhat limited, sea-front, than he can think of the farmhouse of La Haye as an " interesting Flemish homestead," or the Chateau of Hougoumont as a Belgian gentleman's " eligible country house." For him the tour of the renowned fortifications will be the great event of his visit. Having furnished himself with the necessary authorization from the proper military authorities (for he will be reminded at every turn of the strict martial discipline under which he lives), he will proceed to ascend the Rock, making his first halt at a building which in all probability he will often before this have gazed upon and wondered at from below. This is the Moorish Castle, the first object to catch the eye of the newcomer as he steps ashore at the Mole, and looks up at the houses that clamber up the western slope of the Rock. Their ascending tiers are dominated by this battlemented pile, and it is from the level on which it stands that one enters the famous galleries of Gibraltar. The castle is one of the oldest Moorish buildings in Spain, the Arabir legend over the south gate recording it to have been built in 725 by Abu-Abul-Hajez. Its prin- i6 THE MEDITERRANEAN cipal tower, the Torre del Homenaje, is riddled with shot marks, the scars left behind it by the ever-memorable siege. The galleries, which are tunneled in tiers along the north front of the Rock, are from two to three miles in extent. At one extremity they widen out into the spacious crypt known as the Hall of St. George, in which Nelson was feasted. No arches support these galleries ; they are simply hewn from the solid rock, and pierced every dozen yards or so by port-holes, through each of which the black muzzle of a gun looks forth upon the Spanish mainland. They front the north, these grim watchdogs, and seeing that the plain lies hundreds of feet beneath them, and with that altitude of sheer rock face between them and it, they may perhaps be admitted to represent what a witty Frenchman has called le luxe et la coquettcrie d' imprenahle, or as we might put it, a " refinement on the impregnable." Artillery in position implies the possibility of regular siege operations, fol- lowed perhaps by an assault from the quarter which the guns command; but though the Spanish threw up elaborate works on the neutral ground in the second year of the great siege, neither then nor at any other time has an assault on the Rock from its northern side been contemplated. Yet it has once been " surprised " from its eastern side, which looks almost equally in- accessible ; and farther on in his tour of exploration, the visitor will come upon traces of that unprecedented and unimitated exploit. After having duly inspected the gal- leries, he will ascend to the Signal Tower, known in Spanish days as El Hacho, or the Torch, the spot at which beacon fires were wont on occasion to be kindled. It is not quite the highest point of the Rock, but the view from it is one of the most imposing in the world. HIGHEST POINT 17 To the north he the mountains of Ronda, and to the far east the Sierra of the Snows that looks down on Granada, gleams pale and spectral on the horizon. Far beneath you lie town and bay, the batteries with their tiny ordnance, and the harbor with its plaything ships ; while farther onward, in the same line of vision, the African " Pillar of Hercules," Ceuta, looks down upon the sunlit waters of the Strait. A little farther on is the true highest point of the Rock, 1,430 feet; and yet a little farther, after a descent of a few feet, we come upon the tower known as O'Hara's Folly, from which also the view is magnificent, and which marks the southernmost point of the ridge. It was built by an officer of that name as a watch tower, from which to observe the movements of the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, which, even across the cape as the crow flies, is distant some fifty or sixty miles. The extent, however, of the outlook which it actually commanded has probably never been tested, certainly not with modern optical appliances, as it was struck by lightning soon after its completion. Retracing his steps to the northern end of the height, the visitor historically interested in Gibraltar will do well to survey the scene from here once more before descend- ing to inspect the fortifications of the coast line. Far beneath him, looking landward, lies the flat sandy part of the isthmus, cut just where Its neck begins to widen by the British lines. Bevond these, again, extends the zone some half mile in breadth of the neutral ground; while yet farther inland, the eve lights upon a broken and irregular line of earthworks, marking the limit, politically speaking, of Spanish soil. These are the most notable, perhaps the only, surviving, relic of the great siege. In the third year of that desperate leaguer — it i8 THE MEDITERRANEAN was in 1781 — the Spaniards having tried in vain, since June, 1779, to starve out the garrison, resorted to the idea of bombarding the town into surrender, and threw up across the neutral ground the great earthworks, of which only these ruins remain. They had reason, indeed, to resort to extraordinary efforts. Twice within these twenty-four months had they reduced the town to the most dreadful straits of hunger, and twice had it been relieved by English fleets. In January, 1780, when Rod- ney appeared in the Straits with his priceless freight of food, the inhabitants were feeding on thistles and wild onions ; the hind quarter of an Algerian sheep was selling for seven pounds ten, and an English milch cow for fifty guineas. In the spring of 1781, when Admiral Darby relieved them for the second time, the price of " bad ship's biscuits full of vermin " — says Captain John Drinkwater of the 72nd, an actor in the scenes which he has recorded — was a shilling a pound ; " old dried peas, a shilling and fourpence ; salt, half dirt, the sweepings of ships' bottoms, and storehouses, eightpence; and Eng- lish farthing candles, sixpence apiece." These terrible privations having failed to break the indomitable spirit of the besieged, bombardment had, before the construc- tion of these lines, been resorted to. Enormous batteries, mounting 170 guns and 80 mortars, had been planted along the shore, and had played upon the town, without interruption, for six weeks. Houses were shattered and set on fire, homeless and half-starved families were driven for shelter to the southern end of the promontory, where again they were harried by Spanish ships sailing round Europa Point and firing indiscriminately on shore. The troops, shelled out of their quarters, were living in tents on the hillside, save when these also were swept WORKS ASSAULTED 19 away by the furious rainstorms of that region. And it was to put, as was hoped, the finishing stroke to this process of torture, that the great fortifications which have been spoken of were in course of construction all through the spring and summer of 1781 on the neutral ground. General Elliot — that tough old Spartan warrior, whose food was vegetables and water, and four hours his maxi- mum of continuous sleep, and the contagion of whose noble example could alone perhaps have given heart enough even to this sturdy garrison — watched the prog- ress of the works with anxiety, and had made up his mind before the winter came that they must be assaulted. Accordingly, at three a. m. on the morning of November 27, 1 78 1, he sallied forth with a picked band of two thou- sand men — a pair of regiments who had fought by his side at Minden two-and-twenty years before — and having traversed the three-quarters of a mile of intervening coun- try in swift silence, fell upon the Spanish works. The alarm had been given, but only just before the assailants reached the object of their attack; and the affair was practically a surprise. The gunners, demoralized and panic-stricken, were bayoneted at tlicir posts, the guns were spiked, and the batteries themselves set on fire with blazing faggots prepared for the purpose. In an hour the flames had gained such strength as to be inextinguishable, and General Elliot drew off his forces and retreated to the town, the last sound to greet their ears as they re-entered the gates being the roar of the explosion of the enemy's magazines. For four days the camp continued to burn, and when the fire had exhausted itself for want of ma- terials, the work of laborious months lay in ruins, and the results of a vast military outlay were scattered to the winds. It was the last serious attempt made against the 20 THE MEDITERRANEAN garrison by the Spaniards from the landward side. The fiercest and most furious struggle of the long siege was to take place on the shore and waters to the west. And so after all it is to the " line-wall " — to that for- midable bulwark of masonry and gun-metal which fringes the town of Gibraltar from the Old Mole to Rosia Bay — that one returns as to the chief attraction from the histor- ical point of view, of the mighty fortress. For two full miles it runs, zigzagging along the indented coast, and broken here and there by water-gate or bastion, famous in military story. Here, as we move southward from the Old Mole, is the King's Bastion, the most renowned of all. Next comes Ragged Staff Stairs, so named from the heraldic insignia of Charles V. ; and farther on is Jumper's Battery, situated at what is held to be the weakest part of the Rock, and which has certainly proved itself to be so on one ever memorable occasion. For it was at the point where Jumper's Battery now stands that the first English landing-party set foot on shore ; it was at this point, it may be said, that Gibraltar was carried. The fortunes of nomenclature are very capricious, and the name of Jumper — unless, indeed, it were specially selected for its appropriateness— has hardly a better right to perpetuation in this fashion than the name of Hicks. For these were the names of the two gallant officers who were foremost in their pinnaces in the race for the South Mole, which at that time occupied the spot where the landing was effected ; and we are not aware that history records which was the actual winner. It was on the 23rd of July, 1704, as all the world knows, that these two gallant seamen and their boats' crews made their his- toric leap on shore; and after all, the accident which had preserved the name of one of them is not more of KING CHARLES III. 2i what is familiarly called a " fluke " than the project of the capture itself, and the retention of the great fortress when captured. It is almost comic to think that when Sir George Rooke sailed from England, on the voyage from which he returned, figuratively speaking, with the key of the Mediterranean in his pocket, he had no more notion of attacking Gibraltar than of discovering the North-West Passage. He simply went to land Eng- land's candidate for the Spanish throne, " King Charles III.," at Lisbon ; which service performed, he received orders from the English Government to sail to the relief of Nice and Villa Franca, which were supposed to be in danger from the French, while at the same time he was pressed by Charles to " look round " at Barcelona, where the people, their aspirant-sovereign thought, were ready to rise in his favor. Rooke executed both commissions. That is to say, he ascertained that there was nothing for him to do in either place — that Barcelona would not rise, and that Nice was in no danger of falling ; and the ad- miral accordingly dropped down the Mediterranean to- wards the Straits — where he was joined by Sir Cloud- esley Shovel with another squadron — with the view of intercepting the Brest Fleet of France, which he had heard was about to attempt a junction with that of Tou- lon. The Brest Fleet, however, he found had already given him the slip, and thus it came about that on the 17th of July these two energetic naval officers found themselves about seven leagues to the east of Tetuan with nothing to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the attack on Gibraltar was decreed as the distrac- tion of an intolerable ennui. The stronghold was known to be weakly garrisoned, though, for that time, strongly armed; it turned out afterwards that it had only a hun- 22 THE MEDITERRANEAN dred and fifty gunners to a hundred guns, and it was thought possible to carry the place by a coup-de-wain. On the 2ist the whole fleet came to anchor in Gibraltar Bay. Two thousand men under the Prince of Hesse were landed on what is now the neutral ground, and cut off all communication with the mainland of Spain. On the 23rd Rear-Admirals Vanderdussen and Byng (the father of a less fortunate seaman) opened fire upon the batteries, and after five or six hours' bombardment silenced them, and Captain Whittaker was thereupon ordered to take all the boats, filled with seamen and marines, and possess himself of the South Mole Head. Captains Jumper and Hicks were, as has been said, in the foremost pinnaces, and were the first to land. A mine exploded under their feet, killing two of^cers and a hun- dred men, but Jumper and Hicks pressed on with their stout followers, and assaulted and carried a redoubt which lay between the Mole and the town. Whereupon the Spanish Governor capitulated, the gates on the side of the isthmus were thrown open to the Prince of Hesse and his troops, and Gibraltar was theirs. Or rather it was not theirs, except by the title of the " man in possession." It was the property of his Highness the Archduke Charles, styled his Majesty King Charles III. of Spain, and had he succeeded in making good that title in arms, England should, of course, have had to hand over to him the strongest place in his dominions, at the end of the war. But she profited by the failure of her protege. The war of the Spanish Succession ended in the recog- nition of Philip V. ; and almost against the will of the nation — for George I. was ready enough to give it up, and the popular English view of the matter was that it THE KING'S' BASTION 23 was " a barren rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless charge " — Gibraltar remained on her hands. Undoubtedly, the King's Bastion is the center of his- toric military interest in Gibraltar, but the line-wall should be followed along its impregnable front to com- plete one's conception of the sea defenses of the great fortress. A little farther on is Government House, the quondam convent, which now forms the official resi- dence of the Governor ; and farther still the landing-place, known as Ragged Staff Stairs. Then Jumper's Bastion, already mentioned; and then the line of fortification, running outwards with the coast line towards the New- Mole and landing-place, returns upon itself, and round- ing Rosia Bay trends again southward towards Buena Vista Point. A ring of steel indeed — a coat of mail on the giant's frame, impenetrable to the projectiles of the most terrible of the modern Titans of the seas. The casemates for the artillery are absolutely bomb-proof, the walls of such thickness as to resist the impact of shots weighing hundreds of pounds, while the mighty arches overhead are constructed to defy the explosion of the heaviest shells. As to its offensive armament, the line- wall bristles with guns of the largest caliber, some mounted on the parapet above, others on the casemates nearer the sea-level, whence their shot could be dis- charged with the deadliest efifect at an attacking ship. He who visits Gibraltar is pretty sure, at least if time permits, to visit Algeciras and San Roque, while from farther afield still he will be tempted by Estepona. The fi'rst of these places he will be in a hurry, indeed, if he misses ; not that the place itself is very remarkable, as that it stands so prominently in evidence on the other 24 THE MEDITERRANEAN side of the bay as almost to challenge a visit. Add to this the natural curiosity of a visitor to pass over into Spanish territory and to survey Gibraltar from the land- ward side, and it will not be surprising that the four- mile trip across the bay is pretty generally made. On the whole it repays ; for though Algeciras is modern and uninteresting enough, its environs are picturesque, and the artist will be able to sketch the great rock-fortress from an entirely new point, and in not the least striking of its aspects. And now, before passing once for all through the storied portal of the Mediterranean, it remains to bestow at least a passing glance upon the other column which guards the entrance. Over against us, as we stand on Europa Point and look seaward, looms, some ten or a dozen miles away, the Punta de Africa, the African Pillar of Hercules, the headland behind which lies Ceuta, the principal Spanish stronghold on the Moorish coast. Of a truth, one's first thought is that the great doorway of the inland sea has monstrously unequal jambs. Except that the Punta de Africa is exactly opposite the Rock of Gibraltar, and that it is the last eminence on the southern side of the Straits — the point at which the Af- rican coast turns suddenly due southward, and all is open sea — it would have been little likely to have caught the eye of an explorer, or to have forced itself upon the notice of the geographer. Such as it is, however, it must stand for the African Pillar of Hercules, unless that demi-god is to content himself with only one. It is not imposing to approach as we make our way directly across the Straits from Gibraltar, or down and along them from Algeciras towards it : a smooth, rounded hill, surmounted by a fort with the Spanish flag floating above it, and CEUTA 25 walled on the sea side, so little can its defenders trust to the very slight natural difficulties offered even by its most difficult approach. Such is Ceuta in the distance, and it is Uttle, if at all, more impressive on a closer in- spection. Its name is said to come from Sebta, a cor- ruption of Septem, and to have been given it because of the seven hills on which it is built. Probably the seven hills would be difficult to find and count, or with a more liberal interpretation of the word, it might very likely be as easy to find fourteen. Ceuta, like almost every other town or citadel on this battle-ground of Europe and Africa, has played its part in the secular struggle between Christendom and Islam. It is more than four centuries and a half since it was first wrested from the Moors by King John of Portugal, and in the hands of that State it remained for another two hundred years, when in 1640, it was annexed to the Crown of Castille. King John's acquisition of the place, however, was unfortunate for his family. He returned home, leaving the princes of Portugal in command of his new possession ; which, after the repulse of an attempt on the part of the Moors to recapture it, he proceeded to strengthen with new fortifications and an increased gar- rison. Dying in 1428, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward, who undertook an expedition against Tangier, which turned out so unluckily that the Portuguese had to buy their retreat from Africa by a promise to restore Ceuta, the king's son, Don Ferdinand, being left in the hands of the Moors as a hostage for its delivery. In spite of this, however, the King and Council refused on their return home to carry out their undertaking; and though preparations were made for recovering the un- fortunate hostage, the death of Edward prevented the 26 THE MEDITERRANEAN project from being carried out, and Prince Ferdinand remained a prisoner for several years. Ceuta was never surrendered, and passing, as has been said, in the seven- teenth century from the possession of Portugal into that of Spain, it now forms one of the four or five vantage- points held by Spain on the coast of Africa and in its vicinity. Surveyed from the neighboring heights, the citadel, with the town stretching away along the neck of land at its foot, looks like anything but a powerful strong- hold, and against any less effete and decaying race than the Moors who surround it, it might not possibly prove very easy to defend. Its garrison, however, is strong, whatever its forts may be, and as a basis of military operations, it proved to be of some value to Spain in her expedition against Morocco thirty years ago. In times of peace it is used by the Spaniards as a convict station. The internal attractions of Ceuta to a visitor are not considerable. There are Roman remains in the neigh- borhood of the citadel, and the walls of the town, with the massive archways of its gates, are well worthy of remark. Its main feature of interest, however, is, and always will be, that rock of many names which it thrusts forth into the Straits, to form, with its brother column across the water, the gateway between the Eastern and the Western World. We have already looked upon it in the distance from El Hacho, the signal tower on the summit of the Rock of Gibraltar. Abyla, " the mountain of God," it was styled by the Phoenicians ; Gibel Mo-osa, the hill of Musa, was its name among the Moors; it is the Cabo de Bullones of the Spaniard, and the Apes' Hill of the Englishman. It may be well seen, though dwarfed a little by proximity, from its neighboring FAREWELL LOOK 27 Tftfth 1'""°"' "f"'' '^ ""^>^ ^^' ''' '''^^S^ contrast with the European Pillar that we have left beSind. It is shaped hke a miniature Peak of Tenerifife, with a pointed apex slopmg away on either side down high-shouldered ndges towards its companion hills, and presenting a med and furrowed face to the sea. It is its situation as has been noted already, and not its conformation which procured it its ancient name. But however earned' Its mythical title, with all the halo of poetry and ro- mance that the immortal myths of Hellas have shed around every spot which they have reached, remains to tr 'T^. "? ^''' ^' '^^^ ""''' ^^^^^^» i°<^k of the Pillars of Hercules to right and left, and borne onwards amidstream by the rushing current of the Straits we pass from the modern into the ancient world. II ALGIERS " A Pearl set in Emeralds " — Two distinct towns, one ancient, one modern — The Great Mosque — A Mohammedan religious festival — Oriental life in perfection — The road to Mustapha Superieur — A true Moorish villa described — Women praying to a sacred tree — Excessive rainfall. ^i A LGIERS," says the Arab poet, with genuine /-\ Oriental love of precious stones in literature, " is a pearl set in emeralds." And even in these degenerate days of Frank supremacy in Islam, the old Moorish town still gleams white in the sun against a deep background of green hillside, a true pearl among emeralds. For it is a great mistake to imagine North Africa, as untravelled folk suppose, a dry and desert country of arid rocky mountains. The whole strip of laughing coast which has the Atlas for its backbone may rank, on the contrary, as about the dampest, greenest, and most luxuriant region of the Mediterranean system. The home of the Barbary corsairs is a land of high moun- tains, deep glens, great gorges ; a land of vast pine forests and thick, verdant undergrowth. A thousand nils tumble headlong down its rich ravines ; a thousand rivers flow fast through its fertile valleys. For wild flowers Algeria is probably unequaled in the whole world; its general aspect in many ways recalls on a 28 THE SAHEL 29 smaller scale the less snow-clad part's of eastern Switzerland. When you approach the old pirate-nest from the sea, the first glimpse of the African coast that greets your expectant eye is a long, serrated chain of great sun- smitten mountains away inland and southward. As the steamer nears the land, you begin, after a while, to dis- tinguish the snowy ridge of the glorious Djurjura, which is the Bernese Oberland of Algeria, a huge block of rear- ing peaks, their summits thick-covered by the virgin snow that feeds in spring a score of leaping torrents. By-and-by, with still nearer approach, a wide bay dis- closes itself, and a little range of green hills in the fore- ground detaches itself by degrees from the darker mass of the Atlas looming large in the distance behind. This little range is the Sahel, an outlier just separated from the main chain in the rear by the once marshy plain of the Metidja, now converted by drainage and scientific agriculture into the most fertile lowland region of all North Africa. Presently, on the seaward slopes of the Sahel, a white town bursts upon the eye, a white town so very white, so close, so thick-set, that at first sight you would think it carved entire, in tier after tier, from a solid block of marble. No street or lane or house or public building of any sort stands visible from the rest at a little distance ; just a group of white steps, you would say, cut out by giant hands from the solid hillside. The city of the Deys looks almost like a chalk-pit on the slope of an English down; only a chalk-pit in relief, built out, not hewn inwards. As you enter the harbor the strange picture resolves itself bit by bit with charming effect into its component 30 THE MEDITERRANEAN elements. White houses rise up steep, one above the other, in endless tiers and rows, upon a very abrupt acclivity. Most of them are Moorish in style, square, flat-roofed boxes; all are whitewashed without, and smiling like pretty girls that show their pearly teeth in the full southern sunshine. From without they have the aspect of a single solid block of stone ; you would fancy it was impossible to insert a pin's head between them. From within, to him that enters, sundry narrow and tortuous alleys discover themselves here and there on close inspection ; but they are too involved to produce much effect as of streets or rows on the general coup d'ocil from the water. Land at the quay, and you find at once Algiers con- sists of two distinct towns : one ancient, one modern ; one Oriental, one Western. Now and again these inter- sect, but for the most part they keep themselves severely separate. The lower town has been completely transformed within half a century by its French masters. What it has gained in civilization it has lost in picturesqueness. A spacious port has been constructed, with massive mole and huge arcaded breakwater. Inside, vast archways support a magnificent line of very modern quays, bor- dered by warehouses on a scale that would do honor to Marseilles or to Liverpool. Broad streets run through the length and breadth of this transformed Algiers, streets of stately shops where ladies can buy all the frip- peries and fineries of Parisian dressmakers. Yet even here the traveller finds himself already in many ways en plein Orient. The general look of the new town itself is far more Eastern than that of modernized Alexandria since the days of the bombardment. Arabs, Moors and THE GREAT MOSQUE 31 Kabyles crowd the streets and market-places; muffled women in loose white robes, covered up to the eyes, flit noiselessly with slippered feet over the new-flagged pave- ment; turbaned Jews, who might have stepped straight out of the " Arabian Nights," chaffer for centimes at the shop-doors with hooded mountain Berbers. All is strange and incongruous ; all is Paris and Bagdad shaking hands as if on the Devonshire hillsides. Nor are even Oriental buildings of great architectural pretensions wanting to this newer French city. The con- querors, in reconstructing Algiers on the Parisian model, have at least forborne to Haussmannise in every instance the old mosques and palaces. The principal square, a broad place lined with palm-trees, is enlivened and made picturesque by the white round dome and striking mina- rets of the Mosquee de la Pecherie. Hard by stands the Cathedral, a religious building of Mussulman origin, half Christianized externally by a tower at each end, but en- closing within doors its old Mohammedan mimbar and many curious remains of quaint Moorish decoration. The Archbishopric at its side is a Moorish palace of se- vere beauty and grandeur ; the museum of Grseco-Roman antiques is oddly installed in the exquisite home raised for himself by Mustapha Pasha. The Great Mosque, in the Rue Bab-el-Oued, remains to us unspoiled as the finest architectural monument of the early Mohammedan world. That glorious pile was built by the very first Arab conquerors of North Africa, the companions of the Prophet, and its exquisite horse-shoe arches of pure white marble are unsurpassed in the Moslem world for their quaintness, their oddity, and their originality. The interior of this mosque is, to my mind, far more impressive than anything to be seen even in Cairo itself, 32 THE MEDITERRANEAN so vast it is, so imposing, so grand, so gloomy. The entire body of the building is occupied throughout by successive arcades, supported in long rows by plain, square pillars. Decoration there is none ; the mosque depends for effect entirely on its architectural features and its noble proportions. But the long perspective of these endless aisles, opening out to right and left per- petually as you proceed, strikes the imagination of the beholder with a solemn sense of vastness and mystery. As you pick your way, shoeless, among the loose mats on the floor, through those empty long corridors, between those buttress-like pillars, the soul shrinks within you, awe-struck. The very absence of images or shrines, the simplicity and severity, gives one the true Semitic re- ligious thrill. No gauds or gewgaws here. You feel at once you are in the unseen presence of the Infinite and the Incomprehensible. The very first time I went into the Great Mosque hap- pened, by good luck, to be the day of a Mohammedan religious festival. Rows and rows of Arabs in white robes filled up the interspaces of the columns, and rose and fell with one accord at certain points of the service. From the dim depths by the niche that looks towards Mecca a voice of some unseen ministrant droned slowly forth loud Arabic prayers or long verses from the Koran. At some invisible signal, now and again, the vast throng of worshippers, all ranged in straight lines at even dis- tances between the endless pillars, prostrated themselves automatically on their faces before Allah, and wailed aloud as if in conscious confession of their own utter unworthiness. The effect was extraordinary, electrical, contagious. No religious service I have ever seen else- where seemed to me to possess such a profundity of ear- THE OLD TOWN 33 nest humiliation, as of man before the actual presence of his Maker. It appeared to one like a chapter of Nehe- miah come true again in our epoch. We few intrusive Westerns, standing awe-struck by the door, slunk away, all abashed, from this scene of deep abasement. We had no right to thrust ourselves upon the devotions of these intense Orientals. We felt ourselves out of place. We had put off our shoes, for the place we stood upon was holy ground. But we slunk back to the porch, and put them on again in silence. Outside, we emerged upon the nineteenth century and the world. Yet even so, we had walked some way down the Place de la Regence, among the chattering negro pedlers, before one of us dared to exchange a single word with the other. If the new town of Algiers is interesting, however, the old town is unique, indescribable, incomprehensible. No map could reproduce it; no clue could unravel it. It climbs and clambers by tortuous lanes and steep stair- cases up the sheer side of a high hill to the old fortress of the Deys that crowns the summit. Not one gleam of sunshine ever penetrates down those narrow slits between the houses, where two people can just pass abreast, brush- ing their elbows against the walls, and treading with their feet in the poached filth of the gutter. The dirt that chokes the sides is to the dirt of Italy as the dirt of Italy is to the dirt of Whitechapel. And yet so quaint, so picturesque, so interesting is it all, that even delicate ladies, with the fear of typhoid fever for ever before their eyes, cannot refuse themselves the tremulous joy of visiting it and exploring it over and over again ; nay, more, of standing to bargain for old brass-work or Al- gerian embroidery with keen Arab shopkeepers in its sunless labyrinths. Except the Mooskee at Cairo, indeed, 34 THE MEDITERRANEAN I know no place yet left where you can see Oriental life in perfection as well as the old town of Algiers. For are there not tramways nowadays even in the streets of Damascus? Has not a railway station penetrated the charmed heart of Stamboul? The Frank has done his, worst for the lower town of his own building, but the upper town still remains as picturesque, as mysterious, and as insanitary as ever. No Pasteur could clean out those Augean stables. In those malodorous little alleys, where every pros- pect pleases and every scent is vile, nobody really walks ; veiled figures glide softly as if to inaudible music ; ladies, muffled up to their eyes, use those solitary features with great effect upon the casual passer-by ; old Moors, in stately robes, emerge with stealthy tread from half- unseen doorways; boys clad in a single shirt sit and play pitch-and-toss for pence on dark steps. Everything reeks impartially of dirt and of mystery. All is gloom and shade. You could believe anything on earth of that darkling old town. There all Oriental fancies might easily come true, all fables might revive, all dead history might repeat itself. These two incongruous worlds, the ancient and the modern town, form the two great divisions of Algiers as the latter-day tourist from our cold North knows it. The one is antique, lazy, sleepy, unprogressive ; the other is bustling, new-world, busy, noisy, commercial. But there is yet a third Algiers that lies well without the wall, the Algiers of the stranger and of the winter resident. Hither Mr. Cook conducts his eager neophytes ; hither the Swiss innkeeper summons his cosmopolitan guests. It reaches its culminating point about three miles from MUSTAPHA SUPERIEUR 35 the town, on the heights of Mustapha Superieur, where charming villas spread thick over the sunlit hills, and where the Western visitor can enjoy the North African air without any unpleasant addition of fine old crusted Moorish perfumes. The road to Mustapha Superieur lies through the Bab- Azzoun gate, and passes first along a wide street thronged with Arabs and Kabyles from the country and the moun- tains. This is the great market road of Algiers, the main artery of supplies, a broad thoroughfare lined with fondouks or caravanserais, where the weary camel from the desert deposits his bales of dates, and where black faces of Saharan negroes smile out upon the curious stranger from dense draping folds of some dirty bur- nouse. The cafes are filled with every variety of Mos- lem, Jew, Turk, and infidel. Nowhere else will you see to better advantage the wonderful variety of races and costumes that distinguishes Algiers above most other cosmopolitan Mediterranean cities. The dark M'zabite from the oases, arrayed like Joseph in a coat of many colors, stands chatting at his own door with the pale- faced melancholy Berber of the Aures mountains. The fat and dusky Moor, over- fed on kous-kous, jostles cheek by jowl with the fair Jewess in her Paisley shawl and quaint native head-gear. Mahonnais Spaniards from the Balearic Isles, girt round their waists with red scarves, talk gaily to French missionary priests in violet bands and black cassocks. Old Arabs on white donkeys amble with grave dignity down the center of the broad street, where chasseurs in uniform and spahis in crimson cloaks keep them company on fiery steeds from the Government stud at Blidah. All is noise and bustle, hurry, scurry, 36 THE MEDITERRANEAN and worry, the ant-hill life of an English bazaar gro- tesquely superimposed on the movement and stir of a great European city. You pass through the gates of the old Moorish town and find yourself at once in a modern but still busy suburb. Then on a sudden the road begins to mount the steep Mustapha slope by sharp zigzags and bold gra- dients. In native Algerian days, before Allah in his wisdom mysteriously permitted the abhorred infidel to bear sway in the Emerald City over the Faithful of Islam, a single narrow mule-path ascended from the town wall to the breezy heights of Mustapha. It still exists, though deserted, that old breakneck Mussulman road, a deep cutting through soft stone, not unlike a Devonshire lane, all moss-grown and leafy, a favorite haunt of the natural- ist and the trap-door spider. But the French engineers, most famous of road-makers, knew a more excellent way. Shortly after the conquest they carved a zigzag carriage-drive of splendid dimensions up that steep hill- front, and paved it well with macadam of most orthodox solidity. At the top, in proof of their triumph over na- ture and the Moslem, they raised a tiny commemorative monument, the Colonne Voirol, after their commander's name, now the Clapham Junction of all short excursions among the green dells of the Sahel. The Mustapha road, on its journey uphill, passes many exquisite villas of the old Moorish corsairs. The most conspicuous is that which now forms the Governor- General's Summer Palace, a gleaming white marble pile of rather meretricious and over-ornate exterior, but all glorious within, to those who know the secret of decora- tive art, with its magnificent heirloom of antique tiled dados. Many of the other ancient villas, however, and A MOORISH VILLA 37 notably the one occupied by Lady Mary Smith-Barry, are much more really beautiful, even if less externally pretentious, than the Summer Palace. One in particular, near the last great bend of the road, draped from the ground to the flat roof with a perfect cataract of bloom by a crimson bougainvillea, may rank among the most picturesque and charming homes in the French dominions. It is at Mustapha, or along the El Biar road, that the English colony of residents or winter visitors almost en- tirely congregates. Nothing can be more charming than this delicious quarter, a wilderness of villas, with its gleaming white Moorish houses half lost in rich gardens of orange, palm, and cypress trees. How infinitely love- lier these Eastern homes than the fantastic extravagances of the Californie at Cannes, or the sham antiques on the Mont Boron \ The native North African style of archi- tecture answers exactly to the country in whose midst it was developed. In our cold northern climes those open airy arcades would look chilly and out of place, just as our castles and cottages would look dingy and incon- gruous among the sunny nooks of the Atlas. But here, on the basking red African soil, the milk-white Moorish palace with its sweeping Saracenic arches, its tiny round domes, its flat, terraced roofs, and its deep perspective of shady windows, seems to fit in with land and climate as if each were made for the other. Life becomes abso- lutely fairy-like in these charming old homes. Each seems for the moment while you are in it just a dream in pure marble. I am aware that to describe a true Moorish villa is like describing the flavor of a strawberry ; the one must be tasted, the other seen. But still, as the difficulty of a 38 THE MEDITERRANEAN task gives zest to the attempt at surmounting it, I will try my hand at a dangerous word-picture. Most of the Mustapha houses have an outer entrance-court, to which you obtain admission from the road by a plain, and often rather heavy, archway. But, once you have reached the first atrium, or uncovered central court, you have no reason to complain of heaviness or want of decoration. The court-yard is generally paved with parti-colored marble, and contains in its center a Pompeian-looking fountain, whose cool water bubbles over into a shallow tank beneath it. Here reeds and tall arums lift their stately green foliage, and bright pond-blossoms rear on high their crimson heads of bloom. Round the quad- rangle runs a covered arcade (one might almost say a cloister) of horse-shoe arches, supported by marble col- umns, sometimes Grzeco-Roman antiques, sometimes a little later in date, but admirably imitated from the orig- inals. This outer court is often the most charming fea- ture of the whole house. Here, on sultry days, the ladies of the family sit with their books or their fancy-work ; here the lord of the estate smokes his afternoon cigar; here the children play in the shade during the hottest African noon-day. It is the place for the siesta, for the afternoon tea, for the lounge in the cool of the evening, for the joyous sense of the delight of mere living. From the court-yard a second corridor leads into the house itself, whose center is always occupied by a large square court, like the first in ground-plan, but two- storied and glass-covered. This is the hall, or first re- ception room, often the principal apartment of the whole house, from which the other rooms open out in every direction. Usually the ground-floor of the hall has an open arcade, supporting a sort of balcony or gallery FINEST VIEWS 39 above, which runs right round the first floor on top of it. This balcony is itself arcaded ; but instead of the arches being left open the whole way up, they are filled in for the first few feet from the floor with a charming balustrade of carved Cairene woodwork. Imagine such a court, ringed round with string-courses of old Oriental tiles, and decorated with a profusion of fine pottery and native brasswork, and you may form to yourself some faint mental picture of the common remodeled Algerian villa. It makes one envious again to remember how many happy days one has spent in some such charming retreats, homes where all the culture and artistic taste of the West have been added to all the exquisite decora- tive instinct and insight of the Oriental architect. Nor are fair outlooks wanting. From many points of view on the Mustapha Hill the prospect is among the most charming in the western Mediterranean. Sir Lam- bert Playfair, indeed, the learned and genial British Consul-General whose admirable works on Algeria have been the delight of every tourist who visits that beauti- ful country, is fond of saying that the two finest views on the Inland Sea are, first, that from the Greek Theater at Taormina, and, second, that from his own dining-room windows on the hill-top at El Biar. This is very strong praise, and it comes from the author of a handbook to the Mediterranean who has seen that sea in all aspects, from Gibralta to Syria; yet I fancy it is too high, es- pecially when one considers that among the excluded scenes must be put Naples, Sorrento, Amalfi, Palermo, and the long stretch of Venice as seen from the Lido. I would myself even rank the outlook on Monaco from the slopes of Cap Martin, and the glorious panorama of Nice and the Maritime Alps from the Lighthouse Hill at 40 THE MEDITERRANEAN Antibes, above any picture to be seen from the northern spurs of the Sahel. Let us be just to Pirseus before we are generous to El Biar. But all this is, after all, a mere matter of taste, and no lover of the picturesque would at any rate deny that the Bay of Algiers, as viewed from the Mustapha Hill, ranks deservedly high among the most beautiful sights of the Mediterranean. And when the sunset lights up in rosy tints the white mole and the marble town, the resulting scene is sometimes one of almost fairy-like splendor. Indeed, the country round Mustapha is a district of singular charm and manifold beauty. The walks and drives are delicious. Great masses of pale white clematis hang in sheets from the trees, cactus and aloe run riot among the glens, sweet scents of oleander float around the deep ravines, delicious perfumes of violets are wafted on every breeze from unseen and unsuspected gardens. Nowhere do I know a landscape so dotted with houses, and nowhere are the houses themselves so individually interesting. The outlook over the bay, the green dells of the foreground, the town on its steep acclivity, the points and headlands, and away above all, in the opposite direction, the snow-clad peaks of the Djurjura, make up a picture that, after all, has few equals or superiors on our latter-day planet. One of the sights of Mustapha is the Arab cemetery, where once a week the women go to pray and wail, with true Eastern hyperbole, over the graves of their dead relations. By the custom of Islam they are excluded from the mosques and from all overt participation in the public exercises of religion ; but these open-air temples not made with hands, even the Prophet himself has never dared to close to them. Ancestor-worship and the vene- SEMITIC IDOLATRY 41 ration of the kindred dead have always borne a large part in the domestic creed of the less civilized Semites, and, like many other traces of heathenism, this antique cult still peeps sturdily through the thin veil of Moham- medan monotheism. Every hillock in the Atlas outliers is crowned by the tiny domed tomb, or koubba, of some local saint; every sacred grove overshadows the relics of some reverend Marabout. Nay, the very oldest forms of Semitic idolatry, the cult of standing stones, of holy trees, and of special high places on the mountain-tops, survive to this day even in the midst of Islam. It is the women in particular who keep alive these last relics of pre-Moslem faith ; it is the women that one may see weeping over the narrow graves of their loved ones, praying for the great desire of the Semitic heart, a man- child from Allah, before the sacred tree of their pagan ancestors, or hanging rags and dolls as offerings about the holy grove which encloses the divine spring of pure and hallowed water. Algiers is thus in many ways a most picturesque winter resort. But it has one great drawback : the climate is moist and the rainfall excessive. Those who go there must not expect the dry desert breeze that renders Luxor and Assiout so wholesome and so unpleasant. Beautiful vegetation means rain and heat. You will get both in Algiers, and a fine Mediterranean tossing on your jour- ney to impress it on your memory. Ill MALAGA A nearly perfect climate — Continuous existence of thirty cen- turies — Granada and the world-renowned Alhambra — Sys- tems of irrigation — Vineyards the chief source of wealth — Esparto grass — The famous Cape de Gatt — The highest peak of the Sierra Nevada — Last view of Granada. MALAGA has been very differently described and appreciated. The Arab chroniclers who knew it in the palmy days of the Moorish domina- tion considered it " a most beautiful city, densely peopled, large and most excellent." Some rose to poetical rhap- sody in describing it ; they praised it as " the central jewel of a necklace, a land of paradise, the pole star, the* diadem of the moon, the forehead of a bewitching beauty unveiled." A Spanish poet was not less eloquent, and sang of Malaga as " the enchantress, the home of eternal spring, bathed by the soft sea, nestling amidst flowers." Ford, on the other hand, that prince of guide-book makers, who knew the Spain of his day intimately from end to end, rather despised Malaga. He thought it a fine but purely commercial city, having " few attractions be- yond climate, almonds and raisins, and sweet wine." Malaga has made great strides nevertheless in the fifty- odd years since Ford so wrote of it While preserving many of the charming characteristics which evoked such 42 GENERAL VIEW 43 high-flown encomiums in the past, it has developed con- siderably in trade, population, and importance. It grows daily; building is constantly in progress, new streets are added year after year to the town. Its commerce flour- ishes ; its port is filled with shipping which carry off its many manufactures : chocolate, liquorice, porous jars, and clay figures, the iron ores that are smelted on the spot; the multifarious products of its fertile soil, which grows in rich profusion the choicest fruits of the earth : grapes, melons, plantains, guava, cjuince, Japanese medlars, oranges, lemons, and prickly years. All the appliances and luxurious aids to comfort known to our latter-day civilization are to be found in Malaga: several theaters, one of them an opera house, clubs, grand hotels, bankers, English doctors, cabs. It rejoices too in an indefeasible and priceless gift, a nearly perfect climate, the driest and balmiest in Southern Europe. Rain falls in Malaga but half a dozen days in the year, and its winter sun would shame that of an English summer. It has a southern aspect, and is sheltered from the north by an imposing range of mountains ; its only trouble is the terral or north- west wind, the same disagreeable visitor as that known on the Italian Riviera as the Tramontana, and in the south of France as the Mistral. These climatic advan- tages have long recommended Malaga as a winter health resort for delicate and consumptive invalids, and an in- creasingly successful rival to Madeira, Malta, and Al- giers. The general view of this city of sunshine, looking westward, to which point it lies open, is pleasing and varied; luxuriant southern vegetation, aloes, palmetto, and palms, fill up the foreground ; in the middle distance are the dazzling white facades and towers of the town, the great amphitheater of the bull ring, the tall spire of 44 THE MEDITERRANEAN the Cathedral a very conspicuous object, the whole set off by the dark blue Mediterranean, and the reddish- purple background of the Sierra Bermeja or Vermilion Hills. There is active enjoyment to be got in and near Malaga as well as the mere negative pleasure of a calm, lazy life amid beautiful scenes. It is an excellent point of de- parture for interesting excursions. Malaga lies on the fringe of a country full of great memories, and preserv- ing many curious antiquarian remains. It is within easy reach by rail of Granada and the world-renowned Al- hambra, whence the ascent of the great southern snowy range, the Sierra Nevada, may be made with pleasurable excitement and a minimum of discomfort. Other towns closely associated with great events may also be visited : Alhama, the mountain key of Granada, whose capture preluded that of the Moorish capital and is enshrined in Byron's beautiful verse; Ronda, the wildly picturesque town lying in the heart of its own savage hills ; Almeria, Antequera, Archidona, all old Moorish towns. By the coast road westward, a two days' ride, through Estepona and Marbella. little seaside towns bathed by the tideless Mediterranean, Gibraltar may be reached. Inland, a day's journey, are the baths of Caratraca, delightfully situated in a narrow mountain valley, a cleft of the rugged hill, and famous throughout Spain. The waters are akin to those of Harrogate, and are largely patron- ized by crowds of the bluest-blooded hidalgos, the most fashionable people, Spaniards- from La Corte (Madrid), and a^l parts of the Peninsula. Yet another series of riding excursions may be made into the wild Alpujarras, a desolate and uncultivated district gemmed with bright oases of verdure, which are best reached by the coast ROUTE TO GRANADA 45 road leading from Malaga through Velez Malaga, Motril to Adra, and which is perhaps the pleasantest route to Granada itself. On one side is the dark-blue sea; on the other, vine-clad hills : this is a land, to use Ford's words, " overflowing with oil and wine ; here is the palm with- out the desert, the sugar-cane without the slave ; " old Moorish castles perched like eagles' eyries crown the hills ; below cluster the spires and towers of churches and convents, hemmed in by the richest vegetation. The whole of this long strip of coast is rich with the alluvial deposits brought down by the mountain torrents from the snowy Sierras above ; in spring time, before the sum- mer heats have parched the land, everything flourishes here, the sweet potato, indigo, sugar-cane and vine ; masses of wild flowers in innumerable gay colors, the blue iris, the crimson oleander, geraniums, and luxuriant festoons of maidenhair ferns bedeck the landscape around. It is impossible to exaggerate the delights of these riding trips ; the traveller relying upon his horse, which carries a modest kit, enjoys a strange sense of independence: he can go on or stop, as he chooses, lengthen or shorten his day's journey, which takes him perpetually and at the leisurely pace which permits ample observation of the varied views. The scene changes constantly : now he threads a half-dried watercourse, thick with palmetto and gum cistus ; now he makes the slow circuit of a series of little rocky bays washed by the tideless calm of the blue sea; now he breasts the steep slope, the seemingly perilous ascent of bold cliffs, along which winds the track made centuries since when the most direct was deemed the shortest way to anywhere in spite of the diffi- culties that intervened. Malaga as a seaport and place of settlement can claim 46 THE MEDITERRANEAN almost fabulous antiquity. It was first founded by the Phoenicians three thousand years ago, and a continuous existence of thirty centuries fully proves the wisdom of their choice. Its name is said to be Phoenician, and is differently derived from a word meaning salt, and an- other which would distinguish it as " the king's town." From the earliest ages Malaga did a thriving business in salt fish ; its chief product and export were the same anchovies and the small boqiicrones, not unlike an Eng- lish whitebait, which are still the most highly prized deli- cacies of the Malaga fish market. Southern Spain was among the richest and most valued of Phoenician posses- sions. It was a mine of wealth to them, the Tarshish of Biblical history from which they drew such vast sup- plies of the precious metals that their ships carried silver' anchors. Hiram, King of Tyre, was a sort of goldsmith to Solomon, furnishing the wise man's house with such stores of gold and silver utensils that silver was " ac- counted nothing therein," as we read in the First Book of Kings. When the star of Tyre and Sidon waned, and Carthage became the great commercial center of the Mediterranean, it controlled the mineral wealth of Spain and traded largely with Malaga. Later, when Spain passed entirely into Roman hands, this southern province of Boetica grew more and more valuable, and the wealth of the country passed through its ports eastward to the great marts of the world. Malaga, however, was never the equal either in wealth or commercial importance of its more eastern and more happily placed neighbor Al- meria. The latter was the once famous " Portus Mag- nus," or Great Port, which monopolized most of the maritime traffic with Italy and the more distant East, But Malaga rose in prosperity as Roman settlers crowded ANDALUCIA 47 into Boetica, and Roman remains excavated in and around the town attest the size and importance of the place under the Romans. It was a municipium, had a fine ampithea- ter, the foundations of which were laid bare long after- wards in building a convent, while many bronzes, frag- ments of statuary, and Roman coins found from time to time prove the intimate relations between Malaga and the then Mistress of the World. The Goths, who came next, overran Boetica, and although their stay was short, they rechristened the province, which is still known by their name, the modern Andal-, or Vandalucia. Malaga was a place of no importance in the time of the Visigoths, and it declined, only to rise with revived splendor under the Moors, when it reached the zenith of its greatness, and stood high in rank among the Hispano-Mauresque cities. It was the same one-eyed Berber General, Tarik, who took Gibraltar who was the first Moorish master of Malaga. Legendary story still associates a gate in the old Moorish castle, the Gibralfaro, with the Moorish in- vasion. This Puerta de la Cava was called, it has been said, after the ill-used daughter of Count Julyan whose wrongs led to the appeal to Moorish intervention. But it is not known historically that Count Julyan had a daughter named La Cava, or any daughter at all ; nor is it likely that the Moors would remember the Christian maiden's name as sponsor for the gate. After the Moorish conquest Malaga fell to the tribes that came from the river Jordan, a pastoral race who extended their rule to the open lands as far as Archidona. The rich- ness of their new possession attracted great hordes of Arabs from their distant homes ; there was a general exodus, and each as it came to the land of promise settled 48 THE MEDITERRANEAN where they found anything that recalled their distant homes. Thus the tribes from the deserts of Palmyra found a congenial resting-place on the arid coast near Almeria and the more rugged kingdom of Murcia; the Syrian mountaineers established themselves amidst the rocky fastness of the Ronda Serrania ; while those from Damascus and Bagdad reveled in the luxuriant beauty of the fertile plains watered by the Xenil and Darro, the great Vega, with its orange-groves and jeweled gardens that still make Granada a smiling paradise. These Moslem conquerors were admirable in their ad- ministration and development of the land they seized, quick to perceive its latent resources and make the most of them. Malaga itself became the court and seat of government of a powerful dynasty whose realms ex- tended inland as far as Cordova, and the region around grew under their energetic and enlightened management into one great garden teeming with the most varied vege- tation. What chiefly commended Malaga to the Moors was the beauty of its climate and the amazing fertility of the soil. The first was a God-sent gift, the latter made unstinting return for the labor freely but intelli- gently applied. Water was and still is the great need of those thirsty and nearly rainless southern lands, and the Moorish methods of irrigation, ample specimens of which still survive, were most elaborate and effective con- trivances for distributing the fertilizing fluid. Many of these ancient systems of irrigation are still at work at Murcia, Valencia, Granada, and elsewhere. The Moors were masters of hydraulic science, which was never more widely or intelligently practiced than in the East. So the methods adopted and still seen in Spain have their Oriental prototypes and counterparts. They varied, of IRRIGATION 49 course, with the character of the district to be irrigated and the sources of supply. Where rivers and running water gave the material, it was conveyed in canals ; one main trunk-line or artery supplied the fluid to innumer- able smaller watercourses or veins, the accquias, which formed a reticulated network of minute ramifications. The great difficulty in the plains, and this was especially the case about Malaga, was to provide a proper fall, which was effected either by carrying the water to a higher level by an aqueduct, or sinking it below the sur- face in subterranean channels. Where the water had to be raised from underground, the simple pole, on which worked an arm or lever with a bucket, was used, the identical " shadoof " of the Nile ; or the more elaborate water-wheel, the Arab Anaoiira, a name still preserved in the Spanish Noria, one of which is figured in the Al- meria washing-place, where it serves the gossiping lavaiideras at their work. In these norias the motive power is usually that of a patient ox, which works a revolving wheel, and so turns a second at right angles armed with jars or buckets. These descend in turn, coming up charged with water, which falls over into a reservoir or pipe, whence it flows to do its business below. Under this admirable system the land gives forth per- petual increases. It knows no repose. Nothing lies fal- low. " Man is never weary of sowing, nor the sun of calling into life." Crop succeeds crop with astonishing rapidity ; three or four harvests of corn are reaped in the year, twelve or fifteen of clover and lucerne. All kinds of fruit abound ; the margins of the watercourses blossom with flowers that would be prized in a hothouse, and the most marvelous fecundity prevails. By these 50 THE MEDITERRANEAN means the Moors of Malaga, the most scientific and suc- cessful of gardeners, developed to the utmost the mar- velously prolific soil. Moorish writers described the pomegranates of Malaga as red as rubies, and unequaled in the whole world. The brevas, or small green figs, were of exquisitely delicious flavor, and still merit that encomium. Grapes were a drug in the markets, cheap as dirt ; while the raisins into which they were converted, by a process that dates back to the Phoenicians, found their way into the far East and were famous in Pales- tine, Arabia, and beyond. The vineyards of the Malaga district, a wide tract embracing all the southern slopes towards the Mediterranean, were, and still are. the chief source of its wealth. The wine of Malaga could tempt even Mohammedan Moors to forget their prophet's pro- hibition ; it was so delicious that a dying Moor when commending his soul to God asked for only two bless- ings in Paradise, enough to drink of the wines of Malaga and Seville. As the " Mountains," this same wine was much drunk and appreciated by our forefathers. To this day " Malaga " is largely consumed, both dry and sweet, especially that known as the Lagrimas, or Tears, a cognate term to the famous Lachrymas Christi of Naples, and which are the very essence of the rich ripe grapes, which are hung up in the sun till the juice flows from them in luscious drops. Orange groves and lemon groves abound in the Vega, and the fruit is largely ex- ported. The collection and packing are done at points along the line of railway to which Malaga is the mari- time terminus, as at La Pizarra, a small but important station which is the starting point for the Baths of Cara- traca, and the mountain ride to Ronda through the mag- LA CONCEPCION 51 nificent pass of El Burgo. Of late years Malaga has become a species of market garden, in which large quanti- ties of early vegetables are raised, the primeurs of French gourmets, the young peas, potatoes, asparagus, and lettuce, which are sent north to Paris during the winter months by express trains. This is probably a more profitable business than the raising of the sugar-cane, an industry introduced (or more exactly, revived, for it was known to and cultivated by the Moors) in and around Malaga by the well-known General Concha, Marques del Duero. He spent the bulk of a large fortune in developing the cane cultivation, and almost ruined himself in this patriotic endeavor. Others benefited largely by his well- meant enterprise, and the sugar fields of southern Spain prospered until the German beet sugar drove the home- grown hard. The climate of Malaga, with its great dry- ness and absolute immunity from frost, is exceedingly favorable to the growth of the sugar-cane, and the sugar fields at the time of the cutting are picturesque centers of activity. The best idea, however, of the amazing fer- tility of this gifted country will be obtained from a visit to one of the private residential estates, or Uncos, such as that of La Concepcion, where palms, bamboos, arums, cicads and other tropical plants thrive bravely in the open air. It is only a short drive, and is well worth a visit. The small Grecian temple is full of Roman re- mains, chiefly from Cartama, the site of a great Roman city which Livy has described. Some of these remains are of beautiful marble figures, which were found, like ordinary stones, built into a prison wall and rescued with some difficulty. The Malaga authorities annexed them, thinking they contained gold, then threw them away as 52 THE MEDITERRANEAN old rubbish. Other remains at La Concepcion are frag- ments of the Roman municipal law, on bronze tablets, found at Osuna, between Antequera and Seville. Malaga possesses many mementoes of the Moors be- sides their methods of irrigation. The great citadel which this truly militant race erected upon the chief point of vantage and key to the possession of Malaga still remains. This, the Castle of Gibralfaro, the rock of the lighthouse, was built by a prince of Granada, Mohammed, upon the site of a Phoenician fortress, and it was so strongly fortified and held that it long resisted the strenuous efforts of Ferdinand and Isabella in the memorable siege which prefaced the fall of Granada. How disgracefully the Catholic kings ill-treated the con- quered Moors of Malaga, condemning them to slavery or the auto da fe, may be read in the pages of Prescott. The towers of the Gibralfaro still standing have each a story of its own : one was the atalaya, or watch-tower ; on another, that of La Vela, a great silver cross was erected when the city surrendered. Below the Gibralfaro, but connected with it and forming part of the four deep city walls, is the Alcazaba, another fortification utilized by the Moors, but the fortress they raised stands upon Phoenician foundations. The quarter that lies below these Moorish strongholds is the most ancient part of Malaga, a wilderness of dark, winding alleys of Oriental aspect, and no doubt of Moorish origin. This is the home of the lower classes, of the turbulent masses who have in all ages been a trial and trouble to the authori- ties of the time. The Malaguenos, the inhabitants of Malaga, whether Moors or Spaniards, have ever been rebellious subjects of their liege lords, and uncomfortable REBELLIOUS SUBJECTS' 53 neighbors to one another. In all their commotions they have generally espoused the cause which has ultimately failed. Thus, in 1831, Riego and Torrijos having been in open revolt against the Government, v\^ere lured into embarking for Malaga from Gibraltar, where they had assembled, by its military commandant Moreno, and shot down to a man on the beach below the Carmen Convent. Among the victims was an Englishman, Mr. Boyd, whose unhappy fate led to sharp protests from England. Since this massacre a tardy tribute has been raised to the memory of the slain ; it stands in the shape of a monu- ment in the Plaza de Riego, the Alameda. Again, Malaga sided with Espartero in 1843, when he " pro- nounced " but had to fly into exile. Once more, in 1868, the Malagueiios took up arms upon the losing side, fight- ing for the dethroned Isabella Segunda against the suc- cessful soldiers who had driven her from Madrid. Malaga was long and obstinately defended, but eventu- ally succumbed after a sanguinary struggle. Last of all. after the abdication of Amadeus in 1873, the Republicans of Malaga rose, and carried their excesses so far as to establish a Communistic regime, which terrorized the town. The troops disbanded themselves, their weapons were seized by the worst elements of the population, who held the reins of power, the local authorities having taken to flight. The mob laid hands on the custom- house and all public moneys, levied contributions upon the more peaceable citizens, then quarreled among them- selves and fought out their battles in the streets, sweep- ing them with artillery fire, and threatening a general bombardment. Order was not easily restored or without 54 THE MEDITERRANEAN the display of armed force, but the condign punishment of the more blameworthy has kept Malaga quiet ever since. While the male sex among the masses of Malaga enjoy an indifferent reputation, her daughters of all classes are famed for their attractiveness, even in Spain, the home, par excellence, of a well-favored race. " Muchachas Malaguenas, muy halagueiias " (the girls of Malaga are most bewitching) is a proverbial expression, the truth of which has been attested by many appreciative observers. Theophile Gautier's description of them is perhaps the most complimentary. The Malaguena, he tells us, is re- markable for the even tone of her complexion (the cheek having no more color than the forehead), the rich crim- son of her lips, the delicacy of her nostril, and above all the brilliancy of her Arab eyes, which might be tinged with henna, they are so languorous and so almond- shaped. " I cannot tell whether or not it was the red draperies of their headgear, but their faces exhibited gravity combined with passion that was quite Oriental in character." Gautier drew this picture of the Mala- gueiias as he saw them at a bull-fight, and he expresses a not unnatural surprise that sweet. Madonna-like faces, which might well inspire the painter of sacred subjects, should look on unmoved at the ghastly episodes of the blood-stained ring. It shocked him to see the deep in- terest with which these pale beauties followed the fight, to hear the feats of the arena discussed by sweet lips that might speak more suitably of softer things. Yet he found them simple, tender-hearted, good, and concluded that it was not cruelty of disposition but the custom of the country that drew^ them to this savage show. Since then the bull-fight, shorn, however, of its worst horrors, ALMERIA 55 has become acclimatized and most popular amidst M. Gautier's own country-women in Paris. That the beauty of the higher ranks rivals that of the lowest may be inferred from the fact that a lady whose charms were once celebrated throughout Europe is of Malaguefian descent. The mother of the Empress Eugenie, who shared with Napoleon III. the highest honors in France, was a Malaga girl, a Miss Fitzpatrick, the daughter of the British consul, but she had also Spanish blood in her veins. A near neighbor and old rival, as richly endowed, may again pass Malaga in the great race for commercial ex- pansion. This is Almeria, which lies farther eastward and which owns many natural advantages; its exposed port has been improved by the construction of piers and breakwaters, and it now offers a secure haven to the shipping that should ere long be attracted in increasing tonnage to carry away the rich products of the neighbor- ing districts. Almeria is the capital of a province teem- ing with mineral wealth, and whose climate and soil favor the growth of the most varied and valuable crops. The silver mines of the mountains of Murcia and the fertile valleys of the Alpujarras would find their best outlet at Almeria, while Granada would once more serve as its farm. So ran the old proverb, " When Almeria was really Almeria, Granada was only its alqueria," or source of supply. What this time-honored but almost forgotten city most needs is to be brought into touch with the railway systems of Spain. Meanwhile, Almeria, awaiting better fortune, thrives on the exports of its own products, chief among which are grapes and esparto. The first has a familiar sound to British ears, from the green grapes known as " Almerias," which are largely 56 THE MEDITERRANEAN consumed in British households. These are not equal to the delicately flavored Muscatels, but they are stronger and will bear the packing- and rough usages of exporta- tion under which the others perish. Esparto is a natural product of these favored lands, which, after long supply- ing local wants, has now become an esteemed item in their list of exports. It is known to botanists as the Spanish rush, or bass feather grass, the Genet d'Espagne, and is compared by Ford to the " spear grass which grows on the sandy sea-shores of Lancashire." It is still manufactured, as in the days of Pliny, into matting, baskets, ropes, and the soles for the celebrated Alpar- gatas, or rope sandal shoes, worn universally by Spanish peasants in the south and Spanish soldiers on the line of march. The ease and speed with which the Spanish in- fantry cover long distances are greatly attributed to their comfortable chaussures. Nowadays a much wider out- let has been found for esparto grass, and it is grown artificially. When rags became more and more scarce and unequal to the demands of the paper-makers, experi- ments were made with various substitutes, and none an- swered the purpose better than the wild spear-grass of southern Spain. Almeria, while awaiting the return of maritime pros- perity, can look with some complacency upon a memor- able if not altogether glorious past. Its very names. Tortus Magnus under the Romans, and Al Meriah, the " Conspicuous," under the Moors, attest its importance. All the agricultural produce of the prolific Vega, the silks that were woven on Moorish looms and highly prized through the East, were brought to Almeria for transmission abroad. The security and convenience of this famous port gave it an evil reputation in after years, THE ALCAZABA 57 when it became an independent kingdom under Ibn May- mum. Almeria was the terror of the Mediterranean ; its pirate galleys roved to and fro, making descents upon the French and Italian coasts, and carrying back their booty, slaves, and prizes to their impregnable home. Spaniards and Genoese presently combined against the common enemy, and Almeria was one of the earliest Christian conquests regained from the Moors. Later still the Algerian Moors took fresh revenge, and their corsairs so constantly threatened Almeria that Charles V. repaired its ancient fortifications, the old Moorish castle now called the Alcazaba, the center or keep, and hung a great tocsin bell upon its cathedral tower to give no- tice of the pirates' approach. This cathedral is the most imposing object in the decayed and impoverished town. Pigs and poultry roam at large in the streets, amidst dirt and refuse ; but in the strong sunlight, white and blind- ing as in Africa, the mean houses glisten brightly, and the abundant color seen on awnings and lattice, upon the women's skirts and kerchiefs, in the ultramarine sea, is brought out in the most vivid and beautiful relief. The scenery on the coast from Malaga ea.stward is fine, in some parts and under certain aspects magnificent. Beyond Almeria is the famous Cape de Gatt, as it is known to our mariners, the Cabo de Gata of local par- lance, the Agate Cape, to give it its precise meaning. This remarkable promontory, composed of rocks en- crusted with gems, is worthy a place in the " Arabian Nights." There are miles and miles of agates and crys- tal spar, and in one particular spot amethysts are found. Wild winds gather and constantly bluster about this richly constituted but often storm-tossed landmark. Old sailor saws have perpetuated its character in the form of a 58 THE MEDITERRANEAN proverb, " At the Cape de Gatt take care of your hat." Other portions of the coast nearer Malaga are still more forbidding and dangerous : under the Sierra Tejada, for example, where the rocky barriers which guard the land rise tier above tier as straight as a wall, in which there are no openings, no havens of safety for passing craft in an inshore gale. Behind all, a dim outline joining hands as it were with the clouds, towers the great snowy range of southern Spain, the Sierra Nevada, rejoicing in an elevation as high as the Swiss Alps, and in some respects far more beautiful. There are, however, no such grim glaciers, no such vast snow-fields as in Switzerland, for here in the south the sun has more power, and even at these heights only the peaks and pinnacles wear white crests during the summer heats. This more genial temperature encour- ages a richer vegetation, and makes the ascents less per- ilous and toilsome. A member of the Alpine Club would laugh to scorn the conquest of Muley Hacen, or of the Picacho de la Veleta, the two crowning peaks of the range. The enterprise is within the compass of the most moderate effort. The ascent of the last-named and low- est, although the most picturesque, is the easiest made, because the road from Granada is most direct. In both cases the greatest part of the climbing is performed on horseback ; but this must be done a day in advance, and thus a night has to be passed near the summit under the stars. The temperature is low, and the travellers can only defend themselves against the cold by the wraps they have brought and the fuel they can find (mere knotted roots) around their windy shelter. The ascent to where the snow still lingers, in very dirty and dis- reputable patches, is usually commenced about two in the THE SIERRA NEVADA 59 morning-, so that the top may be reached before dawn. If the sky is clear, sunrise from the Picacho is a scene that can never be forgotten, fairly competing with, if not outrivaling, the most famous views of the kind. The Mediterranean lies below like a lake, bounded to the north and west by the Spanish coast, to the south by the African, the faintest outlines of which may often be seen in the far, dim distance. Eastward the horizon is made glorious by the bright pageants of the rising sun, whose majestic approach is heralded by rainbow-hued clouds. All around are the strangely jagged and contorted peaks, rolling down in diminishing grandeur to the lower peaks that seem to rise from the sea. The highest peak of the Sierra Nevada is Muley Hacen, although it has only the advantage over the Picacho de la Veleta by about a couple of hundred feet. It is a longer and more difficult ascent, but in some ways the most interesting, as it can best be reached through the Alpuj arras, those romantic and secluded valleys which are full of picturesque scenery and of historical associa- tions. The starting point, as a general rule, is Trevelez, although the ascent may be equally made from Portugos, somewhat nearer Granada. Trevelez is the other side and the most convenient coming from Malaga by way of Motril. But no one would take the latter route who could travel by the former, which leads through Alhen- din, that well-known village which is said to have seen the last of the departing Moors. This is the point at which Granada is finally lost to view, and it was here that Boabdil, the last king of Granada, took his last farewell of the city whose loss he wept over, under the scathing sarcasm of his more heroic mother, who told him he might well " weep like a woman for what he 6o THE MEDITERRANEAN could not defend as a man." Near this village is the little hill still known as the site of " El Ultimo Suspiro del Moro, the last sigh of the Moor." This same road leads through Lanjaron, an enchanting spot, posted high upon a spur of the hills, and famous as a bathing place with health-giving mineral springs. From Portugos or Trevelez the climb is easy enough: to be accomplished a great part of the way on horseback, and in its earlier levels ascending amid forests of evergreen oak; after that, long wastes of barren rock are passed, till at length the summit is reached, on a narrow strip of table-land, the highest in Southern Europe, and with an unrivaled view. The charm of the Muley Hacen peak is its isola- tion, while the Picacho looks better from it than Muley Hacen does from the Picacho. and there is a longer vista across the Mediterranean Sea. IV BARCELONA The flower market of the Rambla — Streets of the old town — The Cathedral of Barcelona — Description of the Columbus monu- ment — All Saints' Day in Spain— Mont Tibidaho— Diverse centers of intellectual activity — Ancient history— Philanthropic and charitable institutions. <4"|^ARCELONA, shrine of courtesy, harbor of the wayfarer, shelter of the poor, cradle of the brave, champion of the outraged, nurse of friendship, unique in position, unique in beauty ! " Such was the eulogium bestowed upon Barcelona by the great Cervantes several hundred years ago, an eulo- gium warranted by a stranger's experience in our own day. The matchless site of the second city of Spain, its luxuriant surroundings, awaken enthusiasm as of old, whilst even the briefest possible sojourn suffices to make us feel at home. A winning urbanity, a cosmopolitan ami- ableness, characterize the townsfolk, Spanish hauteur is here replaced by French cordiality. Softness of manner and graces of speech lend additional charm to a race con- spicuous for personal beauty. The Barcelonese are de- scribed by a contemporary as laborious and energetic, ambitious of social advance, tenacious of personal dignity, highly imaginative, at the same time eminently practical, steadfast in friendship, vehement in hate. The stir and 6i 62 THE MEDITERRANEAN magnificence of the city attest the progressive character of the inhabitants. Few European capitals can boast of finer public monu- ments, few indeed possess such a promenade as its famous Rambla. The Rambla may be regarded as an epitome, not only of the entire city, but of all Spain, and here the curious traveller should take up his quarters. A dozen brilliant or moving spectacles meet the eye in a day, whilst the normal aspect is one of unimaginable pictur- esqueness and variety. The dark-eyed flower-girls with their rich floral displays; the country folks still adhering to the costume of Catalonia — the men sandaled and white-hosed, for headgear, slouch caps of crimson, scarlet, or peach- colored felt, the women with gorgeous silk ker- chiefs pinned under the chin — the Asturian nursemaids in poppy-red skirts barred with black, and dainty gold and lace caps ; the ladies fanning themselves as they go in November, with black lace mantillas over their pretty heads ; the Guardia Civile in big, awe-inspiring cocked hats and long black cloaks reaching to the ankle; the trim soldiery in black and red tunics, knickerbockers and buskins, their officers ablaze with gold braid and lace; the spick-and-span city police, each neat as a dandy in a melodrama, not a hair out of place, collars and cuffs of spotless white, ironed to perfection, well-fitting costumes, swords at their sides ; the priests and nuns ; the seafaring folk of many nationalities ; the shepherds of uncouth ap- pearance from the neighboring mountains — all these at first make us feel as if we were taking part in a mas- querade. Now way is made for the funeral train of some rich citizen, the lofty car of sumptuous display of black and gold drapery, wreaths of fresh roses, violet, and helio- THE FLOWER MARKET 63 trope, large as carriage-wheels, fastened to the sides, the coffin, encased in black and violet velvet, studded with gold nails ; following slowly, a long procession of car- riages bearing priests, choristers, and mourners. And now the sounds of martial music summon the newcomer a sec- ond time to his window. It is a soldier who is borne to his rest. Six comrades accompany the bier, carrying long inverted tapers ; behind march commanding officers and men, the band playing strains all too spirited it seems for such an occasion. There is always something going on in this splendid avenue animated from early morning till past midnight, market-place, parade ground, promenade in one. The daily flower-market of itself would almost repay the journey from London. When northern skies are gloomiest, and fogs are daily fare, the Rambla is at its best. The yellowing leaves of the plane-trees look golden under the dazzling blue sky, and brilliant as in a picture are the flower-sellers and their wares. These distract- ingly pretty girls, with their dark locks pulled over the brow, their lovely eyes, rich olive complexions, and gleam- ing white teeth, have nothing of the mendicant about them. As they offer their flowers — perhaps fastening roses to a half-finished garland with one hand, whilst with the other a pot of heliotrope is reached down — the passer- by is engagingly invited to purchase. The Spanish lan- guage, even the dialect of Catalonia, is music to begin with, and the flower-maidens make it more musical still by their gentle, caressing ways. Some wear little mantil- las of black, blonde, or cashmere; others, silk kerchiefs of brightest hue — orange, crimson, deep purple, or fan- ciful patterns of many colors. Barcelona is a flower-gar- den all the year round, and in mid-winter we stroll be- 64 THE MEDITERRANEAN tweeii piled-up masses of rose, carnation, and violet, to say nothing of dahlias and chrysanthemums. It is especially on All Saints' and All Souls' Days that the flower-market of the Rambla is seen to advantage ; enormous sums are spent upon wreaths and garlands for the cemetery, the poorest then contriving to pay his floral tribute to departed kith and kin. In striking contrast with the wide, airy, ever brilliantly illuminated Rambla, electric light doing duty for sunshine at night, are the streets of the old town. The stranger may take any turning — either to right or left — he is sure to find himself in one of these dusky narrow thorough- fares, so small ofttimes the space between window and opposite window that neighbors might almost shake hands. With their open shops of gay woolen stuffs, they vividly recall Cairene bazaars. Narrow as is the accom- modation without, it must be narrower still within, since when folks move from one house to another their goods and chattels are hoisted up and passed through the front windows. The sight of a chest of drawers or a sofa in cloudland is comical enough, although the system certainly has its advantages. Much manual labor is thereby spared, and the furniture doubtless escapes injury from knocking about. The wise traveller will elect to live on the Rambla, but to spend his time in the old town. Wherever he goes he is sure to come upon some piece of antiquity, whilst here, in a great measure, he loses sight of the cosmopolitan ele- ment characterizing the new quarters. Novel and strik- ing as is its aspect to the stranger, Barcelona must never- theless be described as the least Spanish of Spanish towns. The second seaport of Spain is still — as it was in the Middle Ages — one of the most important seats of inter- THE CATHEDRAL 65 national commerce on the Mediterranean. As we elbow our way along the crowded Rambla we encounter a diver- sity of types and hear a perplexing jargon of many tongues. A few minutes suffice to transport us into the old-world city familiar to Ford — not, however, to be de- scribed by the twentieth century tourist in Ford's own words. " A difficult language," he wrote just upon half a century ago, " rude manners, and a distrust of stran- gers, render Barcelona a disagreeable city." Nowhere nowadays is more courtesy shown to the inquiring stranger. He is not even obliged to ask his way in these narrow tortuous streets. The city police, to be found at every turn, uninvited come to his aid, and, bringing out a pocket-map, with an infinity of pains make clear to him the route he has to take. The handsome Calle San Fer- nando leads to the somber but grandiose old Cathedral with its lovely cloisters, magnificent towers and bells, deep-voiced as that of Big Ben itself. All churches in Spain, by the way, must be visited in the forenoon ; even then the light is so dim that little can be seen of their treasures — pictures, reliquaries, marble tombs. The Ca- thedral of Barcelona forms no exception to the rule. Only lighted by windows of richly stained old glass, we are literally compelled to grope our way along the crowded aisles. Mass is going on from early morning till noon, and in the glimmering jeweled light we can just discern the moving figures of priests and acolytes before the high altar, and the scattered worshippers kneel- ing on the floor. Equally vague are the glimpses we obtain of the chapels, veritable little museums of rare and beautiful things unfortunately consigned to perpetual obscurity, veiled in never-fading twilight. What a change we find outside ! The elegant Gothic cloisters, rather 66 THE MEDITERRANEAN to be described as a series of chapels, each differing from the other, each sumptuously adorned, enclose a sunny open space or patio, planted with palms, orange and lemon trees, the dazzlingly bright foliage and warm blue sky in striking contrast to the somber gray of the building- stone. A little farther off, on the other side, we may see the figures of the bell-ringers high up in the open belfry tower, swinging the huge bells backwards and forwards with tremendous effort, a sight never to be missed on Sundays and fete days. This stately old Cathedral, like so many others, was never finished and works of reparation and restoration are perpetually going on. Close by stands the Palais de Justice, with its beautiful Gothic court and carved stone staircase, the balustrade supported by lovely little statu- ettes or gargoyles, each an artistic study in itself. Abut- ting this is the Palais de Diputacion, Provincial or local Parliament House, a building of truly Spanish grandeur. Its wide marble staircases, its elaborate ceilings of carved wood, its majestic proportions, will, perhaps, have less in- terest for some travellers than its art-treasures, two chefs d'cEuvre of the gifted Fortuny. Barcelona was the patron of this true genius — Catalan by birth — so unhappily cut off in his early prime. With no little pride the stately officials show these canvases — the famous " Odalisque " and the "Battle of Tetuan " — the latter, alas! left un- finished. It is a superb piece of life and color, but must be seen on a brilliant day as the hall is somber. Nothing can exceed the courtesy of the Barcelonese to strangers, and these pictures are shown out of the regular hours. But let no one incautiously offer a fee. The proffered coin will be politely, even smilingly, rejected, without hu- miliating reproof, much less a look of affront. Ford's ARCHIVES OF BARCELONA dj remark that " a silver key at all times secures admis- sion " does not hold good in these days. Near the Cathedral, law courts, and Provincial Parlia- ment House stands another picturesque old palace of comparatively modern date, yet Saracenic aspect, and containing one of the most curious historic treasures in Europe. This is the palace of the kings of Aragon, or Archive General de la Corona de Aragon. The exterior, as is usual with Spanish buildings, is massive and gloomy. Inside is a look of Oriental lightness and gaiety. Slen- der columns, painted red, enclose an open court, and sup- port a little terrace planted with shrubs and flowers. Here in perfect order and preservation, without a break, are stored the records of upwards of a thousand years, the earlier consisting of vellum scrolls and black letter, the latter showing the progress of printing from its be- ginning down to our own day. The first parchment bears date A. D. 875. Among the curiosities of the collection are no less than eight hundred and two Papal Bulls from the year 1017 to 1796. Besides the archives of Barcelona itself, and of the kingdom of Aragon, to which it was annexed in the twelfth century, the palace contains many deeply interesting manuscripts found in the suppressed monasteries. The archives have been ingeniously arranged by the learned keeper of records. The bookcases, which are not more than six feet high, stand on either side of the vast library, at some distance from the wall, made stair- case-wise; one set of volumes just above the other, with the result that no accumulation of dust is possible, and that each set is equally accessible. The effect on the eye of these symmetrically-placed volumes in white vel- lum is very novel and pleasing. We seem to be in a 68 THE MEDITERRANEAN hall, the walls of which are of fluted cream-colored marble. The little museum of local antiquities in the ruined Church of Santa Agneda, the somber old churches of San Pablo del Campo, Santa Maria del Mar and Belen, the fragments of mediceval domestic architecture remaining here and there — all these will detain the arcli?eologist. Of more general interest are the modern monuments of Barcelona. In no city have civic lavishness and public spirit shone forth more conspicuously. A penny tramway — you may go anywhere here for a penny — takes you to the beautiful Park and Fountain of Neptune. The word " fountain " gives an inadequate notion of the splendid pile, with its vast triple-storied marble galleries, its sculptured Naiads and dolphijis, and on the summit, towering above park and lake and cas- cades, its three gigantic sea-horses and charioteers richly gilt, gleaming as if indeed of massive gold. Is there any more sumptuous fountain in the world? I doubt it. In spite of the gilded sea-horses and chariot, there is no tawdriness here ; all is bold, splendid, and imposing. Below the vast terraced galleries and wide staircases, all of pure marble, flows in a broad sheet the crystal-clear water, home of myriads of gold fish. The entourage is worthy of so superb a construction. The fountain stands in the midst of a scrupulously-kept, tastefully laid-out, ever-verdant park or public pleasure-ground. In No- vember all is fresh and blooming as in an English June. Palms, magnolias, bananas, oleanders, camellias, the pepper-tree, make up a rich, many-tinted foliage. Flowers in winter-time are supplanted by beds of bril- liant leaved plants that do duty for blossoms. The pur- ple, crimson, and sea-green leaves are arranged with COLUMBUS MONUMENT 69 great effect, and have a brilliant appearance. Here sur- rounded by gold green turf, are little lakes which may be sailed across in tiny pleasure skiffs. At the chief entrance, conspicuously placed, stands the fine equestrian monument to Prim, inaugurated with much civil and mili- tary pomp some years ago. It is a bold statue in red bronze. The general sits his horse, hat in hand, his fine, soldier-like face turned towards the city. On the sides of the pedestal are bas-reliefs recording episodes of his ca- reer, and on the front these words only, " Barcelona a Prim." The work is that of a Spanish artist, and the monument as a whole reflects great credit alike to local art and public spirit. But a few minutes' drive brings us within sight of a monument to one of the world's heroes. I allude to the memorial column recently raised to Columbus by this same public-spirited and munificent city of Barcelona. Columbus, be it remembered, was received here by Ferdi- nand and Isabella after his discovery of America in 1493. Far and wide over hills and city, palm-girt harbor, and sea, as a lighthouse towers the tremendous obelisk, the figure of the great Genoese surmounting it, his feet placed on a golden sphere, his outstretched arm pointing triumphantly in the direction of his newly-discovered continent as much as to say, " It is there ! " Never did undertaking reflect more credit upon a city than this stupendous work. The entire height of the monument is about two-thirds of the height of the Monu- ment of London. The execution was entrusted to Barce- lonese craftsmen and artists; the materials— bronze, stone, and marble— all being supplied in the neighbor- hood. On the upper tier of the pedestal are statues of the 70 THE MEDITERRANEAN four noble Catalans who materially aided Columbus in his expedition — by name Fray Boyl, monk of Montserrat, Pedro Margarit, Jaime Ferrer, and Luis Sentangel. Be- low are allegorical figures representing, in the form of stately matrons, the four kingdoms of Catalonia, Castille, Aragon, and Leon. Bas-reliefs, illustrating scenes in the career of the discoverer, adorn the hexagonal sides, six magnificent winged lions of grey stone keep jealous watch over the whole, and below these, softening the aspect of severity, is a belt of turf, the following inscription being perpetually written in flowers : " Barcelona a Colon." The column is surmounted by a globe burnished with gold, and above rises the colossal figure of Columbus. No happier site could have been selected. The monu- ment faces the sea, and is approached from the town by a palm-bordered walk and public garden. The first object to greet the mariner's eye as he sights land is the figure of Columbus poised on his glittering ball ; the last to fade from view is that beacon-like column tower- ing so proudly above city and shore. A little excursion must be made by boat or steamer, in order to realize the striking efl^ect of this monument from the sea. To obtain a bird's-eye view of Barcelona itself, the stranger should go some distance inland. The Fort of Montjuich, commanding the town from the south, or Mont Tibidaho to the north, will equally answer his pur- pose. A pretty winding path leads from the shore to a pleasure-garden just below the fort, and here we see the entire city spread as in a map at our feet. The pano- rama is somewhat monotonous, the vast congeries of white walls and grey roofs only broken by gloomy old church towers and tall factory chimneys, but thus is realized for the first time the enormous extent of the THE NEW CEMETERY 71 Spanish Liverpool and Manchester in one. Thus, indeed, may Barcelona be styled. Looking seaward, the picture is animated and engaging — the wide harbor bristling with shipping, lateen-sailed fishing boats skimming the deep- blue sunny waves, noble vessels just discernible on the dim horizon. The once celebrated promenade of the Murallo del Mar, eulogized by Ford and other writers, no longer exists, but the stranger will keep the sea-line in search of the new cemetery. A very bad road leads thither, on All Saints' and All Souls' days followed by an unbroken string of vehicles, omnibuses, covered carts, hackney car- riages, and private broughams ; their occupants, for the most part, dressed in black. The women, wearing black Cashmere mantillas, are hardly visible, being hidden by enormous wreaths, crosses, and bouquets of natural and also of artificial flowers. The new cemetery is well placed, being several miles from the city, on high ground between the open country and the sea. It is tastefully laid out in terraces — the trees and shrubs testifying to the care bestowed on them. Here are many costly monu- ments — mausoleums, we should rather say — of opulent Barcelonese, each family possessing its tiny chapel and burial-place. It is to be hoped that so progressive a city as Bar- celona will ere long adopt the system of cremation. Noth- ing can be less hygienic, one would think, than the pres- ent mode of burial in Spain. To die there is literally — - not figuratively — to be laid on the shelf. The terrace- like sides of the cemetery ground have been hollowed out into pigeon-holes, and into these are thrust the coffins, the marble slab closing the aperture bearing a memorial inscription. Ivy and other creepers are trained around 'J2 THE MEDITERRANEAN the various divisions, and wreaths of fresh flowers and immortelles adorn them; the whole presenting the ap- pearance of a huge chest of drawers divided into mathe- matically exact segments. To us there is something un- canny — nay, revolting — in such a form of burial ; which, to say the least of it, cannot be warranted on sesthetic, much less scientific, principles. It is satisfactory to find that at last Protestants and Jews have their own burial- place here, shut off from the rest, it is true by a wall at least twenty feet high, but a resting-place for all that. It was not so very long ago that Malaga was the only Spanish town according Protestants this . privilege, the concession being wrung from the authorities by the late much-esteemed British consul, Mr. Mark. For some days preceding the festival of All Saints the cemetery presents a busy scene. Charwomen, garden- ers, masons, and painters then take possession of the place. Marble is scoured, lettering is repainted, shrubs clipped, turf cut — all is made spick and span, in time for the great festival of the dead. It must be borne in mind that All Saints' Day in Spain has no analogy with the same date in our own calendar. Brilliant sunshine, air soft and balmy as of July, characterize the month of No- vember here. These visits to the cemetery are, there- fore, less depressing than they would be performed amid English fog and drizzle. We Northerners, moreover, cannot cast off gloomy thoughts and sad retrospection as easily as the more elastic, more joyous Southern tem- perament. Mass over, the pilgrimage to the cemetery paid, all is relaxation and gaiety. All Saints' and All Souls' days are indeed periods of unmitigated enjoyment and relaxation. Public offices, museums, schools, shops, RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS 73 are closed. Holiday folk pour in from the country. The city is as animated as Paris on the 14th of July. In the forenoon it is difficult to elbow one's way through the crowded thoroughfares. Every street is thronged, men flocking to mass as zealously as devotees of the other sex. In these early hours most of the ladies wear black; their mourning garb later in the day to be exchanged for fashionable toilettes of all colors. The children are decked out gaily, as for a fancy fair. Serv- ice is being held in every church, and from all parts may be heard the sonorous Cathedral bells. Its vast, somber interior, now blazing with wax-lights, is a sight to re- member. Crowds in rapt devotion are kneeling on the bare stones, the ladies heedless of their silks; here and there the men kneeling on a glove or pocket-handker- chief, in order to protect their Sunday pantaloons. Rows of poor men — beggars, it would seem, tidied up for the occasion — sit in rows along the aisle, holding lighted tapers. The choir is filled with choristers, men and boys intoning the service so skilfully that they almost seem to sing. Soon the crowds fall back, and a procession passes from choir to high altar — priests and dignitaries in their gorgeous robes, some of black, embroidered with crosses in gold, others of white and purple or yellow, the bishop coming last, his long violet train borne by a priest; all the time the well-trained voices of the choristers — sweet treble of the boys, tenor, and base — making up for lack of music. At last the long ceremony comes to an end, and the vast congregation pours out to enjoy the balmy air, the warm sunshine, visits, confectionery, and other dis- tractions. Such religious holidays should not be missed by the 74 THE MEDITERRANEAN traveller, since they still stamp Spain as the most Catholic country in the world. Even in bustling, cosmopolitan, progressive Barcelona people seem to spend half their time in church. In the capital of Catalonia, twentieth-century civiliza- tion and the mediaeval spirit may still be called next-door neighbors. The airy boulevards and handsome villas of suburban Algiers are not more strikingly contrasted with the ancient Moorish streets than the new quarters of Barcelona with the old. The Rambla, its electric lights, its glittering shops, cafes, clubs, and theaters, recalls a Parisian boulevard. In many of the tortuous, malodorous streets of the old town there is hardly room for a wheel- barrow to be drawn along; no sunbeam has ever pene- trated the gloom. Let us take a penny tramway from the Rambla to the gloomy, grandiose old church of Santa Maria del Mar. Between the city and the sea rises the majestic monu- ment to Columbus, conspicuous as a lighthouse alike from land and sea. We follow a broad palm-bordered alley and pleasure garden beyond which are seen the noble harbor bristling with masts and the soft blue Mediterranean. Under the palms lounge idle crowds listening to a band, shading themselves as best they can from the burning sun of November! What a change when we leave the tramway and the airy, handsome precincts of the park, and plunge into the dark, narrow, street behind the Lonja Palace. The somber picture is not without relief. Round about the ancient fagade of the church are cloth- shops, the gay wares hanging from each story, as if the shopmen made a display of all their wares. Here were reds, yellows, greens of brightest hue, some of these woolen blankets, shawls, and garments of every de- SANTA MARIA DEL MAR 75 scription being gay to crudeness ; grass green, scarlet, orange, sky-blue, dazzled the eye, but the general effect was picturesque and cheerful. The dingy little square looked ready for a festival. In reality, a funeral service was taking place in the church. If Spanish interiors are always dark and depressing, what must they be when draped with black? No sooner does the door swing behind us here than daylight is shut out completely as on entering a mine; we are obliged to grope our way by the feeble rays of light penetrating the old stained glass of the clerestory. The lovely lancets of the aisles are hidden by huge black banners, the vast building being only lighted by a blaze of wax tapers here and there. Sweet soft chanting of boys' voices, with a de- licious organ accompaniment, was going on when I en- tered, soon to be exchanged for the unutterably monoto- nous and lugubrious intoning of black-robed choristers. They formed a procession and, chanting as they went, marched to a side altar before which a priest was per- forming mass. The Host elevated, all marched back again, the dreary intoning now beginning afresh. It is impossible to convey any adequate notion of the dreari- ness of the service. If the Spaniards understand how to enjoy to the uttermost what Browning calls " the wild joy of living," they also know how to clothe death with all the terrors of mediaeval superstition. It takes one's breath away, too, to calculate the cost of a funeral here, what with the priests accomplished in the mystic dance — so does a Spanish writer designate the performance — • the no less elaborate services of the choristers, the light- ing up of the church, the display of funeral drapery. The expense, fortunately, can only be incurred once. These ancient churches— all somberness and gloom, yet on fete ye THE MEDITERRANEAN days ablaze with light and colors — symbolize the leading characteristics of Spanish character. No sooner does the devotee rise from his knees than the Southern passion for joy and animation asserts itself. Religious exercise and revel, penitence and enjoyment, alternate one with the other; the more devout the first, all the more eagerly indulged in the last. On the Sunday morning following the Festival of All Saints — the 4th of November — the splendid old cathedral was the scene of a veritable pageant. Wax lights illumi- nated the vast interior from end to end, the brocades and satins of priestly robes blazed with gold embroidery, the rich adornments and treasure of altar and chapels could be seen in full splendor. Before the grand music of the organ and the elevation, a long, very long, sermon had to be listened to, the enormous congregation for the most part standing; scattered groups here and there squatted on the stone piers, not a chair to be had anywhere, no one seeming to find the discourse too long. When at last the preacher did conclude, the white-robed choristers, men and boys, passed out of the choir, and formed a double line. Then the bishop in solemn state descended from the high altar. He wore a crimson gown with long train borne by a priest, and on his head a violet cap, with pea- green tuft. The dresses of the attendant clergy were no less gorgeous and rich in texture, some of crimson with heavy gold trimmings, others of mauve, guinea-gold, peach color, or creamy white, several wearing fur caps. The procession made the round of the choir, then returned to the starting-point. As I sat behind the high altar on one of the high-backed wooden benches destined for the aged poor, two tiny chorister boys came up, both in white surplices, one with a pink, the other with sky-blue GRACIA 77 collar. Here they chatted and laughed with their hands on the bell-rope, ready to signal the elevation. On a sudden the tittering ceased, the childish hands tugged ai the rope, the tinkling of the bell was heard, and the mul- titude, as one man, fell on its knees, the organ meantime being played divinely. Service over, the crowds emerged into the dazzling sunshine: pleasure parties, steamboat trips, visits, theaters, bull-fights occupied the rest of the day, the Rambla presenting the appearance of a mas- querade. An excursion northwards of the city is necessary, in order to see its charming, fast-increasing suburbs. Many, as is the case with those of Paris, Passy, Auteuil, Belle- ville, and others, were formerly little towns, but are fast becoming part of Barcelona itself. Most musically named is Gracia, approached by rail or tramway, where rich citizens have their orange and lemon gardens, their chateaux and villas, and where re- ligious houses abound. In this delightful suburban re- treat alone no less than six nunneries may be counted ; somber prison-like buildings, with tiny barred windows, indicating the abode of cloistered nuns of ascetic orders. That of the Order of St. Domingo has been recently founded. The house looks precisely like a prison. Here also are several congregations of the other sex — the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, the Fathers of San Filipe, and others. Gracia may be called the Hampstead of Barcelona. Hardly a house but possesses its garden. Above the high walls trail gorgeous creepers and datura, whilst through the iron gates we obtain glimpses of dahlias in full splendor, roses red and white, and above these the glossy-leaved orange and lemon trees with their ripening 78 THE MEDITERRANEAN fruit. The pleasantest suburb of Barcelona is well worthy of its name. As Sarria is approached, the scenery becomes more rural, and under the brilliant November sunshine reminds the traveller of the East, the square, white, low-roofed houses rising- amid olive and palm trees. The aloes and prickly pears on the waste ground again and again recall Algeria. Here are vast stretches of vegetable gardens and vineyards supplying the city markets, and standing in their own grounds on sunny hill-sides, the quintas or country houses of rich citizens and grandees. From the little town of Sarria — hardly as yet to be called suburban — a glorious view is obtained of city, port, and sea. The narrow dusty streets, with their close- shuttered houses, have a sleepy look; yet Sarria pos- sesses one of the largest cotton-mills in Spain, several thousand hands being employed by one firm. The branch railway ends at Sarria. Here tourists and holiday-mak- ers alight; the hardy pedestrian to reach the summit of Mont Tibidaho on foot — a matter of two hours or so — the less enterprising, to accept one of the covered cars awaiting excursionists outside the station. Mont Tibi- daho is the favorite holiday ground of the citizens. Even in November numerous pleasure parties are sure to be found here, and the large restaurants indicate the extent of summer patronage. On the breezy heights round about are the sumptuous mansions of nobles and mer- chant princes ; whilst down below are numerous pic- turesque valleys, notably that of San Cugat. The stranger fortunate enough to obtain admission will find himself in the kind of fairyland described by Tennyson in his " Haroun-al-Raschid," Owen Meredith in " The Siege of Constantinople," or Gayangos in his delightful BARCELONETA 79 translation of the " Chronicles of Al-Makkari." Marble courts, crystal fountains, magnificent baths, mosaic pave- ments, statuary, tapestries, aviaries, rare exotics, gold and silver plate, are now combined with all modern appliances of comfort. A sojourn in one of the well-appointed hotels will suffice to give some notion of Spanish society. Dur- ing the holidays many families from the city take up their quarters here. Social gatherings, picnics, excur- sions, concerts, are the order of the day, and good mili- tary bands enliven the gardens on Sundays. To the south-east of Barcelona lies the suburb of Bar- celoneta, frequented by the seafaring population. Penny boats ply between city and suburb, on Sundays and holidays the music of a barrel-organ being thrown into the bargain. The harbor is then black with spectators, and the boats and little steamers, making the cruise of the port for half a franc, are crowded with holiday-makers. The bright silk head-dresses of the women, the men's crimson or scarlet sombreros and plaids, the uniforms of the soldiers, the gay dresses of the ladies, make up a picturesque scene. On board the boats the music of the barrel-organ must on no account be paid for. A well- intentioned stranger who should offer the musician a penny is given to understand that the treat is gratuitous and generously supplied by the owners of the craft. Greed being almost universal in those parts of the world frequented by tourists, it is gratifying to be able to chronicle such exceptions. Seldom, indeed, has the sight- seer at Barcelona to put his hand in his pocket. If inferior to other Spanish cities in picturesqueness and interest generall}^, the capital of Catalonia atones for the deficit by its abundance of resources. It possesses nothing to be called a picture-gallery; the museums are 8o THE MEDITERRANEAN second-rate, the collections of antiquities inconsiderable. But what other city in Spain can boast of so many learned bodies and diverse centers of intellectual activity ? Excessive devotion and scientific inquiry do not here seem at variance. Strange to say, a population that seems perpetually on its knees is the first to welcome modern ideas. The Academy of Arts was founded in 1751, and owes its origin to the Junta, or Tribunal of Commerce of Cata- lonia. This art school is splendidly lodged in the Lonja Palace, and attached to it is a museum, containing a few curious specimens of old Spanish masters, some rather poor copies of the Italian schools, and one real artistic treasure of the first water. This is a collection of studies in black and white by the gifted Fortuny, whose first training was received here. The sketches are masterly, and atone for the insignificance of the remaining collec- tion. Students of both sexes are admitted to the classes, the course of study embracing painting in all its branches, modeling, etching, linear drawing and perspective, anat- omy and aesthetics. It is gratifying to find that girls attend these classes, although as yet in small numbers. The movement in favor of the higher education of women marches at a snail's pace in Spain. The vast number of convents and what are called " Escuelas Pias," or religious schools, attest the fact that even in the most cosmopolitan and enlightened Spanish town the education of girls still remains chiefly in the hands of the nuns. Lay schools and colleges exist, also a normal school for the training of female teachers, founded a few years ago. Here and there we find rich families en- trusting their girls to English governesses, but such cases are rare. ESCUELAS PIAS 8i We must remember, however, that besides the numer- ous " Escuelas pias " and secular schools, several exist opened under the auspices of the Spanish Evangelical body, and also the League for the Promotion of lay Teaching. We need not infer, then, that because they do not attend the municipal schools the children go un- taught. How reluctantly Catholic countries are won over to educate their women we have witnessed in France. Here in the twentieth century the chief occupation of an edu- cated Spanish lady seems to be that of counting her beads in church. Music is universally taught, the cultivation of the piano being nowhere more assiduous. Pianoforte teach- ers may be counted by the hundred; and a Conserva- torium, besides academies due to private initiative, offers a thorough musical training to the student. Elegant pianos, characterized by great delicacy of tone and low price, are a leading feature of Barcelona manufacture, notably of the firm Bernareggi. The University, attended by two thousand five hun- dred students, was founded so long ago as 1430, and rebuilt in 1873. A technical school — the only complete school of arts and sciences existing in Spain — was opened under the same roof in 1850; and, in connection with it, night classes are held. Any workman provided with a cer- tificate of good conduct can attend these classes free of cost. Schools of architecture and navigation are also attached to the University. Thirst after knowledge characterizes all classes of the community. A workman's literary club, or Athenseum, founded a few years back, is now a flourishing institution. 82 THE MEDITERRANEAN aided by municipal funds. No kind of recreation is al- lowed within its walls. Night-schools opened here are attended by several hundred scholars. Barcelona also boasts of an Academy of Belles Lettres, the first founded in Spain ; schools of natural science, chemistry, agricul- ture, of medicine and surgery, of jurisprudence, an acad- emy devoted to the culture of the Catalonian language, and containing library and museum. This society has greatly contributed to the protection of ancient buildings throughout the province, besides amassing valuable treas- ure, legend, botanical and geological specimens and antiquities. The Archaeological Society of Barcelona has also effected good work : to its initiative the city is mainly indebted for the charming little collection of antiquities known as the " Museo Provincial," before alluded to. In places of public entertainment Barcelona is unusu- ally rich. Its Opera House, holding four thousand spec- tators, equals in spaciousness the celebrated house of Moscow. The unpretentious exterior gives no idea of the splendor within. A dozen theaters may be counted be- sides. Bull-fights, alas ! still disgrace the most advanced city of the Peninsula. The bull-ring was founded in 1834, and the brutal spectacle still attracts enormous crowds, chiefly consisting of natives. The bull-fight is almost unanimously repudiated by foreign residents of all ranks. A few words must now be said about the history of this ancient place. The city founded here by Hamilcar Barco, father of the great Hannibal, is supposed to stand on the site of one more ancient still, existing long before the foundation of Rome. The Carthaginian city in 206 b. c. became a Roman colonia, under the title of " Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barzino," which was eclipsed in im- ANCIENT HISTORY 83 portance, however, by Tarragona, the Roman capital. In 409 A. D. it was taken by the Goths, and under their domination increased in size and influence, coining its own money stamped with the legend " Barcinona." On the destruction of Tarragona by the Moors Barcelona capitulated, was treated with clemency, and again be- came a metropolis. After many vicissitudes it was ruled in the ninth century by a Christian chief of its own, whose descendants till the twelfth governed it under the title of Counts of Barcelona, later assuming that of Kings of Aragon, to which kingdom the province was annexed. During the Middle Ages Barcelona played a foremost part in the history of commerce. In the words of Ford, " Like Carthage of old, it was the lord and terror of the Mediterranean. It divided with Italy the enriching com- merce of the East. It was then a city of commerce, con- quest, and courtiers, of taste, learning, and luxury — the Athens of the troubadour." Its celebrated .commercial code, framed in the thir- teenth century, obtained acceptance throughout Europe. Here one of the first printing-presses in Spain was set up, and here Columbus was received by Ferdinand and Isabella after his discovery of a new world. A hundred years later a ship was launched from the port, made to move by means of steam. The story of Barcelona is henceforth but a catalogue of tyrannies and treacheries, against which the brave, albeit turbulent, city struggled single-handed. In 171 1 it was bombarded and partly ruined by Philip V. ; a few years later, after a magnani- mous defense, it was stormed by Berwick, on behalf of Louis XIV., and given up to pillage, outrage, fire, and sword. Napoleon's fraudulent seizure of Barcelona is one of the most shameful pages of his shameful history. 84 THE MEDITERRANEAN The first city — the key of Spain, as he called it — only to be taken in fair war by eighty thousand men, was basely entrapped, and remained in the hands of the French till the Treaty of Paris in 1814. From that time Barcelona has only enjoyed fitful intervals of repose. In 1827 a popular rising took place in favor of Don Carlos. In 1834 Queen Christina was opposed, and in 1840 public opinion declared for Espartero. In 1856 and 1874 insur- rections occurred, not without bloodshed. Barcelona is a great gathering-place of merchants from all parts of Europe. In its handsome hotels is heard a very Babel of tongues. The principal manufactures consist of woolen stuffs — said to be inferior to English in quality — silk, lace, firearms, hats, hardware, pianos ; the last, as has been already stated, of excellent quality, and low in price. Porcelain, crystal, furniture, and inlaid work, must be included in this list, also ironwork and stone blocks. Beautifully situated on the Mediterranean between the mouths of two rivers,— the Llobregat and the Besos — ■ and possessing one of the finest climates in the world, Barcelona is doubtless destined ere long to rival Algiers as a health resort. Three lines of railway now connect it directly with Paris, from which it is separated by twenty- eight hours' journey. The traveller may leave Barcelona at five o'clock in the morning and reach Lyons at mid- night with only a change of carriages on the frontier. The route via Bordeaux is equally expeditious ; that by way of Clermont-Ferrand less so, but more picturesque. Hotels in the capital of Catalonia leave nothing to desire on the score of management, hygiene, comfort, and prices strictly regulated by tariff. The only drawback to be complained of is the total absence of the feminine ele- INSTITUTIONS 85 ment-not a woman to be seen on the premises. Good family hotels, provided with lady clerks and chamber- maids, is a decided desideratum. The traveller wishing to attam a knowledge of the Spanish language, and see something of Spanish life and manners, may betake him- seit to one of the numerous boarding-houses _ Barcelona is very rich in philanthropic and charitable institutions Foremost of these is its Hospital of Santa Cruz, numbering six hundred beds. It is under the con-' joint management of sisters and brothers of charity and lay nurses of both sexes. An asylum for the insane forms part of the building, with annexes for the con- valescent. The Hospital del Sagrado Corazon, founded by public subscription in 1870 for surgical cases, also speaks volumes for the munificence of the citizens The only passport required of the patient is poverty. One in- teresting feature about this hospital is that the commit- tee of management consists of ladies. The nursing staff IS formed of French Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul Be- sides these must be named the orphanage for upwards of wo thousand children of both sexes-Casa de Caridad de la Provmcia de Barcelona-asylums for abandoned in- fants for the orphaned children of seamen, maternity hospitals creches, etc. There is also a school for the blmd and deaf mutes, the first of the kind established in Spam. Here the blind of both sexes receive a thorou^^h musical training, and deaf mutes are taught according to the system known as lip-speech. All teaching is gratuitous. ^ Barcelona possesses thirty-eight churches, without counting the chapels attached to convents, and a vast number of conventual houses. Several evangelical serv- ices are held on Sundays both in the city and in the 86 THE MEDITERRANEAN suburb of Barceloneta. The Protestant communities of Spain, England, France, Germany, Sweden, and other countries, have here their representative and organization. Sunday-schools and night-schools for adults are held in connection with these churches. The Protestant body seems active. We find here a branch depot of the Re- ligious Tract Society; various religious magazines, many of them translations from the English and German, are published. Among these are the " Revista Christiana,"' intended for the more thoughtful class of readers ; " La Luz," organ of the Reformed Church of Spain; and several illustrated periodicals for children. Will Protes- tantism ever take deep root in the home of the Inquisi- tion? Time will show. That very advanced political opinions should be held Jiere need hardly surprise us. We find the following Democratic clubs in existence : The Historic Republi- can Club (" Centro Republicano Historico"), the Possi- bilist Republican Club (" Circulo Republicano Possibil- ista"), the Democratic Progressist Club, the Federal Republican Club, and many others. When next a great popular movement takes place in Spain — and already the event looms in the distance — without doubt the first im- pulse will be given at Barcelona. Electric lighting was early introduced here, a company being founded so long back as 1880, and having branches in the capital, Seville, Valencia, Bilbao, and other towns. The importance of Barcelona as a center of commerce is attested by the extraordinary number of banks. At every turn the stranger comes upon a bank. " Compared to the mighty hives of English industry and skill, here everything is petty," wrote Ford, fifty years ago. Very RELIGIOUS FETE DAYS 87 different would be his verdict could he revisit the Man- chester and Liverpool of Catalonia in our own day. One curious feature of social life in Spain is the ex- traordinary number of religious fete days and public holi- days. No Bank Holiday Act is needed, as in the neigh- boring country of France. Here is a list of days during which business is for the most part suspended in this recreation-loving city : Twelfth-cake Day is the great festival of the little ones — carnival is kept up, if with less of former splendor, nevertheless with much spirit ; on Ash Wednesday rich and poor betake themselves to the country; Holy Thursday and Good Friday are celebrated with great pomp in the churches ; on Easter Eve takes place a procession of shepherds in the park ; Easter Mon- day is a day given up to rural festivity ; the 19th of March St. Jose's Day— is a universal fete, hardly a family in Spain without a Jose among its number. The first Sun- day in May is a feast of flowers and poetic competitions ; the days consecrated to St. Juan and St. Pedro are pub- lic holidays, patronized by enormous numbers of country- folks ; All Saints' and All Souls' Days are given up, as we have seen, to alternate devotion and festivity. On the 20th of December is celebrated the Feast of the Na- tivity, the fair and the displays of the shops attracting strangers from all parts. But it is especially the days sacred to the Virgin that are celebrated by all classes. Balls, banquets, processions, miracle-plays, illuminations, bull-fights, horse-races, scholastic fetes, industrial ex- hibitions, civic ceremonial, besides solemn services, occupy old and young, rich and poor. Feasting is the order of the day, and the confectioners' windows are wonderful to behold. 88 THE MEDITERRANEAN Although many local customs are dying out, we may still see some of the curious street sights described by Ford fifty years ago, and the Mariolatry he deplored is still as active as ever. The goodly show of dainties in the shops, however, belie his somewhat acrimonious de- scription of a Spanish reception, " Those who receive," he wrote, " provide very little refreshment unless they wish to be covered with glory; space, light, and a little bad music, are sufficient to amuse these merry, easily- pleased souls, and satisfy their frugal bodies. To those who, by hospitality and entertainment, can only under- stand eating and drinking — food for man and beast — • such hungry proceedings will be more honored in the breach than in the observance; but these matters depend much on latitude and longitude." Be this as it may, either the climate of Barcelona has changed, or international communication has revolutionized Spanish digestion. Thirty years ago, when travelling in Spain, it was no un- usual sight to see a spare, aristocratic hidalgo enter a restaurant, and, with much form and ceremony, break- fast off a tiny omelette. Nowadays we find plenty of Spanish guests at public ordinaries doing ample justice to a plentiful board. English visitors in a Spanish house will not only get good music, in addition to space and light, but abundant hospitality of material sort. The Spain of which Ford wrote so humorously, and, it must be admitted, often so maliciously, is undergoing slow, but sure, transformation. Many national charac- teristics remain — the passion for the brutal bull-fight still disgraces a polished people, the women still spend the greater portion of their lives in church, religious intol- erance at the beginning of the twentieth century must be laid to the charge of a slowly progressive nation. On the CABALLERO 89 other hand, and nowhere is the fact more patent than at Barcelona, the great intellectual and social revolution, de- scribed by contemporary Spanish novelists, is bringing the peninsula in closer sympathy with her neighbors. Many young Spaniards, for instance, are now educated in England, English is freely spoken at Malaga, and its literature is no longer unknown to Spanish readers. These facts indicate coming change. The exclusiveness which has hitherto barred the progress of this richly- dowed and attractive country is on the wane. Who shall say? We may ere long see dark-eyed students from Barcelona at Girton College, and a Spanish society for the protection of animals prohibiting the torture of bulls and horses for the public pleasure. Already— all honor to her name— a Spanish woman novelist, the gifted Caballero, has made pathetic appeals to her country-folks for a gentler treatment of animals in general. For the most part, it must be sadly confessed, in vain ! In spite of its foremost position, in intellectual and commercial pre-eminence, Barcelona has produced no famous men. Her noblest monument is raised to an alien; Lopez, a munificent citizen, honored by a statue, was born at Santander. Prim, although a Catalan, did not first see the light in the capital. By some strange concatenation of events, this noble city owes her fame rather to the collective genius and spirit of her children than to any one. A magnanimous stepmother, she has adopted those identified with her splendor to whom she did not herself give birth. Balzac wittily remarks that the dinner is the barometer of the family purse in Paris. One perceives whether Parisians are flourishing or no by a glance at the daily go THE MEDITERRANEAN board. Clothes afford a nice indication of temperature all the world over. We have only to notice what people wear, and we can construct a weather-chart for our- selves. Although the late autumn was, on the whole, fa- vorable, I left fires, furs, and overcoats in Paris. At Lyons, a city afflicted with a climate the proper epithet of which is " muggy," ladies had not yet discarded their summer clothes, and were only just beginning to re- furbish felt hats and fur-lined pelisses. At Montpellier the weather was April-like — mild, blowy, showery; waterproofs, goloshes, and umbrellas were the order of the day. On reaching Barcelona I found a blazing sun, windows thrown wide open, and everybody wearing the lightest garments. Such facts do duty for a thermometer. Boasting, as it does of one of the finest climates in the world, natural position of rare beauty, a genial, cosmo- politan, and strikingly handsome population, and lastly, accessibility, Barcelona should undoubtedly be a health resort hardly second to Algiers. Why it is not, I will undertake to explain. In the first place, there is something that invalids and valetudinarians require more imperatively than a perfect climate. They cannot do without the ministrations of women. To the suffering, the depressed, the nervous, feminine influence is ofttimes of more soothing — nay, healing — power than any medical prescription. Let none take the flattering unction to their souls — as well look for a woman in a Bashaw's army, or on a man-of-war, as in the palatial, well-appointed, otherwise irreproachable hotels of Barcelona ! They boast of marble floors, baths that would not have dissatisfied a Roman epicure, salons luxurious as those of a West-end club, HOTELS 91 newspapers in a score of languages, a phalanx of gentle- manly waiters, a varied ordinary, delicious wines, but not a daughter of Eve, old or youngi handsome or ugly — if, indeed, there exists an ugly woman in Barcelona — to be caught sight of anywhere ! No charming landlady, as in French hotels, taking friendliest interest in her guests, no housemaids, willing and nimble as the Marys and Janes we have left at home, not even a rough, kindly, garrulous charwoman scrubbing the floors. The fashion- able hotel here is a vast barrack conducted on strictly impersonal principles. Visitors obtain their money's worth, and pay their bills. There the transaction between innkeeper and traveller ends. Good family hotels or " pensions," in which invalids would find a home-like element, are sadly needed in this engaging, highly-favored city. The next desideratum is a fast train from Port Bou — the first Spanish town on the frontier. An express on the Spanish line would shorten the journey to Lyons by several hours. New car- riages are needed as much as new iron roads. Many an English third-class is cleaner and more comfortable than the so-called " first " here. It must be added that the officials are all politeness and attention, and that be- yond slowness and shabbiness the traveller has nothing to complain of. Exquisite urbanity is still a characteristic of the Barcelonese as it was in the age of Cervantes. One exception will be mentioned farther on. If there are no women within the hotel walls — except, of course, stray lady tourists — heaven be praised, there are enough, and to spare, of most bewitching kind with- out. Piquancy is, perhaps, the foremost charm of a Spanish beauty, whether a high-born senora in her brougham, or a flower-girl at her stall. One and all 92 THE MEDITERRANEAN seem born to turn the heads of the other sex, after the fashion of Carmen in Merimee's story. Nor is outward attraction confined to women. The city police, cab- drivers, tramway-conductors, all possess what Schopen- hauer calls the best possible letter of introduction, namely, good looks. The number of the police surprise us. These bustling, brilliant streets, with their cosmopolitan crowds, seem the quietest, most orderly in the world. It seems hard to believe that this tranquillity and contentment should be fallacious — on the surface only. Yet such is the case, as shown by the recent outbreak of rioting and bloodshed. " I have seen revolution after revolution," said to me a Spanish gentleman of high position, an hidalgo of the old school ; " I expect to see more if my life is sufficiently prolonged. Spain has no government; each in power seeks but self-aggrandizement. Our army is full of Bou- langers, each ready to usurp power for his own ends. You suggest a change of dynasty? We could not hope to be thereby the gainers. A Republic, say you? That also has proved a failure with us. Ah, you English are happy; you do not need to change abruptly the ex- isting order of things, you effect revolutions more calmly." I observed that perhaps national character and tempera- ment had something to do with the matter. He replied very sadly, " You are right ; we Southerners are more impetuous, of fiercer temper. Whichever way I look, I see no hope for unhappy Spain." Such somber reflections are difficult to realize by the passing traveller. Yet, when we consider the tremen- dous force of such a city as Barcelona, its progressive tendencies, its spirit of scientific inquiry, we can but admit that an Ultramontane regency and reactionary THE POSTE RESTANTE 93 government must be out of harmony with the tendencies of modern Spain. There is only one occupation which seems to have a deteriorating effect upon the Spanish temper. The at- mosphere of the post-office, at any rate, makes a Catalan rasping as an east wind, acrimonious as a sloe-berry. I had been advised to provide myself with a passport before revisiting Spain, but I refused to do so on prin- ciple. What business have we with this relic of barbarism at the beginning of the twentieth century, in times of peace among a friendly people? The taking a passport under such circumstances seemed to me as much of an anachronism as the wearing of a scapular, or seeking the royal touch for scYofula. By pure accident, a registered letter containing bank notes was addressed to me at the Poste Restante. Never was such a storm in a teacup, such groaning of the mountain before the creeping forth of a tiny mouse! The delivery of registered letters in Spain is accompanied with as much form as a marriage contract in France. Let future travellers in expectation of such documents provide themselves, not only with a passport, but a copy of their baptismal register, of the marriage certificate of their parents, the family Bible — • no matter its size^and any other proofs of identity they can lay hands upon. They will find none superfluous. V MARSEILLES Its Greek founders and early history — Superb view from the sea — The Cannebiere — The Parado and Chemin de la Corniche — Chateau d'lf and Monte-Cristo — Influence of the Greeks in Marseilles — Ravages by plague and pestilence — ^Treasures of the Palais des Arts — The chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde — The new Marseilles and its fijture. ABOUT six hundred years before the birth of Christ, when the Mediterranean, ringed round with a long series of commercial colonies, was first beginning to transform itself with marvelous rapid- ity into " a Greek lake," a body of adventurous Hellenic mariners — young Columbuses of their day — full of life and vigor, sailed forth from Phocaea in Asia Minor, and steered their course, by devious routes, to what was then the Far West, in search of a fitting and unoccupied place in which to found a new trading city. Hard pressed by the Persians on their native shore, these free young Greeks — the Pilgrim Fathers of modern Mar- seilles — left behind for ever the city of their birth, and struck for liberty in some distant land, where no Cyrus or Xerxes could ever molest them. Sailing awav past Greece and Sicily, and round Messina into the almost unknown Tyrrhenian Sea, the adventurous voyagers ar- rived at last, after various false starts in Corsica and elsewhere, at some gaunt white hills of the Gaulish coast, 94 THE OLD PORT 95 and cast anchor finally in a small but almost land-locked harbor, under the shelter of some barren limestone moun- tains. Whether they found a Phoenician colony already established on the spot or not, matters as little to history nowadays as whether their leaders' names were really Simos and Protis or quite otherwise. What does matter is the indubitable fact that Massalia, as its Greek founders called it, preserved through all its early history the im- press of a truly Hellenic city ; and that even to this moment much good Greek blood flows, without cjuestion, in the hot veins of all its genuine native-born citizens. The city thus founded has had a long, a glorious, and an eventful history. Marseilles is to-day the capital of the Mediterranean, the true commercial metropolis of that inland sea which now once more has become a single organic whole, after its long division by the Mohamme- dan conquest of North Africa and the Levant into two distinct and hostile portions. Naples, it is true, has a larger population; but then, a population of Neapolitan lazzaroni, mere human drones lounging about their hive and basking in the sunlight, does not count for much, except for the macaroni trade. What Venice once was, that Marseilles is to-day ; the chief gate of Mediterranean traffic, the main mart of merchants who go down in ships on the inland sea. In the Cannebiere and the Old Port, she possesses, indeed, as Edmond About once graphically phrased it, " an open door upon the Mediter- ranean and the whole world." The steamers and sailing vessels that line her quays bind together the entire Mediterranean coast into a single organic commercial whole. Here is the packet for Barcelona and Malaga; there, the one for Naples, Malta, and Constantinople. By this huge liner, sunning herself at La Joliette, we can go 96 THE MEDITERRANEAN to Athens and Alexandria; by that, to Algiers, Cagliari, and Tunis. Nay, the Suez Canal has extended her bounds beyond the inland sea to the Indian Ocean; and the Pillars of Hercules no longer restrain her from free use of the great Atlantic water-way. You may take ship, if you will, from the Quai de la Fraternite for Bombay or Yokohama, for Rio or Buenos Ayres, for Santa Cruz, Teneriffe, Singapore, or Melbourne. And this wide ex- tension of her commercial importance Marseilles owes, mainly no doubt, to her exceptional advantages of nat- ural position, but largely also, I venture to think, to the Hellenic enterprise of her acute and vigorous Grseco- Gaulish population. And what a marvelous history has she not behind her ! First of all, no doubt, a small fishing and trading station of prehistoric Gaulish or Ligurian villagers occupied the site where now the magnificent fagade of the Bourse commemorates the names of Massalia's greatest Phocsean navigators. Then the Phoenicians supervened upon the changeful scene, and built those antique columns and forgotten shrines whose scanty remains were recently un- earthed in the excavations for making the Rue de la Republique. Next came the early Phocaean colonists, reinforced a little later by the whole strength of their un- conquerable townsmen, who sailed away in a body, ac- cording to the well-known legend preserved in Herodotus, when they could no longer hold out against the besieging Persian. The Greek town became as it were a sort of early Calcutta for the Gaulish trade, with its own outlying colonies at Nice, Antibes, and Hyeres, and its inland " factories " (to use the old familiar Anglo-Indian word) at Tarascon, Avignon, and many other ancient towns of the Rhone valley. Her admirals sailed on every known MASS'ALIA 97 sea : Euthymenes explored the coasts of Africa as far as Senegal; Pytheas followed the European shore past Britain and Ireland to the north of the Shetlands. Till the Roman arrived upon the Gaulish coast with his dreaded short-sword, Massalia, in short, remained undis- puted queen of all the western Mediterranean waters. Before the wolf of the Capitol, however, all stars paled. Yet even under the Roman Empire Massilia (as the new conquerors called the name, with a mere change of vowel) retained her Greek speech and manners, which she hardly lost (if we may believe stray hints in later historians) till the very eve of the barbarian invasion. With the period of the Crusades, the city of Euthymenes became once more great and free, and hardly lost her independence completely up to the age of Louis XIV. [t was only after the French Revolution, however, that she began really to supersede Venice as the true capital of the Mediterranean. The decline of the Turkish power, the growth of trade with Alexandria and the Levant, the final crushing of the Barbary pirates, the conquest of Al- geria, and, last of all, the opening of the Suez Canal — a French work — all helped to increase her commerce and population by gigantic strides in half a dozen decades. At the present day Marseilles is the chief maritime town of France, and the acknowledged center of Mediterra- nean travel and traffic. The right way for the stranger to enter Marseilles is, therefore, by sea, the old-established high road of her an- tique commerce. The Old Port and the Cannebiere are her front door, while the railway from Paris leads you in at best, as it were, through shabby corridors, by a side entry. Seen from the sea, indeed, Marseilles is superb. I hardly know whether the whole Mediterranean has any 98 THE MEDITERRANEAN finer approach to a great town to display before the eyes of the artistic traveller. All round the city rises a semi- circle of arid white hills, barren and bare indeed to look upon; but lighted up by the blue Provengal sky with a wonderful flood of borrowed radiance, bringing out every jutting peak and crag through the clear dry air in distinct perspective. Their sides are dotted with small square white houses, the famous bastides or country boxes of the good Marseillais bourgeois. In front, a group of sunlit rocky isles juts out from the bay, on one of which tower the picturesque bastions of the Chateau d'lf, so familiar to the reader of " Monte-Cristo." The foreground is occupied by the town itself, with its forest of masts, and the new dome of its checkered and gaudy Byzantine Ca- thedral, which has quite supplanted the old cathedral of St. Lazare, of which only a few traces remain. In the middle distance the famous old pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde crowns the summit of a pyra- midal hill, with its picturesque mass of confused archi- tecture. Away to right and left, those endless white hills gleam on with almost wearying brightness in the sun for miles together; but full in front, where the eye rests longest, the bustle and commotion of a great trading town teem with varied life upon the quays and landing- places. If you are lucky enough to enter -Marseilles for the first time by the Old Port, you find yourself at once in the very thick of all that is most characteristic and vivid and local in the busy city. That little oblong basin, shut in on its outer side by projecting hills, was indeed the making of the great town. Of course the Old Port is now utterly insufficient for the modern wants of a first-class harbor; yet it still survives, not only as a historical relic but as a THE CANNEBIERE 99 living reality, thronged even to-day with the crowded ships of all nations. On the quay you may see the entire varied Mediterranean world in congress assembled. Here Greeks from Athens and Levantines from Smyrna jostle cheek by jowl with Italians from Genoa and Arabs or Moors from Tangier or Tunis. All costumes and all manners are admissible. The crowd is always excited, and always animated. A babel of tongues greets your ears as you land, in which the true Marseillais dialect of the Provencal holds the chief place — a graceful language, wherein the predominant Latin element has not even yet wholly got rid of certain underlying traces of Hellenic origin. Bright color, din, life, movement : in a moment the traveller from a northern climate recognizes the patent fact that he has reached a new world — that vivid, impetuous, eager southern world, which has its center to-day on the Provengal seaboard. Go a yard or two farther into the crowded Cannebiere, and the difference between this and the chilly North will at each step be forced even more strikingly upon you. That famous thoroughfare is firmly believed by every good son of old Marseilles to be, in the familiar local phrase, " la plus belle rue de I'univers." My own acquaintance with the precincts of the universe being somewhat limited (I have never travelled myself, indeed, beyond the narrow bounds of our own solar system), I should be loth to endorse too literally and vmreservedly this sweeping commendation of the Marseillais mind ; but as regards our modest little planet at least, I certainly know no other street within my own experience (save Broadway, New York) that has quite so much life and variety in it as the Cannebiere. It is not long, to be sure, but it is broad and airy, and from morning till night its L.oFG. 100 THE MEDITERRANEAN spacious trottoirs are continually crowded by such a surg- ing throng of cosmopolitan humanity as you will hardly find elsewhere on this side of Alexandria. For cosmo- politanism is the true key-note of Marseilles, and the Cannebiere is a road that leads in one direction straight to Paris, but opens in the other direction full upon Algiers and Italy, upon Egypt and India. What a picture it offers, too, of human life, that noisy Cannebiere ! By day or by night it is equally attractive. On it centers all that is alive in Marseilles — big hotels, glittering cafes, luxurious shops, scurrying drays, high- stepping carriage-horses, and fashionably-dressed human- ity; an endless crowd, many of them hatless and bonnet- less in true southern fashion, parade without ceasing its ringing pavements. At the end of all, the Old Port closes the view with its serried masts, and tells you the where- fore of this mixed society. The Cannebiere, in short, is the Rue de Rivoli of the Mediterranean, the main thor- oughfare of all those teeming shores of oil and wine, where culture still lingers by its ancient cradle. Close to the Quai, and at the entrance of the Canne- biere, stands the central point of business in new Mar- seilles, the Bourse, where the filial piety of the modern Phocfeans has done ample homage to the sacred memory of their ancient Hellenic ancestors. For in the place of honor on the fagade of that great palace of commerce the chief post has been given, as was due, to the statues of the old Massaliote admirals, Pytheas and Euthymenes. It is this constant consciousness of historical continuity that adds so much interest to Mediterranean towns. One feels as one stands before those two stone figures in the crowded Cannebiere, that after all humanity is one, ALLEES DE MEILHAN loi and that the Phocseans themselves are still, in the persons of their sons, among us. The Cannebiere runs nearly east and west, and is of no great length, under its own name at least ; but under the transparent alias of the Rue de Noailles it continues on in a straight line till it widens out at last into the Alices de Meilhan, the favorite haunt of all the gossips and quidnuncs of Marseilles. The Alices de Meilhan, indeed, form the beau ideal of the formal and fashionable French promenade. Broad avenues of plane trees cast a mellow shade over its well-kept walks, and the neatest of nurses in marvelous caps and long silk streamers dandle the laciest and fluffiest of babies, in exquisite cos- tumes, with ostentatious care, upon their bountiful laps. The stone seats on either side buzz with the latest news of the town ; the Zouave flirts serenely with the bonnet- less shop-girls ; the sergeant-de-ville stalks proudly down the midst, and barely deigns to notice such human weak- nesses. These Alices are the favorite haunt of all idle Marseilles, below the rank of " carriage company," and it is probable that Satan finds as much mischief still for its hands to do here as in any other part of that easy- going city. At right angles to the main central artery thus con- stituted by the Cannebiere, the Rue de Noailles, and the Alices de Meilhan runs the second chief stream of Mar- seillais life, down a channel which begins as the Rue dAix and the Cours Belzunce, and ends, after various intermediate disguises, as the Rue de Rome and the Prado. Just where it crosses the current of the Canne- biere, this polyonymous street rejoices in the title of the Cours St. Louis. Close by is the place where the flower- 102 THE MEDITERRANEAN women sit perched up quaintly in their funny little pulpits, whence they hand down great bunches of fresh dewy violets or pinky-white rosebuds, with persuasive eloquence to the obdurate passer-by. This flower-market is one of the sights of Marseilles, and I know no other anywhere — not even at Nice — so picturesque or so old- world. It keeps up something of the true Proven9al flavor, and reminds one that here, in this Greek colony, we are still in the midst of the land of roses and of Good King Rene, the land of troubadours, and gold and flowers, and that it is the land of sun and summer sun- shine. As the Rue de Rome emerges from the town and gains the suburb, it clothes itself in overhanging shade of plane-trees, and becomes known forthwith as the Prado — that famous Prado, more sacred to the loves and joys of the Marseillais than the Champs Elysees are to the born Parisian. For the Prado is the afternoon-drive of Marseilles, the Rotten Row of local equestrianism, the rallying-place and lounge of all that is fashionable in the Phocasan city as the Alices de Meilhan are of all that is bourgeois or frankly popular. Of course the Prado does not diflfer much from all other promenades of its sort in France : the upper-crust of the world has grown pain- fully tame and monotonous everywhere within the last twenty-five years : all flavor and savor of national costume or national manners has died out of it in the lump, and left us only in provincial centers the insipid graces of London and Paris, badly imitated. Still, the Prado is undoubtedly lively; a broad avenue bordered with magnificent villas of the meretricious Haussmannesque order of architecture ; and it possesses a certain great ad- vantage over every other similar promenade I know of CHEMIN DE LA CORNICHE 103 in the world — it ends at last in one of the most beautiful and picturesque sea-drives in all Europe. This sea-drive has been christened by the Marseillais, with pardonable pride, the Chemin de la Corniche, in humble imitation of that other great Corniche road which winds its tortuous way by long, slow gradients over the ramping heights of the Turbia between Nice and Men- tone. And a " ledge road " it is in good earnest, carved like a shelf out of the solid limestone. When I first knew Marseilles there was no Corniche : the Prado, a long flat drive through a marshy plain, ended then abruptly on the sea-front; and the hardy pedestrian who wished to return to town by way of the cliffs had to clamber along a doubtful and rocky pith, always difficult, often dangerous, and much obstructed by the attentions of the prowling doiianier, ever ready to arrest him as a suspected smuggler. Nowadays, however, all that is changed. The French engineers — always famous for their roads — have hewn a broad and handsome carriage- drive out of the rugged rock, here hanging on a shelf sheer above the sea; there supported from below by heavy buttresses of excellent masonwork ; and have given the Marseillais one of the most exquisite prome- nades to be found anywhere on the seaboard of the Con- tinent. It somewhat resembles the new highway from Villefranche to Monte Carlo ; but the islands with which the sea is here studded recall rather Cannes or the neigh- borhood of Sorrento. The seaward views are everywhere delicious ; and when sunset lights up the bare white rocks with pink and purple, no richer coloring against the emerald green bay, can possibly be imagined in art or na- ture. It is as good as Torquay; and how can cosmo- politan say better? 104 THE MEDITERRANEAN On the Corniche, too, is the proper place nowadays to eat that famous old Marseillais dish, immortalized by Thackeray, and known as bouillabaisse. The Reserve de Roubion in particular prides itself on the manufacture of this strictly national Provengal dainty, which proves, however, a little too rich and a little too mixed in its company for the fastidious taste of most English gour- mets. Greater exclusiveness and a more delicate eclecti- cism in matters of cookery please our countrymen better than such catholic comprehensiveness. I once asked a white-capped Proven9al chef what were the precise in- gredients of his boasted boiiillabaisse; and the good man opened his palms expansively before him as he answered with a shrug, " Que voulez-vous ? Fish to start with ; and then — a handful of anything that happens to be lying about loose in the kitchen." Near the end of the Prado, at its junction with the Corniche, modern Marseilles rejoices also in its park or Public Garden. Though laid out on a flat and uninter- esting plain, with none of the natural advantages of the Bois de Boulogne or of the beautiful Central Park at New York, these pretty grounds are nevertheless interest- ing to the northern visitor, who makes his first acquaint- ance with the Mediterranean here, by their curious and novel southern vegetation. The rich types of the south are everywhere apparent. Clumps of bamboo in feathery clusters overhang the ornamental waters ; cypresses and araucarias shade the gravel walks ; the eucalyptus show- ers down its fluffy flowers upon the grass below ; the quaint Salisburia covers the ground in autumn with its pretty and curious maidenhair-shaped foliage. Yuccas and cactuses flourish vigorously in the open air, and even fan-palms manage to thrive the year round in cosy cor- CHATEAU D'lF 105 ners. It is an introduction to the glories of Rivieran vegetation, and a faint echo of the magnificent tones of the North African flora. As we wind in and out on our way back to Marseilles by the Corniche road, with the water ever dashing white from the blue against the solid crags, whose corners we turn at every tiny headland, the most conspicuous object in the nearer view is the Chateau d'lf, with the neighbor- ing islets of Pomegues and Ratonneau. Who knows not the Chateau d'lf, by name at least, has wasted his boy- hood. The castle is not indeed of any great antiquity — it was built by order of Frangois I — nor can it lay much claim to picturesqueness of outline or beauty of archi- tecture; but in historical and romantic associations it is peculiarly rich, and its situation is bold, interesting, and striking. It was here that Mirabeau was imprisoned under a lettre de cachet obtained by his father, the friend of man ; and it was here, to pass from history to romance, that Monte-Cristo went through those marvelous and somewhat incredible adventures which will keep a hun- dred generations of school-boys in breathless suspense long after Walter Scott is dead and forgotten. But though the Prado and the Corniche are alive with carriages on sunny afternoons, it is on the quays them- selves, and around the docks and basins, that the true vivacious Marseillais life must be seen in all its full flow and eagerness. The quick southern temperament, the bronzed faces, the open-air existence, the hurry and bustle of a great seaport town, display themselves there to the best advantage. And the ports of Marseilles are many and varied : their name is legion, and their shipping manifold. As long ago as 1850, the old square port, the Phocaean harbor, was felt to have become wholly insuf- io6 THE MEDITERRANEAN ficient for the needs of modern commerce in Marseilles. From that day to this, the accommodation for vessels has gone on increasing with that incredible rapidity which marks the great boom of modern times. Never, surely, since the spacious days of great Elizabeth, has the world so rapidly widened its borders as in these latter days in which we are all living. The Pacific and the Indian Ocean have joined the Atlantic. In 1853 the Port de la Joliette was added, therefore, to the Old Harbor, and people thought Marseilles had met all the utmost demands of its growing commerce. But the Bassin dvi Lazaret and the Bassin dArenc were added shortly after; and then, in 1856, came the further need for yet another port, the Bassin National. In 1872 the Bassin de la Gare Maritime was finally executed ; and now the Marseillais are crying out again that the ships know not where to turn in the harbor. Everywhere the world seems to cosmopolitanize itself and to extend its limits : the day of small things has passed away for ever ; the day of vast ports, huge concerns, gigantic undertakings is full upon us. Curiously enough, however, in spite of all this rapid and immense development, it is still to a great extent the Greek merchants who hold in their hands — even in our own time — the entire commerce and wealth of the old Phocasan city. A large Hellenic colony of recent im- portation still inhabits and exploits Marseilles. Among the richly-dressed crowd of southern ladies that throngs the Prado on a sunny afternoon in full season, no small proportion of the proudest and best equipped who loll back in their carriages were born at Athens or in the Ionic Archipelago. For even to this day, these modern Greeks hang together wonderfully with old Greek per- sistence. Their creed keeps them apart from the Catho- GREEK MARRIAGES 107 lie French, in whose midst they live, and trade, and thrive; for, of course, they are all members of the " Orthodox " Church, and they retain their orthodoxy in spite of the ocean of Latin Christianity which girds them round with its flood on every side. The Greek commun- ity, in fact, dwells apart, marries apart, worships apart, and thinks apart. The way the marriages, in particular, are most frequently managed, differs to a very curious extent from our notions of matrimonial proprieties. The system — as duly explained to me one day under the shady plane-trees of the Alices de Meilhan, in very choice modern Greek, by a Hellenic merchant of Marseilles, who himself had been " arranged for " in this very man- ner — is both simple and mercantile to the highest degree yet practised in any civilized country. It is " marriage by purchase" pure and simple; only here, instead of the husband buying the wife, it is the wife who practically buys the husband. A trader or ship-owner of Marseilles, let us say, has two sons, partners in his concern, who he desires to marry. It is important, however, that the wives he se- lects for them should not clash with the orthodoxy of the Hellenic community. Our merchant, therefore, anx- ious to do the best in both worlds at once, writes to his correspondents of the great Greek houses in Smyrna, Constantinople, Beyrout, and Alexandria; nay, perhaps even in London, Manchester, New York, and Rio, stating his desire to settle his sons in life, and the amount of dot they would respectively require from the ladies upon whom they decided to bestow their name and affections. The correspondents reply by return of post, recommend- ing to the favorable attention of the happy swains cer- tain Greek young ladies in the town of their adoption, io8 THE MEDITERRANEAN whose dot and whose orthodoxy can be equally guaran- teed as beyond suspicion. Photographs and lawyers' letters are promptly exchanged ; settlements are drawn up to the mutual satisfaction of both the high contracting parties; and when all the business portion of the trans- action has been thoroughly sifted, the young ladies are consigned, with the figs and dates, as per bill of lading, to the port of entry, where their lords await them, and are duly married, on the morning of their arrival, at the Greek church in the Rue de la Grande Armee, by the reverend archimandrite. The Greeks are an eminently commercial people, and they find this idyllic mode of con- ducting a courtship not only preserves the purity of the orthodox faith and the Hellenic blood, but also saves an immense amount of time which might otherwise be wasted on the composition of useless love-letters. It was not so, however, in the earlier Greek days. Then, the colonists of Marseilles and its dependent towns must have intermarried freely with the native Gaulish and Ligurian population of all the tributary Provengal sea- board. The true antique Hellenic stock — the Aryan Achseans of the classical period — were undoubtedly a fair, a light-haired race, with a far more marked pro- portion of the blond type than now survives among their mixed and degenerate modern descendants. In Greece proper, a large intermixture of Albanian and Sclavonic blood, which the old Athenians would have stigmatized as barbarian or Scythian, has darkened the complexion and blackened the hair of a vast majority of the existing population. But in Marseilles, curiously enough, and in the surrounding country, the genuine old light Greek type has left its mark to this day upon the physique of the inhabitants. In the ethnographical map of France, ANCIENT TYPES 109 prepared by two distinguished French savants, the other Mediterranean departments are all, without exception, marked as " dark " or " very dark," while the depart- ment of the Bouches du Rhone is marked as " white," having, in fact, as large a proportion of fair complexions, blond hair, and light eyes as the eastern semi-German provinces, or as Normandy and Flanders. This curious survival of a very ancient type in spite of subsequent del- uges, must be regarded as a notable instance of the way in which the popular stratum everywhere outlasts all changes of conquest and dynasty, of governing class and ruling family. Just think, indeed, how many changes and revolutions in this respect that fiery Marseilles has gone through since the early days of her Hellenic independence ! First came that fatal but perhaps indispensable error of inviting the Roman aid against her Ligurian enemies, which gave the Romans their earliest foothold in Southern Gaul. Then followed the foundation of Aquse Sextise or Aix, the first Roman colony in what was soon to be the favorite prov- ince of the new conquerors. After that, in the great civil war, the Greeks of Marseilles were unlucky enough to espouse the losing cause ; and, in the great day of Caesar's triumph, their town was reduced accordingly to the in- ferior position of a mere Roman dependency. Merged for a while in the all-absorbing empire, Marseilles fell at last before Visigoths and Burgundians in the stormy days of that vast upheaval, during which it is impossible for even the minutest historian to follow in detail the long list of endless conquests and re-conquests, while the wandering tribes ebbed and flowed on one another in wild surging waves of refluent confusion. Ostrogoth and Frank, Saracen and Christian, fought one after an- no THE MEDITERRANEAN other for possession of the mighty city. In the process her Greek and Roman civilization was wholly swept away and not a trace now remains of those glorious basilicas, temples, and arches, which must once, no doubt, have adorned the metropolis of Grecian Gaul far more abundantly than they still adorn mere provincial centers like Aries and Nimes, Vienne, and Orange. But at the end of it all, when Marseilles emerges once more into the light of day as an integral part of the Kingdom of Pro- vence, it still retains its essentially Greek population, fairer and handsomer than the surrounding dark Ligurian stock ; it still boasts its clear-cut Greek beauty of profile, its Hellenic sharpness of wit and quickness of perception. And how interesting in this relation to note, too, that Marseilles kept up, till a comparatively late period in the Middle Ages, her active connection with the Byzantine Empire; and that her chief magistrate was long nomi- nated — in name at least, if not in actual fact — by the shadowy representative of the Caesars at Constantinople. May we not attribute to this continuous persistence of the Greek element in the life of Marseilles something of that curious local and self-satisfied feeling which north- ern Frenchmen so often deride in the born Marseillais? With the Greeks, the sense of civic individuality and civic separateness was always strong. Their Polis was to them their whole world — the center of everything. They were Athenians, Spartans, Thebans first; Greeks or even Boeotians and Lacedsemonians in the second place only. And the Marseillais bourgeois, following the traditions of his Phocsean ancestry, is still in a certain sense the most thoroughly provincial, the most uncentralized and anti- Parisian of modern French citizens. He believes in Marseilles even more devoutly than the average boulevar- THE (MARSEILLAIS iii dier believes in Paris. To him the Cannebiere is the High Street of the world, and the Cours St. Louis the hub of the universe. How pleased with himself and all his surroundings he is, too ! " At Marseilles, we do so- and-so," is a frequent phrase which seems to him to settle off-hand all questions of etiquette, of procedure, or of the fitness of things generally. " Massilia "locuta est; causa finita est." That anything can be done better any- where than it is done in the Cannebiere or the Old Port is an idea that never even so much as occurs to his smart and quick but somewhat geographically limited intelli- gence. One of the best and cleverest of Mars's clever Marseillais caricatures exhibits a good bourgeois from the Cours Pierre Puget, in his Sunday best, abroad on his travels along the Genoese Riviera. On the shore at San Remo, the happy, easy-going, conceited fellow, brim- ming over to the eyes with the happy-go-lucky Cockney joy of the South, sees a couple of pretty Italian fisher- girls mending their nets, and addresses them gaily in his own soft dialect : " He bien, mes pitchounettes, vous etes tellement croussetillantes que, sans ezaggerer, bagasse ! ze vous croyais de Marseille ! " To take anyone elsewhere for a born fellow-citizen was the highest compliment his good Marseillais soul could possibly hit upon. Nevertheless, the Marseillais are not proud. They generously allow the rest of the world to come and admire them. They throw their doors open to East and West; they invite Jew and Greek alike to flow in unchecked, and help them make their own fortunes. They know very well that if Marseilles, as they all firmly believe, is the finest town in the round world, it is the trade with the Levant that made and keeps it so. And they take good care to lay themselves out for entertaining all and sundry 112 THE MEDITERRANEAN as they come, in the handsomest hotels in Southern Europe. The mere through passenger traffic with India alone would serve to make Marseilles nowadays a com- mercial town of the first importance. Marseilles, however, has had to pay a heavy price, more than once, for her open intercourse with the Eastern world, the native home of cholera and all other epidemics. From a very early time, the city by the Rhone has been the favorite haunt of the Plague and like oriental visit- ants ; and more than one of its appalling epidemics has gained for itself a memorable place in history. To say the truth, old Marseilles laid itself out almost deliberately for the righteous scourge of zymotic disease. The vieille ville, that trackless labyrinth of foul and noisome alleys, tortuous, deeply worn, ill-paved, ill-ventilated, has been partly cleared away by the works of the Rue de la Repub- lique now driven through its midst ; but enough still re- mains of its Dsedalean maze to show the adventurous traveller who penetrates its dark and drainless dens how dirty the strenuous Provencal can be when he bends his mind to it. There the true-blooded Marseillais of the old rock and of the Greek profile still lingers in his native insanitary condition; there the only scavenger is that " broom of Provence," the swooping mistral — the fierce Alpine wind which, blowing fresh down with sweeping violence from the frozen mountains, alone can change the air and cleanse the gutters of that filthy and malodorous mediaeval city. Everywhere else the mistral is a curse: in Marseilles it is accepted with mitigated gratitude as an excellent substitute for main drainage. It is not to be wondered at that, under such conditions, Marseilles was periodically devastated b}^ terrible epidem- ics. Communications with Constantinople, Alexandria, MONSEIGNEUR BELZUNCE 113 and the Levant were always frequent ; communications with Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco were far from un- common. And if the germs of disease were imported from without, they found at Marseilles an appropriate nest provided beforehand for their due development. Time after time the city was ravaged by plague or pes- tilence; the most memorable occasion being the great epidemic of 1720, when, according to local statistics (too high, undoubtedly), as many as forty thousand persons died in the streets, " like lambs on the hill-tops." Never, even in the East itself, the native home of the plague, says Mery, the Marseilles poet-romancer, was so sad a picture of devastation seen as in the doomed streets of that wealthy city. The pestilence came, according to public belief, in a cargo of wool in May, 1720: it raged till, by September, the tale of dead per diem had reached the appalling number of a thousand. So awful a public calamity was not without the usual effect in bringing forth counterbalancing examples of distinguished public service and noble self-denial. Chief among them shines forth the name of the Chevalier Rose, who, aided by a couple of hundred condemned convicts, carried forth to burial in the ditches of La Tourette no less than two thousand dead bodies which infected the streets with their deadly contagion. There, quicklime was thrown over the horrible festering mass, in a spot still remembered as the " Graves of the Plague- stricken." But posterity has chosen most especially to select for the honors of the occasion Monseigneur Bel- zunce — " Marseilles' good bishop," as Pope calls him, who returned in the hour of danger to his stricken flock from the salons of Versailles, and by offering the last consolations of religion to the sick and dying, aided some- 114 THE MEDITERRANEAN what in checking the orgy of despair and of panic- stricken callousness which reigned everywhere through- out the doomed city. The picture is indeed a striking and romantic one. On a high altar raised in the Cours which now bears his name, the brave bishop celebrated Mass one day before the eyes of all his people, doing pen- ance to heaven in the name of his flock, his feet bare, a rope round his neck, and a flaming torch held high in his hand, for the expiation of the sins that had brought such punishment. His fervent intercession, the faithful believed, was at last effectual. In May, 1721, the plague disappeared ; but it left Marseilles almost depopulated. The bishop's statue in bronze, by Ramus, on the Cours Belzunce, now marks the site of this strange and unparal- leled religious service. From the Belzunce Monument, the Rue Tapis Vert and the Alices des Capucins lead us direct by a short cut to the Boulevard Longchamp, which terminates after the true modern Parisian fashion, with a vista of the great foun- tains and the Palais des Arts, a bizarre and original but not in its way unpleasing specimen of recent French architecture. It is meretricious, of course — that goes without the saying : what else can one expect from the France of the Second Empire? But it is distinctly what the children call " grand," and if once you can put your- self upon its peculiar level, it is not without a certain queer rococo beauty of its own. As for the Chateau d'Eau, its warmest admirer could hardly deny that it is painfully baroque in design and execution. Tigers, panthers, and lions decorate the approach ; an allegorical figure representing the Durance, accompanied by the geniuses of the Vine and of Corn, holds the seat of honor in the midst of the waterspouts. To right and left a THE PALAIS DES ARTS 115 triton blows his shelly trumpet; griffins and fauns crown the summit ; and triumphal arches flank the sides. A marvelous work indeed, of the Versailles type, better fitted to the ideas of the eighteenth century than to those of the age in which we live at present. The Palais des Arts, one wing of this monument, en- closes the usual French provincial picture-gallery, with the stereotyped Rubens, and the regulation Caraccio. It has its Raffael, its Giulio Romano, and its Andrea del Sarto. It even diverges, not without success, into the paths of Dstch and Flemish painting. But it is specially rich, of course, in Provengal works, and its Pugets in particular are both numerous and striking. There is a good Murillo and a square-faced Holbein, and many yards of modern French battles and nudities, alternating for the most part from the sensuous to the sanguinary. But the gem of the collection is a most characteristic and interesting Perugino, as beautiful as anything from the master's hand to be found in the galleries of Florence. Altogether, the interior makes one forgive the fagade and the Chateau d'Eau. One good Perugino covers, like charity, a multitude of sins of the Marseillais architects. Strange to say, old as Marseilles is, it contains to-day hardly any buildings of remote antiquity. One would be tempted to suppose beforehand that a town with so ancient and so continuous a history would teem with Grseco-Roman and mediaeval remains. As Phocsean colony, imperial town, mediaeval republic, or Provengal city, it has so long been great, famous, and prosperous that one might not unnaturally expect in its streets to meet with endless memorials of its early grandeur. Noth- ing could be farther from the actual fact. While Nimes, a mere second-rate provincial municipality, and Aries, a ii6 THE MEDITERRANEAN local Roman capital, have preserved rich mementoes of the imperial days — temples, arches, aqueducts, amphithe- aters — Marseilles, their mother city, so much older, so much richer, so much greater, so much more famous, has not a single Roman building; scarcely even a second- rate mediaeval chapel. Its ancient cathedral has been long since pulled down ; of its oldest church but a spire now remains, built into a vulgar modern pseudo-Gothic Calvary. St. Victor alone, near the Fort St. Nicolas, is the one really fine piece of mediaeval architecture still left in the town after so many ages. St. Victor itself remains to us now as the last relic of a very ancient and important monastery, founded by St. Cassian in the fifth century, and destroyed by the Saracens — those incessant scourges of the Provencal coast — during one of their frequent plundering incur- sions. In 1040 it was rebuilt, only to be once more razed to the ground, till, in 1350, Pope Urban V., who him- self had been abbot of this very monastery restored it from the base, with those high, square towers, which now, in their worn and battered solidity, give it rather the air of a castellated fortress than of a Christian temple. Doubtless the strong-handed Pope, warned by experience, intended his church to stand a siege, if necessary, on the next visit to Marseilles of the Paynim enemy. The in- terior, too, is not unworthy of notice. It contains the catacombs where, according to the naive Provencal faith, Lazarus passed the last days of his second life; and it boasts an antique black image of the Virgin, attributed by a veracious local legend to the skilful fingers of St. Luke the Evangelist. Modern criticism ruthlessly relegates the work to a nameless but considerably later Byzantine sculptor. NOTRE DAME DE LA GARDE 117 By far the most interesting ecclesiastical edifice in Marseilles, however, even in its present charred and shat- tered condition, is the ancient pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde, the antique High Place of primitive Phoenician and Ligurian worship. E[ow long a shrine for some local cult has existed on the spot it would be hard to say, but, at least, we may put it at two dozen centuries. All along the Mediterranean coast, in fact, one feels oneself everywhere thus closely in almost con- tinuous contact with the earliest religious beliefs of the people. The paths that lead to these very antique sacred sites, crowning the wind-swept hills that overlook the valley, are uniformly worn deep by naked footsteps into the solid rock — a living record of countless generations of fervent worshipers. Christianity itself is not nearly old enough to account for all those profoundly-cut steps in the schistose slate or hard white limestone of the Pro- vengal hills. The sanctity of the High Places is more ancient by far than Saint or Madonna. Before ever a Christian chapel crested these heights they were crested by forgotten Pagan temples ; and before the days of Aphrodite or Pallas, in turn, they were crested by the shrines of some long since dead-and-buried Gaulish or Ligurian goddess. Religions change, creeds disappear, but sacred sites remain as holy as ever ; and here where priests now chant their loud hymns before the high altar, some nameless bloody rites took place, we may be sure, long ages since, before the lonely shrine of some Celtic Hesus or some hideous and deformed Phoenician Moloch. It is a steep climb even now from the Old Port or the Anse des Catalans to the Colline Notre Dame; several different paths ascend to the summit, all alike of re- mote antiquity, and all ending at last in fatiguing steps. ii8 THE MEDITERRANEAN Along the main road, hemmed in on either side by poor southern hovels, wondrous old witches of true Provencal ugliness drive a brisk trade in rosaries, and chaplets, and blessed medals. These wares are for the pilgrim; but to suit all tastes, the same itinerant chapwomen offer to the more worldly-minded tourist of the Cookian type appropriate gewgaws, in the shape of photographs, im- ages, and cheap trinkets. At the summit stand the charred and blackened ruins of Notre Dame de la Garde. Of late years, indeed, that immemorial shrine has fallen on evil times and evil days in many matters. To begin with, the needs of modern defence compelled the Government some years since to erect on the height a fort, which encloses in its midst the ancient chapel. Even military necessities, however, had to yield in part to the persistent religious sentiment of the community; and though forti- fications girt it round on every side, the sacred site of Our Lady remained unpolluted in the center of the great defensive works of the fortress. Passing through the gates of those massive bastions a strongly-guarded path still guided the faithful sailor-folk of Marseilles to the revered shrine of their ancestral Madonna. Nay, more; the antique chapel of the thirteenth century was super- seded by a goregous Byzantine building, from designs by Esperandieu, all glittering with gold, and precious stones, and jewels. On the topmost belfry stood a gigantic gilded statue of Our Lady. Dome and apse were of cunning workmanship — white Carrara marble and African rosso antico draped the interior with parti-colored splendor. Corsican granite and Esterel porphyry supported the massive beams of the transepts ; frescoes covered every inch of the walls : the pavement was mosaic, the high altar was inlaid with costly Florentine stonework. Ev^rv PANORAMIC VIEW 119 Marseilles fisherman rejoiced in heart that though the men of battle had usurped the sanctuary, their Madonna was now housed by the sons of the Faithful in even greater magnificence and glory than ever. But in 1884 a fire broke out in the shrine itself, which wrecked almost irreparably the sumptuous edifice. The statue of the Virgin still crowns the facade, to be sure, and the chapel still shows up bravely from a modest dis- tance; but within, all the glory has faded away, and the interior of the church is no longer accessible. Neverthe- less, the visitor who stands upon the platform in front of the doorway and gazes down upon the splendid pano- ramic view that stretches before him in the vale beneath, will hardly complain of having had his stiff pull uphill for nothing. Except the view of Montreal and the St. Lawrence River from Mont Royal Mountain, I hardly know a town view in the world to equal that from Notre Dame de la Garde, for beauty and variety, on a clear spring morning. Close at our feet lies the city itself, filling up the whole wide valley with its mass, and spreading out long arms of faubourg, or roadway, up the lateral openings. Beyond rise the great white limestone hills, dotted about like mush- rooms, with their glittering bastides. In front lies the sea — the blue Mediterranean — with that treacherous smile which has so often deceived us all the day before we trusted ourselves too rashly, with ill-deserved confidence, upon its heaving bosom. Near the shore the waves chafe the islets and the Chateau d'lf; then come the Old Port and the busy bassins ; and, beyond them all, the Chain of Estaques, rising grim and gray in serrated outline against the western horizon. A beautiful prospect though barren and treeless, for nowhere in the world are mountains 120 THE MEDITERRANEAN barer than those great white guardians of the Provengal seaboard. The fortress that overhangs the Old Port at our feet itself deserves a few passing words of polite notice; for it is the Fort St. Nicolas, the one link in his great de- spotic chain by which Louis Quatorze bound recalcitrant Marseilles to the throne of the Tuileries. The town — -like all great commercial towns — had always clung hard to its ancient liberties. Ever rebellious when kings op- pressed, it was a stronghold of the Fronde; and when Louis at last made his entry perforce into the malcontent city, it was through a breach he had effected in the heavy ramparts. The king stood upon this commanding spot, just above the harbor, and, gazing landward, asked the citizens round him how men called those little square boxes which he saw dotted about over the sunlit hillsides. " We call them hastides, sire," answered a courtly Mar- seillais. " Every citizen of our town has one." " Moi aussi, je veux avoir ma bastide a Marseille," cried the theatrical monarch, and straightway gave orders for building the Fort St. Nicolas : so runs the tale that passes for history. But as the fort stands in the very best pos- sible position, commanding the port, and could only have been arranged for after consultation with the engineers of the period — it was Vauban who planned it — I fear we must set down Louis's hon mot as one of those royal epigrams which has been carefully prepared and led up to beforehand. In every town, however, it is a favorite theory of mine that the best of all sights is the town itself: and no- v/here on earth is this truism truer than here at Marseilles. After one has climbed Notre Dame, and explored the Prado and smJled at the Chateau d'Eau and stood beneath GREEK INFLUENCE 121 the frowning- towers of St. Victor, one returns once more with real pleasure and interest to the crowded Cannebiere and sees the full tide of human life flow eagerly on down that picturesque boulevard. That, after all, is the main picture that Marseilles always leaves photographed on the visitor's memory. How eager, how keen, how viva- cious is the talk; how fiery the eyes; how emphatic the gesture ! With what teeming energy, with what feverish haste, the great city pours forth its hurrying thousands ! With what endless spirit they move up and down in end- less march upon its clattering pavements ! Circulez, mes- sieurs, circules: and they do just circulate! From the Ouai de la Fraternite to the Alices de Meilhan, what mirth and merriment, what life and movement ! In every eafc, what warm southern faces! At every shop-door, what quick-witted, sharp-tongued, bartering humanity ! I have many times stopped at Marseilles, on my way hither and thither round this terraqueous globe, farther south or east; but I never stop there without feeling once more the charm and interest of its strenuous personality. There is something of Greek quickness and Greek intelligence left even now about the old Phocjean colony. A Marseil- lais crowd has to this very day something of the sharp Hellenic wit ; and I believe the rollicking humor of Aris- tophanes would be more readily seized by the public of the Alcazar than by any other popular audience in modern Europe. " Bon chien chasse de race," and every Marseillais is a born Greek and a born litterateur. Is it not partly to this old Greek blood, then, that we may set down the lono- list of distinguished men who have drawn their first breath in the Phocpean city? From the davs of the Troubadours, Raymond des Tours and Barral des Baux, Folquet, and 122 THE MEDITERRANEAN Rostang, and De Salles, and Berenger, through the days of D'Urfe, and Mascaron, and Barbaroux, and De Pas- toret, to the days of Mery, and Barthelemy, and Taxile Delord, and Joseph Autran, Marseilles has always been rich in talent. It is enough to say that her list of great men begins with Petronius Arbiter, and ends with Thiers, to show how long and diversely she has been represented in her foremost citizens. Surely, then, it is not mere fancy to suppose that in all this the true Hellenic blood has counted for something! Surely it is not too much to believe that with the Greek profile and the Greek com- plexion the inhabitants have still preserved to this day some modest measure of the quick Greek intellect, the bright Greek fancy, and the plastic and artistic Greek creative faculty ! I love to think it, for Marseilles is dear to me; especially when I land there after a sound sea- tossing. Unlike many of the old Mediterranean towns, too, Mar- seilles has not only a past but also a future. She lives and will live. In the midde of the past century, indeed, it might almost have seemed to a careless observer as if the Mediterranean were " played out." And so in part, no doubt, it really is ; the tracks of commerce and of inter- national intercourse have shifted to wider seas and vaster waterways. We shall never again find that inland basin ringed round by a girdle of the great merchant cities that do the carrying trade and finance of the world. Our area has widened, so that New York, Rio, San Francisco, Yokohama, Shanghai, Calcutta, Bombay, and Melbourne have taken the place of Syracuse, Alexandria, Tyre, and Carthage, of Florence, Genoa, Venice, and Constanti- nople. But in spite of this cramping change, this degra- dation of the Mediterranean from the center of the world THE NEW MARSEILLES 123 into a mere auxiliary or side-avenue of the Atlantic, a certain number of Mediterranean ports have lived on un- interruptedly by force of position from one epoch into the other. Venice has had its faint revival of recent years ; Trieste has had its rise; Barcelona, Algiers, Smyrna, Odessa, have grown into great harbors for cosmopolitan traffic. Of this new and rejuvenescent Mediterranean, girt round by the fresh young nationalities of Italy and the Orient, and itself no longer an inland sea, but linked by the Suez Canal with the Indian Ocean and so turned into the main highway of the nations between East and West, Marseilles is still the key and the capital. That proud position the Phocsean city is not likely to lose. And as the world is wider now than ever, the new Mar- seilles is perforce a greater and a wealthier town than even the old one in its proudest days. Where tribute came once from the North African, Levantine, and Italian coasts alone, it comes now from every shore of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, with Australia and the Pacific Isles thrown in as an afterthought. Regions Caesar never knew enrich the good Greeks of the Quai de la Fra- ternite : brown, black, and yellow men whom his legions never saw send tea and silk, cotton, corn, and tobacco to the crowded warehouses of the Cannebiere and the Rue de la Republique. VI NICE The Qneen of the Riviera — The Port of Limpia— Castle Hill- Promenade des Anglais — The Carnival and Battle of Flowers — Place Massena, the center of business — Beauty of the suburbs — The road to Monte Carlo — The quaintly picturesque town of Villefranche — Aspects of Nice and its environs. WHO loves not Nice, knows it not. Who knows it, loves it. I admit it is windy, dusty, gusty. I allow it is meretricious, fashionable, vulgar. I grant its Carnival is a noisy orgy, its Promenade a meet- ing place for all the wealthiest idlers of Europe or America, and its clubs more desperate than Monte Carlo itself in their excessive devotion to games of hazard. And yet, with all its faults, I love it still. Yes, delib- erately love it ; for nothing that man has done or may ever do to mar its native beauty can possibly deface that beauty itself as God made it. Nay, more, just because it is Nice, we can readily pardon it these obvious faults and minor blemishes. The Queen of the Riviera, with all her coquettish little airs and graces, pleases none the less, like some proud and haughty girl in court costume, partly by reason of that very finery of silks and feathers which we half-heartedly deprecate. If she were not herself, she wouM be other than she is. Nice is Nice, and that is enough for us. 124 ITS SURROUNDINGS 125 Was ever town more graciously set, indeed, in more gracious surroundings? Was ever pearl girt round with purer emeralds? On every side a vast semicircle of mountains hems it in, among which the bald and naked summit of the Mont Cau d'Aspremont towers highest and most conspicuous above its darkling compeers. In front the blue Mediterranean, that treacherous Mediterranean all guile and loveliness, smiles with myriad dimples to the clear-cut horizon. Eastward, the rocky promontories of the Alont Boron and the Cap Ferrat jut boldly out into the sea with their fringe of white dashing breakers. Westward, the longer and lower spit of the point of Antibes bounds the distant view, with the famous pil- grimage chapel of Notre Dame de la Garoupe just dimly visible on its highest knoll against the serrated ridge of the glorious Esterel in the background. In the midst of all nestles Nice itself, the central gem in that coronet of mountains. There are warmer and more sheltered nooks on the Riviera, I will allow : there can be none more beautiful. Mentone may surpass it in the charm of its mountain paths and innumerable excursions ; Cannes in the rich variety of its nearer walks and drives ; but for mingled glories of land and sea, art and nature, antiquity and novelty, picturesqueness and magnificence, Nice still stands without a single rival on all that enchanted coast that stretches its long array of cities and bays between Marseilles and Genoa. There are those, I know, who run down Nice as commonplace and vulgarized. But then, they can never have strayed one inch, I feel sure, from the palm-shaded trottoir of the Promenade des Anglais. If you want Italian medijevalism, go to the Old Town ; if you want quaint marine life, go to the good Greek port of Limpia ; if you want a grand view of sea and land and 126 THE MEDITERRANEAN snow mountains in the distance, go to the Castle Hill; if you want the most magnificent panorama in the whole of Europe, go to the summit of the Corniche Road. No, no ; these brawlers disturb our pure worship. We have onl}^ one Nice, let us make the most of it. It is so easy to acquire a character for superiority by affecting to criticize what others admire. It is so easy to pronounce a place vulgar and uninteresting by taking care to see only the most vulgar and uninteresting parts of it. But the old Rivieran who knows his Nice well, and loves it dearly, is troubled rather by the opposite difficulty. Where there is so much to look at and so much to describe, where to begin? what to omit? how much to glide over? how much to insist upon? Lan- guage fails him to give a conception of this complex and polychromatic city in a few short pages to anyone who knows it by name alone as the cosmopolitan winter capital of fashionable seekers after health and pleasure. It is that, indeed, but it is so much more that one can never tell it. For there are at least three distinct Nices, Greek, Italian, French ; each of them beautiful in its own way, and each of them interesting for its own special features. To the extreme east, huddled in between the Mont Boron and the Castle Hill, lies the seafaring Greek town, the most primitive and original Nice of all ; the home of the fisher-folk and the petty coasting sailors ; the Nicjea of the old undaunted Phocsean colonists ; the Nizza di Mare of modern Italians ; the mediaeval city ; the birthplace of Garibaldi. Divided from this earliest Nice by the scarped rock on whose summit stood the chateau of the Middle Ages, the eighteenth century Italian town (the Old Town as tourists nowadays usually call it, the central THE PORT OF LIMPIA 127 town of the three) occupies the space between the Castle Hill and the half dry bed of the Paillon torrent. Finally, west of the Paillon, again, the modern fashionable pleas- ure resort extends its long line of villas, hotels, and palaces in front of the sea to the little stream of the Magnan on the road to Cannes, and stretches back in endless boulevards and avenues and gardens to the smiling heights of Cimiez and Carabacel. Every one of these three towns, " in three different ages born," has its own special history and its own points of interest. Every one of them teems with natural beauty, with picturesque elements, and with varieties of life, hard in- deed to discover elsewhere. The usual guide-book way to attack Nice is, of course, the topsy-turvey one, to begin at the Haussmannised white facades of the Promenade des Anglais and work backwards gradually through the Old Town to the Port of Limpia and the original nucleus that surrounds its quays. I will venture, however, to disregard this time- honored but grossly unhistorical practice, and allow the reader and myself, for once in our lives, to " begin at the beginning." The Port of Limpia, then, is, of course, the natural starting point and prime original of the very oldest Nice. Hither, in the fifth century before the Christian era, the bold Phocsean settlers of Marseilles sent out a little colony, which landed in the tiny land- locked harbor and called the spot Nicaea (that is to say, the town of victory) in gratitude for their success against its rude Ligurian owners. For twenty-two centuries it has retained that name almost unchanged, now perhaps, the only memento still remaining of its Greek origin. During its flourishing days as a Flellenic city Nicaea ranked among the chief commercial entrepots of the 128 THE MEDITERRANEAN Ligurian coast ; but when " the Province " fell at last into the hands of the Romans, and the dictator Csesar favored rather .the pretensions of Cemenelum or Cimiez on the hill-top in the rear, the town that clustered round the harbor of Limpia became for a time merel}^ the port of its more successful inland rival. Cimiez still possesses its fine ruined Roman amphitheater and baths, besides relics of temples and some other remains of the im- perial period ; but the " Quartier du Port," the ancient town of Nice itself, is almost destitute of any architectural signs of its antique greatness. Nevertheless, the quaint little seafaring village that clusters round the harbor, entirely cut off as it is by the ramping crags of the Castle Hill from its later repre- sentative, the Italianized Nice of the last century, may fairly claim to be the true Nice of history, the only spot that bore that name till the days of the Bourbons. Its annals are far too long and far too eventful to be nar- rated here in full. Goths, Burgundians, Lombards, and Franks disputed for it in turn, as the border fortress be- tween Gaul and Italy; and that familiar round v/hite bastion on the eastern face of the Castle Hill, now known to visitors as the Tour Bellanda, and included (such is fate!) as a modern belvedere in the grounds of the com- fortable Pension Suisse, was originally erected in the fifth century after Christ to protect the town from the attacks of these insatiable invaders. But Nice had its consolations, too, in these evil days, for when the Lom- bards at last reduced the hill fortress of Cimiez, the Roman town, its survivors took refuge from their con- querors in the city by the port, which thus became once more, by the fall of its rival, unquestioned mistress of the surrounding littoral. CASTLE HILL 129 The after story of Nice is confused and confusing. Now a vassal of the Prankish kings ; now again a member of the Genoese league ; now engaged in a desperate con- flict with the piratical Saracens ; and now constituted into a little independent republic on the Italian model; Nizza struggled on against an adverse fate as a fighting-ground of the races, till it fell finally into the hands of the Counts of Savoy, to whom it owes whatever little still remains of the medijeval castle. Continually changing hands be- tween France and the kingdom of Sardinia in later days, it was ultimately made over to Napoleon III. by the Treaty of Villafranca, and is now completely and en- tirely Gallicized. The native dialect, however, remains even to the present day an intermediate form between Provengal and Italian, and is freely spoken (with more force than elegance) in the Old Town and around the enlarged modern basins of the Port of Limpia. Indeed, for frankness of expression and perfect absence of any false delicacy, the ladies of the real old Greek Nice sur- pass even their London compeers at Billingsgate. One of the most beautiful and unique features of Nice at the present day is the Castle Hill, a mass of soHd rearinpf rock, not unlike its namesake at Edinburgh in position, intervening between the Port and the eighteenth century town, to which latter I will in future alaide as the Italian city. It is a wonderful place, that Castle Hill — wonderful alike by nature, art, and history, and I fear I must also add at the same time " uglification." In earlier days it bore on its summit or slopes the chateau fort of the Counts of Provence with the old cathedral and arch- bishop's palace (now wholly destroyed), and the famous deep well, long ranked among the wonders of the world in the way of engineering. But military necessity knows I30 THE MEDITERRANEAN no law; the cathedral gave place in the fifteenth century to the bastions of the Duke of Savoy's new-fangled castle ; the castle itself in turn was mainly battered down in 1706 by the Duke of Berwick; and of all its antiquities none now remain save the Tour Bellanda, in its degraded con- dition of belvedere, and the scanty ground-plan of the mediaeval buildings. Nevertheless, the Castle Hill is, still one of the loveliest and greenest spots in Nice. A good carriage road as- cends it to the top by leafy gradients, and leads to an open platform on the summit, now converted into charm- ing gardens, rich with palms and aloes and cactuses and bright southern flowers. On one side, alas! a painfully artificial cataract, fed from the overflow of the water- works, falls in stiff cascades among hand-built rockwork ; but even that impertinent addition to the handicraft of nature can hardly offend the visitor for long among such glorious surroundings. For the view from the summit is one of the grandest in all France. The eye ranges right and left over a mingled panorama of sea and moun- tains, scarcely to be equaled anywhere round the lovely Mediterranean, save on the Ligurian coast and the neigh- borhood of Sorrento. Southward lies the blue expanse of water itself, bounded only in very clear and cloudless weather by the distant peaks of Corsica on the doubtful horizon. Westward, the coast-line includes the promon- tory of Antibes, basking low on the sea, the lies Lerins near Cannes, the mouth of the Var, and the dim-jagged ridge of the purple Esterel. Eastward, the bluff head- land of the Mont Boron, grim and brown, blocks the view towards Italy. Close below the spectator's feet the three distinct towns of Nice gather round the Port and the two banks of the Paillon, spreading their garden RAUBA CAPEU 131 suburbs, draped in roses and lemon groves, high up the spurs of the neighboring mountains. But northward a tumultuous sea of Alps rises billow-like to the sky, the nearer peaks frowning bare and rocky, while the more distant domes gleam white with virgin snow. It is a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. One glances around entranced, and murmurs to oneself slowly, " It is good to be here." Below, the carriages are rolling like black specks along the crowded Promenade, and the band is playing gaily in the Public Garden ; but up there you look across to the eternal hills, and feel yourself face to face for one moment with the Eternities behind them. One may descend from the summit either by the ancient cemetery or by the Place Garibaldi, through bosky gardens of date-palm, fan-palm, and agave. Cool wind- ing alleys now replace the demolished ramparts, and lovely views open out on every side as we proceed over the immediate foreground. At the foot of the Castle Hill, a modern road hewn in the solid rock round the base of the seaward escarp- ment, connects the Greek with the Italian town. The angle where it turns the corner, bears on native lips the quaint Provencal or rather Nigois name of Raiiba Capeu or Rob-hat Point, from the common occurrence of sudden gusts of wind, which remove the unsuspecting Parisian headgear with effective rapidity, to the great joy of the observant gamins. Indeed, windiness is altogether the weak point of Nice, viewed as a health-resort; the town lies exposed in the open valley of the Paillon, down whose baking bed the mistral, that scourge of Provence, sweeps with violent force from the cold mountain-tops in the rear ; and so it cannot for a moment compete in point of climate with Cannes, Monte Carlo, Mentone or San 132 THE MEDITERRANEAN Remo, backed up close behind by their guardian barrier of sheltering hilis. But not even the mistral can n:ake those who love Nice love her one atom the less. Her virtues are so many that a little wholesome bluster once in a while may surely be forgiven her. And yet the dust does certainly rise in clouds at times from the Promenade des Anglais. The Italian city, which succeeds next in order, is pic- turesque and old-fashioned, but is being daily trans- formed and Gallicized out of all knowledge by its modern French masters. It dates back mainly to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the population became too dense for the narrow limits of the small Greek town, and began to overflow, behind the Castle Hill, on to the eastern banks of the Paillon torrent. The sea-front in this quarter, now known as the Promenade du Midi, has been modernized into a mere eastward prolongation of the Promenade des Anglais, of which " more anon ; " but the remainder of the little triangular space between the Castle Hill and the river-bed still consists of funny narrow Italian lanes, dark, dense, and dingy, from whose midst rises the odd and tile-covered dome of the cathedral of St. Reparate. That was the whole of Nice as it lived and moved till the beginning of this century ; the real Nice of to-day, the Nice of the tourist, the invalid, and the fashionable world, the Nice that we all visit or talk about, is a purely modern accretion of some half-dozen decades. This wonderful modern town, with its stately sea- front, its noble quays, its dainty white villas, its magnifi- cent hotels, and its C?'"ino, owes its existence entirely to the vogue which the coast has acquired in our own times as a health-resort for consumptives. As long ago as Smollett's time, the author of " Roderick Random " re- PROMENADE DES ANGLAIS 133 marks complacently that an acquaintance, " understand- ing I intended to winter in the South of France, strongly recommended the climate of Nice in Provence, which indeed I had often heard extolled," as well he might have done. But in those days visitors had to live in the narrow and dirty streets of the Italian town, whose picturesque- ness itself can hardly atone for their unwholesome air and their unsavory odors. It was not till the hard winters of 1822-23-24 that a few kind-hearted English residents, anxious to find work for the starving poor, began the con- struction of a sea-road beyond the Paillon, which still bears the name of the Promenade des Anglais. Nice may well commemorate their deed to this day, for to them she owes, as a watering-place her very existence. The western suburb, thus pushed beyond the bed of the boundary torrent, has gradually grown in wealth and prosperity till it now represents the actual living Nice of the tourist and the winter resident. But how to de- scribe that gay and beautiful city ; that vast agglomera- tion of villas, pensions, hotels, and clubs ; that endless array of sun-v\^orshipers gathered together to this temple of the sun from all the four quarters of the habitable globe? The sea- front consists of the Promenade des Anglais itself, which stretches in an unbroken line of white and glittering houses, most of them tasteless, but all splendid and all opulent, from the old bank of the Paillon to its sister torrent, the Magnan, some two miles away. On one side the villas front the shore with their fantastic facades ; on the other side a walk, overshadowed with date-palms and purple-ftowering judas-trees, lines the steep shingle beach of the tideless sea. There is one marked peculiarity of the Promenade des Anglais, however, which at once distinguishes it from 134 THE MEDITERRANEAN any similar group of private houses to be found anywhere in England. There the British love of privacy, which has, of course, its good points, but has also its compen- sating disadvantages, leads almost every owner of beau- tiful grounds or gardens to enclose them with a high fence or with the hideous monstrosity known to suburban Londoners as " park paling." This plan, while it ensures complete seclusion for the fortunate few within, shuts out the deserving many outside from all participation in the beauty of the grounds or the natural scenery. On the Promenade des Anglais, on the contrary, a certain gen- erous spirit of emulation in contributing to the public en- joyment and the general effectiveness of the scene as a whole has prompted the owners of the villas along the sea-front to enclose their gardens only with low orna- mental balustrades or with a slight and unobtrusive iron fence, so that the passers-by can see freely into every one of them, and feast their eyes on the beautiful shrubs and flowers. The houses and grounds thus form a long line of delightful though undoubtedly garish and ornate dec- orations, in full face of the sea. The same plan has been adopted in the noble residential street known as Euclid Avenue at Cleveland, Ohio and in many other American cities. It is to be regretted that English tastes and habits do not oftener thus permit their wealthier classes to con- tribute, at no expense or trouble to themselves, to the general pleasure of less fortunate humanity. The Promenade is, of course, during the season the focus and center of fashionable life at Nice. Here car- riages roll, and amazons ride and flaneurs lounge in the warm sunshine during the livelong afternoon. In front are the baths, bathing being practicable at Nice from the beginning of March ; behind are the endless hotels and THE CARNIVAL 135 clubs of this city of strangers. For the English are not alone on the Promenade des Anglais ; the American tongue is heard there quite as often as the British dialect, while Germans Russians, Poles, and Austrians cluster thick upon the shady seats beneath the planes and carob- trees. During the Carnival especially Nice resolves itself into one long orgy of frivolous amusement. Battles of flowers, battles of confetti, open-air masquerades, and universal tom-foolery pervade the place. Everybody vies with everybody else in making himself ridiculous ; and even the staid Briton, released from the restraints of home or the City, abandons himself contentedly for a week at a time to a sort of prolonged and glorified sunny southern Derby Day. Mr. Bultitude disguises himself as a French clown ; Mr. Dombey, in domino, flings roses at his friends on the seats of the tribune. Ever3^where is laughter, noise bustle, and turmoil; everywhere the manifold forms of antique saturnalian freedom, decked out with gay flowers or travestied in quaint clothing, but imported most incongruously for a week in the year into the midst of our modern work-a-day twentieth-century Europe. Only a comparatively few winters ago fashionable Nice consisted almost entirely of the Promenade des Anglais, with a few slight tags and appendages in either direction. At its eastern end stood (and still stands) the Jardin Public, that paradise of children and of be-ribboned French nursemaids, where the band discourses lively music every afternoon at four, and all the world sits round on two-sou chairs to let all the rest of the world see for itself it is still in evidence. These, and the stately quays along the Paillon bank, lined with shops where female human nature can buy all the tastiest and most expensive gewgaws in Europe, constituted the real Nice 136 THE MEDITERRANEAN of the early eighties. But with the rapid growth of that general taste for more sumptuous architecture which marks our age, the Phocsean city woke up a few years since with electric energy to find itself in danger of being left behind by its younger competitors. So the Nigois conscript fathers put their wise heads together, in con- clave assembled, and resolved on a general transmogrifi- cation of the center of their town. By continuously bridg- ing and vaulting across the almost dry bed of the Paillon torrent they obtained a broad and central site for a new large garden, which now forms the natural focus of the transformed city. On the upper end of this important site they erected a large and handsome casino in the gor- geous style of the Third Republic, all glorious without and within, as the modern Frenchman understands such glory, and provided with a theater, a winter garden, restau- rants, cafes, ball-rooms, petits chevaux, and all the other most pressing requirements of an advanced civilization. But in doing this they sacrificed by the way the beautiful view towards the mountains behind, which can now only . be obtained from the Square Massena or the Pont Vieux farther up the river. Most visitors to Nice, however, care little for views, and a great deal for the fitful and fearsome joys embodied to their minds in the outward and visible form of a casino. This wholesale bridging over of the lower end of the Paillon has united the French and Italian towns and abolished the well-marked boundary line which once cut them off so conspicuously from one another. The inevi- table result has been that the Italian town too has under- gone a considerable modernization along the sea-front, so that the Promenade des Anglais and the Promenade du Midi now practically merge into one continuous THE PLACE MASSENA 137 parade, and are lined along all their length with the same clipped palm-trees and the same magnificent white palatial buildings. When the old theater in the Italian town was burnt down in the famous and fatal conflagration some years since the municipality erected a new one on the same site in the most approved style of Parisian luxury. A little behind lie the Prefecture and the beautiful flower market, which no visitor to Nice should ever miss; for Nice is above all things, even more than Florence, a city of flowers. The sheltered quarter of the Ponchettes, lying close under the lee of the Castle Hill, has become of late, owing to these changes, a favorite resort for in- valids, who find here protection from the cutting winds which sweep with full force down the bare and open valley of the Paillon over the French town. I am loth to quit that beloved sea-front, on the whole the most charming marine parade in Europe, with the Villefranche point and the pseudo-Gothic, pseudo-Oriental monstrosity of Smith's Folly on one side and the delicious bay towards Antibes on the other. But there are yet various aspects of Nice which remain to be described: the interior is almost as lovely in its way as the coast that fringes it. For this inner Nice, the Place Massena, called (like the Place Garibaldi) after another distinguished native, forms the starting point and center. Here the trams from all quarters run together at last; hence the principal roads radiate in all directions. The Place Massena is the center of business, as the Jardin Public and the Casino are the centers of pleasure. Also (verbum sap.) it contains an excellent patisserie, where you can enjoy an ice or a little French pastry with less permanent harm to your constitution and morals than anywhere in Europe. Moreover, it forms the approach 138 THE MEDITERRANEAN to the Avenue de la Gare, which divides with the Quays the honor of being the best shopping street in tlie most fashionable watering-place of the Mediterranean. If these delights thy soul may move, why, the Place Mas- sena is the exact spot to find them in. Other great boulevards, like the Boulevard Victor Hugo and the Boulevard Dubouchage, have been opened out of late years to let the surplus wealth that flows into Nice in one constant stream find room to build upon. Chateaux and gardens are springing up merrily on every side ; the slopes of the hills gleam gay with villas ; Cimiez and Carabacel, once separate villages, have now been united by continuous dwellings to the main town ; and before long the city where Garibaldi was born and where Gambetta lies buried will swallow up in itself the entire space of the valley, and its border spurs from mountain to mountain. The suburbs, indeed, are almost more lovely in their way than the town itself ; and as one wanders at will among the olive-clad hills to westward, looking down upon the green lemon-groves that encircle the villas, and the wealth of roses that drape their sides, one cannot wonder that Joseph de Maistre, another Nigois of distinction, in the long dark evenings he spent at St. Petersburg, should time and again have recalled with a sigh " ce doux vallon de Magnan." Nor have the Rus- sians themselves failed to appreciate the advantages of the change, for they flock by thousands to the Orthodox Quarter on the heights of Saint Philippe, which rings round the Greek chapel erected in memory of the Czare- witch Nicholas Alexandrowitch, who died at Nice in 1865. After all, however, to the lover of the picturesque Nice town itself is but the threshold and starting point for that FALICON 139 lovely country which spreads on all sides its endless ob- jects of interest and scenic beauty from Antibes to Men- tone. The excursions to be made from it in every direc- tion are simply endless. Close by lie the monastery and amphitheater of Cimiez ; the Italianesque cloisters and campanile of St. Pons ; the conspicuous observatory on the Mont Gros, with its grand Alpine views ; the hill- side promenades of Le Ray and Les Fontaines. Farther afield the carriage-road up the Paillon valley leads direct to St. Andre through a romantic limestone gorge, which terminates at last in a grotto and natural bridge, over- hung by the moldering remains of a most southern chateau. A little higher up, the steep mountain track takes one on to Falicon, perched " like an eagle's nest " on its panoramic hill-top, one of the most famous points of view among the Maritime Alps. The boundary hills of the Magnan, covered in spring with the purple flowers of the wild gladiolus ; the vine-clad heights of Le Bellet, looking down on the abrupt and rock-girt basin of the Var; the Valley of Hepaticas, carpeted in March with innumerable spring blossoms ; the longer drive to Contes. in the very heart of the mountains : all alike are lovely, and all alike tempt one to linger in their precincts among the shadow of the cypress trees or under the cool grottos green and lush with spreading fronds of wild maiden- hair. Among so many delicious excursions it were invidious to single out any for special praise ; yet there can be little doubt that the most popular, at least with the general throng of tourists, is the magnificent coast-road by Ville- franche (or Villafranca) to Monte Carlo and Monaco. This particular part of the coast, between Nice and Men- tone, is the one where the main range of the Maritime I40 THE MEDITERRANEAN Alps, abutting at last on the sea, tumbles over sheer with a precipitous descent from four thousand feet high to the level of the Mediterranean. Formerly, the barrier ridge could only be surmounted by the steep but glorious Cor- niche route ; of late years, however, the French engineers, most famous of road-makers, have hewn an admirable carriage-drive out of the naked rock, often through covered galleries or tunnels in the cliff itself, the whole way from Nice to Monte Carlo and Mentone. The older portion of this road, between Nice and Villefranche, falls well within the scope of our present subject. You leave modern Nice by the quays and the Pont Garibaldi, dash rapidly through the new broad streets that now intersect the Italian city, skirt the square basins lately added to the more shapeless ancient Greek port of Limpia, and begin to mount the first spurs of the Mont Boron among the villas and gardens of the Quartier du Lazaret. Banksia roses fall in cataracts over the walls as you go ; looking back, the lovely panorama of Nice opens out before your eyes. In the foreground, the rocky islets of La Reserve foam white with the perpetual plashing of that summer sea. In the middle distance, the old Greek harbor, with its mole and lighthouse, stands out against the steep rocks of the Castle Hill. The back- ground rises up in chain on chain of Alps, allowing just a glimpse at their base of that gay and fickle promenade and all the Parisian prettinesses of the new French town. The whole forms a wonderful picture of the varied Medi- terranean world. Greek, Roman, Italian, French, with the vine-clad hills and orange-groves behind merging slowly upward into the snow-bound Alps. Turning the corner of the Mont Boron by the gro- tesque vulgarisms of the Chateau Smith (a curious semi- VILLEFRANCHE 141 oriental specimen of the shell-grotto order of architecture on a gigantic scale) a totally fresh view bursts upon our eyes of the Rade de Villefranche, that exquisite land- locked bay bounded on one side by the scarped crags of the Mont Boron itself, and on the other by the long and rocky peninsula of St. Jean, which terminates in the Cap Ferrat and the Villefranche light. The long deep bay forms a favorite roadstead and rendezvous for the French Mediterranean squadron, whose huge ironclad monsters may often be seen ploughing their way in single file from seaward round the projecting headlands, or basking at ease on the calm surface of that glassy pond. The sur- rounding heights, of course, bristle with fortifications, which, in these suspicious days of armed European ten- sion, the tourist and the sketcher are strictly prohibited from inspecting with too attentive an eye. The quaintly picturesque town of Villefranche itself, Italian and dirty, but amply redeemed by its slender bell-tower and its olive-clad terraces, nestles snugly at the very bottom of its pocket-like bay. The new road to Monte Carlo leaves it far below, with true modern contempt for mere old-world beauty ; the artist and the lover of nature will know better than to follow the example of those ruthless engineers; they will find many subjects for a sketch among those whitewashed walls, and many a rare sea- flower tucked away unseen among those crannied crags. And now, when all is said and done, I, who have known and loved Nice for so many bright winters, feel only too acutely how utterly I have failed to set before those of my readers who know it not the infinite charms of that gay and rose-wreathed queen of the smiling Riviera. For what words can paint the life and move- ment of the sparkling sea-front ? the manifold humors of 142 THE MEDITERRANEAN the Jardin Public? the southern vivacity of the wrasher- women who pound their clothes with big stones in the dry bed of the pebbly Paillon? the luxuriant festoons of honeysuckle and mimosa that drape the trellis-work ar- cades of Carabacel and Cimiez? Who shall describe aright with one pen the gnarled olives of Beaulieu and the palace-like front of the Cercle de la Mediterranee? Who shall write with equal truth of the jewelers' shops on the quays, or the oriental bazaars of the Avenue, and of the dome after dome of bare mountain tops that rise ever in long perspective to the brilliant white summits of the great Alpine backbone? Who shall tell in one breath of the carmagnoles of the Carnival, or the dust- begrimed bouquets of the Battle of Flowers, and of the silent summits of the Mont Cau and the Cime de Vin- aigrier, or the vast and varied sea-view that bursts on the soul unawares from the Corniche near Eza? There are aspects of Nice and its environs which recall Bar- tholomew Fair, or the Champs filysees after a Sunday review ; and there are aspects which recall the prospect from some solemn summit of the Bernese Oberland, mixed with some heather-clad hill overlooking the green Atlantic among the Western Highlands. Yet all is so graciously touched and lighted with Mediterranean color and Mediterranean sunshine, that even in the midst of her wildest frolics you can seldom be seriously angry with Nice. The works of God's hand are never far off. You look up from the crowd of carriages and loungers on the Promenade des Anglais, and the Cap Ferrat rises bold and bluff before your eyes above the dashing white waves of the sky-blue sea : you cross the bridge behind the Casino amid the murmur of the quays, and the great bald mountains soar aloft to heaven above the brawkncf FLOWERS AND SUNSHINE 143 valley of the snow-fed Paillon. It is a desecration, per- haps, but a desecration that leaves you still face to face with all that is purest and most beautiful in nature. And then, the flowers, the waves, the soft air, the sun- shine ! On the beach, between the bathing places, men are drying scented orange peel to manufacture perfumes : in the dusty high roads you catch whiffs as you pass of lemon blossom and gardenia : the very trade of the town is an expert trade in golden acacia and crimson anem- ones : the very gamins pelt you in the rough horse- play of the Carnival with sweet-smelling bunches of syringa and lilac. Luxury that elsewhere would move one to righteous wrath is here so democratic in its dis- play that one almost condones it. The gleaming white villas, with carved caryatides or sculptured porches of freestone nymphs, let the wayfarer revel as he goes in the riches of their shrubberies or their sunlit fountains and in the breezes that blow over their perfumed parterres. Nice vulgar! Pah, my friend, if you say so, I know well why. You have a vulgar soul that sees only the gewgaws and the painted ladies. You have never strolled up by yourself from the noise and dust of the crowded town to the free heights of the Mont Alban or the flowery olive-grounds of the Magnan valley. You have never hunted for purple hellebore among the gorges of the Paillon or picked orchids and irises in big handfuls upon the slopes of Saint Andre. I doubt even whether you have once turned aside for a moment from the gay crowd of the Casino and the Place Massena into the narrow streets of the Italian town ; communed in their own delicious dialect with the free fisherfolk of the Limpia quarter; or looked out with joy upon the tumbled plain of mountain heights from 144 THE MEDITERRANEAN the breezy level of the Castle platform. Probably you have only sat for days in the balcony of your hotel, rolled at your ease down the afternoon Promenade, worn a false nose at the evening parade of the Carnival, or re- turned late at night by the last train from Monte Carlo with your pocket much lighter and your heart much heavier than when you left by the morning express in search of fortune. And then you say Nice is vulgar ! You have no eyes, it seems, for sea or shore, or sky, or mountain ; but you look down curiously at the dust in the street, and you mutter to yourself that you find it unin- teresting. When you go to Nice again, walk alone up the hills to Falicon, returning by Le Ray, and then say, if you dare, Nice is anything on earth but gloriously beautiful. VII THE RIVIERA In the days ol the Doges — Origin of the name — The blue bay of Cannes — Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat — Historical asso- ciations — The Rue L'Antibes — The rock of Monaco — " Notre Dame de la Roulette " — From Monte Carlo to Mentone — San Remo — A romantic railway. tC^'"^!!, Land of Roses, what bulbul shall sing of ■ JP thee? " In plain prose, how describe the gar- ^<-^ den of Europe? The Riviera! Who knows, save he who has been there, the vague sense of delight which the very name recalls to the poor winter exile, banished by frost and cold from the fogs and bronchitis of more northern climes? What visions of gray olives, shimmering silvery in the breeze on terraced mountain slopes ! What cataracts of Marshal Niels, falling in rich profusion over gray limestone walls ! What aloes and cactuses on what sun-smitten rocks ! What picnics in December beneath what cloudless blue skies ! But to those who know and appreciate it best, the Riviera is something more than mere scenery and sunshine. It is life, it is health, it is strength, it is rejuvenescence. The return to it in autumn is as the renewal of youth. Its very faults are dear to us, for they are the defects of its virtues. We can put up with its dust when we remem- ber that dust means sun and dry air; we can forgive its 145 146 THE MEDITERRANEAN staring white roads when we reflect to ourselves that they depend upon ahnost unfaihng fine weather and bright, clear skies, when northern Europe is wrapped in fog and cold and wretchedness. And what is this Riviera that we feeble folk who " winter in the south " know and adore so well ? Has everybody been there, or may one venture even now to paint it in words once more for the twentieth time? Well, after all, how narrow is our conception of " every- body ! " I suppose one out of every thousand at a mod- erate estimate, has visited that smiling coast that spreads its entrancing bays between Marseilles and Genoa; my description is, therefore, primarily for the nine hundred and ninety-nine who have not been there. And even the thousandth himself, if he knows his Cannes and his Men- tone well, will not grudge me a reminiscence of those de- licious gulfs and those charming headlands that must be indelibly photographed on his memory. The name Riviera is now practically English. But in origin it is Genoese. To those seafaring folk, in the days of the Doges, the coasts to east and west of their own princely city were known, naturally enough, as the Riviera di Levante and the Riviera di Ponente respec- tively, the shores of the rising and the setting sun. But on English lips the qualifying clause " di Ponente " has gradually in usage dropped out altogether, and we speak nowadays of this favored winter resort, by a some- what illogical clipping, simply as " the Riviera." In our modern and specially English sense, then, the Riviera means the long and fertile strip of coast between the arid mountains and the Ligurian Sea, beginning at St. Raphael and ending at Genoa. Hyeres, it is true, is com- monly reckoned of late among Riviera towns, but by ANTIBES 147 courtesy only. It lies, strictly speaking, outside the charmed circle. One may say that the Riviera, properly so called, has its origin where the Esterel abuts upon the Gulf of Frejus, and extends as far as the outliers of the Alps skirt the Italian shore of the Mediterranean. Now, the Riviera is just the point where the greatest central mountain system of all Europe topples over most directly into the warmest sea. And its best-known re- sorts, Nice, Monte Carlo, Mentone, occupy the precise place where the very axis of the ridge abuts at last on the shallow and basking Mediterranean. They are there- fore as favorably situated with regard to the mountain wall as Pallanza or Riva, with the further advantage of a more southern position and of a neighboring extent of sunny sea to warm them. The Maritime "Alps cut off all northerly winds; while the hot air of the desert, tempered by passing over a wide expanse of Mediterra- nean waves, arrives on the coast as a delicious breeze, no longer dry and relaxing, but at once genial and re- freshing. Add to these varied advantages the dryness of climate due to an essentially continental position (for the Mediterranean is after all a mere inland salt lake), and it is no wonder we all swear by the Riviera as the fairest and most pleasant of winter resorts. My own opinion remains always unshaken, that Antibes, for cli- mate, may fairly claim to rank as the best spot in Europe or round the shores of the Mediterranean. Not that I am by any means a bigoted Antipolitan. I have tried every other nook and cranny along that de- lightful coast, from Carqueyranne to Cornigliano. and I will allow that every one of them has for certain purposes its own special advantages. All, all are charming. In- deed, the Riviera is to my mind one long feast of de- 148 THE MEDITERRANEAN lights. From the moment the railway strikes the sea near Frejus the traveller feels he can only do justice to the scenery on either side by looking both ways at once, and so " contracting a squint," like a sausage-seller in Aristophanes. Those glorious peaks of the Esterel alone would encourage the most prosaic to " drop into poetry, ' as readily as Mr. Silas Wegg himself in the mansion of the Boffins. How am I to describe them, those rear- ing masses of rock, huge tors of red porphyry, rising sheer into the air with their roseate crags from a deep green base of Aiediterranean pinewood? When the sun strikes their sides, they glow like fire. There they lie in their beauty, like a huge rock pushed out into the sea, the advance-guard of the Alps, unbroken save by the one high-road that runs boldly through their unpeopled midst, and by the timider railway that, fearing to tunnel their solid porphyry depths, winds cautiously round their base by the craggy sea-shore, and so gives us as we pass end- less lovely glimpses into sapphire bays with red cliflfs and rocky lighthouse-crowned islets. On the whole, 1 consider the Esterel, as scenery alone, the loveliest " bit " on the whole Riviera ; though wanting in human addi- tions, as nature it is the best, the most varied in outline, the most vivid in coloring. Turning the corner by Agay, you come suddenly, all unawares, on the blue bay of Cannes, or rather on the Golfe de la Napoule, whose very name betrays unin- tentionally the intense newness and unexpectedness of all this populous coast, this " little England beyond France " that has grown up apace round Lord Brougham's villa on the shore by the mouth of the Siagne. For when the bay beside the Esterel received its present name, La Na- poule, not Cannes, was still the principal village on its ILES LERIXS 149 bank. Xowadays, people drive over on a spare afternoon from the crowded fashionable town to the slumbrous little hamlet; but in older days La Xapoule w-as a busy local market when Cannes was nothing more than a petty hamlet of Provencal fishermen. The Golfe de la X'apoule ends at the Croisette of Cannes, a long, low promontory carried out into the sea by a submarine bank, whose farthest points re-emerge as the two lies Lerins, Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat. Their names are famous in history. A little steamer plies from Cannes to " the Islands," as everybody calls them locally; and the trip, in calm weather, if the Alps are pleased to shine out, is a pleasant and instructive one. Ste. ^Marguerite lies somevrhat the nearer of the two, a pretty little islet, covered with a thick grow'th of maritime pines, and celebrated as the prison of that mys- terious being, the ^Man with the Iron Mask, who has given rise to so much foolish and fruitless speculation. Near the landing-piace stands the Fort, perched on a high cliff and looking across to the Croisette. Uninteresting in itself, this old fortification is much visited by wonder- loving tourists for the sake of its famous prisoner, whose memory still haunts the narrow terrace corridor, where he paced up and dow-n for seventeen years of unrelieved captivit}'. St. Honorat stands farther out to sea than its sister island, and, though lower and flatter, is in some ways more picturesque, in virtue of its massive mediaeval monastery and its historical associations. In the early middle ages, w^hen communications were still largely carried on by water, the convent of the lies Lerins en- joyed much reputation as a favorite stopping-place, one might almost say hotel, for pilgrims to or from Rome; I50 THE MEDITERRANEAN and most of the early British Christians in their con- tinental wanderings found shelter at one time or another under its hospitable roof. St. Augustine stopped here on his way to Canterbury ; St. Patrick took the convent on his road from Ireland ; Salvian wrote within its walls his dismal jeremiad; Vincent de Lerins composed in it his " Pilgrim's Guide." The somber vaults of the ancient cloister still bear witness by their astonishingly thick and solid masonry to their double use as monastery and as place of refuge from the " Saracens," the Barbary corsairs of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. In- deed, Paynim fleets plundered the place more than once, and massacred the monks in cold blood. Of Cannes itself, marvelous product of this gad-about and commercial age, how shall the truthful chronicler speak with becoming respect and becoming dignity? For Cannes has its faults. Truly a wonderful place is that cosmopolitan winter resort. Rococo chateaux, glorious gardens of palm-trees, imitation Moorish villas, wooden chalets from the scene-painter's ideal Switzerland, Eliza- bethan mansions stuck in Italian grounds, lovely groves of mimosa, eucalyptus, and judas-trees, all mingle to- gether in so strange and incongruous a picture that one knows not when to laugh, when to weep, when to ad- mire, when to cry " Out on it ! " Imagine a conglomer- ation of two or three white-faced Parisian streets, inter- spersed with little bits of England, of Brussels, of Al- giers, of Constantinople, of Pekin, of Bern, of Nurem- berg and of Venice, jumbled side by side on a green Pro- vengal hillside before a beautiful bay, and you get mod- ern Cannes ; a Babel set in Paradise ; a sort of houlevar- dier Bond Street, with a view across blue waves to the serrated peaks of the ever lovely Esterel. Nay; try as it CANNES 151 will, Cannes cannot help being beautiful. Nature has done so much for it that art itself, the debased French art of the Empire and the Republic, can never for one moment succeed in making it ugly; though I am bound to admit it has striven as hard as it knew for that laudable object. But Cannes is Cannes still, in spite of Grand Dukes and landscape gardeners and architects. And the Old Town, at least, is yet wholly unspoilt by the specu- lative builder. Almost every Riviera watering-place has such an old-world nucleus or kernel of its own, the quaint fisher village of ancient days, round which the meretri- cious modern villas have clustered, one by one, in irregu- lar succession. At Cannes the Old Town is even more conspicuous than elsewhere ; for it clambers up the steep sides of a little seaward hillock, crowned by the tower of an eleventh century church, and is as picturesque, as gray, as dirty, as most other haunts of the hardy Pro- vencal fisherman. Strange, too, to see how the two streams of life flow on ever, side by side, yet ever un- mingled. The Cannes of the fishermen is to this day as unvaried as if the new cosmopolitan winter resort had never grown up, with its Anglo-Russian airs and graces, its German-American frivolities, round that unpromising center. The Rue d'Antibes is the principal shopping street of the newer and richer Cannes. If we follow it out into the country by its straight French boulevard it leads us at last to the funny old border city from which it still takes its unpretending name. Antibes itself belongs to that very first crop of civilized Provengal towns which owe their origin to the sturdy old Phoc?ean colonists. It is a Greek city by descent, the Antipolis which faced and de- fended the harbor of Nicasa ; and for picturesqueness 152 THE MEDITERRANEAN and beauty it has not its equal on the whole picturesque and beautiful Riviera. Everybody who has travelled by the " Paris, Lyon, Mediterranee " knows well the ex- quisite view of the mole and harbor as seen in passing from the railway. But that charming glimpse, quaint and varied as it is, gives by no means a full idea of the ancient Phoceean city. The town stands still surrounded by its bristling fortification, the work of Vauban, pierced by narrow gates in their thickness, and topped with noble ramparts. The Fort Carre that crowns the seaward pro- montory, the rocky islets, and the two stone breakwaters of the port (a small-scale Genoa), all add to the strik- ing effect of the situation and prospect. Within, the place is as quaint and curious as without : a labyrinth of narrow streets, poor in memorials of Antipolis, but rich in Roman remains, including that famous and pathetic inscription to the boy Septentrio, ovi antipoli in thea- TRO BiDVO SALTAViT ET PLACViT. The last three words borrowed from this provincial tombstone, have become proverbial of the short-lived glory of the actor's art. The general aspect of Antibes town, however, is at present mediseval, or even seventeenth century. A fla- vor as of Louis Quatorze pervades the whole city, with its obtrusive military air of a border fortress ; for, of course, while the Var still formed the frontier between France and Italy, Antibes ranked necessarily as a stra- tegic post of immense importance; and at the present day, in our new recrudescence of military barbarism, great barracks surround the fortifications with fresh white- washed walls, and the "Hun! Deusse!" of the noisy French drill-sergeant resounds all day long from the ex- ercise-ground by the railway station. Antibes itself is therefore by no means a place to stop at; it is the Cap MONACO AND MONTE CARLO 153 d'Antibes close by that attracts now every year an increas- ing influx of peaceful and cultivated visitors. The walks and drives are charming; the pine-woods, carpeted with wild anemones, are a dream of delight ; and the view from the Lighthouse Hill behind the town is one of the loveliest and most varied on the whole round Mediter- ranean. But I must not linger here over the beauties of the Cap d'Antibes, but must be pushing onwards towards Mona- co and Monte Carlo. It is a wonderful spot, this little principality of Mo- naco, hemmed in between the high mountains and the assailing sea, and long hermetically cut off from all its more powerful and commercial neighbors. Between the palm-lined boulevards of Nice and the grand amphi- theater of mountains that shuts in Mentone as with a perfect semicircle of rearing peaks, one rugged buttress, the last long subsiding spur ot the great Alpine axis, runs boldly out to seaward, and ends in the bluff rocky head- land of the Tete de Chien that overhangs Monte Carlo. Till very lately no road ever succeeded in turning the foot of that precipitous promontory : the famous Corniche route runs along a ledge high up its beetling side, past the massive Roman ruin of Turbia, and looks down from a height of fifteen hundred feet upon the palace of Mona- co. This mountain bulwark of the Turbia long formed the real boundary line between ancient Gaul and Liguria ; and on its very summit, where the narrow Roman road wound along the steep pass now widened into the mag- nificent highway of the Corniche, Augustus built a solid square monument to mark the limit between the Prov- ince and the Italian soil, as well as to overawe the mountaineers of this turbulent region. A round me- 154 THE MEDITERRANEAN diieval tower, at present likewise in ruins, crowns the Roman work. Here the Alps end abruptly. The rock of Monaco at the base is their last ineffectual seaward protest. And what a rock it is, that quaint ridge of land, crowned by the strange capital of that miniature princi- pality ! Figure to yourself a huge whale petrified, as he basks there on the shoals his back rising some two hundred feet from the water's edge, his head to the sea, and his tail just touching the mainland, and you have a rough mental picture of the Rock of Monaco. It is, in fact, an isolated hillock, jutting into the Mediterranean at the foot of the Maritime Alps (a final reminder, as it were, of their dying dignity), and united to the Under- cliff only by a narrow isthmus at the foot of the crag which bears the mediaeval bastions of the Prince's palace. As you look down on it from above from the heights of the Corniche, I have no hesitation in saying it forms the most picturesque town site in all Europe. On every side, save seaward, huge mountains gird it round; while towards the smiling blue Mediterranean itself the great rock runs outward, bathed by tiny white breakers in every part, except where the low isthmus links it to the shore; and with a good field-glass you can see down in a bird's eye view into every street and courtyard of the clean little capital. The red-tiled houses, the white palace with its orderly gardens and quadrangles, the round lunettes of the old wall, the steep cobbled mule- path which mounts the rock from the modern railway- station, all lie spread out before one like a pictorial map, painted in the bright blue of Mediterranean seas, the dazzling gray of Mediterranean sunshine, and the bril- liant russet of Mediterranean roofs. THE CASINO 155 There can be no question at all that Monte Carlo even now, with all its gew-gaw additions, is very beautiful: no Haussmann could spoil so much loveliness of posi- tion ; and even the new town itself, which grows apace each time I revisit it, has a picturesqueness of hardy arch, bold rock, well-perched villa, which redeems it to a great extent from any rash charge of common vul- garity. All looks like a scene in a theater, not like a prosaic bit of this work-a-day world of ours. Around us is the blue Mediterranean, broken into a hundred petty sapphire bays. Back of us rise tier after tier of Maritime Alps, their huge summits clouded in a fleecy mist. To the left stands the white rock of Monaco; to the right, the green Italian shore, fading away into the purple mountains that guard the Gulf of Genoa. Lovely by nature, the immediate neighborhood of the Casino has been made in some ways still more lovely by art. From the water's edge, terraces of tropical vegetation succeed one another in gradual steps towards the grand fagade of the gambling-house ; clusters of palms and aloes, their base girt by exotic flowers, are thrust cunningly into the foreground of every point in the view, so that you see the bay and the mountains through the artistic vistas thus deftly arranged in the very spots where a painter's fancy would have set them. You look across to Monaco past a clump of drooping date-branches ; you catch a glimpse of Bordighera through a framework of spread- ing dracc-enas and quaintly symmetrical fan-palms. Once more under way, and this time on foot. For the road from Monte Carlo to Mentone is almost as lovely in its way as that from Nice to Monte Carlo. It runs at first among the ever-increasing villas and hotels of the capital of Chance, and past that sumptuous 156 THE MEDITERRANEAN church, built from the gains of the table, which native wit has not inaptly christened " Notre Dame de la Rou- lette." There is one point of view of Monaco and its bay, on the slopes of the Cap Martin, not far from Roque- brune, so beautiful that though I have seen it, 1 sup- pose, a hundred times or more, I can never come upon it to this day without giving vent to an involuntary cry of surprise and admiration. Roquebrune itself, which was an Italian Roccabruna when I first knew it, has a quaint situation of its own, and a cjuaint story connected with it. Brown as its own rocks, the tumbled little village stands oddly jumbled in and out among huge masses of pudding-stone, which must have fallen at some time or other in headlong con- fusion from the scarred face of the neighboring hill- side. From the Corniche road it is still quite easy to recognize the bare patch on the mountain slope whence the landslip detached itself, and to trace its path down the hill to its existing position. But local legend goes a little farther than that : it asks us to believe that the rock fell as we see it ivith the houses on top; in other words, that the village was built before the catastrophe took place, and that it glided down piecemeal into the tossed- about form it at present presents to us. Be this as it may, and the story makes some demand on the hearer's credulity, it is certain that the houses now occupy most picturesque positions : here perched by twos and threes on broken masses of conglomerate, there wedged in be- tween two great walls of beetling cliff, and yonder again hanging for dear life to some slender foothold on the precipitous hillside. We reach the summit of the pass. The Bay of Monaco is separated from the Bay of Mentone by the long, lev/ MENTONE 157 headland of Cap Martin, covered with oHve groves and scrubby maritime pines. As one turns the corner from Roquebrune by the col round the cliff, there bursts sud- denly upon the view one of the loveliest prospects to be beheld from the Corniche. At our feet, embowered among green lemons and orange trees, Mentone half hides itself behind its villas and its gardens. In the middle distance the old church with its tall Italian cam- panile stands out against the blue peaks of that magnifi- cent amphitheater. Beyond, again, a narrow gorge marks the site of the Pont St. Louis and the Italian frontier. Farther eastward the red rocks merge half indistinctly into the point of La Mortola, with Mr. Hanbury's famous garden ; then come the cliffs and fortifications of Ventimiglia, gleaming white in the sun; and last of all, the purple hills that hem in San Remo. It is an appro- priate approach to a most lovely spot ; for Mentone ranks high for beauty, even among her bevy of fair sisters on the Ligurian sea-board. Yes, Mentone is beautiful, most undeniably beautiful ; and for walks and drives perhaps it may bear away the palm from all rivals on that enchanted and enchanting Riviera. Five separate valleys, each carved out by its own torrent, with dry winter bed, converge upon the sea within the town precincts. Four principal rocky ridges divide these valleys with their chine-like backbone, be- sides numberless minor spurs branching laterally inland. Each valley is threaded by a well-made carriage-road, and each dividing ridge is climbed by a bridle-path and footway. The consequence is that the walks and drives at Mentone are never exhausted, and excursions among the hills might occupy the industrious pedestrian for many successive winters. What hills they are, too, those 158 THE MEDITERRANEAN great bare needles and pinnacles of rock, worn into jagged peaks and points by the ceaseless rain of ages, and looking down from their inaccessible tops with glit- tering scorn upon the green lemon groves beneath them ! The next town on the hne, Bordighera, is better known to the world at large as a Rivieran winter resort, though of a milder and Cjuieter type, I do not say than Nice or Cannes, but than Mentone or San Remo. Bordighera, indeed, has just reached that pleasant intermediate stage in the evolution of a Rivieran watering-place when all positive needs of the northern stranger are amply sup- plied, while crowds and fashionable amusements have not yet begun to invade its primitive simplicity. The walks and drives on every side are charming ; the hotels are comfortable, and the prices are still by no means prohibitive. San Remo comes next in order of the cosmopolitan winter resorts : San Remo, thickly strewn with spectacled Germans, like leaves in Vallombrosa, since the Emperor Frederick chose the place for his last despairing rally. The Teuton finds himself more at home, indeed, across the friendly Italian border than in hostile France ; and the St. Gotthard gives him easy access by a pleasant route to these nearer Ligurian towns, so that the Fatherland has now almost annexed San Remo, as England has annexed Cannes, and America Nice and Cimiez. Built in the evil days of the Middle Ages, when every house was a fortress and every breeze bore a Saracen, San Remo presents to-day a picturesque labyrinth of streets, lanes, vaults, and alleys, only to be surpassed in the quaint neighboring village of Taggia. This is the heart of the earthquake region, too; and to protect themselves against that frequent and unwelcome visitor, whose mark SAN REMO 159 may be seen on half the walls in the outskirts, the in- habitants of San Remo have strengthened their houses by a system of arches thrown at varying heights across the tangled paths, which recalls Algiers or Tunis. From certain points of view, and especially from the east side, San Remo thus resembles a huge pyramid of solid ma- sonry, or a monstrous pagoda hewn out by giant hands from a block of white free-stone. As Dickens well worded it, one seems to pass through the town by going perpetually from cellar to cellar. A romantic railway skirts the coast from San Remo to Alassio and Savona, It forms one long succession of tunnels, interspersed with frequent breathing spaces beside lovely bays, " the pea- cock's neck in hue," as the Laureate sings of them. One town after another sweeps gradually into view round the corner of a promontory, a white mass of houses crowning some steep point of rock, of which Alassio alone has as yet any pretensions to be considered a home for northern visitors. VIII GENOA Early history — Old fortifications — The rival of Venice — Changes of twenty-five years— From the parapet of the Corso — l"he lower town — The Genoese palazzi — Monument to Christopher Columbus — The old Dogana — Memorials in the Campo Santo — The Bay of Spezzia— The Isola Palmeria — Harbor scenes. GENOVA LA SUPERBA— Genoa the Proud— an epithet not inappropriate for this city of merchant princes of olden days, which was once the emporium of the Tyrrhenian, as was Venice of the Adriatic sea, and the rival of the latter for the com- merce of the Eastern Mediterranean. No two cities, adapted to play a similar part in history, could be more unlike in their natural environments : Venice clustered on a series of mud banks, parted by an expanse of water from a low coast-line, beyond which the far-away moun- tains rise dimly in the distance, a fleet, as it were, of houses anchored in the shallows of the Adriatic; Genoa stretching along the shore by the deepening water, at the very feet of the Apennines, climbing up their slopes, and crowning their' lower summits with its watch-towers. No seaport in Italy possesses a site so rich in natural beauty, not even Spezzia in its bay, for though the scenery in the neighborhood certainly surpasses that around Genoa, the town itself is built upon an almost level plain; not i6o LIGURIA i6i even Naples itself, notwithstanding the magnificent sweep of its bay, dommated by the volcanic cone of Vesuvius, and bounded by the limestone crags of the range of Monte S. Angelo. Genoa, however, like all places and persons, has had its detractors. Perhaps of no town has a more bitter sarcasm been uttered, than the well known one, which no doubt originated in the mouth of some envious Tuscan, when the two peoples were contending for the mastery of the western sea, and the maker of the epigram was on the losing side. Familiar as it is tO' many, we will venture to quote it again, as it may be rendered in our own tongue : " Treeless hills, a Ashless sea, faithless men, shameless women." As to the reproach in the first clause, one must admit there is still some truth ; and in olden days, when gardens were fewer and more land was left in its natural condition, there may have been even more point. The hills around Genoa undoubtedly seem a little barren, when compared with those on the Riviera some miles farther to the south, with their extraordinary luxuriance of vegetation, their endless slopes of olives, which only cease to give place to oak and pine and myrtle. There is also, I believe, some truth in the second clause ; but as to the rest it is not for a comparative stranger to express an opinion. So far however as the men are concerned the reproach is not novel. Centuries since, Liguria, of which Genoa is the principal town, was noted for the cunning and treacherous disposition of its peo- ple, who ethnologicallv differ considerably from their neighbors. In Virgil's " ^neid " a Ligurian chief shows more cunning than courage in a fight with an Amazon, and is thus apostrophized before receiving his death-blow from a woman's hand : " In vain, O shifty one, hast thou tried thy hereditary craft." The people of this part of i62 THE MEDITERRANEAN Italy form one of a series of ethnological islands ; where a remnant, by no means inconsiderable, of an earlier race has survived the invading flood of a stronger people. This old-world race — commonly called the Iberian — is characteristically short in stature, dark in hair, eyes, and complexion. Representatives of it survive in Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the Basque Provinces, and other out-of- the-way corners of Europe ; insulated or pressed back, till they could no farther go, by the advance of the Aryan race, by some or other representative of which Europe is now peopled. On the Ligurian coast, however, as might be expected, in the track of two thousand years of commerce and civilization, the races, however difTerent in origin and formerly naturally hostile, have been almost fused together by intermarriage ; and this, at any rate in Genoa, seems to have had a fortuitous result in the production of an exceptionally good-looking people, espe- cially in the case of the younger women. I well remember some years since, when driving out on a summer evening on the western side of Genoa, to have passed crowds of women, most of them young, returning from work in the factories, and certainly I never saw so large a pro- portion of beautiful faces as there were among them. Genoa for at least two thousand years has been an important center of commerce ; though, of course, like most other places, it has not been uniformly prosperous. It fell under the Roman power about two centuries be- fore the Christian era, the possession of it for a time being disputed with the Carthaginians ; then it became noted as a seaport town for the commerce of the western part of the Mediterranean, it declined and suffered dur- ing the decadence and fall of the Empire, and then grad- ually rose into eminence during the Middle Ages. Even EARLY HISTORY 163 in the tenth century Genoa was an important community ; its citizens, as beseemed men who were hardy sailors, found a natural pleasure in any kind of disturbance ; they joined in the Crusades, and turned religious enthusiasm to commercial profit by the acquisition of various towns and islands in the East. The rather unusual combination of warrior and merchant, which the Genoese of the Middle Ages present, is no doubt due not only to social char- acter, but also to exceptional circumstances. '' The con- stant invasions of the Saracens united the professions of trade and war, and its greatest merchants became also its greatest generals, while its naval captains were also merchants." Genoa, as may be supposed, had from the first to con- tend with two formidable rivals : the one being Pisa in its own waters ; the other Venice, whose citizens were equally anxious for supremacy in the Levant and the commerce of the East. With both these places the struggle was long and fierce, but the fortune of war on the whole was distinctly favorable to Genoa nearer home, and unfavorable in regard to the more distant foe. Pisa was finally defeated in the neighborhood of Leghorn, and in the year 1300 had to cede to her enemy a considerable amount of territory, including the island of Corsica; while Venice, after more than a century of conflict with very varying fortune, at last succeeded in obtaining the supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean. The internal history of the city during all this period was not more peaceful than its external. Genoa presents the picture of a house divided against itself; and, strange to say, falsifies the proverb by prospering instead of perishing. If there were com.monly wars without, there were yet more persistent factions within. Guelphs, headed i64 THE MEDITERRANEAN by the families of Grimaldi and Fieschi, and Ghibellines, by those of Spinola and Doria, indulged in faction-fights and sometimes in civil warfare, until at last some ap- proach to peace was procured by the influence of Andrea Doria, who, in obtaining the freedom of the state from French control, brought about the adoption of most im- portant constitutional changes, which tended to obliterate the old and sharply divided party lines. Yet even he narrowly escaped overthrow from a conspiracy, headed by one of the Fieschi ; his great-nephew and heir was assassinated, and his ultimate triumph was due rather to a fortunate accident, which removed from the scene the leader of his opponents, than to his personal power. Then the tide of prosperity began to turn against the Genoese. The Turk made himself master of their lands and cities in the East. Venice ousted them from the commerce of the Levant. War arose with France, and the city itself was captured by that power in the year 1684. The following century was far from being a prosperous time for Genoa, and near the close it opened its gates to the Republican troops, a subjugation which ultimately re- sulted in no little suffering to the inhabitants. Genoa at that time was encircled on the land side by a double line of fortifications, a considerable portion of which still remains. The outer one, with its associated detached forts, mounted up the inland slopes to an eleva- tion of some hundreds of feet above the sea, and within this is an inner line of much greater antiquity. As it was for those days a place of exceptional strength, its capture became of the first importance, in the great struggle between France and Austria, as a preliminary to driving the Republican troops out of Italy. The city was defended by the French under the command of MASSENA 165 Massena; it was attacked on the land side by the Im- periaHst force, while it was blockaded from the sea by the British fleet. After fifteen days of hard fighting among the neighboring Apennines, Massena was finally shut up in the city. No less desperate fighting followed around the walls, until at last the defending force was so weakened by its losses that further aggressive opera- tions became impossible on its part, and the siege was converted into a blockade. The results were famine and pestilence. A hundred thousand persons were cooped up within the walls. " From the commencement of the siege the price of provisions had been extravagantly high, and in its latter days grain of any sort could not be had at any cost. . . . The neighboring rocks within the walls were covered with a famished crowd, seeking, in the vilest animals and the smallest traces of vegetation, the means of assuaging their intolerable pangs. . . . In the general agony, not only leather and skins of every kind were consumed, but the horror at human flesh was so much abated that numbers were supported on the dead bodies of their fellow citizens. Pestilence, as usual, came in the rear of famine, and contagious fevers swept off multitudes, whom the strength of the survivors was unable to inter." Before the obstinate defense was ended, and Massena, at the end of all his resources, was com- pelled to capitulate on honorable terms, twenty thousand of the inhabitants had perished from hunger or disease. The end of this terrible struggle brought little profit to the conquerors, for before long the battle of Marengo, and the subsequent successes of Napoleon in Northern Italy, led to the city being again surrendered to the French. It had to endure another siege at the end of Napoleon's career, for in 18 14 it was attacked by Eng- i66 THE MEDITERRANEAN lish troops under Lord William Bentinck. Fortunately for the inhabitants, the French commander decided to surrender after a few days' severe struggle around the outer defenses. On the settlement of European affairs which succeeded the final fall of Napoleon, Genoa was annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia, and now forms part of united Italy; though, it is said, the old instincts of the people give them a theoretic preference for a re- publican form of government. Genoa, like so many of the chief Italian towns, has been greatly altered during the last twenty-five years. Its harbors have been much enlarged ; its defenses have been extended far beyond their ancient limits. Down by the water-side, among the narrow streets on the shelving ground that fringes the sea, we are still in old Genoa — the city of the merchant princes of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries ; but higher up the slopes a new town has sprung up, with broad streets and fine modern houses, and a " corso," bordered by trees and mansions, still re- tains in its zigzag outline the trace of the old fortifica- tions which enclosed the arm of Massena. More than one spot, on or near this elevated road, commands a splendid outlook over the city and neighborhood. From such a position the natural advantages of the site of Genoa, the geographical conditions which have almost inevitably determined its history, can be appre- hended at a glance. Behind us rise steeply, as has been already said, the hills forming the southernmost zone of the Apennines. This, no doubt, is a defect in a military point of view, because the city is commanded by so many positions of greater elevation ; but this defect was less serious in ancient days, when the range of ordnance was comparatively short; while the difficulty of access which MOLO VECCHIC 167 these positions presented, and the obvStacles which the mountain barrier of the Apennines offered to the advance of an enemy from the comparatively distant plains of Piedmont, rendered the city far more secure than it may at first sight have appeared. Beneath us lies a deeply recessed bay, in outline like the half of an egg-, guarded on the east by a projecting shoulder ; while on the western side hills descend, at first rapidly, then more gently, to a point which projects yet farther to the south. This eastern shoulder is converted into a kind of peninsula, rudely triangular in shape, by the valley of the Bisagno, a stream of considerable size which thus forms a natural moat for the fortifications on the eastern side of the town. In a bay thus sheltered on three sides by land, vessels were perfectly safe from most of the prevalent winds ; and it was only necessary to carry out moles from the western headland and from some point on the eastern shore, to protect them also from storms which might blow from the south. The first defense was run out from the latter side, and still bears the name of the Molo Vecchio ; then the port was enlarged, by carrying out another mole from the end of the western headland ; this has been greatly extended, so that the town may now be said to possess an inner and an outer harbor. From the parapet of the Corso these topographical facts are seen at a glance, as we look over the tall and densely-massed houses to the busy quays, and the ships which are moored alongside. Such a scene cannot fail to be attractive, and the lighthouse, rising high above the western headland, is less monotonous in outline than is usual with such buildings, and greatly enhances the effect of the picture. The city, however, when regarded from this elevated position is rather want- i68 THE MEDITERRANEAN ing in variety. We look down over a crowded mass of lofty houses, from which, indeed, two or three domes or towers rise up ; but there is not enough diversity in the design of the one, or a sufficiently marked pre-emi- nence in the others, to afford a prospect which is com- parable with that of many other ancient cities. Still some variety is given by the trees, which here and there, especially towards the eastern promontory, are inter- spersed among the houses ; while the Ligurian coast on the one hand, and the distant summits of the Maritime Alps on the other, add to the scene a never-failing charm. Of the newer part of the town little more need be said. It is like the most modern part of any Continental city, and only differs from the majority of these by the nat- ural steepness and irregularity of the site. In Genoa, except for a narrow space along the shore, one can hardly find a plot of level ground. Now that the old limits of the enceinte have been passed, it is still growing up- wards ; but beyond and above the farthest houses the hills are still crowned by fortresses, keeping watch and ward over the merchant city. These, of course, are of modern date; but some of them have been reconstructed on the ancient sites, and still encrust, as can be seen at a glance, towers and walls which did their duty in the olden times. For a season, indeed, there was more to be protected than merchandise, for, till lately, Genoa was the prin- cipal arsenal of the Italian kingdom ; but this has now been removed to Spezzia. Italy, however, does not seem to feel much confidence in that immunity from plunder which has been sometimes accorded to " open towns," or in the platitudes of peace-mongers ; and appears to take ample precautions that an enemy in command of the sea shall not thrust his hand into a full purse without a THE LOWER TOWN 169 good chance of getting nothing better than crushed fingers. But in the lower town we are still in the Genoa of the olden time. There is not, indeed, very much to recall the city of the more strictly mediaeval epoch ; though two churches date from days before the so-called " Re- naissance," and are good examples of its work. Most of what we now see belongs to the Genoa of the sixteenth century ; or, at any rate, is but little anterior in age to this. The lower town, however, even where its build- ings are comparatively modern, still retains in plan — in its narrow, sometimes irregular, streets ; in its yet nar- rower alleys, leading by flights of steps up the steep hill side ; in its crowded, lofty houses ; in its " huddled up " aspect, for perhaps no single term can better ex- press our meaning — the characteristics of an ancient Italian town. In its streets even the summer sun — let the proverb concerning the absence of the sun and the presence of the doctor say what it may — can seldom scorch, and the bitter north wind loses its force among the maze of buildings. Open spaces of any kind are rare ; the streets, in consequence of their narrowness, are unusually thronged, and thus produce the idea of a teem- ing population ; which, indeed, owing to the general lofti- ness of the houses, is large in proportion to the area. They are accordingly ill-adapted for the requirements of modern traffic. Genoa, like Venice, is noted for its pala.'yz} — for the sumptuous dwellings inhabited by the burgher aristo- cracy of earlier days, which are still, in not a few cases, in posession of their descendants. But in style and in position nothing can be more different. We do not refer to the obvious distinction that in the one city the highway I70 THE MEDITERRANEAN is water, in the other it is dry land; or to the fact that buildings in the so-called Gothic style are common in Venice, but are not to be found among the mansions of Genoa. It is rather to this, that the Via Nuova, which in this respect holds the same place in Genoa as the Grand Canal does in Venice, is such a complete contrast to it, that they must be compared by their opposites. The latter is a broad and magnificient highway, affording a full view and a comprehensive survey of the stately buildings which rise from its margin. The former is a narrow street, corresponding in dimensions with one of the less important among the side canals in the other city. It is thus almost impossible to obtain any good idea of the fagade of the Genoese palazzi. The passing traveller has about as much chance of doing this as he would have of studying the architecture of Mincing Lane; and even if he could discover a quiet time, like Sunday morning in the City, he would still have to strain his neck by staring upwards at the overhanging mass of masonry, and find a complete view of any one building almost impossible. But so far as these palazzi can be seen, how far do they repay examination? It is a common-place with travellers to expatiate on the mag- nificence of the Via Nuova, and one or two other streets in Genoa. There is an imposing magniloquence in the word palazzo, and a " street of palaces " is a formula which impels many minds to render instant homage. But, speaking for myself, I must own to being no great admirer of this part of Genoa; to me the design of these palazzi appears often heavy and oppressive. They are sumptuous rather than dignified, and impress one more with the length of the purse at the architect's command than with the quality of his genius or the ITS PALAZZI 171 fecundity of his conceptions. No doubt there are some fine buildings — the Palazzo Spinola, the Palazzo Doria Tursi, the Palazzo del' Universita, and the Pallazzo Balbi, are among those most generally praised. But if I must tell the plain, unvarnished truth, I never felt and never shall feel much enthusiasm for the " city of palaces." It has been some relief to me to find that I am not alone in this heresy, as it will appear to some. For on turning to the pages of Fergusson,* immediately after penning the above confession, I read for the first time the fol- lowing passage (and it must be admitted that, though not free from occasional " cranks " as to archaeological questions, he was a critic of extensive knowledge and no mean authority) : — " When Venice adopted the Renais- sance style, she used it with an aristocratic elegance that relieves even its most fantastic forms in the worst age. In Genoa there is a pretentious parvenu vulgarity, which offends in spite of considerable architectural merit. Their size, their grandeur, and their grouping may force us to admire the palaces of Genoa ; but for real beauty or architectural propriety of design they will not stand a moment's comparison with the contemporary or earlier palaces of Florence, Rome, or Venice." Farther on he adds very truly, after glancing at the rather illegitimate device by which the fagades have been rendered more effective by the use of paint, instead of natural color in the materials employed, as in the older buildings of Venice, he adds : — " By far the most beautiful feature of the greater palaces of Genoa is their courtyards " (a feature obviously which can only make its full appeal to a comparatively limited number of visitors), " though these, architecturally^ consist of nothing but ranges of arcades, resting on atten- * History of Modern Architecture. 172 THE MEDITERRANEAN uated Doric pillars. These are generally of marble, sometimes grouped in pairs, and too frequently with a block of an entablature over each, under the springing of the arch; but notwithstanding these defects, a clois- tered court is always and inevitably pleasing, and if com- bined with gardens and scenery beyond, which is gen- erally the case in this city, the effect, as seen from the streets, is so poetic as h^ disarm criticism. All that dare be said is that, beautiful as they are, with a little more taste and judgment they might have been ten times more so than they are now." Several of these palazzi contain pictures and art- collections of considerable value, and the interest of those has perhaps enhanced the admiration which they have excited in visitors. One of the most noteworthy is the Palazzo Brignole Sale, commonly called the Palazzo Rosso, because its exterior is painted red. This has now become a memorial of the munificence of its former owner, the Duchess of Galliera, a member of the Brig- nole Sale family, who, with the consent of her husband and relations, in the year 1874 presented this palace and its contents to the city of Genoa, with a revenue sufficient for its maintenance. The Palazzo Reale, in the Via Balbi, is one of those where the garden adds a charm to an otherwise not very striking, though large, edifice. This, formerly the propert}^ of the Durazzo family, was purchased by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, and has thus become a royal residence. The Palazzo Ducale, once inhabited by the Doges of Genoa, has now been converted into public offices, and the palazzo opposite to the Church of St. Matteo bears an inscription which of itself gives the building an exceptional interest : " Senat. Cons. Andrea; de Oria, patriae liberatori, munus ANDREA DORIA 173 publicum." It is this, the earUer home of the great citi- zen of Genoa, of which Rogers has written in the often- quoted lines : — " He left it for a better ; and 'tis now A house of trade, the meanest merchandise Cumbering its floors. Yet, fallen as it is, 'Tis still the noblest dwelling — even in Genoa ! And hadst thou, Andrea, lived there to the last, Thou hadst done well : for there is that without, That in the wall, which monarchs could not give Nor thou take with thee — that which says aloud, It was thy country's gift to her deliverer ! " The great statesman lies in the neighboring church, with other members of his family, and over the high altar hangs the sword which was given to him by the Pope. The church was greatly altered — embellished it was doubtless supposed — by Doria himself; but the old clois- ters, dating from the earliest part of the fourteenth cen- tury, still remain intact. The grander palazzo which he erected, as an inscription outside still informs us, was in a more open, and doubtless then more attractive, part of the city. In the days of Doria it stood in ample gardens, which extended on one side down to a terrace overlook- ing the harbor, on the other some distance up the hillside. From the back of the palace an elaborate structure of ascending flight of steps in stone led up to a white marble colossal statue of Hercules, which from this elevated po- sition seemed to keep watch over the home of the Dorias and the port of Genoa. All this is sadly changed; the admiral would now find little pleasure in his once stately home. It occupies a kind of peninsula between two streams of twentieth-century civilization. Between the terrace wall and the sea the railway connecting the harbor 174 THE MEDITERRANEAN with the main line has intervened, with its iron tracks, its sheds, and its shunting-places — a dreary unsightly outlook, for the adjuncts of a terminus are usually among the most ugly appendages of civilization. The terraced staircase on the opposite side of the palace has been swept away by the main line of the railway, which passes within a few yards of its fagade, thus severing the gar- dens and isolating the shrine of Hercules, who looks down forlornly' on the result of labors which even he might have deemed arduous, while snorting, squealing engines pass and repass — beasts which to him would have seemed more formidable than Lernsean hydra or Nemean lion. The palace follows the usual Genoese rule of turning the better side inwards, and offering the less attractive to the world at large. The landward side, which bor- ders a narrow street, and thus, one would conjecture, must from the first have been connected with the upper gardens by a bridge, or underground passage, is plain, almost heavy, in its design, but it does not rise to so great an elevation as is customary with the palazzi in the heart of the city. The side which is turned towards the sea is a much more attractive composition, for it is associated with the usual cloister or loggia which occu- pies three sides of an oblong. This, as the ground slopes seawards, though on the level of the street out- side, stands upon a basement story, and communicates by flights of steps with the lower gardens. The latter are comparatively small, and in no way remarkable ; but in the days — not so very distant — when their terraces looked down upon the Mediterranean, when the city and its trade were on a smaller scale, when the picture'^que side of labor had not yet been extruded by the dust and THE DORIA PALACE 175 grime of over-much toil, no place in Genoa could have been more pleasant for the evening stroll, or for dreamy repose in some shaded nook during the heat of the day. The palazzo itself shows signs of neglect — the family, I believe, have for some time past ceased to use it for a residence; two or three roomys are still retained in their original condition, but the greater part of the building is let ofif. In the corridor, near the entrance, members of the Doria family, dressed in classic garb, in conformity with the taste which prevailed in the sixteenth century, are depicted in fresco upon the walls. On the roof of the grand saloon Jupiter is engaged in overthrowing the Titans. These frescoes are the work of Perini del Vaga, a pupil of Raphael. The great admiral, the builder of the palace, is represented among the figures in the corridor, and by an oil painting in the saloon, which contains some remains of sumptuous furniture and a few ornaments of interest. He was a burly man, with a grave, square, powerful face, such a one as often looks out at us from the canvas of Titian or of Tintoret — a man of kindly nature, but masterful withal ; cautious and thoughtful, but a man of action more than of the the schools or of the library ; one little likely to be swayed by passing impulse or transient emotion, but clear and firm of purpose, who meant to attain his end were it in mortal to command success, and could watch and wait for the time. Such men, if one may trust portraits and trust history, were not uncommon in the great epoch when Europe was shaking itself free from the fetters of mediaeval influences, and wa^ enlarging its mental no less than its physical horizon. Such men are the makers of nations, and not only of their own fortunes ; they be- come rarer in the days of frothy stump oratory and 176 THE MEDITERRANEAN hysteric sentiment, when a people babbles as it sinks into senile decrepitude. Andrea Doria himself — " II principe " as he was styled — had a long and in some respects a checkered career. In his earlier life he obtained distinction as a successful naval commander, and in the curious complications which prevailed in those days among the Italian States and their neighbors ultimately became Admiral of the French fleet. But he found that Genoa would obtain little good from the French King, who was then practically its master; so he transferred his allegiance to the Emperor Charles, and by his aid expelled from his native city the troops with which he had formerly served. So great was his influence in Genoa that he might easily have obtained supreme power ; but at this, like a true patriot, he did not grasp, and the Constitution, which was adopted under his influence, gradually put an end to the bitter party strife which had for so long been the plague of Genoa, and it remained in force until the French Revolution. Still, notwithstanding the gratitude generally felt for his great services to the State, he experienced in his long life — for he died at the age of ninety-two — the change- fulness of human affairs. He had no son, and his heir and grand-nephew — a young man — was unpopular, and, as is often the case, the sapling was altogether inferior in character to the withering tree. The members of an- other great family — the Fieschi — entered into a con- spiracy, and collected a body of armed men on the pretext of an expedition against the corsairs who for so long were the pests of the Mediterranean. The out- break was well planned ; on New Year's night, in the year 1547, the chief posts in the city were seized. Doria him- self was just warned in time, and escaped capture; but CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 177 his heir was assassinated, and his enemies seemed to have triumphed. But their success was changed to failure by an accident. Count Fiescho in passing along a plank to a galley in the harbor made a false step, and fell into the sea. In those days the wearing of armor added to the perils of the deep ; the count sank like a stone, and so left the conspirators without a leader exactly at the most critical moment. They were thus before long defeated and dispersed, and had to experience the truth of the proverb, " Who breaks pays," for in those days men felt little sentimental tenderness for leaders of sedition and disturbers of the established order. The Fieschi were exiled, and their palace was razed to the ground. So the old admiral returned to his home and his terrace-walk overlooking the sea, until at last his long life ended, and they buried him with his fathers in the Church of S. Matteo. Not far from the Doria Palace is the memorial to an- other admiral, of fame more world-wide than that of Doria. In the open space before the railway station — a building, the fagade of which is not without architec- tural merit — rises a handsome monument in honor of Christopher Columbus. He was not strictly a native of the city, but he was certainly born on Genoese soil, and, as it seems to be now agreed, at Cogoleto, a small village a few miles west of the city. He was not, however, able to convince the leaders of his own State that there were wide parts of the world yet to be discovered ; and it is a well-known story how for a long time he preached to deaf ears, and found, like most heralds of startling physical facts, his most obstinate opponents among the ecclesiastics of his day. Spain at last, after Genoa and Portugal and England had all refused, placed Columbus 178 THE MEDITERRANEAN in command of a voyage of discovery ; and on Spanish ground also — in neglect and comparative poverty, worn out by toil and anxieties — the great explorer ended his checkered career. Genoa, however, though inattentive to the comparatively obscure enthusiast, has not failed to pay honor to the successful discoverer; and is glad to catch some reflected light from the splendor of successes to the aid of which she did not contribute. In this re- spect, however, the rest of the world cannot take up their parable at her ; men generally find that on the whole it is less expensive, and certainly less troublesome, to build the tombs of the prophets, instead of honoring them while alive ; then, indeed, whether bread be asked or no, a stone is often given. So now the effigy of Columbus stands on high among exotic plants, where all the world can see, for it is the first thing encountered by the traveller as he quits the railway station. One of the most characteristic — if not one of the sweetest — places in Genoa is the long street, which, under more than one name, intervenes between the last row of houses in the town and the harbor. From the latter it is, indeed, divided by a line of offices and arched halls ; these are covered by a terrace-roof and serve various purposes more or less directly connected with the ship- ping. The front walls of houses which rise high on the landward side are supported by rude arches. Thus, as is so common in Italian towns, there is a broad foot-walk, protected alike from sun and rain, replacing the " ground- floor front," with dark shops at the back, and stalls, for the sale of all sorts of odds and ends, pitched in the spaces between the arches. In many towns these arcades are often among the most ornamental features ; but in Genoa, though not without a certain quaintness, they are THE OLD DOGANA 179 so rude in design and construction that they hardly de- serve this title. The old Dogana, one of the buildings in the street, gives a good idea of the commercial part of Genoa before the days of steam, and has a considerable interest of its own. In the first place, it is a standing memorial of the bitter feud between Genoa and Venice, for it is built with the stones of a castle which, being cpptured by the one from the other, was pulled down and shipped to Genoa in the year 1262. Again, within its walis was the Banca di San Georgio, which had its origin in a municipal debt incurred in order to equip an ex- pedition to stop the forays of a family named Grimaldi, who had formed a sort of Cave of Adullam at Monaco. The institution afterwards prospered, and held in trust most of the funds for charitable purposes, till " the French passed their sponge over the accounts, and ruined all the individuals in the community." It has also an indirect connection with English history, for on the de- feat of the Grimaldi many of their retainers entered the service of France, and were the Genoese bowmen who fought at Cressy. Lastly, against its walls the captured chains of the harbor of Pisa were suspended for nearly six centuries, for they were only restored to their former owners a comparatively few years since. Turning up from this part of the city we thread nar- row streets, in which many of the principal shops are still located. We pass, in a busy piazza, the Loggia del Banchi Borsa — the old exchange — a quaint structure of the end of the sixteenth century, standing on a raised platform ; and proceed from it into the Via degli Oreiici — a street just like one of the lanes which lead from Cheap- side to Cannon Street, if, indeed, it be not still narrower, but full of tempting shops. Genoa is noted for its work i8o THE MEDITERRANEAN in coral and precious metals, but the most characteristic, as all visitors know, is a kind of filigree work in gold or silver, which is often of great delicacy and beauty, and is by no means so costly as might be anticipated from the elaborate workmanship. The most notable building in Genoa, anterior to the days when the architecture of the Renaissance was in favor, is the cathedral, which is dedicated to S. Lorenzo. The western fagade, which is approached by a broad flight of steps, is the best exposed to view, the rest of the building being shut in rather closely after the usual Genoese fashion. It is built of alternating courses of black and white marble, the only materials employed for mural decoration, so far as I remember, in the city. The western facade in its lower part is a fine example of " pointed " work, consisting of a triple portal which, for elegance of design and richness of ornamentation, could not readily be excelled. It dates from about the year 1307, when the cathedral was almost rebuilt. The latter, as a whole, is a very composite structure, for parts of an earlier Romanesque cathedral still remain, as in the fine " marble " columns of the nave ; and important al- terations were made at a much later date. These, to which belongs the mean clerestory, painted in stripes of black and white, to resemble the banded courses of stone below, are generally most unsatisfactory ; and here, as in so many other buildings, one is compelled, however re- luctantly, " to bless the old and ban the new." The most richly decorated portion of the interior is the side chapel, constructed at the end of the fifteenth century, and dedi- cated to St. John the Baptist; here his relics are en- shrined for the reverence of the faithful and, as the guide-books inform us, are placed in a magnificent silver- THE SACRO CATINO i8i gilt shrine, which is carried in solemn procession on the day of his nativity. We are also informed that women, as a stigma for the part which the sex played in the Baptist's murder, are only permitted to enter the chapel once in a year. This is not by any means the only case where the Church of Rome gives practical expression to its decided view as to which is the superior sex. The cathedral possesses another great, though now unhappily mutilated, treasure in the sacro catino. This, in the first place, was long supposed to have been carved from a single emerald; in the next, it was a relic of great an- tiquity and much sanctity ; though as to its precise claims to honor in this respect authorities differed. According to one, it had been a gift from the Queen of Sheba to Solomon; according to another, it had contained the paschal lamb at the Last Supper; while a third asserted that in this dish Joseph of Arimathea had caught the blood which flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Saviour. Of its great antiquity there can at least be no doubt, for it was taken by the Genoese when they plundered Csesarea so long since as the year iioi, and was then esteemed the most precious thing in the spoil. The material is a green glass — a conclusion once deemed so heretical that any experiment on the catino was for- bidden on pain of death. As regards its- former use, no more can be said than that it might possibly be as old as the Christian era. It is almost needless to say that Napoleon carried it away to Paris ; but the worst result of this robbery was that when restitution was made after the second occupation of that city, the catino, through some gross carelessness, was so badly packed that it was broken on the journey back, and has been pieced to- gether by a gold-setting of filigree, according to the i82 THE MEDITERRANEAN guide-books. An inscription in the nave supplies us with an interesting fact in the early history of Genoa which perhaps ought not to be omitted. It is that the city was founded by one Janus, a great grandson of Noah ; and that another Janus, after the fall of Troy, also settled in it. Colonists from that ill-fated town really seem to have distributed themselves pretty well over the known world. More than one of the smaller churches of Genoa is of archaeological interest, and the more modern fabric, called L'Annunziata, is extremely rich in its internal decorations, though these are more remarkable for their sumptuousness than for their good taste. But one struc- ture calls for some notice in any account of the city. This is the Campo Santo, or burial-place of Genoa, sit- uated at some distance without the walls in the Valley of tiie Bisagno. A large tract of land on the slope which forms the right bank of that stream has been converted into a cemetery, and was laid out on its present plan rather more than twenty-five years since. Extensive open spaces are enclosed within and divided by corridors with cloisters ; terraces also, connected by flights of steps, lead up to a long range of buildings situated some dis- tance above the river, in the center of which is a chapel crowned with a dome, supported internally by large columns of polished black Como marble. The bodies of the poorer people are buried in the usual way in the open ground of the cemetery, and the. floor of the corridors appears to cover a continuous series of vaults, closed, as formerly in our churches, with great slabs of stone; but a very large number of the dead rest above the ground in vaults constructed on a plan which has evidently been borrowed from catacombs like those of Rome. There is, THE CAMPO SANTO 183 however, this difference, that in the latter the " loctiH," or separate compartments to contain the corpses, were excavated in the rock, while here they are constructed entirely of masonry. In both cases the " loculus " is placed with its longer axis parallel to the outer side, as was occasionally the method in the rock-hewn tombs of Palestine, instead of having an opening at the narrower end, so that the corpse, whether coffined or not, lies in the position of a sleeper in the berth of a ship. After a burial, the loculus, as in the catacombs, is closed, and an inscription placed on a slab outside. Thus in the Campo Santo at Genoa we walk through a gallery of tombs. On either hand are ranges of low elongated niches, rising tier above tier, each bearing a long white marble tablet, surrounded by a broad border of dark ser- pentine breccia. The interior generally is faced with white marble, which is toned down by the interspaces of the darker material, and the effect produced by these simple monumental corridors, these silent records of those who have rested from their labors, is impressive, if somewhat melancholy. In the cloisters, as a rule, the more sumptuous memorials are to be found. Here com- monly sections of the wall are given up to the monuments of a family, the vaults, as I infer, being underneath the pavement. These memorials are often elaborate in de- sign, and costly in their materials. They will be, and are, greatly admired by those to whose minds sumptuous- ness is the chief element in beauty, and a rather second- rate execution of conceptions distinctly third-rate gives no offense. Others, however, will be chiefly impressed with the inferiority of modern statuary to the better work of classic ages, and will doubt whether the more ambitious compositions which met our eyes in these gal- i84 THE MEDITERRANEAN leries are preferable to the simple dignity of the mediseval altar tomb, and the calm repose of its recumbent figure. The drive to the Campo Santo, in addition to afford- ing a view of one of the more perfect parts of the old de- fensive enclosure of Genoa, of which the Porta Chiappia, one of the smaller gates, may serve as an example, passes within sight, though at some distance below, one of the few relics of classic time which the city has retained. This is the aqueduct which was constructed by the Romans. Some portions of it, so far as can be seen from below, appear to belong to the original structure; but, as it is still in use, it has been in many parts more or less reconstructed and modernized. The environs of Genoa are pleasant. On both sides, particularly on the eastern, are country houses with gardens. The western for a time is less attractive. The suburb of Sanpierdarena is neither pretty nor interesting ; but at Conigliano, and still more at Sestre Ponente, the grimy finger-marks of commerce become less conspic- uous, and Nature is not wholly expelled by the two- pronged fork of mechanicism. Pegli, still farther west, is a very attractive spot, much frequented in summer time for sea-bathing. On this part of the coast the hills in places draw near to the sea, and crags rise from the water; the rocks are of interest in more than one respect to the geologist. One knoll of rock rising from the sand in the Bay of Pra is crowned by an old fortress, and at Pegli itself are one or two villas of note. Of these the gardens of the Villa Pallavicini commonly attract vis- itors. They reward some by stalactite grottoes and " sheets of water with boats, under artificial caverns, a Chinese pagoda, and an Egyptian obelisk ; " others will be more attracted by the beauty of the vegetation, for palms THE TWO RIVIERAS 185 and oleanders, myrtles, and camellias, with many semi- tropical plants, flourish in the open air. We may regard Genoa as the meeting-place of the two Rivieras. The coast to the west — the Riviera di Ponente — what has now, by the cession of Nice, become in part French soil, is the better known; but that to the east, the Riviera di Levante, though less accessible on the whole, and without such an attractive feature as the Corniche road, in the judgment of some is distinctly the more beautiful. There is indeed a road which, for a part of the way, runs near the sea; but the much more indented character of the coast frequently forces it some distance inland, and ultimately it has to cross a rather considerable line of hills in order to reach Spezzia. The outline of the coast, indeed, is perhaps the most marked feature of difference between the two Rivieras. The hills on the eastern side descend far more steeply to the water than they do upon the western. They are much more sharply furrowed with gullies and more deeply indented by inlets of the sea ; thus the construction of a railway from Genoa to Spezzia has been a work involving no slight labor. There are, it is stated, nearly fifty tunnels between the two towns, and it is strictly true that for a large part of the distance north of the latter place the train is more frequently under than above ground. Here it is actually an advantage to travel by the slowest train that can be found, for this may serve as an epitome of the journey by an express : " Out of a tunnel; one glance, between rocks and olive-groves, up a ravine, into which a picturesque old village is wedged ; another glance down the same to the sea, sparkling in the sunlight below ; a shriek from the engine, and another plunge into dark- ness." So narrow are some of these gullies, up which. i86 THE MEDITERRANEAN however, a village climbs, that, if I may trust my mem- ory, I have seen a train halted at a station with the engine in the opening of one tunnel and the last car not yet clear of another. But the coast, when explored, is full of exquisite nooks, and here and there, where by chance the hills slightly recede, or a larger valley than usual comes down to the sea, towns of some size are situated, from which, as halting-places, the district might be easily explored, for trains are fairly frequent, and the distances are not great. For a few miles from Genoa the coast is less hilly than it afterwards becomes ; nevertheless, the traveller is pre- pared for what lies before him by being conducted from the main station, on the west side of Genoa, completely beneath the city to near its eastern wall. Then Nervi is passed, which, like Pegli, attracts not a few summer visitors, and is a bright and sunny town, with pleasant gardens and villas. Recco follows, also bright and cheer- ful, backed by the finely-outlined hills, which form the long promontory enclosing the western side of the Bay of Rapallo. Tunnels and villages, as the railway now plunges into the rock, now skirts the margin of some little bay, lead first to Rapallo and then to Chiavari, one with its slender campanile, the other with its old castle. The luxuriance of the vegetation in all this district cannot fail to attract notice. The slopes of the hills are grey with olives ; oranges replace apples in the orchards, and in the more sheltered nooks we espy the paler gold of the lemon. Here are great spiky aloes, there graceful feather- ing palms ; here pines of southern type, with spreading holm-oaks, and a dozen other evergreen shrubs. Glimpse after glimpse of exquisite scenery flashes upon us as we proceed to Spezzia, but, as already said, its full SPEZZIA 187 beauty can only be appreciated by rambling among the hills or boating along the coast. There is endless variety, but the leading features are similar: steep hills furrowed by ravines, craggy headlands and sheltered coves ; vil- lages sometimes perched high on a shoulder, sometimes nestling in a gully; sometimes a campanile, sometimes a watch-tower; slopes, here clothed with olive groves, here with their natural covering of pine and oak scrub, of heath, myrtle, and strawberry-trees. A change also in the nature of the rock diversifies the scenery, for between Framura and Bonasola occurs a huge mass of serpentine, which recalls, in its peculiar structure and tints, the crags near the Lizard in England. This rock is extensively quarried in the neighborhood of Levanto, and from that little port many blocks are shipped. Spezzia itself has a remarkable situation. A large in- let of the sea runs deep into the land, parallel with the general trend of the hills, and almost with that of the coast-line. The range which shelters it on the west nar- rows as it falls to the headland of Porto Venere, and is extended yet farther by rocky islands ; while on the op- posite coast, hills no less, perhaps yet more, lofty, pro- tect the harbor from the eastern blasts. In one direction only is it open to the wind, and against this the com- parative narrowness of the inlet renders the construction of artificial defenses possible. At the very head of this deeply embayed sheet of water is a small tract of level ground — the head, as it were, of a valley — encircled by steep hills. On this little plain, and by the waterside, stands Spezzia. Eormerly it was a quiet country town, a small seaport with some little commerce ; but when Italy ceased to be a geographical expression, and became prac- tically one nation, Spezzia was chosen, wisely it must be i88 THE MEDITERRANEAN admitted, as the site of the chief naval arsenal. A single glance shows its natural advantages for such a purpose. Access from the land must always present difficulties, and every road can be commanded by forts, perched on yet more elevated positions ; while a hostile fleet, as it advances up the inlet, must run the gauntlet of as many batteries as the defenders can build. Further, the con- struction of a breakwater across the middle of the chan- nel at once has been a protection from the storms, and has compelled all who approach to pass through straits commanded by cannon. The distance of the town from its outer defenses and from the open sea seems enough to secure it even from modern ordnance; so that, until the former are crushed, it cannot be reached by pro- jectiles. But it must be confessed that the change has not been without its drawbacks. The Spezzia of to-day may be a more prosperous town than the Spezzia of a quarter of a century since, but it has lost some of its beauty. A twentieth-century fortress adds no charm to the scenery, and does not crown a hill so picturesquely as did a mediaeval castle. Houses are being built, roads are being made, land is being reclaimed from the sea for the construction of quays. Thus the place has a generally untidy aspect ; there is a kind of ragged selvage to town and sea, which, at present, on a near view, is very un- sightly. Moreover, the buildings of an arsenal can hardly be picturesque or magnificent ; and great factories, more or less connected with them, have sprung up in the neigh- borhood, from which rise tall red brick chimneys, the campaniles of the twentieth century. The town itself was never a place of any particular interest ; it has neither fine churches nor old gateways nor picturesque streets — a ruinous fort among the olive groves overlooking the ORANGES 189 streets is all that can claim to be ancient — so that its growth has not caused the loss of any distinctive feature — unless it be a grove of old oleanders, which were once a sight to see in summer time. Many of these have now disappeared, perhaps from natural decay; and the sur- vivors are mixed with orange trees. These, during late years, have been largely planted about the town. In one of the chief streets they are growing by the side of the road, like planes or chestnuts in other towns. The golden fruit and the glossy leaves, always a delight to see, ap- pear to possess a double charm by contrast with the arid flags and dusty streets. Ripe oranges in dozens, in hun- dreds, all along by the pathway, and within two or three yards of the pavement ! Are the boys of Spezzia ex- ceptionally virtuous ? or are these golden apples of the Hesperides a special pride of the populace, and does " Father stick " still rule in home and school, and is this immunity the result of physical coercion rather than of moral suasion ? Be this as it may, I have with mine own eyes seen golden oranges by hundreds hanging on the trees in the streets of Spezzia, and would be glad to know how long they would remain in a like position in those of an English town, among " the most law-abiding people in the universe ! " But if the vicinity of the town has lost some of its ancient charm, if modern Spezzia reminds us too much, now of Woolwich, now of a " new neighborhood " on the outskirts of London, we have but to pass into the uplands, escaping from the neighborhood of forts, to find the same beauties as the mountains of this coast ever afford. There the sugar-cane and the vine, the fig and the olive cease, though the last so abounds that one might suppose it an indigenous growth ; there the broken slopes I90 THE MEDITERRANEAN are covered with scrub oak and dwarf pine ; there the myrtle blossoms, hardly ceasing in the winter months ; there the strawberry-tree shows its waxen flowers, and is bright in season with its rich crimson berries. Even the villages add a beauty to the landscape — at any rate, when regarded from a distance ; some are perched high up on the shoulders of hills, with distant outlooks over land and sea; others lie down by the water's edge in sheltered coves, beneath some ruined fort, which in olden time protected the fisher-folk from the raids of corsairs. Such are Terenza and Lerici, looking at each other across the waters of the little " Porto ; " and many another vil- lage, in which grey and white and pink tinted houses blend into one pleasant harmony of color. For all this part of the coast is a series of rocky headlands and tiny bays, one succession of quiet nooks, to which the sea alone forms a natural highway. Not less irregular, not less sequestered, is the western coast of the bay of Spez- zia, which has been already mentioned. Here, at Porto Venere, a little village still carries us back in its name to classic times ; and the old church on the rugged head- land stands upon a site which was once not unfitly oc- cupied by a temple of the seaborn goddess. The beauty of the scene is enhanced by a rocky wooded island, the Isola Palmeria, which rises steeply across a narrow strait ; though the purpose to which it has been devoted — a prison for convicts — neither adds to its charm nor awak- ens pleasant reflections. To some minds also the harbor itself, busy and bright as the scene often is, will suggest more painful thoughts than it did in olden days. For it is no preacher of " peace at any price," and is a daily witness that millen- nial days are still far away from the present epoch. THE HARBOR 191 Here may be seen at anchor the modern devices for naval war : great turret-ships and ironclads, gunboats and tor- pedo launches — evils, necessary undoubtedly, but evils still ; outward and visible signs of the burden of taxation, which is cramping the development of Italy, and is in- directly the heavy price which it has to pay for entering the ranks of the great Powers of Europe. These are less picturesque than the old line-of-battle ships, with their high decks, their tall masts, and their clouds of canvas ; still, nothing can entirely spoil the harbor of Spezzia. and even these floating castles group pleasantly in the distance with the varied outline of hills and headlands, which is backed at last, if we look southward, by the grand outline of a group of veritable mountains — the Apuan Alps. IX THE TUSCAN COAST Shelley's last months at Lerici — Story of his death — Carrara and its marble quarries — Pisa — Its grand group of ecclesiastical buildings — The cloisters of the Campo Santo — Napoleon's life on Elba — Origin of the Etruscans — The ruins of Tar- quinii — Civita Vecchia, the old port of Rome — Ostia. THE Bay of Spezzia is defined sharply enough on its western side by the long, hilly peninsula which parts it from the Mediterranean, but as this makes only a small angle with the general trend of the coast-line, its termination is less strongly marked on the opposite side. Of its beauties we have spoken in an earlier article, but there is a little town at the southern extremity which, in connection with the coast below, has a melancholy interest to every lover of English literature. Here, at Lerici, Shelley spent what proved to be the last months of his life. The town itself, once strongly forti- fied by its Pisan owners against their foes of Genoa on the one side and Lucca on the other, is a picturesque spot. The old castle crowns a headland, guarding the little harbor and overlooking the small but busy town. At a short distance to the southeast is the Casa Magni, once a Jesuit seminary, which was occupied by Shelley. Looking across the beautiful gulf to the hills on its oppo- site shore and the island of Porto Venere, but a few miles 192 SHELLEY 193 from the grand group of the Carrara mountains, in the middle of the Kixuriant scenery of the Eastern Riviera, the house, though in itself not very attractive, was a fit home for a lover of nature. But Shelley's residence within its walls was too soon cut short. There are strange tales (like those told with bated breath by old nurses by the fireside) that as the closing hour ap- proached the spirits of the unseen world took bodily form and became visible to the poet's eye ; tales of a dark- robed figure standing by his bedside beckoning him to follow ; of a laughing child rising from the sea as he walked by moonlight on the terrace, clapping its hands in glee ; and of other warnings that the veil which parted him from the spirit world was vanishing away. Shelley delighted in the sea. On the ist of July he left Lerici for Leghorn in a small sailing vessel. On the 8th he set out to return, accompanied only by his friend, Mr. Wil- liams, and an English lad. The afternoon was hot and sultry, and as the sun became low a fearful squall burst upon the neighboring sea. What happened no one ex- actly knows, but they never came back to the shore. Day followed day, and the great sea kept its secret ; but at last, on the 22d, the corpse of Shelley was washed up near Viareggio and that of Williams near Bocca Lerici, three miles away. It was not till three weeks afterwards that the body of the sailor lad came ashore. Probably the felucca had either capsized or had been swamped at the first break of the storm ; but when it was found, some three months afterwards, men said that it looked as if it had been run down, and even more ugly rumors got abroad that this was no accident, but the work of some Italians, done in the hope of plunder, as it was expected that the party had in charge a considerable sum of money. 194 THE MEDITERRANEAN The bodies were at first buried in the sand with quick- lime; but at that time the Tuscan law required "any object then cast ashore to be burned, as a precaution against plague," so, by the help of friends, the body of Shelley was committed to the flames " with fuel and frankincense, wine, salt, and oil, the accompaniments of a Greek cremation," in the presence of Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Trelawny. The corpse of Williams had been consumed in like fashion on the previous day. " It was a glorious day and a splendid prospect ; the cruel and calm sea before, the Apennines behind. A curlew wheeled close to the pyre, screaming, and would not be driven away ; the flames arose golden and towering." The inurned ashes were entombed, as everyone knows, in the Protestant burial ground at Rome by the side of Keats' grave, near the pyramid of Cestius. Much as there was to regret in Shelley's life, there was more in his death, for such genius as his is rare, and if the work of springtide was so glorious, what might have been the summer fruitage? As the Gulf of Spezzia is left behind, the Magra broadens out into an estuary as it enters the sea, the river which formed in olden days the boundary between Liguria and Etruria. Five miles from the coast, and less than half the distance from the river, is Sarzana, the chief city of the province, once fortified, and still con- taining a cathedral of some interest. It once gave birth to :a Pope, Nicholas V., the founder of the Vatican Library, and in the neighborhood the family of the Buonapartes had their origin, a branch of it having emigrated to Corsica. Sarzana bore formerly the name of Luna Nova, as it had replaced another Luna which stood nearer to the mouth of the river. This was in ruins CARRARA 195 even in the days of Lucan, and now the traveller from Saranza to Pisa sees only " a strip of low, grassy land intervening between him and the sea. Here stood the ancient city. There is little enough to see. Beyond a few crumbling tombs and a fragment or two of Roman ruins, nothing remains of Luna. The fairy scene de- scribed by Rutilius, so appropriate to the spot which bore the name of the virgin-queen of heaven, the ' fair white walls ' shaming with their brightness the untrodden snow, the smooth, many-tinted rocks overrun with laughing lilies, if not the pure creation of the poet, have now van- ished from the sight. Vestiges of an amphitheater, of a semicircular building which may be a theater, of a circus, a piscina, and fragments of columns, pedestals for statues, blocks of pavement and inscriptions, are all that Luna has now to show." But all the while the grand group of the Carrara hills is in view, towering above a lowland region which rolls down towards the coast. A branch line now leads from Avenza, a small seaport town from which the marble is shipped, to the town of Carrara, through scenery of sin- gular beauty. The shelving banks and winding slopes of the foreground hills are clothed with olives and oaks and other trees; here and there groups of houses, white and grey and pink, cluster around a campanile tower on some coign of vantage, while at the back rises the great mountain wall of the Apuan Alps, with its gleaming- crags, scarred, it must be admitted, rather rudely and crudely by its marble quarries, though the long slopes of screes beneath these gashes in the more distant views al- most resemble the Alpine snows. The situation of the town is delightful, for it stands at the entrance of a rapidly narrowing valley, in a sufficiently elevated posi- 196 THE MEDITERRANEAN tion to command a view of this exquisitely rich lowland as it shelves and rolls down to the gleaming sea. Nor is the place itself devoid of interest. One of its churches at least, S. Andrea, is a reall}^ handsome specimen of the architecture of this part of Italy in the thirteenth cen- tury, but the quarries dominate, and their products are everywhere. Here are the studios of sculptors and the ateliers of workmen. The fair white marble here, like silver in the days of Solomon, is of little account ; it paves the streets, builds the houses, serves even for the basest uses, and is to be seen strewn or piled up every- where to await dispersal by the trains to more distant regions. Beyond the streets of Carrara, in the direction of the mountains, carriage roads no longer exist. Lanes wind up the hills here and there in rather bewildering intricacy, among vines and olive groves, to hamlets and quarries ; one, indeed, of rather larger size and more fixity of direction, keeps for a time near the river, if indeed the stream which flows by Carrara be worthy of that name, except when the storms are breaking or the snows are melting upon the mountains. But all these lanes alike terminate in a quarry, are riven with deep ruts, ploughed up like a field by the wheels of the heavy wagons that bring down the great blocks of marble. One meets these grinding and groaning on their way, drawn by yokes of dove-colored oxen (longer than that with which Elisha was ploughing when the older prophet cast his mantle upon his shoulders), big. meek-looking beasts, mild-eyed and melancholy as the lotus-eaters. To meet them is not always an unmixed pleasure, for the lanes are narrow, and there is often no room to spare ; how the traffic is regulated in some parts is a problem which I have not yet solved. PIETRA SANTA 197 Carrara would come near to being an earthly paradise ■ were it not for the mosquitos, which are said to be such that they would have made even the Garden of Eden untenable, especially to its first inhabitants. Of them, however, I cannot speak, for I have never slept in the town, or even visited it at the season when this curse of the earth is at its worst; but I have no hesitation in asserting that the mountains of Carrara are not less beau- tiful in outline than those of any part of the main chain of the Alps of like elevation, while they are unequalled in color and variety of verdure. To Avenza succeeds Massa, a considerable town, beau- tifully situated among olive-clad heights, which are spotted with villas and densely covered with foliage. Like Carrara, it is close to the mountains, and disputes with Carrara for the reputation of its quarries. This town was once the capital of a duchy, Massa-Carrara, and the title was borne by a sister of Napoleon I. Her large palace still remains ; her memory should endure, though not precisely in honor, for, according to Mr. Hare, she pulled down the old cathedral to improve the view from her windows. But if Massa is beautiful, so is Pietra Santa, a much smaller town enclosed by old walls and singularly picturesque in outline. It has a fine old church, with a picturesque campanile, which, though slightly more modern than the church itself, has seen more than four c£nturies. The piazza, with the Town Hall, this church and another one, is a very characteristic feature. In the baptistry of one of the churches are some bronzes by Donatello. About half-a-dozen miles away, reached by a road which passes through beautiful scenery, are the marble quarries of Seravezza, which were first opened by Michael Angelo, and are still in full work. 198 THE MEDITERRANEAN There is only one drawback to travelling by railway in this region; the train goes too fast. Let it be as slow as It will, and it can be very slow, we can never succeed in coming to a decision as to which is the most pictur- esquely situated place or the most lovely view. Compari- sons notoriously are odious, but delightful, as undoubt- edly is the Riviera di Ponenta to me, the Riviera di Levante seems even more lovely. After Pietra Santa, however, the scenery becomes less attractive, the Apuan Alps begin to be left behind, and a wider strip of plain parts the Apennines from the sea. This, which is traversed by the railway, is in itself flat, stale, though perhaps not unprofitable to the husband- man. Viareggio, mentioned on a previous page, nestles among its woods of oaks and pines, a place of some little note as a health resort ; and then the railway after emerg- ing from the forest strikes away from the sea, and crosses the marshy plains of the Serchio, towards the banks of the Arno. It now approaches the grand group of ecclesiastical buildings which rise above the walls of Pisa. As this town lies well inland, being six miles from the sea, we must content ourselves with a brief mention. But a long description is needless, for who does not know of its cathedral and its Campo Santo, of its baptistry and its leaning tower? There is no more marvelous or complete group of ecclesiastical buildings in Europe, all built of the white marble of Carrara, now changed by age into a delicate cream color, but still almost dazzling in the glory of the midday sun, yet never so beautiful as when walls, arches, and pinnacles are aglow at its rising, or flushed at its setting. In the cloisters of the Campo Santo you may see monuments which range over nearly PISA 199 five centuries, and contrast ancient and modern art; the frescoes on their walls, though often ill preserved, and not seldom of little merit, possess no small interest as illustrating mediaeval notions of a gospel of love and peace. Beneath their roof 'at the present time are shel- tered a few relics of Roman and Etruscan days which will repay examination. The very soil also of this God's acre is not without an interest, for when the Holy Land was lost to the Christians, fifty-and-three shiploads of earth were brought hither from Jerusalem that the dead of Pisa might rest in ground which had been sanctified by the visible presence of their Redeemer. The cathe- dral is a grand example of the severe but stately style which was in favor about the end of the eleventh cen- tury, for it was consecrated in the year 11 18. It com- memorates a great naval victory won by the Pisans three years before the battle of Hastings, and the columns which support the arches of the interior were at once the spoils of classic buildings and the memorials of Pisan victories. The famous leaning tower, though later in date, harmonizes well in general style with the catliedral. Its position, no doubt, attracts most attention, for to the eye it seems remarkably insecure, but one cannot help wishing that the settlement had never occurred, for the slope is sufficient to interfere seriously with the har- mony of the group. The baptistry also harmonizes with the cathedral, though it was not begun till some forty years after the latter was completed, and not only was more than a century in building, but also received some ornamental additions in the fourteenth century. But though this cathedral group is the glory and the crown of Pisa, the best monument of its proudest days, there are other buildings of interest in the town itself ; and the 200 THE MEDITERRANEAN broad quays which fl'ank the Arno on each side, the Lun- garno by name, which form a continuous passage from one end of the town to the other, together with the four bridges which hnk its older and newer part, are well worthy of more than a passing notice. The land bordering the Arno between Pisa and its junction with the Mediterranean has no charm for the traveller, however it may commend itself to the farmer. A few miles south of the river's mouth is Leghorn, and on the eleven miles' journey by rail from it to Pisa the traveller sees as much, and perhaps more, than he could wish of the delta of the Arno. It is a vast alluvial plain, always low-lying, in places marshy ; sometimes meadow land, sometimes arable. Here and there are slight and inconspicuous lines of dunes, very probably the records of old sea margins as the river slowly encroached upon the Mediterranean, which are covered sometimes with a grove of pines. Leghorn is not an old town, and has little attraction for the antiquarian or the artist. In fact, I think it, for its size, the most uninteresting town, whether on the sea or inland, that I have entered in Italy. Brindisi is a dreary hole, but it has one or two objects of interest. Bari is not very attractive, but it has two churches, the architecture of which will repay long study ; but Leg- horn is almost a miracle of commonplace architecture and of dullness. Of course there is a harbor of course there are ships, of course there is the sea, and all these possess a certain charm ; but really this is about as small as it can be under the circumstances. The town was a creation of the Medici, " the masterpiece of that dynasty." In the middle of the sixteenth century it was an insignifi- cant place, with between seven and eight hundred in- LEGHORN 201 habitants. But it increased rapidly when the princes of that family took the town in hand and made it a cave of Adullam, whither the discontented or oppressed from other lands might resort : Jews and Moors from Spain and Portugal, escaping from persecution ; Roman Catholics from England, oppressed by the retaliatory laws of Elizabeth ; merchants from Marseilles, seeking refuge from civil war. Thus fostered, it was soon thronged by men of talent and energy; it rapidly grew into an important center of commerce, and now the town with its suburbs contains nearly a hundred thousand souls. Leghorn is intersected by canals, sufficiently so to have been sometimes called a " Little Venice," and has been fortified, but as the defences belong to the system of Vauban, they add little to either the interest or the picturesqueness of the place. Parts of the walls and the citadel remain, the latter being enclosed by a broad water-ditch. The principal street has some good shops, and there are two fairly large piazzas ; in one, bearing the name of Carlo Alberto, are statues of heroic size to the last Grand Duke and to his predecessor. The in- scription on the latter is highly flattering ; but that on the former states that the citizens had come to the conclu- sion that the continuance of the Austro-Lorenese dy- nasty was incompatible with the good order and happi- ness of Tuscany, and had accordingly voted union with Italy. The other piazza now bears Victor Emmanuel's name; in it are a building which formerly was a royal palace, the town hall, and the cathedral; the last a fair- sized church, but a rather plain specimen of the Renais- sance style, with some handsome columns of real marble and a large amount of imitation, painted to match. There 202 THE MEDITERRANEAN are also some remains of the old fortifications though they are not so very old, by the side of the inner or orig- inal harbor. As this in course of time proved too shal- low for vessels of modern bulk, the Porto Nuovo, or outer harbor, was begun nearly fifty years since, and is protected from the waves by a semicircular mole. Among the other lions of the place, and they are all very small, is a statue of Duke Ferdinand I., one of the founders of Leghorn, with four Turkish slaves about the pedestal. The commerce of Leghorn chiefly consists of grain, cot- ton, wool, and silk, and is carried on mainly with the eastern ports of the Mediterranean. There is also an important shipbuilding establishment. It has, however, one link of interest with English literature, for in the Protestant cemetery was buried Tobias Smollett. There is a pleasant public walk by the sea margin outside the town, from where distant views of Elba and other islands are obtained. The hilly ground south of the broad valley of the Arno is of little interest, and for a considerable distance a broad strip of land, a level plain of cornfields and meadow, intervenes between the sea and the foot of the hills. Here and there long lines of pine woods seem almost to border the former; the rounded spurs of the latter are thickly wooded, but are capped here and there by grey villages, seemingly surrounded by old walls, and are backed by the bolder outlines of the more distant Apennines. For many a long mile this kind of scenery will continue, this flat, marshy, dyke-intersected plain, almost without a dwelling upon it, though village after village is seen perched like epaulettes on the low should- ers of the hills. It is easy to understand why they are ELBA 203 placed in this apparently inconvenient position, for we are at the beginning of the Tuscan Maremma, a district scourged by malaria during the summer months, and none too healthy, if one may judge by the looks of the peasants, during any time of the year. But one cannot fail to observe that towards the northern extremity houses have become fairly common on this plain, and many of them are new, so that the efforts which have been made to improve the district by draining seem to have met with success. For some time the seaward views are very fine; comparatively near to the coast a hilly island rises steeply from the water and is crowned with a low round tower. Behind this lies Elba, a long, bold, hilly ridge, and far away, on a clear day, the great mountain mass of Corsica looms blue in the distance. Elba has its interests for the geologist, its beauties for the lover of scenery. It has quarries of granite and ser- pentine, but its fame rests on its iron mines, which have been noted from very early times and from which fine groups of crystals of hematite are still obtained. So famed was it in the days of the Roman Empire as to call forth from Virgil the well-known line, " Insula inex- haustis chalybum generosa metallis." When these, its masters, had long passed away, it belonged in turn to Pisa, to Genoa, to Lucca and, after others, to the Grand Duke Cosimo of Florence. Then it became Neapolitan, and at last French. As everyone knows, it was assigned to Napoleon after his abdication, and from May, 1814, to February, 181 5, he enjoyed the title of King of Elba. Then, while discontent was deepening in France, and ambassadors were disputing round the Congress-table at Vienna, he suddenly gave the slip to' the vessels which 204 THE MEDITERRANEAN were watching the coast and landed in France to march in triumph to Paris, to be defeated at Waterloo, and to die at St. Helena. The island is for the most part hilly, indeed almost mountainous, for it rises at one place nearly three thou- sand feet above the sea. The valleys and lower slopes are rich and fertile, producing good fruit and fair wine, and the views are often of great beauty. The fisheries are of some importance, especially that of the tunny. Porto Ferrajo, the chief town, is a picturesquely situated place, on the northern side, which still retains the forts built by Cosimo I. to defend his newly obtained territory, and the mansion, a very modest palace, inhabited by Napoleon. " It must be confessed my isle is very little " was Napoleon's remark when for the first time he looked around over his kingdom from a mountain summit above Porto Ferrajo. Little it is in reality, for the island is not much more than fifteen miles long, and at the widest part ten miles across ; and truly little it must have seemed to the man who had dreamed of Europe for his empire, and had half realized his vision. Nevertheless, as one of his historians remarks, " if an empire could be supposed to exist within such a brief space, Elba possesses so much both of beauty and variety as might constitute the scene of a summer night's dream of sovereignty." At first he professed to be " perfectly resigned to his fate, often spoke of himself as a man politically dead, and claimed credit for what he said on public affairs, as having no remaining interest in them." A comment on himself in connection with Elba is amusing. He had been exploring his new domain in the company of Sir NAPOLEON 205 Niel Campbell, and had visited, as a matter of course, the iron mines. On being informed that they were valu- able, and brought in a revenue of about twenty thou- sand pounds per annum, " These then," he said, " are mine." But being reminded that he had conferred that revenue on the Legion of Honor, he exclaimed, " Where was my head when I made such a grant? But I have made many foolish decrees of that sort ! " He set to work at once to explore every corner of the island, and then to design a number of improvements and alterations on a scale which, had they been carried into execution with the means which he possessed, would have perhaps taken his lifetime to execute. The in- stinct of the conqueror was by no means dead within him ; for " one of his first, and perhaps most characteris- tic, proposals was to aggrandize and extend his Lillipu- tian dominions by the occupation of an uninhabited is- land called Pianosa, which had been left desolate on account of the frequent descents of the corsairs. He sent thirty of his guards, with ten of the independent company belonging to the island, upon this expedition (what a contrast to those which he had formerly directed!), sketched out a plan of fortification, and re- marked with complacency, ' Europe will say that I have already made a conquest.' " He was after a short time joined on the island by his mother and his sister Pauline, and not a few of those who had once fought under his flag drifted gradually to Elba and took service in his guards. A plot was organized in France, and when all was ready Napoleon availed himself of the temporary absence of Sir Niel Campbell and of an English cruiser and set sail from Elba. 2o6 THE MEDITERRANEAN At four in the afternoon of Sunday, the 26th of Febru- ary, " a signal gun was fired, the drums beat to arms, the officers tumbled what they could of their effects into flour-sacks, the men arranged their knapsacks, the em- barkation began, and at eight in the evening they were under weigh." He had more than one narrow escape on his voyage ; for he was hailed by a French frigate. His soldiers, however, had concealed themselves, and his captain was acquainted with the commander of the frigate, so no suspicions were excited. Sir Niel Camp- bell also, as soon as he found out what had happened, gave chase in a sloop of war, but only arrived in time to obtain a distant view of Napoleon's flotilla as its passengers landed. Pianosa, the island mentioned above, lies to the north of Elba and gets its name from its almost level surface ; for the highest point is said to be only eighty feet above the sea. Considering its apparent insignificance, it figures more than could be expected in history. The ill- fated son of Marcus Agrippa was banished here by Au- gustus, at the instigation of Livia, and after a time was more effectually put out of the way, in order to secure the succession of her son Tiberius. We read also that it was afterwards the property of Marcus Piso, who used it as a preserve for peacocks, which were here as wild as pheasants with us. Some remnants of Roman baths still keep up the memory of its former masters. Long afterwards it became a bone of contention between Pisa and Genoa, and the latter State, on permitting the former to resume possession of these islands of the Tus- can Archipelago stipulated that Pianosa should be left forever uncultivated and deserted. To secure the execu- CAPRAJA 207 tion of this engagement the Genoese stopped up all the wells with huge blocks of rock. Capraja, a lovely island to the northwest of Elba, is rather nearer to Corsica than to Italy. Though less than four miles long, and not half this breadth, it rivals either in hilliness, for its ridges rise in two places more than fourteen hundred feet above the sea. Saracen, Genoese, Pisan, and Corsican have caused it in bygone times to lead a rather troubled existence, and even so late as 1796 Nelson knocked to pieces the fort which defended its harbor, and occupied the island. " The ' stagno,' or lagoon, the sea-marsh of Strabo, is a vast expanse of stagnant salt water, so shallow that it may be forded in parts, yet never dried up by the hottest summer ; the curse of the country around for the foul and pestilent vapour and the swarms of mosquitoes and other insects it generates at that season, yet compensat- ing the inhabitants with an abundance of fish. The fishery is generally carried on at night, and in the way often practiced in Italy and Sicily, by harpooning the fish, which are attracted by a light in the prow of the boat. It is a curious sight on calm nights to see hun- dreds of these little skiffs or canoes wandering about with their lights, and making an ever-moving illumina- tion on the surface of the lake." * Elba seems to maintain some relation with the main- land by means of the hilly promontory which supports the houses of Piombino, a small town, chiefly interesting as being at no great distance from Populonia, an old Etruscan city of which some considerable ruins still re- * Dennis : " Cities of Etruria." 2o8 THE MEDITERRANEAN main. Here, when the clans gathered to bring back the Tarquins to Rome, stood " Sea-girt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain tops Fringing the southern sky." But long after Lars Porsenna of Clusium had retreated baffled from the broken bridge Populonia continued to be a place of some importance, for it has a castle erected in the Middle Ages. But now it is only a poor village ; it retains, however, fragments of building recalling its Roman masters, and its walls of polygonal masonry carry us back to the era of the Etruscans. It must not be forgotten that almost the whole of the coast line described in this chapter, from the river Magra to Civita Vecchia, belonged to that mysterious and, not so long since, almost unknown people, the Etruscans. Indeed, at one time their sway extended for a consider- able distance north and south of these limits. Even now there is much dispute as to their origin, but they were a powerful and civilized race before Rome was so much as founded. They strove with it for supremacy in Italy, and were not finally subdued by that nation until the third century before our era. " Etruria was of old densely populated, not only in those parts which are still inhabited, but also, as is proved by remains of cities and cemeteries, in tracts now desolated by malaria and re- lapsed into the desert; and what is now the fen or the jungle, the haunt of the wild boar, the buffalo, the fox, and the noxious reptile, where man often dreads to stay his steps, and hurries away from a plague-stricken land, of old yielded rich harvests of corn, wine, and oil, and ETRURIA 209 contained numerous cities mighty and opulent, into whose laps commerce poured the treasures of the East and the more precious produce of Hellenic genius. Most of these ancient sites are now without a habitant, fur- rowed yearly by the plough, or forsaken as unprofitable wilderness ; and such as are still occupied are, with few exceptions, mere phantoms of their pristine greatness, mere villages in the place of populous cities. On ever^^ hand are traces of bygone civilization, inferior in quality, no doubt, to that which at present exists, but much wider in extent and exerting far greater influence on the neigh- boring nations and on the destinies of the world." * South of this headland the Maremma proper begins. Follonica, the only place for some distance which can be called a town, is blackened with smoke to an extent unusual in Italy, for here much of the iron ore from Elba is smelted. But the views in the neighborhood, notwithstanding the flatness of the marshy or scrub- covered plain, are not without a charm. The inland hills are often 'attractive ; to the north lie the headland of Piombino and sea-girt Elba, to the south the promontory of Castiglione, which ends in a lower line of bluff capped by a tower, and the irregular little island of Formica. At Castiglione della Pescaia is a little harbor, once fortified, which exports wool and charcoal, the products of the neighboring hills. The promontory of Castiglione must once have been an island, for it is parted from the inland range by the level plain of the Maremma. Presently Grosseto, the picturesque capital of the Maremma, ap- pears, perched on steeply rising ground above the enclos- ing plain, its sky-line relieved by a couple of low towers and a dome; it has been protected with defenses, which * Dennis: " Cities of Etruria," I., p. xxxii. 2IO THE MEDITERRANEAN date probably from late in the seventeenth century. Then, after the Omborne has been crossed, one of the rivers which issue from the Apennines, the promontory of Talamone comes down to the sea, protecting the vil- lage of the same name. It is a picturesque little place, overlooked by an old castle, and the anchorage is shel- tered by the island of S. Giglio, quiet enough now, but the guide-book tells us that here, two hundred and twenty-five years before the Christian era, the Roman troops disembarked and scattered an invading Gaulish army. But to the south lies another promontory on a larger scale than Talamone ; this is the Monte Argen- tario, the steep slopes of which are a mass of forests. The views on this part of the coast are exceptionally attractive. Indeed, it would be difficult to find anything more striking than the situation of Orbitello. The town lies at the foot of the mountain, for Argentario, since it rises full two thousand feet above the sea, and is bold in outline, deserves the name. It is almost separated from the mainland by a great salt-water lagoon, which is bounded on each side by two low and narrow strips of land. The best view is from the south, where we look across a curve of the sea to the town and to Monte Ar- gentario with its double summit, which, as the border of the lagoon is so low, seems to be completely insulated. Orbitello is clearly proved to have been an Etruscan town ; perhaps, according to Mr. Dennis, founded by the Pelasgi, " for the foundations of the sea-wall which sur- rounds it on three sides are of vast polygonal blocks, just such as are seen in many ancient sites of central Italy (Norba, Segni, Palsestrina, to wit), and such as com- pose the walls of the neighboring Cosa." Tombs of Etruscan construction have also been found in the imme- ORBITELLO 211 diate neighborhood of the city, on the isthmus of sand which connects it with the mainland. Others also have been found within the circuit of the walls. The tombs have been unusually productive ; in part, no doubt, be- cause they appear to have escaped earlier plunderers. Vases, numerous articles in bronze, and gold ornaments of great beauty have been found. Of the town itself, which from the distance has a very picturesque aspect, Mr. Dennis says : " It is a place of some size, having nearly six thousand inhabitants, and among Maremma towns is second only to Grosseto. It is a proof hovi? much population tends to salubrity in the Maremma that Orbitello, though in the midst of a stagnant lagoon ten square miles in extent, is comparatively healthy, and has more than doubled its population in thirty years, while Telamona and other small places along the coast are almost deserted in summer, and the few people that re- main become bloated like wine-skins or yellow as lizards." But the inland district is full of ruins and remnants of towns which in many cases were strongholds long before Romulus traced out the lines of the walls of Rome with his plough, if indeed that ever happened. Ansedonia, the ancient Cosa, is a very few miles away, Rusellse, Saturnia, Sovana at a considerably greater distance ; farther to the south rises another of these forest-clad ridges which, whether insulated by sea or by fen, are so characteristic of this portion of the Italian coast. Here the old walls of Corno, another Etruscan town, may be seen to rise above the olive-trees and the holm-oaks. Beyond this the lowland becomes more undulating, and the foreground scenery a little less monotonous. Corneto now appears crowning a gently shelving pla- teau at the end of a spur from the inland hills, which is 212 THE MEDITERRANEAN guarded at last by a line of cliffs. Enclosed by a ring of old walls, like Cortona, it " lifts to heaven a diadem of towers." In site and in aspect it is a typical example of one of the old cities of Etruria. Three hundred feet and more above the plain which parts it from the sea, with the gleaming water full in view on one side and the forest-clad ranges on the other, the outlook is a charm- ing one, and the attractions within its walls are by no means slight. There are several old churches, and nu- merous Etruscan and Roman antiquities are preserved in the municipal museum. The town itself, however, is not of Etruscan origin, its foundation dates only from the Middle Ages ; but on an opposite and yet more insulated hill the ruins of Tarquinii, one of the great cities of the Etrurian League, can still be traced; hardly less import- ant than Veil, one of the most active cities in the en- deavor to restore the dynasty of the Tarquins, it con- tinued to flourish after it had submitted to Rome, but it declined in the dark days which followed the fall of the Empire, and never held up its head after it had been sacked by the Saracens, till at last it was deserted for Corneto, and met the usual fate of becoming a quarry for the new town. Only the remnants of buildings and of its defenses are now visible ; but the great necropolis which lies to the southeast of the Corneto, and on the same spur with it, has yielded numerous antiquities. A romantic tale of its discovery, so late as 1823, is related in the guide-books. A native of Corneto in digging acci- dentally broke into a tomb. Through the hole he beheld the figure of a warrior extended at length, accoutred in full armour. For a few minutes he gazed astonished, then the form of the dead man vanished almost like a ghost, for it crumbled into dust under the influence of the CIVITA VECCHIA 213 fresh air. Numerous subterranean chambers have since been opened ; the contents vases, bronzes, gems and or- naments, have been removed to museums or scattered among the cabinets of collectors, but the mural paintings still remain. They are the works of various periods from the sixth to the second or third century before the Chris- tian era, and are indicative of the influence exercised by Greek art on the earlier inhabitants of Italy. As the headland, crowned by the walls of Corneto, re- cedes into the distance a little river is crossed, which, unimportant as it seems, has a place in ecclesiastical legend for we are informed that at the Torre Bertaldo, near its mouth, an angel dispelled St. Augustine's doubts on the subject of the Trinity. Then the road approaches the largest port on the coast since Leghorn was left. Civita Vecchia, as the name implies, is an old town, which, after the decline of Ostia, served for centuries as the port of Rome. It was founded by Trajan, and some- times bore his name in olden time, but there is little or nothing within the walls to indicate so great an antiquity. It was harried, like so many other places near the coast, by the Saracens, and for some years was entirely deserted, but about the middle of the ninth century the inhabitants returned to it, and the town, which then acquired its pres- ent name, by degrees grew into importance as the tem- poral power of the Papacy increased. If there is little to induce the traveller to halt, there is not much more to tempt the artist. Civita Vecchia occupies a very low and faintly defined headland. Its houses are whitish in color, square in outline, and rather flat-topped. There are no conspicuous towers or domes. It was once enclosed by fortifications built at various dates about the seventeenth century. These, however, have been removed on the 214 THE MEDITERRANEAN land side, but still remain fairly perfect in the neighbor- hood of the harbor, the entrance to which is protected by a small island, from which rises a low massive tower and a high circular pharos. There is neither animation nor commerce left in the place ; what little there was dis- appeared when the railway was opened. It is living up to its name, and its old age cannot be called vigorous. South of Civita Vecchia the coast region, though often monotonous enough, becomes for a time slightly more diversified. There is still some marshy ground, still some level plain, but the low and gently rolling hills which border the main mass of the Apennines extend at times down to the sea, and even diversify its coast-line, broken by a low headland. This now and again, as at Santa Marinella, is crowned by an old castle. All around much evergreen scrub is seen, here growing in tufts among tracts of coarse herbage, there expanding into actual thickets of considerable extent, and the views sometimes become more varied, and even pretty. Santa Severa, a large castle built of grey stone, with its keep-like group of higher towers on its low crag overlooking the sea, reminds us of some old fortress on the Fifeshire coast. Near this headland, so antiquarians say, was Pyrgos, once the port of the Etruscan town of Csere, which lies away among the hills at a distance of some half-dozen miles. Here and there also a lonely old tower may be noticed along this part of the coast. These recall to mind in their situation, though they are more picturesque in their aspect, the Martello Towers on the southern coast of England. Like them, they are a memorial of troub- lous times, when the invader was dreaded. They were erected to protect the Tuscan coast from the descents of THE TIBER 215 the Moors, who for centuries were the dread of the Med- iterranean. Again and again these corsairs swooped down; now a sm'all flotilla would attack some weakly defended town; now a single ship would land its boat- load of pirates on some unguarded beach to plunder a neighboring village or a few scattered farms, and would retreat from the raid with a little spoil and a small band of captives, doomed to slavery, leaving behind smoking ruins and bleeding corpses. It is strange to think how long it was before perfect immunity was secured from these curses of the Mediterranean. England, whatever her enemies may say, has done a few good deeds in her time, and one of the best was when her fleet, under the command of Admiral Pellew, shattered the forts of Al- giers and burnt every vessel of the pirate fleet. The scenery for a time continues to improve. The oak woods become higher, the inland hills are more varied in outline and are forest-clad. Here peeps out a crag, there a village or a castle. At Palo a large, unat- tractive villa and a picturesque old castle overlook a fine line of sea-beach, where the less wealthy classes in Rome come down for a breath of fresh air in the hot days of summer. It also marks the site of Alsium, where, in Roman times, one or two personages of note, of whom Pompey was the most important, had country residences. For a time there is no more level plain ; the land every- where shelves gently to the sea, covered with wood or with coarse herbage. But before long there is another change, and the great plain of the Tiber opens out before our eyes, extending on one hand to the not distant sea, on the other to the hills of Rome. It is flat, dreary, and unattractive, at any rate in the winter season, as is the 2i6 THE MEDITERRANEAN valley of the Nen below Peterborough, or of the Witham beyond the Lincolnshire wolds. It is cut up by dykes, which are bordered by low banks. Here and there herds of mouse-colored oxen with long horns are feeding, and hay-ricks, round with low conical tops, are features more conspicuous than cottages. The Tiber winds on its ser- pentine course through this fenland plain, a muddy stream, which it was complimentary for the Romans to designate Havus, unless that word meant a color anything but attractive. One low tower in the distance marks the site of Porto, another that of Ostia, and near the latter a long grove of pines is a welcome variation to the mo- notony of the landscape. These two towns have had their day of greatness. The former, as its name implies, was once the port of Rome, and in the early days of Christianity was a place of note. It was founded by Trajan, in the neighborhood of a har- bor constructed by Claudius ; for this, like that of Ostia, which it was designed to replace, was already becom- ing choked up. But though emperors may propose, a river disposes, especially when its mud is in question. The port of Trajan has long since met with the same fate ; it is now only a shallow basin two miles from the sea. Of late years considerable excavations have been made at Porto on the estate of Prince Tortonia, to whom the whole site belongs. The port constructed by Trajan was hexagonal in form ; it was surrounded by warehouses and communicated with the sea by a canal. Between it and the outer or Claudian port a palace was built for the emperor, and the remains of the wall erected by Con- stantine to protect the harbor on the side of the land- can still be seen. The only mediaeval antiquities which Porto contains are the old castle, which serves as the OSTIA 217 episcopal palace, and the tower of the church of Santa Rufina, which is at least as old as the tenth century. Ostia. which is a place of much greater antiquity than Porto, is not so deserted, though its star declined as that of the other rose. Founded, as some say, by Ancus Martins, it was the port of Rome until the first century of the present era. Then the silting up of its communi- cation with the sea caused the transference of the com- merce to Porto, but "the farne of the temple of Castor and Pollux, the numerous villas of the Roman patricians abundantly scattered along the coast, and the crowds of people who frequented its shores for the benefit of sea bathing, sustained the prosperity of the city for some time after the destruction of its harbor.'' But at last it went down hill, and then invaders came. Once it had contained eighty thousand inhabitants ; in the days of the Medici it was a poor village, and the people eked out their miserable existences by making lime of the marbles of the ruined temples ! So here the vandalism of peasants, even more than of patricians, has swept away many a choice relic of classic days. Villas and temples alike have been destroyed ; the sea is now at a distance ; Ostia is but a small village, " one of the most picturesque though melancholy sites near Rome," but during the greater part of the present century careful excavations have been made, many valuable art treas- ures have been unearthed, and a considerable portion of the ancient city has been laid bare. Shops and dwell- ings, temples and baths, the theater and the forum, with many a remnant of the ancient town, can now be ex- amined, and numerous antiquities of smaller size are preserved in the museum at the old castle. This, with its strong bastions, its lofty circular tower and huge 2i8 THE MEDITERRANEAN machicolations, is a very striking object as it rises above the plain " massive and gray against the sky-line." It has been drawn by artists not a few, from Raffaelle, who saw it when it had not very long been completed, down to the present time. X VENICE Its early days — The Grand Canal and its palaces — Piazza of St. Mark— A Venetian funeral— The long line of islands— Vene- tian glass — Torcello, the ancient Altinum— Its two unique churches. SO long as Venice is unvisited a new sensation is among the possibilities of life. There is no town like it in Europe. Amsterdam has its canals, but Venice is all canals ; Genoa has its palaces, but in Venice they are more numerous and more beautiful. Its situation is unique, on a group of islands in the calm lagoon. But the Venice of to-day is not the Venice of thirty years ago. Even then a little of the old romance had gone, for a long railway viaduct had linked it to the mainland. In earlier days it could be reached only by a boat, for a couple of miles of salt water lay between the city and the marshy border of the Paduan delta. Now Venice is still more changed, and for the worse. The people seem more poverty-stricken and pauperized. Its buildings generally, especially the ordinary houses, look more dingy and dilapidated. The paint seems more chipped, the plaster more peeled, the brickwork more rotten; every- thing seems to tell of decadence, commercial and moral, rather than of regeneration. In the case of the more im- portant structures, indeed, the effects of time have often 219 220 THE MEDITERRANEAN been more than repaired. Here a restoration, not seldom needless and ill-judged, has marred some venerable relic of olden days with crude patches of color, due to mod- ern reproductions of the ancient and original work: the building has suffered, as it must be admitted not a few of our own most precious heirlooms have suffered, from the results of zeal untempered by discretion, and the de- stroyer has worked his will under the guise of the re- storer. The mosquito flourishes still in Venice as it did of yore. It would be too much to expect that the winged repre- sentative of the genus should thrive less in Italian free- dom than under Austrian bondage, but something might have been done to extirpate the two-legged species. He is present in force in most towns south of the Alps, but he is nowhere so abundant or so exasperating as in Ven- ice. If there is one place in one town in Europe where the visitor might fairly desire to possess his soul in peace and to gaze in thoughtful wonder, it is in the great piazza, in front of the fagade, strange and beautiful as a dream, of the duomo of St. Mark. Halt there and try to feast on its marvels, to worship in silence and in peace. Vain illusion. There is no crowd of hurrying vehicles or throng of hurrying men to interfere of neces- sity with your visions (there are often more pigeons than people in the piazza), but up crawls a beggar, in garments vermin-haunted, whining for " charity " ; down swoop would-be guides, volunteering useless sug- gestions in broken and barely intelligible English ; from this side and from that throng vendors of rubbish, shell- ornaments, lace, paltry trinkets, and long ribands of photographic " souvenirs," appalling in their ugliness. He who can stand five minutes before San Marco and THE ISLANDS 221 retain a catholic love of mankind must indeed be blessed with a temper of much more than average amiability. The death of Rome was indirectly the birth of Venice. Here in the great days of the Empire there was not, so far as we know, even a village. Invaders came, the Adriatic littoral was wrecked; its salvage is to be found among the islands of the lagoons. Aquileia went up in flames, the cities of the Paduan delta trembled before the hordes of savage Huns, but the islands of its coast held out a hope of safety. What in those days these camps of refuge must have been can be inferred from, the islands which now border the mainland, low, marshy, overgrown by thickets, and fringed by reeds; they were unhealthy, but only accessible by intricate and difficult channels, and with little to tempt the spoiler. It was better to risk fever in the lagoons than to be murdered or driven oflf into slavery on the mainland. It was some time before Venice took the lead among these scattered settlements. It became the center of government in the year 810, but it was well-nigh two centuries before the Venetian State attained to any real eminence. Towards this, the first and perhaps the most important step was crushing the Istrian and Dalmatian pirates. This enabled the Re- public to become a great " Adriatic and Oriental Com- pany," and to get into their hands the carrying trade to the East. The men of Venice were both brave and shrewd, something like our Elizabethan forefathers, mighty on sea and land, but men of understanding also in the arts of peace. She did battle with Genoa for commercial supremacy, with the Turk for existence. She was too strong for the former, but the latter at last wore her out, and Lepanto was one of her latest and least fruitful triumphs. Still, it was not till the end of the 222 THE MEDITERRANEAN sixteenth century that a watchful eye could detect the symptoms of senile decay. Then Venice tottered gradu- ally to its grave. Its slov/ disintegration occupied more than a century and a half; but the French Revolution in- directly caused the collapse of Venice, for its last doge abdicated, and the city was occupied by Napoleon in 1797. After his downfall Venetia was handed over to Austria, and found in the Hapsburg a harsh and unsym- pathetic master. It made a vain struggle for freedom in 1848, but was at last ceded to Italy after the Austro- Prussian war in 1866. The city is built upon a group of islands ; its houses are founded on piles, for there is no really solid ground. How far the present canals correspond with the original channels between small islands, how far they are artificial, it is difficult to say; but whether the original islets were few or many, there can be no doubt that they were form- erlv divided by the largest, or the Grand Canal, the Rio Alto or Deep Stream. This takes an S-like course, and parts the city roughly into two halves. The side canals, which are very numerous, for the town is said to occupy one hundred and fourteen islands, are seldom wider, often rather narrower than a by-street in the City of London. In Venice, as has often been remarked, not a cart or a carriage, not even a coster's donkey-cart, can be used. Streets enough there are, but they are narrow and twisting, very like the courts in the heart of London. The carriage, the cab, and the omnibus are replaced by the gondolas. These it is needless to describe, for who does not know them? One consequence of this substi- tution of canals for streets is that the youthful Venetian takes to the w^ater like a young duck to a pond, and does not stand much on ceremony in the matter of taking off FAMOUS VIEWS 223 his clothes. Turn into a side canal on a summer's day, and one may see the younger members of a family all bathing from their own doorstep, the smallest one, perhaps, to prevent accidents, being tied by a cord to a convenient ring; nay, sometimes as we are wandering through one of the narrow calle (alleys) -we hear a soft patter of feet, something damp brushes past, and a little Venetian lad, lithe and black-eyed, bare-legged, bare-backed, and all but bare-breeched, shoots past as he makes a short cut to his clothes across a block of buildings, round which he cannot yet manage to swim. In such a city as Venice it is hard to praise one view above another. There is the noble sweep of the Grand Canal, with its palaces ; there are many groups of build- ings on a less imposing scale, but yet more picturesque, on the smaller canals, often almost every turn brings some fresh surprise ; but there are two views which al- ways rise up in my mind before all others whenever my thoughts turn to Venice, more especially as it used to be. One is the view of the fagade of San Marco from the Piazza. I shall make no apology for quoting words which describe more perfectly than my powers permit the im- pressions awakened by this dream-like architectural con- ception. " Beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away : a multitude of pillars and white domes clustered into a long, low pyramid of colored light, a treasure-heap, as it seems, partly of gold and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic and beset with sculptures of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory ; sculpture fantastic and involved, of 224 THE MEDITERRANEAN palm-leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into an endless network of buds and plumes, and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptered and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their features indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morn- ing light as it faded back among the branches of Eden when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine, spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, ' their bluest veins to kiss,' the shadow as it steals back from them revealing line after line of azure undulation, a? a receding tide leaves the waved sand : their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs all beginning and ending in the Cross: and above ihem in the broad archivolts a continuous chain of lan- gaiage and of life, angels and the signs of heaven and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above them another range of glittering pin- nacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, a confusion of delight, among which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore SAN MARCO 225 had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst." * This is San Marco as it was. Eight centuries had harmed it little; they had but touched the building with a gentle hand and had mellowed its tints into tender har- mony ; now its new masters, cruel in their kindness, have restored the mosaics and scraped the marbles ; now raw blotches and patches of crude color glare out in vio- lent contrast with those parts which, owing to the intri- cacy of the carved work, or some other reason, it has been found impossible to touch. To look at St. Mark's now is like listening to some symphony by a master of harmony which is played on instruments all out of tune. Photographs, pictures, illustrations of all kinds, have ■made St. Mark's so familiar to all the world that it is needless to attempt to give any description of its details. It may suffice to say that the cathedral stands on the site of a smaller and older building, in which the relics of St. Mark, the tutelary saint of Venice, had been al- ready enshrined. The present structure was begun about the year 976, and occupied very nearly a century in build- ing. But it is adorned with the spoils of many a classic structure : with columns and slabs of marble and of por- phyry and of serpentine, which were hewn from quarries in Greece and Syria, in Egypt and Libya, by the bands of Roman slaves, and decked the palaces and the baths, the temples and the theaters of Roman cities. The inside of St. Mark's is not less strange and im- pressive, but hardly so attractive as the exterior. It is plain in outline and almost heavy in design, a Greek cross in plan, with a vaulted dome above the center and each * Ruskin: "Stones of Venice."' 226 THE MEDITERRANEAN arm. Much as the exterior of St. Mark's owes to marble, porphyry, and mosaic, it would be beautiful if constructed only of grey limestone. This could hardly be said of the interior: take away the choice stones from columns and dado and pavement, strip away the crust of mosaic, those richly robed figures on ground of gold, from wall and from vault (for the whole interior is veneered with mar- bles or mosaics), and only a rather dark, massive build- ing would remain, which would seem rather lower ana rather smaller than one had been led to expect. The other view in Venice which seems to combine best its peculiar character with its picturesque beauty may be obtained at a very short distance from St. Mark's. Leave the fa9ade of which we have just spoken, the three great masts, with their richly ornamented sockets of bronze, from which, in the proud days of Venice, floated the banners of Candia, Cyprus, and the Morea ; turn from the Piazza into the Piazzetta ; leave on the one hand the huge Campanile, more huge than beautiful (if one may venture to whisper a criticism), on the other the sumptuous portico of the Ducal Palace ; pass on beneath the imposing fagade of the palace itself, with its grand colonnade ; on between the famous columns, brought more than seven centuries since from some Syrian ruins, which bear the lion of St. Mark and the statue of St. Theodore, the other patron of the Republic; and then, standing on the Molo at the head of the Riva degli Schiavoni, look around ; or better still, step down into one of the gondolas which are in waiting at the steps, and push off a few dozen yards from the land : then look back on the fagade of the Palace and the Bridge of Sighs, along the busy quays of the Riva, towards the green trees of the Giardini Publici, look up the Piazzetta, between THE GRAND CANAL 227 the twin columns, to the gHmpses of St. Mark's and the towering- height of the Campanile, along the fagade of the Royal Palace, with the fringe of shrubbery below con- trasting pleasantly with all these masses of masonry, up the broad entrance to the Grand Canal, between its rows of palaces, across it to the great dome of Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana della Mare, with its statue of Fortune (appropriate to the past rather than to the present) gazing out from its seaward angle. Beyond this, yet farther away, lies the Isola San Giorgio, a group of plain buildings only, a church, with a dome simple in outline and a brick campanile almost without adorn- ment, yet the one thing in Venice, after the great group of St. Mark's and the Palace of the Dukes, which im- presses itself on the mind. From this point of view Venice rises before our eyes in its grandeur and in its simplicity, in its patrician and its plebeian aspects, as " a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean, throned on her hundred isles ... a ruler of the waters and their powers." But to leave Venice without a visit to the Grand Canal would be to leave the city with half the tale untold. Its great historic memories are gathered around the Piazza of St. Mark ; this is a silent witness to its triumphs in peace and in war, to the deeds noble and brave, of its rulers. But the Grand Canal is the center of its life, commercial and domestic; it leads from its quays to its Exchange, from the Riva degli Schiavoni and the Dogana della Mare to the Rialto. It is bordered by the palaces of the great historic families who were the rulers and princes of Venice, who made the State by their bravery and prudence, who destroyed it by their jeal- ousies and self-seeking. The Grand Canal is a genealogy of Venice, illustrated and engraved on stone. As one 228 THE MEDITERRANEAN glides along in a gondola, century after century in the history of domestic architecture, from the twelfth to the eighteenth, slowly unrolls itself before us. There are palaces which still remain much as they were of old, .but here and there some modern structure, tasteless and ugly, has elbowed for itself a place among them ; not a few, also, have been converted into places of business, and are emblazoned with prominent placards proclaim- ing the trade of their new masters, worthy representatives of an age that is not ashamed to daub the cliffs of the St. Gothard with the advertisements of hotels and to paint its boulders for the benefit of vendors of chocolate ! But in the present era one must be thankful for any- thing that is spared by the greed of wealth and the vul- garity of a " democracy." jMuch of old Venice still re- mains, though little steamers splutter up and down the Grand Canal, and ugly iron bridges span its waters, both, it must be admitted, convenient, though hideous ; still the gondolas survive ; still one hears at every corner the boat- man's strange cry of warning, sometimes the only sound except the knock of the oar that breaks the silence of the liquid street. Every turn reveals something quaint and old-world. Now it is a market-boat, with its wicker panniers hanging outside, loaded with fish or piled with vegetables from one of the more distant islets ; now some little bridge, now some choice architectural fragment, a doorway, a turret, an oriel, or a row of richly ornate windows, now a tiny piazzetta leading up to the facade and campanile of a more than half-hidden church ; now the marble enclosure of a well. Still the water-carriers go about with buckets of hammered copper hung at each end of a curved pole ; still, though more rarely, some quaint costume may be seen in the calle; still the dark A VENETIAN FUNERAL 229 shops in the narrow passages are full of goods strange to the eye, and bright in their season with the flowers and fruits of an Italian summer; still the purple pigeons gather in scores at the wonted hour to be fed on the Piazza of St. j\Iark, and, fearless of danger, convert the distributor of a pennyworth of maize into a walking dovecot. Still \>nice is delightful to the eyes (unhappily not al- ways so to the nose in many a nook and corner) notwith- standing the pressure of poverty and the wantonness of restorers. Perchance it may revive and yet see better days (its commerce is said to have increased since 1866) ; but if so, unless a change comes over the spirit of the age, the result will be the more complete destruction of all that made its charm and its wonder ; so this chapter may appropriately be closed by a brief sketch of one scene which seems in harmony with the memories of its de- parted greatness, a Venetian funeral. The dead no longer rest among the living beneath the pavement of the churches : the gondola takes the Venetian " about the streets " to the daily business of life ; it bears him away from his home to the island cemetery. From some nar- row alley, muffled by the enclosing masonry, comes the sound of a funeral march ; a procession emerges on to the piazzetta by the water-side ; the coffin is carried by long- veiled acolytes and nijourners with lighted torches, ac- companied by a brass band with clanging cymbals. A large gondola, ornamented with black and silver, is in waiting at the nearest landing place ; the band and most of the attendants halt by the water-side : the coffin is placed in the boat, the torches are extinguished ; a wilder wail of melancholy music, a more resonant clang of the cvmbals, sounds the last farewell to home and its pleas- 230 THE MEDITERRANEAN ures and its work; the oars are dipped in the water, and another child of Venice is taken from the city of the hving to the city of the dead. A long line of islands completely shelters Venice from the sea, so that the waters around its walls are verv sel- dom ruffled into waves. The tide also rises and falls but little, not more than two or three feet, if so much. Thus no banks of pestiferous mud are laid bare at low water by the ebb and flow, and yet some slight circulation is main- tained in the canals, which, were it not for this, would be as intolerable as cesspools. Small boats can find their way over most parts of the lagoon, where in many places a safe route has to be marked out with stakes, but for large vessels the channels are few. A long island, Mala- mocco by name, intervenes between Venice and the Ad- riatic, on each side of which are the chief if not the only entrances for large ships. At its northern end is the sandy beach of the Lido, a great resort of the Venetians, for there is good sea bathing. But except this, Mala- mocco has little to offer; there is more interest in other parts of the lagoon. At the southern end, some fifteen miles away, the old town of Chioggia is a favorite ex- cursion. On the sea side the long fringe of narrow is- lands, of which Malamocco is one, 'protected by massive walls, forms a barrier against the waves of the Adriatic. On the land side is the dreary fever-haunted region of the Laguna Morta, like a vast fen, beyond which rise the serrate peaks of the Alps and the broken summits of the Euganean Hills. The town itself, the Roman Fossa Claudia, is a smaller edition of Venice, joined like it to the mainland by a bridge. If it has fewer relics of archi- tectural value it has suffered less from modern changes, and has retained much more of its old-world character. TORCELLO 231 Murano, an island or group of islands, is a tiny edition of Venice, and a much shorter excursion, for it lies only about a mile and a half away to the north of the city. Here is the principal seat of the workers in glass ; here are made those exquisite reproductions of old Venetian glass and of ancient mosaic which have made the name of Salviati noted in all parts of Europe. Here, too, is a cathedral which, though it has suffered from time, neglect, and restoration, is still a grand relic. At the eastern end there is a beautiful apse enriched by an arcade and de- corated with inlaid marbles, but the rest of the exterior is plain. As usual in this part of Italy (for the external splendor of St. Mark's is exceptional) all richness of de- coration is reserved for the interior. Here columns of choice stones support the arches ; there is a fine mosaic in the eastern apse, but the glory of Murano is its floor, a su- perb piece of opus Alexandrimim, inlaid work of marbles and porphyries, bearing date early in the eleventh cen- tury, and richer in design than even that at St. Mark's, for peacocks and other birds, with tracery of strange de- sign, are introduced into its patterns. But there is another island beyond Murano, some half- dozen miles away from Venice, which must not be left unvisited. It is reached by a delightful excursion over the lagoon, among lonely islands thinly inhabited, the garden grounds of Venice, where they are not left to run wild with rank herbage or are covered by trees. This is Torcello, the ancient Altinum. Here was once a town of note, the center of the district when Venice was strug- gling into existence. Its houses now are few and ruin- ous ; the ground is half overgrown with poplars and acacias and pomegranates, red in summer-time with scarlet flowers. But it possesses two churches which. 232 THE MEDITERRANEAN though small in size, are almost unique in their interest, the duomo, dedicated to St. Mary, and the church of Sta. Fosca. They stand side by side, and are linked together by a small cloister. The former is a plain basilica which retains its ancient plan and arrangement almost intact. At one end is an octagonal baptistery, which, instead of being separated from the cathedral by an atrium or court, is only divided from it by a passage. The exterior of the cathedral is plain ; the interior is not much more ornate. Ancient columns, with quaintly carved capitals support- ing stilted semicircular arches, divide the aisles from the nave. Each of these has an apsidal termination. The high altar stands in the center of the middle one, and be- hind it, against the wall, the marble throne of the bishop is set up on high, and is approached by a long flight of marble steps. On each side, filling up the remainder of the curve, six rows of steps rise up like the seats of an amphitheater, the places of the attendant priests. The chancel, true to its name, is formed by enclosing a part of the nave with a low stone wall and railing. Opinions differ as to the date of this cathedral. According to Fergusson it was erected early in the eleventh century, but it stands on the site of one quite four centuries older, and reproduces the arrangement of its predecessor if it does not actually incorporate portions of it. Certainly the columns and capitals in the nave belong, as a rule, to an earlier building. Indeed, they have probably done duty more than once, and at least some of them were sculptured before the name of Attila had been heard of in the delta of the North Italian rivers. The adjoining church of Sta. Fosca is hardly less in- teresting. An octagonal case, with apses at the eastern end, supports a circular .drum, which is covered by a low STA. FOSCA 233 conical roof, and a cloister or corridor surrounds the greater part of the church. This adds much to the beauty of the design, the idea, as Fergusson remarks, being evi- dently borrowed from the circular colonnades of the Ro- man temples. He also justly praises the beauty of the interior. In this church also, which in its present condi- tion is not so old as the cathedral, the materials of a much older building or buildings have been employed. But over these details or the mosaics in the cathedral we must not linger, and must only pause to mention the curious stone chair in the adjacent court which bears the name of the throne of Attila; perhaps, like the chair of the Dukes of Carinthia, it was the ancient seat of the chief magistrate of the island. XI ALEXANDRIA The bleak and barren shores of the Nile Delta — Peculiar shape of the city — Strange and varied picture of Alexandrian street life — The Place Mehemet Ali — Glorious panorama from the Cairo citadel — Pompey's Pillar — The Battle of the Nile — Dis- covery of the famous inscribed stone at Rosetta — Port Said and the Suez Canal. IT is with a keen sense of disappointment that the traveller first sights the monotonous and dreary- looking Egyptian sea-board. The low ridges of desolate sandhills, occasionally broken by equally unat- tractive lagunes, form a melancholy contrast to the beau- tiful scenery of the North African littoral farther west, which delighted his eyes a short time before, while skirt- ing the Algerian coast. What a change from the thickly- wooded hills gently sloping upwards from the water's edge to the lower ridges of the Atlas range, whose snow- clad peaks stand out clear in the brilliant atmosphere, the landscape diversified with cornfields and olive groves, and thickly studded with white farmhouses, looking in the distance but white specks, and glittering like dia- monds under the glowing rays of the sun. Now, instead of all this warmth of color and variety of outline, one is confronted by the bleak and barren shores of the Nile Delta. If the expectant traveller is so disenchanted with his 234 HISTORIC SITES 235 first view of Egypt from the sea, still greater is his disap- pointment as the ship approaches the harbor. This bust- ling and painfully modern-looking town — the city of the great Alexander, and the gate of that land of oriental romance and fascinating association — might, but for an occasional palm-tree or minaret standing out among the mass of European buildings, be mistaken for some flour- ishing European port, say a Marseilles or Havre plumped down on the Egyptian plain. But though we must not look for picturesque scenery and romantic surroundings in this thriving port, there is yet much to interest the antiquarian and the " intelli- gent tourist " in this classic district. The Delta sea- board was for centuries the battle-ground of the Greek and Roman Empires, and the country between Alexan- dria and Port Said is strewed with historic sites. Alexandria itself, though a much Europeanized and a hybrid sort of city, is not without interest. It has been rather neglected by Egyptian travel writers, and conse- quently by the tourist, who rarely strikes out a line for himself. It is looked upon too much as the port of Cairo, just as Leghorn is of Pisa and Florence, and visitors usually content themselves with devoting to it but one day, and then rushing off by train to Cairo. It would be absurd, of course, to compare Alexandria, in point of artistic, antiquarian, and historical interest, to this latter city; though, as a matter of fact, Cairo is a modern city compared to the Alexandria of Alexan- der; just as Alexandria is but of mushroom growth con- trasted with Heliopolis, Thebes, Memphis, or the other dead cities of the Nile Valley of which traces still re- main. It has often been remarked that the ancient city has bequeathed nothing but its ruins and its name to 236 THE MEDITERRANEAN Alexandria of to-day. Even these ruins are deplorably scanty, and most of the sites are mainly conjectural. Few vestiges remain of the architectural splendor of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Where are now the 4,000 palaces, the 4,000 baths, and the 400 theaters, about which the conquering general Amru boasted to his master, the Caliph Omar? What now remains of the magnificent temple of Serapis, towering over the city on its plat- form of one hundred steps? Though there are scarcely any traces of the glories of ancient Alexandria, once the second city of the Empire, yet the recollection of its splendors has not died out, and to the thoughtful traveller this city of memories has its attractions. Here St. Mark preached the Gospel and suffered martyrdom, and here Athanasius opposed in warlike controversy the Arian heresies. Here for many centuries were collected in this center of Greek learning and culture the greatest intellects of the civilized world. Here Cleopatra, '' vain- queur des vainqueurs du monde," held Antony willing captive, while Octavius was preparing his legions to crush him. Here Amru conquered, and here Aber- crombie fell. Even those whose tastes do not incline them to historical or theological researches are familiar, thanks to Kingsley's immortal romance, with the story of the noble-minded Hypatia and the crafty and am- bitious Cyril, and can give rein to their imagination by verifying the sites of the museum where she lectured, and the Csesareum where she fell a victim to the atro- cious zeal of Peter the Reader and his rabble of fanatical monks. The peculiar shape of the city, built partly on the Pharos island and peninsula, and partly on the mainland, is due, according to the chroniclers, to a patriotic whim THE MODERN CITY 237 of the founder, who planned the city in the form of a chlamys, the short cloak or tunic worn by the Mace- donian soldiers. The modern city, though it has pushed its boundaries a good way to the east and west, still preserves this curious outline, though to a non-classical mind it rather suggests a star-fish. Various legends are extant to account for the choice of this particular spot for a Mediterranean port. According to the popu- lar version, a venerable seer appeared to the Great Con- queror in a dream, and quoted those lines of the Odys- sey which describe the one sheltered harbor on the northern coast of Egypt : — " a certain island called Pharos, that with the high-waved sea is washed, just against Egypt." Acting on this supernatural hint, Alex- ander decided to build his city on that part of the coast to which the Pharos isle acted as a natural breakwater, and where a small Greek fishing settlement was already established, called Rhacotis. The legend is interesting, but it seems scarcely necessary to fall back on a mythi- cal story to account for the selection of this site. The two great aims of Alexander were the foundation of a center for trade, and the extension of commerce, and also the fusion of the Greek and Roman nations. Eor the carrying out of these objects, the establishment of a convenient sea-port with a commanding position at the mouth of the Nile was required. The choice of a site a little west of the Nile mouths was, no doubt, due to his knowledge of the fact that the sea current sets east- ward, and that the alluvial soil brought down by the Nile would soon choke a harbor excavated east of the river, as had already happened at Pelusium. It is this alluvial wash which has rendered the harbors of Rosetta and Damietta almost useless for vessels of any draught, 238 THE MEDITERRANEAN and at Port Said the accumulation of sand necessitates continuous dredging in order to keep clear the entrance of the Suez Canal. A well-known writer on Egypt has truly observed that there are three Egypts to interest the traveller. The Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Bible, the Egypt of the Caliphates and the " Arabian Nights," and the Egypt of European commerce and enterprise. It is to this third stage of civilization that the fine harbor of Alex- andria bears witness. Not only is it of interest to the engineer and the man of science, but it is also of great historic importance. It serves as a link between ancient and modern civilization. The port is Alexander the Great's best monument — " si quseris monumentum re- spice." But for this, Alexandria might now be a little fishing port of no more importance than the little Greek fishing village, Rhacotis, whose ruins lie buried beneath its spacious quays. It is not inaccurate to say that the existing harbor is the joint work of Alexander and Eng- lish engineers of the present century. It was originally formed by the construction of a vast mole (Heptastadion) joining the island of Pharos to the mainland; and this stupendous feat of engineering, planned and carried out by Alexander, has been supplemented by the magnificent breakwater constructed by England in 1872, at a cost of over two and a half millions sterling. After Marseilles, Malta, and Spezzia, it is perhaps the finest port in the Mediterranean, both on account of its natural advantages as a haven, and by reason of the vast engineering works mentioned above. The western harbor (formerly called Eunostos or "good home sailing") of which we are speaking — for the eastern, or so-called new harbor, is choked with sand and given up to native craft — has onlv THE EASTERN HARBOR 239 one drawback in the dangerous reef at its entrance, and which should have been blasted before the breakwater and the other engineering works were undertaken. The passage through the bar is very intricate and difficult, and is rarely attempted in very rough weather. The eastern harbor will be of more interest to the artist, crowded as it is with the picturesque native craft and dahabyehs with their immense lateen sails. The traveller, so disgusted with the modern aspect of the city from the western har- bor, finds some consolation here, and begins to feel that he is really in the East. Formerly this harbor was alone available for foreign ships, the bigoted Moslems object- ing to the " Frankish dogs " occupying their best haven. This restriction has, since the time of Mehemet Ali, been removed, greatly to the advantage of Alexandrian trade. During the period of Turkish misrule — when Egypt under the Mamelukes, though nominally a vilayet of the Ottoman Empire, was practically under the dominion of the Beys — the trade of Alexandria had declined consider- ably, and Rosetta had taken away most of its commerce. When Mehemet Ali, the founder of the present dynasty, rose to power, his clear intellect at once comprehended the importance of this ancient emporium, and the wisdom of Alexander's choice of a site for the port which was destined to become the commercial center of three con- tinents. Mehemet is the creator of modern Alexandria. He deepened the harbor, which had been allowed to be choked by the accumulation of sand, lined it with spacious quays, built the massive forts which protect the coast, and restored the city to its old commercial importance, by putting it into communication with the Nile through the medium of the Mahmoudiyeh Canal. This vast 240 THE MEDITERRANEAN undertaking was only effected with great loss of life. It was excavated by the forced labor of 250,000 peasants, of whom some 20,000 died from the heat and the severe toil. On landing from the steamer the usual scrimmage with Arab porters, Levantine hotel touts, and Egyptian donkey boys, will have to be endured by the traveller. He may perhaps be struck, if he has any time or temper left for reflection at all, with the close connection between the English world of fashion and the donkey, so far at least as nomenclature is concerned, each animal being named after some English celebrity. The inseparable incidents of disembarkation at an Eastern port are, however, fa- mihar to all who have visited the East; and the same scenes are repeated at every North African port, from Tangier to Port Said, and need not be further described. The great thoroughfare of Alexandria, a fine street running in a straight line from the western gate of the city to the Place Mehemet Ali, is within a few minutes of the quay. A sudden turn and this strange mingling of Eastern and Western life bursts upon the spectator's astonished gaze. This living diorama, formed by the brilliant and ever-shifting crowd, is in its way unique. A greater variety of nationalities is collected here than even in Constantinople or cosmopolitan Algiers. Let us stand aside and watch this motley collection of all nations, kindreds, and races pouring along this busy highway. The kaleidoscopic variety of brilliant color and fantastic costume seems at first a little bewildering. Solemn and impassive-looking Turks gently ambling past on gaily caparisoned asses, grinning negroes from the Nubian hills, melancholy-looking fellahs in their scanty blue kaftans, cunning-featured Levantines, green-turbaned MEHEMET ALI 241 Shereefs, and picturesque Bedouins from the desert stalk- ing along in their flowing bernouses, make up the mass of this restless throng. Interspersed, and giving variety of color to this living kaleidoscope, gorgeously-arrayed Jews, fierce-looking Albanians, their many-colored sashes bristling with weapons, and petticoated Greeks. Then, as a pleasing relief to this mass of color, a group of Egyptian ladies ghde past, " a bevy of fair damsels richly dight," no doubt, but their faces, as well as their rich attire, concealed under the inevitable yashmak surmount- ing the balloon-like trousers. Such are the elements in this mammoth masquerade which make up the strange and varied picture of Alexandrian street life. And now we may proceed to visit the orthodox sights, but we have seen the greatest sight Alexandria has to show us. The Place Mehemet Ali, usually called for the sake of brevity the Grand Square, is close at hand. This is the center of the European quarter, and round it are collected the banks, consular offices, and principal shops. This square, the focus of the life of modern Alexandria, is ap- propriately named after the founder of the present dy- nasty, and the creator of the Egypt of to-day. To this great ruler, who at one time bid fair to become the founder, not only of an independent kingdom, but of a great Oriental Empire, Alexandria owes much of its pros- perity and commercial importance. The career of Mehe- met Ali is interesting and romantic. There is a certain similarity between his history and that of Napoleon I., and the coincidence seems heightened when we remember that they were both born in the same year. Each, rising from an obscure position, started as an adventurer on foreign soil, and each rose to political eminence by force of arms. Unlike Napoleon, however, in one important 242 THE MEDITERRANEAN point, Mehemet AH founded a dynasty which still remains in power, in spite of the weakness and incapacity of his successors. To Western minds, perhaps, his great claim to hold a high rank in the world's history lies in his efforts to introduce European institutions and methods of civili- zation, and to establish a system of government opposed to Mohammedan instincts. He created an army and navy which were partly based on European models, stimulated agriculture and trade, and organized an administrative and fiscal system which did much towards putting the country on a sound financial footing. The great blot of his reign was no doubt the horrible massacre of the Mameluke Beys, and this has been the great point of attack by his enemies and detractors. It is difficult to excuse this oriental example of a coup d'etat, but it must be remembered that the existence of this rebellious ele- ment was incompatible with the maintenance of his rule, and that the peace of the country was as much endangered by the Mameluke Beys as was that of the Porte by the Janissaries a few years later, when a somewhat similar atrocity was perpetrated. In the middle of the square stands a handsome eques- trian statue of Mehemet AH which is, in one respect, probably unique. The Mohammedan religion demands the strictest interpretation of the injunction in the deca- logue against making " to thyself any craven image," and consequently a statue to a follower of the creed of Maho- met is rarely seen in a Mohammedan country. The erec- tion of this particular monument was much resented by the more orthodox of the Mussulman population of Alex- andria, and the religious feelings of the mob manifested themselves in riots and other hostile demonstrations. Not only representations in stone or metal, but any kind of PALACE OF RAS-ET-TEEN 243 likeness of the human form is thought impious by Mo- hammedans. They believe that the author will be com- pelled on the Resurrection Day to indue with life the sacrilegious counterfeit presentment. Tourists in Egypt who are addicted to sketching, or who dabble in photog- raphy, will do well to remember these conscientious scruples of the Moslem race, and not let their zeal for bringing back pictorial mementoes of their travels in- duce them to take " snap shots " of mosque interiors, for instance. In Egypt, no doubt, the natives have too whole- some a dread of the Franks to manifest their outraged feelings by physical force, but still it is ungenerous, not to say unchristian, to wound people's religious prejudices. In some other countries of North Africa, notably in the interior of Morocco or Tripoli, promiscuous photography might be attended with disagreeable results, if not a cer- tain amount of danger. A tourist would find a Kodak camera, even with all the latest improvements, a some- what inefficient weapon against a mob of fanatical Arabs. That imposing pile standing out so prominently on the western horn of Pharos is the palace of Ras-et-Teen, built by Mehemet AH, and restored in execrable taste by his grandson, the ex-Khedive Ismail. Seen from the ship's side, the palace has a rather striking appearance. The exterior, however, is the best part of it, as the ornate and gaudy interior contains little of interest. From the upper balconies there is a good view of the harbor, and the gardens are well worth visitin^. They are prettily laid out, and among many other trees, olives may be seen, unknown in any other part of the Delta. The decora- tions and appointments of the interior are characterized by a tawdry kind of magnificence. The incongruous mix- ture of modern French embellishn-ients and oriental splen- 244 THE MEDITERRANEAN dor gives the saloons a meretricious air, and the effect is bizarre and unpleasing. It is a reHef to get away from such obtrusive evidences of the ex-Khedive's decorative tastes, by stepping out on the balcony. What a forest of m.asts meets the eye as one looks down on the vast har- bor ; the inner one, a " sea within a sea," crowded with vessels bearing the flags of all nations, and full of anima- tion and movement. The view is interesting, and makes one realize the com- mercial importance of this great emporium of trade, the meeting-place of the commerce of three continents, yet it does not offer many features to distinguish it from a view of any other thriving port. For the best view of the city and the surrounding coun- try we must climb the slopes of Mount Caffarelli to the fort which crowns the summit, or make our way to the fortress Kom-el-Deek on the elevated ground near the Rosetta Gate. Alexandria, spread out like a map, lies at our feet. At this height the commonplace aspect of a bustling and thriving seaport, which seems on a close acquaintance to be Europeanized and modernized out of the least resemblance to an oriental city, is changed to a prospect of some beauty. At Alexandria, even more than at most cities of the East, distance lends enchantment to the view. From these heights the squalid back streets and the bustling main thoroughfares look like dark threads woven into the web of the city, relieved by the white mosques, with their swelling domes curving inward like fan palms towards the crescents flashing in the rays of the sun, and their tall graceful minarets piercing the smokeless and cloudless atmosphere. The subdued roar of the busy streets and quays is occasionally varied by the melodious cry of the muezzin. Then looking northward THE NILE DELTA 245 one sees the clear blue of the Mediterranean, till it is lost in the hazy horizon. To the west and south the placid waters of the Mareotis Lake, in reality a shallow and in- salubrious lagoon, but to all appearances a smiling lake, which, with its water fringed by the low-lying sand dunes, reminds the spectator of the peculiar beauties of the Nor- folk Broads. Looking south beyond the lake lies the luxuriant plain of the Delta. The view may not be what is called pictur- esque, but the scenery has .its special charm. The coun- try is no doubt flat and monotonous, but there is no monotony of color in this richly cultivated plain. Innumerable pens have been worn out in comparison and simile when describing the peculiar features of this North African Holland. To some this huge market garden, with its network of canals, simply suggests a chess-board. Others are not content with these prosaic comparisons, and their more fanciful metaphor likens the country to a green robe interwoven with silver threads, or to a seven-ribbed fan, the ribs being of course the seven mouths of the Nile. Truth to tell, though, the full force of this fanciful image would be more felt by a spectator who is enjoying that glorious panorama from the Cairo citadel, as the curious triangular form of the Delta is much better seen from that point than from Alexandria at the base of the triangle. One may differ as to the most appropriate metaphors, but all must agree that there are certain elements of beauty about the Delta landscape. Seen, as most tourists do see it, in winter or spring, the green fields of waving corn and barley, the meadows of water-melons and cu- cumbers, the fields of pea and purple lupin one mass of colors, interspersed with the palm-groves and white 246 THE MEDITERRANEAN minarets, which mark the site of the almost invisible mud villages, and intersected thickly with countless canals and trenches that in the distance look like silver threads, and suggest Brobdignagian filigree work, or the delicate tra- cery of King Frost on our window-panes, the view is im- pressive and not without beauty. In the summer and early autumn, especially during August and September when the Nile is at its height, the view is more striking though hardly so beautiful. Then it is that this Protean country offers its most impressive aspect. The Delta becomes an inland archipelago studded with green islands, each island crowned with a white- mosqued village, or conspicuous with a cluster of palms. The Nile and its swollen tributaries are covered with huge-sailed dahabyehs, which give life and variety to the watery expanse. Alexandria can boast of few " lions " as the word is usually understood, but of these by far the most interest- ing is the column known by the name of Pompey's Pillar. Everyone has heard of the famous monolith, which is as closely associated in people's minds with Alexandria as the Colosseum is with Rome, or the Alhambra with Granada. It has, of course, no more to do with the Pompey of history (to whom it is attributed by the un- lettered tourist) than has Cleopatra's Needle with that famous Queen, the " Serpent of old Nile ; " or Joseph's Well at Cairo with the Hebrew Patriarch. It owes its name to the fact that a certain prefect, named after Caesar's great rival, erected on the summit of an existing column a statue in honor of the horse of the Roman Em- peror Diocletian. There is a familiar legend which has been invented to accoimt for the special reason of its erection, which guide-book compilers are very fond of. POMPEY'S PILLAR 247 According to this story, this historic animal, through an opportune stumble, stayed the persecution of the Alex- andrian Christians, as the tyrannical emperor had sworn to continue the massacre till the blood of the victims reached his horse's knees. Antiquarians and Egyptolo- gists are, however, given to scoffing at the legend as a plausible myth. In the opinion of many learned authorities, the shaft of this column was once a portion of the Serapeum, that famous building which was both a temple of the heathen god Serapis and a vast treasure-house of ancient civiliza- tion. It has been suggested — in order to account for its omission in the descriptions of Alexandria, given by Pliny and Strabo, who had mentioned the two obelisks of Cleo- patra — that the column had fallen, and that the Prefect Pompey had merely re-erected it in honor of Diocletian, and replaced the statue of Serapis with one of the Em- peror — or of his horse, according to some chroniclers. This statute, if it ever existed, has now disappeared. As it stands, however, it is a singularly striking and beautiful monument, owing to its great height, simplicity of form, and elegant proportions. It reminds the spectator a little of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, and perhaps the absence of a statue is not altogether to be regretted considering the height of the column, as it might suggest to the irrepressible tourists who scofif at Nelson's statue as the " Mast-headed Admiral," some similar witticism at the expense of Diocletian. With the exception of this monolith, which, " a solitary column, mourns above its prostrate brethren," only a few fragmentary and scattered ruins of fallen columns mark the site of the world-renowned Serapeum. Nothing else remains of the famous library, the magnificent por- 248 THE MEDITERRANEAN tico with its hundred steps, the vast halls, and the fotir hundred marble columns of that great building designed to perpetuate the glories of the Ptolemies. This library, which was the forerunner of the great libraries of modern times, must not be confounded with the equally famous one that was attached to the Museum, whose exact site is still a bone of contention among antiquarians. The latter was destroyed by accident, when Julius Caesar set fire to the Alexandrian fleet. The Serapeum collection survived for six hundred years, till its wanton destruction through the fanaticism of the Caliph Omar. The Arab conqueror is said to have justified this barbarism with a fallacious epigram, which was as unanswerable, however logically faulty, as the famous one familiar to students of English history under the name of Archbishop Morton's Fork. "If these writings," declared the uncompromising con- queror, " agree with the Book of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed." Nothing could prevail against this flagrant example of a petitio prin- cipii, and for six months the three hundred thousand parchments supplied fuel for the four thousand baths of Alexandria. Hard by Pompey's Pillar is a dreary waste, dotted witlt curiously carved structures. This is the Mohammedan cemetery. As in most Oriental towns, the cemetery is at the west end of the town, as the Mohammedans consider that the quarter of the horizon in which the sun sets is the most suitable spot for their burying-places. In this melancholy city of the dead are buried also many of the ruins of the Serapeum, and scattered about among the tombs are fragments of columns and broken pedestals. On some of the tombs a green turban is roughly painted. MOHAMMEDAN CEMETERY 249 strangely out of harmony with the severe stone carving. This signifies that the tomb holds the remains of a de- scendant of the prophet, or of a devout Moslem, who had himself, and not vicariously as is so often done, made the pilgrimage to the sacred city of Mecca. Some of the head-stones are elaborately carved, but most are quite plain, with the exception of a verse of the Koran cut in the stone. The observant tourist will notice on many of the tombs a curious little round hole cut in the stone at the head, which seems to be intended to form a passage to the interior of the vault, though the aperture is gener- ally filled up with earth. It is said that this passage is made to enable the Angel Israfel at the Resurrection to draw out the occupant by the hair of his head ; and the custom which obtains among the lower class Moslems of shaving the head with the exception of a round tuft of hair in the middle — a fashion which suggests an incipient pigtail or an inverted tonsure — is as much due to this superstition as to sanitary considerations. Of far greater interest than this comparatively modern cemetery are the cave cemeteries of El-Meks. These cata- combs are some four miles from the city. The route along the low ridge of sand-hills is singularly unpictur- esque, but the windmills which fringe the shore give a homely aspect to the country, and serve at any rate to break the monotony of this dreary and prosaic shore. We soon reach Said Pacha's unfinished palace of El- Meks, which owes its origin to the mania for building which helped to make the reign of that weak-minded ruler so costly to his over-taxed subjects. One glimpse at the bastard style of architecture is sufficient to remove any feeling of disappointment on being told that the building is not open to the public. The catacombs, which spread 250 THE MEDITERRANEAN for a long distance along the seashore, and of which the so-called Baths of Cleopatra are a part, are very exten- sive, and tourists are usually satisfied with exploring a part. There are no mummies, but the niches can be clearly seen. The plan of the catacombs is curiously like the wards of a key. There are few '' sights " in Alexandria of much in- terest besides those already mentioned. In fact, Alexan- dria is interesting more as a city of sites than sights. It is true that the names of some of the mosques, such as that of the One Thousand and One Columns, built on the site of St. Mark's martyrdom, and the Mosque of St. Athanasius, are calculated to arouse the curiosity of the tourist; but the interest is in the name alone. The Mos- que of many Columns is turned into a quarantine station, and the Mosque of St. Athanasius has no connection with the great Father except that it stands on the site of a church in which he probably preached. Then there is the Coptic Convent of St. Mark, which, according to the inmates, contains the body of the great Evangelist — an assertion which would scarcely deceive the most ignorant and the most credulous tourist that ever entrusted himself to the fostering care of Messrs. Cook, as it is well known that St. Mark's body was re- moved to Venice in the ninth century. The mosque, with the ornate exterior and lofty minaret, in which the re- mains of Said Pacha are buried, is the only one besides those already mentioned which is worth visiting. The shores of the Delta from Alexandria to Rosetta are singularly rich in historical associations, and are thickly strewn with historic landmarks. The plain in which have been fought battles which have decided the fate of the whole western world, may well be called the MUS'TAPHA PACHA 251 " Belgium of the East." In this circumscribed area the empires of the East and West struggled for the mastery, and many centuries later the English here wrested from Napoleon their threatened Indian Empire. In the few miles' railway journey between Alexandria and the suburban town of Ramleh the passenger traverses classic ground. At Mustapha Pacha the line skirts the Roman camp, where Octavius defeated the army of Antony, and gained for Rome a ne^v empire. Unfortunately there are now few ruins left of this encampment, as most of the stones were used by Ismail Pacha in building one of his innumerable palaces, now converted into a hospital and barracks for the English troops. Almost on this very spot where Octavius conquered, was fought the battle of Alexandria, which gave the death-blow to Napoleon's great scheme of founding an Eastern Empire, and con- verting the Mediterranean into " un lac frangais." This engagement was, as regards the number of troops en- gaged, an insignificant one ; but as the great historian of modern Europe has observed, " The importance of a triumph is not always to be measured by the number of men engaged. The contest of 12,000 Britons with an equal number of French on the sands of Alexandria, in its remote effect, overthrew a greater empire than that of Charlemagne, and rescued mankind from a more gall- ing tyranny than that of the Roman Emperors." * A few minutes more and the traveller's historical musings are interrupted by the shriek of the engine as the train enters the Ramleh station. This pleasant and salubrious town, with its rows of trim villas standing in their own well-kept grounds and gardens, the residences of Alexan- drian merchants, suggests a fashionable or " rising " * Alison's " History of Europe." 252 THE MEDITERRANEAN English watering place rather than an Oriental town. As a residence it has no doubt many advantages, includ- ing a good and sufficient water supph', and frequent com- munication by train with Alexandria. But these are not the attractions which appeal to the traveller or tourist. The only objects of interest are the ruins of the Temple of Arsenoe, the wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Concern- ing this temple there is an interesting and romantic legend, which no doubt suggested to Pope his fanciful poem, " The Rape of the Lock " : — " Not Berenice's hair first rose so bright, The heavens bespanghng with dishevelled Hght." This pretty story, which has been immortalized by Ca- tullus, is as follows : — When Ptolemy Euergetes left for his expedition to Syria, his wife Berenice vowed to dedi- cate her hair to Venus Zephyrites should her husband return safe and sound. Her prayer was answered, and in fulfilment of her vow she hung within the Temple of Arsenoe the golden locks that had adorned her head. Unfortunately they were stolen by some sacrilegious thief. The priests were naturally troubled, the King was enraged, and the Queen inconsolable. However, the craft of Conon, the Court astronomer, discovered a way by which the mysterious disappearance could be satis- factorily explained, the priests absolved of all blame, and the vanity of the Queen gratified. The wily astronomer- courtier declared that Jupiter had taken the locks and transformed them into a constellation, placing it in that quarter of the heavens (the "Milky Way") by which the gods, according to tradition, passed to and from Olympus. This pious fraud was effected by annexino^ the group of stars which formed the tail of the constella- ABOUKIR BAY 253 tion Leo, and declaring that this chister of stars was the new constellation into which Berenice's locks had been transformed. This arbitrary modification of the celestial system is known by the name of Coma Berenices, and is still retained in astronomical charts. " I 'mongst the stars myself resplendent now, I, who once curled on Berenice's brow, The tress which she, uplifting her fair arm, To many a god devoted, so from harm They might protect her new-found royal mate. When from her bridal chamber all elate. With its sweet triumph flushed, he went in haste To lay the regions of Assyria waste." * A few miles northwest of Ramleh, at the extremity of the western horn of Aboukir Bay, lies the village of Aboukir. The railway to Rosetta skirts that bay of glorious memory, and as the traveller passes by those silent and deserted shores which fringe the watery arena whereon France and England contended for the Empire of the East, he lives again in those stirring times, and the dramatic episodes of that famous Battle of the Nile crowd upon the memory. That line of deep blue water, bounded on the west by the rocky islet, now called Nelson's Island, and on the east by Fort St. Julien on the Rosetta head- land, marks the position of the French fleet on the ist of August, 1798. The fleet was moored in the form of a crescent close along the shore, and was covered by the batteries of Fort Aboukir. So confident was Brueys, the French Admiral, in the strength of his position, and in his superiority in guns and men (nearly as three to two) over Nelson's fleet, that he sent that famous despatch to Paris, declaring that the enemy was purposely avoiding * Sir Theodore Martin. 254 THE MEDITERRANEAN him. Great must have been his dismay when the EngHsh fleet, which had been scouring the Mediterranean with bursting sails for six long weeks in search of him, was signaled, bearing down unflinchingly upon its formid- able foe — that foe with which Nelson had vowed he would do battle, if above water, even if he had to sail to the Antipodes. " By to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey," were the historic words uttered by the English Admiral when the French fleet was sighted, drawn up in order of battle in Aboukir Bay. The soundings of this dangerous roadstead were un- known to him, but declaring that " where there was room for the enemy to swing, there must be room for us to anchor," he ordered his leading squadron to take up its position to the landward of the enemy. The remainder of the English fleet was ordered to anchor on the out- side of the enemy's line, but at close quarters, thus doub- ling on part of the enemy's line, and placing it in a defile of fire. In short, the effect of this brilliant and masterly disposition of the English fleet was to surround two- thirds of the enemy's ships, and cut them off from the support of their consorts, which were moored too far off to injure the enemy or aid their friends. The French Admiral, in spite of his apparently impregnable position, was consequently out-manoeuvred from the outset, and the victory of Nelson virtually assured. Evening set in soon after Nelson had anchored. All through the night the battle raged fiercely and uninter- mittently, " illuminated by the incessant discharge of over two thousand cannon," and the flames which burst from the disabled ships of the French squadron. The sun had set upon as proud a fleet as ever set sail from the shores BATTLE OF THE NILE 255 of France, and morning rose upon a strangely altered scene. Shattered and blackened hulks now only marked the position they had occupied but a few hours before. On one ship alone, the Tonnant, the tricolor was flying. When the Theseus drew near to take her as prize, she hoisted a flag of truce, but kept her colors flying. '* Your battle flag or none ! " was the stern reph^ as her enemy rounded to and prepared to board. Slowly and reluc- tantly, like an expiring hope, that pale flag fluttered down her lofty spars, and the next that floated there was the standard of Old England. " And now the battle was over — India was saved upon the shores of Egypt — the career of Napoleon was checked, and his navy was anni- hilated. Seven years later that navy was revived, to perish utterly at Trafalgar — a fitting hecatomb for the obsequies of Nelson, whose life seemed to terminate as his mission was then and thus accomplished." The glories of Trafalgar, immortalized by the death of Nelson, have no doubt obscured to some extent those of the Nile. The latter engagement has not, indeed, been enshrined in the memory of Englishmen by popular ballads — those instan- taneous photographs, as they might be called, of the high- est thoughts and strongest emotions inspired by patriotism — but hardly any great sea-fight of modern times has been more prolific in brilliant achievements of heroism and deeds of splendid devotion than the Battle of the Nile. The traditions of this terrible combat have not yet died out among the Egyptians and Arabs, whose forefathers had lined the shores of the bay on that memorable night, and watched with mingled terror and astonishment the destruction of that great armament. It was with some idea of the moral effect the landing of English troops on 256 THE MEDITERRANEAN the shores of this historic bay would have on Arabi's soldiery, that Lord Wolseley contemplated disembarking there the English expeditionary force in August, 1882. On the eastern horn of Aboukir Bay, on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, and about five miles from its mouth, lies the picturesque town of Rosetta. Its Arabic name is Rashid, an etymological coincidence which has induced some writers to jump to the conclusion that it is the birth- place of Haroun Al Rashid. To some persons no doubt the town would be shorn of much of its interest if disso- ciated from our old friend of " The Thousand and One Nights ; " but the indisputable fact remains that Haroun Al Rashid died some seventy years before the foundation of the town in a. d. 870. Rosetta was a port of some commercial importance until the opening of the Mah- moudiyeh Canal in 1819 diverted most of its trade to Alexandria. The town is not devoid of architectural in- terest, and many fragments of ruins may be met with in the half-deserted streets, and marble pillars, which bear signs of considerable antiquity, may be noticed built into the doorways of the comparatively modern houses. One of the most interesting architectural features of Rosetta is the North Gate, flanked with massive towers of a form unusual in Egypt, each tower being crowned with a conical-shaped roof. Visitors will probably have noticed the curious gabled roofs and huge projecting windows of most of the houses. It was from these projecting door- ways and latticed windows that such fearful execution was done to the British troops at the time of the ill-fated English expedition to Egypt in 1807. General Wauchope had been sent by General Eraser, who was in command of the troops, with an absurdly inadequate force of 1,200 men to take the strongly-garrisoned town. Mehemet ROSETTA 257 Ali's Albanian troops had purposely left the gates open in order to draw the English force into the narrow and winding streets. Their commander, without any previous examination, rushed blindly into the town with all his men. The Albanian soldiery waited till the English were confined in this infernal labyrinth of narrow, crooked streets, and then from every window and housetop rained down on them a perfect hail of musket-shot and rifle- ball. Before the officers could extricate their men from this terrible death-trap a third of the troops had fallen. Such was the- result of this rash and futile expedition, which dimmed the lustre of their arms in Egypt, and contributed a good deal to the loss of their military pres- tige. That this crushing defeat should have taken place so near the scene of the most glorious achievement of their arms but a few years before, was naturally thought a peculiar aggravation of the failure of this ill-advised expedition. To archaeological students and Egyptologists Rosetta is a place of the greatest interest, as it was in its neighbor- hood that the famous inscribed stone was found which furnished the clue — sought in vain for so many years by Egyptian scholars — to the hieroglyphic writings of Egypt. Perhaps none of the archaeological discoveries made in Egypt since the land was scientifically exploited by the savants attached to Napoleon's expedition, not even that of the mummified remains of the Pharaohs, is more precious in the eyes of Egyptologists and antiqua- rians than this comparatively modern and ugly-looking block of black basalt, which now reposes in the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum. The story of its dis- covery is interesting. A certain Monsieur Bouchard, a Erench Captain of Engineers, while making some excava- 258 THE MEDITERRANEAN tions at Fort St. Julien, a small fortress in the vicinity of Rosetta, discovered this celebrated stone in 1799. The interpretation of the inscription for many years defied all the efforts of the most learned French savants and Eng- lish scholars, until, in 1822, two well-known Egyptolo- gists, Champollion and Dr. Young, after independent study and examination, succeeded in deciphering that part of the inscription which was in Greek characters. From this they learnt that the inscription was triplicate and trilingual : one in Greek, the other in the oldest form of hieroglyphics, the purest kind of " picture-writing," and the third in demotic characters — the last being the form of hieroglyphics used by the people, in which the symbols are more obscure than in the pure hieroglyphics used by the priests. The inscription, when finariy de- ciphered, proved to be one of comparatively recent date, being a decree of Ptolemy V., issued in the year 196 b. c. The Rosetta stone was acquired by England as part of the spoils of war in the Egyptian expedition of 1801. At Rosetta the railway leaves the coast and goes south to Cairo. If the traveller wishes to see something of the agricul- ture of the Delta, he would get some idea of the astonish- ing fertility of the country by merely taking the train to Damanhour, the center of the cotton-growing district. The journey does not take more than a couple of hours. The passenger travelling by steamer from Alexandria to Port Said, though he skirts the coast, can see no signs of the agricultural wealth of Egypt, and for him the whole of Egypt might be an arid desert instead of one of the most fertile districts in the whole world. The area of cultivated lands, which, however, extends yearly sea- wards, is separated from the coast by a belt composed of OVERFLOW OF THE NILE 259 strips of sandy desert, marshy plain, low sandhills, and salt lagunes, which varies in breadth from fifteen to thirty miles. A line drawn from Alexandria to Damietta, through the southern shore of Lake Boorlos, marks ap- proximately the limit of cultivated land in this part of the Delta. The most unobservant traveller in Egypt can- not help perceiving that its sole industry is agriculture, and that the bulk of its inhabitants are tillers of the soil. Egypt seems, indeed, intended by nature to be the gran- ary and market-garden of North Africa, and the pros- perity of the country depends on its being allowed to retain its place as a purely agricultural country. The ill-advised, but fortunately futile, attempts which have been made by recent rulers to develop manufactures at the expense of agriculture, are the outcome of a short- sighted policy or perverted ambition. Experience has proved that every acre diverted from its ancient and rational use as a bearer of crops is a loss to the national wealth. That " Egypt is the gift of the Nile " has been insisted upon with " damnable iteration " by every writer on Egypt, from Herodotus downwards. According to the popular etymology,* the very name of the Nile ( NefXo?, from via t'Aus, new mud) testifies to its peculiar fer- tilizing properties. The Nile is all in all to the Egyptian, and can we wonder that Egyptian mythologists recog- nized in it the Creative Principle waging eternal warfare with Typhon, the Destructive Principle, represented by the encroaching desert? As Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole has well observed, " without the Nile there would be no * In Homeric times, as is shown by the Odyssey, the Nile was called AiyvTtTog, a name which was afterwards transferred to the country. 26o THE MEDITERRANEAN Egypt; the great African Sahara would spread uninter- ruptedly to the Red Sea. Egypt is, in short, a long oasis worn in the rocky desert by the ever-flowing stream, and made green and fertile by its waters." At Cairo the Nile begins to rise about the third week in June, and the beginning of the overflow coincides with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star. The heavens have been called the clocks of the Ancients, and, according to some writers, it was the connection between the rise of the Nile and that of the Dog Star that first opened the way to the study of astronomy among the ancient Egyp- tians, so that not only was the Nile the creator of their country, but also of their science. The fellahs, however, still cherish a lingering belief in the supernatural origin of the overflow. They say that a miraculous drop of water falls into the Nile on the 17th of June, which causes the river to swell. Till September the river continues to rise, not regularly, but by leaps and bounds. In this month it attains its full height, and then gradually sub- sides till it reaches its normal height in the winter months. As is well known, the quality of the harvest depends on the height of the annual overflow — a rise of not less than eighteen feet at Cairo being just sufficient, while a rise of over twenty-six feet, or thereabouts, would cause irreparable damage. It is a common notion that a very high Nile is beneficial ; whereas an excessive inundation would do far more harm to the country than an abnormal deficiency of water. Statistics show conclusively that most of the famines in Egypt have occurred after an ex- ceptionally high Nile. Shakespeare, who, we know, is often at fault in matters of natural science, is perhaps partly accountable for this popular error : — " The higher DAMIETTA 261 Nilus swells, the more it promises," he makes Antony say, when describing the wonders of Egypt to Csesar. The coast between Rosetta and Port Said is, like the rest of the Egyptian littoral, flat and monotonous. The only break in the dreary vista is afforded by the pictur- esque-looking town of Damietta, which, with its lofty houses, looking in the distance like marble palaces, has a striking appearance seen from the sea. The town, though containing some spacious bazaars and several large and well-proportioned mosques, has little to attract the visitor, and there are no antiquities or buildings of any historic interest. ' The traveller, full of the traditions of the Cru- sades, who expects to find some traces of Saladin and the Saracens, will be doomed to disappointment. Da- mietta is comparatively modern, the old Byzantine city having been destroyed by the Arabs early in the thir- teenth century, and rebuilt — at a safer distance from in- vasion by sea — a few miles inland, under the name of Mensheeyah. One of the gateways of the modern town, the Mensheeyah Gate, serves as a reminder of its former name. Though the trade of Damietta has, in common with most of the Delta sea-ports, declined since the con- struction of the Mahmoudiyeh Canal, it is still a town of some commercial importance, and consular representatives of several European powers are stationed here. To sportsmen Damietta offers special advantages, as it makes capital headquarters for the wild-fowl shooting on Men- zaleh Lake, which teems with aquatic birds of all kinds. Myriads of wild duck may be seen feeding here, and " big game " — if the expression can be applied to birds — in the shape of herons, pelicans, storks, flamingoes, etc., is plentiful. In the marshes which abut on the lake, speci- 262 THE MEDITERRANEAN mens of the papyrus are to be found, this neighborhood being one of the few habitats of this rare plant. Soon after rounding the projecting ridge of low sand-hills which fringe the estuary of the Damietta Branch of the Nile, the noble proportions of the loftiest lighthouse of the Mediterranean come into view. It is fitted with one of the most powerful electric lights in the world, its pene- trating rays being visible on a clear night at a distance of over twenty-five miles. Shortly afterwards the forest of masts, apparently springing out of the desert, informs the passenger of the near vicinity of Port Said. There is, of course, nothing to see at Port Said from a tourist's standpoint. The town is little more than a large coaling station, and is of very recent growth. It owes its existence solely to the Suez Canal, and to the fact that the water at that part of the coast is deeper than at Pelusium, where the isthmus is narrowest. The town is built partly on artificial foundations on the strip of low sand-banks which forms a natural sea-wall protecting Lake Menzaleh from the Mediterranean. In the autumn at high Nile it is surrounded on all sides by water. An imaginative writer once called Port Said the Venice of Africa — not a very happy description, as the essentially modern appearance of this coaling station strikes the most unobservant visitor. The comparison might for its in- . appositeness rank with the proverbial one between Mace- don and Monmouth. Both Venice and Port Said are land-locked, and that is the only feature they have in common. The sandy plains in the vicinity of the town are, how- ever, full of interest to the historian and archaeologist. Here may be found ruins and remains of antiquity which recall a period of civilization reaching back more cen- PORT SAID 263 ttiries than Port Said (built in 1859) ^o^s years. The ruins of Pelusium (the Sin of the Old Testament), the key of Northeastern Egypt in the Pharaonic period, are only eighteen miles distant, and along the shore may still be traced a few vestiges of the great highway — the oldest road in the world of which remains exist — constructed by Rameses II., in 1350 b. c, when he undertook his expedi- tion for the conquest of Syria. To come to more recent history. It was on the Pelu- siac shores that Cambyses defeated the Egyptians, and here some five centuries later Pompey the Great was treacherously murdered when he fled to Egypt, after the Battle of Pharsalia. To the southwest of Port Said, close to the wretched little fishing village of Sais, situated on the southern shore of Lake Menzaleh, are the magnificent ruins of Tanis (the Zoan of the Old Testament). These seldom visited remains are only second to those of Thebes in historical and archaeological interest. It is a Httle curious that while tourists flock in crowds to distant Thebes and Kar- nak, few take the trouble to visit the easily accessible ruins of Tanis. The ruins were uncovered at great cost of labor by the late Mariette Bey, and in the great temple were unearthed some of the most notable monuments of the Pharaohs, including over a dozen gigantic fallen obelisks — a larger number than any Theban temple con- tains. This vast building, restored and enlarged by Ra- meses II., goes back to over five thousand years. As Thebes declined Tanis rose in importance, and under the kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty it became the chief seat of Government. Mr. John Macgregor (Rob Roy), who was one of the first of modern travellers to call at- tention to these grand ruins, declares that of all the cele- 264 THE MEDITERRANEAN brated remains he had seen none impressed him " so deeply with the sense of fallen and deserted magnifi- cence " as the ruined temple of Tanis. The Suez Canal is admittedly one of the greatest under- takings of modern times, and has perhaps effected a greater transformation in the world's commerce, during the thirty years that have elapsed since its completion, than has been effected in the same period by the agency of steam. It was emphatically the work of one man, and of one, too, who was devoid of the slightest technical training in the engineering profession. Monsieur de Lesseps cannot, of course, claim any originality in the conception of this great undertaking, for the idea of open- ing up communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by means of a maritime canal is almost as old as Egypt itself, and many attempts were made by the rulers of Egypt from Sesostris downwards to span the Isthmus with " a bridge of water." Most of these pro- jects proved abortive, though there was some kind of water communication between the two seas in the time of the Ptolemies, and it was by this canal that Cleopatra attempted to escape after the battle of Actium. When Napoleon the Great occupied Egypt, he went so far as to appoint a commission of engineers to examine into a projected scheme for a maritime canal, but owing to the ignorance of the commissioners, who reported that there was a difference of thirty feet in the levels of the two seas — though there is really scarcely more than six inches — which would necessitate vast locks, and involve enor- mous outlay of money, the plan was given up. The Suez Canal is, in short, the work of one great man, and its existence is due to the undaunted courage, the in- domitable energy, to the intensity of conviction, and to THE SUEZ CANAL 265 the magnetic personality of M. de Lesseps, which influ- enced everyone with whom he came in contact, from Viceroy down to the humblest fellah. This great pro- ject was carried out, too, not by a professional engineer, but by a mere consular clerk, and was executed in spite of the most determined opposition of politicians and capitalists, and in the teeth of the mockery and ridicule of practical engineers, who affected to sneer at the scheme as the chimerical dream of a vainglorious Frenchman. The Canal, looked at from a purely picturesque stand- point, does not present such striking features as other great monuments of engineering skill — the Forth Bridge, the Mont Cenis Tunnel, or the great railway which scales the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains. This " huge ditch;^- as it has been contemptuously called, " has not indeed been carried over high mountains, nor cut through rock-bound tunnels, nor have its waters been confined by Titanic masses of masonry." In fact, technically speak- ing, the name canal as applied to this channel is a mis- nomer. It has nothing in common with other canals — no locks, gates, reservoirs, nor pumping engines. It is really an artificial strait, or a prolongation of an arm of the sea. We can freely concede this, yet to those of imaginative temperament there are elements of romance about this great enterprise. It is the creation of a nine- teenth-century wizard who, with his enchanter's wand — the spade — has transformed the shape of the globe, and summoned the sea to flow uninterruptedly from the Medi- terranean to the Indian Ocean. Then, too, the most matter-of-fact traveller who traverses it can hardly fail to be impressed with the genius loci. Every mile of the Canal passes through a region enriched by the memories of events which had their birth in the remotest ages of 266 THE MEDITERRANEAN antiquity. Across this plain four thousand years ago Abraham wandered from far-away Ur of the Chaldees, Beyond the placid waters of Lake Menzaleh lie the ruins of Zoan, where Moses performed his miracles. On the right lies the plain of Pelusium, across which Rameses II. led his great expedition for the conquest of Syria; and across this sandy highway the hosts of Persian, Greek, and Roman conquerors successively swept to take posses- sion of the riches of Egypt. In passing through the Canal at night — the electric light seeming as a pillar of fire to the steamer, as it swiftly, but silently, ploughs its course through the desert — the strange impressiveness of the scene is intensified. " The Canal links together in sweep- ing contrast the great Past and the greater Present, point- ing to a future which we are as little able to di